What is up everyone and welcome to the WAN Show!
There is a ton of news to talk about this week, so if you HATE it when we get distracted
from shilling for LTTstore.com and randomly bantering, then you are not going to have
a lot of fun today.
Let's get right into it, no delay!
New York lawmakers are debating background checks for 3D printers.
Oh, and our headline topic, NVIDIA is no longer allowed to export RTX 4090s to China.
How will they game without 4090s?
It's actually impossible.
I mean, they're gonna look back on their lives and think, how much of my life did I spend
without ray tracing?
Ray tracing.
That's an older reference, but come on.
It still checks out.
It still checks out.
Right, what else we got today?
Apple to potentially update phones while they're in their boxes still?
Okay, no.
That is actually cool.
No, that's wild.
I actually really like it.
Because that means they can turn them on.
Remotely.
Well, we'll talk about that later.
That's nuts.
We'll talk about that later.
I don't know what's going on with that.
Later.
And Twitter's gonna charge users.
I don't know.
I was told not to read the doc.
I don't know what other topics are in here.
I've been told there's like a lot of them.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're good.
I believe...
Wow.
This Donkey Kong game.
We'll talk about that later.
Okay.
Stop reading.
It's gonna be great.
Okay, okay, okay.
The show is brought to you today by Thorom AG1 and Seasonic.
At least I think that was Seasonic.
The screen went away and I was looking at something else.
All right, why don't we jump right into our first topic.
We're gonna get through it pretty quick because it's not actually a big discussion one.
It just kind of worked as a title.
The US has banned the export of RTX 4090s to China as part of their attempts to keep China
behind in terms of technological savvy.
It doesn't seem to be going that well based on that new Huawei phone that just came out.
Have you been paying attention to that?
No.
But supposedly their first completely homegrown fabbed processor that's reasonably modern
and yeah, it's a little on the slower side compared to what you can get from the likes
of Qualcomm or Apple right now, but it's not that bad.
Like it's, you know, if you think about that they could clearly build guided missiles 10
years ago and you look at this processor on this phone and go, well, it's a lot faster
than phones from 10 years ago.
Yeah.
It's like if the US's goal is that they're not going to be able to build weaponry or whatever,
then I think that that's going great.
The US is increasing.
I think it's AI research, but yeah.
Well, AI is a big part of it right now, but in general, they're trying to put pressure
on China and keep them behind the US in terms of technological advancement, which I think
is, I think that horse is kind of out of the paddock.
Is it horses that come out of the paddock?
It's something.
Something.
Horses bolted?
Something like that?
The barn door is open?
Sure.
The point is...
Cats out of the bag?
The US is increasing...
Why did you put a cat in a bag?
Not like...
What is wrong with you?
It's like a messenger bag.
Was it at least just one cat?
And the...
It's open?
How many cats did you have in there?
It's just an easier way to carry...
What the f**k?
There's like six.
Only one of them got out of the bag.
The US is increasing export restrictions on advanced AI chips to China, which will also
limit exports to countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Vietnam, though China is the primary
target of the policy.
Companies will now require a special export license to ship NVIDIA, A800, and H800 GPUs
to China.
There are variants of the A100 and H100...
I think there's some typos in here...
That NVIDIA modified...
Oh, these are the variants of the A100 and H100 that NVIDIA modified to comply with export
restrictions put in place last year.
So, those were intended to keep China from having access to the most advanced AI chips.
Now, they're basically going, yeah, no.
The old rules left consumer graphics cards untouched, but the new rules also restrict
sales of NVIDIA's RTX 4090.
Vendors can apply for a special license to sell these GPUs, but it's not clear how likely
the government is to grant them.
Companies will also be required to inform the US government before selling chips below
the restriction threshold.
In August 2022, this is a big hit for NVIDIA.
NVIDIA disclosed that it anticipated $400 million in quarterly sales.
Not annual sales.
Quarterly.
Quarterly sales from China.
So, there's a couple main discussion points here.
You know, one of them is, is this going to do anything?
And I think I've made my feelings on it pretty clear.
In the very, very, very short term, it might slow down some of China's AI progress.
I have a potential counterargument to that.
But, really?
Yeah.
You know what?
I would love to hear it.
So, maybe in regards to raw compute power, it will.
But I think the policy wrestling that the American companies have to deal with will slow them down
just as much or more.
Yeah, that's, that's probably fair.
Also, I am not convinced that we necessarily need a ton more hardware out there in the field
to continue to develop AI in a meaningful way.
Yeah.
If that makes sense to you.
Like, yes.
If you want to build a service that real customers are really using and refine things, for sure.
But at the research level, I'm willing to bet that there are enough RTX whatever the crap's
in China right now.
And I guarantee you they could poke through that firewall to access remote power if they
needed to.
Remote resources, I should say, if they needed to.
Yep.
So, a lot of the models, like Lama and all these other ones, they're all open anyways.
Like, and no, maybe it's not the point of the sword, but they're pretty ridiculously
good.
I don't know.
I don't think there's really any holding them back very much.
I mean...
Personally.
Elijah, who's our junior writer in the writing department and clearly has some research to
do, asks, wouldn't NVIDIA just make a factory over there or am I ignorant?
The restrictions are from the US government on NVIDIA, a US company headquartered in the
US that prevent NVIDIA from shipping advanced processors to China.
Those processors are actually manufactured in Taiwan, which depending who you ask, is
or isn't part of China.
But for the purposes of these regulations, Taiwan, it would not be part of China, which
is a really kind of funny thing.
It's very interesting.
Because the US's stance is sort of like, we don't take a position on this.
By the way, NVIDIA, you may not export chips to China that are manufactured in...
You know what?
We're not going to take a position on this.
Yeah.
So, the US government is sort of within their rights to restrict these exports, but also,
I think this raises some really interesting questions about, in general, the barriers that
are being put up between international cooperation, where governments are stepping in, and especially
the US government, governments are stepping in and restricting companies' abilities to
operate over borders internationally.
I'm honestly not the right person to talk about that.
There's a lot of...
Yeah, there's a lot of geopolitical debates there.
It's complicated.
There's one people have been talking about for a long time, that neither of us are, you
know, in the right position to debate too much.
But there's been this kind of assumption for a long time that there can be no real, like,
war, because all the countries are too interconnected and rely on each other too much.
And by closing that door, there's some concerns that are far above my understanding.
But, yeah.
In other news, Jon Stewart's Apple TV Plus show, The Problem, has reportedly been cancelled prior
to its third season following creative differences between Stewart and leadership at Apple over
how Stewart wanted to cover artificial intelligence and China.
Things are getting complicated.
Hey, Jon Stewart, if you want home on float plane, we're...
Yeah.
We're ready.
We're ready for you.
I love Jon Stewart.
Guy's real.
The guy's real.
Yeah, what he did for the firefighters was super cool.
Yeah, the guy's real.
All right, why don't we do another big topic.
Man, should we court controversy or should we go with something safe?
Controversy first, I think.
Let's do it!
Heat up and then cool down.
All right, you already saw the headline for this.
New York lawmakers debate background checks for 3D printers.
I'm gonna let you read the topic and I'm just gonna look at your face.
He doesn't know about this yet.
He's been completely disconnected this week, just like busy doing other things.
Had a wild week, yeah.
I am so excited.
Let's all watch Luke.
Let's all watch Luke.
Oh boy.
This isn't weird at all.
Wow.
Pain to me.
New York legislators have proposed a bill that would require a criminal background check
to buy 3D printers that could be used to print any part of a firearm.
This would likely...
This would likely include a vast majority of 3D printers commercially available.
Yeah, like pretty much all of them, including relatively cheap FDM printers.
According to the bill as written, background checks could take up to 15 business days.
Sale of these 3D printers would be prohibited to any user who has a conviction or outstanding
warrant for a felony or other serious crime.
While many 3D printed guns require at least a few...
Yeah.
At least a few metal parts.
Yeah.
At least a couple.
Like a barrel.
But anyways, at least a few metal parts for reliability and accuracy.
There are some relatively weak printed guns that can be made entirely of plastic or wood.
But anyways, let's skip past that.
With the exception of the firing pin.
However, I mean, there's ways around that too.
However, these guns typically fall apart after only a few uses.
Yeah.
Okay.
Hmm.
Now to be clear, okay, look, Luke's not some kind of like 2FA diehard, like nothing else
matters, but also I think has a pretty realistic view of what kind of legislation could meaningfully
impact firearm safety.
And honestly, it's not the kind of thing that we're going to get into in great detail on the
show, even though it's something that we both have thoughts on and have talked to each
other about privately.
But what I knew for sure is that you were going to get a huge kick out of this because
this will do absolutely f***ing nothing.
That is why.
That is why.
It will serve absolutely no purpose other than to make it inconvenient to get a 3D printer.
Yes.
And probably only marginally so.
Luke, Mythbusters wood cannon.
Look up the recent assassination of the Japanese-
Look, a handheld flippin' crossbow is in a lot of ways more dangerous than a firearm
because of how stealthily it can be used.
Those are super illegal here, but you can totally make one without a 3D printer.
Like, it's bizarre to me that they are basically, it's like banning scissors and tape.
Like, I'm sorry, you can't have tape because you might use it to bind somebody.
Sure, you could.
And no, this is not, this is not one of those, what's it called?
A straw man argument or whatever?
I forget the exact thing.
Yeah, like someone at Flowpoint Chat or single shot shotguns with metal pipes.
Yeah, this is my point.
Yeah, I'm not taking this to an absurd level just to demonstrate that this is a slippery slope or anything.
This is actually ridiculous.
If you want to make stuff, you can make stuff.
Yeah.
You don't need a 3D printer.
You could fire a bullet without a gun.
Yeah.
You literally don't even need one.
Yeah.
I know this from experience.
Don't worry about it.
Not accurately, mind you.
Yeah.
Uh, okay.
Um, yeah.
So, hmm.
I mean, yeah.
Someone at chat, CNC Machines.
Um, yeah, like what, where, this is my-
Why don't you ban bleach and ammonia?
Because they can be used to make mustard gas.
Styrofoam.
Or gasoline and styrofoam.
Yeah.
Like, I just-
What?
Sorry.
Fellow anarchist cookbook?
Yeah.
Just fell out of the exact same one at the same time.
Nice.
Um, yeah.
Like, I don't know.
You can't, you can't, it's just, it's not, it's literally just gonna be annoying to people
that want 3D printers.
And realistically.
Okay.
Actually, I'm, I'm glad that you brought up the anarchist cookbook because-
I did.
The only-
What?
Which is literally not what happened.
Yeah, well, you know, it's got all kinds of instructions for how to do things with fuel.
I used gas lighting.
Um.
Oh my goodness.
So I'm glad, I'm glad you-
I'm glad you-
I thought it was pretty good.
I'm glad you brought up the anarchist cookbook because-
Oh yeah, sure.
Because the only reason that I ever downloaded it, the only reason I even became aware of
it was because someone tried to ban it at some point when I was in high school.
Me too.
I bet you we did, we probably downloaded the same file and very likely same day.
So it's, it's, it's pretty much just your classic Streisand effect, right?
Yeah.
All this talk about 3D printing guns.
I'm not saying that it's gonna change anything.
Eventually, 3D printed guns will proliferate.
They will be absolutely everywhere.
You will be able to 3D print a sophisticated weapon with commodity hardware.
I have no doubt whatsoever of that.
You're always gonna have problems with-
But-
Certain things.
Trying to slow it down in this way is doing absolutely nothing other than sparking a conversation.
I wouldn't be talking about this right now.
If New York wasn't deciding to do background checks?
For three-
I mean, eh.
It's not like there's some kind of biometric authentication.
All you would have to do is recruit some low-level crony, you know, like organized criminals do, who doesn't have a record yet.
Get them to do the dirty work, which is apparently going to the f***ing store and buying a f***ing 3D printer now.
And then you can print as many guns as you want.
Because it's not like they're even gonna limit how many 3D printers you can buy.
So you just roll up to freaking, I don't know, whatever stores they have in New York that sell 3D printers.
Walk out with an arm load of 3D printers.
What are you gonna do with these?
I don't know.
Sell stuff on Etsy.
Yeah, exactly.
Prove I'm not.
Yeah.
So what's next?
We're gonna have chips and 3D printers that prevent them from printing, you know, firearms pieces like you have in printers that keep you from printing currency?
There's no way.
It's not realistic.
There's so many different ways.
So many different forms.
I mean, they could-
Yeah, I mean, could it kind of AI it?
Anything with a tube?
No.
Yeah, really.
I mean, that's what it would kind of-
Well, the tube is not-
It's plastic.
It would be really bad.
Yeah, but it's technically possible.
For one, maybe.
Ah, there's a lot of pressure.
I don't know.
I think you could-
I don't know enough about this.
I think for-
It just ends up being like this big.
I don't know.
Yeah, band stepper motors.
Exactly.
Thanks, Dan.
Like, just-
There's so many other-
It's-
This is clear-
And this is one of the problems with a lot of gun laws.
Um, is this is clearly made by someone who has no idea what they're talking about.
Yep.
I mean, like, look, it's one of those things where, again, we're not gonna get-
So it's just gonna do nothing and just be annoying.
We are realistically not gonna get into the exact details of any of our stances, but one
thing that Luke and I did talk about in a fair bit of detail is, in Canada, they released
a list of weapons that moved from not band to band.
This is what, a year ago?
Two years ago?
I don't remember the exact timeline, but yeah.
I don't remember when it happened, but basically, as far as either of us could tell, and Luke
is far more knowledgeable about it than me, so take whatever I'm saying as just the vague
recollections of something someone who actually knows anything told to them a long time ago.
Um, but as far as either of us could tell, most of the rationale appeared to be-
Oh my god, looks scary.
Around the aesthetics-
Yeah.
Of the weapons.
So I went through an exercise of showing Linus all the things that were still on the
market, which were significantly scarier.
Like, really scary.
Yeah.
Um, do you, man, do you have any examples that you could think of?
I'm not gonna be able to bring it up right now, but there's one where it's a folding shotgun
Yeah.
That is going to be shorter than the length of your femur when folded.
Yeah.
And comes with a strapped-on femur mount.
Yeah.
Um, so it just like-
Shotguns are f***ing scary.
Like-
And a lot of the policy makers seem to not think so, because they play like-
Yeah.
Like, what, what?
I mean, they're for ducks, right?
Yeah.
It's like-
No, they're for turning objects into ground meat.
It's just like-
Against an unarmored target.
Yeah.
Holy crap.
The fact that we're-
Ah, man.
Yeah, anyway.
So it's, it's mostly the utter illogicality.
Is that a word?
Yeah.
It's just constantly policy makers that have no idea what they're talking about, putting
policy in that mostly just annoys people, um, and doesn't really actually accomplish
anything.
Um, I think this is super common with firearms.
I'm not surprised that, um, this one is similarly like, what?
Um, someone to chat, I want to strap on femur mount.
Yeah.
I, I'm not even saying anything about the stuff.
I was just pointing out that like the way that certain laws are written, like that one
shotgun in particular is able to skirt around certain Canadian laws because it, it meets,
it meets certain very specific requirements.
Um, but like, if you, if you went into the nature of what the law is trying to accomplish,
you would think that that thing should definitely not be allowed.
But if you go into the technical specifics of how the law works, it is totally allowed.
So it's like, huh, this is weird.
And there's a lot of, a lot of firearms laws end up being that way.
Um, where you end up with like weird things going on.
Um, and oftentimes situations that are actually significantly more dangerous for the people
that are trying to follow the laws properly, because it now puts them, the things that they
were using to be more safe are now illegal.
Um, because again, people not knowing what they're talking about.
Like it's, it, it's a firearms law is a very weird realm.
Um, and this one's also weird because again, you can just have like a pipe.
Yeah.
Shinzo Abe.
Uh, this is posted in float plane chat was killed by what?
A piece of PVC, a two by four and a nail or something like that.
Like it's like that gun was very, not a gun.
The article said one shot with except.
Yeah.
It can be made entirely plastic with exception of the firing pin.
And it's like, yeah, except you can use, I don't know.
A piece of metal.
A nail.
Yeah.
Like, yeah.
Had someone involved.
Most of the 3d printing stuff when it comes to firearms, as far as I've been able to observe
is to like make it so that they look cooler because having a pipe and a plank of wood doesn't
necessarily look that cool.
Like it's, it's not, I don't know.
Let's not forget.
Like if refire rates, not a concern, people literally fabricated their own firearms in,
you know, like the 1800s or whatever.
Like if all you need to do is propel a ball bearing at high enough speed to penetrate a
human body, that is not difficult to make on your own.
That stuff has been being done for a very, very, very long time.
It's like, I don't know, bruh.
There's also, you can find videos of them online.
There's like 3d printed firearms competitions.
Of course there are.
And it's, it's mostly like, can your firearm make it through?
Cause they'll all like fall apart.
And this is many years in.
Yeah.
Uh, I don't know.
Someone in float plane chat asked, would you let your kids 3d print a gun?
Um, no, this is not the same.
Oh, I'm not, I'm not saying.
All I'm saying is, is that this law will not change anything.
That's all I'm saying.
And you can tell by how it's written that the person making the law has no idea that that's
true.
It's almost like when we're looking at, you know, laws around right to repair or net neutrality,
or I mean, it's lawmakers making laws about things that they have no idea what they're
talking about and lobbyists and lobbyists informing them about the things that they want them to
know about.
I'm trying to figure out who's lobbying for this.
Is this just kind of like a special interest group maybe or something like who's, I'm assuming
it's just anti firearm stuff in general, but I just, I think that even from that standpoint,
like this, again, it's, it doesn't change anything.
It just annoys 3d printer people.
And honestly, I bet you, cause I, I haven't probably doesn't even annoy 3d printer people
who already have 3d printers.
Yeah, that too.
Like what are they going to make you like hand them in that?
And can I just bring up for a moment that New York is a really small state?
Yeah.
Which is very relevant here because nothing prevents you from crossing state lines into New York
With a 3d printer?
With a 3d printer.
With a 3d printer.
With a 3d printer.
Like it's one of those wimpy eastern states, back when everybody walked everywhere.
Like.
I just, I'm imagining in my head someone with like a tarp in the back of their car covering
up their like 3d printers as they drive into New York.
I'm smuggling in 3d printers.
New York gangsters going from like bootlegging to.
GTO fan in Twitch chat being like, not really.
New York city is small, but the state isn't.
Brother.
Yeah.
We're from Canada.
Anything I can drive across in like a few hours is small.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh man.
Oh, so yeah.
I don't know.
Um, I think if anything, this is going to amplify a 3d printed firearms because now people are,
if they're going to attempt to ban it in any way, you're effectively communicating to people,
whether or not this is true, you're communicating to people that this thing is effective and
dangerous.
Yeah.
Um, so now more bad actors will be interested in it.
Um, so.
Here, I'm gonna, I'm just going to help people out here a little bit.
Um, okay.
Someone in full plane chat, you can 3d print firearms.
Neat.
It's like, oh, this is New York state.
Uh, there we go.
So from the center, it is five hours out basically.
Okay.
This is BC where we live.
From here to here to here.
He didn't even just include Vancouver Island.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
This Island and this Island is also part of it.
Yeah.
So just, just to give you some context.
I'm not, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, okay.
It's, this is not a measuring contest, but ours is bigger.
But ours is bigger.
Which is why you don't want it to be a measuring contest.
Look, there was bound to be a dick measuring contest I was going to win at some point.
Just let me have this one.
And it ends up being the size of a state versus the size of a province.
A lot.
I think a lot of Americans are actually mad because yes.
Yes.
The distortion of looking at a globe on a flat, whatever does make BC look bigger than it
is.
Also.
Yes.
It's mostly mountainous garbage, not inhabitable, covered in snow or rock or rock that is covered
in snow.
Yes.
We get it.
But it's huge.
BC is bigger than Texas.
America has the, America has the best land, the greatest land, but it is big.
Okay.
So if you want to win one, if you want to look at how uninhabitable Canada is, if you look
at the population distribution of Canada, we're all snuggling up against that US border.
Everybody.
No, no one lives in like most of Canada or I shouldn't say no one because now I'm going
to piss off a very, very small population of people.
Um, but there's, there's a, there's a little sprinkling through the rest of it.
Ninety percent.
Uh, and somewhere between, depending on whether you take your source, uh, depending on whether
you source from Quora or interesting facts.com somewhere between 85 and 90 percent of Canadians
apparently live within 100 miles of the US border.
So could literally get there within an hour or two.
Yeah.
And yet we don't go there.
I'm kidding.
We do.
We go there for shopping.
It's so much cheaper.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We, we, we love our neighbor.
We love our neighbors to the south.
We really do.
But our country is bigger.
Look, we got nothing else.
Okay.
It's the only thing we can.
We got rocks.
It's really.
And ice.
Lots of ice.
And water.
Oh no.
Forget that part soon.
Um.
Yeah.
Ugh.
This is great.
This Vox headline.
Canada is a huge country.
Most of it is unfit for human.
I love where it gets cut off.
Yeah.
It's kind of true though.
Unfit for human.
Yeah.
Human what?
Just human.
You just gotta live at the bottom of it.
Unfit.
Yeah.
All right.
Um.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
But this one's cool though.
Brand new and updated in box.
According to reliable leaker Mark Gurman, Apple is planning a system to update sealed iPhones
inside their retail stores without ever taking them out of the box.
Allegedly, these sealed boxes.
This is so cool.
Will be placed on a proprietary pad like device that will turn on the iPhone, install the latest updates and turn it back off.
People are pointing out that New York has like four times the population of BC.
California has the population of Canada.
Yeah.
We have slightly more than them now only because we just cranked on immigration for like years.
Oh, that's true.
Yeah.
We were lower than California for a long time.
I have no idea how many people actually live in California though.
Duh.
That's true.
That is true.
These devices will apparently roll out to Apple stores before the end of the year.
Can I for one say that this is awesome.
It sounds cool.
I love it.
And look, I'm sure there's bound to be some creepy things about the mechanism.
I'm a little bit worried about what someone might be able to use something like this for.
I just, I don't know how you could use it improperly.
I've been trying to rack my brain on that the whole time.
I mean, there could be an attack vector where if you get one of these devices,
you can force someone's phone to update to a particular version of iOS that maybe has some exploit that you can take advantage of.
And because you can turn it on, even someone who thinks their phone is like off and safe, you could, you could still do.
I don't know.
Or something.
But based on that, you have to have physical access to the phone by which time.
Do you?
Pretty much.
Yeah.
It seems like it.
Yes.
It's a pad that you put it on.
So presumably it's also transmitting wireless power.
So I would guess that their packaging will maybe have the phone close enough to the bottom that it could get back.
Because you don't want to run a bunch of, you don't want to run an update on a phone, sight unseen, having no idea how much battery power it has.
Yeah.
So unless you had like an NFC chip or RFID chip of some sort.
Do you think they'd have it connect through?
Because I feel like if you have it that close, you have, you're just asking for damage.
Oh, it shouldn't be hard to say.
I mean, you won't need much power.
Yeah.
And while it's way more effective in very, very close proximity, you can transmit wireless power over a short distance.
I mean, maybe they don't need to.
Maybe they could just have an RFID chip in there that says, hey, I've got X amount of battery or whatever.
And as long as they can read that, then they wouldn't accidentally update something that would then get bricked because it loses power mid update or something like that.
Danny says there's far too many server handshakes to get an iOS update delivered to your phone.
It's just not going to be abusable.
I, the, my problem with it is the access at all.
Um, not necessarily the update.
I, I don't know.
I'm not sure like how this could be used.
It just, it's, it's new.
Um, and therefore concern.
I haven't come up with anything in particular yet.
Like I said, I'm just like worried.
Yeah.
And that's not a completely irrational thing.
And honestly, the scenario that I gave is probably not realistic.
I don't even think iOS supports being flashed back to previous versions, for example.
I don't know.
Um, it sounds sweet though.
Like, I think it's cool.
Um, I, I would like to see a lot of devices get this potentially pretty much everything over time.
I mean, it's funny to me, not only that this doesn't exist just everywhere, but how,
but how easily rectified so many cases of devices arriving out of date could be like you buy a computer, right?
We secret shop companies.
We secret shopped some PC companies very recently.
We're not going to cover this until part four.
So part one is shopping.
Part two is arrival evaluation of the packing materials.
First impressions.
Part three is what is part three?
Part three.
Ah, yes.
Support.
Part three is support.
And then part four is performance and the actual kind of a micro review of every system where we look, okay, how much bloat is on it?
Um, how out of date are the drivers out of the box?
We update everything before we run any benchmarks, because from our point of view, we're evaluating the hardware and we are certainly going to dock points for the bad experience of having to update your own software when it should have just been updated in the first place.
But we're not going to, we're not going to intentionally send our like kneecap, uh, an RTX 4070 with launch drivers when a 6800 XT or whatever the equivalent would be a 6800 or something like that.
When a 6800 gets to run the latest drivers and we're going to say, Oh yeah, well, this is a bad computer.
GeForce experience would have prompted you for an automatic update.
It would have become a better computer.
So we're not going to do anything like that.
Yeah.
But we will dock points and it is something that we see a lot devices shipping with completely out of date drivers.
That's not even the most ridiculous one though, because that's pretty explainable.
That PC has been sitting in a box in a Best Buy for three months or whatever the case may be.
The one that really blows my mind is when I download a piece of software off of the developer's website.
I know where he's going with this.
I launch it and I am immediately prompted to update it.
Drives me nuts.
What the f**k was the point of me downloading it?
Update your download.
That's like when you install a game off the disc.
Okay?
It's 60 gigs.
You painstakingly wait for those files to copy.
You go to launch it and it prompts you for a 60 gig f**king update.
Hey, we're going to update the whole game.
What was the point of anything we just did?
Nothing!
Yeah.
Steam!
Why don't I just download the latest version of Steam?
Okay.
Hold on.
Trying to think if there's a reason.
No.
Hold on.
No, there could be a reason.
No.
Okay.
What if...
Wrong.
Zip it.
What if...
Somebody managed to replace the Steam installer executable on steampowered.com with a piece
of malware.
Or with something that is compromised.
If Valve doesn't update it very frequently and just has a thing that basically serves only
one purpose and that is to be an application that runs on your computer that downloads the
latest version of Steam from their servers and handshakes with them, then theoretically
there could be a security benefit.
There.
I came up with something.
Hmm?
I don't think it's very good.
No, I don't...
Look.
Obviously, I hate this.
I think it's a horrible practice, but I'm just...
I'm trying...
I'm trying to come up with something.
Neen old in Floatplane Chat says, okay, okay, the most secure way.
You download a downloader that downloads the installer that downloads the updates and then
installs them.
Like, I...
I don't know.
People in chat are saying that the Steam downloads only about like 2 megabytes or something.
And then it downloads and installs from there.
Yeah, but okay.
So, bad example.
But there are certainly things like this.
Hardware info is one.
Love hardware info.
It's a great tool.
You download it from the official mirror and then are immediately prompted to update
it every single time.
Why?
What is the point of any of this?
I don't...
I don't understand.
Yeah.
Let's see if anyone...
Yeah, it's a downloader.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know it's a downloader.
Either way, though.
I think this tech is cool.
I think it'd be pretty nice to just be able to use things straight out of the box.
And like overall, by the way, I'm like super supportive of developers updating their
software.
Like, yeah, you know, issue an update whenever you got, you know, new cool stuff to add or
whatever.
I'm not complaining about that.
I just thought it'd be really cool if I went directly to your website rather than a third
and I downloaded the latest version of your software, if it was actually the latest version
of your software.
I think Avon Fox might have nailed the thought process.
Yeah.
It's risk management.
If you only have a stable download as the main download and your update breaks things,
then only updated customers are at risk.
Yeah.
That actually sounds the most likely to me.
That's fair.
That's probably it.
That lines up.
I mean, I'm just trying to think.
Yeah.
You wouldn't have anyone who is authorized to.
So you're downloading major version.
You wouldn't have anyone who's authorized to push code, but is not authorized to update
the website.
Like if there was some kind of disconnect there where the web team, you know, had a single
bottleneck, someone who's allowed to, you know, update the files or whatever.
And yeah, I don't know.
No, I, yeah, I think that that's probably, that's probably the most likely thing.
Yeah.
Oh man.
Windows updates.
Oh, that makes me so frustrated when you, when you check for updates and it's like,
here's everything and you install it all.
And then it's like, you're all up to date.
And then you reboot or something or look at it sideways or sneeze or something.
And then you like click it again and it's like, here's 42 more updates.
What you couldn't have given me.
I don't like when it says you're all up to date and then you click check now.
And then it's like, Oh, I found stuff.
It's like, then don't tell me I'm up to date in the first place.
Yeah.
Have you noticed steam has gotten less aggressive about heating, keeping games up to date?
Yes.
Half the time I sit down to play something, it needs an update.
Let's stop.
What is the point of me having auto updates enabled?
I'm trying to save bandwidth.
Yeah, but I'm going to download it eventually.
Uh, eventually accuse it.
Does it?
Yeah.
It just, it'll just, it'll just say pending update and then it'll, it'll update.
It'll be like scheduled for tomorrow or something.
I'm sitting here going, why?
Hmm.
So it might be that they're managing the load on their side, but especially with the way
that they are able to share bandwidth between steam users though.
I don't think that's been enabled over the internet yet.
Not yet.
Windows updates.
I think, ah, they're definitely on a local network for both of them.
Yeah.
But I don't know if either of them are actually, actually support sharing bandwidth over the
internet.
Uh, honestly, I don't know why not.
I would be down.
If it makes steam downloads way faster.
It'll just schedule games for like two days from now.
Yeah, exactly.
What's the point of that?
I don't understand.
That's on purpose.
Windows update only offers certain updates to those who click again.
Um, yeah.
I just wish there was more manual control over that.
Like I wish I could say like, just give me it all.
Yeah.
And do it at this time so that when I go to use my computer, you're not bothering me about
anything.
Yeah.
Also don't bother me about anything.
Yeah.
I do not want to change my browser preferences or whatever it is that you're trying to shove
down my throat right now.
Yeah.
I use windows because I have to.
Pretty much.
Yeah.
Next up, Twitter charging users.
Windows update apparently does support sharing bandwidth over the internet.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's must be where I got that idea.
But no, steam does not yet.
That feature of steam is super cool though.
I was pulling a file at like over two gigabits from some other computer on my network.
Yep.
No need to download this from steam servers.
I'm amazed they didn't do it ages ago.
Maybe it's just not that common.
People having more than one gaming PC in a single house, but they like have roommates
and stuff, right?
I would think it's pretty common.
Roommates are more common these days.
Yeah.
I guess that's fair enough.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Or maybe it was just complicated or maybe just no one at valve felt like working on that.
I do want it to bother me before it reboots my computer without telling me.
Yeah.
That's not the point.
No, you can prompt me for a reboot.
That's okay.
It rebooting your computer is bothering you.
Yes.
You said that he didn't want it to bother him.
Like man, when I, when I did the switch over to Mac for what, what did I do a month
or something like that?
Way, way back.
Like nine years ago or whatever.
Yeah.
That was a month.
I was blown away by how seamless the operating system update process was.
And this is almost 10 years ago.
I would come in in the morning.
Everything that I had been working on was tiled out exactly the way that I had left it, which
is to say in a completely garbage fashion, because I wasn't going to spend actual money
on a third party application to enable window snapping.
Ridiculous.
They fucking still don't have it.
How is that even possible?
Okay.
It doesn't matter.
The point is I was blown away by how seamless the whole process was.
Everything would be exactly where I left it.
And my operating system would be up to date.
That simple.
How is it that in a world where the Steam Deck exists and the Xbox exists with the excellent
save state functionality that the Xbox supports?
How is it that Windows can't just put me back exactly where I left off?
I actually don't.
I'm sure there's a really good explanation for it.
I'm sure it's really hard, like getting rid of the three different control panels that
you have or building a functioning search.
Just give me Windows 7 search pack.
It was great.
I know, right?
Just give me that.
Don't even update it.
Don't even update it.
Oh, apparently macOS does have window snapping now.
Doesn't it suck though?
I know there's still a third party application.
I was like reading something recently where someone recommended like a good third party
window snapping tool.
So, okay.
Don't quote me on that.
I don't know if this is real or just something that Nizzy is saying, but Nizzy said they enabled
it because it lets Steam Deck users download games faster, which totally makes sense.
Okay.
So that is a situation where you would have two devices.
It was all about them just actually wanting to, it was all about them just actually wanting
to do it then.
Being motivated by the whole Linux is the future of gaming.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised if a developer took a really early version of a Steam Deck
home and was like, I had to download stuff and was like, ugh, I already have this on my
computer.
I should be able to get it from my computer.
And then they just, and then built it in an afternoon, like a, like a crappy version
of it.
And then, you know, six months later.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Um, shoot.
What was I looking for?
Ah, I pulled up something.
Oh, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right.
That's a lot of rights.
Speaking of Valve.
Okay.
I tried reaching out, I tried reaching out privately.
Um, it's time for me to take this public guys.
We need to talk about the Steam hardware survey.
Oh, I thought you were gonna say you're in a relationship.
Um, no.
Okay.
What's up?
This is what I sent to Valve, um, a couple months ago.
Could the Steam hardware survey please be updated to include the generation and approximate
spec of a CPU rather than just the core count and frequency?
The logic that Valve used to split them out the way that they did made a lot of sense at
the time.
Core counts of 1, 2, 4, 8, and other helped guide the importance of developers' efforts to
multi-thread their games and provided insight into which consumers were buying entry, mainstream,
enthusiast, and exotic CPU configurations.
1, 2, 4, 8, and other would have pretty easily fallen into those categories.
Frequency at that time was a strong indicator of the per-core performance, again providing
valuable insight to game developers and other people.
The issue is that over the last 10 years, core counts have moved to the point where not
enough cores is only a problem for thin and light laptops or very entry-level machines,
and frequency is no longer the performance indicator that it once was.
And I sent them an illustration.
So this is a graph from a non-tech showing the Core i9 11900K, 12900K, and 13900K.
These processors have only a 10% difference in frequency, but a 30% difference in performance.
Now I know Valve is, whatever tool you're using can read CPU model names and numbers, and I
think it would be worth the relatively, relatively, I know this would actually be a fair bit of
work, but I think it would be worth the relatively small investment to split CPUs by generations and families.
So like 13th gen, Core i9.
If that's something they're interested in, I would love to provide input.
I think the Steam Hardware Survey is incredibly valuable.
Super valuable, yeah.
And, and, and, this is my pitch.
This is my pitch for why Valve should put actual time into it.
The Steam Hardware Survey generates a ton of organic press coverage for Valve.
Yep.
And doesn't just help people in the media like me, but also helps game developers and gamers.
Yeah.
It's, it used to be a far more useful tool to look at and go, okay, like what should I buy?
Because you know that game developers are going to target the lowest common denominator,
and so if you just go buy whatever's super popular in the Steam Hardware Survey, then you're
probably going to be covered for at least some time period X.
And honestly, looking at the computer, if you just built this computer, Windows 10 64-bit,
16 gigs of RAM.
Yep.
Somewhere between 2.3 and 2.69, nice gigahertz.
Six CPUs, a 3060, eight gigs of VRAM, 1080p monitor probably, you know, 100 to 250 gigs of free space.
That'd be a pretty solid computer.
A solid enough computer to play most games decently well.
But there are going to be systems that would meet those requirements, like that frequency
and core count.
2.3 gigahertz.
That would be utterly unsuitable.
Yeah.
So I think that it's a bit misleading in its current form.
And that's pretty much the only category.
Particularly around CPUs, which is why that's the only thing I actually brought up.
Yeah.
I think it's a little bit misleading.
And I think it has the potential to not be as useful as it was.
And I mean, I don't, I've never asked my permission or told me why they're making the
Steam hardware survey.
So this is all just based on my assumptions of why it exists for, for why it exists.
I don't actually know that.
I just think that it is probably intended as a tool to guide developers, to help them
target the largest possible player base on Steam and vice versa.
Especially if I'm a developer who's working on the performance aspect of my game.
Trying to come into meetings where some other developer wants to implement a certain feature
and I know that the performance impact of that feature is going to move the bar regarding
what computer people would need to have.
If I know that that pushes that bar beyond that computer that we just stated, that's going
to give me a ton of ammo in this meeting to try to make sure that that feature is either
not done or done in a different way that is more performance friendly or whatever.
Like this would be very helpful for actual situations that actual developers are going
to actually be in.
Actually.
Actually.
Yeah.
So.
Actually is a garbage word that I overuse.
That would be great.
To an embarrassing degree.
Like I'm going to actually explain to you guys how merch messages work.
I don't know.
Merch messages are the way to interact with the show.
You can see your message down there.
You can get it replied to by producer Dan.
You can get it.
Oh, sorry, Dan.
You can get it replied to by us.
You can get it forwarded to someone here who can answer your question.
And the way to send one is not via super chats on YouTube or Twitch bits or whatever
else.
We support the whole throwing money at the screen.
I mean, if you must do it.
I mean, okay.
I got employees to pay.
I got miles to feed.
Sure.
Fine.
Go for it.
But the way that I see it, you should get something for your money in case we don't
see your message or just in general.
Even if we do see your message, you should just get something for your money.
So all you got to do is go on LTTstore.com, find something you like, and in the cart you
will see whenever we're live a little box for merch messages and it will send it over
to producer Dan.
Oh, sorry.
I think he was going to wave.
There he is.
You can send it over to producer Dan who will curate your messages.
He's curated a couple to kind of show you guys how it works.
But before we read those, I'm going to tell you guys about a couple updates on the
store.
We've got one new product that I think is amazing and super cool and makes a ton of
sense.
Meet the dropout.
Yeah.
Which we both are.
Well, that's the joke.
It's a, it's kind of a college university styled sweatsuit.
So we've actually got a hoodie and matching sweat pants available in a couple of different
colors.
But for people who didn't actually graduate from post-secondary or who just, just plain
think LTT is kind of cool.
Um, it's actually really comfy.
Well, of course it is.
It's why are you surprised?
This is like, okay.
Every time I was working on a video earlier this week.
Okay.
And you know, you know, Sam from the lab, right?
Okay.
Audio guy.
Yes.
Okay.
He's doing a before and after recording with the, the hats.
So if you're not familiar, a hats is a head and torso simulator, which is a deceiving
name because unless you pay the extra like $80,000 for the torso, it doesn't actually have
a torso.
It's just a head.
So it's a pass.
Doesn't matter.
The point is it's a head.
And it has microphones in the ears.
And we use that to allow you guys to experience a surround sound demo that we were doing in
a video.
So I replaced that wireless sound bar, HTA nine thing that had the, uh, audio issues,
the, the wireless interference or like the cutting out problems.
I replaced it with a wired surround setup and we wanted to find out, well, how magic is
Sony's magic that they did with the HTA nine where you can place them basically anywhere.
And then they'll use microphones on all four of the units to figure out the shape of the
room and correct for it.
Um, so Sam sets up the sets up the hats and then he plays back both files for me.
And I immediately go, okay, yeah, that's that one.
And that's the other one.
What?
Zipper pockets.
Yeah, of course.
Well, I don't want things falling out of your pockets.
Ladies and gents.
I know.
I got you.
Sweats pants, man.
Why do sweatpants not have zippers on the pocket?
Everything falls out of the pockets.
I have.
It drives me crazy.
I can't wear clothes that don't have, oh, even the back one.
Of course.
Even the back one.
Because if it has a zipper, you can always undo the zipper.
Yeah.
What are you going to do?
Sew a zipper on?
Come on.
Sweet.
Maybe like 3% of you.
Maybe.
Maybe.
I'd even say less.
No, the people are into stuff.
They're crafty.
A lot of hobbies.
They're crafty.
All right, people.
Anyway.
You win this round.
So I go, yeah, it's this one.
This one was the Sony one.
And this one is the new system.
And he goes, oh, wow.
I'm so surprised.
And I go, well, come on.
What?
Why do I get no credit around here?
It's not that you.
We have comfortable clothes.
Okay, hold on.
And I can tell which surround system is which one.
So I-
There.
He goes, oh, well, your ear's not trained.
Like, yeah.
To clarify, the surprise is that it, yes, it is comfy, but it is also different comfy.
I don't think this is the same as previous sweaters we've released.
No, we put a lot of work into doing a lot of things differently every time.
Yeah.
And probably it's stupid.
Yeah.
Maybe a little bit.
But no, it has a different fit.
But it feels, it is, it is, it's different.
Yeah.
It feels good.
It has more of like a, like a college hoodie fit.
Like that's, that's kind of the goal.
Yeah.
It does have the same French Terry interior that some of you I know don't like, but I
like a lot because I find it more cooling.
Is it actually the same?
No, I'm not sure if it's the same.
I don't think it's the same.
It's the same style.
It's a little softer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But some people don't, they just don't like it at all.
They prefer the brushed inside.
Oh.
And I've, man, I've had people accuse us of like being cheapskates for that or what
it's, it doesn't.
I prefer this.
The cost is the same.
I just, I personally prefer this.
Me too.
Um, anyway, so we've got that.
And then we've got a weird one.
Um.
Oh yeah.
I was asking what this was before the show.
Okay.
Well, why don't you start by showing them to the people?
We have controller.
Controller.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
What else you got?
I have controller.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Next to my, oh, for focus.
Okay.
I understand.
What else you got?
I have.
Controller.
So far we've done, uh, Nintendo, Xbox, and this is Sony.
And what else you got?
Other, more different Nintendo.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Or, uh, unspecified controller.
Non-copyright infringing wooden square desk ornament.
Yes.
Can I tell you about this?
Yes.
What if I said, what would happen if I said no?
Yes.
I would tell you about it anyway.
Wait, did you hold up every single one of them backside?
What?
You put the logo forward?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
I mean, you don't have to.
It's on me now.
Sorry.
There's no LTT logos in where, um, uh, a box shaped like a letter that's laid in the
alphabet circle thing might have been.
Yeah.
Anyway.
The point is, the original genesis of this, which ironically we don't have one in the shape
was us releasing the shape sorter toy and someone who had just started on the engineering team,
not really having any idea what our process is and how complicated it is for us to release
something because we are so obsessive about quality of everything, saying, you know what
would be cool is if we had like, like a teething toy.
I've seen these like wooden teething toys.
Okay.
Um, and if we have like little kid or like baby stuff, that would be, that would be a
cool, you know, thing.
Uh, what if, I bet it would be really fast and easy.
We'll just like get in touch with someone who can, you know, make, okay.
Anyway, the point is a year later, the project completely morphed.
Um, now it's no longer a teething toy because it has a clear coat.
I was going to say, yeah, yeah.
Mm.
And instead it is intended to be here.
Hold on.
I'm just going to run the site here.
Like ornaments.
Um, yes.
Instead, it is a cool ornament.
Okay.
We need to work on our word wrapping.
Uh, oh.
Ooh.
Controller, our ornament.
At least that R is a soft one.
Pfff.
Description.
Enhance your nostalgic decoration game with our controller ornaments made from beech wood and
finished with a hard wax oil finish.
Oh.
As well as an LTT logo on one side, they give you the option to rep the brand or keep your
decorations sleek and smooth.
No mounting hardware or other accessories included because full transparency, we didn't want to.
Just, yeah.
We weren't really sure.
Double sided tape.
I don't know.
But yeah.
Or just place it on a shelf.
They're just, I don't know.
They're just kind of cool.
So when we got them, we went, look, I don't think this is a teething toy, especially at
the cost.
Like it just was kind of high, but they're really nice.
And we were like, oh, that's cool.
What are the minimum order quantities?
Let's not order that many.
And maybe people would just want these as just like cool, like, you know, rep your favorite
controller gamer decorations or something like that.
Give them to your younger sibling.
Yeah.
When they want to play console games with you.
Yeah.
And then laugh at them.
Yeah.
You could, you could, you could like paint them.
You could do whatever.
Yeah.
That'd be kind of cool.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah.
It's a, it's a weird, it's a weird product.
Yeah.
Uber fuzzy says double sided tape.
They are going on my wall.
Yeah.
I know that for, look, it's something that doesn't exist.
Yeah.
For better or for worse.
It now does.
I think it's almost cool as like an art thing.
I could, I could see some really cool designed painted ones personally.
I don't know.
Um.
Yeah.
Neato.
Yeah.
Leave it to Twitch chat to bring this up.
Pass through them.
Please.
Thanks.
Yep.
Good.
Cool.
We're all on the same page about that.
Someone's going to try it.
Ah.
Oh boy.
What's up?
Everything is fine.
Should I know?
No, no.
Yeah.
No.
Everything is fine.
Oh, all right.
We don't have to if you don't know.
All right.
No, let's talk about it.
Let's talk about it.
What is that?
Then we'll do a couple of merge messages.
Oh, you can throw them.
Underhand.
No, no.
He's not even.
He's.
Oh my gosh.
Oh.
Okay.
Wait, isn't that one already announced?
No.
This is not.
It depends who gets their way.
It depends who gets their way.
As far as Nick or I are concerned, this is not a product.
But if the engineering team gets their way, it is a product.
So do you want to go ahead and show the people?
I love it.
Oh my God.
This is brilliant.
Can you?
Can you?
It's brilliant.
I know, but can you show the people?
So there's a bit loadout, like a soft silicon bit loadout on what do we call these?
The short lanyards?
I forget.
Short lanyard, call it whatever.
Okay.
On a short lanyard.
So if you had multiple bit loadouts for different reasons, you could have these on like hooks
or organized in whatever way and then just take whichever one you need.
I was thinking a bandolier, like you could wear shoulder to hip.
Amazing.
Magnet the monster.
This obviously has to be a thing.
So here's my issue.
I don't know if Luke is messing with him or not.
We're going to line his cam.
We're going to line his cam.
We are working on a bit storage thing of some sort, like a clamshell thing that's, you
know, got nice magnets in it and it's hard case and all that kind of stuff.
It's going to take a little while because of injection molding and lead times and all
those things that take time.
This is something that with the experience that we gained from the stick locks, we actually
could produce relatively quickly.
And if paired with our little shorty lanyards that we have, which are available in a variety
of colors, could allow you to, with a single color of silicone bit holder, color code your
different sets of bits.
So if you had like a Torx metric hex, imperial hex, it would be quick and easy to find those.
My issue is that these do exist by the way, but the reason we would need to do a different
one is because they, A, don't really work very well with our bits and B, our engineering
team didn't find any that they were happy with.
My issue with this is that they don't really stay in as well as I would like.
Okay.
And I'm worried that they'll loosen over time.
And our general product philosophy is that-
What if you put magnets in the back?
Well, then it's not cost effective anymore.
Understood.
And it's also not simple to develop anymore.
So my issue is that it sort of violates our product development philosophy, which is to
build things that don't have a foreseeable failure point.
While this is weird, and it raises a lot of questions about why does it exist, right?
You could ask about any ornament.
I don't think that's fair.
It doesn't violate the product development philosophy.
It's not-
If it just broke, that would have actually been hilarious.
No, I broke the table.
I specifically asked you not to do that!
He did!
He 100% did!
I don't know if they can see it.
He totally did.
He totally did.
Oh my god.
It smashed.
Because that's not an LTT product!
We don't sell it.
No, no, no.
We don't sell it.
We don't sell it.
Might have been made by us.
We don't sell it.
How am I gonna explain this one?
I'm gonna- you gotta tell mom.
Um.
Anywho.
I'm not drinking right now.
Sorry.
Not the right time.
So-
My table.
Are we supposed to pull this or like what?
Back- back to this thing.
You know what they're gonna say.
Uh, I- I understand your argument.
Yeah.
So, is it- is it not overcomable?
It's not gonna be a thing?
Well, okay.
No.
Well, we're taking community feedback.
Back- back.
And like, this is the danger, right?
Cause I know what you people are gonna say.
They're all just gonna want it.
You're gonna say, yeah, do it.
Um.
Them falling out too easily is a- a problem.
But I- I don't wanna- like, I don't wanna trust me bro, guarantee this.
Cause I know it's not gonna last forever.
And I- I hate manufacturing-
Oh, so it's just gonna get weaker over time?
That's the problem?
Yeah.
Everything does, right?
But at least, you know, with something like- with something like clothing, you know, we can-
we can test for that.
We can say, okay, well, here's what we think is sort of a reasonable lifespan for a garment.
Whereas something that holds your tools and just sits and holds them and is like kind of stretched out eventually.
Yeah, I don't want it to wear- I don't wanna be buying a new one all the time.
Um, and I feel like these would be relatively disposable, is my concern.
And no, there would not be a way for us to- to alter this paradigm.
This might be- this might be too much information for the show, but do you have a- a price estimate?
Oh, they'd be- I don't know, like-
In volumes of one, they'd probably be like ten bucks for this and the lanyard.
I suspect that this would be a product where if you bought five of them, we'd probably have to figure out a way to code some kind of price break into the site because-
I could definitely see that because-
We can do that.
Because, like, we have fixed handling costs on every order.
So if you order one of something, we still pay handling costs on it.
We actually cannot just sell things on our store for $1.99 or whatever.
It just- it doesn't work with our model.
Um, but if you bought five of them, I- I don't see why it would cost that much more.
Like, maybe that would be like, I don't know, like 15 bucks or something like that.
Like, I- I don't know.
The actual injection molding cost- or the actual cost per injection molded part is almost nothing.
Most of the cost would be in the development and in the-
Handling, yeah.
Um, and then the lanyard itself, um, it's- this is a funny one.
Even with the higher quality box- box stitch on here.
Like, you know how every lanyard just has, like, a super cheap, like, single, um, what would- seam?
No, not a seam. Whatever.
Just the one line across.
Yeah, sewing- single sewing line.
Sure.
Um, the- the cost of this with- with the box stitch, with the metal hardware, uh, with the nice clasp that doesn't wear out, is still, like, a couple bucks or something like that.
Um, so anytime that you encounter a lanyard that is cheap and crappy, know that they saved at most, like, eight cents on it.
Like, it's- it's baffling to me. It's really frustrating.
Um, so, that's all I have to say about that. Let's not pull it. Let's just kind of-
People saying that they wouldn't buy it with the lanyard.
I think if that's true, you would want to wait for the, like, clamshell one.
I don't think this is something you would want just sitting on a shelf in its current state.
No, I could see throwing it into a toolbox, though.
We probably wouldn't be able to do a ton of different colors, though, unless we did a- um, oh man, I- I can't remember the different kinds of injection molding that we explored for stick logs.
Uh, there's- there's one kind where it's really, really easy to run different colors, and there's basically no setup, and then there's another one where there's a ton of setup.
Um, Top Gear says, don't make it. Spend the money and time on fast-tracking the real bit holder.
There is no fast-tracking that, though. This wouldn't actually delay that much.
This is- this is our design. Like, this is already designed.
Uh, it's just a matter of sending it over to the same injection molder that did the stick locks for us, probably.
I don't know. You know what? Let's just leave it there for now.
Oh, yeah, this is another one. People are talking about the carabiners. When we finally get them all manufactured and ship them out, uh, ship out the replacements, um, Tynan was asking me, should we just sell these things?
This- the same carabiners that we have for the backpack, um, slightly larger, are, like, $30 or something like that on some seller we found for a similar carabiner, like, each.
Do you remember this conversation, Dan?
What about the, uh-
About selling the carabiners?
Yeah.
Do you remember what I said?
Mmm.
I don't think so.
Yeah. That we should sell the carabiners?
Do you know what Linus said?
What did Linus say?
No.
I want to buy the carabiners.
I like them.
Is it just cooler because Tynan said it?
It sounds smarter when Tynan says that.
That's why I respect-
Darn it!
That's why I respect Linus, because he does that.
Look, look, I'm- I- I am changeable.
My opinions are changeable.
I want one for my jacket.
If I hear a good argument for some-
The zipper's been broken for months now.
That's not a good argument.
That's not my problem, Dan.
Full point giant remembrance.
But I can't buy them.
I mean, look, you can just have one.
Do you need one?
I'll give you one.
It's the principle of the matter.
I'll give you one off my backpack right now.
He's gonna take one off his backpack.
I already have a prototype.
No, I'm not.
I don't have the tool for-
I don't have the tool for removing-
Yeah, you can't remove them.
You're not supposed to do that.
But if you sold them-
Oh, guys, no.
They're not climbing rated.
Okay, now I remember why I didn't want to do it.
I don't want people doing anything stupid with them.
They're decorative.
No.
I now oppose it again.
Good job, Luke.
Alright, I'm just gonna go steal some.
It's on you.
I'm just-
Well, okay.
Now we have to make that.
Oh, no!
Tynan's watching!
Oh, come on!
Why does everybody at work watch the WAN show?
Hey, well, it used to be that it was the only way we could figure out what's happening at the company, but now we fix that, so.
Yeah!
For some reason, they do this for fun.
At least I get paid for it, you guys.
Yeah, it's bizarre.
What is wrong with you?
I mean, Luke doesn't.
Yeah, that's actually true.
I legitimately don't.
Oh, no.
You actually have the worst WAN show deal.
Yeah.
Out of everyone at this table.
I don't even have to, like, look you guys in the face.
Because at least I can say, pretty please buy, pretty please buy the dropout, pretty please.
And then I get to make more money.
And then Dan, I mean, yeah, he makes-
He gets overtime.
Yeah, he gets overtime, like, every time.
Yeah.
Like, when we're late for WAN show, it actually costs.
Yeah, because like-
So, please buy some more dropout!
It used to be, like, five to ten hours a day.
It was a lot.
And now I come in at one, so-
Now he has an adjusted shift.
But at this point, we need to adjust your shift to, like, 3pm or 4pm.
Well, my morning's already ruined.
I might have just started working, like, 15 hour Fridays.
It was fun.
Oof.
Yeah.
I miss it.
Anywho.
Let's go ahead and, um, let's go ahead and do a couple merch messages, shall we?
Oh, yeah, that's right.
That's my job.
Uh, I am here for a reason.
Uh, what are some examples of tech making a process longer or more tedious?
I recently saw a kid touch the screen instead of pressing tab when putting in their user
and pass name.
Password.
Ooh.
See, both of those are tech, though.
Ooh.
See, that's a tough one.
Uh, tech making things take longer.
Okay.
Okay.
Um, I generally hate printing anything.
Printers.
Almost, because I use them so rarely.
Almost every time I use them.
You know, I have a friend, sorry, I have a friend who works in...
Shut off.
Oh, my God, not my point.
Um, they work in, uh, like, high-end printer and copier sales and support.
And I mean, like, they've sent me pictures of a copier that, it looks like an assembly line.
Like, it's this whole wall along this, the viewers can't see it, but it's longer than this wall.
Uh, but the whole wall from, like, this corner all the way to that door is one long continuous unit.
Does it, like, copy every side and bind it together and...
I'm sure it can do everything under the sun.
It can, it can laminate things automatically throughout the process.
Ooh.
It can do crazy color stuff that you, like, can't normally do.
And it can do, like, copy protection things.
Okay.
And all this crazy stuff that is interesting and whatnot.
And still...
A huge portion of their job is support.
Yeah.
Because printers are crazy.
Like, oh, my goodness.
It's the least interesting.
Actually, I attended a, like, a sales training thing back when I was at NCIX once.
It was basically just propaganda from HP.
I think it was HP.
Don't quote me on that.
But I think it was HP for why nobody should use anything but authentic ink.
But within that propaganda bullsh** presentation, there was a lot of really interesting tidbits about printer technology and how actually flippin' complicated it is.
Yeah.
It's like hard drives.
Like, we take them for granted and they're boring.
You learn anything about how they're made and it's like, oh, my God, how do these things function at all?
Not even possible.
Yeah.
For any amount of time.
Like, I remember, like, okay, we just kind of dish terms like 7200 RPM.
And we just talk about these things.
It was real casual, right?
But think about it.
On a three-inch platter or whatever the actual circumference, that would be the diameter, would be the three-inch?
I don't know.
Whatever.
The point is, on a three-inch platter or however big those stupid things are, the circumference of that, of the outer tracks at 7200 RPM.
I remember someone from WD explaining this to me.
It's basically like the arm trying to accurately move over this spinning disc is like a bug trying to fly in a hurricane like three inches above the ground or something like that.
Like, the amount of precision is mind-blowing.
It's pretty nuts.
It's pretty nuts.
And honestly, whatever the thing we're supposed to be talking about right now is...
What was it?
Printers.
Right.
It's not that different.
Like, in order to blend these pigments with the kind of accuracy to achieve the level of vibrancy and the level of detail that they do, how fine these drops are and how the methods that they use to control them, particularly in higher-end printers.
It's so advanced, it's indiscernible from magic to me.
Like, it's really incredible.
But, man, do I ever hate them.
And, man, are they ever boring.
I think printers are a great example of something that just genuinely makes things take longer for me than it.
I could literally just write it out and hand it to someone sometimes for how long it takes me to print a document.
I still thought it was fascinating that neither of us had any problems with the printers with the Linux challenge.
I know.
That was so interesting.
I couldn't believe that.
That was wild.
I was sure that that was going to be a problem.
So, clearly, it's Microsoft.
They're holding back printers.
They're the problem.
To advance, you know, digital communication.
That was their agenda.
It was to make MSN more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
And then their monster turned against them.
Oh, no.
I don't know.
Yeah.
How did we get on this stuff?
Is this a merch message?
Yeah.
Yeah, it was.
Oh, yeah.
Something that technology has made slower and less convenient.
Oh, man.
Wi-Fi calling is so unreliable.
I swear, I had fewer dropped calls back in, like, 2005 than I do now.
How about this?
Phones?
Oh, but they make so many things so much faster.
Yeah, but calling.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, calling is definitely slower on a modern phone.
No doubt.
Hmm.
Yes.
More?
What do you think is more popular?
Controller ornament or the dropout?
Controller ornament.
By a long shot.
Yeah.
What is this?
I don't understand it.
This is a really nice sweater.
Like, we put real work into real products that are really good.
This is a real product.
And you guys buy memes.
People buy ornaments.
I know.
I just, I've never understood it.
Honestly, it's, we probably underpriced these.
Like, I went to, I went to some store that had ornaments.
And by underpriced, I don't mean compared to what they cost us or whatever.
Do you do house organization?
Or is it just a vawn?
Organization?
Uh, no, not organization.
Oh, yeah.
Decoration, decoration, decoration.
Oh, no.
Heavens no.
Yeah.
Yeah, why would I do that?
So that's not for you.
No, no, I know.
Well, yeah, but look, the point is I went to a store and I was, I was blown away by how
much things cost.
Yeah.
It was like, that's a ball.
Like, it's a ball.
What does it do?
It goes on a table.
What do you mean it just goes on a table?
That's all it does?
Yeah.
No, what?
I, what, I'm gonna, it's like $80.
Whoa.
Oh, do you have any idea how much ornaments cost?
No.
That's pretty cheap.
It's not for me either.
I don't decorate my house either.
You're shopping at Walmart for your table balls?
It's wild.
It's wild.
Like, you ever go to like a HomeSense or something and that's the cheap one.
Dan's like secretly a table ball elitist.
Oh, we used to know this interior designer and she was like, oh, we're putting this cheap couch
like $75,000 and like her table balls would be like at least $300.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
It's insane.
So anyway, 10 bucks.
That's what I think it's worth.
Wait, they're 10 bucks?
Yeah, they're 10 bucks.
That's not too bad.
Yeah.
I mean, they're wood.
They made a beach wood.
There were some woods that were gonna be more than 10 bucks.
Yeah.
But we decided to start with beach and see how it goes.
You should do like...
You shouldn't actually do this, but it'd be kind of funny.
Maybe you should do it.
I don't know.
Oh, look, it's a fidget toy.
I'm undecided.
But seriously, buy the dropper.
Oh, look, it's a fidget toy.
Everything we make is fidget toys.
Yeah.
It's great.
You should do like...
You know how albums go platinum and stuff?
You mean the Christmas album?
You should make like if a product...
We're gonna try to go platinum.
New Christmas album.
Yeah.
Okay.
Right now.
Yeah.
No, he's actually serious about this.
Sorry, what are you talking about?
We can tangent to that if you want.
I don't want to talk about it.
Okay.
I haven't been informed about this.
No, but you probably will be if we do it.
Okay, we should talk.
Yeah, I was gonna say we'll probably need him on the team if we want to make this happen.
Uh-oh.
What was I gonna say?
Something.
I was gonna say something.
You know how albums go platinum.
Right, okay.
So...
See, I listen.
If you...
If a product sells a certain amount, you should like make a one unique fancy version and then
keep it.
Oh, yeah.
That'd be kind of cool.
So like if this...
Mount it to the wall or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So if this just like goes gangbusters, you should get like some...
A gold one.
Or like just maybe it would be unique per product so it would be like a very fancy wood
or something.
That'd be a lot of gold.
The problem is that the development cycle of making one is just as complicated sometimes
as the cycle of making more than one.
So almost anything that is worth us developing is worth putting for sale unless we can't hit
the MOQs.
In which case we'd probably know that pretty early in the process and then we just shouldn't
spend time developing it.
Right.
I see where you're coming from but I think that's pretty tough.
Yeah.
And that's part of the reason why I said you probably shouldn't do it.
Floatplane chat caught me.
I totally put body parts in the wood controller.
I had already done it before.
The like first thing I did was shove it in here and then go...
It's a very important cylinder.
That's an unusual technique.
The sounds.
The sounds.
Whatever.
I'm gonna read another merch message.
That was only one merch message.
Sounds good.
Hey y'all.
I'm scared of an all electric future.
As someone who works in a parking lot all day, quiet cars scare me.
Linus, do you think there are any technologies that have any unforeseen consequences?
What about an artist version that's not sealed?
I think you should pay like artists to do custom one-off versions.
Because would you have to sand this down to paint it?
I actually don't know.
That's a good question.
So.
Technology that scares us.
Technologies with unforeseen consequences.
I mean good gravy.
I mean everything, right?
This is not an unforeseen consequence.
I had a weird moment today where a system that we are working on developing that I will not disclose.
I was informed by one of my people that DALI 3 was released.
So I wanted to use it.
Oh.
So I asked a question and didn't realize that the way you access DALI 3 is through ChatGPG4.
You do it through the ChatGPG4 system.
You don't go to a specific thing for DALI 3.
I didn't realize you have to turn that on.
Oh.
So I prompted it about this new feature that we're going to build.
Um.
And.
What were you trying to get out of an image generator?
Uh.
Like a design?
Yeah.
Oh okay.
Cause I was just wondering like I wonder what it does.
Yeah.
Because.
So the person I was talking to was Jaden.
And Jaden asked it for something that he was working on.
Which is more different than the thing I asked it about.
And it output like literally Netflix.
Cause it was something in relation to do with Floatplane.
So we were asking about like online video streaming and stuff.
And it output literally Netflix with literally Netflix's logo in the corner.
And we were like whoa.
That's a little on the nose.
Um.
So I went and asked it about another thing that another one of my teams is working on.
Um.
But I didn't turn on.
I prompted it like an image generator.
Yeah.
But I didn't turn on the thing that allows it to generate images.
So it just responded in text about what it would do to make this platform.
In the way that I described it.
And it literally.
Named a feature.
That we have come up with.
With the exact name that we came up with for the feature.
That is not a feature that is available on any site that I know of.
I like literally sat there with a shattered brain for a little while.
It's like are you kidding me?
This is nuts.
And like you know.
I can see why you're keeping this super le secret right now.
Yeah.
As you've seen on LTT store.
And as you've seen sometimes if you've heard the naming of things from my teams as well.
This is not just an LTT store thing.
Sometimes our naming schemes for things are not necessarily the most creative.
So it's not like.
Wood controlling.
What do we call it again?
Controller ornament I think.
So it's not the most creative name in the world.
So it's not like impossible that it could have come up with it.
But it's still like.
Whoa.
It came up with this feature idea.
Despite it not being a thing that people do.
And it's named the same way that we named it.
Very interesting.
Yeah.
I was reading.
Buddy.
Some guy.
I forget his name.
But released a book about how humans have no free will.
Because we are basically just.
You know.
A pot of chemicals.
And you know impulses.
And all that kind of stuff.
Um.
And you talking about.
You know.
How.
How easily.
We can be.
Sort of predicted.
I guess.
In this way.
I don't know.
Adds a little bit of.
My whole.
This is a.
Crazy rabbit hole to go down.
But my whole thing is.
Um.
You.
You need to.
Actively influence.
Your future.
Pr.
Actions.
If that makes sense.
Yeah.
You need to.
Influence your future actions now.
Like your future chemistry.
You need to take the right steps now.
So that you'll do automatically the right things later.
But you'll only take those steps now.
If you are sufficiently motivated to take those steps now.
It gotta be nice to future you.
Yeah.
We're not gonna get into that today.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think you're like.
Your past actions are almost more impactful than your in the moment.
Um.
Decision making at times.
Anyways.
That's an interesting take.
Thank you for sharing it.
Yeah.
Moving on.
Two more topics Dan asks for.
Twitter.
Yeah.
Will be charging new users.
Sick.
A $1 per year subscription in New Zealand and the Philippines in what they are calling
the not a bot program.
Let's go.
According to Twitter.
The subscription would bolster their already significant efforts to reduce spam manipulation
of our platform and bot activity.
I wonder how that's going for MMO platforms.
These users will also need to verify their account with a phone number.
Hmm.
This is a quote here.
New users who opt out of subscribing will only be able to take read only actions such
as viewing posts and watching videos.
It is unclear from the announcement why the rollout is only for these two specific countries.
But I am going to say something that sounds like it's going to be very unpopular and say
this seems like.
And effective if maybe even if it has the potential for unintended consequences idea.
Extreme systems.org is an old school overclocking extreme cooling forum.
The second I originally read this topic however many days ago it came out because I knew about
this one happening.
I immediately thought about extreme systems.
So Fugger the site admin.
What a name.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Whatever.
Basically old school legend in the in the extreme cooling and overclocking scene.
Just couldn't keep up with the amount of spam and crap on the forum and eventually for all new signups.
So it wasn't for existing accounts for all new signups implemented a $1.
I think it might have even been one time.
I don't think that it was a subscription.
Don't quote me on that.
But implemented a signup fee and said that it immediately and forever eliminated spam from the site.
The only problem with that is that as far as I can tell basically none of you know what extreme systems is because.
It's pretty much a ghost town over there.
They do still have a small community from from what I can tell.
I haven't signed on in quite some time.
I just almost never see anything linked there or anything like that.
I mean maybe.
Yeah.
Yeah there.
Look at this.
Hey, they're still kicking extreme systems.
Or get here.
Nice.
You have to register before you can post click the register link about registration is a $1 to post on this forum.
Let's see virtual and augmented reality last posted August 24th.
August 24th.
2020.
Ooh.
Okay.
But here's something more recent from a couple weeks ago.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's pretty slow.
I'm trying to think what were some of the more active.
Ooh.
Okay.
Hmm.
Hmm.
How many just control F 2023.
Yeah, most most sub forums have been posted in this year.
Some of them are not visible if you're not signed in.
Oh, so that's something to watch out for like I think there's some just chit chat ones, but you can just tell there's things that generally have not been kind of looked at in a while.
I don't think anyone is looking for information about a bit motherboard support in the last 10 years, 13 years.
To be clear, I don't know what path would have worked better for them.
I loved that community.
I learned so much of what I know.
They're super, super knowledgeable people, really, really, really, really passionate community in its prime.
Shout out, shout out, shout out Martin's liquid lab.
Um, but, and I understand they had a problem, um, with spam and bots.
I mean, we run into a lot of the same things on the LTT forum and maybe it was just kind of, it was, it was too niche for them to have a large enough moderator team to, to handle that stuff without closing down, battening down the hatches.
Uh, batting, batting, batting something, something down the hatches.
I, I just, um, I think that Twitter is probably going to run into a similar situation if they roll something like this out more broadly.
I doubt that those particular countries are, you know, an especially large source of scammers and spammers on the platform at what I suspect is that they're just small markets where they can run this test and see if it's effective in any way for some period of time.
But, um, I suspect that we already know what the conclusion is and that is that this will be so damaging to overall user engagement that any upside, which would be a reduction in bots for real, I think they would see a significant reduction in bots.
Um, any upside would be outweighed by the, uh, loss of momentum on their platform that keeps Twitter still relevant, uh, after all this time.
Like there are, I go on it far less than I used to, but there are certain things that Twitter is better at than anything else.
Like the, uh, the sniper wolf controversy that happened over the last week.
Have you heard about this?
Uh, vaguely.
Yeah.
She dogged someone or something.
Yeah.
She literally went to Jack's films, his house and posted a video in front of it asking her, criticized them or something all the way around.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause he called her out for just being a reaction streamer, which has become very controversial over pretty much since the WAN show where we talked about launching a react channel.
Like dark.
It was already kind of interesting.
Dark Viper was already talking about it before that, but I feel like a lot of momentum has picked up in that time, which is sort of funny.
Like literally what to be clear, I am not saying that it's because of us.
I am just saying that the timing is very interesting.
By the way, I found a fatal flaw in this product.
I managed to rip through the little loop already.
So we would probably have to embed some kind of reinforced, uh, material in the loop part of it, which is going to complicate the shooting the molds.
See, this is, this is how every product we develop ends up taking a year or two.
Cause you break it.
Yeah.
Which is good because it's better for me to break it than for you to break it.
Yeah.
That's fair enough.
It just means everything takes forever.
Try not to break the table again.
So anyway, yeah, I feel like I talked a lot about this.
Um, any thoughts?
Uh.
Uh, oh my God, Sebastian, not Linus in float plane chat.
One of our, uh, one of our people who works in the engineering department.
I don't know if he's technically an engineer cause that's a protected term in Canada.
And if you like use it wrong, engineers get mad.
Um, yeah, he might be an engineer.
I don't know.
Uh, it doesn't matter.
He does engineering things.
Uh, he says that prototype is full of bubbles and made in 30 minutes.
Okay.
Sebastian.
I get it.
I get it.
I get it.
He's, he is.
A strong proponent of this particular product.
Sebastian, how long is it going to take, do you think, for one of these to wear out to
the point where bits are going to fall out of them?
Ooh.
Honest answers only, Sebastian.
When it's not made in 30 minutes.
Yeah.
And doesn't have bubbles in it.
Yeah.
When it passes QC.
Yeah.
In the meantime, while, while he responds.
Uh, I don't care about anything that happens on Twitter.
Uh, I find it all hilarious.
I found it hilarious when they changed their name to X.
I find this hilarious.
If this kills it, I'll find that hilarious.
Um, if this makes it boom in activity, I'll find that hilarious.
Okay.
That's fair.
Just everything that happens.
I think it's funny at this point, which is, I am happy that I feel this way because
I think it is just so much better.
Um, I don't know.
I think it's funny.
They're going to start charging people to use the site that people hate the most.
That's, that's hilarious.
Um, I think it's, I think it's, I don't think it's going to work.
I think it's wild how Mark Zuckerberg has, in my opinion, been probably the biggest beneficiary
of Twitter turning into even more of a flaming dumpster fire.
And I'm not even talking about threads.
Oh, I'm just talking about how, how broadly hated he was.
Yeah.
And how it seems to be.
Now the internet seems to like him.
It seems to be turning around.
Yeah.
The, the guy who said when people shared their information with him through making Facebook
accounts, he called them effing idiots.
People, people like that guy.
Well, it's all really interesting.
It's all relative.
Yeah.
You don't have to be a good billionaire.
There's a bigger, bad.
You just have to not be the worst one.
Yeah.
Because there's only enough attention and focus to go around.
Pretty much.
Very interesting.
Um, but yeah, I don't think this is going to do anything.
I think you don't need to look any further past, uh, bots and MMOs to see why, um, these
bots are buying accounts and paying active significantly more subscription dollars than $1.
I disagree.
If there is a form of monetization to be had, the bots will go for it.
There is state funded money behind bots on Twitter.
They do not care about $1 subscriptions.
Speaking of which, okay, this is something that I asked for to be in the doc this week.
Did it not end up in here?
Did they not put in my thing?
Dang it.
Yeah, it's not going to change much.
It might change some things.
I suspect, hilariously enough, I suspect it might get rid of the really bad bots, but it's
going to keep the like really good ones, which might actually increase the effectiveness of
the good bots.
Because if people are more trusting of the platform because they believe there are less
bots or no bots, they'll believe the good bots more.
So I don't know.
Okay.
Speaking of bots, I had a really interesting experience.
I'm sorry.
I'm changing the topic here a little bit.
I was, for some reason, trying to find information on that Huawei Mate 60 with the new Kyren 9000S
processor.
So this is that all China, all the time chip that allowed Huawei to launch a purportedly
flagship tier or at least premium-ish tier smartphone.
So it's apparently, according to some experts, according to Hot Hardware, 14 nanometer grade
in terms of the technology, even though they are claiming that it's a 7 nanometer node.
It seems more in line in terms of performance with, you know, 14 nanometer-ish.
Or, I mean, maybe not.
Maybe it's just kind of a not-as-good 7 nanometer design.
I don't know.
It doesn't matter.
The point is, I was reading about it, and I wanted to see, okay, what do people think
is kind of, you know, what's going on?
What do people on Hot Hardware think?
And this was one of the most brazen, blatant examples I think I had ever seen of bot activity,
just obvious bot activity outside of a major site like Twitter.
And it was really eye-opening in terms of how the Chinese propaganda machine works and how
broadly it is trying to influence opinion outside of the obvious targets, I guess.
Because I don't generally delve into the comment section that often.
But, like, look at these comments.
Bill asks, is there any phone that can make satellite call?
No.
Is U.S. afraid to Huawei development?
Yes.
Then above article is not believable.
28 thumbs up.
Life as Josh.
HotHardware.com is not a scientific journal.
None of their results should be considered true.
They do not post their methods or variables for testing, nor do they have the resulting values
peer-reviewed.
HotHardware.com is an entertainment publisher.
They make money like any other website through ads.
True.
Performance is not just numbers.
It is about functionalities.
If you need to crunch number, there are more supercomputer on the market.
This is incredible.
Because, as far as I can tell, these are not bots.
These appear to be human-written comments based on talking points.
Interacting with each other.
I mean, this is a thing.
We know that's a thing, for sure.
The, uh, I don't know what they call it, but the whatever farms.
Sorry?
There's pictures of them.
They're just like...
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, like content farms.
Yeah.
The table above clearly has an agenda to disrepute Huawei Mate 60.
It should be viewed with suspicion.
This seems to be an actual person getting downvoted by bots.
Uh, anyway, it was...
This, this article just stood out to me because almost the entire comment section is just Chinese bots interacting with each other about...
Or, sorry, yeah, or, or, or from what I can tell, more likely actual people typing these messages because the, they are different enough from each other in terms of their mastery of English, for example, in terms of their tone, in terms of the way that they approach the talking points.
It's that I really don't think it's an LLM.
I, I think it's actual individual users just creating this, this wave of spam about an article that isn't even, it's not even trashing on it.
Like, if you look at the article itself, this is, this is what's really kind of mind-blowing to me.
If you look at the article itself, it's pretty objective.
Here's what it is.
It has some semi-custom ARM cores.
Here's the benchmarks relative to some other phones.
It's, it's, they're, they're not trashing on it, but they are calling out things that are not true.
Huawei talks a lot about AI and machine learning, but we found little to no optimization for machine learning.
Um, the GPU doesn't do particularly well.
Um, the performance, uh, it can't compete with the latest mobile SOCs or even many that are years old.
Still, we are impressed that the Kyron 9000S exists at all.
In a few years, their domestic chip manufacturing has ramped up despite lacking access to Western technology.
Uh, like it's, it's a pretty balanced, positive even article talking about the future capabilities.
But somehow this ended up on the hit list and just got dunked on.
Yeah.
And like, okay, I just want to be, I just want to make, make it clear.
Like this guys, I'm not, it wasn't just like four or five messages.
Like this is, it goes on for quite a while.
Like this is not, this is a pretty, um, poorly written comment, but it's probably not from a, from a content farm.
Yeah.
Yeah, pretty much.
Um, okay.
Some of these are, some of these are newer.
No mention of satellite link in the article that distinguishes Huawei from the rest.
Anyway.
All right.
Sorry.
That, this is a totally, totally unrelated thing.
What's up with the satellite link?
So, so we can do satellite calls?
Yeah.
It might have some kind of satellite calling.
Apparently.
I mean, look, the system works.
Yeah.
We are now investigating the satellite calling functionality of the Kyron 9000S.
I mean, I don't care about it, but it might have it.
But now you're learning about it and you are broadcasting it to.
X amount of people.
Some number of people.
Floatplane doesn't have a viewer count.
Got them.
Get owned.
Don't need it.
Fine.
Every time he, every time I bring this up, he's like, do you want it?
And I'm like, how long will it take?
How much will it cost?
A lot, a lot.
And I'm like, okay, forget it.
Yep.
Sounds good.
Yeah, that's kind of how that goes.
Nice.
Also, it won't be accurate because getting around ad blockers is really annoying.
Yeah, that's fair.
Okay.
What else do you want to talk about?
Oh, oh, oh.
Balls.
Sponsors.
Right.
Sponsors.
The sponsor of my balls.
Really expensive table balls is what he's talking about.
Tableballs.com.
Okay, please tell me that's not a thing.
Nope.
It's going to redirect to LTT store soon enough.
Tableballs.com.
Woo!
Oh my god.
I'd hate to think of what you would find on that site.
Don't go there.
If someone, if someone made that like an actual curated site for buying ornamental table balls,
that would be, that would be peak meme.
Well, it ain't a million dollar business idea, but it's maybe a thousand dollar business idea.
So, yeah.
Great.
Yeah.
As in, it's going to cost you a thousand dollars to get it up and going and then no one's ever
going to buy any.
Um, let's maybe do sponsor spots.
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Blood spots?
This says blood spots.
I'm sure that's not right.
It's gotta be bad spots.
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Blindspot.
The show is also brought to you by Seasonic.
These are much shorter talking points, because Seasonic, man, they know you already know who
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No, I'm kidding.
There's some stuff.
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Merch messages.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
Hit me, Dan.
Okay, let's see.
Yo, LLD.
I work in the Air Force as a computer scientist, and there has been a topic that worries me.
I think, uh, I think...
Am I humping, Dan?
Hold on.
There we go.
Yo, LLD.
I work in the Air Force as a computer scientist, and there has been a topic that worries me.
What are your thoughts on the use of AI in deadly war machines, i.e. targeting and or firing?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Terrifying.
Really bad.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We talk about hallucinations all the time.
Yeah.
Uh-oh.
Now, question for you.
Mm-hmm.
And I'm, to be clear, I'm not talking to U.S. military right now.
Given the prevalence of drug use in militaries around the world, what are the odds of an AI
hallucinating versus a soldier?
Oh.
Ooh.
Wow.
Topics we...
Ooh.
Should not go deeply into.
But it's...
Valid.
Not entirely wrong.
Shake hands.
There you go.
Dennis again, Dennis.
Okie dokie.
Please.
What I would more like to see it in is defensive properties.
Missile warning systems.
Things like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, defense.
But actually defense.
Yeah.
Not the kind of defense where it's like the best defense is a good offense defense.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah.
Please, LMG, I'm begging you for any information you can give me on the Precision Screwdriver.
Any ETA, possibly.
I think we are hoping to get it out in the first half of next year.
As for the information, right now we're still waiting on molding for the bit holder that goes
inside the handle.
I think there are some stretch target functionalities that we would have liked to have that we're
still kind of torn on.
So if we were to try for some new functions that might delay it, I think that'll pretty
much come down to whether or not we decide to launch alongside bits.
To be clear, again, I want to reiterate, our goal is not to go up against everyone else
who sells a Precision Screwdriver kit.
I think ours is going to be not cheap, but it will have some functionality that I think
is going to set it apart in the market if people are looking for something very premium.
And our intention is to make the driver available by itself, so you could just alter your foam
a little bit in your existing kit, continue to use your probably perfectly good bits, and
just chuck our driver in as a more premium, or even just an extra, as an extra driver.
What I suspect is that we should have no problem hitting that target, but if you're hoping to
have something to, you know, have under the Christmas tree, that's not happening.
What technology would you like to see in motorcycle helmets or bikes themselves?
I'd like to see better heads-up displays in visors.
I mean, yeah, that's the most obvious one to me.
I think, you know, on the subject of things that AI could potentially be really good at,
I don't necessarily need my vehicle to operate itself for me, but if it could provide helpful
advice, particularly with respect to defensive driving, I think that that's something that
we could all benefit from.
If everyone was driving more defensively, if you're not familiar with the term, defensive
driving refers to a driving technique that minimizes the risk of a collision or a mishap
by taking proactive steps to prevent them.
So rather than reacting to something bad that happens, trying to keep yourself perpetually
in a position where it would be more difficult for something bad to happen.
It's not always possible, but an example of a defensive driving technique that I use on my
motorcycle is that I will almost always avoid being next to a car.
If I can not be next to a car, especially at speed, and at speed is the time when it is
easiest to avoid it because you're not, you shouldn't be bumper to bumper ripping down
the highway at, you know, 60 miles an hour, 100 kilometers an hour, right?
So I will make sure if I'm passing someone, if I have to be next to them, I am going to
give them a wide berth.
I'm going to go as far around them in my lane.
So I have the buffer of the space beside them in their lane, plus the space that would be
beside a car in my lane, plus the width of a car.
I have all that buffer.
If they decide to suddenly change lanes because they don't see me, they shouldn't hit me in
time.
I tend to, okay, and this might just be being like an a**hole motorcyclist, but I tend to
pass quickly.
So I will check, make sure you're not signaling, make sure you're not doing anything.
I don't hang around beside someone any longer than I have to.
And then I will put myself in a position where there's absolutely nobody next to me on either
side.
Um, there's a ton of examples of that.
And I think that even people who want to operate their own car or don't have a car that operates
itself, whether it's due to lack of cameras or whatever the case may be.
I think that having real time coaching for how people could drive more defensively would
be enormously beneficial.
Maybe actually, man, yeah, why didn't I ever, how have we never talked about this before?
What a great middle step that would be.
So instead of just going straight to trying to build autonomous vehicles, if we built vehicles
that advised you on how to better drive your car, because we are still years away, years
away from vehicles, even the ones that have the hardware, like all the cameras and onboard
processing that might theoretically someday have them capable of fully autonomous driving,
no user intervention.
Um, we are years away from them actually needing no user intervention.
I think that'd be a super cool way to use it in the meantime.
Yeah.
Wancho Bingo Chronified says, what about a blind spot indicator that tells you if you're in someone
else's blind spot?
Yeah, that'd be a super cool feature.
Not necessarily a reckless driver, because we don't necessarily want, uh, these systems
like stating that people are doing things that are illegal.
Uh, but if they're like, there's a high speed vehicle approaching from behind and you're
on a bike, that'd be nice to know.
Yeah.
Or I noticed the car in front of you is swerving all over the lane.
Uh, the, the operator may be impaired in some way.
Keep your distance.
A little bit of space.
Yeah.
That's a big one.
I, I look for that all the time.
There's literally on my way to work today, there was a big lifted truck that was just
constantly, you know, listing to the right, listing to the right, listing to the right
tire goes off road and they go, and they get back in their lane and they did that over
and over and over and over again.
I just sat way back because I was like, I'm just not going to mess with this.
It feels like there's a pretty high chance you're going to crash and I don't want to be
right next to your vehicle when it happens.
Um, yeah, I don't know.
Oh, more topics.
Cool.
Yeah.
Let's do topics.
What do you want to talk about, Luke?
Um, well, you told me not to read the doc, so let me scroll through this real quick.
How about the terrible, no good, very bad King Kong game?
Yeah.
What the heck?
Skull Island Rise of Kong launched this week and has been hailed as a contender for the
worst game of the year.
Despite retailing for $50, Skull Island's, uh, bland beat-em-up combat lazy animations and
odd graphics have been compared unfavorably to the 2005 movie tie-in Peter Jackson's King
Kong, as well as Gollum 2023.
That game that we hated a few months ago and mostly forgot about.
Uh, in one widely circulated cut scene, the enemy model is briefly replaced with a static
J-pad.
Okay, hold on, hold on.
You have to watch this.
I need to see this.
You have to watch this.
No, I got it.
I got it.
I got it.
I got it.
Okay.
Um, here we go.
What is happening?
This actually looks like it's from 15 years ago.
Yeah.
Wow.
No way.
The rock smash there is...
I know.
I know.
Aren't they not coming out of where the ground would be either?
Like, if you look at the height of...
Not that this matters at all, but I think he's smashing the air and rocks are coming out
of it.
Anyways, um, a long-form gameplay walkthrough posted by MK Ice and Fire shows repetitive
combat over a short, endless loop of generic bongo music.
An early cutscene interrupts a playable character landing on the ground, causing an impact sound
to frantically, to frantically repeat over and over again during the cutscene.
Wow.
The publisher's game is literally...
Sorry.
The publisher's name is literally Game Mill.
You can't make that up.
That's amazing.
That's like EA...
I'm sure I've told you this before, but EA's mobile game company...
Yeah.
...is called Capital Games.
Did you guys know that?
No.
I hate it.
That's actually the most amazing name.
Like, whoever came up with that, and then the board was just like, oh, yeah.
Like, what?
We don't know.
We don't get the joke.
It's so on the nose.
Oh, it hurts.
It's so amazingly on the nose.
It's beautiful.
Oh, wow.
Anyways, um...
Our discussion question is, how is it that veteran IPs keep having these terrible video
game tie-ins, especially, especially when they've done good ones in the past?
Yeah.
Is this just people not understanding that gamers are not just going to buy whatever shovelware
you crap out?
I don't know.
Like, how does something like this go from discussion to green light to development milestones
to release?
How is that even possible?
Honestly, I didn't understand this.
I saw this very shortly in my Google News feed earlier this week.
But I thought people were just mad because, like, the graphics weren't great.
And they're really not.
Well, yeah.
But I just saw a still screenshot of the King Kong character.
And I was like, yeah, but, like, I don't really care that much.
Like, it could just be stylized that way and maybe the gameplay is good.
But, no.
Apparently not.
Yeah.
I'm just reading Steam reviews right now.
I wonder what the positive ones are.
You know what game's a banger when it's called monkey.exe and has the stock Unity image?
I don't know if I believe this.
I can't read it.
Harambe died for this.
I don't think anyone legitimately liked the game.
Got it.
Okay.
Next topic.
AMD anti-lag ban update.
Yeah.
Last week, there were widespread cases of players in multiple video games getting banned due to AMD's new feature, Anti-Lag Plus, triggering their anti-cheat systems by devouring, sorry, detouring.
Dyslexia is really fun sometimes.
By detouring engine.dll functions.
This week, AMD withdrew its latest Radeon driver, promising to fix the issue.
Anti-Lag Plus is designed to reduce latency introduced by AMD's Fluid Motion Frames feature.
What's more surprising, discussion question, what's more surprising, that AMD didn't see this problem coming, or that the massive rat's nest of interacting drivers and software programs necessarily run modern games online works at all?
I think the second one.
All of the modern world is stunning how it tends to function.
It's kind of wild.
Not just tech, but even just like shipping things.
Crazy.
It's amazing that you can just ship something and it arrives somewhere at some point.
That's actually nuts.
It's like, I don't know.
The fact that it's as reliable as it is, is, I don't know, kind of blows my mind sometimes.
Yeah, I feel like people really do take these kinds of things for granted.
Did I send you that user comment that someone posted on the Secret Shopper video that was basically like, cringe, imagine charging for shipping in 2023.
And I was like, everyone is charging you for shipping.
It's just a matter of whether it's baked into the product cost or whether they are transparently telling you how much of it is product cost and how much of it is shipping.
That's literally the only difference.
There is no free shipping.
Shipping is expensive.
Who do you think pays the person who walks to your door with the thing?
What about all the other touch points from when that was shipped?
It could have been a European.
I did notice a lot of Europeans were outraged by the cost of shipping.
Okay.
Not everywhere has everybody like densely packed in together like in Europe.
Gas.
Have you been to a gas station and noticed that it's expensive?
Guess what?
When it goes on in a jet, jet gas is even more expensive.
I just don't even know what to say to stuff like that.
I like that.
Jet gas.
Not fuel.
Just jet gas.
Jet gas.
Yeah.
You need some jet gas?
Got some right here.
It sounds like a fallout drug.
I understand jet is already a fallout drug, but jet gas sounds like a new one.
Like a worse one.
Like the side effect.
That's better than the joke I was going to make.
Oh, man.
Oh, this sucks.
Honestly, you get this news article every once in a while.
But repair techs found snooping personal photos.
CBC's marketplace took various devices to 20 repair stores across Ontario, including
both small independent shops and large chains.
After installing monitoring software on their devices, technicians for at least nine of those
stores access private data unrelated to the repair, such as photos and social media apps.
At least one not only viewed the photos, but copied them onto a USB key.
The expose...
Expose.
Expose.
Yeah.
Is it supposed to have two E's?
No.
Okay.
The expose was a follow-up to a study published earlier this year that found that many electronics
repair service providers lack privacy policies or controls to safeguard personal data from snooping
and theft.
The main disappointing thing here, in my opinion, is that it was nine out of 20.
Where are you supposed to go?
That's crazy, dude.
Where are you supposed to go, Luke?
Well, best...
Geek Squad does this thing where the monitors are facing out.
But then a very significant amount of the work these days, as far as my understanding goes,
I haven't worked there since they did this system.
It might not work the way that I think.
Little disclaimer.
As far as my understanding goes, a significant amount of the work is remoted out.
Right.
So you have no way...
If it's not occurring in the store, then yeah, all bets are off, basically.
Yeah.
And surveillance footage.
Maybe they have surveillance footage of the monitors that the techs are accessing,
but that's only as good as someone's willingness to...
Have you ever actually scrubbed through hours of surveillance footage?
Like it...
Yeah.
You could quickly open up a folder and...
No one's going to find that in the surveillance footage.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Don't get any ideas, Dan.
And like I've worked in one of these shops before.
I've been literally asked as part of the task to access someone's photos before.
But clearly...
Like to back them up?
To make sure it worked in some program or whatever.
Like there's...
I've also usually...
This is when I was like a teenager.
I already knew it was a problem.
I would ask to do that portion when they were there.
Right.
Yeah.
And I would just...
Do it in front of them.
Yeah.
The spot that I was at had a like swivel monitor.
Sure.
So I could make sure that we could both see the monitor and then I would do the thing.
There's also a lot of unintentional access that happens that this isn't talking about,
but it's pretty common for people to set their screen saver.
I don't know if this is still common.
Yeah.
To a slideshow.
Slideshow of their My Pictures folder.
And then their computer's just not working and they forget that that's a thing.
And then they bring it in.
You fix their computer and then it's just sitting there.
And it's like full of anime porn or whatever.
Or just them.
Right.
Happened multiple times.
Yeah.
You've probably seen some stuff.
And you have those monitors facing out to the store.
And it's a whole thing.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what you're trying to say is on the one hand, gross.
Condemn this.
But on the other hand, guys.
Some basic digital hygiene.
Yeah.
Please?
Yeah.
Okay.
Cool.
Yeah.
Vithagar in Floatplane Chat says,
I worked in support for several years and exactly zero times out of however many
was anyone paying attention to what data I accessed.
Oh, no.
I had very good.
I remember three managers that I had when I worked in Geek Squad.
Each one of them was honestly very good.
It was not.
This is years ago.
It might have changed.
Many years ago.
I don't remember there being any policies or anything like that
that was actually handed down from, like, corporate.
Really?
But the managers, which were just, like, older but still teenage dudes for the most part,
would talk about these types of things.
And, like, just basically, like, don't be a a**hole type of policies.
Right.
Like, Bill and Ted style.
Only work on things in the back room that are hardware issues.
Because then you're not accessing data in the back room.
I don't, I very strongly believe this was not a corporate policy at the time.
But every manager that I had at that time, this was a policy.
Only work on hardware issues in the back room.
If it's a software issue in the front area, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all this other
type of stuff.
Don't mess around.
Yeah.
I felt like we were operating well.
I'll say that much.
And I'm sure, I am 100% certain that there are repair shops with high integrity, but I'm
very disappointed that 9 out of 20 failed this.
That's really brutal.
All right.
We've got a couple more topics that I do want to hit today.
Let me see if I can find them.
Oh.
What is that noise, Dan?
Do you have any idea what that is?
Yeah, that's the AC condenser pump pulling all the water out of it.
Oh.
I forgot to turn the AC back on, you guys, Colt.
No.
No.
Got your sweaters.
I'm kind of chilling.
I'm good.
Mountain Dew LTD screwdriver.
What?
Reddit user Ox Empress has made a screwdriver based on the shape of the LTD one out.
Oh, I see.
I am now holding it.
That was quick.
Okay.
Well, I guess I don't need to show the picture anymore.
This is pretty cool.
Offered us an LTT styled screwdriver made out of Mountain Dew bottles using a DIY filament
maker in return for an official version.
We have accepted this offer and our discussion question is, what do you think of the Dew driver?
I didn't know you could make DIY filament.
That is so cool.
I didn't either.
And that just makes me believe that that whole 3D printer band is going to work even less than
they hoped.
Two liter bottle.
You stick it on a nail.
You put a little blade thing and you can cut it into strips and it makes 3D print filament.
I surprised the...
Is it specific enough?
Does it have to go through more of a process than that?
Yeah, you got to kind of do an extrude-y thing, but it's like actually really workable.
It's very similar types of plastic.
That is so cool.
That's amazing.
You can kind of see there's some discoloration around in the middle because it's not like
absolutely pristine and pure, but like that is 100% recycled.
It's a screwdriver handle.
Honestly, the color shifting just makes it kind of like look cool.
It looks better.
And you can mix and match like if you want to feed some...
Yeah, it's like the uniqueness of a wood grain or something like that.
Yeah, like it's just cool.
I don't mind that at all.
Exactly.
If anything, that's a feature.
That is so cool.
Okay, well, hey, enjoy your screwdriver and I'll also be enjoying mine.
Thank you very, very kindly.
Tynan says, I like the concept of recycled bottle filament.
It works so well.
You remelt it.
Oh, no, re-soften it.
Most of them are PET normally.
PETG is used for lots of filament, but PET works on its own.
Very cool.
Wow.
Can I feel it?
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Oh, it's so light.
Speaking of...
Dude, can I feel it?
Okay.
The next AMD Ultimate Tech Upgrade...
Yeah.
...might be the best one yet.
Oh.
Not because it's, you know, a popular personality over here that you guys know very well or anything
like that.
Do you know who it is?
Well, is it the guy that got a concussion?
No.
Oh.
He was helping.
Is it on Flowplane right now?
No.
No, I don't know that.
Ariana from HR.
Oh, nice.
We went out of our way to make sure that I was not written up throughout the entire process.
That is going to be incredible.
What does that mean?
Oh, my God.
Did they just, like, tape his mouth shut?
Probably should have.
That sounds like a salt.
Did you end up...
Did we ask him to do it himself?
Does that work?
I don't know.
It's coercion.
Oh, darn it.
Yeah.
It's going to be a good one.
It's going to be a good one.
It's going to be worth the wait.
Actually, I think it's not the next one coming to the channel.
The next one coming to the channel is the customer care supervisor for LTTstore.com, Adam.
So that one's on Flowplane.
Is that one on Flowplane?
Yeah.
Okay.
So, yeah, no.
The next one is going to be weeks away because it's shot.
We shot it on Wednesday, I believe, this week.
So it'll take a couple weeks in editing and need brand approval and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
and sort of tedious stuff.
But it's shot.
It's going to be amazing.
Look forward to it.
I also suspect that there will be...
Oh, no.
Some bloopers on Flowplane.
It's on that.
Oh, it's available to the ECC squad.
I didn't know if we were saying that publicly or not.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We've talked about the ECC squad.
Yeah.
So it's in ECC squad territory right now.
Yeah.
So they get earlier access to videos and they tell us if they notice anything that's wrong
with it.
We talked about this after the production break.
Yeah.
No, ECC squad's not secret at all.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
ECC is error correction and checking.
It is a reference to RAM, obviously, but the acronym still works.
Yeah, it totally does.
All right.
I think there's like one more.
Yeah.
Valve gives a peek into its recommendation algorithm.
They released a video presentation last week explaining Steam's recommendation system,
which is a mix of algorithmic visibility and curated featuring with the former being
personalized.
So featured recommended Discovery Q curator recommendations and the latter shown to everyone
like special offers.
These special offers are primarily decided on the basis of revenue.
Quote, when a bunch of players are spending time and money on your game, it's a really
strong signal to Steam that it could be interesting to other players too.
If you're looking to be part of a midweek or weekend deal, you're going to need to be
in the top few hundred best-selling games on all of Steam.
According to the presentation, Steam's algorithm does not favor recent over old titles.
Could have guessed that.
Yep.
Doesn't highly weigh store page traffic and only downweighs negatively reviewed games if
they are below 40% positive.
Wow.
That's interesting.
So you have to have a really bad game for it to affect its algorithmic positioning.
Wishlists do affect the popular upcoming section prior to a game's release, but early access
releases don't drive visibility on an algorithmic level.
According to Valve's business team, Steam doesn't sell ad space on its storefront because they
don't think the platform should be pay to win and that Steam's level playing field and
recommendation system leads to surprise hits emerging organically, such as Pseudo Regalia
and Dave the Diver.
This is really cool.
We talked a ways back.
The platform shouldn't be pay to win, but if people spend money in your game, it algorithmic
wins.
Yeah.
Well...
Because they want you to spend money in the game.
So if you have monetization options that positively influence Steam...
Sure.
I get what you're saying, but they mean the platform exposure itself is not pay to win.
Unless you build systems into your game that positively...
Sure, but I...
Okay, okay, okay.
I think you're...
I think you're kind of being like that about it.
A little bit.
Yeah.
Okay, good.
But what's interesting about this is we talked a few months ago about the general and sh**tification
of the internet.
Steam has definitely resisted this.
They have resisted it.
I will 100% give them that.
Resisted.
They have definitely participated in some of these...
Some of it.
Some of this, you know, getting past your customer first mindset into a profits first mindset,
but...
But it could be so much worse, and it's not.
This philosophy, I hope it survives.
Because Amazon is such a great example of this.
Oh, it's so bad.
It used to be great to shop on.
It's atrocious.
It is...
I don't browse at all anymore.
I used to...
I don't...
At all.
Even when I want to shop on Amazon.
It's not worth it.
Like, we've done streams in the past on Prime Day, for example, where we are actively looking
for deals.
And they are there in a lot of cases, but they're so hard to find.
That's why you need someone doing a Prime Day stream to show you where anything good is.
Yeah, I used to...
So, I don't like buying from Amazon because I don't like Amazon.
But I used to shop on Amazon and then try to find if I could find that thing somewhere
else.
Because shopping on Amazon was just so much of a better experience.
And that's just not true anymore.
Yeah, Dr. Gizmo in Twitch chat says, they don't need ads.
They get revenue from game sales.
Yeah.
Amazon gets revenue from selling the product.
Yeah, obviously.
But they charge for ads anyway because they're at this point where all they care about is
shareholder returns now.
Whereas in the early stage, all they cared about was customer acquisition.
And it's this great article that I forget where it is, but it basically talks about the
of everything and lays out in really easy to understand terms how this life cycle, why
this life cycle, what this life cycle is of especially internet brands.
And maybe part of the reason it's so focused on internet brands is because we see this evolution
happening so fast from a focus on the customer to, I forget what the three stages are.
It's like customer, employees, and then shareholders or something.
I can't remember, but it's, oh yeah, customers, then partners, then shareholders.
So first, Amazon was all about customers and it was all about just the best possible experience
to the customers.
It's screw you, partners and shareholders.
You make no money and whatever.
And then it was all about partnerships.
You grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.
We've got a customer base that you want to access.
Let's get huge.
And then you're huge and you go, okay, time to make money now.
Turn on all the money spigots.
It's a really good article.
Yeah.
All right.
Is it time for Wancho After Dark?
I think it's time.
There's new Threadrippers coming next month, which is really inconvenient for me.
We already shot Compensator 4 and they weren't out yet.
I guess as long as we release the video before they launch, then we should be okay.
That could be part of the point of Compensator.
Well, no, because I specifically talk about Threadripper and how AMD and Intel have both
abandoned the HEDT market.
So we're going to have to shoot a pickup or something.
Uh, um, releasing in November, according to PC Meg, who Dell gave remote access to, to
test a 96 core Threadripper Pro 99, 995WX.
That can't be the right model number.
It's got to be something else.
Oh, 79, 95WX.
Okay.
I think there's a missing seven.
Remote access.
That's weird.
This generation is a serious upgrade over the 5,000 series.
It's Zen 4, has a TDP of 350 watts, and is PCIe Gen 5.
Wow.
Uh, oh, this is Threadripper Pro that's available with 96 core.
AMD is also resurrecting consumer Threadripper, which has up to 64 cores and starts at $1,500.
Okay, that's barely consumer.
Man, AMD has completely abandoned any semblance of wanting to be like a scrappy, you know,
take care of actual gamers, we're affordable kind of player in the market.
Starting at $1,500, what did first gen Threadripper start at?
Uh, Threadripper, what is it, 1900X, I believe, was the entry level one?
It was 550 bucks.
It was only eight cores, mind you, but, like, the 1920, which was, uh, oof, hold on, 12?
I want to say 12 cores?
10 cores?
10 cores.
I think it was 10 cores.
Crap, I don't remember.
I think it's 10 cores.
Um, no, 12 cores.
Okay.
Altback.
Was 800 bucks.
Like, come on, you guys.
This sucks.
Yeah, there, that's all I have to say about that.
It's after dark time.
Time to get dark.
Dan's working on it.
He's got this.
You're not even going to be able to see me anymore in my black hoodie.
Wow.
It's not black black.
It's like, uh, like, uh, like a washed black.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's cool.
I like this one.
If Nick is the one that brought these over, I'm not surprised he gave me this one.
Yeah.
LTTU.
All right, Dan.
Hit me.
I gotta get settled.
Uh, where are my merch messages?
There they are.
Okay.
Okay.
Part of the reason I love the WAN show for direct access it gives to the head of the
company and, uh, how transparent you are.
Are there any other companies that you would like that level of access to?
Oh, man.
All of them?
I think it would be chaos, though.
Oh, yeah.
Like, it would actually be a problem if every company just talked about, like, everything
that's going on.
That'd be sweet.
Because people...
Bring the chaos.
Yeah.
No, I think people would misunderstand it a lot.
I think it would actually be bad.
Yeah, but if everybody was doing it?
Hey, look, everybody's doing it.
Are you saying it would be misused?
I'm saying that...
Company lies?
Linus?
Oh!
Ah!
It's all a farce!
Oh, my goodness.
Or what's your point here, sir?
My point is that...
Okay, okay.
Let's say Valve was totally transparent about everything that they're working on.
Sure.
I think it would actually lead to a lot of negativity towards Valve when projects don't
pan out.
So I completely agree.
This is my star citizen argument.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
So we're in agreement, then.
I would still like...
Yeah.
Very good.
Very good.
Okay.
Very good.
I would still like it.
Um, but yeah, people would treat it negatively for sure.
Because no one understands timelines and the rough nature of them when it comes to actually
like crafting something that takes a long time to make.
If you're like, hey, this should take me a day.
Yeah.
I regret announcing the screwdriver so early.
Yeah.
And you never know what's going to happen.
Maybe the person working on it quits or gets long-term sick or something like that
happens, like that's going to very substantially impact the release time of this thing.
Maybe something else comes up that you absolutely should work on.
It is significantly better for your company to do.
But now because you've publicly said you're making this other thing, now you're going to
significantly disappoint people that were excited for that thing.
When, if you just didn't say anything in the first place, no one's going to have anything
to be disappointed about.
You get to make the thing that you should have made anyways, and maybe you can come back
to it at another date.
But yeah, I don't know.
The, the like hyper aggressive nature that a lot of people treat certain companies and
representatives with on the internet can be really detrimental sometimes in ways that
people don't seem to understand.
This is, this is the argument that I've brought up for a million years about the Blizzard developers
at BlizzCon and there's a BlizzCon coming up, I think, I think soon.
So it's going to be relevant again, I'm sure, because they'll say something dumb again, I'm
sure.
It happens like every time.
Um, but they, Blizzard keeps putting developers on stage at BlizzCon and then they say something
silly and then more stuff comes in place to stop that from happening.
Like they used to take, um, uh, attendee questions and I don't think they do anymore.
I think what they do now is, I don't remember, and this could be wrong.
I don't know.
This isn't a topic.
Um, but I think what they do now is they take attendee questions and then they write them
down on cards and they have a, a BlizzCon person read the questions out instead of the
attendee so that they can control the questions.
So you can't tell them, oh, I'm going to ask something cool.
And then you ask them something brutal.
Um, so like you're, you're slowly getting away from that.
Um, you put developers up on stage that, that say like, um, you think you do, but you don't
or, uh, what, what do you not have phones, that kind of stuff.
They'll say some like stupid stuff like that.
Uh, and then, you know, they're going to start disappearing from stages.
You're not going to have access to them.
That kind of stuff happens.
And I, I, yeah, I don't know.
It concerns me a little bit.
All right.
Hit us, Dan.
Luke, what aspects of Linus have changed over the years and why are, or aren't you okay with
those changes?
Linus said that you told him he had changed in the, what is it like to work for Linus video?
Uh, he's changed.
I've changed.
We've all changed.
It's part of life.
Um, you're not supposed to let Linus.
How tactful.
I think he's changed.
Hmm.
Hmm.
I'm just straight up not going to talk about all of this.
Um, I'll talk about some of it though.
Um, I think he's changed in less ways than the audience.
Thanks.
And in more ways than the audience thinks at the same time, like a lot of the things that
people are like, he changed.
It's like, actually no.
But then there's things that like they, they, they, they don't point out that are like,
yeah, you've totally changed, which I find very intriguing.
Like there's things that I know frustrate you and they, they frustrate me as well.
We're like, you can't talk about the price of things anymore.
Oh yeah.
Because no matter what you say, there's an angle on why you're a bad person because of
it.
Oh yeah.
Um, yeah.
They, have we talked about that on the show before?
I don't know.
I've, I've just been noticing this pattern.
If I, it's a very real pattern.
If I say something is expensive because it's not expensive to you.
Yeah.
And if I say something is a good value, it's only cheap to you.
Okay.
So we've gotten to the point now where in writing in script reviews, I will, I'll tell
the writers like, look, we can't, I can't, I can't have an opinion on a price.
I can speak objectively, uh, relative to, um, the non-slim PlayStation five, the new one
is the same price.
Um, and it's clear that Sony is increasing the price of the all digital version without
increasing it by having it be more.
And then also it costs more to upgrade that one to the disc one with the new modular thing.
If you get it after the fact or whatever it was that we kind of discussed last week, I
don't remember the exact details, but if I were to just say, um, yeah, that drive upgrade
is cheap.
Cause you know what?
I think for a first party accessory for a console that has the kind of utility that a
Blu-ray drive does and giving the kind of flexibility that it does to buyers to get
something at a lower price today, but also be able to add that functionality later.
I think it's, I think it's very reasonable, but there's always going to be a way to twist
that around.
Or if I say, Hey, Facebook marketplace is full of cheap GPUs right now.
Um, it doesn't matter what the context is for that statement, right?
Um, it doesn't matter that I'm talking about it in terms of, you know, relative to what
you can get, uh, brand new in a retail store or relative to what we were looking at six
months ago, a year ago for GPU pricing.
Um, it, it just seems to get twisted around on me and it's, uh, I don't really get it.
I get it.
Or I do get it.
I, I have money now.
I don't worry about buying a GPU.
That is not, uh, that's not a concern in my life.
Um, and I know that for a lot of people it is.
So hearing me even comment on it, it, it makes people angry, like actually angry.
That's the thing that you guys got to understand is these are not just, um, you know, well-articulated,
uh, thoughtful comments about how, um, you know, it could be that over the course of a
successful career, you inherently reach a point where your relatability is reduced, uh,
because of your life situation, not being the same as the people you're talking to anymore.
Like, that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking, people are mad, like furious about it.
And it's, uh, it's, I, I'm taken aback by it because as, as much as, as much as my life
situation has changed a lot, actually a lot of my attitudes towards money and spending
it, particularly personally, haven't.
I've definitely allowed myself to loosen up a bit.
Obviously the car was a huge example of that, but I still wouldn't even begin to consider
spending $7 on a beverage.
Um, and that's, you know what?
I can $7.
And this is going to get turned around on me.
I'm sure.
But $7 means nothing to me.
Absolutely nothing.
I could spend $7 on a beverage every day for the rest of my life.
I wouldn't notice it, but that's not my approach.
That's not my habit.
That's not, uh, that's not how I feel about it.
That's not how I was raised.
Um, that's not how I lived most of my adult life even.
Um, and I, I just, I don't foresee it changing anytime soon.
Like to me, when I see anyone who isn't a high net worth individual spending that kind of
money on a drink, I am floored.
Um, and you know what?
I, I get it.
People, people get enjoyment in different ways.
That just is, I couldn't possibly, I just couldn't possibly enjoy it.
Every sip is like nickel, nickel.
Like I can't, I can't lose it.
I can't, I can't lose that.
Um, and so there's like, there's, I, yeah.
And sometimes I think I, I'm contradictory, right?
Because I, I don't, I'm not acting that.
I, I actually, I feel that I, I, I have a hard, I drink water because especially here,
it's, it's, it's, it's plentiful.
It's free basically.
It's good too.
And it's, and it's good.
Yeah.
Um, some places in the world, it's not so good.
Yeah.
And totally different situation.
Right.
Uh, but then on the other hand, I have this like stupid midlife crisis mobile car.
Um, I don't know.
I'm not going to go so into everything because I think every single one of them is going
to have that type of response.
Uh, but I think a lot of the ways that the audience thinks Linus has changed are, are
inaccurate.
Um, yeah.
I don't know.
And I think a lot of it is very natural aging things.
I just got to do my, I got to do my thing.
Yeah.
Got to do my thing.
I don't think it's a big deal.
I don't think he's changed in, if, if you had changed in ways that I thought were like
really bad, I just wouldn't be here.
Yeah.
I know that.
So like.
Checks and balances, baby.
I would like to think I have also changed.
I think I have in actually a bunch of ways.
Oh, definitely.
I've probably changed more than you.
Um.
Maybe.
In ways that are visible to you, probably.
That's fair enough.
I was super immature when we started this dealie.
Yeah.
In ways that probably weren't obvious to you at the time because you were younger and
in a very different place in your career.
And so my deficiencies at that time were probably less obvious to you.
Oh, no.
But I can see them.
But so this is part of another thing that I was going to say, which I'm going to bundle
a bunch of stuff into one by saying that you're a bit softer now.
I don't actually mean that, that, that saying that to a dude is often going to be interpreted
as bad.
Oh, I don't take it.
I don't mean in that way.
Oh.
Um.
I mean, there's like more consideration.
I, I, I take my time more.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I, I, I, I.
Linus's brain has always been fast action, fast fire, boop, boop, boop, go, go, go, go,
go, go.
And over the last few years, especially, I think.
Yeah.
And I do not mean in the last few months.
I specifically mean in the last few years.
Don't get me twisted.
Um, a little bit more time, intentional slowdown.
I moved fast and broke a lot of stuff.
Yeah.
Which is fun and good sometimes.
Yeah.
It can be really good.
Yeah.
And then eventually you run into, you realize that breaking things takes more time than
just planning and doing them right in the first place.
There's this quote that I'm going to misquote brutally.
I don't remember exactly how it goes, but it's like haste now is time waste later.
Oh, sure.
And it's the concept of like, if you're rooting through like a trunk for things and moving
things out of the way is taking too long.
So you just start throwing them all over the place.
You're going to have to clean that up later.
That's going to waste a lot of time.
Sometimes it's going to be applicable.
Yeah.
Sometimes you need to just fire through it.
Yeah.
Or better yet, if you put them in, in an organized fashion, like the farther back you go and plan
things more carefully, the more compounded savings you can realize.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Um, so there's stuff like that, but I, I, I genuinely think a lot of the ways that the
audience points out the change is usually inaccurate.
I think it's a lot of projection.
Yeah.
No offense.
Often that too.
A lot.
But I see constant comments about how you've changed or about how LTT has changed or something.
And I'm just like, not only is this wrong, but it oftentimes is very provably wrong.
Yeah.
It's just like object, like I can't, man, I don't know.
The comments about the videos getting better after you hired a new CEO were hilarious.
Yeah.
Like, ah, and that kind of stuff is not isolated to that incident.
That is just the most blatantly, obviously provably incorrect ones.
Well, there have been all kinds of ones.
Like there was a period a few years ago, I think it was now where there was just this
kind of momentum in the community complaining about like the immature, like dick jokes and
stuff like that.
And, uh, you know, what is it forever?
And just, just for fun, I've replied to a handful of them, linking them to videos from
the first month that the channel existed that were full of, like there were complaints about
the campy humor and the immature jokes.
And so I just like, I just sent them.
I was like, look, this has always been this.
Yeah.
Maybe you don't like them anymore.
And you know what?
Maybe you grow up.
And you know what?
That's fine.
But, you know, understand a couple of things.
One is you obviously did at some point.
And two, we do not actually think the number 69 is funny.
The thing that's funny is that it's not funny.
It's just, it's cringe.
It's, it's awful.
It's like the, that's what she said.
Constant refrain from Michael Scott on The Office.
Like the lowest possible brow.
Yeah.
We're, we are, we are leaning into it going, ha ha number.
Like it's, there's nothing, it's, there's nothing funny about it.
And it's just, we're just memeing.
We're just memeing.
It's okay.
Or, or it's not, or it's not.
And you like, don't have to watch.
But I promise you, it was always there.
Always here.
And like the cheap thing to, to back that up a little bit.
We both grew up without a ton of money.
Yeah.
I am notoriously called cheap.
Yes.
And I've said this, I've said this before.
And by everybody else.
I've, I've said this before, uh, and people didn't get it and I understand, but he's cheap too.
Oh yeah.
And people point at certain things that you have or whatever, but there's a lot of evidence.
You just got to look kind of between the lines.
Like it took him a long time, but eventually he broke and he bought a bigger, nicer house.
It took him a really long time and a lot of conversations.
And I honestly think a lot of effort, but eventually he broke and bought a nice car.
But I'm pretty sure you consulted everyone in your life that has any interest in, in finances
or cars.
As far as I can tell, everyone I talked to had had a one-on-one conversation with you about it.
You know what?
A big part of that though was optics management.
Yeah, that's fair enough.
I wanted people, I wanted people to understand that like this wasn't something that I was just
doing overnight.
Uh, I wanted people to understand that this wasn't a me first thing.
Um, that came right on the heels of us doing an enormous bonus payout, uh, for the Christmas
party, um, and, and, and, and, and that was kind of the way that that was a big part of
the way I justified it to myself was if I can afford to buy myself something nice like
this, then I should be able to afford to buy everyone else something nice.
And if I can't, then should I really have the status symbol anyway?
Does it mean anything?
It's like, is a status symbol really a status symbol unless you can afford to like give a
bunch of it to someone else too.
If you get what I mean, like, this is not a change.
He would have given me that talk in 2011.
So, so I don't know.
Someone's pointing out the $7 thing, uh, in full plane shots as Bowen said, I don't mind
spending $7 on a coffee if the employees are treated better than Tim Portman's treats their
employees.
And you know what?
Sure.
I agree to defend his point.
His point is either that he's just going to go without the coffee or he'll just make
it himself at home.
And I know this because neither of us drink coffee because we're both cheap as hell.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Neither of us drink alcohol.
Neither of us smoke.
Neither of us drink coffee.
And I bet you, honestly.
I can't imagine burning a thing I paid for.
A very significant part, probably more than 50% of the motivation around not doing those
things for both of us is we don't want to spend the money and a few of those things are
addictive.
So we wouldn't even take it if it was free because there's a risk of spending money on
it later.
I'm just trying to think if there's anything other than food that I have been willing to
invest in a consumable ecosystem, do you buy any consumables?
And there's so many examples of consumables.
I don't know if it's fair to say, but yeah, technically.
Toiletries.
Okay.
No.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Deodorant.
Okay.
Sorry.
I don't mean in terms of personal care.
When I, when I say consumables, I'm talking about discretionary purchases.
So something like a, um, uh, someone say batteries, but yeah, here's a counter.
Linus spent a bunch of time in research finding the best rechargeable batteries.
So he would never have to spend money on them again.
And a loops.
And then, and then I created the no batteries policy in my house, which you guys actually
saw a video about when I converted a battery only, actually, well, Dan did most of the
work, but, um, where we converted a battery only, um, temperature sensor for the Ecobee
smart thermostat into a wall powered one so that I would never have to buy another battery
for it.
No, no, I refuse.
Here's, I'm going to get TMI for a section.
Uh, sop cannon said, is birth control consume, uh, consumable?
Not when it's a vasectomy.
Laundry detergent.
Like, I'm telling you guys, you're actually wrong.
What about house consumables?
Do they count?
Uh, no, I mean.
Not if it's like a requirement.
Yeah, like, like, like, like food and that sort of thing.
Yeah.
Okay.
That makes sense.
Discretionary.
Um, honestly, a big part of my personal rationalization for the car is at least I'm not buying
gas anymore.
I'm using good old subsidized by my solar panels cheap as nothing in BC hydroelectricity.
Let's go.
Yeah.
So I step on that pedal with no regret.
Yeah.
So like, there's some things that have changed, but they're probably a lot less than you think.
And they're probably not what you think.
And I would argue they're significantly more related to just like growing older, growing
a little bit wiser, probably some amount of hormone changes, stuff like that.
Yeah.
Kids are expensive, but I have no problem spending money on other people.
That's never really been an issue.
It's not really a question.
Uh, Tynan brings up, uh, shuttles for badminton.
Yes.
Okay.
Badminton, uh, is something I spend on consumables for.
I do have a counter argument for this though.
I also think that for the personal health, personal care, badminton is a primary personal
care, um, method for me.
It's, it's how I stay in shape.
So compared to what you could easily spend on anything else health related, it's, it's
pretty, it's pretty reasonable.
And most of my badminton costs are the free badminton nights that we run for work and for
some badminton community members.
Money spent on other people.
Which is money spent on other people anyway.
Yeah.
I'm not trying to say.
Yeah.
I know, I know, I know you're not after me about it, Tynan.
Tynan often comes to baddie nights.
It's, uh, actually he and, uh, some of, some of the other team members have made incredible
progress.
It's been a, it's been a really cool, uh, really cool event.
Uh, Sebastian asks, RuneScape, did you spend money on RuneScape?
Does RuneScape cost money?
I don't know anything about RuneScape.
I didn't spend money on RuneScape.
Oh, okay.
I don't know.
Does it cost money or?
It didn't when I played it when I was a kid.
Oh, okay.
I don't know.
I don't know if it does now.
Sheldorin asks, car air freshener, are you kidding me?
No way.
That sounds consumable to me.
No, I got one as a gift that was in the shape of a Game Boy, uh, years ago and it's still
there because I'm not going to replace it.
Well, aesthetically it hasn't changed.
That's exactly, yeah, it's still an ornament as far as I'm concerned.
Uh, so yeah, and to be clear, I'm not trying to sit here saying he's a saint.
I'm just saying a lot of the, a lot of the things, a lot of the things that the community
thinks you've changed about, in my opinion, are wrong.
Yep.
Yeah.
Okay.
Car tires.
This is a really great example.
Exactly, in exactly the same way, I will replace a car tire if it's dangerous or worn
out.
But, while the recommendation is always to do them in pairs, I've always been the guy
to be like, no, only one of them is broken.
My tires are a lot more expensive now.
The, the, here's, here's a weird reference.
The, the, the, both the air and water filter on your fridge are expired.
Oh, oh yeah, there's no way.
Because, because he probably believes that they're over-engineered.
No, I just can't even see the light.
It's like an ad.
Fridges has air filters?
Uh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, for the, for the air, air circulation in the thing.
It helps keep, uh.
It helps keep it not stanky.
Yeah.
I mean, not in my fridge, but in someone else's maybe.
But I, I think they're also over-engineered.
I, I do the same thing.
I let mine expire for a while.
I, I've never changed one.
I need to go home and deal with this.
Um, okay, move, move.
Oh, Tynan!
I'm not acknowledging that.
People want to know what he said, they can be in float plane chat.
I avoided that joke.
You're a bad person.
Me?
No, Tynan.
I want to be bundled with him.
I'm with it.
Oh, that's hilarious.
That's hilarious.
Play now for free.
Yeah, RuneScape says play now for free.
They probably have like a premium model or something.
They're going to make money somehow.
They do have a premium model.
Okay.
Oldscape is the only good scape or 2007 scape, whatever the hell you want to call it.
Yeah, RuneScape old school.
Old school RuneScape?
I've heard it's really cool actually, but.
Number go up.
It's a very good number go up.
Oh, that like type of gameplay.
It's, it's, yeah.
Got it.
It's like a precursor to a lot of them.
Let's see.
Hey, LLD, love the show and the journey LTT has been on.
I appreciate the renewed commitment to quality, but I'm wondering, what are the downsides
of reposting a video like Secret Shopper 3, part two?
Big ones.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's bad.
I can, I can promise you guys right now that that video will not perform like it would
if we had simply left it up, um, the far better option that can be available to under certain
circumstances.
So this is all part of our error handling SOP standard operating procedure that we've posted
on the forum.
Um, the, the better option is one that we outlined there, which is if you can edit the
video in a way that the runtime is exactly the same.
And there's like a bunch of other rules, um, in some cases you can, uh, submit a request
to YouTube to have it replaced.
Uh, but if that's not possible, our only options are to post retractions or, or comments or to
take down the video and re-upload it.
And the problem is that both of those are bad options.
Once you've set a video private, the momentum is, is gone and you are just relying on YouTube
to start to seed it.
And a big part of your audience has already seen it.
So it's going to seem like a bad video that people aren't interested in, but actually people
have just already watched it.
So you're going to not get a lot of reach that way.
And then re-uploading is the exact same problem.
Not a lot of reviews come from people who have subscribed and rang the bell.
Uh, nobody does that.
Nobody clicks that notification.
I've actually been thinking of making a video for a long time called.
You won't click this notification.
Uh, and just talking about how inconsequential subscriptions and notifications are on YouTube
now compared to recommendations.
Um, I just, I haven't really gotten around to it.
It's the kind of thing that only I can realistically write instead of someone else on the team.
And I'm just so busy reviewing other people's work.
I rarely get to write.
Uh, I have one coming soon though.
I wrote the big screen beyond video.
It's that cool VR headset, that super high fidelity one that you tried at my place.
Yeah.
Crazy experience, by the way.
Yeah.
Um, that was wild.
So I, I got, I got to write a video for a change, but that's coming soon.
Uh, what am I talking about right now?
I forget.
I'm going to.
Oh, right.
So taking it down and then republishing it again has the exact same problem because even
though most people won't click that notification, YouTube still uses that as an extremely strong
signal for the appeal of that video to your audience.
Right.
And so if you upload a video that has the same title as when you uploaded two days ago or whatever,
most people aren't going to click it and they're going to go, Oh, signal video bad.
Um, that's less of a problem today.
We had a video that we published, um, where we accidentally clicked an option that doesn't
send a notification.
It was, um, here, I think it was like, um, this one.
Yes.
Okay.
This top one right here.
What were they thinking?
Weird nineties controllers.
It's got one and a half million views.
Do I think it could have done a little bit better with a shove in the butt out of the
gate rather than not having anything go out to notificate, uh, to people who subscribed?
Um, yeah, yeah, probably, but overall it's done.
Okay.
And that wouldn't have been the case, you know, five years prior to that, 10 years prior to
that, when subscriptions and notifications were basically just kind of indicative of the
long-term performance of a video.
Now you can have videos that do awful out of the gate and then great later or great out
of the gate and awful later or awful.
Then you change your title and thumbnail and then they do great.
It's, it's kind of all over the place.
Uh, so I, I think that ultimately secret shopper will do okay, but I, it's, it's very clear that
there is a big downside to feeding it to, you know, a solid quarter to a fifth.
Of the potential audience and then taking it away and then uploading it again and
having lost that momentum.
I want to take a second to jump back to talking about old school RuneScape.
Okay.
Okay.
I just want to say, this is awesome.
Wow.
So the, the website, if you, if you, oh, hold on.
Sorry.
One sec.
Is this official?
Yes.
Um, so I'm going to, I'm going to go through this really quickly.
Okay.
My laptop again.
So you, you get to this website.
If you just go to RuneScape, if you just Google like RuneScape, you land on this website.
Uh, and I was like, okay, a classic adventure reborn.
Everything that I hear people talk about is old school RuneScape though.
And I saw this button up here that said old school.
And I was like, okay, I guess I'll go to that, which opened this up.
That is so cool.
I'm having so many flashbacks.
I love this.
Literally this website being like this makes me want to try the game.
I don't know.
And like, I'm sure it's the like boomery style millennial brain in me.
Just like feeling more comfortable on a website like this.
This reminds me, this is a website to me.
Yeah, exactly.
The stuff, the stuff that we have now is like apps in a, in a rectangle.
This is just like, you know, some, some guy named Steve programmed this by hand.
I understand too.
You have the external links.
He had a beard for sure.
Oh yeah.
The box at the line, the external links, you know, and then you have the internal links
that are very clearly just like text hyperlinks.
You have very clear and obvious, easy to click buttons.
The first thing my eye's going to is new user sign up here.
Yeah.
And then I start looking around and there's more stuff.
It's like the UI is perfect.
Yeah.
Oh, there's a newsfeed.
Very easy, clear to understand.
It's not even behind the fold.
All that kind of stuff.
No.
Amazing.
I really like this website.
10 out of 10.
It's great.
That's all I have to say.
If you were the person on that team that decided that that should work like that, great choice.
It's absolutely fantastic.
That's it.
Next up, I guess.
Love it.
Hi guys.
My wife and I are expecting our first baby and we recently found out we're having a girl.
Do you have any advice for encouraging a girl's interest in tech?
Thanks.
I think the best advice that I could possibly give you is...
Just don't make it different.
Yeah.
Don't change anything.
And, you know, engagement with tech should be meaningful.
It should be educational to the degree that you can make it.
It should be not a crutch.
I think that's probably the most important advice as someone who's been doing the parenting
thing for actually a while now is don't treat tech like a babysitter.
Experience it with them.
Be part of that voyage of discovery.
What is the path not taken with LTT that you are most curious about how it would have turned
out?
Ooh.
I mean, I wasn't that curious about it until you brought it up just now, but I think the
path of converting to like an ad agency slash production company could have been really
interesting.
I, I, there's no way that I had that in me.
I, I don't think we could, it's a cutthroat world and, and I, I don't have the, the background
there.
Oh, oh, okay.
No, here.
Well, okay.
Again, I'm not sure if I'm, I'm trying to think of things to be curious about.
Uh, it's not something that occupies my mind.
I'm more look forward than look back in general, but remember that, um, that small Vancouver
based tech media company that wanted to acquire us very early on.
And I'm still so happy we didn't do that.
The reason that I didn't do it was not actually because I wasn't interested.
They had a lot of experience in traditional media, a lot of advertising relationships that
could have poured rocket fuel on what we were doing.
The reason I didn't do it was because of ego.
Speaking of things that haven't changed, um, whatever, for being real, let's be real.
Like the people who are like, Linus has an ego.
He's totally changed.
Oh, fuck that.
Wait, what?
This is what I'm talking about, dude.
You're just wrong.
If anything, it might've been bigger before.
And to be clear, like, uh, I, I actually agree with you.
Like I've been put in my place a lot of times over the years.
Yeah.
This is part of what I was saying about softer.
Yeah.
It's kind of, it's still very much there, but it's kind of relaxed.
And you got to understand like ego is not necessarily inherently a terrible thing.
It doesn't make you a bad person, but it does make you behave in certain ways sometimes.
And in this case, my, my, my ego did push me away from making a deal with them because it was clear to me that they felt that they were acquiring a smaller company.
And I saw it as a merger of equals and it didn't even matter whether the company share structure was 50, 50.
That was not even, that was not even a factor for me.
It was that they clearly were of the mindset that I was a kid who would essentially work for the company and have shares in it.
Sure.
Or whatever, because I built something really valuable to them clearly, but that they were, you know, the, the acquiring party.
Um, and I was like, no, man, I will, uh, I'll see you on the other side or not.
Let's see how it goes.
Sorry.
But that's, I mean, that can be hugely motivating, right?
Um, I think it was, oh, it was very motivating.
I, I, ah, I don't know if I enjoy it or if I just have to have it competition.
Uh, yeah.
Both?
Yeah.
That's a whole conversation right there.
Maybe both.
Yeah.
Both makes sense.
Yeah.
I had an interview today and they asked me a question.
I was wondering what your response would be.
What is the one thing you've done professionally that you would never do again?
I have to pick one?
Yeah.
I know mine.
Um, oh man.
I, uh, I disclosed the sorry state of our accounts payable at NCIX to a partner.
Oh, I remember that, but yeah, that's a good one.
Um, that was, that was pretty bad.
Like I'm all about, you know, honesty or whatever, but that was probably not, that was probably
above my pay grade.
Um, oh man, shoot.
I was actually gonna, I was actually gonna say something else too, man.
I don't know.
This is, this could be an endless list of, uh, yeah.
Things I've done professionally that I would never do again.
Start a video delivery platform with $0 a budget and one, uh, part-time slash volunteer employee.
Yeah.
That's mine.
Yeah.
Why?
Why would you do that?
That's so dumb.
Yeah.
So dumb.
Actually dumb.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it worked.
It's been all right, but it was a lot of effort and stress and stuff.
Yeah.
That's, that's unquestionably mine.
Mine was pretty easy.
Ugh.
There's definitely things about our hiring practices early on that I would have done differently.
We can't talk about it much without getting into some pretty personally identifiable information,
but yo, like, there's definitely some things we could have done better.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, my interview was like hours long.
I don't regret that though.
No, that was cool.
That, like, honestly, maybe, maybe that forever would have been great.
I remember a very long and weird amount of it, but.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Didn't you have to drive me home that night?
I think so.
Yeah.
Because like, maybe the buses weren't running to where you were going or something like that.
Yeah.
Like I showed up when it was light out.
Like, it's kind of wild how you can go from a job interview with a stranger to just like
getting driven home.
Instabros.
But it like actually, yeah, it actually happened.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Would you have done it again?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
I don't think there's any question for either of us.
Like, it was, it was just stupid a lot of the time.
Right.
But like.
Oh, yeah.
We both thrive off that kind of stuff though.
And it's like, I don't think you can be who you are today and be even remotely happy with
who you are and not go back and make the same decisions.
This is something we've talked about in a lot of detail on the WAN show before, but I
just, I couldn't change a thing.
Like butterfly effect, man.
What if I, what if I changed something and what if I didn't hire Luke?
What if I hired someone else and I turned out to be more easily influenced than I think
I am and they got me into hookers and blow and it blew up my marriage.
And well, you laugh or whatever.
Right.
But like.
This kind of stuff happens technically.
No, not technically.
This happens.
This is one of the things that we were starting to talk to our kids about a lot is so much
of who you become is influenced by who's around you.
The five closest people or whatever.
We're recognizing that we are not going to be in that inner circle for our kids for much
longer.
And so the best way that we can influence them into the future is to try to influence
who will be influencing them.
We recognize it's not going to be us.
And so.
I, I, I count as one of the, like, I don't know what you want to call it luckiest or.
I don't think it was just luck.
Cause I, I, I was in a bunch of different circles at, at various times and I kind of curated
this group, but yeah, the like G vet guys.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was like gamer crew.
Yeah.
But they're also like probably the people that I'm closest with, even though I don't
see some of them for like a year at a time.
Yeah.
Cause we're adults.
Now we're adult males and that's just like a thing that we do for whatever reason.
But like I.
A solitary creature.
Quite deeply.
It's true though.
It's alone in the dark.
Kind of sad, but it's true.
But I like deeply respect all of those guys.
I don't know.
I could, I could talk at length about why, you know, I wouldn't have made the exact same
choices that they did, but I respect why they did it and I understand why it was good
for them.
And these, these are people that push hard to get things done, push hard to advance
themselves and their careers and their, the lives of the people around them, which is
very respectable people.
Um, and if that wasn't true, if that wasn't the case, I mean, I know people, I'm not going
to name anyone, but I know people that went down certain paths that I think were really
bad for them because the people around them were doing those things.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
I mean, I think we, I think we like to think that we're, you know, we have our own mind and
we have our own, uh, we, we set our own course or whatever else, but if we're being 100% honest
with ourselves, uh, I think that we are in a position where we are privileged to be able
to have our own path and make our own decisions, um, and feel that way.
If we'd had a very, very different start, we might not be in that position today, which is
just another way of saying that we could have been easily influenced.
We got a little lucky and maybe we worked hard, but maybe we also got a little bit lucky.
I don't think you can, I don't think you can achieve success without some of both.
I think resisting peer pressure is also like incredibly important.
Yep.
Uh, but I mean, okay, not going to get too personal here, but, um, there are, I think
situations where being completely oblivious to the needs and wants of the people around
you is also not helpful.
And sometimes like doing things that you know are dumb because it's fun is okay.
Yeah.
And sometimes depends on the thing, sometimes doing something that isn't what you want to
be doing right now, but isn't dangerous.
And just because someone else wants to do it is okay.
And if they do peer pressure you, maybe they shouldn't have done that.
But these are, these are social mechanisms that have evolved over tens or hundreds of thousands
of years, right?
Like, let's not pretend that all of a sudden we're going to go, oh, peer pressure bad.
That's not going to happen anymore.
Um, and, and there's something to be said for creating a social network by sometimes doing
what you want to do and sometimes doing what other people want to do.
And, and sometimes one of the tools that people are going to use to, you know, get the group
to do something together is going to be peer pressure.
You just have to also have a good head on your shoulders and avoid it when it's problematic.
Yeah.
And this kind of nuance, like I, I can understand why adults worry about kids.
Like I get it now.
Like my, my brother and I were both very stubborn, not very peer pressurable people.
Um, and as I've grown up, I think I've recognized more and more, like even when I was a kid,
that was something I valued about myself.
I was just like, no, if I don't want to do this thing, you're not going to get me to do it.
It's just not going to happen.
And I like, I liked that about myself, but now that I'm getting older, I'm just like, wow,
there's a few situations that I remember being in that like, if I wasn't that way,
it could have been really bad.
Yeah.
Like really bad.
I'm just like, okay, that's a pretty cool.
I'm happy that worked out.
But you got a little lucky, probably.
Probably.
The fact that you even just sort of had that attitude of wanting to, you know, do your own
thing.
Uh, you can't take that for granted.
No.
Yeah.
Yep.
All right.
With the, as a service model, seemingly invading every market, do you think we'll ever be
a tipping point where the market pushes back and wants to outright own or manage these products
themselves?
I mean, I think the entire open source software movement was just going to say is what you're
talking about.
And there's a ton of momentum there.
I mean, uh, Oh, one of the topics that we didn't get to this week, this is a great segue
into it.
Um, Qualcomm is working on their first risk five processor design.
It's not going to be a full on smartphone chip out of the gate, but in collaboration
with Google, they are building risk five snapdragon for wearable devices.
And you know what arm from my understanding of it has a relatively, um, amenable licensing
situation, but nobody likes paying forever for something when they can spend money on it
once and own it forever.
And I think that's where, that's where, that's where risk five is going to come in and in
the medium to long-term close the gap with x86 and arm, all right.
Well, sorry.
With arm and even to a degree, I think x86 in the very, very long-term.
I have never used the preset buttons on my microwave, for example, popcorn or chicken,
et cetera.
Yeah, me neither.
If an AI could actually predict the right settings, do you think you would use it for
your appliances?
So my understanding, uh, tech technology connections did a video on this like super advanced microwave
from the nineties.
Um, my understanding is what you're talking about does exist and did exist and only doesn't
exist now because it's just way more profitable to crap out cheap commodity garbage microwaves.
Um, and nobody really appreciates that level of product development anymore.
Like there's no reason that a popcorn setting wouldn't work perfectly every time, but mine
burns the popcorn on my like model year 2021 microwave, even though it should just have
a microphone that detects popcorn popping, waits for about whatever it says on the, on
the bag.
Like, I think it's about a two second delay in between kernels popping and then just stops.
Right.
But they don't work that way.
As far as I can tell, it's just a timer still.
So, um, yeah, I think people would use them, but as it is, no, I don't use them.
And actually back to popcorn, it's explicitly says on at least the ones that I have not
to use that setting because it doesn't work properly.
Hi, Linus and Luke, long time fan, finally buying this awesome water bottle.
Quick question, micro SD, external SSD, or large format USB stick for storing movie library
long-term five to 10 years.
Um, micro SD, USB, or what?
Basically they're all flash.
So with that in mind, I would use whatever uses high quality flash.
And the most likely of those products to use quality NAND flash would be an SSD.
Uh, they tend to use better controllers.
They tend to use better flash, um, USB sticks and micro SD just use whatever the cheapest
possible garbage is, because unless you are spending extra money on a really, you know,
good one.
And even then, a lot of the time it won't matter.
It'll just be garbage anyway.
Um, they are going to be the cheapest, cheapest.
They just didn't make the cut for, for proper flash products, possible chips.
What about, uh, things like BitRot and other stuff I've heard?
Because I've had DVDs that disintegrate and hard drives have the same sort of issue.
Yeah.
Nothing's going to be perfect.
I, um.
Even magnetic tape.
3-2-1, right?
How about one inch?
That, that, yeah.
3-2-1.
Um, okay.
After amazing customer service from LTT Store on something I broke compared to the worst
I've experienced from Geek Squad, what is the worst RMA or customer experience you guys
have had?
I, I can say the best for me was EVGA.
Mm-hmm.
Like, hands down.
The worst.
Nobody's came close, but I've also never had to use LTT Store or, like, Flowplane customer
support, so I don't know.
I don't know, man.
I've had a lot of pretty bad experiences.
Uh.
I haven't had many, but I've had to return very few things.
My pool company.
It's still not, like, actually done, done.
They're awful.
Uh, yeah.
They are, they're, they're just, they're awful.
Mm-hmm.
Um, they don't show up when they say they will.
They show up without telling you they will, so they, they'll, like, come in, quickly fix
a couple of things, not everything that is outstanding, and they'll, like, take off,
and you're like, whoa, hey, uh, they, yeah, they're, they're awful.
Phew.
Hi, Linus and Luke.
Uh, uh, no, that's the same one.
It just got pushed down.
I work in pro audio video, and products are ditching local config for cloud-based config,
which is a good way to end up with a paperweight if a company goes under.
Yeah, that's bad.
What products have you seen this happen to?
Routers.
Was it routers or access points?
Access points, maybe?
Yeah, those access points that you have, the, um...
Meraki?
Are they Meraki?
I think so.
The one that you have?
Uh, no, not anymore.
Oh, oh.
Had, for sure.
Was it Meraki?
Couldn't be.
I thought they had, like, a different, like, entry level.
It was, like, a, like, a Cisco sub-brand or something like that?
Yeah, I thought it was Meraki.
Yeah, that's their sub-brand, but that's their, like, really high-end stuff.
Um...
Maybe I'm mistaken.
Anyway, yeah, anything, anything that has a dashboard.
This is actually what turned me off of the, um...
Meraki Go access point requires an active subscription.
Oh, is that the one?
I don't know if it was a Go.
This was a long time ago.
Oh, okay.
But it was a Meraki access point, I'm pretty sure, that required a subscription.
Yeah, the, um, the, like, cost as much as a car automated cleaning robot
that I had looked at for the badminton center.
I was like, hey, so how does, how does the configuration work?
Can it be done locally in the event that you guys don't exist anymore?
And their response was, don't worry, we'll exist.
And I went, yeah, I'm not going to spend tens of thousands of dollars
on a robot that all of a sudden doesn't work anymore
if you guys don't support it anymore.
That's absolutely ridiculous.
I mean, we've seen it happen to lots of products.
I have tried not to invest in many that I foresee that being a possibility with.
I've been really lucky.
I've been really lucky so far.
Sonos got real close for a little bit there with the S1, S2 app split.
But so far, they have continued to support their legacy S1 products
well enough that I'm happy with it.
And the rest are just potentials.
If you guys want to have a look through those.
Sure.
I don't have a good answer for this one,
but it's such a good question that I want to say it.
Anonymous asks,
What is a proverbial hill that you would die on that few people know about?
Huh.
I was trying to think of one.
I feel like through WAN shows, we would have exposed a lot of these.
I mean, I have pet peeves, but I know that I have a hill that I die on.
But every time it comes up, I go absolutely apoplectic.
What is it?
I can't remember what it is.
It's probably some absolutely innocuous little tiny thing
that is very much like a hill you die on.
Like, it doesn't have to be big or important.
Yeah, fair enough.
If it was big and important, I would probably, you know,
have some rational explanation.
I'm sure I have them too.
Or maybe it would be a thing people know about.
But for it to be something that people know about.
Yeah, the problem is that they don't know it.
I don't even know it.
I'm loading up my video idea tracker here.
Because I'm sure there's something in here that, you know,
would occur to no one else.
But buying high-end computers is stupid.
Yeah.
But I think everyone kind of knows that.
Like, we do it anyway because it gives us satisfaction or whatever.
It's fun.
But like, you're so much better off buying a mid-range PC
every three years than a high-end one every, you know, six years.
Or whatever the math works out to.
But then you're never having the high-end experience, you know?
Man, there's a lot of weird stuff in here.
All right.
I'm not going to find anything useful for this.
I feel like as a media personality, I think that's the problem.
I spend four hours a week, basically.
Is that how long Wancho is now?
I think it's like three or four hours.
Somewhere around there, yeah.
Talking about everything that could possibly come to my mind
to the point where I don't even, after Wancho,
I don't even really like talking.
Yeah.
And like, even sometimes the next day, I'm just like,
yeah, I'm just like kind of done talking for now.
That's it.
That's all I got.
So I just, I don't have that much to share.
I just, I feel like.
Which is surprisingly draining.
I want to highlight that question.
So you guys can, you know, use it to start a conversation
with someone in your life.
Cool.
That you want to have a good chat with.
Chris E asks, any reason Build Redux wasn't included
in Secret Shopper despite being a past sponsor?
I'm actually not sure why Build Redux would have
or wouldn't have been included.
Somebody pointed out that they're a subsidiary of something.
Digital Storm.
Yeah.
But Digital Storm's not in it either.
Oh.
I don't remember why we do or don't include Digital Storm.
A lot of the placements in Secret Shopper are as much
because we've shopped them already.
Like, I don't know how Main Gear's business is going.
I don't know how relevant or not relevant they are today
compared to when we did the first one four or five years ago
or whatever it was.
Got it.
So you're just doing repeats.
But then we added Starforge because they are highly relevant.
And then CyberPower was added because we had attempted
to Secret Shop them in the past,
but they hadn't ended up participating
because they didn't provide recommendations.
And our whole thing is we buy whatever you recommend to us.
Maybe we'll expand it in the future,
but this was already a lot of systems to do.
Somebody's asking.
I'll just curate it so it can be shown.
There we go.
I think I did the thing.
Yeah.
How do these hoodies hold up in the gym?
How do the dropout hoodies hold up in the gym?
I don't think we would technically know.
Yeah.
They just launched.
Yeah.
But.
Seems like it would be pretty good.
A good hoodie.
I mean, I wouldn't personally wear a hoodie to work out.
Some people do that.
Is that a thing?
They want the sweat.
I don't like it.
I think we're too sweaty already.
Yeah.
No.
Ooh.
Yeah.
More sweat.
I mean, I.
Dude, I know it's like you're supposed to do it,
but a lot of people don't.
I carry around the like rag and wash bottle
because when I'm done using a bench, it's just.
I gotta clean it.
Sometimes I have to mop down a badminton court
after I play on it.
Dude, you sweat through his shoe.
Through the whole thing.
Okay.
That was in Taiwan.
That was wild.
That was crazy.
And it was not like, I don't know how to describe this.
It was like, it was, it was obviously,
I didn't know this before,
but it was obviously a multi-piece sole
because I went through the sole.
It was not dripping around.
It was like a spot in the sole
where clearly some pieces of rubber
were like fitted together or like.
Separated to some degree.
Yeah.
And I would step and it would squish
and some sweat would come through.
Come out.
It was very hot that day.
Wild.
Absolutely wild.
Yeah.
Hey, LLD, love the show.
Linus, any issues with the pool cooling?
Are we going to get an update on how it's all running?
Absolutely.
There's a video coming
where we're going to deploy all the systems.
There's another video coming.
Man, we've got a lot of videos shot,
but not released right now.
There's another video coming
where we make some changes to the cooling system
to help cool the room more
because I realized there's a fatal flaw
in the entire setup.
I added the five systems, right?
With pool cooling so that I could cool the room.
But all the heat that I'm removing is net new heat.
So if the room's too hot now,
it's still going to be too hot.
So we had to think outside the box a little bit
in order to remove some heat from the room.
It's pretty good now, though.
I'm like really stoked.
All right.
Last one from Tyler.
I only got a used GPU after your testing video
and ended up getting the best deal of my life.
EVGA 3090 with an EK water block,
an EK pump, a radiator,
and a thousand watt Asus power supply
for $700 on Facebook.
That's wicked.
What was your best deal ever?
I think mine might be the...
What was it?
How do you say that?
It was a 200.
But that GPU that I got
in the first Scrapyard Wars was insane.
Oh, the 2900 whatever.
Hawaii.
2900.
Yeah.
Oh, wait.
7970?
What did you have in the first one?
I thought it was a 290X or something.
No.
Or 290.
R9 290?
Yeah.
That's the one.
Hawaii.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was a codename Hawaii.
I don't remember what the stupid card is called.
That was a pretty sick deal.
That was a very good deal.
I think, honestly, a lot of them,
for probably both of us,
you're going to find it in Scrapyard Wars.
One of my best ones,
I don't know if I would remember my best one.
I used to do a lot of wheeling and dealing.
One of my best ones was definitely
the Dual 7800 GTXs
that I picked up.
I remember the story, yeah.
Yeah.
Buddy was upgrading,
upgrading,
cross-grading,
from Dual 7800 GTXs
to Dual...
Ugh.
1900 XTXs
in Crossfire.
That, I think,
would have been the generational equivalent.
1800 ATX?
It doesn't matter.
I think it was 1900 ATXs.
Or, XTXs.
And,
it was...
He was one of those people
that just
bought s***
to play with it
and
just...
I don't think he cared about money at all.
And,
he just wanted to get rid of them quickly.
I saw it.
I was like,
I'll take both.
I ran those for like,
maybe a couple weeks.
But,
I was terrified
that
some news would come out,
that another generation of cards was coming,
and the value would go down
so I flipped them.
But,
I sold those for like,
a couple hundred dollars profit.
Yeah.
Just,
buy low,
sell high.
That's sick.
I was big into that
when I was in high school.
I don't know if this counts,
but like,
actually my best one
would probably be
when I was back in the
Intel Insider program
due to being a part of GeekSwap.
Oh, yeah, man.
I don't know if that counts.
I got so many colleagues
to
give me their account credentials
so I could go and do surveys for them
so I could pick up more SSDs
because I wanted an SSD RAID array
like very early on.
So I had,
I had four
Intel X25-M80 gigs
and so that was,
yeah,
like 300 gigs.
That's,
that's,
that's enough.
And I paid like a fraction
of what they were worth at retail.
That was a pretty sick setup.
Yeah.
So spend lots of money,
but cheapskate.
Yeah, yeah.
Work the angles.
Yeah, exactly.
Last one I'll blast out is,
uh,
Dan and Luke,
any favorite Starfield mods yet
besides the necessary basics
like Star UI?
Dan,
any progress on your bird mod
or any others?
Uh,
I don't know.
I like the color correction one
and then I kind of just fell out of love
with the game.
Yep,
sounds about right.
Uh,
for me,
it's the collection
Constellation V2
because then it does it all for you.
Oh, yeah.
That's a,
that's a good idea.
Yeah.
Yeah,
unfortunately,
I've moved on to other things.
Finding time to game is hard.
That's my biggest problem right now.
Yeah.
I haven't,
I haven't actually moved on from it,
but I haven't been playing it as much
because Light's been busier.
Too many games.
Alex Clark is,
and Light's just been busier.
Alex Clark is boned.
Do you know he's a huge
Cities Skylines guy?
Oh, no.
Do you know he's also a huge,
like,
rally racing game guy?
Yeah,
WRC's coming out right now.
WRC's coming
and Cities Skylines 2 is coming.
Like,
right now.
Stop making good games.
You know how I know this?
We actually have deals
with both of them.
And Alex is on point
because he loves
those series.
That poor man.
Yeah.
So he has to spend
all of his time
working on videos about them
instead of playing them.
It's great.
It's like tantalizing.
That's pretty funny.
I love it.
It's pretty good.
And I love telling you good night.
Thank you guys for tuning in.
We'll see you again next week.
Same bad time,
same bad channel.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.