The WAN Show - Best Buy Scalping PS5s?? For SHAME!! - WAN Show October 15, 2021

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

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Fortunately, we're not live yet. I thought it was going to be like really quiet, but it just super wasn't. It was awesome. Welcome to the WAN Show, ladies and gentlemen. We are back in the studio once again. Yes. We heard you guys. You said, wow, we really like the WAN Show, ladies and gentlemen. We are back in the studio once again. Yes. We heard you guys. You said, wow, we really like the WAN Show being in the studio with Luke and Linus together.

And we said, you know what? That was the plan already. Yeah. So that worked out great for everyone. A lot of great topics for you guys today. Best Buy has been accused of scalping PlayStation 5s. That is a pretty controversial topic. Speaking of controversy, we have a video coming out

that isn't even up on YouTube yet, but has managed to split our community, generating a fair bit of controversy. We're going to be talking about the Hasanabi PC build later on in the show. What else we got today, Luke? You've heard of the vive pro but have you heard about the vive flow probably yes because it all leaked yeah and also it's announced

now but yes and and this is a you know an aggregation show at the end of the week so you've probably heard about all this kind of stuff like the pixel 6 and pixel pass which were also leaked we'll talk about that later. Let's roll that intro! and the show is brought to you today by LG whoops TuxCare okay can I press these two at the same time let's see if this works oh okay uh and FreshBooks um well we're still getting we're still getting the hang of being back in the studio. How did that even work? I will explain it when you're older. So why don't we jump right into our first topic for the day.

Best Buy has been accused of scalping PlayStation 5. So they're PlayStation 5. These PlayStation 5. The latest PS5 restock happened earlier this week but there's a catch anyone looking to make a purchase will also have to be a member of best buys total tech program yeah two hundred dollars annually two hundred dollars annual with that said the total tech program does have a lot of great benefits luke for example you get 24 7 tech support 24 months of product protection on most best buy purchases free delivery access to exclusive total tech member prices extended exchange windows and vip access

to dedicated phone and chat teams so it's's like Amazon Prime for Best Buy, but with different stuff. It's like a Costco membership. But with different stuff, yeah. But with completely different, actually, it's like very similar. So Costco's whole thing is like really good support, extended exchanges. Do you have the product protection thing?

The right to buy stuff at all. Well, with Costco, it's not even like a matter of whether you have product protection or not. Oh, you just like bring it in? Literally take it back and you're like, I don't like it anymore. I ran it into a wall and I don't like it anymore. To be clear, that's an extremely big problem because to my knowledge, Costco does not actually put those items back on the shelf.

And a lot of the time they actually end up getting wasted. So yeah, so Costco has a lot of the time they actually end up getting wasted so um yeah so so costco has a lot of leverage over its partners and they will basically just say well we got it back so you're taking it um yeah you're well in a lot of cases no it'll be we got it back so we are not paying for it oh and we are just going to yeet it because we can't be bothered to send it back now i could be wrong it's possible that costco doesn't work that way anymore or has never worked that way. I'm just, this is my, this is my disclaimer so that I don't get myself into trouble here. But allegedly a lot of big box stores, a lot of big box stores do operate that way and they will have extremely

long payment terms like net 180. Uh, so they are not even paying for the product until six months after they've received it so in a lot of those cases they could put it out on the show floor someone could buy it take it home use it for three months bring it back say you know what forget it i don't want it anymore and they will just literally not pay for it and the manufacturer has no leverage whatsoever they could demand to be paid but then they're going to lose that account and you don't want to do that you don't want to lose like costco or walmart anyway back to back to the issue with best bye-bye i'm going to play devil's advocate here and i'm going to say it's not that crazy okay why i'm going to say it's not that crazy because they are far from the only retailer

to require some kind of membership in order to get access to i mean buy the product at all let alone buy the product at you know a given price i mean that kind of thing totally exists and yeah so so so here's so here basically what i'm doing is the reason i brought up costco is because i'm going to draw a parallel there if costco got a restock of playstation fives you would have to pay a membership in order to buy it now is best by disrupting the status quo here because they had never previously required a membership in order to get access to these hot products absolutely and it's specifically just for hot products so it's not the same as costco because costco is like access to the store as a whole and the mostly

other memberships are free like like a lot of grocery store memberships they'll show like oh this thing is i don't know five cents cheaper or whatever if you have the membership. Yes. But that's a free membership. Yes. Yeah. Yes. It's a little different than 200 bucks a year. How much is a Costco membership? Isn't it 80?

Something like that. Yeah. That's for access to the entire store. This is $200 membership for access to, as far as I know, like one item. Like, is it just a PlayStation? Well, hold on a second. Because I couldn't find anything else. Maybe it's not just one item maybe you could buy as many playstations as you want which could be beneficial in your

life look i'm just making connections here i'm just saying that you could pretty easily justify a 200 best buy membership if you were a filthy playstation 5 scal. Yeah. So that's, I think... I mean, scalpers helping scalpers, right? Best Buy's doing it. Now you're doing it. That's, I think, where really... Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on.

We have not charged any membership fees for anything except Floatplane. What? I didn't mean you. And Floatplane has no benefits. We don't even do early access there anymore. Actually, they do have benefits. They do have benefits. do have exclusives they do have benefits we do exclusives and behind the scenes meet the team meet the team is pretty cool

cutting room floor is one of my favorite though especially with stuff like the intel extreme tech upgrades because those videos i mean we'll have like four five six hours of footage to make a 20 minute video yeah there's a lot of a material that ends up on the cutting room floor yeah uh anyway the point is look i am not going to defend best buy but what i have seen or i rather i'm not going to earnestly defend best buy i was playing devil's advocate before i don't i don't like it at all i'm not going to defend best buy but i saw people calling for their heads saying it should be illegal and the truth is it's not it's not illegal they are far from the only retailer to require some kind of membership i mean even there's a badminton club that i play at where you have to buy a membership in order to have the

privilege to buy court time buying court time yeah this is this is not an unusual business model. It just is a new one for a company like Best Buy,, the damage that they're doing to their brand right now is far greater than the revenue that they could possibly hope to make from this move. The weird thing to me is like, I'm looking at the Total Tech website. Yeah. And honestly, like there's a couple of things that I noticed on here that weren't directly in the notes. like there's the best buy protection thing but also if you buy an

apple product it comes with apple care plus yeah yeah like okay okay free installation of things that you could reasonably have installation for when i first read that i was like will you install my playstation uh but no it's like tvs and appliances right um some vip access whatever okay it doesn't sound that bad. Like, I don't want it, but like they already do stuff like this. This doesn't sound too outside of the grain. And then when they're talking about

the things that you gain, they don't even mention exclusive items. They mention access to exclusive Total Tech member prices, which is very in line with a lot of these other programs. They don't mention the exclusive items. So that's very interesting to me.

Anthony's clearly watching the show. He's typing in the doc right now. He goes, extended warranty and 24-7 tech support is a big benefit that used to be its own thing for that much. So some of you might not know this, but Anthony actually used to work for Geek Squad. In fact, you used to work for Geek Squad. That's right.

Yeah, like this doesn't really seem that bad. It's actually kind of interesting, especially if you do buy a lot of tech from there like a lot of playstations i like you know if you just like to buy a lot of playstations yeah the weird thing to me is that it doesn't actually mention the exclusive items and the timing the timing makes a ton of sense if i was best buy and i wanted to milk the holiday season for as much as humanly possible, the timing for introducing a program like this is absolutely perfect for trying to catch those holiday shoppers

that will pay anything, that would pay $1,000 to put a PlayStation 5 under the tree. But this way, what Best Buy is effectively doing is they're taking that couple hundred dollars and they're taking it rather than letting a scalper make it. So here is a question for you. And this really is one of those questions that has no easy answer, Luke. If that PlayStation 5 is going to sell for $700, let's say, because the disk drive version is $500 plus $200 for this Best Buy membership.

If it's going to sell for $700, who should get that money? So let's assume we live in a world where there's nothing we can do to keep it out of the hands of scalpers, and effectively you are not going to be able to get it for MSRP, who should get that money? Should it be Sony? Should it be the retailer?

Should it be a scalper? I think you saw that argument coming. And I do want to talk about that. I did see that argument coming. We can talk about it afterwards. I don't know. I don't like answering this, I guess guess because i don't think best buy should do it because then when does that get pulled back well it gets pulled back when best buy is feels

like under natural competitive pressure from eb games or from amazon or whoever else like pricing the the one thing capitalism does pretty well is it drives down pricing when you have legitimate competing entities and but they could keep this type of system around forever in a way because they don't they don't say what products honestly again on their website they literally don't say what products. Honestly, again, on their website, they literally don't mention exclusive products at all. Oh, I think this system is here to stay. And I think it's going to be very relevant around like console launches. But we're not talking about the system though.

We're talking about if they just increased the price to what the market will bear, which clearly $700. I mean, these things are, they're going to sell out instantly. I think, yeah, I think they'd sell for more than that. So if they just increased, if just increased the price,

if someone has to do it, should Sony take the additional money? Should the retailer take the additional money? Or should a scalper take the additional money? I don't think it should be the retailer. For, for, I don't think it should be basically anyone. But it's

gonna come down to scalpers let me take let me take i'm gonna take a stand here as a former retailer employee we don't make that much i don't think it i don't think it should be the retailer i don't think it should be anyone and i think that results in it should be the scalper if i'm being fair the reason why i'm saying that is because it's just going to get marked up again the market will bear well then why shouldn't the retailer increase the price again so the market will be like i could honestly see like 1200 playstations so the question for you becomes if because i think the price to the consumer goes up it because i think the scalpers are just going to hit harder if this becomes the norm so tell me the to the consumer goes up. Because I think the scalpers are just going to hit harder if this becomes the norm.

So tell me this. The price to the consumer goes up if the retailer takes more. What's the difference? The retailer is just a middleman. The scalper is just a middleman. Ultimately, the pricing is dictated by what insane people who want to put a PlayStation 5 under the Christmas tree are willing to pay

they're not the ones making craziness happen yeah yeah i'm not i'm not what's the difference i don't think anyone should because retailer scalper scalper which we're gonna get into do you want to literally just further in the notes you want a vanilla middleman you want a chocolate middleman yeah what kind of middleman you want neapolitan neapolitan little man um i i want other solutions i i don't i think this is too basic and i i and we've been talking about this for a long time we've done a little bit of our own efforts maybe we should do verified actual gamer for consoles i don't know if we could get our hands on them we'd absolutely do it yeah Yeah. And I don't know that Verified Actual Gamer is the best solution. No, it's not a perfect solution.

But I think there are better solutions. Well, okay. What? I mean, Verified Actual Gamer Program was the best thing I could come up with. I think it's the best thing that we could have done. Well, what could Best Buy do? I don't necessarily know that Best Buy can do a ton better. But PlayStation can.

I mean, what? Okay. Okay. So here's a proposal. You could have a national registry, okay? Nice. I like it. You put all their SIN numbers in the HTML? I'll talk about that later. Yeah, well, it would be a social security number in the US, right? But whatever the equivalent of your personal identification number, okay? So you enter, you create a console buyer database. And you ensure that for each individual person, only one console and a maximum of five controllers

can be purchased in case they break one. Then that's it. That's the rules. That's all you're allowed to have. I think having some type of registration process for buying a console is fine. I don't think you have to use a social security number. I think there's other ways to do it.

But then there's going to be a way around it i mean we talked about this back when bc rolled out that vaccine that vaccine app where basically you just like flashed this app that is it's so stupid because it's just a screenshot of okay there's a qr code it's like it's better now but the point is it was basically just um there was a there's a screenshot that you could just show to anyone and unless they had the scanner which nobody had them yet there was no way that they could validate anything and then before that it was literally a piece of paper like your your vaccine verification documentation was a piece of paper that when you went in and got immunized they didn't even even, they didn't even, yeah, I'm just making sure there's,

if someone cares what lot number of Pfizer I got, then they can see it, I guess. It doesn't matter. The point is, they gave you this stupid piece of cardboard that could obviously be like copied in two seconds. And when I crossed the border, they didn't even want to see the app. I was like going to load up the app and show it to them. They were like, no, I need your piece of paper. They didn't even want to see the app I was like gonna load up the app

and show it to them they were like no I need your piece of paper they didn't even tell me to keep this I just held on to it because I was like I don't know this seems like someone might ask about it they told you to keep it well they didn't tell me ridiculous I think I got mine before you so maybe it was clearer by that point that people were gonna need them

so I think it's just it's okay there's no right way to do a. So I think it's just, it's okay. There's no right way to do a registry then because either it's going to be something that can be easily fooled like that. I mean, your two examples have nothing to do with how this would work. Or.

But there is ways around it. Or it's going to be overreach. I mean, we can't have retailers, you know, having databases of citizens. That's madness. I mean, you sort of do in a way. I know. I know. databases of citizens that's madness i mean you sort of do in a way i know i know like it's a thing that doesn't mean we should enable it more it's pretty much the same amount right because if if playstation retracts and goes like no all the retailers are doing a horrible job we're going to

track this from now on we're going to manage this from now on they could do it you mean sony who did i say playstation but like yeah so if sony decides to create their own registry well then you've got all kinds of other complicated issues because you've got effectively a foreign entity that is collecting information on like you know american or or Canadian or European citizens. Regardless, though, because if you have like a PSN account, you have to put in all your information. That's true. But to buy a PlayStation, you don't need to have a PSN account. Yeah, I think it's I think they're still getting information.

They could also work with retailers to have like one pool that the other retailers don't get to see. But like when you try to check out it compares against and you're gonna have people abuse it anyway i mean one of the biggest problems for retailers is not their policy family's gonna buy a playstation yeah there's definitely ways around it but i feel like some amount of effort would be better than clearly nothing like there's there's individual people that are getting hundreds of these and like the same thing's happening with graphics cards, right? People are getting pallets of them. Like there is, there is some amount of work that is actively being done not by the scalpers to funnel these things into scalpers hands because it's easier for these

groups of people to do it. Because if they, if they receive a pallet of graphics cards, you don't have to market it anymore. You don't have to deal with a bunch of customers anymore. You can make an agreement. No returns. You can make an agreement with these miners or scalpers

or whoever that there's no returns. Reduce transaction fees. You can do all this kind of stuff by just selling the whole pallet as one thing, right? And you guys got to understand, like particularly in computer retail, you're lucky to make

five to six points on a sale. So, okay, let's break that down, right? Because you've got to pay probably, I think NCIX after some fixed amount paid about a 1% commission on your sales. Okay. So maybe you're paying a salesperson commission. Even if you're not, you're paying them to stand there and sell it instead of selling something else. So there's overhead there. You're going to be paying some overhead in transaction processing fees. So with credit cards, that can be as much as like greater than 1%. So you can be eating it there. You're taking up shelf space.

You're paying actual rent to store these things. Yep. You're going to get some returns it's pretty typical even verified actual gamer got somewhere in the neighborhood of around two percent returns or people just canceling orders and then we're just kind of sitting there going okay we came up with a system because the way verified actual gamer worked we had this um database of customers uh who wanted the cards uh so the people who were the next ones through the gauntlet we would just contact them and say hey who were the next ones through the gauntlet,

we would just contact them and say, hey, you were the next one in the gauntlet. Someone ended up not wanting it. Here you go. But the point is that there's so much overhead that if you could have a single customer take that whole thing, pay by wire instead of credit card, you've got that money immediately.

There's no worrying about chargeback, like friendly fraud, anything like that. Make your agreement that they can't do any returns. So I understand why they do it, but it's really, really, and right, the bigger issue is there's no consequences. No. Outside of shaming that takes place on social media.

Which they don't care about at all. Just to be very clear. Oh yeah, retailers don't. The manufacturers, the one that ends up looking bad when some mining operation posts a picture of the 60 graphics cards that they just picked up or a lot more or a lot more than that um so there's there's really there's been pictures there's no consequences somebody rolls up their garage and it's literally just full of playstation fives and like if if there's if there's basically any genuine effort and there isn't effort from either retailers or sony or whatever to do the other side like if the only amount of

effort coming from the people selling it that aren't scalpers is to stop scalpers that kind of stuff wouldn't happen because no individual person should be able to get their hands on like tens or hundreds of these things and to be clear when we say they shouldn't be able to we don't mean legally they shouldn't be able to there's a lot of people calling for laws against scalping but going back to my earlier point what is the really sticky what is the difference between a retailer and a scalper and there's also like how do you differentiate between like you buy something you use it you enjoy it it's not a return because it's not broken and now you want to sell it which should be completely allowed and how would you how would you enforce that yeah you could say okay

there's also stores that literally just function that way yeah there's a lot of i i used to i used to work in produce um and one of the local sushi shops would walk in and like load up on groceries and then go effectively sell it by turning it into food like how do you that's kind of basic but there's also places that'll go buy stuff from costco and resell it in their own stores like water bottles a lot of gas stations will just buy like drinks from Costco. I mean, Costco has a business membership for that. So what's the difference? Now, Dave Jurr says, in the U.S., there are laws against it with certain items.

Well, yeah, but a PlayStation 5 is not essential. I don't think anybody is going to make that argument. Yeah, like there are anti-scscalping anti-hoarding laws that do exist and right because that came into play with like the the alcohol cleaning stuff and all the same exactly yeah exactly yeah but as long as it's as long as it's a non-essential item like a game console i really i really don't think you're going to win that battle and honestly i don't think it's the right answer the right answer is for everybody to just not pay the higher price yeah but unless you can get all of humanity to get together and cooperate on that which it's not going to happen is not going to happen there's just there really just is nothing that can be done

about it so back to my original point you know what i've kind of i've kind of come around back to my original point i say it might as well be the retailer i i think it's kind of moot because because of the as as long as people are going to pay whatever and they're going to pay whatever yeah then it just doesn't even really matter john wick says other stores like EB Games require you to buy at least $100 of other stuff when you purchase your PS5 from them. I think that's more reasonable because... That's just Conrad, by the way. Oh, Conrad.

Oh, Conrad, change your username. It's confusing. Conrad's one of the floatplane staff. Anyway, the point is that I think that's a lot more reasonable because I think that when you're buying a console, you're pretty likely to need like a game and a second controller or something like that. Like it's, it's unfortunate that Best Buy is okay. And I've come, I've come back around again. I've 180 again. I wouldn't mind a more, uh, who was it? Who was doing that? Uh, uh sorry i lost your message conrad uh eb games apparently i wouldn't mind something like that like look you got to purchase something else

as well but making you buy effectively the extended warranty is pretty crappy so what they're doing isn't wrong it's not illegal it's just crappy and if you don't like it then you should stop shopping at best buy somewhere else yeah um vote with your wallet yeah i mean you can sony is apparently offering the opportunity to purchase a playstation 5 console directly so they've set up a website for that i mean this makes a ton of sense to me again i would rather see the manufacturer take the additional value yeah um oh i don't think you're paying for it no you are you're paying msrp yeah but that means that sony is taking whatever margin there would have been for best buy yeah yeah sorry yeah yeah um all right

well i think that's pretty much all i have to say about that and yeah nick has a comment that it's kind of similar to what's happening with gpus because like the msrp for gpus is just creeping slowly slowly not even that slowly i guess um and not even really creeping it's it's sprinting forward uh people even mentioned on the last verified actual gamer drop they're like wow i mean it's at msrp but it's like pretty expensive and it's like yeah because the msrp went up well something something people might not realize is i've i've seen uh i'm not going to name any names so let's just say a uh a gpu chipset maker so this is either amd or nvidia but i have seen them announce an msrp and then i've

heard from board partners through the grapevine that even though the board partners are still expected to hit that msrp somehow magically and even though the media never get any kind of update that the msrp has changed i've heard about those chipsets getting more expensive to the board partners. And then basically just these chipset manufacturers or not even manufacturers, designers, because they're all manufactured by Samsung or TSMC or Global Foundries or whatever. These designers, be it AMD or NVIDIA,

basically just sit there and let their partners take the flack, just act as a meat shield while they sit and extract more value out of their partners. And because they're all bound by NDAs that are not just NDAs, there's a lot more than the legal ramifications of leaking information from a partner like AMD or NVIDIA. They will cut your allocation. They're not obligated to sell you GPUs. They could sell them to somebody else. They will cut your allocation. they're not obligated to sell you GPUs. They could sell them to somebody else. They will cut your,

they will cut your allocation. They will destroy your business and they can do it overnight. And they'll, they can be vindictive about it. Like, Oh man, you industry is so weird. It's super weird.

You, what they really need is collective bargaining. Like if, if all the GPU board partners got together and we're like, look, bargaining like if if all the gpu board partners got together and were like look we are not going to accept three percent profit margins anymore we are not going to hit your msrp i don't know if it would matter i think it would well okay so it wouldn't matter because they would never all get together and do that okay for one yeah but for two i genuinely think especially nvidia honestly i could see amd wanting to play ball more but especially nvidia i feel like would get

so cheesed about that that their immediate response would just be like we're not working with board partners anymore we're just gonna make all our own gpus get right yeah it would take them a while to build up the capacity to do that it's and it's clear that that's been the direction that they've been moving for a number of years now thinking about making themselves less dependent on board partners um and it's kind of funny because you say you couldn't imagine amd doing that but that actually used to be amd's model like amd used to compete directly with their own board partners back in the remember bba cards i just wouldn't see amd get as vindictive about it well that's because amd doesn't have the option to get as vindictive nobody needs them as badly it's probably true

like come on i mean i i i look i'm not i'm not trying to i'm not trying to throw any shade or anything like that the truth of the matter is that nvidia's partners whether it's through nvidia's actions or through their own, are a fair bit more dependent on Nvidia and it's a lot more lucrative to be engaged with Nvidia on that GPU business than it is to be engaged with AMD. They just sell so many more cards. So even if Nvidia is squeezing you and you're only making, you know, four points on the board, let's say AMD could offer you six points.

Because remember, AMD still has to have that street price competitive with NVIDIA and they have their own costs, right? It costs to get the chips fed. They have to buy memory, right? Yeah. They have their own costs, right?

So even if AMD could get you more margin, if NVIDIA boards are outselling AMD boards four to one, which is about what it is. Is that it? I thought it was even worse than that. No, I think they're at about 80% market share for discrete GPU right now. Don't quote me on that

because it does tend to kind of shift around. Also, how are you measuring that? Are you just doing gamers? Are you doing like Steam survey? That's really all you can go on. Because right now it's honestly however much can be produced yes but nvidia books way more capacity than amd because they sell way more gpus than amd it's that simple yeah um speaking of wanting to sell way more

things you want to talk about the facebook live audio Room with Intel execs? Yeah. So that was really refreshing today. It's been a long time since I remember. Man, hopefully I'm not going to get anybody in trouble. But I had one of my contacts at Intel, Agnes. I actually haven't talked to her in forever. The last time I talked to her, I was kind of beating her up because I was like, look, you guys have a PR problem because you guys are so determined to be professional that you've lost any semblance of humanity whatsoever. You guys are a nameless, faceless organization that nobody cares about because you try so hard to be a nameless, faceless organization that nobody cares about because you try so hard to be a nameless faceless organization that nobody

cares about um and basically i i forget what i had wanted to do oh i remember what this this was around the time that they had that benchmarking scandal where they worked with the the third party or something to produce benchmarks for them that were like clearly, clearly very misleading. And then they issued this total non-apology. And I was like, no, you guys need to get a human face out there. You need to actually apologize. Like you actually mean it. And you gotta, you gotta, you gotta stop being so stuffy. Right. So I was, I was giving her heck about it because i was like it's it's you guys are impossible to work with right now because everyone just looks bad you guys look bad now i look bad and at the end of the day and you know she was neither able to confirm nor deny this but at the end of the day as far as i could tell it was gross incompetence not any actual willful they've been so willfully misleading behavior so long and i know i've

brought this up actually like probably double digit amount of times on wancho yeah i there's that there's that scenario where i talked about how they pulled out of conventions yes because they're like oh we don't see the roi in. They've just been so disconnected from like people for so long. So it's been ridiculous. So that was one of the last conversations I actually had with Agnes. And I mean, she wasn't able to confirm or deny this because I know how it is. But my my belief is that the reason they didn't ultimately issue an apology is because issuing an apology is the same as saying me a culpa. apology is because issuing an apology is the same as saying mea culpa. It's admitting you did something wrong. And admitting you did something wrong to your customers, well, that's human. That's how you engage with your customers. That's how you build a relationship. That's how you build

trust, right? Admitting you're wrong from a legal standpoint, not great. Now you're opening yourself up to lawsuits. So my belief is that what happened there was a case of gross, utter incompetence, not from the engineers. It must have been an exec level person. Again, she could not get any kind of confirmation. And then what I suspect is that the lawyers came in and said, whoa, we just need this to quietly go away without us actually saying we did anything wrong. Because if we do that, all of a sudden, we could be opening ourselves up to all kinds of said whoa we just need this to quietly go away without us actually saying we did anything wrong because if we do that all of a sudden we could be opening ourselves up to all kinds of legal action that's what i believe happened and it doesn't change that that just makes you look like this

this personalityless super slimo like emotionless monster right, a bunch of suits. So, had a really refreshing conversation today. We did these, we've done six now. Actually, I thought that was the last one. We did six of these Facebook Live Audio Rooms as a partnership with Facebook. And we did some really good ones. Luke and I did our favorite games. We did one with Wendell, Linux Then, Now, and the Future.

Luke and I did our favorite games. We did one with Wendell, Linux Then, Now, and the Future. Did a really great one with James and Brian, the electricians, who are talking about, should you let your kids use tech? What's our policies? And the one today was,

is Moore's Law dead? And Intel actually managed to get me two VP-level executives, and Agnes was there. That's why I brought her up, because she was there, presumably, to supervise, but she didn't step in. She didn't say anything. But I had two VP level execs and basically they were like, yeah, we want to talk to you as humans. And then they did. Cool. And it was great because I mean, I, I tweeted about this without actually,

I've never met Pat Gelsinger, Gelsinger, excuse me. I've never met Pat Gelsinger. I've never met Pat. He's the new CEO of Intel. That was about six months ago. All I knew was as soon as I saw the appointment, I knew that he had a background as an engineer, and that made me really excited because Intel's previous CEO was an accounting background. And that sucks.

Intel's previous CEO was an accounting background. And that sucks. That's not how you drive passion and a product-focused culture. You need to have someone who actually understands what you are doing, not just who you sell it to, but what you make. And so I was really excited and I tweeted. I was like, thank you.

What does your competition who's killing it right now all have in common? NVIDIA, engineering background CEO, AMD, engineering background CEO. It's almost like there's a pattern. And I was extremely excited about it. And when I was talking to these guys today, one of the things I asked them was, tell me a story. Tell me a story that illustrates to you how the last six months have been a turning point for Intel and how people are more excited about what they're doing. And one of them came back to me and they were like,

well, okay, here's something. I brought this proposal to Pat and my boss and it was this huge undertaking. Obviously you know obviously it's all it's all nd8 at this point what it is couldn't say exactly what it was but it's this huge undertaking and the the reading between the lines gonna be really expensive and i basically said okay and it's gonna take us here's what we're gonna do. And he was listening rapturously. And I finished up and he basically said, wow, I really like it. That sounds really exciting, but I want it two years earlier. And I'm like, thank you. And he's like, yeah, my team loves that kind of pressure and it's refreshing yeah to have that kind of that kind of pressure where it's not you know what the right business

thing to do might not be to build it two years faster because time is money and when you want more time you got to pay money and you know both of them were they they were human but they were still very professional these guys obviously didn't reach vp level in a company like intel without learning to learning to talk around yeah learning to speak corporate speak a little bit but the good news is that you know i'm familiar enough with that manner of communication that i can see it and i can go okay so what you're saying is there's this willingness to invest in technology for the sake of building cool stuff and doing it now. Which is how you get really intense fans. Well, yeah.

And those really intense fans is how you sell lots of stuff because we've talked about this before. Lots of like friend groups or family units will have like the tech person and everyone in that friend group or family unit will just do what that person says and not just do what that person says you got to understand that at the enthusiast level right even though intel's market share in in the debt in the broader desktop space might still be excellent because they can just produce more than amd in the enthusiast space it's we've seen reports coming out of retailers in europe that have basically said yeah like intel amd like neck and neck or even that amd is out ahead and it's more than just what those enthusiasts say i mean it's what those enthusiasts have experience with that's

it's trust right like if you have amd in your system and you're like yeah yeah, you know, the 10, 8, 50K or whatever is a really good deal right now because, you know, Intel clearly has a fire lit under their butt to move these things and stay competitive. I'm going to go, well, look, I'm not that budget constrained. I don't mind spending an extra $30,

which in the grand scheme of buying a new gaming machine is not that much money. What do you run? That's how that conversation goes that's what they want to know they don't want to know what's a good bang for the buck that i calculate on a spreadsheet they want to know what are you running and like the biggest problem i think when when ryzens were we're starting to kind of hit the scene in the beginning yeah was a lot of people

that have used intel for many years potentially their whole lives yeah um were worried about like am i now going to have problems because cpus are generally not something that you really have a problem with right so you went like i'm taking this piece of my system that has been rock solid yeah for years and i'm replacing it with some different brand is this going to be an issue and it i think that was the biggest problem with ryzen adoption for a long time was they needed to show everyone like no we're cool this is well gen 1 was also kind of a piece of for a while it's also not amazing but they they figured it out um and so yeah like brand loyalty especially with something that doesn't have a lot of problems is tough to overtake like if there's something in your life that you have

a a version of it and it works completely fine yeah and a very reasonable amount of time in the future you need another version you're very likely to just go back buy the new one yeah i like i like i7 i'll have the latest i7 please yeah done yep yeah and that that's true across like a huge range of things it's not just computer components absolutely like for example i i like telling you about our sponsors yeah i you know i i, I get one sponsor and I think, gee, that was a good sponsor. I think I'll do it again. I'll have another, please.

All right, let's talk about LG's UltraGear GP9 gaming speaker. Let me tell you, this thing is not cheap, okay? Not cheap, but it's actually legitimately really cool. So it's got an ES9038 Pro Quad DAC. Plugging into it with headphones. So, okay, the main jam of it is that it acts as kind of like a gaming soundbar, but with surprisingly good positional audio. And then plugging into it with headphones,

I was actually really, really impressed, again, by how accurate the positional audio is out of this thing. There's EQ customization through the Xboom LG app for iOS and Android. It's got RGB lighting, of course. It allows you to quickly and conveniently switch between the speaker and headphones just with a single button. It's got Bluetooth, so if you want to use it as a Bluetooth speaker, you can also do that. And it features echo cancellation and noise cancellation, so if you want to use it as a Bluetooth speaker, you can also do that. And it features echo cancellation and noise cancellation, so if you've got your game

running through it... Oops, I turned it on. If you've got your game running through it... Oh, well, there's the RGB lighting. Apparently it's battery-based. You can still talk to someone through it. You can still use it for your comms, and it actually does an outstanding job. We did a short circuit on this recently. It does an outstanding job of blocking everything out.

So you guys can check that out at the link down below. The show is also brought to you by TuxCare. Thank you, TuxCare. Does your business run open source software like MySQL, MariaDB, or Post... Oh man, see, I hate it when this happens. I don't even, it's not in front of me, but Postgres? PostgresQL?

PostgresSQL. Sure, whatever. Is it difficult to find the time to patch against security issues because your stakeholders don't want the disruption? I mean, that's a thing. Are you afraid your data will leak or be stolen? DatabaseCare from TuxCare has you covered. You no longer need to stop the database just for patching. That's right. No disruptions, no complaints, no exploits. DatabaseCare applies patches on the fly while the database is running. So click the link below to get live patching for your open source databases with Database Care. Hey, thanks, TuxCare. Love you guys. One of these days, you'll have a sponsor read where there's nothing that I don't know how to pronounce in it. But it is not this day. Thank you FreshBooks for sponsoring

the WAN show today. FreshBooks is an invoicing and accounting solution that's built for owners and their clients. FreshBooks says the average user saves 46 hours a month from not dinking around with complicated, annoying accounting software and gets paid over two weeks faster. That's crazy. Those are huge pluses for freelancers and small business owners who just don't have time to waste on invoicing, payment processing, and accounting. Over 3,000 business owners have rated them

an average of four and a half out of five stars on GetUp, and it's super easy to get up and running with their award-winning support. Try FreshBooks for free for 30 days, no credit card required, at freshbooks.com slash when. Just make sure you enter when in the how did you hear about us section. Just for the future, everyone just calls it Postgres.

Postgres. You just don't say the whole thing. All righty then. Just call it Postgres. Good to know. What else do we want to talk about today, Luke? Pixel 6 and Pixel Pass? Yeah.

Hit me. Google is working on a subscription service called Pixel Pass. It bundles a Pixel phone. A subscription service? I'll pass. Hey! Okay, sorry. I don't know.

It might be good. It might be good. It bundles a Pixel phone with a collection of Google services, YouTube premium slash music, because it's one thing. Google One? I literally have no idea what that is. I forget because I don't care but i definitely knew what it was at some point let me double check uh play pass which is like games on

your android phone and google fi uh what's notably missing is stadia and google tv that's a little awkward it would be nice if it had stadia on it um really so you can play so much stadia it would feel more rounded out so you can play considering it has considering it has considering it has play pass it would feel more rounded out i wouldn't really want to use it but that's that's its own thing uh no word on pricing yet and i i believe i don't see the answer to this in here but i i think you get i think the whole idea is that you get a pixel right uh yeah like i don't think it oh there it is i didn't read this line it bundles a pixel phone with all those services got it yeah so google one is basically cloud storage and google phi

is their like um cell phone service right yeah yeah it's a phone plan so you're getting a phone a phone plan storage some mobile games youtube premium youtube music yeah i don't know and you get to keep paying for your phone yep over time i mean i guess if you were already going to subscribe to a bunch of those services anyway it it's not the stupidest thing ever. It's really not that different than a normal phone plan, though. It's a normal phone plan plus... Extra steps. Play Pass and Google One and YouTube Premium. That being said, Google Fi, for the short period of time that I used it,

because it ended up being cheaper when I was on the road than an alternative service, like buying a local SIM. So I had a very, very temporary Google Fi. It fi it was really good okay it was genuinely really good so i don't know whose towers it's on though google doesn't have their own so i was in taiwan so i have no idea there okay well shows you what i know then uh and in the states i'm not sure um so like your service is going to be its own thing i was also going to say what was really nice about it was I could like pause the service or cancel the service whenever. But this is probably not the case on a Pixel Pass. So you kind of lose that flexibility, I'm assuming.

Here's the Pixel 6 page that was leaked. Smarter chip. Boost of camera magic with Tensor Cores. Probably totally borked on release, just like almost every other one. Hey, roasted. Boom, roasted. Google partners with T-Mobile in the US. Okay.

Okay, there you go. I don't think it's a thing in Canada if I'm real quick. All day battery life. I got to say, battery life is one thing that is borderline on the fold. I will very regularly be extremely close to the end of my battery at the end of the day. With that said, I have it set to 85% maximum charge so that I am hopefully going to retain that what little capacity I have for as long as possible. But this is with me usually plugging it into my car on the way to and from work so the fact that we're so close and i'm actually giving it probably about 10 worth of juice throughout the day is pretty uh

pretty tough pretty tough uh hmm qualcomm this is in our notes here qualcomm is apparently um mad bra that another yet another company is making smartphone SoCs rather than just using Snapdragon. I mean, if Qualcomm doesn't like it, maybe they should have been more consistent about delivering big performance improvements year after year. Before we jump there, I was trying to find this. I was surprised it wasn't in the dock. And then I guess I forgot about it. I'm going to throw it at the very top of the dock right below the next wan show thing right above yeah you'll see it screen rant nokia 6310 a new version of the unbreakable brick phone wait sorry i i tuned out for a second here because this is

hilarious um the snapdragon the qualcomm tweet about this is we've decided to make our own smartphone soc instead of using snapdragon and then it's this this uh this twitter trend where you put a bunch of red flags and it's like well yeah but the problem is that you guys have been a big part of the reason that android gets such crappy post-sale support. So apparently the tensor chip that Google is using is going to allow Google to provide five years of updates, which it's about freaking time because Android has looked stupid compared to what Apple provides for iOS devices for years now. I mean, Jonathan Horst, who's our host for Mac Address, did a video recently where he installed the latest iOS on an iPhone SE.

Like, that's insane. That is pretty intense. Where do you find this topic? That's insane. You know that phone, okay? That little phone that we used to use for the FLIR thermal camera the little clip-in lightning one yeah back when you were still working as a writer okay that phone can run the latest version of iOS we still have it

that is pretty sweet that's insane yeah oh this is in here. Okay. All right. Sorry. What were you talking about? New Nokia phone? I was trying to find this topic the whole time. I was trying to figure out what you're talking about. I didn't realize it was the same thing. Okay.

Yeah. Go to the very top of the dock. Yeah. Oh, no. Oh, no. What do we got here? It's amazing. The 6310 brick phone is back and it got a facelift.

So is this running Android or what? I think so, but it comes with snake tired of powerful smartphones that can do everything oh my goodness all right i mean uh people keep saying for those who long for simpler times nokia has something just for you but yeah but the nokia brand was bought out like who even owns the nokia brand nokia is not doing anything. If you think of it as like the Nokia that used to do stuff. Who bought Nokia brand phone?

And it's also just like kind of garbage. HMD Global Oi. Whatever HMD Global Oi is. It has 16 megabytes of RAM. like what who does hmd global own key people brands okay they own nokia it doesn't say it doesn't say what else so they've added some new features such as the ability to zoom on menus for easier readability and wireless fm radio hey fm radio that's the future right there. I was going to challenge you to do like a one-week iSwitched or something,

but honestly, it just seems too terrible. Yeah, I mean, I could. It might be an interesting video, but I don't think I will. No, yeah. Speaking of things I don't think I'll do, I don't think I will dodge the controversy around our Hasanabi build. Okay. Yeah, tell me about it.

So do you know who... Nope. Hasanabi is? Nope. Okay. So I think when we went live, he was actually live on Twitch. So he's probably still live.

That was only like an hour ago. Oh, I don't know his full name, I guess. This is Hasan, the Twitch streamer. Yes. Okay, yeah. Yeah, although that's just... Sorry, Hasanabi is just his handle. So yes. Hassan, we sort of randomly kind of hooked up over Twitter when he was like, yo, I need a PC. And I was like, sure, sure. Why not? And so we decided for fun that we wanted to make the most left PC, the most left leaning PC. And so far on float plane, it has managed to generate a significant

amount of controversy. I think that this is one of the worst like dislike ratios that I have ever seen on a video on floatplane and a lot of the controversy seems to be because people um find Hassan to be a very polarizing figure okay and or they think that we are kind of taking a stand that really our intention was never to take. Now, obviously, if we're building a PC for Hassan, it's going to be Hassan-themed. So you can see that we've got this wonderful hammer and sickle decal for the front. Oh, my. The color scheme is red. Oh, my.

Obviously. And we've got this delightful side panel graphic that the one and only sarah butt created for us we've got jeff bezos on a plate with some broccoli it's good for you um wait he's a twitch streamer though i mean i don't know anything about this dude i know that he like exists i know his name that's it i i don't know there's a there's a weird dichotomy going on here though because he's theoretically a pretty huge amount of his efforts are just making bezos richer uh yes um i think i i want to think that he's aware of the irony of that yeah um i don't know i yeah sure yeah so i guess i just want to kind of get out

ahead of this and say look the point of this video is to have some fun uh the point of this video is to to make a pc for a prominent creator um we we kind of take some shots at both sides. You know, we're just... Can we just... Here. Can we just all be friends? Can we just build a PC for someone and, you know, kind of take some shots at their viewpoints, take some shots at the other viewpoints, you know?

So you shot at both sides, so just everyone hates it is that what's going on is that what's happening you're the enemy of everyone i like it that's good i'm probably gonna enjoy this video i haven't seen it yet that That's fantastic. Oh, man. Yeah. So we should have. I mean, I guess I guess maybe. Wait, no, I don't like it. I've stopped my float plane membership over this. No, stop. Come back. We really need you. We need you, floatplane. Oh, yeah. I don't know, man. I mean, it's one of those things where I understand there's nothing we're going to be able to do to make everyone happy.

So I guess we're just going to make everyone unhappy while we're at it. Maybe, I don't know what's next, the Ben Shapiro PC? Like, what would be an equivalent? You know, we make it out of that one piece of wood from Home Depot. The Joe Rogan PC. This is going to be not. Please try not to get us canceled, Luke. So you can water cool it with ivermectin.

Anyways. Oh, man. All right. I guess that's pretty much it. You know, Geomaster337 says, what about the Trump PC? Throwback to Tech Showdown. You know what's funny is I actually tried many times to get a Trump PC off the ground internally.

I wanted to do just the gaudiest, tackiest, all white and gold PC. And then for part two, I wanted to attempt to hand deliver it to the White House. That was my

plan. I wanted to do it. Nick would not allow it. He wanted to do it. Nick would not allow it. He was like, no. I'm like, look, we don't have to take a stance. And for that matter, when there's a Democratic president, I'd happily build a PC for them as well. I don't care.

For me, it was just like the fact that it would be so easy to build a themed PC around that guy just like oh man like it would just have to be like the front of it you can picture it right like it would have to be the tallest pc with the biggest letters you know like it would just be it would just be hilarious yeah it would have been hilarious it would have been it would have been huge. It would have been huge. And Nick was like, absolutely not. Joel and True says Nick is smart. You should listen to him. He did.

I did. I did. I did listen to Nick. Sometimes Linus takes counsel. Not always. Sometimes. Look, sometimes I understand that my kind of irreverent sense of humor is not shared by other people oh man oh i think yeah i think there's also yeah i don't know this video is gonna be interesting

to watch yeah are you guys gonna is it going to youtube yeah it's going to youtube i'm not gonna back down i'm not gonna back down it's uh it's going to back down. It's going to YouTube. It's the left-leaning PC. It literally leans to the left. We took two of the feet off. And we are not shipping Hasan the feet. Like, there's no, there's no, ha-ha, just kidding.

Go ahead and put the feet back on. Oh, that's so funny. This is literally like a $5,000, $6,000 computer that is missing two of the feet on the case oh my goodness that's so funny um there's gonna be some inconveniences when hasan gets it there's gonna be some stuff that like is not the best i don't know that he has the technical know-how to fix it for For example, every time you boot it up, you get to listen to not just a little bit of,

but the entire Soviet Union National Anthem. If you try to cancel it, your Windows Explorer will not load and you will have to reboot your computer and sit through it. Oh my goodness uh oh man i i don't want to spoil too much but there's a macro you should have made it so that there was a power bar like built into the computer so that it had to share the power that it received um what there is is a pre-installed folding at home instance so you can share your cpu yes okay

that's funny uh i think i'm gonna enjoy this video i think it's gonna be funny yeah i think i can understand in the current political climate how people are you know edgy a little edgy about it just all i'm gonna ask is just try to watch it with a sense of humor instead of trying to watch it with a hating everyone and everything kind of thing. I don't need to be canceled over this. I just was like, hey, the leftist PC, that's kind of a funny theme for a build. Let's do it. I didn't really like learn much about hasan i had one call with him where i kind of talked through his his tech plan um but

but like that was kind of the extent of it i was like this seems like a pretty cool theme for a build let's do it and for better or for worse it's going did he know the theme uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i don't think he knew quite the extent of it like i told him that it might have two left side panels on it so like one of them might have fitment issues i didn't tell him the whole thing was gonna like sit crooked oh my goodness that's uh man that's exciting yeah log 1x says we need the ben shapiro pc i mean yeah i i don't know i don't know what anybody needs i i'm not the doctor i don't have the right prescription for you all right uh what else we got in terms of topics oh this is this is a pretty big topic. LTT Store.

We don't have any new product launches this week or anything crazy like that. So just reminder, we got great mouse pads. By the way, Luke, I am so grateful that you guys finally got reviews working on the site because check this out. We have over 2,000 five-star reviews for the Northern Lights desk pad.

Did you have any idea? No, actually, that's huge. We for the Northern Lights desk pad. Did you have any idea? No, actually, that's huge. We have sold a couple desk pads. Just a few. Just a few. 2,000 reviews. But what we do have is an announcement. We are starting a newsletter.

And Nick and I got together and basically said, how do we make this newsletter not crappy? Now, obviously, in a we make this newsletter not crappy? Now, obviously, in a newsletter, you can have, you know, discounts, or you can have announcements for new products or whatever else, but that's just marketing. And I don't see us as a marketing company, I see us as a content company. And the way that we market is by making great content that people want to watch and people want to, you want to share in the experiences that we're having. And if they see us going like, oh, yeah, gee, that does seem like a really good way to keep your water cold and stay hydrated, they're going to buy the water bottle. They're going to trust us to do a great job of all the things we do.

The way that we market is by just making quality whatever it is that we do right and so i was like yeah look i just i don't i think it's fine for us to have things like product announcements but everyone signs up for those newsletters they do it for whatever incentive there is in the first place whether it's a 10 coupon code or whatever the case i was on the ncx one and then they immediately stopped looking at them oh i, I kept looking at it. Well, the NCIX one was because you regularly bought computer hardware. And the NCIX newsletter was just the price sheet. It just told you when the price sheet was updated.

Yeah. So anyway, the point is, like a lot of brand newsletters, you sign up for them and then you stop reading them. That's true. And so what Nick and I got together and tried to figure out was what can we do to make our newsletter not boring and the kind of thing that people should actually want to subscribe to. And it was like, Eureka, content. It should just be yet another content stream from Linus Media Group. So guess what our newsletter is going to be?

I don't know. there will be product announcements okay there will be offers and stuff like that but tell me more most importantly it's going to be the inside scoop on what we're working on and so the first one is either has gone out or is about to go out and uh apparently we're calling it the leak. Okay, well, that's pretty cool. Because maybe I guess this is based on how often I leak the LTT store stuff. I'm not sure. But the point is, hey, guys, product release notifications and discounts are cool, but they're also boring. The goal of our newsletter... You upload the pre-release version of the leak to Imgur?

I guess so. Nice. Yeah, don't worry about it. The goal of our newsletter is to give you all a look behind the scenes. So this is going to be the first one. You've probably seen

the new WAN hoodie. Hey, I'm wearing it in videos from time to time, but we haven't given you a detailed look yet. Before you ask, it's coming soon, really, really soon.

When you're here, when you're here, you'll be the first to know. And we've got our first kind of detailed images of what the new hoodie is going to look like. So it's what the store

is working on. Yes, it's what Creator Warehouse is going to look like so it's what the store is working on yes it's what creator warehouse is working on then this is really cool um so this is a lot of stuff will either be a long time or could never even see the light of day but we work on all kinds of cool stuff i mean even down to the uh the systems that we're trying to build for embedding magnets in children's toys so that we can make the baby's first PC toy. Have you seen that thing? Apparently, Hasan watched us talking about that. Oh, that's hilarious.

That's funny. Sup, Hasan. Anyway, sorry. Have I seen what, sorry? Have you seen that like baby's first PC thing? I have. You've been talking to me about this concept for like years, but no, I haven't seen it. Jacob has a prototype near where you sit.

You should go ask him to see it. It's pretty cool. The point is that it uses magnets to snap all the parts into place so you can build a pc the problem is that kids toys are really really challenging to make kids safe and magnets are extremely dangerous especially if they are like rare earth like strong magnets if they're ingested they can rip up your insides. And so what we have been doing is we've been doing a lot of R&D on how to embed magnets in blocks really safely. And that's the kind of thing that we never really get an opportunity to

talk about. We just eventually release the product and we're like, hey, here's a product, you can buy it. But there's so much that we learn that we never teach you guys about and i'm looking at it going well this is wasted this is a wasted opportunity if we're going to learn this stuff we might as well talk about it so um the big one that i was really excited about for this week is the uh jacket that we're working on that uses 3d printed down fabric 3d printed down what right so natural down fabrics are known for their thermal insulation and their padding and this fabric is no different it's got a high clo value so that describes the degree of insulation provided by a piece of clothing one clo is about equal to the amount of clothing required by a resting human to maintain thermal comfort at room temperature

it's relatively breathable and it can be actually laminated with a membrane to make a 100% waterproof and super comfortable jacket. This is super cool. So we've got a close-up of the fabric that was used on a reference sample we got from our supplier. You can see it looks like a normal woven fabric, but it's actually 3D printed. And then we've got a really early look at what our jacket based on this might end up looking like. Super cool. So we'll use the newsletter as an opportunity to talk about what we're doing behind the scenes, probably end up teaching you guys a thing or two. Like we've learned so much about mold flow simulation, like plastic molds as we've created the screwdriver. Because it was not as simple as just finding an oem screwdriver and silk screening

our label onto it that was not going to fly for us and it's been oh has that ever been someone someone said please do not call it 3d printed down it would be 3d printed synthetic insulation because how yeah how does it work how's 3d printed down i'm gonna have to get back to you on that one i'm just going based on what the creator warehouse team told me so i can get back to you on that one uh nick's probably watching the show so maybe he'll figure that out and figure it out for the newsletter anyway the point is we've got uh probably one more topic for you guys today. You want to talk about the Vive Flow? Yeah, sure.

Let's jump to it. Give me one sec. Where's the topic? Okay, so they're more, they are a significant step forward towards the glasses type stuff. It's a VR headset aimed at the average person and they're looking to make vr more mainstream it's lightweight 189 grams has a 100 degree fov 3.2k resolution 75 hertz refresh rate speakers and noise and echo canceling mics um there's there's a comment saying it could be decent for virtual meetings i don't think we're

there yet um but maybe it's a step in that direction uh two front-facing cameras to handle inside out motion tracking uh with plans for hand tracking in the future hey whatever um it costs 499 dollars the qualcomm xr1 chipset 64 gigs of storage with no expansion slots um they look trendy 75 hertz though 75 hertz right they look trendy okay and they're very light but they're 75 hertz but they're 75 hertz all right see you later and in canada there's 650 dollars cool yeah time for super chats hey oh man oh you guys send too many super chats you guys are going to have to dial it back and stop sending so many super chats because i really can't read them all um i like need to get home at the end of the show so hey 1218 says i paid msrp for my playstation 5 got an email from sony inviting me to buy one just had to sign in with my account. Got it in four days.

Yeah, not bad. Nostalgia Trip says, when an official source starts to price increase, it's anarchy. The wild card at the end of the day increases the price for normal people. Not that the scalpers would care. They make the same regardless.

When an official source increases price, it's anarchy? Okay. Akiruk Savage says, devil's advocate for best buy this will likely help prevent scalping as well i worked store pickups um ps5s went the same to the same two to three people every shipment they have rules saying you can only buy two so you'll have to buy a subscription for each order oh that's interesting because you would need a new subscription yeah you could do that rule without charging 200 bucks a year you knew it was the same people picking it up every time

that is the worst no i do not accept that at all i'm sorry dude that's not okay that is so ridiculous like the the comment that just came up like oh i just had to sign in with my account it's like yeah just go to sony's web like this is how it should work. Just go to Sony's website. Yeah. Make a PSN account. Like, we were talking about how memberships are okay. It's a membership. Whatever.

You don't even have to pay for it. And then it just works that way. They could even make it so you have to, like, log in with PSN or something to show that, like, at the store. I don't care how it works. But, like, this. Well, at any rate, Spaceman, are there any cosmetic ways we can pimp out our PCs? Might be a fun thing to do in the chip shortage for a lot less.

We kind of tried that with Tech Showdown. You guys didn't really like it because we're not very good at it. It was fun. Ben S. says, Retailer websites should sell hot items using a silent offer system. I actually strongly disagree with that. We have a silent offer system for real estate in Canada and it has caused a lot of big problems. Mike Slovak says, I wonder if this is some kind of situation where the shipping companies

and manufacturing plants are taking the highest profit margin, which is in turn rating the MSRP. Shipping costs are going up, but I can tell you right now that manufacturing plants are probably not the largest contributor because usually they are contractually bound to whatever cost they've agreed on with the brand, be it Sony or Microsoft or whatever the case may be. All right. Armand says, could you give some insight into why retailers don't offer back orders? So yeah, I can. LTT Store doesn't offer back orders

because I don't want to deal with it. It's, well, honestly, it generates so many more complaints than it does happy customers. Yeah, we just do the back and stock notifications. Yeah, as soon as you take someone's money, they're your customer. And now they're always right.

And when they say, I should have it now. They're right, except I don't have it. So I can't give it to you. I can't give it to you. Yeah, there's nothing I can do. And so for me, you know, Nick and I have gone back and forth about this a lot. He is far more in support of back orders than I am, but I've pushed back hard every time because we've seen situations where he and I both almost pulled the trigger on allowing pre-ordering or back ordering. Like say, for example, the shipment was in the port in Vancouver. We're like, okay, let's just, let's just turn it on and say it'll ship out in a week. Boom, delays in the port. It takes two to three weeks to hit us or it's in customs or whatever. And we're like, whoo, dodged a bullet because you do not want, and we're at the scale now

where we could launch a product and we could have literally thousands of people pre-order or back-order it. You do not want thousands of support tickets. How many people like still have their receipts or not anymore i guess but remember the duke nukem forever or whatever people had receipts that were like nine years old they were yellow and you could barely tell what it was for anymore like all this junk it's just like no dude just take the money when you have the product

um gar woody says love the show i watch from the uk would you consider a video about pci e-lanes i believe we've done that before on the tech quickie channel uh pci e-lanes let's have a look here yep the sneaky thing about pci express cpu versus chipset so we kind of explain how uh how the lanes are connected within your computer. Thanks, Anthony Nanya. Jordan says, as borders open up, I know that LTX is going to be on your minds. Are ticket buyers from 2020 going to be invited to access the next LTX early? That's a really great question, and I have no idea how we're going to tackle that. It seems like it's one of those that would be the right thing to do things, but the logistics of it may end up being too complicated.

I don't think we're going to have limited ticket availability though. For certain classes of ticket, like a VIP, we will. But for general admission, I think we're going to be in the convention center next time we do it. So we should able to accept as many people as as want to come up in the byoc land it's probably also going to be limited but what we're going to have to see how it goes sorry we're going to play that by year there's a comment in float plane yeah it says uh i feel like there was a technical inaccuracy with the monoprice uh display port cable it's an active cable that won't function correctly with the tester the tester only works with passive cables.

That Monoprice cable, to my knowledge, is not an active cable. I don't know. Just reading the comment. Yeah, that display port cable? Yeah, no, it's just a thick old copper cable.

Sorry, Capes, I don't think so. It's a really old one. Maybe Monoprice's long display ports are active now. I don't believe that older one was, though. Okay. What was I looking at here uh brad says i love how open ltt is about sponsors and finances to that end does secret labs pay for having their chairs on the wan show and if not why i don't know if they do um i i could certainly ask uh if they do it's probably not that much

wansho is kind of like we do wansho because we love wansho it's not the most profitable thing we do to be clear we're not we're not losing money by any stretch of the imagination especially because of great sponsors like LG Today, as well as FreshBooks and TuxCare. That makes WAN Show make sense. But just how much we would charge to have a chair back there, I suspect it's not very much. Then again, maybe it's a lot.

I just legitimately don't know. Thanks, Matt Hedgecock. And I think that's pretty much the end of it yep yeah all right uh hey thanks uh shifter 999 yeah stewart this is a really important topic. Oh, next update. Disney has not been paying some authors for several properties like Star Wars, formerly owned by Lucasfilm and Fox. Check out the hashtag Disney must pay. Yeah, if anyone was wondering

if Disney is an unscrupulous company, if you were somehow still wondering. For like ever, by the way. Yeah, if you were wondering that. Since inception, this is not do check out hashtag disney must pay it's atrocious it's it's actually horrible um yeah i mean between that and the meager credit and payments that the writers responsible for the storylines in the marvel cinematic universe are getting between that and that um i it's yeah it's it's just not a question of whether disney is unscrupulous or not

linux update linux update uh you guys are just gonna have to wait for the video i gotta get home and relieve my child care okay okay bye guys bye Eckhart's Ladder covers apparently the Disney stuff hi Nick Apple oh hold on i got this up and oh geez oh geez oh geez rick how is this happening i don't understand