The WAN Show - China Got No Game - WAN Show October 20, 2023

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 LTT store.com and randomly bantering Then you are not gonna 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 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 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 no that is actually cool no that's why i actually really

Starting point is 00:00:50 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 i don't know what's going on with that uh and twitter's gonna charge users i don't know i was told not to read the doc i don't know what other other topics are in here i've been i've been told there's like a lot of them yeah yeah they're good i i believe wow this donkey kong game we'll talk about that later okay stop reading it's gonna be great. Okay, okay, okay. Alright, why don't we jump right into our first topic. We're gonna get through it pretty quick,

Starting point is 00:01:39 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. So it's 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

Starting point is 00:02:18 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 u.s's goal is that they're not going to be able to build weaponry or whatever then i think that that's going great uh the u.s is increasing its 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 uh keep U.S. 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?

Starting point is 00:02:57 Something like that? The barn door is open? Sure. The point is. Cats out of the bag? The U.S. is increasing. Why did you put a cat in a bag? Not like. What is wrong with you it's like a it's like a messenger bag 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 oh there's

Starting point is 00:03:16 like there's like six only one of them got out of the bag the u.s 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

Starting point is 00:03:37 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:03:52 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 u.s 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 dollars in quarterly sales not annual sales quarterly sales from china so there's a couple main discussion points here you know one of them

Starting point is 00:04:41 is is this going to do anything and i 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 counter argument to that but really yeah you know what i would love to hear it so maybe uh 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 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

Starting point is 00:05:28 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 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. Also, a lot of the models like the Lama and all these other ones, they're all open anyways. 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.

Starting point is 00:06:10 I mean, 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 so the restrictions are from the u.s government on nvidia a u.s company headquartered in the u.s 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 u.s's stance is sort of like we don't take a position on this by the way except 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. So the U.S. government is sort of within their rights to restrict these exports,

Starting point is 00:07:10 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 geopolitical debates there. It's complicated.

Starting point is 00:07:39 There's one people have been talking about for a long time that neither of us are in the right position to debate too much. But there's been this kind of about for a long time uh that neither of us are you know in the right position to debate too much but there's 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 john stewart's apple tv plus show the problem has reportedly been canceled 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 a home on float

Starting point is 00:08:26 plane, 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? Men, 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.

Starting point is 00:08:51 New York lawmakers debate background checks for 3D printers. I'm going to let you read the topic and I'm just going to 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.

Starting point is 00:09:04 I am so excited. Let's all watch Luke luke oh boy this isn't weird at all wow paint me um 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 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

Starting point is 00:09:46 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 uh but anyways at least a few metal parts uh for reliability and accuracy there are some relatively weak printed guns that can be made entirely of plastic or wood um but anyways let's skip past that uh with the exception of the firing pin however i mean there's ways around that too uh however these guns typically fall apart after um hmm now to be clear okay look look luke's not some kind of like 2fa die hard like like nothing else matters but also i think has a pretty realistic view of there's by of of of of what kind of legislation could meaningfully impact yeah firearm safety and it's 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

Starting point is 00:10:56 yeah we 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. It will serve absolutely no purpose other than to make it inconvenient to get a 3D printer and probably only marginally so. Luke, Mythbusters, Wood Cannon. Look up the recent assassination of the Japanese.

Starting point is 00:11:24 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. It's bizarre to me that they are basically it's 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 and no this is not this is not one of those what what's it called a straw man argument or whatever i i forget the exact thing or single shot shotguns with metal pipes yeah this this is this is my point like 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

Starting point is 00:12:15 to make stuff you can make stuff you don't need a 3d printer you could fire a bullet without a gun yeah you literally don't even need one i know this from experience don't worry about it not accurately mind you yeah uh okay um yeah so i mean someone to chat cnc machines um yeah like what? Why do you bend bleach and ammonia? Because they can be used to make mustard gas. Styrofoam. Or gasoline and styrofoam. Yeah, like I just...

Starting point is 00:12:50 Sorry. Fellow anarchist cookbook leader. Just fell out of the exact same one at the same time. Nice. Yeah, like I don't know. You can't... It's just... It's not...

Starting point is 00:13:03 It's literally just going to be annoying to people that want 3D printers. And realistically, okay, actually, I'm glad that you brought up the anarchist cookbook because... I did? The only... Which is literally not what happened.

Starting point is 00:13:20 Yeah, well, you know, it's got all kinds of instructions for how to do things with fuel. I used gas lighting. Oh, my goodness. So I'm glad you brought up the Anarchist Cookbook 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.

Starting point is 00:13:50 Me too. I bet you we did. We probably downloaded the same file and very likely same day. So 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 going to 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

Starting point is 00:14:20 always going to 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 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 store and buying a 3d printer now and then you can print as many guns as you want. Because it's not like they're even going to 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.

Starting point is 00:15:14 Walk out with an armload of 3D printers. What are you going to 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

Starting point is 00:15:25 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 I mean anything with a tube no yeah really I mean that's what it kind of well the tube is not it's plastic it'd be really bad um yeah but it's technically possible for one maybe uh there's a lot of pressure i think i don't know enough about this i think it just ends up being like this big i don't know um 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. Is this is clearly made by someone who has no idea what they're talking about.

Starting point is 00:16:17 Yeah. I mean, like, look, it's one of those things where, again, we're not going to get. It's just going to do nothing and just be annoying. We are realistically not going to 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 banned to banned. This is what, a year ago, two years ago? I don't remember the exact timeline.

Starting point is 00:16:39 I can'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. But as far as either of us could tell, most of the rationale appeared to be around the aesthetics of the weapons. Luke looks spooky. rationale appeared to be oh my god looks scary aesthetics yeah of the weapons spooky so i i 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 i'm not going to be able to bring it up right now but there's one where it's a folding shotgun yeah that is

Starting point is 00:17:22 going to be shorter than the length of your femur when folded and comes with a strapped on femur mount um so it just like shotguns are f***ing scary and a lot of the policy makers seem to not think so because they play like god yeah like what what i mean they're for ducks right yeah it's like no they're for turning objects into ground meat against an unarmored target holy crap the fact that we're oh man yeah anyway so it's it's mostly the utter illogicality is that a word yeah it's just constantly policymakers that have no idea what they're talking about putting policy in that

Starting point is 00:18:12 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 so i want 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 admits 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

Starting point is 00:19:06 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 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 this is posted in float plane chat was killed by what a piece of this is what i mentioned a two by four and a nail or something like that like it's yeah like that gun was very not a gun the article said one shot with except yeah it can be

Starting point is 00:19:57 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 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 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 and let's not forget like if refire rate's not a concern people literally fabricated their let's not forget, like if refire rate's 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,

Starting point is 00:20:37 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 um and it's it's mostly like can your firearm make it through because they'll all like fall apart and this is many years in yeah i don't know someone in floatplane 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

Starting point is 00:21:31 it's almost like when we're looking at you know laws around right to repair or net neutrality or i mean the internet in general 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 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 because 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

Starting point is 00:22:20 is a really small state yeah which is very relevant here because nothing prevents you from crossing state lines into new york 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. GTO fan in Twitch chat being like, not really. New York City is small, but the state isn't.

Starting point is 00:23:00 Brother, we're from Canada. Anything I can drive across in like a few hours is small yeah yeah oh man so yeah i don't know um i think if anything this is going to amplify uh 3d printed firearms because now people are if they're gonna 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 gonna, I'm just gonna help people out here a little bit. Okay. Someone in full-length chat,

Starting point is 00:23:51 you can 3D print firearms? Neat. It's like, oh. This is New York State. There we go. So from the center, it is five hours out, basically. Okay, this is BC, where we live.

Starting point is 00:24:10 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 to give you some context, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, okay? This is not a measuring contest contest, but ours is bigger. But ours is bigger. Which is why you don't want it to be a measuring contest.

Starting point is 00:24:36 Look, there was bound to be a dick measuring contest I was going to win at some point. Just let me have this one. Just let me have this one. And it ends up being the size of a state versus the size of a province. 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,

Starting point is 00:25:09 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 best land, the greatest land. But it is big. 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 U.S. border.

Starting point is 00:25:37 Everybody, no one lives in like most of Canada. I shouldn't say no one because now I'm gonna 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 90 percent uh and somewhere between depending on whether you take your source uh depending on whether you source from quora or interestingfacts.com somewhere between 85 and 90 percent of Canadians apparently live within 100 miles of the U.S. border. So could literally get there within an hour or two. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:26:09 And yet we don't go there. I'm kidding. We do. We go there for shopping. It's so much cheaper. Yeah, we go there all the time. Yeah. We love our neighbors to the south.

Starting point is 00:26:18 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 trees and ice lots of ice and water oh no forget that part soon um yeah 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 unfit yeah all right um All right. Okay, okay, but this one's cool, though. Brand new and updated in box. According to reliable leaker Mark Gurman,

Starting point is 00:27:12 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 years.

Starting point is 00:27:48 We were lower than California for a long time. We have no idea how many people actually live in California, though. 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.

Starting point is 00:28:08 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 uh even someone who thinks their phone is like off and safe you could you

Starting point is 00:28:40 could still i don't know or something but based that, you have to have physical access to the phone, by which time. Do you? Pretty much. It seems like it. Yeah, 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.

Starting point is 00:29:00 Because you don't want to run an update on a phone, sight unseen, having no idea how much battery power it has so unless you had like an nfc chip or 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 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 getting bricked because it loses power mid

Starting point is 00:29:45 update or something like that danny says there's far too many server handshakes to get an ios update delivered uh 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 it's new um and therefore concern i 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 easily rectified so many cases

Starting point is 00:30:55 of devices arriving out of date could be like you buy a computer right we secret shop companies sometimes we secret shop 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 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

Starting point is 00:31:40 when it should have just been updated in the first place but we're not gonna we're not gonna intentionally send our like kneecap up an rtx 4070 with launch drivers when a 6800 xt or whatever the equivalent would be uh 6800 or something like that when a 6800 gets to run the latest drivers and we're gonna 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. But we will dock points, and it is something that we see a lot, devices shipping with completely out-of-date drivers.

Starting point is 00:32:19 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 what the fuck was the point of me downloading it? 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 fucking update.

Starting point is 00:32:55 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 no there could be a reason no okay what if wrong zip it what if fake news What if... Fake news. Somebody managed to replace the Steam installer executable on steampower.com with a piece of malware?

Starting point is 00:33:33 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.

Starting point is 00:33:54 I don't think it's very good. Well, no, I don't. Obviously, I hate this. I think it's a horrible practice, but I'm trying to come up with something. Your mean old inflow plane chat says 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 people in chat are saying that the steam downloads only about like two megabytes or something and then it downloads and installs yeah but okay so bad example but there are certainly things like

Starting point is 00:34:27 this uh 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 what is the what is the point of any of this i don't i don't understand yeah um let's see if anyone yeah it's a down yeah yeah yeah yeah i know it's like no it's a downloader either way though i think this tech is cool um 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 know, new cool stuff to add or whatever. I'm not complaining about that.

Starting point is 00:35:06 I just thought it'd be really cool if I went directly to your website rather than a third party and I download the latest version of your software if it was actually the latest version of your software. I think Avon Fox

Starting point is 00:35:17 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. 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

Starting point is 00:35:44 to push code but is not authorized to update the website like if there was some kind of disconnect there where the web team uh you know had a single point of 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

Starting point is 00:36:36 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 i think half the time i sit down to play something it needs an update like stop what is the point of me having auto updates enabled yeah but i'm gonna 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 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 right windows updates i think uh they're definitely on

Starting point is 00:37:21 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 game downloads way faster two days from now yeah exactly 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

Starting point is 00:38:07 to shove down my throat right now i 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 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 2 gigabits from some other computer on my network. Yep. No need to download this from Steam

Starting point is 00:38:36 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 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.

Starting point is 00:39:06 No, you can prompt me for a reboot. That's okay. It rebooting your computer is bothering you. You said that he didn't want it to bother him. Like, man, when I did the switch over to Mac for, what did I do? A month or something like that? Like 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

Starting point is 00:39:27 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 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

Starting point is 00:40:11 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, just give me Windows 7 search pack. It was great. I know, right? Just,

Starting point is 00:40:36 just give me that. Don't even update it. Oh, apparently Mac OS does have window snapping. Now, doesn't it suck though? I know there's still a third partyparty application I was like reading something recently where someone recommended like a good third-party window snapping tool so okay don't don't 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 um 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 oh i already have this on my

Starting point is 00:41:25 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 how software gets born all right um shoot what was i looking for ah i pulled up something oh right right right right right right right that's a lot of rights speaking of valve okay i tried reaching out pre i tried reaching out privately um it's time for me to take this public guys we need to talk about the hardware survey oh i thought you're gonna say you're in a relationship. Uh, okay. What's up?

Starting point is 00:42:06 This is what I sent to valve. Um, a couple of 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.

Starting point is 00:42:23 Core counts of one, two, four, eight, and other helped guide the importance of developers' efforts to multithread 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

Starting point is 00:42:59 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 Anandtech showing the Core i9-11900K, 12900K, and 13900K. These processors have only a 10 difference in frequency but a 30 difference in performance um 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,

Starting point is 00:43:47 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 and this is my pitch this is my pitch for why valve should put actual time into it the steam hardware survey

Starting point is 00:44:11 generates a ton of organic press coverage for valve yeah 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 8 gigs of vram 1080p monitor probably but you know 100 to 250 gigs of free space

Starting point is 00:44:57 that'd be a pretty solid 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. 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. 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

Starting point is 00:45:32 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 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 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 a 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

Starting point is 00:46:12 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 uh so actually is a garbage word that i overuse that'd be great to a an embarrassing degree like i'm going to actually explain to you guys how merch messages

Starting point is 00:46:39 work i don't know um 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 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 you know super chats

Starting point is 00:47:00 on YouTube or Twitch bits or whatever else we don't really support the whole throwing money at the screen. I mean, if you must do it, I mean, okay, I got employees to pay.

Starting point is 00:47:09 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,

Starting point is 00:47:17 you should just get something for your money. So all you got to do is go on LTT store.com, find something you like. And in the cart, you will see whenever we're alive, a little box for merch messages, and it will send it over tottstore.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.

Starting point is 00:47:30 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.

Starting point is 00:47:49 Meet the Dropout. Yeah. Which we both are. Well, that's the joke. It's kind of a college university styled sweatsuit. So we've actually got a hoodie and matching sweatpants available in a couple of different colors, but for people who didn't actually graduate from post-secondary or who just,

Starting point is 00:48:22 just plain think LTT is kind of cool. It's actually really comfy. Well, it is it's why are you surprised this is like okay I was working on a video 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 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.

Starting point is 00:48:55 So it's a HASS. Doesn't matter. The point is it's a head. I like this. And it has microphones in the ears. And we used that to allow you guys to experience a surround sound demo that we were doing in a video. So I replaced that wireless soundbar HTA9 thing that had the audio issues, the wireless interference or like the cutting out problems. I replaced it with a wired surround setup.

Starting point is 00:49:21 And we wanted to find out, well, how magic sony's magic that they did with the hta9 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 i have drives me crazy i can't wear clothes that don't have oh even the back one. Of course.

Starting point is 00:50:05 Even the back one. Because if it has a zipper, you can always undo the zipper. Yeah. But if it doesn't have a zipper, what are you going to do? Sew a zipper on? Come on. Sweet. Maybe like 3% of you.

Starting point is 00:50:17 Maybe. Maybe. I'd even say less. I don't know. People are into stuff. They're crafty. A lot of hobbies. A lot of hobbies all right people

Starting point is 00:50:25 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 got well come on what do why do i get no credit around here it's not that we have comfortable clothes and i can tell which surround system is which one so there he goes oh well your oh, well, your ear's not trained. To clarify, the surprise is that, 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. And probably it's stupid.

Starting point is 00:51:01 Yeah, maybe a little bit. But no, it has a different fit. But it's different. It feels good. but no it has a different 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 is it actually the same no i'm not sure if it's the same i don't think 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 the cost is the same

Starting point is 00:51:34 i just i personally prefer 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 what else you got i have controller next to my oh for focus okay i understand what else you got i have controller so far we've done uh n Xbox, and this is Sony. And what else have you got? Other more different Nintendo.

Starting point is 00:52:32 Or unspecified controller. Non-copyright infringing, wooding, 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 i mean you don't have to it's on me now sorry uh anyway there's little ltd logos in where a box-shaped letter that's laid in the alphabet

Starting point is 00:53:09 circle thing might have been. Anyway, the point is, the original genesis of this, which ironically we don't have one in the shape of, uh, 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're so obsessive about quality of everything saying, you know, it 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

Starting point is 00:54:00 the project completely morphed um now it's no longer a teething toy because it has a clear coat i was gonna say yeah yeah and instead it is intended to be here hold on i'm just gonna we're on the site here like ornaments um yes instead it is a cool ornament okay we need to work on our word wrapping uh oh, oh. Controller, R ornament. At least that R is a soft one. Description. Enhance your nostalgic decoration game with our controller ornaments.

Starting point is 00:54:37 Made from beech wood and finished with a hard wax oil finish. 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 just place it on a shelf they're just i don't know they're just kind of cool so when we

Starting point is 00:55:04 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 to your uh younger sibling 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 yeah you could do whatever 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

Starting point is 00:55:38 going on my wall yeah i know that for look it's something that doesn't exist yeah for better 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 do not stick body parts through them please thanks yep good cool we're all on the same page about that someone's gonna try it oh boy what's up everything is fine should i know no no yeah no everything is fine oh uh all right we don't all right well no let's talk about it let's talk about it what is that then we'll do a couple merge messages

Starting point is 00:56:31 oh you can throw them underhand he's not even he's oh okay wait isn't that one already announced no this is not well okay 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 it's brilliant i know but can you show the people so there's a bit load out like a soft silicon bit load out 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 load outs for different reasons you could have these on like hooks or organized in whatever way and then just take

Starting point is 00:57:21 whichever one you need i was thinking a bandolier like you could wear shoulder to hip amazing just magnet them on this obviously has to be a thing so here's my issue i don't know if luke is messing with him 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 um 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 uh 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,

Starting point is 00:58:10 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. Uh, 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

Starting point is 00:58:36 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 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.

Starting point is 00:59:19 I don't think it doesn't. 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!

Starting point is 00:59:36 I don't know if they can see it. He totally did. He totally did. Oh my god. It's smashed. Because that's not an LTT product. We don't sell it. No, no, no, no.

Starting point is 01:00:00 We don't sell it. We don't sell it. Might have been made by us. We don't sell it. How don't sell it. Might have been made by us. We don't sell it. How am I going to explain this one? You got to tell mom. Anywho. I'm not drinking right now.

Starting point is 01:00:15 Sorry. Not the right time. My table. Are we supposed to pull this? 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 and like this is the danger right because i know what you people are gonna say i'm just gonna want it you're gonna say yeah do it um them falling out too easily is a problem but i don't

Starting point is 01:00:46 want to like i don't want to trust me bro guarantee this because i know it's not going to last forever and i i hate manufacturing it's just going to 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 want to 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 uh information for the show but do you have a price estimate

Starting point is 01:01:32 oh they'd be i don't know like in volumes of one they'd probably be like 10 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. Cause like we have fixed handling costs on every order. So if you order one of something, we still pay handling costs on it.

Starting point is 01:02:00 We actually cannot just sell things on our store for one 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 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 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

Starting point is 01:02:33 know how every lanyard just has like a super cheap like single um what it would seem no not a seam whatever just the one line across yeah sewing single sewing line sure 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.

Starting point is 01:03:28 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 can't remember the different kinds of injection molding that we explored for stick locks. 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

Starting point is 01:04:04 this is our design. This is already designed. 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.

Starting point is 01:04:23 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 i don't think so yeah that we should sell the carabiners do you know what linus said what did linus say no i wanted to buy the carabiners i like this is just cooler because

Starting point is 01:05:02 tynan said it it sounds smarter when Tynan says it. That's why I respect Linus because he does that. Look, look, I am changeable. My opinions are changeable. I want one for my jacket. If I hear a good argument for something... The zipper's

Starting point is 01:05:22 been broken for months now. That's not a good argument. That's not my problem dan full-blown diet remember but i can't buy them i mean look you can just have one do you need one i'll give you it's the principle of the matter i'll give you one off my backpack right now take one off his back i already have a prototype no i'm not i don't have the tool for i don't have the tool for 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 all right i'm just gonna go it's on you

Starting point is 01:05:53 we're good 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 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 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 wanshow 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

Starting point is 01:06:30 pretty please buy the dropout 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 like when we're late for WAN show it actually costs yeah because like please buy some more dropout it used to be like five to ten hours a day

Starting point is 01:06:47 and now i now i come in at one so it's an adjusted shift but at this point we need to adjust your shift to like 3 p.m or 4 p.m my morning's already ruined i might just start working like 15 hour fridays it was fun yeah i miss it um anywho let's's go ahead and let's go ahead and do a couple merch messages shall we? Oh yeah that's right that's my job. I am here for a reason. 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 password see both of those are tech though see that's a tough one uh tech making things take longer okay okay um

Starting point is 01:07:37 i generally hate printing anything 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... Oh my God, not my point. They work in 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

Starting point is 01:08:16 this the the viewers can't see it but it's longer than this wall but the whole wall from like this corner all the way to that door is one long continuous 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 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 because printers are crazy. Like, oh my goodness.

Starting point is 01:08:56 It's the least interesting, but actually I attended 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 bulls**t presentation there was a lot of really interesting tidbits about printer technology and how actually flippin complicated it is like hard drives like we take

Starting point is 01:09:25 them for granted and they're boring you learn anything about how they're made it's like oh my god how is this even possible yeah yeah like any amount of time like i remember like okay we we we just kind of dish terms like 7200 rpm and we just talk about these things. It was real casual, right? Like, 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, however big those stupid things are,

Starting point is 01:10:01 the circumference of that, of the outer tracks, at 7,200 rpm i i remember someone from wd explaining this to me it's basically like a like a like the the the arm trying to accurately move over this spinning disc is is like a is like a bug trying to fly in a hurricane like three inches above the ground or something like that like the the amount of precision is mind blowing it's pretty nuts um and and honestly whatever the thing we're supposed to be talking about right now is what was it printers right it's 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

Starting point is 01:10:54 how the the methods that they use to control them particularly in higher end printers it's just it's 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. I could literally just write it out and hand it to someone sometimes for how long it takes me to print a document.

Starting point is 01:11:21 I still thought it was fascinating that neither of us had any problems with the printers at the Linux Challenge. I know. That was so interesting. Couldn't believe that. That was wild. I was sure that that was going to be a problem. So clearly it's Microsoft.

Starting point is 01:11:33 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. Something like that. How did we get all this stuff is this a merch message yeah oh yeah yeah it was uh oh yeah you were gonna something that technology has made slower

Starting point is 01:11:54 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 these phones? 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.

Starting point is 01:12:19 Yes. What do you think is more popular? Controller ornament or the dropout controller ornament by a long shot yeah what do you what do you 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 i buy underpriced i don't mean compared to what they cost organization or is it just

Starting point is 01:12:56 a vaughn organization uh no not organization decoration decoration oh no heavens no yeah yeah why would i do that it's not for you no you. No, no, I know. Well, yeah, but look, the point is I went to a store and I was blown away by how much things cost. 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?

Starting point is 01:13:16 Yeah. No, what? What, I'm going to... It's like $80. Whoa. Oh, do you have any idea how much ornaments cost no that's pretty cheap for me either i don't decorate my house either shopping at walmart for your table balls it's wild it's wild like you ever go to like a home sense or something and that's the cheap one like secretly a table ball

Starting point is 01:13:38 elitist oh we used to know this interior designer and she was like oh we're putting this cheap couch in it's 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 that they're wood they made a beach wood there were some woods that were going to be more than 10 bucks yeah um but we 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 dropout look it's a fidget everything we make is fidget toys um it's great. You should do like, you know, albums go platinum and stuff. You mean the Christmas album?

Starting point is 01:14:28 You should, you should make like if a product. I'm going to try to go platinum. New Christmas album. Yeah. Yeah. No, he's actually serious about this. Sorry. What are you talking about?

Starting point is 01:14:38 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 going to say, we'll probably need him on the team

Starting point is 01:14:50 if we want to make this happen. Oh. What was I going to say? Something. I was going to say something. You know how albums go platinum. Right. Okay.

Starting point is 01:14:59 So. Say I listen. 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 like if this is the wall or something yeah yeah so if this just like goes gangbusters you should get like some gold one or like just maybe it'd 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

Starting point is 01:15:32 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 so i 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

Starting point is 01:15:52 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 this sounds this 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.

Starting point is 01:16:41 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 um 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. So I asked a question and didn't realize that the way you access DALI 3 is through ChatGPT4.

Starting point is 01:17:16 You do it through the ChatGPT4 system. You don't go to a specific thing for DALI 3. I didn't realize you have to turn that on. So I prompted it about this new feature that we're going to build. What were you trying to get out of an image generator? Like a design? Oh, okay.

Starting point is 01:17:33 Because I was just wondering, like, I wonder what it does. 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, literally Netflix because it was something in relation to do with float plane. 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. So I went and asked it about another thing that another one of my teams is working on. But I didn't turn on.

Starting point is 01:18:09 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. 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.

Starting point is 01:18:41 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 for my teams as well,

Starting point is 01:18:59 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. 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 um buddy some guy i forget his name but released a book about how humans have no free will because we are basically just uh you know a pot of chemicals and uh you

Starting point is 01:19:41 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 want to add 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 actions if that makes sense you need to influence your future actions, if that makes sense. 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.

Starting point is 01:20:22 It gotta be nice to future you. We're not going to get into that today yeah yeah i think you're like your past actions are almost more impactful than you're in the moment um decision making at times anyway that's an interesting take thank you for sharing it yeah moving on two more topics dan asks for twitter yeah we'll be charging new users 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

Starting point is 01:21:00 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. 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 an effective, if maybe, even if it has the potential for unintended consequences, idea. 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

Starting point is 01:21:54 about this one happening i immediately thought about extreme systems so fogger 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 um 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 one dollar 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.

Starting point is 01:22:41 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 i almost never see anything linked there or anything like that um i mean maybe yeah yeah they're look at this hey they're uh still kicking extreme systems.org yeah here it. You have to register before you can post. Click the register link, but registration is $1 to post on this forum. Let's see. Virtual and augmented reality,

Starting point is 01:23:16 last posted August 24th, 2020. 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 uh oh okay hmm how many just control f 2023 yeah most most sub forums have been posted in this year uh some of them are not visible if you're not signed in 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

Starting point is 01:24:06 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 there. Super, super knowledgeable people. Really, really, really, really passionate community in its prime. Shout out Martin's Liquid Lab.

Starting point is 01:24:32 But, and I understand they had a problem 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 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 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 what i suspect is that they're just small markets where they can run this test

Starting point is 01:25:16 and see if it's effective in any way for some period of time but um i suspect 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 any upside would be outweighed by the loss of momentum on their platform that keeps Twitter still relevant 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 talked someone or something. Yeah. She literally went to jacks

Starting point is 01:26:06 films this house and posted a video in front of it asking her criticized him or something uh the way around sorry yeah yeah because he called her out for just being a

Starting point is 01:26:15 reaction streamer which has become very controversial over pretty much since the when show where we talked about launching a react channel like Dark Viper was already kind of interesting Dark Viper was already talking about it before

Starting point is 01:26:29 that but I feel like a lot of momentum has picked up in that time which is sort of funny literally to be clear I am not saying that it's because of us I am just saying that time 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 material in the loop part of it, which is going to complicate the shooting the molds.

Starting point is 01:26:59 And see, this is how every product we develop ends up taking a year or two. Because 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 i'm trying not to break the table again so anyway yeah i feel like i talked a lot about this um any thoughts? Uh, Oh my God. Sebastian, not Linus in float plane chat. One of our,

Starting point is 01:27:29 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, very mad. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:27:38 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.

Starting point is 01:27:48 Sebastian. I get it. I get it. I get it. He's, he is a strong proponent of this particular. 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?

Starting point is 01:28:03 Ooh, honest answers. Only Sebastian. It's not made in 30 minutes yeah and doesn't have yeah yeah when it passes qc yeah in the meantime while while he responds uh i don't care about anything that happens on twitter i find it all hilarious i found it hilarious when they change 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 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

Starting point is 01:28:51 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. I'm just talking about how broadly hated he was. Yeah. And how it seems to be. Now the internet seems to like him?

Starting point is 01:29:19 It seems to be turning around. Yeah. 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 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 uh 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

Starting point is 01:29:50 buying accounts and paying active significantly more subscription dollars than one dollar i disagree there is a form of monetization to be had the bots will go for it there is state funded money behind bots on twitter okay they do that's true. 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

Starting point is 01:30:28 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 um i was i was for some reason trying to find information on that Huawei Mate 60 with the new Kirin 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. premium-ish tier smartphone.

Starting point is 01:31:27 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 mean maybe not maybe it's just kind of um kind of a not as good um seven nanometer design i don't know doesn't matter the point is i was reading about it and i wanted to see okay what do people think

Starting point is 01:32:00 uh is kind of you know what's going on 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 um propaganda machine works and how broadly it is trying to influence opinion outside of the obvious targets i guess because i't, 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

Starting point is 01:32:54 satellite call? No. Is us afraid to Huawei development? Yes. Then above article is not believable 28 thumbs up life as josh hot hardware.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 hot hardware.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,

Starting point is 01:33:36 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 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 while we made 60. It should be viewed with suspicion. This seems to be an actual person getting downvoted by bots.

Starting point is 01:34:14 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 not bots. Sorry, yeah. Or from what I can tell, more likely actual people typing these messages

Starting point is 01:34:38 because 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 that i really don't think it's an llm i i think it's actual individual users um 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 trashing on it. Like if you look at the article itself, this is what's really kind of mind blowing to me. If you look at the article itself, it's pretty objective.

Starting point is 01:35:12 Here's what it is. It has some semi-custom ARM cores. Here's the benchmarks relative to some other phones. It's, 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 and 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

Starting point is 01:35:45 manufacturing is 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 god 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, but it's probably not from a content farm. Yeah, pretty much. Okay, some of these are newer. No mention of satellite link in the article.

Starting point is 01:36:37 That distinguishes Huawei from the rest. Anyway, all right. Sorry, this is a totally, totally unrelated thing. What's up with the satellite? So we can do satellite calls? Yeah, it might have some kind of satellite calling. Apparently. I mean, look.

Starting point is 01:36:51 The system works. Yeah. We are now investigating the satellite calling functionality of the Chiron 9000S. I mean, I don't care about it, but it might have it. But now you're learning about it it and you are broadcasting it to... X amount of people. Some number of people. Floatplane doesn't have a viewer count.

Starting point is 01:37:13 Got him. Get owned. Don't need it. Fine. Every time I bring this up, he's like, do you want it? And I'm like,

Starting point is 01:37:21 how long will it take? How much will it cost? A lot, a lot. And I'm like, okay, forget it 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 won't be accurate because getting around ad blockers is really annoying yeah that's fair okay what else you want to talk about oh oh oh balls sponsors right this week's show is sponsored by notion a versatile tool designed to enhance your productivity and efficiency. Notion AI is the latest addition to their suite of features.

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Starting point is 01:39:48 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... Am I helping, Dan?

Starting point is 01:40:08 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 oh now question for you 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 yeah what are the odds of an ai hallucinating versus a Wow. Topics we should not go deeply into. But it's valid. Not entirely wrong. Shake hands.

Starting point is 01:40:56 There you go. Hit us again, Danny. Okie dokie. Dennis again Danny okie dokie please what I would more like to see it in him is defensive properties missile warning systems

Starting point is 01:41:14 things like that yeah yeah yeah defense but actually defense yeah not the kind of defense where it's like

Starting point is 01:41:20 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 um 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.

Starting point is 01:41:50 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 and your existing kit continue to use your probably perfectly good bits and just chuck our driver in as a more as a more premium or even just an extra um as an extra driver um what i suspect is that we should have no problem hitting that target but you know 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?

Starting point is 01:42:55 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 uh of a 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

Starting point is 01:43:44 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 shouldn't be bumper to bumper ripping down the highway at 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,

Starting point is 01:44:18 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 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 um they shouldn't hit me in time i tend to okay and this might just be being like an um motorcyclist but I tend to pass quickly. So I will check, make sure you're not signaling, make sure you're not doing anything.

Starting point is 01:44:51 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. 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

Starting point is 01:45:39 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,

Starting point is 01:45:57 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 or just if there's like a 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.

Starting point is 01:46:36 The operator may be impaired in some way. Keep your distance. Maybe give them a little bit of space. That's a big one. I look for that all the time. There was 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

Starting point is 01:47:01 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. Yeah, I don't know. Oh, more topics. Cool. Yeah, let's do topics. What do you want to talk about, Luke? Well, you told me not to read the doc.

Starting point is 01:47:21 So let me scroll through this real quick. How about the terrible, no good, very bad King Kong game? Yeah, what the... 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 bland beat-em-up, 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. In one widely circulated cutscene, the enemy model is briefly replaced with a static JPEG. Okay, hold on, hold on. You have to watch this.

Starting point is 01:48:03 I need to see this. You have to watch this. No, I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it. 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. Here we go. What is happening? This actually looks like it's from 15 years ago. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:48:32 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

Starting point is 01:48:51 it uh 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 cut scene interrupts a playable character landing on the ground causing an impact sound to frantically to frantically repeat over and over again during the cut scene 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.

Starting point is 01:49:33 I'm sure I've told you this before, but EA's mobile game company. Yeah. It's called Capital Games. Did you guys know that? No. I hate it. That's actually the most amazing name. Like, whoever came 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 it hurts so amazingly on the nose i just beautiful oh wow anyways. Our discussion question is, how is it that veteran IPs

Starting point is 01:50:07 keep having these terrible video game tie-ins, especially, especially when they've done good ones in the past? 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?

Starting point is 01:50:35 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 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.

Starting point is 01:50:57 But I don't really care that much. It could just be stylized that way and maybe the gameplay is good. But no. Apparently not. 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 a game's a banger when it's called

Starting point is 01:51:20 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 yeah okay all the positive ones just trolls then yeah oh oh yeah no i don't think anyone legitimately liked the game got it okay uh next topic amd anti-lag ban update uh 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 uh 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

Starting point is 01:52:19 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 inter uh interacting drivers and software programs necessarily run modern games online works at all i think the second one all of the modern world is is stunning how it tends to function it's kind of wild um not just tech but even just like shipping things crazy it's a it's amazing that you can just ship something and it arrives somewhere at some point. That's actually nuts. Like, I don't know.

Starting point is 01:52:51 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 really do take these kinds of things for granted did i 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 yeah it's just a matter

Starting point is 01:53:19 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 the, that's literally the only difference. There is no free shipping. Shipping is expense. Who, 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?

Starting point is 01:53:43 And I, it could have been a European. I did notice a lot of Europeans were outraged by the cost of shipping. 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 um guess what when it goes on in a jet jet gas is even more expensive i i don't 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 okay i've got some right here it sounds like a fallout

Starting point is 01:54:28 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 gonna make oh man uh whoo oh this sucks honestly you get this news article every once in a while but uh 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

Starting point is 01:55:12 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.

Starting point is 01:55:30 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 9 out of 20. Where are you supposed to go?

Starting point is 01:55:51 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 uh remoted out right so you have no way if it's not occurring in the store then

Starting point is 01:56:19 yeah all bets are off basically yeah and surveillance footage maybe they have surveillance footage of the monitors that the like texts 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 down and like i i i've i've worked in one of these shops before i i've been literally asked as part of the task to access someone's photos before but clearly like to back them up done uh to make sure it worked in some program or whatever like there's i i've also usually i this is when i was like a teenager i already knew it was a problem

Starting point is 01:57:04 i would ask to do that portion when they were there right yeah and I would just do it in front of the 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 um 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 um their screen saver i don't know if this is still 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 anime porn or whatever or just them right happened multiple times yeah you've probably

Starting point is 01:57:45 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 yeah yeah vithagar in floatplane chat says i worked in support for several years and exactly zero times out of however many uh was anyone paying attention to what data i accessed oh no i had i had very good i remember three managers that i had when i worked in geek squad um each one of them was honestly very good it was not this is 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 um would would talk about these

Starting point is 01:58:59 types of things and like just basically like don't be a toll type of policies right um 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 that i don't i 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 in the front area blah blah blah all this other type of stuff don't mess around yeah it 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 it i'm very disappointed that nine out of 20 failed this. That's really brutal.

Starting point is 01:59:47 Alright, 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

Starting point is 02:00:04 out of it. Oh. I forgot to turn the AC back on. You guys cold? No. Got your sweaters? Kind of chilling. I'm good. Mountain Dew LTT screwdriver.

Starting point is 02:00:17 What? Reddit user Ox Empress has made a screwdriver based on the shape of the ltt one out oh i see i am now holding it that was quick okay well i guess i don't need to i guess i don't need to show the the picture anymore uh this is pretty cool uh 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.

Starting point is 02:01:09 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'm just surprised. Is it specific enough? Does it have to go through more of a process than that? Yeah, you got to kind of do an extrudy thing,

Starting point is 02:01:30 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. Yeah, but whatever. But like that is a hundred percent recycled it's a it's a it's a it's a screwdriver hand honestly the the

Starting point is 02:01:50 color shifting just makes it kind of like look it looks better and you can mix and match like if you want to feed some it's like the uniqueness of a wood grain or something like that like it's just cool i don't mind that at all exactly if anything that's a feature that is so cool uh okay well hey enjoy your 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 re-melt it oh no re-soften it most of them are pet normally ptg 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

Starting point is 02:02:40 yeah might be the best one yet oh not because it's you know uh you know 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 flow plane 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?

Starting point is 02:03:18 Oh, my God. Did they just tape his mouth shut? Probably should have. That sounds like assault. Did you end up... Did we ask him to do it himself? Does that work? I don't know.

Starting point is 02:03:31 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

Starting point is 02:03:42 is the customer care supervisor for lttstore.com, Adam. So that one's on Flowplane. Is next one coming to the channel is the customer care supervisor for lttstore.com, Adam. So that one's on Floatplane. Is that one on Floatplane? Yeah. Okay. So yeah, no, the next one, it's going to be weeks away

Starting point is 02:03:52 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.

Starting point is 02:04:09 It's going to be amazing. Look forward forward to it i also suspect that there will be oh no some bloopers on floatplane 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 we've talked about the ecc squad yeah so it's it's it's an it's an ecc squad territory right 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 um after the production break yeah no ecc squad's not secret at all yeah yeah ecc is error correction and checking it is a reference to ram obviously but the acronym still works yeah totally does all right uh 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

Starting point is 02:05:00 recommendation system which is a mix of algorithmic visibility and curated featuring with the former being personalized so featured recommended discovery queue 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 yeah doesn't highly weigh store page traffic and only downweighs negatively reviewed games

Starting point is 02:05:45 if they are below 40% positive. That's interesting. So you have to have a really bad game for it to affect its algorithmic positioning. Wish lists 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

Starting point is 02:06:06 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 the platform shouldn't be paid to win but if people spend money in your game it algorithmically wins yeah well because they want you to spend money in the game but that's not paid by the development options that positively influence steam sure i i get what you're saying but they mean the platform exposure itself is not pay to win and unless you build systems into your game that positively

Starting point is 02:06:45 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 um but what's interesting about this is we talked a few months ago about the general and justification of the internet steam has definitely resisted this they have resisted i will 100 give them that 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 profit's first mindset.

Starting point is 02:07:15 But. But it could be so much worse. This philosophy, I hope it survives. Because Amazon is such a great example of this used to be great to shop on it's atrocious it is i don't browse at all i used to my 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 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

Starting point is 02:07:54 yeah i i used to i so i don't like buying from amazon because i don't like amazon um 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.

Starting point is 02:08:20 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. Yeah. And it's this great article that I forget where it is, but it basically talks about the inchification of everything and lays out in really easy to understand terms how this life cycle, why this life cycle cycle what this life cycle is of

Starting point is 02:08:47 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, 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 that screw you partners and, and shareholders, you, you, you make no money and you know, whatever. And then it was all about partnerships. You grow, grow, grow, 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

Starting point is 02:09:34 yeah all right is it time for wancho after dark i think it's time there's new thread rippers 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 them we should be okay that could be part of the point of compensator well no because i specifically talk about thread ripper and how amd and intel have both abandoned the hedt market we're going to have to shoot a pickup or something. Releasing in November. According to PCMag,

Starting point is 02:10:14 who Dell gave remote access to to test a 96-core Threadripper Pro 99... That's weird. ...995WX. That can't be the right model number. It's got to be something else. Oh, 7995WX. Okay, I think there's model number. It's got to be something else. Oh, 79, 95 WX. Okay.

Starting point is 02:10:25 I think there's a, that's weird. This generation is a serious upgrade over the 5,000 series. It's Zen four has a TDP of 350 Watts and is PCIe gen five. Wow. Oh, this is Threadripper pro that's available with 96 core. AMD is also resurrecting consumer Threadripper Pro that's available with 96 core AMD is also resurrecting consumer

Starting point is 02:10:47 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 $1500 what did first gen Threadripper start at Threadripper 1900x I believe was the entry level one

Starting point is 02:11:14 it was $550 it was only 8 cores mind you but like the 1920 which was hold on 12 i want to say 12 core 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. All back. Was 800 bucks. Like, come on, you guys.

Starting point is 02:11:49 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.

Starting point is 02:12:07 Wow. It's not black black. It's like a like a washed black. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool.

Starting point is 02:12:14 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.

Starting point is 02:12:31 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 how transparent you are. Are there any other companies that you would like that level of access to?

Starting point is 02:12:48 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.

Starting point is 02:13:01 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. It's all a farce.

Starting point is 02:13:19 Oh my goodness. Or what's it? Yeah. What's your, 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

Starting point is 02:13:40 then i would still like yeah very good very good okay I would still like it. Very good, very good, very good. I would still like it. 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, like hey this should take me a day yeah i regret announcing the screwdriver so early yeah and you never know what's going

Starting point is 02:14:13 to happen maybe the person working on it uh quits or gets long-term sick or something like that happens like that's going to very substantially impact the 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 gonna 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

Starting point is 02:14:59 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's like every time. 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 attendee questions. I don't think they do anymore 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 they can control the question

Starting point is 02:16:02 so you can't tell them oh i, I'm going to ask something cool and then you ask them something brutal. So you're slowly getting away from that. You put developers up on stage that say, you think you do, but you don't, or what do you not have phones, that kind of stuff. They'll say some stupid stuff like that and then they're going to start disappearing from stages. You're not going to have access to them. That kind of stuff they'll say some like stupid stuff like that and then you know

Starting point is 02:16:25 they're going to start disappearing from stages you're not going to have access to them that kind of stuff happens and i yeah i don't know it concerns me a little bit all right hit us dan luke what's up 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? He's changed, I've changed, we've all changed. It's part of life. You're not supposed to let Linus...

Starting point is 02:16:53 How tactful. I think he's changed... I'm just straight up not going to talk about all of this. Hmm. Hmm. I'm just straight up not going to talk about all of this. I'll talk about some of it, though. I think he's changed in less ways than the audience thinks and in more ways than the audience thinks at the same time. Like a lot of the things that people are like, he changed.

Starting point is 02:17:32 It's like, actually, no. But then there's things that like 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 frustrate me as well. Where like, you can't talk about the price of things anymore. Oh yeah. Because no matter what you say,

Starting point is 02:17:52 there's an angle on why you're a bad person because of it. Oh yeah. Have we talked about that on the show before? I don't know. I've just been noticing this pattern. 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'll tell the writers like, look, I can't have an opinion on a price.

Starting point is 02:18:30 I can speak objectively relative to the non-slim PlayStation 5. The new one is the same price. 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 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 because 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,

Starting point is 02:19:25 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, 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's not a concern in my life.

Starting point is 02:20:09 And I know that for a lot of people it is. So hearing me even comment on it, it makes people angry, like actually angry. That's the thing that you guys got to understand is these are not just well-articulated, thoughtful comments about how, you know, it could be that over the course of a successful career,

Starting point is 02:20:32 you inherently reach a point where your relatability is reduced 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 and it's it's 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

Starting point is 02:21:02 example of that but i still wouldn't even begin to consider spending $7 on a beverage. 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.

Starting point is 02:21:20 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 how I feel about it. That's not how I was raised. That's not how I lived most of my adult life even. 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 I can't, I can't lose it. I can't, I can't lose that. And so there's like, there's, yeah. And sometimes I think I, I'm contradictory, right?

Starting point is 02:22:13 Because I don't, I'm not acting that. I actually, I feel that. I have a heart, I drink water. Cause 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. Some places in the world, it's it's it's it's plentiful it's it's free basically it's good 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

Starting point is 02:22:39 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. But I think a lot of the ways that the audience thinks Linus has changed are, are inaccurate. 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.

Starting point is 02:23:07 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.

Starting point is 02:23:21 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

Starting point is 02:23:57 that time were probably less obvious to you, but I can see them. 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.

Starting point is 02:24:15 I don't mean in that way. Oh, um, I mean, there's like more consideration. I, I take my time more. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:24:23 Yeah. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, i i take my time more yeah yeah i i i lancis brain has always been fast action fast fire 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 slow down i moved fast and broke a lot of stuff yeah which is fun and good

Starting point is 02:24:46 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 it's taking too long so you just start throwing them all over the place you're gonna have to clean that up later that's gonna waste a lot of time sometimes it's gonna 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.

Starting point is 02:25:35 Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. So there's stuff like that. But I genuinely think a lot of the ways that the audience points out the change yeah 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 ltd's 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

Starting point is 02:26:04 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 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

Starting point is 02:26:42 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 that that's what she said constant refrain from michael scott on the office like the lowest possible brow yeah we're

Starting point is 02:27:25 we are we are leaning into it going haha 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 no 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. Um, we both grew up without a ton of money. Yeah. I am notoriously called cheap.

Starting point is 02:27:52 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,

Starting point is 02:28:01 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 finances or cars as far as i could tell everyone i talked to had had a one-on-one conversation with you about it.

Starting point is 02:28:45 You know what? A big part of that, though, was optics management. Yeah, that's fair enough. I wanted people to understand that this wasn't something that I was just doing overnight. I wanted people to understand that this wasn't a me-first thing. That came right on the heels of us doing an enormous bonus payout uh for the christmas party that was huge yeah 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

Starting point is 02:29:22 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,

Starting point is 02:29:40 this is not a change. He would have given me that talk in 2011. So, I don't know. Someone's pointing out the $7 thing in Philip Plainshot's SBO and said, I don't mind spending $7 on a coffee if the employees are treated better than Tim Hortons treats their employees. And you know what? Sure. I agree.

Starting point is 02:30:00 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.

Starting point is 02:30:17 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. 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.

Starting point is 02:31:07 Okay, no, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Deodorant. Okay, sorry. I don't mean in terms of personal care. When I say consumables, I'm talking about discretionary purchases. So something like a... Someone say batteries, but... Yeah, batteries.

Starting point is 02:31:23 No, 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 yeah 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,

Starting point is 02:31:51 temperature sensor for the eco be 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 a section uh sop cannon said is birth control consume a consumable not when it's a vasectomy

Starting point is 02:32:11 laundry detergent you guys you're actually wrong what about house consumables do they count uh no i mean it's like a requirement like like food and that sort of thing yeah okay like 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,

Starting point is 02:33:08 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. Tynan brings up shuttles for badminton. Yes, okay. Badminton is something i spend on consumables you have a counter argument for this though i also think that for the personal health

Starting point is 02:33:33 personal care exactly yeah uh 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 like a health expense almost yeah 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 spent on other people anyway. Yeah, I'm not trying to say... I know you're not after me about it, Tynan. Tynan often comes to baddie night.

Starting point is 02:34:11 Actually, he and some of the other team members have made incredible progress. It's been a really cool event. 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. Did you spend money on RuneScape? Does RuneScape cost money? I don't know anything about RuneScape. I didn't spend money on RuneScape.

Starting point is 02:34:25 Oh, okay. I don't know. Does it cost money? 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. Sheldoran asks, Car Air Freshener.

Starting point is 02:34:33 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 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

Starting point is 02:35:06 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. Here's a weird reference the Both the air and water filter on your fridge are expired 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?

Starting point is 02:35:51 Yeah. Yeah, for the air circulation in the thing. It helps keep... Helps keep it not stanky. I mean, not in my fridge, but in someone else's maybe. But I think they're also over-engineered. I do the same thing. I let mine expire for a while. I've never changed one. in someone else's baby but i i think they're also overengineered i do the same thing i let

Starting point is 02:36:05 mine expire for a while i've never changed one i need to go home and deal with this um okay 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 tinen i want to be bundled with them i'm with it oh 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 gonna make they do have a premium model okay old scape is the only good scape or 2007 scape whatever the hell you want to call it yeah runescape old school old school 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 yeah got it it's like uh it's the precursor to a lot of them uh let's see hey lld love the show and the journey ltd has been on i appreciate the renewed commitment to quality but i'm wondering what are the downsides of

Starting point is 02:37:12 reposting a video like secret shopper 3 part 2 oh yeah yeah it's uh it's bad uh i can i can promise you guys right now that that video will not perform like it would have if we had simply left it up. 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. 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.

Starting point is 02:37:55 Um, 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 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 are 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.

Starting point is 02:38:35 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. And just talking about how inconsequential subscriptions and notifications are on YouTube now compared to recommendations. Um, I just 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.

Starting point is 02:38:58 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 it yeah at my place yeah crazy experience by the way yeah um that was wild so 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 gonna 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

Starting point is 02:39:40 it's less of a problem today we had a video that we published where we accidentally clicked an option that doesn't send a notification. It was here. I think it was like this one. Yes. Okay. This top one right here. What were they thinking? Weird 90s controllers. It's got one and a half million views. weird 90s 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 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 the title and thumbnail and then they do great. It's kind of all over the place. So I think that ultimately Secret Shopper will do okay. But it's very clear that there is a big downside

Starting point is 02:40:54 to feeding it to 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 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 gonna i'm gonna go through 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 runes, if you just Google like runescape, you land on this website. Uh, and I was like, okay,

Starting point is 02:41:36 a classic venture 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 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 that we have now is like apps visual in a rectangle this is just like this you know some some guy named steve programmed this by hand.

Starting point is 02:42:25 Understand, too. You have the external links. He had a beard for sure. Oh, yeah. You have 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.

Starting point is 02:42:44 It's like the UI is perfect. Yeah. Oh, there's a news feed very easy clear to understand it's not even behind the fold kind of stuff no amazing i really like this website 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.

Starting point is 02:43:28 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, um, is, is don't treat tech like a babysitter,

Starting point is 02:43:52 experience it with them, be part of, 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 an ad agency slash production company could have been really interesting.

Starting point is 02:44:26 There's no way that I had that in me. I don't think we could. It's a cutthroat world and I don't have the background there. Oh, oh, okay. No, here. Well, okay. Again, I'm not sure if I'm...

Starting point is 02:44:38 I'm trying to think of things to be curious about. It's not something that occupies my mind. I more look forward than look back in general. But remember that small Vancouver-based tech media company that wanted to acquire us very early on. 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 we're being real let's be real

Starting point is 02:45:19 like the people who are like lennis has an ego he's totally changed oh that wait what this is what i'm talking about dude you're just wrong if anything it might have 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 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 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

Starting point is 02:46:17 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,

Starting point is 02:46:39 the acquiring party. Um, and I was like, no, man, I will, uh, I'll see 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

Starting point is 02:46:58 it was very motivating i i 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 make sense. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:47:19 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? you 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 i know mine um Oh man. I, I disclosed the sorry state of our accounts payable at NCIX to a partner. I remember that, but yeah, that's a good one.

Starting point is 02:47:59 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. Oh man, shoot.

Starting point is 02:48:09 I was actually gonna say something else too. Man, I don't know. This could be an endless list of things. Yeah, things I've done professionally that I would never do again. Start a video delivery platform with $0 of budget and one 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

Starting point is 02:48:32 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. 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 me honestly maybe maybe that i remember a very long and weird amount of it, but yeah. Yeah. Oh man.

Starting point is 02:49:29 Didn't you have to drive me home that night? I think so. Yeah. Cause 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. It's kind of wild how you can go from a job interview with a stranger to

Starting point is 02:49:42 just like getting driven home. Insta bros. Um, but it like actually, yeah, it actually happened. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:49:50 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,

Starting point is 02:49:58 it was just stupid a lot of the time. Right. But like, Oh yeah. Yeah. We both thrive off that kind of stuff though. And it, yeah. And it's like, uh, I don't think you can be who you are today. it a lot of the time right but like oh yeah yeah we both thrive off that kind of stuff and yeah and it's like i don't think you can be who you are today and be even remotely happy with who you are

Starting point is 02:50:12 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 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?

Starting point is 02:50:37 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're 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.

Starting point is 02:51:01 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 because i 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.

Starting point is 02:51:30 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 like i a solitary creature quite deeply it's true though

Starting point is 02:51:52 it's alone in the dark it's kind of sad but it's true uh but i like deeply respect all of those guys um 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 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, 100%. I mean, I think we like to think that we're, you know, we have our own mind and we have our own, we set our own course or whatever else.

Starting point is 02:53:05 We set our own course or whatever else. But if we're being 100% honest with ourselves, 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 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 achieve success without some of both. I think resisting peer pressure

Starting point is 02:53:22 is also like incredibly important. Yep, 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. 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

Starting point is 02:54:30 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 this kind of nuance like i i can understand why adults worry about kids i could 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,

Starting point is 02:54:57 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 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 could have been really bad yeah like really bad i'm just like okay that's pretty happy that worked out

Starting point is 02:55:21 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. You can't take that for granted. No. Yeah. Yeah. All right. With the as a service model seemingly invading every market, do you think we'll ever be a tipping point

Starting point is 02:55:45 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, oh, one of the topics that we didn't get to this week, this is a great segue into it. Qualcomm is working on their first RISC-V processor design.

Starting point is 02:56:13 It's not going to be a full-on smartphone chip out of the gate, but in collaboration with Google, they are building RISC-V Snapdragon for wearable devices. That's incredible. And you know what? ARM, from my understanding of it, has a relatively amenable licensing situation. But nobody likes paying forever for something when they can spend money on it once and own it forever.

Starting point is 02:56:48 And I think that's where, that's where, that's where risk five is going to come in. And in the medium to longterm, close the gap with X86 and arm. All right. Well, sorry with arm and even to a degree,

Starting point is 02:57:03 I think X86 in the very, very long term. I have never used the preset buttons on my microwave. For example, popcorn or chicken, etc. Yeah, me neither. If an AI could actually predict the right settings, do you think you would use it for your appliances? 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 90s um my understanding is what you're talking about does exist and did exist and only doesn't exist

Starting point is 02:57:36 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.

Starting point is 02:58:11 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,

Starting point is 02:58:18 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. Hmm. MicroSD,

Starting point is 02:58:51 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 and flash would be an ssd they tend to use better controllers they tend to use better flash um usb sticks and micro sd just

Starting point is 02:59:13 use whatever the cheapest possible garbage is because unless you are spending extra money on a really you know good one and then, a lot of the time, it won't matter. It'll just be garbage anyway. They are going to be the cheapest, cheapest, didn't make the cut for proper flash products, possible chips. What about things like bit rot

Starting point is 02:59:40 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. Even magnetic tape. 321, right? How about mortgage? Yeah, 321.

Starting point is 02:59:54 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 can say the best for me was EVGA.

Starting point is 03:00:15 Like hands down. The worst. Nobody's came close, but I've also never had to use LDT store or like floatplane customer support, so I don't know. I don't know, man. I've had a lot of pretty bad experiences. I haven't had many, but I've had to use ldt store or like floatplane 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 yeah they

Starting point is 03:00:40 are they're they're just they're awful 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, yeah, they're, they're awful. Hi, Linus and Luke. 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 those routers access. Was it routers or access points? Access points, maybe?

Starting point is 03:01:27 Yeah, those access points that you have. Meraki? Are they Meraki? I think so. The one that you have? No, not anymore. Oh, oh. Had, for sure.

Starting point is 03:01:39 Was it Meraki? Couldn't be. I thought they had a different entry level level it was like a like a cisco sub-brand or something like that yeah right yeah that's their sub-brand but that's their like really high-end stuff maybe i'm mistaken anyway yeah anything anything that has a dashboard this is actually what turned me off of the uh maraki 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 but it was a maraki access point i'm pretty sure that required a subscription yeah

Starting point is 03:02:16 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 gonna 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 um oh man 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 uh sonos got real close for a little bit there with the s1 s2 app split so far they have continued to

Starting point is 03:03:06 support their legacy s1 products um 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 i feel like through wanchos 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 i die on but every time it comes up i go absolutely apoplectic but what is it i can't remember what it is it's probably some absolutely innocuous little tiny thing um that

Starting point is 03:03:52 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 um you know have some rational explanation i'm sure i have them too or maybe it would be a thing people know, 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 would occur to no one else, but...

Starting point is 03:04:33 here that you know would occur to no one else but uh 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 but like number go up 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 where it works out too but then you're never having the high-end experience you know um man there's a lot of weird stuff in here um all right i uh i'm not gonna find anything useful for this. I feel like as, as a media personality, I think that's the problem. I spend four hours a week.

Starting point is 03:05:30 Basically. Is that how long WAN show is now? I think it's like three or four hours talking about everything that could possibly come to my mind to the point where I don't even, after WAN show, I don't even really like talking. Yeah. And like,

Starting point is 03:05:42 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 um so i just i don't have that much to to share i just i feel like which was surprisingly draining i want 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 uh 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 um i was somebody pointed out that they're a

Starting point is 03:06:18 subsidiary of something digital storm yeah digital storm is 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 gears 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 so you're just doing repeats um but then we added star forge because they are highly relevant and then cyber power 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

Starting point is 03:06:55 buy whatever you recommend to us maybe we'll expand it in the future but this was already a lot of systems to do uh somebody's asking uh i'll just curate it so it can be shown um there we go i think i did the thing yeah how do these hoodies hold up in the gym how do the drop out hoodies hold up in the gym um i don't think we would technically know yeah they just launched yeah um but it 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 i think they want the sweat i don't like it i think we're too sweaty already yeah no more sweat i mean i dude i 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

Starting point is 03:07:57 he 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 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

Starting point is 03:08:23 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

Starting point is 03:09:06 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 the what was it r r how do you say that there's a 200 but that gpu that I got in the first scrapyard wars was insane. Oh, the, uh, 2,900, whatever.

Starting point is 03:10:05 Hawaii. 2,900. Yeah. Oh wait. 79, 70. What did you have in the first one? I thought it was a two 90 X or something or two 90. R nine to 90.

Starting point is 03:10:16 Yeah. That's the one. Hawaii. Yeah. It was codenamed Hawaii. I don't remember what the stupid guy is called. That was a pretty sick deal. That was a very good deal.

Starting point is 03:10:23 Honestly, a lot of them for probably both of us. You're find it in skype red 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 uh one of my best ones was definitely the dual 7800 gtxs that i picked up story yeah yeah buddy was upgrading upgrading cross grading uh from dual 7800 gtxs to dual uh 1900 xtxs in crossfire that i think would have been the generational equivalent 1800 it doesn't matter i think it was 1900 atxs uh or xtxs and it was he was one of those people that just bought 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 of weeks, but I was terrified that some news would come out

Starting point is 03:11:30 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. I was big into that when I was in high school. I don't know if this counts,

Starting point is 03:11:45 but like actually my best one would probably be when I was back in the Intel Insider program due to being a part of Geek Swap. 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

Starting point is 03:12:00 so I could pick up more SSDs because I wanted an SSD RA raid array like very early on so i had um i had four intel x25 dash m 80 gigs and so that was yeah like 300 gigs that's that's that's enough um and i paid like a fraction of what they were worth at retail that was pretty sick setup yeah uh 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 um i don't know i like the color correction one and then i kind of just fell out of love with the game yeah sounds about right uh for me it's not gonna bother collection

Starting point is 03:12:51 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 I haven't actually moved on from it But I haven't been playing it as much Too many games Alex Clark is boned Do you know he's a huge Cities Skylines guy? Oh no

Starting point is 03:13:18 Do you know he's also a huge Rally racing game guy? 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.

Starting point is 03:13:36 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.

Starting point is 03:13:48 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. so

The WAN Show - China Got No Game - WAN Show October 20, 2023

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