The WAN Show - Overpriced Computers! - WAN Show July 22, 2022

Starting point is 00:00:00 There's no lower third. Colton? What is up, ladies and gentlemen, and everything else? We have got a fantastic WEN show lined up for you today. Lots of great topics. The one and only Greg Salazar has done a video on overkill computers.

Starting point is 00:00:19 More like overpriced computers. Yeah. Boom, got him. Yeah, roasted. In other news, discord is now on the xbox if you're into mild hassles so that's great good for you xbox welcome to the year man when did we get like voice chat on pc pc when did vent really Really long time ago Anyway good for you What else we got?

Starting point is 00:00:46 Yeah Whale land tickets are live All the actual whale tickets were gone like immediately But you can still get bring your own computer tickets So check it out Buy them Be there It's gonna be fun

Starting point is 00:00:57 Should be good And also people have put firearms on top of robot dogs And a lot of people are scared yeah we'll we'll talk they could have done it a lot better to be honest they did a really bad job but you can analyze it later you analyze it later for now we're gonna roll that intro our regular producer is not here guys oh that is the wrong lower third yeah that's actually a problem this could be a problem i did it we need our merch messages to work. So recap, for those of you who are new to the show,

Starting point is 00:01:47 we do not look at Super Chats or any other kinds of Twitch bits or whatever. You go, you shop on lttstore.com, and if we're live, you can leave a merch message in the checkout, and it'll either pop up at the bottom, or our producer, who is Coltonton today will respond to your message via text or we will address it on the show. That is the way to send messages. And we're going to jump right into our first topic,

Starting point is 00:02:11 which I have not prepped on at all because let's face it, this is the WAN show. What else were you expecting? Yeah, really. Tik Toker Circuit Board makes videos where he rates pre-builts and he created several videos where he called out overkill computers for their brutally overpriced systems. Now, there are examples in the doc here,

Starting point is 00:02:30 but I would actually rather experience it for myself. So I'm going to head over to overkillcomputers.com. Overkill. Now offering financing. Well, you probably would need to do that. Well, okay. I mean, lots of places have financing. Well, you probably would need to do that. Well, okay. I mean, lots of places have financing. I actually still remember when a friend of mine in high school,

Starting point is 00:02:51 Ty, if you're watching, don't get upset about this. A friend of mine in high school financed a computer. Remember those dollar a day computers from Dell? No, actually. One dollar. You guys don't remember? You guys don't remember any of that? Maybe it wasn't Dell.

Starting point is 00:03:09 Whatever. It was some financing deal. It was like a dollar a day. And he's like, yeah, it's like no money down. I'm like, dude, it was a lot of money. I forget how much money it was. But to me, a high schooler, it was an unfathomable amount of money to spend on a computer. We're talking like hundreds of actual dollars.

Starting point is 00:03:25 Okay. And that's my whole story financing computers is stupid because by the time he actually paid that piece of shit off it was like completely worthless and if he had just saved up and bought what he could afford then he would have actually ended up ahead of the game. That was my whole thing. Anyway, let's go back to overkillcomputers.com. The Rampage Stealth. Now available. The Project Rampage Official. The Orion Official.

Starting point is 00:03:53 The Frostbite. Well, I think I'm going to check out the whiteout. This looks like a pretty normal computer, but whiter. Okay. Hello. Learn more. Here we go. Now, okay. More financing. Who do you think you are dell these have cool names they do have cool names wait what happened to the one i clicked on

Starting point is 00:04:12 where is it blizzard project wait what what is all this stuff wait frostbite is that the what did i click on this is six thousand five hundred and forty dollars now hold on just a gosh darn minute here frost Frostbite build. What is this? Are these individual systems? Or are these like actual series of things? A thing you can buy when you order this computer. Wait, why does it have an 11th gen processor?

Starting point is 00:04:41 Hold on a second. processor. Hold on a second. This is an 11900K for $6,500. Okay, that is an expensive motherboard. There's only one option for GPU. What even is this? Their configurator. Oh, okay. Some stuff has options. NV1? I think you mean NVMe? Kingston? What is a Kingston NV1? Look, to be clear, your PC builder site is better than my PC builder site. Okay, NV1 is apparently an actual thing. Substantial performance upgrade in high capacity.

Starting point is 00:05:22 Efficient performance for thinner notebooks and systems. That doesn't seem like the default SSD of this particular system. Do you just only have like three SSDs in stock? Is that the problem? I kind of feel like that's what's going on. Looking through this configurator myself. I don't understand what's happening. We will be filming some of these builds.

Starting point is 00:05:39 No, there's only one of these builds. What are you even talking about? Okay. I mean, the video is pretty cool. Is that the fit? That doesn't look like that, does it? No, it doesn't. Or does it? I can't tell what I'm looking at. Is this the same computer? I think it might be. I'm actually not sure. The colors keep changing. Okay, maybe there are different ones then. Okay. Okay. Business inquiries?

Starting point is 00:06:10 Powered by Typeform. Work with Overkill. If this is for marketing and business requests, okay. They have merch. Ready to game. Shop now. Wait. Oh, okay.

Starting point is 00:06:21 We're back on the computers page. So, all right i think we've had a bit of an experience on the over there and i have what happened to project orion where'd it go it's not even here what is project unknown ten thousand dollars what does that even mean this build isn't for the faint of heart we take your design ideas and create something truly custom it can be water cooled or air cooled you decide wait what that like that you just give them 10 grand and you hope they give you something good we will custom badge your pc one out of one i should just blush oh man i'm sorry we've talked about it on wanshow now because i should have just bought one just bought one yeah that would have been kind of amazing actually huh okay well there's a did you see the custom request form i didn't wanna is it on your screen it's on my screen yeah i'll screen show you there's a custom

Starting point is 00:07:18 request form unleash the beast customize yours get your gaming pc now this form is reserved for only the most serious customers. There is a minimum budget of five grand for these builds. Due to overwhelming requests, we charge $45 to verify the form submission. What? This is not refundable, but will apply towards your build if you go forward with one. This is only to hold your place in line. Does not guarantee instant acceptance into the custom build program.

Starting point is 00:07:46 Okay. Well, I mean, it's not entirely unreasonable to take a deposit on a bespoke computer. Yeah. But they have no examples of what they're going to build. Like, where's the gallery? Of their, like, previous builds. Yeah, their previous custom ones. Like, what makes it so custom?

Starting point is 00:08:03 I don't know. it so custom i don't know yeah because like how much would creating like a custom hardline water cooling system cost i mean we could we could we could price these out in other places that do them i mean main gear does sure yeah let's do that i'm gonna head over to main gear because like looking at the site this doesn't look like they're trying to position themselves as like a uh a price competitor for for parts it looks like like with their with the names of things and the and the the photos that they're choosing and whatnot it sounds like they're trying to be like the we are a fancy builder you know yeah which is fair enough um there's i do also like that their their links at the bottom goes the team, financing, and then gaming PCs. Just like how when you first land on their website,

Starting point is 00:08:48 the first thing you see is financing, not anything to do with computers. Main gear is not looking too great here either. That's what I'm talking about. Like if you're going to put the time into... How am I supposed to customize this? If you're... I don't know about that part.

Starting point is 00:09:00 What just happened? No, that's not what I... This is not a quick ship i wanted to customize it if you want your computer built in north america um sure and you want it built with like custom hardline water cooling and all this other kind of stuff like it's costs are going to ramp up really quick okay well here let's select we'll go to for the rush right that looks pretty like you know whatever uh okay so here okay apex custom how much was the one we just looked at like 5500 the the frost one or whatever yeah that one yeah

Starting point is 00:09:32 uh let me verify frostbite official okay so here let's put some hellcat red you click on it it doesn't where did it go okay integrated with soft tubing okay hard line tubing from uh from main gear apparently will run you fifteen hundred dollars that's what i'm saying so like the notes in the dock are like oh so the bill fees like a thousand dollars and it's like okay they have a bunch of different computers on here but if you're getting builds that have hard line water cooling and all this other kind of stuff like this is major it's going to cost a lot project frostbite is 65 40 65 40 yeah okay well let's see what kind of spec i can get for that kind of a budget uh does project frostbite have a custom like automotive finish or whatever wait do i have to select a fancy paint job or can i just not i mean if you're

Starting point is 00:10:22 spending that much like uh chameleon pearl multiple colors now hold on a second i mean that sounds amazing what if i don't want that what if i wait hold on can i not unselect the paint job not to toot main gear either gosh darn it but like if if i was spending that type of cash i would want to go with a company that i knew had a good pedigree and reputation and main Gear like does. Yeah, I don't know. Right now their site is kind of a burr under my saddle. Oh, clear selection.

Starting point is 00:10:50 There it is. Okay, so I don't need the automotive paint, but I am going to go with the hard line cooling. We also have the ability to add custom paint jobs with graphics and custom themes. This will add cost. Okay, so it's not included. Yeah. Okay, processor.

Starting point is 00:11:04 Okay, Main Gear's got a bit of a problem here too themes this will add cost okay so it's not included yeah okay processor okay main gear's got a bit of a problem here too because this was also a system that started at like many thousands of dollars and out of the box had a 5600x as the cpu uh that is what we should we should we spec equalize suboptimal uh well no we can't because for whatever reason, Overkill has an 11th gen. Yeah. So I don't know what's up with, yeah, this has 16 gigs of, now hold just a gosh darn minute here, Main Gear.

Starting point is 00:11:36 What is the default configuration? $4,400 for the Apex Rush. That does not have fancy. Apparently Overkill doesn't have a warranty. Oh, really? That's also suboptimal so hold on a second it does come with water cooling but it's soft tubing okay includes rgb fans cools both cpu and gpu comes with a 3080 okay if i If I put a decent CPU in here, something comparable, let's put a 5900X. To be clear, I'm not, I'm not like trashing on people

Starting point is 00:12:11 who have a CPU that isn't a 5900X. Okay. I'm just saying at this price tier, you should have a 5900X. That's all I'm saying. I'm going to put 64 gigs of Fury Renegade RGB memory in memory in here we'll throw a i mean you need a 1200 watt power supply you're gonna spend this kind of money right like come on uh nvme ssd wow it comes with a 512 gig ssd by default i'm gonna go two terabytes 670 actually so you want their default to be

Starting point is 00:12:41 cranked up more now just a gosh darn minute are they charging 550 for a samsung 980 pro does that seem right does that seem right i mean you know i don't i don't shop for ssds often but does that seem right that doesn't seem right you know you know what i'm saying luke doesn't seem right. You know what I'm saying, Luke? Doesn't seem right. No. $249.99 is what that 2TB 980 Pro is going to cost you. And Main Gear wants more than that to upgrade to... Wait, no. Hold on. What? Now I'm really confused.

Starting point is 00:13:23 What happened here? No. No, no, no, no, hold on. What? Now I'm really confused. What happened here? No, no, no, no, no, no. That is over the default one here, right? Yes. I think Overkill Computers does have a warranty, by the way. Because if I select this one here, this shouldn't say plus 297, right? That's over top of this one, if you look at how the number is changing. that's over top of this one.

Starting point is 00:13:44 If you look at how the number is changing, either way, either way, $297 as an upcharge over a 512 gig 670P. Hold on just a gosh darn minute. 670P, 512. How much is one of those going to run you? 50 bucks. So that's a solid $100 of margin for upgrading your SSD.

Starting point is 00:14:11 Man, Colton, is it finally happening? Are we going to start an SI? We could. I had some ideas. I sent them to Linus. But I think there's some actually pretty cool things we could do. We're not doing it. Not now. No, we're not doing it.

Starting point is 00:14:26 It's a cool idea. I don't know if it makes actual sense. It doesn't right now. It doesn't make this. Luke. Unfortunately. Luke. We'll see, dude.

Starting point is 00:14:33 Luke. What are you going to do in 10 years, huh? What am I going to do in 10 years? Not build computers all day. Well, it's been. Well, not you. Well. The company.

Starting point is 00:14:43 It's been 10 years so far. Do you think 10 years so far. If it, do you think 10 years ago you would have said we'd have a lab? No. Yeah. So never say never. Dash Justin Bieber. Okay.

Starting point is 00:14:58 So what are, what are your specs? Do you have 64 gigs or 32 gigs of RAM? Okay. Let me jump back to it. I was looking through the warranty. I think some people are, or it's written oddly but i think they have a parts and labor warranty for one year there's some weird stuff where you have to cover half the shipping cost and some other things and stuff and if you live outside of the u.s you don't have a warranty and blah blah okay

Starting point is 00:15:18 but i think there's stuff but okay jumping back to the computer yeah RAM, 32 gigs. 32 gigs. Four 8 gig DIMMs. I've got 2x16 because I'm not an idiot. Because I'm main gear. That's cool. I'm at 4869. I have a 5900X.

Starting point is 00:15:38 I'm just going to come back to the screen here. I have a 5900X. I have a 32 gigs RAM. I have a 3080, which I believe is the same. We both have 3080s. But what I don't have... Wait, sorry, you have a 5900X? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:15:52 Okay, I also have a 5900X. Okay, what I don't have is hardline cooling. As soon as I select hardline cooling, I'm at 6369. Yeah, so they're extremely similarly priced. Okay. Yeah, so this is a 5900X with an ROG X570. I'm coming over to your screen. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:16:09 Yeah, 5900X, ROG X570, 3080, 1TB, and V1. The really stupid choice of four separate sticks of 8GB DIMMs, and it's $6,500. Okay. What case is yours in? Is it in like a main gear custom? I don't know what it's in. Some case. Lee and Leo 11 Dynamic XL.

Starting point is 00:16:36 This is a Lee and Leo 11 Dynamic. Not XL. Well, mine is XL. Wow. Yeah. That's a win. I bet you feel... Inadequate. Insufficient. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, mine is XL. Wow. Yeah. That's a win. I bet you feel insufficient. Yeah. So I don't know. Hardline water cooling is super expensive. That's my main takeaway.

Starting point is 00:16:54 And I can actually give you guys some background for why that would be. I think that a lot of you are probably looking at this going, linus you should get into the system integrator business because you could bring hardline water cooling to the people at an affordable no no no no no no no no no it's not an affordable thing to do there is so much hassle involved in water cooling computers for customers and what shipping them and i can tell you that anyone who's been doing it as long as main gear has learned a lesson from some time that they tried to get all price competitive about hardline water cooling and then realized that the cost of it is not just the cost of the parts and the labor the cost of it is the cost of the parts and the labor and supporting the bloody thing when

Starting point is 00:17:46 some butthead who can't build their own hardline water cooling system wants to perform maintenance on a hardline water cooling system and expects you to sit on the phone with them for four hours and walk you through it that's the problem supporting watered systems is horrible. Joffred says, how is paying $1,500 for hardline justified? That could pay for 40 hours of some rando to do it. If I can interject here, Cave Johnson on float plane. Yeah, what you're referring to as Linux is actually,

Starting point is 00:18:19 sorry, go ahead. Cave Johnson on float plane. It says, specking out the water-cooling parts from EK's configurator brings the cost of just the hardline cooling without assembly to $1,200. Yeah, so hardline components are super expensive. So if you want to know who's actually making the margin in water cooling, that would be the EK's of the world. When you're spending, I remember back when fancy fittings first started to really take off, I was the product manager for Bitspower, who was really the OG fancy special, all different finishes.

Starting point is 00:18:54 I looked at their product catalog. I'm like, who needs this many different colors of fitting? Why do we need a shiny black and a matte black and a diamond black? They're black, right? Nope. So we carried only a small subset of what they had because it just wasn't scalable. It wasn't feasible. But man, when you're making like $8 a fitting or whatever, or charging like $8 a fitting,

Starting point is 00:19:18 it adds up real, real fast, my friends. They're more expensive than that now. up real real fast they're more expensive than that now so let's go back with that in mind with that overkill computers aside from being clearly a much smaller outfit um really with it in mind that overkill computers is actually not that far off what someone like a main gear is charging for a system like that let's go back to our notes here this was prepared by alex so tiktoker circuit board rates pre-built and made several videos calling out overkill computers for their brutally overpriced systems for instance they are selling a system for 2724 2724 dollars let me try to find this with an r7 5800x rtx 3070 and an asrock b550 motherboard so greg salazar went through pc part picker for the same

Starting point is 00:20:05 parts and got a price of a whopping thousand dollars less so that's that's a thousand dollars of a build fee now it could just be that luke and i happened to find the one system that was competitively priced definitely possible and happened to compare it to one of if not the most expensive boutique builders also a thing that happened but i mean it's a hard line system there there isn't a uh at least the last time i checked there wasn't a ton of them that did hard lines no there's not a ton because it's a nightmare whereas if we're just looking at a system that is not hard line water cooled that's a problem do Do you wanna try and find that 2724? You found it.

Starting point is 00:20:47 All right, let's have a look. Is it as bad as we think? Oh boy, that's an AIO. That is an AIO. Everything here is kind of a pre-pack. I don't know if that power supply has some extensions on it to get those white cables with combs, but that's not like-

Starting point is 00:21:02 Those are not that expensive. No, and the case is handling your cable kale management which is what actually looks really good this is not a primo if if i'm assuming greg salazar is fantastic dude i'm assuming what he did is accurate so if this is a thousand bucks over which like it looks like it would be um because holy crap this should not be 2700 then yeah it's way massively overpriced I'm wondering if this has not reflected any price changes from when prices were all cranked up. Yeah, because it seems like rather than these systems being series of systems that they build, it seems like this is just the system that Buddy made. And if you want him to recreate that exact system then he'll build it

Starting point is 00:21:47 for you which is like um not that clever of a business strategy but i'm also kind of assuming this isn't their bread and butter well i have no idea what their bread and butter i think their bread and butter is finances um but yeah i i don't know this is this is pretty brutally priced 100 and and i and i'm rather certain we could shop around and find way better offers now overpriced computer excuse me overkill computers charging a lot for their computers is not really the topic today what happened was overkill computers responded to circuit boards correct reporting on the pricing and said this was overkill's creative director over on instagram have fun with your 20 000 view videos from now on brother i wish you all well and i'm not threatening you in the slightest. I feel bad for your situation.

Starting point is 00:22:46 Let me know if I can do anything to help you out. Heart emoji. Holy crap. That's cringe. I hadn't actually, I hadn't read or heard that yet. Brother in Christ. Hell yeah,

Starting point is 00:23:04 brother. I, I had not Wow all right this is part of the like we don't really read the topics too much for the show starts I had not heard that that's crazy chat was like this topics kind of boring we should move on yeah we get the quote throwing in i'm not threatening you and ending it with a heart i feel bad for your situation

Starting point is 00:23:34 what are you even talking about oh my goodness so then ex-employees and customers of overkill then began reaching out to add a bit of spice to the story. We've got to sprinkle this with some allegedlys here, okay? So here's a... Some major allegedlys. Ample helping. Let me just take a swig of allegedly from this patriotic... From the new Canada bottle.

Starting point is 00:23:56 Red and white Canada water bottle. LTTstore.com. Available in two different sizes. Oh my goodness. Customers that purchased computers sometimes allegedly had to wait over six months to get their system. Also, some customers that had already waited months

Starting point is 00:24:11 apparently received emails saying that the GPU they'd ordered was no longer available and they would have to pay an additional $400 to put a GPU in their system. So this might be just because Overkill is an extremely small outfit that simply has absolutely no actual stock, no relationships with vendors. The customer also had to sign a confidentiality agreement, allegedly, which is, yeah, the face he's making.

Starting point is 00:24:37 That's how I feel about it. If I ever have to sign a confidentiality agreement to buy a computer, it better be. Like from NASA. Yeah. Yeah, NASA computer. have to sign a confidentiality agreement to buy a computer it better be like from nasa yeah yeah nasa or like intel and every part or at least some part in it is like never released or something and then i will enthusiastically sign that if i'm just buying it from a random store and they're like here sign an nda uh i'm just not gonna do business also allegedly requires employees to sign ndas even though they're an SI, and I doubt they have many proprietary things on the go. I actually disagree with that take.

Starting point is 00:25:08 No, yeah. Any company, you're going to have an NDA for your employees, even if it's as simple as like, okay. What if you're dealing with customer data? Yeah, in our NDA, we have a non-disclosure clause in our employee agreement that says you can't disclose personal information about your colleagues. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:24 That's just basic. It's common decency. If you're one of the computer builders, your ticket will probably come in with the customer's name on it. Yeah, I don't know. No, that makes perfect sense to me. Apparently, though, there are some content creators that are going to court

Starting point is 00:25:39 with Overkill regarding a sponsorship contract. We have very few details about that. Although they do have a Patreon where they have very few details about that although they do have a patreon allegedly where they have members only pc giveaways allegedly which at least uh according to canadian laws i have no idea how this works in america according to canadian laws is illegal that constitutes a lottery and uh yeah so these these are, oh, okay. Yeah, here it is. Entries to members only computer giveaways. We will be giving away one per month.

Starting point is 00:26:09 They are an American company. I don't know what the rules are for that. I have no idea what their lottery laws are, but up here in order to run a giveaway and have it not be a lottery, which would mean that you're under a completely different set of much, much more stringent laws.

Starting point is 00:26:26 There has to be a no purchase necessary way to enter so yeah i have a hard time imagining why you have a like patreon for a system integrator but um anyway plain chatter saying that that's how it works in most states so overkill then sent circuit board a cease and desist alleging that he was defamatory toward the company requesting all videos about them to be deleted and all comments about them removed well gee i can tell you how i feel about threatening members of the media who is basically anyone with a phone and a t account at this point, I suppose. It ain't cool. Tell you what, Overkill,

Starting point is 00:27:09 I think your pricing sucks on that system too. Yeah, buddy or brother. You want my address? Do you want to know where to address the cease and desist? You can find it on Google. Because I could use some free toilet paper. I would actually much rather not wipe my butt with... It'd be uncomfortable.

Starting point is 00:27:29 Yeah, you could get a paper cut in a really awful place. I'd imagine it would have a horrible time healing with all the bacteria and everything. It just seems like a pretty bad time. Yeah, not good. Anyway, this quote is a little long, but worth it. Overkill's CEO, trying to do his best to turn a molehill into artesian builds, then went on TikTok to say things like,

Starting point is 00:27:53 we get a lot of views and therefore have some haters. We also have some past employees with opinions on what we do, and unfortunately we have one employee who has made it his mission to defame Overkill computers. And to those people, I say what you're doing in darkness will soon come to light. And as a marine vet, I have a lot more respect for people who aren't

Starting point is 00:28:14 cowards. Okay. What? Uh, okay. He's a sniper. Over 900 confirmed kills. Uh... Speed and accuracy that has never been seen before okay on the topic of prices overkill ceo said we don't and will not ever place ourselves at the lowest profit margin as a matter of fact we sometimes raise our prices to slow the number

Starting point is 00:28:36 of orders coming through i've never heard of these guys how are there so many system integrators that i have never even heard of i don't know i haven't heard of them either that is a that is a fairly standard tactic though like if you are i don't think it means adding a thousand dollars onto a like not a very fantastic system but like if you have too many orders coming in it is fairly standard practice for businesses to raise your price i just mean i doubt that yeah um it is a simple case of supply and demand the people that keep saying we need to do pc builds for 300 profit they can get a computer somewhere else or maybe learn how to build their own gaming pc they can do that by the way there's a great channel um gamers tech tips or gamers nexus bit tips jace two cents jace greg salazar well whatever there's lots of options that's the

Starting point is 00:29:21 point they went and for a time i may move in silence and put chess pieces in place. Wow. But you can rest assured. This sounds sick. If you threaten my business, my family, and my livelihood, I will utilize every resource at my disposal to arrange a coordinated and effective response. That wraps it up. Let's go.

Starting point is 00:29:49 I'd watch this movie, dude. This is the movie taken go i'd watch this movie dude this is the movie taken i'd watch this movie i'm in oh the sheer volume of cringe is just overwhelming this is great this is great look Look at this. This is terrific. There's a Daggett quote. What grand and intoxicating innocence. Look at this. I love it. Can you just stop? Why are you going to be like that?

Starting point is 00:30:16 You know? So anyway, maybe we can await our coordinated and effective response. So I think we've got a pretty balanced take here. Compared to other system integrators who build expensive systems, their website could use some work, but their pricing on the super overkill stuff does not seem any more out to lunch. With that said, there's probably some systems

Starting point is 00:30:43 that have pricing that is pretty high. And it's well within the right of anyone in the media to have that opinion and express it. And threatening those people is stupid. So that's cool. So you went and you had a not bad situation and you turned it into a really bad situation. I would say your next hire, if you're selling so many systems that you have to raise your prices to slow the order should probably be someone in like pr com yeah yeah you need to stop communicating to customers yeah or media or anyone else yeah because you cannot handle it yeah you you should you're taking it real personal and it's just business so um this also would have like just as a as a thing for anyone else watching this honestly as bad as it sounds could have been

Starting point is 00:31:32 very easy to handle in a relatively positive way um you could talk about how because it seems like this to be fair their whole name is overkill computers. They're probably not focused as a company on mid range computers. Right. So if I was them, I would just talk about how like our, our passion and our focus as a company is the things that they're putting out there. Mostly like if you go to their gaming PCs tab,

Starting point is 00:31:58 the thing right next to the giant financing word, uh, is this, is this crazy looking computer with cool hardline water tubing that looks pretty overkill and is probably too hard for a lot of people to make.

Starting point is 00:32:12 And if you're like, yeah, this is our focus. Sometimes we let old builds sit there and GPU prices were really expensive for a while, so things were cranked up and it is what it is. They could have just said,

Starting point is 00:32:20 you know, our bad. Yeah, we had some outdated builds on the site. Would have blown over immediately. Yeah. Apparently there are outdated builds on the site. Would have blown over immediately. Yeah. Apparently there are free entries on Gleam for the PC giveaways. Okay, cool.

Starting point is 00:32:30 This is according to DawsonJ621 in chat. I have no, I haven't validated that. Yeah. And again, a lot of the details are, allegedly the main thing here is that is a very not good way to respond. Yeah, yeah. It's a bad way to respond the responses are the main things we're talking about yeah alex's discussion questions are hilarious um bullying

Starting point is 00:32:55 creators for reporting on your product is obviously wrong maybe compared to intel's response when we crapped on arc yeah man they pulled out all the stops they listened to us they fixed things they responded to us not just not just by email by flying up here and bringing us a demo of the card working better um that is how you deal with negative coverage. That was like a lesson in how to deal with negative coverage. And it turns the story around into a super positive thing, right? Like if they were just like, yeah, honestly, that's just outdated.

Starting point is 00:33:33 And our focus is these like six systems. You can turn it into a showcase of your cool systems. And now there's more people talking about your store. Like you could have turned this into a major sales opportunity and growth opportunity,

Starting point is 00:33:43 but instead you just kind of look like a baby well i'm glad you said it and not me because i think you're like a little better able to handle the coordinated the coordinated strike all right why don't we move on to our next topic what else did i say we would talk about today ah yes discord on the xbox if you're into a mild hassle uh this was originally a report at least the articles that we're using from by ars technica and ign and it's happened the first console to finally natively integrate discord is the xbox owners of xbox one and series consoles will be able to connect with their friends through discord voice chat on the systems themselves now we actually tried to do this like six months ago or something like that yeah because i it's quite a while i'm pretty sure i've heard talk about discord on consoles for a while we had

Starting point is 00:34:44 the xbox in like the dev mode that allows you to run emulators and other, and we tried to run Discord in a browser or something like that. But the problem was that the browser didn't have access to the audio devices, blah, blah, blah. We didn't manage. We got the app working in the browser, but we did not manage to actually make a voice call. But now it's there. The option is available to Xbox Insider users and calls must be initiated and handed off from a smartphone

Starting point is 00:35:11 with many annoying steps through both the Discord app and the Xbox app. That's wacky. At least you can do it. It's a little wacky. Yeah. You got to transfer over to your Xbox. Okay, so I call you on my phone

Starting point is 00:35:25 yeah go ahead there's a note in here that makes a lot of sense uh or that is very interesting and and i talked about discord i was like yeah we talked about discord on consoles uh discord walked away from a microsoft attempt to purchase them for 10 billion dollars last year allegedly sure yeah sure um and i think that's where i had that in my head from so yeah i guess it wasn't on there previously it's just that they wanted to buy them it's weird that last year sony bought a minority stake in discord and said we'd see the fruits of their collaboration early this year it looks like they lost the race unless maybe there's like a much better app coming on playstation maybe you don't have to call them first on your phone. Yeah, require you to call on their phone.

Starting point is 00:36:05 Either way, this is absolutely a step in the right direction. But I think Jonathan Horst's discussion question kind of hits the nail on the head. Why aren't there just APIs that allow the Xbox and PlayStation to support third-party chat applications? Like, you know, already, already like ages ago they're just computers bro yeah to be fair up until the last like two or three years i probably wouldn't have considered it as a console manufacturer why uh there's very why now there's very little cross-platform

Starting point is 00:36:39 okay so you're just playing with other xbox people or other PlayStation people. Cross-platform is much more a more recent thing. We've been talking about it for a super long time, but it actually hitting big popularity and actually being a thing that people are very actively doing is quite more recent. Like this critical mass kind of thing. Yeah, and they actually had pretty good voice chat. I remember voice chat back in,

Starting point is 00:37:04 you can meme about what the lobbies were like. But I remember voice chat back in like Xbox 360 days was quite functional. And like if you had the actually good headset, like it worked pretty well. Like they had their own thing going. And I bet you in a way for some people in the company, allowing access to things that isn't their own voice chat was probably seen as like somewhat of a a forfeiture of that that ecosystem yeah that uh just just a nice word for walled garden yeah yeah but and like i think this is the right move but it might not have been the most comfortable thing for some people yeah i guess it also means that you're losing some control over the experience users are having on your platform like if you have you know you look at uh games for example will sometimes have a message that pops up if you enable voice chat and online play that'll be like yeah the srb rating for this is kind of out the door as soon as you're interacting with other

Starting point is 00:37:58 users because we can't control if they're going to talk about you know dildos or whatever like sure so okay all right i guess i yeah and like this this might also like if i if i was a if they're going to talk about, you know, dildos or whatever. Sure. So, okay. All right. I guess I get it. This might also, like if I was a, I don't know what this job title would be, but I'm sure it's a thing. If it was like a game and community experience person at Xbox,

Starting point is 00:38:16 I might be concerned about a reduction in actual voice chat activity because there's, I'm assuming this can run in the background while you play other games because it sort of has to so i i think this would increase the amount of people that would just sit in lobbies with other people their friends um while playing other games and not joining the like native voice chat for games if they're playing multiplayer games so that might reduce the usage of voice chat in games which might be a positive in regards to the whole rating thing you were just talking about,

Starting point is 00:38:48 but might be a negative in regards to engagement and stuff like that. Quantum Rand says there are APIs. This is over in Floatplane Chat. Super Mario Odyssey multiplayer mod has actually implemented them for proximity voice chat.

Starting point is 00:39:00 That's pretty cool. Yeah, I don't think that's really what... And apparently Xbox apps have full access to the Windows UWP APIs, and the problem is that Discord and those chat apps were made primarily as browser apps and not native apps. This is Zorg 666 and Flowplane Chat. So there's a little more to it than we thought, but it's clear that there just wasn't a focus on this.

Starting point is 00:39:20 And I think, Luke, you're probably right that that was down to the lack of demand due to the lack of demand due to the lack of cross-play apps and if you have just a native chat app well what why do you need a separate one i remember actually feeling like that when my group and i used to play left for dead all the time i was like oh the game has kind of built-in chat why do we bother with this mumble server and then we like would play other games i'd be like oh okay we need it yeah also the quality was better the latency was lower etc etc but yeah um i can definitely see that perspective okay we already have a perfectly working solution do we really need another one the answer is yes apparently so that's good uh we should probably do a couple merch messages colton you got anything

Starting point is 00:39:58 lined up for us he's he's He's new to this Alright Colton I'm here, I'm here Colton So, Austin asks What are your biggest concerns About the 40 series cards from Nvidia? I mean, people putting them in cases

Starting point is 00:40:17 That were not designed to dissipate You know, 400, 450, 500 watts of GPU I've been thinking about this a lot of these like tempered glass everywhere cases are gonna have some troubles uh we actually need like more old school style i was gonna say how ironic would that be if you can't have like a last generation case but you're fine as long as you have a brand new one or an ancient one like you pull out your your cm what what's the how do you go back to those cases with the huge like 300 mil here here as long as you have a brand new one or an ancient one. Like you pull out your CM. What's that?

Starting point is 00:40:48 You go back to those cases with the huge like 300 mil. Here, here, here. I got one. I got one for you. I got one for you, buddy. How about you pull out the Stacker 830? Look at this boy. Look at this boy.

Starting point is 00:41:02 It's got some cool. Yeah, because there was a while there in like case design where it was very fashionable to just have as many fan slots as you could possibly have yeah this was like pre-tempered glass this was actually kind of in my opinion a dark age of case design that's absolutely my biggest concern though oh yeah and there's going to be a lot of people man we should probably do an updated how to water cool your GPU video. The last time we did that, we were still working out of the Langley house. So that was like seven, eight years ago. And I think this generation, there's going to be a lot more people water cooling their GPU because it's infeasible to cool that kind of power output in that kind of a form factor.

Starting point is 00:41:46 I think we're also going to see a lot of systems damaged in shipping because you're going to have these crazy heavy GPUs. You're going to have some system integrators or even just end users who are moving or something,

Starting point is 00:41:57 you know, try to ship it to themselves. And it's going to rip the PCI Express slot off. Get that graphics card out of there. Move with it separately. Colton, come on. I swear he's really good at other stuff. I got it, I got it, I got it.

Starting point is 00:42:12 I swear. Peter says, hi Linus and Luke. I'm curious if you're considering making LMG's AutoBench program open source. It would be great to allow for the community to use and contribute to the program. Love the show. Right now, that is not the plan. Right now, the lab is going to be quite literally an eight-figure investment by the time we are done building it. I intend for that eight-figure investment to be a competitive advantage for our technology analysis.

Starting point is 00:42:46 With that said, in the longer term, that is not impossible. And I think that a sensible approach could be something along the lines of free for personal use, but license fee for commercial use or something like that. Logo splatter but for us to get to that point we would need we we there's a lot of work to do it's it's not ready to be uh it's not ready for prime time it's not ready to be out there it still requires the developer to brief the writers on how to use it like it it's, there's no documentation. There's, it doesn't even have a GUI yet. So there's a lot of stuff for us to figure out.

Starting point is 00:43:30 It's also- It's coming really fast. Like he's barely even been at the company. Yeah. He's not even off probation yet. And it's already functioning. Like it's- Yeah.

Starting point is 00:43:37 Like it's great. Yeah. Great job. Like the labs team is going, they're going hard. But that doesn't mean that it's like a finished product ready for us to package up and sell. It's also a low priority for us. Priority number one is having the lab functioning. Then we're going to start figuring out, okay, what's our go-to-market strategy for this tool?

Starting point is 00:43:59 What do we do with these things? How do we document these processes, because I do understand that a critical, critical component of this type of analysis is that we publish our methodologies. Because if we don't publish our methodologies, then how can you trust them? But GPU bench, for example, or whatever we're calling it, auto bench, auto bench, I don't know, we'll find some name if we ever actually commercialize it, we'll find some name that's not already taken. So whatever it is we're calling it, if that ends up becoming a product at some point, well, it's not really something that people need to see the code for in order to replicate our results. It'll just take longer because all it does is run benchmarks that are already accessible to you or to you or to me,

Starting point is 00:44:44 but it does is run benchmarks that are already accessible to you or to you or to me but it does them automatically so i it's not it's not like some of our other tools where yeah we're going to disclose exactly what microphones and exactly what what fake head thing we're going to use to test headphones so that our results can be validated it's also third parties it's also it also works in like a pretty specific way um where it's designed to output things into a specific database that works with Grafana and all this other type of stuff. That's probably not what someone would want for a just-take-it-home-and-do-it-yourself average user type situation. We also don't want to support it. Um, good question in the float plane chat though. Alon asks, uh, what are the lab's KPIs from your perspective? What would you call a success? And

Starting point is 00:45:33 what would you call a failure? I laid this out pretty well on the forum. Um, I mean, I have no idea if I'm actually even going to be able to find this post, unfortunately. No, I can't really find it. But I pretty much laid out everything that I expect from the lab. Obviously, I would like a return on the investment in the long term, but that can come in a lot of different forms. It could come in the form of affiliate revenues. It could come in the form of video content for LTT. It could come in the form of video content for LTT. It could come in the form of video content for other channels. For now, I think Gary probably put it best when we had him on the show to introduce our head of the lab. And what he said was, our goal is to not be questioned. So I would like to elaborate on that a little bit we absolutely want to be questioned but when the

Starting point is 00:46:25 questioning is done we want people to come away saying well that was satisfactory but not be questioned is not very scientific yeah yeah so but i understand what he meant and i think his heart was absolutely in the right place that our goal is to build trust to the point where you should still question us, but you might not feel like you have to at a certain point. That's, that's what we want to do. All right.

Starting point is 00:46:57 Okay. Colton, you're, you're, you're typing as me in the float plane chat. What's going on here? You're, you're,

Starting point is 00:47:02 yeah, you can ask more questions. Yeah. Okay, cool. So shadow says, can't wait to try the shorts. I've loved every product I've gotten from y'all.

Starting point is 00:47:12 What product other than the socks are you most excited to be working on? The socks are going to be big. If we ever make them. Um, I'm very excited about our cable management product. That's one of those ones where for screwdrivers there was already a pretty good screwdriver that I really liked I just felt we could do it better for backpack same thing there were backpacks that were perfectly usable for me

Starting point is 00:47:35 I just felt we could do it better with cable management cable management sucks like it just sucks all of it sucks no offense you make cable management stuff keep up the good work um but yeah the i have never found something to go under the desk and hold things like power strips and power uh power bricks and you know cables that are in a way that is quick and easy to like add another thing to and quickly put back into place and our cable management product is going to be sick i've seen the near final geometry now for the power bar holder and it is just awesome it's so awesome it's super easy to use you just pop it into the thing and now your power bar is magnetic it's awesome it's going to

Starting point is 00:48:28 take some time but um when we when we finally bring it to market i think that's going to be the kind of product that doesn't just sell to ltt viewers that's going to be the kind of product that moves really really well just on third-party websites like an amazon or whatever the case may be nice building off of that one more uh so i believe it's see i believe says let's go swimming tyler would ltt store ever have linus sandals yeah we'd love to the problem is the cost the molding costs are going to be astronomical because you have to do different molds for every size. So every model times all the different sizes. And it's just this astronomically complicated project that, frankly, how many pairs of sandals are we going to sell? Like if we made the world's greatest sandals, okay?

Starting point is 00:49:22 A thousand? Ten thousand? Probably not a a hundred thousand so i think there's lower hanging fruit for us to focus on speaking of focusing on ltt store oh yeah what's up i got an interesting comment in flowplane uh from kenev x are there things in the lab's sphere of influence that you have decided to leave alone or to not bother with due to availability of data elsewhere? And I will add on to this or other potential complications? No, I don't think so. Because there I wouldn't say that there's a surplus of data in any given category. Like, you think TVs, you probably think like RTINGS or ratings is actually what they're called, which I learned only recently when we hired some refugees from there. You know, you think, I mean,

Starting point is 00:50:11 power supplies used to be Johnny Guru. Like, now what? Like, Gamers Nexus is getting into it. But you think monitors, you think maybe what? Like, hardware on box, TFT Central. Like, there's, in any given vertical, there's at best two, maybe three. Okay, TVs, you've also got Vincent Teo from HGTV Test, but that's two.

Starting point is 00:50:33 And there are a handful more, but I'd say in any given vertical, at most, a few, maybe a handful of trusted outlets. So I wouldn't consider that a surplus of data in any given category. I think that there's absolutely value to having multiple independent sources of this information so that you can make an informed decision. I also threw in there the other potential reasons thing, because like one of them that we talked about was security. Yeah, something like antivirus is one that, you know, I'm looking at going when we are done setting up the lab for all the hardware categories that we'd like to test from every angle that we could possibly want to test them. We could take that entire size of that

Starting point is 00:51:17 organization and double it and barely even scratch the surface of testing cybersecurity products. Yeah, we had an applicant actually that was like really good and really promising and was interested in security stuff. But it was just like, oh, man, what are we going to do with this? And the other big challenge with security is that we are a for-profit enterprise. We need to make a return on our investment. And nobody f***ing cares. nobody cares unfortunately yeah i find it very interesting but like it's it's rough you try and do any kind of content around cyber security software or or privacy or data protection or anything like that there's a couple people out there that make it work but like like the entire audience just goes to sleep you can

Starting point is 00:52:05 tell the effort level that goes into it for the amount of return that they get from it is like pretty rough um and i'm very happy that the people that do make content in that space make it um and that there's some really good people but yeah yeah uh oh in other ltt store news we've actually got a couple of announcements for today. First up, can I just say, shout out, oh, is the graphic designer slash photographer in Ed's department off probation? No. Okay. Well, shout out probationary employee number 625. And also Bridget. Oh, yeah,y had a blast with it too this was probably the most fun photo shoot that i have ever done for i actually just sat here and went through all of them because they're so funny uh this was

Starting point is 00:52:58 this was an absolute blast we have swim trunks they are inspired by like a GPU. How did you do that? Is someone just pulling on your shorts? Yeah, Jamie volunteered his tribute from logistics. That's funny. She did a great job of that. Anyway, sorry. We have a subtle like GPU block,

Starting point is 00:53:29 water channel inspired design uh zipper pocket in the back like i always freaking lose stuff when i'm when i'm swimming uh socks we've got pockets in the sides uh it's available in black as well this is this is great i actually did not know that she was going to do this. There's another one. There's another one further down. Here's our probationary software engineer from the lab. I love it. Oh yeah, zippers on the side pockets as well

Starting point is 00:53:57 because I hate losing stuff. Sorry, what's that, Luke? We have to be very specific about roles because engineers are a protected term in Canada. Oh, software developer? developer oh okay someone internally told me it didn't matter okay yeah well no i raised questions about it after the fact okay software developer i'm pretty sure it does matter well i think it matters if we are selling their services to a third party saying we have engineers working on it. In Canada, the designation professional engineer and engineer can only be used by licensed engineers and the practice of engineering is protected in law and strictly enforced in all provinces.

Starting point is 00:54:37 That seems pretty clear to me, but maybe there's some wiggle room with the services that you're talking about. I actually read about it more than that it's like if you are representing the work being done as being done by a png uh then they have to actually have the designation okay uh but if you're just like talking internally he also like might i honestly don't remember his yeah i i don't remember either yeah yeah i've gone through far too many to remember at this point anyway uh yeah our our very own swim trunks have arrived. Limited quantities available for 2022. So we have a classic black as well as the super fun blue with subtle water block pattern.

Starting point is 00:55:13 And then we have another announcement. We have all these colors of cable ties. Some of them don't move so well. So now we have mystery cable ties, 50 per pack, 8.99 US. If you order more than one pack, you may get two or more of the same color combo or you may get completely different ones but let's face it you don't care because you ordered mystery cable ties good for you yeah uh was there anything else that i was supposed to say about the store so now's a great time to uh order something send a merch message and we'll go through

Starting point is 00:55:42 some more of them before the end of the show. Colton will read them out for us. Thanks, Colton. I think there was also one more thing. Oh, yeah. Right. Right. The last update on the store is that we did our backpack pop-up shop. I lied. Luke and I were both there. Actually, Colton was there, too. Yvonne was there. Bridget was there.

Starting point is 00:56:00 I didn't know we were saying we weren't going to be there until Wanshow when you said it. So I was like, uh... Yeah I was like uh yeah yeah yeah yeah well the reason was that we didn't want it to turn into no I get it like yeah a meetup yeah uh with like a bunch of looky-loos we wanted to keep it really focused on we didn't really have parking or an event yeah it was that thing like yeah like it yeah it wouldn't have made sense to be a big meetup. Yeah, it didn't make sense. So we wanted to make sure that it was small. And mission accomplished, it was small.

Starting point is 00:56:30 We sold about 50 backpacks, which was about double what I would have said my minimum goal to be successful was. Obviously, a few more might have been nice, but I'm good with it. And that is enough that sometime in the next few days, we are going to be opening up the floodgates because as far as I'm concerned, once independent verified reviews from actual purchasers of the product are in, and that's what you're looking at here, this is no longer a pre-order. This is now a back order. I am really relieved to see what people are saying about it. There was no way that we were going to be able to influence in any way what people posted about it.

Starting point is 00:57:28 people that showed up there's one four star and six five star reviews that do a great job actually i'm i'm kind of impressed they do a great job of identifying all the things that we put a ton of work into for this thing and um and appreciating it as well which is which is always really nice it was actually kind of a wild experience because i've never done it before being there in person while someone is like looking over you know the thing that you spent i had a bit of a feeling because i talked to a few people like oh what do you think about it while they were holding it and i had a bit of a feeling that they were trying to flatter me a little bit even though i didn't work on it at all yeah um so like i wasn't 100 sure but they seemed everyone seemed pretty happy with it so i'm i'm happy that the text reviews are coming in also positive yeah because we have no influence over that whatsoever yeah i i was actually talking to bridget about it because she used to work for a

Starting point is 00:58:21 decent sized canadian clothing retail and i was, yeah, as someone on the design side, is this ever an experience you had? She's like, actually, yeah. They would send us to a retail location, I think she said once a quarter. And so you would actually stand there face-to-face with a customer, them not knowing that you were the designer, like the one who worked on this. And they would stand there and go, yeah, I would buy this, except this is like horrible.

Starting point is 00:58:50 What kind of idiot would put this here? And Bridget's like, thank you. Someone in flow plane chat, by the way, asked, why are they not all verified? by the way asked why are they not all uh verified um so we actually set up a different what is technically a different store uh for for the purchases of the backpack because we had a physical location in canada so we had to do transactions in in cad canadian dollars um so then we we have them coming over here some of them are getting their verified tag properly because it's like seeing the accounts are crossing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The people that don't have a verified tag, we're going to have to

Starting point is 00:59:30 reach out to, because we don't actually control this. We have to reach out to the company that runs the review app that we have and send them proof that it's the same person. And then they can add the verified tag for us. But we're not, we're not like spoofing verified tags or anything. So it's gonna take a sec because we're waiting for a few more of the reviews to come in. And then the people that don't have the verified tag, we're gonna send that information over to judge.me,

Starting point is 00:59:56 which is the thing that we use. And then they'll approve it and we'll be good. It's very important to us that the feedback is real because the last thing we want is returns on a 250 product yep we would much rather not sell it in the first place than take a return on it after selling it that's not that's not a lot of fun all right uh what else we got to talk about today is there any more merchy boys no I think that's pretty much

Starting point is 01:00:27 it for the store today Colton do you have any do you have a couple of merch messages you want to hit us with and then we'll move on to our next topic there's nine curated alright so Jacob says been meaning to pick up cable ties for a while a mystery bag it is

Starting point is 01:00:41 Linus and Luke what's your pick for a competition game at the LAN? Oh, I want to play Halo Custom Edition for sure. I'm like super, super jacked to play Halo CE. I know you'd say that. Yeah. I don't know how much other people are into this, but I really like games that people don't really play,

Starting point is 01:01:02 being the competition games. Because I'm not all that interested in like oh okay it's a two what 250 person land um i'm not all that interested in like what are the the best players yeah so so there's five people here that play all together on a counter-strike team four days a week and we're just gonna watch them crap on everyone else in the entire arena like i that's not super interesting to me um even if i'm one of those people yeah because it's just like oh what it would so my like professional team just gets a pub stomp at some land like okay maybe it's like kind of fun but it's not that engaging

Starting point is 01:01:34 so i like having games that just nobody plays which means i don't really want to tell you it's a secret because i don't want you to practice we've leaked a couple one of the a couple of those on the show um like that um but yeah i don't know i don't know if other people are as interested in that but i like the idea of like okay basically no one has ever played this game let's see who can get the highest score in an hour or something like i'm super into that like one of the most fun experiences i ever had at a land party was my first encounter with midtown madness 2 we played cops and robbers a game mode i had never heard of uh the game is super broken so like the physics of like stealing the the the thing i forget what it is is it like is it money or something i don't know but it's

Starting point is 01:02:21 awful it's awful half the time the. Half the time, the collisions, like you'll go flying across the map and it'll be like, yeah, it didn't transfer ownership of the thing or whatever. And that kind of chaos is not fun in a competitive setting. Like when you're at home all sweaty, like I'm gonna win, I'm gonna win. You know, like that's not fun. But in a LAN environment where everyone's just like

Starting point is 01:02:46 you know had too much red bull and like it has been up for so many hours yeah not really thinking straight anymore it's like i missed gotta you know that's it's just such a great environment right and that's that's what i that's what i want That's what I want. You want the land environment to be jovial, not sweaty competitive, unless you're at specifically a sweaty competitive land. Yeah, if it's a qualifier for some kind of regional... That's different, but that's not what this is. Yeah, it's not that at all.

Starting point is 01:03:21 Not even a little. Man, 1v1 Warcraft 1? Like, that, you shouldn't have said it. Well, whatever. We could still do it. But now people could practice. Now people are going to spend a week practicing Warcraft 1. Yeah, and then when we play Warcraft 2,

Starting point is 01:03:36 they're going to be like, oh, crap! But yeah, exactly. You just whip something out that, like, nobody's expecting. All right. This one comes from graham i lines and luke hope you're doing well today i was wondering if lmg would make a dedicated workshop channel that would focus on prosumer maker equipment and making things for videos or the lab no cool um i can i can elaborate on that a little bit more sorry maker content is super niche um there are absolutely less niche verticals for us to go after before we would do that in the very very long term i would say it's not impossible but honestly i would go for software tips and tricks and tutorials before i would go for maker content in terms of

Starting point is 01:04:32 okay like how to fix weird like errors in windows or like how to how to fix your audio devices in in chat apps or whatever else like no no no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There is views to be had. And software? Software is a category with so much money to be spent and absolutely nobody who is like a major player in the influencer space. So no, no, no. From a business standpoint standpoint it makes sense colton how many

Starting point is 01:05:07 software sponsorships could you sell a lot yeah um kind of a similar ish question from luan uh long time viewer first time caller do you ever think about doing a consumer devices channel you get the occasional vacuum sponsor and be neat to see unbiased versions of those yes i absolutely think for the same reasons that's a little bit farther down the line but i i think that that's totally something that we would be set up to handle we've got a lot of new stuff on our plate right now yeah there's just oh man there's just so there's more than enough to do yeah there's so there's just so much if there's just so much like creating a benchmark suite for a robo vacuum is like oh my god like you okay so what it's probably honestly it's probably less work and less investment to just go buy a house versus like

Starting point is 01:06:01 trying to build a benchmark house right right? And then, so what? What's your benchmark? You just have a bunch of dogs that live there? It's like a dog house. So the dogs just like run around. You donate. They roam around the house. You donate to an animal rescue,

Starting point is 01:06:17 but you're like every once in a while, we're going to freak them all out by vacuuming. But other than that, it's going to be great. So then what? You do like, you lick the cushions and kind of go how much hair for my tongue get all the hair like it's these are legitimate challenges right these are questions we'd have to answer in order to properly uh quantitatively evaluate these sorts of products it's non-trivial so um given the investment and given how few views categories like that get, I would say that that's a sometime later project, not a not a tomorrow project.

Starting point is 01:06:53 Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. What else we got here? Question for Luke. I think it's been answered before, but if you... But do it better this time. Wait, I just lost the message.

Starting point is 01:07:06 Wait, one sec, one sec. Wow. This is from Josh. Bell would have done it better. Yep, he would. Hope you're enjoying vacation, Bell. Question for Luke. If you haven't gone to NCIX or have met Linus,

Starting point is 01:07:16 how different would your life be compared to what it is now? It's a tough one, because Linus probably remembers this, but back in the day, and even now to probably remembers this but i back in the day and even now to a certain degree but back back in the day i always had like a million different things going on because i really liked having fallback plans that was like part of my whole thing i know you were doing like it consulting for like small businesses like even like network wiring up and

Starting point is 01:07:41 drop ceilings and stuff like servers. And servers and stuff for my, it was a lot of like little law firms and notaries and stuff like that because they, by the way, if you want to get into it, it's a pretty good customer to have because their like security is extremely important. And if they lose all their data, they're just like done. So they need to have really good security. They need to have really good backups. A lot of that comes into like, yeah yeah so it's a good customer to have because you can set up a recurring contract and they have money and they have money um customers with money that's key customers with money and people that will come back because like if you're trying to start like a little tech

Starting point is 01:08:19 company thing just like building computers for a few friends or like fixing your friend's computer every once in a while whatever is not going to recurring. You might get some good jobs at the very beginning, but it's not going to sustain you over time. So I was doing that. Uh, I was in school for software stuff. Um, I, I had YouTube aspirations. If you want to see the best video of all time, you can see Linus and I deconstruct, video about a keyboard. That wasn't my only YouTube aspirations. I had other YouTube channels. Yeah, I don't know. I have no idea because I had a bunch of other stuff going on. I was very much in a discovery phase at that time. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And I had school going on as like a kind of guaranteed

Starting point is 01:09:01 fallback. There was also potential. I didn't want to, he's really good at it. I'm not necessarily, but there was also potential. I could have followed my, my dad's path and gotten into plumbing. I would have had a fantastic teacher considering he is currently a fantastic teacher. Yeah, there we go. Baby Luke, look at him. He's baby Luke. dude it's so douchey like if i have this like white undershirt on if i remember correctly and you can see it oh i was just gonna say how many buttons you have undone there yeah too many too many all right oh wow oh wow that's deep what was i doing my mom's filming this too oh no it's just completely undone that's deep what was i doing my mom's filming this too oh no it's just completely unknown

Starting point is 01:09:47 that's okay it's just open that's okay that's okay sure i mean the it's a little weird still the pretty clear uh the pretty clear like translucent white tank top it's not i would say the little odd uh The most like professional presenter of looks. Do you remember Flip HDs? No. Oh, Flip HD. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Those awful little cameras that NCIX sold like a dozen of.

Starting point is 01:10:16 And I think we, based on how quickly they were discontinued, must've been one of the most successful resellers of. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I didn't buy one just to be clear. But I borrowed one from a friend and that was filmed on a flip hd in the kitchen um and was was not a winner i'll uh katara luna asks is that a bong in the background knowing his mother i'm gonna say no yeah no it's a it's a large vase that's gonna be a hard no yeah that question is common though

Starting point is 01:10:44 there was a bunch of that question under that video or whatever yeah but yeah no it's not no answers no all right such a go up i guess you could call it that yeah i'll ask are there any collaborations with other creators you haven't done yet that you'd like to do in the future yes what what what you you want to do a video again? You want us to collab? You owe someone a video. Oh, yes. I owe the spiffing Brit a TPC.

Starting point is 01:11:13 I know. It's been far too long. It's been like years. It's been over a year for sure. I owe the spiffing Brit a T powered computer uh i think it'll probably not have actual tea in the water cooling loop i think we would probably

Starting point is 01:11:32 go for something more along the lines of like water dyed the color of tea but maybe we could at least have like uh like a kettle as the reservoir or something like that or integrated into the loop so it like pours out the top of the kettle into the into the cpu we'll come there's a lot of things you could do with it you could also make it look like there was like a a thing where you could pour out tea and it looked like it was coming from the water cooling but it was actually not or whatever like or oh the whole system could be in the shape of a teapot and then like like uh you could have like the uh the tubing come out the

Starting point is 01:12:06 front and like look like it's pouring or something i don't know we'll figure it we'll figure something out but yes yes we do need to do a tea cooled computer for the spiffing brit yes so dude i know i'm sorry we we will do it at some point it hasn't been forgotten it has been brought up a few times kind of here and there but other than that the truth is I don't watch a lot of YouTube. I don't follow a lot of creators. I respect the work that creators do because I do it myself. And I know that it's not as easy as some people seem to think it is. Um, but for me, it's more just like, yeah, you know, you reach out and I'm kind of, I chill i'm down to i'm down to work with people i don't really i'm not like a fan of too much because i don't really have time to consume it

Starting point is 01:12:50 i'm just busy um so yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't really say so i guess if like i'm trying to think that's the only one i really thought of just because we said we were like who are my celebrity crushes you know if uh i, everybody loves Tom Hanks. If Tom Hanks wanted me to build him a computer, I'd build you a computer, Tommy. No problem, sure. But, I don't know, there's... You don't even look into the collaborations

Starting point is 01:13:15 that you do do. Next! Alright. This one comes from Adam. Hey, Linus. I'm going to see the Backstreet Boys Tuesday night with my wife. Her and my first time seeing them live. Did you ever get a chance to see the Backstreet Boys live like you wanted to? Nope. Twice.

Starting point is 01:13:34 Twice. Twice. I'm twice the Vancouver Backstreet Boys date aligned with my own convention that I had to be at. Twice. I had to cancel tickets I had already bought. I thought it was only once. No, it was twice.

Starting point is 01:13:48 Oh my gosh. Two times they were touring. Two times they were in Vancouver on the same f***ing day as LTX. Yeah. Oh, Ryan Reynolds. Yeah, I'd totally do Ryan Reynolds. I mean, build him a computer.

Starting point is 01:14:03 And the other thing. Maybe both. Yeah, that was chat's idea. Chat's totally do Ryan Reynolds. I mean, build him a computer. And the other thing. Maybe both. Yeah, that was chat's idea. Chat's idea was Ryan Reynolds. Yeah, for sure. For sure. No problem. Charlie Sheen, that's a little more controversial,

Starting point is 01:14:14 credible. He hasn't been in the news recently. I don't know if he's like still controversial. Powdered water cooling. Do you guys want any more? Yeah, yeah. Hit me with one more. All right.

Starting point is 01:14:23 This one comes from Ashley. In the recent video about the Intel Arc series, it was mentioned that it performs well in dx12 and vulcan since wine and proton run windows games through vulcan i knew this do you believe this card is a good value for linux users thanks okay i don't know that's the kind of thing that i feel like anthony is going to have to be given a week to go and deep dive on because dxvk yes translates older versions of directx into vulcan and the really hilarious thing is that my understanding is dxvk either works or is like on the verge of working on windows so running through this like not emulation but translation layer could actually be a more

Starting point is 01:15:05 efficient way to game than using, like, DirectX 9 or DirectX 10 directly? That was a weird sentence. I don't know the answer to that, and that's not the kind of thing that we were going to be able to test in a very early preview, like what we were able to do with Shroud and Tap last week. But yeah, I'm into it. It sounds sounds super cool i just don't know the answer so i'm sorry all right why don't we jump into another oh my god i'm signed out of okay pick a topic you need a topic do we have topics left sponsors thanks to new relic for sponsoring today's show developers are some of the most curious people. They're the first to explore the newest tech,

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Starting point is 01:16:32 by signing up at newrelic.com slash WAN. That's N-E-W-R-E-L-I-C dot com slash WAN. newrelic.com slash WAN. Thanks to Clyde for sponsoring today's show. Clyde is an endpoint security solution that uses the most powerful untapped resource in IT, end users. Old school device management tools like MDMs force disruptive agents onto employee devices that slow performance and treat privacy as an afterthought. But Clyde does things differently. Instead of forcing changes on users, Clyde notifies their team via Slack when the devices are insecure and gives them step-by-step instructions on how to solve the problem. Thank you. And finally, thanks to NordPass for sponsoring today's show. Do you use your Facebook or Google account to log into every website or app you visit?

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Starting point is 01:18:39 Again, go to nordpass.com slash WAN and use code WAN to take advantage of this limited-time offer. This one comes from Anonymous. In the years you've beencom slash WAN and use code WAN to take advantage of this limited time offer. This one comes from Anonymous. In the years you've been hosting the WAN show, are there any topics that stand out in your memory as the most interesting or the most infuriating? Oh, I mean, I don't know. Team viewer calling me all the time

Starting point is 01:18:58 and messaging me is pretty infuriating. I'd say that NVIDIA's treatment of hardware unboxed was very infuriating. That was infuriating i'd say that nvidia's treatment of hardware unboxed was very infuriating that was infuriating and disappointing um i got really into discussing like anytime we talk about potential consumer like enthusiast use cases or virtualization i get kind of excited and into it like the first time i thought of like whoa you could use this server technology to have like a single computer in your house that powers all your thin clients and you could slice up the compute power as needed so if you needed like gaming here and homework there it could be dynamically allocated and and that stuff has

Starting point is 01:19:41 come to pass not in the way that i envisioned it, but in like a, you know, scalable business, like sensible way. So, you know, services like GeForce Now or Stadia or whatever else the case may be. So I'd say that's pretty exciting. But no, I don't know if there's like a specific time that stands out to me. You guys got to understand there are literally like, are we over a thousand hours of WAN show that exists? Like I think at least yeah it's got it's got to be it's got to be up there i mean uh i don't think either you or i have missed a wanshow in the last two years so that's like in a long time times a hundred times an hour and a

Starting point is 01:20:15 half like that's a that's a solid probably couple hundred hours right there i topics that stand out to me. I remember the, the Oculus one. Was it, I don't think it was when, no, I, yeah. When Facebook bought Oculus, that one show. Yeah. You were not impressed. No. And I wrote like a huge thing for it. Um, that, that was, that was very memorable. And then I think, uh, this is, I'm not going to do gonna do uh ones that like bothered me i don't remember the exact word that they used but um the other one that i remember talking about a lot was like we had this i feel like it was recurring topic but it was this idea of like having like robot wars on a football field i think we only talked about it once okay but like man video games irl yeah whole yeah so where you're we're basically bringing together fpv drone technology and augmented reality and like you essentially the stakes

Starting point is 01:21:16 would be so high it's like it'd be like paintball but for like flight video games because if you get hit by someone you'd have you'd have logic in these combat drones that would be like yeah you're that sorry that engine is disabled well it'd be a motor but that motor is disabled now good luck limping to the ground see you later so you could actually fall out of the sky and lose like a hundred dollars worth of damage to your drone like it's the kind of thing that you i mean what like maybe in dubai you know you could create a an arena for this and actually get get participants for it or something like that but it couldn't possibly exist so it's a rocket league irl this was this was pre-rocket

Starting point is 01:21:57 league yeah this is ages this was a long garage back in the garage yeah Here in my garage with my knowledge. One more really important question. This one's from Ethan. Linus, what's your favorite type of cheese? Oh, I'm going to be honest with you. The best experiences I've had with, I've ever had with cheese was when I was in Paris with my mother. She took me there as a graduation

Starting point is 01:22:25 present all my time in paris yeah and uh so we went for a couple of weeks it was it was pretty awesome a week i don't know it was some period of time and i was there with my mother so that was good uh to be clear i'm very close with my mother um and what we would do was we would just go get some baguette and we would go into a fromagerie and get some cheese, excuse me, fromage. And we just, we wouldn't know what anything was. So we would just get like half a dozen random ones. I have no idea what I ate. Um, but I would take the cheese and I would put it on the baguette and then I would eat

Starting point is 01:23:03 and it was delicious and nothing else like here has compared but i also don't go out of my way to buy fancy cheese here because we don't have from asuris um so yeah it was it was great yeah it was awesome yeah like to be clear okay yeah there's some allegations in the in the comments on here which are interesting to me uh there's a note that says in communication with customers hive claims to be a brand in the middle of a climate crisis that needs to change their focus by bricking discontinued cameras are they actually doing that uh are they bricking their devices shutting they're shutting down the servers yeah

Starting point is 01:23:45 wow yeah that is i mean it's one thing to eol a product right to stop supporting something to shut down selling it but still support it or no i'm saying it's one thing to stop supporting it sure it's entirely another to claim that you are discontinuing support in the name of fighting climate change that is not what happened Hive what happened was you didn't want to support it

Starting point is 01:24:15 because it cost money and so you stopped don't turn this into some kind of like white knight like Greenpeace like message here that So you've stopped. Don't turn this into some kind of like white knight, like Greenpeace message here that you're protecting the world. What are you even talking about?

Starting point is 01:24:34 Who do you think you are, Apple? Weird move. We stopped including chargers because, well, we just love the earth so darn much. No, no, that's not why you stopped including chargers. That's a happy coincidental accidental benefit. Maybe, maybe, but that's not why you did it. So wacky.

Starting point is 01:24:58 Bloody hell. That's such a weird move. Did literally a single person take that the way they had hoped i don't know yeah i really i really don't know very odd uh what is this all right um wow is that oh no we've got another really great topic this is cool lewis rossman and aaron wolf want your ideas to help get people back control of their own devices uh so there's a couple of sources here there's uh fudo.org grants and we'll get into a little bit more detail about this totally legitimate looking website later. It is legitimate. Rossman assures me it's legitimate.

Starting point is 01:25:50 Otherwise, I actually would not be promoting it. But Lewis asked us to get the word out about the man and organization that, quote, kicked me in the ass to start a non-profit. That non-profit being the Repair Preservation Group, or RPG, which has been instrumental in furthering right-to-repair legislation thanks to financial grants from Aaron Wolf, founder and leader of Futoh. Futoh's goal is to give no-strings-attached financial grants to high-quality projects that are focused on tech freedom,

Starting point is 01:26:20 like they did for Rossman. So Wolf cold-called Rossman in 2020. Rossman hung up on him in typical Rossman fashion. I was going to say. Why you got to be prickly like that, man? I mean, like, I love you, but come on.

Starting point is 01:26:38 Anyway, hung up on him thinking it was a scam because, and I quote, who the f*** randomly calls my store saying, I want to give you no strings attached to your money. Kate, that's fair. Which is fair. That's fair.

Starting point is 01:26:50 Which is fair. We got to give him credit where credit's due. A wolf called back and ended up giving Rossman a small loan of a million dollars, sorry, excuse me, grant, to start RPG, helped him hire an attorney and walked him through the process. So in two years, Rossman says, he has not once second guessed or even asked what I did with any of the million dollars he gave.

Starting point is 01:27:08 All he asked is that I do not sell out and keep doing what I'm doing. So Rossman basically reached out to me to help get the word out because he doesn't want anybody else to hang up when they get a call. Fair enough. And I mean, based on the state, based on the state of this grants website like this looks like it's straight out of 1998 um yeah i i i would i would think it was kind of fishy as well so i wanted

Starting point is 01:27:36 to defend it until i went to the home page and i saw that there's like effectively no padding between the words and anything oh are you on it right now yeah yeah there's just like the text just goes like right into the gorgeous definitely looks like a website created by someone who just like hands out million dollar grants casually um which is fine you know you want to put the money where it's going to be most effective yeah honestly yeah a gorgeous gorgeous website is not not the answer to that so cool um fudo is asking uhudo is asking similar projects to apply at fudo.org slash grants with three basic requirements. One is to be open source or have a roadmap to becoming open source. Two is to not have an exploitative business model. So no data mining, selling user data, etc. And number three

Starting point is 01:28:19 is that you do not sell out to the tech oligopoly when they come a knocking, which seems reasonable enough on the surface, but guys, it's probably harder than you might think to resist when that kind of bag of money shows up. One other example of the type of projects that FUDO is looking for is the privacy-focused Android fork GrapheneOS. Its makers are currently in funding talks with FUDO, which hopefully I'm allowed to disclose. Well, that's in here. And Rossman will apparently be putting together a makerspace with Wolf near University of Austin over the next year. A little more about Aaron Wolf, 18-year Silicon Valley veteran,

Starting point is 01:28:54 founded Yahoo Games in the 1990s, had success as an entrepreneur and investor, notably as a seed funder and early contributor to WhatsApp. Today though, huh, I wonder if there's any bitterness in that whole do not sell out to big tech with the whole whatsapp thing yeah today though fudo through fudo aaron is devoted to using

Starting point is 01:29:10 his fortune and talents to give people back control over their computers and sovereignty over their technology cool um discussion question here uh courtesy of riley murdoch says more rich people using money to fight tech monopolies, please. K, thanks. I mean, yeah, I guess that's basically it. So we're happy to help spread the word. If you guys have a project, hey, head over to futo.org slash grants. I assure you it is not as illegitimate and sketchy as it looks, which is great because... It's probably also just like very new. Well, I mean,

Starting point is 01:29:45 um, called Rossman in 2020. So the site though, I don't know. I don't know. I could look into it, but I honestly don't really care too much, but yeah, if it's legit,

Starting point is 01:29:58 it's legit. That's it. Yeah. Sounds good. Uh, that's an info page. Like, I don't know.

Starting point is 01:30:04 Who cares? Oh crap. We haven't even talked about whale land tickets i was gonna say things that are not legit yeah the robot you were saying you thought it was like fake or something i saw some posts about that but maybe it was about a different video i don't know we'll talk about it but whale land tickets first oh no we're doing this okay yeah uh a robot dog similar to Boston Dynamics spot was demoed with an assault rifle just kind of thrown on top of it. The video went pretty viral, I think. Got a lot of views. It was kind of everywhere for a while. You can see it's very spot-like. It's running through some type of patrol script there. You can see it does have some issues with recoil. That could be fixed pretty easily if you just didn't put like a pyramid that you strapped a gun to on top of a robot dog

Starting point is 01:30:55 that was built for other things. And there are companies that have made ones that do look more legit. I just don't think we've actually seen videos of them being used, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. it looks like the technology dog that was used in the video is sold on aliexpress for about three grand um yeah um it looks like it's very likely of of uh there's some suggestions that it might be of russian origin because there was an insignia

Starting point is 01:31:25 on the on the robot dog that looked like it was linked to something every single thing that links it to that origin could be done and put there by basically anyone so it means basically nothing but yeah i don't know just throwing it like on top with duct tape is not the most elegant solution and i guarantee you that there are people making more elegant solutions that are better at recoil control. And probably don't just use a firearm that was made for a human taped on top of a dog. They use a firearm that was made for the dog, properly attached to the dog. Jaden's saying, hey, not this, please. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:32:10 It's happening regardless but yeah it's spooky it's just uh i don't think that necessarily the one in the video is the one that you should be yeah the one on the video is like relatively speaking not a problem um but there are ones that already exist that are much scarier yeah uh alex actually added a note to this uh nicholas uh plouffe was the one who who prepped it but he says imo this is way less terrifying than a drone strike this thing is super loud and i can outrun it by going downstairs like it's i mean you can't outrun a bullet but i get his point either way drone strikes are spooky yeah we're getting outside of our realm here pretty quickly, but like, yeah, it's a thing. Just if that video was spooky, just understand that that's pretty base level. Discussion question is, in about a hundred years, we've gone from riding horses

Starting point is 01:32:56 into battle to drone strikes from a pilot hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. What's next for modern warfare? I i mean i think that the answer is um you know it's all basically information it's all subterfuge it's all manipulation of public sentiment you can cause so much more damage to a country by weaponizing its own population than by actually just like destabilizing it by riding up in like a tank i mean to be clear tanks have their place but it's um it's kind of like an after the fact roll in and seize territory type of situation where you've already kind of ruined that territory through the other means um also yeah yeah i don't know i don't want to give people ideas so i'm not going to talk about other things related to this.

Starting point is 01:33:47 Yeah, Luke has some good ideas. It is something we talk about, but I don't think it's going to be on the WAN show. No. Speaking of things that there was some debate internally as to whether to talk about on the WAN show, I don't know how to address something like this in the right way because there just isn't a right way to address something like this.

Starting point is 01:34:13 But it's possible that online there will surface an email. It seems to be being sent to our partners, to our business associates, like other media outlets. It was copied to as many members of our staff as this individual was able to guess at. And it contained some very serious allegations about me. So rather than wait for this to pop up on Reddit and, you know, to have people make assumptions, I felt, you know, it's better for me to just tell you guys what my take on it is and we can go from there. So the email alleged that when I was 16 to 17, and this is from the alleged father of a daughter, from the alleged father of a daughter alleged that I raped a 12 year old girl.

Starting point is 01:35:17 So that's pretty, uh, that's pretty heavy. Um, to that, I would say that's completely untrue. And I sincerely doubt that this email contains any truth whatsoever. Um, yeah, if there's any, if there's any, wait, who wrote this? No, I'm not. That's, that's not, no, that's not a thing. So anyway, I will, I will show you guys what I said about that internally, because the basic bottom line of this is I have no idea, no idea what this particular person is talking about. So let's go ahead. I said, hey everyone, by now you've probably either seen or heard about the explosive allegations that were blasted out to most of the company via email. The only way I know how to respond to something like this is with full transparency. So for better or for worse, here's my entire relationship slash

Starting point is 01:36:02 sexual history. I had my first kiss in the summer when I was 14 at an acquaintance's birthday party. She tasted of cigarette smoke, but it was otherwise enjoyable. I started my first relationship when I was 15 with a girl I met at Bible camp. I have redacted the name. Our relationship lasted about six months, and while we kissed, hugged, touched, we never had sex, we were the same age. I lost my virginity at 16, with my then-girlfriend and high school sweetheart, name rejected. Might have been 17. Either way, our relationship lasted until I was 19. We were entirely monogamous. We were the same age.

Starting point is 01:36:39 I met Yvonne in my first semester at UBC. We started dating in January of that year. That is it. So, you know, whatever, whatever people might think one way or the other, you know, is, uh, is, is two sexual partners enough for a, for a man? Um, that's it. That's, that's my, that's my, that's how many notches are in my belt. Not only do I have no idea what this person is talking about, I can't even figure out who the supposed dad is talking about. Because in my life at that time, there were no people who matched the description that was provided. The daughter of an immigrant family four to five years younger than me, that is literally no one. So the discussion question here is, as a public figure,

Starting point is 01:37:28 this is something that I've been aware of as an attack vector for a long time. I mean, forever, yeah. And it's something I thought about, but it wasn't until now that I finally went, okay, so what do I, what on earth am I supposed to do in this situation? Either you acknowledge it right away, which is clearly, clearly the path that

Starting point is 01:37:51 I've settled on. But this has the potential to make me look defensive. Even worse, if I, you know, go aggro on it, you know, I pull out the, this is libel, and I intend to defend, protect my rights, blah, blah, blah. Well, that has the unintended consequence of potentially silencing legitimate victims of sexual assault or sexual abuse. That is absolutely the last thing I want. I am not saying that this alleged supposed daughter is lying, because she doesn't exist. So it would be the supposed father of this supposed daughter that would be lying in this case. Because, yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about. Option two would be to ignore it. This has the potential to make it seem like I have something to hide

Starting point is 01:38:49 or I'm trying to sweep something under the rug. So clearly I decided not to take that path. I think this person is probably getting at least part of what they wanted by hearing me talk about it on the WAN show. I have to deal with that. That's the unintended consequence of even acknowledging this kind of an attack. But the reason that I chose the path that I did,

Starting point is 01:39:13 which is full disclosure, is that what it does is make it so that this is the last time that I ever have to acknowledge anything like this. You guys now know my entire, everything there is to tell. So that's it. That's all.

Starting point is 01:39:33 Sorry. I'm, I'm not spicy. Very mild, pretty mild flavor. Pretty boring guy. Actually. It's kind of,

Starting point is 01:39:44 I was kind of an awkward, I was kind of an awkward i was kind of an awkward teen when it came to girls actually yeah ej tech on floatplane says not sure what's more insane the defamatory email blast or line is sharing that timeline for the entire internet to see. Yeah, I'm not sure either. I just don't know what else to do, guys. It's a weird situation to be in. Yeah. You got to ask yourself, like, what would you do in this situation if you had a company of people that are reading this and then looking at you?

Starting point is 01:40:18 And if you had a community of people that are watching your videos and potentially going to hear about it because the email blast went out to a wide range of people. You want to get out ahead of it. Yeah. But like, how do you do that? You know, I'd love to know what motivated it. But it's really tough because if there was a grain of truth that I could build on, then at least I could go, okay, maybe it's that particular grudge over that particular thing I said in a video or, or that, that perceived slight against that, that person that are, and, and, you know, the, the truth is that I have not always been the nicest person in the world. I've talked about it on the WAN show before. Like I was pretty mean in high school um i have i have buried any hatchets that i had as an adult that's something that i i set out for

Starting point is 01:41:11 myself to do um so i i don't think this is someone actually out of my past coming coming out of nowhere i think this is just a i think it's a fairly obvious attack vector yeah um so so yeah what i'm what but what i was saying was if there was some kind of, if there was some kind of kernel or nugget of truth in this that I could build on, like if, if it at least matched the description of, of someone who I had offended or wronged in some way, then I might be able to, I might be able to figure out what on earth is going on, but there just, there just isn't't. There's nobody in my life, past or present, who matches that description. The email is also very clear

Starting point is 01:41:52 that there wasn't going to be any information given. Yeah. There was no trails to follow. Yeah. So I think I've said everything that i have to say about that and i think it's time for us to do some merch messages let's do it all right this one comes from julian are there plans for add-ons to the backpack similar to the moss organizer nest or packing cubes that are appropriately sized for the ltt backpack packing cubes sorry packing cubes that are appropriately sized for the LTT backpack?

Starting point is 01:42:25 Packing cubes? Sorry. Packing cubes. Moss Organizer Nest, you said? Yeah. I think we've... I've seen these before, right? Moss Organizer Nest. Okay, I'm looking at it.

Starting point is 01:42:35 This is a sponsor of the WAN show. Oh, add-ons. Ah, yes. Yeah, we do have some add-ons planned. For the webbing on the front, I think we want to do a phone holder, which I've already had requests in person for now at the pop-up shop so yes we intend to do something like that and i think we are also planning an internal like tech pouch uh it's really funny

Starting point is 01:42:55 the that's the genesis of that product was bridget showing me something that she had kind of gone rogue and had a sample created for. And I looked at it. The first thing I said, I was like, sorry, what is this? Like a purse? Is this a tech purse? And she goes, no, it's not supposed to be that shape. They sewed it wrong. I'm like, oh, okay.

Starting point is 01:43:15 It's supposed to be more like a jumbo pencil case. And then it unzips and like kind of accordions out. And man, the latest prototype, really good. Not ready yet. Uh, yes, yes.

Starting point is 01:43:29 Stuff will happen. What else you got? All right. This one comes from. Alexandra. Uh, yes. Yes.

Starting point is 01:43:42 Will. Oh my gosh. Hold on one sec. Will you make more mats and will you test tempered glass testing from computer cases so i'm assuming that's referring to the lab when we do tempered glass testing more mats like more desk pads yes there are more designs coming soon and will we test tempered glass from computer cases like for like shatter resistance or no, I'm going to say, I'm going to say no. I mean, that's a really cool rabbit hole to get down. Like the, the optical transparency of different manufacturers like side panel glass,

Starting point is 01:44:17 like who has a great, you know, anti-glare coating that makes it so you can see your internal components. I mean, yeah, sure. Cool. If you want to start case panelelglassreviews.com, you go do that. Power to you. Hit it up. Yeah, I love it.

Starting point is 01:44:32 But no, no, that is not a vertical that we plan to pursue at this time. All right, this one comes from Kyle. Gamers Nexus took a chance investing in a sound isolation chamber and fan testing while LTT is taking a chance with labs. These moves prove your passion to the trade and are critical to the viewer based trust relationship.

Starting point is 01:44:50 Thank you. Any plans to collab more often with the new equipment? Hmm. I don't think the new equipment necessarily makes collabing easier. There aren't a ton of tech creators like in bc so a lot of people would have to like like change countries to come check out the lab the lab stuff is not very portable i think other than referring to each other which we do and respecting each other and and supporting each other they're awesome in public yeah those guys are great um super legit i yeah i i think

Starting point is 01:45:25 that i think that some friendly competition in the space would also be great i think that we have the potential to push each other to be better um you know no i mean i i'm oh i mean one one collab that i have i have a verbal agreement from steve from gamers Nexus 4 is he says that once their place is totally set up, I get to do a tour of it. I get to make a video like doing like my spin on the Gamers Nexus lab. And he's more than welcome to come and check out our space and do some Gamers Nexus coverage. Tell me if he thinks my team did a good job of building out our testing facility. So I think that would be that would be really fun. But no other than that not really all right this one comes from matthew matthew asks will the display cable testing shown previously in videos be incorporated into ltt labs

Starting point is 01:46:17 yes well and it'll also be a critical part of the development of our upcoming cables which i know puts us in a pretty awkward position conflict of interest wise. But if we just maintain our complete transparency, then I think we should be fine. That's something that you could maybe send it to other people to test. Yeah, for sure. And we will. My understanding is that other YouTubers have already expressed interest to their communities in reviewing our screwdriver and backpack,

Starting point is 01:46:47 which we would be more than happy to facilitate. So if there's anyone who you know, who you want to review those products, let them know, send them this clip. Assuming they have a sizable audience, I'm sorry if you have four subscribers on YouTube, it's not like I'm not knocking you. I don't want to go full Artesian builds here. You're not big enough to send you a screwdriver. No, no, it's not. It's

Starting point is 01:47:07 not about that. This is not a prize. It's if you are legitimately a reviewer slash influencer in that vertical, then we'd be happy to at least explore sending you one or at the very least, I know that some have said they do not want review samples. They would rather just buy it. they do not want review samples. They would rather just buy it. We could give you a, like at that moment, heads up so that in the first wave,

Starting point is 01:47:30 you'll be one of the first to receive your order. So we could at least do that. Yeah, just let us know how you want to work it. All right, we got a merch message from Anonymous for me. Wait a minute. Let's go.

Starting point is 01:47:44 Thanks, Colton, for jumping in for the WAN show. Did you send this yourself? No's go. Thanks, Colton, for jumping in for the WAN show. Did you send this yourself? No, no. Thanks, Colton, for jumping in for the WAN show. Anonymous, Anonymous, I tell you. Anonymous, Anonymous Colton. Question for Colton.

Starting point is 01:47:52 What is the best and worst parts of your workday? You know, the best parts are getting to work with all these fine folks, okay? Just showing up. Why don't you kiss some more ass, Colton? Oh, wow. Anyways, I just like working here I'm sorry the worst part of my day is dealing with you right now

Starting point is 01:48:11 I'm just kidding I'm joking I don't know that's a good one I think that's all the questions I have yeah I appreciate you Edmund says hey Luke and Linus, love the show today. What's a game franchise that you recommend to people?

Starting point is 01:48:30 A franchise. I mean, I'm super into, you know, I love my Beat Saber. Love Anno. Depends so much what you're into. Yeah, it's not for everyone. Yeah. Also, franchise is like kind of specific because a lot of my favorite games are not a part of a

Starting point is 01:48:45 franchise um yeah i don't know i can't think of a franchise that isn't like super generic and you've probably already played it um so i don't really have an answer sorry franchise yeah i don't know depends too much on what you're specifically into sorry as always it depends what you're into and i think that pretty much wraps us up for wansho today we will see you again next week same bad time same bad channel bye i lost track of time and I'm going too late so I cut it oh

Starting point is 01:49:42 Larian Studios Divinity? yeah but then like i wouldn't necessarily recommend super high playing the old ones you just play the new ones you check out baller's gate which is coming out it looks amazing you should play divinity original sin 2 there you go

The WAN Show - Overpriced Computers! - WAN Show July 22, 2022

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