The WAN Show - Stop Flying Over My House - WAN Show July 29, 2023

Starting point is 00:00:00 Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? You can't get a well-groomed lawn delivered, but you can get chicken parmesan delivered. Sunshine? No. Some wine? Yes. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. See app for details.

Starting point is 00:00:17 What is up, everybody? And welcome to a very special, very fantastic, very live edition of the WAN Show here at LTX 2023. Can we get the crowd cam up here for a second? Hey guys, say hi to the WAN Show audience! Let's go! All right, we've got a fantastic show lined up for you guys today because if Because if we don't, you can actually mob us. Oh. An insurance company in the States is using drones to spy on their policyholders. What are the implications of this? Are we actually living in the worst dystopian timeline? Yes.

Starting point is 00:00:59 I think so. Because Twitter is no longer a bird. It's just a placeholder. They were like, we couldn't think of any branding. Let's just put an X. We're going to be talking about that. What else we got today, Luke? Did you just segue from topics?

Starting point is 00:01:13 I did. I think that's a first. That's actually amazing. Okay. I don't know. ESRB wants to age scan your face. No, that's more dystopian timeline. But it fits the theme of the show.

Starting point is 00:01:26 Come on. No, it's not the theme. It's okay. Are you going to do the one right after it too? No, I was actually going to skip that. No, not the online casinos targeting children. Yeah, I think it's interesting to talk about, which I didn't top, I didn't title this properly,

Starting point is 00:01:39 but Wargaming, specifically for World of Warships, is getting rid of their forums entirely. It's just done. Come on! Forums are still cool! And Warships specifically, they have actual technical documentation on their forums that is sorted and easy to find.

Starting point is 00:01:56 It's actually some of the most important forums there are. And they're gone. They're going to Discord. Cool, roll that intro! They do it? They do Cool. Roll that intro. They do it? They do it. Roll the intro. Why are you even here, Dan? I don't know.

Starting point is 00:02:11 I didn't sign up for this. You did sign up for this. Oh, yeah. You organized this. Oops. It's like hosting a party and then complaining that the food sucks. Yeah, I cook the food.

Starting point is 00:02:28 The nice thing is that we get to deflect blame a third time. True. That is pretty good. Are they actually going to roll the intro, though? I'll be back in a minute. Okay, Dan's going to go back there and roll the intro. Let's go, Dan! Okay! Right into our headline topic here. The original article is from Petapixel, or ABC 7 News, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:03:05 something. We've got a couple sources. But California homeowner CJ Sveen has reportedly had the insurance policy on his house dropped after his insurer, the California State Automobile Association or CSAA, claimed that photos of his property showed, and this is amazing, potential hazards in his yard. If I was going to lose my home insurance just based on the potential hazards in my yard, I would have had no home insurance for the last two years because of the empty hole that is dug in the back of my yard where my pool is supposed to be. No insurance, and I have a hole in my yard. It would be

Starting point is 00:03:46 fair, it made us both bleed, literally. That is true, we have both bled in the pool already. Yeah. Not in like a weird way though. Anyway, these potential hazards, Sven is a tinkerer who's restoring a 1966 Chevy. Which is extremely normal. Which is a totally normal thing. What is the point of having a yard if you can't have a car on cinder blocks in it? I thought this was America. Or North America. This is where it gets absolutely crazy, though.

Starting point is 00:04:18 Sfien contacted the insurer, at which point representatives claimed that they had sent a drone over his property to acquire the photo. They didn't even have the sense to deny this unbelievable invasion of privacy. They're like, yeah, we sent a drone over your house, which, by the way, like, are you even allowed to do? How big is this drone? How heavy is this drone? Did it have a flight plan? I have absolutely no idea how you can justify this.

Starting point is 00:04:50 This is an egregious invasion of personal property. What they did deny was his request to even see the photos at all or address any of the issues in his yard. They're just like, no, doesn't matter if you solve it, no more insurance. That's it, you're done. Forget about insurance. Many California insurers have apparently been trying to find any excuse to deny insurance on properties due to wildfire risk. I mean, okay, so hold on a second.

Starting point is 00:05:18 I don't even have to actually send the drone. I can just say, I put a drone over your property, deny your insurance, your ability to get insurance, refuse to show you any of the pictures and then... Yeah good enough. Yeah sorry dog. So hey you know you right there. We saw you doing something bad. Uh, I'm going to need, I'm going to need your pass. Yeah. You're out of LTX now.

Starting point is 00:05:50 I'm sorry. Yeah. No, no. Hold on a second. There's a, yeah. No, yeah. Well, what choice does he have? I saw, I saw him. I saw him doing something bad.

Starting point is 00:06:06 I sent a drone over his desk at the LAN party. Yeah. He's not allowed back. The world's quietest, smallest drone. Yeah. You can't see any evidence. It happened. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:06:17 It 100% happened. You know you're not getting this back now, right? Okay. No, no. Oh, he caught it. Nice. That was good. Very nice.

Starting point is 00:06:30 Here's the problem, though. Spine's not even in the wildfire zone where insurers are trying to cancel insurance. And he hasn't made a claim in the 15 years he's had the policy. Is anyone here from California? Anyone? Wow. I'm not sure if that was better or worse than I expected. It's fewer people than I expected.

Starting point is 00:06:53 Or rather, sorry, it's more people than I expected, but it's less noise. It's a lot quieter. Yeah. Yeah. The Californians aren't thrilled. That's fair. They're in California, and that's why they're also in therapy. But the plot actually thickens here.

Starting point is 00:07:20 When contacted by ABC7, a local news outlet, the CSAA, so this is the insurer, denied that there had been any drone at all, claiming that the photos might have been captured by fixed-wing airplane or satellite instead. The CSAA, likewise, refused to show any of these photos to ABC7. Okay, so hold on a second. I didn't see you do something bad with a drone. I fired up Google Maps. And in somewhere that you were at some point, you did something bad. So no insurance.

Starting point is 00:08:00 Sorry, get wrecked. I don't even know where to start with this. Like, on the one hand, there's the offensiveness of some random entity at some random time being allowed to take photos of your property. Because it's one thing if you're taking pictures of someone's behavior on public property. on public property. Like, for example, insurers are well known for their practice of hiring private investigators or even having internal teams that will go and see if, you know, Mr. Back Pain or Mrs. I Can't Walk Because of My Knee is actually, you know, playing softball or spending all their time at the gym, right? This is something that we know about. But there are actually, you know, laws that allow them to photograph you or videograph you in public space.

Starting point is 00:08:50 Whereas this is like, okay, yeah, technically, I guess you don't necessarily own the... Do you own the air above your property? I think it also drastically depends on where you live. Like, there's a note here saying that beyond restrictions on peeping toms, there's no other laws at that beyond restrictions on peeping toms, there's no other laws at all preventing this type of surveillance.

Starting point is 00:09:09 So it might here. Right. Because I'm pretty sure you can't do that here. I think that's actually, like, a no-no. But in California, maybe it's okay. Man, that's absolutely... That's wild. That's wild. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:09:21 And guess what? Things are about to get even more wild. In other news, the ESRB wants to age scan your face. I mean, hey, they've got it in China, and it's working out great for them. Fantastic. The Entertainment Software Rating Board has made a joint filing to the FTC alongside digital identity company Yoti, who I've definitely super heard of and I'm sure has the best security practices. Totally trust them.

Starting point is 00:09:56 And digital media company Super Awesome for permission to use a system called Privacy Protective Facial Age Estimation. What is that? Yeah. The system requires the users to take a photo of themselves, check whether or not the face in the frame is live, then sends the photo to a remote server where it is AI-analyzed to determine the approximate age of its subject. The ESRB says the system will delete images immediately

Starting point is 00:10:26 after use. Sure. Someone's going to backdoor that in like four years, find the entire archive. Sorry, where is it? They also stated that. They're going to have a whole website for it. It's going to be called backdoorphotos.com.

Starting point is 00:10:43 The Facebook. By the way, don't go to that URL. I wouldn't actually recommend going to that one either. Yeah, it's probably not a bad idea. They also stated that they would not use the system as an age gate to prevent children from purchasing and or downloading restrictively rated video games. Well, wait, what is the point of this?

Starting point is 00:11:03 I suddenly have no idea. Wait! Luke, wait, what is the point of this? I suddenly have no idea. Wait! Luke, no, I'm totally over it. I actually want this. Everyone's allowed to buy the game, but I don't have to listen to 12-year-olds in the lobby. So they can't play

Starting point is 00:11:18 it. It actually hard locks their always-on microphone. Yay! They're always on microphone. What is more likely is that the system might be used by publishers looking to remain compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, which requires verifiable parental consent before collecting or sharing the personal information of children under 13. parental consent before collecting or sharing the personal information of children under 13. Epic Games, Super Awesome's parent company, interesting, agreed to a $275 million penalty for violating COPPA this past December. I mean, the thing that's frustrating about this for me is, can I make a crazy suggestion? How about if what you're doing is so egregious that doing it to children results in a $275 million fine?

Starting point is 00:12:09 How about you just not do that to anybody? Yeah, anybody at all. That'd be great. I mean, it's a crazy idea. I know. I know. You know what? No.

Starting point is 00:12:17 No, don't applaud that. I'm sorry. That was a stupid thing to say. We can't do that. Yeah, we shouldn't do that. We should take as much information from people as possible. In fact, here at LTX, can we come back to the crowd cam? Crowd cam.

Starting point is 00:12:31 Okay. So who here gave their name and date of birth in order to buy a ticket? Okay. Okay. Who here was photographed at some point during the event? Okay, so this is good. This is good. Don't raise your hand.

Starting point is 00:12:48 You're lying. Okay. Now, I spoke with the team before the show here, and I asked them to make sure that they got a blood sample from everybody who came through. Who gave a blood sample? Okay, good. Very good. Very good. Very good.

Starting point is 00:13:00 Any semen samples? Okay. We're going to come back to the two-shot, please. Thank you. I don't know if we want that last one. There was no official collection of semen samples, so whoever you gave it to, weird kink. Might want to follow up in nine months. Yoti claims... Yodi claims that the AI has a 99.7% accuracy rate

Starting point is 00:13:33 for distinguishing the faces of minors, and it considers things like whether, say, an 18-year-old could have a 14-year-old kid. Okay. Yodi's system is also under trial in the UK to check whether customers are old enough to buy alcohol and requires anyone that the AI judges to look 25 or younger to show ID. Here's my problem right now.

Starting point is 00:14:03 I don't have a better solution. Here's my problem right now. I don't have a better solution. We've talked extensively on the WAN show about these, like, whether it's governmental or whether it's a third party, these identity collection entities basically just turning into gigantic honeypots. Anything that's going to hold this information is going to be a target. And so if the solution is, hey, well, instead of holding information, why don't we just use an AI to determine what we need to know and then immediately delete the data? It's actually a pretty sound idea. But why do they even need to collect it in the first place? Well, that's the thing, right? Well, you can't analyze a picture without having it at some point.

Starting point is 00:14:45 Yeah, but who cares? The problem is that I just don't... Okay, well, that's a separate conversation. Yeah. Right? But, okay, so let's take all the different various things that you might want to verify age for online. You know, whether it's viewing adult content. And adult content doesn't necessarily mean, you know, Twitter-rated content.

Starting point is 00:15:13 A lot of which can be found on x.com, by the way. You don't have to look that hard. And I'm not even necessarily talking about that. I could be talking about something as simple as an R-rated movie, right? Like, it's not like there isn't a value to something like this. You know, say, for example, if, you know... I mean, certain news stories might be age-gated if they're showing a certain level of content in that story. Yeah, sure, like something graphic, I think that's a pretty good example. Absolutely. You know, even something as simple as, like, whatever Google calls the Play Store now, whatever, the movies.

Starting point is 00:15:42 I don't know, you can rent movies on YouTube, sure, fine. If they could age-gate an R-rated movie or something like that, I don't necessarily see that as an entirely terrible thing. It's just that we've been betrayed over and over and over and over again

Starting point is 00:16:00 when it comes to the collection of this data to the point where you were just laughing about it. You're like, in four years, it's going to turn out they kept all of them. And they're going to make some excuse, right? They're going to say, well, we had to have it so that we could train the AI better. DAN GALPIN- We didn't realize that caching server

Starting point is 00:16:16 wasn't getting garbage collection. DAN GALPIN- We didn't realize it was just a completely unprotected FTP with no password on it. DAN GALPIN- Oh, we delete it immediately, except the server that it goes to is completely unprotected. So people just scrape it as it comes in. Like, I don't know. Like, there's issues. Do you have hobbies you haven't told me about?

Starting point is 00:16:35 Here's a question for you. You know too much about this. It's just too easy, man. As someone who has kids, would you be happy to make it so that they're, you know, less likely to run into things that you don't want them to run into in a trade for their face being scanned every single time they attempt to do so? Because I feel like that's not worth it. I understand parental controls on like everything are basically garbage and there's really, really easy ways to get

Starting point is 00:17:03 around it. Yeah. But I feel like there really, really easy ways to get around it. But I feel like there's probably pretty easy ways to get around this, too. This is a really tough conversation. I almost feel like I wish we were... It's a funny thing, right? It's not like the WAN show's any different. All you guys would have been watching it anyway. You're just here in person. But I almost feel like this is a really personal...

Starting point is 00:17:19 We're exposed. Yeah, it's a personal question. Stop looking. I'd be fine answering it with just you there. And I guess Dan is also there usually. Oh, he's so personal question. Stop looking. I'd be fine answering it with just, you know, you there. And I guess Dan is also there usually. Oh, he's so cute. Look at him. You know, I don't really know the right answer to that because, you know, compared to, okay, wow, we're going to get real here. When I was a young lad of, you know, 13, 14. It was pretty easy to find inappropriate content

Starting point is 00:17:48 on the internet. You know, for- And my dad's here, I got grounded for a month. For that age. Have you told the story of why? I can. It's cause he printed it. Okay, okay.

Starting point is 00:18:14 Tell me this. Was it at least 16-bit, or was it 256 color? It was okay, It was okay. I'm a little older than him. We only had 256 color and we considered ourselves lucky. The situation was back then you don't have laptops, you don't have smartphones. So if you wanted the content in your room... So the point is...

Starting point is 00:18:43 The point is it was relatively hard to get your hands on stuff. And it was relatively benign compared to what just pops up in my feed on x.com when I am just looking at what's trending and scrolling down. And you just see people like... Which, for the uninformed, is Twitter. Jumping onto these, yeah, jumping onto these trending hashtags or whatever the case may be, right? And so it's something that, you know, Yvonne and I have talked about a fair bit.

Starting point is 00:19:12 It's like, realistically, we cannot stop our kids from getting access to pretty much whatever they want. And, you know, honestly speaking, I feel like pornography is a pretty low-hanging fruit, right? Like, it's an easy target. Oh, think of the children. What about the pornography? And there's obviously some very valid conversations to be had there about it, but there's really, really disturbing stuff on the internet.

Starting point is 00:19:39 It's not just about that. Especially right now, actually, with the war in Ukraine, this is like the most documented war I've ever seen. And you can find live footage of stuff that could be very disturbing to people. Very traumatic. Not protected by anything. And this solution is not going to apply

Starting point is 00:19:59 to every single website, to every single service, to every single... I'm connecting to this through my Nintendo DS type of way that you could access things. You're just going to be collecting people's faces, but there will be other ways to get things. The short version of it is,

Starting point is 00:20:15 I hope that if my kids ever watch this WAN show, or this segment of the WAN show, I hope that we... Don't use the printer. I got Yvonne a sick printer. That's not why.

Starting point is 00:20:39 You don't know. We have a really nice printer. Anyway, you know, I hope that they would feel like we followed through on what we've talked about, which is we've resolved to talk to them about things, understand that we're never going to be able to rely on parental controls, try to frame things in the appropriate context, help them make good decisions about the content that they are consuming online.

Starting point is 00:21:09 And realistically understand that at the end of the day, children are just little tiny adults. Right? Like they are, it's amazing how fast they change. Right? You know, anyone with kids? How mind-blowing is it? Right? Kids, how mind-blowing is it, right? They go from hiding behind you when a stranger comes into the room to talking back to the stranger, and you're like...

Starting point is 00:21:33 It happens so fast. So, no. No, I don't want people collecting pictures. Is it public how old your son is? Ish. Ish, okay. So last time we were over, you were comparing heights,

Starting point is 00:21:51 and he was going to bed, and you said that he had to go to bed because he was whatever age, and then you were like, wait, come back, we're going to collect heights, and when he comes around the corner, he's like, I'm, and then says his age, instead of introducing himself as his name, because you would refer to him as his age.

Starting point is 00:22:08 And just, I can't do it right now because I can't say the age and I'm going to keep it private. But the comedic delivery was like, just, just tell the story properly. It's fine. I can say it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so he was referring to him as 11 and he goes around this wall and then comes back around the wall, like arms plastered to his side, kind of waddling a little bit. He's like, I'm 11. Just the comedic timing of it and everything was genuinely very, very funny. And it wasn't funny like just because LOL little kid.

Starting point is 00:22:37 It was funny because of the timing and how he did it and stuff. He's got the snark. Yeah. Little Linus running around. Which is kind of terrifying. Yeah. My answer is no. No, I don't want them participating in any of this. Especially because, like

Starting point is 00:22:57 you said, it's all going to be for nothing. There's going to be maybe, you know, Steam supports it, and maybe Epic Games Store supports it, but Battlestate Games' stupid launcher. No shot. There's no way they're going to support it, right? I mean, I'm not even sure how long, like,

Starting point is 00:23:17 Activision Blizzard's own launcher, Battle.net, I'm not even sure how long that is for this world now that their games are on Steam now. It kind of feels like the first step toward throwing in the towel, right? So to be clear, I am expecting them to carry that on for a very long time. That 30% take is pretty brutal. But I'm looking at it going, for what? If I have to participate in this system, hey, at least maybe it could be something that actually is universally adopted

Starting point is 00:23:43 and it has some kind of meaningful function. Yeah, be careful with that too because another topic that didn't actually really make it into the, or it did, the Google DRM browser stuff. Okay, we will get to that later, but what we haven't talked about that is directly related to this topic is, by and large, I think the ESRB's function is one that I don't object to really meaningfully. The goal, at least? Yeah, with the goal of keeping really kind of inappropriate content out of the hands of people who are maybe not at a mentally developed stage where they fully understand it and are ready to process it. You know what, to be clear, I think that 99% of even kids can very well understand the difference between animated video game violence and real world violence, but it only takes a small handful. Like that's something that I've learned over and over and over and over and over again is that if only 0.1% of people act in a certain way,

Starting point is 00:24:50 that's like, okay, so hold on a second, what are we up to, like eight billion now? So 10% is 800 million and 1% is 80 million and 0.1% is eight million people could do something, right? And obviously, you can't turn the whole world into a rubber padded room, right? That's not realistic. But when I look at this technology, I go, even though largely I kind of agree with the goal of the ESRB, every time we see this stuff, I look at AI and I go, oh, man.

Starting point is 00:25:27 So now you're going to have an authoritarian regime that's using this to ensure that, you know, and not tell you, you know, oh, hey, you can't buy that game. But they're going to be monitoring what games you're playing. And they're going to be filing that away with your social credit score or whatever the case may be. And I just thought of this now But they might delete the picture, but they might not delete the analytics from the picture So they could scan things like eye color skin color. Do you have a beard? Do you not have a beard like how much do you wait? You can probably check certain fat percentages from people's faces to a certain degree different things like this

Starting point is 00:26:02 They can harvest a lot of information about you from a photo of your face. I didn't say anything about that. It's funny because there's a lot of, there's a big societal push toward less profiling and yet the tools that we're building, just more and more profiling, are super charging our ability to profile people just based on their appearance, based on their preferences. You know, I remember having a really funny conversation. It might have been at the first LTX, actually, which is great, like six years ago now.

Starting point is 00:26:32 Right? Anyway, I remember having a conversation where I ran into one of our few female viewers. And I was like, oh, hey, this is unusual. Do you want to take a picture for your boyfriend? Because that's usually it. You can't do that, though. No, but that's usually...

Starting point is 00:26:53 Yeah, but you can't do that, though, because it's not always. Luke, this is on topic. Okay. And the point is, we ended up getting into a bit of a conversation where she goes, yeah, that's like my whole life, is because I'm into tech. And that's why you can't do that. I know, I'm coming to this, Luke.

Starting point is 00:27:08 Okay, okay. Because I'm into tech, and because I'm into cars, and because I'm into engineering. You know, every ad service where I go and I poke into it, they just, they assume I'm a man. And they profile me like this, and I was like, deeply sorry. Clearly part of the problem.

Starting point is 00:27:36 But it was such a wake-up call as to why we actually can't do this. I mean, the problem is that in that case, the system kind of worked. Based on all the categories of ads and products or whatever that they had for men and serving them to her, she was like, yeah, I actually get very relevant ads. Yeah. But I still object to it. Which is fair.

Starting point is 00:27:58 All right, Dan, you don't have your thing on your thing, so you might just have to kind of jump in when we're supposed to do a thing. I think we're supposed to introduce the concept of merch messages and do a couple merch messages? Yeah, sure, if you want. Yeah, whatever. What do you mean, sure, if I want? No, it's producer Dan, not just go with the flow, Dan. You're supposed

Starting point is 00:28:16 to be helping us here. Okay, sure. All right. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, merch messages are the way to interact with the show. We don't do super chats. We don't do super chats. We don't do Twitch bits. We feel like, hey, if you're going to throw money at the screen, you might as well throw money at the screen in a way that

Starting point is 00:28:31 gets you some fine, high quality merchandise from ltdstore.com in a few days or a few weeks. It depends on the customs of your country. I've heard all kinds of horror stories about people needing to bribe their customs officials in order to get...

Starting point is 00:28:48 I cannot control that. I'm deeply sorry, but there's nothing I can do about it. So merch messages are sent by going to lttstore.com and in the cart, there's a field. Whenever we're live, you can go ahead and send a little message. It'll pop up on the bottom of the show. Like this.

Starting point is 00:29:05 Yeah, like that. Or Producer Dan will type a little reply to you, or he will curate it for me and Luke to chat about. So, Dan, you got any merch messages for us? I do, actually. We have a couple here. First up is from Sam. Hi, Linus. Love the show, as always. One request, make the audience crack their fingers.

Starting point is 00:29:25 Why on earth would you read that? Are you trying to upset everybody? Yes. I don't think they're gonna be able to hear it. I mean, okay, I'll tell you what. Three, two, one, go for it. Yes. Whoa. Three, two, one, go for it. Yes.

Starting point is 00:29:50 Okay, moving on. Next up is from Calvin. This one's less gross. Hi, Linus. In Chicago, I saw a billboard that was LTT tech support. Have you ever had difficulty securing a trademark or web domain? How did it go? It's actually LLT tech support. They apparently feared our fierce legal team too much to call it LTT tech support. But yes, absolutely. We've run into everything. Part of my problem is I talk too much.

Starting point is 00:30:28 too much. We ended up having to, and I shouldn't even say that we did this because I'm going to exacerbate the problem, but we ended up paying a domain squatter to get creatorwarehouse.com because we announced the name of our company, Creator Warehouse, the sub company that works on all of our merch, before actually securing the domain and then someone went and grabbed it. And you know what? I have to give props to our community. Most of the time that happens,

Starting point is 00:30:54 it happens a lot because I talk a lot. Most of the time that happens, people are like, hey, I've actually been holding onto this for you. I would take a token, a couple bucks to cover the amount that I've spent holding on to this domain for you. I figured you guys would come knocking eventually. Most of the time it's like that. But yeah, we ended up paying a domain or come up with a company name or whatever else, there's the ones where they're not available.

Starting point is 00:31:39 And that can be extremely challenging. Man, trying to come up with something that isn't already taken at this point is really hard. I mean, we've been told countless times, flowplane.com, that's a stupid name. Fine. What's a better one? You find a 10character.com that's available that uses

Starting point is 00:31:57 actual real dictionary words. I'll wait. It was really hard for us too. Unfortunately, the whole story of how we got it is, like, sort of gone forever. Really? Did you know that? No. Remember when you, like, closed the Google services for that domain?

Starting point is 00:32:14 Oh, yeah. The club domain? Oh. The doc that had the entire history of how I did all of that, and you, like, showing up and knocking at the person's door, and me diving through lineage pages to figure out who was related to who in the

Starting point is 00:32:30 Freemason thing and all this kind of stuff. That actually all happened and it's gone. And then us agreeing to host like the son of the person who owned it at LTX in exchange for them even agreeing to sell it to us. Yeah. I mean,

Starting point is 00:32:45 we remember bits and pieces, but yeah, I don't remember the exact story. I had it documented. It's gone. Yeah. It's probably okay. Yeah. We used to have a worse name. It was floatplaneclub.com. Yeah. That was bad. Could have been worse. At the time, there was a bunch of different things that were club. There's Dollar Shave Club and all these other clubs. I can't think of any others. Can you? Not anymore. Yeah. Probably for a good reason.

Starting point is 00:33:12 Oh, wasn't there like a Neopets-ish type of club thing? Penguin. Yeah, Club Penguin. There was Club Penguin. I think Club Penguin might have been a little bit before. Anywho. All right, Dan, want to hit us with one or two more? Yeah, sure. Let's do another one here.

Starting point is 00:33:29 Let's see. LTX23, let's go. Thanks for making the Digital Path content. For those of us that cannot make it in person, did any of you grow up watching Computer Chronicles on PBS? Fun to revisit the history of PCs. Isn't PBS American? Computer Chronicles on PBS. Fun to revisit the history of PCs. Isn't PBS American? Computer Chronicles?

Starting point is 00:33:48 Anyone? Computer Chronicles? Who's seen it? Okay, that was pretty weak. Here, let's do Paw Patrol. Okay, well, given how crap Paw Patrol is, I'm going to have to assume Computer Chronicles was... Wow, from 1983 to 2002, they did 428 episodes.

Starting point is 00:34:13 Yeah, sorry, no, I have never heard of Computer Chronicles, but this looks delightfully 1980s. Unfortunately, I have no way of showing this to you other than, I don't know, this? I knew this would happen. Wow. Unfortunately, I have no way of showing this to you other than, I don't know, this? I knew this would happen. Wow. New generation laptops from the Computer Chronicles. We had a discussion before the show about how he wasn't able to share his screen, therefore there would be no issues of leaks.

Starting point is 00:34:38 And he found a way. I didn't think he'd just turn his computer around. He could just leak everything anyway. Professional. He'd have to squint. Love Love it. Alright, Dan, hit me with one more. Sure, let's see here. We got one more. Hi, LTX. Question for Linus.

Starting point is 00:34:52 What happened to your Lambo? Did you ever do anything fun with it before getting rid of it? Loving the show, and we'll try to be at LTX next year. Okay, for those of you who don't know the story of my old Lambo, which was a 2003 Honda Civic that ended up with a pink paint job, then ended up with green racing stripes,

Starting point is 00:35:10 courtesy of Nikki V and the Channel Super Fun team, and then ended up looking like absolute garbage, courtesy of the attendees of LTX 2018. Yeah. That was not the goal. Yeah, I didn't expect people to just dump bottles of glitter glue inside the car. But they definitely did do it. I actually did drive it for months afterward.

Starting point is 00:35:33 Just, I don't know, it's still red. I constantly have little bits of glitter on them. And I'm not kidding. It was at, like, for months. It was rough. The reason that ended up at LTX 2018 was because I showed up the night before the event was supposed to open, having not really seen anything, and started just kind of freaking out about how light on content it was. With that said, I don't want to throw the team under the bus.

Starting point is 00:36:03 They had very few resources. They had very few resources. They had very little time. In fact, it is largely the same team that is still planning LTX. So they are... Can we just get a round of applause for... That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. Obviously, these guys are capable of putting on a proper expo.

Starting point is 00:36:37 We just needed a bit more experience, a little bit more resources. Hey, look, it's Colton. Ignored. He and his wife, Sterf, have... That's her real name, by the way. He and his wife, Sterf, have worked tirelessly. Chase, I just want to give a massive shout-out again to the team. This is absolutely incredible.

Starting point is 00:37:01 Anyway, back to LTX 2018. I show up the night before and I'm like, oh my goodness, one of our main attractions is Ivan's collection of old GPUs, which is basically just some outdated graphics cards on a table. On a table. Wow, they're here and not on the internet.

Starting point is 00:37:22 We are actually screwed for tomorrow. People are going to ask for their money back. So I came up with the idea just to have some kind of interactive activation. Well, first, I kind of altered some of the booths and kind of went around with the team. It wasn't just me. We all brainstormed together to try to level things up a little bit. And I was like, okay, what if someone just hits the dollar store tomorrow morning and will let people interact with the famous Lambo? They can, like, help decorate it.

Starting point is 00:37:48 They could, you know, write their names or where they came from. They went a little off the rails with that, covering it in glitter, splashing it with paint. Not a square centimeter of it was left untouched, inside or out. They even covered the windshield. I had to hang around for, like, an hour after the show to scrape off my windshield so I could drive home. So anyway, long story short, LTEX is way better now, which is good. And that car was pretty unpleasant to drive. Like the seat upholstery was crusty. It was actually really bad. Yeah, like it would kind of poke into you through your shirt.

Starting point is 00:38:25 So what ultimately ended up happening to it, we had wanted to do something cool. We wanted to do like enter it in a demolition derby or something like that on Channel Super Fun. Or blow it up with a tank or do something like that. But unfortunately the costs associated and the red tape associated with getting any of that done just made it unrealistic. You know, it turns out to participate in a demolition derby, you are actually, for liability reasons, no matter what waiver you sign, not allowed to say, yeah, no, it's cool. I'm not going to reinforce it or put a roll cage in it at all. I'm just going to go for it. I'm going to pilot it with my Logitech 710 controller and whatever happens, happens.

Starting point is 00:39:12 They will not let you do that. Yeah, that would have been really implosive. Yeah, so we ended up just taking it to like a recycler, and they presumably recycled it or took parts out of it that were needed for other 2003 Honda Civics, and hopefully its pieces are living a better life somewhere. All right, Dan, one more. Man, that was all just one merch message. What's the most difficult part of LTX to plan?

Starting point is 00:39:48 I have no idea. All of it? Colton and Steph? You know what? Actually, I have a pretty good guess. I'm going to see if I get it right. Okay, I'm going to write this down. Someone who plans LTX, get up here, please, quickly.

Starting point is 00:40:02 Colton to the stage. Colton Potter, everybody. What's the question? Can you repeat the question? The question is, what's the most difficult part of LTX to plan? And Luke, I've written down my answer, and I'm not going to touch it. I'm not going to touch it. Apparently from today, it's line management and signage.

Starting point is 00:40:26 But. Agree? What did you write down? What? What did you write? So you wrote down something? Well, I didn't want to throw any of my fellow creators under the bus. But I think coordinating with online creators is just about the most difficult part of doing pretty much anything.

Starting point is 00:40:43 Myself included. Yeah. Everybody's just got a busy schedule. It's hard to get a hold of people sometimes. It's just about the most difficult part of doing pretty much anything, myself included. Yeah, everybody's just got a busy schedule. It's hard to get a hold of people sometimes. It's really good, though. Shout out to all the creators that are here. Yeah, thank you so much for being here. You're all awesome. Thank you. Alright,

Starting point is 00:41:00 why don't we jump into our next topic? Luke, you want to pick one or should I pick one? Should we go dystopian or should we do something that's good news? I feel like we need something good. It's literally all the time. There's nothing, Luke. How about the encrypted radios for vital infrastructure that have intentional back doors?

Starting point is 00:41:18 How about Tesla misrepresenting their battery range on purpose? Okay. Can we take, mildly bad? Sure, yeah. Which one is that? Online casinos targeting children, then. Yeah, sure, why not? CSGO streamer, I don't know how to say this, Hun Gaw Gini, that,

Starting point is 00:41:41 did an expose where he requested sponsorships from CSGO skin bedding sites and received offers worth up to 120,000 euros per month. Are you kidding me? Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Slow down for a second. Paungaungangni. Who has heard of Paungaungangni? Anyone? I'm probably butchering it. H-O-U-N-G. We're being very mean. I'm sure you're doing great.

Starting point is 00:42:11 Let's see. You can't look on YouTube. Oh, they're doing great. Come on. Yeah. Okay, 700,000 subscribers. Okay, maybe I just need to put this in context. For us, at 14 million subscribers or whatever we're up to now, a sponsorship deal of 120,000 euros a month would be huge.

Starting point is 00:42:34 Massive. That would make that sponsor, over the span of a year, one of our largest sponsors, if not our largest sponsor by dollars. if not our largest sponsor by dollars. Like, that is enormous, especially if we factor out, by the way, you know, shout out ASUS ROG for sponsoring LTX this year. Okay. Okay. But that's separate.

Starting point is 00:43:05 Hangang Ganyi, sorry, is not running a live convention or an expo. This is purely for online content. So if we were to take someone sponsoring just our content at that kind of a rate, they would be one of, if not our biggest sponsor at our size. That is wild. Okay, and can I just say shout out because this is an amazing, amazing expose. Okay, so... A really good way to do it.

Starting point is 00:43:25 So what happens? So after he gets those offers, he then requests that they send him information about their licenses and operating practices. He concluded that most, if not all, of these sites were not properly licensed as online casinos. And he also demonstrated how he could create a new Steam account and use it to gamble skins on an external site without ever having to verify his age. And while I would probably assume this was a joke as well, to be clear, he named the account, I'm 14, by the way. Kind of rough. He also released a survey asking players about their CSGO gambling habits,

Starting point is 00:44:04 collecting over 9,000 responses. Over 70% reported that they had started gambling with skins prior to the age of 18. At least one was only 12. Many met the definition for problem gambling, where their addiction is damaging to them, their family, and their day-to-day life. family and their day-to-day life. The majority, around three-fourths of top CSGO streamers on Twitch, are taking sponsorships from at least one of these various gambling websites. CSGO is not the only game where miners get addicted to gambling. Journalist Cody Luongo, who covers eSports and betting, has reported that there are a

Starting point is 00:44:40 handful of black market casino sites targeting miners aged 16 and younger through Roblox, which we've actually covered on the show before. Can we just talk about how, okay, this is kind of a funny one for me. Because growing up as a kid, it was always kind of baffling to me that it was illegal to play poker in some places. Here in North America, like, you actually, technically, were not allowed to get together with your friends and have a poker night and bet real money. And, like, you know, if one of your buddies was a cop, it was like, oh, better not invite them. Like, that was always bizarre to me. I don't, I'm so tight-fisted that the idea of betting anything other than what I could give away without caring at all whatsoever is sort of foreign to me. So the idea of developing a gambling problem where I was losing significant amounts of my money or going into debt was something that I didn't really understand at the time. I was very young, right?

Starting point is 00:45:43 But can I just ask how the pendulum, because I still don't think that's a big deal. Like if everyone's got, if you've got like a $10 buy-in or whatever and you want to get together, eat some chips and dip and play card games, what business is it of anyone else's from my personal perspective?

Starting point is 00:46:01 I'm sure this is going to blow up on Reddit or whatever. It spins out of control quickly. I don't think it's that big of a deal as long as everybody has a bit of self-restraint, right? How did we go from that to half of the commercials during a sports ball game being for just betting on every single aspect of it? How many times is the quarterback going to pick his ass? Like it wouldn't surprise me if you could bet on that stuff. Yeah. I don't know how you'd measure it.

Starting point is 00:46:31 It's so high. They're constantly in there. I mean, they got those tight pants. I don't blame them. Yeah. Have you ever bet on anything like that? Have I ever? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:45 Have you played in a casino, stuff like that? Have I ever? Yeah. Have you played in a casino? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So after over 10 years of traveling to Vegas every year for conventions, Yvonne and I finally went together once for a CES and we bought like, I think, a hundred

Starting point is 00:47:02 bucks in chips or something like that and we lost it in about 10 minutes at a blackjack table and we're like well bucket list complete. That was lame. I no longer feel the need to ever do that again. One time when I was like 16 I was traveling back from Arizona and I was by myself in the Las Vegas airport. And they have those slot machines all throughout the thing. And I had a little bit of money, not that much. So I took like 25 cents, I put it into a slot machine, immediately lost it. And was like, yeah, that's stupid.

Starting point is 00:47:33 And went and bought like a gaming magazine or something. I was like, this was a much better investment. To be clear, one of the things, one of the aspects of gambling that I do understand why people get into is betting on games. Betting on professional sports matches. It makes you more invested when you're watching, makes it more tense, a little bit more interesting. I still would never do it. I used to love watching hockey. But before, I forget if it was the last one or the one before, there was some kind of tussle between the millionaires and the billionaires.

Starting point is 00:48:07 And I was just like, this is very commercial. Happens in hockey a lot. Yeah, it seems to happen a lot. And to be clear, I'm not blaming the players. If the ticket sales and the merch sales are coming in, they should get their piece. Absolutely. I'm just saying that it really made me, instead of just sitting and watching hockey,

Starting point is 00:48:27 it made me reflect on the business of what I was watching and how much of it is just a product. And it gave me time to sort of think about the way that the athletes, even though we put them on these pedestals and we look up to them, and as kids, they're our heroes.

Starting point is 00:48:42 We have posters of them on our walls. The way that they're actually just kind of treated like livestock, you know, like, no, but really, you know, what they're prone to, like, leg issues. So I just take them out behind the barn and see you later, buddy. Right. Like, I don't know. I just I started to find a lot of it really kind of uncomfortable for me. But what I will say is that when I was following the sport very, very actively, it wasn't so much that I cared about the Vancouver team winning, because realistically, there was nobody on the roster that was from Vancouver or probably even wanted to be here.

Starting point is 00:49:20 And they weren't going to win anyways. Well, no, no, this was when they were good. Oh, okay. Yeah, so it's not like I'm rooting for my Vancouver team, but, you know, you get to know the characters. You develop these, like, parasocial relationships. I'm sure you guys can't relate. Got them.

Starting point is 00:49:36 You feel like you know them. You want to root for them, right? You want them to succeed. You want them to, you know, lift up the cup or whatever it is, right? And so what I kind of realized, you know, looking back at how invested I was, like I had stopped biting my nails for years until I started watching hockey religiously again. And I realized all of my nails were bitten down to nubbins because they'd be behind by one in the third period or whatever.

Starting point is 00:50:01 behind by one in the third period or whatever. Yeah, and so I can see how people could get kind of hooked on the thrill of having not just their hometown team where they know all the personalities or they love the logo. People will follow sports teams

Starting point is 00:50:18 for any number of different reasons or because they are in the city where they can go and watch them live or whatever the case may be. Their primary colors really go with my skin color. But people being able to amp that up and, you know, have the thrill of winning real money and, you know, I can see how you can... Having an actual stake in the game. Exactly. I can see how that could be extremely addictive. We're really making an advertisement for sports gambling. Well, but what I'm saying is I do find it upsetting

Starting point is 00:50:47 that we have gotten to the point where it's gotten very... I feel like mobile gaming started this, man. It's gotten very predatory. Like, they're going after the whales hard. Hey, look., hi whale team. We try to provide value for the whales. They got a computer, they got the hotel and all that good stuff. There's value, there's value in that ticket. We're not just taking your money and giving you back like some pixels right or a chance to have something.

Starting point is 00:51:27 I guess our, I don't know, our, oh, wow, seriously? We didn't even get to the worst part, Luke. These Roblox or Robux casinos can, you can, oh, wow, you can cash them out for real currency, meaning that millions of dollars are being gambled in these online casinos, and Blocksflip, one of the largest of these sites, is paying teenage Roblox influencers

Starting point is 00:51:54 for promotions. Oh, I guarantee you it's for money laundering as well. They're often going, like, promise you. Creators as young as 14 have claimed to have received emails from Blocksflip offering sponsorships, including kickbacks for the wagers that are placed by referred players. Oh good, now it's a pyramid scheme too!

Starting point is 00:52:15 Yay! Roblox has stated that it will be taking actions on these sites, but didn't exactly specify how. Hasn't Roblox said that kind of thing before? I'm pretty sure. I mean, as long as we just count on these platforms to self-police, I just don't think we're ever going to see any kind of meaningful change because they benefit from it. Even if they aren't taking a little bit off the top of every transaction,

Starting point is 00:52:42 they benefit from the popularity of the game. Well, it's Robux transactions, so their money has to be involved. Even if they weren't, though, they still benefit from people just being invested in this platform. Can we please find something that's good news? What about sponsors? Oh, here's something good. We have a motherboard house of cards announcement.

Starting point is 00:53:06 Congrats to Caleb M. from Idaho. His house of cards had an outstanding length of 185 centimeters. You have won an ROG Strix motherboard. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how you claim your prize. Give me the motherboard. Where's Sean? Is it here? Okay, cool. We'll deal with that in a second. Why don't we talk... You know what? Why don't we talk about Twitter rebranding as X? People in Floatplane Chat are saying that we should have floatplane gambling

Starting point is 00:53:32 where you can gamble on what's going to happen in WAN show. Wait. This is actually a really good idea. Okay. Float bucks. We basically, we stack. Oh, we rig it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:53:51 Yeah. Yeah, of course. We stack the deck. Money. Okay. So we've been, I wish you guys weren't all hearing this. We've actually been doing this for years. Okay.

Starting point is 00:54:02 Every time the WAN show is late, we're conditioning you guys to think the WAN show is always late. Then, we introduce the ability to bet on whether the WAN show is on time or late. We bet on the WAN show being on time and then we lose all of our money anyway because we couldn't start the WAN show on time to save our lives.

Starting point is 00:54:19 It still happened late. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did we get the motherboard? He's furiously typing, which I think means no. Twitter has officially begun rebranding itself as X. Hilarious. The letter X in the new logo is the monotype Special Alphabets 4 font, which also looks similar to a standard character added to Unicode in 2001. Sure does. The second I saw the logo, I was like, wait, I've seen this before.

Starting point is 00:54:54 Okay, I'm just going to keep talking through the discussion question, but like, the new branding has been criticized for being awkward to integrate into normal speech. Okay. It's also been criticized for its similarity to those of pornographic websites. On Monday, a worker on a cherry picker began dismantling the sign on X's San Francisco

Starting point is 00:55:16 headquarters. However, it appears they failed to inform the building's owner of the change, who called the police. This left the sign simply reading, er... Highly applicable. owner of the change, who called the police. This left the sign simply reading... Er... Highly applicable. Initially, X was unable to use the at X handle

Starting point is 00:55:34 because it had been in use by photographer Gene X Huang since 2007. And then as of Thursday, they just took the handle, offering Huang some merch and the ability to meet with their management team once as compensation. Hwang declined any meeting, feeling that it would be awkward. I feel like this has kind of been beaten to death over the past week, but do you have any thoughts that you feel are kind of unique? Is there anything? Oh, no, I just think it's hilarious. I don't care at all.

Starting point is 00:56:12 I just think it's really funny. They took literally, literally one of probably, I don't know, top ten, top five with how much it's talked about in the news and stuff, most recognizable brands, and just yeeted it. For like no reason at all. He's talked about how he wants to make x.com a thing, he wants to have the X app, he wants to do this AI stuff. Why wasn't it just something else?

Starting point is 00:56:38 Why was it the same platform? You bought effectively a name, they were super negative. The tech wasn't all that special. You bought a name and then got rid of the name, which is the funniest possible thing he could have done, in my opinion. I think this is hilarious. When I first saw it, I thought it was a joke. I thought it was like an Onion article. And then my actual app actually updated, and I was like, no way! This is real! And now I just use it even less, which is great. Honestly, over the last few weeks, the relatively few amount of people that I need to use Twitter for to interact with through DMs, kind of just going off of Twitter. So the amount that I need

Starting point is 00:57:18 to use it just keeps going down. Can we talk about the intention of turning it into an everything app? That's worked many times in the past. Yeah, so, I mean, it's sort of not the stupidest vision ever. You know, people using it for payments, using it for communicating with each other. And while I've said that sarcastically, is WeChat not effectively that in China? Yeah, pretty much. It's sort of an everything app, China? Yeah, pretty much. It's sort of an everything app, right?

Starting point is 00:57:46 Yeah, pretty much. It's kind of like an everything app. You use it to communicate with people. You use it to get news. You use it to pay for groceries. You use it to make sure that Big Brother can keep track of your social credit score. All that good stuff. It's everything.

Starting point is 00:58:02 Cool. But the problem with this is that X isn't even a good name for that. It feels like a placeholder because it objectively is a placeholder. I don't know. Project X. We'll come up with a name for it later. Nobody ever actually launches Project X. Except Microsoft, who I think we can all agree that other than Elon Musk, is the one entity worse at naming anything.

Starting point is 00:58:36 Really? Especially in relation to Xbox. Xbox 360. That was okay. One. That was bad. Series. That was okay. One. That was bad. Series. That was worse.

Starting point is 00:58:47 It went downhill fast. I thought 360 was okay. I just thought the progression would also make sense. They started with X and then they actually managed to get worse. So where is Twitter headed from here? I also think X as like a thing that people say used to kind of be a thing. X factor, X marks the spot. It was actually a thing that people used,

Starting point is 00:59:12 and now it's like, not? And now we have to use it again, but for the worst reason. Yeah. I mean, is this really as simple as he's just still butthurt over the whole, you know, PayPal originally being x.com and then it like became PayPal and then he ended up like ousted or whatever it was. Like I know there's some bad blood between him and PayPal and then he like for sentimental reasons bought x.com from them like ages, ages later. Like is this really going all the way back to when my former employer, Netlink Computer Incorporated, changed their website name from PC97.com in 1999 to NCIX.com, Netlink Computer Incorporated X.

Starting point is 01:00:00 Because X is cool. Yeah. That's kind of gone now. It's been gone for 15, 20 X is cool. Yeah. Like, that's kind of gone now. It's been gone for 15, 20 years, Luke. Yeah, yeah. About when he got the domain in the first place. Yeah, this is the... So we're really just going back 20 years,

Starting point is 01:00:15 and I'm supposed to trust this platform to find out what's hip and cool. Oh, I don't trust it for anything, which is why I just think it's funny. I don't know. Okay, no. No. No. No.

Starting point is 01:00:30 The audience said LTX. Because if it was LTE, that would have been very confusing. Linus Tech Expo spelled correctly would have caused all kinds of problems. There's also precedent set from PAX, Penny Arcade Expo spelled correctly would have caused all kinds of problems. There's also precedent set from PAX, Penny Arcade Expo, X being Expo.

Starting point is 01:00:50 We were followers. Yeah. We weren't trying to, like, boldly name things X. Dot com. And we have a history of naming things pretty stupid things, too. Channel super fun. Channel super fun. It was super fun and it was

Starting point is 01:01:05 a channel, okay? Techquickie is just a sex joke. So it's fast as possible which is on Techquickie, I guess. Yeah. Go ahead. What does it abbreviate to? Printers.

Starting point is 01:01:24 Fast as possible? No, it doesn't. It's a joke. Oh, I get it. We got there. Yeah. Good joke. Just like this joke segue to our sponsor.

Starting point is 01:01:37 Do you want to give away the motherboard first? Oh, yeah. I want to give away the motherboard first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently somebody's won this and Asus is. Yeah, yeah. So Caleb M. from Idaho, are you here? I think he is. Do you want to come away the motherboard first. Apparently somebody's won this, and Asus is... Yeah, yeah. So, Caleb M. from Idaho, are you here? I think he is.

Starting point is 01:01:47 Do you want to come up on stage? Okay, well, just head up here and queue up by Dan at your leisure, and let's get to our sponsor spots. John! Hit me, Dan. John? What, do we want a sponsor spot? Yeah, I want a sponsor spot.

Starting point is 01:01:59 Technically, it has to be them, right? Don't you have the sponsor spots? Oh, is it just, it's not Dennis Reeds? No, no, no, it's special. They come up there. Oh, it's special. Oh. Thanks to Hacked for sponsoring this episode. If you like The Wan Show, you should probably check out Hacked. Hacked is a tech show about cybersecurity, internet grifters, and people using technology to do something truly unexpected. Hacked was revived after their TV deal fell through due to the collapse of a

Starting point is 01:02:25 certain cable TV network. I'm not naming names here. On each episode of Hacked, host Jordan Blumen and Scott Francis Winder dig into news stories or questions like how did legendary hacker Joe Grand hack open a crypto wallet with a lost password and millions trapped inside? Hacked is finally running real ads and they're running them exclusively on the WAN show in a frantic bid to cannibalize as much of their audience as humanly possible. The call is coming from inside the house and the caller's name is Hacked. They even share friendly Canadian accents. Sometimes one story, sometimes a bunch, Hacked is a podcast all about the unexpected things people do with technology. With over 70 episodes, it's a deep dive into tales of folks hacking things

Starting point is 01:03:00 together and hacking them apart. Find Hacked, the logo is blue, wherever you listen to shows. That's Hacked, a podcast about people using technology in weird, unexpected ways, wherever you get your shows. Thanks to Best Buy for sponsoring today's episode. Studying. Yeah, that's right. Even hearing the word makes you feel just a bit more sad inside. Make those study sessions a little more bearable with some new tech. Best Buy wants to hook you up and make your grind easier during their back-to-school sale. Maybe it's time to upgrade that old laptop you've been carrying around or get a second monitor to increase your productivity. And Best Buy is making that easier by giving you sales on brands like Sony, HP, Logitech, and more. So check out Best Buy's back-to-school sale and grab some new gear at lmg.gg slash bestbuybacktoschool. Your brain

Starting point is 01:03:40 and wallet will thank you. Thanks to Cuddly for sponsoring today's show. Fact. Animals are cute. Unfortunate fact. There are millions of animals in less than desirable situations that need support. Cuddly helps give animals a healthy life and a loving home by providing tools and resources to support animal welfare organizations around the world. All partners featured on Cuddly are not-for-profit or municipal agencies and have been verified to ensure that they are in good standing. You can donate to an organization or even a specific animal featured on their weekly wish page.

Starting point is 01:04:09 Check them out at lmg.gg slash cuddly to learn more. That's lmg.gg slash c-u-d-d-l-y. Your donation could help change the life of a furry friend. Anything like that? Can we find some good news? Um... Do you want to talk about Sam Altman's WorldCoin? Yeah, because it's hilarious.

Starting point is 01:04:29 At least it's funny, okay? You know, at least we can laugh at some of the bad. Okay, Sam Altman, best known for his involvement in OpenAI, has launched WorldCoin. And honestly, we didn't have this as one of our prepared topics mostly because we don't really need it because all we really have to do is read the introduction on worldcoin.org and I feel like you guys are gonna be laughing alongside us. More than three years ago we founded WorldCoin with the ambition of creating a new identity and financial network that's owned by

Starting point is 01:05:05 everyone. The rollout begins today. Can I just say that that is either the most benevolent or the most ominous thing that I have ever heard. If successful, we believe WorldCoin, what a terrifying name, could drastically increase economic opportunity, scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy, enable global democratic processes. My goodness, what an ambitious goal. And eventually show a potential path to AI-funded universal basic income. Where did that come from? This is some next level crypto bro right here. This will solve all of the problems.

Starting point is 01:05:53 You can even eat it. WorldCoin consists of a privacy-preserving digital identity, world ID, and where laws allow, a digital currency.. Okay I knew it. I knew the crypto was coming. Gotta be crypto. WLD and it is received simply for being human. We're all rich. Let's go. We hope that where the rules are less clear such as in the US, steps will be taken so more people can benefit from both of these things.

Starting point is 01:06:29 You can now download World App. The first protocol... Hey, names are hard. We just talked about this. And reserve your share. After visiting an orb, a biometric verification device, which also doesn't sound ominous at all, you will receive a world ID. This lets you prove you are a real

Starting point is 01:06:51 and unique person online while remaining completely private. As the global distribution of orbs is ramping up, you can find the closest one and book a time to be verified with World App at worldcoin.org. Press your face against the orb so we can know you're human and enable you to survive. Luke, have you seen the pictures of the orb? Oh yeah, it's amazing.

Starting point is 01:07:17 Okay, so just put your eye into this thing. Okay. And then, will for real, this is all completely secure, definitely, take your indelible world identity and make sure that no one can impersonate you or think that you are not a real human being. Yeah. That would be fine. Like, to be clear.

Starting point is 01:07:52 You know what? Someone in the audience was like, trust me, bro. Well, I know, right? What if they did it? What if OpenAI and WorldCoin both adopted Trust Me Bro? Would you try to trademark it? I would stop using it. I don't think I want to be associated with technologies

Starting point is 01:08:13 that are going to be completely obsoleting our functions as humans over the next three to ten years. Though, with that said, actually, this seems like a good transition into our next topic. Has anyone else noticed that ChatGPT is getting measurably, noticeably worse as time goes on?

Starting point is 01:08:32 I don't think this is actually in the doc. No, it's not. But we can talk about this as well. I've read a lot of documentation about how ChatGPT 4, specifically, is getting worse over time. I also know, especially on our team, Conrad, who's actually behind the stage right now making sure that Merch Messages keeps functioning,

Starting point is 01:08:48 but he has mentioned multiple times about how ChatGPG 4 has gotten worse and there's a lot of people talking about how they believe the more it interacts with humans, the worse it gets. Which is kind of hilarious and also really sad at the same time. But yeah, it's interesting.

Starting point is 01:09:08 In that same talk, we're watching ChatGPG4 get worse through various different ways. We're also seeing restrictions coming to the major platforms like OpenAI. Like they're figuring out, oh, they used some things in training that the companies that had that data in the first place are not very happy about. Or they're outputting answers that... Are an issue for some reason. Are an issue, whether it's due to, you know, social pressure, or whether it's just due to

Starting point is 01:09:40 the flawed data set that they were using, making some really alarming assumptions. Well, they're also making claims about people that don't end up being true, but they're using their name in the statements and stuff, and then OpenAI is trying to wrangle that in, but then there's problems with that. And meanwhile, there is open source versions coming out

Starting point is 01:09:59 that do not have those types of restrictions on them and are not suffering the same degradation that we're seeing on OpenAI's platform. It's going to be a really interesting time. We saw this huge boom, and it was like, wow, these guys are so far out ahead that what could ever possibly catch up? And they've got all this brand recognition.

Starting point is 01:10:19 It's like, oh, lawyers. That's who can catch up. That's not really catching up. that's slowing down the other guy yeah, yeah, fair I can't say how I know, but I know someone who works for an insurance firm that OpenAI tried to get insurance through for these types of things, and they were like

Starting point is 01:10:38 nope, like no shot is that happening I don't know if they ended up getting insurance or not but yeah they were wise to that one No shot is that happening. I don't know if they ended up getting insurance or not, but yeah, they were wise to that one. Good luck, OpenAI. Shall we give away this motherboard? Yeah, let's give away this motherboard.

Starting point is 01:10:54 Why don't you come up on here? Come on up, come on down! If I understand correctly, you built almost a two... Oh, there we go. They fixed it. We're good. Sick. You built an almost two meter tall motherboard tower? Yes.

Starting point is 01:11:15 That is freaking awesome. As someone who is also... Vertically challenged. Hey, we have to own it. How did you get up there? Share your secrets. Hey, we have to own it. You're kidding! How did you get up there? Share your secrets. I used a man lift.

Starting point is 01:11:32 A man lift? Yeah. Really? I snuck it in in my pocket. No, seriously, though. How did you get up to 1.85 meters? That's about the only way I could do it. Did they have ladders? No, they didn't.

Starting point is 01:11:42 No, but... No, how did you do it? He's keeping his secrets for next year. Tippy toes, that's all I had. All right, well congratulations. Enjoy your motherboard. Thank you. All right, take care, man.

Starting point is 01:11:58 Man lift. That's what we call it when Luke holds me up at the front of the Titanic. He's the man. I own it. Got a few more merch messages here for you. All right, hit me, Dan. Sure thing.

Starting point is 01:12:16 Hope y'all are having fun. Linus, how fun is it to do the WAN show in front of a live audience? It's really stressful. Oh, oh, oh, but I have powers. Okay, okay, let's do the thing. We rehearsed something before you guys all got here, you online viewers. Don't mess it up this time.

Starting point is 01:12:37 Okay, ready? Wait, wait, wait, they need to switch. Yeah, they gotta switch to camera. Okay, so I'm gonna do this thing, and then you're gonna watch, you're gonna see, you're gonna see a thing that's gonna happen. Crowd view, crowd view. Yeah, we I'm going to do this thing. And then you're going to watch. You're going to see. You're going to see a thing that's going to happen. Crowd view. We need the crowd feed.

Starting point is 01:12:48 Do picture in picture. Use the technology. Okay, here we go. Ready, guys? Give them your best shot. Here we go. Here we go. You right there didn't stand.

Starting point is 01:13:13 These are blinding, but I can smell it. I don't know, pretty fun. Pretty fun, actually. Really nerve-wracking. You know, it's a funny thing how you can get used to something and yet you throw the smallest variation at it and you're all of a sudden like... Okay, I remember this one time I ran into my kindergarten teacher

Starting point is 01:13:39 at the fruit and vegetable store. And she had me for she had me for one and a helper years. She was a second and then she was my main teacher. And this is only maybe, like I'm in grade two

Starting point is 01:13:58 and she had me for K1 or something like that. So I have not been out of her class for that long. And I run into long and I run into her and I'm just like couldn't even say hi my dad like what happened at the badminton match my dad's making conversation no that was just I'm awkward people found that video yeah I know yeah anyway anyway so I so so I so you so you see someone you know a little bit out of context and it can throw you for a bit of a loop.

Starting point is 01:14:30 I went through this really weird thing in the early days of LTT Store. Obviously, you have to have pictures of your merchandise. And A, because I think it's really authentic for us to model our own merchandise. You know, A, because if it's not good enough for us to even bother to put it on once, it's probably not good enough for you. And B, because it's kind of like the ultimate, who was it, Dove, who did that thing, campaign for real beauty, whatever, where instead of having models with, you know, super unrealistic Barbie movie levels of physical perfection,

Starting point is 01:15:06 they just used real people. Good movie. I think it was them. Yeah, I actually really enjoyed it too. So it's the ultimate that. This is really us. Like really us, the people who worked on these products, who designed them. You'll see folks like Sarah or Lloyd or, you know, Alameda or, you know, the rest of

Starting point is 01:15:27 the team that actually makes these products. You know, the engineering team even, you know, we don't like hide anybody away. If people volunteer for merch photos, we try to accommodate it and, you know, we don't always have room for everybody. But, you know, we just, we try to have real people there, right? And that's super cool. And then the other main reason is because I'm cheap. Hiring models is expensive. I do think it's better this way either way. No, I do genuinely think it's better this way.

Starting point is 01:15:55 So anyway, that was why we came up with the idea of having our own people model all of our own products. And the problem was that this is even before the first underwear shoot, which is one of the times that I think I have been most uncomfortable at work. Yeah. Like it is, you know... Every once in a while I'll go in the store

Starting point is 01:16:17 for like a legitimate work reason, and I'm scrolling through and I'm like, oh, there's Linus in his underwear. A pleasant sight. What can I say? And it's such a... We talked before the show. He was like, how many people in the audience do you think are wearing LTT merch?

Starting point is 01:16:37 We started looking around for like shirts and sweaters and stuff. And I was like, hmm, we don't actually know. It's a funny thing, though. Even before I did that first underwear shoot, what I discovered was that... Oh, he's doing it now. He's coming off. You know, I'd put on a...

Starting point is 01:16:57 Okay. No! No, no, no, no, no, no. I was kidding. We're streaming to Twitch. We actually can't. Yeah, there's no pool. No hot tub. Next time.

Starting point is 01:17:18 Oh, actually, since I have your guys' attention, we don't have a hot tub, but we do have a dunk tank tomorrow. We're going to be... Yeah, we're raising money for charity, so you can... I don't remember exactly how it works, but you can buy balls, and then you can huck them at the dunk tank,

Starting point is 01:17:34 and I'll be in there for an hour tomorrow. So hopefully I see you guys out there. Yeah, I think there's raffle winners going to throw as well. Okay, sure. And we're going to be broadcasting it here and to the BYOC stage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:17:44 So we'll get with you guys about that. But anyway, it was such a weird experience for me and we're going to be broadcasting it here and to the BYOC stage if you want to not go outside. We'll get with you guys about that. But anyway, it was such a weird experience for me going through my first merch shoot because I'm like standing there in the shirt and I'm like... I have spent the last decade of my life in front of a camera.

Starting point is 01:18:01 It feels very weird. Why all of a sudden? Because you flip a dial to photo mode instead of video mode. Do I just have absolutely no idea where to put my hands? You put a video camera in front of me, I could talk all day. No problem. You see him shift into presenter mode? But you tell me don't talk.

Starting point is 01:18:24 And I'm like... I just don't know what to do with it. And massive props to our team. Most of our merch photos are taken by Hoffman and Maria, if I recall correctly. I might have missed someone, and I'm so sorry if I did. But, you know, massive credit to our team. They really do a great job of making the experience more comfortable.

Starting point is 01:18:50 Like the couples underwear shoot that I did with Yvonne. It was great that Maria was there to kind of, you know, keep the mood really light because, you know, just, you know, casually two of the company executives just, like, stripping down to our underwear in the office and you know, there's people there and everything. Is there such a weird thing too? Stripping in front of her would have been super

Starting point is 01:19:12 weird, but standing in front of her now in your underwear was normal. Sure. It's just, it's bizarre. So anyway, coming back to the original question, something about the live audience really does feel

Starting point is 01:19:28 very, very different, even though this is the same WAN show with the same producer and the same tardiness. Sorry. No, you weren't late. That's true. So it's not actually, it's tardiness. New, different tardiness. Yes.

Starting point is 01:19:43 We're like 24 hours late. Oh, come on. It was rescheduled. He's just trying to defend it because it was him. I got it down to 30 minutes, and you're complaining about 12 hours and 30 minutes. What we can all agree on is that it's a very tardy show, okay? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:20:01 Sorry. My sincere apologies. All right, do you have another merch message for us? Sure, I do. Let's get a couple and then we'll move on to one more topic. You know, for someone who had another life as an audio professional, this is driving me absolutely crazy. For the love of God, keep your mic

Starting point is 01:20:16 close to your mouth. That's too close. That's too close. Okay, that's what he said, but I couldn't understand him. You keep doing this. It's a personal pet peeve. It drives me absolutely crazy. Which is why he's doing it. I don't want to talk into it.

Starting point is 01:20:33 You heard me ranting earlier. Didn't you? No. What? What? Oh, I was going off about this when I was talking to Luke earlier. Just like how impossible it is for people to hold a mic up to their mouth. I'm holding it to my mouth when I'm talking. And I move it away when I want talking to Luke earlier. Just like how impossible it is for people to hold a mic up to their mouth. I'm holding it to my mouth when I'm talking and I move it away when I want to breathe.

Starting point is 01:20:49 To be fair right now, this thing literally does not fit on my head. Oh, no, not you. This is better. Okay, here we go. Oh my god, Dan. Hey, LLD and LTX. Any news on Floatplane coming to TV streamers

Starting point is 01:21:05 such as Apple TV and Nvidia Shield? Ah. This is a pretty decent time to shout out the Linus Media Group.com slash jobs. We got there. Check out that. I need more front-end developers. Right now, Jaden, bless his soul,

Starting point is 01:21:27 is doing all of the front end development for Flowplane and all of the development for the apps. So he needs some help. This is the job site. Go apply. JADEN LIEBERMANN- It's literally at the very top. DAN GALPIN- Yeah. Yeah, he needs some help.

Starting point is 01:21:42 But yeah, once we have more workforce in app and front end, we do want to try to support those things. But there's a lot of stuff to do. Bingo! Yeah. Did you leak something? No. What was the bingo?

Starting point is 01:22:01 I don't know. Probably... Wanshow bingo. Oh, yeah, people are playing Wanshow bingo. Oh, yeah. People are playing wanshow bingo. Oh, yeah. They probably were already. It's a whole thing.

Starting point is 01:22:10 I suggested it being late, thinking nobody would get that. Yeah, I... Yeah. All right, Dan, hit me again. Sure, last one, and then I think we'll move on to a final topic. Hi, Linus. Have you got any labs updates, and is there any big projects in the pipeline? Oh man, Labs was super, super exciting because we were doing tours over the last couple of days

Starting point is 01:22:36 and I got to kind of listen in on some of the tours and I got to find out about things I didn't know about. on some of the tours and I got to find out about things I didn't know about. For example, did you know that we have a couple of software-defined radios in the RF chamber now that will go up to 7 gigahertz and will be ready for millimeter waves sometime next year that will allow us to take phones and not just measure how good their reception is, but also find out how much low reception affects their battery life, and we'll be able to see how good their reception is at every different off-axis angle. And apparently, this is like a big problem in the wireless industry.

Starting point is 01:23:12 Devices are getting approved for carrier use that have antenna issues so bad that sitting on one cushion on a couch, you can have fine signal and be browsing your x.com or whatever else it is that you're doing. Really doesn't roll off the tongue, does it? No. And then you move two cushions over and your reception sucks and your video call is cutting out or whatever it is that you're doing. To be fair, it sounds like something you probably shouldn't do. Going on x.com? Which is maybe okay. Yeah, okay, but let's, okay, what about, you know, being on a video call with your relative? That you should do, okay? Aunt Muriel deserves the time spent with you.

Starting point is 01:23:49 Call your mom. Even if she's only calling because she needs tech support. Anyway, so we're going to be able to, you know, find out, you know, which of these devices are slipping under the radar through back alley deals. Oh, man, I'm really, really excited about what they showed me with MarkBench. We had live demos running for everyone who came through the tours. Any of the whales and orcas or anyone who booked a tour,

Starting point is 01:24:18 how cool is MarkBench? It's going to change everything, you guys. We had V1 on display, which is just games with built-in benchmarks and collecting telemetry data and automating the running, which is pretty cool, but you could have done it with AutoHotKey if you really wanted to. Then we've got V2, where now we've got replays from games that support that but do not have built-in benchmarks, like Rocket League V2.

Starting point is 01:24:43 We had those running live, collecting all the telemetry data we need. The team has the CPU overhead on the client system down to, I believe, under 1% now, which is absolutely flipping incredible. a way that is scientific and repeatable and reliable. Man, it's really exciting. But what I got to see, actually not on the tour, sorry, you guys didn't get to see this, but what I have seen is V3, which is going to be having MarkBench play the games, putting all of the inputs into a game for ones that do not have integrated benchmarks, do not support replays that can be played back in the engine and put a load on the GPU, and just don't support anything at all, but still allow us to get real world, in game, in engine performance results from. And then, oh, there's another project that they just finished that I'm going to see the results for, I believe, early this coming week, where we bought a metric WAC, which is, I think, 12 or 13?

Starting point is 01:25:55 That is the exact definition. Yeah, 7800X3D processors. Because the problem is that in the old days, if you wanted to parallelize your testing, right? The problem is that in the old days, if you wanted to parallelize your testing, right? So if you wanted to say, okay, we've got a GPU review coming up and we want to test 30 games. And we want to test, you know, 30 different GPUs. What is that? 900 tests? In the time that we have with the cards. We couldn't conceivably run them all in a single bench. Now in the old days you could have parallelized that

Starting point is 01:26:30 relatively easily. You just could buy more test benches because the processors ran at three gigahertz and there was not much performance variation between them. But now with turbo boost or precision boost or... Auto overclocking. Yeah, essentially auto overclocking. Depending on how much you won or lost the silicon lottery, you can have very measurable performance differences from one identical system to the next one. So what the team did was they bought a metric WAC, which is 13 or 12, 7800 XDD processors,

Starting point is 01:27:08 and then they ran them one after the other after the other and basically took our outliers on the high performance side and on the low performance side. Maybe just took them home. I don't know what happened to them. Something happened to them. And we ended up with five that are in the middle that are within 1% of each other. So what you're going to see is you're going to see over time as we create these validation processes, you're going to see us massively parallelize our testing, which is going to allow us to spit out way more data. And I'm not just talking like a review. Because a review is good. A review is very interesting. But a review only comes around when the product launches.

Starting point is 01:27:48 And so in the long term, is that really – we've gotten to the point where GPU product cycles have stretched out past less than a year, which is when I first got into this stuff, to about a yearly cadence, to a year-ish, to two years. I mean, we can have a GPU family that's sitting around for two, three years at this point. So you could be shopping for this thing two years down the road, and what use is that launch review on ancient drivers looking at ancient games? No, we want to go back and we want to retest this stuff. So how cool would it be if we could get enough processors, enough benches that are within our 1% margin of error,

Starting point is 01:28:22 and we could basically say, okay, look, yeah, There's enough benches that are within our 1% margin of error. And we could basically say, okay, look, yeah, this GPU is going to go sit on this bench for like a month. And it's going to go through every game across every driver revision. And we're really going to track like what's been going on with the development of this card. I mean, particularly for something like Intel Arc, that would have been absolutely fascinating. Oh, absolutely. But if we don't have these parallelization processes, we're not going to be able to do that.

Starting point is 01:28:47 Because we won't be able to trust the data. You won't be able to compare it to anything else in the database. So, yeah, the team was explaining that to some of the people who were going through the tour. Oh, man, have you seen the mouse robot? Yes. It's pretty cool. Okay, it's kind of janky right now. It's all cool. Okay. It's kind of janky right now.

Starting point is 01:29:06 It's all 3D printed, but it's 3D printed in such a way that everything is, I think they called it like plated or something. I can't remember what they called it. But basically it means that every part is flat and can be CNC'd on a two-dimensional CNC router or mill. So that means it's pretty much ready for manufacturing once we've got all of the kinks ironed out. But what was really cool is that they've got just like these 3D printer motors that are moving

Starting point is 01:29:36 the mouse back and forth and then comparing the real data that's output from the mouse from the expected data. So based on the DPI that's configured, how far it's supposed to have moved versus how far it actually thinks it moved. So we're going to be able to really nail down precision and accuracy testing for mice, which is all very fine and cool. But then they started talking about the juiced up one. I forget what the exact kind of motors that they're planning to use. Is it the clear path one? Yes. Linear mode. They're planning to use high-performance linear motors with the idea being like right now it's like this big, right?

Starting point is 01:30:17 Because it's just using like an old 3D printing bed or something like that. And the idea is that they're going to be able to rip these mice at speeds of around five meters a second with just unbelievable acceleration. So we're going to be able to really split hairs. And you know, it's one of those things where I feel like a lot of people look at the lab's content and go, well, why does it matter? You buy a power supply, Well, why does it matter? You buy a power supply, your computer turns on, who cares?

Starting point is 01:30:50 But I have never been of that mindset. Like, I remember getting into, like, the text equivalent of screaming matches with people on the forums in the old days where some people had this attitude that was like, Some people had this attitude that was like, look, if they want to buy a Pentium dual core, you know, instead of an Athlon 64X2, and they want to pay more and they want less performance, and they're happy with that, you know, why does it matter? I'm like, it matters! They could have had more for less! Why would they accept anything but the most for the least? It's wrong. I love how you say this is back in the day. You built literally a whole company to accomplish that goal. And then did it again, but you were like, this time with a lab. But better.

Starting point is 01:31:46 More science. And so, like, you know, why are we rewarding companies that are releasing subpar products? Why don't we care? We should care. If this one's a little bit better and we can prove it, well, then we should get that one. And then we should put pressure on everybody else to do better. That's how the industry moves forward. That's the whole point.

Starting point is 01:32:08 You should care. And so realistically, okay, whatever gaming mouse you choose to buy, I'm actually not going to judge because it's a peripheral. It's something you touch, right? I might judge a little bit. Okay. But it's something you touch. It's very subjective. If one of them makes your hand cramp, even though it has the best sensor, don't use it, obviously, right?

Starting point is 01:32:35 But, and so, you know, in the mouse category, I think there are going to be a lot of, you know, well, really, they're both pretty good, but pretty much it comes down to, you know, what's more comfortable for you or what has the software that you find most intuitive to use. But if all other things are equal and you find both of them pretty much comfortable, why wouldn't you take the one that's, like, 0.1% more accurate? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, or, like, why wouldn't you get rid of your stupid dinky little laptop mouse that you're using on your desktop?

Starting point is 01:33:10 Because there's like no way. Yeah, who was that? ElectroBoom. Yeah. He's here. Yeah. Medi, are you... We can get you a new mouse, bro. Yeah. In fact, I think we actually have a sponsor locked in for the the Medi upgrade

Starting point is 01:33:26 I don't know if he knows that yet, but we're We are getting you a new mouse, bro Makeover nice. Yes. It's awesome. His workspace is utterly unacceptable Yeah, yeah except for the art which is actually amazing and he painted it which is sick. Don't remember his scopes And actually his treadmill. Yeah, his treadmill's pretty cool. Okay, so he's got some pretty cool stuff, but there's some things that are bad. We're going to fix everything that's not cool about it. In fact, I think

Starting point is 01:33:51 the sponsor is Asus ROG who also sponsored LTX. Yeah, we're going to be hooking up with some really good stuff. Really good stuff. Oh, crap. Linus leaks a video. video is in the bingo? Bingo? Speaking of our sponsor, Asus, I do want to address some of your feedback on the secret shopping our sponsors video.

Starting point is 01:34:25 Some viewers felt, and it's a really funny thing because on YouTube, the interactions with the videos are almost overwhelmingly positive. And even Reddit wasn't that mad about it. But Flowplane was pretty salty about this video. Some viewers felt that we went unnecessarily soft on Asus, who spent an hour on the phone with our secret shopper and never quite managed to solve the problem until we made a suggestion that led them to the correct answer. And there's been some speculation that this is because Asus is a sponsor for us. us. Let me just take a moment to say, guys, if I was trying to brush Asus' treatment of us under the rug, would I have included them in the video? If I was trying to stall until after LTX when our

Starting point is 01:35:19 sponsorship deal had gone through or whatever, would I have published the video before? Come on you guys. Yeah, because you didn't do every single sponsor we've ever had. You did a lot of them, but you could have had one less and it would have been fine. We could have easily just cut it. We didn't because it's not right. If we wanted to make them look better,

Starting point is 01:35:41 wouldn't we have just said that we didn't spend that long on the phone with them? Yes, the score of three might have felt a little generous. It was also the first one that I filmed. Like sometimes the simplest explanation really is the best one and there is no conspiracy theory. It was the first one that I filmed and we didn't really have a clear scoring system yet. So I was like, oh, I don't know. Kind of seems like a three. One of the other factors that I had to kind of consider in my decision was that I thought that our problem was kind of nonsense. Like, we basically intentionally misinterpreted the quick start guide in the worst possible way.

Starting point is 01:36:25 And I feel like while, you know, three might have been a little bit generous, you know, I still would have at least had them end up with like a two, two and a half. Like, there's no way I would have changed it that much. Because for me, and I feel like we just weren't really, we weren't really on the same page about what the scale was. I saw one person complain that it should have been minus five. And I was like, there is no minus five. Zero is that we weren't able to get in contact at all. One is, you know, rudeness, dismissiveness, and not dealing with the issue properly. Two stars is not being ultimately satisfied with the result or it taking too long. Three stars for me was, hey, we did get the issue resolved even if it wasn't ideal.

Starting point is 01:37:23 And I feel like that was something that was probably the wrong rating system. I think that what it should have been was more along the lines of like five stars is that I am overwhelmingly satisfied and I want to recommend these guys to everybody. This was a good experience. I am now a promoter of this. Yeah and three stars is like I actually had a pretty bad time which is how I feel like a lot of consumers do but I was treating it more like a linear scale where zero really was, we got absolutely nothing done. We got nowhere with these guys and five was absolute complete perfection. So I think what ended up happening is I ended up really compressed in the kind of three to four

Starting point is 01:37:57 range because we kind of got everything mostly solved, even if there were some challenges. Anyway, the point of the series is we do want to keep our sponsors accountable. We did secret shop them, and we didn't try to hide anything from you guys. That was why, even though we gave a score, we showed you the process. If we were trying to hide something, we easily could have. We made the decision not to. So all I would ask is, hey, you know, please, try to give us the benefit of the doubt, right? Like, being transparent about our relationship with our sponsors also means that we are opening ourselves up to criticism. If we were really trying to hide favoritism, guys, we wouldn't do

Starting point is 01:38:40 these kinds of videos at all, or we would just, you know, select a different sponsor who we think will score better if we were just trying to get some brownie points with you guys. We don't do these kinds of videos at all, or we would just, you know, select a different sponsor who we think will score better if we were just trying to get some brownie points with you guys. We don't always get it perfect, and I actually, I do agree with the audience feedback that three was probably too generous. But it has absolutely nothing to do with that we're trying to hold onto Asus's sponsorship. In fact, I can tell you guys that it definitely ruffled some feathers over there but that's okay right that's part of that's part of why Asus benefits from us talking about them

Starting point is 01:39:14 because they know that hey if they stay the course and they take their lumps and they take that criticism and they try to act on these things and fix them, then we'll continue working with them, and that credibility will mean that people will go to them. So that's all I have to say about that. Viet... No, sorry. Forrest Gump reference. I don't have my swear button, so I can't actually do the thing. Anyway. Shall we move into when after dark?

Starting point is 01:39:44 I know you have a dinner to get to in two minutes. Is that actually like a thing? I'm just going to go unplug all the lights. I don't care. Do we have gobo's in them? Is there any other important topics? I'm just checking. I don't know.

Starting point is 01:40:00 There was the Tesla rigging battery range thing. That's bad. I shouldn't do that. The Google DRM for websites thing. Oh, that's pretty messed up. Yeah, I want you to talk about that. Can we fire through it? Sure, yeah, we should get through the Google thing at least.

Starting point is 01:40:14 Okay, the Tesla one, basically they intentionally offered rosy estimates of how far you could go so that you would think your car had better range than it did, but people noticed that it doesn't actually go that far, so they would complain, and then Tesla created an internal team to suppress the complaints, which is like, yeah, really good company led by really good leadership.

Starting point is 01:40:42 It's really good. Anyway. Okay, Google proposes DRM for websites, sort of. led by really good leadership. It's really good. Anyway. Okay. Google proposes DRM for websites. Sort of. Google engineers have published a paper titled... Oh, hold on. Actually, sorry. One sec. Yeah. Yeah. The whales pointed out that clearly

Starting point is 01:40:56 I have no problem bad-mouthing a sponsor literally right in front of them. Tesla's actually here at LTX. Hey! Let's go. You know what? The truth is I just don't give a shitX. Hey! Let's go. You know what? The truth is I just don't give a shit anymore. Hey! Like,

Starting point is 01:41:15 I beg. Do you have any idea how many water bottles and screwdrivers and backpacks these fine people have bought today? I am actually not beholden to anybody. And like, sure, if we can take their money and build the lab faster and build this like world-class media organization,

Starting point is 01:41:34 yeah, I'll do it, but I don't have to. And if they don't like it, if they don't like our rules of engagement, see you later. We're ready for a new meme. New meme, yeah, probably. All right. Yeah, sorry. Google proposes DRM for websites.

Starting point is 01:41:55 Let's go. Yeah, Google engineers have published a paper titled the web, or not the, just Web Environment Integrity Explainer, which proposes that websites ask for tokens from users' machines. Those tokens would have been cryptographically verified by OS and browser-based testers. Google would then likely control which websites

Starting point is 01:42:14 and browsers seem trustworthy, which is why many critics on GitHub have called the idea DRM for websites. The paper claims that the proposal is to improve security and reduce bots and fake engagement, which might actually be true, to be fair. However, if enacted, this would break most ad blockers, which is probably the real reason why,

Starting point is 01:42:36 and squeeze the user base of alternative browsers that refuse to enact the system, as they will be unable to access a range of various websites. Obviously, the idea of a website requiring a specific browser isn't new, but the ubiquity of Chrome slash Chromium might mean something wholly different for the relative openness of the internet. Louis Rossman, who's here by the way, called the proposal... He called the proposal one of the scariest things he's ever heard in his life. And he lived in New York for years. And honestly, from my perspective too, I think this would effectively spell...

Starting point is 01:43:13 New Yorkers have no filter. Like at all. They just say anything. We know that. We've seen him do it. Yeah, we've seen him do it. But this would, in my opinion, effectively spell the end of what we have known up until this point as the internet. Okay, that's very doomsday-y.

Starting point is 01:43:32 No, but actually, I think so. I disagree. Yeah. I'm just saying that's pretty doomsday-y. This would be, like, super bad. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we're doom and glooming too much. Maybe they elaborate more and there's more to it

Starting point is 01:43:43 and there's different ways to engage with it. You can have different versions of a site, something like that. I don't know. Yeah, I agree with that guy. All right, I think it's time for WAN show after dark. Yeah, WAN show after dark. Let's do this. Let me get my messages open here.

Starting point is 01:44:01 Okay, first up. Oh, there we go. Thanks, guys. Wow. How have we not shown that view more? That looks awesome. That does look awesome. Yeah, change it up a bit. Sweet. Okay, first one, here we go. Hey, LLND,

Starting point is 01:44:17 thanks for the floatplane pass, but I was wondering what's the best-selling desk pad at LTX? Have a great LTX. I'm hoping to go Sunday. I don't know. I know the best-selling desk pad online was the retro dinosaur one, but we had some suspicions. Is anyone from the LTT store team within earshot? Nick Light? Anyone?

Starting point is 01:44:46 Are they at the BYOC stage? Anybody from the BYOC stage have a merch person? Can you come to the main stage? Anyway, I don't actually have analytics for the sales today because we had to use a different Canadian account and something.

Starting point is 01:45:03 I have actually no idea how much stuff we sold today. I just see most of you carrying it. So I assume it's a lot. So we had some theories that once people saw the other ones in person, and especially once people were at the convention center, like the Vancouver one would be more popular, or the Zero-G one that Luz got in front of them would be more popular. So I truthfully just do not know the answer to that.

Starting point is 01:45:27 But it used to be the dinosaur one. But the other, they all look absolutely amazing. What one do you think you've signed the most? I've heard dinosaurs! Sarah Butt, everyone! Sarah Butt. Totally unbiased. Yeah, totally credible source of information.

Starting point is 01:45:47 The designer of the dinosaur one. The one that I've signed most has actually been the Vancouver one today. Me too. So we'll see. Another? Hello, LTX and LLD. I would love a folding phone, passport style,

Starting point is 01:46:02 but I have to stay iPhone due to everyone I know using iMessage. How long do you think it will take until Apple makes a folding phone? That's not true. Why? Yeah. What do you mean you have to stay on iPhone because everyone you know uses iMessage? Social stigma.

Starting point is 01:46:17 Who cares? Oh. Oh, my God. They're different colors. Oh, no. Your bubbles are the wrong color. Oh, I'm sorry, I can't. You do not have to.

Starting point is 01:46:29 You can... No, be the first one. No, no, I'm offended. I'm offended. I have no idea when we'll see a folding phone from Apple. Although I will say this, based on my experience with the folding displays that I've used so far and how they like eventually crack, I suspect Apple's QA department probably said no for good reason to the, at least. So I'm using a Z Fold 3.

Starting point is 01:47:01 This is a couple generations old now. But I can see why they said no to this. I'd imagine that Apple will at least do a mostly pretty good job of validating it. And then they'll probably wait a couple years and see if their validation was valid and then go from there. Also, man, I just, I have no idea what operating system it would run. Like they have this weird thing that they do where no, every device like needs its own operating system. So what are we going to have, iOS, iPadOS, and iFoldOS? Which one is going to allow you to lock the display in landscape mode on the home screen

Starting point is 01:47:35 and which one won't? You guys ever notice that? What an arbitrary limitation of iOS, right? The fact that you can't just go into landscape. They obviously did all the work for it, for the iPad, so why can't you do it? Yeah, I know you used to be able to, you just can't anymore because, I don't know. Would the folding one be allowed to do that? Maybe it would be allowed to, but only when it's unfolded. All right, Dan, hit me. Sure.

Starting point is 01:48:11 I'm a little embarrassed by this one. Hi, LLD. I had the joy of seeing Dan frantically making the sponsor list for the intro at the Keoxia booth earlier. What is the most frantic last-minute work that you had to do for an LTX before? An LTX? I've had a really easy time with every LTX. I just kind of show up and I'm like, this is cool, man. And then I do my stuff.

Starting point is 01:48:39 I have nothing to do with these. Man, I would say that the most frantic one for me was the story I told earlier, where we were trying to turn 2018 into not a complete disaster. The end game was awesome. I know, I know. It's because we worked really hard at the last minute to kind of turn things around a little bit. We came up with some stuff. And it was a real challenge. It was not me. I helped, And it was a real challenge.

Starting point is 01:49:05 It was not me. I helped, but it was a team effort. And that was the most stressed I have ever been about LTX ever. Yeah. Sorry, I got a message simultaneously. Hi, DLL. If cost and logistics were no issue, what would the number one thing each of you

Starting point is 01:49:28 would want to make a reality for a future LTX? Oh. Free puppies! Wow, that's really tough. I mean, for me, it's already gotten kind of so close to what we had, what we could have ever hoped for it to be. We wanted it to be, you know, not just about Linus Tech Tips. kindling that we could use to start the fire, right?

Starting point is 01:50:05 To draw you guys in here for Linus and Luke and the rest of their punk-ass crew, right? But we had the greater vision for what could make it more than just that was to make it about bringing together the community because LTX didn't actually start as a trade show. It didn't start as a convention.

Starting point is 01:50:29 It started as a meetup. 2017 came about because it was becoming untenable for us to try to do a lot of smaller meetups. It was kind of like, oh, well, if we could just get the community all in one place and sign everything they shove in front of our faces and take all the selfies that they could ever want and, you know, just talk shop with people, then maybe that'll kind of be our solution to doing that in a scalable way. And then it was so awesome and it was so cool bringing the community together like that that the next time around, you know, we had the idea of like, oh, what if we could like bring other creators out and then people could see more than just us. And you can kind of see how it like starts to evolve into just this ever-broadening definition of community. And obviously, you know, you have to bring brands in in order to help pay for the thing because believe it or not, we can't sell an unlimited number of whale tickets.

Starting point is 01:51:24 It's funny. the thing because believe it or not, we can't sell an unlimited number of whale tickets. It's funny, the whales actually asked me, why didn't you sell more whale tickets? Because you could have, you know, made this thing super mega profitable if you just sold more whale tickets. And I was like, right, but there's five of you here or six of you or whatever at the whale dinner. Did you really want there to be 60? Would it have still felt so intimate, right? So there's a limit to what you can do in terms of ticket sales. You have to bring in brands. But, you know, we wanted to do it in a way that was really authentic and really community-driven as well.

Starting point is 01:51:51 So we were kind of like, okay, so we're going to bring in the audience. We're going to bring in other creators. We're going to bring in brands. And then what happened in 2019 was the creators all started, like, networking with each other. And the audience started networking with them other and the audience started networking with them and the brands networked with the creators and they networked with the audience and it became this super cool thing

Starting point is 01:52:09 and we had all this momentum and then the world got sick. And I'm really happy. I'm really excited to see that four years later it's managed to, it seems to me, still be that, but bigger and better and awesomer. So I guess, I don't know. I wouldn't... I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't really think I would change anything other than, you know, just try and make it better.

Starting point is 01:52:45 Try and have the POS terminals have no connectivity issues. And, you know, try and make the lines shorter. And, like, go wider. You know, go broader. Go more whale. Yeah, it's like all just natural progression stuff. I don't think there's anything major that it's missing. It's just...

Starting point is 01:53:03 Nah. I think LTX stays here. Something that I think would be like a pretty crazy milestone is once one of the buildings can't properly contain us and we have to take both, that'll be like a pretty big moment.

Starting point is 01:53:17 We made it. Yeah. Because, you know, packs, they have more than one building, so... Okay, so, here's an on-the-spot question. Oh, and I don't think you have to actually answer it Okay, then I won't but I'm wondering what the vibe check is right now Because leading up to the event every single time you're really gonna do this I'm gonna do this leading up to the event every single time. It's you know, it's actually really expensive We make less off of this than you would think.

Starting point is 01:53:47 All of a sudden it's like... Opportunity cost of LTX is extremely high. Yes. So there's that. And it's really difficult and it creates a bunch of short weeks which is hard for production. Things are really hard. But now you're here. And I do tend to find that there's the negativity dip

Starting point is 01:54:06 and then LTX happens and he's like, yeah, let's go. So how are you feeling? I always have a blast at these. It's always really exciting. You know, A, it's so cool to see that every comment, like every chat message, there's an actual real person. And it's hard to feel like that every comment, every chat message, there's an actual real person. And it's hard to feel like that when it's all online.

Starting point is 01:54:29 It becomes just numbers, right? This feels like a lot more people to me right now than the people watching online, just because they're not there. They're not tangible. We're not on side monitors for these people. Tell me in chat, do you feel personally attacked right now?

Starting point is 01:54:57 But that number online is 1015x. What's here? So theoretically, we're talking like this enormous crowd, right? But it's A, it's so cool that it feels real and it feels so big

Starting point is 01:55:13 and it feels so connected. And then B, it feels so positive. That's something that LTE has. It's not the same vibe that I necessarily have ever gotten anywhere else. And I used to get it from very old packs, but not anymore. But it's not just us. You talk to anyone and they're just like, Oh yeah, I like, I'm meeting so many people here. And I just,

Starting point is 01:55:35 I like, I did all this stuff and it's so cool. And, um, I just, it's hard to not kind of fall in love with it. Right. Not, Not to be the sometimes boring business-y person that I've kind of become, but I think it's also a really interesting and good reminder or show, depending on how long people have been here, for certain people on the team, like why we do some of the things that we do.

Starting point is 01:55:58 Sure. You start having these conversations with people in person that are like, this is why I got into this career. This helped me get through various things. This got me interested or got myself and my partner interested in one single subject that we can bond over. Lots of different reasons

Starting point is 01:56:13 why this community is important to them. So you don't have to answer now. I will give you the best answer I can. You know, until we decide otherwise, the intention is to bring it back next year. However, we haven't booked the convention center yet. We do need to do a debrief. We need to make sure that what we're doing makes sense. And this is one of the reasons, these kinds of really hard decisions

Starting point is 01:56:50 is one of the reasons that I honestly just don't really want the pressure of being CEO anymore. I actually don't want to make the call. I would like to, I would like to come and I'd like to participate if it's something that the company does that makes sense. And to be clear, you know, Taren's not going to, I've talked to him about LTX. He's not going to come in and immediately go. Well, the ROI on this isn't good enough. See you later, right? Like he understands the inherent value of, you know, networking with other creators networking with the community bringing people together.

Starting point is 01:57:18 We just have to make sure that we can do it in a way that is not breaking the back of our team because that's the other really important aspect we have to consider is, you know, everyone talks about how, you know, crunch is bad, right? I think we can all agree that whatever industry you're in, crunch is a negative thing, right? And so what if I told you that you can have LTX but we can't find a way to figure out how to do this without it causing crunch for a significant portion of our team? Is that worth it?

Starting point is 01:57:55 I don't know. I don't know. And it's true. There is crunch. LTX is really, really hard on a lot of the team. So, you know, obviously we'd love to try to find a way to make it just easy and smooth and everything goes great. It's totally cool, right? But, man, the logistics.

Starting point is 01:58:15 We've got like 6,000 people in here today. Isn't that? Yeah, right? It's wild. Do you know what 2019 was? Do you know the attendee count? Chase told me today, and I think I see him at the back. Is that Chase, your silhouette? Yeah, okay. Chase, just give me, no, no, no, you're good, you're good, you're good, but was it 2,300 at 2019? Is that a yes or a no? About 2,300. And for attendees today, we had over 4,000. And then plus the plus ones of our staff, which is now a significant number of people, each gets two.

Starting point is 01:58:56 So that's like another 200 people. Plus our staff, which is another 100 people. Plus all the vendors. Like we had some brands show up with like 10, 15 people for their booth. So apparently it's close to 10, 15 people for their booth. So we have, apparently it's close to 6,000 people today, which is, it's just a lot. It's a lot. And we want, we want to do it. That's what I'll say. We want to. Cool. Yeah. Good enough. Okay. Now for something a little bit easier, is there an update on the basement gaming computers? Oh, yes.

Starting point is 01:59:41 One of them is up and running with pool cooling, except it's not because I had to turn it off the other day because contractors were coming to redo some of the PEX plumbing that we did that we didn't do a very good job of. And then for the other four, we need to make some significant modifications to a case and then we need to do it like four more times. Basically, what I think is going to happen with LTT over the next little bit is we're going to borrow a bunch of engineering resources from Creator Warehouse and hope that we can blow through some of these really heavy projects that have been sitting on the back burner like finally gaming minivan part 2 is coming. Yeah, yeah and that's thanks to the engineers at Creator Warehouse. Massive shout out Sebastian who got that one over the finish line because there's just so many little things like oh yeah we have to design and create a mounting bracket for a monitor that

Starting point is 02:00:26 goes on the back of a headrest. I'm not going to do it. So, yeah, that's the plan. That's the plan. Has Linus or Luke ever shot a gun when visiting the United States of America?

Starting point is 02:00:44 I mean... You know we can shoot guns in Canada, right? That's a thing? Like, there's a shooting range in Langley. I went with my wife. It's like, you could go while you're here. Yeah. In direct response to your question, though, yes, I have.

Starting point is 02:01:07 I visited a shooting range when I was down in Vegas. In fact, if you dig through the catacombs of old LTT videos, you can actually find it. It's there, yeah. I believe it's there. I don't think it was ever intended to be published, but during some channel hijack at some point, YouTube doesn't maintain, or at least they didn't used to maintain the private public unlisted status of a video. So when you restored all the videos to your channel, it restored everything and just made it all public. That's how it used to work.

Starting point is 02:01:38 So if you search for... Las Vegas gun range and fire arm center. search for... Um... Yeah. Las Vegas Gun Range and Firearms Center. For the remote audience, someone in the crowd shouted out the exact title. Look at that. It's Linus with a hilarious Las Vegas hat with flames on it. Of course.

Starting point is 02:02:02 At the gun range. Looks like a Haw Wheels hat. Yeah, it's hilarious. So the answer is yes, this was me doing it. He didn't even tell me to get my elbow in. Terrible. Terrible form. Yeah, I have many, many times. My grandfather was a Marine, and when I would go down to visit him, we would go do drills and stuff. He had me doing like on the move Mozambique

Starting point is 02:02:26 drills in a range that you're only allowed to get into if you have like special access because he had it and all this kind of stuff. It was a lot of fun. We did after he passed away we were down there and we actually went to the gun range that he used to go to all the time to do a bit of a send off which

Starting point is 02:02:42 was, yeah, it was cool. I don't know about that. We're both trying to reply to potentials right now. Oh, yeah, please do that. Hi DLL and LMG team and everyone at LTX. Congrats on an awesome LTX. Is there a limit on how big you want LTX to grow? Linus?

Starting point is 02:03:09 No. Two buildings. Yeah, two buildings. Three buildings. We will buy downtown Vancouver. Car-free downtown Vancouver. Hey, DLL and everyone in the LTX crowd. Do you have any tech tips to help with

Starting point is 02:03:31 post-convention or expo depression? I hope everyone has fun for the rest of the expo. Honestly, no. I look forward to next... We'll see. One of the cool things with the prevalence of Discord, actually, you can... A lot of people at the event have been meeting other people at the event this is something that used to happen when I went to small

Starting point is 02:03:52 packs as well and I've been talking to a ton of people here but that's happening here you're just waiting in line you become buddies with the person in front or behind you just add people on discord play games with them and stuff. Yeah yeah the community doesn't have to just be for like two days. Yeah. And you can, if you stay in contact with that person, you can come back to the next one and reunite that way and it can be this whole thing.

Starting point is 02:04:14 Yeah, it doesn't really have to actually just completely end. You could kind of carry it forward in spirit a little bit. Hi, LTX. The Square Enix FFXIV Fan Fest is this weekend in Vegas. One of the sponsors is the Intel NUC.

Starting point is 02:04:32 That's weird. Do you know any other poor timing ads or sponsors? Uh, wow. Oh, oh. That's weird. Oh, oh, we had really bad timing on a sponsorship once. Oh, wow. Oh, oh, oh, we had, we had really bad timing on a sponsorship once. Oh crap. Is Colton still around there? There was a man, there was a situation where, um, we had like a, like a sponsorship deal lined up with someone and then the video was supposed to go live and then like two days prior something totally catastrophic happened. Like they had like a major breach or something like that. Sorry?

Starting point is 02:05:13 I don't know. You know what? Realistically it's probably happened with multiple sponsors. We've been doing this for a while. I can't remember but we've been around the block long enough that we've definitely seen some bad timing on sponsorships. That wasn't bad timing, that was just bad.

Starting point is 02:05:38 There's a difference. Hello, DLL and LDX attendees Question for DLL What is your favorite part of working with each other? Been watching this show for years and love every second of it They want us to be so cute

Starting point is 02:06:01 Brutal honesty I can say anything to this man They want us to be so cute. Brutal honesty. I can say anything to this man. And probably have. Luke, your weight loss journey is going great. You still have work to do. It doesn't bother me because, like, yeah, I don't know. We'll talk about it.

Starting point is 02:06:22 And it's true. I do have work to do. And I'm working on it. It's fine. But we got to, you know, you got to trust each know. We'll talk about it. And it's true. I do have work to do and I'm working on it. It's fine. But we gotta, you know, you gotta, you gotta trust each other. It's all, you gotta be real, right? Like I can, if Luke says something nice to me, it's great because I know he actually means it. Because if he thought that, you know, I was, if he thought I was, if he thought I was losing my soul, he would tell me. He would use those words. Yeah, that happens.

Starting point is 02:06:52 You know, I think it's important, right? Because our relationship is complicated. We're friends, we're colleagues, we're boss employee, we're... You were my landlord for like five years or something. Yeah, like it... Was your second wife? Yeah, we got to be able to be real with each other. Otherwise, we're going to be second-guessing everything. I mean, we've been through it all.

Starting point is 02:07:12 And then Dan was there. Yeah, one of my biggest pet peeves is not knowing where I stand with someone. So, like, yeah, basically same answer. For Dan, I'll talk about Dan. I manage Dan, so I'll talk about Dan for a second. They're both my boss. I very much enjoy Dan's general extremely chaotic energy and just desire to do all of the things.

Starting point is 02:07:44 He's a little distractible sometimes, but he gets a lot of stuff done, and he's very excited to do interesting, complicated things, which is very fun to work with. So I'll give you that. Up next is from Jeffrey. Linus and Luke, do you have a favorite memory from creating a video or working on a special project together?

Starting point is 02:08:13 Christmas album! Thank you. So the audience shouted out Christmas album. A favorite memory. It's happening. It's hard to pick one. It's hard to pick one favorite.

Starting point is 02:08:27 We did some really goofy, weird stuff together in the early days. Like, this is going to seem like probably a not very, like, not that great a moment. But it's one of the ones that I'll always remember. a moment, but it's one of the ones that I'll always remember. We had this, I think it was a water gun fight or something like that in the back alley behind the Langley house, and I did something to him, and it was underhanded. I remember this. And for the one time in our entire relationship, he looked at me and ran after me in a way that I actually wasn't quite sure if he would hurt me or not. I scaled a fence, which I'm trying to remember if he pulled me down off of, or if I did get over it. I'm not sure. But just those, I don't know, it was all so raw.

Starting point is 02:09:20 It was so raw back then. You can't pick one. And I know it's cliche, but it's impossible to pick one. I've mentioned mine a bunch of times on the show before, but it was the Denny's trip. So there was this, before Linus Media Group was a thing, back when we were at NCX, there was one. He had a full-time job. I was in school full-time, and we were also full-time making Linus Tech Tips and Intex videos.

Starting point is 02:09:47 So we were working a lot. And there was one time where we went to go get food after work. Denny's was the only thing open. We showed up. The hostess and waitress slash person doing both of those things was passed out on a table. If I remember correctly, the chef took... No, she took our orders.

Starting point is 02:10:08 Yeah, she took our orders and then fell asleep. And the chef just left the food under the heat lamp. So I don't know if it was just me or both of us. At some point, we were just like, this is Denny's. How long could this food possibly take to deliver? Yeah, so we just went into the kitchen

Starting point is 02:10:23 and got the food ourselves. And it was just like the, I don't know, if you guys watched how I reacted to the hack, you can imagine how I was kind of feeling in that moment. We're like, this is crazy. The stuff we're trying to accomplish is crazy. We have no idea if any of this is going to work. This is still super early days, but we're both committing really, really, really heavily and giving everything we have to make this work. And we let the waitress lady sleep, which was also cool. It's just the kind of people we are.

Starting point is 02:10:55 She clearly needed the rest. Yeah, and we can go get it ourselves. It's fine. Last couple here. You guys are the heart of the tech community. How does it feel to have nearly all big tech creators at your expo and nearly all geeks at home jealously wishing they were there? It's exciting. It's amazing.

Starting point is 02:11:17 It's unlike anything else. Yeah. Nice and terse hello DLL timestamp guy here three away from the big 100 stamps woo shout out timestamps what was your proudest

Starting point is 02:11:42 and jankiest solution to a problem that made everyone was baffled? Made everyone baffled, I assume? Wow. Ooh. Ugh. This is a really tough one. Why do you got to throw us such a difficult one?

Starting point is 02:11:57 That baffled everyone. There's been so many janky solutions. Using Windows Server for our NAS. That was a janky solution, and it definitely left everyone baffled. What about having the NAS on the stairs? What about having the hard drive stored above the toilet? Yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, whole room water cooling.

Starting point is 02:12:21 There, you know what? That's my answer. That left everyone baffled. All we've got left here is potentials. Do you want to just go through them rapid fire, or shall I read them to you top to bottom? Yeah, I think we're trying to text answer. I would maybe start at the top, and we can power up.

Starting point is 02:12:36 Sure. Sounds good to me. There's an app on Google. He's doing that one. Skip that one. What? Sorry. Skip that one.

Starting point is 02:12:44 Go next. Hey, LL and D. I am Sorry. Skip that one. Go next. Hey LL&D. I am currently working on my PhD in processor design. I guess there are, oh boy, there are lots of other researchers in your audience. Would you consider having a forum for

Starting point is 02:12:57 researchers at a future LTX? Honestly, what I would expect is that you guys would put together your own, like, band of merry researchers and kind of connect here. And, you know, I, man, like, are we going to need, like, banks of meeting rooms for people to, like, just, like, hang out, like, hang out? I don't know. You know, we'd love for LTX to be driven by the community's needs. So if that's something that you feel like it needs, we'd love for you guys to come and participate

Starting point is 02:13:29 and hang out and meet each other and make connections. Hey, DLL and hi, LTX people. What are some helpful tips you have for traveling with your tech on trips, business, and or leisure? Oh, we did a whole video on how to pack your computer. As for how to travel with your tech, I got to say, man, I never throw away like a velvety like Crown Royal bag. You know, like a soft bag. Which means he has, what, one?

Starting point is 02:14:05 I buy motorcycle helmets, too. Okay. They also come in them. But that's why I packed the Play Button PC in to bring it here. I just put it in a motorcycle drawstring bag. They've got that nice, soft feel. And, yeah, it's not going to get scratched. It's not going to get scuffed.

Starting point is 02:14:20 I mean, I think the biggest one is assume, no matter who you have charged with moving your tech around that they're going to do absolutely everything in their power to break it and package it accordingly. I wish I could have made it to LTX. Maybe next year. Luke, when can we download videos from Flowplane? I'm a truck driver. I don't always have service, and I don't want to eat through my data.

Starting point is 02:14:47 Thanks. Now. Yeah, yeah, now. And also literally forever ago. Fix your UX, Luke. Sorry? Fix your UX then. Oh, they might mean specifically

Starting point is 02:15:01 LTX behind the scenes videos. Oh. In which case, I don't know, maybe we'll look into that and see if maybe downloading It might mean specifically LTX behind the scenes videos. Oh. In which case, I don't know, maybe we'll look into that and see if maybe downloading is disabled on them. Is that even an option? Oh, the mobile app. Oh.

Starting point is 02:15:17 Like I said earlier, linusmedigroup.com slash jobs, apply for the front end position. apply for the front end position. Yeah. The poor man needs so much help. Have you heard about the Windows Vista Extended Kernel project? It lets the kernel say it's a different version of Windows. Do you see a future where an old version continues to get community updates? No.

Starting point is 02:15:51 I mean, it's one of those things where even if it could continue to get some kind of updates, you could continue to run Steam on it, right? Because Steam will not run on very old versions of Windows because Valve will drop support, even though, I don't know, technically, yeah, it probably could run or whatever. But I just wouldn't recommend it. Unless there's a full source code leak or something like that for Windows Vista, you're not going to be able to rely on community updates to keep it actually safe to use.

Starting point is 02:16:15 And so I just don't think it's the kind of thing that I can recommend. And I just don't think it makes sense. Didn't the Windows 95 source code leak? Was it 95 or 98? Something like that. 2000. 2000 leaked as well?

Starting point is 02:16:30 I don't know. I mean, who knows then? Maybe one day Vista's source code will leak and we will see some kind of extension project and the whole thing will make sense, which would be a really wild alternative to Windows, Linux, or macOS. Yeah. I feel like with Windows 2000

Starting point is 02:16:47 there's really a lot of fundamental stuff missing for the internet age that it's not something that you would realistically want to use even if you could. But getting up to Vista, I know about Vista's reputation.

Starting point is 02:17:05 Okay? But it was not that bad. Yeah, Vista fans. Vista fans. I don't know, an updated Vista? I'd use it. The way it was rolled out was terrible. The laptops that people were putting it on,

Starting point is 02:17:23 the companies were putting it on, was completely not okay. The certification of Microsoft was trash. The operating system itself, if on a computer powerful enough, was neat. Windows XP! And...

Starting point is 02:17:38 I think that... Wait, you've got one more in here. This is our last Merch message from the evening. Hey DLL, long time viewer from the Langley House couple, questions, is there going to be a Tux Plus plushie from the WAN intro? And have you considered doing an LTT-themed minifigure like the Lambo or Pizza PC?

Starting point is 02:18:01 We have actually considered a Tux plushie. I have no idea what they're talking about. I'm not sure what you're referring to. But for the... Oh, in the animation there's a penguin. Linux penguin. On the couch or something? Yeah, that's not really our jam.

Starting point is 02:18:17 Some Linux channel or Linux group of some sort can do a Tux plushie. That's their thing to do. As for... What was the other? Oh, right, right, right, right, right. As for like little tchotchkes and stuff, yeah, we've had that on the agenda for a long time.

Starting point is 02:18:35 You know, for us, it's a fine line between wanting to produce what the community is asking us for, but also not just manufacturing garbage. So we have some really cool stuff coming. I showed this on the tours that I was on with the Orcas and the Whales. We have this cool little desk lamp coming that looks like a retro computer. And it has, yeah, see, they know what's up.

Starting point is 02:18:55 It's got a curved screen on the front. And then it's got an LED array behind it inside. And so you can just kind of bask in the soft glow of a little tiny CRT monitor on your desk. So we have some kind of cool stuff coming like that, but not too much. We don't want to go out of our way to just make stuff that we know is destined for the landfill sooner rather than later. And I think that's it. We're done.

Starting point is 02:19:22 We will see you again next week. Different bad time, but the same bad channel. Bye. And I think that's it. We're done. We will see you again next week different Bad time, but the same bad channel. Bye Thanks for watching!

The WAN Show - Stop Flying Over My House - WAN Show July 29, 2023

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