The WAN Show - You Said I Was Wrong - WAN Show September 13, 2024

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm going back to university for zero dollar delivery fee, up to five percent off orders and five percent uber cash back on rides. Not whatever you think university is for. Get uber one for students. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings may vary. Eligibility and member terms apply. Hey there everybody. Welcome to a chilled out, relaxed WAN show. So smooth. We've got a great show lined up for you guys today. We're going to be talking about Apple's iPhone 16 glow time event
Starting point is 00:00:27 The PlayStation 5 Pro announcement Luke. We also have some good news in this week in AI and We're gonna be talking about how the US government is pushing for greater VPN access. They're pushing for greater VPN access Yeah, I think it's a good thing. Well, it's smooth. Mm-hmm goes down easy Just like this intro. To our intro. Uh, yeah. The show is brought to you today by Manscaped, The Ridge, and Acronis, along with our chair partner Secret Lab and our laptop partner LG. Why don't we jump right into our first topic, which is of course that I was wrong this week. Yeah. Twice. Yeah. Now I
Starting point is 00:01:26 assume that you have watched literally nothing. Nope. I assume you know I mean I don't think there are any two tech products that you could care less about than the iPhone and the PlayStation. Yep. Yeah. So why don't I catch you up on exactly what happened and then we'll go from wow it's been three minutes and we've already thrown something at our producer I'm sorry I was talking why't we... what do you want to start with? Should I catch you up on the iPhone? Okay, so Apple announced the iPhone 16 lineup. So you got the 16, the 16 Plus, the 16 Pro, and the 16 Pro Max. If I recall correctly, honestly... I'm not obsessed with Apple's lineup and
Starting point is 00:02:26 figuring out exactly what it is. I'll look at it when I need to and I'll refresh myself, but other than that it honestly isn't something that I pay that close attention to. But this time around, and this made people pretty angry, I was approaching the iPhone announcement event from a bit of a different perspective. So I feel like, and what happened was our video ended up having a pretty positive overall spin on it. When largely the reaction from the tech press and sort of influencer army out there was pretty negative. But I'd like to explain why. So first of all all let's talk about what makes the iPhone 16 lineup new. They're getting the new A18 processor
Starting point is 00:03:10 family so we have a regular A18 in the iPhone 16 and then an A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro. As far as we can tell from Apple's comparative benchmarks like they didn't compare both of these new processors to one single predecessor. They compared them to different things. And if you do the math from previous Apple presentations, they seem like they're probably pretty close. So it looks like they're very, it looks like they're very similar in terms of the at least CPU performance, GPU performance, and neural processor performance
Starting point is 00:03:45 But all of this is going to become more clear as time goes on The There's there's upgraded glass. So their ceramic shield is is now significantly stronger I actually don't have a I don't have a summary of the specs in my notes, which I normally have when I run through something like this, so we'll have to kind of figure that out. But the things that really stood out to me were actually not necessarily the hardware. Oh, there's a new button. It's like a programmable button. Which is kind of cool. Action button, which I kind of like. Was that ever a thing in the past?
Starting point is 00:04:24 On the past? Um on the iPhone? I read some comments of people talking about like oh they took the button away so that they could give it back to us now and I was like what? I mean they had the home button. Okay. But that wasn't reprogrammable. Did they have a button? Actually it was on the 15 Pro. Yeah it was on the 15 Pro but now it's on the regular 16. So that's just okay. So there were there were a few things that people were pretty, and the camera button is new across the board. So we have a dedicated shutter button, but no, no iPhone in the past has ever had a shutter
Starting point is 00:04:55 button. So there were a couple of things that people were pretty upset about, and one of them was that in the video I said that I was probably going to go because I've been talking about switching to an iPhone for a little bit for a while now and I think I'm just I'm overdue and there's a lot of things about iOS 18 that are looking very compelling to me and there's some there's some Android there's some Android army members who are worse telling me that these aren't new features to Apple or that they're copied from Android or that they don't make that much of a difference
Starting point is 00:05:31 or whatever. But the reality of it is that to me, like the phone operating system that I use doesn't really matter and I don't really care who's copying from each other. Realistically, Google and Apple copy liberally from each other at this point. And it doesn't really matter to me where it originated from. What matters to me is that I need a new device right now.
Starting point is 00:05:53 And the iPhone 16 lineup actually looks pretty compelling. And I think that's kind of the root of where your thoughts on this stuff came from was that you need a new device and you're on an old one. And I think you and I even talked about this, I don't remember, but a lot of people that are unhappy with the event, it's because they have a current generation device and they're looking at the upgrade and going this doesn't
Starting point is 00:06:16 really seem like a lot, but we're at, I mean it's called iPhone 16, the jumps per generation is gonna slow down. Phones have been boring for a long time now. And the way I'm kind of looking at it is you can be disappointed quite genuinely every single generation, or you can start shifting your goalposts a little bit and look like one or two generations back for your improvement jumps. And I think it's going to be more than one or two. I think realistically what this comes down to is that the the days of us getting something major to upgrade to every single generation, not only are they dead but they've been dead for a long time. I completely agree. I've been over it for a
Starting point is 00:07:01 few years now at the very least. And so I guess that was, and the amount of speculation that we were paid by Apple to have kind of a positive spin on it. Guys, anytime you see someone who accuses us of being paid by Apple to be positive about Apple products, you can immediately just dismiss anything. Were we even invited to the event? No, of course not. Yeah. Let alone paid. Immediately just dismiss anything invited to the event. No, of course not. Yeah Apple's little paid the extent of Apple's media relationship with me up until now is
Starting point is 00:07:39 That they emailed me once are they kind of cool with MAC address? Oh, I don't know if they are No one has kept me up to date on it. Okay, so I not sure. Maybe. But as far as I am concerned, and as far as the LTT channel is concerned, Apple has never so much, has never gone past scheduling a conference call with me. They never actually went through with the call. It did get scheduled, but it was cancelled minutes before we actually went through with minutes before we actually went through with engaging for the first time. Apple has no interest in working together with me. So people were mad about a number of things. They were mad because they felt we were overly positive about the event. And I think that a big part of that comes down to that difference in perspective
Starting point is 00:08:22 where most of the rest of the tech media, if they're running a 15 Pro now or a 15 Pro Max, are looking at this going, oh, boring. Where's the innovation, Apple? And I think they just have to get used to the idea that that's gonna happen over a much longer cycle, whereas I'm looking at it going, man, my AirPods Pro 2s just got way better, like ages after I bought them, which I'm pretty stoked on. I didn't even know that was a thing, that sounds great. It's a kind of behavior that- What feature are you gaining?
Starting point is 00:08:51 For me personally, not much. They're optimizing the noise cancellation, they're adding some like- And this is retroactive to what you have now? Yeah, it looks like it's like some kind of machine learning assisted, quickly switching in between transparency mode for conversations and turning everything back up. Oh, that thing looks really cool.
Starting point is 00:09:07 Yep, it's something that absolutely exists in other products, but my assumption is that based on how well Apple has handled active noise cancellation, it'll actually be implemented pretty well, and I might actually use it. They're also adding like hearing aid-like functionality to AirPods. I've been using them as casual hearing protection
Starting point is 00:09:26 for a long time, but they are more formally talking about using them that way with the improved active noise cancellation. If you cancel out a wave, the wave is canceled. No, I was thinking you mentioned hearing aid and then noise protection. Both. And I thought you were saying those were the same thing
Starting point is 00:09:44 for a second. No, no, yeah, not the same thing. But yeah, I thought you were saying those were the same thing for a second. No, no, yeah, not the same thing. But yeah, no, you're talking about different stuff. Okay. So I just, I thought that was pretty cool. I actually opened the video on like a software update, essentially, and I think a lot of people were kind of surprised to see that.
Starting point is 00:09:58 The other thing that people kind of went after me for was that I told them my intention was to go with the iPhone 16 plus the non-pro and and a lot of the feedback that I got on that was Linus you know if you're gonna go into the Apple ecosystem for the first time in a long time you should be having the full experience but the reality of it is guys like I can pick any iPhone I want like we're ordering all of them through work. I just literally grab off the shelf whichever one I am, I want to use.
Starting point is 00:10:32 But the reason that I went with the iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Plus, I haven't actually 100% decided which one I want, I'm going to hold them first, is that I don't think people should be buying the Pro. Don't get me wrong. I don't know what the difference is. There's features on the Pro that I would like to have. The regular iPhone 16 still doesn't have a high refresh rate display. Ooh. Yeah. 60 Hertz? Which for like $800? Pretty embarrassing. But most of the other stuff that's and but then again neither does the device that I am upgrading from. It feels nicer. I have a higher refresh rate screen now I can feel it. It does but I guess what I've
Starting point is 00:11:19 discovered is for my phone I don't know I... I don't game on my phone. It does make touch feel more responsive. I can absolutely instantly tell if I'm using a high refresh rate device and things like higher polling rates on the touch input. It definitely makes a difference. But I think I have just become not that much of a power user and a lot of the other features on the Pro, I just don't need them.
Starting point is 00:11:49 The studio quality microphone, 4K 120 FPS recording, I don't need that stuff. It's got another, I think it's got another camera. I don't know, man. The iPhone's ability to film in log makes video on iPhone extremely interesting sure but I'm not using it professionally this is just my phone do I need to shoot 4k 120 on it like I can they added I could see it they added pro res recording to the non-pro so if I just want to record in ProRes and I don't
Starting point is 00:12:21 need 120 frames per second is ever like you ever want to shoot like a little slow-mo thing of your son playing badminton or something like that? I don't know. Sure, do I need it at 4K? Oh, it's 4, okay, so you can still do- 4K, yeah, oh yeah, I can still do high frame rate. Sheesh. Yeah, it's just, it's a lot. People are saying, okay, yeah, the Li LIDAR, the LIDAR is great. You know what? That is great. I don't take that many pictures. And the handful of features that need the depth sensing, I can, I know enough people that I can
Starting point is 00:12:57 borrow a phone from. Like there's been, I think it's come up twice. Once when I had to do a facial scan for that VR headset, the big screen beyond. And once when I was a bit part, I when I had a bit part in an undisclosed film that I don't know if it's ever even gonna get made at this point. I haven't heard back about it in a while. Whatever, anyway.
Starting point is 00:13:20 I wonder if part of it, sorry. I used it to scan the room that I was in because that was useful for them for VFX overlays. I wonder if part of this is people that, can you pre-order yet? I think we've placed our orders. Did they set up pre-orders? I actually don't know.
Starting point is 00:13:35 It's a minor detail. Procurement will take care of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Way to go. It's nice. What was I gonna say? I wonder if some of this is people that bought the pro that are yes you can you can pre-order it. I wonder if this is people that bought the pro that
Starting point is 00:13:53 you know want the tech guy to make the same decision they did. I do think there's a lot of that. And I can see why they would want to because it's $1,500 Canadian Canadian. This is Canadian. So it starts out I believe 1200 us And it is funny. It is funny to me seeing how many people are legitimately angry at me Like I've betrayed max is 1750 because I am because I'm using an iPhone The pro max is what my car cost. Not my current one. Yeah, I was gonna say. Surely that's not right.
Starting point is 00:14:29 No, my first car. Sorry. You're getting older. Your first car was a minute ago. You might have to have some inflationary adjustments, which we'll be talking about a little bit later. It's still a lot of money. Yeah, I mean, we're...
Starting point is 00:14:41 And so I was... Realistically, I was looking at the iPhone 16 going, okay, is this really, do I need a titanium phone? Or is aluminum probably okay? Are you gonna end up, that one's not in a case, are you gonna put it in a case anyways? No, I'm not gonna put it in a case. Yeah, okay.
Starting point is 00:14:55 But like, it's aluminum, and dude, their glass is like, very shatter resistant, so I'm really not that worried about it. I used to be no case, I was no case in my previous phone this phone so huge That I decided to get a case for it anyways because I was like I feel like it's just gonna get knocked off of things More often. Yeah, it's enormous, and I'm happy. I have one look at this There's a massive bite out of that oh wow yeah, you really hit that one yeah She uh that case is doing work, and it is actually it's it's been dropped a couple times, but something that's kind of nice about it
Starting point is 00:15:29 Is that I just don't care? Because I don't even like the phone nice, but I don't want to replace it. There's a case on it But I don't care for it. It makes sense. It's just like now whatever. Yeah Which is a nice? It's nice to just not worry about it another. Another difference for the pro is that the bezels are slightly smaller. So in about the same form factor there, the screens are 0.2 inches bigger.
Starting point is 00:15:53 But then if I cared that much about that, why would I get an iPhone with like a, you know, giant forehead notch in it in the first place? Like I, I don't know guys. I mean, feel free, feel free to like come at me and let me know. But I think that people should probably just be getting the regular 16 if they want an iPhone, if they want the ecosystem.
Starting point is 00:16:12 And it's funny to me how we get so stuck in our tech bubble, and we get so stuck in our priorities that sometimes we forget that most people don't care. Yeah, most people Cannot tell a 60 Hertz display from a high refresh rate display Also only looking to upgrade their phones when their battery life starts to annoy them too much Which is usually every like three years Or more more like my battery life didn't really start getting bad on this until about the last year or so And I believe this is up to, I believe this is six years. Probably depends on their usage.
Starting point is 00:16:49 Like if they game a lot, so they're doing some really brutal battery cycles, then it's going to be sooner if they don't later, et cetera, et cetera. Noke asks, you often say you prefer a phone where you can take photos and videos of kids important moments with the iPhone 16 shutter button be a good addition for you? I never need to be that quick on the draw. As long as I've got a gesture that I can activate in a reasonable amount of time, and the onscreen button is there
Starting point is 00:17:16 in a reasonable amount of time, like I am so well adjusted now to the ergonomics of holding my phone so that my thumb is here for the shutter button, I just... the value of a dedicated hardware button for that for me is extremely low. Extremely low. There's still things that I'm super not impressed about. I mean, the fact that Apple's base storage is still 128 gigs...
Starting point is 00:17:42 I was just going gonna talk about that. On devices that cost like a flippin' ton of money, the fact that storage upgrades cost so much. $300 to go from 512 gigs to one terabyte is crazy. Apple literally charges so much that their NAND flash chips could be made of gold Literally we got no I'm serious we we grabbed some pieces of the golden controller and we compared them to like like like NAND chips and
Starting point is 00:18:21 like we like we did the math and like how much gold it was to weigh as much as like apples NAND chips and like we like we did the math and like how much gold it was to weigh as much as like apples NAND chips and Like wait for wait Apple Apple storage and memory cost as much as gold was this for a video. Yeah I was gonna say why would you need the pieces from the gold? We it was I believe it was from the other one and then look up gold value I believe it was I believe well, yeah, but we had the gold so we could That's why I said is it for a video, because it's for a video that it's a cool visual thing. Anyway, yeah Yeah, so it was it was it was freaking hilarious right though because
Starting point is 00:18:54 It's it's crazy. It's like when you compare printer ink to you know, yeah Chanel number whatever, you know, like like these obscenely valuable liquids funny enough. I watched that video oh The like printer video yeah, yeah, yeah, I watched that one of the very few who did it I didn't watch the other terrible performer. How'd you like it? I was actually pretty good. Yeah I didn't know about the whole tank thing and stuff and there was one really mad comment that was saying Everyone knows you should just get an older laser printer They had a bunch of up votes. I get these questions all the time, and it's like like genuinely
Starting point is 00:19:34 No, no, no, no, no, no, they were like everyone knows like like our advice was bad They didn't get to the part of the video where we talked about that. Oh very cool I can't help, I can't help people. I can't help them. Anywho, so, I'm kind of excited to try it, even though I'm definitely gonna have some issues. I don't think that having USB 2 speeds
Starting point is 00:20:02 is gonna bother me that much, day to day, I very rarely offload. I noticed Plex actually... Wait, why is it USB 2 speeds? On the 16 non-pro, it's USB 2. You're kidding. Even though it's USB-C. Like, look! There's absolutely stuff that is gonna make me mad.
Starting point is 00:20:19 But how often do you... When's the last time you offloaded photos from your phone via USB? Uh, yeah, that's fair. When's the last time you connected your phone to a computer via USB? Oh, decently often actually. Okay, to transfer files though? No. Okay, so who cares? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:36 Who cares? I do think it's interesting. Do they have any color overlap? Oh, black and white? Okay. Crystal asks, will you miss your s pen? The answer is Absolutely. Yeah, I have become I've gone from why are they taking up space in my in my note with this stupid pen to Whenever I want it. I really wanted it, predominantly for marking up screenshots.
Starting point is 00:21:05 Why don't you get a new note? Is it just Apple time? Yeah, I could, it's just time. Apple time? Yeah, it's just time. So basically, I think that's what it boils down to. And you know what the last part I think is? Is, I mean, we've talked about this on the WAN show,
Starting point is 00:21:22 so you guys will kind of be familiar with this already, but I'm so tired of negativity. Yeah. It's like, why do we have to compare it to last year's iPhone 15 and say it's not enough? What do you mean it's not enough? If it's not enough, then keep your iPhone 15. Yeah. That's totally fine. That's go for it even good
Starting point is 00:21:47 That's good. You just yeah, okay If anything I would actually now that our mobile processors Especially apples are fast enough to do pretty much whatever we could need to do on our phone reasonably speaking I would actually love to see less frequent upgrades and longer software support or whatever that looks like. Because you've got to remember, Apple is driven somewhat differently from other phone manufacturers. They are a lot less motivated by the initial sale of the iPhone. To be clear...
Starting point is 00:22:18 Oh, they're happy to grab it, though. They're happy to take your money. But they are far more motivated by the size of the iOS ecosystem and the number of people that are buying stupid men. Yvonne picked up wordscapes, like the mobile, like word crossword spelling de jumble thing. And I've been playing with her sometimes. Dude, dude, the lengths that they go to. We're both getting into playing
Starting point is 00:22:47 boomer games with our partners. Nice. What is happening? I play the New York Time games with Emma. Oh, Wordle or whatever it is? Yeah, those things. And you play Wordscapes? Yeah. How the Mighty Fall. Nice, I know, right? We used to be true gamers. I used to play Left 4 dead 2 with my posture like this boys Boy Oh, I heard that yeah, so so so we've been playing wordscapes lately dude the length that they go to To extract money from you. I'm sure Apple gets a piece of every one of those transactions At the end of the day, the most important thing to you
Starting point is 00:23:25 is that you're on an iPhone. Not necessarily that you are on the latest iPhone, but that you are on an iPhone. Because the bigger the install base is, the more of that sweet, sweet app store money they're extracting from you, and the more incentivized app developers are to continue to prioritize the iOS platform.
Starting point is 00:23:44 So, I forget where I was going with this. What was my last reason? I forget, it doesn't matter. Let's talk about the PlayStation 5 Pro announcement. This was a little more recent, so I'm gonna remember all the details a little bit better. But in a nutshell, Sony upgraded the GPU. I was a little surprised.
Starting point is 00:24:04 Oh, we also get Wi-Fi 7, higher base storage. I'm trying to think if there's anything else that was really upgraded going from the PS5 to the PS5 Pro, and I don't think so. There were some things I was a little surprised by. I didn't expect the CPU to stay Zen 2. Yeah. Already when the PS5 came out, I remember it, I remember feeling like, oh yeah, it makes sense that it's Zen 2 because the development cycle for this is so long that it would have had to be, but boy would it ever have been nice if they, you know, if the dev kits were all Zen 2 and it was like Zen 3 for the real products, you know, if the dev kits were all Zen 2 and it was like Zen 3 for the real product,
Starting point is 00:24:46 you know. So I was a little surprised to see Zen 2 stick around. But it also kind of makes sense. Wait, hold on, what's going on here? Okay, hold on, we'll get to the PS5 Pro in a second. Shrafk to in floatplane chat says, Linus, this is such a disconnected take. When a product costs $1,200 and there's no improvement to justify it, that's when we should be negative. This is a consumer protection issue. No.
Starting point is 00:25:15 A consumer protection issue would be if Apple tells you it's something that it isn't. A consumer protection issue would be if Apple deactivates your iPhone 15 Pro and forces you to buy an iPhone 16 Pro. You are not compelled to buy this. This is not food, it's not shelter, it's not water. It's a iPhone. But if you have a 15 or especially like a 15 Pro, you don't need a new phone. Yeah. Which is not bad thing like like the that that's the biggest take from the event From me is that you don't need it and I am certain
Starting point is 00:25:52 Honestly, it might have even already happened because I just don't care that much because I'm not going to upgrade my phone Yeah, but whatever new pixel announcement. I'm not upgrading to it. So like I don't even really care what it is What I'm not upgrading to it. So like I don't even really care what it is. What I'm looking for is Gonna end up being like the pixel 10 or 11. Yeah when that launches I'm gonna be evaluating that versus whatever iPhone is launching at the same time in Comparison to the phone that I currently have and deciding am I gonna get a battery replacement or am I gonna buy one of these phones? Yeah, so I'm interested in it So basically back to back to my point of us being more focused on the positive aspects, remember too guys,
Starting point is 00:26:30 this isn't a review, this is a summary of a product announcement. So obviously, I'm gonna talk about the highlights. Why do I wanna drag myself down? Why do I wanna drag everything down by dwelling on the negative? And at the end of the day, if it's not a big enough upgrade over last gen, well that's fine because Apple's not targeting last gen.
Starting point is 00:26:50 They're not selling it to last gen. The question is not, the question is not, is $1,200 compelling enough for someone who already owns an iPhone 15 Pro? That's a stupid question because it's not $1,200. It's $1,200 minus whatever you could sell your 15 Pro for. That's the actual value and that, I don't know, that's up to you. I have no idea what they're worth in the secondary market. You can go figure that out.
Starting point is 00:27:13 The question is, is $1,200 worth it for someone who needs a phone? And so I think that's the difference. And it looks like just on the surface to me, like it looks like, yeah, probably. That's the difference in perspective that I wanna start approaching things with is, as someone who is the actual target market for this product. Okay, so let's go back to the PS5 Pro. So the main things are it's got a better GPU,
Starting point is 00:27:39 similar architecture, which again surprised me, because we gotta remember this product launched four years ago, I think it works out to write PS PS 5 came out in 2020 PS 5 release that PS 5 no nuts not this limb or was it 2022 yeah November November 2020 was when the PS 5 launched. So four years later, I was kind of expecting, you know, I don't know, Zen 3, at the very least, I was expecting an architectural change to the GPU. But then, as I was sort of working through the script with David, I was like, no, it actually makes sense. Because from Sony's perspective, the most important important thing because this is a mid
Starting point is 00:28:26 cycle refresh that realistically they aren't going to sell a ton of yeah especially if you compare this to base PS5s or PS4s right these pro models are for their more affluent customers they're for their more the more discerning console gamer right you know it know, SIPsT like this, right? Who can definitely see the difference in the pixels, or realistically, who can see the higher refresh and higher frame rates. So making sure that developers have continuity
Starting point is 00:28:58 between the regular model and between the pro model is way more important than squeezing a little bit more performance out of it. Wi-Fi 7, I think, is actually a pretty important upgrade that is maybe not being talked about enough, especially by us. Like, we turned that video around extremely quickly. And so there were a couple things that I think
Starting point is 00:29:21 weren't necessarily wrong, but are things that I would probably wanna do differently to go back. I would talk about WiFi seven. And especially in the PlayStation ecosystem where you might have a PS portal and your PlayStation five pro is not connected via ethernet. Having WiFi seven and a WiFi seven router, even if your PS portal doesn't support WiFi seven,
Starting point is 00:29:42 which it doesn't because it's a PS portal, it would be better to have a stronger connection between the PS5 Pro and your router. It's still better. The better every link in the chain can be, the better off you're going to be. So Wi-Fi 7 is something I would have talked about more. I also would have more explicitly talked about
Starting point is 00:30:00 the lack of a disk drive. That was something that we kind of glossed over. And at the very beginning, we had a bit where, talked about the lack of a disk drive. That was something that we kind of glossed over. And at the very beginning, we had a bit where, you know, by the time you buy a stand, and I think David and I had talked about how the visuals should also have the disk drive, and it should just like add up the whole price
Starting point is 00:30:16 and compare it to the thing. Because we said something along the lines of like, by the time you buy a disk drive, this thing costs darn near twice as much as a base model PlayStation, or costs about twice as, I forget exactly how we worded it. And I probably would have expanded on that more later,
Starting point is 00:30:34 because I think that people were pretty upset when they felt like we were justifying the price, when we talked about how it wasn't Sony's most expensive console ever, that crown actually, corrected for inflation, goes to the PS3, which came out at $599, but that was back in... Man, when did the PS3 come out? Like 2002? Oh boy, I'm gonna get this wrong. 2006. Okay. So that came out way back in 2006.
Starting point is 00:31:04 I said I'd touch on inflation. Quite a few people were really upset that we made a with inflation comparison to the PS3. And I'd like to explain why we did that. And the reason they were upset was because, and I get this, people are sick of seeing a price justified today because of inflation.
Starting point is 00:31:27 Well, it's reasonable for it to be $700 because if you compare that to $500 for the PS3, inflationarily, they're very similar. In fact, that was more dollars back then. But that wasn't what we were saying. We weren't trying to justify the price. In fact, the very opening of the video. Wages haven't scaled with inflation. I'll get to, yes, I'll get to that. We weren't trying to justify the price. In fact, the very opening of the video... Because wages haven't scaled with inflation. I'll get to... yes, I'll get to that. We weren't trying to justify the price,
Starting point is 00:31:48 though. What we were saying was, there's a precedent for this. That's what we were saying. This isn't their most expensive console. Is that like one of the communication things that you would have wanted to change? I would have wanted to clarify that. And I can see why people are upset about it, because, yeah, their wages haven't flipping scaled with inflation. The buying power of that much money is not the same even if it's the same inflationary wise. Exactly. However something that I feel like a lot of people overlook in stuff like this is
Starting point is 00:32:22 that the costing of a product from a company from a consumer electronics company like Sony is contingent on their costs for their sourcing Do you think Sony makes power supplies Does Sony have a power supply manufacturing plant? Do you think it's that I think it's more that there's no competition Really in the space we talk about that But I just want to I just want to talk about the importance of why this inflation number matters Sony buys power supplies from Light on and those power supplies cost more now than they used to yeah because
Starting point is 00:32:58 Commodity prices have gone up in inflation. Yeah, do you think Sony manufacturers? microprocessors? No. Do you think Sony has their own iron mines where they get iron to make steel? If we were talking about Samsung, maybe. Who knows? They do everything. That's true, but we're not. But Sony, no. Sony manufacture DRAM. No. Does Sony manufacture DRAM? No. Sony is their designer, but they don't actually manufacture just about any of the raw materials of a PlayStation 5.
Starting point is 00:33:35 Like certainly they're doing board assembly. And just like Em Hop pointed out in Philippine Chat, fab time is huge right now. Fab time is crazy right now. Ranma Chan says, I saw a chart yesterday that showed how much TSMC is essentially gouging companies due to manufacturing capacity and it's rough. And that was why the second thing I said was microprocessors. Yeah, Sony doesn't make microprocessors. We are in an environment right now where there's an effective monopoly on cutting edge node microprocessors. As much as it's been kind of hilarious for people who hate Intel, many of whom are justified
Starting point is 00:34:09 to watch them struggle with the rollout of their fab business, we should be rooting for them because Samsung has proven time and time again that they're just not gonna catch TSMC. Here's a hot take. Then again, so is Intel. I'm surprised they're as cheap as they are. With how few people can make them cough, cough one place.
Starting point is 00:34:40 I think we're lucky that they're not making it way worse. And maybe they're not making it way worse because they know other companies would then have more opportunity to spring into the space, and they would rather there's less people competing, so they're happy to take their really significant cut that they are. But they have an effective monopoly on cutting edge chips. And the fact that they're not just astronomically more expensive is, I think, where... Soterios Johnson Yeah, I remember seeing a quote from, I think it was TSMC's chairman or something like that, basically making the observation that Nvidia's sure charging a lot for these AI processors. Yeah, yeah, I don't remember that quote,
Starting point is 00:35:10 but I know what you're talking about. Yeah, like, huh, we could take more of that because who else is gonna make it? Nobody. No one. No one. Like they could effectively charge, you know, there's limits to this, but practically anything for certain product lines that like,
Starting point is 00:35:25 you know, a government is not going to just not buy it. So like, I don't know, I think, yeah, I think the fact that you can buy go out and buy a very respectable, super solid CPU for your computer for like 100 bucks is and it's from a monopoly that you're also going through middlemen for is wild like yeah, I don't know Yeah, so I think They're cheap because they're a loss leader you buy the console and Sony gets the licenses when you sell the games They have no competition right now, but you don't decide that that too. That's not up to you
Starting point is 00:36:01 Yeah, and when there is no competition, there's no real reason for them to do that. Yep. And who's competing with the PlayStation 5 Pro right now? Microsoft? Yeah. No? Not even a little bit. My understanding is the rumor is that Microsoft has actually canned their mid-generation refresh. I don't know if that will end up being true or if that's even actually canned their mid-generation refresh. I don't know if that will end up being true or if that's even the recent rumor mill.
Starting point is 00:36:28 But Sony is effectively competing against absolutely nobody and what they're selling is an experience that only has a value to those few who value it. And back to our conversation about the iPhone, because I think that in both cases, a lot of the criticism of our coverage Came down to the same thing guys
Starting point is 00:36:49 Sony is not selling PlayStation 5 owners a $700 upgrade Sony is selling people who want to buy a console a $700 console and If you want a disc version, yeah, you're gonna have to pay another 80 bucks for an add-on for an add-on disc drive Dude, the writing's been on the wall for game discs forever. I think this is the last generation with this dress I Hope not. Yeah, I hope not me too
Starting point is 00:37:25 No, I Think we're gonna get one more. I Think PlayStation 6 has a disk drive But I think that it is I think that it is it moves to this add-on Model that we have now and I think they de-emphasize it extremely heavily and then I don't think PlayStation 7 has one Okay, well, sorry, what was I saying right Right, so they're, so right, so, so they're selling a $700 PlayStation to someone who wants a PlayStation 5, but like a bit better. And if you were, have a PlayStation 5 and you were going to upgrade to it, you wouldn't be paying $700.
Starting point is 00:37:59 You would be selling your PlayStation 5 and you'd be paying whatever the difference is. So you'd probably get a few hundred bucks for your PS5 and you'd pay $400 or whatever, which if we're being realistic, four years into this product's life cycle, it's not a ridiculous amount of money. I wouldn't pay it. No. I have personally never bought a PlayStation. That's not true.
Starting point is 00:38:21 You never bought a current gen PlayStation. No, I've never bought a PlayStation. I was given a PlayStation 2. Oh, you were given that? Yeah, I own it. Darn it. But I didn't buy it. All right, fair enough.
Starting point is 00:38:33 I knew you had one. Yeah, I got a PS2. All right, fair. Thought I got you. No, it was a gift. Okay, so question, I'm jumping off topic from PlayStation. Do you have anything else to say about PlayStation? No, just, we're evaluating it from the perspective of someone who's interested in buying it. And I think that's something that our viewers are just going to have to get used to.
Starting point is 00:38:53 We are not evaluating it from the perspective of someone who hates consoles and thinks they're stupid. And we're going to be realistic. Like it was, I don't know, it's tough seeing people say, and we're going to be realistic. Like it was, I don't know, it was, it's tough seeing people say, yeah, it's easy for a, you know, it's easy for someone like you to come down and millionaire, explain to us why it costs so much, but you're just out of touch. It's like, well, okay, but if someone else said it, would it be, would it be more true? The information doesn't change. Or less true because what it really boils down to is that there's about $200, $250 worth of GPU and SSD upgrade in this thing.
Starting point is 00:39:31 Stop millionaire explaining to me. And it costs about $200, $250 more, kind of depending on how you want to do the math. Yeah. And it's like... And they're going to make money off it because they have no competition. So that's what companies do. And it's like... And we're not not I'm not being an apologist. I'm not saying I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying it is. Sorry. Yeah. The the whole iPhone thing comment that I saw a few times
Starting point is 00:40:02 after we moved off the topic was that we were ignoring negatives in the video that you did for the iPhone thing. Yeah. Did you mention anything about how like, you know, it's cool, whatever, but it might not make sense for you to upgrade if you're on 15? I just thought that was obvious. Okay. I did not. I did not mention that it might not make sense to upgrade from the 15. That wasn't my perspective. And I think this comes back to a point that you've kind of been hammering on for a while. We don't need everyone to have that perspective. Oh yeah, for sure.
Starting point is 00:40:38 If you want that perspective, you should be watching a video from someone who has an iPhone 15. I don't. If you are seriously considering this thing, I would watch... I would value personally, like actually completely detaching myself as much as possible. I would value seeing your video because it's a different take. And then I would watch a range of other videos that also have other takes. And then I would find where my opinion is on it somewhere in the middle or whatever. Maybe I align perfectly with someone who knows, but like
Starting point is 00:41:12 you figure out where it is, but I don't personally even want a reality where every single piece of content on a product is exactly the same because if that happens, there will only be one reviewer left. Yeah, and there's no- Because eventually there will only be one reviewer left. Yeah, and there's no- Because eventually people will stop watching all the other ones. There's no value to it. No one wants that.
Starting point is 00:41:31 This is a funny thing. I often get asked by up and comers or people who wanna start a tech channel, you know, like, do you have any advice on, on like, you know, my style? Like, what can I do to make my videos more like you? And I'm like, you don't. Yeah, you don't. You should have your own ideas. You should have your own perspective. However much the audience is going to yell at you for not exactly copying what everyone
Starting point is 00:41:54 else does. In the long term, they'll value it. And the proof is in the pudding. My perspectives, my tastes have changed over the years. And that's not flip-flopping, that's being open to new information and new ideas and new perspectives. Theoretically, if you follow the scientific method, your stances on things should change with new information. You should be trying to have the most accurate one you can. And I did mention some negative things.
Starting point is 00:42:22 Like I mentioned that you can get cheap Android phones that have high refresh rate displays. When I talked about the 60 Hertz display on the non-pro, I mentioned that I would miss side loading and that I would probably still need to have an Android device handy. Like I did acknowledge issues. It's not like I'm just trying to,
Starting point is 00:42:42 yeah, it's not like I'm just trying to like be an Apple apologist all of a sudden. I'm never going to get an invite to one of their events. That's never going to happen. And like, honestly, it really just doesn't matter anymore. I don't know if you want to go. It would be so much more work to make the same video that I would make in my basement.
Starting point is 00:43:02 Yeah, because you're just watching the keynote anyways. Yeah. So like, so like, make in my basement? Yeah, because you're just watching the keynote anyways. Yeah, so like... So like, why am I there? Yeah, I don't know. Like, I can get hands on with it, but let's be real, it's an iPhone. Like, that's... Alright. Okay.
Starting point is 00:43:18 I think we've bashed the things that you were wrong about. Yeah. Moving on. Should we do this one? I'm still wondering what this one is. Oh. Oh, sure. Yeah, we could do a couple of merge messages.
Starting point is 00:43:36 Sure. I mean, that was kind of like two topics, right? Yeah, I think that was two topics. If you guys want to interact with the show, send a little message to producer Dan so he can put it at the bottom of the screen or send you a little response or forward it internally, the way to do it is a merch message. We don't want you wasting your money just throwing it at the screen. If you
Starting point is 00:43:54 want to throw money at the screen, you should get high quality merchandise in the mail for your efforts. And we've got a deal for you this week we are heating things up with a special promo for WAN show we're bringing back Luke you gotta get your thing oh they don't fit oh they didn't have my size does it bring the wrong size yeah but I have other colors to show you all right cool we're bringing back some pieces for a limited time now that it's almost fall. These are the color block hoodies that we released a couple of years back, themed around our various channels. So I'm wearing the short circuit one, here's LTT, here's the Tech Quickie one. We thought it'd be fun to throw these back up on the site for
Starting point is 00:44:37 just $39.99, but the catch is that they're only available as a mystery, so you never know which one you're gonna get And we're gonna heat things up even more Coming back at the same time Wands sweatpants and if you buy a mystery color block hoodie, you'll get these for 10 bucks Heads up nuts Heads up. This is kind of for our big boys out there, okay? We have very limited stock of the smaller sizes. We're stocked a little bit deeper on the bigger sizes, but the
Starting point is 00:45:10 discount will apply automatically when you have both a mystery color block hoodie and a pair of WAN sweatpants in your cart. So if you're looking to send a merch message while being able to get some stuff that's on sale that won't be available for much longer, now is your chance. Also on the store, the Offsite Laptop Bag is available again. To be clear, guys, it is not going to fit an Ohio class submarine in it. It is a laptop bag. It is not a... what are they called? The like... Messenger bags? Yeah, it's not a messenger bag. This is a laptop bag. So sorry for any miscommunication around that. LMG.GG slash laptop bag.
Starting point is 00:45:47 It's up there. And I guess that's all we have to say about merch messages. So all you gotta do is add something to your cart. You'll see a little box for a merch message. That'll go to producer Dan. Let's show you how it works. Dan, hit me with a merch message. Sure thing.
Starting point is 00:45:59 Hey, LIDAR Nuke and dual and PVS 14.9 vision monocular. Sure. Sure. I know thatular. Sure. Sure. I knew that thing. Yeah, cool. If given the choice and that it was unproblematic, would you choose to cover older military tech? If not, if so, under what circumstances?
Starting point is 00:46:16 Older military tech. Yeah, I don't see why we wouldn't cover a military tech thing. The issue for me is that we don't really get into tech history that much, and we definitely don't, I think, have the street cred in the military space to speak intelligently about that kind of thing. Like, I would be doing all the same research that anyone else would do, you know, browsing forums and Wikipedia and, you know, downloading
Starting point is 00:46:46 schematics off of War Thunder or whatever. Leaking military secrets, yeah. Given the reference in the in the naming, covering like night vision goggles, I don't think is a thing that makes a ton of sense for us. I think it would have to be like, how do they, how do they make sure that like, I don't know, these electronical components are able to survive in like warfare zones? I could say that being like a good tech quickie.
Starting point is 00:47:16 Yeah, kind of interesting. What makes an electronic device battle ready, you know, or something like that. How does it help resist EMP pulses, stuff like that? Yeah, I don't see really the why we would get into a specific piece. That really seems more like a gun channel could... Okay, I could see us being brought in as a collaborator
Starting point is 00:47:37 on something like that. Like if they wanted to discuss, if they pull the board out of something and they were like, okay, and then to talk about what makes this board special compared to consumer electronics at the time, we sent it to LTT. Sure. Or the opposite, considering they had that, was it PlayStation 3s?
Starting point is 00:47:57 I think it was that server farm made out of PlayStations. Like little things like that. Yeah, could make sense. But I think there isn't as much crossover as you might think, but there's some. Next up. Hi, LLD. You've teased a smaller backpack before. Is that still in the works or was it replaced by the... I don't know, laptop bag? Does it just cut off there? By the. Okay, by the.
Starting point is 00:48:28 It is definitely still in the works. Our latest sample of it is very good. Luke, you saw it last week. Yeah. Yeah. I really liked the side pockets. I won't say too much about it. Yeah. I don't know how much we're talking about, but those are sweet.
Starting point is 00:48:38 Did I even show you the little hidden pockets that are in them? I don't think so. I don't know if those are gonna make it into the final, but we're gonna push for it. Depends on costing a little bit. But yeah, no, the smaller backpack is coming. We're working on naming for it. I think we're going to have to do one more sample, but hopefully that'll be like a pre-production sample rather than a sample sample. And if we can sign off on that one, it go to production We're very very excited about it right now. It fits like a 15.6 inch gaming laptop pretty comfortably
Starting point is 00:49:10 We think we can make a tweak that would allow it to fit most 16 inch devices even at that size It's the one that I was wearing in my AMD Ryzen Ryzen 9000 coverage from Computex, if I recall correctly. So it looks a little bit different. Computex line is 224. It looks a bit different now and the internal layout thankfully is way better. It was, my notes after that trip were not good and I wasn't a hundred percent sure if we were gonna if we were gonna even be able to move forward with the product
Starting point is 00:49:49 because the design of it was so dependent on it being basically unusable as far as I could tell but Matthew I think is the one who did the work on tweaking the design while also dramatically improving the usability of it. Yeah, here's the video where I think it made its first appearance. This is apparently a hack. If you just go back and forward, ads disappear. And the more you do that, the more it trains YouTube to just not bother serving you ads really
Starting point is 00:50:26 Yeah, it doesn't seem to account for that you go right back onto the video Here's just accounts for that you bounce off the video the second you see an ad. Here's a question Yeah, if ad block is piracy. Yes is ad aversion piracy Like avoiding that oh like like ad avoidance like going back and forward to make it not send it to you. Resume viewing. Resume viewing. That kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Creepy. I think as long as you are...
Starting point is 00:50:55 Because you're not breaking terms of service. It's not against the terms of service to... Close your eyes? Is it officially against the terms of service to use adblock? Yeah. OK. Whereas navigating away from a page is absolutely not against the terms of service.
Starting point is 00:51:13 But if you automated it, so if you had a browser extension that every time you clicked a YouTube video, like micro loaded the page and unloaded it, and then loaded it again, I think that would qualify as an ad serving countermeasure Because it's the automation of it like not manually running it that whole that whole argument where ad block is basically the same as closing your eyes is Stupid yeah, because it's not yeah closing your eyes
Starting point is 00:51:44 It's the same as closing your eyes and you know, they'll compare it to like TV commercials or whatever else. Right. Um, no, because you, you, you would just close your eyes. That, that would be the same thing. Um, but when you, when you automate something, um, then to me that becomes a, um, is it also the distribution of it of said thing Hmm So you're talking like if you made your own script or something like that
Starting point is 00:52:15 I want to address this really quick Sydrax and FulplineChat said I just hate malvertising. I Strongly agree. I hate malvertising too So that's it. We're not telling you don't run this. We're also not telling you don't use adblock. Yeah literally Never happened never said that yeah, it's I Yeah, I don't have I don't feel like I don't feel like rehashing that one today sure I have never said don't use adblock I'm trying to think like maybe there was some way of showing the garage in 2013 where somebody's gonna like got him
Starting point is 00:52:52 It's like I don't know whatever Okay, I have never That I recall said don't use adblock I've been very consistent for a lot of years that... I don't know, Val Herrick in Float Plane Chat said, Linus literally called me up last night and told me not to use adblock. So what are you saying? I told you not to tell people that. That was a conversation between just the two of us. He called me too. So is that why you're so tired this week? You're just calling all of the audience members. I actually have to confess something you broke into the float plane database
Starting point is 00:53:29 I have to confess something I Bought an auto-dialer it wasn't even It was it was a recording. Oh, so it couldn't even tell it wasn't me because those guys are idiots It's not a whole it's not even a honor voice. No. No, it's literally an old-fashioned auto-dialer They got bamboozled Yeah Get rekt Anyways yeah, it's not a thing dude. We're just
Starting point is 00:53:58 and like We've got we both got some Linux ISOs okay so like relax yep or don't relax it actually doesn't really matter to me stay tense I'm probably gonna do one more if you're okay with that sure sure let's see hey LLD did Plex ever fix your issues got my first NAS set up a bit ago. Transcoded downloads are crucial for me, so decided to try MB. Haven't had any real issues, might be worth a look. I am probably going to try Jellyfin or MB at some point. Overall, I've been pretty annoyed with Plex.
Starting point is 00:54:48 That issue recently was a permissions thing in TrueNAS where I was having trouble with that show you wanted to watch. So that wasn't a Plex issue. That series of Linux ISOs? Yeah, series of Linux ISOs, sure, whatever. The point is just that I haven't actually tried to do a lot of local downloads lately. So I haven't realistically played with it that much, but Plex has been pretty well behaved for me lately,
Starting point is 00:55:10 and I actually saw some pretty promising news. I think it was either this morning or yesterday. Plex announced that they're going to split out the photo backup functionality that they used to have in the main Plex app into a separate app. And I remember talking to them about that because the photo backup function was really cool and really easy to use and really convenient and I really liked it and
Starting point is 00:55:30 then they just deprecated it and I was like well that's sort of uncool because I thought that that was part of the function of this product. So now it's a separate app and I wonder if that's going to help them overcome some of the challenges that they've had because from what I gleaned, the issues that they had continuing to support that feature basically came down to library access and constant changes when it came to accessing the library and then backing it up, especially as a background task.
Starting point is 00:56:01 So if that can be a dedicated app rather than part of the video watching app, maybe that'll help them do a better job of it. So I want to check that out, but I know absolutely nothing about it yet. And I'm gonna have to, I'll give it a chance. I mean, I have a lifetime subscription. So if I, so if you go away from it, you can always just come back. Yeah. And look, but the cost of Plex is not a factor for me. Yeah. For a lot of people, the cost of Plex is a major factor, so they want something free and open source, but I don't care because I already own it.
Starting point is 00:56:30 So the cost of both of them is the same for me personally. It might change what I would recommend to someone else. I might say, hey, give these free options a try before you spring for the paid one. But for me, it doesn't matter. So I'm going to give it a shot. And then the other big thing that I'm waiting for is That that NAS software that I invested in from from ash tech you doing the research on this before the NAS software comes out though Because I'm assuming you're gonna have some video on the NAS software kind of does make sense
Starting point is 00:56:58 Yeah, but my whole thing with the NAS software is I want to have to do as little work and research as possible. Oh no I mean like if you're if you're making a video like hey do this stuff to set up your NAS or whatever I don't know having an informed opinion on the Plex jellyfin whatever debate would be good? No I probably won't. Oh okay. Because a lot of my opinion is gonna come down to ease of setup and so my my goal, my big ulterior motive with this whole with this whole investment into Eshtec was that whatever I want to install on a NAS that I think is good, I will have a backchannel way saying, hey, can you guys support this and make sure that everything just works so that I don't have to think about it? And then by proxy, everyone else will be able to install, let's say, Plex or Image or whatever, super easily and won't have to think about like the stupid permissions issues that that I switched which VM I was using to download ISOs.
Starting point is 00:58:09 And it made it so it turned into read-only for certain containers. Because it was using Kubernetes. I was on the older version of TrueNAS scale. Just such a mess. And I'm sitting here going, I don't want any of this. I just want to have my files and like I can read and write them and stuff. Yeah, it's the whole thing. All right.
Starting point is 00:58:37 Are we done now? Are we moving on? I don't know. Who knows? You want to pick a topic, Luke? I'm this one. Which one? Scroll up. Might just be a man and say it. Because I don't know what's going on with it. Be a man, do the right thing. I fix it. Sure yeah. What's happening there? Um honestly. Inform me. Honestly I don't know so why don't we do this together? Oh, oh boy. So earlier this week
Starting point is 00:59:07 Yesterday, I fix it announced their smart soldering iron. This thing's kind of wild by the way. It's This is cool hundred watt heater ready to solder in five seconds. It can run off the wall for like an entire workday I think they advertise. It has a literal web interface that you access through like Chrome, you know, like through a browser, like an actual, you know, like a web interface so that you can configure it and yeah, I don't know, it looks pretty cool. I've definitely seen some discussion around the price By the time you buy the soldering iron and the dock and you know, whatever else people are saying
Starting point is 00:59:50 it's like hundreds of dollars which When you compare to some of the more value oriented options Is not that competitive? Yeah, but there are also soldering irons that are wicked expensive There are but I think that for the people who are into like hackos you're gonna pry them from their cold dead hands yeah I'm showing our producer cam for no reason oh I'm a JBC boy oh there you go Rolls-Royce baby actually my the one I have at home is like a $40 clone and it's like okay, but it doesn't have a battery pack.
Starting point is 01:00:26 You can't like move it around. Oh yeah, that's right. Dan's the one, he's the one who made us spend a fortune on those stupid soldering stations. That's so nice, dude. I was sitting there. They're a partner. This is not an endorsement,
Starting point is 01:00:39 but I was sitting there trying to learn on my soldering iron. Oh yeah. I remember this. This actually happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was trying to get Dan to like teach me. Oh yeah. This actually happened. Yeah, I was trying to get Dan to like teach me how to solder. Yeah. And I was, you know, coming along but I was struggling a little bit and then he gave me the nice soldering iron. I instantly did it. Like, and because you're, you're learning the techniques, you're not
Starting point is 01:00:57 necessarily because you're, for me to use a really broken soldering iron is difficult, but I know what's wrong and for somebody learning, but you don't need like a $1,500 station to learn how to solder with. Yeah so it's like it's something like this is great. It's for sure a skill issue but still the nice soldering iron just made it so much easier. And so something that has like a temperature control like this and it can get hot really quickly and it's not super unwieldy. It's a nice thing about the JBCs is they are like this size for their their ends and stuff like that but they're ultra professional levels. Yeah. Alright so, oops where am I going? Last
Starting point is 01:01:35 laptop there we go. So back to this thing. So I've seen some some commentary on the pricing. Some people are not super thrilled with it. Some people are more thrilled with it. Anyway, Vitor responds and says now I want an LTT soldering iron. And Kyle Weins, CEO of iFixit says he does seem to be good at copying our products. There's been a fair amount of speculation as to what exactly he means by this. Is it gentle ribbing? Is it genuine upset? And more than one person has pointed out that on the very day that he posted this, one of our videos went live with an iFixit sponsorship in it. So what I will say is
Starting point is 01:02:17 I also don't know. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna reiterate everything that I've said about the iFixit relationship and We'll go from there. Sure. So if it's gentle ribbing gentle ribbing received If it's not gentle ribbing well, I don't know we're good on our side We're chill. We believe in the iFixit mission. We have absolutely no intention of becoming iFixit. We're not gonna even begin to approach the kind of replacement parts that they stock,
Starting point is 01:02:57 the guides that they create through their community, even the type of content that they produce. They do such a great job of their teardowns that we've looked at doing that type of content before and we've just kind of gone, yeah, I don't know, maybe someday, but realistically, this seems like it's pretty well served, evaluating the repairability of devices and stuff like that. We absolutely value iFixit as a partner. We specifically went out of our way to make our
Starting point is 01:03:27 driver available as a standalone driver for people who just want a driver upgrade and they're going to put it into their iFixit kit and use it with their iFixit bits. We went out of our way to make sure that our driver was compatible with iFixit bits. So there's a whole thing. We talked about it in the short circuit live stream when we announced our precision driver, where the ISO standard is actually not what everyone, including iFixit, does. And I forget the exact detail, but basically it comes down to manufacturing tolerances.
Starting point is 01:03:56 So you're supposed to have this socket, which is actually a, if I recall correctly, a metric translation of what is actually an imperial size. So that's supposed to be the size, and then the bits are supposed to be smaller, but what everybody else does is they make the size bigger and the bits smaller, or whatever. Basically, you're supposed to make this big enough
Starting point is 01:04:20 that at the upper range of the tolerances for the bit size, they'll fit for sure. And what we did was we made this at the upper range of the tolerances for the bit size they'll fit for sure. And what we did was we made this at the lower range and then our bits were smaller. I forget. Hold on. Let me think about what it is. So what happened was our initial drivers, this was too small. That's right. So everyone else makes the bits the size and then they make their their driver bigger. Slightly oversized.
Starting point is 01:04:47 And what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to make the socket the size, you know, four millimeters or whatever it is, and then the bits are supposed to be smaller. So in our first samples, we had bits and sockets that fit perfectly. But when we went to put someone else's bits in our socketsckets we realized they were the ones that were at the high end of the tolerance range were too big. So we had to go back and we had to make ours wider like everyone else. And anyway, doesn't matter. The point is that we went out of our way to make sure that the driver was compatible to reduce waste. So if people already have a set they can upgrade to the fidget spinner slash precision
Starting point is 01:05:23 driver without wasting all of the bits in case that they already have. But we also wanted to offer an option with the ideas that we had to improve the product that would include bits and a case. So, you know, I don't know. If he's serious about it, I don't really know what to make of that.
Starting point is 01:05:46 We're still down to work together. I disagree, I guess. I will say that. I disagree that it's a copied product. iFixit didn't invent precision screwdrivers. iFixit didn't invent bitcases. And, you know, from my point of view, either it's a copy at a higher price in which case he shouldn't be worried about it right or it's a product that innovated with things like this magnetically detachable nicely cool
Starting point is 01:06:18 stackable case deeper bits that make their way into, you know, recessed housings more easily, an all-metal driver that has bit storage, they do have one with bit storage, but it's not all metal, higher quality bearing, replaceable tops, stronger magnet. No, I think it's about as different as a product can be and still be a precision screwdriver. Oh We added we added magnets to the inside. Yeah, that's nice. It's a parts tray. Yeah Yeah, and to be clear the iFixit one can also be used as a parts tray, but it won't be magnetic. Yes So there you go. So yeah, I don't know. Is he mad who knows are we working on a soldering iron? Not at this time, but if we thought there was room to innovate and make a better soldering iron, I'm not going to rule out anything. We
Starting point is 01:07:10 definitely have other products in our roadmap that are tools, and therefore will probably overlap with anyone who sells tools. But part of our product development philosophy is that we don't just make the same thing that's already out there. is that we don't just make the same thing that's already out there. If we aren't adding something, then, I don't see why we bother. And in some cases, what we're adding
Starting point is 01:07:32 can be as simple as making it more affordable. Like, most things I have to do around my house basically just require a screwdriver. So I have LTT screwdrivers for everything. I had to use a hammer last night. Wasn't an LTT hammer. I'm disappointed.
Starting point is 01:07:49 We actually do have a potential product spec for a hammer. I have some ideas. Okay. That was entirely a joke, but all right. No, I mean. It's true. I mean, what I said is not untrue. I used a hammer last night.
Starting point is 01:08:07 And I literally pulled it out and was like, huh, it's like blue. It's not orange and black. I have ideas. Alright. And you know what, sometimes it can be as simple as coming in at a lower price. Like, I think that anti-static work mats are overpriced, essentially. So our mod mat, which we actually created in collaboration with Mod-Rite,
Starting point is 01:08:34 who has been doing mod mats for, oh lord only knows how long, they... Didn't they patent it? Yeah, yeah, like way back in the day. So they're they're they're pretty og so we actually partnered with them and ours is gonna be coming soon, it's gonna be Very price competitive compared to what's out there and that's still like profitable. So So yeah, if we see if we see an area where we can improve the state of the market then yeah We'll go for it but if we don't then we're not then we're not just looking to come in
Starting point is 01:09:05 and copy someone else's product. And I reject the assertion that this is a copied product. And if it is a copied product, they should have no problem recopying it. And then there's this better. And that's how competition works. Then everybody's product is better. I mean, we didn't patent anything here.
Starting point is 01:09:24 Even if we could have, which I really know I don't think we could have but even if we could have that we're not It's not really how we roll. I do think at some point. We'll probably have to patent something But that's not a bridge that we've really had to cross yet, I think if we ever did like a like a new to cross yet. I think if we ever did like a like a new you know what it's probably better for me to just not even say there are a couple things that we have in development that could potentially benefit from being patent but for patent tax write-offs yeah sure let me get right on that. All right. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, hopefully we're still cool. We love you. I fix it. And if you guys are mad, I'm sorry. Speaking of madness, the US government pushes for war the doc just keeps floating around. The US government pushes for greater VPN access.
Starting point is 01:10:24 Last week, the White House met with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Cloudflare, as well as civil society advocates to encourage tech companies to offer more digital bandwidth for government-funded internet censorship evasion tools, which is an insane sentence to me. Tools supported by the Open Technology Fund, or the OTF, which is funded by the US government, have surged in popularity in countries like Russia, Iran, Myanmar, oh, and Myanmar, sorry, missed the and. According to OTF president Laura Cunningham,
Starting point is 01:10:58 the number of VPN users they support has more than quadrupled over the last few years to around 46 million users each month the otf wants Discounted or subsidized server bandwidth to help meet that growing demand What is which to me? Sounds like the government is basically being like yeah We don't really care if you like pirate movies and music and stuff. We want all your data That's that's my
Starting point is 01:11:30 That's what I get from this person Which is funded by the US government have searched and populated countries, so they want you know resistant groups and whatnot that are in Maybe not super friendly to US countries to be able to do their thing. But do they want encryption for their own citizens? This would allow them to see all the things. To encourage tech companies to offer more digital bandwidth for government funded internet censorship evasion tools. Isn't that such a wild sentence? Huh. But, but, but, um, interesting. Yeah. I don't know a ton
Starting point is 01:12:18 about the OTF. I don't know how far the fingers of the US government are in the OTF, but if you run the VPN yourself You can do a whole heck of a lot But are they saying they're running the VPN? I don't know, I don't know. Or are they saying they want tech companies to offer more bandwidth, wait, for government-funded Yes. censorship evasion tools. For those.
Starting point is 01:12:47 Not for all of them. For those. It's very interesting to me. It sounds like a two-pronged attack. This is the vibe that I'm getting. So the one prong is, hey, we get to help groups that are in Russia, Iran, Myanmar, and other places. Uh-huh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is valid.
Starting point is 01:13:12 Which is probably something that they want to do. They need to be able to communicate and organize. A multitude of reasons. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And then the other one is like, oh, I don't know, and if other people use it, we get to have a really good look into what they're up to. Well, yeah. Wow, 46 million users a month. Wild.
Starting point is 01:13:30 OTF VPNs. Yeah, like what is an OTF VPN? Like, no, this is good stuff. Oh No, this is good stuff Like do they do open VPN did I see an open VPN logo? I recognize that logo immediately yeah, so we know this is like good then So these are tools that you can use to build VPNs like this is not necessarily Very interesting cuz I don't know though. I'm not aware of like a sick back door in OpenVPN. Umm... I don't know what this means though, or if this is just a list of things.
Starting point is 01:14:14 Like I don't know if this means um... Do they make- are they responsible for OpenVPN? Guys? I don't know. Help me out here. I have genuinely no idea. Are they responsible for OpenVPN? Guys? I don't know. Help me out here. I have genuinely no idea. Like I don't wanna get into like a WireGuard
Starting point is 01:14:31 versus OpenVPN debate. Like WireGuard may be better. It's on here though. It's on this list. That's why I'm saying like, I'm not sure what this list necessarily means. Like do they just put funding into these? Yeah, maybe.
Starting point is 01:14:44 They're part of the funding I see open VPN wire guard and tour I see this okay, but I don't necessarily know if this means This is from the open tech fund or if this means this is the funding that it's received. You know what I mean? They've got to have received more funding than that overall Oh, wait, maybe that is over. Because it says free and open source software sustainability fund. Your mom's an open VPN. Why do we even talk to any of our chats anymore?
Starting point is 01:15:10 Read the last paragraph. Through the FOSS sustainability fund, open VPN will focus on growing its core. Okay, this isn't the, is that a different thing? I don't know. Okay. Is the FOSS sustainability fund a fund within the Open Technology Fund? I don't know. I don't know where this rabbit hole goes.
Starting point is 01:15:32 But it's, it's definitely... So there may be downsides, but fundamentally... It's probably good. Better VPN access seems... Probably good. Good. Okay. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say it's a W for now yeah and hopefully I don't end up eating those words yeah we don't have very good information on this so I don't think we can really say much unfortunately but we'll move on what I would like to talk about is Nvidia purses yeah what AI
Starting point is 01:16:04 researcher Teresa Barton is selling a limited run of 10 purses crafted out of Nvidia GeForce GT 730 graphics cards for $1024 or $1024. Her website also indicates that she will at some point be selling a handmade bag made out of... A handbag. Yes, A handbag made out of a H100 AI chip for $65,536. While Barton says the cards themselves are non-functional and ethically sourced from data center dumpsters, the fans still work. Which is, I mean, that's, uh... That's neat? That's cool? Yeah! I don't know.
Starting point is 01:16:44 Is there like a little battery bank somewhere to power the fan I see the fan has its the fan is on the outside and it has its own plug Yeah, there's got to be there's gotta be something there to be a battery in there or something I think one of my questions is how much stuff can you actually store in this purse like purely aesthetic? I do think that they look surprisingly neat Yeah, I read this title and was like oh, it's gonna look like junk and then I saw the actual purse thing and I was like oh It's not too bad. What is um, what is the what is the justification for the price here because
Starting point is 01:17:19 She literally says that's a way to be waste I don't know. I think purses in general, there's probably whatever. How do these items end up so divorced from their costs? Like is this... like about here, here, is there like... I honestly think if you try to figure this out you're just gonna hurt your brain. Is there an objective? Like is she, is this contributing to some kind of- Oh, I think 1024 is just computer number. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what I meant by that.
Starting point is 01:17:51 I didn't know. Oh, Mike, I just got assaulted by LTT ads. Oh, they just went away. I get it. All of the verticals of ads on this website, which there are many, they were all LTT ads for a split second and then they went away. Oh.
Starting point is 01:18:03 Sorry. I just, I was kind of expecting it to say like oh yeah proceeds are going to some kind of research into AI something but no this appears to be just like I don't know maybe she's just a bespoke designer that made only ten of a thing and if you're gonna do that you're gonna charge a bunch. Yeah I guess so. Okay. Uh sure well hey you know what I wish you luck. I bet you at least one person bought it. You think so? I feel like it.
Starting point is 01:18:41 You think so? I think so. I don't know dude. I um I think that seems think so. I think so. I don't know dude. I I think that seems pretty unlikely. I think even most people who spend a lot of money on purses probably expect to be able to carry something in them I Do not agree with that statement at all Wow, I Don't really I don't really understand Wow. I don't really, I don't really understand what I'm looking at here. So you're basically telling me this purchases ineligible for this.
Starting point is 01:19:15 Why is it even here then? I guess shop probably doesn't deal with a lot of things that are over 30 grand. So they never really thought about that scenario. This just seems like like, is she just, is this a social experiment? Is she just trying to grab headlines? Like this can't seriously be the best sales pitch you can come up with.
Starting point is 01:19:34 Oh, is this the like $60,000 one? Yeah. Yeah, I don't think she thinks anyone's gonna buy it personally. But like, you know enough rare, one of a kind GPT-4 training GPU, you know there's lots of them, and if you know enough to one of a kind GPT for training GPU. No, there's lots of them. And if you know enough to know about GPT, then you'd think you could just use chat GPT
Starting point is 01:19:51 to like write a better description for it. That's literally all it says on this entire page. This particular page, I think is more about the bringing eyeballs in. Like she's, I think she's memeing, dude. Oh, at least to a certain degree, yeah. Fits a phone certain degree. Yeah fits a phone nice
Starting point is 01:20:07 Yeah My short chain available. I bet at least one has sold. I think she's memeing that doesn't look good The other pictures look pretty good. Well the pictures are just stupid because this picture is not a GT 730 This is the H The h100 one so what is it doing on this product page? Like what is this doing here? This is not any of those things. This is this is ancient. This is like Yeah, GF 100. This is Fermi. This is a this is a 480 So like what am I even I don't think she expects to sell any I think she's memeing
Starting point is 01:20:41 So I buy one I still know but I bet you she sold one because of what you Just did don't actually do it I'm I want to know if it's a real site. Am I actually going to get a purse in the mail? Do you want my credit card? No, I don't That's the only way I'm gonna get an h100 at some random time in the show you should throw that thing back at me What I'm sorry, I was talking. No, it's fine. Just the thing I threw you should throw that thing back at me. What? I'm sorry I was talking. No, it's fine. Just the thing I threw at you. Do you want your water bottle back?
Starting point is 01:21:09 He didn't throw a water bottle at you, Dan. It's on your side of the table. With this? That's my water bottle. Oh, I drank from it. I couldn't find yours. Oh. Okay. Well, do you have any diseases? I'm sure we've done worse.
Starting point is 01:21:22 Pre-show, baby. Subscribe to Flo Flowplane! And subscribe to our sponsor, Manscaped. Blonde and Gold are in this year. Oh, he's actually doing it! But if you don't like blonde, trim it! Our sponsor, Manscaped, is riding the gold train
Starting point is 01:21:42 with their Lawn Mower 5.0 Forged Gold Edition. Not only does it Manscaped is riding the gold train with their Lawn Mower 5.0 forged gold edition. Not only does it shine in style, but it also offers an exceptional trimming experience ensuring you feel golden every day. It features an advanced dual head system and skin safe blades and it's waterproof. If you ever find yourself lost in the brush brush it even comes with a built-in LED to illuminate the trickiest spots The lawnmower 5.0 ultra gold edition is available in limited quantities so head over to Manscaped.com slash when and use code WAN show to get 20% off and free shipping
Starting point is 01:22:23 Actually looks pretty slick. Yeah. Not bad. The team does such a great job of the footage for these. A lot of it looks like it was provided by the brand, except that I recognize backdrops and stuff that we have. Wait, it's not? This footage? No, this is our footage.
Starting point is 01:22:39 Oh my god. Look, someone bumped the table there. Good job, James. This is ours? Oh, yeah, I know that set. Yeah, that's the screen thing. Yeah, this is all our footage. That's. Oh, I know that that's it. Yeah, that's the the screen thing Yeah, this is all our footage. Oh man. I was killing it No, that's it's over in the corner where when show set used to be at the very far away
Starting point is 01:22:52 Yeah, there's a there's a piece of glass and then they have a display behind it Yeah, like now the team's the team's great bring it back there. Yeah This is this is where ed's all was experimenting with some of the UE 5 like real-time tracking stuff. there. Yeah, this is this is where edsall is experimenting with some of the ue5 like real-time tracking stuff Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway the show is also brought to you by ridge look at us They're also bringing gold to you this summer with that's us to massive sweepstakes. Yep. That's it. Did you see it was Dennis driving? Yeah, yeah, that should be Now you could do now you can drag race like Dennis he's the passenger seat. I think it's a cyber truck up How am I looking at and if being the center of everyone's attention isn't your style don't worry. Okay that happened
Starting point is 01:23:39 I know they were telling us before the sure on got pulled over right yeah, right there. Yeah, yeah, they Okay, sorry. We're really we're really losing track of the sponsor talking points here anyway, so good Ridge massive sweepstakes they have other prizes to choose from and yes That is real footage of Dennis and charade on the highway in Salt Lake City anyway, the winner of the sweepstakes gets to choose between a hnessy Velociraptor, a gold-plated Cybertruck, or $100,000 cash. This says what would I pick? Oh, it cut back to me. Yeah, that's what it's supposed to do. What would I pick? I guess I'll take the cash What would I do with a velociraptor?
Starting point is 01:24:27 I love that the follow-up sentence was what would I do with a velociraptor? Not the other one Yeah, that makes so much sense I'm trying to acknowledge something that's a real option. I mean I don't What I would be seen in that like you could melt it into a controller I'd be on the parking lot scraping it off, and I don't know man. I'd be I'd be Legit I'd be legit ah Look Reg. Hopefully this is compatible with the sponsor spot. We're doing for you right now here. I'll talk about your key holder
Starting point is 01:25:11 There you go be distracted I would be there is they do have a cyber truck and a Hennessy version of their things their key holder in their wallet Yeah, I would be embarrassed to be seen in a cyber truck. At all? Or the gold plated one? Is the gold plated one less or more embarrassing? It's cooler. So it's less embarrassed. Yeah, it's cooler. I think it's so bad that it comes all the way back around to kind of cool. This might be a weird take. I actually think where it says just ridge on the side of the gold plated one actually just looks good. I rarely like when you see like just the brand logo on things, but I just something to break
Starting point is 01:25:51 up just the like see of it's all the same right there. Yeah, like I think it actually looks sharp having something on it. Yeah. That thing looks so tacky though. I just can't. So if you had to pick a vehicle you'd go with the Hennessy Raptor and if you had to pick something you'd go with the cash? Hold on a second, hold on, hold on let me think. Are you looking up their value on the resale market? No You have to pay people to take them away. I'm just a little curious Price of stainless steel per pound. Oh, dude. See I would have a really hard time going back to filling up at the gas station I am NOT into having a gas vehicle anymore. Can you go anywhere in a cyber truck? Will it turn on?
Starting point is 01:26:50 Get the truck and electrify it. It'd be a fun project. Oh, no, but if I'm gonna have an electric truck, I'll just get a Rivian. Dude, getting like over a thousand horsepower Hennessy Velociraptor and taking the engine out and electrifying it would be kind of hilarious. That would be completely lame. I'd put in my cappuccino.
Starting point is 01:27:07 Dude, I'm sure the engine for the Hennessy is bigger than your old car. Somebody put an LS in it with twin turbochargers. No way. They had to remove most of the front end and the hood. It's 800 horsepower. Oh my. That's actually terrifying. Death speedrun?
Starting point is 01:27:25 Yeah. That would have like the power to weight ratio of a slot car. Like that would be ridiculous. It's like nearly one to one. That's crazy. Actually, I think the engine weighs probably more than the car. More than the rest of the car. Yeah, so it would affect that slightly.
Starting point is 01:27:42 Top Gear 1224 says, what's more embarrassing a gold cyber truck or a purple tycan? Gold cyber truck. Yeah I really think it is. The cyber truck is just brutal dude. Anywho, from now until September 16th you'll get two entries for every dollar spent or you can get four X entries when you purchase the cyber wallet or Hennessy specialty product so we've got a couple of their oh, we've got a key holder and a wallet Oh, why am I even holding these up? We've got wonderful footage of them. There you go. That's what they look like Wow, see it looks so nice. So enter now at ridge.com slash when or using the link in the video description I take the cash. I'm just gonna take the cash. Take the cash
Starting point is 01:28:24 Speaking of take the cash. I'm just gonna take the cash. Take the cash. Speaking of taking the cash, our next sponsor is Acronis. Is your business paddling risky waters? The risky? What? Paddling the risky waters of the internet unprotected. Our sponsor Acronis is here to save you from scary sharks. Wow. My goodness. Acronis doesn't just act like a shield, but they also simplify your IT management. Instead of juggling multiple vendors and spending thousands, Acronis CyberProtect brings security backup and disaster recovery together in one easy-to-use platform. But they don't just backup your files. They also offer built-in features like patch management, device control, and more. And with AI-powered protection, you can get the most secure backup to keep your
Starting point is 01:29:07 data safe. Plus with one-click self-service recovery anyone can quickly fix IT issues without relying on central IT. You can manage remote endpoints, run vulnerability assessments, and handle patch management all from a single platform. Hey wait, that was a redundant talking point. Dang it you guys. Anyway protect your business from data loss and cyber threats with Acronis CyberProtect by heading over to go.acronis.com slash Wanshow or the link in the video description. Okay, we're supposed to do a few merch messages. Dan, go ahead and hit me. Sure. Hey, Linus and the talent. I'd be curious to your thoughts on, yeah, that's nice.
Starting point is 01:29:51 That's- No, I'm not responding to this merge message. No, no, no, that's- No, I don't like it. No, that's good for you. No. Okay, whatever. Talent is a derogatory.
Starting point is 01:30:01 I take it that way. It is not. I don't think he means it to be, but right now- No, talent is not derogatory. I take it that way. It is not. I don't think he means it to be, but right now. No, talent is not derogatory. It removes the person from the statement where you're just like an object. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a second.
Starting point is 01:30:17 I, what, really? I've always thought it's not a- I think they meant it as a derogatory, but it's like, no, that means that you're the real person and we're just like accessories to make your show. What? Oh man, see... Because I've called you guys the talent before, because from my perspective, like I'm producing the show and you're just kind of like part of what makes the show, right? So you remove the like human aspect that your people... He's the human, we're the legion. No, no, no, I'm not a person either. Like the show right so you remove the like human aspect that you're the human were the no no No, I'm not. I'm not a person either like the show it becomes the entity right?
Starting point is 01:30:51 And you are just kind of a part of the show like set dressing right? I it's a whole thing most of chat Does not appear to be aligned with that damn. No no it's definitely supposed to be No, I don't understand. I don't, I don't. Because I thought, because hold on. Because a lot of people have said, hey, Dan and the talent before, but this is the first time that like Linus has been. No, no, they're calling me untalented. It's definitely a sick burn. But like, but a lot of the other merge messages that use Dan and the talent in them, right? Yeah, because the onscreen players are the talent. Yeah, like that's just, I think that's just an industry term. I don't think it's meant to be derogatory.
Starting point is 01:31:34 Like if you say, and- Yeah, but that's derogatory to you because you're like the people as well. If you say, and director, then like, I don't think that's disrespectful. I think that just describes their role in the production. Am I off base here? I don't know. I think we're all a bit off base.
Starting point is 01:31:51 I didn't realize that this would be so polarizing so immediately. All right. I've never loved the turn personally, but I honestly, my amount of cares is quite low. Yeah, because like I... But I've never loved the turn. Oh, all right. Well, for what it's worth Luke. Host makes more sense. I think you're talented. Because is well not everyone's a host though. Here's a question. Yeah, about the word talent. I just looked
Starting point is 01:32:14 it up and I'm still not. I've taken it maybe I'm just taking it wrong. I've taken it as like you have an innate skill. It's not something that you honed But you were just naturally good at something dude, you're playing video game logic Hmm. I get to be sounds very likely Are you guys actually siding with me for a change? Yeah, I think I think Linus is right too. Yeah, sure It's it's all it's it's a bit of a, talent is used for anyone on screen, not just the host. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're calling me untalented, but they're just meaning on me. But originally, the reason why I didn't originally like it is because it seems derogatory to everybody else.
Starting point is 01:32:56 Oh, that was my original reason. Oh, like referring to the person who is like the star, whatever people that are any good as the people with talent. Yes. Oh, I see. That's like when I originally didn't like the star or whatever. Those are the only people that are any good. As the people with talent. Yes. Oh, I see. That's like when I originally didn't like the word, that was my reason. Yeah, but I don't think like a director implies that they're not a talented one. I think it's just, yeah, no, talent is just, yeah. But the directors tend to be the ones with the money.
Starting point is 01:33:19 No, that's a producer. Yeah. Yeah, no, director... Do directors not also? If you're good, sure. But if you're a good talent, then you also have money. And if you're a good... Actually, as far as I can tell,
Starting point is 01:33:33 most everybody else ends up not making a ton of money. But... Yeah, then you're an extra, you're not even talent. Well, no, no, I just, I was trying to come up with, like, I mean, I guess if you're like... See, but like, yeah, why is there a distinction there? No, an extra is still talent. Are they? 100%.
Starting point is 01:33:48 A lesser talent. Although often extras are given no lines, so they have like no real effect on like... Luke's literally looking this up. I'm going out of here. Background actors, supporting artists, junior... Oh my goodness. Have we custodianized the extras? No, that's right there. No, no, no, I mean that we don't call them extras anymore. Oh, oh. Now they're junior artists. Oh, that's something that I didn't know about.
Starting point is 01:34:21 That atmosphere sounds so much worse to me personally. Oh yeah, that's awful. Whoa, that's such a downgrade. Excuse me, what's your job? Could the atmosphere go stand next to the potted plant? Like. You've got some bad atmosphere. Gross. Oh man.
Starting point is 01:34:38 Yeah, this is not something I've thought about a lot or cared about much. I turn into gas. I mean, if you could do that, you might be one of the main characters in the show, actually. I may be slowly turning into gas. I mean, we've seen plenty of evidence of it.
Starting point is 01:34:54 Those poor chairs. Okay, so when we frame it as Linus and the talent. What was the question? I don't know, I want to finish this. Yeah, what does that mean? So Linus and the talent means that was the question? I don't know, I want to finish this thought. Yeah, what does that mean? So Linus and the talent means that I'm untalented. No. Yeah. That's what they meant.
Starting point is 01:35:10 It was a sick burn. They were, it wasn't serious. No, but we've just established that talent is a role in a production. Yeah, you guys are both talent because there, boom, talent, untalent, talent, untalent, talent, untalent. Yeah, but you still have a job here. Well, yeah, but they were just memeing
Starting point is 01:35:26 because they were pretending to misunderstand the term talent as having talent. And they were referring to me as being untalented. I think that's why I don't like the word. But they did, but they, No, cause in my mind, you're the one with the name. So you get to be a person and then we're just accessories to your production.
Starting point is 01:35:46 No, because like I've, okay, like I've- They definitely intended it to imply you were untalented. Yes, but I've gone on the third party sets where I am like the main person, and I get referred to as talent. Yes. Or like on the contract, it'll just be like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
Starting point is 01:36:02 heretofore referred to as talent. Like it just means a performer. That's all it means. Exactly, right? I mean, my favorite term is watering the talent. Right, I fill up your water bottles. I used to give the bands on stage their water. Do you want warm water?
Starting point is 01:36:18 Do you want cold water? It would be best for your throat, right? Watering the talent, it's fun. I don't know. From now on I want to be referred to as shortened. I'm not tall, so I actually see the whole term as kind of discriminatory. Okay, atmosphere. Kingent. All right, so what are we talking about? What was the- Shortened Kingent. You wouldn't let me get there.
Starting point is 01:36:45 I'd be curious to your thoughts on why tech and gaming cafes haven't taken off in North America. It seems like it'd be a slam dunk with gaming becoming super mainstream and popular now. They don't seem to be doing as far as my terrible observations can account for. I don't think they're doing as well in Asian countries either these days. Oh, really? I mean, I don't know. Because mobile gaming is taking off, that's why. Oh but are you talking about like a themed cafe though or are you talking about like an iCafe with like gaming computers in it? Is that what they're referencing? No I think they're talking
Starting point is 01:37:17 about themed cafes. Oh my bad. There was that bar downtown that had like gaming themed cocktails and stuff? Was that what it was called? Yeah, but didn't they shut down during COVID? I think they at least shut down one location. Looking it up. Yeah, I guess, yeah, I guess the question for me is, you know, what is it? Man, this is tough, because I have to confess that when we went to Japan, like went to the Pokemon Cafe, for know, what is it? Man, this is tough. Cause I have to confess that when we went to Japan, like went to the Pokemon cafe, for example, I was super unimpressed by the whole deal.
Starting point is 01:37:53 The food was not just not very good. Like it was functionally inedible. A lot of it. Where at, sorry? In Japan. It was packed. Like business was booming, but it was just kind of sucky and I just kind of wonder if the expectations for a themed restaurant are totally different here because
Starting point is 01:38:13 I wouldn't see a business like that succeeding very well here. Your food still has to be good. Like I've never been, but my understanding is- That food quality in Vancouver is actually insanely high. My understanding is even like Hooters has decent food, though I've never been, but my understanding is... Average food quality in Vancouver is actually insanely high. My understanding is even like Hooters has decent food, though I've never been there. That's what I've heard, don't quote me on that. But I don't think it's good enough to have a theme with... A themed restaurant with just like disgusting food in it here.
Starting point is 01:38:39 Yeah, apparently the wings are great, says Chat. Yeah, there you go. So, says chat. Yeah, there you go. So they used to, to know about nowadays. The wings are good, yeah. So maybe that's part of it. And I think that one of the challenges is that in order to have like a gaming themed cafe, it either is like sort of generic,
Starting point is 01:39:00 in which case I don't know if it would appeal to people as much, or you'd be paying licensing fees because it's commercial use of the IP. And I think that affects the quality. So like the Pokemon Cafe seems to be actually run by the Pokemon Company. And so the kind of margin that these that these licensed brands expect has a direct impact on the quality of the product in a lot of cases has been my experience. With that said, I mean, I think we've talked about, you know, restaurant ideas before and like Yvonne and I have talked about lots and lots of business ideas over the years. Like one idea that I had a while back that I thought would be super cool is I wanted to create like toddler land. And so the idea was that it would
Starting point is 01:39:58 be like an attraction for adults where you have this warehouse that you decorate the outside to look like a normal house, but everything is scaled up. You walk through a giant front door and you experience this entire environment, like what it would be like to be thigh high to an adult. So there's like giant stairs and you can like sit and eat a meal at a giant table with giant cutlery and like I don't know It'd just be like a weird it'd be such a like a you know, an Instagram a bowl
Starting point is 01:40:31 Yeah like thing to do a big spoon on like Suspension crane wires that like flies food towards you But not even that not even no I hadn't gotten that far cuz that would be a lot of work It's sweet though. Mostly it was just gonna be creating a giant environment It It was kind of inspired by these upside down houses that you can go to. But just like... Have you ever been to Darktable? I have. Yeah, I like those types of experiences personally. Would the meals also be giant portions? Yeah, I mean sure yeah I'd be down. Like you source produce that's like oversized and stuff and like I don't know I don't know just does it just like wacky ideas, but I've I've always had this kind of
Starting point is 01:41:11 Brain worm idea that like if I don't want to If I finally just want to chill I would like go You know move further out than where we are now to a smaller area and then open just like a very small corner cafe diner thing like Luke in Gilmore Girls and just like do that. Interesting. I'm just going to chill now and I would have to have enough money that it wouldn't have to be super profitable or maybe even profitable at all, because like those types of businesses are often... You'd want to buy the property outright.
Starting point is 01:41:49 Maybe find one that's commercial zoned on the bottom and then live above it kind of thing. Like he does in Gilmore Girls, exactly. Are you a Gilmore Girls fan? Oh yeah. Really? I did not know that. Yep.
Starting point is 01:42:00 Huh. Hold on. Okay. Let's play a game. I mean, I haven't watched it in a long time, but yeah. Well, yeah, it hasn't been airing for a long time. Like, are you like, uh, quizzing me? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Starting point is 01:42:12 no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, the smart snappy dialogue. Yes, the one-liners. Absolutely Very much so that's a huge part of the draw. It's not the only draw. Yeah That's why I started there. That's why I started there
Starting point is 01:42:33 I think you like probably the relatively realistic and believable character interactions It's very dramatic as a show, but it doesn't get into like, I cannot believe that any human would behave this way territory, I think, for the most part. That's kind of all you need. It is very dramatic, but there's never usually like, I don't think there's any like murders.
Starting point is 01:43:01 Yeah. It's not like, oh my, how could, oh my goodness. It's like... It stays pretty grounded. Yeah. It's not like, oh my, how could, oh my goodness. It's like... It stays pretty grounded. Yeah. What else? For me? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:43:11 I'm answering it. Yeah, I found some of the characters pretty relatable. I found the mistakes that the characters go through or like the choices that I didn't agree with to feel very human. If that makes sense. Like I might not have agreed with the choice that this one person did, but yeah, I could see them doing it. Or I could see like one of my friends like doing this. I found Rory insufferable. Often. Yeah, I just like it like he's not my favorite character. Sometimes there's characters that I dislike enough as people that I just kind of have a hard time watching the show and I just Found her extremely difficult said be around in my opinion the and someone in chat said this but I'm not actually just copy copying them
Starting point is 01:43:54 It's also my opinion. The show is about Laura Lye and Luke, right? And I didn't like Luke just because he shares my name You're not that shallow. No, not quite. Because I definitely... And his character is just... I root for any character named Linus. I get so few Ws, Luke. There isn't that many Luke's either, but the ones that I do have are pretty cool. You literally have an apostle.
Starting point is 01:44:19 I don't want to hear about it. I have that. Skywalker's pretty sick. Yeah. Luke from Gilmore Girls is pretty based. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to hear about it. That's I have that. Skywalker is pretty sick. Yeah. Yeah. Girls is pretty. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to hear about it. We've got it going on.
Starting point is 01:44:31 Yeah. I don't know. It's just it's just a good show. I like. I find some people might not even like this, but I don't care. I find a lot of modern media is like, oh, like it's all about the the grays, like, you know,
Starting point is 01:44:48 the evil guys, you should probably like them a lot, and the good guys are like actually really bad, and meh meh meh meh meh meh, we're gonna make sure that you come out of this learning something, and having moral questions, and like, sometimes I just want to watch something and be like, cool. Yeah, the Nazis lost. Yeah. And that's good. Good. Like, just leave it Yeah. And that's good. Good. Like just leave it alone. I don't, anyways. And there's another form of content that aligns with that whole concept
Starting point is 01:45:12 which is just where it's like relatively casual and you actually just want to relax and watch something. And I think Gilmore Girls falls in line with that. There's another like, there's a Canadian show where it follows a family that owns a, it's like a convenience store or something. Oh, Kim's Convenience. Kim's Convenience. I like Kim's Convenience. Okay. For, I think, similar but not the same reasons why I like Gilmore Girls.
Starting point is 01:45:42 I thought Gilmore Girls was better, but I still thought Kim's Convenience was pretty good. Yeah, it wasn't something like Kim's Convenience wasn't something I was gonna sit down and watch dedicated. Sure, but if it was on? Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, and like Gilmore Girls was somewhat similar. I used to watch Gilmore Girls because the computer at my parents house was in the family room where the TV was, so like my mom would be watching the More Girls or whatever. And it was good enough that I would like headphones off and like actually pay attention
Starting point is 01:46:10 to it while I'm doing other things. Slice of life shows. Yeah, chill. Slice of life shows. Or you can go you can go on the dramatic level and have more intense topics. But I often do like it when it's like, yeah, the Nazis lost and the Nazis are bad. There's a time and place for the like, the morally gray, learn things, question things content, but it's just, it's so constant these days. It's just like, man, relax. I
Starting point is 01:46:36 don't, I actually just want to chill. The world has enough of this already. Have you looked at politics at all? I don't need more of that, personally. My goodness. All right, I forget what the question was, but go ahead, Dan, hit us with another merch message. Yeah, sure. What even is this show about? How did we get, was that a merch message? I think so. Yeah, that was a merch message for the last 15 minutes. Hey, WAN.DLL, with the PS5 Pro comes my continued sorrow that storage is soldered. Thoughts about the idea that PS4 hardware could outlive PS5 hardware, since high failure components can be replaced.
Starting point is 01:47:16 That's an interesting question. And to be clear, I wanna acknowledge that the PlayStation 5 has some non-soldered storage. It does have a storage bay that you can install an M.2 SSD in, which in my opinion was such a pro-consumer, like, healthy move that I can't say enough how unexpected it was for me, from Sony, of all players. But with that said, what Eric points out is that the boot SSD is very much soldered
Starting point is 01:47:55 and you cannot boot off of that M.2 drive. Could PS4 hardware outlive PS5 hardware because you can just replace the drive anytime you want? Man, I'd love to think that, you know, Sony could issue an update or something that would allow you to move all of the boot partition, like any necessary OS files over to the M.2 drive. I kind of don't think they would. But then I didn't think they would to the M.2 drive. I kinda don't think they would.
Starting point is 01:48:27 But then I didn't think they would have an M.2 slot in the first place, so I don't know, maybe they would. But remember, Sony acknowledges, I think, that the performance of the M.2 slot is not as high as the soldered SSD. But then I don't think we've seen a game yet where it's made a difference. I think really my answer to all of this
Starting point is 01:48:49 is that it should be terrifying for anyone who's into consoles, that it's basically just PlayStation right now. That is horrible. It's very bad. Does it matter? Absolutely. Well, hold on, hold on.
Starting point is 01:49:02 Let me, hold on, let me finish. Does it matter if every Sony exclusives just gonna come to PC Anyway, I'll let you finish but I Did finish? No, I'm doing the Kanye reference I know the reference but I'm already done talking I think it does I think it matters for console people But like PC people I don't think it makes a difference.
Starting point is 01:49:25 What's a console person even going to be in a few years? I mean, Microsoft has publicly acknowledged Steam OS now. I think we're going to get a Windows Console OS for handheld, at which point we're going to get a Windows Console OS for desktop, because basically the same thing. If we get that, then I think it's fine, but I've heard no whispers of that. And honestly, PC on a TV right now is not a great experience.
Starting point is 01:49:49 It's not a console-like experience. It's not great. You can configure Steam to launch on startup and launch in big picture mode. It's not. You're 100% right. Like, there is, I don't care. But I understand the reasons why certain people like consoles.
Starting point is 01:50:05 And they're getting less solid because consoles are getting more annoying to use, I think, over time, which is weird and sucks. But back in the day, the argument was like, with my N64, put thing in, turn thing on, I am playing game. That's it, which is awesome. It was so funny funny I saw one comment
Starting point is 01:50:26 that had a fair number of upvotes that was just like, there's like charging more for just like, it's like slightly better and it's more expensive. And I was just like, just like on PCs. Sorry man but welcome to the party. Yeah exactly. I apologize that you're here. Yeah. Yeah and? But yeah, no they're so PC-like, you're right. Yeah. Which, which unfortunately, they seem to be inheriting a lot of the negative aspects of PCs and not inheriting as many of the good ones. Those worn patches. While PCs are actually gaining the good things from consoles. Consoles are retaining a lot of the negativity that they've had, like paying for access
Starting point is 01:51:12 to online multiplayer. That is mind-blowing. And you look at the way that Microsoft has just brazenly changed the way that Game Pass works, so that it kind of sucks on Xbox compared to on a PC. Yeah. And effectively have just said, I don't know, get good, buy a PC, then if you want to get a good deal on Game Pass, like, what? Yeah, it's, it's, I think a somewhat uncomfortable time to be a console gamer, especially if you're an Xbox console gamer,
Starting point is 01:51:41 but even if you're a PlayStation console gamer, it's just all a little uncomfortable right now. And if you're someone who's like a TV gamer, maybe let's call it that, then yeah, it's just awkward because Windows isn't an amazing solution. You can do it, but it's, yeah. It's not great. As long as you need a keyboard and a mouse,
Starting point is 01:52:06 couch solutions for that are just kind of awkward and really bulky. And I don't think there's any getting away from that, to be honest. No, but there's so many games that you can play on PC with a controller now. Like it's kind of... It does help a lot. Solved, essentially. It helps a lot. Speaking of which, speaking of games that you can play with a controller, I have a hot
Starting point is 01:52:24 take that the internet is not going to like me for. You played more Final Fantasy 6 and it's not that good? No, I did play more of it and it's very good. Nice. I'm still very happy with that game. It's gonna take me a long time to beat it, but on a- It really is.
Starting point is 01:52:38 On a- I got pushed with a very strong recommendation to at least try a game. Uh oh. So I did. What game? And so far it So I did. What game? So far it's really good. What game? Star Wars Outlaws. Oh. It's really good so far. I thought people said it was okay. I thought people said it was terrible. Or wait no I'm thinking of Jedi Survivor. Yeah. Uh okay so sorry is that is that a hot take? Outlaws? Do people hate outlaws? It's because it's from Ubisoft, which is I think why people don't like it after playing the game. It has one of the coolest, I'm going to say most innovative and then someone's
Starting point is 01:53:13 going to be like, oh, they lifted it from this indie game. I'm sorry, I didn't know. Most innovative like lockpicking mechanics. The story seems really good so far. The characters seem cool. The design of the environments are fantastic. The city that I'm in is awesome. There's some things that leave things to be desired. I think the speeder driving mechanics are not great. I think the general gunplay isn't fantastic. Yeah, aren't people mad that you can't shoot and also drive at the same time or something? Yeah, that's kind of weird. You can use an ability to do like... Like a takedown or whatever it is. Like an ultimate kind of weird yeah you can use a ability to do like like a takedown or whatever it is like an order that kind of yeah but it has like charge up that
Starting point is 01:53:50 is definitely like awkward yeah but it also has barely impacted my gameplay at all so I don't care I haven't played that much so maybe it becomes more of a thing the more you play I don't know but But so far, having played it, it's... I think most people are saying it's bad because Ubisoft is bad, not because the game is bad. I think the game is pretty good. How many hours are you in? Counting it in hours is already becoming disingenuous. I'm not that far in. I'm through the intro to the game area and then I've spent probably like 20 minutes after that and then that's it. So I'm not that far into the game. But like the sound is great. The story already
Starting point is 01:54:36 has me quite interested. The lockpicking mechanic is so cool that there's a thing that constantly turns and then in a, it like shows the pattern that you have to do. And then as it comes back around making like ticking noises, you have to like almost preemptively press along with the rhythm and then unlocks for you, which is like actually kind of fun and satisfying. You'd like feel like you did well when you did it
Starting point is 01:55:00 instead of a lot of other lockpicking mechanics and games where it's just like tedium. Right. I don't know. I just can't with Star Wars anymore, dude. I just I... Oh, I'm just I'm just I'm completely ignoring that it's Star Wars. Oh, okay. That makes sense. I haven't seen a lightsaber in the game yet. I don't think it matters. You're like outer rim, whatever, space outlaw person. Okay.
Starting point is 01:55:24 No part of the game so far has been in like Star Wars has not been important even slightly so far. I don't think we've ran into a single character that's like a major character from the mainline series personally yet there's no lightsabers no there's no even reference to any of it so far. There are technically stormtroopers, I think I've seen like four and they didn't matter. Yeah. Okay, and the last one I think I've got for you here. Oh, Linus Duke and Dan, question for Luke. I currently am desperately searching for a job in a market that seems almost dead
Starting point is 01:56:02 for developers. What do you think of jobs that ghost applicants? We've done it by accident. I am sincerely sorry for anyone that we ever didn't get back to. It was not our intent. Sometimes I end up doing it and I don't also, like he's saying, intend to, but for some of the positions here, we just get a insane amount of applicants and it's a little bit hard to keep track. You can keep bumping to get a response, but in general, you're recognizing that it's a tough market out there. Don't just apply to one place. Yeah. And don't wait.
Starting point is 01:56:38 Dude, I had not one- You got to take care of yourself first. But two articles in my newsfeedfeed like before even refreshing that were like I've applied to 900 jobs and like haven't gotten an interview and I've applied to 400 jobs and haven't gotten an interview. It seems like it's getting hungry out there. A big part of the problem is. Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, spicy taking coming. No. Oh, okay. AI written applications. Oh. AI written cover letters, AI written applications.
Starting point is 01:57:09 Application rates at jobs are going through the roof, not in line with unemployment because the barrier to apply to places is lower than ever, especially when they ask for cover letters and stuff because people just aren't writing them. Interesting. And then the average quality of people's writing is going up because a lot of AI writing is better than the average person's writing. Yeah. Now tell me this, if you're using AI to write your application and then they're using AI to sort it. Yep. This is a whole thing. How are how are the humans actually involved in this transaction?
Starting point is 01:57:52 I really think we're gonna have to find some way to change the dynamic of how hiring works. I don't know what the answer is but I go back to everything's in person. You walk into a store and hand in a resume like yeah we meet potential employees at at like you know events job ventures don't have to go back to online dating but for like jobs I feel speed applications you all get together and like did like speed dating but like job applications crazy no do not show up here with a resume I'm just saying you know it was you know it was very surprising to me when we did the screwdriver pop up Tim's your zero zero sorry, sorry, sorry. Tim 000X3.
Starting point is 01:58:45 And I actually do believe this. My brother-in-law uses a bot to apply to 1,000 jobs a day. He got 10 offers since he started Zero before. And people hear that. So then they start doing that. Because if you're getting zero offers, you're desperate, right? You're gonna do something.
Starting point is 01:59:03 This makes sense. You have to self-preserve, right? People are going to try to fight. So they're going to hear that, then they're going to start doing that. And now this person, who was previously able to apply to, I don't know, maybe 50 jobs a day max, is now applying to a thousand. Then you times that by a bunch of people. And then all the workplaces have too many applications. So it either takes them basically months to go through it, which is what, like some of the positions I've had where I have 2,200 applicants, like, yeah,
Starting point is 01:59:28 it's going to take an obscene amount of time to go through it all. Or they don't feel like doing all that work. So they just sort it with some algorithm or AI reading thing or something. So like, this is broken, basically. And I'm not I'm genuinely I have no clue what the next step is. But I really hope I don't know some startup or something finds some
Starting point is 01:59:52 solution to to solve this because it's so bad. At the precision pop up, I noticed we had a little booth that was like an LMG jobs booth, and I was, Ariana and the new HR, oh shoot. Probation, I think. Well, whatever, whoops. Pretty sure that's wrong anyway, so I think you're okay.
Starting point is 02:00:17 Nice. Ah. Yeah, let's go with that. I'm gonna say pretty sure, but yeah. Cool. Anyway, they were there and I dropped in and I was just like, what are you guys doing here? And they were like, oh yeah, it was someone in management's idea. And I'm like, they're like, why? Is it a problem? No, it just wouldn't have occurred to me in a thousand years
Starting point is 02:00:42 to have like an LMG jobs booth at like a product launch pop-up thing. But I talked to them after the fact and they were like, yeah, we were actually like, what's the, not bumping, pumping, bumping would be like club, right? Yeah, they were like, booming, booming, business was booming was effectively what they said.
Starting point is 02:01:05 And I was like, oh, that is cool. And I guess in the context of this conversation, that makes sense. Like, we're going back to human connections to wild, right? Like, that's not, that's not what I was told growing up. I was told, you know, send your resume Maybe drop it off ask to speak to a hiring manager But like good luck none of them were gonna talk to you by the time that advice made its way to me. So yeah Wild I don't know if I ever got a job out of the blue Trying to think like I volunteered at the pool I'm trying to think. Like I volunteered at the pool. Oh dude.
Starting point is 02:01:46 What? My family just, oh yeah, all of us. My mom got into the film industry by biking up to a film set and like talking to the director. And then the director could tell, they were in like the middle of nowhere. So he was like, yeah sure, bring me a resume like today as like a joke. And she actually biked all the way back home and then biked all the way back to the set and gave a resume. And he was like, that's not sure you have a job.
Starting point is 02:02:12 And then she became, that was a union position. So she skipped the whole, like, you have to work through indies to get into the union thing because she technically got union hours from that, meaning that she was in the union. So then she was just working for like big Netflix shows immediately. Almost all of my early career jobs, I just got by like basically showing up and being like,
Starting point is 02:02:32 I'll work right now. I can do this right now. And they were like, sure. I'm sure my brother has similar stories. My family's kind of, yeah, we've been all over that. Huh. Yeah. In response to your question, how'd I get a job at NCIX?
Starting point is 02:02:53 I was well known on their forum. They had thousands and thousands of posts. They very much knew who I was before I showed up with the resume. That's kind of how Sean got a job. Sort of. He still had to like from our infrateam win the the interview rounds or whatever yeah he had
Starting point is 02:03:08 to go through the process but we absolutely knew who he was yeah all right but yeah it sucks out there it sucks real bad it sucks for both sides because I've gone to pretty crazy lengths and it's sometimes taken a long time to fill positions in in some of my teams because of the insane waves of applicants we'll get. The most we ever got I think was like 22, 2300 but properly giving an appropriate amount of time to each one of the 22 ish hundred applications is brutal. Hold on a second Who's top gear 1224 says he was notorious actually What was your username on the NCIX forum you to tie back?
Starting point is 02:03:53 I want to know now new line is from the NCIX forum. Let's see if I let's see if I remember them Or if I get to pull Thanos, I don't even know who you are We'll see if we get a response anyway, sorry, yeah, I got distracted there Yeah, I know so like it it sucks for the people putting in applications and it also sucks for the other side because I Don't know that having an ocean of applicants actually means That you are for sure going to get This actually means that you are for sure going to get like the best one because it's such a crap shoot when you're just going off of pieces of paper that try to describe a
Starting point is 02:04:30 person. It's like, no, dude, depends on what they're applying for. Like if they're applying for a writing position, piece of paper is pretty good. Yeah, maybe as long as they actually if the piece of paper is writing, but are you actually getting the writing sample with the initial application or are you just getting the resume and stuff and then you request the writing sample afterwards? Depends. I mean, a lot of the time you can,
Starting point is 02:04:51 at least if they actually wrote it, you can tell a lot about someone's writing ability from their resume. Another problem, because it's pretty easy. Like, okay, cool, we have this super neato, was this written by AI checker, except that so do the people that are trying to get past it. So they can just make small edits until it says 0%. Like it doesn't mean anything. Top Gear was memeing and Tyback says you don't know me, but you were impossible to
Starting point is 02:05:20 miss on the NCIX forums. That sounds likely. Yeah, that's kind of my jam. No, there's no archive, Nokia. It's actually a real shame. There was a lot of technology lost there. It was low-key, like, kind of an amazing resource, an amazing archive, because the threads about products
Starting point is 02:05:40 were tied to the bottom of the product page. So, if you browsed the product archive, you could find all this discussion about products that was highly, highly relevant and probably difficult to track down anywhere else. It's a real shame that that site has just vanished into the ether now.
Starting point is 02:05:59 I maintain that I would love to acquire the domain and IP and resurrect it, but we have not been able to reach an agreement that I consider to be reasonable up until this time. Taron asked me about it the other day though. He was like, do you like still want to do that? Sure. Like if you can negotiate it,
Starting point is 02:06:20 but the offer that I got last time was not, had no basis in reality. So it was very difficult for me to as time goes on to it's worth less and less like are they recognizing that? I don't know. I mean, I haven't talked to them about it in a while. Basically, the last time I made an offer, it was pretty much based on the cost of a four letter.com. And then plus like, fourletter.com and then plus like some and then what they came back to me with was essentially an offer that would have some kind of like long-term revenue share like a bunch of I'm sitting here going no you understand that this brand is like completely trashed and worthless right? Like it's not even the people who know what NCIX is know that it imploded
Starting point is 02:07:11 spectacularly and was like shady at the end like it's it's the IP is worth nothing the brand is worth nothing it's a four letter. people's personal information on them were auctioned off. Yeah The bit man asks if you got NCIX calm, would you bring back the netlinked name? No, I think I think what I would do with the NCIX channel is like a like a software and troubleshooting channel I think that would be that would be the closest thing to sort of its origin story while also fitting in well with our current portfolio of channels. I would I would love I'd love to do something like that. Yeah, Top Gear asks, Is the issue the creditors or the seller? Or that's not really what they asked, but whatever close
Starting point is 02:08:05 enough. It's a combination, right? Because the ownership of the IP was not necessarily the corporate Netlink Computer Inc. So if I were to acquire it, there could be some dispute as to who I was supposed to pay for it. And none of that, as far as I can tell, has been legally resolved. And no one who's involved has any interest or any motivation to resolve it until someone comes in with a bag of money. So it's kind of a chicken and egg problem. So I just think it's just gonna, I just think it's gonna just languish forever.
Starting point is 02:08:46 And I think that's also something that the seller doesn't understand is the baggage associated and the risk associated with digging up this, this corpse could be diseased. They'll just never sell it though. I mean, they'll die eventually. But that's, that's not them selling it. No, I just mean like, you know, I remember telling my wife at some point, she wanted me to like pick something up
Starting point is 02:09:12 and I was like, any problem goes away if you wait long enough. She's like, no. I'm like, no, really, I mean, yeah, eventually we're all just gonna, you know, big crunch or whatever the current theory is for how the universe ends. None of this is gonna matter.
Starting point is 02:09:23 Eventually. The fact that humans were on this planet going to happen. Yeah, eventually. The fact that humans were on this planet will be irrelevant. Eventually. Eventually. Yeah, sure. When the sun just goes whoop. Wait, we digging up corpses to eat?
Starting point is 02:09:36 No, no, no, just roadkill. I want to, I want to be US president. It's recycling. All right, what are we talking about? More topics. Oh, sure. we talking about? More topics. Oh sure, yeah. This week in AI, strawberries, UI benefits, and meta being meta. Do you want to do the AI roundup?
Starting point is 02:09:54 Yeah, sure. There's some pretty interesting stuff this week. I wasn't sure. I didn't know that strawberry was actually 01. I don't know. I didn't know I didn't dive super far into that. So maybe the person who wrote this is is correct I just I didn't think that was the case, but I didn't verify this or anything So maybe it is I'm not really sure but
Starting point is 02:10:16 Either way, I'll go through the talking points regardless And then if you guys want to look that up if you care at all the needle. Yeah, sure But I'll go of these are points open AI has unveiled its new strawberry AI language are very star star but star I thought it was strawberry oh wait no it is it is strawberry oh it's starberry in the dock why does our why do I know say starberry I thought it was strawberry gosh darn it notes okay well that's fine handyman is saying it is very oh one I think he means strawberry oh one I think he means that it's... Look if you want real news go watch a different show.
Starting point is 02:10:49 This is just us talking. I do have some cool stuff to show for this but yeah okay so strawberry I guess it is the same thing thank you Handyman I believe Handyman. So they unveiled their new strawberry AI language model which the company says has significantly improved reasoning and problem solving abilities. The new model's official name is OpenAI 01 with initial versions available now, which are 01 Preview and 01 Mini. OpenAI says that 01 Preview outdoes GPT-4-0 in competitive programming, mathematics, and scientific reasoning.
Starting point is 02:11:24 Users however say that this improvement is far from global and comes with significant delay due to the multi-step processing occurring behind the scenes before answering a query. And before we move on- So we're just adding more power. Before we move on to other This Week in AI topics, I wanna go over some of the things that I did.
Starting point is 02:11:43 Oh, Luke did a thing. So one of the examples that they had was how many E's are in the word strawberry, which is I think why, or sorry, how many R's? How many R's are E's or R's? Yeah, R's, I did E's because I wanted to switch it up. How many R's? So how many R's are in strawberry?
Starting point is 02:12:00 Hold on, is this a trick question? Three? No, it used to say two. It used to say two. It used to say two. So previous models would say two because it couldn't like count very well. It didn't have... Oh. It couldn't like deconstruct problems, things like that. Okay.
Starting point is 02:12:16 So I dumped... Oh, I actually... Do you mind zooming a little? Don't want to show you all that. Anyways, I already did. That's fine. We're doing some stuff with OVH. It's going to be cool. I copied some texts that I had and had it count the amount of E's that were in it and it did it and then I was like I don't want to verify that so I made a smaller amount and then asked it to count that and then I did verify
Starting point is 02:12:36 it and they were correct so it can count that properly now which is cool okay I didn't know that was hard that was that that was not super easy. And then I looked up a calculus question, a fairly basic one as far as my understanding goes, and I compared its answer to what the internet said, and it sounded like it was pretty correct. Ign ignore this part you might zoom in a little on the calculus question I just for the general do you mind zooming a little control plus okay but yeah it's interesting it came to the same final conclusion that I found in in answer banks on the internet which was
Starting point is 02:13:22 interesting and then this is a question that I had shown on Wanshoe before that it couldn't answer, which was this New York Times game with the rules of the game, and then can it do it basically, right? Oh, it totally did. So that was wrong. Oh, it was?
Starting point is 02:13:40 Because I was trying to see, so this knew the 01 preview, you can't do attachments. So I was trying to see if I switch to a previous model, like GPT-4.0 and do an attachment, can I then switch to 01 preview and make it read the attachment? The answer is no. It no longer allows you to switch the second that you have an attachment. But I just fed it the information this way instead of inserting a picture. So I just laid it out for it basically. Yeah. It took 62 seconds, but it was not wrong. It won the game. Wow. Instantly. Well, in 62 seconds. Yeah. I then kind of realized, you know, the works instantly, 62 seconds of the time.
Starting point is 02:14:27 I mean more like the first time it tried, but yeah. So the challenge here. Oh, I don't think I even told it. Okay. I didn't actually ask it to do it in six words. Yes, Christopher, we do. I didn't ask it to do it in six words. Yes, Christopher, we do. I didn't ask it to do it in six words, but the goal this time was to do it in six words. Sometimes they'll be like, oh, do it and try to do it in four words or whatever. And when I play with Emma, usually we try to beat the amount that it asks you to beat
Starting point is 02:15:00 it in. So it says six words, we'll try to do it in four words or whatever else. So I then asked it after it did it right away the first time, I said, can you do it in. So six words, we'll try to do in four words or whatever else. So I then asked it after it did it right away the first time, I said, can you do it in as few words as possible? Because that's not in the rules. So it wasn't aiming to necessarily do it in a few words as possible. And then we went way off the rails. This was rough. After why we need a word starting with K so we can consider the last letter of Koi as K by rearranging the sequence slightly, which is not a thing at all. Additionally, alternatively, we can add a bridging word if necessary, which is necessary,
Starting point is 02:15:40 and then it just didn't do it and decided the last letter of Koi was K. Which is a really different misspelled word. Not how that works. Yeah. So I tried to work with it and then it ended up answering, but it answered like sort of multiple times in one answer. And also the final one was actually eight words. And it was like, congratulations, you won using eight words. And I was like, that's, uh, that's worse than six.
Starting point is 02:16:09 So yeah, I don't know. It's not a silver bullet and in classic open AI fashion, they're being a little closed about how it works. Nice. But it is interesting. You can see it sort of think, like throw a question at me and I'll show you how it how it in quotes thinks because this part's actually important Sorry, what do you want you want a question throw throw something at me to throw at it? What's better a zip-up hoodie or a pullover Mm-hmm. What's better, a zip-up hoodie or a pullover?
Starting point is 02:16:45 Sure, why not? I don't know. You're putting me on the spot here. I don't know if that's a smart question. It's not. Pfft. But let's see. So when it does this whole thinking thing,
Starting point is 02:16:58 we'll see if it actually has to think. Yeah, okay. So we can see what it does. Evaluating hoodie types. Yeah, cool. It's very neutral, very good. But you can see the steps that it took. Noticing convenience and style.
Starting point is 02:17:15 Offer adjustable designs and casual aesthetics while pullover hoodies excel in warmth and simplicity. And I wanted to dive more into it. I wanted to try to play chess against it to see its spatial reasoning, but I didn't have time. But I was chatting dive more into it. I wanted to try to play chess against it to see its spatial reasoning. Sure. But I didn't have time. Um, but I was, I was chatting back and forth with Wendell about this for a second. These are odd. These are weird. Oh yeah. Noticing convenience and style. Did it notice that? Did that happen? They're like, they're very humanized ways of doing this. Right, but is it actually different from what it was doing before?
Starting point is 02:17:52 It's uh, I think, I feel like they're trying to make it more approachable and friendly by humanizing it. And I don't know if I like that and I wonder if this is part of the contention that has led to certain people leaving OpenAI. Because this is like genuinely kind of weird. I think they just generate random text to it. Because like this is all factors that would have had to be considered by any other previous model anyway.
Starting point is 02:18:27 So if the only difference is that, and how do they prove that this has anything to do with the actual model training anyway? Why would OpenAI be motivated to show us any part of the narrowing down and categorization that helped it to understand my two comparatives here? Well, originally, they were supposed to be open and now they're like the least open version. So I think that's why they would show us but I think in my opinion, the reason why they're
Starting point is 02:19:02 showing these steps is they're trying to justify the time taken, which is that does make sense. This is why it's taking time, because it's not blitzing towards one answer. It's trying to compartmentalize the question that you asked and then solve each section individually and then bring an answer to you to deal with. That's like the whole reasoning steps and stuff. I haven't done enough research on how this works yet. This broke yesterday, I've had no time.
Starting point is 02:19:28 But it's definitely interesting. It is worse than old models at certain things. Some people have called that like an overthinking problem where sometimes the solution is like easier than it tries to make it and by in quotes again overthinking it causes some problems here and there but Yeah They don't show it actually it's faking they hide it for competition. Yeah, I mean, okay
Starting point is 02:20:03 they hide it for competition? Yeah, I mean, okay. Like I was saying, they're, they're, they're very strongly humanizing what it's doing. They're not, they're not, it's not exactly what's happening. That's fairly obvious. It doesn't work that way. It's not personifying. Yeah. But then was it all, wasn't it kind of already like friendly? Yeah. I see the difference. By doing that drop down. It feels like you're trying to look behind the curtain I see and there's another curtain and I don't think like in the same way that people used to argue with me before it Was able to look on the internet. They're like no it is looking on the internet. Do you remember that? Yeah People are gonna get this I see and I I don't I
Starting point is 02:20:44 Don't necessarily think that's good, you know? In other news, speaking of things that are not that great, the state of Nevada has announced that it has paid $1.3 million for a Google powered AI system that will assess unemployment claims using evidentiary documents and transcripts from appeals hearings and recommend to a human referee whether to approve or deny benefits. Nevada officials promise that every case will receive human review and they expect the new system will eliminate the backlog of cases that has existed since the pandemic by reducing the time it takes to write a determination from several hours to just five minutes in some cases.
Starting point is 02:21:26 Here's my question. How do you do a human review in five minutes of something that used to take several hours unless you're just mostly going along with what the AI said? I don't know how realistic what I'm saying is, but I've also been reading some stuff about how the whole like get a chat gbt or whatever style program to help you with the thing and then review the output before you submit that's being followed through less these days well yeah dude fixing a bad
Starting point is 02:22:01 output in some cases as someone whose entire job for a lot of the last probably eight or nine years has involved a significant amount of taking other people in this case, other people's output and fixing it is actually a significantly higher mental burden than just thinking about it and putting it down for myself in the first place, whether we're talking about script review or whether we're talking about like a planning document for an event or whatever the case may be. Imagining for a second that by having the AI do the work that someone can just review it and that those skills even are necessarily transferable or fully transferable
Starting point is 02:22:49 is so naive. You also have to understand humans, right? Like someone's gonna fall behind and need to catch up because their boss is mad at them and they're feeling like they're gonna lose their job so they just start stamping things faster. Like it's I Don't like this it clearly still hallucinates. It's clearly still does
Starting point is 02:23:14 Is able to be lightly pushed into problems that are not super easy to detect if you're not really looking through stuff if you're not really looking through stuff. It's not ready for these types of scenarios. And Meta's global privacy director recently admitted during an Australian Senate inquiry that the company has been using public photos and posts on its social platforms from as far back as 2007 to train its AI models. Meta claims they only scraped accounts of users over the age of 18. Is this even news? No. And Google's Notebook LM app
Starting point is 02:23:50 now has a feature called audio overview, which can summarize the documents it's given into a lively bantering conversation between two AI hosts, essentially a fully automated podcast. That actually sounds completely unhinged and I would potentially listen to the crap out of that I would love we should just feed the WAN document to it see how it does yeah see how it does so accurate it is I'd be I'd be I'd be actually pretty down if you did this with the I don't know the
Starting point is 02:24:24 automated meeting notes that you get, if you try to have something automatically take, like exactly transcribe what people say from meetings, it's hilarious anyways. Yeah. It's wrong all the time. Oh yeah. They all are. 100%. Oh dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude. Oh, have I, have I I got a clip. Hold on. This is amazing. Oh, I should send it to Dan. Do I have it? I wiped my phone a little while ago,
Starting point is 02:24:53 so I actually don't know if I have this clip on my phone anymore. I'm so upset right now. Oh, let's see if it synced to Google Photos. My Google Photos is a little messed up though, so things don't always sync there. Okay, well, do a thing real quick if you don't mind. I'm going to see if I can find this. Google the way back machine. When Google search deprecated its cache feature earlier this year,
Starting point is 02:25:13 Google liaison Danny Sullivan expressed a hope to compensate for the loss of the feature by linking to the way back machine. Now, according to a blog post from the internet archive, that hope is now a reality. Google likewise confirmed that search will be linking to these archived websites. Users will be able to find these results by clicking the three dots next to a particular link and searching the more about this page option
Starting point is 02:25:40 on the about this result panel, which is actually pretty cool. So that's that's good news. Yeah, I thought that was super cool. That's cool. I'm being able to find way back machine stuff better is is pretty, pretty excite. Some actually really silicon. I think I found it. But I am Dan. Do I have just like a standing
Starting point is 02:26:07 share folder with you yet? No but you can just send it to me on chat if you want. Nah. All right while they do that some other really good news actually we're all in Gaben's family. Valve is officially rolling out Steam families for all users. Family allows up to six members of a household to play any game from their shared library. This includes the ability of multiple people to play multiple games from the same library at the same time, or the same game
Starting point is 02:26:38 if the library contains multiple copies. So cool. The previous family sharing system blocked playing multiple games from the same library if the owner was already playing a game. Which was really inconvenient for me because if I wanted to play tape to tape over in the LAN area and someone's playing Beat Saber over on the TV, I couldn't do that. So you had to go sign in a stupid other account to pain in the butt. If you're not playing the
Starting point is 02:27:01 same game at the same time and you're a family living in the same house, this totally makes sense. I love family sharing, I've been in the beta for a while. I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. And it's great and everything else needs it, dude. The kids wanted to, the kids want to try Anno. Yeah. And I was like, I like logged into Uplay
Starting point is 02:27:22 and I'm like, these guys are so far behind. So what I have to log in as a parent, I have to log my kid into my Ubisoft Connect account in order for them to play this game. Like we've gone so far backward from disks and then now Steam has caught up to disks and then past disks in everything but resale. Resale is still something we've got to solve here Valve, but like, dude, I was just I was looking at it going this is this is ridiculous. It's
Starting point is 02:27:55 like dinosaur. I'd rather I'd rather they just like not bother playing the game. I like I just don't want to I don't want to deal with this platform at all. This is such this is an absolute game changer for Steam users. It should be noted, you can't just willy nilly change families. There's a one year cool down. So you can't just be like, yeah, yeah,
Starting point is 02:28:14 I'll just like join a family and then dip and then join a different family according to what's most convenient for our shared game library. But you also like, so the next note is a council said his children will be unable to leave the group unless kicked out by a parent while parents can leave at any time once a user joins the car man now you got real leverage I'm gonna kick you out of the steam family I wonder about that rule actually says once a user joins a family they'll have to wait a year
Starting point is 02:28:41 before joining another as a as a child of a family that You may have conflict with Is that weird? It seems like it might be weird. I wonder if once you're a certain age you can just leave anyways I don't know probably yeah, cuz you your age is determined by your birthdate Anyway, not by telling it how old you are, like in steam. Oh yeah. Yeah, you don't say, I am 13. You say, I was born in this year. So it should be fine.
Starting point is 02:29:12 Yeah, yeah. Yes, sound is very important for this video. Apparently kids can leave, they have to contact steam. They can't just do it willy nilly. I am a little worried if there's like any identifiable information in the videos or anything that needs to be blurred? Oh, what is this? Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Okay. Just don't worry about it. Okay
Starting point is 02:29:31 No, it looks like it should be fine You're thinking about sharing it to stream, but I can't see what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cuz it's a surprise for you Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a surprise. Okay On my own laptop, oh well, I didn't think of that, did I? If not, I can get it. Nope, nope, nope, nope. I can do it on my own laptop. Just makes the sound easier.
Starting point is 02:29:54 This was taken in August. So this was taken a little over a month ago. And this basically summarizes, in a nutshell, why I just completely don't believe anything I hear from Google about the usefulness of digital assistants. I've talked a fair bit about how utterly bloody useless my voice assistants always are for me. So no matter what the demo is, whether it's that stupid camera that was supposed to take
Starting point is 02:30:31 a picture whenever it was the right time because AI, or whether it's like your assistant's supposed to like book an appointment for you and it's somehow at the right time and the person on the other side isn't mad about it. Just like all these things. And I hear from you guys like, oh yeah, I know it works great for me. I'm sitting here going, the amount of time you waste getting this stuff to work
Starting point is 02:30:51 compared to the amount of time it would take to just call your stylist and make an appointment. I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. Because- Assistant is a more convenient alarm setter. This is the kind of shit that I deal with just about every bloody time I try to use the thing. Okay, so Dan, do I have audio?
Starting point is 02:31:07 So your laptop's currently playing something, so let's make sure that stops before we play this. Your laptop's playing something. There we go. And I'm gonna turn that on and we should be able to hear it too, I hope. Yeah, go for it. You guys got audio for me? No, I don't have it here. Does Luke hear it? We should turn on C. Bing-giddy-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing- Watch Dan until he fixes it. I mean, you gotta play audio or I can't. Oh, I see.
Starting point is 02:31:47 Yeah, I don't know. Let's look at him very intently. Why aren't we getting it? I wanted to listen. Does it look like I'm looking at him? I'm trying to look at his portrait. Oh. Oh, we were just gonna look at him.
Starting point is 02:31:58 I guess we could look at him. He's like behind a monitor though. This feels like more, like if he's looking at the preview of the show then like this is like intense like we're like yeah yeah we're overseeing. Micro management. I think I know what happened. You press that key on your keyboard slightly too slowly. See how effective this is? Yeah. He's gonna fix it because you know looking at it. I'm gonna have to take the stream down to fix it.
Starting point is 02:32:23 We can. Uh. Really? We probably shouldn shouldn't do that let me let me see what I can do if we go set this to seven we can solve all the problems he starts to apply changes no I'm not going to do that we can solve all the problems LMG has if we just have two managers per employee and then they just stand over them yeah it's very effective they'd work probably twice as hard. That's what construction does. And it's very efficient and there's never cost overruns. Construction sites, worker and friends.
Starting point is 02:32:57 And to be clear. And like he said, timelines never get exceeded. No disrespect to the people who are working hard on construction sites. It just When you drive past them the optics aren't great Yeah, oh the honestly the road workers I understand almost more because a lot of the times It's the whole hurry up and wait situation. Yeah, the whole crew can't be working at the same time You have to wait for some process to finish
Starting point is 02:33:19 But it just you know when you walk by and there's four people looking at the one guy in the hole I was doing so it's just like okay Sometimes the hole is too by and there's four people looking at the one guy in the hole who's digging, it's just like, okay. Yeah, but sometimes the hole's too small and only one person can do it. Exactly. I also, and anytime people bring up that argument, it's just like, yeah, and then you go to work and sit on your darn phone anyways. Like there's- I have a solution. Assuming that-
Starting point is 02:33:39 I also have a solution. The worker's on the side of the road- I mean, you just turn up your laptop speakers. Just because what you happen to be doing is inconvenienced by these workers not having been done their job already doesn't mean that you're also not lazy at your job sometimes. Shut up! Um, my solution is dumb. My job isn't broadcast to thousands of people.
Starting point is 02:34:01 I mean, yeah, it is. Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay my solution is dumber than yours but also might actually work a little bit better than yours Dan. So I'm gonna hit play at the same time and then Luke can just listen to it slash watch it on my phone. Oh well. Oh yeah I guess I'll have to do it. Okay are we ready? Okay so let's switch to Linus laptop. Oh Dan Why are you hanging out in the middle of my car console? Okay. Here we go. One, two, three She's right here Ghostbusters Sorry, do you want to call Yvonne ho
Starting point is 02:35:00 Who do you want to call Yvonne Who do you want to call? Ho It's brutal that it's writing it too. That's so bad actually. It's writing it out prop the Ghostbusters is very funny. The best part is that that interface as soon as I deactivate like the voice assistant, the top contacts thing goes away I can't I can't touch it. I can't touch it. I'm like come on While the voice thing is up. Can you touch it?
Starting point is 02:35:34 No, no, it doesn't work because it because the voice thing is like an overlay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's so annoying Dude and to be clear I use that function all the time and it does work a lot of the time It works just often enough that I depend on it. And then so when it doesn't work It's just another another potential double W for the old Acura When I want to call people I press the phone button on the steering wheel That's me pressing the phone button on the steering wheel and then I have a dial. Oh, it just goes through my speed dial I actually and I am a boring person and honestly the top four people in my speed dial It's pretty much all I need and then I have fun. Oh, it won't be through there
Starting point is 02:36:17 Am I on your speed dial? Yeah But I mean in my car I'm talking in my car car, okay my goodness What I mean in my car, I'm talking in my car. My goodness. Look, I'm insecure, okay? I just want to know where I stand in this relationship. The same spot. I'm number two suggested. After the literal GF.
Starting point is 02:36:41 Nice. Hold on, hold on, let's see. I don't actually, okay, so this is interesting. I use T9. So you'll see the way that I, like when I open my dialer, it literally just has me dialing random numbers. So with that in mind, yeah, I only have like my recents.
Starting point is 02:37:01 I just clicked like- Which is just 50% Yvonne and then like some random other people you can it's like unknown numbers for the most of most part well those are incoming oh yeah yeah so if I were to if I were to do like outgoing only it would be probably about 80% Yvonne I call almost no one but my wife I don't do like speed dial on my phone. Is there a speed dial thing? Yeah, speed dial still a thing you can like oh, yeah. Okay. I have a favorite section there Is that is that better that might be even better?
Starting point is 02:37:36 dang Okay, so it's it's dad brother girlfriend and Linus and mom I So the the one that you're looking at here yeah this this is this is fine right yep the one that you're looking at here I set this up when there were only about 10 to 12 people in the company so I set it up with basically you and Yvonne and then I think it's just like alphabetical. So I still have a bunch of people that don't even work here anymore. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 02:38:09 They're in like this top contacts list. Like the, I forgot there was even a favorites thing on my phone. I don't use that. Yeah, speed dial, dude. Speed dial is dead. Yeah. Like it's really easy to use. You just go like this and then assign.
Starting point is 02:38:20 But I just, I'm never going to use that because I can totally just, okay, I miscl sign, but I just, I'm never gonna use that because I can totally just, oh, okay, I misclicked, but I can, I have you that quickly by just boop, boop, boop, boop, because once you have T9 memorized, it's quick. It's so fast to call people T9. Dude, iOS 18 adding T9 dialing is way too much of the reason that I'm willing to try it. I believe you.
Starting point is 02:38:46 I can't call people 13 on dialing. And the only person I call is my wife, so it's stupid. That's like a phone screening for me is an actual required feature. I'm not gonna switch phones if it doesn't have phone screening at this point. Yeah. Which just won't happen. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:38:59 I don't know. Like I don't, I cannot think of a possible feature that a phone could have that is going to override my desire to have phone screening. At this point, with how many spam callers there are, I'm using phone screening like every other day. Xwar2 asks, do you guys think your social situation may change considering the text bubble change in iOS 18?
Starting point is 02:39:22 On my end, it's prohibitive with my one friend being singled out as the only Android user. How do I say this gently? X-MAR2, you and the rest of your friends are f***ing assholes. Switch to a cross-platform messaging app. iMessage is not special. You're welcome. Urban Furber said, iPhones have screening. I thought, yeah, so I would consider them. I'm just saying this is,
Starting point is 02:39:51 I'm not saying there aren't alternatives. He's also saying, iPhones have T9 dialing now. I'm just saying that is a required thing for me. If one of the brands, if Pixel stopped having it, I would no longer use Pixels. Just straight up. I would no longer use pixels just straight up Rubber Nick says how do you know what they are doing Linus the fact that it matters
Starting point is 02:40:16 That anyone is on Android or iOS tells me what they're doing. That's ridiculous. It's so Stupid speed dial is not T9 recursive. T9. The amount of time I've spent arguing about T9 dialing with people who just- I think most people have literally no idea what it is. Don't understand what it is and don't want to understand what it is. I've explained it so many times. And you don't need to, but if you don't understand what it is, don't argue about it.
Starting point is 02:40:41 That's it. Someone says, what is it? Oh man. Okay. I'm going to explain it. I'll explain, don't argue about it. That's it. Someone says, what is it? Oh man, okay. I'm gonna explain it. I'll explain it. I'll explain it. I'm gonna explain it again. Okay.
Starting point is 02:40:51 You know how on your phone, when you open up like the dialer screen with the numbers, if you start typing someone's number, right? It'll start auto completing the rest of the number. That made a ton of sense back in the early 2000s when people memorized phone numbers, which also no area codes. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 02:41:12 And phone numbers were a lot shorter. Phone numbers were seven digits. When I was a boy, we didn't need area code to dial the area code unless it was long distance. Anyway, okay, there's another way to start dialing numbers where instead of dialing the numbers, okay, so the two area codes here are, well, the two main ones in our area are 778 and 604, okay?
Starting point is 02:41:38 So if I dial 778 in the modern era, that's gonna auto-complete literally half the people in my phone book. And if I type 6-0-4, so it's not narrowing it down much. I've typed three numbers and it hasn't really done much. But if you look closely, and this is a remnant of a very long time ago when it was really great for marketing to have your phone number for your business that you would expect people to maybe memorize, I hope,
Starting point is 02:42:06 because that's how people would remember phone numbers was by memorizing them. If you could have the phone number of your business correspond to a word. So say for example, you were a business that did house cleaning, then you might so numbers correspond to letters. 2 is ABC, 3 is DEF, 4 is GHI, and so on and so forth. So, what you can do is you can dial the numbers that correspond to the name of the person you're trying to call, and it narrows it down way faster. Way too fast. If I type 5853, that could be Luke, it could be Duke, it could be Laveged. It's probably Luke, right? So as soon as you've typed probably three numbers at
Starting point is 02:43:09 most, four, unless you have an enormous contact list, you have probably surfaced the person you're trying to call, and on Samsung anyway, you can text with a swipe to the left and you can call with a swipe to the right. So for me, being pretty fast, I can call Luke in... Okay, well here, I don't know, give me a name. Uh, Jake. That was pretty quick. I saw it come up. I didn't see the whole thing. My phone's slow, which slowed me down, but like... I said the... He typed three numbers and then a list of people came up and I didn't see the whole thing. My phone was slow, which slowed me down. But like, I said the, the, he typed three numbers and then a list of people came up and I could, I could, I couldn't see it very clearly, but I saw Jake's profile photo. I recognize his profile.
Starting point is 02:43:52 So probably in about half a second, I can call someone. It completely negates any need for me to have any kind of favorites or ever dig around in my address book. And that's the reason that it's faster. It's because for whatever reason, when you go to contacts, you then have to click search, you then have to start typing. It's so many more interactions with the device when what you should be doing is just dialing the numbers according to the letters, and it goes through your entire address book,
Starting point is 02:44:26 which when your address book is as big as mine, can be a challenge. And admittedly, it's not as big as it used to be. Like back when I was handling all of like our brand relations on the sponsor side and product procurement, and also the team and, and, and, and, and, you know, the, the random people that I might call list was a lot longer.
Starting point is 02:44:52 Like these days, yeah, I mostly just call my wife, but I'm definitely used to it. I'm definitely used to just, you know, doing that. And you can put businesses in there too. Like if I want to call my vet, I'll just type, here, hold on, I have to close the stupid address book that I opened like a caveman. So I just type 838 and boom, my vet's there
Starting point is 02:45:12 assuming that I actually put my vet in my address book. Which I, oh, you know what I probably did, but it's probably under Fraser Heads Animal Hospital. There you go. So 3727. I don't actually, I couldn't tell you. Like if you asked me right now. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:45:29 Like. What is the number code for calling Dan? Dan, three, two, six. I'm gonna say six. Nice, nice. But there was like some computation there. But yeah, I don't have to think about it if I'm dialing. So it's one of those things where it's just like,
Starting point is 02:45:50 if it works for you, great. And if you don't want to memorize all of that bulls**t, just don't and don't care and just not be bothered by the fact that T9 dialing is there for everybody else. Because it doesn't affect anyone other than the people who use it. It's totally fine. Jaron DeVries says,
Starting point is 02:46:14 I learned about T9 dialing from you, changed my life, best tech tip ever. Yeah, it's just, it drives me bananas. When I'll explain it like this this and then people will look back at me like a stupid. No it's not stupid it just doesn't matter. It's not for you and that's fine but it isn't stupid. Yeah I don't use it. I think it's cool. I think if you're a person who's like invested in it it's it's pretty sweet. I there are definitely use
Starting point is 02:46:45 cases where I think it would be kind of nice but looking at my phone and the people that I call I don't call them any people the favorites tab is fine and honestly I don't even use that I can pretty much just operate out of recent oh dude especially in my car when I can't rely on my voice dialing recent is like a godsend. I'm usually trying to call Yvonne anyway. In my car the the top contact is Emma. Yeah. To call her in my car is yeah probably half a second because I'll move both hands simultaneously I'll press the the phone button on the steering wheel
Starting point is 02:47:25 and then just enter on the middle of the like dial thing cause she's the first one. And when you press phone, it goes directly to the favorite. So it's just like, calling. Nice. Amazing. And then if it's basically you or anyone in my family, it's just like one or two dial clicks and then enter.
Starting point is 02:47:41 And it's right there. It's like, okay, cool. So we Kaku asks silly question, is Taryn eligible for the $5,000 tech upgrade series? I don't think execs are eligible, at least not anymore. We did Colton though, and we did Yvonne, come to think of it. Are execs eligible?
Starting point is 02:47:57 I think some have opted out. I'm not 100% sure. I don't know how it works. All I know is that the the float plane peeps are Elijah says they're eligible If I ever get pulled I'm taping Elijah to a pole so he can't do anything in my house I Wouldn't blame you we could actually just have like an Elijah cam Yeah, sure that would just be in the corner of the entire video
Starting point is 02:48:29 So it would show what elijah was doing taped to the pole while you and I were working on it Not taped down and we could give him like little puzzles or something to play with Yeah, like little finger puppets or sure And then and then we can make sure there's a monitor nearby with like subway surfers So he can just oh good have like, you know distractions so he doesn't just like start tweaking out. Yeah, we're having withdrawals Yeah, that's good Elijah we got you we're thinking about we're thinking of you. We'll make sure it's comfortable Okay, what else are we supposed to be talking about? Okay, yes, Subway Surfers. Oh, God. He's in now.
Starting point is 02:49:06 He's in. There are two more topics left. Long form videos in the shorts feed. Somebody on the subreddit posted a screenshot of a long form YouTube video being displayed as a short. According to Google's support page, they are conducting a few experiments with the watch page to increase discoverability across channels, formats, and lengths of YouTube, which could mix, could include a mix of video formats, including long-form videos where you'd normally see shorts.
Starting point is 02:49:38 Kind of weird? I get the motivation. I get it too. There's no money in shorts. Yep. Not for creators, not for YouTube. Yep. It get it too. There's no money in shorts. Yeah. Not for creators, not for YouTube. It's very small. Like we did that. We had that short a couple weeks ago that did like eight or nine million views on that little like underwater scooter majig thing. And compared to a long form
Starting point is 02:49:58 video that did that kind of viewership, to be clear, it's really hard to get that kind of viewership on a long form video by comparison. But compared to long-form video that did those kinds of numbers, huh? Like a fraction it's like I think the I think the monetization rate is like a 20th or a 30th or a 40th or something Like that like it's some it's some tiny tiny amount by comparison. And so sorry So I can I can see them wanting to convert Shorts viewers to a longer video watching session. I don't know that having letterboxing and pillarboxing or whatever, or like gigantic letterboxing,
Starting point is 02:50:37 I guess is how it shows up. I don't know that that's the solution, but. That's my biggest pushback, to be honest. The formatting's weird. I can see why they wanna do it,. I can see why they want to do it and I can see why creators would be interested in it as well because short form content is very much Seen as a funnel somewhere else whether it's to your courses that you offer to your merch to your long form videos almost nobody sees it as
Starting point is 02:51:00 or like Something that gets a lot of eyeballs so you can sell sponsorships or product placements like almost nobody is treating shorts like the end. It's a means. Yeah. Elijah pointed out short to long conversion is so bad though, less than 1%. So that's true. And I don't think that's at all surprising if you look at how the mechanism of shorts
Starting point is 02:51:21 works. It's not really designed for that. But this could help increase it, I think is the idea. Yes. There are also, if you look into it, some really interesting strategies being employed by creators to improve their short to long conversion. And I promise you there are certain creators that have way higher conversion rates than that. I also think there's other forms of conversion rate. Like one of the most interesting short strategies that I've seen is a creator who they didn't take a slice out of their video. It's a genuinely unique piece of content, but it's related to an upcoming video and it's really
Starting point is 02:51:59 interesting and it makes you want to know more. And then that video comes out. So they use it as a trailer, like hours later or a day later. So yeah, it's basically a trailer and you won't see any conversion on that effectively because there's nothing for them to go to watch, but it, it might give you a stronger click through rate on that first notification because these viewers are primed to be interested in this piece of content and then they see that content follow through. Really
Starting point is 02:52:27 interesting idea. There's a bunch of interesting angles that creators are taking. But... Nokii asks, didn't you guys get sponsored by Nexigo to make sure it's answering people's tech questions? How's that sponsorship revenue compared to full video sponsorship? I don't know how much they paid but I would assume that it is less than full length videos like VODs and more than if we just uploaded shorts without any sponsorship. We uploaded a short yesterday I think, oh no today we uploaded a short yesterday, I think. Oh no, today. We uploaded a short today,
Starting point is 02:53:05 that's actually doing pretty good. It's reacting to the cardboard laptop. Oh yeah. Yeah, Evan and Caitlin made. Met the MatPat's retirement party. Almost said funeral. He's alive, as far as I know. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:53:24 Oh my goodness. Yeah. Can yeah just ominously add that at the end of all another 80 years maybe oh my goodness um yeah that's cool though that's good yep job team is Is Uber engaging in pay discrimination? Non-profit news organization, More Perfect Union recently conducted an experiment where they brought together several Uber and Lyft drivers and had them log into a shift and place their phones next to each other on a table.
Starting point is 02:54:01 They found that the drivers were consistently offered different pay for the same jobs, with lift price swings being the most drastic. Sometimes this variation was only a few cents difference, but it could also vary by as much as three dollars. Due to the black box nature of Uber's algorithm, it is unclear why any given driver was offered different pay. According to an Uber blog post, upfront pay may be affected by GPS location, estimated arrival time, promotional offers,
Starting point is 02:54:28 and surge heat maps that refresh every few seconds. However, these should have been largely accounted for by having all of the drivers in the same place at the same time. However, this pay may also vary depending on tests that are being run by Uber. Our discussion question is, is this pay discrimination and what is the likelihood that Uber can
Starting point is 02:54:47 or is using this system to minimize driver pay? That second part, 100%. As for whether it's pay discrimination, that's harder to say because they would have to prove that they're discriminating based on some kind of protected attribute of the drivers. Also, are these drivers all the same rating? Is rating allowed to play into their income? Does it play into their income? Is it just a way to get
Starting point is 02:55:12 kicked out of the program basically? There's a lot of questions to ask here. I just thought it was interesting. It's interesting that there's variance. Yeah, I mean it makes sense that if they're going to play around with the rate that you pay they're also gonna play around with the Rates that they pay totally and I would absolutely see them using this to minimize the amount that they pay while Maximizing the amount that they extract. I mean, that's literally the name of the game business works. Yeah Hey flow plane updates speaking of business. Yeah, have you ever wondered why the WAN show is late all the time? To answer that oh my god this is a monthly series to answer that question people like the first one we have a monthly series called why is WAN late that just launched yesterday and is apparently already beloved.
Starting point is 02:56:05 So Sammy has been going around in the Lead Up to Wan show and talking to people about what's going on in the lead up to Wan show, especially when we are late. And there's some pretty good behind the scenes. You can kind of see what it's like on a Friday around here. This is this is pretty old. This is from I Mean, yeah, obviously when you were at Defcon yeah Defcon. Yeah And you're getting a fair bit of gray in the beard. Oh, yeah dang. Yeah, not the hair so much Yeah, I heard for sure. Well, you have a really favorable hair color to hide it. Oh, yeah Favorable hair color to hide it. Oh, yeah
Starting point is 02:56:47 Like since my gray has been coming in for a while But because I have a little bit of like blonde highlighting it's been hard to hard to hard to tell I just pretty obvious now, though. I don't care. I Thought I was gonna be bald. Yeah, me too. I'll take it dude I'm so stoked to have gray hair. Like you're apparently supposed to look to the men on your mother's side. Yeah, I didn't know that. Dude, my grandpa went bald in high school. Oh, my grandpa had hair the whole time.
Starting point is 02:57:12 Okay, then yeah. So yeah, I didn't know that though. So I just look at my dad and be like, well, like I had written off having hair. I assumed by the time I was like 25, I'd be gone. And I didn't care about that. Which to be clear, yeah, is fine. Yeah, I was like, whatever, I guess that'll happen. I guess I could pick it. Seriously though, there's so many bald dudes, I don't know, who cares? And then when I figured
Starting point is 02:57:37 out that isn't happening, it was fairly neutral, I guess, because I had accepted it so much that I was just like, whatever. And now it's like, oh, I guess I'll have it, but it'll be gray. That's fine. I don't know. I just, I don't care. Yeah. Some people get really self-conscious about it. Really, really, really, really into it.
Starting point is 02:57:57 Like I was quite taken aback when I was on Ludwig's stream and he goes, hairline check, hairline check, hairline check. And I'm like, like he does that with his stream, like very regularly. And then he's like, oh, you're doing pretty good for 37. Are you on the Finasteride? I'm like, sorry, what is that? What even is that? I only know what it is because we had this conversation.
Starting point is 02:58:22 It's like a hair thinning drug. I thought mine was worse. Well, it's mostly here. Am I doing it bad? It's mostly here that it's gonna recede more. So yeah, you could see, I'm definitely receding, but. I don't know. It's just, I think like,
Starting point is 02:58:44 I respected my dad the whole time I was growing up. My dad was bald the whole time I was't know. It's just, uh, I think, like, I respected my dad the whole time I was growing up. My dad was bald the whole time I was growing up. So I just, I never cared at all. Yeah. Apparently that drug can be dangerous. So I'm not endorsing it. Yeah, it wasn't an endorsement. Yep. Like, I don't even know if it's legal in Canada. There's all kinds of drugs in the States that, like, are not a thing up here. Yeah. Supp, supplements too.
Starting point is 02:59:06 Anyway, it follows both Finus and Luke after 4.30 p.m. and we're even tracking who's the latest so go check it out. We're also bringing back another special week on Float Plane, Riley Week. Nice. Riley Week will go live with a few specials centered around Riley. That's gotta be fun. We'll talk more about it next week and maybe even show a little teaser of what's to come. So make sure you guys are subscribed to Float Plane. And now it's time for When After Dark. Yeah. Dan, you want to change the color scheme?
Starting point is 02:59:37 He's got this. I believe in Dan. Nice. Nice. When After Dark. Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. And after dark, nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice.
Starting point is 02:59:52 Nice. It'll be nice. Some merch messages. Yeah, hit me. Do we go back to the way we started the show and be all gentle and soft? Nope. Hi, Linus, Luke and Dan. Hi, little cages. I moved last weekend and in the confusion,
Starting point is 03:00:06 the movers stole my PC. Have you had any PCs stolen? How do you prevent theft in such cases? I had a pocket PC stolen. It's kind of my fault. I left it behind in a nice rink. Oh. And then when I went back, it wasn't there anymore
Starting point is 03:00:22 and that, yeah, them's the brakes. And that was pre like pins. Like wasn't there anymore. And that, yeah, them's the brakes. And that was pre, like, pins. Like, literally, if the battery died on that device, it completely factory reset. Like, it was just, yeah. That was a real thing, by the way. It was terrible. Yep. Yep.
Starting point is 03:00:37 I don't think I've ever had a... I don't think I've ever... Oh, okay. I think this isn't what you mean, but like we've had equipment stolen, but not like my computer. Yeah, I've been very lucky. Yeah, I have never had one stolen.
Starting point is 03:00:57 I do take measures. You know, general house security is one. That's not gonna help you when movers take it. So I have no real tips for stopping the movers from taking it. That's, that's a rough one. Um, when I'm traveling with like laptops and stuff, um, even if I'm not tired, if I'm just like sitting down
Starting point is 03:01:18 in an airport, I never like, I don't like just put my bag on the seat next to me because there's a chance I'll look this way and it will be to my back. And so one might just take it and walk away and I might not notice. I'll like tie it to myself or wear it or something or like it can even be pretty simple. Like I'll put the bag down. I'll kind of like hook my foot through the shoulder strap while I'm sitting down.
Starting point is 03:01:43 Like it's not even a noticeable movement really, and just make it so that if you were gonna pick up the bag, you'd be picking up my whole leg, and then just like, whatever, I'll just keep it that way. Might've had a beater laptop taken from the back of my Civic once when it was broken into, but I remember at the time not even being sure
Starting point is 03:02:00 if it was in there, like it really didn't matter. Yeah. So maybe. sure if it was in there like it really didn't matter yeah so maybe my the first laptop I ever bought still works this was that thing but pre that oh really yeah that I see thing also still works yeah I've never actually had a lot of it to someone the like brown one right yeah okay yeah bamboo yeah yeah sweet steal a bag get a free Luke basically one way to look at it hey Dale I recently installed a smart panel and apparently my network closet and office are pulling 1200 watts total constantly any tips for how I can bring down my $600 monthly electric bill?
Starting point is 03:02:46 For the network closet, there's not much you're going to be able to do other than buy new stuff. And I mean, $600 a month? Oh, man, power must be way more expensive where you are. They're saying home office and stuff too, right? They just added monitoring. They didn't say home office. They said my network closet and office. Office, home office. Well, you guys are assuming that it's home. Yeah, otherwise you wouldn't care about the electricity bill. You might if you pay utilities and you're... It's true. I don't know. I think we forget that our electricity is cheap here.
Starting point is 03:03:21 Yeah, no, I think the electricity there is just really expensive. Without reducing what your electronics are doing or what your things drawing power are doing, the only way you can really do stuff is like get more efficient like power supplies or something like that. 1200 watts constantly. 240. That's a lot. Is a lot, yeah, 240 would improve efficiency a little bit,
Starting point is 03:03:42 but we're talking like, you know, three to five percent maybe. Percentages. Yeah. So maybe you're saving like, you know, 20 bucks a month and whatever that upgrade is costing is going to take a minute to I'm really wondering like the what is what is the constantly what is running constantly that's taking that much power because there might be some things that you can do where
Starting point is 03:04:03 you can run like scheduled systems to shut things down or something because that's that's a lot to pull constantly. Dude, like are you running AC overnight? Oh yeah like AC could be a big part of it. Tim says I'm in Massachusetts I have a home lab I spend a thousand dollars a month in electricity. Yeah we're really lucky that our power comes from falling water here. Yeah, you got to, other than buying new stuff that is more modern or doing less with it, shutting it down when you're not using it, putting it on a schedule. I don't know what to tell you because utility power costs what utility power costs.
Starting point is 03:04:40 I mean, you could put up solar panels. That's an option. I mean, you're spending a panels, that's an option. I mean you're spending a lot in order to make these upgrades but like it's also costing you a lot to not make them so it almost seems like you'd have to. I feel like it's gotta be because he said constantly my interpretation of that is like even at four in the morning when no one's there. So my assumption is that certain things just need to be shut down, whether that's AC
Starting point is 03:05:05 or something else. Could be the computer? Maybe the computer. 1200 watts, like that doesn't even account for having AC running. Yeah, it's not enough, is it? Yeah. It's gotta be, he's leaving the computer on constantly.
Starting point is 03:05:15 Shut her down. Put her to sleep. Hibernate it. Yeah. Do something. I feel like something can change. Up next, Linus the Closet Gamer. You have said in the past that you didn't agree with some of the decisions that LMG made. What were they who made those decisions then?
Starting point is 03:05:38 Oh man, there's all kinds of decisions that I don't necessarily agree with. It's a big company now. I could probably just search my email. I mean even in the earlier days. Oh, yeah. I'm just gonna search my email for the phrase. I don't agree. Oh my god, there's so many. Uh, hold on. Well, I'd kind of hope so at this point to be honest. We've been around for so long if he didn't disagree that many times like
Starting point is 03:06:03 uh, he's like too agreeable at that point. okay. I search for which we know is not a problem G-dub sometimes I don't agree with myself. I like that. That's good G-dub sometimes I don't agree with myself. I like that. That's good My position can change on things. Yeah. No exactly. That's reasonable. Oh Yeah, okay, I'm trying to Don't see the results no, I mean hmm I Man what could I? Oh, I'm gonna search for try anything twice because that's a line I often use
Starting point is 03:06:52 when people suggest something to me. And okay, this is regarding the compilation of Scrapyard Wars. My response is just try anything twice. I support it. I do and I said I No, okay. I didn't this I didn't really have an opinion on man I guess a lot of this would take place like via chat Luke Can you think of something we did that I was like, I don't agree, but let's try it anyway
Starting point is 03:07:23 Like I feel like there's definitely been- I promise you this has happened a bunch of times. I can't really think of like a particular example. Like, there's definitely concepts for videos that I've been like, I don't agree, but we can try it and see how it goes, or like, titling a video where I'm like, okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah, go ahead and try it and see how it goes or like, like titling a video where I'm like, okay, yeah, go ahead and try it. Um,
Starting point is 03:07:48 I don't think that's the best approach. I can't find anything right now, though. I can't think of a particular one off the top of my head, but I know there was videos back in the day that we'd go back and forth on and you'd let me try stuff and sometimes it would work and you were wrong. And sometimes it wouldn't work at all. And you were right. And it's just like, I don't and sometimes it would work and you were wrong and sometimes it wouldn't work at all and you were right and it's just like, I don't know how it would go. Okay.
Starting point is 03:08:14 All right, well, I don't know. Do you wanna do another one and I'll keep trying to find something in the meantime? Sure. Do you have any for me, Doug? Yeah, I know that there's one or two in here. Let's see if I can find it. Ah, hey, LLD.
Starting point is 03:08:28 Luke, what's your favorite lean back game to relax with these days? Oh, I thought of something. Oh, okay, nevermind, Luke. Shut up. We're doing it. We're doing a fairly costly customer survey. Oh yeah.
Starting point is 03:08:47 Yeah, I don't agree. I told the senior management team that I don't think it's the best possible use of money. I think that a lot of the things we're looking to learn from it are things that if the product team at Creator Warehouse wants to know, I could probably get them 70 to 80% of the way there by just chatting with them for 30 to 60 minutes.
Starting point is 03:09:15 A lot of the questions we're asking, I understand why they want to do it in this way by hiring like a survey company that specializes in the composition of the questions and the sampling and whatever else, and it has these connections. I think that the polling and survey industry is inherently flawed because truly neutral sampling is literally impossible, especially in the modern age. And you see that with highly publicized survey results like US election predictions, US election polls.
Starting point is 03:10:07 So we're doing it. We're spending what I consider to be a not very amount of money that I'd like to spend on it, but I greenlit it because this was something that the team other than me and Yvonne and some other people is aligned on and my whole thing is like okay well then here's my expectations in terms of measuring a return on this and I hope you know what you're doing. Tyback says, this is a mistake, you're airing dirty laundry.
Starting point is 03:10:51 It's not dirty laundry, it's okay to disagree. I've said that a bunch of times on the show, Show is Lioness. I've said a billion times on the show that this company makes decisions that I don't agree with all the time, and that's okay. And that's okay. You're never going to be in an organization where you agree with literally every single
Starting point is 03:11:10 action the company ever takes. And I've provided my rationale, but let's make sure I provide their rationale as well. Their rationale is that if we sample our existing customers, it doesn't tell us much about the broader customer base that's out there. If we just go based on gut feeling, well then, or like, you know, what we've anecdotally observed over the years, sure, yeah, that might get us 70% or 80% of the way there,
Starting point is 03:11:37 but if this gets us a few more percent, that might at the very least, help guide product development in a more scientific, a more rigorous way. Part of the justification is that that's just what these things cost. So if we wanna dip our toes into data collection in this manner, this is just kind of what it costs to have a credible company do it, and then we can
Starting point is 03:12:05 decide after trying it once if that's something that we want to do again. So there are absolutely, absolutely counter arguments. And at the end of the day, I said, I don't agree. And here's the check. a check. Bold. Bold. Well, you gotta you gotta try stuff, right? I mean, if I just wanted to, if all we ever did was my perspective, then that could potentially limit our capacity for new ideas and growth, right? There is this whole problem with founders, where, in some some cases to like grow past a certain point you either need to like cycle them out or certain job functions can't be done by them anymore because they'll have a certain scope of thinking that doesn't necessarily continue to work.
Starting point is 03:13:00 And to be clear there's certain times when I would absolutely stick to my guns. And to be clear, there's certain times when I would absolutely stick to my guns. Yeah. But when it's a difference of opinion, you have to leave openings. Yeah. Okay, sorry, what was the question for Luke? I want to hear now. What's your favorite lean back game to relax with these days? Oh. back game to relax with these days. Oh. I don't do that as much these days. Not playing. You assume Luke leans back. Yeah, time has been expensive for me lately. Genuinely lean back is a tough one because usually I'm more like I'll
Starting point is 03:13:50 go play Pokemon Go because it gets me outside I'm walking I try to stay in constant movement when I'm playing Pokemon Go as much as possible. Literally the opposite. Yeah it's not a lean back but it is relaxing. Yeah. I'm changing the words which is not fair. So I think that makes sense. Yeah. So it's not a lean back, but it is relaxing. I'm changing the words, which is not fair. So I wanted to include the answer because it's sort of in line, but it's also completely not. So a general lean back game, I haven't played it in forever, but either Civ, Civilization, or FTL is not a lean back game. I sweat when I play the game.
Starting point is 03:14:27 I always make it like hard as possible. LCS stresses out. Go crazy. I've beat all the challenges in the game on all the, anyways. That's impressive actually. I am a FTL sweat. It's one of my favorite games ever.
Starting point is 03:14:39 Very sweat. But yeah, so Civ or Assassin's Creed Right now it's you can tell I played all the time because I don't remember the name Odyssey Odyssey Odyssey, let me look it up. Did you ever mess with Tabor Fortress? Sort of give me a sec though. Yes Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I've been playing this game for, it looks like, six years. I play it, you know, every once, like, every three to six months. I'll go jump in and do a few missions and then leave again. The setting is beautiful. The South Street Odyssey is a beautiful game. Great sound, you have a really cool partner buddy
Starting point is 03:15:30 and like this pet eagle that you have. The environment and the setting is just, is absolutely fantastic. So it's a very fun game to go just chill in. Yeah, I don't know. That's it though. Okay, let's see. What else do we have? Hey, leak, lime and do drop. Nice. Linus, when are we getting more house build updates? Oh, very soon. I actually reviewed a video today that is fixing the
Starting point is 03:16:08 We think we hope fixing the corrosion issue with the water loops and adding leak sensing Leak sensing is good. Yeah You have flow issues with that. You have a crazy pump. So maybe it doesn't matter We were having some flow issues, but that was due to the particle filter that we had in line. We got a better particle filter and it seems to be flowing a lot better now. So, cool. Yes, but no. Linus, are you still grateful of having this job? Years ago you kept mentioning that you have the world's best job, but you don't really bring this up lately, being frustrated by the community instead.
Starting point is 03:16:47 That's a good question, heavy. That's a good question though. Well framed too. I am grateful. I have definitely found a more, I have definitely found a less positive side of it, particularly over the last year or so. And I don't think it's new.
Starting point is 03:17:12 I just think that for a long time, the supportive voices largely overwhelmed to the point of completely drowning out the less supportive voices. Animosity and negativity in the tech space has like massively spiked. I, um... That sucks a lot. Out of curiosity, because other than Sony's own video, we have the highest viewed video
Starting point is 03:17:37 on the PlayStation 5 Pro. Like, it's not even close. So out of curiosity, I went over to r slash PS5. Like Reddit f*** fucking hates me. It's like not that's not subjective. That's just a fact. Largely speaking, the Reddit community just whether it's dismissive or or outright hostile. In general, the Redditor community just kind of hates me.
Starting point is 03:18:05 And so I went over, I was just, I was curious, do we even merit a post, let alone, you know, getting any upvotes over there? And not only did our PS5 Pro video, which multiple people elsewhere, like off of Reddit, pointed out how balanced it was, like we did point out the things that Sony did that were making it very difficult for people. The extremely high price for a console is a tough pill to swallow in this economy. You know, like it's not great, but we also talked through and explained why it costs what it costs. So not only did we not merit a post,
Starting point is 03:18:46 even though people are clearly watching it, people are watching it, but our last couple of PlayStation products, so I believe it was the Portal and the PSVR, had a bunch of discussion about them when the videos were posted, zero upvotes. Not because there was any particular argument against anything we said, but just because outside of, outside of and even within the LTT community there is an amount of animosity that I am
Starting point is 03:19:30 having a hard time really coming to grips with. It's been interesting. It's been interesting watching the discourse change around something like the framework investment. When we did it, it was with full transparency and with the informed consent of the community, understanding what this was, what it meant, what would and wouldn't change. Sorry, are you talking the framework investment right now?
Starting point is 03:19:58 So not only the full consent, the excited involvement. And over time, that has morphed from enthusiastic support and I don't mean for everyone a lot of people are still like very much like rah rah rah framework in fact too much. I mean Austin posted that not completely positive video and people piled on him for it. It's just another edge of the sword. Yeah. Too much animosity. There's too much fighting. So a lot of people are still very supportive,
Starting point is 03:20:29 but there's another sort of portion of the tech community that just looks at it and goes, okay, well, Linus is compromised now because he's got this framework investment. But what I don't see is I don't see anybody actually providing any concrete evidence to suggest that the framework investment has affected my coverage of any mobile device. Show me. Show me where I said something that was unfairly flattering a framework
Starting point is 03:21:07 or unfairly critical of a competitive framework. Show me. If anything, I treat them like the coach's son. I reviewed a script with Elijah today. We had someone come to us with a complaint about their customer service experience with Framework. So it took us a little while, but we secret shopped them. And I was not involved. Elijah, Alex, some unnamed people who are staying anonymous because they're not staff and if we can use their credit cards for mystery shopping, then hey, why don't we just not disclose their names and then we could use them again?
Starting point is 03:21:48 So a team of people put together a secret shop for framework and as I was going through, I went out of my way to, if anything, I still did act in my role as editor, but when I made a change to the script, I made 100% certain that everything I did toned down the positivity as opposed to toned it up. Or I explicitly checked with Elijah and I said, does this still convey your thoughts about it? I don't know. It's been a really difficult thing. We're deep enough in Wanshow at this point that maybe I'll just say this, but I made it... Sometimes I make edits to the script as we're going through and we're working together on tweaks to it that are just meant to be
Starting point is 03:22:41 a joke. They're just meant to get a laugh out of the writer who's sitting next to me, like watching me change stuff. And I put in a bit about how realistically the value of frameworks investment for me is less than, I could probably name half a dozen laptop brands that have paid me more over the course of my career than the value of my investment framework. Like if you're, and it was kind of, it was kind of poking fun at this idea that,
Starting point is 03:23:19 that somehow it was going to affect my day to day operation of the company other than to be extra, extra, extra careful about it. I mean, you know this. Every single time the idea of framework has been brought up when it comes to internal use. What do I say every single time? If anything, you point out that they're expensive and you push against it. If anything. And outside of that you're usually
Starting point is 03:23:51 like I don't want to be involved with the conversation. Because we were we were looking into getting frameworks for internal laptops because of you know their repairability and other stuff going on but honestly they're really expensive. They're really expensive? They don't have touchscreens? It's tough, yeah. There's a lot of people at the company that are pretty ride or die for touchscreens.
Starting point is 03:24:12 And again, they're really expensive. So, I don't know, hopefully they can figure that out. That Cyborg Relay says, "'I've seen someone say you accidentally auctioned an engineering sample, or whatever controversy it was, to attack that brand, Cyborg Relay says, I've seen someone say you accidentally auctioned an engineering sample or whatever controversy it was to attack that brand because they were a framework competitor, truly unhinged.
Starting point is 03:24:31 And the thing is that it was very enlightening but also disheartening. Rossman's video supporting our D Google your life series because the the the portion of the tech community that I don't I don't under I don't understand it. If you wade into that mess, I don't know, maybe if you have like a background in psychoanalysis, you can let me know what you think the kind of rationale behind it is, but it's... It's pretty intense. It's tough. And I still have a great job job and I still am extremely grateful, especially
Starting point is 03:25:28 for the years where things were largely, not largely, they're still largely supportive and positive. It's actually been, it's been really encouraging seeing viewership tick back up. We're like, I think we we I think we cracked like 80 million views on LTT we've been actually executing really well on content overall audience audience sentiment has been really good but the I do miss the days when it was almost universally supportive and that doesn't mean that I just expect adulation for everything I do. I have always solicited constructive criticism.
Starting point is 03:26:12 We had a rule on the forum when we first started it that you couldn't attack, you know, other creators in the space, each other, other people, moderators, media group, moderators, basically anyone, but you could go after Linus and myself and it was genuinely fine for a long time because people would do it, but it was not a huge population of people. And usually the people would just kind of deal with it and move on and it was fine. It was genuinely fine for like many years. And now it's just just I think there's a little bit of shooting the messenger like people people if some people that are still extremely angry about like ad block is piracy thing yeah like really angry which I genuinely at
Starting point is 03:27:00 no point in time have ever understood. Because everyone's like happily posting memes about pulling the pirate hat back out again and stuff. But then pointing out that that is also that. Who cares? If you don't care. Like deeply insults them, it's like what do you even mean? If you don't care and you sleep well pirating movies and music, like software.
Starting point is 03:27:18 Why is this a different line? I don't know. Why is this a worse line? I don't. I don't know. I've genuinely never understood it, I don't know. I don't know. Why is this a worse line? I don't know. I've genuinely never understood it. I don't know. I don't know, dude.
Starting point is 03:27:29 Whatever. Or like, you know, when you have that conversation that basically goes, but just like understand that when you pull the funding away from something, it gets worse. Yeah. Like, dude, the state of news media now, it's terrifying.
Starting point is 03:27:45 It's terrifying. And the deeper you go down that rabbit hole, the scarier it is. Yeah. We are so vulnerable right now because we weren't willing to pay a subscription and we're still not willing to pay a subscription to support like real journalism.
Starting point is 03:28:09 Yeah, so. There's been a couple comments, one of them was saying that like, it's not just you guys. While that is true, I genuinely believe that we get a higher percentage than most because of a lot of stuff that happened. And that both really, but there's channels that are just as big as us that don't get anywhere near as much. And then also there's been some comments of people telling me to like pull this topic along because it's clearly negative
Starting point is 03:28:42 and that we should just ignore the trolls. I hear you, I don't want us to do this all the time on Way & Show, but I think sometimes showing kind of what's going on on our end is just sort of being honest with the viewers. Um, and it's pretty intense. Like, uh, if you sort that, that Rossman video that you mentioned, pretty positive video overall. If you go into the comments, it's not entirely positive, but it's a pretty positive view. If you go into the comments and you sort by newest, brutal.
Starting point is 03:29:16 Yeah. And it's like, it's easy to say, well, forget the haters, but this isn't that small of a niche. You know, that's a video that has well over half a million views now, thousands and thousands of comments. And there's this almost universal just like, I don't know how to describe it other than just like, yeah, animosity, hostility. Anger and expression of anger paired with a note that no action, no matter what you do, can ever be redeeming. I noticed that at a very oddly consistent rate. There was a bunch of different people, clearly not bots, but just like, this doesn't make it
Starting point is 03:30:02 okay and nothing that is ever done can fix my opinion of this person. It's like, whoa. Yeah. And it's, what's the term, molding? Yeah. Like it's tough to relate to. Like I try to take feedback, right? Like I try to, we've always taken in data and tried to throw out what's bad and keep what's good and keep evolving, keep evolving, right? But when you get something that's just like, I'm mad and nothing can ever change that I'm mad. I don't even necessarily know what I'm mad about. But, you know, here's what I've kind of like, here's what I've kind of grabbed onto as the justification
Starting point is 03:30:44 for my behavior. I don't really know how to deal with that. Speaking of things that we've done that I haven't agreed with, I strongly disagreed with a lot of the ways that we handled the controversy last year. But that's part of making decisions together as a team. That's part of making Decisions based on you know, the best information that you feel that you have at the time I felt like there was a lot we could have said and I wanted to say but You have to You have to manage
Starting point is 03:31:19 There's also that I was in two parts Well, it's a complicated Yeah, I don't want to get way too into things. Yeah, we're definitely not going to do that because if we were to make a decision about changing what we have or haven't said about any of that, that would be a decision we'd make as a team because what you have to understand past a certain point is that the decisions you make impact more than just you. There's a hundred people on payroll who depend on this company and that was shown, that was thrown into sharp relief last year when I think, I think a lot of the crusaders felt like
Starting point is 03:31:59 they were taking down, you know, like a big bad ogre. When at the end of the day, I already made my money. And the people whose lives that if we went down, which we weren't going to, we kind of are awesome and we have a great team, literally world-class. But if we went down, the people whose lives would have been most negatively impacted would have been most negatively impacted would have been small creators. I often hear people say, yeah, I don't watch LTT, I watch small creators, because I want to support small creators.
Starting point is 03:32:36 You know, you mean smaller creators like Dan Besser, you know, producer of this weekly podcast who, by the way, creates every day for a living here. Lots of things. Even in that same sense, if you start looking to external to this company, small creators, I have always believed in a rising tide lifts all ships when We were at our peak so was the entire tech youtuber sphere When we slumped so did everyone now, I don't think that we can
Starting point is 03:33:26 Assign any cause of us. Yeah, there's been other challenges. The whole industry follows a similar line. Yep. And I don't think that- I didn't mean that, relax. I don't think that members of the tech media tearing each other down is constructive. I think that we have always worked to build up. Technically, no. I don't, there's, there's the one case where we were negatively comparing, I'm saying we as a company, not us, not you and me as individuals. We were negatively comparing other outlets. Sure, but I think we dealt with that pretty decisively. I agree. I'm just saying. Okay. Yeah, I can't I can't control what every single person says and does. No.
Starting point is 03:34:12 Yeah, there was a there was an error in a video a little while ago that You know, basically, I was accused of being biased in some way. I don't want to get into the exact details because it's just not worth it But I was accused of being biased and I was sitting there going like I didn't even touch that I never saw it. Yeah That's tough and it's like I think I think that's largely because like that might not work that way this Here we have a hundred plus people but a lot of YouTubers are one two bit operations. So people do think that they basically see everything, but it's like we're not. Yeah, we're super not.
Starting point is 03:34:59 So yeah, I am still grateful. It's harder to keep track of that. Um, there are, there are definitely times I, I was, I was swimming in my private pool the other day and I thought, no, really though. I was like, this is, this is the pool that, you know, this, none of this would be possible. This is a crazy life. I could have never imagined for myself if I hadn't, through a combination of hard work, talent, and being exceptionally lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. This is you guys. I was actually thinking more of my wife and the team
Starting point is 03:35:48 Sorry, you guys are totally totally integral to the whole thing like for real Yeah, it was like Three days ago. So yeah, I definitely think about it often But it's harder in the day to day these days. It's it's been it's been very challenging It has to just to you know, help us come up for air a little bit here though. You mentioned earlier teams are doing better. Things are getting better. All of that is true. Not only are performance metrics coming back, but I genuinely think the space is getting a little bit less toxic.
Starting point is 03:36:24 I think there's been a sentiment shift towards us specifically as well. Yeah, I'm honestly looking more overall at the whole industry, but that's probably also true in regards to us. I think they're kind of related. Maybe. I think they're kind of related. I think a lot of people are maybe tired of it. I think people are getting exhausting. It is. It's very exhausting. I'm just tired of people are maybe tired of it. I think it's exhausting. It is. It's very exhausting I'm I'm just tired of being angry. Yeah, I Don't have the energy for it anymore
Starting point is 03:36:53 Like why are why are we doing this? The answer has to be because we love it. Otherwise why oh You mean like the work? I thought you meant the fighting Sorry Otherwise, why? Oh, oh, oh, you mean like the work. I thought you meant the fighting. Yeah. No. Sorry. I was like, oh. Yeah, I don't know. That's, yeah.
Starting point is 03:37:16 I am genuinely, it was a little doom and gloom for a while there. At this point, I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I think we can get back. Maybe not exactly where we were, but I think we can get back, maybe not exactly where we were, but I think we can fix some of this. And it's gonna take effectively everybody. Well, yeah.
Starting point is 03:37:36 Creators, viewers, everyone. Can you guys be part of it? Can we try to not be upset about if someone just likes the PS portal, even though it's locked down? Can we just be okay with that if they just like it? Is that okay? Yeah. And to be clear, this means honestly, mostly elsewhere, right?
Starting point is 03:37:58 Not just us. And it doesn't mean just like accepting everything all the time. It's just. King Ghost, I missed the friendly collaboration too. Yeah. I literally my favorite thing. Out of practically everything used to be going to events and having these dinners that we used to do. Luke, we had dozens of creators at probably the biggest tech creator dinner that
Starting point is 03:38:25 has ever taken place at LTX. And then sick literally, weeks later, we were living on ostracization island. Literally weeks later. Yeah. As if it never happened. And we never did anything to help build up the space. As if we were evil people motivated only by whatever, like tearing people down. I, uh, I, quite the, quite the peak and fall. Cause that, that I still got whiplash. Yeah. We, we were like, videos were killing it. I think public perception was super, super high. And this is, I mean, this is a story that's been told a bunch of times in reality. Yeah. But yeah, we were we were at a hell of a peak at that point in time.
Starting point is 03:39:12 Anyway, hey, we had a club go live today. Yeah, Evan and Caitlin. Super cool. Yeah, we have some more collabs coming. I'm very excited for everything that's coming. And yeah, we've been we've been killing it. No, thank you, anonymous. Yes, I am grateful. And you know what, maybe it was maybe it was cathartic to to have this to have this conversation. I don't want to do this all the time. No, no, me neither. But I think it's good to recenter and refocus every once in a while. Thank you. Yeah, and like look at the channel, man.
Starting point is 03:39:50 He is five pro video, 1.4 million views, Apple event video, 1.5 million views, $50 versus $50,000 computer, 1.3 million views, 1.9 million views on the why the YouTube video are taking down, lowest rated PC, 1.3 million views, 1.6 on the tech upgrade. Content has been Killing it. Yep. I
Starting point is 03:40:08 Understand the printer video isn't doing that. Well, you still got 800,000 views on a printer So no one even buys those show me anyone else who can get 800 At a certain point, it's like that's still pretty cool. Like yeah, it's not doing as well as the other ones But it's a printer I remember using a line a lot like that when I would back when I would pitch to brands. I'd be like, especially it brands consumer electronics, you know, they can they can go to they could go to like a, okay, this is contemporary, right? Or contemporaneous. So they could go to a Casey Neistat, you know, like Samsung or whatever,
Starting point is 03:40:45 right? Go to someone lifestyle, right? But IT brands, I would I would often pull out this line, I'd be like, tell me who else can get a million views on a hard drive. I'll wait. Like it's, we are, I think we're really good. And it's not, it's not just me. We as a team are really good at finding what's interesting about technology and being excited about it and sharing that excitement. That's our superpower. And-
Starting point is 03:41:17 And watch that and also watch everyone else's stuff. I don't know. The tech space is cool and different angles are cool. We say all the time, we'll say it now. If you watch review on something, watch other reviews as well. Yeah, like that's never going to change. I want this tide. Not only do I believe that the tide lifts all the ships, I want it to lift all the ships. The space is uninteresting if it's just a few players. And that's how things slowly die. You want it to be vibrant and lively. You want a lot of places for people to go for information,
Starting point is 03:41:49 for news, for entertainment content, all the type of stuff where the interest is this type of tech stuff. That's how everything is going to be able to move forward best. And that's how you sow the seeds of the next generation of creators as well. Yeah. Like if we're just down and angry and negative all the time, how are we going to, how's anyone going to get enthusiastic and replace me?
Starting point is 03:42:12 Smashing on anyone for having a slightly different opinion. There's no real space for new angles, new talent, new ideas. Yeah. So try to promote the idea of different angles on things, different opinions on things, different approaches to things. And then there's more of a chance that that person in their bedroom with a camera that had bought a new phone can make a video on it and start a career that way. Jim's text says, the printer video was good.
Starting point is 03:42:45 It was a bummer that the only laser printer you had was monochrome. There are some good color laser printers out there that are cheap also. That's a really good point. I think it was just kind of a limitation of the format. We were trying to do that thing where the increments go up in 10X.
Starting point is 03:43:00 And at $400, you can get a really nice tank based inkjet. At $4 you can get a piece of garbage bubble jet. We literally did get a $4 printer though. It was like six and a half Canadian dollars or something like that. I forget exactly what it was, but it was like 450 US or something. And then at $40 you're not getting a color laser.
Starting point is 03:43:23 You're getting a black and white laser. So I would have actually really liked to show like a 60, $70 option that's like a color laser that will at least do like color documents or whatever. We tried to kind of talk about it, but you're right. You're right. That was something where we tried something. We tried, so we tried this like increments of 10x format
Starting point is 03:43:45 with the 50 versus 500 versus 5,000 versus $50,000 computer thing. We tried it with the printers. I don't think we have anything else in the queue right now, but we gotta try stuff. We gotta try stuff. Could maybe do honorable mentions just to fill certain gaps.
Starting point is 03:44:00 That's an idea. Yep. Maybe, I don't know. Yep. That's another thing is like, we'll have minor missteps here or there, but content constantly changes and you're never going to perfectly hit every time when you learn things move on. That's part of the job. I think the content team is doing great. I think they're killing it. And I think the views and general audience sentiment improving reflects that. A random physicist says home theater would be a
Starting point is 03:44:25 great 10x video. Like the $10 home theater based on what you did in Scrapyard Wars. You could do it. Do it like there's just that's one of the things with home theater stuff is like well that guy I think just like took pity on me or something. I don't know. He knew who you were. Oh he didn't at all. Okay. Did the audio from that ever go in? I don't think so. I haven't watched a full video. We have the whole thing audio recorded. He had genuinely no clue. Okay. All right All right, I'll allow it. I'll accept it. He thought I was a very weird guy But yeah, there's like old home theater equipment sometimes people are just trying to move it on that wasn't even old That was actually all kind of newer stuff. Anyways, that was weird. But yeah.
Starting point is 03:45:12 Yeah. Next? Would you care for a second merch message? That's got to be one of the all time links. Yeah, let's go something a little lighter this time, if you don't mind. Oh, let me just look... What is your opinion on geopolitics?
Starting point is 03:45:30 This might take me a bit to find one. Would tech link still exist if Riley didn't join LMG? In 2019, you talked about how it picked up nearly all the lost revenue from LTT when LTT struggled. This one wasn't better. Would LMG be entirely different? I hope there was no tech link. I love Riley. I didn't see a path toward having that high energy, irreverent, yet informed style without Riley. I basically had in mind what I wanted to do
Starting point is 03:46:00 and waited until NCIX went to crap and immediately slid into Riley's DMs. I don't... Who else could be Riley? Tell me that. Riley is a unique pearl that has been grown from a unique piece of sand. Do that again, Luke? I'm just saying like how you get pearls, like so you had to like crack NCX open and just like... Yeah, extract the one valuable thing. No offense to some of my former colleagues, there were other pearls. They were just a little misshapen. Next. Hey DLL, as an ignorant American, my knowledge- you don't have to say ignorant- my knowledge of America's hat comes from media like Pure Pwnage, Letter Kenny, Shorzy, and LTT. What Canadian made media would you recommend? Wait, Pure Pwnage is...
Starting point is 03:47:00 Canadian? I think they were, yeah. Oh! We don't even know what's Canadian. Yeah, that's- that's a whole thing. I just assume most of it's American. I think Friendship is Magic is mostly Canadian. Oh. Yeah, the production was like local. Like Riley did a voice in it once. Oh, that would make sense why he did that? Okay. Yeah, sure. Yeah, but I... It was saying red green, yeah? Yeah, yeah, red green. Fred Penner? Probably a pretty dated show at this point Yeah, I just feel like probably ah Does anybody know the Beachcombers is that no yeah some people it might be an old thing
Starting point is 03:47:36 Trailer park boys Park boys Canadian. Yeah, what yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, that's sick What's oh, yeah stargate? What's my aunt was on Stargate Stargate Stargate sick. What makes Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's sick. What's so yeah, Stargate. What's my aunt was on Stargate. Stargate. Stargate sick. What makes it Canadian, though? I don't know. Everything's filmed in Canada. Yeah, but like, OK. But is it culturally Canadian really? What is Canadian culture? We.
Starting point is 03:47:58 I thought that's a question right there. Yeah, I think that's hard to nail down in this part of the country. I think it's, well, I mean, they have the same issue in America. You can drive like 200 miles in America and be like... I'm still in Texas. Yeah. Well, no, no, I don't even mean that. I mean, you can still be in Texas and think you're in a completely different country.
Starting point is 03:48:21 And it's very much the same here like in the lower mainland I will literally go play badminton. I'll be like oh Yeah, I'm a token white guy Yeah and then I can drive like you know four hours to five hours to Vernon or something like that and Yvonne and I'll walk down The street and you'll have people be like what? Yeah, an Asian. Yeah, yeah know, like kids. Same province. Dude, when she was there for her practicum, like, little kids would point at her. Like, not like-
Starting point is 03:48:50 Little kids, dude. They don't know better. They're gonna do what they're gonna do. They don't know better or anything, but it's just like... I don't know, what the- what is- what's- I think you get more unique Canadian culture the more east you go. Yeah, probably more unique. Yeah, like Vancouver is Such a mixing pot. Yeah
Starting point is 03:49:10 Not always the most mixed but all the ingredients are thrown in. Oh, yeah, they're all in there. Yeah, like I I Often tell people that it's like stupid for me to travel for food. Oh, yeah, cuz like dude food in Vancouver You just got to pick through like dude. Food in Vancouver, you just gotta pick the like dude. If you know what you want, there's a city that will have amazing versions of that. Like it's always a joke to me when people are like, yeah, you have to like eat the raw fish in Japan and I'm sitting here going, you know, we live on the same ocean, right? And there's like plenty of Japanese people here to like cut up a fish for me if I really need, if that's really what I'm into. Like I just like are you talking about there dude man like Indian cuisine Asian amazing amazing
Starting point is 03:49:49 like all of it only thing Middle Eastern we kind of lack and Mexican I was gonna say Mexican our Mexican I am very jealous of a new one where tell me don't tell me now okay I'm gonna tell you now. What is he talking about? You're gonna like where it's located as well. Really? I've been getting sick of where we live for food, so I've been trying to find them. Mostly just for you. I really, really like Mexican food.
Starting point is 03:50:16 Yeah. Dude, you can go to any random hole in the wall in LA. Oh, dude, it's amazing! And you'll get this like, giant thing, it'll be like $8, $9. Okay, I haven't been out of LA in a little while. If it's up to me and I'm in the States, practically anywhere in the States,
Starting point is 03:50:30 I will basically just eat Mexican food. Oh yeah. Cause I know I'm not gonna get it when I come back. 100%. It's like you get like an enchilada here and it's like this stupid wimpy little thing. You go down there, you order enchiladas and it's like a whole plate covered in delicious like sauce and there's like unlimited pico and a little
Starting point is 03:50:48 thing you go get it and so the pico oh properly made pico pop properly made guacamole yeah dog oh man so good so yeah we're lacking that. Yeah, yeah, we and to be clear, I'm sure you can get good Mexican cuisine in Vancouver. But what we don't have is like a huge Mexican community here. And so that's the difference, right? Like you can get good Indian cuisine probably just about anywhere. But you guys don't have Surrey, where like it's cheap and it's everywhere and it's like super authentic. If you just pick a random one,
Starting point is 03:51:34 it's probably going to be very good. I don't go to random ones anymore. I don't either. I only go to Eustadji. Dude, masala and Langley. No man, Eustadji. I will challenge you to like a curry hole showdown. Which, wait, probably not the best way of phrasing that.
Starting point is 03:51:52 I meant like a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that specializes in curry. I know a place. I Was that intentional yeah, tell me was that intentional It doesn't look like it was intentional Luke. I know when it's intentional with Linus. Oh God a pair of you. Oh Sure, I'm singing like watering holes. I know slash hole in the wall. Yeah. Yeah, that's not a curry that comes out of that hole That is not a curry hole
Starting point is 03:52:40 Man I had it really my favorite one it was in the middle of Surrey and they they closed down they changed ownerships Was it called I cannot. It wasn't taste of Punjab was it? No, okay This was like cuz they're you study now in their way. It's like actually better You know, they change management. I think you start G dude, dude. The owner is a G I am definitely there's like the weirdest pictures of him in all their I've been to a couple of their locations Wait, is that actually their branding? Is it you start G 76? Yeah Oh, no, it's cool down. It's cool. Dude the central city. Look good. You're good the central city Yeah, the central city location has artificial turf on the wall why I don't fucking know but it also has fairy lights and Love this man. They had they had mr. B cartoons on the TV when I went in look at the way he poses
Starting point is 03:53:27 In front of his restaurants. This is sick. Their branding is so inconsistent and they don't seem to give any Means it's good. Their garlic done is perfect. The food looks amazing The picture oh, no, it's so good. Their garlic naan is flawless and unlike McDonald's the food looks like that. No way. It looks exactly like that. I will defend, I still think Miss Hall is great. We'll do both. Let's do it.
Starting point is 03:53:52 That looks so good! They pulled food out of their kitchen and they took these pictures. I swear to God. That's amazing. What is this road? It's Canada, we have one. Like seriously dude, I love their branding what is it like they're milestones they look like yeah there's their locations
Starting point is 03:54:14 so I didn't become aware of them until they replaced the place I liked to go in Surrey Central. This website decides amazing. Oh yeah like what font do you use yes? Conrad take notes Yeah, yeah Apparently okay, so that was a grand opening a while ago, but apparently they're in Kamloops, so there you know Anyway, you study like what does this site to scroll forever? What am I even looking at here? Seems like this is ready in the jeans. This is their Instagram. This is him Yeah, yeah, that must be him that must be him. This isn't just never incoming call, but what is this? Dude
Starting point is 03:54:57 Okay You study we got to the end. Yeah anyway So yeah, I I love I love Vancouver. I love Anyway. So yeah, I love Vancouver. I love Vancouver food. Yeah, Vancouver food's great. Yep. It's one of the best things that's going on. And like, okay, like Chinese food.
Starting point is 03:55:11 You can get everything from like, like literal, like actual regional styles. So you can be like Szechuan style, or like more like Hong Kong style, like hot pot, Taiwanese style, you know, like you can get like, so like the China area, you can get like different styles, and then you can also get like trashy American Chinese food.
Starting point is 03:55:31 You know, like you can get your sweet and sour pork and your oil drenched chow mein or whatever, like it's- Of course. Yeah, it's great. Okay, what are we supposed to be talking about? I think we're done with that one. DLL, any way to vote on items we would like to see again in the store? I would love to see the black shorts again. Pre-orders or even Kickstarter style where we need
Starting point is 03:55:54 to reach a minimum order size. Which shorts like the swimming trunks or the sweat shorts? No, we had just like shorts. The sweat shorts. I think they werehirts. Yeah. I actually had a conversation with Nick earlier this week about some of the ideas that we have that we just don't know how feasible they are. Like we don't know what the order mix is going to look like in terms of sizing. We don't know in terms of color. Like is there the possibility of building our own kind of Kickstarter style thing where we basically say, okay, yeah, like our moq for this is 2000 units. If 300 or 400 of you preorder or 500, like we set some threshold, we basically go, okay, yeah, here's, here's where it's at right now. Here's how close we think we are. Here's where we anticipate it'll come out. Are you down? Are you in?
Starting point is 03:56:41 Yeah, I could, if you're gonna, if you're gonna anticipate when it would come out, you have to put a deadline. Yeah, yeah. And then we just refund if it doesn't make it. Yeah, I could if you're gonna if you're gonna anticipate when it would come out you have to put a deadline Yeah, yeah, and then we just refund if it doesn't make it. Yeah, I think this person is describing a non-deadlined version but yeah, yeah, I don't see I yeah, it sounds like they're describing more of like a Like a threshold for resurrecting older items I we don't have anything right now, but there is a possibility that yeah, Mastrop style or Kickstarter style that we could either bring back high demand items or do kind of edgier or kitschier stuff that we're really not sure about.
Starting point is 03:57:28 Is Drop just like a keyboard company now? Oh no no no. No, they have other stuff. Don't forget about headphones. Yeah. Top Gear says, okay, but how long would I have to wait after I order? Will it be like backpacks, six plus months? Yes. Yeah.
Starting point is 03:57:41 Yeah, production times are weeks or sometimes months. Shipping is like a month. It just takes time. As sampling, they got got it like someone has to like make it like it's one-off You know, and then it has to be shipped and then we have to like schedule a meeting and then we have to evaluate it And then we have to compile our feedback. We have to send it back and then they have to like make another one like it's making products is I It's making products is, I feel like a lot of media, and I don't just mean tech media, I feel like a lot of media would have
Starting point is 03:58:11 a very different perspective if they had actually created anything. A lot of critics create nothing. And it's definitely given me a better perspective. Yeah. More? Yeah. Or not, we could just sit here in silence. I mean, that's an option. Yeah.
Starting point is 03:58:40 So excited to meet Monitor-kun. Why can product... what? I have no idea. So excited to meet Monitor-kun. Why can products that are still being purchased out of stock on the store? I'm going to give you another crack at this one. Go ahead, Dan. Why can products that are still being produced be out of stock on the store? Why not just send it when it's made after I ordered? We are generally not that into taking back orders because our lead times are so long that we end up creating negativity out of an attempt to provide a service, which is the ability to back order.
Starting point is 03:59:21 We're not like we we act more like a manufacturer. It's not like we have a water bottle factory, like I don't, you know, own a water bottle factory, but we behave like a manufacturer in that we, we place large orders, we have to figure out our mixes, we have to warehouse them, we have to market them, sell them like we're pretty vertically integrated for a lot of our product stuff, which means that our ETAs are dependent on manufacturing and global logistics. They're not dependent on whether our supplier down the street has stock or our other supplier has stock. There is no other supplier a lot of the time. We're working directly with factories. So it takes as long as it takes and You end up creating a lot of work for yourself because no matter how hard you try to disclaim that this is gonna be three months Sorry People will message you can be angry about it And then heaven forbid it lasts longer like we'd rather just take your money once we have something in stock or at the very least Once we know with a fair degree of certainty once we're like when we're gonna be getting it. We've made exceptions and honestly, it's
Starting point is 04:00:31 Worked out. Okay, sometimes but not as well other times word 97 guy in full plane chat said Oh man, when I was working in the snowplow industry, we spent a year developing the crate it ships in Yeah, things take time a year developing the crate it ships in. Yeah. Things take time. Yeah, things take time. When you start getting into engineering and development and whatnot, things take time.
Starting point is 04:00:51 And you'll think it'll take six months, and then in month five, you'll go, oh, there's a big problem that we didn't foresee. And now it requires re-engineering or whatever. The whole ISO standard for the size of the bits and the size of the sockets, realizing that the entire rest of the industry was doing it wrong.
Starting point is 04:01:10 Doesn't backwards or whatever. And we had to decide, do we go according to spec or do we go according to compatibility with the rest of the ecosystem? Even just making that decision is gonna take a lot of time. How could we see that coming? Yeah, this stuff happens all the time.
Starting point is 04:01:30 So like, I don't know. Times a five, four. Hello, Linus, Luke and Dan. As big fan of Overcooked, I was wondering if Linus had heard of the game Plate Up. It's pretty similar. It's also published by some of the YouTubers called the Yoggcast. Oh, really? I have not heard of Played Up. I know Overcooked, I know Moving Out. My kids really like Moving Out. I play Played Up. Overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam. It's phenomenal. It's great if you like screaming at your friends. Yeah. Cool. So good. After having played Overcooked, I haven't craved more of that kind of gameplay, really, personally.
Starting point is 04:02:07 But, yeah, I might be down to try it sometime. But I also, I don't know, man, like I'm old. Like when I have half an hour to hang out and play a game, honestly, it's a lot easier and more comfortable for me to just flip on a game that I already know how to play. Dude, yeah. That you don't need friends for. Got him. easier and more comfortable for me to just flip on a game that I already know how to play. Dude, yeah. That you don't need friends for. Got him.
Starting point is 04:02:27 I mean, like, you gotta get a group of people together at midnight, right? Not... Wow, why you gotta burn me like that? We both get burned. First you uninvite me to your pool party. Yeah. Okay? Rude.
Starting point is 04:02:42 You weren't invited in the first place. Turned off. Head is off. Bye, Dan. Rude. You weren't invited in the first place. Turned off. Heads off. Bye Dan. Bye. I'm sorry.
Starting point is 04:02:52 Okay, welcome back Dan. We need someone to read the merch messages. Okay. Need somebody to come to my pool party. Please. Hello, WAN. What's happening in the rain? Yeah, I'm at the lawn party.
Starting point is 04:03:03 Just splash around on the floor. Hello, Wan.dll. With iPhone and Pixel promising plus six years of software updates, do you think that they will try and push newer devices harder or increase the benefits of the new devices and exclude from olders? I think they're absolutely going to try to differentiate the newer products, but I think that six plus years of software updates is less an action that they are taking to extend the lifetime of these devices and more an acknowledgement that that is
Starting point is 04:03:34 and is becoming the product life cycle for phones and they better just get on board or they're going to be left behind and there's gonna be no one to sell a new phone, no one who wants anything to do with their brand when their competitors are supporting the devices for longer. I think this is a response. I don't think this is proactive,
Starting point is 04:03:52 particularly on Google's side. Apple seems to have slowly acknowledged this over time. You go back to some of the very earlier iPhones, they didn't necessarily get this nice long support period, but for the most part they do now because Apple recognizes that the value is in building out the size of the install base. My company recently got acquired and the new organization is nothing but egos, but I love my team and older co-workers. How would you deal with new leadership causing problems due to the lack of confidence and big ego?
Starting point is 04:04:35 It's the same story, man. You hear it over and over again, acquisitions, like, private equity, I don't know. It's tough. I'm sorry. We've never been in that scenario, honestly. Yeah. I mean, I've definitely had friends that have talked to me about, you know, how the company changed after they were acquired and stuff. And I can't think of too many versions of the story where it ends real good. They exist.
Starting point is 04:05:02 They do. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think of too many versions of the story where it ends real good. They exist. They do. But I haven't heard that it usually ends up real good for is not the individual workers. Oh, no, but that's what I meant.
Starting point is 04:05:17 Yeah, I know. I know. I'm only counting the stories I've heard from individual workers. I'm not counting like the ownership. Ownership does great when when a company gets acquired. That's yeah. It's kind of how it works. What happens when you run out of bad shafts for the scribe driver? Will we just be getting a scribe driver with the primo knurling instead? No, the primo knurling is too rough to
Starting point is 04:05:41 hold like in a pen grip. What if I buy a screwdriver and then cut off the head and then machine it myself? Why don't you just machine a pen at that point? Extremely expensive scrap driver. That's probably worse. I like this. Yes. We've talked about this.
Starting point is 04:05:56 I live my life by that, Luke. I thought you knew me. I know, this was what I'm at. Somewhat what I'm referencing. VR. Form. Nevermind. We have lots of supply of shafts.
Starting point is 04:06:12 What is it, four tons? This is not a concern for the time being. We have a lot of shafts. We're not concerned about not having enough shafts? We... We... It's okay, look, it's bad shaft.
Starting point is 04:06:28 You're not missing anything. It's rough. Technically it's ribbed. Technically it's knurled. I think that's worse. Anyway, the point is we've got lots, but we have talked about this, and we would consider
Starting point is 04:06:46 making a scribe driver from scratch, but I don't know. We're years away from having that conversation. I think we've got plenty of scribe drivers. You should take the branding from Nintendo, the new with the multicolored things coming out of the new. Do you know what I'm talking about? New Nintendo 3DS? Do that.
Starting point is 04:07:07 New Scribe Driver. New Scribe Driver. For now. What's new about it? Technically nothing, but it's made from new things? I don't know. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, so Scribe Driver, yeah, we'll keep mining
Starting point is 04:07:21 for shafts, mine shaft, shaft mine, shaft mine shaft. I don't know, there's plenty in the hill for shafts. Mine shaft, shaft mine, shaft mine shaft. I don't know. There's plenty in the hill of shafts. Shaft hill. Shaft mountain. Broken shaft mountain. That's a great movie. Shaft mountain.
Starting point is 04:07:40 Classic. Hi Linus Lucan Dan, this is the last one I got for you. I was wondering if you think there is a chance that TSMC will be broken up as a monopoly, particularly if Intel were to pull out of the fabrication space and focus on research and development. So when you break up a company, you are breaking it up into, it's like an antitrust thing, right? You're breaking it up so that it cannot utilize its advantage in one area to give it an unfair advantage in another area. TSMC, for the most part, just does one thing.
Starting point is 04:08:17 You can't break up TSMC. I mean, oh, hold on, hold on. You could demand, it's so integrated. I was on. You could demand that there are in D and like, like tool development breaks off from their pure manufacturing. But in Silicon, they're so serving the one thing parallel and they're so integrated. I don't see how you could ever. I also think that would quite genuinely be directly against the interests of the governments involved. Yeah, the government of Taiwan is like not going to be interested in that. No.
Starting point is 04:08:54 And I don't care which one you ask, like the more pro-freedom government that is currently in power or a more pro-China government that if they were ever to manage to win somehow, in power or a more pro China government that if they were ever to manage to win somehow, none of them would be interested at all in disrupting disrupting TSMC's current just like march to complete global semiconductor domination here. Yeah, yeah, they're not going to disrupt that. That would be unwise on like so many different levels. Thank you so much for tuning into the LAND show. Yeah. We're gonna see you guys again next week. Yeah. Same bad time, same bad channel? Yeah. Bye!

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