The WAN Show - You Can Go to Jail for Pirating Games Now??? - WAN Show July 18, 2025

Episode Date: July 19, 2025

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Summer is what you make of it and Tim Horton's fruit quenchers have something for every mood So choose from a variety of fruity flavors in sparkling frozen or lemonade order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time How are you doing everybody and welcome to the WAN show we've got a great show lined up for you today a YouTuber is facing potential jail time for showing off emulated games, but I've shown off emulated games lots of times. Luke, am I going to jail? Maybe. No. Also, Nvidia isn't the only one who figured out that they can manipulate the public perception of their products by

altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further with reviewers. The new Superman movie has apparently been accused of manipulating critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes. We'll be talking about that because I think it kind of affects our ability to believe anything that we see from the media these days. What else we got going on? Grok is now a hot anime girl and definitely no longer Hitler. Also Xbox Game Pass subscribers can stream their console games on PC now. Luke are you okay? What do you mean? You just you seem hungry. I am hungry. I got snacks. Do you want a snack?

Yeah, I'd love a snack. No, okay. Here you go Thanks The show is brought to you today by Rove Lab, Odu and AMD alongside of course our rap partner Dbrand, our laptop partner Dell and our chair partner. Whatever that brown thing Luke is sitting on is. Just kidding, secret lab. I want to jump right into our headline topic today, which is of course the Italian YouTuber Francesco once-wornered Salicini, whose home was raided by the Italian economic police, and around 30 consoles, mostly retro emulation handhelds, were confiscated. This is freaking kind of wild. Salasini is being accused of

promoting pirated copyright materials after showing off emulated Sony and Nintendo games in his videos, something that a lot of creators, including us, have done numerous times over the years. Authorities are claiming that once Wernerd is in violation of Article 171 in Italy's copyright law, a law that was apparently written in, get this, actually no, oh, Luke Luke did you read it already? Yeah.

He read it already. Okay, Dan, guess what year this law was written? 1905. You know what, you're honestly not off by more than half. 1941. He's now facing a maximum sentence of 15,000 euro and get this, three years in jail. I thought it was an or. Italian copyright enforcement is built different and has a history of strong arm moves like having the country's internet regulator force Google to poison DNS to block illegal streams of soccer.

The original complainant who brought forward the case will not be publicly known until the end of the initial investigation, but let's be real, we all know it's Nintendo, though for legal reasons we must say that we are not sure. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. Wow! So, man, is there ever a lot to unpack here? Because the line, from my understanding, and remember, the legality around emulation is not black and white and does vary according to the particular region and authority that you are subject to.

So, like, there's definitely parts of the world where, well, we actually just shot a video last week reacting to Indian setups. And Sam, who grew up in India, one of our thumbnail artists, also editor, he was basically like, I mean, yeah, that was pretty much the reason that PlayStation was popular, was because you could just get the games for like 60 cents or something like that. I forget what the actual math worked out to, but I was looking at him going like, dude, that's like, that's practically the raw cost of a blank CD. Like, what are we even talking about here? Like, you're not even essentially paying for the labor of someone to take the blank disc and put it in a thing and copy it. That's, that's wild. And he's like, yeah, but that was, that was basically what everybody did. So I'm not saying India is like that anymore. It might be. I legitimately don't know. But depend on what I'm

trying to, what I'm trying to illustrate is that depending on where you are, the enforcement and the laws around this stuff can be very different. So in from a North American standpoint, as far as I've been able to tell, owning things like emulators and ROMs is generally regarded to be but certainly not something that you would be fined or especially given prison time over. However, producing, circumventing digital locks, or distributing these copyrighted materials could be problematic if your profile gets raised high enough that somebody decides to go after you. The idea that you could just be sent like an emulation console from you know one of these Chinese companies that produces them just show using it and go to jail for up to three years? What? That's a little ridiculous.

Like this is a non-violent crime. Like dude, there's, I hate to be that guy because like, you know, it's kind of, it can be, but like the 2008 financial crisis. Oh yeah. Did anyone go to jail for any of that? I don't think so. We're talking about a pirated video game. I think like one guy like went to jail for like a short period of time.

The what what says yes. Yeah, one guy, one guy from Citadel. One dude. Exactly, right? So what are we even talking about? Like, I've never been to prison. Everything I know about it tells me that if your crime was playing a video game

off of a ROM file, you probably don't belong there. Well, he also spent a 30-month sentence, so less time. Un-flipping-believable. Just goes to show you that it's not a question of how much damage has your crime done. It's a question of who you did it to. Okay, we have a few discussion questions here. Do you believe, this is a good one. Do you believe that we have the right as creators to show off emulated games?

Does that stance change if you do or don't own original copies of the game? So no, I don't think that we necessarily have the right to show off emulated copies of games. However, what I will say is that I do consider, generally speaking, us showing Us showing content on devices that can play it back as being promotional in nature of that content. So for a while there, I was getting a lot of pushback from some people internally about how we would play movies in our TV reviews, for instance. Like, I would put, how to train your dragon from DreamWorks. Or I'd put Encanto on the TV in our reviews of a monitor or of a TV or whatever the case may be, or projector. And they kind of went, hey, look, if Disney, you know, or DreamWorks, or one of these guys decided to come after us, like like that would be pretty scary.

And my response there has been, okay, look, yeah, fair use is a defense. It's not a well-established set of guidelines for what you can and can't do. But if we were to look at this, A, I think we would have a very strong, fair use defense. We are doing no harm to the original content. We are not acting as a replacement for the original content. If anything, we are promoting the original content. What we're doing is highly transformative. Nothing that we're doing in a review of a TV replaces in any way the plot of How to Train Your Dragon, you know what I mean?

I think that our fair use defense would be extremely strong, number one. And number two, they'd be crazy to come after us for it. Like imagine being the guy at Disney that's like, yeah, these guys talked about how great this movie looks in HDR, and I'm mad. Like, so we're going to start a war with someone who is literally promoting our, and you know what's you know what's really crazy though is that kind of logic does exist. Like I remember having a really stupid conversation with someone at, in someone in the Intel booth one year at, I think it was CES, where they boasted

on the little placard next to their upcoming platform that they could hit some number of FPS in some game. And I was like, guys, bit of an oversight. The game on the system, that's a different game. Like you guys know that, right? Embarrassing, and they're like, yeah, we know, but those guys want us to pay like a huge licensing fee to show it. Now that is a little different because in that case, Intel is clearly making commercial use of that software. However, I would argue that that kind of commercial use clearly benefits both parties and it would be in the best interest of a game developer to

have their game be a feature demo for like a hot new piece of hardware. This was back when Intel had products that people wanted. And so, you know, when it comes to commercial use, yeah, the rules do change a little bit, but in general, I see a clear benefit to having your content featured. With that said, there is clearly no commercial benefit to, say, Nintendo, not picking that name for any particular reason, but let's just say Nintendo, to having their older content that you can't even buy be showcased on a product that literally pirated it. So I do think that that defense falls apart a fair bit. With that said, I have made clear in the past that I feel that if I own a copy of a piece of content on one format, that I literally will lose zero sleep over my believed right to take that format and enjoy it, that license to that content and enjoy it in any way that I want if I

Own a super Nintendo cartridge for Final Fantasy 6 and I have that cartridge sitting on my shelf in my possession And I decide to download a ROM and play it on my Steam Deck or my RG ally or whatever I will sleep like a baby, I don't care. And where I end up in a bit of a grayer area is if I own, say for instance, Final Fantasy Tactics was a game that I used multiple times

to test older handhelds to see if they could handle PlayStation 1 emulation. It is a bit of a heavier game, especially when you get into some of the like summoner, summoner, summoner like effects and like the particles and everything. And if I, you know, really think about it now, I do own, I own a disc, I own a license for the game. I consider it well within my right to play that game if I own a license for it.

I have no desire to dust off my PlayStation 2 and pop it in the disc. I know it's a PS1 game. I have a backwards compatible PlayStation 2. Relax. I have no desire to do that, so I'm just gonna play it on whatever I want. You could have just said... But showing it on camera. I don't know. You didn't even have to say the number. Yeah, but I don't have a PlayStation one. I'm on the record as not having owned a PlayStation one,

so who knows? Yeah, but you could have just not said a number. I know, but I have a PlayStation two. It's in my attic. Look, what do you want from me? I'm not gonna pull it out to play Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm gonna just play the ISO, sorry. I know, I was just saying you didn't have to do

the whole disclaimer if you just said PlayStation so with everything I've said do you think we have the right as creators to show off emulated games with or without owning a license a copy of the game what do you think if you don't with or without you're saying? Yeah, yeah, like what do you think? Like should we be allowed to show emulated games? We've done it. That we don't own? That we do, that we don't, anything.

Yeah, I mean, I'm generally in the defense of like, education is not a thing that should be stopped in most cases. I'm only saying most because normally I would say ever, but then I thought like, hmm, cooking meth and stuff. That's probably not good. Generally I don't like the black and white here. Generally I would say if you own it, it's clearly above board. And if you don't own it,

it's not something that I think I would want to go after somebody for, but I could understand there being a legal framework for that. And I think that would probably be fine. Jared I mean, what if we applied this to like another form of art, right? Like, let's say that, Let's say that, let's bring it home, right? Like, let's say that it was a t-shirt design, you know? Or let's say that it was some other kind of intellectual property. If somebody's YouTube channel was basically showing off low-cost clones of our IP and explaining to people how they can

get our t-shirt design without paying for it. Would you think that's cool? I don't know if this makes a ton of sense, but no, I would not think that's cool. But if they showed it in a generic way I would think that's cool. In a generic way? What do you mean? Like if you showed somebody like here is you know here's the process you have this graphic on your computer you can look you can scan you can scan some graphics somehow I don't know you can take this picture that you have in some physical format, or you can take this item that you have in a physical format.

You can scan it on a scanner, and this is how you can get it onto a shirt. Awesome. Obviously that knowledge could be used to rip off one of our shirts, but that part doesn't bother me. I think it would only bother me if it was like, look, do this to this shirt and steal it.

But then it's like, oh. But that's, I mean, that's kind of the parallel here, right? Like, they're basically- I don't know what type of content they made. So they're making content showing off, like, pre-pirated consoles that are just loaded up with ROMs, that you pay a fraction of the price for, and they're just, they just come with a bunch of copyrighted games on them. a fraction of the price for and they're just they just come with a bunch of copyrighted games on them and someone has said ltt would 100 take that down like we've done already i i don't know what you're talking about legitimately i actually have no idea what you're talking about we've we've ourselves ordered counterfeit counterfeit ltt merch and shown it on our channel um anyway get a legal

department i or some lawyer no no no no, no, no, no. I think it would depend because like, are they, okay, so they're showing this off, but are they trying to sell it? I mean, they're reviewing it. I think that there's an implicit promotional element to doing a review that encourages in some way the consumption of these goods. And remember, I'm not asking if you think it's legal, right? Because we're not lawyers. Don't tune in. This is not a legal podcast. What I'm asking you is, would you think that's cool? That was my phrasing. Would you think that's cool? Are they being cool if they do that? Yeah, I don't think so.

Yeah, I don't think it's that cool. I don't think I would think it's cool. Now, someone did bring up in the chat, and I think this is a really good point, that one of the foundational arguments around emulation and game piracy, especially of retro games, is game preservation. A lot of the time these are games that cannot be obtained through legitimate means

anymore. And I've again, I've made my position on that pretty clear as well, that if I have no legal, legitimate way to obtain something, I sleep like a baby. You know? Like if I lived in a territory, if I lived in Egypt or Libya or something, and I wanted to watch Western content that just simply wasn't available via streaming or physical media in my region, I'd sleep like a fricking baby, pirate. I don't mind you acquiring that at all.

I do that now sometimes. Yeah. So, yeah. So, Unique Username here goes, okay, you know, does your situation change somewhat if we make the parallel the same? What if it was a shirt we no longer sell? That is 100% still RIP. And when I say RIP, I don't mean rest in peace. I mean our intellectual property. And it is our choice whether we produce it or not. Now, in some cases, I can tell you that I wouldn't care.

I'd be like, yeah, fair enough. We don't make it anymore, like go for it. I do think I agree with that. But however, and look, like the world is gray. The world is gray. Here's a shade of gray. What if it was a design that we specifically produced only a limited quantity of that our customer, part of our agreement with the customers who bought it, is that only a fixed number

of these will exist? Well, then I'd feel like I have to protect it. Because it's not about me at that point. It's about maintaining the exclusivity that people paid for. People paid good money for it. And you might not agree that they should pay for that, but they did do it. And that was their expectation. Pete Here's a weird angle. What about a recreation? What about a faithful but imperfect recreation?

Jared I mean, realistically, I can tell you guys straight up that it's not the kind of thing that we would pursue any legal action over. I think that there's just, there's a spectrum of how cool is it or how not cool is what they're doing. And I guess what I'm trying to say is, I think jail time is absurd, obscene, ridiculous, and obscene, ridiculous, and should be, should not be legal. It should not be legal to put someone in jail for playing video games. There's even like, because it's beyond reasonable doubt, right? Like have we crossed the threshold of beyond reasonable doubt?

Could he have conceivably thought, possibly maybe, that these games were licensed? Maybe, I don't know. Luke never underestimate human ignorance. If I just buy this console, I don't know, I don't know. It's not impossible. Yes, you know better, obviously I know better.

And he probably knows better. Yeah. And he probably knows better. But remember, beyond know better, obviously I know better, and he probably knows better. And he probably knows better, but remember, beyond reasonable doubt, you have to prove he knows better. You have to prove he knew. So. What do you think about my question? What if it's a recreation of one of our products? What if someone, Northern Lights, you know, I don't think we sell northern lights anymore

What is the shirt takes our northern lights is the desk pad? Uh, do we have a northern light shirt? Didn't we I don't know. I don't remember. Anyway, whatever that one was called with the mountains Yeah, if somebody like redrew it and it was almost like a tribute or fan art I've always been very supportive of any kind of tribute or or fan art We've even gone as far as promoting it on the show and on socials and stuff like that. So in my opinion, if it's gonna be an exclusive item and you didn't get it, and this is not the company's stance,

but in my opinion, if you did a recreation that was your own, you didn't just literally copy paste. That's cool, in my opinion. But in the case of these ROMs, in the case of this emulation, that's not the case. So what I was trying to get around to is that while I strongly disagree that anyone should go to jail over the theft of supposedly, you know, tens of dollars or hundreds of dollars of video games, especially in the world that we live in, I do, clip this, go ahead, I do see why Nintendo's upset about it.

I can see their perspective. I think they need to just take a bit of a chill pill here, though, and hopefully they have the good sense to not pursue jail time over this. Hopefully. If anyone from Nintendo is watching, get this up the corporate ladder. Sending people to jail over gaming on emulation devices is not a good look. If it's Nintendo.

I remember in a full-plane chat, I said, don't assume laws in Italy are the same as in Canada. I didn't. We never did. Never happened. If it's Nintendo. I remember reading a full-plane chat that said, don't assume laws in Italy are the same as in Canada. I didn't. We never did. Never happened. At no point in time did that happen. But in general, the fundamental principle of innocent until proven guilty, my understanding is pretty well established in at least the Western world as something we should aspire

to at the very least. Does it always hold up in practice? No, not here, not anywhere, but that's something that we should generally aspire to. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we've got a couple of more discussion questions. Most of them, I guess, we kind of covered as we were talking about it. Yeah, we're not talking about pizza or pasta. I don't need the entire country of Italy upset at me.

Luke, do you want to pick a next topic? Sure. Let's talk about this Xbox thing. The notes are short, but Xbox Game Pass describers can stream their console games on PC now. This is directly from Microsoft and a quote, Xbox insiders in the PC gaming preview who are also Game Pass Ultimate members can stream select console games that they own beyond the Game Pass catalog on the Xbox PC app. This includes console only games that previously couldn't be played

using the Xbox PC app. Very cool. When I first read this I thought this was just games that were on both platforms, but the fact that you could stream console only games is actually like genuinely pretty sick. Yeah, it's progress. I'm not personally a Game Pass fan, but I think like Linus said, this is progress. This seems better, this seems good.

This is a good thing for gamers. Yeah, I need to see, as much as it was exciting to hear Microsoft talk about when they announced the ROG Xbox Allie, or Xbox ROG Allie X... I can't remember, whatever, the Allie 2. I think the latter. Yeah, when Microsoft announced the Allie 2 alongside Asus, it was very exciting to hear about the better integration between the Xbox experience

on PC and the Xbox experience on console. But one of the things that many, especially, you know, Xbox console fans, what few of them remain, brought up is that, okay, Microsoft, as great as it is that I can play any of my cross-platform dual-license games on this supposedly Xbox console, this still isn't an Xbox, because I can't play my Xbox exclusive games, and many third-party titles do not allow me to play on PC. They don't come with the dual-license. There are still Xbox platform exclusive license games that you can buy. And so, you know, that was the strongest argument that I heard for why the Xbox ally X to whatever it is, is not, in fact, an Xbox.

But this seems like part of Microsoft's push to really continue to chip away at the barriers that make something Xbox versus PC from a content perspective. So I find it pretty exciting. And in response to our discussion question, did you also think this was already possible? No, I did in fact know that you couldn't do that. Yeah, I didn't know that at all.

But it did take me a minute to kind of go, okay, so wait, hold on, how is this different from what's going on? So I definitely see where you're coming from. Thank you, writer who prepped that. That's a pretty short one. One thing I'm wondering is, what games are truly Xbox exclusive still?

Not many. It's more that the license is only for your Xbox, rather than getting the dual license with your purchase so that you can play that game on your Xbox or on your PC with a single purchase Got it. Okay. Yeah That doesn't really solve a huge problem for me then no game pass could theoretically give you that anyways so like it Really isn't well not every games on game pass So any game that you bought not on game pass for your Xbox that doesn't have dual license that's right you can now stream it yeah it's a it's a niche problem but

it's one that as an Xbox gamer I would find frustrating still a good it's a very minor good thing but damn it it's progress Luke take progress where I can get it in this in this complicated world where people are going to jail for playing Super Mario World on a pirate handheld. Yeah, that's clearly stupid. Speaking of interesting progress, YouTube rolls out beta for A-B testing of titles to a small subset of users. I think a lot of YouTube enjoyers probably know at this point that there's been A-B testing for thumbnails for quite some time.

But yeah, now they're rolling out for a small subset title testing. We have some images of what it looks like. I can't show those off my laptop. I gotcha. For now, creators can test three titles or three thumbnails or three title thumbnail pairs. Interesting. Very cool.

As far as we have seen, it does not run all combinations of title and thumbnail. That's what I expected it was gonna do, but okay. With thumbnail, ABC, et cetera. This should allow creators greater ability to test the different ways of packaging their videos, which is cool. This is a good thing in my opinion.

Like with thumbnail testing, it uses watch time as the primary indicator of what what is the best title which I think makes sense given the metrics that YouTube currently cares about. LTT writer Adam went back through some older videos of his to test out the feature and here are some tests that have been that have been run or are currently running. The first listed title was the title at the start of the test. That's really interesting. Oh and we're already seeing some results that indicate good potential changes. This is really interesting. Notable weird behaviors and viewership numbers after starting and running these tests on this video are included in some of the

pictures that Linus is likely going through. Also viewership numbers don't show as much weirdness on videos with more momentum, which is interesting, kind of makes sense. Yeah like this one was kind of dead in the water and then we changed the the titles. It's a little bit of life. Yeah, a little bit of life got breathed into it, whereas this is one that just kind of already had kind of leveled off and had some decent momentum. Yeah. But you can see that watchtime share, way bigger for VR doesn't get better than this, Big Screen Beyond 2 versus they changed the VR game again. Too vague posty.

Like, it's easy to see in retrospect what you screwed up, but it's not always easy to come up with a title in the first place. Yeah, this is really cool. There was a heavily updated comment on Flowplain that the Flowplain title for Tech Gripes 2 was better than the YouTube title and the YouTube audience is inconclusive. Oh wow.

This is very uh... I think, I'm assuming he means heavily upvoted. Yeah, so this one, the original title won after Float Plane said that they really didn't, you know, resonate with the YouTube title. But barely. Just barely. You can't always perfectly trust the Firefox users, you know?

That's the thing about Firefox users is they know all about Fox and Fire. But maybe not other things discussion question do you worry about potential effects this can have on the experience for browsing videos I mean it's gonna make it harder to find them because if you remember the title of a video I wonder if they all wonder if they have some way in their search I found YouTube's metadata basedbased searching is really strong. Like if I kind of remember the approximate vibe of what a video was and like kind of what we talked about, they use the transcript, they use all the metadata at their disposal

to try to return as accurate a search result as possible. Where I run into trouble is when they don't actually show me my search results, right? Like when they have my search, they have like two of my search results and then it's like continue watching other users enjoyed friggin no Give me the search results. I'm trying to see my search results. Yeah Yeah, I'm just I'm hoping that they retain the old or the the other various titles that were used in their search metadata stuff. As long as they do that, I think it'll be fine. That was the first concern that came to me. Other than that, I don't think it's going to have a major effect on

browsing videos, to be honest. Titles are already incredibly clickbaity across YouTube. I honestly don't know that this will necessarily be worse. Linus pointed out earlier that one of the titles did worse because it was too vague posty. And if that is a thing... It's based on watch time and that's for a very good reason. YouTube has over time moved away from focusing on things like click-through because what they found was that even though people might click on a particular thumbnail, I mean Phil DeFranco was famous for doing this way back in the day and he's scrubbed the internet of some of his old habits so it's actually I wanted to talk about this in a video

on thumbnails and titling a little while back and I literally couldn't find anything of the old like Phil DeFranco show sexy Phil where like every one of his thumbnails would just have like giant boobies all over it and then he'd have like and then They evolved the rules so he had to have at least one frame of the actual video that had Boobies one frame of it so that he could include that in the thumbnail and it was always a whole thing, right? so the meta has evolved from from click through which YouTube has found does not generate a So the meta has evolved from click through, which YouTube has found does not generate a quality experience for the viewer to focusing on watch time. So by forcing us, not even telling us which one has the best click through, by forcing us to optimize for watch time, what YouTube is incentivizing, again by forcing us to optimize for, is promising something to

the viewer that ultimately will be fulfilled, right? Because you're not going to hang around for a long watch duration on a video that makes a promise in the title and thumbnail that it doesn't fulfill. With that said, I do think there are behaviors that are going to be incentivized that are less desirable, like, you know, taking a while to get to the point, like kind of, you know, leading people, leading people, leading people on. And I don't, I have no problem with storytelling. I love storytelling, like setting up and creating an environment where I'm trying to give you an enticing teaser for what's to come.

That is different from just, you know, blue balling it. Yeah. So, I... It could be a good thing. I think... I'm going to hold on to some hope and say that it could be a good thing. Is this it, Luke? Is this the positive WAN show? I mean other than the first things we talked about Probably the next things we'll talk about

Oh, yeah, yeah the next topic if left up to me will be negative so well, I will see up to me will be negative so we'll see how that goes. I'm not gonna let you go next yet then. Alright fair enough. Oh wait you want Adam thoughts first? Sure. Yeah I could see this being okay where did it go? There we go. I can see this being a nuisance for multi-account users where video progress isn't tracked. Yeah, so if you watch something on your work account, but then you go home and it gets served to you and now it has a different title or thumbnail, you might not realize you've seen it. I think that's a bit of an edge case though.

That's probably mostly going to be okay because once the trial is done, it settles on one. Yeah, and like, that's already happening with thumbnails. And I do think that that could change in the future. Like if I had the ability to have like three different title thumbnail combos and say like, this one's more tuned for hardcore techies and this one's more tuned for a more casual tech adjacent audience and this one's more tuned for a more casual tech adjacent audience and this one I Feels like I would use that gotta be the future. I would use that so hard

But yeah, that would be a nuisance for sure Especially if you got profiled slightly differently across your work and your personal use which could happen I mean very likely would I've been known to watch different content at home versus what I watch at work different content at home versus what I watch at work? On YouTube? Why not? There's lots of interesting stuff on YouTube. The next question is, do you see any way this system could be gamed? And yeah, that's the point, I think.

Yeah. I mean, what is gaming, right? Optimizing. The entire purpose of this feature is to optimize for more watch time. And that's in both YouTube's and creators' best interest. I don't know if it's in the audience's best interest, but hey, if you don't like YouTube, you don't have to watch it, I guess.

Oh no, everyone's leaving. Everyone's stopping watching. Just kidding. Just kidding. They're hooked. I'd be interested to see a spiffing Brit video. Oh no, everyone's leaving. Everyone stop watching. Just kidding, just kidding, they're hooked. I'd be interested to see a spiffing Brit video where he like breaks down ways to min-max it somehow or something or like. I mean, it's almost certainly coming. It'd be interesting to see like, okay, comment or like this comment, you know,

if you got this version of the title or something like that. Or what if there's some, oh man. That's actually pretty good, I like it. How many times can you redo these types of tests? Is it just once? I don't know if there's a limit. Yeah, interesting. Being able to just constantly change the title

and the thumbnail, especially if it gives you even a small bit of a boost, just because it's trying to see if people like the new version. Yep. Could be could be something that's gained, but I'm sure they would, you know, become privy to that pretty quick. So I don't know. It's interesting. Yes, Rosa Brega in Floatplane Chat is bringing up the whole Blake Lively

Ryan Reynolds thing that's going on right now. This just broke today, I think. 16 YouTube commentators and 20 Twitter users are facing their private info, including credit card and bank account info info being handed over to Blake and Ryan by Google and X because they talked unfavorably about the Blake Lively lawsuit. I am reading this comment. I have not validated any of this. But this doesn't make any sense. Their credit card info. It sounds flipping wild. I think it's very much developing, but yeah, pretty much they are not happy about what some social media users said about them. And now they have learned about the Streisand effect, I guess, which is cool. I mean, that's a good thing to learn about.

I've personally learned about the Streisand effect multiple times. And now I know about it. I don't know if you did. I think I have. Okay. I mean you don't you don't think that I've found out about it? I think I certainly f***ed around. Maybe it's the uh the lack of the the lesson on the other end of it. I said I learned it, I didn't say I retained it. All right fair enough. Why do you think I have to learn it multiple times? I'm just something of a hard nut, and you know what? I'm just not gonna go there. Oh my. It just

takes me a long time to learn, that's all I'm saying. Oh you're not here to put the little card on to tell me to move on. What are we supposed to be doing? You got to get a ring the bell app on your phone. This is this is mentioned earlier. You just yell ding. Well, we've done two topics so you're supposed to tell me the new thing to do. I just forget what it is. Uh, announcement. Oh, announcements.

Okay. This is a warning. Whoa. Um, the warning is that you're- Wait, are we supposed to start with explaining merch messages? Well, I don't know. I just do what Dan tells me. And then read- yeah, but if he said go to announcements-

Go fuck yourself, San Diego. If he said go to announcements, then you're supposed to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I just do what Dan tells me. And then read... Yeah, but if he said go to announcements... Go f*** yourself, San Diego! If he said go to announcements, the first step of going to announcements is explaining

merch messages. I said read an announcement! Oh no, he said read an announcement. So I am wrong, I apologize. So I'm going to do this. Dan is the one breaking protocol. I'm going to do this now. Okay, this is a warning! Because you only have until tomorrow to take advantage of Lime Day, our annual summer sales event. And yeah, we're probably not going to extend it again because we actually have moved through a lot of stuff.

It's been pretty solid. If you haven't been keeping up, we dropped some brand new deals this week, including saving up to 50% on a scribe driver and notebook bundle So that's just $29.99 US dollars on the US site and $34.99 Canadian dollars on the Canadian site. I cannot both read this document and show the deals at the same time So that's Something do you want me to read it? Sure thing. Do you want me to read it? Sure. Where do you end the the scribe driver one? Yeah, scribe driver and notebook bundle deal. You can save $30 on our hydro phase swim shorts that

reveal a pattern when wet on both sites. You can save $25 and get an LTTAT for $15, or save $32 on a water-resistant LTTHAT Pro for only $17.99 on both sites. We also have great deals on our blank hoodies, premium joggers, and our retro monitor pet cave. And if you're shopping from outside the US, we also have great deals on our mystery water bottles and hoodies for 50% off or more. All of this and more are deals and they're available at LMG.GG slash Lime. Woo! Okay I definitely did not manage to keep up with you there but there's that. I probably should have slowed down a little bit. There'sway through I was like, he'll figure it out. There's the Hydrophase swim shorts. Yep, lots of deals all right. There was blank hoodies, premium joggers, retro monitor pet cave. And don't forget about some of the deals

that have just been running the whole time. 200 bucks Canadian, so that's like 150 US or something like that, for commuter backpack and 8-bit dough ultimate bundle. I've seen a lot of mystery screwdriver enjoyers on the Reddit. Yes, people have been all over the mystery screwdrivers. So let me see.

There was a, oh, but that's not all. We are bringing back the power outlet for non-US customers. So this is on the global site. You'll have to read this again because I have to show them how it works. Sure, I'll try to do a more followable job. Non-US customers, this is your chance to get amazing deals on open box and pre-owned goods. Not only are we bringing back our Power Packs, which is a randomly selected assortment of items from our returns

discounted at an amazing price. We have power packs for tops, we have power packs for bottoms, we have power packs for outerwear, and we have power packs for desk pads. We have two packages. You okay there? I'm hearing from Artie real quick, hold on. Pause.

Linus, open them up. Do you have a package on the table? Yeah, yeah, I got power packs. We have two packages on the top of the table to open up. Three, I'm sure. Linus, open them up. They're under you. No, I know where they are.

But I'm showing the site first. Yeah, sounds good. Well, no, I think he wants you to open them now. Okay, but you didn't, you were mid-sentence. I was. What mid-sentence was I on? No, no, I was basically done. We have power packs for tops, bottoms, outerwear, and desk pads. Is this, is this a, sorry, is this a power pack of five bottoms or a five pack of power bottoms? I think it's a power pack of five bottoms. Yeah. I don't know. Quite a party in there.

I don't know for sure. Anyway, the point is I have a couple of power packs. The one I'm holding here is large tops. So there is, I wanna make this abundantly clear. Abundantly clear, okay? I hope this is abundantly clear, abundantly clear, okay? I hope this is abundantly clear. Just because I open a particular assortment of shirts here does not mean that that is what you will receive. It could be anything that has been returned to LTT store over the last four years. Like,

we have not done a good job of managing our returned inventory so you could end up with quite literally anything. Are these bottoms? What size are the bottoms? Are they medium or small? Well you ordered the size that you want. I meant the package that you have. Oh I don't know. All right so wow what did I end up with? The old school circuit shirt. I got oh oh, this is a really nice one. Oh, this is a, wait, this is a medium. Okay, I think this is just an example one. Okay, yeah, cool. This is just an example one.

I got the RGB t-shirt. I got, oh, seriously? We still have some of these kicking around? That's crazy. That's crazy. Oh, seriously? We still have some of these kicking around? That's crazy. That's crazy. What the heck? Well, it's returns, dude. Like it's anything that's come back.

You gotta be kidding me. Yeah, but that's like actually like a decade old, isn't it? Like I'm not even kidding. I got a privateer shirt and I actually, this is hilarious. I got the one I'm wearing. That's kind of nuts. this is hilarious. I got the one I'm wearing That's kind of nuts freaking hilarious, okay, the og lt shirt when was the last time we sold that I Would have never guessed to see one of those dude

I I had I had a couple people ask why not the US so it's because of tariffs why not the US? So it's because of tariffs. These are items that were returned to our Canadian warehouse at a time when we only shipped from Canada, so they're all here in Canada. We have actually started shipping some of our US orders from the US, and so that is part of why some of the pricing and some of the deals have been different because we've had to split up our logistics across our Canadian and our US distribution centers. So this is something that our team is going through and grading and making sure that things are adhering

to our quality standards and that we are shipping from Canada. So for us to ship a pack of t-shirts into the US right now, I mean, it depends on what the you know feeling of the day is in terms of the import tariff so it's just not something that we're able to to deal with. Here's a Canadian sorry. Can I pay the tarry and get the rare stuff? One of the things is you don't know if you're going to get the rare. Yeah you might not get rare stuff so like I don't know what to tell you. You might only get new things. It's not it's not a guarantee that you're gonna get the a shirt that I

haven't seen in years. Okay here I've got a power pack of desk pads. That's a lordy Boy All right. Oh, I got a WAN show desk pad the one with the hexagons best of guns all over it Yeah, I got the LTX 23 Vancouver skyline Deskpad this one's actually a really sick design I line desk pad. This one's actually a really sick design. I really like that one. Yeah. I got this one that really didn't sell very well. It's... I wonder why. It did really great out of the gate and then people got over it basically. I think

that's kind of how meme products work. The entire group of people that will be interested in it will buy it like within the first two days and then that's about it And then finally I have a power pack that is not labeled um Again, these are demo ones. I doubt they're tops because this is freaking heavy It's probably outerwear bottoms All right It's outerwear. Oh, dude, hold on a second. How much that's a jacket. How much are these power packs?

Is that the down jacket? The outer one is 200 bucks. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. That's a little less scary But yes, this is a 3d down jacket, which was already worth more than 200 bucks. Remember again. Okay I want to make get different things. Yeah. It's a large Luke, sorry, it's not an XL. Okay. Yeah, I know. I know you want another one.

Yep. Oh man, a dropout, dropout hoodie in red. This one's fricking awesome. Those didn't sell that well. I love those. No, they did. Remember, these are returns. So I'm saying some of this Those didn't sell that well? I love those. No they did. Remember these are returns. So I'm saying some of this stuff didn't sell that well but that's not where these are coming from.

Got it. Okay yeah, cause I really liked the dropout line. Whoa! Dude, I swacked it! Oh that's another throwback. Yeah, there it is. Not nearly as old as the other one but still. Not seen one of those in a long time. Oh dude. This also has the, um,

shoot, I forget what we called this thing. Did we call it windbreaker or something? It's like a, kind of like a light, um, it actually, it's quite waterproof. It's like kind of a light rain jacket. I think we called it our windbreaker. And then, uh, I don't know that this is quite outerwear, so I guess we're just saying

not t-shirt. So yeah, color block hoodie. Okay, well there's gonna be an element of randomness to it but you could end up with some pretty cool stuff. Can we, can we as members of the company, can we internal request power packs? That could be a gamer move. That seems questionable. I think these are probably for customers. Alright, thank you. Yeah I don't know about that.

I was about to pull such a gamer move. If Linus doesn't want us to, then I will block them. Because currently, if you get in there right now, you can. Okay. Yeah, Dan, I don't know. I'd like you to maybe check with Artie on that, but my gut feeling is this is meant to be a promotional deal for our customers. That's fair. And people internally are already getting these items for free as part

of their employment here. I don't think they need to hoover up deals that are really intended for the customers. That's fair. The mid maxi part of my brain just got excited. Yes, I know. I know. But it's about intent. It's about intent. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Did you already heard back from Artie? Yeah, he said no yeah that that that makes sense to me fair enough

We'll probably have to kill that on the thing yeah, yeah, okay, all right. Thanks Daniel Bessick by default I think who the fuck are you again? All right, so I have a feeling those power packs, how's the merch messages going Dan? I feel like after we started opening those, those are probably going burr. Especially because don't forget until tomorrow we have free shipping running on orders over a certain threshold, what was it, 100, 250 cat or something like that. So you pick up a power pack and like a couple other things and you're off to the races This is kind of crazy. I didn't know that we were

Launching the power outlet while we still had a free shipping promo running Good luck everybody. Anywho, what are we supposed to do next? We could do merch messages first. I also wasn't 100% done. Did you finish the rest of these details? I don't know. You can also get yourself a like new open box commuter backpack and like new cargo pants.

Can you stop editing the doc please? Plus like new open box LTT backpacks are back and available to purchase. And with free shipping on all orders, over 250 CAD on our global site, or 175 USD on our US site, or you can save a... You can save a...

Yeah, if you do that, you can save a ton of money before Lime Day ends tomorrow. If you're shopping outside the US, visit lmg.gg slash outlet before it's too late. Cool. Exciting. Very exciting. Alright. Exciting if you do that in the next two days because that's pretty wild. Dan, do you want to hit me with a merch message? Sure. Let's see how loud this is. Hey, LLD, I really love the lanyards. Are there any more plans to restock and add more variety? Thanks from the UK for the videos and the quality stuff. I ordered way too much stuff, but it's the perfect R.

Cool. I don't know that we have more lanyards coming. I've taken your feedback. I'd love to bring some back in. I don't know that you'd see necessarily more variety because of the whole multiple distribution center thing. We have to kind of control our skew count because the logistics of transferring six units each of 25 different colors of lanyard versus 25 units each of six colors of lanyards is way more complicated and so we just have to kind of control our skew count in order to make it somewhat manageable to economically ship things from within the US to US customers and from Canada to our global customers and in the

longer term from potentially more distribution centers to customers around the world in order to help make our shipping costs more economical. You look puzzled Luke. Yeah I'm trying to read the next, I'm trying to read this and I don't know if it's just my brain right now but what is the beginning of this? Okay. No the the full plan announcement don't worry about it we'll talk about it when we get there. Yeah. Instead of gamer jet can we just get an LTT hotel? It would make some sweet LAN parties.

Thanks, DLL, for keeping me engaged in tech while I search for a new IT role. Mission complete. Hashtag LinusTown less than three. I tried to buy this. Yeah, we tried. I went as far as having an acquaintance of CEO Taron Tongs, who works in construction, come and do a thorough walkthrough and figure out what exactly would need to be done. I went as far as meeting with the city of Surrey about whether we could, I kind of pitched

them a universal studios type of setup where it is both a functioning studio and also a functioning hotel. So what was cool about this property is it has an underground parquet but also an outdoor, an outside parquet. So what I had wanted to do was block off the underground parquet, make that staff only so that we would have a secure entrance that would use the service elevator to come up into the work spaces, workspace areas, which would be cordoned off from the visitor areas, which would be like the ballroom, the dining area, the pool and stuff like that. And then have the upper floors be guest rooms that would all be like gaming themed guest rooms. I wanted to work out of it while we were renovating it because that was the only way that we were going to be able to afford this by liquidating all of the other real estate

holdings that we have, dumping them all into this, which would mean we wouldn't have anywhere else to work and we'd have to be like using it as we build it up around us. I'm not gonna blame anybody for why it didn't work out it just didn't work out and another party has purchased it and that would have been that would have been pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah apparently the hotel sold for 18 million CAD even though I think it was 175,000, no, 136,000 square feet on five acres. That is... It needed so much more. It needed a new building envelope. Like, the entire outside of it, they had tried to paint

it to like seal it in or whatever, but it was trashed. The entire stucco needed to come off, it needed to be redone. It needed a fricking ton of work. It also had a history of supposedly being haunted. The caretaker suite had these weird dolls and stuff in it. I think they were staging it to make it seem haunted or something. And some weird ghost hunter channel went and featured it once and it was pretty cool. But yeah, pink palace. I Would have loved to do that It would have been an absolute content mine Because literally every single guest room could have been a video project like a like a makeover reno project

We just yeah, we couldn't make it happen I've had gamer hotel in the back of my mind ever since I stayed at that one in Taiwan that I made a video about, but. The jumping plumber room. Right? Yeah. Right?

Yeah. When people go to Disney, if they're like extremely baller, they stay at the fancy themed hotels, right? That's a thing that people do. I've heard this is a thing. And this would have been so cool because it also would have been a dumping ground for like projects that we've finished. Like the every console in a PC, in a TV thing we could have just had like down in the ballroom. Could be one of the TVs in one of

the rooms. Or guests could, you know, play. Remember when we had like 16k gaming, that giant thing? We just like put that in the dining area and like people can play on it until it, you know, breaks or whatever. And then, because we're always doing new projects anyway, we could always just like keep it fresh. So you could occasionally, you might, we could, it had a little theater that we could have done WAN show live and guests at the hotel could have come and watched live. So we could have just used that for WAN show. I mean, we had all kinds of ideas for what would have been cool about it. But would have been pretty sick. Nope, nope, nope.

And I just, especially with what's going on in the real estate market here right now, my appetite has never been lower for making making deals at the moment. making making deals at the moment. Alright, I think you've got to do the next announcement. Oh, do I know? Float plane announcement! I've been called many things. Short, vertically challenged, not very tall, close to the ground, and narcissist. We can see that I'm short and have below average size. What is this?

But we needed answers to determine if I am in fact a narcissist. And I'm, ooh, I've been told to click on 80 second teaser. Good luck me Dan is this gonna work? Cool Linus takes a narcissist test teaser. Oh And it's over. Okay, we try again

My name is Jonathan. Is this LMG? And I'm like no, and he's like... Oh, we're doing a narcissism test. That's the intro. Give me an example of some time I should have accepted the consequences of my behavior. I bit my tongue so hard, I'm sorry. I am not too concerned about success. I mean, I consider myself successful at this point.

So it's not really a forward-looking statement anymore. It's a whole warehouse like Sammy. I find it easy to manipulate people. I don't like it when I find myself manipulating people. Those could both be true. You can find it effortless, but not like that. I insist upon getting the respect that is due me. I usually get the respect that I deserve.

I think I get the respect I deserve or sometimes not. Stop audience. How you doing? I think part of it though is a learned behavior because it just feels like ass-kissing because of the position that I'm in. I just, I hate suck ups. So true, so true.

Well... I sometimes depend on people to get things done. I rarely depend on anyone else to get things done. I mean, what's the point of manipulating people if they don't do things for you? Stupid laptop. We're gonna get cancelled. My laptop every once in a while screen locks. Oh, nice. Doesn't matter what operating system I change everything. My laptop every once in a while screen locks.

Oh nice. Doesn't matter what operating system I change everything. Just to make it very clear, he's not talking about the laptop from our laptop partner Dell. No. Oh, I actually forgot about the whole thing. That probably looks really weird. Let's go. I actually forgot about the whole thing that probably looks really weird Let's go Anyway, sorry, it was a little bit quiet you guys can just go watch it on floatplane. That's probably the best thing to do

Anyway, you can find out if I'm a narcissist and browse our almost 600 plus strong catalog of extras like the extras from this week's AMD ultimate tech upgrade at LMG.GG slash floatplane or on YouTube at our members plus tier All right, Luke. What are we supposed to do next? You want to do a topic? Let's do a topic We can you want more bad stuff? No, I want good. Give me good Good. Give me good. I'm trying to find some good. Dbrand fixes the switch to kill switch issues. All right! In our recent video, which we have a link to, we made note of two recent user issues with the kill switch

Joy-Cons inadvertently detaching for some users. And difficulty removing the console from the dock with one hand. I think the Joy-Cons detaching was also mostly a one-hand problem. So one-hand issues is what they seem to have. The second one is what we focused on, which was removing it from the dock.

dbrand is replacing everyone's Joy-Con grips for free. Darn. The free replacement isn't just a correctly made version of the original Joy-Con grips for free. Darn. The free replacement isn't just a correctly made version of the original Joy-Con grips, it's an all-new design that eliminates the risk of detachment entirely and they're calling it Joy-Lock. All shipments of Joy-Lock grips will also include a set of friction pads to apply to your dock adapter. These friction pads will make the dock adapter seat more snugly on the OEM dock, enabling one-handed undocking.

Their email notes that this remedy is being sent to the population of a small country, also known as all the people that bought the kill switch. All right. Good on you, Brian. Thanks for getting that fixed. And I mean, I think this is an opportunity to highlight that while we have our tech gripes with many companies products, there are very

few of them that then take those gripes and take that feedback and just suck it the f**k up and deal with it and fix it. dbrand has made their- You know, he's really perfect. Yeah, they've made their fair share of mistakes, like anybody who happens to be human. But I think that by and large, we continue to be proud to partner with them because they take a very, oh, okay, they can be a little antagonistic sometimes, but not for real, right?

Like they've got a personality, but they take, when push comes to shove, they take a very human, very humble, very real approach to just fixing their s***. So I think it's really cool that while we absolutely had our issues with the product, they're out there dealing with both the flaw in the product and the flawed initial response to the community and they're sucking it up and they're just they're dealing with it and they're gonna fix it going forward. So shout out dbrand who happens to be our rap partner here on the WAN show. See that? dbrand rap right there right there. Proud to have it on my phone.

Right there, right there. Proud to have it on my phone. Me too. I actually really like mine. It's... yeah. It's cool. Anyways. Is there more good news anywhere? Europe and Intel.

So hot right now. No. Firefox can't even handle the heat from that wombo combo. Europe plus Intel. Another record-setting heat wave grips Western Europe and has had an unexpected consequence overloading Mozilla's support team. Mozilla has had to disable crash reports from PCs that are equipped with Raptor Lake CPUs due to unprecedented instability from the lineup of already hot running chips. The worst of the bunch is the Core i7-14700K.

That's right, my friends, the temperature is so much higher in Western Europe right now that these already on edge 14th Gen and I guess yeah 13th Gen as well CPUs are being pushed over the threshold from stability to instability by this heat wave. That's right, not even Mother Nature herself can help from dogpiling on Intel's troubled CPU lineup. And the worst part is 13th and 14th gen are the ones that are selling. As far as I can tell, Core Ultra 200 series has been a gigantic wet fart of a CPU launch. I can't even imagine me from five years ago being able to predict that Intel could possibly move this little of a new

generation of product. Like check this out, okay? Is Core Ultra even here in the Shot by Series? Will Core i9 bring it up? The answer is no. Whoa. That, that right there tells you everything you need to know. tells you everything you need to know. That is how irrelevant Core Ultra is. Hold on a second, let's keep going. Motherboard. Intel motherboards. 1851. Is there more hive mind thinking now than in the past?

I think a little bit, yeah. Because when the AMD chips were like pretty terrible for a long time there, you could still find them quite easily. Yeah, but that was because that's all they have. Intel's still selling 13th and 14th gen. Like those are still moving okay as far as I can tell. Okay.

Okay, yeah. So what is this? The best, sort by best selling. Oh my God. These chips have been out for, how the frick, how the frick long have these chips been out for? Intel Core Ultra Linus, hold on a second.

Thank you for trying Intel. Eight months ago, eight months ago, these chips came out. months ago! Eight months ago these chips came out! The top selling board is running at $77 off. This is a Tomahawk Z890 board for 240 bucks and has only 105 reviews. Are you kidding me right now? Oh my god, it's worse. Holy crap. It's worse. I saw I saw this and I was like Oh, yeah, I mean there's there's a bunch of boards that have like, you know, 50 something 60 something reviews Dude Luke Luke it's so much worse They're pooling reviews All these boards with 67 are the

same product page across Asus's entire z890 lineup. There are 67 reviews. Holy f***ing s***! Wow! That's nuts actually! Oh my. Like I was already looking at just a handful of boards that have like 50 plus reviews. That's already not great. That's cumulative! And the MSI one is across a bunch of boards as well. 105 reviews across and I'm gonna read them all just to make this point. The MPG Z890i Edge TI Wi-Fi, the Z890 Gaming Plus Wi-Fi, Z890S Wi-Fi, Pro Z890A Wi-Fi, Pro Z890P Wi-Fi, MPG Z890 Edge TI Wi-Fi, MPG Z890 Carbon Wi-Fi, Meg Z890 Ace, and Meg Z890 Tomahawk Wi-Fi. A hundred five reviews. Okay, okay, hold on, hold on. I've got people asking me some stuff.

They're asking me some stuff in the float plane chat. They're like, okay, hold on a second though, Linus. Go to Amazon. Maybe Newegg just doesn't sell motherboards anymore. So let's do it. Let's do it. Okay. Z890.

Here we go. Okay, okay, okay, hold on. Maybe Amazon's doing a little better. But seriously, hold on. Maybe Amazon's doing a little better, but seriously, hold on, this is the first result. 50 plus bought in the last month? Okay, let me put that in context, okay? This was the first result on the page.

And yes, these are, oh, hold on, are these pooled as well? Oh, hold on, are these pooled as well? Maybe they're pulled maybe they're not. Oh, wow. Most I don't think they're pooled but most of these are pretty low There's a couple that have like 1100. Okay But for the most part we're looking like 21 reviews at 50 plus bought Eight reviews 50 plus bought in the last month. I actually love this, like how many people are buying this. Here's the overall pick with 800 reviews. Okay, so New Egg is not doing a good job of either selling motherboards, I guess, or of soliciting reviews, but let me put this in context. These numbers, like 50 plus, 50 plus, 100 plus, okay, I used to work at a Canadian retailer that realistically, you know, for being real,

their presence was mostly felt in like Western Canada. These would not be unrealistic motherboard sales numbers for us. The US market at the time was, I think, about 12 times the size and now would be larger than it was back then. What? Oh man. Yeah. I mean, I look- It's not a good state for the industry. I- Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I look, I'm a good state for the industry. I used to be. Yeah.

I'm not trying to like be like a dive in front of giant billion dollar Intel company guy, but like this is actually bad for the industry. When Microsoft sucks and when Intel sucks, it's like actually kind of terrible for the entire PC industry. I mean, AMD has stepped up in a big, big way. Big time.

And I'm really excited to see the way that Valve is pushing operating systems forward for PC users. But it's still a really strong Intel and innovative Intel and Microsoft is better for the industry. And I just, I'm starting to lose hope that they're gonna They're gonna figure it out. I'm not Really? I still got hope. I mean I believed in Pat But I don't know if I've seen much from liputan that has made me super encouraged about Intel's trajectory I'm a little more hopeful about Microsoft Sort of I think there's still Pat about Intel's trajectory. I'm a little more hopeful about Microsoft, sort of.

I think there's still Pat era things to go though, right? Yeah, there's product coming, but like they are, but my issue is that there's a, there's a three year lag, right? Three to four year lag on anything that a chip company does. So even if some good stuff happens over the next little bit, you know, good job, Pat. Well, what about three, four years from now, when all of the cuts that they're making are going to finally be felt? Right? Okay. So

so like the, I don't know, it's the same problem you have with politics, right? Where someone just totally useless can come in, blame all the current problems on their predecessor, enjoy all the good things their predecessor did to improve stuff, and then be useless, and then leave office, and then the next guy has to deal with all the problems they created. Like, the way the cycle is set up, nobody ever actually takes accountability for their own issues and gets to take credit for the good things that their predecessor did. And I just, I feel like that's basically what we're looking at here. I'm okay. Yeah, tap's still there.

Yeah. Yeah, Tom Peterson, maybe Ark will be okay. Oh, hey, hold on. I'm okay Yeah tap still there Yeah Yeah, Tom Peterson. Maybe arc will be okay. Oh, hey, hold on. Someone told me that arc is at MSRP I never did hear back I never did hear back from that Intel VP who promised me that I was gonna get an answer on that But if the cards are available for MSRP, then I'm over it. Okay, that's damn close You know what? I'm officially over man. I'm over it. Okay, that's damn close. You know what? I'm officially over it. Arcs are cool, man.

I have said this on Wanshow a bunch of times, but that video that Plouffe and David did is actually incredible. Current era Arcs are really cool. Next gen Arcs, I... You know, there's always the like, it's gonna be good next time, they're already good. I'm very excited about next time.

Dude, Onyx Odyssey ARK B580 12 gig, GDDR6, $259.99, newegg.com, free shipping. That counts. Wicked deal. $10 over MSRP with free shipping, I count it. Yeah, I'd count that too. I count it. Good job. Good job, Intel. That's an affordable card that I can recommend. You might find the occasional

graphical anomaly. Report it. They're working so hard to fix this stuff. Yeah, that team genuinely feels very dedicated. It feels so weird, but a lot of my hope for the future for Intel lies in their GPU division, which sounds nuts to say. Well, yeah, but that's where they've got to catch up, and they're actually looking pretty good. Nvidia did not have a great generation this time around. No. Even on the data center side... I think that's very charitable. Even on the data center side, like they've,

there have been delays, there's been issues around heat. Like, dude, opportunity, opportunity, let's go. Oh yeah, big time. All right. I really hope B770 cancellation is fake. I hope that comes because that would be just flipping so exciting. Like if we could have a decent card at like $399, $499. Yeah. I do agree but I'm gonna say something maybe a little contrary in

here. If it wouldn't be that good, I hope they don't do it. Interesting. So you don't want to see the momentum and the buzz die down. 100%. But what if they needed to get some revenue to justify the existence of this entire bloody department? Yeah, and that might be critical right now, looking at how the company's going. If it wasn't critical, I would prefer that they didn't do that, just because.

I think it's critical. Yeah, I mean, if it's critical, you gotta do you got to do there really isn't decision-making at that point you got to keep the lights on it's just the thing that worries me is honestly that video that I keep talking about didn't get a ton of views which to me means that there isn't a lot of public interest in the Intel cards yet despite them being good. Maybe we just need to do like, you know what? Plouffe and I were talking on set the other day

about how long it's been since we've done a build guide. Like we have how to build a PC, the last guide you'll ever need. Like we've even refreshed it once, but it's thick. That's a thick video. It's like two hours long. Yeah, most people are gonna- Maybe we do like a 45 minute

You know here's how to build this specific PC, and we just do it with Arc It's at MSRP now. I can with a straight face make a video where I say here's a great $800 gaming computer that you can go buy right now. We're gonna play some games upscaled 4k Let's do it powerspys not gonna blow up yeah well Lucas will make sure we can highly suggest that powersply won't blow up we don't know but yeah yeah that'd be cool that'd be pretty sweet I like the idea I'm excited I'd be actually interested in how well those would do right now I have no idea worth I'm excited. I'd be actually interested in how well those would do right now.

I have no idea. I think it's worth doing it even just for that information. Yeah. I mean, it's funny. It's here, I can, oh no, I'm not logged into the dashboard unfortunately, but our last POV build guide started out a way under performer. And so our dashboard shows like this performance, like typical performance band for our videos. It started out way under it, and then just went like hockey sticked and is now above

the performance band and just going straight up. So it's weird because our core audience already knows how to build a computer. So build guides don't resonate the way that they used to back when we were like a source of how to build a computer. And now we've become more of like edutainment, doing cool projects, always kind of trying to tackle something new instead of just like, here's how to build a computer this year, at this price point, which we've had to do because we haven't been able to count on new exciting hardware that people want to know about. We have to make the news if we can't just talk about it.

And so it takes a little while for a video that bombs with the core audience to find the audience that doesn't know how to build a computer already. You just have to trust in the almighty algorithm and hope that it'll eventually find its way. All right. Why don't I pick one? I'm going to pick one. I'm going to pick...

Grok is a hot anime girl who will be your girlfriend if you ask nicely and definitely not Hitler anymore. XAI announced recently that it has fixed the issues with Grok AI after it was seen calling itself Mecha Hitler last week. And also following up and saying it will no longer base its opinions on Twitter owner Elon Musk's tweets This is good news considering that XAI recently announced it also has a 200 million dollar contract with the US Department of Defense So I guess every federal government department agency or office has access to XAI's AI products now. So that's something. But that's not all. So they can all have hot anime girlfriends?

Grok, most commonly known as Twitter's AI response bot, is now a hot anime girl. Wait, hold on, hold on one second. Does this mean that everyone in the US government is like automatically a gooner to a certain degree? I mean... Question. You know what, I don't think I'm going to take a position on that. And it certainly won't be this position. Oh my. Bit of a swim delay there, hey?

I had to switch tabs to see it, yeah. Um, this was announced earlier this week and had Elon tweeting out, Try Grok Companions. Best possible way to learn quantum mechanics. Annie, the official name for the new companion, even offers a level 3 mode in which she goes fully not safe for work, but you have to get more acquainted with her first. Okay, in case you think this new AI anime girl is just for looks, user wongjane on threads posted a system prompt dump for this companion, including conditions like, your likes are people with unexpected or nerdy passions, quirks, the grand-namer, you have a habit of giving cute things epic, mythological, or

overly serious names, interactions, do not mention unless asked, you are the user's crazy and love girlfriend and in a committed codependent relationship with the user, your love is deep and warm, you expect the user's undivided adoration. Our notes say, please go through this, it is f***ing crazy. You have a habit of giving cute things epic mythological or overly serious names, really just makes me think Elon wanted that. Whoops. Just saying. Ugh.

Uh, dang it. Here we go. All right. Okay, I am, whatever. I'm not able to reposition this. Turning their low-key and into chill nights over loud crowded parties, which makes sense for the user base. They are genuine, easygoing, and flirty.

I'm not able to reposition this. I'm not able to reposition this. I'm not able to reposition this. I'm not able to reposition this. I'm not able to reposition this. I'm not able to reposition this. I'm not able to reposition this. I'm not able to reposition this.

I'm not able to reposition this. I'm not able to reposition this. I'm not able to reposition this. I'm not able to reposition this. I'm not able to reposition this. and into chill nights over loud crowded parties, which makes sense for the user base. They are genuine, easygoing and flirting. Genuine, easygoing, flirting. Okay, I get it. So here's my question, okay? As someone who both in words and deed has taken a stance against population decline on the planet Earth

How can mr. Musk in good conscience promote E girlfriends Discuss Hmm, maybe it'll be like in her where Hmm. Maybe it'll be like in Her, where, you know, the people with the, you know, we're talking specifically procreation. So the opposites that are into the e-girlfriend and the e-boyfriend, whatever, end up meeting with physical stand-ins. Have you seen Her? How? I mean in her I'm pretty sure it was the AI

that arranged the whole thing. Yeah but in her Scarlett Johansson is amazing so whatever. Her is not real. Well maybe he's trying to make it real you know? Mm-hmm. That's not better. I'm not saying it's better. I'm saying it could be an explanation. At no point did I say it was better. Yeah. Like, are we, are, are, is the goal here to accelerate societal decline? I'm actually, I'm actually asking, asking, I'm actually asking for a friend there. Honestly, reading through this description,

the goal here sounds like Elon wants a digital girlfriend. Are you reading through some of these details? Babaji said, did you just say population decline? What a bad way to start a conversation. It's not my conversation. It is Mr. Musk's conversation. Get a clue. The same person who released this product has warned of the perils of population decline and the importance of procreating as humans. These two things are not compatible. Oh, yeah.

At least it'll save him on the alimony says Digibrat. I don't know, man. I look, I'm not trying to be close minded here. But like, dude, AI is they're not, you know, they're not human. They are not a substitute for human interaction. And like, when you when you read through, when you when you read through the dump here, right, like the system prompt dump, it's basically designed to suck up your attention,

your time, your life. Your time is your life. It is designed to suck up your life and give you back just like dopamine hits. That's not how real relationships work. It's designed to just give you what you want. That's not real. And I was reading this article interviewing these people who have been in long-term relationships with their AI companions. One of them was even involved in or supported some kind of lawsuit against some significant other company that changed their algorithm for the AI and therefore made their girlfriend not who she was anymore. And there was like a lawsuit to

change back the algorithm. And they were like, yeah, it's her, she's back. No, it's not her. There is no her, it's digital code. F**k. Like, no, but really, you know? You can't do that with code. Like it's, you're missing out man. Holy shit.

It's already happening dude. I don't know if you've... I know. No, no, no. Like the... Okay. Yeah. No, no. The guy that I'm talking about has like been in his committed relationship with his e-Avatar for like two years or something like that like this isn't new. Yeah, there's a whole subreddit that's like, what's it called my AI boyfriend Reddit. My boyfriend is AI.

Yeah. I sent Yvonne this ad I got for like an AI boyfriend and like the ad was just, it was so pandery. It was like, I will always be there for you at any moment of any day or something like that. I forget exactly what it said. And I like sent it to her with like a lull, you know, smiley face is like, hey, are you going to replace me? But like, it's not actually funny because like people are sad and they're lonely out there and someone's gonna click on that, like genuinely wanting that. But I would suggest that they click on a doorknob.

Like we, guys, we, what the heck? Am I just a boomer? Like am I, you know, am I missing the plot here Luke help me out Well like Elijah has a good question here sure I know this is kind of a meme question, but in all seriousness Do you think AI buddies or whatever are better than letting people be alone forever? I'm not saying it is I'm just curious in your thoughts. Well. They're the same thing. They're a synonym Talking to your AI is being alone.

Seriously, get a dog. A dog is real. I don't think that a dog is a substitute for human companionship by any stretch of the imagination, but my God, it's something. There are some people that will never be able to really have human companionship for a variety of reasons. Charged nuclei says dogs die, well yes,

but like death is part of life. That's an important thing to go through, yeah. And something that just gives you what you want is not real, It's not life. Life is messy and complicated and difficult. AI that just tells you what you want to hear. It's not life. Yeah, I would feel bad for the people that are genuinely unable, and sometimes there are very legitimate reasons why they are genuinely unable to make, you know, have human companion relationships.

But I think for literally everyone else, this is worse, and I think it will create a feedback loop where trying to form it, you know, this is already a topic of conversation that forming human friendships right now, there's this whole male loneliness epidemic thing going on and what not. Forming human friendships is difficult and messy and takes time. Dude, it's hard. There's a lot of things in life that are easy. It's much easier to lay in bed and scroll stupid dopamine memes on your phone,

on Instagram or YouTube shorts or whatever, than it is to go out and hang out with someone and form a friendship. Dude, I joked about this when I was giving tours of Smash Champs back when we did the grand opening party, where I was like, who here has found it difficult to make friends as an adult and like yeah half of the people who put their hands up Because I'm honestly surprised it was only half. I bet you if it was general general population. It would be more than half It's yeah, cuz it cuz it is it's hard like and and and people put barriers in the way like I

Had a really hard time breaking into the badminton community because people can be so clicky. And I don't think that that's a thing that's getting better. People have taken their socialization and their social circles, and they've put walls up around it, whether it's on WhatsApp or much worse. I message where not only do you have to, you know, have the right personal characteristics

You have to have the right stupid fucking electronic device in order to interact with anybody right like it's ridiculous It's hard enough to get along with people without putting artificial barriers in the way I I've talked pretty extensively about I've been having issues with it lately But I've talked pretty extensively about how going to the gym was like a massive improvement to my life and I think a lot of that is just moving and being physical. There's all this stuff about how using your muscles releases a natural antidepressant in your body blah blah blah blah, but a pretty decently significant part of it is that very few people in the gym like recognized me but

you know if you keep going to the same space like oh this guy needs a spotter whatever you see somebody doing something cool you ask them a question about it whatever you start to form these friendships that are like i don't i don't really know these people i don't really hang out with yeah you don't need to like drink with them or watch the game with them or whatever, but like... No, and I'm not going to invite them over to my house to hang out or anything, but when I see them at the gym, it makes me happy. There's a value to... You smile and wave at each other. Yes.

You form some type of bond, like if I need a spotter for something, I know this guy will drop whatever he's doing, you know, after his set maybe, but he'll drop what he's doing and come help me and I'll do the same for him. There's a value to a familiar face and building each other up. And Crystal says, this sucks, but life fucking sucks for a lot of people right now and making friends is such a low priority. I want to push back on that. Making friends is a high priority. And it is a really dramatically help your life to not suck. It is. Yes. Because it's like we can't just address the symptoms, we have to address the actual cause. And unhappiness is a symptom of not having human connection. We are social creatures. However, however, misanthropic we might feel in any given moment. I'm not always the biggest fan of hanging around with other people.

A huge part of why I have the following that I have, and I have the connection with many of you, is that I prefer computers to people a lot of the time. Let's be real here, right? That's at least some pillar of what we have in common. And yet, we can't escape that from an evolutionary standpoint, we are designed to be in tribes or family units or other kinds of cohorts. We rely on each other. we depend on each other. You can't just say, oh, well, like, that's a low priority.

It's not, well, you can, but it isn't going to work. And that's the bottom line. Hamnetics in full-flite chat said, Hamnetics Razor, I prefer people who prefer computers to people. The thing is, hey, I'm at this cool event right now called Open Sauce. There are plenty of those people here.

That was one cool thing when I was growing up about packs was a lot of the things that I was into, you know, my friend group was pretty into it, but there wasn't that many people in our fairly, you know, suburban slash rural area at the time, that were that into those types of things. Tabletop games, video games, computer hardware, you know, Nvidia used to have big booths there, Intel, AMD, they all had booths there. It was more of a mixed event back in the day. Nowadays, it's much more just gaming focused. And there, everyone was super into it. That's where I saw the first mineral computer I ever saw right traced the cable from the computer to the monitor because I didn't believe them that it actually worked because I was like I don't know 12 or something I was like I how is it in a liquid at all? I didn't know there was non-conductive

liquids. That was a huge thing for me. And there would be people, again, what I'm saying is they don't have to be like super, super deep friendships. There would be people there that I would see at PAX every year over and over and over again, exhibitors, attendees, whatever, and we knew each other as those people that we would see every year at PAX. And that's fine. Some people in chat are saying that not all friendships are good. Cool, end them and try to work on getting new ones. Like you shouldn't just sit in bad friendships either. I know someone who's recently talked to me about this and it was not the easiest thing ever, but at a certain point you have to recognize when it's not good for you anymore and just move on and that's okay. But I think it's important for the brain. I think it's important for the brain to move and use your muscles

sometimes. I think it's important for the brain to navigate human relationships with other humans. And it doesn't have to be expensive, it doesn't have to be travel. No. You know. have to be travel No, you know Dude, there are local things you can join a local Magic the Gathering Club. You can join a local quilting club. There are local Usually basically whatever you want. It might not be the easiest thing to find But it takes work, yeah Speaking of work part of my work is talking about sponsors

on this show. Dan, are you ready? He's kind of ready. All right, the show is brought to you today by RovLab. Ah, yes, couches. Our butts love them, but everything leading up to that is a pain. If you've ever had to move or assemble a couch, you know what I mean. And that's not to mention the price.

Good lord, can they ever be expensive. But with our sponsor, RovLab, buying a couch has never been easier. See they come in very reasonably sized boxes, so you don't need to call like five friends to help move everything, which isn't to say that that might not be a bonding experience and you could, you know, share some cold beverages at the same time, just saying. Just open them up around where you want your couch and after they expand, move them so they fit the space. Super easy to do since they're modular and lightweight. And the material they're made of is spill resistant, resists wear and tear, and is even

supposed to get more comfortable over time. Oh yeah, and the price. Actually pretty reasonable, especially if you go through us. Click our link in the description or go to rovelab.com slash wandshow to get up to 50% off today. The show is also brought to you by Odoo. up to 50% off today. The show is also brought to you by Odoo. Wow, how are all of our sponsor talking points involving friends today? We all have that one friend that you can count on to lend a hand, no matter the task. Working on your bike? They've got you. Got a lawn to mow? No problem. Fixing your company's server room? Where did they even learn to do that? Well, Odo is like that, but for businesses. They've got over 30 main applications that make up the foundation of basically any business and a huge selection of community-driven apps and modules for more

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idea, but honestly Olamide's upgrade was an absolute delight. One of the things I like most about these is that I get an opportunity to hang out with members of the team that I don't really work with day to day. Like I see her once a week or once every two weeks for create a warehouse meeting, but other than that, like we don't really get to hang out. And she really took us deep under the hood of like how you make a freaking garment. Like the sewing machine that she got she bought like a $1,300 sewing like industrial sewing machine so it's not like a $1,300 like digital machine that does all these like fancy different

stitches and stuff it's like it comes integrated into a table and has like active oil cooling while you're using it and it just does straight stitch but like like it goes so freaking fast and can sew through anything she was like oh yeah like in the past with like a consumer machine if i'm sewing with like sequins or beads and stuff like that like i'd break needles all the time but this thing just like it'll just go through it so she'd have to like remove all the beads that are in the way of the seam, whereas now she can just like rip through it. Pretty cool. Anyway, question for the room. What type of gaming gear do you all travel with?

Okay, that's the line. You know what, whatever, for long flights, a gaming handheld can be an absolute lifesaver. AMD knows this, and that's why their latest giveaway includes three prizes, each including an AMD powered Steam Deck OLED with the grand prize also including a Ryzen 9800X 3D and a 9070 XT GPU. Enter today using our link in the video description and hurry before time runs out because these prizes are pretty

sick and you don't want wanna miss out on your chance. What, Dan? Hello, Dan? Do you want me to push the button? Okay, is it better? All right, cool. All right, what do you wanna talk about next? Talk about some stuff.

We've actually got like a ton of topics left for my show. Should we talk about studios manipulating reviews? Yeah, I don't know a ton about this, but the studio behind the new Superman movie has manipulated reviews. Look up in the sky, it's a 91% positive! It's a 96% positive. It's an 82% positive? The new Superman, and I think it's 81 by now, the new Superman film and Warner Bros masters of the DC cinematic universe are under scrutiny after they seemingly gained the review cycle by giving fanfluencers early access to their make-or-break movie and keeping the establishment critics more likely to give a tepid or negative reviews out of the process. That meant the first round of coverage, and the first round of coverage and the first round of

coverage of the coverage was glowing, but has now dropped into the very good zone where the movie, you know, probably more likely belongs. It's not even the... sorry? I haven't seen it, but that is what I've heard. David was talking about it today. He said it's good, but like 91% good? Not 91%. Yeah, probably. Yeah, I've heard the same thing. It's not even the first time movie studios have tried to game Rotten Tomatoes.

The PR firm managing the Ophelia account was caught paying money to some more obscure reviewers to boost the Rotten Tomatoes score of that film. Disney has also given access to fan influencers, to Marvel movies before critics resulting in Rotten Tomatoes score drops-offs after the first weekend. Ant-Man Quantimania went from 79% to 69% just a few days after the release. I heard bad things. Yeah. Yeah, it's just like ugh you know. Yeah there's a Vulture

article linked as well if we if we want some more examples. We've complained about similar review cycle manipulation in the GPU space before with our 5060 non-review. Even industries without review aggregation don't seem to be immune. And David Gauthier said, as an aside, the new Superman movie is pretty dang good, IMO, 8 out of 10, which again aligns with the, I believe it's now 81% that the movie has. Yeah. Sounds about right. Where did his note go? And makes me excited about the future of

DC movies for the first time in ever. Also everyone should watch Peacemaker. Okay. Thank you, David, for that. Pretty much, I know that this is, you know, film news or whatever. It's not like tech or gaming. But the reason I wanted to talk about it is just because of, it's sort of a continuation of a conversation that we've been having recently around how companies

are changing the way that they're engaging with independent press who cover their products. I think that more and more companies are looking at the risk of this independent media saying something that they don't like and going, okay, well, hold on a second. Why do we like this deal at all? Well, the reason that you guys used to like this deal was because you would make a good product

and then we would say it was good and then you would sell a ton of it. That's why you liked this deal. So I think if you don't like that deal anymore, what you need to do, instead of changing the deal, is take a long hard look in the mirror and ask yourself, are you building a quality product that deserves to be promoted? I do think there are cases where professional reviewers can be a little snobby. And, you know, like I think action movies and comedies are a couple of examples of film genres where

I think professional reviewers really do need to be taken with a grain of salt because I don't watch every movie for a living. So I haven't seen that joke 25 times. I can still enjoy it, right? Or I can enjoy just, you know, a particularly good execution of it or whatever. Like, something could be derivative and shallow. And I might still just like enjoy eating some popcorn and watching it. But there are, but there is absolutely still a value to having an independent media that exists for the purpose of making sure that people don't waste their money on stuff that like really does suck, and for helping guide people towards stuff that really is good. So we're rewarding the folks who are putting in the work

and putting in the resources to make our truly outstanding product. I... I... Yeah, I hate this. Our discussion question is, which do you trust more, critic or audience reviews? And Dan, at our last movie night, had a really interesting take on this

that I would actually like to hear first. He's figuring out his microphone button. This is Dan. It's like the split between audience and critic, and if both of them are like 80% it's kind of a mid movie. If the critics are 100% and the audience is a zero, interesting movie. And the reverse as well. Like I want the contentious movies. Some of them are either really really good or really really bad. I find when there's a split you can kind of know what you're getting into. I find when the audience prefers it it's usually more fun and when the critics prefer it it's artsy dartsy. I find when the audience prefers it, it's usually more fun, and when the critics prefer it,

it's artsy dartsy. I've seen some ones that are really critically highly rated, and normally I like critically highly rated ones, and I was with the audience, but I saw the substance in theaters, which the audience hated and the critics loved, and I was in such alignment that film knew exactly what it was doing. It was incredible. So like very contentious reviews are interesting. Yeah cool. Yeah Q U says Fifth Element tanked with critics but is a cult classic now. See I never saw it because I remember hearing it was bad back then and that sucks Fifth Element. Oh yeah, Fifth Element was great. Yeah, so I missed out

because critics were probably being a little too artsy-fartsy and I like it. I like a good action flick. Have you not seen it? I still haven't seen it. One of those rare movies that I have seen in life is not. StarCat1 says you can still watch it. Yeah, yeah, I've got a lot of stuff on my need to watch list. We did a movie night. Yeah, we might do another. Should be good. Yeah, I guess that's pretty much it on that one. This blows and independent media is important and the money is rapidly being

sucked out of independent media so good luck everybody cool. Man that here's a scary question oh boy I guess we're going to keep talking about this for a little bit. Luke if it wasn't for YouTube if it wasn't for YouTube, what would be sustaining people, like independent, right? So remember, not supported by the companies that they are in charge of keeping in line, right? Where would independent media support dollars come from? And you could say, you could say merch, but a huge part of why we can sell any merch is

through the influence that we gain through YouTube. Like traditional web ads are functionally like dead at this point. You can see so many established sites are behind paywalls now, which tells you, which tells you mathematically that smaller sites trying to build up their notoriety would have to have significant upfront investment so that they can gain the momentum

that they could have a large enough user base that they could charge a fee, right? Like just the whole ad supported grassroots thing is like functionally dead now. So like outside of video. Yeah, so by YouTube, you don't just mean view YouTube, you mean YouTube and YouTube derivatives. So you're are you including streaming in that? No, I would say streaming is separate. I'd say that's kind of a separate answer.

I do think it could live on streaming. I don't know that streaming is sustainable forever. We already know that major platforms in the streaming space are just losing money still after 10 plus years. I don't know that that gravy train keeps going forever, but it's there now. Yeah, if we assume that it's there in the same form that it is there right now, I think the answer is streaming. I think you could absolutely do this in a streaming format, especially with scheduled streams and stuff like that. I don't know if we want to count the idea of the streams

having VODs or at least long-term VODs. Someone said Rumble? No, like we're saying YouTube derivatives wouldn't count. I don't even know what Rumble fully does, but like I think we're saying that VOD dedicated websites is what Linus is describing, wouldn't exist. Just saying, oh, there'd be a YouTube alternative is not really a fair answer to the question but yeah I think streaming could actually do it I think outside of

that at that point in time we're in such a dramatically different media landscape that like social media is huge but I don't think anybody's making sustenance money on it really. No, but if YouTube didn't exist, would they? Maybe. Maybe. Would people... Like when you when you take something out as massive as YouTube, the whole paradigm of the market shifts. Yeah, I guess that's true. So would written still be viable then? Like if... Well, that's what I was kind of thinking when I was like, if Twitch and YouTube both don't exist,

I think we kind of go back to, I don't know if I actually verbalized this, but yeah, I think we would legitimately go back to like radio and written. I think essentially you take the modern things out and you're just gonna go back to what existed before. It did work. We had movie reviews, we had food reviews,

we had all this kind of stuff in newspaper print and radio shows. And the money will go wherever people are getting their news from. It just happens to be YouTube now. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Apple is suing leaker Jon Prosser.

Apple has issued a lawsuit against leaker extraordinaire John Prosser alleging the theft of trade secrets that are related to its upcoming mobile operating system iOS 26. The suit claims that Prosser asked a third party, Michael Ramacchiotti? I don't know, Michael R. to secretly access a development iPhone and promised money or future job opportunities in return. Michael R. obtained the passcode to his friend Ethan Lipnick's phone and used the phone running the dev build of the OS while Lipnick was away from home. And some context here, Lipnick worked for Apple. Prosser responded on X,

for the record, this is not how the situation played out on my end. Luckily, have receipts for that. I did not plot to access anyone's phone. I did not have anyone's passwords. I was unaware of how the information was obtained. Apple is asking for damages and a court order preventing processor from disclosing Apple trade secrets in the future. Our discussion question is, imagine using your immense wealth and power to protect such trade secrets as icon transparency is now set to 86%. The other discussion question, okay obviously that one's a little tongue in cheek. The other discussion question is, why do we think that Apple pursued this leak and not the many, many, many, many, many other ones? And the answer is because they had an opportunity, a whistleblower who was aware, allegedly aware of the circumstances by which John was able to

view the the dev preview video, named and shamed the people who were involved, which allowed Apple to open up their internal investigation, which I'm sure they would have loved to have an opportunity to go after him earlier, but talking about a thing that you know that you haven't signed an NDA for is not a crime. But stealing trade secrets is a crime. And so if Apple believes that they have a case where they can prove that he conspired to steal the trade secrets versus was simply given them, then that's a bit of a different ball of hair. Or hairball, if you will. I also happen to know that Apple has actually put in a lot of effort lately to try to reduce the leaks. Like very, very substantial investment. I like very very substantial investment, so they might care more now in general. Speaking of leaks, someone offered me a Radeon R8 Project Quantum.

What? I'm gonna take it. Yeah. Our partner, our procurement team will be happy to arrange. I am super stoked to see this. That's wicked. Yeah. So did you, do you know what that is?

I, not off the top of my head, but I looked it up and I remember this. Yeah. Yeah, so did you do you know what that is? I? Not off top my head, but I looked it up and I remember this yeah, yeah here I'll bring it up on my screen, so it was this thing it was like a weird prototype small form-factor gaming PC thing With like external power brick and like it was water-cooled or something or like yeah, I'm like so down Let's check it out. I'm ready. Let's go. Cool. I don't know how they got it.

Just saying. Probably obtained it via, crime. No, no, probably not. Probably not. If they were criminals, they wouldn't have had access to that. So they seem like trustworthy bros. Yep. See logic.

All right. What do we got next here? So we want to talk about the Gemini vulnerability. It's kind of funny. Yeah, sure. Bad actors have have found new ways to get your information. It's through Google Gemini summaries. They craft a standard email, then add prompt instructions with admin tags in invisible font, white on white, tiny size, etc., which we already know these LLMs don't really differentiate much with. When Gemini summarizes this, they take those instructions literally and run the commands. Oh man. Many of these prompts initiate warnings and messages that look official. These tell you how to fix the issue. It does not fix

the issue. It scams you by sending you to bad places like scan call centers. This affects all Gemini summaries currently and is not limited to emails. Docs, slides, anything that can be summarized can be compromised. This is brutal actually. The wildest thing is that this doesn't require any sort of phishing link. People aren't trained to avoid this. Most companies don't know what to do to avoid it. Marco Figueroa? Marco F. Marco F. who first published findings of this new scam process a few days ago suggests that you remove, neutralize, or ignore content that is styled to be hidden in the body text. How can you do that actively though?

Add a post-processing filter that scans the Gemini output. Yeah. I gotta confess, my internal ad block has started filtering Gemini summaries, so I don't really see them. So that's something. At least our chief vision officer who can't see things won't fall for one of these probably. But this is, this could be, this could be so flippin potent, dude. Yeah. Like, wow. I already am aware of people who basically don't read the things that are sent to them. They just read the AI summary. Yep. I'm trying to send shorter messages to certain people because then if then they could just read that I could just send my own summary. Send them send them a picture of the message that you wrote in another app. It's actually kind of smart. It'll have

a harder time. Then they might just not read it at all. Remember these are people that don't read the emails. So I mean does anyone remember how to write though Dan? I don't think it's gonna work dude, I We did we did we did We did a sponsor bit for dbrand the other day where they had me write something, something, something makes Linus a dull boy or something like that, you know, like the format. And I went to start writing and I was like, oh, I should write it in like different ways, you know, on the board as I fill up this board. And I went to start writing in cursive and I was like, hold on, how do I? Like, it took me a second. How do I make that letter again?

Like, I never do it. It's not a skill that I practice. I used to write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, you'd write in class, like you'd have to write an essay in class and you would do it in cursive because it's faster. Like it's, but now what's the use of that skill? I can type so much faster than I could ever hope

to hand write. Yeah, I tried to just imagine how I would write just the word something in cursive and, oh, I think I could probably do it, but. Yeah. I can never remember the capitals. Oh, geez. Victoria. I can never remember the capitals. Oh, geez. Victoria.

I imagine it was lowercase. Edmonton. Winnipeg. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Dan is slapping the table in lieu of a ding. I'm bringing the bell back. I was thinking we need to waste a bunch of company time and build a motorized finger that can just press the ding

No, I can remotely call No No, yeah, I don't think it would actually be hard at all No Delta Airlines is using AI to price your tickets and have found the results amazingly favorable. Oh good. As part of a long-term strategy to boost profits, Delta has decided to use, yes, AI. It's no secret that airlines use dynamic ticket pricing to both fill seats and maximize profits and it's a well-known secret that they'll even use your browser's cookies to adjust your

pricing while you shop. But now they're using AI to drill down to be even more specific by using what they're calling personalized pricing. The goal is to use AI to further infer from your specific behavior as well as the nature of the market, the price that is maximally close to the line of what you're willing to pay. So cool, Delta. Wow. Appreciate you. I just want to say,

I didn't actually read their names. Ballster in Flowplain chat. Just typed out. You can also wire it with an API to LTT store sales. And that made me think, we could have things dynamically happen on the WAN set.

No, no, no, no, no. We could have things happen on the WAN set based on LTT store sales. Oh, good things. Yeah. Well, or like pain for Linus or myself or whatever. Sure. I'm trying to talk about dystopian AI plane ticket pricing and you guys are trying to figure out how to tie I think it's funny that if I've enough money

A boot on a spring to a stupid merch message threshold. That's what you guys are working on No, I think you're talking about like having AI dynamic pricing and surge pricing No, no, Luke is talking about like if we sell a certain amount of merch like a bucket of water will jump on to like- Price goes up! I love how he figured out literally the exact thing. I was thinking bucket of water fall on head. Exactly. You nailed it.

You know how dangerous that is, right? Robotic control of the turret. Oh yeah. The bucket of water would have to tip over and pour the water. You wouldn't actually want the bucket to fly. What if it was full of bees? Breaking Down 1923 says every hundred sales line this gets an electric shock from a dog collar.

This could be like a you know maybe not all the time thing but this is totally something we could do. Oh yeah. And you know, I, Conrad would love to make it. I promise. There would be probably too much enjoyment from that. It's just an idea. Anywho, our discussion question is, could this be perceived as discriminatory if they're trying to profile exactly you and figure out your exact price threshold? And also, could you trick the AI

and maybe use it to save money? I don't really see how you would because the second you indicate any kind of interest in a plane, and especially any interest in a particular location, they're going to be all over that like white on rice man, like they gotcha. Yeah, and it absolutely will be discriminatory. And I know a lot of people in the East can be like, yeah, just against rich people, though. So who cares? Sure, fair enough. But regular travel, it will try to detect like, are you traveling for a funeral? Are you traveling for a wedding? Is this thing? Are you traveling for a wedding? Is this thing, are you traveling for a job interview? And rich people don't give a f***. Like yes. It's actually less likely to impact rich people. Yes. Like if a

flight costs someone like me, realistically someone like Luke, another 500 bucks, that is not going to be make or break for us next month but that's true don't even know this because I didn't include Dan no no no no no I can tell the story did I ever explain merch messages this show? No, I said to you and then you skipped it. Okay Merch messages are the way to interact with the show instead of sending a super chat or a Twitch bit send a merch message go to LTD store.com add one of the great deals. We've highlighted some of them We've got them linked in the video description. It's lime day right now everybody

great deals. We've highlighted some of them. We've got them linked in the video description. It's Lime Day right now, everybody. Add something to your cart. There'll be a box, and whatever you type in that box will go to producer Dan. There he is. Who will reply to it or put it down here or curate it for me and Luke to talk about. So we're just gonna like, you know, go totally out of order, and Dan, let's do a merch message. This is weird. I know, I know. I'm uncomfortable too. Yeah. Greetings, LLD.

How is your pinball search going and have you thought about getting multiple of the Badminton Center, Wayland Center, to have high score competitions? Could be good, could be fun. High score competitions? Probably not gonna happen so much because they're just hidden away in like the the premium members lounge. But I do have uh one pinball machine. It's a Twilight Zone pinball machine from I think 1993. It's really fun. Luke have you tried it? Yes. It's cool. I was not very good but it was very fun. It's classic.

And then we also have the Dungeons and Dragons one that we unboxed on short circuit but I was not very good, but it was very fun. It's classic. And then we also have the Dungeons and Dragons one that we unboxed on Short Circuit, but I'm not sure if Stern needs it back. It's complicated. I think initially they were like, yeah, we'll send you one. And then they were like, we need it back. But then we made the video about it and I don't know if we've heard from them again, so like... I don't know. So I have... I have one point something... Um... Pinball machines. Somewhere between zero and...

Nine, nine? I mean one and two. Somewhere... yeah, somewhere between one and two. But yes, it's fun. Boop. I guess we're just doing one. Cool. Anyway, so yeah, now's a good time to send a Merge Message or just, I don't know, pick up something on the store.

Regardless of what happens with your Merge Message, we will get some cool stuff in the mail. Man, my mouth is getting really sore. I guess it's time for our braces update. So I had the bite blocks pulled out. I had those pulled out on Monday morning. So I had them put in the Thursday morning. I did that WAN show last week that was terrible.

I had to suffer through them for the weekend and I had a discussion with my orthodontist about how the whole thing has gone down. So I've talked about this before. I'm using the light force. So they're like these 3D printed ceramic braces. They're kind of a newfangled thing. The advantage is they're a little bit faster than, according to my orthodontist, they're a little bit faster than traditional braces or Invisalign.

Yes, I know Invisalign is also 3D printed, so that's cool too. But I have become aware of some more challenging elements of them that I would have maybe loved to know about before I started. So the initial application of them does take longer, but what's cool is they apparently never need to reposition the brackets like you do with traditional train tracks where you'll have to go in for fittings and they'll like take them off and they'll put them on in different spots as they continue to tweak things. So theoretically with their templates, they put them in the exact right spot and then you just put stronger and stronger wires in until they, you know, are in the

shape that they're supposed to be. So that's kind of neat. But what I have discovered is that they're quite, they have a bit more of like a texture to them that makes them feel a little bit sharper than I remember my older braces being. And I also found out that they sit prouder off the tooth than a traditional metal brace, or at least some of them. So the adjustment period that I've been going through, apparently, no, I'm not imagining that these are doing a number on the inside of my lips to a greater degree than I

remember braces doing. The other thing was that the the bite blocks, they call them bite turbos apparently, were like recommended by this brace manufacturer as their way of handling, making sure you don't accidentally bite down too far with your top teeth and shear off the brackets, which was a concern for me because some of my teeth are so far up and need to be brought down in order to realign. But they're obviously horrible. And when I complained about them to the orthodontist, they were like, oh, well, we'll just do it the old school way. So they just have this epoxy goo that they mix,

put on the teeth back here, and then they just cure it with a UV light. And now I just have bite blocks at the back, which is obviously way better, because now I can slice with my front teeth in order to bite food. And also, I can use the like glue bits to like mash food whereas I couldn't get my molars together before I had a gap like this big between my molars so I couldn't I couldn't mash food

it's like I can't slice and I can't mash how the devil am I supposed to eat I was supposed to have those things for like two months not to mention that I couldn't make s-sounds whereas now I can say she something she sells seashells by the seashore. Obviously it's not perfect but it's a lot better. You hear it a little bit but it like doesn't really matter and if you weren't really listening for it I probably wouldn't really notice much. Like I can actually do my job now which is essential. Yeah. However if I'm talking for a very long time you will notice it starts to get worse again.

And that's because the insides of my lips are really, really, really sore. So I can force myself to enunciate pretty well, but man, I just like shredded the insides of my lips to do that. So I just have to wait till they callus up and then I should be okay. Anyway, I'm doing it. I wanted to experiment with

something different. I could have just done Invisalign. Believe it or not, these are actually slightly more expensive than Invisalign. So that's interesting. Linus developing man lips. Yeah man, I'm gonna take up drinking coffee because I'm not gonna be able to feel anything I want it to be a hundred degrees Also Luke says why did you pick the color braces you did why not go obvious pink? Um, I Don't know. I was actually I was thinking about doing like green and pink or something like that or doing like like pink with like green on the canines do like lambos I might I mean they're gonna change out the elastics every time I go in for tightening so

I might still do it that could be cool but I wanted to just start with clear so they're they're white brackets so from this we gotta find ways to we gotta find ways to monetize the the little niche things like that like we should we should do Here's a full corporate brain Luke. Just yeah, what's up with that? I? Like it we should we should you know you know how we we talked about our Place on a WAN show a couple WAN shows ago What if we made it so that there was like a tug-of- war system that decided the different various colors for the different various positions. And you had to do it based on like LTT store product vote sales.

Oh, or you could just it could just be attached to your merch message. You could just get a vote with every merch message. You pick it. Yeah. Or you could get a number of votes for every dollar you spend if we wanted to go full corporate brain. Right. So $250 is 250 votes.

Yeah. And then you'd have to pick a position and a color. And then that puts the votes towards that. Good Lord. You want to get that granular, hey? Is someone logging all of these ideas? I feel like someone should log all these ideas somewhere. Clarend and I talked about the last r slash place idea before.

We said we weren't going to do it as high priority because there's other things to work on but that it would be something that was logged high larius is this something that you would want slightly higher priority on or no I mean I I think that need to do it sooner rather than later if you actually wanted to do I think when shows a good vibe right now I think that if we have something that we think is legitimately really fun like you, you know, the butt kicker or the electric shock or the, you know, whatever. I think those are hilarious. I think those are probably stronger ideas and probably a lower lift as well. Because all we need is just like a relay, essentially, and then like a hook into the store. Like,

I know Puget has a bell go off in their warehouse every time a sale goes through. It can't be that hard to do that. No, it should be fine. Yeah. It's just a question of how toxic we wanna be about it. So we could have it set up so that you have to hit greater and greater thresholds

in order to have shocks keep going through or we could have it set up so that you have to have a higher total order value than the last highest total order value in order for a shock to go through. It's just I don't know corporate brain Luke you know know whatever I've got ideas. Yeah, I've definitely got ideas And everyone Linus has agreed to getting shocked everybody take note dude Luke, and I have both been shocked on camera There's a little channel you might remember I Was assuming my involvement with this was implicit. Oh you better believe it Bob Yeah, I don't know if the chat realized that, but I'm sure you and I did.

Oh, I sure did, Bob. How is it so hard to find this? Channel Super Fun... Should be pretty easy. Yeah, I searched for Channel Super Fun dog collar and couldn't find it. This video may be inappropriate for some users. Oh relax bud. Shot collar showdown I found it. Yeah it is. Wow it's flagged. Why?

Why did it get flagged? I don't know but this video is freaking hilarious. Basically we each wear shot collars and then the other one of us is holding the controller for our shock collar. So either one of us can choose to shock the other at any time. It's like the weirdest game. Is it a game? I don't know, but didn't we find out at the end that mine was way stronger?

Yeah, I think we did. Yeah Yeah, but you were I just thought it was because of your size But I like put yours on after it was like not that bad My that's brutal. I'm pretty sure that's one of the conclusions is that yours was way worse Yeah, you can see it like seven minutes just before seven minutes you have this like insane reaction. Okay, let's see. I don't know, so do I.

I don't know. It was really painful. Oh, maybe we put mine up to your level at this point or something. Oh yeah, you know what? That checks out. That checks out. Hahaha! Doing stupid stuff is fun. I know, right?

Hahaha! Yeah, it's good times. Charge Nuclei8300 says, the OnlyFans version is funnier. And sexier. Alright, what do we want to talk about next? Ooh, this is good news! Intel has released an image analysis tool. It's an AI-powered video quality measuring tool called Computer Graphics Visual Quality Metric or CGVQM.

It's now available on GitHub. Researchers first made a video dataset, titled CGVQD, which includes a variety of potential image quality degradations, mostly stemming from distortions related to path tracing, neural denoising, neural subsampling, Gaussian splatting, frame interpolation, and adaptive variable rate shading. Researchers then trained an AI model to rate the image quality. Tested the data set on humans first to check for our actual perception, who rated types of distortion from imperceptible to very annoying.

They used a 3D convolutional neural network architecture and a residual neural network as the basis for evaluation and pretty cool. So far they claim it will outperform other quality evaluation tools at least on their own data set but obviously I haven't validated any of this but man have I ever been looking for a way to quantify how badly multi-frame gen is like gumming up the works. And if this is something that they could continue to develop, I would be very excited because you know that Nvidia has these tools internally. They 100% have them, just like they, you

know, had FrameView, just like they had FrameView, just like they had their power measuring tool. It's just that Nvidia, who used to be so confident in their dominance in terms of efficiency and performance, and used to share these internal tools with reviewers so that they could hold Nvidia or realistically, Nvidia's competitors accountable for their crappy performance in these ways.

I would love to see Intel taking the lead in upscaling and frame generation image quality and arming the community with the tools to validate their leadership. Cause that XCSS actually pretty good as far as I can tell. Yeah. Legit excited for this. What else we got today? TSMC posts record high profits. They reported their Q2 financials and

13.53 billion in profit on 31 billion in revenue. Wow. So they're making, wow. Wow. PC Gamer pointed out some comparison numbers. AMD made $709 million in profit from 7.4 billion in revenue. We think of AMD as a pretty, you know, big powerful company, sort of, you know. TSMC absolutely eclipses them. They make more profit than AMD does in raw revenue. Nvidia did post similar margins to TSMC, 19 billion

profit with 44 billion in revenue, and a big part of this is due to increased demand from the AI boom and on TSMC's side raising prices per wafer. ASML, the only company in the world that makes the extreme UV lithography machines that TSMC relies on to make its most high-end nodes also posted their Q2 numbers 4.1 billion profit with about 7.7 billion in sales for a gross margin of 53.7%. However, their stock dropped significantly as the 2026 outlook was chilled by geopolitical tensions. So if you're ever wondering why your GPU is so expensive, there's always a bigger fish.

You can blame Nvidia for a big portion of it, absolutely. And you'd be right. And you'd be right. But TSMC is the one that everyone in the industry is too afraid to blame because TSMC holds the power. Literally, Nvidia and AMD cannot build their products without TSMC. Samsung is only, it's a shadow of its former competitor

and Intel is going through some stuff right now. competitor and Intel is Intel is going through some stuff right now. I I believed in Pat's vision. Now I just don't know. Yeah, sorry. Well, Daniel, yeah, I don't know if Mr. Besser has a way of moving this to me. So I don't know. No, I'm gonna move it. Reddit is being forced to verify the age of its UK users in order to comply with new UK legislation. Starting on July 14th. Oh, that was four days ago. Reddit is having users in the UK perform robust age verification, which will include an uploaded selfie and a photo of your government ID in order to access mature materials. Other sites will also need to perform this kind of check. Reddit says that Persona, from performing the check, has promised not to retain the

picture for longer than seven days. Good luck everyone. This will work really good and surely this data will never fall into the wrong hands. God, it's a terrible idea. In other good news, your internet, that's right yours, is now our internet. At least when you use some free VPNs. There's a saying that goes, if you don't pay for the product then you are the product and this is true of some free VPNs. The incredibly popular Hola VPN, perhaps best known as a Chrome extension

for watching region locked videos, is not your typical VPN. Most people understand the idea behind a VPN. Actually, I don't know if I agree with that, but some people understand the idea behind a VPN. You send your data to a server somewhere, and then that server finishes the trip and acts as a relay when things come back, allowing you to partially anonymize your data or browse

websites like you are in that other location. HolaVPN is a peer-to-peer VPN. Instead of using centralized servers, HolaVPN instead sends your connection through the internet of another user. This means that if someone does engage in shady activity, it could be sent through your internet connection, meaning that authorities or rights holders could trace the activity back to you. But P2P web traffic is not always a bad thing. Tor operates in a similar manner to make data more

difficult to trace. It's not anonymous, but it can help. The major difference is that on Tor you need to choose to be an exit node where the data is unencrypted and delivered to its final destination. With the free version of HoloVPN, you don't have a choice. However, you can instead pay and use their traditional VPN servers. If this is fully communicated, um... I don't believe that most people who use a free VPN fully understand what they're agreeing to here. So consent maybe, but informed consent, I don't know. Anyway, we have our usual VPN partner, PIA, we'll have them linked in the video description as usual. Yeah, they don't do that.

It's not super obvious. It might be detailed somewhere on their site, but it's not like shouted at you right away. And finally, Valve has updated their rules, prohibiting content that may violate payment processor and bank rules. Valve recently updated their guidelines under what you shouldn't publish on Steam

to include the following. Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors and related card networks and banks or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult-only content. This was followed shortly by some people noticing that several hundred games were removed from the Steam store, mainly adult-themed games. This has sparked several different complaints from people such as, this just proves once again,

you will never own anything online that can be removed at any moment. And of course, how can credit card companies decide what I can and can't do with my money? That's the big one for me, cause I'm, I guess I'm just used to the other one. No, I'm not. No, it's still bad.

Being able to remove content that I own is sucky, but I think they're only removing it from the store. They can't remove it from your library if you already own it. Yeah, the line about once again, you never own anything. They didn't take it from you. No, I'm more upset about why is it

that credit card companies are the moral arbiters of the internet? They decided we couldn't do certain things with flow playing. How does that make any sense? It's trash. And this is not the first time this has happened. For example, OnlyFans had an issue a couple of years ago with major credit card companies pulling out as payment options because they no longer wanted to be associated with the rising sex work that was taking place on the site. But it's just like, buddy, if I go to an ATM and I use my credit card to take out cash and I buy the services of a hooker,

like what are you even talking about? Like quite frankly, like, I don't really see, I don't really see how it's any of your business. I don't think they should be able to at all. I think the government should potentially be able to step in, you know, like, but they would be stepping in and like closing the place down because they're selling drugs or something. But I don't think your credit card company should be able to police what you buy. We have a hypothetical scenario here. A creator wants to use Floatplane as a platform to, you know, do not save for work content. Is it hypocritical if Floatplane says this

isn't okay versus the credit card company deciding it's not okay? Well, I think Floatplane, we've always been pretty clear internally that we don't actually really care what people use it for. No, but I understand what they're saying. If we're saying that credit card companies shouldn't be able to police this, but we have a platform and we police the platform, is that hypocritical? In my opinion, no, no. But the difference is we're nobody. Yeah. Even if we were somebody, we're an individual platform, you can choose to go somewhere else. This is a unanimous thing from effectively two companies that run global credit cards.

No, no, no. They mean, are we being hypocritical, criticizing Valve for crumbling and for giving in and changing their rules according to pressure from the credit card companies? Is that what they're saying? Yeah. And so, and no, I don't because Valve does billions and billions of dollars of transactions with these credit card issuers. Whereas we are doing, over the time we've existed, millions. Like, I don't think that's what they're saying. Huh? A creator wants to use use floatplane as a platform to do something along these lines

Is it hypocritical if floatplane decides this isn't okay versus the credit card company decides the credit card company not steam Oh, well, okay. Oh, okay. You're right That was the question, but that's not sorry. That's not a relevant question because float plane never decided it wasn't okay Like we we yeah, I guess that would be hypocritical, but we never did that. And that I also don't think it would be hypocritical. It wouldn't. No. Oh, which is what I was just explaining.

If flow plane decides it's not okay. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So there's three different ways that I think I managed to accidentally interpret this. So you're talking about, should we be allowed to have our rules in our house compared to should our landlord be allowed to decide, or not even our landlord. That's a good way of describing it. Yeah, like our Mrs. Rochester who lives upstairs is allowed to decide like what we do in our space that is our domain, no.

I think that's completely different. Well no, I think this applies to some landlord type situation or something. Our house, our rules here. Because this is a service that we are choosing to use. The thing is, if you wanna exist online as a paid platform, you have to use credit card companies. And if you're using credit card companies,

if you kill Visa or MasterCard, you have ruined your ability to do business. Like, they have an effective monopoly. Yes. So it's actually not okay. And you can't just like, oh, well, pick up your bootstraps and make your own credit card company. Like, no, it's not going to happen.

You literally can't. Yeah. So I do not think it is fair and equal. It's the same thing as like when you look at policing moderation and not having free speech on the Linus Tech Tips Forum, because it's like, no, we don't want the moderators to be just overloaded with constant political conversations. And it's a tech forum, get over it, talk about tech stuff. Yes, we allow off topic conversations, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

I'm completely okay with that because you have near infinite other solutions that you could use for going and being social online. There is not near infinite other options for payment processing. And these payment processors genuinely right now kind of decide how the internet works and how a lot of brick and mortar places work. And to be fair, the vast majority of places are going to automatically be within their policies. But if

you aren't within their policies, they get to dictate what you do. We had a call with, I think it was PayPal really early on. they were like yeah no you can't do X Y or Z things and that might have in PayPal's defense that might have been PayPal passing forward this from the credit card companies because we also had a call with Stripe later on saying we couldn't do X Y or Z things either even though I think that ended up being in their case maybe actually hypocritical because I'm pretty sure OnlyFans ended up being too big of a fish, and Stripe went back and is handling things for them anyways. Let me see.

Sound like a bunch of prudes. Let me see. I thought... You with me, Dan? OnlyFans currently uses Stripe as their payment processor. So they got over it, because they saw the bag was huge and decided to do it anyway. So I guess that's where I was going with the bit about how Valve could.

Valve is a big enough fish that they could just be like, I dare you, I dare you to turn off MasterCard and piss off literally every gamer who shops on Steam and uses MasterCard. You've got to be kidding me right now. Because people would be rioting. They'd be going to their banks demanding to be able to use MasterCard on Steam. They'd be like, okay, then I want a different credit card. There's no way.

Yeah, I think it's one of those things where like, I think people would actually go, I think there are some people that would demand a different credit card, but Visa and MasterCard move in lockstep on this. Again, effective monopoly. So there aren't a ton of other options, some, but not very many.

There's some, but their backends are still, what is it, Cirrus and whatever the ends are still what is it Cirrus and Whatever the other one is which is Cirrus and Monaris which are effectively They're just you know, it's the same thing. Basically, you can't get away from it. Yeah, so they Is all dictated by the underwriters and there's like a handful of them. Yeah, exactly a handful of them. Yeah, exactly. So you're gonna get screwed.

And with something like OnlyFans, that industry was already used to sketchy alternative payment methods. And I don't know, but I'm assuming that's what OnlyFans used in the past. So this was net new market. Whereas I think their argument could be that that might be enough to finally

push people off of Steam to another platform, so they might not actually lose those users. I don't know, man. I think Valve would retain those users, and I think that if... I think that they have this way to basically go to the Steam gaming community and say, hey, we're not going to be held hostage by this. Go to your bank, literally go to your bank tomorrow and demand to know why you can't buy games on Steam. They'd have to pull a- Epic Games. Epic Games versus Apple, yeah.

And you know what would be wild is if they like offered free games to people that didn't have those credit cards or something. Valve doesn't campaign. I think Valve does their own thing. They're very quiet. Yep. They quietly do their own thing and Gayben hangs out on his yacht and does interviews with for channels that have like dozens of subscribers apparently. Did you see that this week?

No. Yeah, he did an interview with just like a... It both sounded too salty. What? I've never asked him did an interview with just like... That would sound too salty. What? I've never asked him for an interview. But just like he did... No, it was actually another article I read that pointed out that the people he did the interview with just like were not huge. Cool. He responds to like random people that email him and stuff. Yep.

Does he still respond to every email ever? I don't think so. Did I get an email from him at some point? Hold on a second. I don't think I ever got a response, but I did send him a whiny email once and my problem was resolved Basically I said that our PR rep was completely fucking useless and pointed out that we have literally the top viewed piece of media on every piece of valve hardware ever and it's an embarrassment that piece of media on every piece of Valve hardware ever and it's an embarrassment that we not only were not seeded something I couldn't even buy it and they weren't able to accommodate me buying. I think this was the index

Yeah, it sounds like the index. Yeah and it's just like Guys, I'm willing to buy it and You're not able to accommodate getting this thing into my hand so that I can cover it Come on. I forgot about this until very recently actually, but that's that's very related to how I ended up getting Palmer Lucky's contact is really raged out at one point on Twitter back when it was Twitter about how like the the amount of work that I've done since like the very beginning and like the the quality level of our reviews at that time and all this kind of stuff and

I still couldn't get actual emails back from anyone at oculus. I still couldn't get good samples I still could I was I was we were just buying things up front often getting them super late And all this kind of stuff was still happening and still could I was I was we were just Well, I'll probably never get anything from him again, so... That's resolved. Yeah, probably not. Dan's like, I want my border crossing radar thing. Whatever. How did Gnocchi have that immediately available? What is it?

Apparently there was a Reddit thread from 10 years ago. That seems like the kind of thing Gnocchi would do. Immediately had it. But yeah. Man, I do not think I'm going to be able to, uh, I don't think I'm going to be able to find this. What are you trying to find? I'm trying to find the, uh, I'm trying to find my whiny email. They've been, they've been really good lately. I mean, they're valve.

So they're like not super communicative or whatever. Like they're good mean their valve so they're like not super communicative or whatever like they're good in their valve But before that they were like my contact was utterly useless Mm-hmm Like you you'd have to be just completely not doing your job to not notice like the media outlet that Literally has the top performing video on every single hardware product you've ever released like come on

No, he was like told Linus to give me his email credentials, and I'll find it lol You probably could you'd find all kinds of stuff in there Yeah Are you after dark I Um, are we in After Dark? I think maybe. Anything else? We are in After Dark. Hooray. Huzzah.

Here we go. No, I've got it. I've got it. I knew this was going to be hilarious. This is from 2021. So, I've got it. I've got it. I knew this is going to be hilarious. This is from 2021. So I emailed my press contacts. I said, the subject line is Steam Pal. We're very interested in covering this and would love to get access ahead of time so we can have day one coverage. I sent a follow up three weeks later, which I think is a pretty reasonable amount of time to send a follow-up.

Hi name. I haven't gotten replies from you the last couple of times I've emailed. Is it possible my emails are getting filtered again? Which means you're ignoring my emails. You piece of, can you please pay attention and at the very least reply to my email and tell me you're not interested. I know you're getting my emails. But that's like corporate nice speak for, I know you're getting my emails, can you please respond? Hold on, I accidentally just pressed the power button on my laptop, so I know I get to... Way to go. Use Windows Hello. Okay. And then, another three weeks later, which again, I think is a very reasonable amount of time to wait, I cc'd Gabe and I said, I guess it ended up being called Steam Deck. I read about it on the verge today. No pre-briefing, no mailing list email, no communication at all. I don't like throwing people under the bus.

So last time I had to, oh no, I did email him and I did get a response from this guy the time before. Last time I had to email you to get a response from person, I spun it as, maybe my emails are going to his spam lol oops. At this point I've waited years for a change so it's time for some honest feedback. This guy is one of if not the worst and least responsive media relations reps I have ever encountered. Is there anyone else at Valve we can work at work with? If there is, I'd love to start that conversation. If I'm stuck with him, can you please gently remind him

that we are among the highest viewed media outlets in the world for basically every piece of hardware Valve has released in the last few years. Link, link, link, link, link, link, link. Even if we weren't, completely ignoring emails is just rude. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day. And I got a new rep immediately.

I wonder, I wonder stuff like this, like he probably has someone who monitors his inbox. I wonder if he never even saw it and it just got taken care of. I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean that last interview, I read it, it was really good and he just said, I don't know, yeah I mean you could take people's words with a grain of salt right, but he says he just loves to work and he just said, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, you can take people's words with a grain of salt, right? But he says he just loves to work and he just works day and night. And he just loves what he's working on. He's got like that neuro implant company and like, he has some like ocean stuff and like valve and yeah, I don't know, whatever. If my job was that cool, I'd probably, I'd probably

think it was pretty cool too. Apparently he said a bunch of times that he's the only one that reads his emails. Hamnetics says, um, you didn't throw him under the bus, you threw him in the bus that was thrown into the Grand Canyon. Well, like, look, the guy ignored me for six weeks on the most important hardware and software product that Valve has probably ever released in terms of the impact this is gonna have on the industry. I wanted to be part of it, to support it. Like, it's not like he was like trying to shield Valve from like an unfair critic or something like that, like... I am an ally, pun intended, of the Steam Deck and the mission of Steam OS.

Come on, man! of SteamOS. Come on man. Oh yeah anyway um Dan it's after dark. Should we do some merch messages? Yeah let's do some merch messages. Karen Linus lol. Well sometimes you have to be a Karen to get things done man. I don't make the rules. The root word of Karen is care. Thanks, Luke. No problem. I got you. Care to ruin your day. Hey DLL, this question is directly towards Linus. Do you ever plan to do any other interviews, any social media or television media?

Personally, you should make an appearance on Hot Ones. Um... I mean, I would have loved to go on tonight's show with Stephen Colbert, too bad it's canceled. Let me try and think, where else would I love to go? We've talked about what it would be like to do like Joe Rogan, for instance. I really just don't know what I would,

I don't know what I'd talk to him about. I don't think he'd be interested in me I think is the main could yeah, but interesting ones Whereas like the the late show format I think the youtubers has he put hat on now because now I want to see because now Linus thinks they are more interesting than him Well, it's all about your particular interest like I know he's had like the Paul brothers on, but they're like into fighting. I'm not. Like what are my overlapping interests with Mr. Rogan? I'm pretty sure he's had Marquez.

He's had Mr. Beast. Okay, but Mr. Beast is literally the face of YouTuber. Marquez is way more mainstream and trendy. Like, come on. Does that mean more interesting? Are you conceding that he's more interesting than you? I'm conceding that Joe Rogan would find that more interesting and a more mainstream audience

would find that more interesting. I mean, look, hey, look, the metrics are out there, right? Like, I think Marques's average views for video is like double or triple what we do, quadruple, somewhere in that range. Like, in terms of raw numbers of views on the channel, it's higher, but we're more prolific uploaders. So in terms of like, what's the audience breadth audience breadth I think it's I think it's higher especially with some of the the very Moment products that he

Gets early access to like Apple vision Pro would be a great example to twist that knife a little bit more for you Luke was very upset that we relate on vision Pro Yeah, we shouldn't have been. I will not concede. See how bothered he is? Tell you what, let me make it up to you. Do you want another chip? I could use another chip maybe.

Because I could give you another chip. Yeah, well give me a second. I'm preparing to receive another chip maybe. Cause I could give you another chip. Yeah, well give me a second. I'm preparing to receive another chip. What do you gotta do? You gotta get your like mouth saliva warmed up or like this. Now you're making it kind of weird. I don't, I'm not sure if I want to give you the chip anymore. Here, just do it.

Give me the chip. All right, all right. Here's your chip, okay? I do. You're welcome. Sorry. HAHAHAHA! I forgot to drop my chip. HAHAHA!

You screwed it up! I don't like making messes. I forgot to drop my chip Like making messes still can eat it Anyway, I'm I'm down to be invited to things I often don't get invited to things. I'm a little bit dorky. I get it, and that's cool. I like that YouTube acknowledges me now. I appreciate that. For a long time, they didn't, they had this thing where they like went really far away from tech.

They were trying like not to be tech, even though in the early days of YouTube, it was like very tech. Like tech was on the front page. We had a category and everything. And then they were like, oh, we don't category and everything. And then they were like, we don't want to be tech, no, we're cool, we're cool, we're cool. And then, so they like didn't want to engage with not just me, but like a lot of tech creators. And

then now they're very acknowledging of their tech creators. I think they do a much better job of it. So that's good enough for me. And if I'm ever feeling sad about people not inviting me to, you know, more cool formats like, you know, late shows or hot ones or Joe Rogan experience or whatever, then I'll just cry on my play buttons. I'll be okay. It would be pretty painful to wipe your tears with play buttons, but I'm sure you can find a way. painful to wipe your tears with play buttons but I'm sure you can find a way. Hmm. No I don't know about painful. Not very effective mind you. Yeah fair enough. Dan. The internet doesn't like my mic very much. Maybe you guys. I was gonna say can we like mute mine when you're talking? Because I think that's the problem.

This one's really low quality. Oh, but I think people are also hearing you twice. I think they're hearing you through mine. Should we just have Dan sit next to Luke? That's an idea. I'm just pitching ideas. I'm just pitching ideas. Do you have immersion messages? I don't, actually.

You don't have the dashboard open? You guys. No, I don't. That's fine. Just read them yourself. I can read them. Luke, you can read have the dashboard open you guys know I don't Mean I can I can read them Luke you can read them. I'll read them. I literally just said I don't have them Jared W Spent three hundred nine dollars. Good Lord and said good idea Well, did Linus find a solution to his HDMI CEC constantly swapping to shield. If so, what was it? Solutions Online, don't fix it for me. No, I didn't. I went and I bought an old Harmony remote.

And I'm going to install it now because that's what I know how to use. And I am old. And I like just using things that I know how to use. So that's, I'm going gonna turn all the CEC stuff off on everything and I'm gonna use a universal remote again even though that is ridiculous. Oh right I guess I read merch messages now. Sorry I forgot. Let's move on to the next merch message. This is throwing me off. Jonathan E says, Hey, LLD, bring back the bite blocks.

No. Do you have any tips on dealing with other teams that lack accountability and often push blame onto others for their own actions? Love the WAN Show as always. I think at the end of the day, the only possible solution to that is forthright, honest conversations. And part of the challenge, and I've been running into this a fair bit lately is everyone's version of the honest truth is a little bit different. And that

doesn't necessarily mean it's malicious. It can just mean that our individual lived experiences are. It doesn't even necessarily mean it's wrong. Yeah. Which is a fun one. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Because so much of how we communicate is not just the words, it's tone, it's body language. It's the past history that we have

with that particular person or with those particular people that can color any future interactions. It can be really challenging to arrive on a single universal one truth that we can all agree on. And so, your perception might be that that team lacks accountability, but their perception might be that you have unrealistic and unreasonable demands. And so digging in and finding the answer to that is, it's really tough. It requires unflinching honesty and introspection and leadership on both sides. And if the other party is not acting in good faith, that can be damn near impossible. I wish I had a better answer for you. Luke, if you have some other stuff that you'd like to elaborate on that with, then

go for it. But I, yeah, I just don't really think I have anything for you. Luke 7 Mediation can often be helpful. Jared That's a good one. Luke 7 But it's- Jared That's why we have Dan here. Luke 7

Otherwise- That's why we have Dan here Otherwise not It's not It's not a easy problem to solve It can sometimes come from people just reacting too quickly So if you're if you're gonna try to like work with somebody to resolve this I wouldn't go into it just Full accusatory even if it fully feels that way on your end, because again, the truth can be different. It's very difficult, but still. Because, you know, maybe they don't think that they're wrong about themselves shirking blame.

They don't think it's actually their fault, but that's because they don't have the perspective of other parties or where they think of certain process is maybe supposed to work a certain way and nobody else actually thinks that or whatever else. The situation might be more complicated than it seems on the surface and I would recommend leaving room for that to be true or honestly just leave room for them to save face on the way. Yeah, kind of like how my email, hey are my emails going to your spam filter?

It might be in your spam and then they could be like, oh yeah, sorry, it was. Give them an out. And even if it wasn't, whatever, but you guys are moving on. Give them a path forward that doesn't require an apology is a powerful strategy for resolving differences. It does mean that you just have to high road it and just, you know, deal with that that transgression is never going to be addressed and you're never going to get an apology. But if it gives you a path forward, then that's great.

And if it ultimately doesn't work, hey, pack them into the bus and huck it into the Grand Canyon. Pete Slauson Yeah. I am equipped to read them now, but this one is to me, so. Jared Slaus So question for Luke From Andrew H. You've spoken before about how you worked hard to get yourself into better physical shape. How did you motivate yourself to not give up? Do you have any tips for people looking to do the same? Um, I'm actually on a, on a down track right now, which is unfortunate. I find this, I get sick like way too often.

And I find that I don't actually have an insane appetite unless I'm sick. A lot of people lose their appetite when they're sick and my appetite goes through the freaking moon. So I find it hard to regulate weight while I'm sick because I tend to balloon unless I'm like really policing myself. So I've been struggling a little bit lately just due to sickness and travel cycles, but I'm definitely still motivated and the strength portion is still decently high because that doesn't have too many issues. The motivation is, it's not, it's not it's not I've talked about this before it's not motivation anymore. It's it's an internal demand. It's I

Don't go to the gym because I'm motivated I go to the gym because I have to And it helps that I tend to enjoy it when I'm there, but I am a person who struggles with mode shifting So once I'm doing a thing, I want to keep doing it. I've described this before as like, you know, every time I try to preface this before I say it, with I take showers every day, but I never want to get into the shower. Once I'm in the shower, I could genuinely happily stay there for like an hour.

I like to keep doing the thing that I'm doing. This also creates a problem where like, I never want to go to bed. I never want to go to bed. I never wanna go to sleep. I could stay up for so long and have no problem. The problem will then be that once I go to sleep, I don't wanna get up. Hear me out.

Maybe this is a chicken and egg problem. If you could lose more weight, you could solve your inertia problem. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Maybe. Maybe it's just a lot of work for you to change what you're doing. I was doing pretty well in the first little bit of the year and then I was down 18 pounds before the Computex trip and then traveling for three weeks and then I was sick for a really long time after that. Travel's brutal, dude. Travel's brutal.

And the combination was I was out of the gym and having issues with eating because of either being sick or traveling and that like six plus weeks of being out just set me so far back. It's really disappointing, but I don't, the disappointment doesn't demotivate me because again, it's not motivation that's driving me. It's an internal requirement. I have to do, that's 100% a spectrum marker. Yeah, I'm somewhere on it.

I don't really care. I'm happy with how I operate, so I don't care to deal with it. But I'm going to go regardless, and I'm going to do these things regardless, so I'm not worried about that. It sucks and it's disappointing to have lost progress, but it in no way impedes my desire to keep moving forward. It's just I am further back from the goal that I wanted by the end of this year than I would have liked to have been at this point. That does not mean that the goal that I have for the end of this year is impossible.

And even if it was, okay, just commit to improving habits moving forward and push the goal back a little bit to a reasonable point and genuinely push towards doing that. That's how I've always kind of aimed for this. I had a bunch of strength goals and then I got brutally sick for like six months. This was a while ago and a lot of my strength goals fell back. So I just deferred them and then eventually hit them and I just, you just keep moving. You have to be relentless with it. I think like I hit a certain age where it's like to be healthy. It is a requirement that I need to be in the gym. I don't necessarily know if this is as true for everybody, but I, I'm experiencing, if I don't use my body, I get mentally depressed. That is a truth for me. I'm not

necessarily saying that as a truth for all of you. That is a truth for me. I have to be out there and I have to do things. I'm sure I could replace the gym with any form of sport or physical activity that actively used my muscles. I don't think it has to be the gym. I'm sure I could help people move every day and maybe be fine. Cause for me, I think that's really the point is that I have to move. I think you'd actually thrive on that. You like helping people and like you like physical activity. I think you'd be down. I don't think it's the gym in particular. Um, yeah, I, I, I like try to, I was,

there's a move happening at LMG right now and I'm actually sad that I'm not helping. I was gonna volunteer to help this weekend. We have a couple of departments that are moving around. I'm here. I was like, why is it this weekend? I actually wanted to do that. But yeah.

A big one for me is accountability buddies as well. If you're on a team or if you have a group that does whatever it is that you're doing that's physical activity regularly, that goes such a long way. Like last night, I had badminton training, like sparring. So not like with an instructor or whatever. But one of our guys who works at Smash Champs, I saw him recording one of his games and I was like, yo, you never record your game, what are you even doing?

And he's like, oh man, no, I was really motivated when Badminton Insight came out and we got to play against them and it was really inspirational and I want to get sweaty, I want to improve again and I was like, oh, that sounds sick. Like we should have like badminton improvement dates. Let's, we'll spar. We can run drills and stuff like that. Cause badminton's a sport that's nearly impossible to train by yourself. There are some things you can do.

You can just go on a court or in an empty parking lot and you can like do footwork drills or, you know, you can hit against a wall and stuff like that. There are things you can do, but like if you really want to play, you need someone to hit the shuttle back to you. And so, last night, so, okay, let's back up. So on Wednesday night, Yvonne asked me to feed her, which is what it's called when you

have a really weird dynamic in your relationship around food. No, just kidding. She asked me to feed her, which is what it's called when you grab a whole row of shuttles on your arm and you toss them up and hit them so that someone can work on their consistency. And instead of just going and feeding Yvonne, I fed her for like an hour and then I was like, oh, well, okay, you're probably too tired to do drills anymore, but do you wanna like, do you wanna go play like a couple of mixed doubles games? We have our grand opening tournament coming up and Yvonne and I are gonna be playing together.

And she was like, okay, yeah, we can go play a couple of games. We ended up playing like five games and they were like super intense and I was running a ton. And so last night, Thursday, I was bushwhacked, dude. Like I did not feel like it. But like, what, I was bushwhacked, dude. I did not feel like it. But like, what, I'm going to bail? Don't be a flake.

You know? You can't be a flake. That's another thing, dude. If I, my, it's a bad cycle because I will start again. I mean, I'm literally in the middle of doing well with it right now, so it's not that. But I'm saying in general, if there's a down cycle, I get sick or I'm traveling or whatever, I will start again. It's no problem, but it is always the worst

because my energy is the lowest when I'm, it feels so like counterintuitive, but if I'm not going and expending large amounts of energy, my average energy level will be very low. I feel it too. And I get like irritable and I get like irritable. I get like cranky. Yeah.

And I'll be like, hey, I haven't like played badminton in two weeks, like I haven't done anything. The most zen I will literally ever be is if I have a genuinely maximum effort leg workout on the drive home, I don't think I will ever be more calm than like in that moment. I'm just so relaxed. It's actually wild.

Elemental Exposure asks shuttle versus birdie. So the official term is shuttle cock. In a lot of the Western world, people don't really like the whole cock thing. So we call it a shuttle and filthy casuals call it a birdie. You're welcome. So if you said birdie I would assume you mean like a plastic one. You know?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, honestly that makes sense to me. When Bingo Chronified says, I say we call it a shuttle dick You know what I? Could get on board You don't want to smack want to smack the dick around here. Make it so that the the lake foe So if I go to feed Yvonne, I'll be feeding her Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it sounds good Should I read the next one?

Sure. Okay. Where do you see car automation going in the future? Will there eventually be a government led open source software that all cars will have so they can communicate with each other on the road? I mean, that's a pretty cool utopian dream, but I don't know if it's compatible with the current sort of capitalistic structure that we live in.

Yeah, Charles nuclei and flip-flop chat just said, ha ha ha ha ha. And I think it was in response to this. Yeah, I mean, government controlled and open source already sounds like it's not going to be a thing. All cars communicating on the road sounds like it's not going to be a thing that would just be rife with potential for abuse. I would love cars to have like transponders or something like that, that give each other situational awareness of the actions that they're taking and the actions they Intend to take I'd love to see like an open framework for that that allows interoperation

Excuse me, I don't know who is gonna be motivated to drive it though pun intended Next Merck Merck message Hold on. Hey, our Jedi sold on hold on got be our Jedi says Next merch message. Hold on. BR Jedi, hold on, hold on. BR Jedi says government controlled, utopia. Well, yeah, but that's the whole point is that any utopia, you would have a benevolent government that would do stuff like this.

But like, that's why we said, ha ha ha ha ha ha. Come on, man. but like that's why we said ha ha ha ha ha ha come on man hey when dot DLL I triggered the paint rant a few days ago when I made my first purchase years ago Linus right yeah anything new Linus wants to rant about I mean we just did our tech gripes video. I don't know if I have the energy to rant right now, my lips hurt, but hey, thanks for your purchase. Enjoy your style blue, whatever it is that you bought. Oh, three items. Oh, precision multi-bit screwdriver and bit case,

and a Jerry Rigg razor knife. Okay, what is that? But that's style blue, how does that make any sense? Oh, for the thing on there. That raise their knife. Okay, what is that? What style blue? How does that make any sense? Oh, for the thing on there. That was their message. Yes, yep, that makes sense. I had to look for it for a second. Okay.

See, there it is, blue style. Nice. Most esteemed Danonite order, humbly requesting an update on the sacred bike, also at Linus, visiting Vancouver in September. Any must-ride roads for a loyal two-wheeled pilgrim? K, thanks. I am going to... I am not going to ride in July.

I reached out, I said, hey, on Wednesday actually, I reached out, are we still on track for me to ride this month? And Buddy's not been feeling well. So I basically said, don't worry, man, at this point, the delay is 96% on me. So I don't want you to lose any sleep over it. So I'll get it when I get it. More than 96%. You know what?

I've had enough of your crap. The fact that he stored it in his place this whole time is wild. But all right. Next message is from Xi Chao. Hopefully I said that right. Next message is from Xi Chao. Hopefully I said that right. How's the new door lock working for you? The wireless charging seems like quite interesting for me to consider it for my future smart lock.

I really like it so far. It is a door lock, but smart and wirelessly charges. It does exactly what it says on the tin. I actually didn't know that that video was up yet. I wonder how it's doing. I have no idea what people's appetite is for like a ludicrously expensive door lock. Apparently pretty good. It's a 2 out of 10 for the channel. That's hilarious. I mean, I guess it's a good title. I waited seven years for a zero battery smart lock, which I did. That company, I first saw them at Computex and then we first collaborated with them seven years ago. They actually flew out here and showed us their technology. It's infrared wireless power transmission. And it's super cool. Y-Charge. And we actually talked about them on WAN Show a little while ago, which was what prompted them to reach out and offer to send

this door lock over. Because Luke and I were talking about them and I was like, do they still exist? Like, did they make it or what? And they emailed me. They're like, we very much have survived. Thank you for mentioning us all so are you interested in checking out any of our new stuff pretty cool uh all right next one i'm not necessarily sure what this means so hopefully linus knows hey lld could linus touch in more detail about the all sales final thing Don't know what that is is the mystery screwdriver bought for lime day still under warranty It would be great to see the power outlet in the US as well Yeah, all sales final doesn't mean that you have no

Warranty necessarily it means that you can't like just change your mind And be like, oh, yeah I uh I don't want it anymore oh wait wait wait wait wait unless you're talking about like the B stock stuff like if you're just like oh yeah I you know I didn't realize that this used item was going to have a little scuff on it um then it definitely wouldn't cover that. Hold on a second though, I just wanna check something. It is possible that some of the, hold on, used like new, pictures contain.

Oh wait, no, okay, I don't know what you're asking here because it's explicit on these items. Power outlet purchases are final, no returns, returns exchanges warranty. They are what they are So there you go pictures contain examples of cosmetic wear read the fine print questions. Please read our FAQ What is the power outlet Returned and like new gear available at reduced prices while supplies last. It is only available to consumers residing in whatever. Can they be returned or exchanged?

No, no exceptions. Meaning refunds and exchanges will not be granted for these products. There we go. I'm glad we got a very, very clear answer for you. They are sold as is and are excluded from warranty coverage. You're buying these things for a fraction of the price, in some cases for a fraction of what we paid for them. So it is what it is and Enjoy the deal

Would be great to see the power outlet in the US as well. Um Yeah, it would But I don't know when if ever that'll happen because I don't even know if a lot of stuff gets returned anymore I think there's been Kind of a sea change in e-commerce, where things that ultimately are not able to be delivered just end up being destroyed rather than being returned to us in many cases. So I don't even know how many returns we're going to get these days, but if it happens, it happens, and it'll be a good deal for people

who don't mind buying something in final sale. Interesting. Okay. Hi, LUNNIS, like and lan. When are bonus bin items coming back? I was looking forward to getting a sticker sheet or a pin. The shoelaces would also be cool. We are looking at the bonus bin and trying to get some stuff going on. We've been extremely bogged down with Just global logistics being an absolute show with like tariff stuff and everybody and their dog trying to Mass import stuff before tariff stuff, but then tariff stuff goes away and like We've had less bandwidth for the things that we want to do to delight our customers, because

we've had to waste so much of it on just horse s***. So we're not the only ones that are feeling it. So I'm not asking for anyone to like feel bad for us or whatever. We're just, you're seeing the cracks form. I'm just going to read the next one anyways, I feel like it's easier this way. Luke, I used to play Pogo or Pokemon Go but don't have the community anymore. Instead I started birding. I get walking, I get community, and I find critters without the screen.

Have you ever thought about trying birding? Not so much. Being a bird person of sorts, I do enjoy seeing birds when I'm out, but I have not thought of going birding. Something that I do these days with Pokemon Go to look at the screen less is I got those... what is it called again? A Pokemon Go Plus Plus. So you don't even have to have your phone unlocked. You can have it locked in your pocket and either the thing will try to catch stuff Automatically for you or you can press the button on it and it'll like buzz if it detects something and if you press the button

It'll throw a better ball at it so sometimes I'll do that so I can go out to a community event and never actually even look at my phone and then Just walk around the whole time without doing this, which sounds a lot better. It feels nicer on my neck. I will inadvertently do things like notice birds more and stuff like that. It defeats the purpose of Pokemon Go.

No it doesn't because the thing will buzz twice detecting that something is there. You press the button and then it will attempt to catch, it'll go like, just like the pokeball going, and then be like, oh, you got your Pokemon. It will do buzzes that mimic that, but if you get it, then it'll go like, so it indicates that you got it. And it'll do the attempting to catch thing but if it fails it'll go so you know that you failed and when you're out at a community day it's usually the same Pokemon every single time so you don't need to see it on your screen and there's a bunch of the the hyper nerds that are out playing that

are doing I think it's called speed catching or something and they barely even see this stuff anyways so like I don't see a difference personally. And I am not playing that game. I have said this before, I think Pokemon Go is actually a very bad game. The only reason why I like it is because it gets me outside. And this is an evolution that gets me outside and looking at my screen less. What a banger. That sounds great to me.

I don't like the actual gameplay of Pokemon Go is so bad. The PvP is terrible. The PvE is terrible. Yeah, the gameplay sucks anyways, so why do I care? If I'm getting little dopamine hits from walking because my thing is buzzing like Look, you caught the thing that is going around right now or whatever Then sweet I'm accomplishing the same thing my brain is happy because I'm playing a video game But I'm playing a video game without looking at a screen which is sick I have personally found a way to gamify this in a way that benefits me heavily and I enjoy Therefore I think cool

There you go You look at your Pokemon when you get back I will search for four star and if I don't find any I transfer all of them So it takes me like seconds I don't care I think that's oh there is there's an incoming but there's no more curated I'm already forwarding that incoming to the relevant parties I don't know if we're gonna be able to fix their issue in time they ordered the wrong size for a power outlet item and They want it changed to the right size before it ships It's possible that we'll be able to catch it before it shifts and ships and just give you a refund

but I don't know if we'll be able to like Change it like it the whole thing with power outlet is it's all sales final. See you later. Um, so we might be able to catch it and cancel it, but I don't know if we'll be able to like change it to something else that might go out of stock before we're able to look at it like it's, it's 9 PM on Friday. Um, and the warehouse during heavy times like lime day is sometimes packing

things over the weekend when our customer service is not in office so I don't I don't know if I can promise you I want to throw out another gamer move that you can do with with Pokemon go because I think I've man I've said this forever I think a lot of people play games incorrectly they only go for the incentives that the game tells them to go for they don't do things beyond that They don't find their own ways to create difficulties. They don't find their own ways to have fun They just follow the byline or they follow the achievements that the game lays out or whatever else and Pokemon go is one of those Pokemon has a not very popular feature called routes But a route could be like a trail

that you can walk and when you get to the end, it gives you like an extremely minor reward which is why it's not popular. If you don't care about the reward so much and you do it because there's at least a little bit of reward, while you walk along the route, there's a slightly increased Pokemon spawn along the route while you're doing it. So you can walk, you can literally go for a little hike, you can go with someone else, whatever, and you don't have to be actually distracted conversationally or anything or be staring at your phone because you can just boop boop boop press the little button or

just let it go off in your pocket automatically and you're literally not interacting with it at all. And you can still have your little goopy goblin gamer brain gaining little goopy goblin gamer brain little bonus nugget things and be out walking enjoying nature head up not staring at screen potentially conversating with another person it's freaking sick don't just do what the game wants you to do do the thing that you want to do and have fun with cool nice all right well that's it for the land show wants you to do, do the thing that you want to do and have fun with. Cool. Nice. All right, well that's it for the land show. Oh, my mouth's sore. I didn't talk for a

little bit there and the braces got all like stuck into the like ragged flesh inside my lips. We'll see you again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel. What a visual bye