Discord Threw It All Away - WAN Show February 13, 2026

All right, there you go. What's up everyone? Welcome to the W show. We got a great show for you guys this week. Of course, the big news is Discord requiring facial scans for age verification. Oh man, you can you can tell how passionate the writing team is about a particular topic when you see how many notes they created for it. JORDAN IS LIKE, I AM GOING to very thoroughly talk about why this is very upsetting. Yeah, we're going to be getting into that. Also, oh man, we had we we had the other huge privacy nightmare. Did Did anyone watch Rings a Super Bowl, lad? Cuz I did. Yeah. Yeah. Not looking good. Okay. What else we got? Luke, find me some good news. You got the good news, right? Modern standby won't drain your battery anymore. Maybe possibly. Uh, and yes, Slaps is already mobilizing to try to look into it. Um, because part of the question here is, has anyone else verified this? Uh, so we're going to try. It's It's going to be difficult to conclusively verify, but we're going to try. Um, also, let's see. I have a machine that definitely is very often on in my backpack. So, uh it's it's a it's a chronic offender. So, maybe we could uh maybe we could work together. In other great news, Mr. Beast just bought a banking app. You picked that? Yeah. What could go wrong? Just roll the intro. The show is brought to you today by Razer, Squarespace, Zero Bounce, and UPDF along with our rap partner Dbrand, our laptop partner, Razer, and our chair partner Razer. Good lord. It's going to be called the Razer Show at some point with all the sponsorship money that Razer's throwing at the WAN show. I uh it's it's I mean, thanks Razer, first of all. Um but also, it's a little confusing cuz I think they went 10 years without doing anything with us. So, okay, they're they're back. They're back hard. All right, why don't we why don't we jump right into our first topic today, which is of course the big news from Discord. Discord announced that it will start rolling out age verification globally beginning in March, just 5 months after a breach from a third-party age verification vendor exposed the government IDs of around 70,000 Discord users. I don't think the timing for this could be a lot worse. Um, well, no, actually, it could have been worse. It could have been just 4 months after a breach, but I think you understand what I mean. The platform is going to automatically configure all user accounts for what they're calling a teen appropriate experience unless those users are proven to be adults. Now, it is worth noting that apparently not everyone is going to have to submit uh proof of being an adult, but the way that they get, you know, non-user submitted proof of your adulthood is not going to make you a lot happier than submitting the proof. All right. First, let's talk about what happens with users that are not verified adults. uh they will not be able to access age restricted servers or channels. They won't be able to speak on stage channels. They will see content filters for anything Discord decides is graphic or sensitive. They will see warnings about friend requests from users they might not know. I mean, honestly, that's fine. Um and will have DMs from unfamiliar users go into a separate inbox. Frankly, those last two should just be platformwide. I'll die on that hill. DMs from friends and interactions on non-agger restricted servers will operate as they always have. Users with pre-existing subscriptions to restricted servers will have those sur Oh, this is wild. Will have those servers content obfiscated until they pass age verification checks. The craziest part of this, Luke, and I feel like I Okay, part of me wanted to wait until the end of going through the information before talking about this, but I feel like I just have to jump in right now. The craziest part of this is they didn't have to do this. There were some jurisdictions that are pushing for stronger child safety measures that are that are putting pressure on on social media platforms, including Discord, to put these kinds of checks in place. But then they didn't have to roll it out globally. And we've seen this before. Sometimes it's a huge benefit to a to a to a user base. You know, when Apple gets a bunch of pressure from the EU to use USB type-C, guess what? We get USBC iPhones everywhere. So sometimes this works out really great. But this is software. So there was no real reason other than maintaining two forks, I guess, that they had to do this. like do you have any thoughts on this as someone who you know has led a couple of software teams now currently? Yeah, I mean I wouldn't want to touch this at all ever. Um and like they talk about how they I I I think this is maybe in the notes somewhere. Again, we haven't gone through all of it yet, but um they they talk about how they're going to delete it immediately. Uh but then they also talk we'll get into that. I just mean like why would they maintain the two forks? Can you give me a reason why they would roll this out globally when a lot of the world is not putting any pressure on them to do this? Um, maintaining the two forks can be really annoying. Uh, and I think they might see the writing on the wall a little bit that a lot of different countries are moving in this direction. Um, I mean that's fair. That's that's fair. The momentum is really building. I can't believe how quickly we went from Everyone kind of agrees that social is just BS anyways. Oh, no. I I was going somewhere else. Like social social media is like really bad for kids. Oh, yeah. And then like sometimes legislation can seem to move pretty quickly. Like there are there are, you know, minor phones right now. It's moving pretty fast. It moved pretty fast. It really did. Yeah, it was like it all. Speaking to the Verge, Discord's global head of product policy stated that, and this is a quote, for most adults, age verification won't be required. Remember how I said though that you weren't necessarily going to like how they were doing that? She went on to explain that Discord's age inference model uses account information such as tenure, device, and activity data and highlevel patterns to attempt to determine the user's age range. So, uh, I guess I'm safe because I still use GIFs, which are apparently boomer meta now. Oh, and you call them that, which means you're obviously ancient. Uh, so you're you're good. You're in the clear for sure. Uh, if the system is unable to infer a user's age, the user will be prompted to take a video selfie for facial age estimation. Discord claims the video won't leave your device, but as many commenters noted, that does not mean that your biometric data is safe. Alternatively, you can submit a scan of governmentissued ID along with a selfie as definitive proof of age. Age will be apparently estimated using the KD tool from Swiss-based vendor privately. Discord claims images of documents are deleted. In most cases, immediately after age confirm. What does in most cases mean? Why would it not be in all cases? And they also claim they don't keep the information from the ID. Um, which, you know, you tell a community like Discord that, oh, oh yeah, we're going to, you know, we're only going to do this with it and we're going to delete it probably immediately and it'll totally be fine. Of course, they're going to start, you know, pulling at every loose thread they can find. Um, so some Discord users posted on Reddit saying that policies for K and privately don't exactly line up with what Discord is saying. I also think this is actually outofdate information. Oh, I flip plane chat got me going down a path and then I started googling some things and it sounds like they've swapped out the K plan. Um, and they're know they're now going down, they didn't do a like roll it back situation. They just switched partners and now they're working with a company called Persona. And people in flow plane chat, I have not verified this yet, are saying that Persona is owned by Peter Teal. Um, so wait, this is out of date, but not in a way that it is getting better in any way. Oh, no. Like potentially worse. Yeah. No, Discord. Why? Why? You were for an actual fairly extended period of time. Persona in the UK as an experiment. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. I there's there's some stuff going on here. I'm not 100% sure what it is. U there's a Reddit thread from 11 hours ago. Like this is very new. Um Discord has assured its users that it is using K for its facial age estimation. This is a bait and switch. Uh K is an ondevice zero knowledge proof. It can scan your face and the K runs an assessment model locally and estimates your age. I mean that sounds pretty all right. Discord only receives a token. that say blah blah blah blah blah. That sounds not too bad. Persona is a corporate partner of Palunteer, a spying surveillance company that blah blah blah blah blah. They quote unquote delete your information within minutes usually, but they retain the embeddings. The embeddings are machine readable portion of your face or ID something something. Discord has promised K I but is giving us persona. Um, this is all relatively new. Okay, so I don't know about all this. Here's what we can say definitively. We can say that so far the story from Discord doesn't seem to be firmed up in a way that is making their community happy. Yeah, I think we can say that. Um, many commenters have mentioned canceling Nitro subscriptions and or moving to other platforms even if they don't get prompted to verify their accounts. Others have started placing bets on how long it'll take for Discord to be hit with another breach because of course everybody bets on everything now. Uh this is not financial advice. I would not get involved in that personally. Um, commenters have also brought up um some pretty uh well I've um a pretty familiar debate between the real name solve everything crowd and the privacy advocates reminding us that um while there can be benefits to people using real names. I you know okay this is pretty early in the show for me to say something this controversial but I appreciate or at least appreciated before it was so full of spammers the real identity element of Facebook marketplace it was a lot easier to navigate knowing that for the most part these were real people yeah now it's just scammers anyways now it's just scammers anyway they seem to have kind of overcome it so there have been there has been at least one time when I personally enjoyed and appreciated that element of a web service. Um, but it's worth reminding even the people who do enjoy that vibe that online privacy can be a literal life and death issue sometimes. Um, and even when it's not life and death, many folks have a good reason not to share their identities as explained by Redditor Radio Active Truth. This is a quote. Am I really going to associate my legal name with the PTSD groups that I'm part of? because of course they're not safe for work. So I would need to be age verified. Um like do you know how sickening it would be to the hundreds of members there to have to put our legal names on experiences that scarred us? Right? Like there's so many perspectives. There's so many ways that people use the internet and and connect on the internet that rely on not being forced to upload a governmentissued ID. Um, okay, Luke, go ahead and say it. Oh, just like this was obviously inevitable. Oh, no. I was going to I was I I wanted you to just tell us you already use TeamSpeak, just like you already use Firefox because you're just that cool. I I do I do use TeamSpeak, though. Like, I actually do. I Okay, I use an older version of TeamSpeak. I I do think I've never used this one, but I do think a lot of people are unaware. So, like, okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm going to go back. Is Team Speak the answer, Luke? Is Team Speak the answer? I think for most people, the answer is going to be to stay on Discord, which is really sad. Um, I would encourage you to try something else. Now, when we go back to the old great, uh, Ventilo is still showing off uh this this UI. So, okay, that might not be working for a lot of people. Mumble Mumble is still showing off this UI. So, again, it it might not be up there for a lot of people. even though both of them are based. I'm just saying. Uh but TeamSpeak is trying. I haven't tried this version of TeamSpeak, but they have like chat channels and server browsers and friends lists and chats and like it looks a lot like Discord. I I when the group of people that I joined that was using TeamSpeak um told me they were using TeamSpeak, I was excited about this and then I realized that we're still using like I think TeamSpeak 3 or something. nice. Also, someone in chat said, "Teamspeak 6 is just a matrix server with a different UI, which brings up matrix, which is another thing a bunch of people have been talking about. Uh, I had that ready. Thank you. Thank you for priming me on that flow plane chat." Um, matrix is another option uh that people are exploring. Things are built on top of this, which uh I I can't confirm that this is actually just built on top of Matrix, but it I mean that would maybe make sense. Um, but there there are there are other options. I know a lot of people are going to run into this this thing and just go like, well, okay, Discord is the only thing out there. For a weird blip of time, people used Skype. Before then, people used like a huge variety of things. Mumble, Ventilo, TeamSpeak, Xfire, Razer Comms for 4 and a half minutes. I was I was going to say I was going to say I mean the show is already brought to you by uh Razer three other times. Why don't they resurrect comms? Isn't the show can be brought to you by Razer coms? But Discord did fully pull a Amazon Walmart maneuver and effectively kill everything else. So there really isn't much but these things are not much with momentum. not not much that has any meaningful sort of user base that they could that they could grow that they could kind of quickly grow from. Yeah. But there are efforts out there and I would implore you to at least check them out. Matrix sounds really exciting. Uh there are also I'm not going to name them just cuz the open source people can get a little spicy sometimes. But uh there's been a couple people in flow plane chat that have been like yeah but Matrix is kind of not great. I've never personally used it but I've heard great things. Lumilia points out that Steam chat has actually improved a lot. Steam's gotten way better between the time that we actually relied on Steam chat quite a bit. Um, and then Discord took over and then was dominant. Um, Valve has quietly continued to improve the social experiences of just using Steam. I mean, I don't Someone said, "What about Slack?" Slack is not an acceptable replacement for gaming groups in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah, that's a tough one. Um, and I don't love the the fact that Steam's social experiences, which still aren't amazing, are baked right into the Steam platform. I want something that is truly crossplatform. Like, okay, yes, they have the mobile app, but like this is this feels like one of those things where if Microsoft and the Xbox team were like on it, you you know where I'm going with this. They never will. If they were dialed, right? Yep. Like if they were dialed, this would have been solved so long ago. If they were dialed, they never would have abandoned MSN Messenger. And then now they would just have like a gaming version or something. I don't know. They would have some form of way to like tie it into gaming. If only Microsoft had known how enormous social networking, social media was going to be cuz they were they were so far ahead. They had all the mind share. All of it. Nothing else mattered other than MSN and Skype which they bought. Like Trillion was dead, ICQ was dead, AIM was dead, everything was dead. They were just they were it only show in town. Yeah. Some people are saying like the hardest thing will be I think it was Elijah. Um I don't know. I lost it. Uh no, it was Elijah. The hardest thing would be getting whole groups to move. Like I have a server with 1500 people. How do I move everyone? Um yeah. No, that's really that's a great point. Yeah, because you will there will be there's also a lot of Discord bots and Discord integrations for different communities and stuff. Um I Discord is I think it's free to self-host. I'm pretty sure. Um so like maybe consider that because it's still free. But like I don't know guys. Uh this isn't this isn't it I don't think. I think we're still going to be waiting for what it is, but when you look at the mass of what Discord is, and then you you try to tell me Nitro is fully funding that platform. Sorry, bro. There's no way. I don't believe I had this conversation with one of the writers the other day. I forget who it was, but they were they were making the argument to me that, "Yeah, do you have any idea how much people spend on Nitro and all that?" And I'm just looking at it going like, I don't think Like it it it looks like they've they've gone I mean we've seen it so many times that I don't know why oh it was Elijah. We've seen it so many times that I don't understand why we keep getting surprised by it. A new service shows up. It's totally free. It's totally way better than anything else that you would probably have to pay for or is free and you know kind of jank because it's a handful of people that are working on it in their spare time. Like, of course, you've got Mumble up on screen right now. Yep, that checks out. And everyone migrates to it. They get the user base that they keep growing the user base, which allows them to, you know, keep getting access to funding to keep burning money. And then at some point, the piper comes calling and they have to figure out how to make money on it. And they come up with all these ideas and they convert some of the users to paid. But it's it's not enough. I don't think I'm convinced that Nitro is enough. Geek Power points out there are ads in Discord. Yep, fair enough. As someone who uses it unpaid with no Nitro and Okay, admittedly, I do have I do have a pretty solid built-in ad block into my brain, but I have I don't think I've ever seen an ad in Discord. Okay, they bother me about Nitro, but I I just dismissed that. Pretty good. There are cosmetics. I know very few people that have paid cosmetics. There are free ones. I know people that have those. And you only need a few whales. You only need a few whales when it comes to cosmetics. I still think there's going to be just like what happens with basically every platform. I think there's going to be a major um we want to make more money now push at some point and they've been slowly creeping towards it. And maybe it'll just continue to be slowly but yeah. And then the other part is as you acquire all these users, you're you're kind of caught between a rock and a hard place, right? Like you're you're caught between this need to monetize the user base that you don't have because or that you haven't figured out because you were like, "Okay, well, we'll deal with that later." And then you're caught between that and the regulatory burden that exists for extremely large platforms, regardless of how much money they're making. Like if you had a social media platform that had a hundred million users, you're going to be under intense scrutiny. Whether you're making a billion dollars a year or losing a billion dollars a year, it doesn't really matter just because you're so influential. Uh Whiskey Nerd points out that the Discord IPO is supposed to be next month in March. That's something that's okay. I saw a conspiracy theory that this is like 4D chess trying to somehow manipulate the public perception towards Discord right before the IPO because that was the only explanation they could come up with for why they would do something this upsetting to their user base right before they go public. But, and maybe this is just me not being, you know, stock marketrained enough, but could there possibly be any reason for you to want your company to be worth less before you go IPO? I thought you want to juice the valuation before you go IPO. Yeah, it's weird. Hit me up. Hit come on. Then maybe that's the like Palanteer adjacent push. Um, working with Persona cuz that's a that's a weird move. Ah, uh, all publicity is good publicity says Advo Cactus Diaboli. Most equities trading is bots. Bots don't care about product sentiment. Okay, that's that second part though is an it's an interesting point. But if they bleed users, bots probably care about that a little bit. Tank the initial price, go public, then once you buy a ton, you roll back the bad stuff and go up once you own it. No, because then you wouldn't just you just wouldn't IPO in the first place. You would just keep owning the stock. Uh we'll only uh control the running costs. I really I really don't think that's it because well see how much people actually care is what this ultimately is going to lead to because like you hear really really loud noises about so many different things gambling uh microtransactions in video games all these different things and then you see the user behavior is to just use it more than ever. Um, yeah. I I I I think I think the ultimate reaction to this is going to be nothing. And that's kind of sad. But I mean, I'm going to go check out, you know, TeamSpeak 6 or whatever this is. See how cool it is. Maybe it's cool. Maybe it's not. Maybe it'll be a real alternative. Maybe it won't be. But I'm interested. Okay, cool. That's a pretty depressing note to end that on. But let's get right into uh let's get right into a an update for you guys. Whaleand brought to you by Threat Locker. Do you want to throw the uh schedule up on screen, Luke? Is just one, count them, one week away. We've got an extensive lineup of games scheduled for the stage, the 8V8 arena, and the lounge with locally hosted lobbies for a bunch of games, including Battlefront 2, uh Tribes 2, and other classics like Halo Custom Edition. You can enjoy some classic split screen or local multiplayer action in the gaming lounge. Uh we'll have a lineup of party games ranging from 8 to 12 players at once. And we'll be hosting a Smash Bros tournament in the lounge on Saturday. Uh we're pulling up to the land with the new and improved modified Fire Truck featuring uh Okay, hold on. It only has some of this stuff so far, so don't read out all of this, but it definitely has a super custom Nintendo Switch 2 themed gaming TV setup in the back. So, you can check out the firetruck in person. Um, oh yeah, and we just got confir Oh, no way. Seriously, we just got confirmation today that just like LTX 2023, we will have a custom screwdriver station on site. Oh, wa. Really? I had no idea. This is the first time hearing of it. What the heck? But that's pretty cool. That is cool. So, we'll see you guys there. I have I have I ever explicitly said that you and I are going to be there? Like we've talked about Whale Land a lot, but did we clarify that? Oh man, I got my date screwed. I am going to be there to be clear as the as a spoiler. I am totally going to be there the whole time. Everything's fine. Everything's okay. But I got my date screwed up and I thought that thing that's coming this weekend that I told you about was that weekend and I was like, "No." And then figured out that I'm all clear. I'm all good. So, I'll be there. Geez, Luke, I was real upset for a moment. Anyway, tickets are available at lmg.gg/whaland. We will see you there. I I got to jump back into something cuz somebody in chat reminded me of uh something I was going to say. Where'd it go? Uh Deep Blue V7 said, "Our our servers for our open- source chat solution have been buckling under all the people signing up. Maybe just temporary, but usually some people stay at least." And that's awesome, and I'm very happy for it. I really don't want this to come across negative, but something I was planning on saying for this segment was that if like say TeamSpeaks users for example double quadruple, I don't think Discord will even notice. Um the the the the mass that Discord has right now is insane. And one thing that this might help is like your open source project, maybe you guys get bigger and maybe TeamSpeak gets bigger and maybe these other solutions get bigger and maybe they become at least seen as a viable actual alternative. That alone in my opinion would be a huge win. Uh because right now it's it's nothing. People basically just use Discord or nothing. It's it's only Discord. Um, so if we can at least normalize that there are alternatives, even if we can't take a real actual sizable chunk out, but if we can just normalize there being alternatives, um, I think that would be awesome. So, just try to keep that in mind. I don't I don't think we're going to be able to make a real dent to Discord. Um, but this is a this is a slow war, not a fast one, I think. All right. Do you want to pick our next topic? Sure. Um, Modern standby won't drain your battery anymore. According to Microsoft, Windows 11 Yeah, according according to Microsoft, can also be used that way. Uh, Windows 11 background processes won't trigger modern standby issues, meaning you'll no longer see excessive battery drain when your machine should be in the uh S0 sleep state. Previously certain procreesses previously certain processes were able to break the machine out of the sleep state without the user's knowledge leading to unexpected battery use. And in many cases it is now stored somewhere that it's difficult for it to breathe. So like a backpack or something like that. And it can also go into really really bad thermal situations. and and and those thermal situations can be exacerbated by the use of say for example liquid metal thermal interface material which um when when it's stored in a backpack completely enclosed and the laptop gets super hot for no reason whatsoever and is on its side uh for a extended period of time can lead to some pretty bad stuff. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Uh it can lead to unexpected battery use naturally in a good environment. It can lead to other even worse things in a bad environment. In newer builds, Windows will now try to prevent the PC from waking up. Try uh without the user opening the lid or pressing the power button. The discussion question is has anyone not employed by Microsoft confirmed this is actually fixed? I don't think anyone's completed testing on this yet. I'm sure other people are and please check theirs out as well, but Labs is going to be is going to be cooking on this a little bit. Uh we obviously have other things we're already working on, but this is something we will be looking to as well. So hopefully we'll have updates for you there. I'm sure there will be an article if nothing else. Um and yeah, I hope other people check it out too because this is going to be something that's relatively difficult to conclusively make statements on. Okay, I have a fantastic test system for you. My Elite book that I've been daily driving lately is I would say a solid like one out of eight times um is going to be like piping hot when I take it out of my backpack. And so it comes up for me a lot just because this this is kind of funny. I haven't had a desktop at work for like a year. Uh it was back when I did the Qualcomm Snapdragon 30-day challenge. I was supposed to be using Snapdragon issues with my NC laptop on a dock. Um, even though I went back to x86 more recently with a stricks Halo machine. So that that HP I look I I don't know that I would necessarily blame HP for this, but I run into this all the flipping time. And it is so freaking annoying. People are very rightfully pointing out that MacBooks don't really have this issue. Nope. And also pointing out that Linux laptops don't really have this issue. Yeah, that's totally fair. I mean, hey, we're on we're kicking the Linux challenge off, I think, in this next coming week, right? Yeah. And I told I told Elijah I want five drives. So my desktop upstairs, my desktop downstairs, my work laptop, my uh my Oh, my handheld, and then I think there was there was one other one. I was like, I'm I'm doing it, Luke. I'm going for it this time. I'm not going to touch Windows for a month. Do we help each other at all? interesting like how like cuz Okay, so here hold on let me put it this way cuz I think I agree with you but I have some comments cuz I I would think you know a very communitydriven initiative like Linux right you would think well yeah community is why not your immediate community part of it right yeah and if your community was like Linux noobs you know, who are who are also who are who are also on this journey at the same time. I would say that that is is kosher. I'd say that that's fair game, but I don't think some of the other folks in our cohort would really qualify as a Linux noob and then where do we draw the line? Like, am I allowed to call Wendell? You know, I I feel like for me, I I kind of still want to be me. I'm not going to completely pretend to not know anything because this is not my first kick at the can, but I'm but I'm not going to just leverage the resources that I have. I like I I think Elijah has a line in the script that's something along the lines of like not everyone has Torvolds on speed dial, right? Like you we can't we can't just we can't be us either. It has to be somewhere in the middle. Elijah just trying to flex as per euge. Um yeah, okay, fair enough. I mean, it's a it's a pretty cool flags. Yeah. I um I'm not sure how this is going to go for me. I I think yours is going to be kind of boring just because you're like dailying it already. But like I it's it also it hasn't truly been daily because that laptop has had so many hardware issues that it's been bouncing back and forth between getting serviced and coming back to me that sometimes I end up back on Windows for a while and then I go back to running uh various versions of of Linux. Linux has never genuinely never been the problem and I have verified multiple times that it happens. I have two drives in the machine now. So I have one for Windows and one for Linux. Um, well, not realistically. I have one that is split in half for Windows and Linux and I have a storage drive, but whatever. Um, you know what I mean? And it it Yeah, they they want me to like try to verify that it's working under Windows cuz they just don't believe me. So, it's like, okay, I'm running Windows and I ran into the same problem again. Thank you. Please fix. Uh, and then after I have it for like a little while, um, if I know they're going to repair it, I go back to Linux anyways cuz that's what I want to be using. But I've been like verifying the issues within Windows. Um, and it's a problem in both. It's definitely like hardware issues with the laptop. It has nothing to do with software at all. But, um, so yeah, I've been bouncing back and forth, so I can't quite say that I've been dailying it, but I have been fairly actively using it for a long time now. Um, and feel pretty comfortable in it, but I'm also not really gaming much on that laptop. Um, I find personally, and I'm genuinely not intentionally calling anyone out here, but uh, even even a video that I I publicly said I liked a lot, and I do like a lot, whenever you see creators do like Linux eyew switch challenges, it's always framed as a challenge. And that always involves doing things that are particularly difficult in Linux. I don't even This stood out. Hold on, let me finish talking. This stood out to me because when I switched Linux on my laptop, I just did what I always do and it was literally never a problem. All right, ever. But everyone always has like a thing. And it's very common that it's creators and creators always have to edit videos and this is like a known problem is that like Premiere doesn't work very well, right? So they run into like the editing videos problem and then they're like, "Oops, it doesn't work." And it's like, "Yeah, okay. Well, that was predictable cuz all the other I switch videos also tried to edit videos and also had problems. So, it's like I Yeah, I I don't know. All right, let the record show that that right there was definitive proof that anything can happen once. Luke did in fact get to finish talking. Uh, but I'm still going to jump in now that you're done and defend myself. I don't think anything that we tried to do as part of our last I switched was unrealistic or unreasonable cuz I wasn't trying to I wasn't trying to edit. Our last I switch was pretty I don't edit video. Our last I switch was pretty successful though. I mean I had a lot of issues. I'm not necessarily saying I had a problem with our previous run at it. Okay. I just like in in general I think the I don't know. I would implore the audience to pay attention to the things that, you know, we the three of us or anyone else has actual problems with instead of just their conclusion being that there was some problems with what they were doing. Um, like if they if they play, you know, if you play games that are Proton Platinum and you just run some basic applications and spend the vast majority of your time in a web browser, like an enormously massive percentage of users, then in a lot of cases, you know what? I actually won't say this as a definitive statement. I suspect in a lot of cases it's going to be totally fine, but we'll see how it ends up going. Um, yeah. All right. I can't see Dan's Luke's saying there's a negative connotation to challenge that suggests there was a problem. That's part of it, but I I think it's that is definitely part of it, but I also think people put themselves in situations intentionally sometimes. Um, it's like it's like the whole throwing for content thing, right? um you you you put yourself in in situations intentionally that will cause contention and will cause issues because that is insanely more interesting on camera. If I went to explain my laptop experience with Linux on camera, I would sit down and be like, "It was fine. I used a web browser and it was it was f it was fine. I didn't have any problems. I had to Google how to update it and then I went, okay, that's how." And then I updated it and it was fine. like no one's going to care about that. So, so you have to like do something. Like they're literally promoting Linux by putting it in difficult situations that it's not going to do well at because then at least more people will see the video and you might get more people to adopt it. Like I'm not going after the creators here to be clear. It's just it's a complicated situation. I just want people to understand that like just because it has problems doing certain things doesn't mean that it will always for one and for two doesn't mean that you're necessarily doing that. Um, like how many people in the audience are actually editing videos? Okay, that is such a that is such a hilarious thing for you to bring up because so much of how we make decisions is totally not based on what we actually do. We know from GPU review videos that we make. Oh yeah. And and look at Apple's marketing. how laser focused are they on, you know, on how creative you can be with your iPhone? And there is absolutely a subset of the users that are, you know, going to be, you know, the next filmmakers, you know, the next generation of filmmakers, but there's also a lot of users that are just sitting in Starbucks browsing Facebook on their MacBook and that's all they were realistically ever going to do on it. They could have had a Chromebook and they would have had quite literally exactly the same user experience. Yeah, my phone is largely sold on its camera and 90% of the photos that I take are of my parking spots. Um, like that's the most Luke thing you've said at least today. I was reviewing my photos from New York and it's it's it's where I parked my car at the airport and that's like it. It's funny because there's certain things that you do and there's certain places that you go that you take a lot of pictures. That is true. That is true. Like when you went to that and that get away from it all place you went in Taiwan, you took a ton of pictures there. Like you were you were behaving like a like a relative I haven't seen in a couple years. How many pictures you wanted to show me? Like it was crazy. Uh yeah, that's true. But other than that, like like you almost seem weirded out if I pull out a phone at dinner and I'm like, "Let's take a picture." Like why? To what end? Yeah, for some reason my brain's like people or building? No. Leaf? Yes. Yeah, sure. Rock, yes. I don't know why. Parking spot. Triple. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Every time. Will you actually use this reference? Someone said bird. Yeah, that's true. I have become that guy. You're such a bird. I do take photos of what happened. I often take photos of birds while while my thumbs up is in the frame as well. I'll be like, "Yeah, good bird." If if I had told you when I met you that you were gonna turn into a weird bird dad, you'd have been like, "No, that's stupid. Birds are stupid." Like 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're a waste. You would have been like, "They're a waste of time and money." Yeah. I just get a dog. Honestly. Yeah. Unbelievable. That's still not necessarily untrue, but I do like them a lot. All right. On the subject of taking pictures, um, Ring, Ring is a company that is owned by Amazon and it takes a lot of pictures of your front porch and paid big bucks for a Super Bowl ad to celebrate or announce or whatever, whatever they were trying to do is not what ultimately happened. uh but to promote their search party tool which allows anyone in the US, Ring owner or not, to launch a search for their lost dogs using all the Ring cameras in their neighborhood. Now, hold on a second. Just give me one second here. I can see the look on your face. You know I can see you even though I'm remote, right? Just contain yourself. As someone who has lost multiple pets and who cried multiple tears multiple times over losing multiple pets, I understand the sales pitch here. I get it. However, if you're in that moment, if if if 10 minutes ago you recognized that your pet is gone, in that moment, a lot of people are going to want this thing, even if right now they don't. Not everyone. Some people will hold true to their their, you know, their line. However, however, this launch coming just a few months after Ring announced a partnership with law enforcement surveillance provider Flock Safety was received with really an immediate and completely predictable response from just everyone. Um, with the EFF calling the feature a surveillance nightmare. Look, if Amazon and Ring was a company that I had any kind of trust in whatsoever, right? Any kind of trust in whatsoever. And they announced this like lost dog feature. And it was a core part of the design of the product that all of the image recognition was done locally on device and that was opt in and and and it's something that as someone as a pet dad who has has lost a pet that got out um it's something that I I I would crave you know that that I could want. But the last two companies that I could have any interest Yeah. really in administering this are going to be Amazon and Flock. Dude, Flock has has has demonstrated sort of irre irrevocably. Yes, that's the B. Basically, they could never earn my trust back the way that they have handled security and data privacy. Man, Flock and Persona, aka Peter Teal, uh, getting into consumer stuff is not fun. That that being like a primary thread of today's show is not cool. It is worth noting, by the way, that they apparently uh ditched the flock partnership, but like, okay, doesn't that just tell us everything we need to know about them? How they choose their partners? like I don't want to I don't want to be I don't want to be like that. But you know if someone is if someone say for example was married to someone abhorrent and you know doesn't seem to have a problem with it you know like what what's our what's our nuts? Let's let's use a historical example. Ava Braun or Eva Braun, excuse me. Okay. Who's this? Is that's Hitler's wife. Oh, like I never name. Does it not tell us anything about her just how she chooses her partner? It's like, yeah, at some point she cut ties with Hitler or whatever. Well, they kind of both cut ties with the world at the same time, but that's a whole separate thing. You know, like just because she divorces the guy, does that not still tell us a fair bit about him? Especially if the circumstances of cutting ties were because of public pressure. Like, doesn't that just doesn't it still tell us a lot about the kind of decision-m process that's going on behind closed doors? Is this called is this a thing? Zoys or whatever says Godwin's law. Like, is this just like birds of a feather kind of thing? What's Godwin's law? Uh, I'm No, I'm not reading the AI overview. is an internet adage asserting as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches. No. Okay. Very funny. I actually thought this was a pretty good comparison, Linus. I I will give you that. Um, thank you. I I just for other people that might be confused. I was like, I didn't think they did. Yeah, they did not divorce. I understand he's doing the comparison here because themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, he's doing the comparison to divorce here because Amazon and Flock are no longer working together. Um, but yeah, and you know what, like Avon Fox in float plane chat points out, okay, what if this person was manipulated or in a relationship due to pressure or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes, that's fair. It's not a perfect analogy. Please. The the point is just that Amazon as a company clearly chose to partner with Flock. Okay. if Lionus Media Group chose to partner with Flock and then you guys got super mad about it predictably and then I said, "Oh, wow. Yeah, wow. That Oh, you guys are so right. We should have never done that. We're We're not doing that anymore. Wow. I'm so glad that Come on. That's happened." You know, has it not? And we're not uh Okay. Flock. Okay. I don't think you could draw a direct parallel to anything maybe not someone as bad as Flock, but we've worked with we've worked with brand someone just pointed out anchor. We've worked with brands. Uh someone said Raid: Shadow Legends. Uh we've worked with brands that we've then been like, you know what, maybe you guys are right. Let's pull back on that. Um but Flock literally like No, I agree. The scale is not the same, but I'm just saying like this this can't be extrapolated fully. So you can absolutely make mistakes but in this case I'm talking about partnering with again an abhorrent organization that it has complete and utter disregard for user security and privacy in some in in some cases like Rage Shadow Legends never led to anyone being you know falsely harassed by law enforcement or you know Raid Shadow Legends never got anyone they never had anyone one have a gun pointed at them because of it. Like, let's let's be real here, guys. I I think these these two is it birds of the same feather? Whatever. I'm trying to use the flock analogy. Um I don't know how much they mind it. It It do be Amazon after all. FDC, this is older 2023, but FDC and DOJ charge Amazon with violating children's privacy law by keeping kids Alexa voice recordings forever and undermining parents deletion requests. Um, Amazon just do be Amazon at the end of the day. Maybe they're kind of chill with with Flock. Uh, they for raising that. And the other thing is that it has to do with like our knowledge at the time. If we announced a partnership with Flock today when you've heard me on stream talking about the horrible things that they've done and making it clear how horrible I think they are like we I no there's no precedent in LMG's history for anything like that. Like people are bringing up people are kind of trying to sort of poke poke holes in it here. Someone brought up the honey thing. It's like yeah but we didn't know any of We stopped working with them when we did and we stopped working with them as soon as we did. like that. That's the difference. Whereas when you announce a partnership with someone that you know is horrible, then it's a completely different situation. April Fool's video idea. Good lord. What What is We're partnering with Flock. New new LTD store webcams. Oh my god. That's how we can use Twitter. New Twitter cams powered by flock 724 on float plane chat says do not do that. You will never recover. And you're so right. The number of times though, dude. The number of times I run up against people who legitimately believe horrible things about me because I joked about it or because I said it in an April Fool's video is distressingly high. Like this is the reason that actors like Dwayne Johnson have no lose clauses in their contracts because people will actually watch someone be acting on TV and be stupid enough to think that they're weak because they lost a fight in a movie that they were scripted to lose. Which I I think you can I think you can be comfortable just not caring about those people's opinions, though. I I I think I think that can be okay. Luke, I wish I could rise above. I wish that this was an isolated small tiny minority. Luke, I wish I think you dig pretty hard to find comments sometimes. I think you can't help yourself. I think that that can be true at the same time as it can be true that it is a distressingly large number. Sure. Maybe I should just retire to a potato farm. Yeah, Dan and I had a fancy dinner last night. My favorite part was the potato. Dang, they're pretty good. Potatoes are pretty good. Potatoes are It's hard to It's hard to knock a good potato, dude. Dude, a baked potato with some butter and some salt and pepper. You get a bit of sour cream on there. You get a little bit of like green onion. Like, now we're talking. Are you salivating, brother? Oh yeah. Potato in almost any form though. Warm potato. Great. Great. Cold potato. Warm potato. Fantastic. Okay. Hear me out. Hear me out. Okay. Nugget potatoes cold. Nugget potatoes cold can be pretty good. Yeah. All right. Potatoes just win. Potatoes are great. Yeah. Yeah. And not not every not every French fry is good cold, but but there are there are good cold French fries. I I I'll die on that hill. I think they're better warm. I can't think of a I can't think of a potato that's like even even nugget potatoes. I think they're better warm. Potatoes gain a lot from heat. I don't know why, but I think they gain a lot from heat. They're I will give you nugget potatoes like at a like room temperature are probably the best form of potatoes at room temperature in my opinion. I still think they're better warm. I once accidentally potato show ate so many room temperature nugget potatoes that I threw up. I wasn't sick. I just spontaneously was like my stomach is at capacity. I was I was reading. I was like reading and just eating potatoes and and I just Yeah. And I just threw up. It was like it wasn't even like it wasn't the sick sickest most like foul throw up ever or anything. It wasn't even that gross cuz I had just eaten all of it and it was just it was basically just potato. Like it was probably still edible. Oh, gross. I love I love this like way too perfect image I have in my head of this situation of you just being way too laser focused in on what you're doing to not realize that you've eaten like an entire massive massive bowl size of your entire torso thing of of potatoes and your body's just like bro get it out of here. Yeah. ADHD turned up to 11 someone point. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's all I'm all I'm picturing is just like, wait, I I must keep reading. And also, this hand is just doing this motion for whatever reason. Uh, that's great. Um, anyways, back to evil things. Um, we don't unfortunately get to keep talking about potatoes. Um, yeah, that I mean that sucks a lot. Uh, there are alternatives again, just like in the Discord thing. There are there are alternatives in this range of products. the alternative ends up being more expensive usually. Uh but you can shout out ubiquity. I was just going to do it. There are also other alternatives that aren't ubiquity, but uh you know in our kind of spaces a lot of people do do be liking ubiquity. Uh okay, hear me out. True spec security camera uh partnered with Flock. Um Oh god. Yeah. No, but like it's it's effectively going to end up being self-hosting and through something like Ubiquiti or a variety of other products. Um, it's got to be self-hosted. You can do a self-hosted solution. You can have your own cameras. Um, you could share them with with family members. You could uh remotely access them when you're away from home. You could use a lot of the same features. You can literally do the like press the doorbell, have a video call thing um just without uh you know, Amazon um watching your every move. It is possible. Hey, it'll cost more, but if there was a company, if there was a company that you didn't have to feel like you were um you know, helping move us towards a dystopian future, um it would be Creator Warehouse. We have uh we have a lot to talk about this week and the big one is the one that Luke is wearing. Dude, it's kind of covered right now, so maybe if you can give them a better look at it. That thing is so flipping cool. This is it. This is the lawsuit hoodie. This hoodie exists because 3 years of unanswered collab emails felt like a sign to stop waiting for permission and just make this white-on black hoodie that we wanted to make. Anyway, it's made from the same heavyweight 100% cotton as the WAN hoodie. So, it feels thick, premium, and built for daily wear with YKK zippered pockets to keep your things secure. The sleeves feature bold, fully embroidered controller inspired graphics, and there's a small Easter egg on the care label that is optional to read, but highly recommended. You want to bring up the website? Okay. Yeah. Don't Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Let's see if people can figure out Let's see if people can figure out what it was inspired by. I will not confirm or deny because I don't actually I mean Oh, is it in there? It's literally the first line of the description. Oh, no. That's That's not Oh, wait. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, okay. Never mind. We apparently went full not that subtle. Literally, the the brand name is like the third word. Okay, cool. Well, okay. We weren't actually concerned about Dbrand in terms of like the look. Uh, what we really wanted to do was a hoodie that looked like a thing. And then in order to make sure that the iconography wasn't going to cause any problems for us, we partnered with Dbrand to use their iconography. It's a pretty cool product. Do you want to scroll through some of the uh some of the other pictures? Yeah, I love the Sherrod ones. I think this is Sherrod. Yeah, he's got the the helmet on. These looks the Dbrand Ro robot helmet. I don't know where they found to do these photos, but these are awesome. I I am continually impressed with the photos that are coming out of the Steam. This is Oh, good. I was hoping there was going to be a good picture of this. The zipper looks sick. It's like blacked out and it has this like copper inner core. It looks so dope. I don't think I've seen that before. Um I think it's Yeah, it's all of them. Even the smaller zippers that are on your pockets have this like copper inner design. I think that looks It's It seems to be like a spring to kind of like keep it held down. Is that what the actual copper bit is doing? I think so. Guys, that's nice. H I don't know. Um yeah, but keep scrolling. Apparently the last picture is the b the best one. There's a lot of pictures for this. I think they really liked the set that they were at cuz there is there is quite there's quite a few. Uh but we will we will keep going through them. There's so many pictures. There is a ton of photos. Nice. That's a bit of a hint. Dude, I I I kind of love this hoodie. When we got our first sample of it, that photo is sick. That photo is hard. Amazing. That's dope. Yeah. I don't know where the heck they were. That's sick. That's sick. That's probably my favorite one. Hell yeah. It's um Okay. Do you want to throw us back on? This one is dope. Yeah, those are cool. It's It's one of those things. I think this is when our team is is like h see I don't want to take anything away from the other things we do but this is the stuff that gets me uniquely excited like this is when I think the team is at their absolute best when they create something that is so sort of gamer culture like internet culture referencing and yet is so flipping wearable And if somebody doesn't know what it is, if they don't know that it looks kind of like a, you know, game console or if they don't recognize those icons, they're just like, "Wow, cool hoodie." But if they do, you know, it's the if you know, you know. And I just I love stuff like that. They absolutely Yeah. Yeah. Marchable. They hit it completely out of the park on this design. Taking I again I don't want to whatever lawsuit hoodie go check it out. lmg.gg/lawsuit hoodie. Flipping cool. Um some quick housekeeping from the warehouse. Uh turns out when you keep making really cool new stuff, you eventually run out of space. So we're running three sales right now to clear some space and reset for what's next. There's the last chance sale at lmg.gg/lastchance. gg/lastchance. So, this is the final call on some older stock that is not coming back once it's gone. At least we have no plans to bring it back. Uh, so no restocks, no reruns, no, oh, I'll just grab it later. This is later. Get it now. Um, only the bundles are end of life. Okay, commuter bag, OG backpack, and techack will live on, but these bundles are going away. This is last chance. Uh, we also have our end of season apparel sale. Clearing out some seasonal styles to make room for new designs that are already in the works. Same quality and fit, just end of season pricing while supplies last. That's lg.gg/endofse. And finally, we have a buy more, save more for all blank t-shirts. One blank t-shirt is just not enough. They're comfortable, easy to wear, and having a few in the rotation just makes sense. Stock up on blanks at lmg.gg/blank tees. Te e tes. That's the one. Uh maybe Dan, do you want to throw these links in the description in the various chats if that uh kind of works for you? All right. Sick. Sick. Luke, want to pick a topic for us? Uh, sure. No problem. YouTube react videos could face lawsuits, but not for the reason you No, we're supposed to explain um uh uh uh checkout messages. You told me bigger topic. I Yeah, I know. I screwed up. You told me bigger topic. I know, but I introduced all the products and and now that's when we're supposed to do checkout messages, right? All right. Okay. Uh, wait, where's the thing? Wait, is it not in here anymore? Okay, I'm just going to have to wing this. Checkout messages are the way to interact with the W show. We don't want you to throw money at your screen. Or we do want you to throw money at your screen, but we don't want you to just throw money at your screen for acknowledgement. We want you to throw money at your screen and get Oh, yeah. Check out check. No, check out messages, comms. Yeah. Okay. They're chat's gaslighting me. We want you to get highquality merchandise in return. So, if you want to send a message into the WAN show where producer Dan Are you guys going to throw him up there? Yay, there he is. Nice. Where producer Dan will um just post it like that one that's up at the top of the frame right now or he'll reply to it or he will curate it for me and Luke to respond to. Then all you got to do is head to the checkout on ltstore.com. There you go. And you'll see this interface where you can pick a color, decide whether to leave your name or have it be anonymous and go ahead and place your order and we'll show you what a curated one looks like. Oh man, I'm so tired, dude. I was snowboarding all day. I'm like dying. That was my best. That was the best that I could do just now. Am I super blurry? No, you're just little down there in the bottom, I guess. Cool. You are blurry. It's uh it's focused on the background. Put up your hands. I'll fix it. I will try to fix it. Technology. No. Oh, for crying. So blurry. Blurry lioness. H. You got to squint. Camera's in use by another application. Like, yes, I know. That's the That's why I need to fix it. Seriously, I can't. The Razer app doesn't let me change the focus if it I love technology. How about a merch message? Oh, now you're worse. Yeah. Yeah. we're good. I'm back. I'm so back. Okay, Dan, show us how a merge message works for crying out loud. No, I won't. Well, just I'll show you how I'll show you how to check out. I'll show you how the com works. Autofocus is disabled. What is it doing? My goodness. we're losing them. Oh, no. Put on your glasses. Just saying. Hi, W. DLL. I was wondering about how you chose the colors of LTD store items. Is there some science to it? Is it purely vibes? And why not just make the same product in more colors, especially apparel? Uh, I can answer the more colors part. More colors or more SKUs. Uh, and that can get that can get pretty rough on certain things, especially when there's a lot of sizes. So, like if you look at um I'm going to bring up on screen our our cleanup wizard t-shirt. So, if we added another color here, we don't add one product. We add six products because we add a red one of this in small and medium and large and extra large and extra extra large and extra extra extra large. Um, and you can extrapolate that quite a bit sometimes. Like the pants, the pants can be pretty brutal for this. Uh, if I go to, let me go navigate through the store real quick. We have, he's going to keep working on his blur. I'm not worried about you seeing him. U, I'm going to go over to this one, the city set. Go to the new pants that we have that are awesome. Now, you have two different inseam lengths, two uh, a crazy amount of waist sizes and color. So you've got all the waist sizes times two times the amount of colors and the amount of products that you have to keep in stock just goes whoop. So usually try to keep it kind of dialed down. Now there's a bit of a research portion to selling things as well where we put these pants on sale. We've got the regular, we've got the tall, we've got these all these different waist sizes. If these sell super well, that might inform us that the pants are good and maybe some people might like additional colors and then we could expand from there. But if these just sell like kind of okay, then maybe we don't want to add a bunch of colors cuz maybe people like the pants enough but they don't like them enough to have to buy more in a bunch of different colors. Uh, so yeah, t-shirts have a bit of an easier time with this because you can have a bunch of blanks in a range of colors and then print the shirts onto the blanks, but then that even that's not like a perfect answer. Um, hopefully I did justice to that question for the CW people. Uh, I know there was another part to that. How do you pick the colors? Um, yesesh. There's a very low percentage chance that I can answer this accurately. Lionus might know decently well, but he has faded into the void. Uh, he's gone. So, I'm going to give it a shot. CW people, I'm sorry if I fail you. U, but I think they they look at trends, they look at upcoming trends, they look at general fashion stuff and just try to look at uh the different types of colors that people are into moving forward. Um, and try to keep us matched with said trends. Now, uh, we do tend to fall into a bit of a category of tech nerd. Uh, and generic tech nerd do tend to like black shirt. Um, so black shirt with printing on it does often end up being a way that we go. Um, but I also think that they're trying to have fun with stuff. They want to have fun jobs. They want you to have more interesting clothing. I support it. So, every once in a while we get stuff like the pixel heart shirt, which is this like crazy red. Um, yeah, I didn't sell the teddy fleece jacket, which is pretty wild colors as well. That one does pretty good. People love that one. I really like the RGB sweater. I really think people look really sharp in this. Um, I think I've told the story like a million times, but is anyone supposed to be able to see what you're showing? Um, I can show that now. Um, this is the the RGB sweater. This is a non black. It's actually it's a it's a dark like I don't know if you could call it navy, but it's a dark blue with like like basically color flecking throughout it. I didn't know this was our product for a while. Um I sat down at a conference next to Taran and he was wearing it and I was like, "Oh, wow. It's a really nice sweater. It looks good on you." I had no clue it was ours. Um that's hilarious. I think it looks really sharp. Um, I think like when you look like this photo, I think is a really good representation of just like you wear a decent pair of pants, you throw this on top of it, and you look very professional while wearing a sweater. It's cool, but with a touch of fun. Yeah, 100%. Yep, it's cool. Okay, next question. Thanks for stalling. No problem. Um, let's see. Hopefully my guesses on those answers were at least decently accurate. I didn't hear them cuz I had to leave the room. Yeah. in order to open up the application in order to put it back to manual focus, which it was still on, but just all right. I did what I could. Oh, great. I started Clare Obscure a week or so ago, and I'm really enjoying it. Lionus talks about JRPGs a lot. Are there any other modern ones with some ARPG elements I should check out? Love the show. Thanks, guys. Uh, I'm the last person to go to for game recommendations because I a I tend to be like kind of basic. Like I just play what I know I'm probably going to like. Um, and b I don't get a chance to play a ton of games, so I don't really get to go off the beaten path much. Like like what what am I supposed to say? Yeah, Expedition 33 was really good. Did you really need me to tell you that? like flipping like swept the Game Awards, right? Like it's you don't take don't take my word for it at that point, I I I love Crosscode. It's uh it's probably h is it my is it my favorite modern JRPG? The characters are so incredible. Um if you haven't played it already, go play it. But it's more of like a pixel art style that I'm personally really into. And I just I haven't I haven't played that many modern ones. I did finish Expedition 33 since last WAN show. So, if we want to talk about it at all, we can. But Luke hasn't played and I don't think Dan's playing, so there's not really going to be much for me to say other than Yeah, it's really good. Um, without getting into stuff that would involve serious spoilers for people in chat and on the show who might actually play it at some point, you know. Okay. One one small thing I know on the store that we're advertising like the polo and the tech pants together and this this might be me being RGB sweater pilled but I think the tech pants and a nice belt and the RGB sweater would go really well together. I'm just going to put that out there before we move on. Thanks Luke. Come to me for future fashion advice. Next topic. YouTube React videos could face lawsuits but not for the reason you think. A lawsuit has been filed between two creators for reaction-based content. The catch, one channel is filing the lawsuit against the other for the way the react content was acquired. Interesting. Christopher Cordova, the individual who filed the suit, is stating that the footage that was acquired without their permission was ripped using ripping tools that bypass YouTube's technical protections, which they claim is in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, DMCA. Torrent Freak stepped in to defend Jonathan Hunult. Hopefully I said that right. The individual being sued saying that there is no way Cordova could prove that's what I was kind of thinking. Or no ripping tools are being used stating that for years many React creators simply record their screen instead of ripping the content. That's yeah that this is very difficult to prove. Judge Dearie did not immediately throw out the case, which has raised concerns in the React community because if this case goes through, it could have effects down the line for all React type content. That would be I mean very interesting. Uh to summarize, this isn't a question of fair use. Judge Dearie has acknowledged this as fair use, but what calls into into question is the way react footage is obtained. How are you supposed to how would you prove how you got it? Like what would what would a hypothetically what would that look like to you? Dude, I have no idea. I I mean the discussion question here is how the is anyone ever going to prove how people obtained footage? I'll just cut it out of the video if I leak the file name. Um yeah, I have no idea. I don't think you can really prove this. But then would that what difference does it make result? None in my opinion. Uh but would that result in if you can't prove that you got the footage like ethically then you can't do it at all or would it go the other way around? I don't know. I don't even think it's a question of ethically though. It's a question of whether you circumvented a digital lock effectively, right? But then is screen capturing a screen not the same thing? Is that not a ripping tool anyway? That that's where I and to be clear, I'm not even taking a side on this one. I'm I don't know what you do asking questions. You're not going to be able to prove it. And like you said, what difference does it make? Yeah. I don't I don't understand why we're even having this conversation because I don't understand the difference. I don't know. Okay. In that case, let's not even let's not even bother. Let's talk instead about something okay that doesn't happen necessarily that often, but something pretty cool that the Canadian province of Quebec has done. They have a new consumer protection act. Um, oh yeah, which is all in French. So, bad news everyone, but that's okay because uh we'll figure we'll we'll sort it out for you. But basically, um they had some planned obsolescence uh safeguards that were passed back in 2023 that are finally going to come into full effect October 5th of this year that are pretty cool. For starters, increased minimum warranty periods on consumer electronics and appliances from three years on laptops, desktops, tablets, cell phones, and game consoles all the way to 6 years on large appliances like stoves and refrigerators. That is kind of awesome. The next line is also awesome. Like, okay, hold on. Let's let's talk about this. Like why is it that 3 years is not already standard for an Xbox? That's crazy. Yeah, I like this a lot. I do suspect that this will result in products being just more expensive in Quebec. Yes. Um but I I think this would be cool if it was a standard basically everywhere. I this this like we're I think we talked about on the show like a couple weeks ago, but this this whole idea that like even refrigerator repair people are like, "Yeah, you don't bother to keep your refrigerator after 5 years. It's just garbage." Is like this is now e-waste on a totally different level, dude. Like when it's phones and stuff like that, that sucks. Obviously, e-waste in general is unfortunate, but like we're throwing out washers and dryers and refrigerators and dishwashers as if they're, you know, phone cycle replacements. Like, this is bad. This is not good. I've got people asking, "I wasn't an Xbox already a three-year warranty?" No, this is a like five I mean, what's the Xbox up to? I was going to say $500 device, but it's gone up in price. Like this is an expensive item that has a 1year warranty. Okay. The next one. Warranties follow the product for the full term of the warranty regardless of whether the item is resold. This is just such common sense. It's just so obvious. What? Something this this water bottle that that isn't a rule magically might not last as long if I sell it to Luke. What are you talking about? Insane. All right, next. Used cars and motorcycles also get automatic warranty coverage depending on the age of the vehicle and mileage. Um, uh, Jordan says, I think this is dealers only, but it's not clear in the translation. Yeah, that one's a little tough. I don't know how that works, but I I like the gusto. Yep. Additionally, all goods bought or leased must be able to serve their normal purpose for a reasonable length of time. The law also prohibits the use of techniques that make it more difficult to maintain and repair goods and aims to guarantee the availability of spare parts and repair services based. Retailers must inform customers of their minimum warranty coverage under the law before trying to sell any extended warranties So basically that's a really good last line actually cuz people might not be aware that this change happened. Uh that's a very good very good addition. Whoever was like, "hm, we might actually want to add something to this." That was smart. Good job. So, David and I David and I did another one of those fun Lionus and David just go and buy something adventures. Uh, we we went to Costco to buy a desktop and we had a really cool experience with that from one of the reps there that is not going to be able to appear on camera because we didn't call ahead and get permission to film at Costco. just kind of showed up and we're like, well, we're buying a computer and we're going to roll on some metag glasses and uh good luck everybody. Uh, by the way, uh, apologies in advance. David has never shot anything on metagasses before and he's a very active conversationalist, so the footage might be a little shaky sometimes. David was like the king of of interacting with with the with the host from behind the camera. You know that, Yeah. like he just like he can't help it. He's just a very active listener. He's a very he's a very uh engaged personality and these are all good things as long as you're not a human tripod. So anyway, but yeah, it was really fun and we we had a really great experience where um the the representative which I didn't even know like Luke, did you know that Costco had like someone who works in the electronics department to like talk to you about computers? Yeah, it's a thing. So, we talked to the guy and he gives us a little, you know, like pro tip that if you don't tell the motherboard manufacturer, for instance, that it was part of a complete system, it may very well have a longer three-year warranty on it. And same with, you know, things like memory. They often have a lifetime warranty on it. So, yes, it has, you know, a Costco extended 2-year warranty. So, they they do an extra year, I believe, on computer systems compared to if you buy those systems elsewhere, which I thought was a pretty good value ad. But he was like, "And you might even be able to get more." And it's the kind of thing that makes you feel really good as a consumer. Like the sales rep is is there to help you and guide you and inform you rather than there to extract your money. And it was just such a positive experience. And that's wicked. Uh to have that enshrined in law. I guess I wish it wasn't necessary, but I'm glad that it is. And I would love to see I'd love to see this expand. I did see someone in the chat saying, "Yeah, there's already brands that are um that are looking to pull out of Quebec because of this." But I think the answer is not for Quebec to back down. The answer is for everyone else to step up. That will give more opportunity and more sales attention to brands that don't. Which is awesome. Now, it's time to give some attention to the brands who sponsored the show today. Nice. We received some new chairs on the Wan Show set that Razer sent over. I unfortunately am not sitting on one of them. I'm sitting on a hardbacked wooden chair that has my butt completely asleep. But if I was sitting on one of them, then I would tell you these are their new Isker V2 new gen chairs. The leather on these now comes with Razer's cool touch technology to help not just with breathability, but to make them more peel resistant. Their goal is to find ways to vent heat to make longer sessions of gaming, working, or podcasting more comfortable. Whether you like to sit upright or you have the posture of a slug, their hyperflex lumbar system adjusts 360° to find an angle that works for you. And the headrest comes with memory foam cushions that are designed to fit the curvature of your neck. The armrests can be moved up, down, side to side, and can even shift the angle that they sit at. And you can grab one of these for yourself today by checking out Razer's new Isker V2 new gen chair at the link in the video description. I can say with 100% the sponsor readers over honesty that I wish I was sitting on that chair right now. This thing sucks so much. Sometimes a wooden chair can actually be really great. Oh yeah, this is not one of those times. The show is also brought to you by Squarespace. Whether you're an entrepreneur looking to finally launch your business or you're looking for a way to share your hobbies with the world, it really helps to have a website. And our sponsor Squarespace would love to help you get started. They've implemented new AI tools that have you start with a curated set of layouts that allow you to customize to fit your brand's vibe. All you really need to do is tell Squarespace what your brand is about, find a matching tone, and hit enter, and you will have at the very least a starting point. And if your business just happens to sell anything, all of that can be done right from Squarespace's platform. We've used Squarespace for many years for our linusmedroup.com website and we've been extremely happy with I mean the ease of use is like I know it's not in the talking points that often anymore these days but like they should still talk about it because it matters a lot when you're a company that you know not everyone happens to be a web developer and you know sometimes it's Colton updating the site. Um love the usability of Squarespace dude. So, start building your website today and get 10% off your first purchase by visiting squarespace.com/w. All right. You want to pick another do you want to talk about Ankor? This really came up when we were talking about the sponsors that we've kicked to the curb. It sure did. No notes. Ankor Yuthi Soundcore. Anker Yuthi Soundcore. Context. Anchor used to be our biggest partner. Did they? But our biggest partner? I don't think that's right. Is that right? Think so. I'm going to message Colton right now. they used to be a sizable partner that we had. Maybe the biggest one. I don't think that would have been right, but I messaged Colton and Steve and I will find out. Fake news in the Wandok. Uh, and we dropped them because of a fiasco with Yuthi where their cameras weren't encrypted and they tried to lie and got caught and it did get resolved, but it was weird and took a long time and they still had us on their website for like months and months and months and months and months and months and months. But, uh, we want to work with them again. So, Lionus wants to sus this out. Okay. I just heard back from Colton. He says, "Yes, they were our biggest partner 2020 era." Oh, man. Yeah. So, they messaged me earlier today and basically Colton's like, "Hey, we want to work with them again specifically on the Anchor and Soundcore brands. Are we fine engaging with them?" Uh, we dropped them many years ago uh because of the whole debacle. I'd just like to bring up for a moment that I'm so tired of people calling our integrity as a company into question when we have done stuff like this, like unflinchingly, without hesitation. Apparently, they were our biggest partner. Literally didn't matter. We did it anyway. Cool. Let's move on. Um, I think the big question here is put very succinctly by night author in the float plane chat. Any reason to believe that they have changed? I think that's the question. I think that's the question. And I have to I have to be honest with you. They they did eventually resolve the Yuthi thing. We still I still have no interest in engaging with the Yuthi brand. I didn't like the way that they deflected. Like if the Yuthi thing had happened and then they had immediately owned it and taken steps. I'm not about people being defined by their mistakes. To me, you're defined by you're defined by how you respond to them. How did they respond? They did eventually. They did eventually. They initially initially they just like deflected and and completely not apologized. Yes, they did eventually. It was like ages later. Um, and so that was my problem. That was why we ultimately were like, "Well, see you." And Andre B says, "Okay, well, how do you prove now that they're trustworthy?" So, I think that's why Colton is talking specifically about the Anchor and the Soundcore brands rather than even bringing up Yuthi with me because no, I I just don't um I just don't think that I would be comfortable with a Yuthi product at this point. Um, but like look, this is one of this is one of those things where when we dropped them, it did create a ton of confusion because I was very explicit from the start. I said, "Look, we're just not going to take their money. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop using their products." Like, check this out. Hold on. I'm up. One sec. Literally right now. Literally right now I am plugged in. I mean I mean an anchor power brick. I mean there's also this Oh, hold on. I can't see. One of the more recent articles on the labs website is testing an Anchor Nanocharger. Um yeah, we never said we weren't going to cover them. We never said we weren't going to use the products. we just said that we weren't going to take their money. Um and I think the question is have they have they done enough for us to change that? Yeah, I'm just looking at a lot of uh Oh, does the Verge require a subscription now? Interesting. Uh for some articles, not all. Apparently, their Yui blames the software update and promises to do better article is behind one of those. And I mean, I don't know. It's been five years. How long do we have to put someone in sponsor jail for? Like I I think it's I think it's um it was um was it actually 2020? I think it was like 2022 2023 or something. A lot of the not a lot of the stuff I'm finding online about this is from 2023. Yeah. Okay. Can you Okay. Oh no, Colton. So sorry, Colton said 2020. They were like they were our biggest partner in 2020. Got it. trying to remember. Um I'm trying to remember who it was. There was uh was it Tech Brew that uh made that really good point about not uh not just like if if a company makes a mistake, not just putting them in jail forever. Like at some point if they rectify the issue then No, it wasn't Tech Brew. Who was it? Luke, do you remember? No, I…

Transcript truncated. Watch the full video for the complete content.