I Love My Mac - WAN Show April 10, 2026

Welcome to the WAN show. We got a great show lined up for you guys today. It is week two of the positive WAN show. I had more fun last week than I probably have in over a year doing Wan. Maybe we just keep it this way. I'm not skimming through the dock today and I was just like, yeah, yeah, awesome. I want to talk about all these. We got a lot to talk about. One of the big ones is that I have spent about the last week with my MacBook Neo. I am ready to talk about some of my experiences with it, both good and also not as good. And in other news, that I got right before the show started. You bought one. Technically, not for me, but yes, I freaking called it. So, I can't believe how hard I called that. Yeah, I I don't know. Usually, you're the one who's predicting things out here like freaking Nostradamus, and now I get to do it. Y, it's a small win. but it's a win nonetheless. Speaking of winds, nonetheless, the French government is ushering in Lan Linux, which I assume is how they would say it. The year of Linux. We'll be talking about that. What else we got today? Uh, I mean, there's more Linux news on top of that. Deer, John Deere settles US right to repair lawsuit agreeing to a hundred million dollar fund for farmers and other things that I think is arguably like more important, but we'll talk about that soon. Also, Steam uh just this is actually so exciting to me. There's going to be a I can't find the topic, but there's going to be a frame rate estimator for games when you're looking at them in the store so you can tell how well it might perform on your machine, which is so sick. And they would have the data. They would have the data. It's awesome. And I would have the intro. The show is brought to you today by Dbrand, ODU, Squarespace, and Proton alongside our rap partner Dbrand and our chair partner and laptop partner which is Razer and also Razer. Do we need to have a policy that you're only allowed to sponsor the WAN show like once at a time? You know what? No. No, I don't think we do. Let's jump right into the headline topic, which this week has just got to be. I mean, it's MacBook Neo Mania out there. And now that I've switched over to it, dude, I got to say it's it's the real deal. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny cuz the one that I purchased, which again wasn't for me, but the one that I purchased is the same color. Yeah. Okay. So, you like the uh you like the the the yellowish yellow. I think it's just fun. There's so many things these days that are just either black or white. Yep. And it's like Okay. So, it's fun to just have something else. I don't want to bore you guys. And I know that, you know, the LTT audience tends to swing a little bit less. Hey, I'm so excited about Apple. Please tell me more about Apple. So, why don't I talk about some of the challenges that I've had with it? It turns out that while the MacBook Neo has been an absolutely fantabulous sort of daily driver machine, uh, web browsing, word processing, uh, chat, you know, all the things that I mostly spend my days doing have been I don't know how to describe it other than enjoyable. It's just such a nice machine to use. every aspect of it that you interface with directly is so good. But there have been a few challenges that have reared their head over the last little bit. And the one that's probably been the most disruptive to me is the limitations on the IO. If you're the kind of person that never connects your laptop to anything, I think I could recommend the Neo without hesitation, unless you use software that you, you know, you know, you're going to need more RAM, you're going to need more performance for. If you're just someone who uses a browser on your laptop, heck yeah. If you dock, I've had some issues. Really interesting. We got a one of those like dual USBC port out into a big breakout box. It just runs along the side. I think there's one from Anker, U Green, a few different brands. Yeah. And it's been totally fine, but it's not a dock fully. So, it kind of is. There's HDMI out and stuff. In fairness to Apple, the display that I'm connected to, not the most compatible. It's that Dell 6K one that we did a video on a little while ago, and there's two problems. So, first of all, it doesn't run at 6K, obviously, because that there's no way that this would be able to drive it. It runs at 4K, which would be fine. Um, except that Mac OS's native handling of non 16x9 and non the same aspect ratio as their displays displays is frankly unacceptable. There's already the weirdness with how Mac handles your like where setting your resolution rather sets your DPI like it sets your scaling is is how we would sort of think of it on Windows. Um and that can already be a little bit confusing. But on top of that, when you go through the list, even when you say expose all resolutions or or show me every resolution or something like that, when I'm connected to that Dell, even when I close my lid, which from the last time I did a MacBook challenge, if I recall correctly, is the only way to fully disable this display. You can't just like turn it off in the display manager. Um, and if I'm wrong about that, guys, hit me up in the chat. Um, but even if you close the lid and you're just only using your ultrawide display, I don't get a single ultra wide resolution. There is a tool that I downloaded, uh, it's called better, I think it's called better display. Yeah, better display. But frankly, after spending about 3 minutes on it, I didn't figure it out immediately. And it is seems pretty pretty obtuse. So, the the stretching for my display has been pretty freaking annoying. Not nearly as annoying as the occasional complete disconnects. Oh, weird. It'll just disconnect, go back to this for a second, and then fire the display back up. I haven't messed with an external display, so I haven't ran into any of that. Another big one is that I'm getting occasional Wi-Fi issues that Oh. I don't know if it's related to Apple's Wi-Fi chip or uh or or if it's related to our Ubiquiti access points or what it is. But I'm going to I'm going to fire this over to Dan just so I can show you guys. But occasionally I will just run into a situation where I can't stream video. Weird. Yeah. I was trying to review a video today on Frame.io and I just couldn't. And I was like, "Okay, that's really annoying, but maybe it's Frame.io." I have seen it before. I've seen it on YouTube as well, but I was like, "Okay, maybe it's maybe it's just Frame.io being a derp." And so, I fired up YouTube and I had exactly the same issue. I literally could not watch a YouTube video. I'm not going to I'm not going to make you guys watch the whole clip here, but Dan, did you did you get that? Yeah. Let me know when you get a chance. And uh for me for me just while he's figuring that out the there there was some stuff that was just like learning curve things right cuz I have no real experience with Mac OS so trying to figure out how to like set it up properly and stuff was just a little weird. Um but it wasn't it wasn't that bad. It's just kind of different and you know coming off of being on the Linux challenge for 2 months or whatever like learning new things about an operating system is kind of fresh right now. So not a big deal. You might say you're more used to thinking different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, the thing that really got me, sorry. The thing that really got me though was installing stuff. Okay. You ready for this? Mhm. It's very strange if it's not in the app store. The drag and drop thing. It's like, oh, drag and drop. Give us one second. Um, it's like, oh, oh, drag and drop. But you drag and drop and nothing happens. You have to like drag and hold and then like put it in an open spot in the folder and then it sort of happens. It's like what? I don't even think you have to do that. I think it's I think it's already doing it and then you're just fidgeting around more and it's doing it in the background and then you're like, "Oh, it's done." I I've There was also a lot of like ghost loading where that's what I want to call it is where like you'd go to launch something and just nothing happens. Your your mouse doesn't go beachball. Just nothing happens. Nothing comes out. And then you wait and then you Oh man. And then you you wait a while and then it just launches. People are saying wrong and stuff like Yeah, probably. I have no idea what I'm doing. It's just those are the things that kind of felt weird so far. And I mean to me it's like I get it that that's the Mac way. You you drag the thing over what? Why? I already doubleclicked it. Yeah, that was the weirdest part for me was like, what even is this step? What is the point? Why? Just how about just know? I I'm willing to bet this is one of those things where I understand why other people are used to it. Totally get it. But hear me out. Would you notice or care if that step just went away and then nobody ever saw that ever again? probably not. Why does it like mount the installers? Maybe I was doing something weird. Very likely I was doing something weird because I don't know what the heck is going on. I was dis I've been disappointed by how many things I couldn't find in the app store. That too. Discord. Wasn't in the app store. Why wasn't Discord in the Yeah. Why isn't Discord in the App Store? Very weird. And maybe that's on Discord. Because I I went to install something and then realized like, oh, I'm probably being such a boomer. They have an app store just like Linux has a package manager. I should just go use that. And then yeah, it just wasn't in there. It's very odd. I thought and that was one of the steps where I was like, "This is for sure a me problem." So, I checked, did I spell Discord right? Maybe it's buried for some reason. I scroll the whole time. No, it's not there. Teams, too. What the heck? Didn't look for teams. Yeah. And there's so many things and be like because people will take advantage of of vacuums in available apps. There's all these things that are kind of similarly named trying to entice you to download them in the app store. It's like, no, it's obviously that's not what I want. Obviously, I just want teams and I just want my Discord. Yeah. But other than that, it's actually been wonderful. And like I did the the body flex thing. I did that as like a demo to show them like, "No, it's actually made really well." Yeah. It didn't budge. Let's uh let me show you how wonderful the experience I had earlier today was. Made laptop. Yeah. But you don't know that this is Oh, no. No. I I rebooted it and the issue went away. Went away. Okay. And it's happened a few times. Got it. I don't think we ran into this. I wonder if this is a problem with your unit or something. We'll see if other people in chat have experienced this. We're not going to be able to watch this whole thing. It's a minute of of us watching this YouTube video not load. Ah, yeah. So, there's definitely been some It just wasn't working. It just It was not working. It did. It did not want any part of any of this. I don't think we can go back down, but yeah, there you go. Um, let me just see if there's anything else that's kind of stood out. The performance is really great until it's not great. Search is incredible. Oh, Spotlight. Oh. Oh, you use Spotlight now. I don't think I've ever used Spotlight before. It made me just mad again cuz I'm like, why why isn't Windows so much better? But Spotlight seems awesome. The funniest part of this is that, correct me if I'm wrong, but over the last few years, I feel like the Mac community has soured on Spotlight a little bit and feels it's gotten worse. Wow. It used to be like even better, like god tier and now it's still like a tier in my Oh, it's way better than in my opinion. But um but from my understanding, Mac users are a little bit like, "Come on, Apple. We can do better than this." cuz they know they can. Spotlight is like I really really liked Spotlight. I find uh navigation of like, you know, your local storage and stuff to be pretty simple. Like none of it feels like too bad. It It was kind of nice coming in with a little bit of pre-existing knowledge, knowing that if I had like my active window, the controls for it were going to be up in like the top bar, whatever you want to call that. Like knowing that ahead of time was kind of helpful. Um, learning how to use the I think it's the called the dock, the bar at the bottom. Learning how to use that in different ways and like what things mean like if it's to the right of the vertical line, it's not actually on your dock, it's just there right now and okay, I want to actually pin that to the dock and blah blah blah blah blah. I continue to be annoyed that Apple just kind of gets a free pass for some of the included software that is basically an ad. Um, like the fact that Apple TV is just literally front and center. That's okay. The Apple TV is probably fair. I did think it was kind of neat that games is there though. And there's like chess pre-installed and there's like some fun stuff like when you want chess, you don't want bejeweled with microtransactions. Yeah, this is See, this is my point is like Microsoft used to come with cool stuff. I used to get pinball and pre-sell. Yeah. And now it's just like ad garbage and I I get the Mac open and I'm suddenly like excited to check out some of the apps. I'm like, "Oh, I wonder what the chess app is like. I wonder what some of these other things are like." Um I I appreciated that not to already pivot it to Linux, but when I did my switch to KDE, KDE came with a bunch of pre-installed fun little games. I was like, "Oh, that's pretty sweet." They're so tiny. Like Katos says you should try the Windows Power Toys equivalent of Spotlight. It's so sad it's not built in. No, it's infuriating that I'm not It's good news and show week. I'm not going to be infuriated today. But good call. Good call. But the number of times that I've read that comment in float plane chat is more than a dozen over a span of at least a couple of years. At which point, it's not on me for not installing it. It's on Microsoft for not implementing it. Like if Windows is good by default, I will likely be inspired to do things like that to mod it to make it even better. But Windows has to be good by default. Um, if Linux isn't quite there, I'm much more willing to do stuff to Well, I didn't pay for it because this is free. I didn't pay for it. This is a very different they they cannot be seen as equivalencies in my mind. even if you're uh putting the the hat on and pirating Windows, I still think it's it's not the line is different. Um, and if I can spend a little bit of time and get Linux to a great spot and then just use that, I would rather do that than fight something that actively seems to hate me. Um, there extremely different vibes. Oh, Dan, I have another fun one for you. Uh, I don't think this is really like actionable in any meaningful way. Um, but I just thought it was so funny that here I'm let me let me send this over to you, Dan. Let's do a topic really quick that is related to the MacBook Neo and then we'll come back to something really funny. You're going to love this. Um, the Neo has apparently been so popular that Apple is running out of the A18 Pro Bend chips that were not quite iPhone 16 Pro ready, but work fine for the less constrained thermal situation in the Neo. Uh, Apple reportedly only planned to make 5 to 6 million units with the leftover supply they had and are now scrum scrambling to get more chips. I mean, freaking How does a Don't take this the wrong way. I mean this in the most respectful way because Apple is a modern-day masterclass in supply chain management and forecasting. How the did Apple think they were only going to sell 5 to 6 million units of these things? I Joe Schmo who can't make enough cables to save my life could have told them triple it. Like this thing is an absolute game changer. And that's probably before the educational institutions have even validated this thing. Like dude, there's going to be a lot more. How can they not? How could they that this is the kind of thing that I just I find so baffling. Like you remember back in the days when you were always working on like some review of some CPU or some GPU and we'd release our video where we're like, "Yeah, it's not that good." And then the brand would they'd call you up or they'd email you and they'd be like, "What do you mean?" And we're kind of sitting here going like, "You can run the same." Yeah. You can run the same benchmarks that we can. What are you talking about? And in a lot of cases, okay, this might explain some of it, which is in a lot of those cases. They did it. The the the technical teams totally understood. And it would it would end up they would just end up being like, "Ah, I don't know. It got to marketing." And then they just said some stuff and like that's not what we found. And this is like this is the opposite of that. This is like how could they possibly not have known that they had the product launch of the decade on their hands in at least in the laptop category. Seriously, name a laptop from the last 10 years as impactful as this one. I am not trying to shill. I don't have an investment in it. I think framework has been very impactful. I think if you'd said M1 MacBook I would have massive. I still think this takes both of those though. I think so too just because of the accessibility. I think both of those are up there for different reasons because to me the the long-term picture is also really important. This is not just today. This is a $350 laptop on the secondhand market 2 and 1/2 3 years from now. that that and the thing is with its build quality, it'll last probably. It's probably gonna be fine. Like you you kind of had it slip a little bit earlier in the show and it bonked the table and part of me went like and then I was like actually it's a tank. Yeah, it's probably it's not going to care about that at all. And like the fact that there's so little battery in it to achieve the kind of battery life that I'm getting. It's not class well it is class leading but it's not it's not gamechanging battery life especially for a MacBook but it's outstanding especially when you consider the size of that battery. The fact that it's cooling isn't stellar is kind of fun. Like Alex's video just putting the thermal pad under there. Like that's cool. That makes me want to go mod a laptop. I um I've always kind of wondered um like you know how there's laptop docks that are supposed to assist with cooling by just blowing another fan at the bottom. Turns out they don't really do that much, at least for any laptops that we've ever tried it with. But I've always kind of wondered if there could be a thermal interface material that's non goopy sticky enough that you could like you could add a bit of surface area to some like would that be a good product for LT store? Just a machined aluminum thing that you sit your MacBook Neo on. Are we on the same wavelength? Did you get this from someone? Did you hear this from someone? You haven't heard this from anybody? From who? So, I've been pushing this idea that there is a dock that you put your laptop in that you have to have like almost press it into like a switch too. And then uh kind of but flat. Okay. I was thinking flat but however it works. Um and then it could like that you know where the USBC's are. So, if it's machined well enough, maybe as you press it in, it could like move a lever arm that plugs in USBC or something and it puts it on some type of cooling surface. And I was thinking it would be really cool if it was like an actual thermal pad, but they're probably all going to be too goopy and when you pull it away, it's going to pull some material off of it. So, like we need some way. And then I kind of came down to like uh um what are they called? basically a piece of metal with uh one of those frick the electrical coolers that create heat on peltier are cool probably not the answer they're super inefficient yeah and you've got to get rid of the heat somehow and so you end up with a fan and it ends up see I would want a passive solution for this and I don't think I would need active cooling I think that as long as I could get more and this is ignorance It's not impossibility. I don't know how you transfer that heat super effectively without goop. Yeah. What what my ideal my ideal for something like this cuz like we've we've dabbled in improving the cooling of passive Apple devices over many many years. I I remember water cooling the original USBC MacBook back in what was it like a tray of water or something like that. Yeah. using plasticine or like play-doh or something to shield the ports and then just putting it in an ice bath. Yeah. Um it made a big difference. Made a big difference. It was pretty cool. Um, but ever since then, I've always felt like the best solution would be something more like a um uh like a a hot cold pack, like a freezer pack, like some kind of like a bladder that um that you could, in a perfect world, you could actually circulate fluid through. So, you could like water cool it, but without actually having the water touching. Well, I think you could. Yeah, probably. I've just We've never We've never put the development cycles into making something like that. what the market would be. I have always adored the idea like I was pissed with the Switch one that the dock didn't offer any potential performance improvements. I have always adored the idea that like it works when you're mobile, but then you can there there's like an incentive to plugging it in that isn't just big screen now. The incentive is like this is performance mode. I always thought that was really cool. Um, and realistically, yeah, uh, Avian, this probably is an example of the type of device that you could just have a a laptop stand with a fan on it and it would probably get you 98% of the way there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the idea of like a big machined piece of aluminum with fins in it or something like that that you like that you put it on in order to get max performance and do a It's pretty cool. it might make more sense once we get something with an A19 Pro, maybe a year, a year and a half from now or something like that. Anyway, back to our actual topic here. According to Tom's guide, Amazon seems to have the best availability of these things, which matters because if you're ordering direct from Apple, apparently you're looking at up to four week delays. Wild. I got I got mine from Oh man, this is kind of unfortunate. I got mine from Best Buy. Um they were totally sold out on the lower capacity no Touch ID model. Um so got the higher capacity with Touch ID model. I think that was especially Touch ID. I think that was a good move because I I I was ended up being kind of happy about it because Touch ID is pretty sweet. I have not only ended up missing Touch ID just cuz it's like convenient and nice. Um, but I've noticed that there are some software flows that Apple or their their software partners don't seem to have um factored in um for devices that don't have Touch ID. So, you'll like get prompted to to do Touch ID and like I don't have one and it's not like if you search in settings um for like Touch ID, it doesn't just tell you you don't have Touch ID. Like it just interesting. if you don't understand that you ordered one that doesn't have Okay. Sorry. Sorry. That could be confusing to to like an average user. So, speaking of confusing to an average user, we we didn't know that the So, the the Touch ID, see how yours has like a power button or a lock button or whatever it is on that key on the Touch ID one, there's no logo. Oh, right. Cuz it's a fingerprint sensor. So, we were trying to have her do Touch ID and she would press it in. We're like, "Why the heck does the computer keep going to sleep?" We're like trying to do basically anything and the computer keeps just shutting itself down. We're like, "What is happening? Why is this thing so buggy?" And then Yeah, I know. It's We were pressing the power button. That makes sense. Um, what was I going to say? Oh, yeah, man. The Best Buy experience, dude. I I walk right in, tell them exactly what I want, and they're like, "Okay, I'll get it from the back. I'll meet you here in a couple minutes." Okay, sounds good. Goes and gets it from the back, like, "Uh, can I tell you about our service plan thing?" And I was like, "I mean, yeah, but I'm not getting it." And he was like, "Okay." And he pitched it to me. He was like, "Worse than I even thought because now it's a subscription instead of a one-time buy." Um, and he keeps going through the details and I'm like literally just sitting on my phone. Like I'm not buying this. And it goes on for so long and every once in a while I look up for my phone and he's like, "Oh yeah, you can bring it into uh GeekWad anytime and they'll they'll repair it for you." And I'm like, "You guys just ship it off, right?" And he was like, "What?" I was like, "You're repairing it through a depot. You're not repairing it here, right?" And he's like, "Yeah, but we give you like a loner laptop while yours is out for repair." And I'm just like, "Wow, that sounds bad." like, "Okay, back to my phone." And it was like a long time. Yeah. I mean, let him do his job. No, I did. Yeah. You know, no disrespect to the guy. You got to you got to do what you got to do, but product service plans. Eh. Yeah. Especially on Yeah. I don't know. So, to address the availability shortfall, Apple is reportedly considering asking TSMC to restart A18 Pro production, which is wild. Uh, but TSMC is apparently already maxed out on it 3 nometer process. So, other options that Apple is rumored to be considering are dropping the base model entirely and only selling the higherend model to hopefully slow down sales. It's not going to do much. Even at $700, it's incredible value. Or accelerating the release timeline of the MacBook Neo2 with A19 Pro silicon. Interestingly, the MacBook Air M5 is readily available, but um that's probably because it starts at nearly double the price of the cheapest Neo. So, it's not exactly uh you know, filling the same niche. The Neo is kind of eating Apple's own lunch. But that's what that's what hungry companies do. They eat their own lunch. They compete with themselves. If if A series silicon ultimately makes the lowest end M silicon kind of redundant in the lineup, so what? That's fine. Great. No problem. That sounds fantastic. Apple like they're going to get serious market share for Mac OS if if they can keep up. This thing destroys. Like there's no there is no other option that would have been even close to as good for the person. Well, I think it's pretty clear. I bought it for my mom. But I I think there's there's no there there was no other option for her that would have even competed. One thing that has been kind of nice is on a on a hunch I thought it might have been better for her because she uh adapted to iPhone a lot easier than she adapted to Android. iOS and Mac OS have so little in common that it's kind of shocking to me they come from the same company. But widgets on the desktop. I was off like working on something else for a second and she just like set up a ton of widgets for herself and kind of like organized her desktop the way that she wanted. I was like okay cool. That wouldn't have been natural to me at all. Um, and there was one of her apps where the like native app support for Mac OS is kind of crap, but uh when you click on the widget, it just launches um I don't know what it's actually called, but it just launches like her phone on her Mac. Yeah. Screen mirroring. Yeah. And it just launches that up and then she just uses the phone version of the app and it's totally fine. And it's like, okay, she figured out all of that on her own. Sweet. So that that part kind of worked. There are a couple things about Mac OS that weren't entirely intuitive, but we ended up figuring it out. Um, and then the just the laptop itself, like dude, if you if you hand this to either of us three months ago or whatever, ask at least minimum minimum. And probably more than that. Yeah. Like, got him. Damn. Okay, but here's a funny one. Dan, roll the clip. If I had a nickel for every time this has happened to me, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's funny. It's happened twice. How, DUDE? How is that even possible? I don't know. How do you do this? I don't do anything. Oh my god. Oh man. I don't know how to deal with this anymore. It's like I I have this reputation I feel for like being a hater, you know, like complaining that everything's a buggy piece of It's like, Adam and I'm so legitimately happy that it's working great for you, but it doesn't change my experience. That's so funny. We even installed Steam. I'm sure you did. Ah, man. That's really funny. Sofa says, "Thank you for getting footage." I have I have some I have a pretty I have a I have pretty good footage. It's not on this phone, but I have pretty good footage of my screen on my uh my folding phone registering clicks offset by about a centimeter as well, like regularly. Like, dude, I just I get I get so much weird I get so much weird stuff. Here's a fun one. And um someone I know um pulled up their Samsung was it a Samsung? Ooh, I don't know if it was actually a Samsung, but it was a uh definitely a folding phone. and um compared. Oh, okay. LT store. We have new stuff. Uh we'll we'll get to that in a second. First, let's uh click on one of these products. Uh oh, what He clicked so aggressively. Sorry. There you go. I get duplicates of our product photos on our site. And his folding phone didn't get it. That's strange. I don't I don't understand. I don't know how to deal with this stuff. That might not be a problem for long. I don't know if you want to announce that or not, but I'll just leave it. Announce what? I don't know. I don't know. Sure. Go for it. I don't know. The new site. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, there's a new LT store site. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think we've I think we've talked about that. Okay. I have no idea. Um but in in like semiclassic fashion, development on the old site is not super attractive right now. Oh, I get it. I get it. It is what it is. Anyway, we can move on to another topic. You want to pick one? Sure. So much good stuff. This Steam one, dude. This is so sick. Steam client files point to frame rate estimator feature in the works. Data miners were sifting through a recent Steam client file release, and they uncovered references to a new feature called the frame rate estimator, which would let you pick a game, input your CPU, GPU, and RAM. I also suspect eventually if you do the hardware survey, it will just have that information. your display resolution. Yeah. If you do the hardware thing. Yeah. Uh and you can get a a chart of expected frame rates based on crowdsource data from other Steam users running similar hardware. The groundwork appears to have been laid 2 months ago when Valve added an opt-in option in the Steam beta client that let users share anonymized frame rate data initially focused on Steam OS devices like the Steam Deck. Um, at the time Valve said that the data was meant to improve game compatibility and Steam performance. Valve is not officially Valve has not officially announced the feature, confirmed a release timeline or really anything at all. Um, but yeah, it exists as unreleased code and it sounds awesome to me. This would legitimately Okay, I was about to say in a vendor agnostic fashion, but it's not it's not vendor agnostic. It's it's Steam, but they actually technically very specifically now have their own operating system which really throws But for me, this would pretty much address the problem of, you know, minimum requirements and what graphics card should I get and what CPU should I get to play this game or this is amazing. Should I should I buy this? And I don't know. I I'd like to think that maybe this had something to do with some of the feedback that I gave Valve a little while ago on the Steam hardware survey. It's been about a year, so they've legitimately had time. But basically, I said, "Hey guys, I love the hardware survey. It's really cool, but there are some aspects of it that are kind of antiquated now. If the goal is for developers to understand what hardware they should be targeting and if the other goal is for users to understand what kind of performance they can expect, then only reporting things like the number of cores, the frequency that they run at, and I I believe it even does it cap at quad core or uh I don't even think it will don't quote me on that. The granularity is fairly limited from what I remember for core count. And then especially frequency. What I pointed out to them is I gave them examples of CPUs that were released uh oh yeah 10 years apart that have the same core count and the same frequency but vastly different performance. Um and kind of laid out why we need a little bit better granularity with respect to the generation of the hardware that we're looking at. Um, and that would be beneficial to everybody, users, game developers, realistically Valve themselves, and selfishly media who, you know, we will often lean on Steam hardware survey data in order to bring the most relevant content. like um I don't remember a single GPU review scrum that hasn't involved pulling up the Steam hardware survey at some point to just just to have the right reference points like oh okay you know blah blah blah let's do this this this and this holy crap 6% of people on Steam are running a 3060 we should throw that in just for context so that 5% of the people watching can go oh this is how it compares to exactly my GPU right now that's really important to us. And so I would I'd like to think that they took that seriously. Realistically, Valve has very smart people working there. And I'm sure somebody thought of it, but you know what? I'm going to give myself.1% of the credit. You think, can I get away with that? I don't know. We'll see. If if it happens, maybe that that credit will have some value. 1% 1,000th. Can I get away with it? I don't know. I can't guarantee anything. Uh I'm looking here and yeah the for CPUs specifically it's still kind of Yep. This is not 3.7 GHz and above really and no we do have exact core count so that is useful but the frequency is a is a major issue in my humble opinion 2.7% of users with 24 cores 24 uh but I believe that's logical so that would be 12 core CPUs if I recall correctly. Check 30. Check 30. Physical CPUs. Oh, is that physical? Oh, okay. So, those would be thread rippers then. Really? 2.74% of users are thread rippers. That's Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. No, that would be um Intel uh Intel 24 cores. Yep, that's Intel. So, that would be like 14900 KS and Oh, yeah. Eight performance cores, 16 efficiency cores. Yeah, sorry. Oh, see, but even that bundling in efficiency cores with physical. Exactly. There's just there's so much more granularity gives me the ick that that we could use to make more informed decisions. Either way, I am I am excited to see Valve build out their tools beyond just their one their one console for the benefit of all PC gamers that are using the Steam platform. Do you need me to go back to your laptop? Well, I was interested. This is This is certainly too old, but I'm really interested what happens to the OSX numbers in the near future. I just think it's funny they still call it OS 10. I don't think it's been called OS 10 for like a thousand years. Sure, but I like the the Oh, man. Okay, I want to I want to look this up. Google search history for like running games on Mac cuz these are selling like freaking crazy and they can run a ton of stuff. Like it can run Cyberpunk. I was looking up for my dad to see if it could and it can run SnowRunner. Like it can actually run a lot of different random Steam games. It can run Cyberpunk. I played it today. It's not a great experience. 15 to 30. Uh yeah, that's pretty good. It's good for things considered. Yeah, it's good for what it is. Um hold on. I'm going to go worldwide uh last uh I don't know. Sure. 2004 to present. Here we go. Damn. wait for it. Wait for it. Ready, Dan? Dang. This is what I'm saying, man. Dang. So, like it's like these laptops matter. They're making they're making a huge impact right now. And that's going to apply to gamers and which is actually really really interesting for the overall like because when I'm looking at it now for March 2026 Windows saw a 4.28% drop in user share and the vast majority of that went to Linux but 1.2% of that went to Mac and then we have these laptops coming out and there's the Linux surge seems to be continuing. I see threads about it constantly talking about pal people. Wow, I haven't used this in a few years. I gave it a shot for whatever reason. Maybe it was us. maybe something else and it's working right now. Tons of trends about that. And then also these laptops are moving like crazy and Windows is getting Windows at least for gamers is getting hit on both sides. I think there's a chance that Windows falls below 90% of the install base for Steam in the next Yeah. Do you think it could happen this year? For sure. I I think if Apple had an unlimited supply of A18 Pros, I would say yes. I agree 100%. Yeah. Yeah. If they only have six 7 million of them, then I'm not I'm not as sure. I'm not as sure. But that is wild that Windows might be less than 90% of market share for for for Steam. That's Wait, are they going to fall behind like Nvidia? I'm gonna be I'm gonna be I'm going to be writing a video next week that tentatively is titled the humiliation of Microsoft Windows or Windows's year of humiliation or something something along those lines. It might not be the year of the this is not a title but it might not be the year of the Linux desktop but it definitely is the year of Windows humiliation. Yeah. and just kind of talking through how how tenuous how how dominant their market share still is and yet how tenuous their position is becoming if that makes sense. And I'm going to kind of talk through um some of the overall trends that we're observing both in the Linux world and the Mac world and simultaneously amongst Windows users who are just so tired of it, you know. Yeah, it's exhausting. Uh why don't we jump into uh why don't we pick a good news topic? Hey, that's any topic. Nintendo in a shockingly pro-consumer move like I did. Wow. Um has divorced digital and physical game pricing. Um, the complete quote is from a Games Radar article and this is uh this is a quote. My guess that is that this is actually them lowering prices of digital games and not raising the price of physical games. That's where I'm at with this. I think generally no I don't agree with this part. Nintendo tries to do right by their customers and I think they do also disagree with that. I look at this as a proconsumer move. I think it's a smart move, too. But it does appear to be that Nintendo will be decoupling physical and digital pricing. We don't know that this means that digital pricing is going to go down and all the pricing is going to stay the same. We don't know that. That is just an assumption. It could be that hardware that physical game pricing will go up. But given that they already increased pricing for the Switch 2 generation, given that given that they've allegedly cut production of the Switch 2, my guess is that they're looking at their business. They're looking at their business going, "Okay, we've got some good titles for Switch 2. They're very expensive. How can we address this in a way that doesn't that isn't a price drop that doesn't devalue our software which Nintendo never wants to do? But that but that's that's kind of what I'm saying is it would be a price drop but only on the digital copy. Yeah. So to me, the way that I'm reading this, and maybe this is maybe this is hopeful, good news, April Wan, show Lionus, reading it this way, but the way that I'm reading this is that Nintendo is going to be the first to blink and go, "All right, digital's cheaper and I'm here for it." Or maybe not maybe not the maybe not the first to blink. I mean, there's certainly no doubt that you can buy a PlayStation game on sale on the, you know, PlayStation store for cheaper than a physical copy at, you know, GameStop or whatever. I mean, it is pretty cool, but Nintendo for the first time going, "Okay, yeah, it's it's cheaper online." And it always should have been probably. I mean, I think there was maybe an argument in the early days of Steam that this infrastructure was so new and the investment in it was so colossal and the value free and the value of cloud save and the the convenience of just downloading it whenever you know maybe there was an argument to be made at that time but I think in the years after that it's been pretty hard to justify the price being the same for a digital copy of a brand new title versus a physical copy. Yeah, you can't you can't completely remove all the cost of making the physical copy because there is expense in keeping the infrastructure up of distributing digital copies and stuff like that. But like man, they are not even sort of close. Uh Aroine actually brings up another kind of um I don't know about good news, but certainly funny news. Uh Nintendo lost the patent covering character summoning and battle mechanics. Did you see that? like the the the Pokeball patent and No Man's Sky apparently immediately added the mechanic to the game. They did. Yeah. Uh look, I my relationship with Nintendo as a brand is deeply complicated. There's so many things they do. I don't like you and I'll also buy everything you make. That if they were anyone but them, I would um I would just patently, pun intended, refuse to buy anything from them. But on the other hand, like I don't I don't know of anyone who so lovingly cares for their IPs. With that said, I haven't seen the new Mario movie yet. Um, many of the reviews I've read of it were very negative. However, however, however, I did my due diligence and I went back and read the same people's reviews of the first one and they were also negative, which to me is just an indication that they're probably not a lot of fun at parties and the kind of people that suck the life out of the room because the first one was just fun. Not everything has to be that deep, man. Maybe I just need an excuse to eat popcorn. And if as long as the second one is a good excuse to eat popcorn, I think I'm going to be pretty happy with it. Nice. All right. I want to go see a movie in theaters for the first time in many years. I want to go see Hail Mary. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to see that, too. There's actually there's quite a few uh kind of interesting movies right now. My son really wants to see Goat. I have no idea. Sports movie, but like animated with a with a goat. Like greatest of all time, but also a goat. I No, I put that together. Oh my god. Is it like this generation's Airbud? I don't know exactly what it is, but he's excited about it, which uh you know is cool, I guess. Who is it done by? Sony Pictures Animation, man. Where the heck is Disney and like all these other It's Anyway, sorry. We can move on to something else, but that's is uh we can talk about Netflix. Here's a fun Netflix, get owned. Luke and I have talked about this extensively on the WAN show. We've taken what I feel is not necessarily it shouldn't be an exceptional approach to the subscription fees on Flowplane. Whatever you agree to when you sign up is our agreement. And while technically for some reason platforms are within their rights to alter the deal, pray I don't alter it any further, we've never taken that approach. And it looks like Netflix was just informed that in Italy you're supposed to do it the float plane way unless you explicitly say that you have the right to do it your way. An Italian court in Rome has ruled that Netflix's subscription price increases between, get this, 2017 to 2024 over a span of 7 years were illegal under the country's consumer code, which requires companies to provide a stated justified reason before raising prices. Netflix now has 90 days to notify its roughly 5.4 4 million Italian subscribers of their right to a refund or face a €700 daily fine. Lawyers for the consumer group Muimento Consumtorio, sorry I'm sure I butchered that, estimate that premium subscribers who have been paying since 2017 are entitled to roughly €500 each. Wa! While standard subscribers are owed about €250. That's That's like That's like tidy little tax return territory. Like that's not that's that's not pocket change. That's freaking crazy. That's go get yourself something nice. If every eligible unfortunately if every eligible subscriber claims this, Netflix's total liability could exceed $2.3 billion. On top of the refunds, the court ordered Netflix to roll monthly prices back to the 2015 launch levels. €1199 euros for premium,9.99 euro for standard. Sounds like a lot of people are gonna be VPNing to Italy. Netflix says it will appeal and insists that its terms have always complied with Italian law, but the ruling could have a knock-on effect across Europe. Consumer groups in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Poland have filed parallel challenges on the same legal basis, and German courts in Berlin and Cologne have already struck down the same Netflix pricing clauses. Now, it is worth noting that Netflix has updated their terms of service now and any price changes that they implement going forward will be legal from my understanding of it. That's not in our notes, but that is my understanding of it from just my own reading before. Um, but this is still a a pretty nice little, you know, a nice little W for consumers in Italy who are tired of, you know, getting squeezed on every freaking stupid subscription service under the sun, just casually casually raising prices all the time. Um, it's good news, WAN show. So, this isn't one of the topics for this week, but uh, YouTube had a had a premium subscription increase that, you know, just I don't know, it's that premium subscription increase uh, like last time they say it's to improve the service and like last time it seems to be more aligned with just general inflation and less aligned with any kind of meaningful improvement in the service. So, make of that whatever you will. I still, even at the new price, I still think YouTube Premium is one of the best bang for the buck subscriptions out there. YouTube is full of incredible content. Uh, I'd like to think like you're watching right now. I use it so much that it's worth it to me still. And the fact that it includes YouTube Music, which I find to be a perfectly chulant music streaming service, it's fine. And the fact that you can get it on a family plan for a deep discount and share it with up to five family members. It's just it's it's a great it's a great value. It's an outstanding value. All right. You want to pick one? Oh, wait. No. Oh, I'm good. Oh. Oh. Oh, guys. Guys, that uh pull up the store, right? Um we have a very exciting launch on LT store this weekend. It is the flex and flow collection. The first item from this collection is our multi-pocket leggings. They're finally here. We started development of LTT um I don't want to call them yoga pants, but they're yoga pants. LTT leggings like I don't know 3 years ago or something like that. Um, I am constantly reminded of this project because Ivonne loves her prototype ones so much that I fold them every week even though we never actually made the product. Um, so you're going to get more now. They're just like the leggings that you know you could get at one of the other stores that sell these leggings. Let's be real, right? Except they've got seven total pockets. two on the thighs for your phone and five in the waistband for your smaller stuff, so you can actually carry your things without needing a bag. The fabric is soft, breathable, and moisture wicking with Lycrest spandex for great stretch and shape retention, so you can wear them for workouts, errands, or just all day. People in the office have been really excited about these, and they've already been wearing them to Pilates, tennis, and just around the house. You can now get yours at lmg.gg/leggings. And I'm gonna take a moment to kind of go, hey, our women viewers out there, we hear you loud and clear. You've been disappointed with the assortment of women's products on LT store. Here's your chance to help us invest in this category. This is a great product. whether you wear leggings or not, spread the word or wait for a few reviews to come in and then spread the word. It's a really good product. It is, I would say, up to or at the top of our game in terms of how quality this product is. Um, if you want to see more women's products, you're going to have to buy some. There's also I saw people in full chat earlier asking about like, "Oh, I fit uh whatever size from whatever brand." Yes. Um will I fit these ones? There is a size guide. So um right here, some people don't see it cuz it's just like hyperlink text, but under the sizes on pretty much every product on the store, there's a size guide. You can click it and it will be Yeah. A lot of like the the pictures and stuff are are generic, but this grid will be for the specific product. So, you can see your inseam length, your hip width, your your pants, blah blah blah, waist, relaxed, whatever, something. And all your sizes that go along with that. Yep. Very important. All right. These ones are for the guys. These are great. The flex pants. They're kind of inspired by like mountain biking pants. So, they are built to move. We've got reinforced knees, a gusseted fit, and a stretchy waistband with a do not drop draw cord that can be tied on the outside or the inside. And they've also got seven pockets, six with YKK zippers, so you can carry basically everything and not worry about anything falling out. They're really comfortable. They uh in like a weird way, like they're not soft. They're like um shear. Oh, here. Right. I don't really know how to describe them. They're like a Oh, interesting. Yeah. And they're on the inside. They're like uh I don't know. I don't know how to describe them. I can see that they're nice, but I understand what you mean by that being a little bit. Yeah. So, kind of like um kind of like some of the French terry hoodies. Like they're they're soft, but they don't sit like right on your skin. So, they're not super warming. Not like terry at all, though. I don't want someone to hear that and get the the raw. But the the effect is like that where it's it kind of it kind of holds off your skin a little bit so it makes it feel more breathable uh but still not not cold like it's still you know I don't know there it's a it's a really cool garment. Sure. Do they fit you? Uh I don't think they would cuz these are a small. They're No, the the inseam length on all of them is 29. sorry these are not in tall. It's pretty normal to have a 32, but okay. All right. So, those are those are pretty exciting new products. Uh, and now is a great time to order one because if you're new to the WAN show, then I'm about to explain the coolest thing about the it's not the coolest thing, but it's a cool thing about the WAN show. Instead of like other streams, just throwing your money at the screen and like I don't know, hoping senpai notices you or something. Uh, we don't do Twitch bits or super chats or anything like that. We do checkout messages. So, if you want to send a message, all you got to do is head to ltstore.com, add something to your cart, and when we are live, you will see the interface to send a checkout message. You pick your color, you fill in your checkout message, you can be anonymous, or show your first and last name, and once you place your order, it will either go up there. It'll just pop up like, "Thanks, Richie P over there." Um, oh no. It'll go to producer Dan who will pop it up like that, reply to it, or curate it for me and Luke to respond to. Should we do a couple curated ones to show the folks how it works? Yeah, sure. I got lots here already. Thanks for enabling my wife to get some highquality active wear. As for my question, what's the worst part of dealing with asbestous removal? The price. Besides the price, was that in the checkout message? I thought that's why you jumped in with No, the worst part is the price. Nothing worse. Uh, well, it's not the asbestous getting into your lungs and giving a mess of urine oil. Well, that's the thing is I didn't do that. I paid someone to do it. So, the worst part is the price. I mean, I'd say my bigger concern when I was crawling around in the basement was like mold, not asbestous. Like, if I if I end up with some kind of weird mold lung disease or something like that, it's definitely from doing that. But I don't think there was really anything in the way of asbestous down there. And I didn't really disturb anything like I didn't I didn't break any I didn't like touch any cocking or like uh break any uh like like um uh break any materials apart or anything. I just like hauled like soggy carpet and stuff out of there. Okay. Up next, just finished a computer vision project for school. What is a project that felt super rewarding after completing? I have a pretty critical version of that, which is the mineral oil computer. That thing got me everything. It got me grants to go to school. It got me friends when I was at school. And it got me this job. That was a highly rewarding project. Really worked out. Yeah, that's uh um I'm not going to be I'm not going to be able to beat that. hiring Luke. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Is that a present project? Let's go for the feels. I mean, it was a long interview. It was a very long interview. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Uh, super a project that felt super rewarding. You know what? I'm I'm not going to go with like the most rewarding, but I'll go with one that was quite rewarding recently. Um, I bought a couple of RC cars for me and my son back when he was well, it was like 10 years ago, so he was just little and I was I was probably jumping the gun a little bit. We didn't use them much and they sat for 10 years. And in that time, all the differential fluid leaked out. All the shock oil leaked out. Um, the batteries like died died like not just were were drained. They they died. And um uh there were some broken parts on them from the little that they were used cuz I was reckless and he didn't know really how to control it cuz he was just a little kid. And over the last few weekends we've worked together. We learned how to uh strip apart uh reseal and uh fill a a diff on an RC car. We fixed up the shocks. We replaced a bunch of like broken pieces. And then um with everything repaired, we went out, made like a makeshift ramp, and uh we're playing around with it last weekend. It was super cool. I crossed the pool cover with some water pulled on it, burned my motor. So, um we're not quite there on the reward on this project yet, but we're we're getting there. We're getting there. Cuz it was really fun. working on it though cuz you're working on repairing it with your son which is like so valuable. Yeah, he's learning a little bit. Really cool. Um we we had to 3D we had to make like design and print some 3D printed parts in order to finish the repair cuz it was like Did he like lead that portion? Yeah. That's kind of cool. Oh yeah. I I got to show him how to use calipers, you know, just I don't just father son stuff, you know. Yeah. Yeah. That's sweet. Yeah. It's good stuff. It's good stuff. I like that. Should we do one more down? Oh, no, we're not. We're doing two more topics. You can do one more if you want. Nope, I don't want to. We'll do it later. Good. Got away. Hey, let's talk about Lan Linux. The French government is apparently accelerating plans to reduce reliance on extra European software in an effort to achieve digital sovereignty. And when I say extra European, I don't mean super duper European. I mean outside of European like like extracurricular that like that sort of extra workstations at Denham DINUM the French government's digital agency will be the first to be moved to an as yet unnamed Linux distribution. My notes say insert holy war here. Yeah. And other departments including the National Cyber Security Agency will be following suit. Okay. All right. Let's start it. I already Okay, hold on. I know my answer. I know my answer. Hold on. Hold on. Um, hold on. Hold on. Um, I'm going to go with um Okay, go ahead. hold on, hold on. Mandrea, I think that was it. Mandrea. Mandrea. I don't know how to pronounce it. I looked at I looked up I was looking up dros before the show. I was like, are there dros that are either popular in France or largely maintained by French maintainers? That's hacking. You can't search stuff. I had to just guess. All right, fine. Well, I don't know. I could still definitely be wrong. I have no clue. I I think I think they're going to be based and they're actually going to roll their own. They wouldn't be the first government to do that. And I think it's going to be based on Arch Mandreas or me Media or something. Yeah, I know. Can you just show me this word? No, I What is this? M A G E I A. I'm not any closer than you. Maga. Sure. Something. I don't know. Um I I read something. Yeah, that's the successor. Whatever. I don't know, classic Linux stuff. It's not Mangaro. I can I can say that. I have no idea what it'll be. If you look at userbased installs, it's very likely that it will be, you know, DBN based or Archbased. People are suggesting names for a French government own Linux distro. We've got Baguette OS. We've got um Dro of Liberty, Linu Linux Arch Driump. We've got um Dro de Liberty Bestie OS. That's pretty good. That one's pretty good. I like that. I'm I'm I'm liking a lot of these. I'm liking a lot of these. That is pretty good. Oh man. Um, that's fun. Uh, yeah. I I wouldn't mind Sakray Boon, too. I I hope they I hope they don't roll their own. Or if they do roll their own, I hope there's a lot of uh up the chain development that happens. I just, man, we don't need more fragmentation. Oh my god. No, we don't need it, but it just seems like the kind of thing that would happen. If you look at the Steam hardware survey in regards to dros that are like on the more simple and easy side of things, Mint has a lot of install base. I don't suspect they're going to end up going there. My my guess would be is that they don't end up on Mint. Um, but we'll see. I could see Red Hat, something like that. Just something something with actual Red Hat, Fedora, like real support grunt behind it. Totally. Yep. that would that would probably make the the most sense. Something along that line uh being said by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, but still Red Hat is American though. That might be fair. I'm not sure if it matters as much. I don't think it matters as much, but there's still a company behind it and that company's in the States, right? Yes. Zusay is an open is Zusay is a is is a more European centric and still very wellsupported and storied dro as well. That could that could get it. Yeah, I think there I think the origin there is German. U definitely get it though. That's interesting. I don't know but it's exciting and there's there is a question here. Uh we've seen similar programs elsewhere in Europe with the city of Munich's uh limuk uh project running from 2003 to 2017 before they ultimately decided to reverse course. Do you think France's efforts will be successful? And I think they actually could be um the the difference between I know I've said this probably every W show for a month, but the difference between the last time we did the Linux challenge and now is genuinely mind-blowing. It's astronomical. Whoa. What? Linux Mint has a French founder. Someone in chat just said it. I don't know if it's true or not, but someone in chat just said it. If that's true, if there's a chance that it's Mint, that would be so sick. That would be so cool. You are actually rooting for Dros like a Linux dude now. No, I'd just be happy. I You clapped. You clapped. Happy. That is the definition. Happy little collapse. That is the definition. I'm happy. I'm genuinely happy with whatever they go with. I I don't actually care. But it would be neat if it was Mint. I just I I I'm not a I'm not a hater of other choices, but I I get a little happy when when people use Mint because Mint is cool. Speaking of Linux, patches to the Linux kernel and KDE should give a noticeable performance boost to gamers with limited VRAM, which sick 2026 apparently includes cards that have only 8 GB of dedicated memory. And that really has been a trend over the last couple of years. Developer Natalie Voc has refined kernel level memory management and introduced a KDE plasma component to enable VRAMm prioritization for the foreground application i.e. your full screen game. The patches are out now initially for AMD and theoretically Intel uh on Cache OS and on other archbased dros. If you don't use KDE as your desktop, the improvements are also available in newer versions of Valve's Gamecope compositor. If you're after the technical details, you can check out the developers blog post, which um Dan will not be posting in chat, so you'll just have to go uh Google pixel clusters GPU blog. I can post it in float plane chat at least. Thank you, Luke. That's wonderful. I appreciate you. Excellent. Um, it says two more topics and we're through two more, but until he comes back, we're not Oh, you know what? Yeah, we'll do sponsor spots. Oh, wait. I can't I can't without I did have some people ask like, "Oh, why are you so happy about Mint?" If you're running Cashy, I'm running Cashy on my desktop PC for the modern Cache and KDE on my desktop PC for modern features and performance and power and raw. And I'm running Mint on my laptop for simplicity and stability and and work every timeness. And that's why I would expect a government to go more on the mint side than than a cashy side. But I do think there's there's plenty of other solutions that would make a ton of sense. Um Fedora, Red Hat, things like that being among them. Maybe not Red Hat again because the American company thing and that being like the whole goal of what they're trying to get away from. I don't think it's the same as using Windows, but they'll probably still not go that route. Uh I've got a micro topic. This one isn't so much good news as it is hilarious. Redditor posted a couple of screenshots showing an AI summary with some facts about the company that acquired us 9 days ago on April the 1st. FOMO Foundry. This is great. Uh, so apparently my browser thinks that FOMO Foundry is a real thing. FOMO Foundry is an entity that acquired Lionus Media Group in April 2026, pivoting the tech media company toward a product first strategy that replaced its writing and engineering departments with AI tools like chat GPT and proprietary large language models. Following the acquisition, LMG launched the Linus Coin, a physical token minted from defective screwdriver parts, which serves as a digital credit with a 2:1 redemption rate to maintain financial solveny. How could anything be so accurate and yet so fundamentally wrong? we did it. We did it, Reddit. We did it. We bamboozled. Uh what is this? Is this uh is this Gemini then? it looks like Gemini to me. What's goggles? Is this I just don't want to get this wrong. Wait, what is goggles? Yeah, my browser thinks so this this is it's some LLM somewhere. Um so what seems to have happened here um is that DNS records indicate that FOMO-foundry.com was registered March 17th of this year. So, it's possible that the AI is conflating that network OS with our new corporate overlords. Or it's also possible that it just ain't that deep and it's easily confused. Um, if you're wondering, by the way, we did register FOMO.ai. It's not Gemini. Yeah. So, it's it's something. We bamboozled something. So, we did register FOMOry.ai, AI, but um you'll have to try it for yourself to see where it goes. We worked on that for a while. It's pretty good. Yeah, actually I I think the developers who worked on that aspect of the April Fool's joke are the unsung heroes of this whole endeavor cuz so it was like actually a lot of effort and so few people went to it and like it won't necessarily have legs, but we worked on it for a while. I know. And like to be clear, the the physical merchandise team, they did a lot of work getting the coin design did a lot of work getting the coin going. The video production guys, they did a lot of work make bringing the whole video together. Um Elijah died for this project. So that's true. That was that was unfortunate. But but that still might not equal the effort of But FOMO foundry.ai AI I think was more effort than all of those things combined. Like Elijah's parents raising him for over 20 years I still pales in comparison don't think equaled how hard the developers worked on fomoofoundry.ai. But they'll be remembered by us. Um I I mean I'm never gonna give them up. Or let them down. No. Uh, okay. Scod develops a bike bell that can bypass, speaking of bells, that can bypass noise cancelling uh, headphones and then gives the technology away for free, which is awesome. This is so bass. This is so cool. It sounds really cool, too. SCOD has developed the Duo Bell, a bicycle bell engineered to cut through active noise cancelling headphones, which is a major problem right now cuz tons of people have them. They've become very normal. Uh in collaboration with researchers at the University of Salford, the car company points to a 24% rise in bike pedestrian collisions in 2024, partially blamed on the explosion of ANC headphones drowning out traditional bells. Researchers found a narrow safety gap between 750 and 780 hertz where ANC algorithms struggle to suppress sound. So the bell rings at that exact pitch. It's a range, but whatever. Uh, a second resonator at a higher frequency keeps it sound like keeps it sounding like a normal bike bell and uh uh and an irregular striking mechanism produces sharp sound bursts that ANC processing can't really react to in time. Uh, the whole thing is fully mechanical with zero electronics, which that's the coolest part. That's awesome. Also just so awesome. Uh and in real world in real world tests with Deliveroo Couriers in London, which I'm assuming is like I don't know like Uber. Yeah. Uh I actually don't know. Pedestrians with ANC headphones detected the Duo bell from up to 22 m further away than a normal bell. That's awesome. Giving cyclists a critical extra reaction window and a pretty decent one. go to 22 meters in the context of like traffic movement. That's that's awesome. That's huge. That's lifeaving. Pretty sure it's called SCOD. Okay. Thank you. Cool. Uh neat. Uh SCOD is publishing all the research and findings publicly for free so other manufacturers can build their own versions. fitting given that Scod actually started out making bicycles 130 years ago before it ever built a car. That is so cool. Our discussion question is, when's the last time a car company did something this genuinely useful for cyclists and pedestrians without trying to lock it behind a patent? Uh, I can't think of anything. There's got to be something at some point, but yeah, I have no idea. I don't I don't What this reminded me of was the seat belt. Wasn't the seat belt something like this? Somebody invented it and then made it free for everybody. Yeah, but I don't know if that helps pedestrians. You know what? That's pretty based. Volvo and seat belts. Yeah, that was that was very cool. No, I'm I'm down with it. You know what? Let's go. Let's go shout out Volvo then. I mean, to the extent that the original Volvo even still exists as a car manufacturer. I'm just I'm just saying. Who knows? I'm just saying. Well, no. Like they're they're owned by uh who owns Volvo? Yeah, Gily. I mean, everybody's, as far as I can tell, basically everybody's been sold to somebody since back then. No, no. Uh VW is still VW. They're out there. Ford's still Ford, for better or for worse. That's something. Uh you know what else is something is our sponsor, Vessie. Yeah. The weather's looking a little nicer out there, ain't it? which means more walks in the woods or short trips for the weekend. And it's time to update the wardrobe to something that's easy to wear and pack, is stylish, and can still handle those sporadic April showers. And the Vessie Weekend Neo is a great upgrade choice. Not only are they minimalist in design, but they're also breathable, easy to clean, and according to Vessie, 100% waterproof. They handle themselves in all terrains like slick sidewalks and lumpy logs thanks to grippy rubber soles. And this is something really cool. Their shoes now come in half sizes for half-size folks like myself. Do I really have to read that? All right, fine. You know what? Fine. I'll read it. I'll read it. All of you. You get free shipping. Plus, every purchase is covered by a one-year warranty and 30-day hassle-free returns. If your April plans involve moving, commuting, traveling, or exploring, you need a shoe that keeps up. So, stay dry and stay comfortable. and simplify your packing by getting 15% off your weekend Neo or Stormburst shoes at bessie.com/wandshow. The show is also brought to you by UG Green. UG Green recently released their Max Do Thunderbolt 5 docking station which sports 17 whole ports all in one hub. 17. This allows you to clean up your workspace since this one box can be used for data transfer, video input, networking, storage, and even just charging. Sorry, did I hear that right? Video input. I think you mean like like for daisy chaining video. That can't be a capture card. Um, it includes a built-in NVME slot. Oh, that's cool. For you to add additional high-speed storage to cut down on the time you might be waiting to, I don't know, edit your 4K videos or whatever else or just to have more storage because a lot of Macs are not that expandable. The Maxi Do can also support three independent displays on Windows or two on Mac, making it great for presentations. The Dock gives up to 240 watts of power, so you can charge multiple devices at high speed and power them all at once. And with 2 and 1/2 gig networking, you'll have fast and reliable connection to your wired devices. So, grab your UGG Green Max Thunderbolt 5 docking station for 22% off at our link today or by checking out this uh There it is. QR code. Did we talk about Linux on limited VRAMm already? Okay. Yeah, topic wasn't crossed off, so I wasn't sure. Sorry. Nope. Oh, I just I don't cross them off. I just I just uh collapsed them. I think Dan does. Which one was it? What a guy. No, I got it. I got it. I think you were just getting water or something. It's fine. Cool. Just wanted to check. Blow plane announcement. We let Mr. David Pancratz vlog what his week at LMG is like. Huh. If you've watched any LTT videos in the last se six to seven months, David has been an unsung hero in probably at least one of them as he has been really helping out the writers in their push to getting especially some of the more technical aspects of things over the line. This week's float plane exclusive has him building a PC for Red Bull, showcasing uh scripts for setting up our PCs and being part of the do writers at LT all think the same video. You can go check that out at lmg.ggfpwan. Let's see what people are thinking of this video so far. Uh yeah, there people are people are liking it. Pretty cool. He um he is a wearer of many many many hats. All right, more topics. Uh yeah, there's uh one I want to jump into. Sure. Uh where'd it go? It's on the dock. Samsung Electronics fires first shot in departure from ARM. Develops proprietary SSD controller based on open-source risk 5. It's happening. More risk news. It's happening. Risk is good. Samsung is launching its BM9K1 uh cool uh SSD lineup with a custom in-house controller chip built on the open source risk 5 architecture, marking the first time Samsung has shipped a commercial product using Risk 5 instead of ARM. The move lets Samsung skip ARM licensing fees um and customize the chip however it wants, which is especially relevant given ARM's recent legal fight with Qualcomm over chip design changes. Samsung says the new design is 1.6 times faster. That does not mean your SSD will be 1.6 times faster to be clear, but still that's very cool. And 23% more energy efficient. That does not mean your entire SSD will be 23% more energy efficient, but it's still cool uh than the previous generation. Samsung is following Western Digital, which has been using its own risk 5 chips in SSD controllers for years. And Samsung has played around with Risk 5 and other projects since 2020, sorry, 2019, but never shipped anything until now. The BM9K1 is set to launch in 2027. And that is awesome because any commercial project products that ship with risk on them just makes it more normal. To be clear, ARM is also risk, but he means risk five. Yeah. Yeah. The I have a theory. It's just a theory that's not trademarked. Retired. Nope. He's retired. A computer theory. Sure. A computer theory. I have a computer theory. I have a theory that as long as the transition took between x86 and ARM or not even transition because they're very much still coexisting today but as long as that took I think risk 5's rise will be at most a third of the amount of time we're going towards a very interesting future because with the like mind share divestment that's happening from Microsoft and Windows right now of people interested in Mac and people interested in Linux and just kind of moving off of off of that. Um, and hardware just getting a little funky like pricing has been really crazy. a lot of Chinese manufacturers are starting to kind of prop up and look at that consumer market and go, we might be able to take some of that, especially if pricing is going to be 2,000% higher than it used to be. Um, companies like more and more companies I'm finding discussions about risk five to be much more common these days than it was even 3 4 years ago. Um, there's, you know, Google making their own stuff. Intel interested in being a fab potentially more than even their own. Like Speaking of Intel, I had this queued up already. I don't give financial advice on this show, but if you bought Intel when I said that I thought it was looking kind of cool and laid out all the reasons I thought it was kind of cool in the medium to long term, um, you're doing pretty good so far. Just throw that. I I I don't know, man. I It's It's real tempting sometimes when I can just kind of like see the tea leaves and I'm like, "Mhm, this is the direction." Me being invested in Intel would be pretty bad though. That would be pretty bad. Anyway, yeah. Yeah. So, it's like it's it's interesting. A lot of things are moving towards like actually genuinely moving towards open source setups for things um which is very based interesting. It's cool. I don't know what that future necessarily looks like. Probably a lot of fragmentation but I think it'll be fun. I'm excited. Okay, next topic. Stay the path says, "Yeah, that'd almost be as bad as like the president of the United States shilling a ticker or like a crypto or NFT or something." You're You know what? You're right. I think that um if it's their own name, I think they have to. That would never happen. Yeah. That's that's pretty far-fetched. I I wouldn't want to live in a world that's so corrupt that the politicians at the highest level would shill stocks and also almost as bad YouTubers would do it. I don't want to live in that world. Almost almost as bad. Uh, speaking of far-fetched, Apple approves drivers that let AMD and Nvidia eGPUs run on Mac. Okay. I was so excited when I read that much of it. Carry on. Yeah, it gets a little worse. Uh, the software is designed for AI though and not built for gaming. Apple has officially signed off on those drivers. Uh, the drivers are developed by Tiny Corp, the company behind the Tiny Box AI accelerator, and Apple's approval means users no longer need hacky workarounds like disabling system integrity protection to get eGPUs running. This is specifically for AI workloads, not for gaming. The drivers are built for running large language models. So, if you were hoping to plug a GPU into your Mac and fire up games, that's unfortunately not in the cards. Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. Nice. Solid. Solid. Tiny Corp first got an eGPU working on Apple Silicon back in May 2025. That was not me, by the way. That was the writer. Um, back in May 2025, but that required unofficial methods. Now, with Apple's blessing, installation is straightforward. For context, Tiny Corp sells some serious AI hardware. Their lineup ranges from 12,000 from a $12,000 box with four AMD 9070 XTs all the way up to a $65,000 system running four RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPUs. The reason that this is in good news wow I feel like I should explain that it's still good is that this is the first step sign of a potential future thaw in the frosty relationship between Apple and Nvidia. I would love to see at some point. Um, you know, I think asking for an Nvidia GPU baked onto Apple silicon in a multi-d package, that's probably unrealistic, but I'd love to see a future where I could hook an Nvidia eGPU up to my MacBook Neo3 or MacBook Neo4 and run serious games off of an iPhone CPU. Be sweet. And Nvidia's down. We know this because they actually went and did the work and made a driver. And this was a number of years ago. And Apple intentionally blocked it from working. Ever since Bumpgate, things have been frosty between between the two. But I just I feel like both of them have come so far and been so successful that you would think it would be time to bury the hatchet. You know, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Maybe when pigs fly and, you know, me and Gamers Nexus make up and kiss. I had a segue plan for the next topic and it's gone. is I have no idea what it was. Uh I have genuinely How's that for an image in your mind? Oh no. His hair just draping around your face. Hey, what makes you think I would be on the bottom? So many things. Keyron, I feel like he would. Yeah, Keyron has made their keyboard and mice designs source available, allowing anyone to design or 3D print parts for their devices. This is so cool. They published a GitHub repository containing production grade CAD files for 83 of their keyboard and mouse models. files are available in step for 3D CAD work, DXF for 2D plate cutting, and DWG for engineering drawings. Meaning that owners can 3D print enclosures, CNC a replacement plate, even in…

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