I'm Happy Apple Is Getting Sued - WAN Show March 22, 2024

What's wrong with everyone? Welcome to the W

show

. I'll be coming to you live from the western side of the Pacific and we have a great

show

scheduled for you today. The big story this week is, obviously, that Apple is being

sued

by the US Department of Justice in other almost equally big news. I was featured on a smos song and it got sexual, extremely sexual, yes, LinkedIn thinks gaming at work is cool and that your entire company should compete against other companies, which is exciting and also a terrible idea that we will discuss more Go ahead and I don't know if you mentioned this or not, but Apex Legends got hacked mid-tournament in a big way, which ruined everything we're going to talk about that I didn't do.

I know hacking works like this, okay, let's go ahead and do that introduction. I can not do it. Luke has to do it. Oh ha, you're green and Jawa brought it. You're okay, we were both doing it, so it's great, absolutely fantastic. right, why don't we jump right into our first topic and if you're, if you're a heavy user of R sl

apple

um, you're going to have to take your copium supplements because this is going to It may be quite difficult to hear, but the reason why It's not because I hate Apple that I'm

happy

with this news, in fact, those of you who were here for the pre-show on Seaplane and Twitch will have seen that I drive AirPods on a daily basis.

In fact, I use Apple products as part of my life and even pay a lot of money for them. Do you know how you know? I pay a lot of money for them because they are made by Apple. Oh yeah, it's fair and I, uh, oh, we lost. he uh while we wait to get it back I'm going to start reading the thread yeah, it's back, it's back, it should be great, it's back, do you want to lower the bandwidth a little bit? Actually, let's have Luke read the topic. I'll be right back that sounds good yesterday the US Department of dust uh that would be great Department the US Department of Justice and the Attorneys General of more than a dozen states filed a lawsuit against Apple for monopolizing markets of smartphones in the Justice Department's largest antitrust lawsuit since It's like an incredibly massive case against Microsoft in 1998 in which Microsoft was accused of acting anticompetitively to boost Internet Explorer, if any of you remember that in the lawsuit EP Epic Games Fortnite users were only claiming that Apple had a monopoly on the iOS software distribution market.

This lawsuit concerns Apple's effects on the smartphone market in general. iPhones make up about 56% of the US smartphone market, having surpassed the 50% mark in 2020. Simply put, the government's complaint cites virtually every iOS complaint raised. by users in recent memory, this includes Apple blocking third-party app store payment systems and downloading on iOS, intentionally obstructing cross-platform features in apps like Apple Messages, making iPhone users look like Android phones They are to blame, so you should know how to just buy. your mom, an iPhone that quotes a line that the Department of Justice specifically cites in its document. You can search for that clip.

It's pretty good. Eliminate cloud streaming services. Apple recently changed its global policies to allow services like Xbox and GeForce cloud streaming now. house its game streaming library in a single IOS app and also refuses to add Android support to the Apple Watch in response. Apple told 9 to5 Mac that they investigated this possibility for 3 years and concluded that it was not feasible due to technical limitations and also forced third parties to wait. I can see? I'll let you finish, but can I just call? I don't have my beep button so I'll have to manually make up the name um ox manure um in that there is absolutely no way that a company the size of Apple with Apple's resources couldn't find any meaningful way to get the AppleWatch.

I don't think people would have expected a parody feature. I mean, as an Android user with airpods, I understand that I'm a bit of a second-class citizen, there are certain things that you know, I understand, you know that aren't necessarily going to work, like Apple is using, you know, a special proprietary codec. or something like that to allow their space nonsense, it's like, yeah, you know what maybe. I don't understand that, but there is a certain thing, no, this is that they are degrading the experience because they are malicious, I shouldn't say malicious, but because, oh man, arrogance, the word escapes me right now, but basically because they don't respect me . enough for not buying enough products from them to work for me the fact that I can't alter what the long presses of the stems do unless I buy an iPhone and connect it to an iPhone um that's really bad the fact that I don't They can't update the firmware in any way without a Bluetooth connection to an iPhone it's that they just obviously hate their users it's yeah there you go thanks Lightning Man GTS it's spiteful there is absolutely no way they wouldn't do it. able to update the firmware otherwise, they just designed the product in such a way that it just doesn't work, and they do it on purpose, part of me is willing to consider a little that probably everyone at Apple You just know, enemas and Kool-Aid all day, every day and you can't even imagine a world where you simply wouldn't have an iPhone, so it's not a problem at all.

Then you know why we would have a way for you. you know, connect it to the case via a cable and have you press it like that or something and I understand that the cas is just for charging or whatever, except it's not because they can definitely communicate with the airpods through the case, so I don't know, so I can understand why they just didn't consider it when they designed the product, but it happens way too consistently to the point where it has to be on purpose at this point and I think that's essentially what What the Department of Justice is saying is that we have a long history of Apple designing their products for minimal interoperability and then basically shrugging our shoulders and buying more of our stuff, okay Luke, sorry, move on, yeah, no Don't worry, to continue with the appointments. uh from the government forcing third party payment services to use Apple Wallet by blocking super apps like WeChat uh alipay and other apps that also serve as platforms for mini apps and thus reduce users' dependence on features Apple's own and more, there are tons, the doj even says that Carplay is anti-competitive, which was actually a little interesting to me, but anyway, um, yeah, that doesn't make sense on the surface, but if you click in what they are, what they are referring to is actually a future of Carplay. uh not the status of carplay right now, so apparently

apple

is telling car manufacturers that in the future if they want to be able to support carplay they will have to let apple take control of all the screens in the car, not just one. window screen and this is really frustrating for me because one of the problems I've had with Teslas, for example, one of my main reasons for not being interested in a Tesla for years, even though on paper it was like what you are As a technician, you should have a Tesla, right?

One of my main problems was that I was locked into Tesla's OS, so yes, I could use Google Maps as long as Tesla decided I could use Google Maps like I couldn't. I just plug my phone in and use whatever I want and it's been proven now that you can even in a Tesla just run Android auto or run carplay in a window and get all the functionality you want that way instead of relying on Tesla, uh, Tesla . own inment operator, but I thought no, this is absolutely, this is absolutely perfect. I'll never have to be at the mercy of the automaker, who and Tesla, you know, have been much better than traditional automakers at this, but I still just don't trust automakers to keep their software up to date, while I trust myself to keep buying a new phone every time I need one, which turns out isn't very often, but I can do it and then I can just bring it.

Yeah, I can bring that new experience with me, um and this, I didn't realize, would completely ruin it because all I wanted was for my phone to run in a little window on my dashboard. I don't want, I don't want my phone. to completely take over the car, I want my car to work like it should and my phone to work like it should and then I can listen to whatever music I want on the playlists that I have stored on my phone, that's it, that's all I want . I'm asking and I just don't understand why companies like Apple have to flex like this and impose their will like God, who cares, you already sold the iPhone, I'm sorry, move on, yes, yes, and by the way, no, I don't was. rapping or making strange gestures, I was, I was bringing liberty and freedom to a bug that was bothering me, anyway, moving forward, Apple released a statement saying that the lawsuit threatens who we are and would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology that people wait.

Apple, where hardware, software and services intersect, many parallels are being drawn. I'm going to have to interrupt you again right here because I actually agree with that. I very much agree that this lawsuit threatens who they definitely are because Apple Apple is anti-competitive um and this would threaten that greatly um as to whether it would hinder their ability to create the kind of technology that people expect from Apple, I don't think that I wouldn't do it at all, if anything, I think this would open up the kind of technology that Apple creates, which is really cool, honestly, a lot of times I think it would open up that technology to a wider range of users.

It's great, I think I'm really afraid I don't see a The bad thing and the thing is the arguments you're going to get I don't know what to call them and I realize this is extremely disrespectful um but I'm so sorry I can't think of another word, but just like. the zombies, you know, the kind of argument that you're going to get from these fanatics, who will defend this multi-billion, multi-billion dollar corporation to the death, like it's this weird dynamic that I don't understand, like having this guy. of parasocial relationship with a logo, you know, the kind of arguments that you will get from them, you know, I like the closed ecosystem, I like the Walled Garden, I like it, I like all the good things about having a Macbook, an iPhone, airpods and a Vision Pro and all the synergies that exist between all these products that you can have that are not locked yet, great, yeah, so keep buying them all.

I'm not asking you to change anything for yourself, I'm just asking for a way to update the firmware on the damn product I bought without buying another product and in order not to recognize the level of disrespect that is to BAS, I'm basically saying yes you have than to come to our store to update the firmware of this product if you didn't buy enough of our products, I mean, imagine for a second, imagine for a second if to get a Windows update after purchasing a Windows computer, well, you had to Go to a Microsoft store and ask them to install it for you.

Imagine it as if that's what you have to do, in any case, whether we're talking Democrat versus Republican, PlayStation versus Xbox, Apple versus whatever, you have to accept whatever and then you have to pretend that someone you hate does. did and decide if it would be okay and if it wouldn't be okay then it's not okay it really is that's a good way to look at it actually yeah yeah that's a good way to frame it um continuing with a lot of parallels are being drawn to the Microsoft antitrust case , which was like the last really big case they did, it's not the last one they did, it's the last super big case they did, um, that involved years of arguments, rulings, appeals of those rulings, and finally a settlement.

With Microsoft making a number of concessions, Riley also points out here that I, like Riley, have also seen analysts claim that the lawsuit is both well-founded and ill-founded, an eventual messy compromise seems likely, which yeah, I mean, you're going a We have incredible amounts of money from Apple and a lot of money from the government, the government doesn't want to lose, so a lot of money versus the government not wanting to lose, it's going to take a while, it's going to be a big compromise the way I see this it plays out if the government makes enough money that it will be such a big distraction and such a big sunk cost for Apple when this all plays out that they will, at least if Microsoft has anything to go by, they will.

For 20 years or so, I relaxed my calculations on the whole issue of anti-competitive business practices. I mean, some of these things have been so obvious for so long. I mean, look at epic games versus Apple. I don't think so. You don't have to like that epic Tim Sweeney You don't have to like epic games I don't want the epic games store on my computersand I have, I got into this with Tim Sweeney back in the day. I wouldn't say he's my favorite person, but I think you know that if we ignore Tim Sweeney's personal motivations for this, where he obviously wants to make more money and grow his company, it would be ridiculous.

You shouldn't ignore that either, but disagree with your fundamental points that Apple and these other Marketplace holders are engaging in anti-competitive behavior to secure their whopping 30% share of every purchase made on their platforms. I don't agree with that. I feel like it's a demonstration that you don't really understand the behaviors these companies are adopting and that you don't understand what anti-competitive means. Yes, it's okay to create a product that has benefits if you use it with top brand tips. . I mean, let's take our screwdriver for example, it works best with our first part short bits, but there is a big difference in the product to make it work.

It fits 12. bits if you buy some first hand and it had, you know, an RFID chip in the bits and the ratchet stopped working if you didn't buy our first hand bits, there's a huge difference between designing products that work well together and designing products that punish users for not buying enough and for not following our rigid rules, yeah, it's interesting because you often hear that 30% thing and it's compared to Steam, which is intriguing, because there are some things in there that have makes sense and there are some things that don't, it's like it's something in-game, it doesn't necessarily have to go through Steam, a lot of companies will do it because for DLC and stuff it's easier, but there are some in-game purchases that don't have Going through Steam there are also a lot of things Steam could do to be significantly more anti-competitive that they don't do.

There are interesting statistics. I'll come back to that in a moment. There are interesting stats right now that make it seem like oh Steam is a bit like in 2018, a group of Valve staff tried to figure out how efficient they were being and found that they were making more money per capita than Apple, Facebook, etc. Almost every tech giant found that in 2018 they were making exactly $78,400 per employee at Valve at any level and you compare that to Apple, which makes clunky machines. Oh, absolutely, you compare it to Apple, which historically has incredible amounts of money in the market. bank and only make cash, compared to Apple, Apple makes 47616 per employee which is closer to half than anything else, so Val is doing well with that 30%, but they allow you to sell your game on your own platform if you wish. sell, they allow you to sell your game on other platforms, they are not determining, oh, you have to sell your game at least at the same price as it is here.

Remember Humble Bundle when they came out back in the day when they gave away games. basically for free that you were activating on Steam and using the Steam service to download and Valve was cool because they're not engaging in a lot of these other anti-competitive things, 30% is a lot we can talk about, but Honestly, that's a different conversation when there are a ton of different libraries on Steam. Steam even allows you to use games that you have installed from Steam. On a different launcher, there are many other multi-launcher things. I think even Nvidia cards these days can boot games. of your software as if anyone would want to do that, it's interesting.

I have some problems with the 30%, but there are a couple of people here. uh hcky says I don't hear Lonus complaining about Microsoft only letting you play Xbox games. on the Xbox, so you weren't listening, uh, because that was a big point for me for a long time, was Microsoft's talk that they were paying for games on Windows. You know, when they launched Vista, they had this menu of my games, um, and they kept talking about how much they cared about Windows games and the Windows gaming ecosystem on Xbox 360 and even to some extent in the Xbox One days.

I never shut up about how he made us have these releases with these shitty ports way down. the line on PC and that and that Microsoft Windows users were treated like second class citizens when functionally the Xbox was just a computer, guys I never shut up about it, the reason you don't hear me complain now is because It's not a The problem right now is that games work on Windows and Xbox like nothing, many, many games that you buy for Xbox. I don't think it's all of them yet. I haven't looked into it recently, but I know there was a big change. that took place about three years ago, where a lot of games would actually be dual licensed so you could play them on Windows or on Xbox, they added keyboard and mouse support to the Xbox so you could play your games with a keyboard and mouse, which which was a big problem for me, as a PC gamer.

I'd look at an Xbox version of a game and say, "Oh, cool, I'll get this in two years and I'll be able to use a proper set of peripherals with this shooter." A lot of the problems I've had over the years have been addressed, that's why you don't, that's why you don't see me complaining about it anymore, because believe it or not, I'm not just a hater, I don't. I complain about things just for the sake of complaining about them. I complain about them when they are bad and when they are wrong. This is one of Jen in the Twitch chat as an app developer and editor.

I find the 30% tax for both Apple and Google, by the way, no one disputes that Epic

sued

them both, on the one hand I find it high, but I also get a lot of services for it. I get a complete store system including billing payment management etc. I also get a review process that Yes, it can be frustrating, but it also ensures a quality threshold for the apps that are published. Nobody has a problem with that and I want to make this absolutely clear. Nobody, not me, not the Department of Justice, not Tim Sweeny, nobody has a problem with that.

The problem is not. the 30% fee the problem is not the complete solution with the billing and all these tools and review and guarantee of user security none of those are problems the problem is the blocking the problem is the blocking the problem is that if I don't want your invoice in the system if I don't want it to process your payment, I'm forced to leave, that's the problem, the problem is that this review process is so frequent. I mean Luke, what is the percentage of times we crash our IOS app for user security reasons? User security issue, quite a few, it's not happening as often anymore, just to be very clear to people watching, this was a big deal, like probably a year and a half or two years ago, it's happening all the time, like any other time, and when it would happen. it could happen several times for user security oh uh, I guess it's never okay, how many times were we blocked for something that wasn't very frequent?

Yes, my favorite. This is a bit off topic. Yes, you may be right. I'll leave Luke. tell the story because I'm late oh the Netflix one no the one I was going to talk about there was one time they blocked us because they said they couldn't log in and then they sent us a screenshot of another's login portal person while trying to enter our information, there was another time where they blocked us because they said they couldn't log in and then I looked at it was our login portal. I looked at their login and they just misspelled it and submitted. back, I thought: why are you writing something like why copy and paste this?

This is crazy. I don't know what Netflix was, what it was. Netflix was doing something, yeah, where we set up our, yeah, that's how it was. The first thing you see when you launch the app is just directing people to create an account on our site or something and basically our team assumed that what we were doing was fine because Netflix, for some reason, had a special deal. with Apple, where they were allowed to direct people to their own portal, um, for H for subscriptions and they didn't, they directly didn't allow people to subscribe through the app because Netflix's entire business model would be unsustainable if they gave Apple 30% of their gross revenue. and so they had your registration set up in such a way that you were just redirected and that's how we set it up, sorry, I was just talking to the audience, I was saying, I don't know if you still are or not, this was This was a while ago, yeah , this was a while ago, so we set it up thinking okay, obviously it's okay because someone else is doing it.

We set up our app to work exactly the same way because, believe it or not, our business model is a video stream. The seaplane platform is also not sustainable if we give 30% of our growth to Apple. We do not sell cosmetics in the game. Uh, we don't sell, you know, just button-mashing games or whatever. Otherwise, like us, we have very significant costs associated with publishing this video and 30% of the gross is not sustainable for us, to the point where we will invest Cycles in creating our own payment processing and our own management of subscription plans and all that.

To make it sustainable, we set it up the same way Netflix was doing it and our application was rejected and when we responded saying this is exactly the same as Netflix, it was a long battle. Yes, and from the beginning, they said yes, I can't even remember what they did, they said you can't compare yourself to any other app on the platform, it's not a valid argument, and I thought this is one of the most important on the platform. Is it possible that this is not a valid argument? You think people aren't going to build things based on what they see in your thing and they were like you can't compare it to any other app?

This is what we tell you to do. listen to what we say and it's okay because that was also very frustrating because I would complain when we had a lot of problems. I was complaining about

getting

blocked for x or y or B and people were messaging me and tweeting me. to me and all this kind of stuff, well my application surpassed whatever it is, yeah, that doesn't mean anything in my experience, it's not like everything is completely individual. I am having this problem. Now I'm dealing with this person. on Apple's side and it is what it is, I can't make any argument based on precedent, which is very frustrating, yes, that's how arguments work, by the way, yes, precedent matters a lot, yes, like and again you have You have to go back to Would you be okay with it if someone you hate did it?

So if Microsoft said oh yeah, you know, um valve, oh, oh, this is cool, here's a stupid thing, you know, oh yeah, you know. Valve is allowed to have Steam integrated enough into Windows networking that when you switch to a wired connection, it will automatically go faster and use that wired connection, but you know gaming can't have that, so just stay on. Wi-Fi unless you manually disconnect your Wi-Fi and restart the app and um, yeah, what a shame, it's different rules for different apps, you'd be furious, you'd be sitting there, well, this is ridiculous. it's ridiculous that they're controlling this and that's exactly the argument here, you just can't control functionality like that, um and for anyone who's going to answer me, yes you can, Apple did it, the answer is no, you can't. and the Department of Justice finally woke up from its 25e slumber and realized, at that time, back in 1998, you know, I was 12 years old, so I didn't really understand.

I used, I used Internet Explorer and I thought Internet Explorer was okay because I don't know better. The only thing I had touched was Netscape Navigator, which in my perception was a piece of garbage, although I perceived it as a piece of garbage because of Microsoft's anti-competitive practices that effectively forced them to eliminate all of their funding maybe, but as a consumer I didn't understand the impact that Microsoft's behavior was having on competing products and on their own product, all I saw was convenience, so convenient that Windows comes with Internet Explorer, it's so natural, of course.

They are integrated because I was just a child. I didn't understand it now. I'm three times the age, which has some disadvantages, but definitely has some benefits. I have the wisdom to look at the vision of what Microsoft did. back then to see what Apple is doing now and see the knock-on effects of this, see how this type of platform control hurts me even if I don't understand it and if so, if you are a user who loves Apple ecosystem let me let me try to lure you in with honey instead of vinegar this time forcing Apple to compete harder is going to be good for you you want a hungry Apple you want a competitive apple with a bite you don't want an apple that's just going to sit back and get fat and being lazy and putting billions of dollars into vanity projects that eventually get cancelled.

You want an apple that's trying to improve on the iPhone, an apple that recognizes, oh, you know, there's a serious quality, you know. problem with um, you know what I'm going to go after lower hanging fruit, um, you know, oh, there's a small percentage of users whoThey're still mad because you still can't move your app icons on the home screen to your heart's content is that you have to create, you know, trash folders wherever you are and make them invisible wherever you want so you have an empty spot. um we should take care of that let's get hungry let's fix the problems um the fact that it took what was three or four years to address those butterfly keyboards on their MacBooks you don't want that Apple you want the Apple you're afraid of lose market share, you want you to know that yes, yes, you want the Apple that is going to lower the price. from iCloud because they can't just shove it down your throat because they are forced to allow other cloud providers like man how awesome would it be if someone like Blaze had the same level of API access and could have the same level of integration with iOS , suddenly you wouldn't have to pay for iCloud since Blaze is a perfectly good service and if Apple were forced to allow it on their platform you would benefit because they would have to compete with iCloud instead of just I mean it's priced at iCloud when it was the last time the iCloud price changed it doesn't matter the price when is the minimum amount they provided when was the last time it changed because it's like nothing yeah I don't know I know there are two interesting arguments to go along with this also, I got both from Theo, but one of them is that this is a thank you to us because it's bad for us, but I think he was talking about places like Twitch and stuff mainly at the time. but the platforms that have a split with the creators on the platform, so the stream plane would be one of these, Twitch would be one of these YouTube, maybe I don't think YouTube is largely operating this way, but even It will affect them to some extent.

Twitch, this will only affect a portion of your audience, but to some extent, on whatever platform you're splitting revenue on, this is an additional split and that's going to hurt those platforms disproportionately compared to others because uh, like the flow plane for example is a much larger slice that comes out of the pie before we have to try to divide it with our creators who are on the platform to have it divided and then divided again, which is really very difficult for us. and then you have platforms that I probably don't know, the other argument floating around is that there are platforms that are like bringing monetization to the App Store and there are platforms that mostly just benefit from it, because there are platforms that are really big and very importantly, I think the example Theo used was like banking apps, banking apps are going to pay your Apple developer fee and then nothing despite it being a huge requirement in the modern era for people to bank with your bank. it's not at all having a banking app, so this would be something they would pay a ton for, but they're not paying anything as effectively being subsidized by the Twitches, the hydroplanes, the mo mobile apps with microtransactions in all of them. all the things that are actually flowing a lot of money through this 30% cut are effectively subsidizing these other, in many cases, huge companies that only have to pay their developer fee or nothing if they're on Google.

Play Store, but it's both situations are like this doesn't feel good this doesn't feel good I don't know oh and there's no incentive for Apple to change it no no, I'm here and there's no incentive for Apple to change any of that as long as they are making money, yes, hand over fist, I might add, yes, and if they are, if not, if not, they are bound to compete with anyone, if they are able to simply sit back and maintain the status quo. as long as it's comfortable and that's exactly what these types of antitrust cases are designed to combat is complacency in Comfort to force them to compete hard and everyone, absolutely everyone, unless you own a bunch of Apple stock, should support that And you know what.

Even if you own a ton of Apple stock, you should still support it. Was Microsoft crippled by 1998 antitrust? I was decoupling Windows and Internet Explorer. Actually, I'm talking long term now because long term they are doing it. They are doing very well right now, they are crushing right now, to be honest I'm not an accountant, okay this is not financial advice but pretty much any smart person you talk to who treats stocks like any other something that is not a game of chance. to tell you that you're buying this for the long term, you're buying it because it's a company you believe in, because it's a vision you believe in, it's something you understand, this is how you're supposed to buy shares, because you're supposed to instead of trying to time the market, you're supposed to time the Market knowing that you know it's historically grown at X rate and whatever the case may be, um, with that in mind, if you bought Microsoft for a long time .

You're a sad camper today because of that lawsuit, especially if you actually bought it right when that lawsuit hit. You're probably doing really well because because they had to fight, they had to try and you know. What have they learned something in the long term? I don't think so, their antics with Edge today are honestly probably worse than what they were doing with Internet Explorer in the '90s; However, with that being said, what I hope is that the Department of Justice wins a huge settlement here. and we see a bit of a return to good behavior because, man, has Edge ever gotten annoying?

I would love to see them go after Microsoft again, honestly, I would love to see the Department of Justice get 10 times more staff and see them go after a lot of the clownish behavior we've seen around the world to fix anti-competitive practices in the ecosystems of Wal Garden. I'm so tired of it and I'm tired of us accepting it, it's really frustrating, yeah, yeah, HP printers, come on man. I'm, I'm wondering, I've been, this has been on my radar for a while, I don't think they're in a place right now for this to happen, but some of the actions that Microsoft has been moving towards AI things, makes me think that you guys released the Beast again, like what's going on here are you trying to completely control the entire AI space or not, because sometimes it's like it's

getting

a little bit close, but you haven't.

I haven't actually done it yet, but I wonder if this will feel like a cross shot. I don't know, we'll see, I hope so. I hope they're trying to make an example of them because of the fact that it's so broad to me, yeah, they go after everything I can see where people are coming from, saying oh, this is complicated, but the fact that it's so broad in my mind is more of an indication that they are going for damage here. So I think they know they're not going to win everything, yes, but if they just come in right, this is going to hurt, and even if it doesn't hurt as much in terms of the final deal.

This is going to be a huge distraction, it's going to be very costly just in terms of the opportunity cost in terms of the time lost. I think the message to Apple is to be nice or this will be an ongoing problem. defend themselves on all fronts and I just hope they deliver, yeah yeah that said it's an election year so who knows yeah that's true. Priorities change so quickly in American politics these days, well yeah you can't. I even just specified America there, but yeah, I agreed, um, yeah, it's interesting because most of the people I know because yeah, like you, you were 12 or whatever, I was like nine.

I don't know when the Microsoft thing happened. Most people talk to them. about what happened, um, if you've talked to them about how they felt back then and what they think about the ramifications, etc., etc., the majority of the feelings I've seen are that they wish this kind of thing would happen. more often. What happened to more companies? They will point to some company now that is doing something and say why don't they go after them. So yeah, I think we should be

happy

that people who, if you're American, I guess, are. you are paying them to do their job you should be happy I guess they are doing their job and I hope they keep doing it because antiv is bad we can all wish they would do more of their job 100%. with you should do more of your work, but you know, let's take what we can get, yes, this is good, this is good and yes, I'm not American and many of you are probably not American, but Apple, being a company American, that's the best. vulnerable on American soil and Apple's is their largest market or it's China now, but at least one of their largest markets is one or two, I don't remember, but this is the largest market or the second largest, whichever something that Apple has to do.

Your American customers are very likely to reach everyone else, so it's a very, very good thing for everyone else. um, yeah, Jed Ora on Twitch says the lawsuit sounds like it was written by someone who was really technologically illiterate. They blame Apple for the death. of Windows Phone and others rather than those companies making bad moves and that's a very good point. Uh, I haven't read it. Pages or however many pages it has. I haven't read it, but I've skimmed it a bit. and I've seen some highlights that people have been talking about on Reddit that really emphasize what you're talking about, you're not wrong, there are definitely some areas that could have been improved by bringing in someone who really understands the technology and history behind some of these things, but again I understand that government competition is not going to be as high as private sector competition and I understand that the Department of Justice is going to lose a lot of this.

All I can hope is that they win enough that we see a big enough deal that Apple gets a slap on the wrist enough to change its behavior at least temporarily for at least a temporary period of time and that make the rest of the industry wake up and leave. Woo, wait a second, okay, great example, this was when the FCC went after that Xbox promotion where Twitch streamers didn't disclose that they were getting paid to play games on Xbox, this was around the launch of the Xbox One , never. As far as I can tell, I don't think we've seen much less a high profile case.

I don't think we've seen a single additional case behind this type of undisclosed product sponsorship and paid sponsorship, but what I will say is that it did cause significant change, it didn't clean up the industry completely, there are still companies out there and there are still plenty of them. , a lot of influential people doing dirty deals, undisclosed deals, but compared to what it was before, when it was complete Yeehaw like just the wild west um I would say it's noticeably improved even now, even eight years later or whatever that we're doing eight or nine years later, so I'm unusually optimistic, it's naive maybe, but we saw a big change at Microsoft. behavior for a long time in 1998 we saw a big change in advertiser behavior and influence, at least temporarily, when the FCC hit Microsoft for that Xbox promotion and I hope we're hopeful that uh Avon fox in flan says Now it's fashionable to say you disclose, yes it is, and some people don't, some people say they disclose and disclose.

Sometimes some of that is an extremely important shift in how viewers feel about creators monetizing their stuff, extremely important when we start any form. of monetization, no matter what you receive, you will receive very significant hate and like from a lot of people, people are very angry nowadays if you don't monetize your stuff, people say what are you doing, you need to earn money to be able to do this as a career, you need to monetize your things. Playing those ads on ttch, yeah that's very common nowadays, it's completely reversed, so in the past, revealing that you had this, that's why doing things like that is bad, revealing that.

If you had any kind of deal in the past, it would have garnered you significant hate and potentially lost you viewers, and these days, revealing that you have one will make people cheer you on and expect you to do better. It's changed so much it's actually crazy. Yeah, unless they don't like the company you have the deal with, but overall it looks positive anyway, moving on to topic two, talking about phones, Windows phones, Apple phones, whatever the minimum, it's like a Kindle, but it's a minimal starter phone, launched a crowdfunding campaign. for what they called the minimal phone earlier this month, although they haven't reached production yet, they have a working prototype for a smartphone with a 3 and 1/2-inch monochrome eink display and a physical keyboard, it's 4 gigs of RAM 128 gigs of storage, the phone's operating system is a customized version of Android 13 and the phone has a Bluetooth app and 5G support, although its 15Hz eink display makes it unsuitable for watching videos or playing games , the phone includes abecause there are billions and billions and billions of dollars right now, not necessarily, but I think you should be aware of that. what you're doing on YouTube, well you can do it on your computer, a lot of it is like being on the phone, yeah, that's made easy too, in my opinion, a lot of it is literally, specifically, being on the phone because I mean, I mean posture, what you end up doing physically isn't very good, etc., but oh man, I'm so unhappy with my typical neck posture and it's one of those things where I try to be mindful about it a little bit, but it's like it's hard to try to use your phone like no one does this no, no one is doing this like you see people walking no one walks like this like everyone walks like this it's bad and it's not good it's okay it's this the rest of the swatch also I love how well this lines up right now even though my head is super small, it's pretty cool, there's all this like, um, it's not necessarily so much the pose itself, although the pose can be more aesthetic, but if you think about it I think the simple idea of ​​weight being supported by bones is exactly like saying weight is supported by bones rather than weight being supported by muscles.

If you're curved like that, your muscles are trying to hold themselves together and if you're straight up. the bone is just sitting on itself, it's much better for you, much better for you, here we go, do you want to explain the commercial messages? Oh, sure, yes, commercial messages are the way to interact with the program. Don't buy even a little. Don't buy some Super Chat merch, messages are the way to go, all you have to do is head over to LTT store.com where we have some updates for you and when you are in the cart there will be a little box every time we go live and you can leave a merchandising message. to producer Dan, who normally I would uh Hey, Luke will, no, he won't.

I saw his hand reach for what I thought was a, he's actually controlling you, there's nothing to wait for, yeah, okay, whatever, okay, okay, he'll go to producer Dan, who will select his message for Luke and I can talk about it or answer it himself or it will just appear at the bottom of the screen so you can see a little greeting for your mom or a proposal for your loved ones or for yourself. I know whatever the case may be, we've actually had people proposition us on the W show before, which I think is pretty fun.

Anyway, the point is that we will do our best to respond to your marketing message in some way. Last week was an example. from a week where we didn't get to all of them because there were like a thousand or something, but the worst case scenario is that you'll get some quality merchandise in the mail instead of just throwing money at a display, which has always offended me. kinda um no you know nothing against streamers who depend on that and people who enjoy that kind of stuff yeah it's just not my problem and I like that if you're going to spend money you should definitely get some quality.

In return, before I send out some product messages to show you how it works, I have a couple of small product updates for the store. Retro Screwdriver is still working with free shipping for your entire order. We had a couple of people. Ask us, yes, this temporary offer that ends March 29 applies to international orders, so if you haven't picked up a screwdriver yet, the time to do so now is to pick up the Retro Luke Screwdriver, do you want to get it on display? Choose the retro screwdriver color combination and you'll get free shipping on your entire international order, so hey, do me a favor, grab a few other things while you're at it, that would be great because international shipping is pretty expensive and this is a good Time to buy anything else you want from the store because, hey, free shipping, might I recommend our new cable management arcs?

We also have, what else is really cool and people are very interested in Tech saac? stock right now and has great reviews, yeah, magnetic man, dude. I wasn't sure about Luke. I love this. I wasn't sure this was one of those products that, um, I thought, do people want such an ugly management solution? Don't know. Turns out the answer is yes, it just looks so good that these things are crushing it, um, they are absolutely crushing it, it's like every frustration I've ever had with, oh, I used zip ties this time, now I need to go look. zip, forget it, I'm just not going to bother or like velcro ties, you know.

Long live Velcro ties! They're great, but they're not perfect. They are if you use them correctly and really squeeze them. What a pain in the butt to add something to magnetism, man, magnets, they fix it, how do they work? Love you very much. It's one of the most uploaded things on Reddit right now. Is anyone using one of the Arcs to open their refrigerator? a broken hand I wonder if I can find that wizards are super strong um I'm just trying to think what else is uh what else is cool to pick up at the store man we release so many products I feel like some things end up kind of buried , uh, the Dropout hoodie I'm wearing, it's really good, it's a super comfortable men's outfit, um, yeah, oh, Steve, Steve is doing great, that mock collar that talks about the show being It's mostly about Apple this week anyway, yeah. so LTT store.com anyway Dan, do you want to show what a select merch post looks like?

Sure, wait, we're looking at the refrigerator door, he just used the regular magnets, now he's using ours, cute, cute, we'll see him again. only 11 seconds so it has a stack of magnets which then being in a stack can help two stacks two stacks oh I even noticed that yes it has two stacks and then yeah just one handle They also sell a larger size if you want to be able to do that. stick more fingers in there, anyway, curated merch Wizard, that wasn't intentional. I'm so sorry, I'm not a very good accomplice, I'm not sorry, I'm sorry, I'm blushing.

You have always recommended dram ssd, but unfortunately most ssd only have SLC. Cash has changed his opinion a lot on dlessless SSDs, sometimes you guys use them in your builds like sabr, so it's one of those things where I feel like it and you know what I don't have, unfortunately I don't have a rational basis for it. this and sometimes things are like that, although I feel like dless is still the route I would go if I could, if I could pay the extra in a particular budget for my build and the reason why is that it puts a little less stress on the nand a long term.

Will this be a problem within the reasonable life expectancy of an SSD? Nand Flash probably won't be used as an SLC cache to speed up the drive or use system memory, so many SSDs these days support using a bit of system memory to offset the role of a cache. Dedicated dam on your SSD and that apart from the small performance hit is not problematic at all, relying on the nand itself to speed up the SSD, may cause a bit of extra wear and tear even then that will be a problem in the long run , you probably don't know, I think in the early days of SSDs Especially when we were using two-bit SLC or Percell mlc, there was a lot of noise and stress about how our SSDs had a finite number of correct cycles and were only going to last a little while. time and they basically had a countdown. timer, they had a clock ticking and we got really stressed about it and some of that was true especially for an enterprise application where these things are going to be overwritten multiple times a day, but for the average user.

I mean, think about it, how often is that SSD overwritten and can it support hundreds or in some cases thousands of overwrite cycles? That will ever really be a problem, um, yeah, so it's not rational, but I would still do it. take a cash SSD instead of a cashless SSD, assuming you know they are the same price. I don't know if I would, but that being said, if I were to buy a system, let's say I bought a Rog. Ally or a Steam Deck or a laptop and it had an SSD with no battery. Am I going to notice?

Am I going to bother replacing it? No, and especially if you were taking a game unit as a secondary game unit. Don't know. Direct storage may be important at some point, the first two games that were implemented haven't really mattered, but for direct storage it might be important at some point, so as a secondary game drive, just my game dump, would I bother getting a d? Cash SSD is not at all for that, where I'm not going to have any important data and you know, everything could be replaced by downloading the games again from Steam, just get the cheapest possible storage from a reasonably respected brand, it would be more in the chat from the seaplane says that Kingspec SSDs die quickly, although I mean it may be true, it may not be true, it may be anecdotal.

I don't have any reliable data on whether Kingspec SSDs die quickly or not, but yes I would say it probably has less to do with the lack of dram cache and probably more to do with the quality of the nand. There have been some recent scandals, particularly in USB sticks and SD cards, surrounding low-quality nand Flash from Rando or, in some cases, suppliers. Nand is used in these devices which have an extremely short life cycle. I would love to see that product like the SSD nand USB flash drive, you know, like the grade A nand chip USB flash drive.

I don't know anyone who sells that premium USB flash drives used to be a brand name thing. like Patriot or anything else but I'm not convinced they exist anymore, apparently they do, does anyone have an example of who makes who makes? which these days, build it yourself with an m.2, I mean yeah that's what I do, apparently Corsair has a SanDisk and Samsung has them, but which one specifically, guys, because don't tell me all the Samsung ones They are good, they are good. quality and there's no way, uh, give me a specific model, let's look at the Samsung bar and someone says I've never heard of a Samsung bar or me, and apparently neither have you, you have no idea what you're talking about, apparently the SanDisk of a terabyte. extreme Pro oh my gosh, okay, I have to get back to this, unfortunately, I can't share it with you right now, uh, oh, I couldn't find it.

I brought a bunch of Samsung sound bars, no, I found advantages of the bars, sure, how did you do it? I can't find it, maybe you're on that Japanese Google. I'm trying to find the right one and then I'll share the screen. Yes, they can strive with you. No I dont think so. I understood this though, sir. Samsung bar plus uh 3.1 flash drive 256 gig speed with style move files in a rugged refinement Flash I don't see how St says I can share the screen look at that uh I didn't even know that was a thing now how How do I do this?

You make it great. You need this fast. Well, no, it's okay, it's okay. Wait, no, I'll just show you, I'll just show you, okay, so everything you're looking at is correct. here is a sponsored result from Amazon it is very small what you are seeing here I am highlighting it I see I see I see everything you are seeing here is a spal result what you are seeing here is the same result from Amazon but not sponsored, wow, and then people also ask what is old with a 100% scale. I think this is an amazing 1440p display.

I have to go here to find it. Oh wait, not this result, this is a different WD page. be the actual result right below the page so you can say they totally knew they 100% knew what I really wanted, they just put it below all their sponsored crap anyway. Okay, I'll stop screen sharing now if I can figure it out. find out how to do it oh I'm reviewing someone, someone suggested me to use kogi. I've never heard of it apparently it's a premium, uh, like pay to access. I guess I'm not sure. Okay, so this is a portable SSD.

It's not what it was, this is not really a USB stick. I wanted something in that USB stick form factor that just uses higher quality nand, like an SSD, the advantage of the bar is that what the bar has is that it doesn't look very big, okay? I'm going to try looking it up again, oh my gosh, karaoke. I have had 100% regular flash drives that are physically larger than this 100% multiple of them, oh yeah this one looks good so the bar plus is a reliable drive to store. your valuable data is fine so it looks like this is what I want, yes with a little boom that's a long time, are they really saying how many total rights you have or are they just saying?

Samsung makes a lot of Nan Flash and our Nan flash experts, so you have to trust it because I don't really see anything that indicates exactly what n chips are in this thing. I'm not sure I can't find it either. let's say it's fast uh and the reviews for this thing are terrible most of them are on samsung's own site the reviews are horrible start scrolling down yeah oneautomated. turret um there is no coverage you are going to be angry why is it on? you're the victim actually yeah yeah we really just want to line the pockets of a bunch of insurance companies because now all the companies are going to need anger Insurance for this I don't know, it's hard for me I think in general for the With most sites and services, people simply need to be more aware that they are sharing their data and potentially sometimes not if they feel uncomfortable. with that um cough things like 23 and me and things like that um and with other things like when it starts touching things like medical and and all that um maybe maybe certain levels of personal data should have something like that uh to try to pressure companies to that they try to make sure that they have good security practices and maybe yes, maybe they have insurance so that if people's identities are stolen or anything else because of this, that insurance can step in and give them a certain amount of payment .

They may have money in the bank to deal with the financial ramifications of that scenario. There is hardly any thought about security. That is simply not true. Actually it's not true. Depends. In some very small companies that can, there is hardly any thought about security. Don't do it because having a full-time security specialist on your staff is going to be very expensive. Developers are very expensive as it is and then having one specialized in something assumes that you find one that is really good and it doesn't just bother you and you just don't understand it well enough to know if they are actually doing a 100% good job. , that's a big deal and that one person is enough to contain the Horde, and even if you have a super, super, super good security team, you're still going to have vulnerabilities here or there, so it might still happen.

I don't know, it's um, it's hard. I'd love to. I'm usually into the kind of, you know, I find them harder to crush the business side of things, um and I. I know this might be, this might seem hypocritical because I run a web company that technically has a certain amount of user data, but I don't think all things are equal here. Negligence is the most important, but I don't know exactly how to do it. define it, yeah, how can you really get someone into that? um like we think about the forum leak like you mentioned before if you think of someone if you think that what this company that you like is doing is Well, if you had a company that you didn't like doing the same thing, would you still think that it's good?

Well, okay, let's change things if you think that finding these companies for this is good, do you equally agree with that? well, apply yourself if that happens to you, that's what I'm trying to place right now, so when the forum leak happened it's like yeah, it sucks, I think we should have been fined for that? I really believe it. I don't think we did anything particularly wrong and I don't think the data that was on the forum was really too overwhelming for anyone. I think the main bad part was that you know you should probably do it.

No two passwords were used in the same place. It really wasn't that important at the end of day two, yeah, yeah, sorry, but if you're a bank or I don't know anyone that deals with passports. details or safe medical things or very high value number things or social security numbers, yeah, maybe there should be more precedent there. I don't necessarily know what those requirements would have to be, but yeah, I don't know, I think so. Maybe it should be a sliding scale, is what I'm trying to say, and to be clear, none of us condone in any way the selling of this private data and then, you know, the subsequent leaking of it from somewhere else.

I mean, that's 100.% on you, you should be fined with Oblivion, but in terms of destroying absolutely any company that has an employee, potentially making a mistake and they were doing the best they could like, uh, I don't necessarily. I think that's going to be sustainable or we can talk about Steam families now, although yeah, let's jump, let's get back to that, talking about things that were unsustainable, playing games with my kids is a big deal because so far, every kid needs their own. copy of everything, each child needs their own copy of everything and that will still be true to some extent for anything that is online multiplayer where we all want to play at the same time, but one of the biggest problems for me has been that, unlike from you know, 10 or 20 years ago, where you could buy a library of games and anyone could play any of those games at a time without interfering with the others, the same way it worked on Steam until now, you can share your library with your family, but only one.

Everyone can use that library at once and it didn't use to be that big of a problem because offline was a pretty good solution: you could just start the game on one machine, log out, and then start a different game on another machine. and leave it online if they are playing something that requires multiplayer or in many cases you could get away with it you could just start the games one after the other and it would just work although strictly speaking it wasn't supposed to work but then the valve blocked a lot plus offline mode, they did a lot more checking online and it got to the point where it wasn't feasible and they started enforcing their policy of one game from one library in use at a time. more strictly to the point where I would log in to do a quick benchmark at work and kick my kid out of Rocket League at home or whatever the case may be, and it's kind of sucky because it used to be that you bought your entire library. of games and anyone could play them as long as they weren't both playing the same game at the same time, then you don't know there's no harm, no foul, right?

Well, guess what valve is taking it back to that, so they released Steam Families in the Steam beta client, which is a collection of new and existing family-related features to replace both Steam Family Sharing like Steam family view. A Steam family can consist of up to six members and all Steam family members have access to any games that support family sharing in the libraries of other members of their family now, so instead of just being able play one game from one library at a time in the whole family, users can now play different games at the same time, that's amazing, yes, adults consent.

Parental controls ring and limit play time, allowing access to appropriate games and more, and a child account now has the ability to request that an adult pay for their shopping cart, making it much easier for parents buy games for their kids and as a parent, more importantly, it makes it a lot easier for kids to not buy games on their own because in the past you basically had to choose between the inconvenience of having to go down and log in. your credit card information every time or the risk that your children would buy things with a credit card saved in their account now.

I see a downside to this as a developer, how do I feel about my games being eligible for Family Sharing now that Family Sharing is much more convenient and much more powerful, since Family Sharing was basically so inflexible that it essentially didn't did I use? I ended up buying multiple copies of games just so I wouldn't have to worry about interrupting my kids while they're playing, when I want to play or when I want to compare something or whatever the case may be, as it is now. It seems like a lot fewer people are going to have to do that, and as their own independent living organisms, you know, should my kids have the right, or my roommates, or my friends, or whoever my family is, should have the right to play these games. buy um, will my game be less likely to be eligible for Family Sharing under this system?

How would you feel? Yes, I don't know. I'm reading the FAQ right now because I'm trying to get a vibe on how a family unit might form because one thing that worries me if I'm a developer is that you know, a close group of six friends at school form a family and They share a Steam account between all of them and the cops are totally fine. I'm not judging for sure, there's like 32,000 in the Seattle one and it's growing every day, it's not sustainable, so yeah, I don't know, there doesn't seem to be any limitations to like Under One Roof or anything like that.

Actually, I don't find any limitations. They say the terms of how they define a family are subject to change, so maybe they'll figure it out. over time, um, there are also some interesting things if you leave a Steam family, um, you will have to wait a year since you joined the previous one, oh, that's no big deal, oh, interesting, so you can't just Give a like. float from one family to another no more than a year from the check-in date of the previous one, not from the check-out date, so if that's okay, that makes sense, there could be a difference of zero days if it's more than a year .

Um, yeah, as long as you don't, well, it basically says you don't have to mourn your old family for a year, yeah, as long as you've been with them for at least a year, yeah, which might be good. . for some people, you know things happen in family units, um, it's just that I don't know, I would like to enable this, but it's definitely a scenario where I guarantee you people will misuse it now, honestly, in most situations at work. Benchmark Accounts, we're just going to have to have a couple copies of each game spread across all of our Benchmark accounts, which will make using those Benchmark accounts much more effective for us.

They are in a family, friend, they are all, yes. It's clearly not family, so yeah, there are definitely uses for this that aren't going to be family now. Yeah, honestly, I think there's nothing wrong with that. Basically, we don't have to buy five copies of every stupid game. that we can run them for 20 minutes every week with Ben or whatever, if it's that group of friends from school. I used to share games with my friends. You swap games all the time temporarily like, oh, I have this first game, you have this N64 game. We both have both consoles for some reason.

I don't know why I made this weird analogy, but you can borrow this one. I'll borrow that one and we'll change it in a week or two. Whatever it was, it was very normal. um, I understand that making it all digital and giving it the ease of use of something like Steam will massively increase the number of transactions that happen, but you're locked into this family unit for a year at a time, so it's not like you're jumping around. all over the place depending on what game you want to play, so I don't know, I hope it goes well because this looks like a really cool thing, and honestly, it's the main way I would potentially use it.

It's to encourage people to pick up a game for themselves, like here, look, you can borrow this for a while. I've definitely never lent anyone my Origin account so they can try out Titanfall 2 and then convince them to buy it themselves. after, um, that's definitely never something I've done, by the way, neither of us ever recommend doing it, don't lend out your gaming accounts, yeah, um, but it's like, I don't know, I think I'd be fine with that . I think I would turn it on, yeah, I think it's cool. I think it's good. I'm a little worried about how it might go, but I really hope it goes well because I think overall it's a very good thing.

Yes, and I honestly believe. It might encourage sales to say that everything is good, there are definitely things that will not be universally considered good and I think it's time we shift our conversation to the smos song that they released, uh, I think it was earlier this week or last week called submissive and reproducible a collaboration with BB without money um that has his baby without money don't say BB without money come on H Do I have any idea who he is? H is good, I like his music Really come on now, okay, so the point is, um, the official music video, uh, Luke, do you want to upload it?

Yeah right if you want everyone to go at the same time so maybe head to about 1:30 1 1:30 yeah and then you guys can if you all go there if you could here I'll leave this in the chat. I'll leave the link to the uh guys we can all watch together this is how I'm going to do this so you guys get your views so I'll leave this in all the chats. Oh my gosh, it shows up Twitch chat rules for my own account, okay, so guys, just go there so Luke doesn't go to the screen. share Luke, you haven't started watching yet, right, no, I'm going to be playing audio from my computer, you're all going to have to listen, otherwise you won't be able to hear it, okay, um, but you're just going. to go back to the main view W, so everyone's going to watch it together, so I'm basically going to say "okay, Mark" and then everyone's going to play it, okay, okay, then you can go back to the main view, okay , twist, yes.

Okay, okay, will Luke listen to mine? Yeah, uh, without it being broadcast. I mean, Luke, you can fake it. Okay, where the hell is this coming from? Becausemoment. I think I've talked at length about why, you know, I had to find a I had to find a way and I got it. I got my way, but I've talked extensively about how games like Ballers Gate 3 and uh hell divers and more recent ones like cooperative games or even single player focused games. a fantastic co-op mod that works great for Elden Ring, but Elden Ring is more of a single-player game.

Elden Ring appeared. A lot of these non-online competitive games have been doing very well lately and I think a lot of that is because hacking in competitive games has gotten to a ridiculous point um and no, I don't know if it's because companies aren't investing enough. or if it's just a losing battle, it doesn't matter what they do or whatever except the percentages. The amount of cheaters in games is crazy, the amount of streamers that get caught cheating all the time is crazy because if cheaters get caught or if streamers get caught cheating you know there are a lot more because it's so much more easy when you're not on the stream, um.

So it's frustrating and it ruins things because the biggest problem we've also talked about is that it calls into question any other loss or death or whatever you have in a game, even if that person isn't one. If I don't cheat, it's like they do. I actually lost because of a skill. Gap. Did I really lose due to a lack of preparation? or whatever, or I lost simply because this person cheated, which really soured the whole experience. I think a lot of people. Out there it's okay to know that you're not good enough to win all the time, but you don't really feel too good about losing because you know the other person could have been worse, but he set something up and now he wins anyway. it's hard.

I personally know a lot of people who have stopped playing many competitive online games, especially competitive online shooters. I even know people who traditionally haven't been interested in anything but competitive online shooters and have started switching to things like League of all games because yes, you can cheat in League of Legends, really yes, but it has much less impact than cheating on something like, say, War Zone or Valerant or Call of Duty or um or Counter-Strike or something like that, um, so yeah. it is what it is, but this sucks, this sucks a lot, there's a commercial message here that I want to jump to quickly because it's some kind of topic, uh, by Brandon G.

Luke Laran announced today that Balers Gate will not be receiving any major DLC like Someone who hasn't played yet, this removes a barrier to entry for me, but what does it feel like for a long-term player? Yes, I'll talk to that. In fact, I already contacted them about this. sad strong disagree very angry no actually I'm I'm sad because I really like the characters. I really like the story and honestly there are so many ways I could look at it and I think it would be great if the team is amazing. From the bottom up, from what I can tell, I think they would make a very good DLC, but if you read further into the article, the reason they give for doing it is because they didn't believe their hearts were in it, apparently there was communication before they were released bg3 about other projects they could work on other than bg3 and the team was excited to work on them and when bg3 had incredible success in Smash Hit, the natural step for a game company is to create DLC or add-ons. content of some kind through expansions or whatever so they can continue to monetize that game, which is what you do naturally, so Laran went into the normal thing that you do, but their hearts weren't really in it, they were excited to work in this other one. thing and the CEO of laran Sven Vicki I hope I pronounced his name correctly um I just decided like you know what no, we're going to do what we really want to do, which is the next project that they're not announcing um and you know what I'm sad about not getting DLC for this game, that's great, but I'm more excited about whatever they end up doing next, as far as I'm concerned it's the right move.

I think it's good if if they're well funded, the next thing, yeah, exactly right, like whatever, um, so yeah, I don't know, I think that's good, I also think the next thing they're going to do is not specifically D and there's been talk about that too, which might be a good move on their previous game, original sans 2, as far as I understand, it's not based on any of that and it's fantastic, um, I, I don't think they need to be attached. D and D at all personally, I don't think it's necessary in the slightest, I think I have no problem creating worlds, creating interesting stories, creating interesting character bases, all that kind of stuff.

I think they'll be completely fine doing that, so yeah, I'm excited for what they do next and the motivations behind this move excite me. the fact that they made this move even though I'm still sad that I won't be getting DLC ​​so yeah I think it's good. I'm also happy. I will say this, they are not giving the D to some. another company that's going to ruin it, uh, because we see things like that happening too, um, so they didn't, they didn't talk about this stain on the legacy of this game, yeah, they didn't talk about doing this because I don't think ever necessarily occurred to me, but there are companies that have done it and would do it and as far as I know, they're not doing it, so it's great because I'd rather it didn't happen.

If it's touched, then it's ruined, so yeah, I'm fine with that, is there any other topic we want to cover real quick here? I feel like, um, Canada's ban on the Flipper Zero update could probably use some discussion, uh, the creators. of The Flipper Zero have published an official response to the Canadian government's proposal to ban both the zero and similar devices as a way to reduce audio theft, but here's the main argument against banning The Flipper zero is the done, oh okay, yeah, here's the thing. The Flipper zero lacks the hardware necessary to replicate a keyless fob to be able to enter a car.

Car thieves can use a keyless repeater system to pick up the signal from a keyless fob near a home's entrance and transmit it to a nearby location. car, but the equipment needed to accomplish this is significantly larger, taking up the space of a backpack, and much more expensive, around $6,000 online. The Flipper zero can capture and replicate code from a remote control, but it cannot replicate the type of code-in-code used by car key fobs. The creators of Flipper zero further argue that many security systems currently rely on security through obscurity, meaning that most people simply do not know enough about the system to exploit its flaws, which is one of the reasons why flipper zero exists unnecessarily. to say that I agree with flipper and the canadian government is being very stupid.

Also EVGA, which has traditionally been in the news for being super cool, is in the news for something that isn't super cool. A Reddit user, Uris, whatever was recently posted on the LTT. subreddit, the user purchased a new gold colored EVGA GQ 1000 watt power supply, however it was defective which is not necessarily a problem. Things happen, but he sent it back to EVGA, who told the user, "Save the cables and accessories that came with the unit." and they just sent the power supply back when they received their new unit, plugged in their old cables and the PC couldn't boot and there was a clicking sound possibly indicating that a surge protection circuit had been activated.

They immediately rechecked the cables, which were the correct EVs. they were EVGA cables, but after some troubleshooting, they checked the voltages on their St of Power with a multimeter and found they were well below 12 volts instead of 3 volts and Z volts instead of 5 volts, etc., when The problem was reported to EVGA customer service, they were able to determine the problem in a matter of minutes at some point the pin layout of that power supply was changed this incident destroyed 22 terabytes of SATA drives and this is where things turn out They get really bad because this is all bad but this is where things get really bad.

Support has suggested that the user seek a warranty replacement from the manufacturer of the hard drives instead of EVGA compensating them for the drives to replace them. Excuse me, so EVGA is basically suggesting the user to do a little, do a little fraud on their hard drive manufacturer instead of EVGA taking responsibility for their mistake, this is really bad, it's interesting because I think they should do it . I don't know why it says SATA drives because as you expect there will be IDE drives like what good because it was the SATA connector that uh the voltages were messed up yeah but what I'm saying is I can't tell if this is hard to distinguish.

There's a drastic difference in cost, it doesn't matter, just, yeah, well. I'm at 22 terabytes, I assume they are hard drives, yeah that shouldn't even be the case if they are hard drives. I mean if it's any of them you just have to put up with it, it gets weird because if you're not the manufacturer of the drives how are you verifying that this is what happened but at that point you made such a bad mistake that you just have What to deal with? I think this sucks a lot because I'm one of the main reasons I liked EVGA so much because their customer service was very good to me, but that was also over a decade ago so I don't know what it is, things like this me They make me feel like evj isn't the company they used to be.

I've never heard of them doing anything like this in the past. Never. I've told stories of how great they had customer service a million times. I've never heard anyone counter it and then. this is it, this is hard, let's talk, uh, let's talk, seaplane announcements, spring break, do you want to talk to us about what that is, yeah, we have something special for our seaplane members starting next Monday, March 25th through March 29th. March, we will release more. Exclusive seaplane specials as part of what we call Spring Break Seaplanes. It's also because we made too many exclusives for the month, which is a funny problem.

We'll also be doing some giveaways, including a set of custom posts. LT keys that you just saw on the show, actually, um, Green Man Gaming codes, yeah, do you want to mention them? They look amazing, yeah they're really cool, this keyboard is heavy because it's amazing, oh oh no, maybe I would display them digitally. oh, show them about what you're doing cool, Luke digitally, bring them in digitally. I don't think I have that. I mean, I can Google it. Where do I get it from? Where do I get the digital one? No, the link is, there is a link.

Look at it now, I bring it, wait, wait, guys, here we go, technology, I didn't see the link in the document, leave me alone, come closer, there you go, no, I refuse, oh my God, oo anyway, the key Enter is a screwdriver. uh there's a banana for the check, I guess I can't tell where the lump was, you said there was a lump, it's here, there, you see it in the boxer, in the key of the boxer, yeah, super cute, it's pretty big . What did I say? It was normal size, sort of anyway. Uh, yeah, uh, okay, how did I get here?

Okay, here we go. I see. Okay, the link was in a different part of whatever they're being mean to Reon. How many years? Have you been doing this? And you can, in fact, you can buy the key cap set for yourself if you want. It's $39.99 with free US shipping, that's not B elsewhere in the ads and they feel good, yeah yeah I want one of those. they're a partner, we get some of those, uh anyway, apparently we're also giving away retro LT screwdrivers, wow, and a magnetic home cable management package that's actually super legit. There's a preview of content for next week, which I'm opening because I can do that bad people um uh I gotta I gotta play this I gotta play this Dan uh yeah I fixed it it's probably going to be loud here we go yeah send it I mean you got than play it with audio.

No, the laptop is muted, well, ah, it's not my fault this time we did a departmental battle of paper airplanes with departmental airplanes. We activate silence. I mean, that's use of time. My name is Luke, so no, we have one person from each department to do a paper airplane battle to watch. Who can make the best design? Who can do it the fastest and who can throw it the furthest? Hi, my name is Luke Laf, that's not how it's pronounced. I'm the COO of Flowplane and CTO of lus Media Group, that's not even accurate, throw it out, you didn't listen to me, wait, this is wrong, I'm not the flowplane that the CEO got him, don't we have ECC?

My RoR was ruined, so by default I'll do it back as a secondary objective. I'm going to bring you random facts about Canada that progressively get more deranged over time and I'm going to start with Winnie the Poofind no connection between things and quantity. I've overpaid too much for mediocrity at best and paid almost nothing for incredible quality. Have you been in cities all the time? Yes, because I found it when I went out. of the big cities that stopped completely and I think maybe it's a touristy thing or like an expensive area versus a cheaper area or something, um, but yeah, that's getting things at an affordable price, like I don't remember the last time my whole family sat down. the food for about 10 bucks ahead, but we had the full bill service fee included, it was like $56 at this place that was like in a mall, you know, like it was nowhere, like it wasn't not even a random house W or not. a mall was like you know here they have these department stores that are kind of what we would consider a mall, but it's more like a bunch of stores.

I don't know how to describe it it's a little different um but it was like a restaurant essentially is what I'm trying to say uh and it was cool and cheap and then we would go to places where it's like oh that was $340 ahead of me and I'm not very sure where it went um and it just doesn't seem to be a connection there, yeah, yeah, they ran me, no, I didn't forget anything, some of them include a $10 service or a 10% service fee. I found very high and low quality, very high and low. pricing all that kind of stuff when I was in Tokyo I didn't go to other major cities um and then when I left that major city and went into smaller towns, smaller cities, that kind of thing is no longer a quality issue . on average it was much higher.

I personally found that people tell me that it just means I was unlucky in Tokyo, which is fine, but that's what I experienced. The quality was really like everything was amazing and cheap out of town. Yeti Wrangler says that would be true almost anywhere, although no, no, uh, in Vancouver everything is expensive, whether it's junk or good, yeah, that's the difference, every meal is $30, no matter if you're eating a three course Greek meal or going to McDonald's, yes, everywhere, yes, yes, and then in Taiwan everything is cheap, which isn't actually true, it is, but they are hyper touristy garbage areas.

This exit from the program, thanks for watching the guys, see you next week, same bad time, same bad Channel, here we go, oh, oh, oh, what did you do? I pressed the enter button no, no, I broke it, wait, wait, I can do that, yeah, here we go, well, you know what I'm doing sometimes, it better be right. uh, oh, no, oh my god, terrible, great, wait, wait, oh wait, I got it. to stop the show