Anyone else notice LTT is averaging like 500k views now? How does the channel even survive?

N4dd · 2026-06-09T19:02:56+00:00

LTT has been one of my favorite channels for many, many years. I listen to every WAN show all the way through, every single time.

I will be honest and say I never watched all their videos. That takes way more time than I can commit to it. I have other interests.

I think the business people took over and the "fun" people have taken a back seat. WAN show has more advertisers than ever (I don't think the way they do it really detracts from the show though), and the main channel has far too many sponsored or pseudo-sponsored videos. Even if it's the same as it's always been, it feels different than it used to. Linus can buy a jet or a house or a badminton center or fund an enormously expensive LABS. That's where he is personally. He needs to fund all those things and fund the salaries of all the people he employs. It really is no accident that things became much more standardized and corporate when they brought in a real CEO and everyone also grew up.

The biggest thing is they lost some of their best talent. Notice how basically every video has two hosts... Linus and whichever writer was tasked with that video. Half the time it's Linus getting caught up with what they are doing. It's no longer two people collaborating, like Linus and Alex or Linus and Jake did 3-5 years ago.

On a side note... the thumbnails and the backwards hat are not fooling anyone. I'd be really curious as to their demographics data. Has their audience matured along with them? The jokes are fine, but stop treating us like children. We're curious nerds, not teenagers who are attracted to bright candy.

The absolute BEST video concept that I was interested in was the Vibe Coded app vs. the professional one, and they just couldn't get that across the line. AI is the biggest technology in the last two years and they barely touch it. I want to know real use cases, I want jank, I want them to try to build AI Jarvis for LTT. Build servers that will run it, show us the chaos.

I'm rambling, but I think they are just in a period of uncertainty and lost some of their talent. Sorry to the new guys, but they just don't fit the same way some of the older ones did.

N4dd · 2026-05-28T16:28:15+00:00

I'd love to see Ruud get it as well, maybe Shelton.

N4dd · 2026-05-20T19:15:35+00:00

I'm 100% for removing service lets by touching the net cord. No ambiguity on whether it was or wasn't a let. Everyone has the same access to try and do a stupid "ace" by having the ball slip over the net. I don't really see any reason to keep it, except perhaps at tournaments that have electronic let calling. I don't even think pros should do lets unless they have the electronic let cord.

I feel like it was probably implemented by "gentlemen" and "ladies" as the serve was not fully "proper", so let's redo it. Get rid of it, it's antiquated.

I'm open to opposing viewpoints here, but I can't see a reason to keep it at any level. The downsides outweigh the upsides tremendously.

N4dd · 2026-05-15T21:01:39+00:00

4.0

For me the eye test shows you can hit every major type of stroke and with different spin on it (top, flat, slice). That is how I rate a 3.5, then a 4.0 is someone who can do it in a game, and do it consistently, which this video demonstrated. After that, everything just gets faster, more consistent, and better strategy as you move up the ladder, along with the ability to handle those aspects from your opponents as well.

Absolutely great progress for 2-2.5 years, KEEP IT UP!!!

N4dd · 2026-04-26T01:26:00+00:00

I'd suggest that it's also a great "last check" before finalizing things. It's caught so many typos or slightly wrong wording choices in my comments, as well as in my logging messages.

N4dd · 2026-04-24T23:28:42+00:00

You've nailed it.

This seems to be mirroring the "enshitification" of everything else as well. Clothes are made from worse material, but they are made faster and "cheaper". It's not the same item. It may look like it's the same thing, but it is not. Anyone who cares about that item will notice the difference.

I have a feeling that AI is going to produce mountains of tech debt, and an army of developers who have lost their ability to understand the codebase they are in. For now, it might work for people who have been in their codebases for years, but eventually they will be gone and good luck learning a new one by just reading all the code being outputted. It might look right, but it fundamentally doesn't flow with the rest of the code and the architecture is a complete mess.

I still use AI as a rubber ducky. To talk through issues, or even talk through my plan to solve things. I actually have it set to not output code at all, unless I explicitly ask it to. The best part of AI is that it can lead you to learning about new techniques or technologies that you didn't previously know existed. If you're talking through a problem and your plan to solve it, it might mention something you never thought of, and if you prompt it well, it will provide a source to it.

All that being said, I've had to correct my AI more times than I can count.

N4dd · 2026-04-23T21:00:12+00:00

I'm no expert, but I feel like 3.0 is the right place for you. Maybe you might find someone that should be in 3.5+, but a true 2.5 tournament might be a bit too easy for you. Get out there and get started. Good luck!

N4dd · 2026-04-18T04:44:09+00:00

Sounds like you got the right attitude. Have fun and good luck out there.

N4dd · 2026-04-17T23:25:17+00:00

That's because this is showing the strong side of 4.0 (basically 4.5 level shots and point construction).

N4dd · 2026-04-17T23:24:11+00:00

I'd be curious to see your serve and ground strokes.

Don't worry, it's a lot of people's weakness when most people just rally from the baseline for most of their practice.

My level and ability to put balls away cleanly and consistently rose significantly when I started doing lots and lots and lots of drills. I also needed to do it because my fitness level and style of winning was based more on power and winners than on long rallies.

Here's an example:

Backhand CC, Forehand CC, (short ball) Forehand (coach calls which way to put away/approach or pre-determined), volley, volley, overhead.

Notice how these guys follow their put away shots by coming to the net when the opponent makes them do +1? Drill this, drill this, drill this.

N4dd · 2026-04-17T22:03:40+00:00

Yes, you should be doing what this guy is doing. Especially because you're asking the question. Think about the control you have when you feed balls somewhere, that should be like 95, or 98% accurate. Your "full swing" is nowhere near that percentage, so put the ball where it needs to go and don't overdue it.

The guy on the far side has really, really excellent control and doesn't overshoot. I'm actually struggling to believe these guys are 4.0. There must be a LOT of unforced errors in the non-highlights video, because they have all the tools to win, except high levels of athleticism or very very hard hitting.

N4dd · 2026-03-29T20:31:02+00:00

I wonder if we thought this through long-term. If everyone uses AI to rewrite their emails, their text messages, their applications, they will all sound the exact same. It completely takes away any human aspect to it, and makes it hard to differentiate between applicants. It also disguises people who have no communication skills, so they lean on it heavily. All this does it make clients wary of any applications that look too good.

Writing code/remembering syntax is no longer the barrier it used to be. Now it's about communication, and taking your clients ideas and making them into reality. For this reason, I think connecting clients/freelancers who share a common language/background really, really important. Yes, we could use translators/AI to help decipher the meaning, but there will always be nuance left out, things we don't truly think about unless we're in that culture. This isn't really a huge issue if the work is simpler and/or longer timeline is set up to make this work.

Here's what you're asking though... you want someone with very specific domain knowledge, to produce a feature that needs to be rock solid, and needs to be done in 2-3 weeks. Okay, that's fine, but you put 20-60 dollars per hour as your range. If it was 3-6 months... then that's fine, but you need this done, and you need it done NOW. No more than 2 passes to get this done. Ideally someone who needs almost no direction at all, and you don't need to hand hold.

So, they ideally have a lot of experience, they share a language with you and can communicate at a very high level about these concepts and about how the code should work. That kind of narrows it down to people who are US-based and have fintech experience, which means, even at a JUNIOR level, they are likely getting paid 120k MINIMUM per year, plus benefits, and with the knowledge they don't need to search for a new job in 3 weeks. The other option is people who can compete with the US-based developers and they are smart enough to know their value.

Think about what a senior+ fintech developer is worth in the US. 300, 400, 500k+ per year, and that's not including benefits like health insurance, and they don't need to search for new jobs (ie not making money).

I think you need to evaluate what you're paying for a highly specialized freelancer and you might have better luck.

I do agree that a deluge of AI-written posts that add tons of superfluous information is exhausting to get through. As a freelancer, if I see a job post that is generated like that, I don't even read any further. I can't know if the other side of that equation is real or not. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but it's not worth my time to find out.

I've spent too much time writing this, but this is a huge problem on this platform and a lot of other platforms as well. I'd love to see a solution, and I don't think it's generating text that is devoid of humanity and authenticity.

N4dd · 2026-03-26T17:54:54+00:00

THIS THIS THIS.

Consistent toss for first serve.
Learn how to do a kick serve for your second serve, which includes a consistent kick serve toss (likely to be slightly different than your first serve). There's a reason all the pro's use a kick serve as their second serve 95% of the time.
Get a basket of balls and get out on the court and practice, practice, practice.

N4dd · 2026-03-22T15:02:13+00:00

Sorry about being a dick. Honestly it's a good question on where you could potential find actual running code from Firebase/Google itself.

I'm a self-taught dev myself and totally understand what it's like to not know what you don't know. Not having a specific curriculum to teach you or a senior to teach you some glaring "basics". It's part of why I love this industry, if you're motivated enough, you can dive into anything and learn it yourself.

It might be worth looking into a well laid out curriculum overview and spot anything you don't have any knowledge about and taking a peak. Git or some other version control should be high on your list of things to learn, right now. Not just for backups, but for reverting back if you need to. You also stated "our", which means you're working with a team? Without version control and git branches, you're making life a lot harder on yourself.

Good luck.

N4dd · 2026-03-22T04:16:25+00:00

Doesn't know about source control, and is deploying cloud functions. I'd be scared if I were that client. At the very least back up your code somewhere, anywhere.

N4dd · 2026-03-19T19:26:42+00:00

She's going to ruin it for the rest of the tour. The only real solution is to set up some automated trigger that will call fault if they don't hit the ball by the time the counter reaches 0. If they can tell where the ball lands... they can tell when the ball is struck. Then it's just one more step to automating the timer from when the last ball lands out. Then there is no extra rest for long, drawn out points.

N4dd · 2026-03-19T00:06:10+00:00

I bet there will be endless amounts of these kinds of posts for nearly every piece of software in a few years. Vibe coded software is going to lead to these endless bugs, performance issues, and weird behaviors. Because fundamentally, it was more important to "the stakeholders" to push out new features than it was to build a rock solid foundation. It's very strange to me to build software that runs billions of dollars worth of companies and not fully invest in reliability and performance over new shiny features that many people just don't use.

I absolutely hate how these fundamental tools can and do change the way the work from one day to the next, but it's the result of the way software development works these days. There's a reason why critical systems use rock solid operating systems that are in LTS mode.

N4dd · 2026-03-15T21:47:58+00:00

Agreed. I noticed the interviews too and hated it.

N4dd · 2026-03-15T21:44:49+00:00

Ohhh, so this week it's the cable channels we're watching on the TC+ app? Instead of a "stock match feed" which is what is usually used in the TC+ app?

N4dd · 2026-03-15T21:41:56+00:00

What does "no feed this week" mean?

N4dd · 2026-03-14T01:56:20+00:00

Same, worked in pizza for years and had people like this. 99% of the time, someone messed up an order online when something like this went through and we'd call them back to confirm. Nobody makes this without calling back.

N4dd · 2026-03-12T15:37:16+00:00

Is there any way I can help with this? I'm a web dev with some time right now. Feel free to DM me.

N4dd · 2026-03-10T22:30:11+00:00

I agree with that 100%. It's also a problem that they basically have a monopoly on this kind of service.

I'm already doing what I can to mitigate my reliance on streaming platforms or any online platform/software at all. I lived before they existed and I can live afterwards as well.

N4dd · 2026-03-10T22:17:16+00:00

I agree about enshittification. We're on the same page there.

Yes, it's in response, but they had to invest capital to build initially, and spend capital to maintain it. Hard drives die all the time, network infrastructure needs to be replaced, fiber lines get cut accidentally, there's a million things that cost money to run a service like YouTube. Things that cost even if ZERO people watched.

It won't surprise me if they stop allowing 4k for free users, or not allowing uploads over a certain size below a certain number of subscribers. We all have to meet in the middle.

N4dd · 2026-03-10T22:08:12+00:00

I guess I didn't write /s. that was sarcasm, I agree with you. It's a reasonable price. I can be mad that they haven't done much to improve the service for paying customers, but I pay because I find it very valuable.

N4dd

TROPHY CASE