Google’s New Laptop Almost Ended the WAN Show

Summary
In this clip from The WAN Show, Linus Sebastian (calling in remotely) and Luke Lafreniere discuss the severe software failures Linus encountered while attempting to use a new “Googlebook” laptop to broadcast the show. During the discussion, producer Dan provides a live demonstration of Google’s Gemini assistant on his phone, which malfunctions by reading its raw Python code calculation aloud before answering a simple query.

What is shown

• [00:12] Linus describes experiencing major software issues on Google’s new Android-based “Googlebook”, including Docs links forcing open a Chrome browser window and clipboard copy-paste failing in Microsoft Teams.
• [01:50] Linus explains total audio input/output routing failures when plugging in an Elgato Wave:3 USB microphone and wired headphones.
• [03:03] Linus demonstrates holding up an Asus ROG Ally handheld console, which he had to join to the call as a secondary session just to transmit his audio.
• [07:46] A photo taken from Linus’s phone is displayed on screen, showing the Googlebook displaying a system crash popup: “Chrome isn’t responding”.
• [08:50] – [09:48] Dan performs a live voice query to the Gemini assistant on his smartphone, asking: “What time will it be in 8 hours?”
• [09:21] The assistant experiences a noticeable delay before reading out raw Python code and string format parameters over text-to-speech (“current_time equals datetime 2026 10 9... future_time equals current_time plus timedelta hours equals 8... Actually, hold on, let me start over. 2:45 AM.”), sparking laughter from the hosts.

Claims & numbers

• Linus states he was originally planning to use the Googlebook as his daily driver for a full month, but gave up after only three days due to software unreliability.
• Linus references an upcoming segment covering a Microsoft Surface event revealing a Surface Laptop Ultra powered by Nvidia’s Spark N1X processor.
• Luke and Linus claim Gemini on phones has significantly degraded basic voice assistant latency and reliability compared to legacy Google Assistant.

Notable quotes

• [07:49] Linus Sebastian: “You have one job! You have one job! Run the Chrome browser!”
• [09:21] Google Assistant/Gemini: “current_time = datetime... print future_time.strftime percent I, percent M, percent p... Actually, hold on, let me start over. 2:45 AM.”
• [09:51] Luke Lafreniere: “So it like basically writes out the code to figure it out, and then goes ‘oh oops, uh’, and then tells you the actual response.”

Assessment
A genuine, unscripted podcast discussion and live demo clip. The audio and OS failures described by Linus are personal anecdotes illustrated with a real photo of the system error, while Dan’s mobile assistant test is an authentic, unedited live demonstration of an LLM tool-use/scratchpad output leakage bug.

Described by gemini-3.8-flash on 2026-10-15 from the video’s audio and frames.