The WAN Show - Blizzard Boycott? - WAN Show Oct 11, 2019

Episode Date: October 12, 2019

Use offer code linustech to get 15% off MOS products at https://mosorganizer.com or on Amazon Canada at https://lmg.gg/moscanada Honey automatically applies the best coupon codes to save you money at different online checkouts, try it now at https://www.joinhoney.com/linus Sign up for Private Internet Access VPN at https://lmg.gg/piawan Buy an LTT shirt, hoodie, hat, and even our own insulated water bottle at https://lmg.gg/wanlttstore Timestamps (Courtesy of Cahenvels) 0:32 Topic rundown 1:32 Intro 2:08 Blizzard has Hearthstone player Blitz Chung suspended for 'liberate Hong Kong' statement 4:20 Linus Brb, James takes his place. Topic remains the same. 5:55 Linus Returns, topic remains the same. 6:44 Blizzard aware of political repercussions in the Chinese market. 8:45 Blizzard also ceases work with both casters involved in airing Blitz Chung's statement. 10:55 Mark Kern's chinese statement tweet PT 1 14:10 Blizzard CEO statement (J. Allen Brack) 19:47 Officially not really chinese statement thing PT 2 20:57 Separation between entertainment and politics 26:10 Linus asks Luke how he would handle the blizzard situation 29:16 Linus's take on how he would handle the blizzard situation 32:05 What about Colin Kaepernick? 33:00 Reacting to chat 38:48 Apple removes Hong Kong protest map 44:33 Google has also removed Hong Kong Protestor game 45:23 Steam to make local multiplayer games online (remote play together) 46:45 LTTstore.com New water bottle colors 47:07 Steam subject continues 48:55 PT 2 high refresh rate latency test announcement ft. Michael Grzesiek (Shroud) 50:17 Lan parties going 'retro'? 51:45 Sponsor MOS Organizer 53:17 Sponsor Honey 55:09 Sponsor Private Internet Access 56:51 Stadia 'thing' 63:20 Superchats Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it. Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving. For example, a runner could be training for a marathon, or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that goal to beat your personal best?

Keep chasing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. And and it is when show time again okay david no problem you got this all good bruh we have a lot of great topics today things happen things some people are mad some stuff happened this week everyone's mad the the the chinese are mad the people who aren't Chinese are mad. The people who aren't Chinese are mad. And that's basically the whole world if you think about it.

Yeah. It's like those two books. What they teach you in Harvard Business School and what they don't teach you in Harvard Business School. I now know everything. Thank you very much. So Blizzard banned a pro Hearthstone player for supporting the Hong Kong protest. We're going to get into that. And the commentators and took his money and banned him for a year i said we'll get into

there's way more news than that i said we're going to get into it um apple release hong kong protest map uh app app app no yeah not a map it's a map app well okay fair enough um in news that people are not as riled up about, Stadia will use AI to predict gamers' actions for negative latency. This is hilarious. We are that much closer to a self-playing game. And what else we got? He's going to aim at his head.

I'm pretty sure he's going to aim at his head. We'll just take care of it. Oh, wow. I am so mad about this. But it's your turn to read the topic, so you go ahead. Steam to make local multiplayer games work online. You're mad about this. Wait Oh, no, this is amazing. Yeah, I'll totally misunderstood the headline. We're good. What are the interest? We'll roll the intro Go What do you think? I'll explain when we do the topic. Okay, that'll be in a while. Go do your thing! Go go go! Oh, wait.

I can do this. You gotta start the blizzard thing? I wanna do the blizzard thing! We're gonna be here forever! It's a really long topic! I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I Okay, I don't know what we're doing. We're doing this. We're doing this, okay. So this was posted by Spartaman64 on the forum.

And everyone else. And everyone. Do you want to read through this? No, go for it. Okay, so Blitzchung, a pro Hearthstone player from Hong Kong, ended a stream earlier this week with a statement of support for those engaged in the month-long protests against local police and government in Hong Kong.

Yes. If you haven't been keeping up with the news, then here you go. Beef pro the Hong Kong protests That is all that is the tulip. That is the too long did not read okay? so basically as far as if you are pro free speech and freedom for individuals and against government oppression and all that crap then this is a perfectly reasonable thing for blitzchung to do. And as a result, Blizzard ruled that he violated competition rules

and basically kicked him out of the Grandmasters tournament, took away his prize money, which was what, 10 grand? I think so. Something like that? Whatever, it doesn't even matter. Took away his prize money. Took away his prize money and banned him from taking part in Hearthstone Esports for 12 months. Solid year.

Starting October 5th 2019. But I'm mad. They also banned the commentators as well. Like okay no I'm back hold on a second. So what if that what if the pickups just someone else's voice? So the craziest part of the comment... okay we should probably read through the whole thing.'s voice? So the craziest part of the comment... Okay, we should probably read through the whole thing. No, no, I have... So the craziest part of banning the commentators is that they even, like, tried to kind of cut him short, but I guess didn't do it, like, enough.

They also kind of egged him on a little bit to start and then kind of cut him short as well. So to be that guy, technically all of this was definitively against the contract. So they are within legal bounds. I can leave for this part. But hold on. That's like being in the lawful evil alignment.

It truly is. It is basically the definition of lawful evil. Because you're following the law. Okay. You know what? Guys, I'm sorry. I'll be back in one second. Because you're following the law. Okay, you know what? Guys, I'm sorry. I'll be back in one second.

BRB, Tornado, I have to go. I don't even know exactly what it is. It's really quick, right? But Blizzard can't be too surprised that this did happen because statements of solidarity with social and political movements have been happening in sports events for an extremely long time.

There was the black glove thing. I don't remember all of them. Take a knee. They've been happening in sports and I guess now esports for a very long time. They're a very common thing. And I think the way that they reacted was rather heavy-handed. I'm going to keep on going through some of the notes here.

Do you think that that part of the contract, given the context that you're outlining for us, do you think that when they're handing the contract for that tournament, that the person handing it to them said, hey, pay attention to this section. This is super relevant right now. One thing that I will bring up here is that I have heard, allegedly, that the commentators and Blitzchung both knew they were going to get in trouble going into this. Like it was his plan.

This was planned. This was against the TOS, but I'm going to do it anyway. Yes. And the commentators. Yeah. This is, as far, there's so much, I'm going to get more into it later. There's a fair amount of, like, conflicting information in this story. Some of it's pretty freaking solid.

And there's a lot of the information I've had to like work and eat this week so I've been able to keep up with 100% of it but that's the allegedly part is that they knew they were going to get in trouble I don't necessarily know that they knew to what degree they're going to get in trouble it's probably one of those things where it's like disciplinary

actions and they don't say what they are so they probably didn't know like all the money was going to take away the ban for a year all that kind of stuff but they thanks buddy but they knew to a certain degree that they were going to get in trouble So what we brought up while you're gone. Yeah that blizzard Bad reason keep in mind bad reason that these types of like nope bad reason Statements or shows of solidarity have happened in sporting style events for an extremely long time

This is far from the first time this has happened, and I think they reacted quite heavy handed. Okay, so now we can continue on. They were extremely heavy handed. Yes. Did we talk about the part where this is in fact well within their rights, but that we think it's stupid? Yeah, well we said that before you left. Well, I was mad about that. So they were fully within legal rights. That was the lawful evil thing that

I brought up. So in, did we bring up the exact terminology? No, and there's like more of that to brought up. So in did we bring up the exact terminology? No. And there's like more of that to come too. I want to make sure we're going through these points. The next one is Blizzard aware of the political repercussions in the Chinese market.

Not even just political sphere, but market in general. This is something to understand guys. It's not just the Chinese government. Oh yeah that it's not just the chinese government the oh yeah oh yeah this one too uh it's not just the chinese government and the communist party and uh you know the the kind of the officials that are going to get upset by something like you know um expressing solidarity with the hong kong protesters or um you know, recognizing the sovereignty of Taiwan or something like that, for example.

It's Chinese people, too, who get really edgy and really mad about this stuff. Yes, some Chinese people. Chinese people. It is a highly controversial topic over there, whether we're talking Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, or any of the entities that China considers to be within China, but that themselves consider to be not so much within China. So Blizzard is reacting not just necessarily to pressure from the Chinese government, but also to pressure from Chinese consumers who may, I guess in their estimation, organize some kind of a boycott against them, which could hurt their business in mainland China,

which is, of course, one point whatever billion potential customers. It's a lot. Now, one thing to consider as well is actually Blizzard games in China don't actually seem to be as big of a percentage of Blizzard's income as you might expect. But the World of Warcraft movie made, I think it was like $220 million in China. Do they not have good movies there? They single-handedly made it a success because of China's income,

and then it didn't do that well in North America. So they have some things that are working well there. Not everything is working well there, though. To move on, I just want to make sure we get through these points. Yeah, yeah, fine, fine, fine. Get us through the points. Pull on forward. Blizzard also add that despite them physically ducking from comments on air

and immediately cutting to a commercial, the company will also immediately cease working with both casters, so we mentioned this earlier involved in airing Blitzchung statement in response The community has endeavored to make the overwatch character may an official mascot of the Hong Kong protests in hopes that The Blizzard game is banned in China It didn't take long for the idea to catch on and she's now on newscasts from Hong Kong have appeared showing protesters with printouts of May's artwork.

They've also edited her character intro video to include support for Hong Kong, and they've done a bunch of other stuff. This is actually a really interesting move because they're trying to effectively make it so that to stop this imagery, they'd have to ban everything related to Blizzard because it might creep onto other Blizzard characters as well. So they're trying to use like a commercial social move to screw Blizzard over even harder

to do like you know social repercussions for what they did. Some Blizzard employees who disagree with the company's moves have covered some of the company's values that carved into an orc statue in their campus. They're covered with think globally, every voice matters, et cetera. They've covered them with paper, apparently. So something really interesting. Sorry.

This is breaking. Apparently, according to chat, Blizzard CEO issued a statement like very, very recently. That guy sucks a lot. Or Blizzard CEO. Okay, sorry, no. Activision Blizzard CEO.

Is it Blizzard CEO or is it the CEO of Activision Blizzard? Let me find out. I only briefly glanced at this. If it's Bobby Kotick, it's Activision Blizzard and he's a complete... That's what I was saying. Yeah, I don't like that guy. Hold on, hold on. Let me see if I can find it.

If someone could actually link us to it, that would be great. In the meantime... Because I googled it and I can't find it. In the meantime... Oh, no, JL and Brack just released a statement. Okay, okay. So that's Blizzard. That's not Activision Blizzard. Okay, so I'll bring this up. Go ahead and keep doing your thing. Okay, so this one needs my screen to be shared.

Yep, let me get on that but um so this is a tweet that's going out. It has 13,000 likes and 4,000 retweets It's from Mark Kern Mark Kern was somewhat divisive in getting classic wow to come back used to be a developer on I believe classic wow and Is a fairly political? Hold on hold on hold on hold on. Hold on, hold on. Trust me, hold on. Trust me, seriously. He's a fairly political person and he's talked anti-Blizzard quite a bit.

Now, with that in mind, whatever you think about that, he tweeted this out, which was a statement on Weibo. I'm probably saying that wrong. Weibo. Dot com, Weibo. Weibo, yeah.

And he posted a translation to it saying, hold on, please. We are very angered and disappointed at what happened at the event last weekend and highly object to the expression of personal and political beliefs in any of our events. As always, we will defend the pride and dignity of China at all costs. Hold on. I really like that you have a red background while you're reading that. Hold on.

Okay. Switch over here. this is a different translation that was posted and i have uh checked with a person who speaks chinese that i know personally that has said this statement is far more accurate it doesn't say at all costs anywhere in the original post etc this is where some of, I mentioned this while I think you were gone too, there's information flying all over the place. We've got to be very careful about verifying all this kind of stuff. I'm not willing to say that this, the translation that I got from the person that I know that speaks Chinese

is not exactly this, but it's very close. This statement is still terrible. I know. Okay, cool. So just so we're all on the same page. So this one says, we express our strong indignation and condemnation of the events in the Hearthstone Asia Pacific competition last weekend

and resolutely oppose the dissemination of personal and political. So one of the reasons why this one is kind of funky is because the wording is very specific and grandiose. People are thinking that probably didn't get properly translated. Yeah, it was. And the translation that I got was a little bit more simple, and I think it's probably a little bit more accurate. But it was close to this one.

So it was more like, we're going to safeguard national dignity. It wasn't like, we're going to defend your honor at all costs. Very orc-like. It wasn't quite that way. And then I got more information that this specific statement is from a company. I don't remember their name, but they, like, represent Blizzard in China or something. It's not even them officially. And then I figured out that this statement was actually part of, like, a retweet thing. Yeah. And it had a longer official statement from Blizzard,

which said stuff along the lines of this. Oh, wait, hold on. Which we don't actually need to show on stage. Oh, okay. It's just a notepad. Although we respect the freedom of expression individual, freedom of expressing individual's ideas. Again, this was very roughly translated.

But we need to point out that all players must follow the rules and officials made for the game. That official is made for the game. Okay, so here it is. I just had to get all that out there. The Verge's article is from five minutes ago. So here it is. Regarding last weekend's Hearthstone Grandmaster tournament,

that is about the most understated subject line I think I have ever... That is like that is saying, we done goofed without actually saying we done goofed. It's like regarding last night. One of my ideas for the picture for this was just big Blizzard oopsie.

So the first line of this is also kind of hilarious to me. Hello Blizzard community space dot space dot space dot. This is Blizzard community. Space dot, space dot, space dot. This is the biggest dot, dot, dot he could make. So, okay. Blah, blah, blah. These ports exist to create opportunities for players from around the world, from different cultures, from different backgrounds,

to come together and compete and share their passion for gaming. It's extremely important to us to protect these channels and the purpose they serve, to bring the world together through epic entertainment, celebrate our players, and build diverse and inclusive communities. Our official Esports tournament broadcast was used as a platform for our winner of this event to share his views with the world. Uh, yeah? And? Okay, what else we got? We interview competitors who are at the top of their craft to share how they feel. But don't share too much about how you really feel.

We want to experience that moment with them. Hearing their excitement is a powerful way to bring us together. Over the weekend, Blitzchung used his segment to make a statement about the situation in Hong Kong in violation of rules he acknowledged and understood, and this is why we took action. Every voice matters. That's all capitalized. Is that like a hashtag or something?

Where's that? Every voice matters. I don't know. And we strongly encourage everyone in our community to share their viewpoints in the many places available to express themselves. Sorry, guys. However, the official broadcast needs to be about the tournament

and to be a place where all are welcome. In support of that, we want to keep the official channels focused on the game. Our shoutcasters to amplify excitement of the game. They elevate the watchability and help the esports viewing experience stay focused on the tournament and our amazing players. Thirdly, we're actions based on the content of the message. So we have the rules. If this had been the opposing viewpoint delivered in the same divisive and deliberate way, we would have felt and acted the message. So, we have the rules.

If this had been the opposing viewpoint delivered in the same divisive and deliberate way, we would have felt and acted the same. So, yeah, probably. So, that's one thing I was going to say, is like I understand the idea of not wanting your event, your gaming-focused event to be overtaken by political stances. I get that, kind of regardless of where they are. That hasn't been great for the NFL over the last three years. No, and it takes a lot of the conversation away from the game.

Which, as like a fan of the, I mean I don't care about Hearthstone, but as a fan of game, let's insert just whatever, I wouldn't want it to be taken over. I would be disappointed that this had been taken over by political stuff if I was a fan of Hearthstone.

That would suck. At the same time, because, like, I'm sure everyone knows stuff is going on in Hong Kong right now. At the same time, I think their response was ridiculous. So it goes on to say that when we think about the suspension, six months for Blitzchung is more appropriate and they're doing the same thing for the casters reducing their sentence from 12 to six months but considering they have to get hired and blitzchung has to qualify they're probably not going to get

hired ever again so just to put that out there or they will just to be like, we're not angry. A six month suspension in e-sports, particularly as a caster, is basically a career ender. You're done. And I don't mean that in like a I'm just trying to be a downer kind of way. But these are these are not NBA athletes that are making more than an entry level contract and, you know, making millions of dollars a year to the point where if they get a six-month subscription, if they get a six-month suspension, they're losing 2.6 of their $5.2 million a year deal or whatever the case may be.

This is not... Esports is not at that professional sports level where you get paid whether you win or not because it's just huge. You were talking about the commentators and commenting is extremely competitive um i know someone personally he's a good friend of mine from from all the from way back high school uh who went decently far in counter-strike casting and he was doing a really good job and had some like really legit gigs and still couldn't like completely make it work just because of financial reasons yeah and it's hard because you're not getting paid that

much so what I'm trying to say I guess is that regardless of how much that NBA player and whether we're talking NBA or NHL or NFL or whatever the case may be the point that I'm trying to make is that these are not traditional media cushy gigs where these people have been working at them for the last eight years and they've got a very comfortable float set up for them that if something happens to go wrong and they're six months before they land a new gig, I'm like, ah, you know what, it's no big deal.

I guess I'll just, you know, eat some Kraft dinner for a bit. I'll still be able to make my rent, you know? I don't know if any of these people stream. I don't know any of these people. Me neither, unfortunately. But maybe go watch their stream or something, try to support them in the meantime, if you want to do that.

Something to think of if you're interested. So let me just see if there's anything else that... Some Blizzard employees who disagree with the company's move. Yeah, okay. So that's pretty much it. I feel like I've kind of said everything I have to say on the subject. Yeah. I wanted to point out the officially not really Chinese statement thing

just because there's a lot of confusion going on there. Sure. So I'm happy I was able to bring that up. of confusion going on there. Sure. So I'm happy I was able to bring that up. I don't have the source for... It's relatively easy to find. If you can find this waibo.com post thing,

it was found by the person that helped me with the Chinese translation, the full post. And it's a little bit more grounded. And then this comment that came in is, as far as I know, this could be false. As far as. And then this comment that came in is, as far as I know, this could be false. As far as I know, this comment that came in that's actually on the screen right now that is supposedly translated, but I believe inaccurately, is from a company that represents Blizzard in China. I don't remember what they're called right now. Got it.

It's like a PR firm or something. I don't remember what it is, but it's somewhere in this tweet feed thing. Someone comments on it partway through. Do you have your mic? Oh, yeah. You need my microphone? Sure. Here you go.

Thank you. So just remember, even in all these emotionally heightened situations, to try to verify sources and check things and dive into things a little bit deeper on your own. All right. So I lied. Everything is very confusing. There's still more to discuss. Okay.

So I think that you and I probably both agree that there does need to be some separation of entertainment and politics because the cold hard truth... You need a break sometimes. ...is that Blizzard has many different customers to consider. They have their customers in China on either side of this issue.

They have their customers in Hong Kong. They have their customers in china on either side of this issue they have their customers in hong kong they have their customers around the world and then they have their customers who really don't identify as any of that and just want to watch people play video games uh who just want absolutely nothing to do with any of it and maybe this is actually their release from i want to add this one in there maybe they're hardcore about this and just need a break yeah exactly so with that in mind like i mean i think uh linus tech tips is a perfect example of this like i don't get really deep into pretty much any political cause unless there's something that comes up in the news that just is so obvious like the right to be able to speak out against your government um and stuff like that that i

just kind of have to go okay yeah that is pretty straightforward and we should probably throw our voice behind it um but as far as like my own political views, I don't really get too deep into it, especially outside of WAN show. I've been, I've been floored in the last few years, how so many people have taken political and moral direction from companies. Like why, why is, why? I have some theories as to why this is a thing, but why is this a thing? That sounds like more of a, when we get together on the weekend and hang out conversation than a land show conversation. But just the whole idea of taking that direction from companies is very weird. And that's exactly what our typical approach to it is.

And quite frankly, if we had one of our employees running around making very incendiary political statements all the time, we'd say, at the very least, we'd say, look, you have to consider that whether your personal Twitter has one of those nice little disclaimers, these are my personal opinions and don't reflect my company. If half your tweets are pictures of yourself at the office, interacting with your coworkers, and about the projects you're working on at the company,

you need to understand that this affects your personal brand. You have to think about the way that you conduct yourself online in much the same way that you think about the way you conduct yourself at something like a formal dinner party where people can see you and observe you and watch your behavior who don't really know you and may not fully understand you. Um, or maybe don't speak the language that you speak very well and could easily misinterpret you. Um, so you really need to consider that in the way that you conduct yourself online because you really are just putting yourself out there. Unless you more or less hide who you work for, you're effectively a spokesperson for your company at all times.

Not actually, but, like, how people are going to see it is going to be that way. I didn't make those rules. Unfortunately, Twitter, I mean, I guess Facebook to a lesser extent, but Twitter's been the one where something happens and then it spreads like wildfire. The Twitter culture is such that people kind of grasp onto whatever the smallest things are. It's like, so what's this person's at handle? Where do they work? What do they do?

Who do they associate with? And all of a sudden, it's almost like a pseudo social credit system in a way. The way that people judge the statements and photos that people post on a platform like Twitter. And so it's something that we've had to be aware of. I mean, it used to be back when we founded Linus Media Group, it was actually our policy to say that everybody who worked here had to have a Twitter. Because I felt like it was really important not to shield our staff from people, but to give them a platform to increase their notoriety. I mean, Luke's like a game streamer now or something. And that wouldn't have happened if we had sort of given him.

Hey, at least four dozen people were watching last time I tuned in. Okay? Hey, Intel sponsored you to go to PAX East not that long ago. Yeah, that's true. They sponsored you as a games gamer. I don't know if you remember this. My conversations about games are probably far more interesting than me playing games. Either way.

Either way. The point is that we didn't want to shield people. Some companies do have policies like keep your mouth shut, say nothing about work. Whereas we didn't. Nowadays, we don't really push people about it anymore because we've become a lot more diverse. And the climate has changed that to the climate has absolutely changed in the last even just the last five six seven years so okay so with all of that in mind knowing that as a company anyone who associates with you

is going to reflect on you in some way and the thing about a controversial issue is that by its very definition, when you take a side, you will piss off somebody, probably a lot of somebodies. How would you have handled this as Blizzard? I was actually going to ask you the same thing. I knew you were. That's why I didn't give you a gap. Of course.

So I am going to answer this, but one thing I want to bring up before I forget, because you just reminded me because of the Twitter thing. Yeah. Something kind of entertaining that happened around this whole thing that I noticed. And some people were like, oh, they recently came out with a new expansion or something. Whatever. Magic the Gathering Arena has pumped ads around this issue.

They started just pumping, as far as I can tell, as many ads as they could possibly get. Magic the Gathering Arena has pumped ads around this issue. They started just pumping, as far as I can tell, as many ads as they could possibly get onto YouTube and a bunch of other stuff immediately when this started hitting. And it was amazing. That was a move right there. That was a strategic move. Whatever. They have a new expansion?

Sure. Great. But I'm 100% certain that they bought more ad space due to this whole thing okay so i've actually talked to a few people about this and i'm very unsure and i would want to talk to a group of internal people to try to figure it out yeah um i think something would probably have to happen yeah because i don't want every event to turn into this. One thing that I had considered was dissolve his winnings and place them across the other contestants. But not ban him for six months.

And maybe do something similar with the casters. I'm not sure. But just make it, I don't know, some way that it's not super impactful but it's like you probably don't want to do that anymore and like other people aren't going to want to do it so without so here's the thing because this blew up so big it's hard to go back in retrospect and say well here's what they could have done differently because if they had done something differently, this might not have gotten so big. And in fact, I do not know for a fact that no one has ever done anything like this before

with a lighter consequence. So my gut reaction, my gut reaction when I see it is for Blizzard to have ripped the stream down or gone to ad or whatever, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that in the context of look this is a sporting event it's about sports yeah or esports as it were and it is not about politics chill out because he did like wear the mask and everything which was pretty far to take it um like you can make a statement without putting on a costume

i guess is and if you think about i don't know what the right thing to think about the the kind to take it. Like, you can make a statement without putting on a costume, I guess. And if you think about sort of... I don't know what the right thing to do is. Think about the kind of decorum that's expected in a post-game interview for a hockey game or a football game. If someone starts putting on, like, masks and stuff, you're like, the cameras are going to get cut. Yeah. So I understand that.

But if I was them, and I'm'm saying right now so i'm counting on my chat to jump in here everyone probably hates me right now so if i was them maybe this has happened before i would have said look no consequence this time yeah but very publicly to everyone i would have said if this ever happens again it will be a heavy-handed consequence expect a one-year ban from participating in blizzard that makes sense because like you don't my my biggest thing if i was blizzard in this position is that i don't want this to happen again in the future. Yes. I don't necessarily care. You can't change what the milk that has already been spilt. Yes. Yes. But what you can say in a way that doesn't make everybody mad is instead of punishing

those individuals, which really looks like taking a stand stand you don't punish those individuals and you come out and say we at blizzard are not taking a side in this which they to my knowledge never actually did we at blizzard are not taking a side in this there's the like defend china stuff so there you go so right so correct me if i wrong. I don't think they ever actually said it. I don't know how it's worded. Yeah, I don't know what exactly the word is. But they never came out and just said, we are not taking any side in this. And I don't think companies really should.

That should be for people, not companies. Whether you like it or not, a lot of companies build their brand based on a cultural identity. That's the Apple formula, and as soon as Apple does something, everyone does it. Everybody's watching the way that Apple operates their business. I just don't think people should take direction from companies.

Well, that's a separate conversation. So, what I would have liked to see is Blizzard basically taking no action against the individuals because of the way they should have known that was how it was going to be perceived. Clearly not. What does that even mean? And they should have taken action against the airing of political dirty laundry in their events.

Yeah, I like the idea of being like okay not this time but this is the like everybody gets one warning um and in the future we don't want any political stuff at any events and we'll be heavy-handed about that i think that's a fair response i like that more than mine mine was like trying to make it light but moving forward quickly um but i like i like that one more so super chat just came in uh it's not the first chat about it what about colin kaepernick so here's the thing colin kaepernick was an excellent learning opportunity for leagues around the world and based on what the injection of politics which to be very clear cannot be be hung on Colin Kaepernick's head alone. But based on what has happened to the culture within the NFL around the injection of politics into that game,

if I was any other league, I would be trying to figure out how to keep it way away from mine. I would be trying to figure out how to keep it way away from mine that has not been a positive thing for the NFL for any of the teams and by extension theoretically the players not that I personally am of the mind that

most sporting leagues do a great job of sharing their earnings with their key talent this happens a lot where people misconstrue stuff we say on land show because we have to say it live and things don't always get 100 out perfectly but there's a lot of people in chat that like aggressively very aggressively do not understand the words that are being said in any form at all um i'm trying linus is not like positive to genocide

someone said that yeah I don't know there's some weird stuff going down in chat I just want to be very clear one thing well hold on whose genocide are we talking about in Supreme Commander

the sirens shall rule forever there's another thing where people are like commander. Sirens shall rule forever. There's another thing where people are like talking about how we're talking about Chinese actions. No, right now we're talking about Blizzard's actions to be very clear. Someone was like, this would never happen because China does everything heavy-handed. And it's like, well... What is going

on? Yeah, so my wife is messaging me saying people think I'm coming across pro-China. When did I say anything pro-China? Yeah, I don't know where any of this is coming from. I would actually like to know. Guys, hit me in the chat. Where's the pro-China statement here? You low-key sound pro-China. None of this makes sense. I don't get it. There's a lot of confusion in the chat.

It's not a politics show. We're not very good at discussing politics keep that in mind i would like that to to remain what what nation are we talking about we're only talking about blizzard we're talking about blizzard blizzard is not a nation we're talking very specifically about blizzard we didn't say blizzard was right we had no point in time said blizzard was right we said that blizzard was technically within uh their legal rights but we didn't say Blizzard was right. We had no point in time said Blizzard was right. We said that Blizzard was technically within their legal rights, but we didn't say that was the right thing to do. We described it as lawful evil. Yeah. Have you ever played an RPG? Like, I don't get it. Lawful evil means evil. Yeah, but they're following the law, which is what they did.

But they're following the law, which is what they did. LOL just ignored. What? I can't even find anyone who's saying anything coherent about what we said that was pro-China. So I would love so much to address it, but it's very, very difficult for me to address something that I'm not sure. Well, now I don't see it anymore because I think they stopped.

Red background. There's a blue one, too. Come on. You know what? It's been there for years. Why don't we move into Stadia uses AI to predict, uh, what? To censoring speech in China for corporate profits. You said you would have given anyone giving a political, but it could have, what? You said you would have given anyone giving a political statement.

What are you talking about euphoric me? You need to be slightly less euphoric and a little more coherent censoring speech in china what no we are talking about what as a sporting league they should have done to make their sporting event about sports something to be really clear about too because that is a thousand percent what we're saying this is not uh a free speech argument because it's a company's platform free speech is from a government perspective okay so are we doing that again are we doing the whole thing where people don't understand the difference between free speech and the ability to say anything you want, anywhere you want. So the forum... MinusTechTipsForum.com.

You are not entitled to free speech there. If you post a thing that has every swear word in the dictionary on it, and then just go like, I'm allowed to keep this post up. Mods are going to remove it. We'll remove it, and then you will post it again, and then we will ban you. Yeah. You have no rights. Because we are trying to keep that platform on topic.

And we also have, speaking of things that we keep away from our forum, politics. If a thread, even if it starts out discussing technology, like, you know, for example, something that the... Also both sides, to be really clear. Something like net neutrality, for example, has, for some reason, become a political topic, even though it is definitely a technology topic. If your thread devolves into political mudslinging... And a number of them have. We lock it.

And a number of them have been locked. Why? Because as a business, we are about technology. If people wanted to discuss Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or whatever, there are a thousand other places, probably tens of thousands of places online, that they can go do that. Also, a big one for us, straight up. The mods are all volunteers.

The mods are all volunteers, and they don't have time to deal with all of that. So we just don't allow those conversations because we have to like hire staff and pay them to manage those conversations Yeah, the forum doesn't make any money. Yeah, there's no way that's happening forum For example where we do not in fact allow political discussion regardless of which side you Personally lean towards. Yeah regardless of which side you personally lean towards. Yeah. And we also said that Blizzard should not have had any consequences for the participants because we didn't feel like anyone had been appropriately warned, something that I had wanted to discuss afterward.

Okay, so they were appropriately warned. How appropriately? They knew something was going to happen. Yeah, but that's different. Allegedly. If I speed against a highway sign, I know that my ticket is going to be 157 Canadian dollars with three points against my license. That's really specific. Did you recently get a ticket?

No, I just approximated. Okay, okay. I gave it exactly. The point I was trying to make, giving an exact number, is that if I read the Motor Vehicle Act, I know exactly what the consequences are going to be. Now, obviously, there's some nuance there. There's some interpretation there. If I was speeding against a highway sign while there was literally a school bus full of children trying to cross the road and I don't yield to them. For some reason.

Well, then I'm also probably going to get hit with reckless driving, endangerment, blah, blah, blah. There's a whole bunch of other stuff. So no, it's not as cut and dried as here's the offense

and here's the exact consequence. But Blizzard doesn't have a motor vehicle act, and so they clearly didn't lay out, okay, well, if you deviate from the talking points, yes, it was a great match, yeah, a lot of respect for my opponent, they played hard,

this is an honor, thanks mom and dad, bye. You know, like if they don't have a menu of consequences, then you can't run around basically destroying people's livelihoods. That's maybe a part that you guys also missed on the stream. Those of us who were like, yeah, you guys are like super pro-China, pro-Blizzard. We were talking about how destructive this was to not just the streamer, but also the casters that were involved in this heavy-handed punishment. And trying to suggest ways that you can support them in the meantime while they're banned

because Blizzard reduced the ban from 12 months to six months, but that could potentially ruin someone's career. Okay, Enrico makes a very stupid point. You're treating critics of China like any other much shallower critics of, like, sports. I don't know. Comes off as insensitive and pro-China. No, we're not.

Again, we're not necessarily the greatest political commentators out there. I don't know how to explain it to you any more clearly, unfortunately. We said standing on the side of Hong Kong is the right side to stand on. I don't remember exactly how it was worded. Which critics of China did we treat as... We also actually haven't commented at all about critics of China. Nope.

How? When? One of the tweets earlier. One of the tweets earlier. One of the tweets earlier? Oh, but that's because it was an incorrect translation. Yeah. And we showed the correct, we showed the correct translation, which is still, as was stated, horrible. Yes. But it's not, it's, it was an incorrect, we should be mad about the right thing. That was what I was saying. Are we sure it was an incorrect translation? We're fairly sure. Okay. I have someone that I know that speaks Chinese that read it and translated it,

and their translation was extremely similar to a translation that was posted by a random user in the Twitter thread. Yeah. So we're, like, pretty sure that one was more accurate. It's still, like, bad. And we said thread. Yeah. So we're like pretty sure that one was more accurate. It's still like bad. And we said that. Yeah. It's just different. And I would rather people were angry about the right thing.

Yeah. Because that makes your argument more irrefutable. It makes it stronger. It's a good thing. You want to be angry about the right thing. This will help you. I'm trying to help you want to be angry about the right thing this will help you. I'm trying to I'm trying to help you all right, so There you go guys

Hope that was fun in summary Blizzard did the wrong thing Lawful evil like we said lawful evil like we said were Lawful evil, like we said. Were they within their rights? Yes. Not their social rights. I didn't say responsibilities. I said rights. They were within their rights.

It is within the letter of the law. Did they do the responsible thing? No. Have they backtracked? Yes. Have they backtracked enough? That was coming. No. Yeah. Yeah. Are we pro-Ched? Yes. Yes. Have they backtracked enough? That was coming. Yeah.

No. Yeah. Yeah. Are we pro-China? No. I don't know why you thought that. I don't know where that idea comes from. We talked before the stream, like, all right, I don't know if going over there is going to be the wisest thing.

Honestly, I haven't considered getting on a plane to China ever since Canada detained um what's her name Hangmei something I think um I don't remember her name yeah Huawei's CFO the daughter of the founder or whatever I'm sitting here going like China's whole reaction to that was completely disproportionate and inappropriate because within the letter of the law not just like within the letter of the law like there were some there were some pretty clear and obvious reasons for her to be detained uh and she clearly knew it because otherwise why would she have gone through vancouver for her connecting flight um anywho ever since then like it, it's, it's been, I don't know. I don't know if I've ever said anything particularly defending China.

I don't think so. Anyway, people will interpret whatever they want, but, and there's nothing I can really do about that. So then, why don't we move on? Um, oh good, our next topic. What a mess. Apple removes the Hong Kong protest app. Oh good, our next topic. What a mess. Apple removes the Hong Kong protest app. Maybe we shouldn't talk about that. Oh, well, we promised we were going to talk about it, so here we are.

Just a day after Chinese state media criticized Apple for allowing HK Map in its app store, and a week after Apple flip-flopped on its initial decision to delist the app, the crowdsourced map app has been removed, again sparking concerns that Apple is pandering to China's political regime. The app shares information on the location of pro-democracy protests and police activity in Hong Kong. Opponents of the app say that it enables rioters to commit violent acts, while supporters of the app say it helps people avoid police brutality.

HKMaps creators say there is no evidence that the app has been used to target police or threaten public safety. They added that apps such as Waze, which use crowdsourced information to help users find where police are hanging around, are also still permitted on the App Store. In an internal letter, Tim Cook explained... Tim Cooked?

Depends how badly this goes. Tim Cook... Tim Cook... I didn't expect that. That was pretty good. ...explained Apple's reasons for pulling the app. It is no secret that technology can be used for good or for ill. This case is no different.

Apple based its decision on credible information from both Hong Kong police and Apple users in Hong Kong that the app was used maliciously to target individual officers for violence and victimize individuals and property where no police are present. This use put the app in violation of Hong Kong law. Similarly, widespread abuse clearly violates

our app store guidelines, barring personal harm. Apple made the decision a day after a Chinese state newspaper wrote a commentary criticizing the company for approving the app. In this case, we thoroughly reviewed them, and we believe this decision best protects our users. HKMap is still available on desktop. Not that it's the same scale. Yes.

But there was news that came out around when pokemon go first launched because people were using the pokemon go stops as mugging locations yeah because they knew people with phones and probably battery banks and potentially hanging around there and probably not paying too close attention and you could busy chasing pikachus mug them or swipe their phone or whatever yeah and that was like that was in the news, I believe, a fair number of times. Yeah. So where was the ban for Pokemon Go? It was used for, they say, where's their official statement on it?

If it's used to whatever, whatever. Yeah. Protects our users, something, something, barring personal harm. Yeah. So, you know, it's's just so there's a clear double standard here yeah basically what's going on and actually this is a fair bit more cut and dried than the blizzard case quite honestly because with blizzard they can make the argument now blizzard did a very poor job if their actual intent was to keep political discussion out of their sporting event,

which, okay, I can at least understand and sympathize with, they did an extremely poor job of seeming unbiased about it. Really bad. Like, the worst. I can't think of a worse way that they could have handled it. But if that was their intent, and they had done something, say for example, like warning everyone involved, making sure that the entire community knows, look,

this isn't going to be tolerated no matter what side of the fence you stand on. If you are a pro-China winner of the next Hearthstone tournament, don't you dare say anything responding to what happened here, because you will be banned. If that had been their stance, I would have said

okay, fair enough. It's your platform. Those people can talk about whatever they want to talk about while they're on some other platform. Be it Twitter or Twitch or whatever. Actually, I don't know. Does Twitch have any guidelines with respect to political discussion? But it's not Blizzard's concern.

It's not Blizzard's concern because it's someone else's freaking platform yeah here this i don't necessarily agree with mr cook's terminology here yeah um clearly violates our app store guidelines your app store guidelines quite honestly suck i'm sure yeah's really, it's way too vague. I'm sure, like, Tinder has been used. You think? For horrible things. Of course, obviously. I'm sure all of the related apps, sorry, Tinder, but you're the most well-known one that I know of.

Similar things, there's plenty of them. I'm sure they've been used maliciously. Lots of apps have been used maliciously to whatever their definition was, was terrible. So they need to be more specific about that if they want to try to enforce this. Oh, our chat wasn't working. To the scale at which they were enforcing it, at least. Blizzard banned someone who was idolized

and had reach in China. Others in the tournament in the USA had spoken out with no reaction. Okay. Yeah. All right. I'm just checking. The stream health says red, so I was just refreshing the page to get things working. I have to take this with me?

Keep it in your bag. Wow. The airport is going to love this. Yeah, really. You should almost attach something random to it yeah I I am going to get extra screening because of this you know this right whatever yeah yeah it's fine I'll take it I'll take it yeah I said you know the x-ray those two right yeah I'm totally getting questioned. It's a camera handle, okay?

It's a camera handle. Yeah. So, in summary, oh, Google apparently, just in case you were hoping that our other benevolent mobile device overlord was standing up for freedom of speech, Google has also removed a pro-Hong Kong protester app game called The Revolution of Our Times from the Play Store due to a policy that bans capitalizing on sensitive events such as attempting to make money from serious ongoing conflicts or tragedies through

a game. Okay. That's pretty specific. Actually, no, that kind of makes sense to me. Never mind. Whereas the one on the App Store is clearly designed for people to coordinate their efforts in order to accomplish something. Yeah. All right.

Well, way to go, Apple. But hey, at least your headquarters is 100% renewable energy, right? In lighter news, let's just jump to the Steam, because it's just warmer. It's just better. Things are things are greater there. I'm just gonna talk about it because he's reading chat. Steam to make local multiplayer games work online. Steam has announced a surprise new feature coming as soon as October 21st. That's awesome. Remote play together. This feature will transform any local multiplayer video game into an online one by having the primary player Stream their game to up to three other friends meaning that the other players won't have to buy a copy to join Okay, can I explain why I was mad about this when I read the headline? I was wondering okay

I was just letting you read I was mad because I Interpreted it transforming any local multiplayer video game into an online one as a way of adding fresh layers of DRM to the local multiplayer features of games that are available on Steam. My bad. Okay. That's not what this is. This is super cool. This is basically like Kali, but like 2019 edition.

This stream, we have to be super careful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. About redefining stances over and over again. But don't interpret this as being pro-Valve. Yes, yes. Because as far as we can tell, they're kind of buttheads. And we speak out against them all the time. Okay.

But this is a cool feature. I don't know what to do anymore. Go to lttstore.com, drink water. It's good for you. We have new water bottle colors. Don't drink so much that you drown. That's not what we're saying. We have white and black and we have golden black.

The golden black has the stealth lettering and the white one has the black lettering. Yeah, drinking water is good. All right, so the host computer basically renders the game while also shouldering two other burdens so it has to stream the game to the other participants and it has to juggle all the incoming buttons and commands from the other players so this is gonna be a whole new level of host advantage yes Wow the feature will support a 1080p video signal sent to the other players at 60 frames a second,

and all players must have at least a 10 megabit per second connection for a successful low latency game. I wonder how many games are going to stop including local multiplayer because of this. What games include local multiplayer anymore? Yeah, that's a good point. Like pretty much nothing. Some random minigames. So I was firing up the menu in Supreme Commander, which I was playing the other day yes and i was like oh right local multiplayer because i like saw it oh yeah that so fun fact um we're doing part two of our uh high refresh rate monitor latency

exploration yeah i don't know if i've announced this yet featuring shroud ah i don't know if yeah i don't know yeah so i'm going down to LA so many people named him after that Yeah, I know including myself. So so many people we worked with Nvidia. We made it happen nice So it's gonna be pretty freaking cool. We are we are dramatically expanding the scope of the what's up big what I Don't know you're talking about your bag in my bag the grip I don't know what you're talking about. Your bag. My bag. The grip. You're going somewhere.

Oh, yeah, yeah, right. That's why I was upset about putting this in my bag. I'm going to be traveling. So, um... Like, related? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for that. There we go. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I'm doing other stuff down there, too. I'm gone for, like, a week. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, that's only a one-day shoot. Okay. Are you on next week's WAN show? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I'll be back. Okay, cool. So, anyway, anyway, so we're working with Shr Yeah, okay? I'll be back um so anyway anyway So we're working with shroud is gonna be freaking awesome. I forget what the point of any of this was what was I talking about? local multiplayer supreme commander Supreme commander made you think of it. I don't know why am I talking about shroud? There's a reason video guys help me out steam. Yeah, no

No games not including local multiplayer potentially in the future. Oh, yeah. Guys, help me out here. Steam. Yeah, no, no. No. Games not including local multiplayer potentially in the future? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Okay. So one of the tests uses an Overwatch map that's like a flick shot test. Okay. Okay, so you've got.45 seconds to hit a target. What's up?

What? Just don't talk about the whole thing. I'm going to talk about this. Okay. There's a lot of feedback. What's up? What? I'm gonna talk about this. Okay, so one of the tests is an Overwatch custom map that is like a flick shot test. Okay. And one of the things that we discovered is that if you're on a Wi-Fi connection, it don't work too well. Ah. Because you can't just like load up a custom map like locally and just play on a custom map like you're still connected through a server so there you go i thought that was fascinating yeah yeah i know the starcraft community wanted um was the starcraft community i think so wanted

land support for a long time because like, like, at tournaments, like, they'd lose connection to the Blizzard servers mid-game. And it was like, uh, what do we do now? Thanks. Didn't need that. Do you feel like LAN parties are ultimately going to have to become retro game fests? Because there is literally no point in all being in the same room. I mean, other than the camaraderie, hey, you gotcha, you loser, that kind of stuff. Other than that, in terms of game quality.

Like a game called Squad was a game that I really wanted to play with a bunch of my friends. We never ended up doing it, but a bunch of my friends in the LMG Lounge. Because the communication and stuff that has to go on in that game is really fun to do kind of live and in person. But, yeah, most lands that I'm a part of turn into slugfests of old games, which I'm completely okay with personally. Yep, I'm down for it. HandClock says, yep, land for SC2, still non-existent.

Yeah, okay, so it was that. Yeah, well, I mean, the cold hard truth is it's because it's hard to DRM it. That's all there is to it, because if you can play on a LAN, then you can get a cracked EXE of an older patch version of the game that doesn't have it fixed yet, and you can LAN it up. I mean, that's how we used to do and you can you can land it up i mean that's how we used to do it no no excuse me uh wow i well this is awkward um unlawful good unlawful i don't know no never mind let anything good about it. No, never mind. Let's move on. Sponsor time. Unlawful neutral?

Sure. Yeah, let's go with that. Yeah, yeah. All right. All right. So this video and none of the things you have heard in it, but whatever. Don't worry about it. This video is brought to you by Moss.

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They just opened up their Amazon store at lmg.gg slash mosscanada, M-O-S Canada. And the code works there as well. So enjoy, guys. Freakin' awesome bag. And they've got a bunch of other cool stuff too. I really like their magnetic cable organizer. So it's just a little sticky magnetic thing

that if you have a cable that you only use sometimes, you throw it on there so that it won't be like flying all over the place or fall off your desk and then you can just grab it and use it like something like a phone charging cable or a mouse charging cable also honey honey is the free shopping tool that finds the best promo codes wherever you shop online at specific sites they have some really other really cool features too so we were using honey just to make a video totally unrelated to a honey sponsorship the other day where we were so here's one of the challenges when you do a

cheap when you do a cheap products roundup like you do you know keyboards for less than $20 it's pretty straightforward to find all the keyboards that cost less than $20 but especially as you get up into mid-range where things cost like 50, 75 bucks, there's this gray area between products that are not discounted right now and cost $50, when normally they're like 30, and products that cost $100 but are on super mega promo down to $69.99 right now. And are sometimes permanently on that promo. Right? So you can end up with a really lopsided comparison

by trying to look at a price band like that. So we used Honey's price history feature. And we designed our criteria to be that at some point in the last couple of months, it had to hit that price at least three times. Okay, cool. Because Honey also has price watching features so if you were to use honey then if you're willing to be a little bit patient and what we say is okay it has to hit that price sometimes then you'll get a notification boom you go ahead and buy it didn't actually know that that's actually really so it was a it was honey yeah it was a it was a great way for us to take some of that guesswork out of like,

well, is this discounted or is this artificially inflated right now? And find a really good mix of products that was like a fair $50 to $75 keyboard roundup. Yeah. So I've said a lot about how great Honey is. It works at tons of stores and you can get it for free at joinhoney.com slash Linus. Also, private internet access. PIA supports a variety of VPN protocols actually on the subject of China since we love talking about it so much today. I got a really great note from one of our other sponsors who I'm not going to name, but they're over in China for business, which is a

great reason to not name them right now. They're over in China for business right now, and I got a I got a Twitter DM. That was like yo Thanks for the thanks for the tip on Pia They're the only one that's working for me over there right now to be clear PA doesn't always work over there I've been over there at times and it was intermittent or didn't work, but right now they're working I mean, it's always an arms race right right? Trying to get past the Great Firewall of China. Anyway, they've got a lot of other features that are separate from that, but it was just like one of those little moments like, hey, thanks for endorsing these guys because this is working out great. Their apps are available for Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS, Linux, and Google Chrome.

They have over 3,000 bare-metal servers in 44 locations across 28 countries. You can connect up to five devices at once with a single account and you can check it out today at lmg.gg slash PIA WAN. If you're into that sort of thing, they don't block torrenting, so there you go. Now you know. All right. They would be the one sponsor on today's show that does support the messaging in this episode. Yeah, yeah, I know, right? Yeah, PIA is gonna be like, oh, yeah, I know, right? Yeah, PIA is going to be like,

oh, yeah, this show seems fine. I'm glad that we're associated with it. I mean, I actually don't know anything about Moss or Honey's standpoints. And you know what? I shouldn't. I think that's the biggest point that Luke was trying to make

that really got glossed over in the earlier parts of the show today. Yeah. All right. I want to talk about the Stadia thing. Okay. Can we do one more topic? Yes.

Stadia thing? Okay. I know. We need to go. Okay. This is great. This was posted by WKDPaul on the forum. And if you guys aren't familiar with Stadia,

I'm out. It's basically... What was that stupid thing that was the first one that didn't work? Now I forget. Dang it. The first one. The Nvidia one?

No, no, before that. The first gaming stream, game streaming thing. It was that, like, um, ARM-based one. Yeah, uh. Dang it. Cloud gaming. I don't think anyone cared, though. I know, but I'm trying to, cloud gaming, first one.

First one? Shut up. This is my... Be nice to me. I had a rough week. I just love that. On live! Oh, you found it, actually.

Okay. Hey, my Google foo is strong. I'm impressed. I'm impressed. To be fair, it just came up with Wikipedia. Google was like, I don't know. Take this. Look, was it the second hit or not?

It was, but that's because of cloud gaming, not first one. Whatever. You know what? Control F first. Is it in here? There you go. Boom, first. Don't worry about it.

Okay, one didn't help me much. So online. Basically, the idea is that you've got this lightweight, inexpensive box, and then you've got a server somewhere that actually renders the game, and your commands are sent over the internet, and then the actual rendered game frames are sent over the internet to that box that decodes them. It's an H.264, or ideally H.265,

or something more sophisticated video stream that goes on your screen. So you don't actually have to buy a console or gaming PC in order to have a high-fidelity gaming experience, and what you give up for that is that you don't actually own your hardware or your games, and you have to pay a monthly subscription, so it's gaming as a service. In a nutshell, Google Stadia is Google's entrant into what is becoming rapidly a very crowded field. And in order to make their platform lower latency, because the hardcore gamers have said, look, this can never be as good as local because laws of physics, no matter, even if we're communicating at the speed of light, which we literally are if you have fiber fiber optic internet and it goes all the way to the server over fiber optics literally speed of light we're still talking like 50 milliseconds ideally to a server that's like not down the street from

you and that assumes that you're not going unnecessarily through a bunch of different hops which can happen depending on congestion or outages or DDoS attacks or whatever the case may be. So this is Google's solution. I love this. AI that predicts when you're going to do something, adding a negative latency offset to your gaming. Go. There's just so many things that are so derp with this.

Because the amount of time it's going to happen, where it's going to interpret the wrong thing. One of the things I hated the most, the reason why I beat the little girl on stage in Mario Kart, was because... You're a monster. You're still a monster. I didn't know the new Switch version...

How old was she? Like 10? Very young. 8? I didn't know the new Switch version. How old was she? Like 10? Very young. Eight? I didn't know the new Switch version had a training wheels feature where it would like keep you on the course. I knew it felt weird, but I was like, whatever. And then, but I, my whole goal, it's a long story, but my whole goal was I wanted to stop

before the finish line. And then the training wheels drove me over the finish line. I was trying to like force my car into the wall. Leave me alone! I didn't want to! But, like, that feature sucks. And I know it's not the exact same thing. But in this one, like, is it going to learn that I'm not very good at shooting people in the head?

And when I try to shoot them in the head, is it going to make me shoot them in the chest? Like, what? If I go and I'm like, you know what? head, is it going to make me shoot them in the chest? Like, what? If I go and I'm like, you know what? This time I'm going to do it. I'm going to aim and make sure I actually aim properly. This time I'm going to aim. And I go and I sweep up on my mouse pad, going for his head, and Sadie is like, nope.

I'm going to keep your cursor here. This is a great quote. This is a great quote. Ultimately, we think that in a year or two, we'll have games that are running faster and feel more responsive

in the cloud than they do locally, regardless of how powerful the local machine is. So basically, it's like a buffer of predicted latency inherent to Stadia players

set up or connection in which the Stia system will run leg mitigation like it could they maybe Do computation for like a huge variety of possible outcomes so that they're ready if you do them But it wouldn't know which ones. Oh, I guess it could oh Okay, that would be so maybe it's not just one because if it sent you, like, okay, now hold on. This would be like a new codec even.

This would be nuts. What if it sent you, like, 10 or 20 or 50 different outcomes, and then, like, assuming that your shot was either on target or, like, slightly anywhere around it, if it could then like shift certain elements of the image, use AI to

fill in the gaps, okay, maybe it's cool. Is it that? Well, no, I don't. They didn't say that. Not yet. Yeah, I don't know. The first interpretation that I had of it, I hate it. If they try to give you Schrodinger's cat of potential future gaming solutions,

that could be pretty interesting. All right. Did he kill or did he not kill? Well, both options are true until proven false. So I don't desire to continue streaming today. No. I think we're not. So far today I've been pro-genocide, pro-China, pro-fascism. Yeah, all I can say is, you, I don't even know what else.

You know what? Uh, you do you, buddy. Um, thanks for watching, guys. See you again next week, same bat time, same bat channel. Bye! Oh, crap! Super chats! I should probably do some super chats. Okay. Okay. 32Bytes says, your stream was down for eight minutes. What happened?

We actually have no idea. We don't know. no idea that'll be some post-mortem diagnosis there you know what fine albie says where do y'all stand on pro-china free hong kong we stand pre-hong kong pre-hong kong we noted that at the beginning of the stream

we did that happened not this stream the other one that's true that's true hauntus says no one wants you to be political just ethical We did. We did. That happened. Not this stream. The other one. That's true. This is kind of the part two stream. That's true. Hauntus says, no one wants you to be political, just ethical. Yeah. It's amazing. But somehow that has become political, hasn't it? Yeah.

It's kind of amazing. And that was where the whole lawful evil discussion came in. That was again on part one. We really tried to cover a basis and it just didn't work gap to franny says uh i ordered the ltd edition knocked to a heat sink one of the decals will go on the two and a half inch quad box that you signed at ltx 2019 which i appreciate gold looks great on blue oh i'm so glad um oh my goodness wow yeah this is just all about this oh man class

413. It's not fair to a company that you're a face for to espouse controversial topics that could cost people their livelihoods. I'm actually not sure what your position is here. And you know what? I'm okay with that. No, I think he's specifically talking about when you were talking about people's Twitters at the company.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Sure. Blink your eyes 1400. I'm putting together a gaming PC. Want to know what is the best Wi-Fi card for it? Ethernet connection. Yeah, and if not that, then Powerline. Powerline is better than Wi-Fi.

If you must have Wi-Fi, then it really is more to do with how close you can get the antennas together and less to do with how great your Wi-Fi card is. 2225per says reasoned and balanced commentary will never appease the zealots i'm pro hong kong i get what you're saying and i'm sure many others do too but the squeakiest wheel gets the grease so to speak thank you that was actually really nice to hear someone gets it really nice to hear. Someone gets it. Alexis says,

Alexis sends $5. Longtime listener, first time chatter, love the podcast. Here's $2.75 of my money. Alexis gets it. Ilya says, have you seen Der Bauer's video series

where he examines 9900K under the electron microscope to a single transistor visible? No, I haven't. Sounds cool. Drunken Scriard says, it's going to be the best BlizzCon ever. I'm going. Are you really?

I've had a ticket for like a really long time. It's going to be really weird. I've been planning so far. I'll tell you what I've been planning so far. Do you know Red Shirt Guy? Do you know the history of Red Shirt Guy? Sounds familiar. There is always somebody goes up to the mic at blizzcon yeah and it was the same guy

for a long time and then around Blizzard or more Diablo Immortals it was a new guy yeah he just also happened to be wearing a red shirt but they just say things that just dunk Blizzard every time so I am packing specifically only red shirts just as like a joke and I was already planning on doing that and now I'm just like oh this is gonna be crazy

I'm gonna go anyways but like do we start like the Red Sea movement here and just get everyone at BlizzCon to wear red shirts I don't think we have the clout to do it it would be amazing our audience might see of red oh my god i don't think we i don't think we have the clout to do it no but like we could try it would be amazing i mean our audience might there's 10 there's 10 000 people

watching right now yeah like i will be at blizzcon if every one of you tells 10 people that would be a hundred thousand people who are at least aware of this of the idea of showing up at blizzcon wearing a red shirt do it it. It would be hilarious. If you show up to BlizzCon and you see me and you're not wearing a red shirt, no selfie. Or if you come up to me and you see me and you're not wearing a red shirt and you're like, I can't afford to buy red shirts, that's fine. If you're going to threaten that, you have to hold true to it. Okay, but what do we do for the people that are like...

You carry one extra red shirt in like quadruple XL. I'll cover it. And just put it on them and take it off when they're done with the selfie? Expense it to Linus Media Group or something. I will pay for a 4XL red shirt. Okay. I expect to see zero selfies with Luke from BlizzCon if they are not adorned in red. Because they might be someone who, like, takes it far away.

You chase them down. You take their phone. All right. Red shirts. BlizzCon. Do it up. Jacked up. If you chase them down, you take their phone. All right. Red shirts, BlizzCon, do it up. Track death. Exactly how much damage does the depth of discharge do to a phone battery compared to the height of charge? The video you made wasn't clear.

They're both bad. Depth of discharge is going to instantly kill it if you go too deep, but most phones should prevent you from doing that, whereas height of charge is more like a slow burn. Legolad play well it's notable that an american team did a very similar thing as blitzchung soon after and faced no repercussions at all uh no are you talking about the nba because that's been a huge controversy i forget what team it was i don't think he's talking about hearthstone but i know

nothing about this oh an american hearthstone team faced no repercussions at all. Yeah, that doesn't sound that surprising to me. This is what I said early on. I don't know everything about this story. Once again, Blizzard handled it wrong. Very, very bad. D minus minus. Jason says, another major issue is how Tencent is involved in all the major gaming companies.

So many. So Tim Sweeney came out and said, well, as long as I'm in charge, Epic Games, blah, blah. Yeah, how long are you going to be in charge, Tim? Like, how many more hundreds of millions of dollars do you need? Are you really going to stick around that much longer?

Also, furthermore, who was it? Riot Games has made some pretty negative headlines over this as well. Unfortunately, I haven't looked into what they've said so far, so I can't really comment on it yet. Made a statement saying that their broadcasters and their people are not to... They effectively said what you guys said Blizzard should have said.

Oh, okay, never mind. They basically said, look, no political stuff in our broadcasts. Yeah, but they've said it ahead of time. Yeah. There was also some issue. One of the teams in that tournament is called Hong Kong Attitude, and casters were shortening it to HKA. So they thought that was a directive from Riot,

but apparently it was not. Right. To be fair, that's just a really long name to say a billion times during a cast. So I wouldn't be too surprised. Araven says, Is Floatplane okay? Had a minor heart attack when the stream went down. We'll figure it out.

Floatplane overall is fine, but the streaming... Is the videos we're streaming, people are still watching? Yeah. Uh, Zembensky, where are all your clothes made? China. Actually, where was this? Honduras. Honduras. And printed in Canada. And printed in Canada, by the way. Ba-bam-bam!

Luke, what's your go-to from Tim Hortons asks Jonah. Hot chocolate. Tim Hortons kind of sucks. Tim Hortons sucks ass now. If I do go there, it's a chili. Yeah, it's the only edible thing left on the menu. And the bun sucks now. And chocolate, yes it does.

And you take all the bread out of the bun and you kind of squish it together, use that as a spoon, and then you use the hollowed out shell of the bun, and you kind of squish it together and use that as a spoon, and then you use the hollowed-out shell of the bun as a spoon. That's how you eat it. The old bun was like this delightfully chewy bun, and then they went and they put this hard crust. So dry.

Dry, garbage bun. And the chili's worse now, I think. I don't want this. Look, look. I don't want this to come across anti-America or pro-fascism or whatever. But ever since Tim Hortons got bought, they suck. Downhill. They used to make the donuts fresh in store.

Tim Hortons donuts are inedible now. They're disgusting. They used to be good. But yeah, so it would be chili and a chocolate milk. If I have to eat at Tim Hortons, I get the chili too. They're not owned by an American company get the chili, too I thought they were Brazilian investment, but I don't want this to come across anti-brazilian either whoever whoever's mad just sucks now. It sucks now It's been terrible ever since they got bought out good input Nick. Thanks Nick

Someone would have someone would have screamed at us for that. Let's get the right people. Yeah, let's get the right information. Exactly. Perfect. Oh man. Oh my goodness. Ever since we started reading Super Chats, people have been hitting it pretty hard. We can't. We gotta go. Bye guys. Bye. Thanks for watching. Uh, yeah. We'll see you next time!