Alright guys, welcome to the WAN Show, it is that time again this week, the time that I set aside to spend with you.
All of you out there in Twitch streaming land and oh crap, I've got the tab open on my laptop and I'm like 20 seconds behind and I can hear myself and ok, I've managed to make it so that I'm not going crazy anymore which is nice.
I am unfortunately without Luke this week which is a real shame but he's basically got some stuff he's got to deal with this week and I totally get it.
So I'm going to hopefully have someone join me in a short while here and you know, it's funny, I was planning to have the show go completely smoothly with no hitches in his absence, the way that he claims that it always is.
In his absence, the way that he claims that it always goes when I'm not around but I will confess to you now, I have not yet actually tested my screen share so this is the moment of truth.
Will I be having an easy, well not easy, I mean you know live streaming is very difficult but will I be having a seamless show today? Oh look at that! Nailed it!
Yes my friend, so we've got a lot of great topics for you today, there's been some big news and there's been some little news, researchers built a 1000 core processor, I'll be talking about that and why it probably doesn't mean a whole lot to you and won't for quite some time.
YouTube's terms of service have been updated, it's mostly around their harassment and cyberbullying policy so that is going to have potentially huge ramifications for some YouTubers out there who are basically making a living out of harassment and cyberbullying.
Twitch brings CFAA and trademark claim against bot operators, apparently they are a persistent frustration, that is some strong language coming from their senior vice president marketing.
And in much huger news that's not necessarily directly purely tech related but will absolutely have an effect on technology and how that works especially for Europeans moving forward, the UK has voted to leave the EU.
It is final but there are some important other notes about it that we're going to be talking a little bit about later so without further ado, let's get on Twitch chat here and see if, wow, no one is complaining, that is amazing!
And here come all the complaints so let's roll the intro so that I can just, you don't even have to watch me pretending not to read them.
Squarespace, oh what the heck, it's like four pixels off, look at us, we're like dancing, oh wait.
Also for some reason we have much darker skin in this one, fascinating. Tunnel bear, fresh bugs, and those are all the same but the blank ones.
One of these days, one of these days we're going to become a real professional media company and we're not going to make little mistakes, who am I kidding, that's never happening.
Alright, so let's jump right into our first topic here, the original article here is from nGadget, researchers build a 1000 core processor that they call the kilo core.
Yep, that makes sense, so in a nutshell, what a kilo core or a many many core processor would be optimized for is, as you can well imagine, performing many many parallel operations, so that's many many many many small things all at once.
This is not going to have pretty much any relevance to you, the person sitting there who wants to play games or encode video that you edited or I mean really most of what you would consider to be a home use for a computer.
This is not going to have any relevance for you, I don't want to say ever because ever is a really big word but for a very very long time because the limitation of the way that we currently code software is usually when it comes to performance, the single threaded performance of the CPU or CPUs that are being used to handle the workload.
It will take an enormous change in the way that programming is done for something like this hyper low power kilo core processor to have much relevance to someone who wants to even general web browsing can consume a lot of CPU horsepower these days.
But there are things that it can be used for, sorting through data, encryption, one of the applicability sort of notes that I have in here is encoding videos but that is heavily dependent on the codec being used for one thing and for well I mean how many video streams you're trying to encode.
So if you could make a thousand core processor that is powerful enough for each of the cores to handle an individual encoding stream, holy crap, I mean I could see a site like Twitch or like YouTube being all over that kind of technology.
It's like you mean we can have a thousand cores, each of which can handle an incoming video encoding request from a file upload by itself and these things can consume let's see.7 watts total.
I mean the whole thing could run on a AA battery and this is without the benefit of the latest manufacturing process node so this was actually built on 32 nanometer technology which is quite archaic at this point in time.
Though it should be noted that a mere what I don't know four or five years ago that would have been considered state of the art.
So the processor handles 115 billion instructions per second and part of what makes it operate so efficiently at the core is that the cores transfer data to each other directly rather than on a shared cache of memory.
So again it should be noted that that will only be more efficient for certain workloads where the cores need to share data directly with each other and where you can build enough interconnects for the cores to not have to leap over multiple other cores in order to access another one.
Very very cool so let's just see if there's a is there like a picture I can show you or anything like that it looks like most of the news articles this one's over on BGR.com are just pulling generic CPU pictures off of shutter stock here.
Flight attendants and passengers get away with this all the time fascinating love it thank you for that love those sponsored articles under the actual article that I'm trying to read.
Alright so the original source here is decks air tow.com a site that we've never actually referred to before as far as I'm aware.
So there have been some changes to the YouTube terms of service that target harassment now to be clear I don't have a strong objection to changing terms of service to prevent cyberbullying or harassment and honestly I don't know why we really even call it cyberbullying bullying is bullying.
And calling it e-bullying it's almost like cyberbullying is almost like softening it I mean what's actually you know what would be considered more adulterous sex or cybersex.
You know what do we consider to be more sport like sports or e-sports and I don't personally believe that cyberbullying has the potential to be any less harmful than any other type of bullying and in fact I think it can make you feel much more trapped because you can't even escape from it online so anyway YouTube has made some changes to the terms.
In cases where harassment crosses the line into a malicious attack it can be reported and will be removed so this is referring specifically to a video that a user would upload.
So harassment may include abusive videos comments and messages revealing someone's personal information which is great I mean doxing is never okay maliciously recording someone without their consent that's interesting how do you determine that it is malicious.
And I mean what does that do for an awful lot of YouTube videos that are just like this person failed look how stupid they are that's uh that's that's interesting that could have serious ramifications for content that it will be uploaded and a lot of content that's already on the site.
Making hurtful and negative comments and videos about another person deliberately posting content in order to humiliate someone unwanted sexualization which encompasses sexual harassment or sexual bullying in any form and incitement to harass other users or creators.
Interesting note is that what's what's that channel called drama alert or something yeah yeah drama alert got a new host within minutes minutes of this announcement hours of this announcement hi Nick welcome to the show.
Hi hello everyone that's partially due to that and partially due to the fact that he's just a really you know remember hold on we're uploading this to YouTube no personal attacks okay no harassment allegedly not a very nice person.
And a lot of people have been posting videos essentially attacking him so it's like a two fold thing I think with that but yes they did replace their hosts funny how funny how swords can have two edges on them isn't it.
It cuts both ways as the kids say.
Actually I think which kids somewhat dated expression which kids yeah 70 year old kids.
Oh come on I'm not 70 anyway you can report people that are breaking the new and updated terms of service using YouTube's reporting tool speaking of which I actually need to deal with a false flag on one of our stupid videos.
Yeah every every it's basically it's like just you know no this isn't valid especially once you're once you're a verified verified youtuber it's it's pretty simple to deal with a lot of those types of reports but every once in a while someone will say that our video needs closed captioning.
Which that would be nice yeah yeah we looked into it before it's just really expensive no they're saying it needs it some videos legally must have closed captioning.
If they've been uploaded as broadcast television in the United States then they they must be closed captioned so for us it's just a matter of going no actually it.
Doesn't I think it's also in Canada if it's supposed to be used as like a public resource yeah so and I think it has to have closed captioning as well so there's there's some there's some terms of service he'd funny stuff that you know every once in a while happens but.
This is this is pretty potentially pretty far reaching I mean fortunately it doesn't have an impact on us but what it does do is it highlights for us and I mean really for any online content creator once again the powerlessness that we have I mean.
On the one hand you think yeah you know Internet video you know kind of freedom of expression say whatever say whatever you want but at the end of the day what people have to realize is that.
YouTube.com is Google's playground and if you want to play in Google's playground you got to play by Google's rules and while this again doesn't affect us because we don't harass or bully people on the Linus Tech Tips channel because.
A well okay there are certain manufacturers that you could argue that I wasn't very nice to their product but that's not personal that's the product.
But these terms are pretty open ended yep and that's like my huge concern with it is what are they going to constitute as bullying are they going to constitute satires bullying yeah because that's a massive concern and I think that.
You know I'm not like someone who's like oh this is the beginning of the end for YouTube or anything but yeah it brings up a lot of concerning questions and censorship is often the lead to the death of a platform.
So I think that as long as YouTube has the resources in place to actually handle this properly and they're just going to make sure that they review everything before they do it unlike their copyright system.
They don't have a great history of doing this.
As long as they handle it properly I think it's a good thing for the platform because let's be honest lately there has been a lot of questionable content on the platform.
But it has a huge potential to go bad with that said they are making strides towards improving these things for example it used to be that if someone filed a copyright claim against you.
Your monetization got pulled.
Even though the video might stay up during the appeal period but your monetization got pulled so for example monetization would go to the person who is claiming it right.
I don't think so.
In some situations I think if it was like someone who auto detection of music yes.
But depending on what it was sometimes monitors and I've had monetization just pulled for other reasons during a dispute or an appeal period for example this is this is actually a great example it's an older one now.
But I'm just going to I'm going to pull up the video because this was I was so freaking mad about this at the time obviously it's water under the bridge at this point I love my YouTube overlords.
We love you please don't shut us down please don't please don't shut down my channel but check this out so this is one of my older videos this is back from 2012 and I have no idea how loud this is for you guys.
But this is my unboxing of the original razor blade.
Let's go ahead and full screen this baby yeah check that out it was a big old thing it had like this weird weird this was called the switch blade interface.
So razor blade thin and light gaming notebook featuring and you guys can't read all the way over here because we are covering it you know just move us featuring switch blade unboxing.
So what happened with this video was that YouTube actually flagged it automatically for dangerous content containing weapons.
So I'm going to pull up the analytics for this video and I'll explain exactly why I was so upset about it so the way that my compensation structure worked at NCIX at the time was I had a monthly quota for how many videos I had to make.
So I think it was as high as 45 at one time 45 unboxings was like my quota and I got a flat rate and it was it was very little it was like $10 per unboxing or something like that like it was it was pretty low rate or like $15 or something.
But remember the production values weren't what they are now it was like it was one shot me and my wife.
Okay sometimes there were two shots if you made a mistake sometimes there weren't two shots if I made a mistake so let's be careful with how we say the two shots ended up in the video.
Back in the day if Linus made a mistake sometimes it was the person behind the camera waving frantically going stop stop stop and then the shot would cut and then you'd come back and go okay actually yeah I was wrong it's actually this and they would just leave that in the video.
So for all you new viewers out there if you think it's bad now.
So let's go let's pull up my analytics for this video here and I will show you guys why I was so upset because okay so I got a flat rate for the videos that I made and then what I also got was a cut of the YouTube AdSense.
So that was how we ended up with ads on the videos. So here are the first I don't know how many days this is like 20 20 days somewhat of this video.
It got pulled immediately because of the word switchblade.
In the first five days for me in 2012 okay like 70 80,000 views like how many views is this about 80 to 90,000 views in the first week was unheard of that was a big deal that was like huge for me.
Also the CPMs I believe were higher on the platform at the time and a variety of other reasons why this is really upsetting but it just got pulled it just got completely pulled.
I got nothing for it and even though like my appeals like yo this is clearly a laptop computer and nothing to do with razors nothing to do with blades and nothing to do with switchblade knives.
Hey put this back.
But they would just turn the monetization off and it's just gone poof.
So the point of that really long story was they're improving they're getting better but it's not perfect yet and I totally hope that they don't screw this up.
Alright speaking of screwing things up the original article here is from Polygon and I'll let Nick go ahead and introduce this topic here.
So last Friday Twitch filed a lawsuit against seven individuals slash organizations that are in business of selling bots.
These bots are designed to artificially inflate the viewer and follower accounts of Twitch streamers.
They are a persistent frustration in the words of their marketing senior vice president Matthew DiPietro and they have announced that they are now creating a very real problem on the platform.
So these bots have been used to deny streamers partnerships or harass other broadcasters and Twitch employs technological solutions that detect and remove false viewer or bots currently.
So the lawsuit represents a third layer in their strategy against bots here and yeah among the allegations there are federal trademark infringement unfair competition cyber squatting fraud breach of contract and tortious interference.
So they're seeking injunctions against the bot makers including the transfer of the possession of their domains.
They're ordering barring payment processors from providing them with service and restitution legal fees and punitive damages.
I mean bots are a huge problem for pretty much any platform that is trying to monetize views or ad impressions because I mean there are there's a reason that I don't know if you know this but the Google AdSense terms of service basically do not care why bot traffic is viewing ads on your site.
So this is like a really scary thing this is not actually why we lost our Google our Google AdSense account that had to do with people posting racy images on the forum.
Yeah pictures lewd pictures on the forum that like buried in a thread of you know for almost like a 400 page desktop wallpaper thread and it's like you know you need to be monitoring like yeah that is what it is so that's that's why you don't see Google ads on the line of tech tips from anymore but but this is an interesting interesting fact is that their terms of service don't give a crap why there are bots viewing them or why there are bots clicking on the ads.
They are going to go after you with a shoot first ask questions later approach you'll get cut off and you will it will be up to you to prove that someone else was maliciously coding bots and creating bots to browse and click on your ads.
So like that because it really hurts the value of Google's product for that for their purposes that approach makes sense because if the burden of proof is on them and they have no way to prove whether or not it was you that was body because let's be honest they don't know then they can never take it away.
So as soon as they put the burden of proof on you that allows them to actually take it away in any case there's body and the reason why body is a huge issue is because like Linus said we're trying to sell a product like an ad if there are rumors out there even yet.
You know some of the ads are being bought it the advertisers are coming after you and going why am I paying you for nothing.
Yeah paying for absolutely nothing literally with twitches more complicated because I mean you can't just go you know oh twitch streamer X Y or Z you know yo you're banned from the platform until because I mean malicious actions towards twitch streamers that have nothing to do with them.
You know whether it's as as silly as you know fake pizza deliveries or you know getting into a much more malicious territory things like swatting this is a huge thing it's something about that community that thinks you know trolling the on air personality is somehow appropriate.
So for twitch to come in and start going heavy handed like anyone who has bots viewing their stream you know you're you're banned you're cut off your partnership you know your your subscriber revenue is getting withheld I mean that would be grossly unfair.
So the issue is so multifaceted on twitch too because as a new viewer to a game you're going to click on probably one of the top broadcasters within that game category.
So if someone's body they're not only trying to get more ad revenue by displaying a higher view count they might even just be trying to get more exposure to get featured or whatever it is so.
Yeah it's just such a I mean like what I'm trying to say is maybe the person who's body isn't even doing it maliciously maybe they're trying to help the content creator in their own disturbed way which is terrible by the way yes please don't do that that's like the worst thing.
Yeah click fraud view fraud any kind of any kind of fraud is so hard for a content creator especially a smaller one I mean for actually this is a great opportunity for me to get into to get into what happened with our Amazon associates account but anytime a content creator runs afoul of a much larger entity.
Whether we're talking about Google Amazon twitch owned by Amazon speaking of much larger entities it can be so hard and I understand the reasons for this I mean you got you got to think about it like a program like you know an Amazon associates or like the creator management team at a company like Google which is like you know so there's alphabet and then there's Google and then there's YouTube and then there's like.
Sales and marketing and content acquisition and content development and then there's this tiny little team like talent management.
And there are literally millions of creators in some cases at least hundreds of thousands that much we know for sure so for even someone like me where I would like to think that I'm fairly significant I think I'm in the top 500 and change of youtubers.
Let's say top 600 to be safe even for me getting in touch with a partner manager took until about a year and change ago just to give you guys some idea that was how long it took me to reach out to me get this they reached out to me about the tech quickie channel.
Did I tell you that yeah they weren't actually reaching out about the Linus Tech Tips channel we completely slipped through the cracks let's be fair though the like the contact email on that on that channel is extremely messy so like it's possible no no I would have noticed it's possible I get notifications on my phone for every email.
I would have noticed I was like wow they talked to me be still my heart so so especially for a small content creator anytime so OK anyway it's really small teams managing this stuff they only have so much bandwidth to manually reviews things so a lot of this stuff is done by automated systems.
And to get someone to review it has to be done in a priority fashion so if you have 500 subscribers on YouTube good luck like I lost my channel four and a half years ago took me over a month to get it back it took you to literally five years to ever get in touch with me about anything.
And when I so getting into the Amazon thing when I was found to be in breach of Amazon's associates terms of service my appeal process was basically yo can we talk about this on the phone.
Yo no good luck elsewhere so it is so it can be pretty tough now with that said so so leading back into because you know we consider ourselves to be something of a key online video.
Program when it comes to technology and I know a few people who know a few people who know a few people who were willing to stick their necks out on my behalf I do actually have some news to share as far as the whole Amazon thing goes.
So last week I did announce that Amazon associates are Amazon links were dead our account was dead and everything was dead since that time I have managed to get on the phone with someone and it looks like we are going to work together to move forward.
I've actually got some some notes that that I put together about sort of what what is exactly going on so it was pointed out to me that anyone is allowed even unless you've been found to be like clearly maliciously abusing the program.
Anyone is allowed to change their business model and to a compliant business model and reapply.
So we've actually been approved as of yesterday morning for a new account and you know here's what I have to say to you guys this does mean there will be a new ID you won't have seen that anywhere yet because we're working.
Very carefully to go through our everything and make sure that all of our practices all of our editors know you know how to call it out correctly you know all of our writers know how to call it out correctly.
We want to make sure that we are 100% above board because I do not imagine for a second that I have a longer a longer leash than you know about this if we were to ever violate the terms of the agreement again.
But here's what I'll say if you're a creator out there who is using the Amazon Associates program or if you're looking into the Amazon Associates program because honestly in spite of the stress that I've gone through in the last week.
I still highly recommend participating in the program is a great great program it's a great way to make additional revenue without compromising any integrity as one of the things that I love about it is that because Amazon carries everything I can recommend something on Amazon without there being any conflict.
Because they carry everything because they carry everything I don't care if you buy the LG G5 or the you know one plus three I don't give a crap just go buy it there by one by both.
So here's what I'll say carefully study the terms of the agreement carefully clicking on all of the hyperlinks within the terms of the agreement because there are subterms of the agreement within the terms of the agreement review them all.
Some of it is kind of vaguely worded but I understand why they do this and it's to prevent abuse you can't cover every eventuality.
I get that so some of the terminology does seem a little gray but here's the advice that I've been this is my personal advice is not coming from Amazon and making it very clear that I'm not affiliated with Amazon in any way other than that I am a participant in the Amazon Associates program that's something that they say that you're supposed to say.
It's in the terms of service the way to read it is keeping in mind the spirit of the agreement which is that you are to show your viewers or your audience applicable products on Amazon especially ones that you like or recommend and you are to provide them with a means to quickly buy it by clicking on a link that you provide them.
So if you keep that in mind while you read through it the rules are much easier to understand so there you have it we have learned our lesson we were extraordinarily lucky that we have some friends of some friends who were very generous to put their necks out and vouch for us being good people who were not maliciously abusing the program so huge shout out to all the people who quietly helped us with this thank you for that.
And look forward to seeing more Amazon links under our videos moving forward.
Yay yay and another thing is one of the people that I was talking to you about it said like some of the people that work in that program are like people from all walks of life all stages of life so some of them like don't necessarily I guess understand the newer relations and stuff right so like keep in mind that you have to just live within the terms as they're there and and then some just in case so yeah.
Lesson learned and it was a good one speaking of lesson learned I wonder what lessons will be learned from this original source here is from the BBC dot com the United Kingdom is no longer part of the European Union holy actual freaking crap.
Asterisk it's going to take like at least two years and the referendum is not technically legally binding although anyone in the House of Commons that goes against it is probably committing like career political suicide so it's probably pretty much almost like definitely gonna happen.
Unbelievable so I mean there's a lot of incredible stuff here like if you guys were like me you were probably glued to your phone last night just looking at all the mind blowing stats around this and and all the speculation going on but here's a few key ones.
71.8% of eligible voters attended.
I have never I mean I know that it broke UK records but I mean does that does that break every record.
Yeah people cared holy crap and and and that's with like extreme weather conditions like flooding happening yeah so if like the weather was all good we probably would have been closer to like 75 or 80%.
Unbelievable unheard of and even more crazy is just how divided the country was so in the end it was a mere 52 to 48% vote it was incredibly close.
England was just a touch higher on the leave side of things Wales was right there in the thick of things at the average 52 and a half voted leave 47 and a half stay Scotland and Northern Ireland both back to staying in the EU which is going to have some very interesting ramifications for the Scotland England relationship over the next little bit with Scotland going as far as to say.
Yo we might have actually you know done the wrong thing when we stayed in the UK a little while ago we might be referending again.
This is interesting okay no one of my one of my one of my favorite Quebec law over there sent me this Wikipedia article on the Quebec referendum which was actually another quixote I guess we could call it when when Quebec voted on whether to leave Canada become an independent country for the first time.
This was on October 30th 1995 and 93.52% of people turned out to vote the no option carried by 50.58% so yes there have been closer and.
50.58 yeah I had forgotten how close that was so okay all right thanks a prime you got me there you got me there I should I should have studied up my Canadian history better so what is all this mean first let's talk a little bit about what being a member of the EU has meant in purely technological terms.
Cheaper airfares easier easier studying and traveling and living abroad on the mainland in mainland Europe cheaper cell phone cheaper cell phone service so the way that the EU has cracked down on roaming charges within European Union members has been.
A huge benefit to EU countries I have I have been to the EU and traveling over borders extraordinarily easy very very cool.
Essentially what the EU does the European Union does is turn the partner countries into a single market so they're essentially eliminating borders in a lot of ways for good services people money especially with the euro which was implemented what like 10 15 years ago something like that.
I can remember when the euro got implemented but it wasn't like he was not it was in my adult lifetime ish like I remember going to Paris and they're still being Franks when I graduated high school.
So it began after World War Two and it was all about economic cooperation and has and has become more than that so the overall goal is to boost trade create jobs lower prices.
Alright so why then did United Kingdom residents vote to leave so they claim they were being held back said it would impose too many rules on businesses and charged billions of pounds per year in membership fees for a little return.
Wanted Britain to take back full control of its borders and reduce the number of people coming to work and live in the country because that's one of the thing as much as many Britain's have been enjoying you know going and working or living over the English Channel there.
Well the same is true of anyone else who wants to go and live in the UK.
They also objected to the move towards what they saw as the creation of a United States of Europe.
So to speak to the membership fees there was like a note that I read where I think in 2014 slash 15 you know the fiscal year 2014 slash 15 the UK was charged something like 8.8 billion pounds in membership fees and they were able to trace back about 5.5 billion pounds of actual benefit for UK citizens or UK residents.
So that includes stuff like university grants housing grants etc.
So there's a significant cost to them for actually being a part of the union in that cost is essentially absorbed by some of the other members of the union that contribute a bit less.
So yeah I can I mean empirically I can kind of understand the argument there but that's looking at that one statistic in a vacuum and ignoring you know the free trade that it allows the travel free convenient movement and you know what but there's a lot of people who don't give a crap about that.
That's true and for them whatever just want to stay in Leeds or wherever and live out their life there then maybe it's better for them to just have a UK.
So here's a few more interesting interesting tidbits the pound has fallen to its lowest since a night or fell.
I don't know if it stayed there actually I haven't looked recently but it fell to its lowest since 1985.
Fun fact our Amazon.co.uk affiliate payouts haven't been cashed in a really long time.
I heard yeah so so we actually like just lost like like a really long time I know so we just lost like a lot a couple thousand pounds or something I think a lot yeah.
I don't know how much exactly but I don't know how much exactly but it's like it's like not insignificant so thanks for that Brexit.
The treasury forecast a rise between 0.7 and 1.1 percent in mortgage borrowing costs so like that might not seem significant but I think it works out to somewhere around a thousand pounds a year extra.
Ouch.
And like possibly years added to your mortgage so like compound interest dog that sucks like yeah.
Where the hell did this come from emergency pun the EU now has one GB more space.
I did not put that there.
Whoever did whoever did is fired so it's pretty funny though.
It was probably ghost so you can't technically fire him.
Damn it.
All right well that's okay.
One GB.
One GB more space I see what you did there.
I see you bro.
Thank you for that all right speaking of thank you for that thank you to tunnel bear for sponsoring the WAN show the tunnel bear is the easy to use VPN app for mobile and desktop.
It lets you tunnel to 20 different countries allowing you to browse the internet thank you for that Nick and use online services as though you are in a different country you just choose the country in the app.
Turn it on and boom your connection gets encrypted with the as 256 bit encryption and your public IP address gets switched so you show up as though you are from somewhere else something that could end up being more relevant for Great Britain citizens than it used to be.
I mean think about this things like content law could now be dramatically different between Britain to this is where I'm tying it back into tech.
It's a lot a lot of people asking in the twitch chat content law could be very different in Great Britain than it is in the rest of the EU.
Holy crap you could have completely different.
Oh you could have completely different like censorship layers you could have all kinds of stuff that a VPN could be beneficial for.
Oh this is going to be this is going to be an interesting 10 years.
Anyway tunnel bear makes it easy with no port configuration DNS or any other nonsense and they have a top rated privacy policy that does not log user activity.
You can try it out for free at tunnel bear.com slash land and you can save 10% at tunnel bear.com slash when there is no credit card required for the 500 megabytes of free data by the way.
Speaking of no credit card required have you ever run a small business for yourself whether you do tiling or teach dance lessons in your in your attic or don't do it in the attic that do very warm dog hairdressing or dog hairdressing or plumbing or or small time computer repair even medium time computer repair.
Maybe you make trinkets like dream catchers. Yes yes all things Luke's parents Luke's family has done. I don't know about dream catchers. I don't know about dream catchers specifically. It seems like it might be a thing.
It seems believable doesn't it? Yeah. Anyway fresh books is a great way for you to spend more time actually making money and less time in boring accounting software trying to figure out how much taxes you owe.
So it's super easy to use even if you're not a numbers person. It's cloud based so you can access it anytime. It's got great functionality like being able to take pictures of your receipt so you can log your expenses being able to log your hours so you know how to bill for a particular job being able to accept deposits being able to send those deposits and those bills to your clients being able to tell if they've read them being able to here's where that segue comes in.
Accept payment from your clients via credit card through fresh books directly and it makes the whole thing easier if you have any questions you can reach out to their support staff where you will speak to a real live person with no escalations no callbacks.
I mean I'm sure they'll call you back if something goes wrong and you get disconnected. They're good people over there. But that's what it's all about. Try it out. Head over to freshbooks.com slash when and claim your free trial to day which brings us finally to Squarespace the sponsor for which I'm no longer allowed to say build it beautiful and no longer allowed to say.
Well what I can't even you should yes you should you know the whole about which I am no longer allowed to say.
Jeff Bridges Jeff Bridges I think the whole point of that is that you're not supposed to say anything about it and I'll just you're a lot more fun to troll in person. This is great. I should bring you on the I should bring you on the show for the ad spots every time.
So Squarespace is the way to build a beautiful website that's all about you reflects who you are you just choose one of the templates which are actually surprisingly flexible you know once you you know gussy them up with pictures here and text there and you've got a cool little logo designer you can make your own little simple logo.
It ends up looking pretty darn unique and you can do all this even without a deep amount of coding skill. They've got 24 7 support via live chat and email all of their websites feature responsive design so they look great on everything from a full size computer to handheld device.
Commerce is built into every single template now is pretty freaking cool so got a free online store cover pages is a feature that allows you have a simple web presence with just a single page you know like let's say it's just you know you're just a restaurant.
You don't want to spend a whole lot of time on your site you're just like you know what I just want people to know what my hours of operation and my menu are boom we got chicken fingers.
Yeah get that up in a couple of minutes and don't think about it anymore because our website linusmediagroup.com hosted on Squarespace for the last like 4 years I don't think it's ever been down.
Awesome it's just all about people being able to access your website get information about you your sports team your art portfolio your business whatever the case may be and go on their merry way.
So head over to squarespace.com and use offer code linus to save 10% if you try their 2 week free trial and you decide hey I like it it's cool.
So thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring the WAN show Squarespace.
Wait for it.
Set your website apart.
No really I think that's their current one I mean I can't get in trouble for saying saying what's on their site I should just turn absolutely everything on their site into a tag into like a slogan Squarespace create your free trial today.
Squarespace domains Squarespace logins.
Squarespace perfect websites Squarespace trusted by the world's best Squarespace over a million paying customers holy crap that's.
Wow.
That's actually kind of incredible we need to we need to charge more.
They may actually watch this.
Now you're going to be the one who gets us in trouble with the sponsors that's great now it doesn't have to be me anymore that's fantastic I love it.
Random question yes this is I was thinking this when you're in the spot if you had to open a restaurant what kind of a restaurant would you open.
I would open a food restaurant and it's great because food American dad actually has an episode where the main character Stan opens what he calls the food restaurant his food restaurant and his food restaurant is stupid.
And I wouldn't open a food restaurant like that because his served like I don't know what it's like chocolate dipped chicken wings or whatever like just dumb stuff.
So my food restaurant would be kind of like.
Kind of like what I think restaurants like white spot try to do where they'll have like a chicken teriyaki dish and they'll have like a fish and chips and they'll have like a butter chicken like a variety restaurant they have a variety except the problem is that they do everything in sort of this super non authentic.
Pandering to to you know midwestern you know white people sort of way it's like you're trying butter chicken if you didn't actually want to eat butter chicken yeah exactly so so my food restaurant would be kind of like out like an all star all star team.
Yeah so it would it would kind of have it would have meals so I don't actually know that we would do family style dishes I think it would be individual individual meals and I would want those individual meals to lay like it would I would kind of say OK.
We're going to have a larger than normal kitchen we're going to have to kind of absorb some some operating overhead they're going to have to have a couple different chefs with different backgrounds.
Yeah you'll have to have a little bit of background I think you'll have to bring in some consultants whenever you want to introduce a new dish because you're not going to expect your you know Cajun specialist to all of a sudden be able to whip up an amazing Thai dish.
But I would say OK let's absorb some extra operating overhead here and let's be able to put together kind of set set meals.
So that any group of people can come and dine and you know if I'm going out with you know like a like a Taiwanese partner or something I can take them there and they can get some you know some dim sum or some you know Singaporean style Hainanese chicken or whatever and I can have a burger and both of those things will legitimately be somewhat authentic and good.
That would be the objective of my restaurant OK what would your restaurant be I'm curious now I don't I don't think this is very on topic but that's OK I'm curious that's OK I mean.
It's a similar thing Luke and I actually talked about this like a while ago and essentially what we came up with was like there's very like Americanized dishes in each culture.
So like sweet and sour pork from Chinese food chicken teriyaki California roll California roll yeah essentially having like Canadian food just being like the variety of other cultures of food that we all bring together and call Canadian food because we have a lot of awesome cultures here with a lot of awesome food.
Yeah that's true especially Vancouver it's great actually there was another great restaurant idea that I had a while back I would want it to be like an icebreaker restaurant I think I'd call it icebreakers and the idea.
Around here they think it was a hockey themed restaurant like a hockey themed sports bar icebreakers with a Z.
It's like we serve only club seal you know.
There's a spaghetti that is one long noodle right and the idea would be that you would go there with a date knowing that no one is going to be able to perfectly consume every meal without getting something dribbling down their arm or on their chin or whatever.
There's like an ad that somebody pretty much like did that really except what it was was they were like OK we're going to pair these people up and then the person like they had to feed each other the food.
So they found like food that both people liked and then they had to feed each other the food on like a first date so it was like awkward but not essentially fun people in the chat or just spamming RX 480.
I don't know what I'm supposed to say yeah there's rumors yeah which we can't talk about so here's the thing actually this is this is a good topic.
Why aren't we talking about RX 480 because we do talk about pre-release hardware rumors very frequently so we're not talking about it because we know the answer.
We can talk about rumors when we don't know the answer but once we've signed a non-disclosure agreement that says we are going to independently evaluate the product that is not going to affect the way that we look at this product but we are not going to say anything about it until such time as the broad release of information is allowed to go out as specified by in this case AMD.
So once we've signed that we can't talk about it until it's time to talk about it so a lot of people have asked you know why is it that every text channel has a video on the GTX 1080 at exactly the same time that is why.
And some people wonder why embargoes are in place and they're like oh this is you know it must be because companies are paying people to do a review or something like that.
It's so that there's fair competition in the review market. It's so that we don't get an advantage from being Linus Tech Tips and having you know 2.7 whatever subscribers.
Or that we don't end up with a disadvantage because we're in Canada and our card gets you know held by customs for three days or something like that so by having usually it's anywhere from about five on the very low end which is very frustrating.
Anywhere from about five to about 12 days. Usually that's how long you have with a product so that allows enough time for something to go wrong.
Like you know for someone's kid to get sick and need some chicken soup or whatever for something to go wrong and for you to still get your coverage out at the same time as everyone else.
Apparently I said 2.7 subscribers. Thank you Twitch chat. 2.7 million subscribers. I think you said 2.7 whatever subscribers so you didn't remember it was millions but you knew it was something so good job.
I mean I thought it might be billions and then. Speaking of good job, cable company overcharges might be even worse than you realize.
The original article here is from Ars Technica. Man I love those guys. Look at that flying sheet of money and the other flying sheet of money and the other flying sheets of money.
But this image is not about freedom. This image is about getting fleeced by your cable provider especially if you're an American. Not that I believe for a second that it's any better anywhere else.
So a senate report compares billing and service records and finds massive overcharges. Who the cable companies? Oh my goodness who would have thought.
Not charter and its new subsidiary Time Warner Cable. I have apparently been overcharging customers at least 7.2 million per year for equipment and service.
The investigation has found. So Time Warner Cable overbuild customers nationwide an estimated $639,948. How did they get an estimate that goes right down to the single dollar anyway between January and April of this year.
And these problems are bad because neither company had been issuing automatic refunds or credits to overcharged customers.
So during the six and a half year time period examined by the committee TWC and charter made no effort to trace equipment overages to their origin unless customers specifically asked them to and did not provide notice or refunds to customers.
Comcast has in the past overcharged customers but they do a much better job at issuing refunds apparently than Time Warner Cable.
Comcast told the subcommittee that it only had a billing error rate of.3%. Comcast told them. So it must be true.
Time Warner Cable will begin investigating the overcharges only if customers bring it to their attention. So if you're a Time Warner Cable customer give them a ring over there.
And I don't mean this kind of ring. I mean the kind of ring that goes YO DOG SUP!
Going forward both companies will apparently provide customers with a notice if they are overcharged.
Actually I wouldn't be down that would be totally wrong. It would be totally wrong but it would be dope if it wasn't. That was the thing that blew my mind with the charter and Time Warner Cable merger or whatever.
Where the Time Warner Cable CEO apparently had it written into his contract that he got some obscene amount of money should ownership of the company change. Three months later he was already putting pen to paper for a change of ownership of the company.
He was totally interested in bettering the company.
No conflict of interest there whatsoever. You know it's funny how many inherent conflicts of interest exist in the world.
And this is all like sanctioned stuff. Like you recently, oh are we able to talk about that? Your big thing that happened recently that's been very exciting for you and kind of crazy. Have you been, are you out?
Okay, I'm moving. I'm not changing my sexuality or something like that which is what it sounded like you were saying. I'm moving. That's the big news.
So when you deal with a realtor, whether you're buying, whether you're leasing or whatever the case may be. When you deal with a realtor, ultimately there exists as far as I can tell an inherent conflict of interest.
I have met some very good realtors, very good people. But there is an inherent conflict of interest because the seller or the leaser, not the lessee or sellee, whatever I don't care, you guys get the point.
So the seller or whoever is leasing the property pays the realtor fees. They pay that out of the negotiated rate that the buyer ends up agreeing to pay.
So the way it works is that, let's say hypothetically, a house is $440,000 for example, let's say hypothetically. So what would happen is a typical real estate agent commission as I think somewhere in the one to quite a bit more than one, I think as high as like three or four percent.
Yeah. I think it depends on market conditions. Cause like in Vancouver right now, I think it's somewhere in the one to four. Whereas, you know, if housing prices were closer to a hundred or $200,000, it would probably be a little higher.
So basically what happens is the seller is responsible for paying that to their realtor that they have entered a covenant with or whatever the case may be to represent them. So that realtor ultimately like there's this code of ethics or whatever, which is great for people who actually abide by those types of codes, but I've certainly met those who don't.
So there's this code of ethics that says that they have to represent you and blah, blah, blah. But the fact of the matter is they get paid no matter what.
And they get paid by the seller.
They get paid more if the rate is higher. So, okay, if they're representing the seller, then that's great. But there's a realtor potentially and often in many cases for the buyer as well who also gets paid by the seller who also gets paid a proportion of the amount that the property sells for and who the selling realtor has to split the commission with if there's a buying realtor present.
So this creates all kinds of conflicts like choosing a buyer, which you're not supposed to do based on them being self-represented in which case the seller's realtor takes the entire commission versus another buyer who has a realtor who is sticking up for their best interest.
There's dual agency, which is like the most broken thing ever where one realtor represents both parties.
There's these negotiators on both sides, both of whom it is in their best interest to flip through properties as quickly as possible at as high a rate as possible. And I'm to believe as a buyer, especially that this is somehow in my best interest.
Fortunately, my realtor is actually the dad of someone that my wife went to high school with and their families know each other and so there's some trust there and he has not steered me wrong, which is good.
But anyway, let's move on to this fantastic article over here on Polygon. Counter-Strike player files suit against Valve over illegal gambling surrounding CSGO.
Very interesting. I mean, it was a matter of time before skins and match. I mean, you've already got match fixing, so you're as close to real gambling as you can be before being declared real gambling that only adults can participate in.
You know, age of majority and all that stuff that goes along with normal gambling sites and gambling participation and gambling establishments.
There was also something that happened recently. I'm trying to find it. Something along the lines of one of the betting sites had a deal with a streamer where they would tell him when he was going to win so that he would bet higher on those and then freak out when he won.
Essentially, just the scummiest thing I've ever heard of.
So creating more glamour around the practice of betting. So Connecticut resident Michael John McLeod has filed a suit, currently seeking class action status, and I don't actually see that being a difficult thing to achieve here, against Valve and three skin gambling and selling sites.
And the complaint alleges that Valve knowingly allowed and has been complicit in creating, sustaining, and facilitating a market where players and third parties trade weapon skins.
It continues that they knowingly allowed, supported, and or sponsored illegal gambling by allowing millions of Americans to link their individual Steam accounts to third party websites.
That's interesting, because there's plenty of legitimate uses for Valve's login credentials being valid on a third party website.
Like, say for example, Linus Tech Tips forum, where you can use your Steam credentials and all the encryption and account management is done over on Valve's side.
We never even get it, we just get a hash or a token or whatever, and you can use your Valve two-factor authentication, all that good stuff.
So there's plenty of legit uses for that, but I can see where they're coming from here.
In the esports gambling economy, this is further allegations, skins are like casino chips that have monetary value outside the game itself because of the ability to convert them directly into cash.
It also alleges that some third party CSGO websites don't require age verification, which allows minors to bet as well.
Bloomberg has reported that CSGO skin gambling is currently a $2 billion industry.
So in sum, Valve owns the league, sells the casino chips, and receives a piece of the casino's income stream through foreign websites in order to maintain the charade that Valve is not promoting and profiting from online gambling.
Wow. Uh-oh. I mean, I'm not a legal expert.
We should get, like, that should be added to our lower third, actually, just permanently.
Not a lawyer.
Next to my Twitter handle, it should just say not a lawyer, my outline is tech.
But I gotta say, that sounds from just sort of like a rational, reasonable person who's been observing kind of this weird environment over the last few years.
That sounds not quite bulletproof, but pretty compelling.
Yeah. It's not great.
Everyone's Twitch chat's like, sell your skins!
Sell your skins now. Get out.
Honestly, since-
It's the tulip bubble of the 1800s or whatever.
Since this whole thing began, I mean, I was always kind of questioning it because it's like, huh, don't you normally have to get, like, licenses to gamble and stuff?
Yeah. It's, like, pretty tightly regulated in Canada. You have to spend a certain amount of your income on anti-gambling advertisement.
Like, this is a really tightly regulated industry.
It's a big deal. Like, a huge deal.
And, you know, they've gotten away with it for so long just because I think people don't really understand, like, the people who would come after them don't really understand what's happening.
So, this might shed a bit more light on that because, yeah, it is not a good thing, in my opinion.
I mean, it's just, it's so accessible.
Because it's literally using something that you get as a drop, potentially, in a game that you've paid for and you're playing to get you tied into it.
And whether Valve agrees or not that they are quote-unquote facilitating it, I mean, I think there's an argument to be made there.
Again, not a lawyer. Don't understand law very well at all.
But I think that there is an argument to be made against Valve in this situation.
So, will be interesting to see what happens. That's for sure.
To be clear, no means no. You said you didn't know the law very well. I'm just making sure you're at least aware of that.
I'm just, I'm going to have all sorts of stuff on my Twitter about, yeah, I'm just, I'm not.
Oh yeah, you can find him at at nicklmg or something like that. Is that right? Is there an underscore in there?
No, that sounds great.
Alright, so, Microsoft will use Steam to sell Windows games, not just its own store.
Wow, a move from Microsoft that actually looks like they actually care. Very nice.
Original article here is from Ars Technica and a couple of their latest, blah blah blah, a couple of their latest games.
So Forza, Six Apex, and Killer Instinct have done well in the store, but Quantum Break did not.
So maybe they're kind of going, oh gee, maybe we don't have to be the only store that sells our games.
Maybe we could give someone else a cut, although Valve does take a very significant cut.
But Phil Spencer said Microsoft will ship games on Steam again and noted that while some game releases have done well in Windows Store,
Quantum Break wasn't our best PC release and Gears of War Ultimate Edition was okay.
Awesome! I'm excited, because I almost played nothing that isn't on Steam. It is so convenient.
It's like, it's prohibitive to not have your game on Steam nowadays.
It just feels like Steam is the way to game. I mean, I guess there's Blizzard, Battle.net or whatever.
But still, you can still technically launch those games through Steam, you just have to actually set it up.
Yeah. We've got a couple other sort of rapid-fiery topics here.
SanDisk made an iPhone case with built-in storage, up to 128GB of extra storage.
All it does is bulk up the phone, surprisingly little actually, not that badly.
And instead of investing an additional $300 or whatever it is to get an iPhone with that amount of storage,
you can just have a bumper case on it that has a little bit more bulk at the bottom by the lightning connector,
so that there can be a power pass-through and so that it can have a data interface to that storage, and off you go.
The one problem with this is that you will be limited to USB 2.0 speeds, but...
It requires a companion app. It can only store certain things, it backs up your camera roll.
It does password protect your photos and any files that are on there, so that's nice.
And you can also get a battery pack on it for an extra $40.
Yeah, a 1,900mAh battery pack. I mean, that will turn your iPhone 6s into a bit of a brick, but...
32GB of storage is $60, 64GB is $100, and 128GB is $130.
See, this, by the way, Apple, is how pricing for additional flash storage should work.
Yeah.
Ugh.
Yeah, it's kind of messed up.
Yeah, I guess there's, I don't know, there's like some iPhone 7 rumors or something.
I'm not really sure how much I care about that.
There were a couple other things that I thought were pretty interesting.
Where did they go?
You know what? Let's call that it for the day.
Thanks for watching WAN Show, and a huge thanks to Nick, you guys.
Again, you can find him over at at NickLMG over on Twitter.
I'm gonna post that in the Twitch chat.
Let's hope I don't have any lewd tweets on there.
Yeah, let's hope you don't.
Google might shut me down.
Thanks for watching, guys. We'll see you again next week.
Same bat time, same bat channel.
Bye!
Thanks for watching.
Why is everyone talking about G2A?
What'd they do? I mean, I'm sure it was something.
It's just like, they're the same as always.
And people are posting videos about it, like they have this forever.
Oh.
And nothing's gonna happen.
Unless there's been a change, which I don't think there has.
Right.
Yeah, okay.
People wanted us to talk about iPhone 7.
Okay, fine.
iPhone 7 rumors expected to be a revision of iPhone 6.
Wow, is that really a note on this?
Okay, forget it.
It doesn't have a headphone jack.
That's the rumor.
Surprise.