Hey there, ladies and gentlemen, it is Petrifying Pumpkins here. I am in desperate need of a haircut, but that's not what this video is about today. Today I want to talk about the recent Iron Man virtual reality delay, the indefinite delay I should say, and I want to ask the question, did this delay need to happen? So let's just jump right in. So I'm sure you've already heard this all by now, but just in case you didn't, a couple of days ago, Sony made the announcement. Unfortunately, they had to indefinitely delay both The Last of Us Pair 2, huge title for them, and Iron Man Vior, also a big title, but in a different way. Now this is, of course, due to the current coronavirus plague, currently ravaging the globe as I speak. But ever since that announcement went live, there's been a lot of people out there saying, well, did this really need to happen? We have digital, especially with Vior. A lot of people are buying their games digitally. Couldn't they have just released a digital and met the people who buy physical ways for whenever that version eventually drops? And of course, physical wouldn't be impacted by logistical issues like shipping, printing discs, and getting things to stores all over the world, you know? But looking at it from Sony's point of view, I think it does make sense. I mean, looking at The Last of Us Pair 2, The Last of Us Pair 2 is going to be an absolutely huge system seller for the PS4. Even in this final stage of its life, it's still going to move a lot of units. That game is huge. But then on the PS Vior side of things, Iron Man is probably like the most high-caliber profile game that they have coming out on PS Vior. Maybe even until PS Vior 2. There's certainly been nothing announced so far that they can match that level of hype that Iron Man Vior has on the PS Vior.  They've been thinking, you know, I'm going to buy Iron Man, I'm going to buy a headset that might even be a bundle. There should be a bundle. I'd be surprised if there's not an Iron Man bundle with the headset from Sony's side of things. But Iron Man Vior would definitely move at least some significant amount of headsets off the shelves. But if you release Iron Man Vior first digitally, maybe even months, because we don't know how long this is going to last. It's indefinite after all. Before the physical version, all of a sudden that impact gets lessened considerably. So maybe those people who would have bought the headset day one, all of a sudden they've had all these months to look at the reviews they've been watching playthroughs from streamers on YouTube, Twitch, whatever. And of course, with such a significant amount of time passes, people just forget these things. You have to keep in mind Iron Man Vior is going to be targeted at the casuals. Not like people like you and me who are into us, who are like enthusiasts. These are people who are like, oh cool, Iron Man. I've seen Iron. I'm not Tony Stark because the 2008's, you know, Marvel movies. Robert Downey Jr., you know? So all of a sudden, all those potential casual sales could be impacted by, you know, a staggered release like that. Now there is also a couple of other considerations that could have went into this decision that Sony have met, including the fact that they wouldn't want spoilers to be spread around. Because there's people out there who can only buy physical for whatever reason they're unable to download or maybe they just don't want to. And it's not fair on them that they have to worry about spoilers and stuff like that from people who bought the game digitally day one. Not to mention because of this crazy, you know, situation that the word is in right now. A lot of people who maybe would have bought Iron Man Vior day one, no problem.  They're completely financially unstable now. If they were going to buy us before all of a sudden they need their money for the essentials, the foods, you know, pay rent, pay the bills, all that kind of stuff. So those are sales that are gone now as well. So it might make more sense for Sony to just wait a few months. However long this is going to take for things to return to at least some kind of normality so that they can have the biggest impact financially. Because at the end of the day, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, these big publishers, they're not charities. They have bottom lines. They have a lot of overhead. They have targets that they need to hit. They have shareholders that they need to keep happy. So as much as it pains me to have to wait for Iron Man Vior even longer and The Last of Us Part II as well because, you know, I love that even though it's flat. I absolutely love the first game. Cannot wait for the second one. I'm actually more bummed out about The Last of Us II if I'm being honest. Regardless, I can see where they're coming from. I understand. With all that said, I think us as PS viewer owners might come out of this, you know, relatively unscathed compared to the flat gaming. I mean, most PS viewer games don't even get physical releases, at least not at the same time as like day one. You know what I mean? Physical release can come a few months later and in many cases that's often what happens. So I wouldn't expect any more indefinite delays over on the PS viewer side of things, thanks to the coronavirus. Maybe some smaller delays like with Gorn, whatever from people having to work at home. But I don't think we'll see any more indefinite delays for PS viewer titles. Unlike flat gaming where I think, you know, Ghosts of Tsushima, Cyberpunk, you know, Halo Inferness, whatever Nintendo is working on this year. Those games are all high risk of getting that dreaded indefinite label in my opinion to say nothing of the next gen consoles themselves. So maybe this situation will overall work out for those, you know, digital only titles like so many of the PS viewer titles there and you know, indies in general because all of a sudden there's no none of this AAA competition, you know, it's all the path is going to be cleared for all these games to sell a lot more than maybe they normally would. Of course, I can't say that for sure. Everything's up in the air right now. Who knows how long this coronavirus stuff is going to last. Is it going to be weeks? Is it going to be more months? Could it be a year? I don't know. Nobody really does. But anyway, that's my two cents on why I think the Iron Man viewer delay is probably the right decision for Sony to have met, even though it hurts us all deeply inside. So before I end this video, let me give a huge thank you to my Patreon supporters whose names are on the screen as I speak. Thanks to their generosity. I'm able to devote more of my time to the channel, which is great. And let me give a big shout out to the top tier of Patreon supporters. Tradition, Columbus Thomas III, Crumb, and Pete Hawkins. Thank you very much for your exceptional generosity. And as I really do appreciate that, it is a huge help to the channel. If you'd like to support the Patreon, the link will be in the description. But if not, don't worry, I'll be happy with, you know, just the likes, subscribes, sharing the video where people might be interested in seeing us, stuff like that, be a huge help too. And finally, let me give a huge shout out to Decepticon for continuously letting me to use all his music in these videos. So if you want to check him out over on Decepticon.com or Spotify or whatever it is you use to listen to music, you're probably going to find him there. I'll see you lads and ladies in the next one. Bye for now.


Hey, guys, today I want to talk about my real estate scripts, my real estate scripts, the scripts that I developed over the course of 15 years and making 100,000 cold calls. This is my baby. This is something that I developed over time, and it goes really deep. It isn't just words on a piece of paper that you read.  This is blood, sweat, and tears developed over time and trial and error and figuring out what works and what doesn't work. It's so deep. There's so many implications to why every single word is on these scripts, and it's designed to not only get to the desired place of creating a relationship, that's the goal. That's the absolute goal for me when I'm talking to prospects. It's not to do a deal. A deal is something that happens as a byproduct, but however, it's designed to create the relationship, build rapport, also read the other person on the phone, so there's a lot to these scripts. It's not just, like I say, something you're reading off of a piece of paper. They're really designed to help you flow the conversation naturally and help you get to a place where you're talking to people as if they are your family, and that's what you want. You want people to feel like you're treating them like you would a family member or a very close friend, and that you're giving them the same advice you would give your mom, your dad, your brother, your cousin, so on and so forth. I want to dive into this and really go deep with you on it and give you the philosophy behind my scripts, not just trying to figure out how to get them to do a deal today. I also want to talk about the fact that a lot of coaches and trainers are against a lot of the things that I do within my scripts and even who I'm calling. I want to address all of this today in this video, and I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. If you would like to download my scripts, they're in my free course, completely free. Just go to www.zerodediamond.com or click the link in the description below. Go to the free course that's called Ricky's Scripts. Go right there, download them. You can also watch videos of me calling prospects live right there on the website within those courses. There's tons of videos there, me calling prospects on there and on YouTube and really everywhere. So again, this is coming from trial and error. I didn't get this from anywhere but my own blood, sweat and tears. I used this script as well as so many other agents have to make millions of dollars and I sold 100 properties a year for eight years in a row as a single agent as a byproduct of these scripts. I coach many, many agents that are in the top 10 in their local MLS, several that are number one in their MLS and even their state that use these scripts and follow the zero to diamond philosophies and principles and strategies. So this is tried and true. This isn't if this is how I built my business. Now I'm not saying go out there and build your business the way I built my business. I'm just saying, hey, here's a gift for me to you. This is how I did it. If you can use some of this in your business, great. If you think it's garbage, then that's great too. It doesn't matter to me. It's free. I'm just sharing with you what worked for me. If you want to go a different direction, listen to a different guy or coach or broker or something like that, go for it. Whatever works best for you is what I want you to do.  Not everybody builds your business the same way, right? So let's get into it. I'm going to, I'm going to kind of go through the script and I'm going to break it down.  I don't know how in the world talking to property owners in a subdivision that you would like to sell in is a waste of time. You know, going in there and creating relationships, seeing what you could do to help people, introducing yourself, seeing what they in fact want to do an hour later if they already have an agent, if you can stay in touch. I don't see how any of that is a waste of time. Well, we want leads that are ready to buy or sell right now. I mean, it's all the same stuff because when you give me that lead that you charged me a lot of money for, I'm still going to have to call them. And some of those are not going to be ready right now. I don't care what you say. And now we're right back to the exact same thing. And with circle prospecting, I can just pick out the exact subdivision and just go ahead and call everybody. You know, it's everybody, it's different. The different lead gins are different and they, you know, it takes a different, I guess, personality. But I enjoyed circle prospecting because I'm calling thinking of myself as a volunteer worker doing community outreach to see what I can do to help people in my markets. Not everybody thinks like that. Most people in fact, thinking a way of, you know, I only want to do deals today. Well, I'm trying to figure out if somebody wants to do a deal today. I also want to create the relationship for the future if they don't in fact want to do a deal today. I'm going to help them either way. So I'm really good at discovering if they want to do a deal now, if they want to do business later, if they don't want to do business at all. It's my job to figure that out and to get them into my database, whereas I can start sending them my weekly email that has really been the reason why I've sold so much property because I've accumulated so many relationships to get that weekly email that call me when they're ready and refer me all of their friends and family. It's very simple and so you'll find that a lot, most of my strategies, all of my strategies are extremely simple. And that's really what you have to do if you really want to scale. If you're doing too many things, it's really hard to be a master of all of them and you end up, you know, not really being very consistent with all of the different things if you're spread out. Having a couple of things that you're really good at that really, you know, can help you scale, that's really key. So calling property owners, whether it be expired for sale by owners, circle prospecting, even if you have, you know, listen, I'm not Zillow, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. I'm not telling you where to get your leads from. You know that right now. I'm not telling you this is the way to do it. I'm just saying this is how I did it and many other agents have done the same thing. So the script goes like this, you know, ring, ring, ring. Hello. Hey, Mr. Johnson. Hey, Mr. Johnson, Ricky Kruth here, local real estate agent here in Gulf Shores, Alabama. How you doing today? Cool, me too. I'm enjoying the day. Isn't it gorgeous? Great. Well, listen, I don't want to take up too much of your time, but there was a house right around the corner from you that just sold and if you knew about that, I was going to call and let you know and see if there's anything in the world that I could do for you. No? Okay, cool. Is there an agent you would work with if you were to do something? I got you. Well, hey, listen, I'm sure you'll do something later on down the road. If not now, I would love the opportunity to work with you when that day comes. Would it be hard if I just stayed in touch with you? Great. What's a good email for you? Is this your cell number? OK, cool. Listen, again, my name's Ricky Kruth. I'm a local real estate agent at whatever company right here in Gulf Shores. I'll stay in touch with you via email. You let me know if there's anything in the world I can ever do for you. You take care, tell everybody I said hi, and we'll talk to you soon. Boom. It's really that simple. Now, I'm going to break it down.  Again, it's not just a script that you're reading. There's transition points. There's reasons for every question. And there's a lot of respect that goes into this script. And of course, going deeper after me breaking this down, it takes thousands and thousands of calls to get your tone down, your speed of voice, so on and so forth. There's a lot of people that use my scripts that don't have a lot of success in the beginning because they're still trying to map out how to talk to people, how to respond, speed of voice, tone, so on and so forth. All that goes so far, so, so, so far. That's kind of the other equation to this. But all I can do is give you the basics and tell you you need to make thousands of calls to really master this. And then it's up to you to go do it. I can't go make the calls for you, unfortunately. If I could, I would. But nevertheless, let's break it down. So in the beginning, there's three questions. These three questions are very strategic because they're designed to get a response out of the prospect so that I can read them on the phone. I want to understand what their state of mind is. Now, just the fact that they answer the phone is incredibly positive right then and there. They're not answering the phone hoping for something negative. They're answering the phone hoping that something positive comes out of this and that you bring them some kind of value.  However, there are some people that are just gonna be mad no matter what. That's okay too. Our job is to go out there and filter through the population to find the people that want to do business with us, which is only gonna be 20 to 30% of the people we talk to. The other 70 or 80%, either don't like us, which is fine or they already have an agent they're gonna work with, something of that nature. But the 20 to 30% is who we're looking for and that's who we're gonna build our business on and if we allow the 70 to 80% get to us and beat us down mentally where we don't even make our calls or do our prospecting or follow up or whatever the case may be, then we're just allowing the 70% of people who aren't even gonna do business with us, literally cave in our entire career. And now we're right back to working 40 hours a week on somebody else's business. Guys, build your business. You got into this business and the entire business is predicated on talking to people you don't know to help them buy into our real estate. It's really that simple. And most of us are scared to do the one thing that this business is 100% predicated on. Regardless of you connect with people and get your leads on social media or buy the leads or whatever the case may be, every lead generation avenue is just set up to collect data for you then to call them. And if you're not calling them, then you have a team member and ISA, somebody in your group is calling them to initiate business and take the business to the next level, figure out what it is they wanna do and why, put a game plan in place to help them do it. It's really this simple, guys. We're overcomplicating the process. Once I understood how simple this business was, I was like, just give me a list of every single property owner in my market. Let me just get to work over here, guys. Give me that list and leave me alone. I'm fixing to go to town here and that's what I did. I went to town, I called every single property owner I could and before I knew it, I was the number one agent in my market. Just calling owners, creating friendships, figure out what I could do to help people, doing a weekly email. That's it. That's all I did. I didn't do social media from a business. I didn't do a lot of this traditional stuff or in the modern world, traditionally modern strategies that everybody's doing nowadays. Now, I do preach, do social media. Let me be clear. I do want you to do social media. I want you to go hard on social media. I want you to make your calls all morning and do social media all afternoon. Absolutely. 100% without a doubt.  It's free. You can connect with hundreds and even thousands of people in your market for free.  However, it's really easy nowadays with social media to do this. So let me be very clear there. But back to the script. There's three questions in the beginning. There's a Mr. Johnson, right? It's just Mr. Johnson. It's not, is this Mr. Johnson or can I speak to Mr. Johnson? Mr. Johnson, because you assume who's answering is Mr. Johnson. And you wanna say it with a question mark type tone. Mr. Johnson, to see what they say, you're waiting for a response. As they respond, you're collecting data right there on how they're feeling, their tone, their speed of voice, all the above. Then the next question is how are you doing? Okay, you're introducing yourself. You know, hey, Mr. Johnson, this is Ricky Kruth. I'm a local real estate agent right here in Gulf Shores. How you doing today? And how are you doing today? There's a lot of coaches and trainers and brokers and gurus out there that tell you not to say that. I think it's absolutely ridiculous. And I think the reason they say that is because when they say it, they're not genuinely interested in how people are doing. They're just trying to do a deal today. Whereas when I say it, it's literally why I'm calling. Like the entire reason I'm calling is because I wanna know how they're doing. That's the objective. That is really the entire punchline. I'm using whatever property I'm calling about as an excuse to get into a conversation to get to know this person. That is it. And I think it's absolutely ridiculous of somebody to say you shouldn't ask somebody how they're doing. That's just respectful. You don't know them like that. I'm not gonna get to know them either unless I know how they're doing today. It's hilarious to me when I hear people say that. But there again, I have different objectives, right? I'm not trying to do a deal. I'm trying to get to know someone. And so that actually makes sense that I want to know how they're doing versus if I'm just doing a deal, maybe I don't care how they're doing. I don't know. Somebody will have to explain to me why people say don't say that. Nevertheless, I believe very strongly in it and it comes from my chest. It comes from my heart. I genuinely want to know how they're doing. That's why I say that. But moving on, that's just another question. I'm waiting on a response and I'm listening very hard and I'm picking up data. Then I'm gonna ask another question that starts with a short statement, you know? Well, great, me too. I'm enjoying the day. Isn't it gorgeous? I'm enjoying the day. Isn't it gorgeous, right? Statement question, it could be anything. It could be, you know, I'm enjoying the day. You're getting ready for New Year's, right? Me too, I'm enjoying the day. How was your Thanksgiving? You know, how about them?  It could be so many things. There was something in the news that there was some serial killer running around one time. They finally called him and I made that my question. I forget what I said. It was a funny one. If I remember it, I'll let you guys know. But it's a short statement and a question to get another response. This is also doing something else. It's helping people feel more comfortable that you're not going right into a, I'm gonna, you know, we're gonna sell my house.  I'm not going right into that. They hear I'm an agent, they think automatically, oh, he's gonna try to get me to sell my house. No, I'm not, I'm not trying to sell your house. I'm just trying to see how you're doing today. See if there's something I could do to help you. I'm trying to get to know people in the market here. So, trying to connect with people. Nevertheless, those three questions give me a lot of data. I know how to continue the conversation and make the conversation flow nicely and naturally from that point. Now, I'm not gonna ask them if now's a good time to talk or, you know, if now's a good time or all that other stuff where I'm asking a question of that. I'm just gonna make a statement because they answered the phone. Answering the phone told me that now's a good time. I don't have to ask them if now's a good time, but I can respect their time by saying, cool, well, listen, I don't wanna take it too much of your time, but that's the transition right there. Right, that's the transition.  And when it comes to that awkward point where we're done with that part of the call, then you continue to make the conversation flow and you're ready to hit that first transition. Great, well, listen, I don't wanna take it too much of your time today, but that's it, that's the transition right there. And it respects their time. It transitions the conversation into the reason you're calling, which is about real estate and you're able to flow it from there. Now from there, it could be anything depending on who the lead is. If they're an online lead, social media, it's for sale by owner, circle prospecting, expired, sphere of influence, referral, whatever you're calling about. Let's say it's circle prospecting. You know, great, well, listen, I don't wanna take it too much of your time today, but there was a house right around the corner from you that just sold, didn't know if there's anything in the world that I could do for you today. Right, and so I'm giving them market information. Look at what I've done. I've asked questions, I'm not rushing into a sale, I'm making them feel comfortable with me, I'm respecting their time, I'm transitioning to value, a house right around the corner sold from you, and now I'm asking them simply if there's something I could do to help them, not if they would buy or sell a house today. And so it just kind of continues here. You know, and that could go one of two ways. They could say, yeah, we're looking to do something or no, we're not looking to do anything. Either way it goes, we're ready. If they say they're looking to do something, we're gonna continue to do discovery there. Oh, well, are you working with an agent on that? You know, what are you looking to do? Why are you looking to do it?  But if they say they're not ready to do something, okay, great, well listen, let me ask you this. Is there an agent you would work with if you were to do something? That's the transition, right? That's your second transition. Now look, if they say yes, they're looking to do something or no, either way, I'm asking them if they're working with an agent because I need to know right up front, are you working with somebody? That way I kind of know where I stand in this equation. They may have somebody that's really close to them they're gonna work with. You know, it kind of knocks me out of the ball game. That doesn't mean I'm gonna quit talking to them, right? If they say they have an agent, I'm still, and they're not looking to do anything, but they have an agent if they were, I'm still gonna ask if it's okay to stay in touch and get their email. I'm not gonna give up on that. People switch agents all the time. At the same time, I'm not trying to steal that client either. I just wanted the opportunity to stay in touch, send them information. If they get value out of my information I send every week and they use their agent, I'm fine with that, right? If years later and something happens and they need me, I'm here to help, whatever happens, right? It's cool with me, but when they say no, hit my transition, great. Well, let me ask is there an agent you would work with if you were to do something? You know, whether they say yes or no, let's say they say yes. Great, who is it? I may know them. They tell you who it is. You tell them it's a great agent. They're in good hands. And look, you'd still love the opportunity to stay in touch with them. Would that be okay? And so you ask if it's okay to stay in touch before you ask for the email address. Very important, right? Is it okay if I stay in touch with you? Great, what's a good email? Is this your cell number? Everything I said earlier, right? If they say no, they don't have an agent. Okay, cool, well listen. I'm sure you'll do something in the future, right? You'll buy or sell a house at some point in the next five, 10, 15 years, I don't know. But I would love the opportunity to work with you when that day comes. Would it be okay if I just stay in touch? Cool, great. What's a good email? Cell phone number, again, my name's Ricky Caruth. I'm a local real estate agent right here in Gulf Shores. I'll stay in touch with you via email. If there's anything I can do for you whatsoever, please reach out. I'm happy to help. And so, I mean, it just flows all the way. And it's designed, really guys, this is a script I just went through, but it's designed to kind of veer off of this script as you get to certain places where you start, like if they say they wanna do something, well that just veers it all the way down into discovery mode. You may veer into a conversation about the weather. You know how many conversations I had that we ended up being like, five, 10 minutes worth of weather talk before I even got to the point of what we're talking about or even talked about the weather and veered into another subject before I even got to, that we talked about for a while before I even got to the part about why I'm calling. This is all relationship development. And as far as asking for the email, this is like after I've determined that we've got good rapport, I've determined if they do or don't wanna do anything, they're not looking to do anything now, maybe in the future and they wanna stay in touch with me. Of course I'm gonna get the email. I've heard coaches say that's a bad strategy to get the email address. And the reason they say that is because they feel like people are just focused on getting the email, getting the email, getting the email. But I feel like what they're coaching is getting people to just focus on the appointment, appointment, appointment or deal, deal, deal. And so you're gonna have that problem no matter what with agents just kind of zeroing in on trying to get that whatever the goal was at the end of the call. But that's not really my goal at all. My goal is to try to create rapport, to try to show them through my communication that I care about them. That's my goal. The email is just something at the end I can use to continue that great first impression with them through my incredible weekly emails. So that's kind of where I stand on it guys. I just went through the whole script and really kind of broke it down for you why I do everything within my scripts. You can use this for any prospect whatsoever. So again, you can download the scripts at zero to diamond.com. You can also, if you wanna look and see how I do the weekly email, I've got a course there at Zero to Diamond called Start Your Weekly Email where I do tutorials and write down the entire weekly email if you're interested in that. Along with the 60 day challenge and everything else that I offer, it's all completely free. So why wouldn't you? It's also a social media platform that you can use to connect with other agents in the Zero to Diamond program. So feel free to join there and let me know if you have any questions whatsoever. I'm gonna link a video right here. This is an older video that I did a while back about everything I learned from making 100,000 calls. So I haven't seen it in a while. I'm gonna link it right here for you though. It's just kind of a blast from the past. Hope you enjoy that. And again, if you need anything, I have any questions, shoot a comment below. Subscribe if you haven't already and we'll talk to you guys on the next video. Take care. I want to, I want to.


Who am I? I come from Belgium. I have a small consultancy company. We do a lot of Linux and some BSD also. In BSD, we do mostly free BSD and open BSD. Last year I was talking to the guys of NetBSD to see if there's any interest from them to get on power. For the moment, they don't have the resources and we also don't have the resources and with we I don't mean only just my company, but the other function that I have as the chair of the Open Power Foundation. So we will focus for now on free BSD and open BSD. This talk will specifically talk about free BSD, but open BSD also works on it. So yeah, like I said, a small introduction then specifically about free BSD. Where you can get resources, where you can start playing with things, and then some back to the future elements, where I will give highlights what will come by end of this year and end of next year. So introduction, when we talk about power and open power, you're talking from everything from the power eight and onwards. So even on free BSD, you have power PC 64 LE, so the little Indian version. And that's the one that is currently being developed. That's the one that's currently being pushed forward. That's based on the power ISA 2.07. And you can get these machines still today on eBay at a reasonable price. I know people who bought recently at like 1000 euros a machine and you can start playing with them. So that's still fairly okay from price. Of course, this is much older technology and it does not have all of the acceleration features that newer versions have. But you see a whole bunch of manufacturers there. IBM and Tyen being the two main ones and it's mostly the Tyen ones that you find on eBay very easily. Then the power nine, which is a complete update of the ISA. That's why you see 3.0. That one actually has a whole bunch of virtualization updates in there and also made some changes to how the allocation tables and the hash tables work. You see again a whole bunch of manufacturers there. IBM and Raptor being the two main ones. Raptor being a company that produces fully open source hardware. So you can actually go to their website, find all the specifications. They also made a power eight version. I don't think that one is available anymore, but the power nine is available. So the Talos two, which is the most common board, even now has a BMC card, which is fully open source. So you don't use the A speed and then you can bifurcate it and have the run BMC version from Raptor.  This is the current version, so 3.1, also power 10. At the moment, IBM is the only one who's manufacturing this. We actually have Inspur, Raptor, yeah, I forgot Raptor on this slide, but Raptor will announce a power 10 very soon. Inspur has announced them already and there are a few other companies there. You see there, for instance, the LibreSock project, which is more of a single board computing project, so smaller type of devices they are targeting, which we hopefully will start seeing next year in the dev version come up at least. That's also the last line, power pi, power SBC. These are projects that we are trying to start up so that you could get smaller developer type of machines. They would have the same capability, they would just be less performant. So there's no open power machines. There are machines that use open power technology, which means that what the foundation does as, for instance, the power ISA is fully open source. Now a company like IBM can take that and make their power 10 chip. LibreSock could make that and make that fully open source. So under the LibreSock project, we actually want to build a power ISA compliant core that would be fully open source. You can go to the LibreSock foundation website and find the entire code there with all the instructions, the implementations and everything. And that's why I say this because while power used to be a one manufacturer CPU, we are moving towards multiple manufacturers and this will mean that you would have different type of power implementations because some people like LibreSock might not implement MMA instructions because it's not a requirement. Some of them would have accelerated memory instructions. Some might not have that. So that's the reason why I mentioned this here. Power in the past has been associated mostly with enterprises. This has to do with AIX and SAP HANA, which mostly run on proprietary power, so IBM's version of power. That's again outside of the scope of what I'm discussing, but I just want you to be aware that those also exist. People talk about power not being really fully open source. That isn't true today. So you will see that the complete ISA set is open. You can go to the website, find it. If you find a bug in it, you can actually report it through the website. And then the ISA working group, which manages the document, will actually give you feedback on, well, this is a minor correction, thank you. Or this is something more complex, so let's discuss this further. You do not need to be a member of the foundation to do that. Obviously, we as the foundation like companies becoming member, but there's no requirement for that. So that's also why it's important to understand that this is really fully open source with a feedback loop. You can give feedback on any part of the technology that's being developed. And yeah, then the most common mistake is power today is not just IBM. So IBM is still, of course, the major company behind it, the major contributor, because they invented the ISA, and they will still continue to drive a whole bunch of things, but they will not be the only company behind it anymore. And yeah, power is ancient. Yes, it is. It was developed in the 1960s, but it's still functional. It has evolved over time, and that evolution you've seen in the way that it is being put forward. So we don't like breaking backward compatibility, which is why certain features take a long time to get in, and others take a long time to get deprecated. Then the biggest confusion and the biggest thing that changed is when IBM started open sourcing the platform, they made a conscious decision to go little Indian. This was mainly driven by the Linux people, so it's not something that was 100% their choice. They were advised that little Indian would be easier to develop, and so they pushed everything to little Indian. For now, I think FreeBSD still has support for big Indian. The main problem will be desktop applications. So a lot of desktop applications only work in little Indian, and with desktop applications, I mean Firefox, JavaScript, and all of those type of applications you want if you're running a workstation. So that's why you will see a lot of the work is migrating to little Indian. If you're using it for server purposes, you could as well run big Indian. And on the network stack, if you're running for routing, or even for high-end storage, it makes sense to keep it in big Indian, because it's faster. So on the other architectures you have threading, typically most other architectures only have two threads per core. On power, we typically have four or eight, depends which type of system you have. So on the power eights, it was always eight threads, which means that on a small machine, you could get up to 192 threads, and in the latest one, it's 480 threads. So you'll see that the small and the enterprise are the same on the P10, and that's because a small machine is a single unit. An enterprise is typically four sockets per node, but you have four nodes that are grouped together. So that would mean that you have 1,920 threads in one keg, as IBM calls it. So it's a lot of threading. Because they can share memory, they actually have a shared backend infrastructure on it. You'll see the P9 small is the only exception where you have four threads that was done for marketing purposes, because technically there was no reason to do it. It was done for marketing purposes. IBM sometimes says it was done for thermal purposes, but that isn't entirely true. But yeah, most of it is eight threads nowadays. So I was mentioning that everything is fully open source. The device is completely open source. Now you will find back that a power machine is not a machine, you can actually press a button and boot up. So it does have a power button on the front, but the power button is not the power button like you traditionally know. So what happens is once you put in the power on the back of the machine, it actually starts the BMC. And that BMC is a computer in a computer. And so when you press the button, it's actually the BMC IPL in the machine. And so IPL is initial program loader, which is how the machine gets booted up. At that point, host boot takes over and host boot will actually initialize all of the devices in the machine. So it will do a memory check, it will do PCI bring up, it will do memory training and all of that. Once it has completed, ski boot takes over and ski boot is actually the Linux kernel, an embedded Linux kernel that runs on the machine that will initialize all the processors. So once that's done, then the actual processors and everything has been initialized and you get petite boot. If you were in the talk of Netflix before me in this room, they were also talking about petite boot because of the PlayStation 3. Petite boot is nothing more than just a TUI, so a text-based interface where you can select what you're going to do and how you're going to do, whether you want to pixie boot. But it's running a Linux kernel at the back end. At that point, if you would say I want to load FreeBSD, what it does is it KXX the FreeBSD kernel and then boot FreeBSD on that. This is the same on the Talos machines, so it uses exactly the same. Sometimes you'll see it referred to as OPAL, so that's the open power abstraction loader. OPAL is an open source project, so you can go to GitHub and you can find all the code. If you actually just give it, let's say, like Talos 2 and you build it, it will build the image completely for you. If you want to add there for other pre-loaders, you can actually do that. So let's say you have a GPU card or a special SATA card that was not traditionally foreseen. You can add those drivers in and it would actually boot that and give you the ability to boot from there. So this is also a fully open source. There's a device tree listing that needs to be filled in by the manufacturer. Every manufacturer is required to put that online and you will find them all available somewhere. So like I said, you typically do not boot a machine by pressing the button. There's a BMC in there. So the BMC is your open baseboard manager, like you know on other server architectures. It's a computer in a computer, so it actually loads up and when you press the button, it will boot up the machine. On power-based machines, that's running open BMC. If you have older machines that will still be on the ASD, so the ARM architecture. If you have newer machines that will actually be based on Libre BMC, which is an FPGA implementation of the power isa on a device that you put in a board. So in that way, you actually have a power device booting up another power device so that you can actually work. That one is only available on newer machines. It's something that was developed last year. You can upgrade specific Power9 machines to use this. So the Talos 2 with that upgrade card is there or the developer board from IBM also has that. So that's a special machine where you take out the ARM one and replace it with the FPGA implementation. The interact between the two typically is referred to the self-boot engine. So sometimes you might see the self-boot engine that's nothing more than these two BMCs interface to the actual machine. The interface is there only to boot up the machine to verify temperatures. It's not like it has access to anything of the kernel. It just needs to control temperatures, make sure that you don't blow up your machine and sometimes it can initialize or reset PCI slots. So for FreeBSD, what does that actually mean? We have support for open power from FreeBSD 12. It's the PowerPC64LE. At the moment, it's still tier two. So we're working on getting that in tier one. There are some bugs that still need to be fixed. For instance, if you have a power nine, recently the bug that got fixed is using the hash table completely and using the red X tables. So you can actually get acceleration and full acceleration. One other thing is the NX engine within power nine isn't being utilized for FreeBSD. The NX engine is the compression engine. So it's a special co-processor within a power nine machine that actually can do compression offloading. For the moment, that's not supported. That would make a huge difference for GZIP, LZMA, BZIP two and maybe one or two other ones. But that's something that we need to look at. Like I say, it's still work needs to be done. A lot of the parts are also not fully supported. That's another thing I want to look at. The foundation has been helping us. And I mean the FreeBSD foundation. There's also people from Raptor and from the open power foundation that have been helping out. So I'm not claiming I've done all of the work. But we did get a loaner machine from IBM specifically for FreeBSD additionally. Which means that if you have time or the ability to do this, you can actually help out and use that machine. And like I said, I'm not definitely the most important person in this project. I'm just the one advocating it. Alfredo and Leandro are the two main developers. They actually did most of the parting in the beginning. And yeah, we're still looking for people to help out. There's a whole bunch of parts that need to be supported. There's a whole bunch of other things that do not work fully yet. For instance, Firefox now works on their Linux. Nobody's actually tested if that works on the FreeBSD. From my perspective, I'm more of a server person. So I'm more interested in that part being available. But from a complete ecosystem, we need to be able to support all of the parts as well as on other architectures. So I wanted to give a small demo if I can find the place. So this is a Power 8 machine. And if I run, so I have created an auto installer script which basically will start the installation. It starts of course on a serial console. It's a VM. I don't have a spare machine to do a complete install on bare metal and show you, but it's the same idea behind it. So in this case, I have an auto installer file that will boot up.  It will start the traditional FreeBSD installer. It will then boot up the, well actually now it's only booting up the kernel itself. So it uses the open firmware booter and then goes into the FreeBSD kernel. It will then start the installer and do the auto installer like on any other machine and system. The complete installation for this will take about one and a half minutes. Again, this is just a small little installation. I'm not doing anything complicated here. But if I now say, okay, start installation, you'll see that, yeah, the internet isn't that fast, but you'll see that it's basically doing an installation and it's only installing the FreeBSD base and FreeBSD kernel. That's about it. Like I said, I'm not doing too much in this presentation, but you get the idea. It's like on other architecture. So here it's using a USB installer image to actually do it so it doesn't need internet because otherwise you need to go and fetch it. It would take a little bit longer, but you can do that the same way. Typically any power machine can be installed through a USB installer. So the one that's available on the website of FreeBSD, but also some machines may not be able to do USB installers and you would need a Pixi boot. It depends which type of machine you have. Mostly the proprietary machines require you to Pixi boot while all the open machines will boot from a USB. So you see it takes about one minute and 21 seconds to install. Let me find out. So what I did here was just take out the auto installer because my script doesn't take that out automatically and then we'll just keep on auto installing all the time. But if I now boot up without the auto installer, it will actually basically start the open firmware. And then after doing this, it initializes all the, in this case, QMU, but it's the same if it would be a physical machine. So this is the part which the boot loader does and then you have the actual kernel from FreeBSD booting up at this point. This is running on a Linux machine with QMU because that's what is currently supported for virtualization and at this point I'm in the machine and you see it's a PowerPC machine. I can do PKG and install a whole bunch of applications. Like I said, there's a lot of ports that are already supported. There's also a whole bunch of stuff that is missing and we need to work on. Yeah, for the moment, the current machines, if you want to play around with it are not that cheap, which is why I will show you later how you can actually get access to machines without having to purchase them.  Again, these are developer machines and not the entire machines. One of the things which we started about two years ago is looking at manufacturers that can build smaller type of machines with a target of 3,000 euros for an entry server and about 1,000 euros for a workstation. I'm not saying we are there yet, but that's what we are working towards. It's still going to be more pricey than an X86 or an ARM machine, but you will also get much more performance for that. If you are able to work with FPJs, you can use MicroWatt. MicroWatt with a decent FPJ, and I'm talking here about an RT-A7, so that's typically 250 euros type of hardware, so it's not like you need to buy one of the huge FPJs. They can run MicroWatt or Libre BMC. Sorry, Libre Sock. MicroWatt and Libre Sock are nearly the same type of car. Libre Sock has a few more extensions that it's working on, but this means that it's fully open source, you can program it. So the upper one is a DCSCM board, and this is the open BMC, Libre BMC implementation. The lower one is an RT-A700, which is one of the smaller FPJs it works on. The upper one is a bigger one, but those are the type of machines you can also run it. Again, you will not get the performance like on an actual machine, but if you're doing dev work, it's something you can look at and work with. Then the other way of getting access to machines is using the OpenPower Hub. So this is from the foundation, resources we make available. It's cloud-based access. You can get bare metal, you can get a virtual machine. They have a whole bunch of accelerators, GPUs, anything else that's available. At the moment, we have four providers, Oregon State University, which has the biggest setup, and has FPJs, GPUs, University of Oregon, which also has a whole bunch of them, and then Raptor has, obviously, their own machines, and my company also provides some services in there. So if you want temporary access, or even if you want long-term access, you can request it. So if you go through the form, traditionally we'll give you three weeks. If you add in the form that, okay, I'm going to continuously keep on updating this and work on this permanently, you will get permanent access. It may be that you don't get it in the one that you request, but one of the four will give you permanent access. Yeah, I put the email address there of the hub. If you have any problems, you can always mail me, and I can figure out where you can get access to. Then the next part is more about, yeah, powering back to the future, and with this, I presume everybody knows PowerPC, the Apple devices. We want to go back to, yeah, smaller formats, desktops, single-board computers. There has been an initiative for a laptop. I'm not saying that's something that's coming very soon, because that's going to be very complicated for now, but these are things that we're definitely thinking of. One other thing is the power isa today is fully open source, but when IBM donated it and made it fully open source, they also made it more structurally divisible. So previously, if you wanted to be power compliant, it meant that you had to implement 1099 instructions. That doesn't keep account with how many intrinsics and hash tables. That's 1099 instructions just to be power compliant. With the new subset in 3.1, you can actually go as low as SFFS, which is a viable working option for embedded devices with only about 214 instructions. We are actually working on reducing that to 200 instructions and looking if we can even create a smaller subset for microcontrollers or other type of devices so that you do not need to implement that many instructions. So for people trying to manufacture it will be easier, but also for us as maintainers, it's going to be much easier to divide this. So we have started work with GCC on this. We haven't moved to other ones yet, but we will move to LLVM and other ones over time. But we want to go through the same logic like x86 and ARM has, whereby you define instructions in groups and then you can just say that okay, this CPU is this combination of groups of instructions. Because now it's limited to IBM Power 9, which is good if you have one manufacturer, but if you want to go more independent of IBM and have different manufacturers with different features, we will move to that type of setup. So that's something that's in the play. That's why I added also the subsets here and the names. So you have PowerPC64, which typically is referred to as Big Indian, and then PowerPC64LE, which is the little Indian. Those are the ones that FreeBSD supports today. But we have been playing with PPC64 SFFS. For now only with Linux, because the amount of resources we have to play with and the people that are available to help out are all Linux users. But once we get that a little bit further, I would like to have BSD support also on that and make it available like we have today for FreeBSD and OpenBSD. So future hardware, this is ranked in order of expectation to come to market. So entry level, PowerISO 3.1 or Power10 based rack servers will come by the beginning of next year. Again, target price will be still around 3,000 euros. So it's not cheap, but it's not as expensive as before. And three level workstations will be coming. Again, target price will be about 1,000, 1,500. And then the single boards we hope to have by end of next year, most probably more 2025, but by the time they actually become available. And microcontroller systems and FPGA devices are today already available. So the FPGAs are the easiest way for the moment to get access, because you can buy them, you can download the images and just get working on that. Yeah, PowerPie was the initiative I mentioned last year. So I said I will mention it again here. So the ideas of having an open embedded, sorry, an open source embedded single board computer, it would be a dual core Power 3.1 based machine, most probably some kind of OMI acceleration, because this is the memory bus that IBM has developed and is today part of CXL, but it has a lot of advantages in how it connects to other memory buses. Given that we now have Libre BMC, we will most probably put some kind of small FPGA on the board and have it as a BMC, which you can then program and use. And the idea is to have a platform that people can actually use at home. I think everybody knows the Raspberry Pi and how popular that became and how much development work is done on that. People buy it, play with it. I'm definitely not saying that we will hit that prize of 50 euros, it might be 10 times more expensive but it will still be a magnitude less than what you today have. The idea is with the more people that we can give this to, the more people that buy this, the better the platform will become. So that's why we keep on advocating for this and are working towards building this. And yeah, my point which I tried to make last year and which I'm trying to make this year is that there are a lot of people involved in making this work on power, we need more people. So if you have time, if you have the ability, please get involved. I'll repeat the question. So one, I'm not a RISC-V expert. So let me be honest on that. So the problem that mostly comes and this is what I keep on telling most people is RISC-V says it's open source but isn't actually fully open source. That's one aspect. RISC-V has done a, or is doing a bottom top approach while power is doing a top bottom approach. So it has the enterprise level type of machines already. It doesn't have any of the lower sets. While RISC-V today you will find a lot of microcontrollers, a lot of embedded devices. You might even start seeing some desktop environments but most of the server machines that they're coming out with have failed. I've not heard of anyone that is really successful or any implementation anywhere in the world that is large. And the second part is while RISC-V is very much hyped because they say they are open source, they are not open source. If you find a mistake in the ISA, you cannot report it to RISC-V. We need to be a member of RISC-V to do that. If you want to build a chip on RISC-V, we need to be a member of RISC-V. In the power ecosystem you can actually build a power chip without being a member of the Open Power Foundation. You can use it, you can do anything with it. You can even get it certified that it would be open power ready. You don't need to be a member for that. So that's where the difference lies. I still believe that RISC-V in the smaller devices will be much better. And if you're talking accelerators and very specific applications, RISC-V is better. If you're talking more general computing and more of a mini to maxis machine, power will be a better solution. So the question is, this subsets, does it make more work and more complexity? Coming to the point more, yes and no. So the thing with having these subsets is that the subsets are fixed. So these are the four subsets we have today. These will not change. We might add one more and make a fifth one, but we're definitely not going to touch these in any way. So if a manufacturer comes and creates an SFFS compliant CPU and let's take a specific example, Libra makes this car and is actually working on that, and tomorrow company XYZ makes that same car with that same instruction set, your code should run seamlessly. There's nothing you need to do from that perspective. So that's the idea behind it. Having the different subsets is because not all people will want the same device. ARM does this also, Intel does this also. So that's where the idea has come from. So I don't think it will fragmentate the ecosystem that much. Yes, you will get these three or four. To be fairly honest, I only think the BELE SFFS will really work. All the other ones will be for embedded or very specific uses. Those will be the three general ones, and that's what we are aiming towards. And it just means that you have different subsets and different architecture codes for them. If you look from a perspective of, oh, I only want to maintain one, that's going to be difficult because then you need to take the lowest common denominator, in this case, SFFS, and then it would work even on LE because that same binary will work on an LE. It's not that that won't work. You might not get all of the acceleration and all of the features, but it must work on that. So a core that is LE subset compliant is automatically SFFS compliant. So in that way, I don't think it makes a fragmentation that big. But this is, of course, a risk in a way. So for OpenBSD, I think it's PowerPC-64. It's big Indian, if I remember well. So you basically can support all of them below it. The server ones will be the BE subset. So the highest one, the workstations will be the LE subset. We have no direct plans for SFFS that will most probably be next year. So late 2024, beginning 2025, I suspect. Not at the moment, no, unfortunately, no. That's something that we have discussed, but we haven't figured out how to do that. Because for instance, OpenBSD is big Indian.  Some of them provide only one or the other. So for us, it's very difficult to figure out how we do this benchmarking. If you have an idea, we can discuss that, and we are definitely thinking about how we can do that. We don't have an answer for that for now. So the question is Raptor and Power10. That they weren't going to develop a Power10 because the OMI connector, sorry, the OMI bus wasn't fully open source, which isn't true, by the way. It is fully open source. The problem is the training wasn't published. So the training program is published on how you train it, but the training data, the blob itself hasn't been published. Microchip, which is the co-author of OMI, doesn't want to release the binary blob, but has released how you build it so you can build the binary yourself. And they say, oh, this is open source and it's true. I mean, they don't technically need to publish the binary. Raptor has found a solution on that. That's all I can tell you for now. Last one then. It's a human problem. So the question is we don't have that many parts supported. It's a human resource problem. There are not enough people involved to keep it up to date, one, and then test it, two, and there are not enough people using it. So it's more a human problem, I think, for the moment than an actual technical problem. For most of these, the patches are available online or they are available for Linux. You can port them to BSD. For some of them, like Firefox, they will be exactly the same. So I think it's a very human problem for the moment where we don't have the resources because there are not enough people interested and we need to create that.


What is up everyone, my name is Zesty Mike and today we're going to be talking more about social media and building your overall business. As you continue to build your business, you'll have the opportunity to work with different brands, different companies, and different websites. However, where do you start? And how do you know how much you're worth? I know firsthand it can be pretty tough to give a quote when you've never done it before. So my advice to anyone who's looking to make money from their social media platform is to sign up for a website called socialbluebook.com. It's free and weighs the power of your YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. They're also adding other sites that you can monetize, so there might be more for you here soon. By connecting your accounts to this website, you can find out how much you should be charging for tweets, Instagram posts, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, and more. Now you can even filter out prices depending on what the company wants. Do they just want a shout out, product placement, or do they want a video entirely about their product? You can use this to get an idea on how much you should be charging for each type. Now let's say you're doing a package deal. You want to do photo and video content. You can select all the platforms you're integrating with the deal, select what type of deal it is, and then it shows you your total value on what you should ask, and you can actually send a quote directly from the site. In the quote you can add things like production costs, add a description of where the money will be going so that you won't be losing any money, and more. Now here's something I thought was pretty cool as well. Let's say you have a job bringing deals to YouTubers. You can even act as an agent, manager, or even an MCN for said YouTuber and take the cut agreed upon in your contract. But hopefully with this site and the knowledge of how to use it, you won't need to rely on someone else to get brand deals for you. By using this you can get an idea of how much you're worth and worth to bring that number up so you can earn more money in the future. Not only that, but to make sure you're not being low-balled. Which unfortunately has happened to me several times. So a site like this is just really comforting to get reassurance of how much your social media package is worth and how much you should be getting for these different posts and video shares. The moral of the story is don't underestimate your worth. Now this does weigh how much reach you have and how much influence you have in the community. So if you don't have a following, your number might not be very high. And in that case, there is still ways to make money. But when I'm talking about brand deals, this is considering how much influence you'll have in the community and how much influence you'll be giving out for said product. So this is where this site comes in. So if you're someone who doesn't have a following yet, don't fret.  You just got to find what works for you. But anyways, guys, that's it for me today. If you want to see more of my tips and tricks, you can click the link in the sidebar. Or if you want to see more of me and my personal channels, you can click the links down in the description below, as well as the cards up in the top. But anyways, guys, that's it. And we'll see you next Monday. See ya. Tough to, I know firsthand it can be pretty tough to give a quote when you've never done it before. So my advice is to anyone who's looking to make money from their social media. Impulse is produced by the Freedom Network. Ever wanted to earn revenue from your videos? Freedom offers a great partnership program, which includes access to hundreds of thousands of audio tracks, sponsorships with great partners, and most importantly, a no lock-in contract. You can leave at any time for any reason. We accept everyone, both big and small. For more information, click here or visit the link in the video description.


Hey everybody, I really am gonna get my video about free DLC up next, but I realized something interesting this week. I'd heard about the updates to the PC versions of Borderlands and Borderlands 2, and I decided to check it out and see how they looked. The game looked about the same as I recall, although there seems to be cooler lighting and maybe a little bit sharper textures, but more importantly, I found myself replaying the entire game.   Fun note, the developers obviously knew how annoying these guys are, because when you enter the level they first appear in, this is written on the wall.  I never got bored in the way I did with the Division 2 or Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Those games have much higher production values, and in many ways, much more streamlined and polished gameplay or inventory systems, so what was it?  Why did I genuinely enjoy my 60-plus hours with Borderlands 2 when the Division 2 had me playing in kind of a generally positive but sleep-like state? Why did I never get bored here while Anthem bored me so much I literally had to push myself through it? Well, I'll tell you in a relatively short video after the logo. There's a lot of hype surrounding Borderlands 3, and when you read posts about why people are hyped, you'll almost always see things about how they love the loot system. And because I'd mainly been reading about people looking forward to a game that, quote, gets loot right, I found myself quite a bit less excited than most. Because honestly, I find the sheer volume of loot to be exhausting, man.  If the loot was the most important thing in Borderlands 2, it's likely I'd have stopped playing this game after like 2 or 3 hours. I don't like inventory management. It feels like homework. Like something I must now do in order to keep playing the game part of the game?   I'm replaying Wolfenstein 2 and the amount of times I have to look at the floor and aim at a 1mm squared point in space to pick up armor is horrendous. I swear to God, in the last 3 years I might suspend 100 hours looking at the ground while strafing side to side pressing X or E.  The guns are very cool and it is fun to use the different types of weapons but the loot is only a tiny part of what makes the game so compelling. I remember the big outcry that loot drops too rarely in Destiny 1 and I kinda agreed I guess, but in Destiny 2 you cannot go one minute without having to pick something up and then deleting it in a menu. At least Destiny less to be picked up by walking over it though. Still, less loot of better quality is preferable to a diarrhea geyser of loot I'll need to sell or deconstruct or drop on the ground so I can sprint again.  You end up literally needing to pick up loot as you fight. It's too much loot is what I'm saying and yet. If I find a torrent of loot to be too much of the game what could possibly have kept me playing so long? I really struggle trying to figure this out for a while because make no mistake I had a blast replaying this game like a shockingly good time. A good 40% of the time I play video games I'm either cursing or sighing and I almost never did that here. So again, what's the secret sauce? Was it the gunplay? No, the gunplay is fine, it's good but it's not spectacular or anything. I definitely enjoyed the combat more than the vision but less than Destiny or Warframe or Doom, was it the enemy design? Now there is a great amount of enemy variety and most of the combat sections are challenging enough to be fun but that's not it either. For every excellent battle scenario that mixes 8 different enemies that all require different approaches there are 5 scenarios of killing 35 dogs that are repeatedly spawned out of holes in the ground. Maybe it was a level design. Now this does matter. Borderlands 2 does a really great job with its semi open world maps. The world is big and diverse with regions feeling distinct and having enemies that fit the locations.  It's not an endless expanse of rusted cars and ghouls or 3,000 miles of ancient Greece that all looks exactly the same. It's more good than great. You don't marvel at Borderlands level so much as never get very annoyed. Now a game that doesn't annoy me with its shitty open world map is rare so credit where it's due but no that's not the main reason either. It was only near the end when I completed a certain questline that had hit me. Borderlands 2 is excellent because all of your actions are contextualized. Let me explain. Why am I getting this thing again? I need to give a shout out to Anthem here because it was Anthem that made me realize what's so great about Borderlands 2. I just bought a new Z390 motherboard and an i7-8700K to go with my GTX 1080. I overclocked the CPU, I got it to 5.2GHz and I wanted to see if I noticed a significant improvement in gaming.  And side note, Anthem now runs spectacularly well. It is still amazingly bad but it runs buttery smooth on ultra at 1440p at like 80 frames a second. I played about 5 legendary contracts in Anthem and a couple of legendary missions to check out the new CPU while I was in the middle of playing Borderlands 2 and I found the game shockingly boring, like epically boring. I was far too kind in my review of the game frankly, Anthem is the ambient of video games. As I was flying from one hot and cold mini game to the next I started wondering how anyone could find this fun. There's simply no way even the developers could enjoy this game for more than like 15 minutes at a time. It was this couple of hours while in the middle of playing Borderlands 2 that really drove home what was wrong with the game. And it's the same thing that's wrong in another much much better game. Why does Division 2 blur into an enjoyable but incredibly forgettable series of combat encounters? Why does Anthem put me to sleep? Because the range of reasons you are given for the shooting and looting is insanely low. You're rarely given much of a reason at all. And when you are it's almost always something incredibly shallow or forgettable.   Or at least it makes me angry. Sometimes you're given literally no reason at all.  I can only remember a tiny few of the reasons I did any mission in the Division. I liberated control points because they were red and I wanted to make them green. I was sent to save certain dudes because they were dudes who needed saving. And I guess I shot down propaganda broadcasts because they were saying bad things apparently. Oh I retrieved the Declaration of Independence. I shot guys in a series of hallways that somehow saved the president. I remember that because it made me laugh when the president pieced out by hopping on a ladder and being pulled into the sky by a helicopter. I tried shooting him but nothing happened. In Far Cry 5 the only missions I recall are the linear story missions. I saved hostages that had no names. I took over control points because I needed to fill up a meter.   But I cannot recall one single example of why I was doing a mission. Actually I do recall one. I remember having to get a gift to give a lady so I could go to that lady's party. But that is it. The other 40 hours I killed dudes. I picked things up and I brought those things to other things for no real reason at all as far as I can recall. You will often hear this complain about mission designing games and it's something that specifically appeared in almost every single review of Anthem, including mine. The complaint goes like this. Every mission is the same.   These complaints were totally valid. But in the back of my mind I've always thought, but wait now. Every single game ever boils down to a sequence of repetitive tasks. Dark Souls. Every level's just about killing things and opening shortcuts. Doom. All you do is walk down hallways and pull the trigger. Borderlands 2 has the exact same structure.  Some of the missions ask you to go somewhere and kill things until those things drop an item for you to pick up.  So why does go here, kill that and pick up an item, get insanely repetitive in the Division 2 and Anthem, but stay impossibly fresh in Borderlands 2? Because the context applied to those actions matters an insane amount. More than it should. More than we even realize. Borderlands 2 has an unprecedented amount of context added to these actions. Every single quest has a story attached to it. Every cookie cutter fetched quest gives the player a compelling reason to fetch the quest. And the stories attached to these quests is usually more than these outlaws are also bad and must also die. Hell, even when Borderlands does use that exact same framing device, it does it in a unique way by adding humor and characterization to not only its friendly NPCs, but also the enemies. You're told about specific outlaws, what they did, and why they need to be shot in the face. The items you're told to pick up are interesting or funny. You're told why you should pick them up and why you're bringing them back.   And holy crap, you will get tired of finding and picking up relic fragments in Anthem. Borderlands also has you picking things up all the time for quests, yet even though the act of picking up the item is mechanically identical, every time I don't think Borderlands has you pick up the same item twice. And if it does, it's never for the same reason. We're going to only look at a few quick quests here, but literally every single quest in the game is framed as well as these. There's a famous and beloved character in the game, Tiny Tina, and like all the other friendly NPCs, she has a quest line for you to complete. The quest line is called You Are Cordially Invited and it boils down to killing flying helicopters and picking up the stuff they drop, going to an area and killing bugs to get a thing, going to another area and picking things up while bandits shoot at you, kiting one specific bandit a few hundred feet and doing a wave defense section. This is the same formula used in Anthem.  In fact, that is almost every single quest in Anthem with almost no variation at all. So why did I have such a great time doing Tiny Tina's side quest and remembered it almost entirely from seven years ago when I have only the haziest recollection of any of Anthem's main story missions that feature the exact same mechanical gameplay system because the framing around the actions is unique and interesting. It's what you're picking up and why you're picking them up.  Then you're kidnapping an enemy and fighting a wave defense while Tina has a tea party with the bug, the bandit and the stuffed animal grenade while she tortures the person who killed her parents. The character Tina is totally unique and interesting. The quest story is totally unique and interesting and it lends novelty to player action. You want to find the items because you're curious what they are. You want to pick up the items and bring them back because you're interested in seeing what happens next.  There's a late game quest where you go to various bandit camps and kill them and pick up items to bring back to an NPC. The entire quest line is driving to a location, killing bandits, picking up five items and returning to an NPC, driving to another camp, picking up five items from garbage cans while fighting off bandits and returning to the NPC and then fighting a tougher enemy boss. It's probably the 200th time you've done this in the game but it is still totally fresh because the NPC is a robot who wants to be human and the items you're fetching are clothes and human limbs for the robot to wear at which point he realizes he still doesn't feel human and should try and kill you because humans are violent. The NPC dialogue is both hilarious and insightful. You want to see what he'll say next. You're curious what the robot thinks will make him human and so you happily fetch the quest. There's a quest where you kill a monster that ate an NPC's arm and leg for revenge. There's one where you try and win over a woman's scooter likes only to find she joined the bandits to escape scooters unwanted advances. You set captive animals free. You find out why a mining operation disappeared, et cetera. There are just dozens and dozens of unique characters and an unbelievable amount of imagination went into the creation of these scenarios. It's almost unprecedented in its commitment to making sure you never do the same thing for the same reason twice. Even as you are doing the same thing over and over and over it's always and I mean always for a new and interesting and entertaining reason. Once I realized this, I started to notice how incredibly impressive it is. How ridiculously rare it is in a shooter and even more so in an open world shooter. And yeah, I think we can call Borderlands open world. Even though its maps are broken up like larger separate levels, they aren't linear shooter levels. Then I started to get like really blown away at the sheer amount of effort that must have gone into the creation, writing and scripting of this many unique scenarios. It's a Titanic achievement and it's what kept me plowing through hour after hour. It also made me realize why exactly Borderlands 3 has probably taken so damn long. Borderlands 2 has like huge RPG levels of writing in its quest design. It is totally unique amongst shooters. No other game is even remotely like it in this regard. And because of the reason you're given for shooting and looting are always either entertaining or thought provoking or ridiculous and funny, the NPCs who gave you these quests suddenly become people you're attached to. That Fester quest for Tina was funny but it also explained Tina to me. I was rewarded with humor, characterization, combat, dialogue and after all of that came the gun or whatever she gave me, which I don't remember. Do you remember any of the quest givers in Anthem or in the Division 2? Do you even remember any of the quests? And remember now the Division 2 is a well made game. It's mechanically tight. It's quite pleasant to play much like Far Cry 5 is. But those games both put you into a kind of catatonic state. You get lulled into continuing on because the game feels pretty good to play but it's ridiculously repetitive. Anthem is so repetitive the game is bad as a result. None of these games ever engage you beyond their base mechanics and systems. When those systems are sound like Far Cry or the Division, they feel like well made products. When they aren't sound like Anthem, it feels like a mindless chore. But they don't ever go beyond feeling like pleasant time wasting. They don't drive you on to play so much as not give you a good enough reason to stop playing. And again, the quests themselves in Borderlands 2, the actual mechanical functional quests are exactly the same.  It's exactly the same.   The sheer range of context given for player action is incredibly diverse. It's a lesson that any game in any genre can learn from Borderlands 2. Borderlands defining legacy has ended up being lots of guns. It's most referenced as the first loose shooter and FPS Diablo, but that is not what makes Borderlands or Borderlands 2 so incredibly unique and satisfying to play. It's loot and abilities and skill trees have all been copied and in some cases surpassed. The one thing that hasn't been copied is its insane commitment to giving the player a compelling reason for almost every single action he takes. Probably because it's really time consuming and therefore expensive or maybe because nobody even thinks about how damn important that ends up being to a player or maybe because smarter devs have realized it's easier to addict a player for 50 hours than to engage them for even one. Everyone loves Borderlands for its charm and humor but that charm and humor are devices that drive the player to complete repetitive actions. The hundredth time you kill a bandit and pick up a thing should be boring. It should be annoying. It should make me angry.  But it never is. She didn't yell at me once the whole time I played Borderlands 2. It's the game's greatest triumph and it's this that's made me realize it's actually kind of a masterpiece beyond far beyond what I realized. Video games are repetitive by their very nature but they're also unique amongst games and that they're able to provide real narrative framing for all your actions. Borderlands is totally unique amongst big open world games in this regard. It's closer to a really funny narrative RPG with guns than it is to Division or Destiny. Playing it again made me realize how much better it is than I remembered and I really, really hope that Gearbox fully realizes what makes it so special isn't just a billion guns. The guns are really just a way to keep the combat interesting as I plan another tea party or get a robot human limbs to wear so we can feel like a real boy. All right, that's it for now. A video about the Epic Store and one about free DLC will be coming up soon. See you next time. Thanks for coming. Bye.


YouTube what's up, man? This is mutt head-to-head action and I'm getting to play DNA suspect DNA suspect Obviously, he's with top man. And you guys don't know and he won the San Francisco club series last year He would have made a run at 20 minute, but unfortunately he had to play young kid in the first round That's always a tough matchup. So suspect is a guy I played a lot on these Xbox leaderboards friend of mine So it's always good to play this top competition, especially a mutt early in the year We will really know the game that well everybody's learning what they're doing But as you'll find out this game DNA suspect is also in the cluster, man I put that cluster e-book out already on man terms So you don't have to game or you get the game, you know This week or this weekend you can have a e-book already to go to ready to start winning these crazy mutt head-to-head rewards that they have now in Madden 20 and we'll see just how we both use this Offense a little bit different as I'm more of a put five people out You know really want to hit these check downs and everything and in the way he plays a lot more max protect a lot more Looking downfield looking for the big play But for me, I got saved a couple times this game Really getting a hang of past protection and everything out of this formation And he did a good job of mixing up his coverages and everything third and 17 I put the right play just didn't make the right read through it through right at Anthony bar But I saw something maybe you want to go for him fourth down. I know he's in cover three I can get this bombs. Just give me enough time Julio Jones in my home Just puts it on a rope and the rack animations are so clean this year when you catch that ball in a run You will not get caught. There's no shoestring tackles from behind You're just gone and that was a beautiful throw by Patrick my homes. That's why I went for him fourth I saw that on the end of third down after I do a bad pass And I just knew I could attack that same spot the next play he ran the same defense was able to get it Early in the game. I'm out here in a little 3 3 5 Normal just here. I see Russian 3 he is all day running around look at Wilson throw the ball It says cross body inaccurate below the screen though You guys see that cross body inaccurate, but he completes it for 37 yards after that, you know, I said I had enough I'm gonna send them pressure as their slate breaks up this pass right here I'm gonna send six seven eight people the rest of the game I've had enough and this is when I kind of started incorporating the three four-eyed setups And I'm releasing that e-book soon. So by the time you're watching this that defensive e-book this three four normal Just absolute pressure in your phase defense will be out by the time you guys are watching this video But if you don't have that premium membership on men's or if you're missing out It's gonna give you every e-book I release all year every e-book clef releases and every e-book skimbo releases It's a great deal for the entire year. So check that out So I got a great stop a square seven the first drive feeling really good You gotta go down here and just really take control of the game now The mud player ratings are really low early in the year and that includes the carry rating So for me now, I'm pretty much playing on conservative, especially if I get a lead like that I don't want to give a fumble back You can get somebody momentum. I'm playing really well Right now as you see eight for nine just taking what's there as I try to go up to seem to tie a re-kill My home's over those that one, but so I don't want to give a fumble Just playing playing well would hit this flat underneath over here to tie a re-kill so I can take these hits as you see as Jamal Adams out There I know he has Bradbury Patrick Peterson. I just don't want to be getting hit Loading underneath there to the sake one Barclay. But everybody at me now So I have another fourth in one. I want to go for it hit that drag underneath the Julio Jones I'm just taking what the defense is there. That's pretty much What you got to do in Madden for a while now as I do this drag again, and of course I just talked about it and you guys know I talked about it for a reason I was gonna fumble there's Julio Jones coughing it up on Conservatives so the next play I rage bliss and he runs out with Russell Wilson Really want to say one for five right now. I'm playing great Von Miller again getting off that edge just attacking Von Miller and Colomac outside linebackers once again There is slay fast enough to keep up with Keenan Allen swat that pass one for six fourth down He's putting the ball. So right now. I'm disappointed that this is only a seven-point game. I feel like I'm on top I feel like I'm really playing well and Patrick Peterson almost gets out of there But Bradbury makes a play right there with a two-minute warning. I said, I feel like I'm playing outstanding football right now Really disappointed for this to only be a seven-point game gotta get some type of points here He's starting to rash it up the pressure and get a get to the quarterback pretty well right here as I hit the dragon Neath the Tyree kill Not in field will range yet. The kickers in what are not making this field. Well, so I'm gonna go ahead and go for this fourth And five a good defense drove the wrong play right there I put him on a curl should have kept him on his corner out gets to stop that he needs Seven nothing. So there we go. I got three possessions and he throws back across the body Kate and Alan catches the ball in front of me Guess the ball inside the ten. I mean, I have three possessions I only have seven points disappointing because I feel like I have four stops already and There we go. Roquan Smith taking to recall it to recall will be heard from before this game is over again He's really I don't want to say the best running back But he's definitely the quickest really hard to tackle in the open so if you're looking for that type of running back To recall is the one get him to a fourth and goal He's gonna go for it here on fourth down I play a little two-man under and the problem being in three four and two man under as you have Hello Mac on Kenan Allen didn't think about that. He kills him on that little curl route wide open bad mismatch bad Bad defensive call really to have a little Mac on Kenan Allen and he got seven out of it Back to throwing the drags. I got to take was there underneath man Because he's really sending a lot of pressure at me As you see there boom another second probably got set five six times this game I that's more than most games and then you see here same pass protection. We pick it up fine go up top to Beckham Doesn't come up with a plan. He played out a little riskier. I should have probably went to the scene pass to Tyree kill, but That's half time, you know, I felt like I played a great half and for me to be on then it's high game right now Kicking off is really disappointing.  You got to be able to score more points I fumbled once and I got stopped on fourth down right there. So definitely disappointing that this is a tie game I feel like I played a really good first half It's just got to keep up that same way in the second half and things will go Well really ratcheting up the pressure here. He throws the drag on the need to see why he'll in Make a tackle and that's pretty second and six. I'm gonna bring even more pressure I believe we're on 70 which has to go up top of Tyree kill and Denzel Ward 86 speed make the play I swear right there just to get a better angle on the ball right there to catch it with my safety Chuck underneath the Saquon Barkley. That's my running back pretty much really solid fast strong Jukes everything. So I really like getting in the ball, but like I said, I'm playing on conservative So you won't see a lot of jokes. You won't see a lot of spins. I don't want to fumble the ball I already fumbled once that's enough for me. This play I want to play make her back to the middle Tyree kill I want to stop right there go up the middle find my blockers read my blockers and take it to the Baja Great play right there one of my best plays of the year so far with Tyree kill definitely Huge play to go ahead and get seven not have to worry about the red zone and just really I mean that feels good up seven now Just got to keep playing defensive. I stay at this pace. I should be able to score Should be able to keep it going. He finally he finally puts his tight end out on a route Dumps it off to him. We make a tackle, you know, that's okay That's going to happen when I'm sending this much pressure You see the next play boom. He tries to put the tight end out again This time vah Miller comes around at edge puts him down second and 20 Those over the slam Patrick Peterson's not having any of that against ty hillan Third and 20 we send everybody those drag he falls underneath ramsey taps him up fourth down Send everybody again. Actually, I didn't send enough people right there And he finds the fade beautiful touch pass by russell wilson the tyree kill Man, that's a nice play. Just really beat the defense that I had I sent seven And I'll tell you this youtube. I should have sent eight fourth and long should have sent eight We sent seven should have sent eight Tyree kill beat me over the top there, but I go down a score again. We're just in we're in a tie game This is a battle when two good players meet up. This is what's going to happen As you see bradbury really gave me fits. That's already. Oh, that's his first sack But I feel like in the second half he's gonna have another one off that edge I'm sliding over there my my left guard and my left tackle are just too fat and slow to get out to that db I thought about almost going for this, but I've been playing good defense. I punted the three calling And the first play he finally puts three calling out Little late and this guy has juke box or whatever it's called where the juke's are just unreal Plus, I believe he's like 88 speed just way too fast I just took it to the crib on me those juke's with to riko and are unreal One play but that's okay because I have time to go down scoring tie He could have milked a little bit more But you know when you're playing high pressure defense as you guys watch I've either sacked him or I've given up a one-play touchdowns, you know But I definitely have gotten enough stops to be one in the game If I play a little bit of offense as we hit the crossing route right there to thomas Michael thomas get it to the 50 yard line plenty of time on clock and there's that guy brad barry again Really getting some pressure off the edge with him. He's sacking with brad barry I'm sacking him with vine miller as I throw underneath the julio jones pick up a smooth 15 yards Gets me to a 38 gotta make a play here and I'm just gonna take off with my homes Take what's there. I max protect that he only rushed three So I took off from my homes get to a fourth down gotta make a read and I do over here To julio jones hit the corner route two minute warning Let's just go ahead and just run the ball try to keep that clock moving because I want to go to overtime right now I don't want him to get the ball back Next play again. I'm just going to hike in hall with patch from my homes Boom pick up a nice little bit nice little chunky yard is there First and ten flat right on the top of hill gotta stay in balance keep that clock running And I do a good job staying in bounds right there second and sixth Hit the curl route over here michael thomas inside the 10-yard line This is when he's going to start using his timeouts to try to get the ball back First play he run commit high ball julio one hand catch Boom, I didn't expect to run come in right there, but he did so 50 seconds two timeouts I have to get off the field can't get up a big play But we're not going to change the philosophy We're not going to stop bringing everybody to the party Vine miller gets to the quarterback brings him down for his third sack of the game He's on fire now. He's in his own goes for the streak up the middle of the field Tyree killed denzel ward 86 speed not having any of that knocks it away We get to a third in 19. Those are in a cone. I'm going to strafe. I'm not getting juked again But Tyree Cohen pushes me for 10 yards gets the first down Next play calil mech eats up the quarterback tackles him and that's going to take us to overtime I actually went to toss an overtime elect to receive Got to go down and get some points. I feel like my offense was better than the first half I got sacked a lot more in the second half. So, uh, you know, I always go to get the ball Definitely want to try to get some points as you see we got crushed right there, but we're on conservative Hopefully we don't fumble again flat route tyreek Picking up a smooth six yards six yards on the flat route is real always good You'll take that drag route over the middle julio jones Nice couple of yards. I would love to be on balance So I could juke or spin or even stiff arm, but you know, I just I said, I'm afraid to fumble especially in the overtime game Pick up that first down next play.  He brought seven people that play Geez third and 26. I got stuck on my camera tackle dump it off the barkley Pick up a nice chunk. So this makes this fourth down manageable. Now. I'm thinking about do I go for this? 43 yard line the kickers and mutt aren't good. So if I turn the ball over, I'm not necessarily donating fieldball But I'm pretty close to it. So I'm thinking about a fourth and 12 is hard to get. I'm going to call time out And I'm going to punt my defense has either been a one or I've given up one play touchdowns I feel like I can hold him. I can make a play. Hopefully make him punt That way, uh, we can go ahead and I can only need a field goal Hopefully admit a field need a good punt here need to get out of bounds There's no wind no reason why this punt wasn't more out of bounds But he actually did a great job clicking on cohen making a play I just this guy is the fastest player in the game.  But sleigh Makes a play for me bang First play and we set him up there. I want to show you guys what I did coming out of the huddle here Now, I knew that's what he's been going to So I took a chance one play on a hard-flatted Patrick Peters and over there And I feel like if he made a good throw or throw two to recall Patrick Peterson would have made a play on it But what happens is for some reason they make Russell Wilson go to shittiest pass And Patrick Peterson has no chance. That was the play I needed didn't get it next play He finally just puts a fade and Hilton finally beats Patrick Peterson And we're going to lose the game and over time on that fade route to ty hill and Patrick Peterson got beat Game with a lot on defense there game with the whole game Definitely was a good one man was a barn burner. We definitely went up and down the field great game Guys hit the like button subscribe. You can watch these games live twitch.tv slash dub dot