Welcome to the RF Elements Unlicensed podcast. I'm your host Caleb Nour and I'm joined with our other host, Tossos AlexEU. What is going on Tossos? What's happening Caleb? Not much going on. What's going on with you man? It's Friday here, right? Friday there. Oh yeah. It's weekend is upon us man. So it's a good day. It's a good day. I feel it in my veins or maybe that's all the monster I drank right before doing this. So I don't know a little column A, a little column B, but that's okay. I can't do that stuff man. I can't do that stuff.  I like the sugar free monster. That's that's what I drink the white can. It's pretty good stuff, but I mean, I can only have like one every couple of days. I can't do it like every day or multiple a day. I mean, I like my coffee too, right? But I'm like a one coffee kind of guy in the morning and then I'm good to go at that point. I'm charged right for the day. Well, you're about too high strung for me at half the time anyway. So it's probably a good thing. Oh, I've been messing around with these like super turbo espresso cold coffee drinks lately just thinking around here and they're great, but I can feel it killing me. So yeah, yeah, bad stuff, bad stuff. Anyway, all right. Well, today on this here podcast that we're trying to figure out how to make, we've got a great episode. So we're going to talk a little bit about the history of RF elements, where the horns came from, you know, which is what most people know us from and answer that age old question of why exactly are we so horny? But yeah, so we'll just go ahead and lay it down for everybody. You got to clear the air and make sure that we're on the same page. But before we get into that, a lot of things going on lately. What have you seen flying across your radar, either with us in general or in the industry? So I mean, it's very dynamics with things are always changing. This week, though, there's been a lot of conversation about the radio shortages that are out there, radio shortages that are coming. So a lot of discussion this week has really specifically been about, you know, the ubiquity prison, rocket prison radio becoming hard to get some light beam. CPEs are becoming very difficult to get. So, you know, we've been spending or at least I've been spending a lot of my time trying to, you know, give the wisps out there some alternatives for those particular radios. Like, you know, not many people still know that the older first generation Rocket 5 AC light radio is still in full circulation and actually it's in pretty decent quantities available. Now, of course, it's first generation, no active filtering, no GPS synchronization. But the main point here is that it is 100% compatible with all of the Air Max CPEs that you were using with your prism, right? So it's a, you know, stop gap kind of thing. You know, if you have a tower go down, right?  Or you maybe sacrifice and put up this Rocket 5 AC light in its place until you can get some prisms, at least your customers come online. Maybe their speeds are slightly reduced. I mean, that's fine. Something is better than nothing. And quite frankly, the performance is actually pretty good. We have customers all over Latin America specifically that are delivering 100 megs with the Rocket 5 AC light specifically on our horns because our horns kind of help with the noise rejection. So it may not have active filtering built in as a hardware standard, but the horns themselves help filter out a lot of that stuff. So the performance is really good. And it's again, just a measure that you can use or an option you have. So yeah. And what's really nice about the Twistport architecture that we use in our horns and stuff is it makes swapping those things back out really easily. So you get some prisms in stock, slap them in the Twistport adapter. Then when you go swapping on the radio, it's a simple twist and unlock. And then you get your other radios back on. Then you can take that AC light and go put it somewhere else. You know, use it as a subscriber unit, put it on the back of an ultra dish or something like that real quick and easy makes for a mighty fine CPE device. So especially when you're trying to push long distance with these higher order modulation rates that people are doing, that works really well. The other thing that I'm seeing sort of take off right now is our starter dishes using the ISO stations or even the C5X from Amosa. People are using these starter dishes because it's a very clean install for CPE device. The radio just basically snaps directly to the back of it. It's very, very cost effective. And the RF performance is great. You know, we built those starter dishes to be a low cost alternative to other parabolic dishes out there or integrated CPE unit solutions. But we still keep the really high quality RF characteristics that we developed when we did like the old traditions and stuff. So simplify the mounting architecture and stuff like that, but still really good RF performance. So those are really taken off and we're pushing some verbiage out there in the wild so people know what that looks like. Yeah, and that also brings up another good point out there as far as the shortage goes, not just using our starter dishes as a potential CPE, but it's also natively supports the round form factor radios from Ubiquiti, the ISO station and the prism station, which again, the prism station round radio is another good step in or fill in for the regular Rocket 5 prisms that people are using. And again, they make good CPEs when you couple them with the ISO station. So there's a lot of with the starter dishes. So there's a lot of other options out there for you if you're looking for that. Other than, of course, switching platforms, which is something people can do too. Some people are getting tired of these issues with Ubiquiti, let's say, and they want to just change platforms. The twist port makes it easy to go from Ubiquiti to all of a sudden Cambium, you know, with just a change of an adapter. It's pretty pretty simple. Yep, definitely. So other thing I've seen bounce across my plate here recently just because it's at the tip of my tongue is the new 2.4 gigahertz array sector. Yeah. Patch array sector. Now, we talk a bit of smack about patch array sectors, but, you know, there are cases where it makes sense and 2.4 is a case where, you know, there's probably not going to be a ton of volume for us. This is never going to be, you know, a huge moving product, but it makes a lot of sense for those that are still deploying in 2.4 for very rural areas, you know, very long distance clients. You're trying to shoot through a couple trees here and there sort of near line of sight in these situations where a full blown, you know, mega dollar CBRS deployment doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense financially. So we've had a lot of interest in it. It is now hitting distribution. There are some in stock and they're about to be a lot more in stock here in the States at least. So that's excited. We've had a very small, we've had a small but very vocal contingency in our customer base looking for this. So it's rocking and rolling and we're happy to have it out there. Yeah. Yeah. The array sector line is something that I'm very excited about as well because, you know, there are a lot of frequency bands that, you know, horns are just not practical in, especially the lower frequencies, right? 2.4 being one of those specifically. The wavelength is too large, meaning the adapter would be huge. The antenna would be huge. Not that it's not possible, but it would require a kind of total redesign of everything from the ground up in order to do horns and those frequencies. And it kind of leans into, you know, CBRS and us kind of, you know, starting to move forward into other frequency bands outside of 5GIG. So it's exciting for me to see that it's finally really, really happening and it's really moving forward now. It's good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. I really would like to see a 900 mega-horns horn at some point just so I've got somewhere to like part my truck inside of it. You still see them everywhere and just pick up those big AT&T towers and stuff like that. You got those big-ass square horn-looking things, man, those long lines or whatever. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So that's all six. But yeah, I think the mega-ultra-horn one day, one day we'll have this. So, well, good deal, man. So let's jump into the heart of our conversation here. We'll talk again, like I said, about the history. Let's talk about horns. You know, we're very known for our horns now that we don't do other things. You know, we've got a lot of dishes. We've got the array sectors that we're just talking about and we'll flush these out in more details later on in further episodes. But, you know, the horns are our main bread and butter. And with that, you know, comes this whole, hey, we're a horny wisp. Let's talk. Let's talk a little bit about the horny-ness and let's get, let's get horny. So that sounds awful. Somebody shoot me, I said. Yeah, do you want to go there? So horny. Let's go there. Okay. Yeah. What do you want to know about the horny history of our film? It's so it makes plenty of sense. You know, when I'm new to the company, you know, but I've known you guys for years and it seems like it's always been there. But, you know, where did this come from and sort of where did it tie into? You know, what's the history of where did these horns come from? You know, you've got a pretty long history, but I think folks would be interested to say, you know, hey, these showed up here with the symmetrical and then the ultra dish and then where did the asymmetricals come from? So give us a walk down memory lane here on this beautiful Friday and let's talk about our horny history. Yeah, it's quite a long history. I mean, it's only been six years, but it seems like it's it's been it's been forever, right? So, you know, the original horns came out around 2015, I believe it was, you know, we did the launch at Wispel Palooza in Vegas for the first time and kind of introduced the horns to the rest of the market was kind of our coming out party for for horns and stuff. So I got to know like when you first launched those and put them up and everyone walked up to it, like, what was the general reaction?  Or everybody people pick up the message kind of quickly or not? Everybody thought they were point to point antennas. They're like, wow, these are really cool microwave little antennas. I'm like, no, they're there are sectors are point to multi point. They're like, no way. You know, what do you mean? What do you mean? There's like, you know, these these are actual point to multi point antennas.  So that was the initial idea and the first thing people thought when when they when they, you know, when we first brought the horns to market their visual perception of what it was all about. But but a sector is supposed to be tall and heavy and have a whole bunch of like weird metal plates bolted on the side and wrap it in aluminum foil and stuff like that. So how could this small light weight easy to deploy unit with his twist port thing? How could that possibly be a sector? Right? Yeah, yeah, definitely. That was it was very confusing. It was very confusing.  Right. So you start telling them because obviously it was, you know, eye catching and they're like, All right. Naturally, they want to know. But then when you start saying, Oh, this is our 90 degrees symmetrical horn and it has, you know, 9.6 dbi gained. They're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what? How much? I'm like nine and a half dbi of gain.  That's nothing. I need 20 or 21 dbi again.  And that's where all this noise comes into play and how we started, you know, kind of putting our message out there. It's like, Well, if you have less antenna gain, you have less received sensitivity and therefore you also hear less noise and basically you improve your SNR. So that's kind of how that message all started and how we started, you know, putting it out there into the world. So you mean I don't want to hear the noise like five or eight miles away for my subs that are a mile away, like, come on, man. That's so counterintuitive. I did, man. It took a long time to kind of really educate and get people to at least start thinking about our concept of noise isolation. I mean, there's the whole thing between not having side lobes and all the other things that help us isolate against noise, but really having everything from 30 degree to 90 degree horns and 10 degree steps and at different gains is really another tool in the toolbox of how you utilize this.  Or hearing over it and stuff like that. And it's really this, you know, noise isolation of not having side lobes and again, the reduced the reduced gain of the antennas reduces the amount of noise you hear. So it's really, you know, it's really deployment specific, which antenna works, works best for you. And, you know, at first, of course, we were mocked, right? Everybody laughed at us. Yeah, it's not going to happen. But I remember, I remember like our second year at Wisp of Palooza and definitely our third year at Wisp of Palooza where, you know, I, I'm really good at faces. I'm not the best with names all the time. But if I see a face, I remember it, right? So I remember everybody that I talked to and I'm like an elephant in that way. I actually remember, you know, the majority of those conversations. And it was funny to see the second year at a third year because when people started using it, they wouldn't tell anybody, you know? So like the second year you're at the show and you're out there with the same wears and you'd see guys kind of like walk by and like kind of look at you and like walk by and then they kind of come back and it slowly ease in, right? And where they used to yell at you and say you're dumb for thinking that this thing would actually work.   So there's a whole, a whole evolution of all that stuff and how it went down. And then fast forward to this year. So I started in April 1st. So I don't know if that bodes well for me or not. We'll see. Maybe better for me than you guys. But, you know, we had the Dallas show, the Whisp America show, like three weeks later. So I went to booth bouncing around doing my pitch and everyone's like, man, your horns are awesome. You've really done all those great stuff. And I'm like, yeah, definitely. I've been working really hard, you know, making sure that you guys are successful. So got to, got to soak up a lot of that extra credit on that, which was pretty cool. But yeah, it's been pretty wild how the shift in conversation has been. So yeah, I mean, it took a while, right? So again, there was a, there was an, there's been an evolution or, you know, evolution, or yeah, there's been an evolution of our message and how we kind of, you know, send this information out there and educate Whisp's and we try and change and tailor our message to help people understand it because everybody, you know, learns in a different way. So you need different examples of how this thing affects you as a Whisp to make it click in your head and people finally get it and people eventually want to try it.  So, you know, at first people were, you know, I don't, they didn't want to talk about it, right? A lot of them were treating it like proprietary information or like, holy crap, this stuff really works. If I tell my customer or my competitor knows about it, then he's going to use it and he's going to be able to offer the speeds at home. So, so people kept it, you know, like, you know, intellectual property for themselves, right? So that's was the first kind of generation of people out there in social media with the product. And eventually it got out to the masses and everybody wants to talk about it and everybody's posting pictures and everybody's proud of these 12, 24 and even like 30 horn installations. And that's kind of where the horniness thing kind of came from and how that evolved into, you know, the social media sphere of everything in our marketing, you know? Yeah. And then, you know, they learned too that they didn't have to be afraid of their competitors using it because the more their competitors use horns and everyone's cuts back on all that noise just being squirted all over the place with these noisy sectors, you know, it only helped everyone. So it was one of those where all floating boats, blah, blah, blah, everyone does better. So yeah. And it was funny because everybody back then, you know, they used to complain that nobody wanted to frequency coordinate with one another. And really the truth was even if they wanted to frequency coordinate, they couldn't coordinate because all the side lobes, all the noise there was just no effective way of really doing that. And now the precision of our antennas with no side lobes and it actually only goes kind of where you point it. You actually are able to frequency coordinate with your competitors and stuff. So it actually not only makes it possible but people realize that, you know, they both win when they play well with each other like that. Definitely, definitely. So the symmetricals were first, obviously. And then we went through a second generation, mechanical improvements and things like that. We're always, always tinkering of things, making it better. And then the big daddy ultra horn was somewhere in that middle phase, which I'm a huge fan of the ultra horn. It's pretty cool. Ultra horn rocks man. It's an extreme measure but by golly, sometimes you got to swing at big sticks. So and then the asymmetrical sectors came out and I think that's really what sort of drove that that coincided with the big boom and popularity, especially with the widths that were not necessarily dealing with the really small ranges or the really high density. But that's that sort of middle ground where, you know, your ranges are not extreme but you know, definitely not, you know, quarter mile and stuff or half mile or whatever it may be. And the densities weren't super high. So what did, what do you see the asymmetrical sectors sort of doing for the next leg of what the horns were doing? Well, I mean, they kind of serve two purposes, right? So there was, you know, the symmetrical horn really is the smaller symmetrical horns really is a an antenna for really high density. Not that you can't achieve that with the asymmetrical but that was really kind of the first generation and how those things work. We had a huge portion of our customer base or potential customer base out there that just didn't need that density, right? They had longer distances to cover with less customers in a wider angle of view, right? So, you know, they needed basically a sector, right? They needed that type of coverage. So that's where the asymmetrical horns come into play with a much higher gain at a much wider beam angle than its symmetrical counterpart, right? So really this really helps go out into those areas. Now, what we're finding, right?  These higher modulation radios actually require more antenna gain, right? Because people still are trying to kind of push the limits of their coverage areas and stuff like that. So you need, you know, antennas with more gain. It just helps that ours have no side lobes. So we're again, at least focusing all that game that receives sensitivity in the direction that you actually need it. So it kind of plays two things in there, you know? Yeah, and it's definitely what I see it as is kind of the best of both worlds. Now, you know, there's different ways to deploy and this is why I think our link calculator that you will hear us, we will fly that link calculator flag a lot during this and basically everything we do. I may need to get a big banner back here on the wall, this empty wall back here.  You know, a lot of people aren't used to utilizing down tilt as a tool. They were just like, hey, we need to get it just down enough to hit our clients. Well, with the large elevation cuts we've got on the horns and the different versions, depending on the different horn, there's a lot of stuff you can really do with those and do wide coverage areas and really hilly terrain, mountains and stuff like that. So play around and, you know, used to down tilt two degrees max, maybe three. Well, we're talking horns. I mean, we can roll 10 or more. So run that link calculator, play around with it. If you got any questions, reach out to us. We will walk you through it. We spent a lot of time doing that because once you figure that out, then you figure out the bulk of, you know, what the RF planning on this looks like for sure. Yeah, link calculator is a great tool.  And we spent a lot of time not only developing it, but trying to work with the radio manufacturers out there because that's another thing, you know, you can go into kind of a generic link calculator and kind of put, you know, your TX power, your antenna gain, and it'll give you the basic, the basic distances that you can run based on basic link calculation, but we actually work with Mamosa. We actually work with Cambium and we recently were able to work with Microtech to kind of get the detailed received sensitivity data that we need for all the different MCS rates that the radios are capable of operating in. So that way now, with that data, we can give you highly precise and actually it's extremely accurate what kind of distances you're gonna get, where the MCS levels start to drop from, you know, the highest modulation down to low modulation and plot that all out on a map. So it's extremely useful and it's very beneficial for customers to learn how to use that tool and go give it a try. Definitely, you want to use it. You want to use it for sure. Definitely. So that said, let's talk about giving horny. So the first time I went to a trade show and came back with one of the shirts. It was one of the, when the first Are You a Horny with shirt came out. So a little background for those that don't know me. I'm a bit of a large fella, a little girthy. And, you know, I come back from these shows and I got a handful of t-shirts, the ones I think are cool, but most of them don't really fit, you know. So I ended up just giving my wife her sleep shirt. So she's got like trade shows from across the world full of companies and languages. She has no clue. So I came back and I was unpacking my suitcase. I was like, babe, here's this new shirt for you.   And at the time I'm like, I don't know. They make horns or whatever. So fast forward a few years and now I am super horny. So where did that come from? And then like the whole, the horn, the plural version of the story that you told me is actually super interesting. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, on social media, it all started with a customer. What really wasn't us. There was a customer out there that had deployed whatever, you know, eight or nine horns on his tower and he was super excited about it. We were super excited about it, right? To see people actually, you know, doing the things we said that you could do with her horns and stuff like that. And he was just like, hey, I'm a super horny wisp.  And we're all, everybody started laughing. Like that's pretty funny, right?  And, you know, in a lot of our team meetings and team calls and stuff, it's pretty much done in English no matter where we're at, but every once in a while, they switched to Slovak, you know, and I've been there a gazillion times and stuff. And I hear lots of words, right? Mostly, you know, I know a lot of the cuss words, obviously, but there are other words that, you know, that just stick and I remember always hearing horny, horny, horny in a lot of conversations and, you know, long story short, horny is just plural, horn, right? So it's more than one horn is horny. So that's how we, you know, kind of said that maybe we should use that and somebody obviously beat us to it and kind of did it. So we, there was really no debate at that point. It kind of took off to, so to speak, go viral in the industry. And yeah, that's kind of how the horny wisp, you know, came to be, I guess, you know? Yeah, that's funny. I get it. I mean, it makes total sense.  We get a little froggy with it to sort of push. So it is funny though, you know, doing presentations like for sort of standard customer base.  But at the same time, you know, just super cash about our talking and conversation. You can see that here, but there are times where I'm doing a presentation. I'm like, this one's a little stuffier, a little corpus. Let me control after this presentation and make sure it doesn't actually say horny in here somewhere.  It's not that dirty or that edgy and stuff like that. So I mean, it's just kind of a, it's a light edge to be, you know, to be used compared to, you know, some of the cuss words we've used and some of the bracelets we have and yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll get into that some other point. So well, that's cool, man. So that's awesome. Yeah, I got a sack of them here that I need to start spreading out, but well, cool man. No, I think this has been a very informative little chat here kind of about the history, where things came from, where some of the funny parts of things came from. So getting people learned up, educated about what we do. And I think that's a real important part of what we're trying to do with those podcasts, you know, super casual format, very informal and we're going to flex around with it. And the big part of what we want to do with this is get feedback from, you know, folks out in the wild. Absolutely. Absolutely. We want to know what you want to hear, right? What you want us to talk about, you know, what we should, you know, be shedding more light on in the industry as a whole. You know, it could be, you know, something from the equipment side. It could be something from the legislative side. I mean, whatever it is, we want to know. We want to know.  So, I mean, we can both bounce up here and just talk about whatever we've all been doing this a little while.  But yeah, let's, you know, you guys let us know. Where should we focus? What are we going to point at? We're going to start doing guests at some point here. So bring some folks on, share your story, talk about things that you've run into or crazy stories from the field. I don't know.  So let's, let's figure out what's entertaining and which you guys did the crazies, the crazy story segment. We will have to sort of screen those. Right. So take a, take a few takes. So we'll have a, maybe we'll have a PG version and an after dark version. We'll figure that out. Our filaments after hours, after dark. So that's cool, man. So I think it's about time to wrap it up here.  We were both getting a little jumpy to get our weekends going on. I know I've been, I've been doing a math trying to figure out what I'm going to cook this weekend. I've been on this big barbecue cook. I always have, but lately, especially I've gotten a little bit more keyed up. Maybe, maybe the competition has kind of gotten me stirred up here a little bit. So, so, but then trying different stuff too. So I've tried the, what is it? Oh, the smoke and then fried wings. I've tried that at a time or two and never worked out, but I'm going to try something different. I'm going to smoke them and then draw them off real good and hit them with a flash fry and then the sauce and stuff. I think maybe give that a shot, maybe do American cheese. I don't know. We'll figure something out. Yeah. I've been looking, I've been looking into the frying thing, man. I've been watching some, you know, cooking shows and stuff and man, just been seeing these Carol like chicken sammies and everything that people are making up some fried chicken, fried fish, fried shrimp. I mean, fried up every way.  You know, I have an addictive personality on some of those things that I do. Like I got into smoking, which is all about smoking. You know, there you saw me go into my sourbread baking phase. You know, all of that stuff. I went through my griddle phase and, you know, I jumped back and forth and sometimes incorporate both, right into it, but frying is just something I'm just like, hmm, I don't know. I see a deep fryer being purchased in my future and maybe you'll start seeing some of that in my social media stuff, some fried, some fried goodies coming up, I think. I think that's where I might go. Oh, this is, this is not where my heart needs to go, but I'm kind of right there with you. I was, I was sitting on the sofa on my laptop the other night looking at one of his big fancy stainless steel outdoor deep fryer setups, one of those four gallon rigs and stuff from my bio classic or something. So I'm looking at it and getting all excited. My wife walks up behind me to ask me something. She's just like, no, no, we're done. No, no, we've got enough stuff outside. No. And I'm like, well, well, I am kind of running out of space. And if I keep this up, I'm going to be a heart attack broke, but I don't know. It keeps me amused. So I also saw some cat was griddling. They were, what was it?  Oh, they were taking sausage patties, frying them up, dunking them in pancake batter and then making pancakes out of them. And I'm like, man, I don't know if I've gotten to that point in my life yet, but we'll see. We'll see. Yeah, that's pushing it. That's definitely pushing it right there. Depends on how much liquid brain power I pick up over the weekend. We'll see how things go. So all right, man. Well, thank you for everyone listening to us. You know, this is new. We're trying to figure it out to those of y'all that are still here. We absolutely appreciate it. If you want to find us, we are all over social media. We have the RF Elements Facebook group. We have the Facebook page. Then we've got the RF Elements English Facebook group, which is big. We've got RF Elements Español. We've got RF Elements Asia, which we just fired up as we get more and more inquiries from that region. We've got a YouTube channel where we put out tons of informative educational content there. We've got our website, ton of good info there. And we're just, we're around. So you guys let us know. Again, anything you want to hear, let us know any feedback and we will greatly appreciate it. Yeah, we're not hard to find. We're out there. So until next time, everybody, stay horny. All right, y'all be good. Stay horny.


Coming up on DTNS, host a talk and get paid by Twitter, Snap makes some big strides in the AR race and Patrick Norton catches us up on right to repair and what our rights actually are. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, May 21st, 2021. From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In lovely Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Rich Strafilino. Some more in St. Louis, I'm Patrick Norton. Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, I'm Len Peralta. And the show's producer, Roger Chang. Before the show, we were talking about rubber bands and the fact that Patrick has a lot of them and uses them, in fact, for all sorts of things, such as entertaining the children. If you want to know more about that wider conversation, get on it. Our expanded show, Good Day Internet, is all yours if you become a member at patreon.com.dtns. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. A new tax agenda from the U.S. Treasury Department proposes that any cryptocurrency transfers worth $10,000 or more must be reported to the IRS. The IRS updated its guidance late last year requiring taxpayers to declare if they purchased, traded, sold, or received cryptocurrency in 2020. The cyberspace administration of China announced that 105 apps, including LinkedIn, TikTok, and the video-sharing app, Kuaishou, used overcollection and excessive authorization to illegally infringe on personal user information. New regulations on data collection by apps from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology came into effect May 1, and the apps now have 15 working days to correct those issues. Amazon will shut down its standalone Prime Now app and website worldwide by the end of the year. Amazon will move third-party partners, local stores, and all expedited delivery options to the main Amazon app and site. The information and Reuters sources say that Netflix is looking to hire an executive to oversee a new video game division, which could make the Apple versus Epic case that much more interesting because Netflix has been the non-video game video service. Netflix has tried interactive programming in the past with Black Mirror, Bandersnatch, and You vs. Wild where users could decide characters' moves. Also, it's created games based on shows like Stranger Things and La Casa de Pepelle. The information also noted that Netflix could offer a bundle of games similar to Apple Arcade as an option to subscribers. The Wall Street Journal sources say that Google called off long-running negotiations with its DeepMind artificial intelligence unit seeking to grant DeepMind more autonomy. The founders of DeepMind had sought autonomy as far back as 2015, including proposing a partial spin-off looking to establish an independent legal structure used by things like non-profit groups, which reportedly did not make financial sense to Alphabet. All right, let's talk a little bit more about what Snap is up to. We talked about a new video editing app that Snap had launched yesterday. Snap also confirmed to The Verge it has agreed to buy Wave Optics for more than $500 million, which is Snap's largest acquisition ever. Wave Optics makes WaveGuides a display technology that helps users overlay virtual objects into the real world through transparent surfaces and light projectors. This is used in Snap's fourth generation of Spectacles glasses, which the company announced on Thursday. The new Snap Spectacles have a 26.3 degree field of view and also ARFX, those are called lenses by Snap and are designed to be bright both indoors and outdoors. Cons, kind of big. Battery life is only 30 minutes if used the whole time and the glasses weigh 134 grams. That's going to be a lot heavier than your standard sunglasses. A spokesperson for Snap says Wave Optics will continue to supply other companies with its WaveGuides but will make custom optical systems for Snap. In February of last year, Wave Optics announced they had made a thinnest color WaveGuide available and several months ago it unveiled a WaveGuide for prescription glasses in partnership with Luxxcel. Now, Spectacles not widely available to buy yet, at least not this new fourth-gen version of them, though the company is offering units to developers and also content creators to create new experiences and filters with SnapJet's own Lens Studio tool. So consider this Snap's attempt to pull ahead in the AR glasses race because we've talked about this in the past but Google recently posted a handful of job listings around building WaveGuides. Apple bought holographic WaveGuide maker Aconia back in 2018 and is said to be ready in AR glasses perhaps even as early as later this year and Facebook is also building custom WaveGuides for future AR glasses. Now, Patrick and Rich, I don't know if you saw these glasses. They're a little futuristic but it does seem that Snap is all in on technology that clearly we're still a few years out from this becoming a mainstream thing. Sorry, I remember seeing that number and thinking a half billion dollars is a lot of money and I don't remember the original Snap glasses being that super popular once the initial sort of this influencer has them and you don't. So go to this machine somewhere and get yours. A half billion dollars is also in general a lot of money but specifically a lot of money for Snap too. They brought in I think it was $770 million in revenue in Q1. This is a significant spend for them. Obviously, this is a developer, I mean it's being sold to developers. It's a developer kit. I can't imagine anything like this directly will be sold to consumers. We will see. They kind of remind me of the old spy tech glasses that were a toy that had mirrors in the back of them a couple years ago. The big thing it stands out to me though is this field of view. It's 26 degrees and WaveOptics has been making thinner and thinner lenses like Sarah as you alluded to but they're also getting narrower and narrower field of view as they get thinner. I don't know if that's something they can overcome. For comparison the original hollow lens which was criticized for having a very narrow field of view had a 35 degree field of view. It's basically like 26 is like basically looking down like a 90 millimeter lens like that kind of crop. It's a pretty tight area of AR effectiveness or something like that.  So yes I would hope field of vision gets bigger rather than smaller. Well Snap CEO Evan Spiegel did say when kind of talking a little bit about the spectacles and where the company saw it going that we're about a decade out from this being something that that we're really prepared to to have people embrace in an everyday level. Snap also released a video that gives you a little bit more of an idea of where it's hoping development goes with spectacles as far as content creation. There was an interesting example of a woman who had spent a lot of time in New Mexico and there were all these points of interest that she was trying to guide somebody who would have gone to the places after her to to know what's cool and where you know if you look at a certain sign you get more contextual information that's great but she has to make that and so Snap banking on the fact that a lot of these creators are going to want to make this sort of stuff for Snap specifically that's where I think you know this this all really hinges on adoption on the creation side because if you have a bunch of cool stuff sure you're going to sell a lot of glasses but if there are only a few things especially with you know battery life being woefully low it's a it's a bit of a harder sell. I think it's it's also interesting that Snap chat or snap is is like they're they're the amount of money they're making has increased spectacularly maybe more than I think people are aware of especially me. Well yesterday we covered about how the citizen app had used its on air live broadcasting feature to share personal information of a suspected arsonist of a Los Angeles area fire along with a $30,000 bounty 860,000 citizen users received a broadcast and the on air host encouraged them to help bring them into justice though after police detained the man he was let go due to lack of evidence citizen says it failed to follow its own validation protocols today now citizens back in the news mother board reports leaked internal documents plus its own sources at citizen detailing the company's plans to add private security work presence to the scenes of disturbances based on app user requests so you could report a disturbance and theoretically have a security worker dispatched right now citizen uses a merely reported incidence in their neighborhoods using that info along with police scanner transcriptions the app sends real-time safety alerts to users about crime and other incidents happening near where a user is located the security response project is being actively tested according to those internal emails two former citizen employees tell mother board that it would work uh excuse me uh tells mother board that would work uh that when summoned a private security company working with citizen would provide the response staff securitas a private security contractor is said to be one of the company's citizen is working with as is la ps or los angeles professional security on friday mother board reported that los angeles professional security is also linked to a citizen branded vehicle seen driving around los angeles a citizen spokesperson says it's part of a pilot program but the client to offer more details citizen currently has a subscription product called protect which sends a user's location to a citizen employee when it's turned on they can stream video to a protect agent just someone watching the feed when activated using a safe word it costs 19 dollars and 99 cents per month uh if this uh this service ever launches i'm assuming it would probably cost more than that although we would have to see on that um but i hope so yeah uh but you know sarah uh kind of uh private security as a service uh kind of a uh interesting direction for citizen yeah listen i know that okay there's two different worlds right here's the world that citizen goes like well hey if if sarah is a citizen user and something terrible is happening in her general area you know she's she sees somebody and she knows she's about to get you know robbed right and she's able to hail a private security uh worker that is working for a company that is a has a contract with citizen and that person comes in time and saves the day isn't that great for sarah she had no other choice i mean let's not even get into the fact that i used this rather than uh contacting law enforcement for a second because that's a whole another issue but okay so that's that's in theory okay sure right you want to help keep good people safe the problem is is that yeah as you mentioned rich you're already paying 20 dollars to be like heads up citizen i want to broadcast where i am when i feel unsafe at this particular time but it's why do i feel unsafe what is going on we for an app to be employing rather whether it's direct employees within the company or contract workers working with the company people coming out to like you know have some muscle over anybody that i find suspicious type of a thing this gets weird really quickly uh and we've seen as you mentioned in yesterday's show that uh you know a manhunt on citizen got out of control extremely quickly and luckily it didn't get worse you know you didn't get somebody convicted of a crime that they they didn't commit that almost a million people that were citizens users were told to actively help in the the uh apprehension of yeah and the i mean just i just think of other kind of internet manhunts that we've had like the boston marathon bombing or something like that where we had people doing their own investigation and pointing fingers at people or like just even something like swatting all of a sudden using these security forces now obviously if you have a citizen profile it'd be very easy to point the finger back you know it's it's one thing if you live in a gated community or it's not it's not uncommon to have you know pay private security to drive around your neighborhood or something like that or have something on call it's when you introduce this level of scale where you can instantly broadcast a manhunt to 860 thousand people as a private company who you know you these are your paying customers this not it's a it's a different relationship i guess than you know then like a then like a government or a citizen or something like that that you know it like you said serah it can it can go off the rails pretty quick yeah there's you know there's also the the question of okay sure if i've got the money and for whatever reason i feel like i need a layer of protection private security sure you know you see it with you know people it sort of the celebrity sphere all the time right and sometimes for a good reason but then what happens okay let's say that there's some sort of the incident there's some sort of altercation well you know that citizen taking on quite a bit of risk if the company is saying well this is a tool that we set up that our our citizen user is just use it's just using a feature that we gave her but it has turned into a mess you know and how does that how does that shake out legally yeah i can imagine this screwing up a lot of things for actual law enforcement if you have you know like like you said they had no evidence even though they you know identified this guy he was eventually released i could see if a security force getting involved especially if you know if situation got violent or something like that that could actually you know mess up an investigation indeed well this one hopefully won't be violent as long as you like audio rooms before the launch of its ticketed spaces feature in the next couple of weeks twitter is previewing this feature so that us users can know what to expect when they host a ticketed space all right so this is how it works users can apply to host a paid live audio room if they have at least 1000 followers they have hosted three spaces in the past 30 days remember spaces is basically twitter's clubhouse competitor they also have to be 18 years old or older twitter will cover transaction fees it's partnered with stripe so stripe is handling the payments however there is a little bit of a breakdown and who gets what money 30 percent of app store fees either from apple or google are going to apply and this is a mobile feature so of a ten dollar ticket let's say i'm charging you ten dollars to come to my uh my ticketed spaces talk well that becomes seven dollars then of that seven dollars twitter takes 20 percent of that seven i get the other 80 so still i'm making money but you know it's something to consider twitter says when applications open they'll be processed within a few weeks and include a small us test group of hosts although anybody in the world can buy a ticket so they're starting the rollout for hosts but they're opening it up to the world as far as being able to come to the audio room spaces recently started allowing anyone with more than 600 followers to host free events they can also schedule events those are two new features and twitter says it's working on co-hosted event capability patrick what do you think about this is this is is if you're a big celebrity and your audience is on twitter and you've got something to say i can see you this being a lucrative thing but how many of those people are there patrick i think you're muted that'll teach me to actually touch my keyboard during a show um one you know there's there's an entire series of conversations between epic and apple right now about whether or not uh 30 percent is too much but 30 percent it is um this is an additional revenue opportunity this is an opportunity for twitter to have the most famous people on twitter generate money off of twitter and therefore consider twitter more valuable than say hosting a room in clubhouse i mean there's there's a lot of complicated messy stuff here there's the whole you know there's been a whole huge debate about newsletters and our news our newsletters a legitimate source of revenue or does it only happen when there's you know it's it doesn't you know it doesn't really matter if it you know if a hundred people pay you five dollars and that's five hundred dollars you wouldn't have made otherwise that's fantastic if you have 50 000 people paying five dollars that's a large number uh two or fifty thousand dollars and that's fantastic or maybe it's not if you make that much money that you can laugh at that but i think google a you know i you guys were talking earlier about like snap needs people to make content to make sure snap stays viable and this is twitter wants to figure out reasons to make twitter continue to be important to twitter users um or or the people on twitter that that that generate lots and lots of clicks and links and you know as you know somebody who's watched you know processing and handling fees go up and up it would be nice if these these fees were less um you know twitter taking 20 percent that's pretty hefty compared to a lot of other stuff out there but yeah i mean you know if you if you look at the map i mean you know the creator whoever's hosting that's getting 56 percent of whatever that ticket was um you know certainly so this is this is the bargain that every creator or every you know twitter user whether they want to go through the you know the extra effort of either managing uh patreon or some other sort of crowdfunding platform to then host that content which had its own set of fees and its own you know compromises and inconvenience uh but that's going to be i'm assuming it's going to be less for most instances than 56 percent like blanket fee uh whether the convenience of one click i'm instantly you know i i can pay with apple pay or google pay or whatever uh instantly kind of be in that room it's a seamless transaction if that's worth uh basically half of you know of your ticket price i i think that's an open question i'm certainly listen people will go for a long way for convenience i'm not saying that and this is definitely an integrate seems like it'll be a nice integrated solution that's just a that's a big slice of the pie yeah the whole the whole idea that there are so many clubhouse clones now and for the most part clubhouse is the only standalone product right all the other big platform said oh well let's just bundle something that clubhouse does into our existing platform which to me makes a lot more sense the nice thing about clubhouse and i'm not a huge fan of the app uh just because i don't know there's only so many audio rooms i can i can i can uh you know drop in on but that was sort of the beauty of it is i could kind of bounce around you know as long as i had access to the app i wasn't you know if i was sort of not into a conversation or i had something else to do it wasn't really a big deal if i if i jumped out or maybe switched over to something i thought was more interesting you know once you get me to pay for something and i feel like oh this is really worth my money you know this is you know my favorite i don't know guitarist teaching me how he made that one song kind of thing i'm just you know spitballing here uh that that might be great i'm gonna say yeah i'm glad i've had these ten dollars and i don't really care how they split it up i'm i'm just glad that i have access but if it's not great it i wonder how the content that's being offered will change because if you're a certain caliber of celebrity or otherwise notable person sure you can get away with just charging and you do whatever and people are happy to be there but a lot of people who are popular on twitter might have to rethink like eh you're not just going to start a stream and and rift you have to have a little bit more of a plan going in well if you want to join the conversation in our discord which is going 24 7 you can join it by linking to a patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns well last week pre-orders for the framework laptop opened up it's a modular laptop designed to be easily repaired and upgraded over time there's even a diy kit available where you can you can put it together yourself if you're into that sort of thing it's great that consumers have these kind of options to buy something that's repairable by design although to be fair no one has had any time hands-on time with the framework laptop we've really haven't seen reviews out so we don't know if that one's any particularly any good but for consumers who own a laptop from other vendors the right to repair becomes a really important question so patrick i know this is a this is an area of passion and interest for you uh what right does i i guess kind of can you break it down what right does the everyday consumer or even an independent technician have when it comes to repairing tech boy this is a complicated and messy question um it was funny also because i was chatting online with a couple of friends uh or on twitter i should say about the framework laptop which led to one person being like oh you know people need to think about right you know if if it's not glued shut you know it won't be as waterproof and repairs in i'm babbling but it's interesting uh i babble because it's been kind of fascinating to watch the reactions because right to repair bills have have been you know floating up at the state level all over the place for the last few years and some of the responses to those get really fascinating but uh you know you had a link on here about uh the french repairability intakes uh there's been a lot of news lately like vice did an article about how leaked apple brood pins uh blueprints were helping independent technicians repair things and you know the first thing i should point out is upgrading or an upgradeable product is not the same as right to repair but devices that are designed to be upgraded are often significantly easier to repair because for example they're designed to be opened and that's one of the challenges with a lot of things uh there was one notable i can't remember maybe it was a debate in new hampshire where the uh the the member of the the uh the the the the response was like cell phones are supposed to they're just going to be disposable we don't need a right to repair bill and uh that's an interesting kind of response because the vast majority something in the neighborhood of a half a million phones get disposed of on a on a want to say a monthly basis uh maybe five or 20 of those depending on whose number you're looking at actually get recycled so all of this stuff is ending up in landfills which is generally bad and when you look at studies uh like pier did a study and increasing repairability can save families hundreds of dollars per year because their devices last longer they keep them running longer um you know being able to open devices modern repair and unlock and jailbreak the software electronics those are like the foundations of what the iFixit folks call their consumer bill of rights and i i mentioned iFixit because they were an organization that came out very very early to try to do things like help you repair your iphone for example uh they came up with tools so when apple was like we're going to put a special five star five pointed pentastar screw on our devices so nobody will be able to open them while they commission their own screwdriver so that you could open that up they have uh tens of thousands of guides repair guides not just for a lot of electronics but for stuff like washing machines and um you know you don't just need tools or parts or the ability to open something up but you need repair information um you know reasonably priced independent repair shops and a lot of people are like that's ridiculous but you see it already exists and this battle has already played out for your car for example uh there was a big fight in massachusetts to do things like make obd2 codes available so you could find out what that you know check engine line well that's an obd2 code okay well how do i do that well you go to the dealer and you pay a hundred dollars and then they tell you whether you'll have to pay thousands more um and uh you know this is this is an idea that if this information is made available then more things can be repaired and fixed and more affordable um there's a really weird article when you start to write to repair this is really weird opinion piece that shows up from uh iEEE.org's spectrum and you know i'm gonna grossly oversimplify it and i just want to say right to repair is not forcing you to repair your own items there seems to be a little confusion there at least in this one article and it's a very popular article which means it's linked to or you know in a lot of ways uh you know nobody's forcing you to get a screwdriver and a soldering gun in a magnifying glass and just dive in there right because not everybody wants to or needs to repair their devices but um you know there was a really kind of a the biggest recent update around this was an FTC report called nixing the fix or the full title is nixing the fix and FTC reports on to congress on repair restrictions and it talks about that you know uh warranties are being voided which is a violation of the magnus and moss warranty act which goes back to 1975 which basically says hey if you offer a warranty there's some things you need to do for it to be okay for you to offer a warranty which sounds a little strange until you start looking at sort of what was happening uh back then with warranties being voided for specious reasons um yeah I kind of cycled this back to cars again because the magnus and moss act is a big deal because it used to be like you would take your truck to the dealer because there was a carburetor problem and the dealer was like you put oversized tires on that you avoided your warranty so you're gonna have to pay full ticket for that carburetor that exploded well inside the warranty repair period um i'm oversimplifying and i'm using my goofer voice but but this is the kind of stuff that would that would happen um you know so there's a really great i'm gonna kind of try to synthesize this but that FTC report which was pretty you know across the aisle and and supported by all the political parties uh quote even when a warranty does not explicitly require that repairs be performed by the original equipment manufacturer the oem using oem parts many manufacturers restrict independent repair and repair by consumers through product designs a complicated prevent repair unavailability of parts and repair information designs that make independent repairs less safe policies or statements that steer consumers to manufacture repair networks application of patent rights and enforcement of trademarks disparagement of non oem parts or independent repair software locks or firmware updates and user license agreements um you know using things like the dmca to prevent people from repairing their hardware is a little weird um you know but it's an interesting battle that's going on and a lot of it is about whether or not things should be disposable whether or not you should be forced to you know and when you look at some of the studies it's like there was a i want to say an illinois study on hospital equipment uh and total life and if you had to use the oem for repair the cost was generally 20 20 percent higher 18 or 20 percent higher than if you the hospital is able to use independent repair shops so you know the one of the things the fdc commission came together and and said is you know based on a review of comments submitted in materials presented during the workshop there's scant evidence to support manufacturers justifications for repair restrictions and i'll be honest i'm not an unbiased observer in this i believe that you should be able to repair things i believe that you should be able to fix things to keep them out of landfills to conserve resources um and because i'm also an inveterate breaker of screens at least but they're not armored and i think it's nice when you can fix the things you own instead of you know recycling them or giving up on them but right now there is a lot of stuff out there in terms of or fights right to repair dot org is really interesting to look at and also be aware especially if you live in an agricultural state you may notice that there is a heavily supported bill for agricultural right to repair but the consumer electronics bill is kind of language which uh well there's conversation for another day well it's uh it's something that we'll definitely you know we'll keep talking about as we learn more about it but i think at the very least you know some of the points that you covered where you know a company could say it's just dangerous for you as a consumer to do this so we're just gonna we're gonna take that danger off of your hands maybe true in certain senses you mentioned hospitals well there there maybe is a reason that the hospital really needs to go through the oem but not always um and it's it's better to give some gives the control back to the consumer all right rich let's check out the mail bag all right sarah sounds like a plan well we got an email in response to chris christianson's underwater photo tip from yesterday's show and comey had an idea he said i believe a 360 degree camera would be great for underwater photo and video with the invisible selfie stick which is kind of sits in the blind spot of the 360 camera it would look like you took another diver underwater to film you you can keep the 360 360 video rolling and crop it later to get regular video in any direction the only downside is if you crop regular video the resolution is lower than something like a 4k gopro for example if your 360 video is 5.7k it becomes about 720p if you crop an 80 uh 80 degree uh field of view from it i had a good experience with the insta 361 series and he would recommend the one r and one x2 and the riko theta series which is like those little handheld uh riko 360 cameras some models are waterproof but i think you need an underwater case for diving probably well advised but uh but good thoughts i've heard i've heard good things uh about that insta 360 so i bet you uh i bet you'd be up for the task yeah that's good stuff thanks comey and you know even if it drops down to 720p it's like you know for an underwater photo it's still gives you some fun creativity to be had uh if you have any feedback on anything that we talk about on the show like comey did today please do send it our way questions comments everything is welcome feedback at dailytechnewshow.com we also like to shout out patrons at our master and grand master levels today they include pat shiren urwinster and philip shane we'd also like to thank our brand new boss your name is kathryn and we love you we just started back at us on patreon so thanks kathryn you boss you well and you may have noticed len peralta on the show today and len has put together some fantastic artwork for us len what do you got for us today well thanks rich you know i find uh ticketed spaces and twitter very interesting uh however i feel that twitter is missing a um a marketing angle here i think they can call the tickets twickets right i mean am i am i alone in this right i think twickets right and not only that but the image i drew today someone had mentioned in the chat how does ticket master come into this well this guy uh the image is of a scalper who is skill scalping these quote unquote tickets and of course he's from ticket master selling them for 300 bucks a pop so uh who knows ticketed spaces interesting stuff who knows what's going to happen but uh this image is available right now at my patreon patreon.com forward slash len also at my online store len peralta store dot com and you can watch me every week on twitch.tv forward slash len for all that you can watch me put this together live and actually help uh me put it together just like some of the people in the chat room did so thank you very much for that thank you len great stuff is always tickets i mean you know they had it right in front of them how does twitter not pick that up yeah also thanks to patrick martin for being with us today patrick where can people keep up with the rest of your work because you're a busy man avxl.com is is always a good place uh that is the podcast house with robert here at about home theater and audio or just go over to the twitters and look for at patrick norton excellent we are live on this show monday through friday for 30 p.m eastern 2030 utc find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live rich and i are back on monday and we be joined by nate langson talk to you then and have a great weekend this week's episodes of daily tech news show was created by the following people host producer and writer tom merits host producer and writer sarah lane executive producer booker roger chang producer writer and host rich truffleino video producer and twitch producer joe kunz associate producer anthony lemos spanish language host writer and producer dan compost news host writer and producer intern dr nicole ackerman's social media producer and moderator joe zoe dederlin our mods beatmaster w scottis one bio cow capt kipper and jack shitt mod and video hosting by dan christiansen video feed by shanway music and art provided by martin bell dan luders moustafa a a cast and creative ass starts a cast ad support from great trace gainer patreon support from steven brown contributors for this week's show includes scott johnson justin robert young and patrick norton guests on this week's show included gen cutter and rob demillo live art performed by lenn peralta and thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible this show is part of the frog pants network frog pants network get more shows like this at frog pants dot com diamond club hopes you have enjoyed this bro


Making policies that affect people serving around the world could be hard to do from the office in Washington. That's why Chief of Naval Personnel, Admiral Bill Moran came to Naval Air Station Signela to speak directly to the service members about new policies and hear their concerns about what is and isn't working. Moran discussed the modernization of personnel policies, retention tools, and explained how the Navy intends to empower its talent and leadership to maintain a ready workforce. Moran also took time to re-enlist seven sailors during his visit. Bill's morale. If you think about it, I mean Chief of Naval Personnel talking about retention, having people re-enlist part of his day. Moran thanked the sailors and assured them that their concerns would be addressed in Washington. From Naval Air Station Signela, I'm Petty Officer Sean Hillier.


Hello everyone and welcome back to enter the ether of the podcast all about the upcoming third person mobile ethereal clash of souls I'm your host the man goose joining me as always my friend and co-host jelly knees. How you doing jelly? Fantastic man goose happy to be here. There's a point where I think I'm gonna start hearing your intro in my sleep Yeah, it's like every time you start it like I can already know the entire thing like what as it's coming up And so it's just like second nature now That's how I greet people in life too like What's up everybody? I'm the man goose you are awesome and welcome to the dollar general store my Should be a Walmart greeter with that kind of attitude. All right Every five seconds you do it all day. You get really good at it real fast. Hello everyone and welcome to Wendy's Like do you work here? You have to work on your outros if you want that job You got the intro fine, but the outros that's where it's gonna be like Bye everyone. Thanks. Thanks for coming to Walmart. I don't buy food My Outro if I worked at Wendy's oh So the weekend has passed the guys ended a little early the the open weekend. I know When the servers first went up there was like already a record amount of games being played according to skifter So I think you guys got a lot more people in than you than you expected at first. So That's good news and bad news because the back end didn't quite hold up There were several patches throughout to help people get into matches. I'll tell you right now I had zero problem getting into matches myself But that's good to hear But yeah, so from what I've been told the basically when they turned on the servers and Instantly hit the game cap that we have had in the past Yeah, and so it just bam within 10 minutes We were at max game capacity there and so yeah, then it turned into a oh, okay We've got more people than expected right now like quickly turning things on and getting everything else ready to go Which is a good problem to have to be sure right and the point of these tests is to further scale things up right in and So we had the first one where we got in and dated had issues with the back end had to pull it down They're the second one where we were able to last her out both for Saturday and Sunday and Had very minimal downtime to reset back end or apply patch whatever it may be So then we scaled it up again this time now we have more players Because of that and then so now it's just getting that next each the rung of the ladder basically moving on up. I Should say I had zero problems logging in I did and when the servers first went live. I did have problems getting a match but um After that initial patch, I didn't have any Any issues sweet had a lot of fun with the game though games need to be performing well Mm-hmm One complaint I got and this is something I've noticed too and I don't notice it on everybody's system though Like I've watched other people play and everything looks crystal clear, but it looks a little grainy on my end I've noticed that in a lot of your YouTube videos that it looks Not not your YouTube videos, but ethereal's YouTube videos the game looks a little bit grainy Do you know what that's all about? So that's something we're actually trying to track down is we believe that there's a post process somewhere that is Working inconsistently and so when it when it works it looks fine when it doesn't you that's when you get that grainy look to it but it each post process that's on the map Has like 500 different settings and they it could be two settings interacting with each other it could be one that's just on when it should be off And so it's we're constantly trying to look for and go through those settings trying to find what that is So I don't have an exact answer for you But it is definitely something we're looking for to try and hunt down to get rid of as soon as possible Okay, that's good because I would like to see that in the next um Because like like I said, I've seen the game it is even on my pc has played crystal clear without any of that Grayness so I know it's capable of it and there was no drop in fps or anything when it when it was clear like that Um, I think it's mainly noticeable on marina with her hair Hmm. Mm-hmm the texturing on her hair. Yeah But that's about that's about it. I had some fun marina games. I'll tell you what That's good man for a guy that hated marina. I know like really come around makes me happy to hear that um and that's Because the new map is right around the corner as well Where a lot of the changes or fixes that we're applying to like post processes on the current map We'll go forward onto that map as well. And so it's just Because part of it is finding if we find the issue now, we don't have to worry about it when it comes time Right to transition over to the new map. It's just a automatic fix Another thing I would like to see before the next one is um, you guys did do the tutorials which were great The youtube ones. I would love to see something in game Um, that's one of the complaints. I keep another complaint. I've seen in the past and I've seen uh in the present is That there's a such a steep learning curve for ethereal Like we've talked about this before and it really is a huge learning curve And like and then I mean the the the elephant in the room is over primes closed beta test was this weekend as well And they also similarly shut down due to some matchmaking issues shut down early, but um Like that game is I wouldn't say it's simple Like if you're if you've never played on mobile before you're going to be confused But walking into over prime is a hell of a lot easier than walking into ethereal Absolutely And that's something that I've been Trying to work on of what the best way to do that is and so I actually want your feedback mangoes is if I don't want to go the fault route in that when you start the game for the first time It is a mandatory video that you have to sit and watch because that Feels bad Right and there's nothing worse if right if if somebody comes up to you and says go do the dishes What is the least likely thing you want to do in that moment? Go do the dishes right? So if you're saying sit and watch this tutorial What are they going to do they're going to pull out their phone and they're going to scroll their phone for 10 minutes Yeah, wait for the tutorial to be over and go on there with their day Um, so I don't want to make it feel forced But the thought process I've had on it is when you first log into the game for the first time You get a pop-up that says hey, we really recommend that you watch these tutorials And and a link to them a takes you to the separate page whatever it may be But there is the opt out if you should choose to then opt out of watching those things How do you feel about that concept mangoes? um I like that concept I think it could be a little more robust When you said pop-ups what I immediately thought of I've seen this in other games is you could turn it on or off But it's like tutorial pop-ups throughout the game that pop up like on the side of your screen like As you're passing red buff or something a pop-up would come up If you kill this minion and take the buff then it'll give you this this and this I think or like a pop-up on your screen when a tropos spawns like 20 minutes of tropos is spawn He always spawns at 20 minutes so people know that Yeah, I definitely think that's a good thing to add that someone could toggle on or off You'd definitely be able to toggle it on or off because you wouldn't want that shit Maybe present your first like three games and then auto toggle off or whatever it may be Um something like that is actually I think that's a great idea Yeah, I think that would be good You see stuff with like that in legal legends when you first start playing legal legends Oh, really pop-ups like that that say like remember at 15 minutes whatever happens remember at this Yeah, so I think that's a great idea Yeah, I think um World of Warcraft is where I first saw it and then I ended up turning that shit off But yeah, it was very helpful in the beginning And yeah, that that helps a lot and I think that's a great idea to Implement for those kind of features. Yeah, I don't know how hard that would be Yeah, not my department. So I can't say like that'll be in there tomorrow. No big deal Because now I will have programming knocking down my door at that moment the second this goes out if I said that I'll tell you another thing that I learned during the playtest is that I hate Fumo funky monkey So much so much.  I learned it every time I I'm a learning computer though like that last time he gank he went he even told me he said I went and took your purple buff Then I went and ganked you on blue.   You're learning. He can be taught ladies and gentlemen That's my favorite character about right now by the way is lia lia I got it. It's so fun a double kill off of one dive from the sky And that was just the most satisfying thing ever it was a noxious and marina running away under their tower And they were both really low health and I'm like And that will both of them I mean we've talked about it in the past too being able to still have fun when you're losing I think is a huge huge thing to have right, uh, for instance, I mean With the over prime test angus you and I had a couple games Where we were losing and it almost stopped being fun because of it. It was impressive and it lasted forever Yeah, and so it's It's really cool to see that ethereal at least has the Essence of that concept if not the full concept of even when behind you can still have fun playing the game Yeah, I think a big difference between over prime and ethereal in that aspect was Spires responding in ethereal felt right um And it felt like it was it was a way at a an actual catch-up mechanic for the team that was behind Mm-hmm inhibitors responding in over prime felt like it was just making the game drag on Mm-hmm So yeah, and I don't know I don't know the complexity of what makes one better than the other But it felt like shit and over prime felt great in ethereal Yeah, and that's absolutely I think it's a balancing for one thing It's a map design thing as well. The spires in ethereal are significantly closer to the end game Right, you're not running for 30 seconds to then go from the spire or the inhibitor to the core, right? But overall I think ethereal's games are more consistent in their game time In that they usually fall in that that 25 to 35 minute sweet spot the vast majority of the time Sure, you're gonna get longer ones or slightly shorter ones um But I think that was something we noticed as well as the the over prime games consistently go over that game time It felt like and so it's good to see the more consistent from ethereal I wouldn't say they consistently go but Oh, no, there's like less of a spread Like it's in over prime. It's either you end the game in 20 minutes or it drags on for an hour Like it was one or the other there was no like Maybe a 40 minute game or something like that.  You're in it for the long haul Because yeah, no kidding. Yeah I don't know why I think is Once people get to fill full build. There's just no way to end the game and over prime when With the expanse expansiveness of the lanes in ethereal You could push one lane hardcore and then get away And and have that lane push and then move to another lane whereas Over prime you really couldn't do that. So maybe that's what it is just the The the size of the map for ethereal is actually more conducive to ending a game early Rather than the small map of over prime Yeah And I think a benefit of ethereal is even with the large map you saw of the trolls So if your team or sorry the guardians now, they're different. Yeah. Yeah, we did talk about that forever Yeah, we could talk about that for sure But the guardians having the guardians in there your team can control those rotations In terms of like if you wanted to be on fire lane and transition over to ice Your team has the control if you have the guardians that you can do that and you right There's more opportunities to create space for your team to win the game There's also the wyvern wyvern mechanic where Yeah, they took two of the wyverns, but You take that final wyvern and you're good Every time I have to record a video and I have to mention the wyverns I have to like actively sit there and be like, don't say wyverns. Don't say wyverns. Don't say wyverns I looked it up. Both are correct. Both pronunciations are correct Yeah, but the last thing I need is comments down there going like it's pronounced wyvern Yeah, but dirty dirty. He'll be down there ripping me a new one if he hears me say wyverns But it's the same if you say wyvern people are like, why don't you say that like why when it's a wyvern? You're always going to get it. You're always going to get it But yeah, the changed up a couple of the uh assets So the troll which I kind of looked like a melted crayon is uh gone now replaced by um Some kind of weird rock dude That's uh a lot cooler looking and functions better.  Yeah, dude I watched a clip of windu Of his stream during the last test of of that happening and I was dying laughing just watching it So i'm gonna miss those guys for sure. Yeah, but it is I think the guardians are definitely a welcome change Uh like the melted crayon is gone The functionality is better. They look cooler overall I think the the chonker being like a dual tailed scorpion bifurcated Tailed scorpion. Yeah the scorpion and then there's the weird spider thing spider crab nonsense and nope Dude, both those things are way more intimidating than the old red buff from paragon. Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah that thing is uh pretty cool looking. I was impressed. I was impressed. Is that do you guys make that yourself? Or is that uh Like an epic asset those are epic assets. Yeah, okay We do have plans to eventually create all of our own assets for the jungle camps But for now those are epic assets. Okay, right on and part of that was To really phase out the last of the paragon assets that we use as placeholders Because we want to create that separation, right?  Yeah. Yeah.  I think that took a lot of people by surprise that also took a lot of people by surprise That it wasn't a paragon remake like I think they clicked a lot of people Yeah, I've definitely got to do I mentioned this on the partner panel one of the my favorite comments that made my brain short circuit was Is it over problem the one being made by predecessor? And I was like Yeah, but a lot of people seem to think that ethereal is a paragon remake and it's not at all and um And now we kind of have created that final separation Where there's nothing in there that you're going to look at and be like that was paragon and Right and kind of separate that out and they look good. The assets look good I'm zero problem with you guys using free epic assets. You don't have to build everything From the ground up like every game out there uses assets. You know what I mean I mean, for instance, man, we've played bpm. Bpm is almost entirely epic assets Specifically paragon assets and it's a great game. Who cares, right? Yeah, yeah, doesn't matter And a lot of people enjoy that game that have never even heard of paragon. Yep I see my friends on steam that never played paragon like pick up bpm and I'm like, hey, look at that Yeah, um This is way off topic from a theory, but I like to see more games use the paragon assets and in fun ways That'd be neat I think we've seen a couple come out, but the the ones that use them Seem to like be really sketchy sometimes. Yeah, which is weird I guess because they're high quality assets for free. It's one of those like Just throw it in the game and it looks good. Yeah Uh I had a um a good conversation with toran over the weekend. We were talking about How like there's a lot it seems like a lot of people have never even heard of mobas never played Amobas are are being attracted to ethereal and like trying amobas out for the first time Which uh, wow, that's uh, it's a hell of a moment to cut your teeth on but uh But we we were talking about the reasons for that and he mentioned, um Maximilian dude, I don't know if you ever heard of that content creator. He mainly does fighting games Yeah Yeah, well he was talking about like the main thing that draws people into a new fighter is interesting character design And I think you guys have that in spades and I think that's what's Pulling people in because you got a little something for everybody there Yeah, and honestly these are just scratching the surface of what's to come with characters Yeah, so we've got we've got quite a few characters already modeled and designed completely right there just in the phases of Creating kits visual effects animations all that kind of stuff Right and the character models from here on out get nuts So like it's one of those things of like if you're looking for interesting character design It's coming like we have some now, but they're really coming as well Yeah, which is really cool Somebody said they wanted Grogdor to be bigger.  I thought I'll think people like realized like looking at that Yeah, and having him roll at you is going to be terrifying Like he may not be all that tall. I mean he's taller than most myths, but he's just big. He's like he's on all fours He's like a molten ramping Maybe Yeah, that's gonna be fun So, um, I think so important things that we that I've been looking at today, especially Yeah, now that the weekend's over is Like the metrics of what we were seeing so we saw like almost instantly hit that game cap initially, which was great to see um And but looking at like account signups and all of that People that just people that created an account and validated so the people that didn't validate their account are not included in this number We had over 1400 account validations What in the last week? nice Which blew my mind looking at the figure.  What are you what? Like that's insane to create to create that many accounts and then actually have people go to their email and validate it Because that means the non-validated accounts increase that number which is still insane Um, we saw just in the 24 hours that the download was up or a little less than 24 hours that the download for the game was up before The server's been live We saw over 500 downloads just in that 24 hour period. That's awesome. Which is again huge, right? And that shows the interest is definitely increasing and it's definitely picking up there. So which is really cool to see from our Yeah You guys are kind of um ground level right now and things are starting to rise Seems like we were below we were subterranean for such a long time now. We're at ground level now It's kind of start building up and uh get that word of mouth out And it's it's crazy, right? Like it's especially you and I who have been doing the show for a year and a half at this point almost Right to see The changes that have come and like all those things and like I said being subterranean and now finally being at that Ground level where things are starting to happen Is really cool to see I just from the outside perspective even not even as an employee I mean even not just not just the show we you and I have been Very interested in tracking ethereal for Like what three four years now something like that My first used to video was an ethereal video There you go It's crazy.  Like Uh-huh Absolutely, and I think that's something we can Coordinate to an extent or in similarity to overprime because we've seen the same thing from them They were kind of silent for a long time But when they started going it just scaled upwards from there And I think we're not quite at the same extent that they are in that But we're in that same train of that we're just constantly moving now and just getting things down the hill I kind of wonder How many more accounts would have been made and and how many more people would have been trying to play ethereal this weekend if overprime wouldn't have Had their closed beta test the exact same weekend Which is one of those impossibilities unfortunately, but it's To me it's a good and bad thing Because if we hit cap right as we started Right with the players we did have already Right. I'm glad it wasn't Worse Yeah Right on the other hand, of course, I want more players, right? There's no question about that I want more players want more engagements across the board, especially as part of the marketing scene That is literally the like the thing I want most in this world, right? um But it's gonna be really interesting to see Barring any other people having an open weekend the same time we do Uh, it's really interesting to see for the next one What what's the figures show from then out as well? I was that's another question I have what what happens What happens if you guys announce your weekend and then two weeks later our predecessors like We're gonna have an open weekend on this weekend I I don't have a good answer for you. I think it'll depend a lot on how we feel On if it was predecessor, we probably need to look at potentially moving. Yeah, because They're the 800 pound gorilla in the room, right and they'll toss their weight around it means nothing right and so I think we'd have to probably at least consider Changing weekends, but until it happens. I couldn't give you a straight up. This is what the plan would be right in that regard I definitely there was definitely some talk about it With overprime doing their same that same thing But overprime doesn't have the same weight that predecessor has at the same time, right? I think they they gained some weight this weekend. Oh, I agree But uh, yeah, yeah, they they still don't have anywhere near the the popularity the predecessor carries, but yeah, um But still that's just the paragon community like those that sway in those numbers ethereal's drawing is building up slower, but You know more surely with numbers outside of the paragon community. So that's That's good. Yeah, absolutely. And that's Overall, I think this weekend has been encouraging for us to see that that growth is possible Right, despite it not going as well as we had hoped for sure um There definitely was the silver lining there of Seeing those account sign up seeing the hitting the cap initially all of those good things as well, right? I think it's also I wouldn't say it's a good thing But like predecessor had back-end problems had to had to close down their their close beta You guys had back-end problems had to close down your open weekend Overprime had back-end problems had to close like this is something that people are going to start expecting now, which is Both good and bad like they're not going to be as critical of it I think going forward now that they've seen so many of these however, I did see one comment somebody somebody's like Oh another one is fun You know, but uh, I mean that could be like it's not a good thing that they're that they're that they're uh Not going the distance, but uh, I think it's it's probably a good thing that people will probably be a little more understanding now That they see how difficult it is Yeah, it shows it's not necessarily like an incompetency Right, it's something that can be an issue for all kinds of people And it's it can be the same issue for completely different reasons at the same time too. So it's right Which is yeah, like you said, it's a good and bad thing, right?  I think like I think too many people are like Think that everybody owes them something like I've been tracking this game for so long. You owe me the opportunity to play it. No Nobody owes anybody anything Like this is just maybe it didn't go as well as you wanted it to but it You know, that's like saying that The beer somebody gave you doesn't taste as good as you wanted it to like it was a free beer, man. Just take it And and I can say right at least for me personally as part of the marketing team When I see comments like that I I guarantee you I am just as disappointed in whatever the thing is. Yeah, right like it's It's not falling on deaf ears.  Like I'm like it should have been working. What are we doing? So it's not I'm in the boat with you guys, right that if something is going wrong or if you're running into an issue I apologize deeply because I wish I could just snap my fingers and fix it Um, but it's definitely something we want to be better in the future Yeah, and it's just hard and it's hard to see comments like that because you want it to be so good You sit there and you're like, I I want it to be so good so bad like oh man Oh Well, I mean I had fun all weekend I split my time between ethereal and over prime as you know I need to I need to I need to play them all your content creator. I got it. Yeah But uh, yeah, it was a good time. I really enjoyed the the games that I played in ethereal Should be posting some videos pretty soon Sweets I know we did it before man goose with the other one. So let's run through the Survey again and just kind of get some some of your thoughts Yeah, some of your thoughts of how you felt about it all Uh, how did you hear about ethereal youtube? The amount of amount of youtube answers i've seen on this question But they're like Google forums is weird in that it doesn't it makes capitalization a different answer. Oh really So there's like 17 different youtubes because people type weird and it's just like what why are we The y and the t They go all over again Uh, you already talked about the having fun in ethereal. So we are good there What did you think of the field of view man goose? I think the field of view is good. I did have a few problems with lia where after I would land I would be like I would just the top of my head would be at the very bottom of my Screen and I had to like jump to to fix that but that was more of a bug than a field of view problem But I think overall the field of view was really good and um casting abilities felt uh better this time Okay, cool last time Yeah, and that's due to some of those camera effects That were implemented to help kind of make it more adjustable and more unique to each myth as well Uh, you said you loved lia the most so we're good there How do you feel about items going into this test? Do you think items were too strong too weak just right? I think the items are just right. They are very strong But you want your end item to be very strong. You don't want it to just do absolutely nothing um I do like that almost all the items are passive instead of active Because that would just be too much for me to handle my brain couldn't take a bunch of active items On top of everything else that you got to consider in ethereal. So I think the items are just right Yeah, and I think The important thing why we went with the passives is because there are those extra buttons You have to press right the extra ability for one thing the class ability and that kind of stuff so All in all we actually only have I think it's one or two button presses over a traditional moba with active items So it's Very very similar But just because of the the daunting nature of like you have an extra ability and a class ability and all this Rather than just like and you're familiar and you a little spike shoots forward like congrats, right? Like it's uh, I think that makes it feel different But it is very similar in that regard and that's why a lot of those are passives is to not add An extra seven buttons on top of that. Yeah, and I appreciate that And there was something I was gonna tell you oh, I was gonna ask you it's not on the survey But I just thought of it How do you feel about progression of items in terms of like By the end of the game if you have four items, do you think that's good bad? Do you think you get them too quickly too short or too slowly? Again, I think it's just right. Um, I don't think you should reach full build every single game Like people want to reach full build. I think but I don't the repercussions of that are Kind of terrible because once you reach full build it feels bad that you have nothing to do with your gold But I think that the progression of the the the The economy is good Like I think the economy is good. You get your items at a decent pace and um Yeah, again, I don't think you need to be full build every single match If you can win the game with four items, then that should be cool Full build should be an ideal to shoot for And like you think it would be awesome if I could do this But if you never reach that then that's fine too Yeah And I think it's nice because you can reach full build if you get crazy fed on like malaya Right because you're getting extra gold and you're getting the kill gold Constantly that you can get to that full build a little bit faster Whereas if you have everybody reach full build by 20 minutes, let's say Right that that impact of her being strong falls off significantly faster at the same time. Right All right, and then how did you feel about the pace of ethereal? We already kind of talked about this a little bit, but I think pace is good cool Uh, we talked about accessibility information Mangus is an absolute pro at ethereal. No need to worry there And so the big question What do you feel ethereal is ready for the next stage of consistent release? Why or why not again though? So I still don't think it's ready for the next consistent stage of release. I still don't have general chat in there I think that's good. Absolutely necessary And I think some sort of tutorial is going to be needed to onboard new players before you Have a widespread release I think that's going to be the most important thing because people just get confused by ethereal man Absolutely And that's something that we're Like we talked about earlier right looking for looking for suggestions on Working with some of our own feet things that we want to implement for that Just trying to make it a more accessible game for all across the board. Yeah Like once you get that wrapped up, then yeah go for it I would like to see more heroes more myths added before you go for like a full one Release I think people will get bored playing the same myths over and over again Yeah Yeah, and that's I mean we're that's like one of the higher priorities for us is cranking out more characters Yeah, because seven characters is just not enough. We know it the community knows it Everybody knows it you need more characters than that to at least give some variety to players, right?  So it's of course, that's a super high priority for us is getting more characters in the game Yeah I think after that that you guys would be good, but yeah, there's there's still more work to be done before this Goes into early access. I believe Already making us any final thoughts on your experiences weekend. Yay had fun Sounds so excited No, that's a great time. Like I mean we laid it out all throughout here It's a fun game and great pacing. I mean the map seems huge, but it's not that big once you get a feel for it just um Just onboarding new players is going to be your your toughest, uh toughest challenge Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely It's all gonna say man I don't have anything extra on that either. So all right, so Bye All right, before we close it out, uh, jelly you got anything you want to plug Switch.tv slash jelly niece, uh marvellous monday eight o'clock p.m. Mountain time Who won the last one? Who won the last one lily lily won the last one. What I know What's your pick you missed it because you were too busy playing other things. Oh, well, I'm sorry It's fine. Whatever dude. No, it's fine man. You spirited was there stunt was there, but it's fine Uh, what's she pick what game she picked? I have no idea Oh, you still don't know. I think maybe dream daddy. I don't quite remember. Yes, please We might be revisiting dream daddy. I'll have to double check. I got emotionally invested into that game and I want to know where it goes Perfect. I'm glad to hear it Somebody to bring back dream daddy for a while. Uh, I think I'm gonna try and stream some more probably fault because it's uh the one that's playable but We'll see I might do some indoor lilies. We'll see what we're doing Yeah Yeah It's going to about wrap it up for this week folks. Uh, I hope you if you guys did get in I hope you enjoyed it. Um, let us know your experiences in the comments below with ethereal What you think should be improved because this is in a pre alpha state. This is your time to affect how the game um improves in the future and uh Take it as that. Don't take it as this is a finished product. Take this as Um clay that you can mold into something that you really like But um, I think that is going to be about it. I hope you all join us as we enter the ether Bye food Would be my new outro for everything man Goose Special shout out to channel members foolish blood hunter jelly needs me. I'll mix for men stunt farith and raven


Now, Kobano will come flying forward through the middle, finds Mitrovic to the left, inside the area, Mitrovic onto his right foot, clearance by Steve Cook once, and then twice on the six-yard area, almost as if he was a goalkeeper, Steve Cook, throwing and putting his body on the line, keeping his arms out of the way, incredible stuff from the cherries captain. Unbelievable, fantastic blocks. Absolutely saving the goal from being scored. There's a referee, restarts the second half, Solankee inside the box, Doric Solankee! Number 17 for the season, right in front of the travelling cherry supporters who are going wild away to our left, Fullham Mill, Bournemouth one. That was Jordan, do you know what, that is a set play. I've seen them do that four or five times now, right from the kickoff, exactly the same sequence of passes, and then the last one they tried to put Solankee in, and he's unbelievable, what a goal, what a start.