Welcome back, those were snippets of the President's broadcast of yesterday as well as the assentum to the 2024 budget. Now, improving dynamics in the oil sector will provide tailwinds to Nigeria's economy this year. The 650,000-barre-up-a-day dangote refinery located near Lagos received its first cruise shipments last month, indicating that fuel production will commence in the first quarter of this year. Now, for decades, Nigeria has struggled to meet its domestic fuel needs through local refining due to underinvestment in its refineries, with mineral fuel imports having reached roughly 40% of total imports in 2022. While the dangote refinery will not reach its maximum production level this year, it will still significantly reduce Nigeria's dependency on imported fuel. International Finance and Economic Analysts, Mokhtar, Mohamed joins me now to discuss further. Many thanks for joining me, Mokhtar. Thank you for having me. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you. Let's quickly examine some of the key takeaways from the President's speech and other aspects. According to the President, the primary objective on his agenda is ensuring food security and reducing food inflation. From what we know, the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that the nation's food inflation is at an alarming rate of 32.84%. The President said to ensure constant food supply, security, and affordability that they would step up plan to cultivate 500,000 hectares of farmland across the country to grow maize, rice, wheat, millet, and other staple crops. They also launched addresses in farming with about 120,000 hectares of land in Jigawa State last November under the National Weed Development Program. What do you think of this rollout? Nigerians were actually almost so hungry in the year 2023. How do we address food security for 2024, Mokhtar? I like the way you put it. How do we show food security? That's what security always comes. So for us in Nigeria and as a standard, to have food security is to have security so that the farmers will be able to go to farm. All this policy is a good policy, but if you don't have farmers going to go to farm because of insecurity, you cannot achieve it. We look at the states that are the food basket, that are the Northeast, and most of the states are suffering from insecurity challenges. So as long as the President is trying to address all critical issues that he said, I think the most important one is bringing security back. Once you bring security back, security is a foreign of prosperity. So once you have security, then the people will have confidence to go out to do their business and they will start prospering. So listening to the President's speech, I mean, it's all about talk, talk, talk. It has been like that since the President came in. You talk, this is the policy work. This is what I wanted to do. The only policy that the President have hit the ground running with is the removal of subsidy, the fruit in the currency. Every other policy they have told us about attractive investment bringing time exchange rate by December. Pretty no one has worked this thus far. So I think for me, they need to do a lot, a lot, a lot of work in terms of making the award reaction is more or less becoming like the people want to hear me. This is what I'm going to talk to them. The speech of Mr. President incident does not come up with details of what he wants to do. The only details you could see the President came out with is in the area of when he said the security, they will improve the security apparatus and that. But every other thing was just like, let me just see them. After I seen it, then we could see them and begin to have a look for solutions to it. All right. Now, for tax and fiscal policy reforms, the President said he's administration will reform the tax and fiscal policies. You said specifically that the President has not really said the specific word, but he said they want to enable business environment to thrive. And he also added that he will not hesitate to remove any clog hindering local and foreign investment in the country. What do you really think we should do differently? We've always talked about widening the tax net and then making sure that the poor people are not overtaxed. How do you see the outlook for taxation and the fiscal policy for this year, 2024? I think for taxation, I'm a little bit hopeful, maybe because of the presidential committee on taxation murdered by somebody that knows what is doing for all these participants. So maybe I'm excited on that and I'm waiting for the White Paper to come out or the report of that committee to come out there. We'll see how we'll take it from there. Secondly, when the President talked about businesses, that was a good one. But again, it didn't tell us how they are going to achieve this. When it comes to SMEs, when it comes to business, all are based on demand and supply. So you do your own work, demand and supply, we take care of it, of itself. So there are good, like I skip saying, good speeches on the course of them, I mean, businesses and that. And I think the most important thing that can happen in the tax net is widening the tax brackets. And when I say widening the tax, there's not taxing already taxed. But I'm saying widening the tax bracket, now we begin to move to the informal sector. The thing is that up to this moment, we will not be able to absorb the informal sector. And until we do that, there will not be able to catch a large number of people that are blaming the economy. So what the government should do is try to come out with innovation with strategies on how to get the informal sector to begin to pay tax. Let that woman that sells Pepe be wanting to pay tax. Let that woman that does business by the roadside wants to pay tax. So that for me is going to be the game changer. Not just widening the tax bracket, taxing the tax, oh, you don't want to tax the poor. So those are a lot of things that the president needs to do. I hope in terms of physical policy, seeing that no matter what you do in the monetary side, when the physical side does not synergize with you, then that's a challenge. And I hope this is a message of how we change in those areas. Let's talk about implementation of the new leaving wage for workers. The president also affirmed his commitment to increase the leaving wage of workers this year. According to him, economic aspirations and the material well-being of the poor, the most vulnerable and the working people shall not be neglected. Muktawe been talking about minimum wages since late the fourth quarter of last year. We know what happened with the labor strikes and every other thing. What is the leaving wage on them? How do you really see this working out this year and the capacity of the federating states? Do you think they can actually follow suit? Let's start with the last question. Ordinary, every state would have to do its own minimum wage. Lagos state should not be collecting the minimum wage. Somebody in Giga or Kano state, Lagos state workers. Those are different in terms of cost of living. If you look at the Bureau of Statistics report, you'll realize cost of living in some places are higher than cost of living in these other places. Now, the whole point of the government is going to set up a minimum wage. That doesn't mean that's where it will stand. So the state will be forced to pay them. And I don't think any state should complain about paying minimum wage this year because again, their income has drastically increased. States are sharing one of the best interests of income they've ever said before. And that was because of the removal of subsidies. So I think there's still a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot to be done in that aspect to make sure that they have a living minimum wage. And like you say, what is the living minimum wage? If you see a minimum wage that would be above inflation and pressure, that is the living minimum wage. Whether by minimum wage, you'll be able to attract inflation. I mean to be able to address inflation in my purchasing power. And also I still have more, I still have some also left to tackle other issues. So for me, it's not just the same like I keep saying, the government kept saying this is what they want to do, what they want to do. But they have not been able to do any of those policies yet. They come up with one excuse or the other. I hope this could just be the game changer. All right, let's talk about Tempe Trillium. There's been so much hope on the Dangote since last year. Modular, Port Hacquard and the Dangote Refinery are set to begin operation this year. The president stated that the local refineries, that's the Port Hacquard Refinery as well as the privately owned one. That's the Dangote Refinery. We all come on stream today. It's as though we are putting so much hope on Dangote for this year. How do you see this? Is this a civil line in Mukta? Will this change all the issues that we've had in the downstream sector? It will change it Justin. It will change it. It will change it. I'm confident it will change it. It's going to have Dangote Refinery come on stream. And so we are going to see a lot of activities under space. Job, direct job, indirect job. So we're so excited looking forward to it. Hopefully we don't have any issues again because they have started saying that by December they will start distributing PMS. And I mean, these are others have not seen that yet. Hopefully, maybe we will see that later before the end of this month. Again, Dangote Refinery, like I said, is one of the largest refinery in the world. So definitely we expect it to hit some capacity, but it will not start with hitting maximum capacity in terms of production, but as time goes on it will. But what is Dangote Refinery saying they will concentrate on is to make sure they have PMS supplied to the Nigerian market. Now, would that bring the cost of PMS down? In the short term, it will bring the cost down, but not relative to how we want it. But the long term, when market competition comes in, I'm happy that the damn Dangote is thinking of coming home with this refinery. That's the center NMPC is saying that Potakor Refinery will be ready. And Potakor Refinery is closer to the base than moving cheap from Potakor to Lagos for Dangote Refinery. And we're moving it to LMM Potakor too. It's going to be a good thing to look at. I think for me, the best thing that can happen to us this year is to get those two refinery working in optimal levels. And then they will reduce our dependence on importation of fuel, which if you look at from the data from natural fuel statistics, that's the one that take the last chunk of the effects in the economy. So this would be a very good one for us. All right. One thing that Nigerians are still talking about, you know, each time is some power electricity, all of that. The president also promised steady power supply through Power Installation Project. Okay. So Mukta, I just want to get your thought concerning that because we are tired of hearing upneppa all the time and all of that. So how do we really just go about getting steady power supply from this year and beyond? I think steady power supply will do more in both administratively, technically, because the administrative part is to get the right players to come and want to have licenses. And the technical part is for them to have the technical partner. And then the financial part, you don't have the financial muscles. If you look at the privatization that we've had before, most of these three aspects are missing, and that's why we are still challenging our system upneppa. Because the finance is not there, the technical know-how is not there. The administrative regulatory framework is not as deep as we want it to be. So when you look at these three factors, those are the three factors that can actually transmit power to our households and also be a game changer. But one of these factors are not being addressed by the government. You cannot see any result. Why is government holding on to distribution? Why is government wanting to be the sole one to distribute? And government say, okay, we are distributing. We have about more than 10,000 megawatt, but we can only impart seven. So how much, as administratively, be able to enforce some policies on the discourse to be able to start maximizing the numbers or receiving all that they have for. And what they need to do is to get the technical partner to work on their transmission and all the things we can do. So they see a lot of work to be done. But like I said, it seems to be saying all the right things every time, but it doesn't seem to be doing all the right things always. All right. So Mukta, I don't know how much dollars we are able to amass for 2023. Because if you have so much dollars right now, you're like the big man because of the whole forex regime issue and all of that. But let's project for 2024. I don't have so much dollars, as it is. What should we be doing about our forex regime, the issues of inflation, and our monetary policy generally, as we round off, what should we be looking at for this year 2024? Monetary policy, deal with inflation, deal with exchange rate volatility. Then if you deal with inflation, price will stabilize. So and to deal with inflation, you need to have track effects because over 90 percent of what comes when we bring it out of the show of this country. So we need to do that. We need to do that. The monetary quality, you need to step in and step in on time because if you don't, then exchange rate is going to be a big, big, big, big problem. Come here. If you look at what Bloomberg have already said that they expect our Nairat to be one of the worst performing currency in 2024, even after being one of the worst performing currency in 2023.  And hopefully, I think the government should channel most of its energy into that space to bring in that necessary stability that we want here, that space. All right. I just want to squeeze in the final, I promise you it's the final question. Specifically, the real sector, the manufacturing, what do you see, what do you project and what should we be doing differently this year? I think that sector is still having tough this year in the area of if you don't create stability in FX rates, that sector was the worst hit sector last year. And if you don't create that stability, it will still be the worst hit sector this year. So what are we going to do? They need to work as much as possible to create stability in that space. That is the only thing that sector is looking for now, stability. Once you create that stability, it will address a lot of issues. So I think we see, we all know what to do. They need to create stability in that space for me. That is all we need to talk about. Create that stability. Let's for once have a stable relative B between the Naira and the dollar. How far can we go this year, Justin? It all depends on two key things. Number one, the multilefinery is coming up soon. So the region on FX, we go down based on the data from Nigerian Bureau of Statistics. So that could have drive down the exchange rate. Number two, attract foreign investors back to Nigeria by that portfolio of foreign direct investors. Number three, let the exchange rate merge. One that is major in the exchange rate. Nigeria, that's what I would rather remit through the bank. But once there's no measure through the exchange rate, they will always look for me to send that money for that money to be exchanged in the parallel market. So the government need to make stability. And once you create stability, you have disrupted the system of the currency, what I call trying to get our economics on the economic term that we use. People, just currency, they just try to, without any fundamentals. So currency speculators, as you are able to get enough liquidity into the system, then you are able to deal with foreign currency speculators. When you deal with foreign currency speculators, when they get their hands on when they come into the system, rates will come down. And the next phase of it is how do you maintain that rate? All right. You need to consistently do these three things that you are doing to consistently put rates at that stable rate for a very long time. Thank you so much, Mukta. We just hope the government will have a listening ear and be able to just stabilize them, these critical sectors, and there's some points that you have made today. Many thanks for all of the insight. Would you appreciate them? Thank you, Justin, for having me. Yeah, our pleasure. And that's the size of the show for today. I am Justin Acadone. Many thanks for being there. Bye for now.


Wel ydych chi'n gweithio, Corena, a dyma am fewn i fod y tîm bod, fod tynnu unrhyw o'r Corena i ymwneud ar y cwrtig, fewn ei fydda i fan ar gyfer Llywodraeth Yngrifreddymaeth Cymru. Pwysig yw dych chi gwybod i ddiweddwyd, ac y cwrdd fawr yn rhan fydd yn rhan sy'n gweithio eich rhan i ddweudio cwrdd o'i ddweud i rywun Hanf natuurlijk fel hyn yr ymwneud, felly mae'n ddweud iawn i dtwng mwyaf ar yr cwrddig. I was asked to say a few introductory words going into this development day. I've been coming to these since 2015, where many people in the room have been coming for much longer, particularly Celine, kicked this up many years ago. So, from my perspective, a few thoughts about why this community is special, and also what's changed since 2015, and I think that's summarised by this incredible banner here, and the theme of the climate emergency. So, what's special about this community, from my point of view, I've seen an immense commitment to climate justice, to taking action that provides material support, to build the resilience of the poorest people, and most vulnerable communities in the world, but also to enable them to take action as well on the mitigation part, and to be actors in confronting the climate emergency, as well as build resilience. It's a community largely of practitioners, but also the links to social movements, and it's about doing stuff on the ground, so it makes a difference in the most vulnerable communities, the communities at the front line of climate impacts. But it can also have an influence in the bigger negotiations. We've seen that many times through many agendas. So, it's kind of unique in that sense. Now, given these unique characteristics, what has changed since 2015? Well, I think in 2015 we were pretty optimistic, maybe on a bit of a high. I think if any of us had been told at that point that global greenhouse gas emissions would be 4% higher than they were then, we'd have been pretty impressed and pretty shocked. And of course, as that stop builds up, the ask to deal with it to hit 1.5 gets steeper. This fantastic artwork gives the carbon budget figures, which are now less than 10 years at current rates of emissions, to hit 1.5. And the recent UNEP emissions cap report gives the figure that global emissions have to drop by 7% per annum to give a fighting chance of hitting 1.5. Which we're in countries, of course, it's probably twice that, and it is an incredibly steep ask. The signals in the natural world, particularly perhaps for the icy and sea green land and Antarctica, but also the Arctic ice, are alarming.  So there's that element too. Climate finance still isn't doing the job it needs to do for the poorest countries and the poorest people, both in terms of value, but also in terms of how effective it is at providing meaningful support to the communities at the front line. In short, this adds up to the climate emergency, which I think is the summary of this banner. We shouldn't feel, I think, that the efforts in the Cops and events like this have failed or are futile. I think it's up that made a material difference in many ways. One way I would pick out is the Paris 1.5 degree target. The least of our countries played a huge role in getting that onto the Paris agenda. It was a much closer thing, and we'll probably remember that, that it came through. With that 1.5 degree target, we would have had the OBCC special report on 1.5, and I think if you look at social movements, that really supercharged them. It was critical that that was done. So it kind of supercharged the street level movements. The school strikes had started before. Extinction in the UK was just starting. The summer has moved into the US and started before. Many other global movements, but the 1.5 degree report has provided that global narrative. So that was a key thing that came out. In the end, it will be shifting the politics that makes a difference. If we're to get on track, we need to see government shift, we need to see the politics of climate change shift, and there are signs of that happening in some key countries. Some of the stuff in the US on the one side of the political spectrum about the Green New Deal genuinely can match the scale of the challenge. We're seeing similar things in the UK election happening later this week from some of the major political actors, and I think perhaps most strikingly the recent law in Denmark which provides a much stronger legal framework for urgent litigation that we've seen before. So for this community, what does being in climate emergency mean for us? For this community, how can we contribute? So let me just start with you starting thoughts to sort of guide some of the thinking here as a contribution. One question is how we can contribute to recognising the need for transformation of speed, which is one of the themes of this event on all fronts for mitigation and adaptation, for building resilience and also for climate finance. Does this phrase, winning slowly as the time is losing, we are starting to win in many areas, but we're not winning first enough, so it's that question that's been in this critical. How can we contribute also to getting serious, more serious about climate justice? That's a question of finance reaching the communities at the frontline dealing with the worst damages. It's also a question of starting to give meaningful shame forward to loss of damage to this critical element of the Paris Agreement that's been a struggle to get to a material point that we need to take forward. How can we contribute also to an enhanced ability to deal with the worst, to deal with extreme events which in some cases will get more frequent, but in most cases will get more serious, whether it's droughts, floods, cyclones, wildfires. There is that question of urgency there about improving our capacity for resilience in those events. How can we contribute also to making the realities of the climate crisis as it impacts the most vulnerable people in the world and the communities at the frontline in the poorest countries? How can we contribute to making that visible on a global scale? And finally, the most important thing involved is probably the shifting of the politics. This is a practitioner forum rather than sort of fundamentally an advocacy forum. But what can we do also to help build that momentum in the social movements on the streets, which in the end is the thing that will shift the politics and the Paris Agreement with its bottom-up structure I think we always recognise that. So it's not about trying to do everything ourselves but it's about thinking what does this change situation mean for developing climate days? How can we reflect the climate emergency in that thinking? And a final thought, which is that next year when we come 26 in Glasgow in the UK, obviously critical to have raised our mission in the New York after MDCs, obviously we're not yet there yet in terms of what that looks like and the way which Hamilton is shaping up for that particular G20. But there's a question I think again this year being for it, how can it best make its best contribution to meeting the challenge of COP26? Also something we can reflect on through the day. So thank you very much for hugely looking forward to the discussions here and again a final word of huge thanks to the organisers for doing such a incredible job of reorienting us to be able to help development climate days in Madrid for COP25. Thank you.


Early Sunday morning the Johnson County School District received information about a potential school shooting threat at Johnson County Middle School. The district immediately contacted local authorities to begin an investigation. Yesterday we received very early in the morning a threat that was possibly concerning to us as a district and one of our schools. The first thing we had to do was establish if the threat was accurate and if it pertained to one of our schools and through investigation with people in our school district and with the Sheriff's Department we did determine that the threat was the initial threat was directed at our middle school and we stayed in contact all day yesterday with the Sheriff's Department and the Kentucky State Police until the situation was resolved. Appalachian wireless is all in on tag madness right now select devices get up to 750 off on the Appalachian advantage unlimited or nationwide makes a mesh plans with renewed or new lines plus trade in up to 750 off because we are you we are Appalachian wireless. The threat was determined to be credible and a thorough investigation was done to determine the perpetrator. We pretty much at that point turned it over to the local authorities to our Sheriff's Department. I would like to commend them Sheriff Scott Hazlett and one of his deputies Dave Adams. They did a fantastic job yesterday in handling this situation because once we determined that the threat was real and accurate they kind of took lead on the on the situation and through various interviews they determined that the persons Snapchat account had been hacked by another individual and that individual was taken into custody and and it just kind of proceeded from there. The school district wants to remind people to stay vigilant and if you see something of concern to contact the school district or the local authorities as soon as possible. Reporting for mountaintop news I'm Brianna Robinson.


Welcome back to the School of Calisthenics, it's Tim and Jaco and today we're looking at how to progress using the tools in our locker. So make sure you tip to subscribe and then we're going to get into the lesson on how to use these six tools. Progressing in calisthenics can be a real challenge because sometimes you're just not strong enough to move to the next more advanced progression. So you've got to find ways in which you can dive it back so you can train at a level which is appropriate to your current level of development. Yeah, there's nothing funny about it Tim so I don't know why you're about to start laughing. In the traditional weight training it can be quite easy. If you're not strong enough to use the ten kilo dumbbells, well you just don't pick those up or you put them back down, you pick up the eights or the sevens. In calisthenics we just have to think outside the box a little bit, use our brain and we're going to help you out how to understand to do that so we can just manipulate the exercise and your body to be able to work to your strength and ability levels. The assistance tool then, this is using something like a rubber band is one example where it's going to help you to assist you or give you some support and some help on the way up in with the example we're going to give now where Tim is going to jump in for the pull-up so he might not be strong enough to do a pull-up yet and then the band is going to help him to have the strength to be able to work all the way to the top with great technique and good control. He could turn that into a muscle-up if he was working on those as well and then the assistance could be like a partner helping you or you could be holding on to a ring whilst you do a pistol squat or again we could use the band to work some back lever progressions to help you with that. Tool number two in the locker is eccentric and then we're going to use eccentric a lot in our training because sometimes you're not strong enough to pull through the full range of movement from for example a bottom position of a pull-up or what we're going to look at in this exercise is a dip so you can't push out of the bottom so just by training the lower phasor movement we can actually build up more global strength in the muscle so Jackal lowers into the bottom portion of the dip he's then going to put his feet down on the floor he stands back up and then starts the movement again ultimately training like this is going to build that basic strength and all after a while what we're going to find is that we can actually push out from the bottom up as a starting point of the movement rather than having to focus on that just that lower phasor we'll be able to complete the whole thing. Eccentrics also work really well for our handstand push-ups up against the wall we can use them for the flag lowers if we're training towards horizontal flag position we can start the top and lower down we've also got great options in the muscle up particularly during that transition phase we can drop down from the high dip position through the transition slowly controlling that as we hit that bottom range the most important thing to remember about all of these is that we're making sure that we're hitting five-second Eccentrics on all of those so it should take you five seconds to complete that movement always under control always with great technique okay so the third tool in the locker is the wet week or the awaited tool or it really is just an increased resistance tool so we're going to use weight to make this harder assume Tim you've got what the 50 kilos is it what have you got that 50 50 50 he can do he could do it just pick the knees one didn't you right so what he's going to do is we're using the weight to to make it harder so he's having to actually produce an awful lot more force than his body weight is needed for so if he's wanting to be able to do muscle ups are a good example of this then he wants to be able to produce force very fast a lot of it so he's going to use the extra additional weight from that to help him build up enough strength for they could be used with a weighted vest you could do the same things with in dips or you could also use a resistance band to provide more resistance in some pushing actions like in a push-up so tool number four in the lockers isometrics and these work really well both in quite specific movements like our lever progressions but also in our basic strength like pull-ups I'm going to get Jacko to give us a quick demo so if you're struggling to pull through the full range on a pull-up one of the things that isometric can help with is to develop strength above and below the point at which we're actually going to real hold that static point out so you can see Jacko's not moving that's the nature of isometric we want to hold that for about 10 seconds and if we can do between four and six sets we're really starting to rack up some nice time on the tension that builds that strength that's going to help us to be able to complete the full movement by ourselves through full range without having to pause at any point the options that we've got on these were as I say work really well for levers we can look at a back lever and progressions in the tuck position in those and also a tuck planche position our great isometric exercises to help you build towards that final movement so the fifth tool in the locker is levers and angles and here Tim's using a body weight row to give us a good illustration of how we can change the angle to make something easier and as a engineering student myself Tim this is one of my favorite tools in the locker I got a first-class in a masters of engine anyway so Tim is normal body weight row position he's working and building up some nice strength there but if he's struggling he want to make it easy for himself all he needs to do is walk his feet further back so the angle is that is now more close to vertical so he's higher up and that's going to require less strength than in that original position we showed you if he wanted to make it harder she starts to get really good he walks his feet much further forward now rather being more vertical he's actually now more horizontal he's nearly parallel to the floor and then the force required here to drive himself up it's going to be an awful lot more we can use angles as well for things like handstand push-ups where we can take our push-up position we can have our hands higher up on a box to make it easier or we can raise our feet up progressively so we can go from that horizontal position in the handstand it becomes more difficult when we get more vertical with the levers point of view we can change the lever length which would be we could bend our knee and our human flag and therefore we'd only have one leg straight so the force required to hold that position it's going to be easier with one leg bent to a number six in the locker is stability and this is one that's maybe lesser known within calisthenics the principle though being is that we can make an exercise more difficult or easier by changing the stability requirements so we make the environment that we're training more stable it becomes easier if we make it less stable there's more of a neurological demand the body has to find ways to stabilize and that makes it more difficult the rings is a great example because they move around there is no real stable point so we have to do all that stability work here in the shoulders and so Jacko jumps up you can create a nice stable position what you might find when you do this first is that the rings want to shake around a little bit and that's part of your the process of your brain starting to understand that unstable environment the alternative to this will be to do them on bars which is more stable and therefore an easier progression so you be able to probably do more reps on the bars then you'll be able to do on the rings this bottom position that Jacko is dipping down to there is a really difficult point as well to hold that stability great progression to play around with the other progressions that we have is we could change the surface that we're hand balancing on so we could use mats or a box to make that less stable we can also look at a wall handstand by using the wall as a point of support with the foot against the wall to be able to create more stable foundations and therefore take out some of the instability you would have if the wall wasn't there and then finally we would have the flag variation and using a stability ball to hold that flag position it's actually really nice movement pattern exercise as well but having the ball to support you gives a load of really good proprioceptive stimulation into the shoulders whilst you perform on your human flag so those are the six tools that we use to change and progress our calisthenics training when we feel like we need to make a smaller step because the next big jump is just a bit too difficult so those work for loads different exercises there's a real creative side of using the locker tools to be able to pick whatever it is that you're working on apply the right tool and find that little stepping stone onto your next progression put those in with some consistency you're not going to be far away from nailing the ultimate goal that you're working towards yeah so sometimes it's you have to think a little bit about it that's not a bad thing so start thinking about your training start using some of these tools if you haven't yet click subscribe make sure you do that that's over there if haven't got a free beginners guide make sure you click that that is down there and if you haven't seen one of our other tutorials about how to progress that's up there until next time that's dismissed


Live from San Jose, California. It's theCUBE, covering innovating to fuel the next decade of big data. Brought to you by Western Digital. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Western Digital headquarters off Almedin down in San Jose, a really important place that Western Digital's been here for a while as their headquarters. A lot of innovation's been going on here forever. So we're excited to be here really for the next generation. The event's called innovating to fuel the next generation of big data and we're joined by many time people on Dave Tang. He is the SVP in corporate marketing comms Western Digital Dave. Always great to see you. Always great to be here, Jeff. Absolutely, so you got to emcee the announcement today. Yes. So for the people that weren't there, let's give them a quick overview on what the announcement was and then we can dive in a little deeper. Great, so what we're announcing was a major breakthrough in technology that's going to allow us to drive the increase in capacity and density to support big data for the next decade and beyond, right? So capacities and densities had been starting to level off in terms of hard drive technology capability. So what we announced was microwave assisted magnetic recording technology that will allow us to keep growing that aerial density up and reducing the cost per terabyte. You know, it's fascinating because everyone loves to talk about Moore's Law and have these silly architectural debates whether Moore's Law is alive or dead. But as anyone who lives here knows, Moore's Law is really an attitude much more it is than the specific physics of microprocessor density growth. And it's interesting to see, you know, as we know the growth of data is growing in giant, the types of data, and we're going to go big data, but now streaming data are bigger and bigger and bigger. And we talked about, you know, stuff coming up of people and machines compared to business data is way bigger. But you guys continue to push limits and breakthrough and even though we expect everything to be cheaper, faster and better, you guys actually have to execute it back at the factory. All right, well, it's interesting. There's this healthy tension, right? A push and pull in the environment. So you're right, it's not just Moore's Law that's enabling a technology push, but we have this virtuous cycle, right? We've realized what the value is of data and how to extract the possibilities and value of data. So that means that we want to store more of that data and access more of that data, which drives the need for innovation to be able to support all that in a cost-effective way. But then that triggers another wave of new applications, new ways to tap into the possibilities of data. So it just feeds on itself and fortunately, we have great technologists, great means of innovation and a great attitude and spirit of innovation to help drive that. Yeah, so for people that want more, they can go to the press releases and get the data.  But she talked about, you know, from her perspective, we're still just barely even getting onto this data opportunity in terms of automation, and we see over and over at CubeEvents, innovation's not really not that complicated. You have more people access to the data, you have more access to the tools and let them try things easier and faster and feel quick. There's actually a ton of innovation that companies can unlock within their own four walls. But the data is such an important piece of it and there's more and more of this. What used to be digital exhaust now is I think maybe you said or maybe Dave said that there's a whole economy now built on data like we used to do with petroleum. I thought that was really incredible. Yeah, right, right, it's like a gold mine. So not only are the sources of data increasing, which is driving an increased volume, but as Janet was alluding to, we're starting to come up with the tools and the sophistication with machine learning and artificial intelligence to be able to put that data to new use as well as to find the pieces of data to interconnect, to drive these new capabilities and new insights. Yeah, but unlike petroleum, it doesn't get used up. I mean, that's the beauty of data, right? It's a digital asset. It can be used over and over and over again. And to sell for a new resource. And you're right, in that sense that it's being used over and over again is that the longevity of that data, the useful life is growing exponentially along with the volume. Right, and Western Digital's in a unique position because you have systems and you have, you know, big systems that can be used in data centers, but you also have the media that powers a whole bunch of other people's systems. So I thought one of the real important announcements today was, yes, it's an interesting new breakthrough technology that uses energy assist to get more density on the drives, but it's done in such a way that the stuff's all backward compatible. It's plug and play. You've got production scheduled in a couple of years, I think with tests out to customers next year. So, you know, that is such an important piece beyond the technology, you know, what's the commercial acceptance? What are the commercial barriers? And this sounds like a pretty interesting way to skin that cat. Right, oftentimes the best answers aren't the most complex answers. They're the more elegant and simplistic answers. So both from the standpoint of a user being able to plug and play with older systems, older technologies, that's beautiful. And for us to be able to, the ability to manufacture it in high volume, reliably, it cost effectively is equally as important. And you also talked, which I think was interesting, it's kind of the relationship between hard drives and flash, because obviously flash is, I don't want to say the sexy new toy, but it's not a sexy new toy anymore. It's been around for a while. But, you know, with that pressure on flash performance, you're still seeing the massive amounts of big data, which is growing faster than that. And, you know, there is a role for the high density hard drives in that environment. And based on the forecast you shared, which I'm presuming came from IDC or people that do numbers for a living, still a significant portion of a whole lot of data is not going to be on flash. That's right. I think we have a tendency, especially in technology, to think either or, right? Something is going to take over from something else. But in this case, it's definitely an and, right? And a lot of that is driven by this notion that there's fast data and big data. And while our attention seems to shift over to maybe some fast aid applications, like autonomous vehicles and real time applications, surveillance applications, there's still a need for big data because the algorithms that drive those real time applications have to come from analysis of vast amounts of data.  It's not going away or shifting over. And I think it's a really interesting kind of crossover which Shiana talked about too, where you need the algorithms to continue to chain the systems that are feeding, continuing and reacting to the real data. And then that just adds more vocabulary to their learning set so they can continue to evolve over time. Right. Yeah, and what really helps us out in the marketplace is that because we have technologies and products across that full spectrum of flash and in rotating magnetic recording, and we sell to customers who buy devices as well as platforms and systems, we see a lot of applications, a lot of uses of data, and we're able to then anticipate what those needs are going to be in the near future and in the distant future. Right. So we're getting towards the end of 2017, which I find hard to say, but as you look for it kind of in the 2018, and there's just insatiable desire for more storage because it's insatiable creation of more data. What are some of your priorities for 2018? What are you kind of looking at as like I said, I can't believe we're going to actually flip the calendar here in just a few short months. Well, I think for us it's the realization that all these applications that are coming at us are more and more diverse and their needs are very specialized. So it's not just the storage, although we're thought of as a storage company, it's not just about the storage of that data, but you have to provide complete environments to capture and preserve and access and transform that data, which means we have to go well beyond storage and think about how that data is accessed, technical interfaces to our memory products as well as storage products, and then where compute sits. Does it still sit in a centralized place or do you move compute out closer to where the data sits? So all this innovation and changing the way that we think about how we can mine that data is top of mind for us for the next year and beyond. It's plenty of job security for you, Dave. Let me think about it. All right, he's Dave Tank. Thanks for inviting us and again, congratulations on the trip. Always a pleasure to be here. All right, Dave Tank, I'm Jeff Rick. You're watching theCUBE from Western Digital Headquarters in San Jose, California. Thanks for watching.


We're out here at Arta Range in Djibouti, Africa, doing cruiser weapons training. The Camp Lemonnier Weapons Department instructors are leading this event to maintain their proficiency as instructors and also provide weapons familiarization to joint services. We have team members out here today from the Navy side of Camp Lemonnier, the Maritime Security Squadron, Air Force, Army and Navy Medics. It's important for us to keep our skills sharp, should we be needed in combat. The weapons familiarization is good for the shooters and also the instructors to keep their skills sharp for training others in shooting.


What's up everybody and welcome back to For The Minions, the weekly podcast where we talk about all of the third-person mobas that we've got a lot going on for in the week of December. A little change of plans this time. My internet was down for about four days, so we do have no special guests, but we're still going to do the news and updates. I didn't do the poll and then for the topic, we're just going to talk about all the stuff that's been going on and will be going on for this month. I'm your host, TheMangus, joining me as always, even on such short notice as my friend and co-host Jelly Knees. How you doing, Jelly? I'm fantastic, Mangus, dude. I'm excited. You know, for years we've been like, I thought we could get more information from these companies and now everybody's giving information. It's like, wait, okay, hang on. I regret this. Blow it down, please, one at a time, one at a time. Yeah, it seems like they all picked the same time to start pelting us with updates. It's the season, I guess, man. We even had something for predecessor this week. We haven't had anything for predecessor like forever. So let's kick it off with the news and updates. We're going to start off with Fault this time because I think by the time that you're watching this, the Fault Patch 14 should be out and should be playable. And hopefully it's going well. I can't tell because we record two days prior to the airing of this show, so hopefully everything went all right. But yeah, we got lots of updates for them. Like I said, the patch should be out before we even get to the updates. Let's talk a little bit. We were just talking before we even started it up. This Patch 14 is kind of make or break for Fault. And that's like, to me, I'm both optimistic and nervous about the patch at the same time where I'm like, I'm super excited because it's going to bring a bunch of good things. But if those good things are not good, then it's really, really bad. So it could go either way. I'm cautiously optimistic for them. Yeah, same here. Like I've said a million times now, when people judge Fault they're judging their first release. They're not judging post-patch 13. I've been having so much fun with Fault post-patch 13. And I'm hoping that 14 doesn't just break everything. It doesn't break all their progress. Hopefully it builds upon what they've already made. If it's patch 13 with improvements, then I think they're going to be set because I think this new patch will pull people back into the game. And if there's enough there like the mastery skins and everything to keep people engaged, they could re-establish their player base and that's what they're missing right now. They just need people to be playing the game for it to be absolutely great. And when you're going with item updates, a map update phase, the mastery system, the AI, like all of these things are just good player improvement things that help everybody along the way. So as long as phase is pretty balanced when she comes out, as long as like everything is in a workable state, right? And even if they have to tweak like the mastery numbers just slightly or whatever it is, being as workable as possible is going to be the best thing for them. And hopefully after as long as it's been since patch 13, all of it is in that workable state. Yeah. I think it will be. I think this is going to be a big turnaround for Fault. I think they're going to see some improvement. Will they overcome the other companies? Who knows? We'll know that maybe a year from now, maybe, but this will definitely be a huge improvement for Fault. For updates, they let us know a couple of their different items that they were talking about. So we've got the Demon Sword, which is 40 physical power, 400 health, 10 cooldown reduction, and reduces physical armor by 5% on basic attack, lasts 6 seconds, stacks 6 times. And once you have it fully stacked, every attack gives 15% lifesteal on the target. They've been releasing some really powerful items. This seems like the answer to Severog is what this seems like. Yeah, absolutely. Not only does it shred your armor, it's also going to give you lifesteal when it's at max shred. Yeah. Why? Armor shred by itself is really strong. Giving an additional lifesteal boost at the end even more so because now carries take this item consistently because they can get the best of both worlds. I mean, this is the old syndrome quote from Incredibles is if everyone's super, no one is, right? And so they're just releasing these items where they can just be like, all of you are overpowered. Congrats. Like whatever is going to happen is going to happen. Nice Incredibles quote.  I think Severog, there needs to be something to address Severog. Because I don't know if you've ever faced a good Severog that's well stacked before the late game. Oh, he's incredible. Yeah. It takes the entire team. And the whole time he's dealing a massive amount of damage too. So they do need something to answer Severog.  He'll be able to stack up these stacks to six really fast so that they're shredded armor. He'll also be stacking his health regen and then he's going to get 15% lifesteal on top of all of that. Chimera's going to be unkillable. Chimera and Boris too, Boris. Oh, God, yeah. I didn't think that. Rebi has been in a weird spot of either being broken or useless. And they've kind of left him in the more useless category for now. This item could bring Boris back up just by itself. You sniff somebody out. What is it? You say you snort the line of cocaine and then you just rush at him? Yeah. And then you're mauling people with lifesteal no less and unstoppable and all the other things Boris has. It could be the two of them I think are going to jump back up and play right. You're going to not see so much Kalari and Severog anymore. Oh, God, yeah. Yeah. Especially Severog, if he's jungling against Chimera or a Boris that has this item, he's just kind of fucked. I know. I can't wait. This item sounds super fun from a user standpoint. They all seem super fun from a user standpoint. Let's move on to the next one. Majus Siphon, 75 energy power, 200 health, range of mana. Another stacking item. This one though gives energy power and health and that max stacks, 75 being I think the maximum stacks you can get. You get a 10% discount on your mana discount on your abilities. I don't know how powerful that will be late game, but just the energy power and health stacking would be enough, I would think. Yeah. And I think this is going to be an item that mages, the really heavy casting mages take first. Right? They kind of, a lot of them feel like an identity of what item to take first. It's kind of just been like whatever you feel like in the moment. Whereas this now definitively states its place is like you take this early because you get that refund at max stacks to help you as long as possible. But also you get that increasing power over time. I think it's a brilliant item. It seems like the opposite to the one we talked about last week, I think, where it was the attack damage equivalent. Right. And so I think it's just the the mage version of that, but I get another very strong item in the early game for sure. Yeah, I can definitely see this being more of a first pickup than that physical power stacking item. For sure. Because it's got everything you want. It's got energy power. It's got health. It's got mana. For a squishy mage, especially with Kalari being as popular as she is right now.   Like it's just across the board a good item for them. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to turn my nose up at discounted abilities. But like I lose, like I run out of mana a lot early game late game. I hardly ever managed hardly ever an issue. So I don't know, but still being able to not worry about it at all. It should be nice. Would be kind of nice. I mean, like I said, if everyone's broken, nobody is right. Yep. This next one's the one that I'm the most excited about the Knights battle plate. You get 300 health, 30 physical armor and 30 energy armor. This is one of the only items where you see both types of armor on one item. In the active, you get a shield for 100 plus 20% of your maximum health per nearby enemy hero for three seconds. But your damage output is dropped by 50%. And it's got a 60 second CDR. As a passive, you get eight physical and energy armor per nearby enemy. So this is just a straight up support tank item. Where you just sacrifice your damage, but you don't, you shouldn't need anyway. If you're supporting and you just gain a massive shield that you can just stick in there and fight out longer. Yeah. And if you combine this with last week's item that reflects damage and reduces the damage you take from crits. The two of these together.  So it's going to be, I think those two items being together are going to be huge for the support tanks, but just tanks in generals too. Yeah. I really like this item because it gives you the chance to do what you're supposed to do as a tank. And a lot of times in especially MOBAs, you get melted before you can do anything. Like your job is to go in and disrupt. But as a support, you're kind of behind on gold and everything. So you don't have all the items you might necessarily need. Just this item alone would give you that ability to go in at least do some disruption. Maybe you'll die, but that's fine.  Then your team can roll over them. If you can trade one for three, then that's fine as a support. That's what you should be doing. If you can get away with it too, that's even better. Being able to take this on someone like Steel that can use his ult to go in and knock people up and then immediately gain 100% extra health, that's insane. That's a huge boost for Steel for tanks in general, but with the engage that Steel has, Steel especially. Yeah. Oh God, yeah. And then you can bull rush while they're still attacking you and putting displace one of them. You don't have to worry about getting killed before you can actually bull rush. Man, this is going to be a very strong... If used well, this is going to be a very strong item. They're all very, like we've been saying, all very strong items. Yeah. Other than that, I guess they had some server issues this week. I don't know, I wasn't able to play, but they got those fixed. It sounds like it was an Amazon or a greater internet issue. It wasn't directly them because there were outages all over the place. So, I mean, Mangus had an outage. It's Mangus' fault. He didn't have internet, so the internet reciprocated and said, nobody gets internet. His fault, blame Mangus, confirmed. The tree that fell on my power lines ruined it for everybody. Sounds like a Mangus tree. If I can't play, you can't either. I liked how they handled it though.  I think that's about all they really say about that is, I think they handled it well. And then, they've been doing like a countdown till the patch, and we've been seeing some new map images along with that. They're kind of covered up by the countdown thing, but you can still peek around, look around in the background and see some stuff. This is kind of cool. For the most part, it looks like the lanes are staying relatively the same. There's slight variations in height or how they're oriented, but it looks like it's just a visual update to the map to make it look... Right now, it's kind of barebones. It's kind of like, yes, there's ground and grass. Congrats. And then you're walking around with the structures in the middle of all the lanes. And I think this is really going to set it up to look more visually stunning and just set them up to feel better when you're walking around the map. Their map was... They had a really nice map before and they had to tone it down because they didn't have it optimized at all. Hopefully, this will be a version of that that's better optimized. Yeah, absolutely. Alright, cool. Do you have anything else to say about fault? No, I can't wait to see what patch 14 does and how people will receive it. So I think next week, I'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about in that regard. Oh, I'm going to be a partner again. The main goose is a partner again. I renewed my fault partnership. Alright, perfect.  Let's move on to... Let's talk about Over Prime. Just publicly, they announced the winners for their meme event and there was like 30 of them or something like that. I still don't know about the other event that they had, but it's cool. If you won, congratulations. You get a $100 steam gift card, but everybody else still gets the $10 in-game currency, so everybody's a winner there. And then on the other end, though, they gave us... They gave content creators, I guess the Over Prime partners, I guess you would call them, some exclusive stuff and we got it. So we got first, let's talk about this skin. I thought it might be steel. You thought it might be Orb Prime, but it could also be Rampage, I think. Yeah, absolutely. Rampage is old, always inflates its top half, and that's kind of what this looks like, is that it's an inflated top half. So absolutely could be a Rampage skin. And the old arcade game Rampage had a gorilla, so maybe there's a connection there. I don't know one of my favorite games from childhood. If that's the case, I will buy this skin. If it's a Rampage skin, I will buy it, I don't care. Oh, I didn't even think of that. But I think it's probably going to be a Prime skin, right? Orb Prime has always kind of had those gorilla tendencies, the way he stands, the way he attacks and all those things. So I feel like it'd be a good skin to just throw out there, in addition to the destroyer skin that we have images for and the short video. I think it fits more that way, but honestly could be anything. At first I thought it was steel, just because I was thinking, like if you look at the Mayan steel skin, it kind of looks like that, but the proportions are off. So I think it's more likely to be a Rampage skin or an Orb Prime skin than a Steel skin. That was my first impression. I think I was wrong. Yeah, man, goose, gosh. That's what happened when you don't have internet for several days. You just turned into a wrong guy. Speaking of that destroyer thing, we got a new image of that.  It looks incredible. The animations are solid. You feel the weight behind them. The visual effects on the claws look really nice. I think overall really cool. We haven't gotten confirmation that it is an Orb Prime skin, right? I think that more solidifies it for me that it's probably an Orb Prime skin, being the purple color, the giant thing. It looks like that's going to be its attack when it's attacking towers. But who knows?  I have no idea.  What's that skin? What's that thing? Coming out of nowhere. Coming out of the left field with this stuff. The last thing was Boris, which it just looked like they did some color changes and some texture stuff with him, which still looks a lot like Boris. Yeah. Not everything's going to be a complete change. I think it definitely helps, but it's not huge in that regard, right? It's just visual changes. All right, cool. Whatever. Unless they're telling me that's a skin, in which case that's dumb. Yeah. That's going to be a very basic skin for him that's essentially a recolor. No, I'm sorry, that's dumb. You know what I was thinking when I saw this? Orb Prime has had Boris for a while, I think longer than Fault has, but I, in my head, connect Boris with Fault anymore just because he's been playable in Fault for so long. Yeah, I do too. He's been playable in Paragon, so I just think of him as a Fault hero. I mean, that's one of the benefits of having released him first, essentially, or more publicly first, is that you get the association with your game, but the downside to that we've talked about in weeks past is now every other Boris is going to be compared to Fault? Yeah. No, they just did Boris better. So it's a double-edged sword. Oh, I don't know, we'll see. His kit was actually quite similar in between the two. Did you ever play him in Orb Prime? I did not. The only big difference, I think, is that he had a charge. Okay. On one of his abilities, where he would charge towards someone, gain more speed as he went, and then when he hit them, he would be stunned, and they would be stunned. Like, you'd both be stunned when you ran into them. All right. I could see that. That's kind of a cool idea. Yeah. I don't know if that'll stay. I don't know if that'll stick. I don't know if that'll be the Boris that they go with, but that's what it used to be. I don't know, man. Snorting Cocaine Boris is kind of pretty fun. I'm not going to lie. He is. He is. Oh, let's move on now to predecessor. I'm going to make you wait for ethereal predecessor for the first time in forever has got an update. It was just an image of the new map where they've been working on some map details. Looks gorgeous. I don't know what that's rendered out, but they were also talking about their they're trying to optimize the game as well. So what would you think of the map image? I think I think it's probably rendered at the highest resolution they can. So probably for 4k at minimum. It looks incredible. I love the detailing. The leaves have definition to them, but they're not just blending into the background. The walls, you can kind of see the texture on them and it feels good to look at. It's pleasing to look at. It's not too much. They hit a little chimera down in the bottom corner somewhere, which was fun. Oh, they didn't see that. Yeah. He's like hiding behind a wall, like peeking around. It's so weird. But overall, I think it looks incredible. And I can't wait to hear more about when we can play the game again. Why are we losing our minds and anguished? Creeper chimera skin. I love it. Yeah, I didn't see that at all. Give him a Freddy Kruger skin, man. Turn his axes into just long claws. Maybe just Malaya. You're not wrong, but... Oh, we should get a genderbender or Freddy Kruger skin for Malaya. Oh, I'm down. I'm so down. Oh, and make it happen. Well, since we're already talking about ethereal, let's move on to ethereal. That's all we had from Pred was that map, really.  There was the Lea theme, which was amazing. It sounded exact... For once, it sounded exactly the way that I thought it was going to sound. Yeah. This is a really good theme. It just...  Being the heiress of the jungle. To me, that's the entire vibe. Listening to that, I'm just like, yeah, I can get behind this. I could listen to this while running through the jungle, 100%. It just fits really well. It's got jungle drums in the background and everything. One of the comments I saw in the video, somebody said they could picture themselves flying along and listening to that. Yeah, that's really cool. You guys keep doing really well with these. The thing is, Dante's theme is so much more different than any of the other themes. The other themes are different, but it's a different variation of classical, I would say, like modern classical. Whereas Dante is just straight up dubstep. I don't know. Dante's to me is like Dante mixed it himself. Yeah. Right? The others, I wrote for them and like presented them. But Dante is just like in his castle, like just jamming out trying to do this together.  Right? Like 100%. We can see Dante doing that. That's the best part. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I loved it. Just like I've loved every single every single theme that's coming out for you guys. Yeah, man, we're just gearing up for the stress test on the 18th. So it's going to be fun. It's going to be so good. Yeah. And all right, let's move on. Popularity poll wouldn't do it this week. That's going to bug me forever, too, that I have a hole in my. In my stats. Let me let me just make up the stats. Aetherial 99%. Oh, yeah. Everybody else sharing the 1% remaining. Wow, what a great popular. Look at that. I think you definitely should keep that one in your records. Like what happened this week that Aetherial popped up to 99%. That's crazy. Aetherial promised everybody a gold bar if they voted for them. A gold bar. I wouldn't even know what to do with a gold bar. I don't think anybody would. They'd just be like, I now own a gold bar. Like, where do I get money for this?  So, uh, all right, let's let's recap. What's been going on and what is happening this month. So this month we got the long awaited patch 14 from fault. We've got Aetherial's stress test, second stress test on the 18th. And then we're pretty sure that something's going to come out of overprime this month. So, I mean, according to their, their whatever timeline, they would release several months ago, they were saying that quarter four, here we are. This is quarter four. This is quarter four. Yeah, but they still have a ways to go in quarter four, but I the word on the street is that something's coming out this month, like whether that be the actual release of the closed beta or if that's like a free alpha weekend or something like that. I have no idea. You would think I would know being on there, being in their inner circle, but I don't. Gosh, man, goose. How dare you not know. I know, right. But yeah, I mean, and maybe we'll get something from predecessor. They've said it like a hundred times at this point with every announcement they've made since their last stress test, like we'll share more details soon. When one month later, starting to feel like a therial in that regard of like, yeah, soon things are happening, right? Like it's because their map teaser said the same thing of like, we'll share more. We're excited to share more details soon, meaning this month, like everybody else because that could be a mean week for them. All predecessor updates are just the SpongeBob several hours later. Perfect. Oh, yeah.  It's so weird that stuff is actually moving. You know what I mean? Seriously. I mean, that's kind of why you restarted for the minions as a whole anyway. But to think two years ago, two years ago, I was on for the minions and that was for the minions like 48, right? And so that's three years ago you started doing the show and now we're finally getting updates consistently from almost all of these companies. And the games are actually releasing. Like when I started like tracking these like what 2018 or something. Like I thought it would be like two years and we would have something. Here we are.  They wanted to find out what they needed to improve. But I didn't expect it to be so goddamn long between that alpha and then the next one. It was like a year before we saw anything for pred again.  Just an announcement that they're not going to be even using the Paragon assets anymore, which was like over a year ago and I haven't heard anything since. Yeah. It was weird that like I had my hopes up everybody else had their hopes up or all taken like oh, this is going to be sweet. And it's coming so soon like look at all the progress they're making.  With the exception of course of fault fault did release like what a over a year year ago July. Yeah. July came out of nowhere with theirs. But. Like this feels like a new era for fault. Like this feels like it's as much of a release for fault as it is for over prime in ethereal. And it feels like in a good way for for us the gamers right and the consumers of these games is that they're all pushing each other. Right. I think the reason we're seeing so many announcements all at the same time is because all of these games are starting to push announcements. So right you see you see it all the time that one game will make an announcement and then like the next day or two days later suddenly all the others make an announcement. It's like this is fishy. Okay. Something doesn't add up. I know every time I post an ethereal announcement I like to twiddle my fingers and wait because I know I'm like someone's going to do it. I'm going to post an announcement too. Like I just one of those things that we're seeing the trend of and so I think they're all pushing each other to become to to release more information and give more back out to their communities. That's kind of the benefit from our end of them not like you see all the time the comments about they should just all merge into one company. Well the benefit from our end of them not merging is that they are going to compete and try and create a better better product just to outdo the others. So speaking of though actually man goose I want to get your opinion on something this week. I was hearing from multiple people in the pred discord that predecessor does not consider overprime a competitor or a MOBA. That one of their mods was saying this in their discord that overprime is not considered a competitor or a MOBA. That was a predecessor discord. Yeah. You know what they they got swagger and they have every right to be because most the vast majority of the old Paragon refugee community is behind predecessor. But they need to and well Smokey has been saying from the beginning he never looks at anybody as a as a competitor. He's just trying to make his own game. But God damn they really need to take overprime into consideration when they're doing anything because like we've said before they need to look at these other companies as competitors or else they're going to get they're going to lose the race. They need to do something and overprime is definitely stepped up and they are they are a competitor. Maybe they're not a traditional MOBA maybe they're not exactly like Paragon was but they're a competitor. They're in this space and they've been making huge moves. It's just been a deluge of information from overprime recently. And like everything is kind of base like all their stuff that they've released. That's just base. Like that's going to improve from what it is now. Like Yeah. They really need to they can't they can't be sleeping on anybody. They can't sleep. They can't sleep on overprime. They certainly can't sleep on ethereal overprime and fault and pred pulling different sides of the Paragon refugees. But that's still pulling from the same base. That's not something they can just ignore. They can't say that like because they're pulling different people we don't have to worry about them because all it takes is a flip of a switch and they start pulling your people. Right. And so you have to consider that because they're almost the same as you are. Right. Different speed different slightly different a flip of a switch and they could easily start pulling those people across. I have a I have a theory I've been working through in my head too. I think a lot of people I've said this before they remember themselves being way better at Paragon than they actually are and they're out of practice.   I know a better Paragon than this. Then they're going to move on the over prime.  I can't wait till Fred comes out. Then Fred's going to come out.  They're going against the jelly goose combo in predecessor. They're going to they're definitely going to lose. Yeah. Especially if they don't ward. Shots fired. Yes. I think that's one thing that's going to happen but even more so like like I've said I keep saying that over and over throughout this entire show. I need to I need to stop saying that. Like I've said before. Like I said back in my day even when the Paragon first shut down and I was only one track. Youngblood here man goose. I got to keep you in line. But now they the community shifts. The community shifts. Everybody was all about core.     And then I can see over problem coming everybody move on over and over prime. You do have the ones that just stick with that are very faithful to the game as if that's going to curry them favor with the devs and it's not but that's something I support people trying all the games. But don't just assume that just that right now because the one game is ahead that it's always going to be ahead. And I think we've talked about in the past putting blinders up to the other games as a fan too is not beneficial. Right. Right. In just being like all these other games are trash predecessors the best right like that doesn't do anything productive for anybody. Right.  Right. Like it's one of the things Shad QQ in the ethereal community is die hard ethereal. Right. Everything every post he talks about ethereal.  Right. And you'll even compliment some of the other games or some of the some of the stuff. Yeah. He'll say like fault looks really good but I'm an ethereal guy. That's a preference more power to you but he doesn't feel the need to go out and bash the other titles because he's an ethereal guy. Right. And I think if we could all embody that a little bit more it would just be beneficial for all the games going forward and put the best foot forward for all of them. Yeah. I don't know man. I mean from right now it quality wise I think predecessor is in the lead from what I've played. Absolutely. Like they have the lead in the fan base and they have the and it's because they have such a quality product. But I think another thing that people aren't considering fault actually has a really good game loop like they have it fine tuned. Rotations are fine tuned. The heroes are actually pretty balanced.  If you're getting rolled you're getting rolled it doesn't matter what hero somebody's on. But yeah they've had a lot more time to adjust their game to what it needs to be. So I think people need to take that into consideration that fault may just be far more balanced the predecessor for a while.   Yeah absolutely. That's something fault has had time to pair down and so that an ADC feels powerful enough early game that they don't feel weak. But they're also not just three-shotting people like from level one. You mean triple grenade twin blast is not okay.  And that's all those patches add up. Absolutely. And the the big thing that is yet to be seen from any of these games outside of fault is what does the game feel like to play after your rose colored glasses are removed. Right. Because predecessors only had weekends and you've seen by the end of those weekends people starting to starting to lose those glasses and starting to have realizations about like the carries are not balanced the itemization is not balanced these items are inherently broken useless whatever it is. Right. That starts to come off and that's only after three days. So when the game is playable in a much longer extent that they have to combat that and they have to combat the fatigue that's in after it's not that new feeling all the time. Right.  So the game is in a very good state right now and with patch 14 coming out people are going to start playing it and then we'll start realizing that false no joke. Yeah they have a years over a year's worth of consistent play that they've learned from right and none of the other companies have that right now. Yeah. A lot of people don't realize like when I put out shorts a vast majority about 90% of the shorts that I put out are from fault but they all think it's Paragon. They think it's old Paragon clips. It's false that good that people are fooled into thinking that is Paragon. Yeah absolutely. Man I can't wait. This is such an exciting it's an exciting time to be a pair of refugee I'll tell you what finally. Finally. I can't wait in a year or two years to see where we're at when we're on four the minions 250 right where where is this where are we going to be at like who's who's going to be the reigning title who's going to have the best feeling who's going to like all of these things are going to be so different in two years if they're all getting ready to release right about now.  Yeah I mean after the last couple of years Vegas you never know you really don't. Oh God you really don't.  There are so many alpha dates that were missed and then so many reworks and everything I was like this game is just not going to come out. Here we are with a second stress test. It's happening. First one didn't go great but a lot of people got at least three or four games in and everybody that had those games a ton of fun and I 100% agree the game was a ton of fun and then we're going to have another one of these stress test hopefully it'll go a lot better and prep you guys for a pre-alpha very soon. Yeah absolutely. Exciting times for sure like it's can't wait to see what goes on. A lot of people don't seem to realize ethereal has actually been in development longer than any of the rest of them.  They weren't given all the epic assets unfortunately. Yeah. So Freddie Krueger Malayaskin win. Yeah I mean talk to Owen I'll put it up there here Owen I am endorsing this please.    I want that skin You want a mole Malayaskin. Yes. Yes I do. All right. Perfect. Oh and make it happen. Manga said just realize Manga we sound like two old men like sitting on the porch talking about the glory days of like you know back when Paragon was the thing that's what's going to be like retirement homes like when I'm in a retirement home it's going to be a bunch of old dudes talking about the video I asked. I love it. I love that. It's going to be great. It is. It is.  This was the patch Wukong came out like ESPN classic can't wait ugh yeah alright man I think that's about all I had to say yeah that's it yeah it was fun to just kind of chill out and not have a serious topic to talk about even though we did get a little serious here and there that's who we are though yeah exactly that's who we are don't forget it yeah when Manga says internet otherwise that's not the case fuck and where I live too like I can't even use my phone like before when my internet was out I just used my phone and like did the wifi hotspot do not have nearly enough service to do that I could barely even have a fucking phone call where I live oh west Virginia alright shit do you have anything to plug Jelly? just my twitch doing marvelous Mondays every Monday at 8 o'clock mountain time 8 p.m. mountain time and maybe I'll stream some fault this weekend depending on how much time I have the theory of course so it all depends yeah what about you Mingus mountain time mountain time I really got nothing to plug nothing to plug I'm trying to try and catch up do some videos I did a short today and it felt good that I hadn't done any creation and so long alright shit I think that's gonna wrap it up for this week let us know in the comments what you think about anything especially if you disagree with us at this point I do love to discuss with people and try and figure out where their heads are at when they when they disagree with something we say and if you agree with us then you know throw that in the comments too I don't give a shit I also talk to you about that too and again if you do want to co-host I know this only had the two of us but I do want to have co-host and if you like somebody was saying in the comments Demon was saying that they didn't think that they were prepared to really talk about if you ask me now to give you on the show you got about two months to catch up so unless everybody cancels but yeah I think that's gonna wrap it up for this week folks thanks for coming out if you're watching the premiere if you're watching the video thanks for watching anyway if you liked it hit the like button subscribe if you want to see more of this type of content but for now let's sign off Jelly man gooooo shout out to channel members foolish blood hunter jelly knees meow mix for men stunt and ferret