Category Archives: Mind Uploading

Understanding what social media platforms your customers are spending all of their time on is ideal but nearly impossible. Users typically have multiple accounts that they access throughout the day, leaving various touch points as they go. Snapchat, in particular, is a popular platform, with an average of 332 million engaged users logging on and spending over 30 minutes watching videos, snapping photos, and trying on filters every day. Dive into essential Snapchat business tips and more below, and decide for yourself if Snapchat is right for you.

Impactful Audience Tools

A common misconception is that Snapchat is most heavily used by a younger audience, deterring those businesses who may want to reach people 18 or older with ads. In reality, Snapchat users range from 13 to 35 years old and beyond, reaching an impressive 75% of millennials and Gen Z. Not only does Snapchat reach a broader audience, but it also reaches a more engaged audience. This is largely due to the fact that ads are full-screen and immersive, capturing every inch of attention, unlike some platforms.

Lets dive into the different ways you can better understand and reach potential customers who are ready to connect with you. In Snapchat Ads Manager, Audience Insights are available to better understand your audience so you can create relevant content and find potential audiences that you may not have considered before. Location, demographics, interests, and device insights are all available to advertisers.

In addition to Audience Insights, you can utilize data thats unique to your business, product, or service to create Custom Audiences. These Custom Audiences can be built by uploading customer lists within the Snapchat Ads Manager. Uses of Custom Audiences include, but are not limited to:

Immersive Experiences and Ad Formats

Since Snapchat ads are full-screen experiences, advertisers have an opportunity to capture a users full attention as they interact with the platform naturally. During that moment where a users attention is captured, the right ad has the potential to inspire action and drive results that other ad formats cannot.

Snapchat is budget-friendly, allowing for businesses of all sizes to advertise. Not only can you start with a budget that works for you, but Snapchat also offers free, in-platform creative support through Snap Publisher. The Snap Publisher tool allows you to create inspiring videos via a range of features, including:

Snapchat offers a range of ad formats, including:

Plans for the Future

Snapchat has been known to stay ahead of trends and frequently introduces new user experiences that are exclusive to Snapchat. During this years Snap Partner Summit, Snapchat introduced plans for the future with a large focus on augmented reality. Augmented reality (AR) is not new to Snapchat, with an average of six billion AR lenses being used per day. During the Snap Partner Summit, it was announced that more advancements to AR tools would be top of mind for the platform.

Our investments in augmented reality represent our ongoing efforts to build technology that serves humanity, and that feels intuitive and familiar to use.

Some of the announcements regarding advancements in AR tools that might catch your attention include:

AR Creation Suite

The launch of the Augmented Reality 3D Asset Manager makes it much easier for partner brands to manage 3D models for any product in a catalog. This also allows brands to create Shopping Lens in a few seconds without any extra costs.

AR Image Processing now allows brands to leverage existing content originally produced for a website and convert them to AR-ready assets for Snapchat AR try-on Lens experiences.

Available today in beta for select partners, apparel, eyewear, and footwear brands can build virtual try-on experiences using AR-ready assets with AR Shopping Templates. This is fast and free for brands to import their assets and create Lenses in minutes.

Dress Up

Try on clothing from the comfort of home with Dress Up. Found in Lens Explorer, Snapchatters can browse and discover new looks and products from brands while having the ability to share looks and save favorites to easily find your favorite looks again.

Pixy

And last but not least, we were introduced to Pixy, the flying camera that requires no controllers as it automatically captures photos and videos in the sky above you. Another bonus? Pixy knows exactly where to return, softly in the palm of your hand. Be sure to watch the official announcement for Pixy here!

So, if you arent already taking advantage of Snapchats robust feature offering and unique audience, now might be a perfect time. You can begin expanding your efforts and reaching new customers on Snapchat today no matter what size brand you are!

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If You Haven't Considered Snapchat Yet, Here's Why You Should - JumpFly PPC Advertising News

Screenshot: Deep Silver / Volition / Kotaku

Yesterday, as part of Summer Game Fest, Volition released a new free-to-download demo for the upcoming Saints Row reboot out later this year. However, this isnt a demo of the games open-world or its vehicular combat. No, this is just the character creator. But thankfully, its a fantastic character creator with a vast array of clothing and customization options and a long list of sliders and features you can use in creating your own unique crime boss. And as a result, in less than 48 hours people have already created some wonderfully accurate, silly, and terrifying bosses using the new free tool.

Saints Row Boss Factory is the perfectly named character creator demo that was released yesterday for free on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC via the Epic Games Store. In Boss Factory, you are able to create the boss of your dreams (or nightmares) using a huge list of sliders and options, including the ability to tweak and modify everything from face symmetry to body weight to how modest you want your boss to be with regard to underwear and nudity.

Theres no actual game to use them in yet, but for now, Im having plenty of fun looking at all the characters people are creating and uploading to be shared in Boss Factory. Any of these will be playable in the full game out this August, too. Keep that in mind as we look at some of my favorites.

Read the rest here:

The Best (And Weirdest) Creations People Have Made Using Saints Row Boss Factory - Kotaku

Daniella Modus-Cutter is a full-time carer, mother and grassroots campaigner, maintaining a list of schools in the UK reporting COVID infections. She is Clinically Extremely Vulnerable and has been shielding since the start of the pandemic. She was interviewed for the Global Workers Inquest by Julie Hyland.

JH: You opened your Twitter account in March 2020 at the very start of the pandemic in the UK. What made you decide to do this so quickly? What were your concerns and how did you understand the dangers?

I opened my Twitter account as my eldest son said he thought Id like it and it would help making friends whilst shielding at the start of the pandemic. When I opened my account, I wanted to get information about COVID.

I already had big concerns but almost overnight I was shellshocked realising that I was very vulnerable to COVID. I never really thought of myself before as extremely vulnerable to an illness. Im physically disabled and yes it affects my daily life and is a struggle day to day, but I can adapt to my surroundings through help from family and a support worker.

I started campaigning with SafeEdForAll [Safe Education for All]. My name is on two open letters for mitigations in schools to the Education Secretary. I moved over to Fighting for Vulnerable Lives because I am Clinically Extremely Vulnerable (CEV) and I thought I could support parents better who were in the same place as me, in addition to pushing for mitigations in schools.

JH: You now have 10.7k followers because you have taken responsibility for compiling the rate of incidences in schools and amongst children especially. What have you uncovered?

I decided I would start to do weekly list of cases in schools as it was an ever-changing situation where at first schools told parents if there was a case in schools and which class etc. This soon changed and parents were worried as it went from whole school notifications to just class notifications.

So, I decided to put a daily message on Facebook and Twitter asking parents to contact me with cases in their schools as this will help vulnerable families to be aware when cases were in their childs school and act if they wanted to take their children out of school.

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My school data compiling has been 10 percent of help from parents sending me letters; the other 90 percent has been through open research through school newsletters/ websites and Facebook and Twitter posts from school pages. Term time I could spend four to eight hours a day researching and supporting parents.

At times it has been really hard with uploading my data onto Twitter. At times people have trolled me and have been intimidating towards me for the data I have shared.

What the data clearly shows, and that is thanks to SafeEdForAll for putting the data on an animated map, is: you can see the delta wave start to spread across the country all through the summer term of 2021.The government and the authorities would have known this.

You can also find my work on Fighting for Vulnerable Lives and on my own Twitter page.

JH: Throughout the pandemic, the line has been that deaths are mainly due to pre-existing vulnerabilities, that People didnt die from COVID but with it. How do you see this claim?

The last few years have been an uphill struggle. Shielding has been very hardespecially in the winter when you cant access outdoors. My husband is Clinically Vulnerable. My son hasnt been to school since March 2020 because it is just not safe for him to attend. There are no mitigations, no masks, no testing, no HEPA filtration to stop transmission. He could bring COVID home to me. It could make him very ill, and it would make me extremely ill. Most probably I would lose my life.

It has been portrayed that it is just CEV people whose lives are at risk. This is not true. Four in ten people who have died have not been disabled or had any chronic illnesses. We are part of a capitalist system. If you dont contribute in monetary terms of labour the government doesnt think your life is worth saving.

The policies towards the pandemic have caused a horrendous loss of life. This is eugenics that the government are playing. Capitalism over life.

Disabled people have taken the heaviest toll. Through the pandemic they make up six in 10 COVID deaths. Many people would have lived to old age. They may have had asthma or diabetes which is treatable with medication, but the government decided to do away with mitigations that slow the spread of COVID.

I feel the government have washed their hands of protecting CV people who havebeen left with no health care through the fear of catching COVID.

The government have gone ahead and lifted mitigations in medical settings. I speak with many people like myself who are CEV. We do not feel safe to go to our medical appointments or even for the vaccine due to this for the chance of being infected prior to the vaccine having time to work, so we feel its safer just to stay home.

It shouldnt be this way as we have the right to healthcare without the prospect of getting infected and losing our lives. Many of us have sacrificed so much just to stay well and free from infection by basically effectively being prisoners in our homes. Our children have suffered the most through foregoing their education to keep them COVID free as they are vulnerable themselves or theres the danger of bringing COVID back home to a loved one.

We have to choose to suffer in silence and not have any health care for the fear of getting COVID and dying. And we dont have to die because many conditions are treatable, and you can live a long life.

CEV have a right to life just like anybody else. The right to treatment, the right to healthcare. And the right to be able to go out and not be prisoners in their own homes. All this could be remedied if the government put health first and their short sightedness is going to cause continuous health problems for people for decades to come, maybe for generations to come.

JH: Your work on schools has been unique and exemplary. You are the only person in the country to have compiled these records which has exposed the claims that schools are safe and that children are not affected. What have you learned doing this work?

The government made many mitigations political. Their political ideology against mask wearing, social distancing, HEPA filtration, or any preventative measures has caused irreparable harm across communities. The failure to mitigate against a novel airborne virus in schools has led to childrens deaths and irreparable harm to childrens health. It has left thousands of children orphans. No one talks about this and the mental anguish it is causing children.

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The vaccine only strategy has failed. Theres nearly two million people with Long COVID. This will really affect the workforce for a very long time. The only solution is contact tracing, testing, putting ventilation systems into public spaces, isolation of contacts. Unless this happens, we will forever be in a vicious circle.

This is already affecting the labour market. Less people are workingpossibly due to Long COVID. The pandemic is raging on. Kids are going to schools with cold symptoms. CEV families have only got one optionto keep children home and forgo education until such a time that the government wakes up to the problem that it is creating. And this is the only way we can be protected.

Everyone screams human rights, but where are our human rights or our right to life? I see no human rights agency campaigning on our behalf about this, our right to healthcare and access to safe education for children who are themselves vulnerable or a family member. We just get threatened with prosecution or social services just because we want to keep our families safe from the Petri dish of the education system.

I have had no involvement from the trade unions. Absolutely none. They could have done this work on the situation in schools very easily by taking information from their members and they have the resources to do so. The teaching unions have worked hand in hand with the government all the way through. I do not know why members are still paying their fees as theyve done nothing to protect staff. As of December 2020, over 500 staff have died from COVID and 10s of thousands of education staff have Long COVID.

My attitude to the Labour Party is its not a party for workers anymore. Its now a Tory lite establishment. If this was a true workers party, there would be no way they would turn their back on teaching staff. The government and the Labour opposition had a perfect opportunity in the summer of May-September 2020, when a more effective lockdown was in place. They could have made sure proper ventilation was installed in schools as per Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) recommendation. Cases were low in September 2020 and test and trace was still in place along with mask wearing in schools. It would have stopped the need for lockdowns.

We have effectively been thrown under the bus by the government, the opposition parties and any organisation thats supposed to help disabled/ CEV families.

JH: The pandemic has been declared officially over. But your own work shows that the situation in schools is as bad as ever. Infections are going up and so are hospitalisations.

The school data I have logged is just the tip of the iceberg. Yet it shows that not having mitigations in schools caused disruption, more disruption than if the schools were properly mitigated for an airborne virus. Children are getting Long COVID, hepatitis. I fear for childrens lives and what the future legacy will be.

The reason Ive taken a pause from my data work is because it is extremely hard to find any information due to the stopping of free testing in schools.

I feel this is deliberateto enable the virus to run rampant through schools. Vulnerable families have been forgotten about. Out of sight, out of mind. People are getting on with their lives but frequently getting infected which is no life really because its doing untold damage to bodily organs.

And it doesnt work out like this as there is constant distribution to education through staff and children becoming sick. Some schools have had to close classes / year groups and even whole schools at times throughout the pandemic.

Children are not being protected in schools. No HEPA filtration, no masks, no testing, no contact tracing. Just because you wish something over, it doesnt mean it is. Its just hiding from the reality of what is really happening. Schools must be kept open at all costs because children are just an extension, just a cog in the capitalist wheel so parents can go to work.

I have been supporting parents and trying to get the information they need to deal with issues with schools and non-attendance. If I didnt know the information, I directed them to a campaign that could help in their situations.

Ive campaigned for safety mitigations in schools; masks, HEPA filtration units in classrooms, free testing and 10 days isolation for positive cases and remote learning for children with vulnerable families until its safe for them to be able attend.

Pretending COVID isnt a problem will cause a worse variant that completely evades the vaccine, which has started to happen. We will continue to see wave after wave of infection, disruption to education, children/staff/parents being hospitalised or worse losing their lives. Until COVID is taken seriously, we will see constant disruption to businesses, through staff illness and staff unable to work due to Long COVID. For a healthy economy you need a healthy workforce.

JH: What conclusions have you drawn and how do you see the solution?

The pandemic is part of a bigger problem. Having recklessly endangered so many lives through the policy of herd immunity, governments everywhere are deliberately trying to provoke a war with Russia.

I really dont understand peoples reasoning when it comes to the war with Ukraine. There are many people I know through my work on COVID that are aware of the harm the governments caused as regards the pandemic but seem to believe everything they are told about war.

They should understand that COVID and this war are connected. They are part of the problem which is capitalism. Ukraine isnt the democracy that the government is selling them: Ukraine banned the Russian language, opposition parties and media. A high percentage of Ukrainians are ethnic Russians. This war didnt start in February this year, it started eight years ago when the republics of the Donbas broke away from Ukraine to become independent as they didnt want to be governed by a US-backed right-wing government in 2014.

The sanctions in place do not hurt the leaders: its always the people of said country that suffer. And in this case the sanctions are also hurting the citizens in the countries that are imposing them.

The working class everywhere are suffering at the hands of their own governments in western countries, through inflation, higher energy and food prices.

What is needed is for the working class across the globe to come together and strike and protest for better pay and conditions, to stop the pandemic and end war. That is why I joined the Educators Rank-and-File Committee.

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Herd immunity in education: I fear for children's lives and what the future legacy will be. - WSWS

She is known for keeping it real with her social media audience.

And now personal trainer turned author and entrepreneur Tiffiny Hall has shared an emotional video with her Instagram followers, in which she admits how hard it is to accept it will take time to get her body back after the recent birth of her second child.

Hall announced she and TV and radio funnyman Ed Kavalee welcomed daughter Vada on May 30, uploading a black and white photo to her Instagram account the following day.

READ MORE: WATCH: Mick Jagger's five-year-old son debuts his dance moves backstage at The Rolling Stones concert

"Arnold's little sister has arrived. Welcome Vada Kavalee30.5.2022," she captioned the post.

Since then, she has shared several photos with her Instagram followers, including one of her in her underwear while holding Vada in her arms.

"Home from hospital with Vada," she wrote on June 5. "Juggling post partum recovery, nurturing the sibling relationship so no one feels left out, sleep deprivation and feeding. Let the fourth trimester begin. The washing can wait! Any tips?" and the hashtag #bounceforward.

But it was a more emotional Hall who took to Instagram with a two-minute video she posted along with the comment, "Bouncing forward is important but no one said it would be easy."

READ MORE: See what happens when two mums try out the latest viral trend: 'Messy dinner' challenge

Sitting in the living room of her home, Hall started by thanking everyone who had left congratulations following Vada's birth before passing on a message to anyone who is pregnant or had just given birth.

"I just really wanted to say how important it is to bounce forward and that it's not easy ... to bounce forward and take the pressure off," she said.

"Even I am standing in the mirror, looking at my new body Vada's house my big bump, and it's really hard to accept that it's going to take time," she said, before dissolving into tears.

"You know, anyway, super emotional too," she continued.

"But, it is going to take time and healing takes time, and it depends what birth you had. For me, I've got a few stitches and stuff's going on, so it's all a bit painful, but she's absolutely beautiful and worth it."

Hall also said she was taking the opportunity to explain to her four-year-old that it took a bit of time for bodies to go back to normal.

"Arnie keeps asking why my tummy is so big. Bless him, no filter. He keep saying, 'Is there another baby in there Mum?'

"And it's hard to accept it but you have to take one day at a time.

"You have to be kind to yourself and you can't let those negative thoughts enter the brain because everything the mind says the body hears. You've really got to remember that.

"So I am sending love to everybody, especially those who have just had a baby, who are up late feeding, who are doing the brutal hours [that] newborn babies require."

In another video she uploaded just today, Hall shows off her pregnant belly then turns away to the camera before turning back, this time with her baby in her arms.

She uploaded the video with the comment, "One week old postpartum with Vada," and the hashtags #BounceForward.

Many followers rushed to thank her for her honesty.

"Thank you so much for being so real," one wrote. "I remember the very day I had my first baby, I got up from the hospital bed to go to the bathroom and my mother-in-law asked me when the next baby was due. I was both shocked and devastated. It was less than eight hours after giving birth. It's so refreshing that you're normalising postpartum recovery for the mums of the future."

Prior to Vada's birth, Kavalee took to the airwaves of his radio show to call out the people who commented on his wife's changing body while she was pregnant, before she joined in, admitting she had been reduced to tears by the cruel jibes.

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Tiffiny Hall reduced to tears over relatable postnatal body battle: 'It's going to take time' - 9Honey

Never doubt the power of a last minute equaliser. Brighton won only once in December but the month ended up feeling hugely successful thanks to three of the five matches featuring the late goals which became the Albions trademark in 2021-22.

That all three of those memorable conclusions to games came on the road was in keeping with what had happened over the previous two months.

Whereas the Albion were a joy to watch away from home, their form at the Amex had left a lot to be desired. That manifested itself in the controversial circumstances in which November had ended.

A 0-0 draw with The Leeds United had led to a small smattering of boos at the full time whistle. These made headlines and caused Graham Potter to offer a stinging rebuke, saying that he needed a Brighton history lesson to understand why fans were jeering his side who sat eighth in the Premier League table.

The answer to that was because Seagulls supporters were frustrated by the same old story playing out every week. Against the 1996 Coca Cola Cup runners up, that read 20 shots from the Albion, zero goals, one point.

Form was not the only stark contrast between watching Brighton home and away in the 2021-22 the support the team received differed greatly as well, something that was noticeable as December kicked off with a trip to West Ham.

Four days after the booing and the request for a history lesson, Potter and his players were given a heroes reception after drawing 1-1 at the London Stadium thanks to the first of those late levellers.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, nothing is certain in life except death, taxes and West Ham not beating Brighton. The Irons led for 84 minutes following Tomas Soucek heading home a Pablo Fornals corner after Robert Sanchez and Lewis Dunk got themselves into a bit of a state.

Brighton suffered from both fortune and misfortune from that point onwards. The Seagulls were lucky not to fall 2-0 behind midway through the second half.

Sanchez got in another mess from another West Ham corner, resulting in the Albion goalkeeper appealing to the referee for a foul when in reality he had simply missed his punch.

VAR took a look, which must have been to simply appease the goalkeeper and prove he was at fault. It was during this investigation that the ball was found to have brushed the ankle of Michail Antonio stood in an offside position on its way in and so the goal was disallowed.

A ridiculously harsh decision on West Ham but one that looked like having no bearing on that outcome once Brighton found themselves finishing the game with only 10 men.

Jeremy Sarmiento, Adam Webster and Adam Lallana all picked up injuries over the course of the match, with Lallanas coming after Potter had made all three of his substitutions.

Not many would have given the Albion hope of finding an equaliser whilst playing shorthanded. December though was a month when Brighton showed you could not write off the class of 2021-22 in any situation and they duly levelled the tie in the 89th minute through a piece of individual brilliance from Neal Maupay.

Tariq Lamptey hung a cross into the West Ham box which was behind Le Petite Shithouse Francais. Maupay though showed the sort of flexibility rarely seen outside of circus contortionism, bending his body into an unnatural shape to score a stunning bicycle kick past a flabbergasted Lukasz Fabianski.

The away end went wild as Maupay celebrated with the travelling support through a haze of blue smoke. The euphoria caused by Maupays moment of magic made West Ham 1-1 Brighton feel like a victory, to the point where nobody batted an eyelid that the Albion were now nine games without a victory.

That run was extended to 10 in the trip to Southampton. There was some sort of glitch in the matrix at St Marys as for the second time in 72 hours, Maupay scored a very, very late equaliser when Brighton were down to 10 men to rescue a 1-1 draw.

There were once more question marks over Sanchezs role in an opposition goal. His poor kick was returned forward by the head of James Ward-Prowse and Shane Duffy then expected his goalkeeper to come and intercept the danger.

Sanchez though was glued to his line and Duffys hesitation allowed Armando Broja to collect the ball, fool Duffy into sliding into a Portsmouth postcode and then beat Sanchez to make it 1-0.

Brighton looked both tired following their midweek exertions and lost without Dunk or Webster, both now injured and facing some time on the sidelines.

When Leandro Trossard was stretchered off after Potter had already introduced Aaron Connolly, Solly March and Jakub Moder, the Albion again found themselves trying to find a leveller with a man disadvantage.

The lengthy delay caused by Trossards nasty looking arm complaint led to 10 minutes of stoppage time. It was in the eighth of the 10 that Maupay struck, this time with a goal highlighting the footballing intelligence he rarely gets credited for.

Southampton goalkeeper Alex McCarthy was struggling with injury and so when Moder lined up a free kick on the edge of the Saints box, McCarthy summoned Ward-Prowse to stand on the line.

Maupay took full advantage of the situation, showing great awareness to move closer towards the Southampton goal, knowing that Ward-Prowse was so deep as to be playing him onside.

The extra yards Maupay gained had him perfectly positioned in the event of the ball ending up loose in the box which is exactly what happened when Moders strike cannoned off the wall and the Polish midfielder then sent the rebound back into the area.

With no Southampton player near him, Maupay simply took a touch and fired into the bottom corner. That was the WAB Brighton December Player of the Month award sewn up for Maupay with only two games played, his second accolade of 2021-22 after also winning the vote in September.

Maupay goaded the Saints fans, Duffy went berserk as limbs flew in the away end. Who cared that Brighton had just equalled an unwanted club record of 10 top flight games without a win in amongst all the delirium?

Spurs had been due to provide the third opposition of December a week later, only to be postponed due to a Covid outbreak amongst the Tottenham squad.

This was no bad thing from an Albion point of view, giving the Seagulls three more days to try and get players fit ahead of the Wednesday night visit of Wolves to the Amex.

Those plans were ruined when Brighton then had several players struck down with Covid. No worry, the Premier League would help the Albion out by postponing the fixture, right?

Wrong. Controversially, the game went ahead. It seemed that whilst every other Premier League club was granted time off in the 2021-22 season for Covid reasons, Brighton were not extended the same help even when infections were spiking in December.

Eluding to the selection problems facing Potter, the Albion social media team put out a mock starting XI graphic.

Michel Kuipers was in goal. A back four of Bruno, Guy Butters, Gordon Greer and Gully. Fatboy Slim, Media Intern, Andrew Crofts and Royal Blood made up the midfield. And up front Bobby Zamora and Glenn Murray.

By full time, Albion fans could only wish that Norman Cook and a bloke in a seven feet tall seagull costume had been on the pitch.

Circumstances might have been against Brighton, but that could not excuse how woeful they played in losing 1-0.

A piece of history was written in the process as the Albion recorded 11 top flight matches in succession without a victory.

Presumably, not the history lesson Potter had in mind when he made those ill-advised comments the previous month.

Wolves had not scored for seven hours before some typically suspect Albion defending from a corner gifted them the only goal of the game.

Yves Bissouma made a hash out of clearing the initial delivery into the box, succeeding only in looping it to Ruben Neves.

The Portuguese playmaker had a worrying amount of time and space to clip a ball back over an Albion defence who were all over the place.

Nobody in blue and white seemed to know whether they should be pushing up to catch Wolves offside or marking an Old Gold opponent.

In the end, they did neither and Neves return was clinically volleyed home by Romain Saiss as it finished Brighton 0-1 Wolves.

Covid not only impacted what happened on the pitch against Wolves, but also caused swathes of empty seats in the stands. The record books will forever show an attendance of 30,362 based on tickets sold rather than actually bodies through the turnstiles.

In reality, there were no more than 15,000 there. Brighton fans were not willing to risk catching Covid on December 15th with Christmas 10 days away, thus missing the big day in self isolation just to say I was at Wolves at home in the 2021-22 season.

This laid bare the detrimental impact of the Albions controversial ticket sharing scheme, whereby season ticket holders were not willing to pay 20 for the right to pass on their seat to a family member who also had to be a 25 MyAlbion+ member.

One sure-fire way of telling that the club know they have cocked up is when Paul Barber writes a 1500 word essay defending whatever the failing idea is, including barely-hidden contempt of any criticism of the Albion.

Trying to claim that everything was hunky dory with the season ticket sharing scheme despite the visual evidence of empty seats was a classic of the genre, made even better by saying any complaints were being done purely for Clickbait.

Not the greatest PR move Barber has ever made, especially when even fewer fans turned up to the Brentford game and supporters began uploading photos of empty seats to Twitter complete with the hashtag #Clickbait.

Those 12,000 or so hardy souls who made the journey to the Amex for that 8pm kick off on Boxing Day against the Bees were at least treated to a first victory since mid-September, as Brighton ran out 2-0 winners.

It was also the first time the Albion had won on December 26th since a 1-0 Championship success over Queens Park Rangers in 2005. Plenty of reasons to crack out the Baileys once everyone got home from the Amex at gone 11pm.

Both goals came inside the final 10 minutes of the first half. Enock Mwepu was the architect of the first, playing a brilliant ball over the top of the Bees defence.

Trossard timed his run to perfection and without breaking stride, volleyed the ball over the head of advancing Brentford goalkeeper Alvaro Fernandez and into the empty net.

Like London Buses, you wait over three months for a goal from open play at the Amex and then another comes along instantly.

Seven minutes later and Lallana linked up with Moder to feed Maupay 30 yards out. The Frenchman advanced a few steps before hitting a scrumptious curler into the top corner to leave Fernandez grasping at thin air.

Two extraordinary match winning saves up the other end in the second half from Sanchez helped secure a much-needed three points to significantly lift the mood around the Albion.

That was clear in the final game of December as Brighton went and played European Champions Chelsea off the park at Stamford Bridge with one of their best performances of the entire 2021-22 season.

Romelu Lukaku gave the Blues a first half lead with a controversial goal, scored after Lukaku had seemed to throw Maupay to the ground as both tussled to reach a Mason Mount corner.

Brighton were totally dominant after that, to the point where Chelsea fans decided to try and help their team waste time. This led to quite simply one of the greatest moments ever to take place at an Albion game in the clubs 121 year existence.

A ball was cleared into the front row, where a home supporter picked it up. Rather than hand it back, he decided to try and boot it towards the back of main stand.

We say try, because all he succeeded in doing was leathering the ball into his own friends face from point blank range, much to the delight of everyone in the away end.

Brighton fans had an even bigger reason to cheer when the game ticked into the first minute of stoppage time. The outstanding Marc Cucurella pushed forward and crossed into the box, where Danny Welbeck rose like the proverbial salmon to make it Chelsea 1-1 Brighton.

It was the first goal the Albion had ever scored at Stamford Bridge in an away game against Chelsea. That was a much better history lesson for Potter and Brighton to finish December on as their 2021-22 season began to get back on track.

December2021 record: P5 W1 D3 L1 F5 A4Results: 1-1 v West Ham (A), 1-1 v Southampton (A), 0-1 v Wolves (H), 2-0 v Brentford (H), 1-1 v Chelsea (A)League position at the end of the month: 10thWeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month: Neal Maupay

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Brighton & Hove Albion 2021-22 Season Review: December - We Are Brighton

Whitearmor real name Ludwig Rosenberg has shaped the sound of an entire online generation. The 29-year-old is the producer behind Swedish collective Drain Gang, a group of friends consisting of artists Ecco2k, Thaiboy Digital and Bladee who formed in 2013, gaining prominence in the cloud-rap scene alongside friend and collaborator Yung Lean. As the groups master beatmaker, Rosenberg is responsible for their mercurial and terminally online sound, which has garnered a prolific reputation among countless baby-faced Soundcloud producers who aspire to follow in his footsteps.

Perhaps the most elusive member of the group, the Stockholm-based producer has managed to keep a mysterious online presence, despite the collectives deeply obsessive fanbase, which has spawned countless fan accounts, meme pages and a highly active subreddit. Im probably the least famous out of all of us, he says, with a grin. Hes notoriously silent on social media (I never understood Instagram) except to post the occasional Drain promo or reshare and rarely takes photographs with fans. This is one of the first interviews hes agreed to in the decade since the groups formation.

Im probably the one that says no to most things. Its not that I mind it, I just dont really enjoy it and fans know that. Our fans are very respectful in general, he tells me over Zoom. Hes calling in from Barcelona, where Drain Gang have just performed as part of a Year0001 showcase at the citys Razzmatazz. Camera on, a rarity among reclusive internet artists, he answers questions in a low Swedish drawl. Occasionally, hell break into a sly grin as if quietly amused, while at other times, exudes the quiet confidence of someone who (plainly) knows their shit.

Growing up at the height of the early internet, Rosenberg credits many of his early formative music experiences to MTV and the digital music revolution, spending hours trawling Napster, where he would spend hours downloading music with his dad, a computer enthusiast. I started listening to a lot of Bob Marley and rap music and Slipknot, he explains. The blogspot era was my biggest thing, where you could just pirate music. Music blogs that would just put up music; you would find one blog that was good and then youd find other blogs. Knowing the sources and knowing which blogs were similar. A lot of clicking; I like clicking stuff. He pauses. But now everything is being fed to you through the algorithm. Back then, you had to actively search for stuff. But the algorithm has made it even harder to find stuff on your own.

He began playing drums as a teenager, spending time in an indie-rock band before heading down the electronic noise and experimental route. In 2010, he began uploading mixtapes online and listening to a lot of Waka Flock and Atlanta rap, which he describes as his biggest music-related internet experiences. He elaborates, I feel like my perspective on music has always been honing in on specific parts of songs and then reimagining a lot of stuff. I focused on what I didnt like a lot a problem-based mindset.

I know what it feels like to make music with no response, with some response, and now with this much response. It all has its pros and cons, he says, reflecting on Drain Gangs cult following and their gradual rise to superstardom. I barely feel anything about it. Its not to sound arrogant but its a very uphill battle once you start. You still have to make new music even past that point; you still have to pretend that its just you and your music. I shut a lot of that stuff out to be able to focus and to have your own compass of whats good and what youre trying to express or not.

I know what it feels like to make music with no response, with some response, and now with this much response Whitearmor

When creating Ecco2k and Bladees 2022 album Crest, the group rented a cottage next to the cliff-bound beach from Ingmar Bergmans fantasy epic The Seventh Seal. The Crest album has a lot of inspiration in Abba and this Swedish movie with Bjrn (Ulvaeus) he makes a lot of the Astrid Lindgren movie soundtracks, he explains. The ambient textures can be heard on Music for Weddings: The Abyss, Rosenbergs solo project, which he describes as a breakup album. The Abyss is a mistranslation of L-bas, a novel by French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans It was originally called Music for Weddings, but I thought itd be nice to have the colon breaking it up in the middle, he says.

In the Abyss: Music for Weddings marks the first time Rosenberg has dropped a full-length solo release under his artist name, though he maintains its not all that different to other projects. I feel like Im still a producer, he asserts. If you release music thats just instrumental, you don't have to be really an artist in the same way. The 10-track record has quiet intensity, where stretched-out yet euphoric melodies are paired with sparkling synth pads to give off the sensation that youre drifting through air. Sonically, its very similar to Crest melodically, though a bit more stripped-down. Everything I want to say has always been in the melodies, he says. Making music is my outlet, so I feel blessed that you can just make a melody and thats it.

Its hard to pinpoint exactly what defines Drains extremely genre-fluid sound; the group has had many evolutions, with tracks traversing everything from digital trap, eurodance and glitchcore. Fuelled by a constant need to reinvent themselves, their most recent albums have taken a more innocent-sounding turn, where bubblegum pop melodies combine with existential-lite lyrics to give off a sense of youthful nihilism. Tracks like Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and a 2021 collab with Charli XCX on track Drama have propelled them into the mainstream, while Bladee and Ecco2ks campaign with Marc Jacobs cutesy offshoot y2k brand Heaven further adds to the cute lore surrounding the group.

Drainers (the name given to Drain Gang fans), too, champion this 00s aesthetic; a mix of mall goth and emo, with hints of Harajuku. But what does Rosenberg think? Im not an aesthetic person at all; I dont really care about clothes or visual stuff Im strictly melody, he responds, adding: The melodies can be cute though! The fans, he explains, have their own narrative thats separate from what the group actually puts into the world. The narrative is this: were just these guys making music and we exist in a world where there are all these people who have their own stuff going on. What people choose to do with our music, or whatever narrative they want to put out, is fine by me.

In the Abyss: Music for Weddings is out now

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Whitearmor: Everything Ive ever wanted to say has been in the melodies - Dazed

For the last few years, Call of Duty has moved away from Steam, with Activision instead choosing to launch the games on Blizzard's Battle.net platform. This year, the series may finally return to Steam, according to newly leaked artwork.

As spotted by Reddit user, Kalinine, new artwork for Modern Warfare II has appeared on Steam over the weekend. The art shows Ghost, a returning character for Modern Warfare 2 (2022), a sequel to the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot. The artwork appeared on a page for Black Ops III DLC, despite not being related to that previous game. If Activision developers are uploading new artwork to Steam, then they could be building a Steam page for the new game.

Alternatively, it is worth noting that many publishers post news updates for their older games on Steam to advertise to prior customers on the platform, even if the game is only available via another launcher. Ubisoft for instance is known for doing this with the Assassin's Creed games. Newer titles like Valhalla are only available via Ubisoft Connect and the Epic Games Store, but news updates regarding Valhalla are posted to previous Assassin's Creed community pages on Steam.

There are a ton of back-catalogue Call of Duty titles on Steam and they still sell quite well even to this day. With that in mind, it is possible that Activision is simply uploading artwork to post news about the new Modern Warfare II to Steam Community pages.

Activision and Infinity Ward have not officially announced much in regards to Modern Warfare 2, but we do know the game is launching on the 28th of October and recent rumours suggest it will have an exclusive VR mode for PS VR2 on PS5.We can expect new official details over the summer, including beta dates and gameplay.

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Your ISP has a data cap. Youre worried about using so much data you blow through it. So what exactly does that look like, and are you really at risk of doing so?

We think data caps are awful and an antiquated practice that shouldnt even exist. But if youre stuck with an ISP that has a cap, youve probably thought about it before. Maybe youve even taken some steps to monitor your data usage out of concern youd be hit with overage fees.

But even then a data cap can feel kind of abstract. Its certainly a concrete number and your ISP will be sure to let you know if you blow through itsomebody has to pay the $-per-GB overage fees after allbut what does using up all your data look like?

Data caps range in size from as low as a few hundred GBs for various satellite and rural DSL providers to as high multi-TB caps for other providers. Typically, however, the average is around 1TB (with some small variations like 1.2 or 1.25 equally as common).

With that in mind, were going to play around with 1TB as our example data cap. Feel free to take our numbers and tweak them to fit your situation.

So you have a 1TB, or thereabout, size data cap. Youre worried your streaming video or gaming habits might put you at risk of blowing through it and paying extra.

Weve crunched the numbers on the bitrates and demands of various common internet activities to create a rough average data rate for each activity.

First, lets look at what we would consider active internet use, usage where youre sitting there actively engaged with the content like streaming a movie or playing a game.

In the table below weve broken the information down into how much data the activity uses per hour and then extrapolated that out into how many hours you could do just that activity before hitting a 1TB data cap, as well as what that works out to in terms of hours-per-day in a 30-day month.

Youll notice many activities exceed the number of hours in a daythats because a single user doing that activity simply cant use enough data to exceed the data cap. You simply cannot blow through a 1TB data cap listening to Spotify all day or sitting there playing Overwatch.

Some activities, such as streaming 4K video, are significantly more bandwidth-hungry and a single user could, with some dedicated after-work binge-watching over the course of a month, absolutely blow through a 1TB data cap.

Where data caps become more problematic is when you have multiple people in the home. Very few people will, on their own, watch 11 hours of HD video a day. But if you have five people sharing the same internet plan and all watching content at the end of the day, the per-day usage per person shifts from 11 hours to around 2.3 hours.

When it comes to day-to-day internet use like watching Netflix or playing around on social media, if youre not watching everything in 4K or sharing your internet plan with a large and active household, its actually kind of tough to get close to most data caps.

That is, unless, youre downloading lots of stuffand big stuff at that. Then its pretty easy to blow through a data cap.

Well skip inserting a chart here with dazzling stats like how you could download 500,000 ebooks before hitting a 1TB data cap. Realistically even the most obsessive data hoarder isnt downloading 500,000 eBooks or 200,000 MP3s.

But large downloads, like those you run into with modern video games, can put a real dent in your data allotment for the month. Even fairly modest games often have multi-GB download sizes and AAA titles routinely run 100GB or more.

Whether you just bought a gaming PC and are going wild downloading all the titles you want to catch up on or youre restoring your Steam library, its very easy to blow through a data cap before the month is even underway. Console games arent exempt from large game sizes either, so dont think that just because youre playing on an Xbox youre exempt from the hulking size of AAA titles.

If youre a gamer, then, its wise to consider your data cap when downloading your games. If there are only a few days left in the billing cycle and you have spare bandwidth, thats a perfect time to download a new game or a pile of large patches to your existing game library.

In addition to games, obviously any large files are going to eat up your data allotment. Whatever youre downloadingbe it pirated TV shows or piles of Linux ISOsbesides large games, lots of large file downloads are one of the fastest ways to blow through your data.

Historically, smart home and security wasnt a category not many people would need to consider. Netflix streaming and downloading game updates cover the big data sinks for most folks.

But the arrival of easy to setup up and cloud-connected security cameras has introduced a significant point of data usage into many homes.

Very few people realize it, but both download and upload bandwidth count towards your data cap for most ISPs. That means not only does watching your smart security camera through your phone or TV chew up your data cap just like watching streaming video would, but the camera feed uploading to the internet also chews up your data cap.

If you have your cameras set up so that they only stream to the cloud when you are watching them, the usage might be fairly trivialsay, around 10-20 GB for routine checking-on-package-deliveries.

But if you have an always-on smart camera system, like you get with the higher tiers of Googles Nest Aware monitoring, the feed from each camera is sent to the cloud 24/7 not just for package alerts and other detect movements. That upload bandwidth adds up really quickly. Per Googles documentation for the Nest cameras, you could use up anywhere from 30GB to 400 GB per camera every month depending on how youve set the video quality.

So if you recently got a smart camera and youre using up way more data than usual, thats a good place to start your investigation.

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How Long Does It Really Take to Blow Through a 1TB Data Cap? - How-To Geek

Like regular contributor Davey Winder, I have my hobby-horse subjects. Every so often he writes about his dislike for the slow evolution of hacking from industry-insider compliment to mass-media warning label. For me, 2021 was the year streaming took a turn for the worse.

From the outset, it was something of a fake jargon term, loosely covering all delivery of media (sound as well as video) without an initial download to local storage. Mostly, people would throw the term around when a sporting event, Royal wedding/birth/defenestration, or record-breaking volcanic eruption spiked interest in unfolding events. Streaming was a sign you were on the leading edge of the home multimedia revolution.

Then, things started to get a lot more complicated. Both Facebook and YouTube took the video captured by their phone apps and beamed it onto a web page with potentially millions of viewers, either live or on-demand. This concept has been curiously slow to take off, and seemed to have many fans in the upper reaches of the IT product design business, with almost zero support down in the more variably connected lives of everyday consumers. Too much faff; kills the battery; need to change your phone twice a year to keep up with the software, they said.

Protesters use Facebook Live to gain both attention and new followers to their cause

Personally, I have a valid interest in this game because my partner has been a habitual visitor to both Parliament Square, and Speakers Corner, as part of her permitted exercise circuit during COVID-19. It turns out shes pretty good at talking to the various tribes inclined to turn up in those locations, no matter their affiliations or, in my view, how crazy some of them might be. This was all very well until I was shown a YouTube video: of course, it shows Sandra in the midst of a lot of chaps, almost all of whom are holding smartphones.

My concern is, if something goes amiss in this vast focus of the worlds protests, how do I guarantee staying in touch? Her new mates will instantly say Telegram, but to my mind, watching that video, the main obstacle to asking what time tea wouldnt be the government snooping on the data packets; its all those guys connected live to YouTube or wherever, uploading around a MB a second of streamed video. Not forgetting all their buddies who watch, rather than stream, in the crowd. Telegram wont do me any good in a small area occupied by 10,000 people all trying to update their social media, no matter how unbreakable its encryption. Encrypted or not, secret or not, worthy or not all data packets look the same and get an equal shake when the bandwidth metre is on 100%.

The key problem here is contention. Almost everybody forgets, when benchmarking their internet speeds and crowing about 5G signals, that theyre not making a single hop over-the-air instant connection. No matter how fast the radio signal portion of the link might look on your benchmarking software of choice, it will be connected to a backhaul: a piece of fibre with often substantially less capacity than the radio side of the cellular connection. Remember, quite a lot of the earlier backhauls from the days before 2G or 3G were even contemplated, were made over ISDN copper circuits. Thats an absolute maximum of 128Kbits/sec per cell tower.

Yet, nobody noticed. People like me, whose lives are run by an influx of messages, might have occasionally spotted the odd delay, but these were in the order of a few seconds and, rarely, several hours. People dont think about how this performance is achieved and what it means for them. In the case of the modern-day protest march in central London, led by the Pied-Piper-like figure of Piers Corbyn, contention hardly does the technology justice. Corbyns favourite protest trick is literally blowing fire: when he spits out a ten-foot fireball, people nearby do two things. One, they step smartly back, and two, they take a picture, or stream a video. While they do that, the local infrastructure gives each phone a piece of the actual underlying bandwidth, divided up between all the in-range users. Tens of thousands of them, sometimes.

Firebrand Piers Corbyn knows how to ignite the phones of passers-by

Streaming is probably the most profligate bandwidth consumer of the modern era, and worse than we dared to imagine because the whole vlogger/streamer culture is itself controversial. Streaming brings with it a certain guarantee of validity: no editing, no picking and choosing, just the rawness of an uninterrupted feed. This appeals to those with a slightly paranoid outlook, as viewers and the range of protests in central London that attract streaming vlogger coverage are also right from the modern conspiracy theory playbook. In fact, theyre so driven by paranoia that the fossil copies left behind of their live stream sessions get deleted from common social media platforms within hours of them finishing whether by the site managers, trying to kowtow to government public order requirements, or by the originators, convinced that the live faithful are their only true friends, it matters not. The evidence self-disappears.

Which, for techies beleaguered by over-adventurous partners, really doesnt help me figure out the best solution to our ongoing need to communicate. I wouldnt mind something like Telegram, and yet not quite so politicised: something that lets me run a message window on my PC, which tells me the round-trip delay (if any) for each of my contacts, and optionally has links from there to the bit of Google that shows you their location and journey history, if theyve turned that stuff on.

I remember an improbable Scottish business unit of Telefnica, the Spanish phone company, demonstrating something quite like but not exactly the same as this: the bandwidth requirement for such a thing is apparently pretty low, though I expect the battery life might not be a big winner. Id like to see how those functions would work on a modern phone like the Nokia X20, which amazed me with its stamina doing sat nav duty before Christmas, for instance. As for our need to stay in touch, we have found that short SMS messages are still the most predictable platform in a big meeting or event.

I talked over the whole streaming thing with a senior colleague, and he was surprisingly negative on the subject. Give it a few months and everyone will be doing it, he said. I didnt see why he was right for some time after that, when strange twists of fate left me with a small bucket of 5G-capable phones. After only a few weeks of not very diligent fiddling, I see his point one of those major benefits to the long delays produced by lockdown and by truck driver shortages is that the phone makers have been sitting back and thinking carefully about what features they can present, and what software they can wait to be written before releasing their new models.

Youve been streamed: will we all be doing this in a few years time?

With at least a years delay in all manner of sectors from COVID-19 or from simply trying to restart after the pandemic, there has been lots of free developer time to address the more difficult and time-consuming features. Suddenly, in 2022, even the cheapest 5G phones have both the horsepower and the code to support much more compute and communication-intense functions. Barriers to being live online were a big part of the reason why doing this was only of interest to to be polite about it fanatical types. With these actual new-generation devices in the hands of practically everybody, the more contentious and fame-hungry vloggers are likely to disappear behind the sheer volume of more mainstream interests and past-times.

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Live streaming is pushing IT infrastructure to its absolute limits - IT PRO

Recently, some of the travel restrictions [COVID] in Korea have been lifted. Youre no longer required to quarantine upon arrival, which became a huge incentive for pro teams, pro players, and streamers to travel to Korea to practice. All these individuals have a different goal when traveling to Korea; pro players/teams travel to hone their skills by scrimming with Asian teams, as well as grind the solo queue ladder, while those that travel independently, such as the streamers, come to just grind the solo queue ladder.

Ever since the champion Katarina got reworked, I, the writer of this interview, have almost exclusively played her. Call me one-trick or whatever, but there was something about the explosiveness of the champion that really made this game refreshing. For me to interview one of the best Katarina players in the world, Jackson KatEvolved Dohan had me very excited. I had a chance to chat with him during his time in Korea to talk about his journey as a pro player, as well as his thoughts on what its like to play on the Korean server.

Howve you been enjoying your time in Korea so far?

Oh, it's, it's insane here. I love it. Ever since I even started playing solo queue, in general, it's been a very good time for me. Streaming has been so fun, I've been able to put in many more hours than I normally would. Usually, if I'm to play NA solo queue, I wouldn't be able to play more than eight hours because I would just go insane. But here, I can play for 12+ hours, I'll stream for 10 hours and then I'll take a small break. And then I'll play again for another four. It's crazy.

Do you play off-stream in Korea?

Yeah, every now and then. Not too often. I would say around only 5% of my games are off stream. The rest 95% are all on stream.

Before we get into your time here in Korea, I do want to talk about how you had a very interesting career of being a streamer first. That's where I found you first. Do you mind talking about that?

I first got into streaming years and years ago, probably back in 2016, I would say. I started streaming when I was 14 years old. When I started doing that, I wasn't Challenger yet. It was like my second year playing the game. And then as I was streaming, I eventually hit Challenger. And because I hit Challenger, I started making connections with a lot of people and started growing a little bit on YouTube and Twitch. It wasn't by any means where we are right now, but it was really nice.

Was the purpose of you starting streaming because you wanted to go pro?

Oh, no. I only started shooting just for fun. It was always like in the back of my head that I wanted to be known for something someday in LoL. I was always caught up on looking at websites to see if I was the number one Katarina back in 2014-2016, and that was my goal. I wanted to be the best at something. So I kept on trying and I just kept on streaming, even though I wasn't making a living off of it or anything. I was just streaming every single day because it was fun.

According to my research, you got drafted to EG first through Scouting Grounds, then onto TSM Academy. Talk to me about that transition.

My path to pro was actually a lot more complicated, because I was streaming and doing YouTube the entire time and while I was doing that... The story of it kind of starts when Katarina as a champion was not in a good spot in the meta. It was around the time when Irelia got reworked and Zoe got released. Those two were the mid lane meta for months; the four-second Irelia passive, she Qs you level 2 and you die.

As a Katarina player myself, I remember those terrible days [laughter].

[Laughs] It was definitely unplayable. I was like, "I can't lock Katarina in any of my games because I'm gonna get stomped." So I just stopped playing her for a while. And I kind of stopped streaming and YouTube for a bit, but my audience wanted to see Katarina and I was like, "Okay, well, I don't want to let down my audience." Uploading Katarina was just not good at all.

So I didn't upload Katarina, I didn't really stream at all, I just played solo queue all day and instead of playing Katarina all day, I played those champions: I played Irelia Zoe, Akali, older Swain, Kassadin, etc, right? Just learning those champions basically for an entire year, all of 2018, I would say. I didn't even know about Scouting Grounds at the time, but by the time I learned it, Scouting Grounds had already started. So I already missed the first opportunity to participate. After I learned about it, I was like, "Wow, if I only knew about it earlier, I couldve probably taken part in it". So I made it my goal next year to go there.

I played in the amateur scene in 2019 for the entire year before I went to Scouting Grounds. The way I got onto my amateur team was through the Tyler1 Championship Series in Dec of 2018. We got second place in that tournament; the team that we lost to, their mid laner wasn't gonna play for them, so they asked me to play for them next year. I joined, we won a lot of amateur tournaments together, we took part in multiple LAN and online tournaments, and did really well. It was my first team environment, and I had a good time playing with them. As a gamer, it's very secluded because you normally play LoL 15 hours a day, dont go outside, and not make friends in real life. It was nice to go to LAN events with this team, and understand what it was like to be in a team.

So at the end of 2019 was when you went to Scouting Grounds?

Yes. There used to only be the solo queue requirements, but this time, they picked the top two amateur players from each role, and the top two players from each role on the solo queue ladder. Our team didn't make the cut. It sucked, and it was really sad to not be going with everyone.

Lucky for me, I got in through the solo queue; I was like the number 2 or number 1 mid player on the NA solo queue ladder in 2019. I got invited, and I of course went without hesitation. Funnily enough, before I went to Scouting Grounds, I was invited to multiple team bootcamp tryouts, and one of the ones I went to was TSM. And while I was going to TSM, I landed with two of my other friends [Gorica and Johnsun] that were also going to the TSM bootcamp. We were hanging out at LAX, when Gorica checked his email and said, "Oh, I got my Scouting Grounds invite."

I didn't know I was going to get invited, because I wasnt keeping track of the solo queue ladder. But when we got back to the hotel, I got wifi, looked at my email and I had the invitation. It was actually really funny because the bootcamp was two weeks before Scouting Grounds. So I was in LA for the bootcamp and Scouting Grounds took place after three days.

Id say Scouting Grounds was the highlight of my career. You learn a lot. I feel bad for the players that had to do it online because of COVID. However, my in-person experience included meeting every LCS coach, a lot of the management from the teams, and other players that are in the same shoes as you are, who are trying to become pro.

As a region, NA failed to achieve international success in LoL Esports. There are a lot of speculations as to why thats the case, but one of the major reasons that keep coming up is because NA teams do not really practice as hard as the Eastern teams. What has your experience been like in terms of practice regimen with TSM?

I'll start by kind of adding onto what you said about the whole laziness aspect. I don't think it's necessarily the players' fault a lot of the time. I think the year before I started playing Academy, they actually changed how scrim blocks worked. When I started playing, you would scrim five games a day, usually for four days a week because you'd have one off day and then two match days. So each day, you would set your scrims at around noon, and then practice until around 5 p.m. Now that I'm here in Korea, I've actually heard from people how the Korean pros scrim and how LPL pros scrim. [Triple blocks?] Yes, they start scrims at 1 p.m. and end at 11 p.m.

I can assure you that's the case based on my experiences.

Yes. They do three sets of three, which is insane to me. I wish that was what it was in NA when I was playing, but it wasn't. They kind of made it universal with every team to do only five hours a day, because some players didn't feel like they had any free time.

I can understand why some people want to have free time because if you're scrimming five hours a day, your schedule is still already packed. You don't have much free time off because a lot of people are obligated to stream, even if they don't like to. Some pro players might just want to finish scrims and just play solo queue. So my usual schedule would be to wake up at 9-10 a.m., eat breakfast, go to the office, scrim for five hours, eat dinner. And then you go home, and you do whatever.

Personally, I would always rather scrim more. I was always excited for double blocks, where Id scrim five hours, take a break for dinner, and then play like another two or three games. That was always fun to me, and was always good practice, but that is sadly not the case anymore, because it takes every team to agree to such a schedule, or at least one other team to scrim against.

Overall, I think NA is like the Champions Queue situation, where the whole laziness aspect of it is just part of the culture. Of course, there are a lot more internal issues with Champions Queue, where people have complained about the MMR system and how there's a lot of players there that they feel like shouldn't be there. But there's also the problem that there's a lot of players that should be there but aren't.

While were on the subject, can you elaborate on your thoughts a bit more on Champions Queue?

A lot of players have different ways of practicing, right? There's no doubt about that. I know players that literally play better if they scrim more and play less solo queue or vice versa. There are different practice methods, depending on what you're trying to focus on. In general, if you're looking at an LCS bot laner, they would probably improve more if they were to just do 2v2s after scrims rather than solo queue, especially since duo queue is gone. What are you going to learn if you're queuing up as a solo support, and you get like the grandmasters on your team? The matchup isn't going to be the same that it would be in an actual match.

I can understand why some players decided to not play Champions Queue, because its a waste of time for some players.

So after your tenure with TSM, you transitioned back into full-time streaming. Talk to me about that transition.

I had multiple opportunities, but I didn't really want to play Academy anymore and I didn't really see the point in playing LCS at the time. So I decided to just go back to streaming. I wasn't even planning to go back to streaming initially but I started streaming every single day and doing daily uploads. In the process, I regained my passion in content creation and I started to really enjoy it. It was going really well for me so I was like, "Okay, I'm going to stick to this."

In general, I have more free time. Before I played Academy, I would stream for 10 hours a day. And then when I started playing, my time was obviously very limited. Even though I only scrimmed for five hours a day, I'd only have around like three-four hours of free time a day to stream. Some days, I wouldn't even feel like it because maybe we had a bad day of scrims, or maybe I just wanted to play different champions in solo queue.

Fast forwarding to the present day, what made you decide to take this trip out to Korea?

My reason was just to just to stream. I've been playing NA solo queue for the past six years. I've always wanted to go to Korea. It was actually a plan I had since my Academy days. It was my plan to go to Korea during the first off-season, which would be around May-June 2020. But COVID hit February or March of that year, so that's when all the restrictions came into place. When the restrictions were lifted, this was like my only chance. I saw it. I was waiting this entire year for the visa applications to open, and the visa allowed me to stay here up to six months.

I was like, "Okay, well, I've always wanted to do this. I feel like if I don't do this now, then I probably will procrastinate and just never do it again." This is my first time being in a different country, and its been a good time so far.

Did you have any specific goals, such as hitting a certain LP or anything like that?

No, just Challenger. My initial plan was to hit Challenger on the Korean server and then go play on the Chinese super server, but I wasn't able to get an account on the super server.

You're currently at what? 900 LP [during the time of the interview]?

I keep going from 900 to 800, just going up and down. I wouldn't say I'm stuck because I'm gonna be there for a few days but definitely our LP graph is going up slowly, slowly but surely. [He finished at 756 LP on the ladder when he left Korea - Ed.]

Did you expect to hit that high?

In a way I did. I didn't expect to climb the Challenger that fast; I wasn't expecting to hit Challenger in 13 days, that's for sure. But I was definitely expecting to hit Challenger at some point in the trip, just not as early as I did. I was going to hit Challenger, maybe a few weeks in, maybe like near the end of the trip.

From someone that played NA solo queue almost exclusively, what are some of the things that you like and you disliked so far about the Korean server?

The server itself is very good mechanically. Maybe the ping has something to do with that, because everyone's playing on 9-20 ping, as well as the Chinese players playing on 35. Obviously a lot better than NA solo queue. In NA, if you're on the west coast, you're playing with 60+. If you're on the east coast, you're playing with 20. So there's a very big gap there. So overall, a lot of the mechanical players on this server shine because of low ping.

Overall, though, I feel like due to so many mechanical players on the KR server, they fail to realize that there's also macro in the game. A lot of my solo queue games in Korea are about perma fighting. There's no thinking about what can happen after the fight. I've had solo queue games where someone will go for a 1v2 and die, which leads to losing Baron. But I feel if a lot of players just think properly then they just won't go for the 1v2. I feel like the players here take a lot of risks.

I feel like part of that reason is because pro players use solo queue to experiment more, so for them, its more about limit testing.

Here is the original post:

KatEvolved: "Due to so many mechanical players on the KR server, they fail to realize that there's also macro in the game." - InvenGlobal