 Alright, I know this episode is late. Usually, we make the episodes available every Friday 6am. But here I am, 10am on a Friday recording today's episode. And usually, I make it a point of being punctual because one of the things I've noticed about content creation is that you have to be regular. And it's easy to fall off the horse once you say, oh, I can let one episode go, I can be a little bit late, I can take a day off, and it doesn't work like that. Or, and you know, I do try to keep a consistent work ethic. So, even though I do have a good excuse slash reason, I usually record on a Thursday, but yesterday, holy Thursday, I was out most of the day doing personal deliveries and you can check out the live drive stream of that on our YouTube channel. But you know, I got home and I was really kind of beat out. But again, the show must go on and we do have some interesting news. This holy week, long weekend, and I hope you're having a good time wherever and whenever you're listening to this. Jumping right in with hardware news, AMD 7800X3D just released and just to give a quick backtrack, the X3D tag means that they added additional cash and all of the tech gooblidook at side. Bottom line for this technology is that it allows faster performance, usually in single core applications, i.e. gaming. So, in particular, the X3D series has been good for all sorts of things. They started it with the 5000 series, but in particular, they serve as very good CPUs for running games. Now, AMD has already come out with the 7950X3D, which is their most expensive and now the 7900X3D is also out now. But reviews about those first two CPUs have been mixed. Yes, the performance is good, but the price is also quite high and you're not seeing the superlative performance that you're expecting to see from an X3D CPU, at least for gaming, for single core applications. But the earlier views of the 7800X3D do appear to be quite promising. In part because of the way the chip was designed, apparently only one chiplet was added to enable or to get the additional 3D cache for this particular CPU. The two more expensive CPUs in the line used additional chiplets and apparently that creates inefficiencies between shifting between the 3D cache and the non-3D cache. So, the single chiplet design for the 7800X3D allows it to be more efficient in processing instructions which may be why it handles games better and it is cheaper than the first two generations or sorry, the first two chips above it. And I mentioned this not because a lot of people are probably thinking of upgrading, a lot of people have already settled into their gaming rigs. But it's interesting to point out that at least for gaming, you don't really need to get the top of the line when it comes to CPUs. A lot of people with a budget just assume that oh, the most expensive CPU for Intel is 3900K and I want that. Or for AMD, it's a 7900X3D. Yes, you are getting additional performance but particularly for games, you don't need a lot of cores and threads which is what you're paying for with those more expensive CPUs. So while your games will run great on those CPUs, price to performance, you're not gaining a whole lot more compared to if you have gone, would say, 3900K for example. And these multi-core CPUs are really meant for a lot of multitasking if you're doing heavy rendering and things like that. So there are specific use cases where you would want multi-core CPUs but gaming isn't really one of them. So if you're making a gaming rig on a budget, do keep that in mind that you don't automatically need to jump to the latest and greatest CPU. And the 7800X3D, while being a bit pricier than some other CPUs, is definitely a lot cheaper than the 7900X3D and the 7950X3D. So that's something to keep in mind that you do need to look at the single-core performance more if you're getting a gaming rig compared to some other use cases that you might have. And speaking of gaming, one game that doesn't really need a lot of force power to run is Dota 2, but it certainly runs on drama. And we have a Sai player, 23 Savage. He recently made a statement saying that Filipinos spread like cancer, I guess in gaming communities and Dota in general. And well, this Sai player was a bit annoyed because he was streaming a game and he felt that somebody was stream sniping him. Now back in the day, when I was playing games like way back when we used to call that commsat from commsat from Starcraft 1, it was the Terran ability which you added to your command center. Basically, you could reveal parts of the map. But since we were playing IRL in a LAN cafe, commsat just meant like, dumaan ka sa likod ng kalabad mo at nakita mo yung position niya, nakita mo what units he had and things like that. So stream sniping is basically commsat, but online. So you're playing a match, but you're watching the other player's stream. So you know what he's doing, you know what abilities he has, what items and things like that. So 23 Savage got upset when he thought an opposing player was stream sniping him. And then it came to, I don't know, I guess he suspected the stream sniper was Filipino. And so there was a, he mentioned in the stream which I guess was recorded on YouTube, which has been set to private now, I think based on the news report. He said that Filipino spread like cancer. And if I were to manage a team and choose players, I will only allow one Filipino player in my team at most. Interesting to me that we are, well, number one, it's a little interesting to me that Filipinas are considered quite toxic online. And this is a constant theme and refrain that I've heard from people that I've interviewed. We've done YouTube videos, YouTube collaborations with other tech YouTubers from other Asian countries, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand as well. And there's this one YouTube video. I think it's by Pinoy. He goes to Singapore where they were having the Dota Finals just recently and then he interviews people and like the challenge was, say something or what would you chat or say online in game that would show that you're a Filipino player but without saying that you're a Filipino player. And like even other nationalities new like our curse words, yung mga PI natin, yung mga bobo, yung mga ganyan. And it's just like, it's interesting to me how universally pervasive we have become or rather the image of us has become of being these very aggressive, not just in-game but also in the way we communicate players. And it's even more interesting, doubly interesting to me that Filipinos, we run with it. Like we don't deny that we're like this. In fact, based on the comments to 23 Savage, they're like, a lot of Filipinos agreed. They're like, yeah, well, that's us. That's what we do. And they weren't offended. They were like, yeah, we're really kind of, I mean, a lot of Filipinos agreed with him with his description that we are cancer. I mean that we're this very kind of agro. Again, not just as a playing style, but as a teammate, a very toxic kind of teammate that will berate you, that will constantly get in your face about not doing the right thing. And it's interesting to me that we, yeah, just let that go. That we admit that this is our national identity as if nationalities had a gaming identity, that would be the Filipino player in a nutshell, very toxic as a teammate. From a sociological point of view, not to get too heavy, but I'm always fascinated by these kind of analysis of like, a culture is like this because it's reacting to this traumatic event in the nation's history. We have a lot of literature even discussing whether the Philippines is a proper nation because we were born out of, we weren't united previously before we were colonized. We were a bunch of islands all happy doing our own thing. And then suddenly this political unit was forced on us by someone from outside and while it had hundreds of years of history behind this kind of idea that these group of islands are one unit that didn't, you know, prepare us for independence as it were or so it was the Spanish, the Americans, and then briefly the Japanese and all of that time the political unit was always just this thing foisted from outside and we're even now we can see that we're very regionalistic rather than nationalistic and so all of these kind of cultural things coming into play at least for our country and it's been, you know, I find it fascinating that as a national identity as gamers our gaming identity would be this very toxic kind of character which we have embraced. We don't shy away from that image of us and it's become so much so that I'm kind of thinking of making a video out of it or like a long form podcast really kind of exploring where the the origins of this toxic Filipino gaming identity and why? Yeah, what does that reveal about us as players, as a nation, as a culture, as a society? Shifting from sort of local flavor to more international news the US Department of Justice filed a antitrust suit against Activision claiming that they came out with they came out with rules for the Overwatch League this was like way back like a couple of years ago where they put salary caps on players and and the US DOJ took that as an antitrust action or basically you have a monopoly and you're abusing that monopoly to the detriment of other players or other competitors in your space and I'm kind of blank on the legal details or the legal details aren't very clear to me. I just find it weird that something like this would get filed because a lot of the professional sports have those kind of salary caps and you hear about it all the time when people talk about the NBA where oh well this team has to trade this guy because they're over the salary cap although at least in the NBA to my understanding you can go over the salary cap but you get taxed perhaps the problem with the Overwatch rules was that it was a hard cap like you can't earn more than 100,000 a year or a month or something or whatever so it was a hard cap compared to a soft cap where you have to pay more luxury tax which is how I think it is in the NBA and it was a bit weird because they filed the suit like the DOJ filed the suit on a certain day and in a couple of days later they already came out with a statement saying that the thing had been settled so the so activation had already proposed a plan to the judge where both parties the court needs to approve the plan but then the charges or that particular suit would get dropped it was very quick it was a very quick resolution to this of course activation has more antitrust issues with their Microsoft wants to purchase them and a lot of antitrust bodies around the world not just in the US are looking into that proposed purchase but I just bring this up because it's really it really brings home how big gaming has become I mean, you know again, you know, when if you have been gaming for a long time you would never have thought that our hobby would come would become this big juggernaut where you have the government the US government stepping in and saying that oh, you know, one publishers actions are antitrust I mean, you think antitrust you think the big telco companies in the states before the big oil companies in the states before here in the Philippines we have a small but very thriving antitrust practice as it were a lot of the big companies because we do have a new law in place not new but relatively new the Philippine Competition Commission which needs to sign off on these big trade big acquisitions and things like that so it is a big practice market here in the Philippines as well as abroad but who knew that gaming would grow to such an extent that it would become or there would be antitrust issues involved and just my two cents a little bit I do miss gaming when it was less of a juggernaut I mean, gaming now is everywhere you see it in the advertisements you see it in the hype for the new games and you see it in the number of people, right? I mean, you have so many people playing all kinds of different games and I love the diversity like diversity in the sense that we have so many games available to us now but because it has become so big the industry has become so large a certain kind of like ironically the types of games that I just mentioned you know, we have so many games available now for choosing but a lot of the genres I grew up with are effectively dead or effectively they they don't gain they aren't mainstream now so we don't see a lot of releases for them talking about adventure games talking about simulator games I mean, yes you do see releases but not like back in the day and also this kind of like the gaming culture has really changed I mean, going back to the report on 23 Savage and even just like it's so big now that governments are looking into the antitrust dimension of it gaming back then I mean, yes, you could have a toxic teammate and of course, trash talk was part of it but it wasn't this kind of big intense like in your face or at least, you know, when I played and I usually played with friends in real life it wasn't like it was still kind of enjoyable which I think maybe some of the joy gets leached out when you go online and you get screamed at by a total stranger and you know, there's all sorts of other things coming into play now with gaming there's like identity politics and just all kinds of other politics that don't really have to do with just playing a game like you can't play a game in a vacuum anymore I guess this is just an old man's kind of complaint that things were simpler back then and I know all old men feel like that I mean, that's a trope since Hector, no, not Hector Nestor, Nestor from the Iliad I think Nestor from the Iliad is the old guy who's just basically like, oh, back in the day and I had a recent conversation with a friend just yesterday where we were doing our own versions of oh, back in the day because we are feeling our age it was a bit simpler, you know you didn't have it was just a start of at least when I started playing you got your gaming news from magazines and the reviews were like substantial reviews there weren't just like comedians trying to be funny and using games as a medium nothing wrong with that but again, it has become the overwhelming type of gaming related content you have streamers which are to be funny and like the art of picking apart a game but not to be just negative so that you can get views but rather it's like I really care about gaming and I'd like to see games succeed and this is not a good game for me because 1, 2, 3 bang you know, the heyday of computer gaming world or electro EGM I think was it electro gaming monthly or something like that I mean, I remember EGM more for the for the the initials rather than the actual name but I mean, I do still game I do still enjoy games but there's a lot of the culture now that I really can't wrap my head around and a part of me does miss the old timey-wimey kind of insulated world of gaming but with that said I hope you're enjoying the games that you're playing this holy weekend or whenever you're listening to this thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Tech Show but Friendly our or the podcast from Hardware Sugar this has been Anton your host mostly usually for this show and sometimes on our Hardware Sugar YouTube channel please do check us out on YouTube and please do leave us a review on Apple Podcast or wherever it's possible to review this podcast because I'd really like to get some feedback whether up or down on what you guys are enjoying thanks so much and till next Friday have a good week