 Hello, this is the inaugural Left Left Up, your monthly fix of gaming and tech news, covered from a radical perspective. I'm your host, Mariam Dijkalvita and Mariam Dit. Don't forget to subscribe to this channel and follow Navar Media on Twitter. Alright, let's start with tech. In early August, electric car company Tesla has launched the mass manufacturing of their latest and cheapest Model 3. Starting at $35,000, this electrical vehicle boasts that it can ride between 220 to 310 miles from a single charge. That is indeed impressive, and so Model 3 is hailed as a trend-setting, moderately affordable, fully electric vehicle. Now, when I talk about this with my radical friends, there is an understandable sneer at my excitement for it. Sure, Tesla is just another corporation, and yes, even sustainable energy will just end up being another commodity to be sold. Hardly an anti-capitalist utopia. However, climate change is real. It is happening right now, and it is disproportionately affecting populations living in poorer regions of the planet. While the rest of the world was focusing on the disaster in Houston, floods in India, Bangladesh and Nepal killed at least 1200 people and left millions homeless. And so it would be a fairly privileged position to take and ignore the absolute urgency to adopt technologies which would reduce our production of CO2 gases. Furthermore, necessity for oil in petroleum products creates multiple wars and ecological disasters around the world. As it currently stands, Tesla is a research company that has already lost over $3 billion and is only staying afloat due to stock investments. Unlike companies seeking profit maximization by using patents to establish exclusive products, Tesla encourages competitors and has made virtually all of its patents available. Its new manufacturing facility in Nevada will be completely energy-sustainable, and Tesla claims that 100 solar factories similar to their plant would be enough to provide all of the planet's electricity demands. Last month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration published its latest findings that reveal United States renewable energy is locked in a virtual dead heat with U.S. nuclear energy, each providing roughly 20% of the country's electrical generation. The majority is still produced by fossil fuels, but the trend is changing. Leading heads of BMW and Volkswagen have gathered in Germany at the beginning of August to a so-called diesel summit. They are discussing how to mitigate the business losses caused by the shift to renewable energy supplies. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, of course, still needs to be criticized for his donation to political parties providing money for such staunch climate change deniers as Mark Rubio. Then he also, at the same time, supports universal basic income. Weird, weird man. Tesla also must be held accountable for its treatment of their factory workers. The Tesla Workers Organizing Committee is raising issues to do with overtime, pay, and injuries in the workplace. All of that said, cars will exist. Tesla is at the forefront of the electric vehicle revolution, and I'm very curious whether Model 3 will reach its hype and become the trend-setting mass-consumer ecological vehicle of the future. And don't worry, if it's successful, we're like totally nationalizing it. Another potentially interesting development that is coming from the west coast of the United States was launched on the 23rd of August. Jobs of the Future Fund is an initiative created to prepare for the inevitable automation of various jobs, by some estimations 47% in the next 20 years, just in the United States alone. In comparison, unemployment peaked at 10% during the Great Recession after 2008, and almost 25% during the Great Depression, the period between 1929 and 1939. Jobs of the Future Fund advocates the introduction of the so-called robot tax for every machine that replaces a human being a company must be prepared to pay monthly taxes. The money collected would then fund new creative opportunities for work that are otherwise underfunded. The Future Fund explicitly distances itself from the universal basic income movement, as it believes that it is dangerous to be creating an order where a few people have nearly all the money and power, and everyone else gets a basic welfare check. While I'm a full supporter of the universal basic income project, especially for carers and those providing domestic labor, it is important to acknowledge that the robot tax may be the closest step towards that vision, and it will inevitably create a class of mega-rich people who won't even have to bother with labor costs any longer. That is a struggle we must be prepared for and adjust our tactics accordingly. Nonetheless, it is fascinating to see the big heads of the Silicon Valley beginning to take the human cost of automation seriously. On 1st of August, Britain's Home Secretary Amber Rudd has released an alarming feature on the Daily Telegraph informing us that she is in a conversation with the members of the Global Internet Forum with the intention to convince them to terminate end-to-end encryption. Even worse, Rudd insists such a move should be made privately without any indication to the users, meaning that once and if she gets her way with companies like Microsoft, Twitter, Google who own YouTube and Facebook who own WhatsApp, they may be tapping into our privacy and we won't even know. Now, I absolutely love this story. A study released on August has found that Uber drivers in London and New York artificially cost price surges so they can make passengers pay more. Some drivers deliberately log out of the mobile phone taxi app so the number of available rides dives. This creates a rise in the price of the available cars sending the price upwards and allowing drivers to reap the benefits. Professor Mareke Mellman told the Times, drivers have developed practices to regain control, even gaming the system. That's right, in the gig economy that is already so difficult to unionize, although Kudos to independent workers union Great Britain for trying, it is no surprise that workers will attempt to break the system and I for one commend these drivers for being tech savvy enough and essentially breaking the seemingly invincible Uber app. The criticism towards such practice revolves around the fact that in the end it is the consumer that pays more, not the bosses. However, during any industrial action it is often the case that the consumer is inconvenienced, whether that's Southern Rail or junior doctors. And if enough drivers do it, Uber will have no other choice but address the issue of low pay and the lack of social security the companies and police face. I mean seriously, if one doesn't have the resources to win the game, bend the rules and hate the game, not the player. Google was rocked by a scandal when an internal memo was leaked portraying the views of one of their senior software engineers. Now, I have to give an ounce of credit to this James Damore dude in the media the said memo and Damore's views have been portrayed as that of a violent misogynist with no respect to women. The 3,000 word text was indeed a bit more nuanced but essentially argued that due to biological differences women should not expect top jobs in tech and that Silicon Valley is not a safe space for people with his opinions. Boo hoo. Is Mr. Damore all trites? Nah, don't think so, is he extremely conservative in his views? Yeah. However, since being fired, which was mostly done for PR reasons for Google's point of view, it seems anyways, Mr. Damore was not helping himself by jumping ahead and doing interviews with such unsavory figures like Milo Ionopoulos. Reports show that quite a few people in the company believe Damore's views and it seems awfully strange that Google is not taking very serious action investigating all the individuals in the company that are reproducing the difficult path women and other minorities face when reaching those top jobs in tech. But as true radicals, we must also refuse becoming complacent and think that if we have an equal figure of women at the top of industries, the fight is over. Let's believe that if only there were more women in positions of power, paid just as well as men are, that would create a trickle down effect to the lower paid jobs is false and needs to be challenged. That capacity can be convenient for capitalism. At the end of August, Hollywood producers were in slight panic as the film industry has had its worst box office weekend in more than a decade. Perhaps something to be said about the fact that paying $15 or pounds and getting a two hour experience just doesn't seem as economically attractive as spending the same amount of money on a video game and getting 20, 30, 40 hours of a lot more interactive action. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime must have also had an effect on the cinema revenues and I am curious to see how is Hollywood going to react to such news. On the other hand, second biggest gaming event of the year? Gamescom in Cologne. Last month has had an astonishing 345,000 visitors and was opened by the country's chancellor, Angela Merkel. Yes, I'm now looking at you Jeremy Corbyn for opening EGX happening in Birmingham at the end of September this year. While the sheer size of the event sounds impressive, Christopher Drink in his article for GamesIndustry.biz is an interesting but ultimately very sad point that the vast majority of the couple of thousand games exhibited at this convention are not going to be heard of and are unlikely to reach any success. That is purely due to the industry's massive discoverability problem. There is so much talent in the field but everyone tends to play safe when it comes to games development. I agree with industry analyst Matt Lees when he says that these days games should be controversial apart from outstanding and innovative gameplay mechanics which are increasingly difficult to achieve. Indie developers shouldn't fear covering political and cultural trends. Such thematics in game could really benefit from the new cycle. Now it's time for awesome technology of the month. This month I present Refugee Aid app or Ref Aid. It's a brilliant mobile application that locates the nearest resource for food, shelter, education and work opportunities, healthcare and legal help. More than 400 of the largest aid organizations including Red Cross and Doctors of the World all use it across 14 different countries. I imagine people that are making this hiring journey are probably already aware of this app but are urge individuals that are watching this program if they are able to donate to the developers of this app and Continuous Growth will have all the links at the bottom of this video. Now a shameless plug. The World Transform 2017 Momentum's political festival is going to have a panel on video games for the many and yours truly is sharing it. We will be joined by Rosa Carbo-Mascarral, Creative Corp. Brunran, Nicola Sehe, developer of Viscal Combat from the recent presidential election and industries veteran Adam Payne. We'll be looking what role can gaming play in reclaiming this space from the right. How can it influence politics beyond elections? Imagine and construct worlds beyond the neoliberal order. Now I want to hear from you. Any suggestions for September news that could be covered in the next month's show or perhaps some cool technologies I should be aware about. Or indeed maybe you're an employee at a gaming or tech company and would like to blow your story. I want to hear from you. Please email mariamatnovarmedia.com and thanks for watching. See you in a month. Bye. When the day comes, Tesla will be nationalized. That's it.