The Giant Beastcast: Episode 297

Just what I needed. Happy weekend duders.

Really feel Jeff's pain on his keyboard situation. Just had a static shock blow up my keyboard of 10+ years a couple weeks ago.

I also need to ground myself literally every time I stand up. I use an intermediary object to make the process somewhat less painful (a Leatherman in my case, but I know a lot of people use keys for the same effect).

Regarding trading latency, physical proximity of hardware, etc there was a nice talk at cppcon a few years back that gets into the software side of things that puts a lot of that in perspective. Kind of an unsettling convergence of engineering and commerce.

CppCon 2017: Carl Cook “When a Microsecond Is an Eternity: High Performance Trading Systems in C++” - YouTube

Finally I’m here for stonks talk

Vinny Cramer. STOCKS STOCK STOCKS

GETH ZACKALAR I had that same issue with a cheap gaming mouse. I rubbed a blanket on my partner when he was playing on his PC and a large shock caught the cheap metal Amazon third party seller gaming mouse and that thing was dead.

The time is now for #DOGE.

That's a fine lookin' alley.

I’m kinda with Jeff G. It’s a stonks story, not a game story.

Hold the line! Keep buying!

I had the same issue as Jeff for years and always in the winter. Since I connected every device to a UPS it stopped completely. I have no idea why though.

I too had static problems for a while due to a dry indoor environment but I finally broke down and got a humidifierand it's done wonders to both the static and my allergies.

@hughj: Sweet, ill check this out.

BLENDERS WERE ROBBED

"NOBODY LIKES GAMESTOP!!"

(Abby Russell has entered the chat)

"Overwatch with Nicolas Cage" when?

Jeff, I constantly get static shocks now as well, winter is in high gear here in Finland.

Sticking the hedgefunders is funny but it’s also going to force GameStop into bankruptcy. Not sure how in the end that is good for these struggling retailers. Hopefully vested employees were able to capitalize.

Hitman 3 is also on Stadia, and it’s the best way to play all three Hitmans.

Used copies of Pocky & Rocky on SNES generally go for at least $150 on eBay (much more if you have the packaging). I checked GameStop trade-in database, they’ll give you 1 cent.

Yes, that them crooked vultures album was good. But here is the best thing to come out of that collabo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhdCslFcKFU

FRESH POOOOOOTS

I too know the problems of static electricity and have fried a keyboard in the past with static electricity.

Worst thing to dip fries in is simply - room temperatured water.

I personally hope this reddit wall street hacks continue with other companies and sociopath stock brokers. I hope it doesn't end with Gamestop. Its hilarious when the lines between the rich and everyone else is exposed for everyone to see.

nice Office Space quote from Alex at the start

Yay!

The reality of the Gamestop short squeeze is that the Reddit mob are intending to cash out and when they do the price will crash at extraordinary speed. I expect only a small proportion of reddit investors will actually profit and quite a lot will be left with terrible loses they can ill afford. If we think about things like pensions, the small element of the Reddit gang that make a large profit are not going to contribute to that but hedge funds are one of a number of financial instruments that do. The inequality issue is more about the skilled/strong taking more than their fair share and the unskilled/weak getting little (as I see in my tech job market vs someone else who does manual labour). The Reddit posse will end up representing an extreme illustration of this inequality with the quick keeping everything for themselves and the losers losing everything.

I don't usually watch the video, but I quickly came to realize that Alex's facial reactions are on point.

He's like the Alexa Bliss of GB.

And holy shit, Bakalar's Dan is spot on.

Fye-nalley, the future sequel to Returnal.

It's funny that so many places are calling the Medium the "first xbox series console exclusive" when that was actually Enlisted which released when the console did. Game got zero coverage anywhere though, it's oddly compelling while being some real eurojank. It was made by the Cuisine Royale devs and is in their early access system.

Regarding that momentary questioning of Star Trek's Transporter technology implications, and Vinny asking "is that really Scottie?" I can answer that for you, but the implications are worse once I have done so.

Do people get killed and a clone of them created every single time they are transported? If yes, it wasn't the real Scottie, if no, it was.

The reasoning is generally simple. Either whatever makes you you can remain fully intact when every molecule in your body is separated, and then reconstructed, or it doesn't. Enjoy the nightmare fuel that Ship of Theseus argument brings about to those who might never have been exposed too it before!

JEFF! It is your chair that is causing the static issue!. I have seen too many comments on the fabric secretlab causing an excess of static.

Hey Vinny, just thought I'd say no need to apologize for the parent talk. I don't have kids, but I still live in a world with them. I like hearing about what games are all the rage with them these days.

Thanks for a great show as always!

Hold the line bois!

💎👐💎👐

Jeff was extra grumpy in this episode. Telling Vinny and Alex that GB is drinking the koolaid on Hitman and trying to weasel his way into the notion that it's not a negative thing among others.

@crashtanuki: Cranky Jeff is Best Jeff.

I also would not like to dip my french fry into raw sewage

Nonplussed means bewildered.

I wasn't aware there was a Switch cloud version of Hitman 3 until Vinny mentioned it here. I just played through the free demo of the yacht training mission and I'm impressed how well it plays. The relatively slow pace of Hitman seems well suited to streaming. I wouldn't pay full price for it, but a subscription streaming service on Switch would be interesting if they were able to hit the right price point.

Haha, too true. He should have stuck with it as the site did fall in love with that game more than most, which isn't a bad thing. I've found the game much more fun watching than playing.

Kind of a bummer to hear the dudes talk about GameStop shorting situation and get like 70% of it wrong. I know they prefaced with they aren't experts, but its still spreading the misinformation the hedge funds want people to think, rather than of what actually happened/is happening. Media manipulation and fear mongering are classic strategies for shorts.

The investment into GameStop always had underlying value. Ryan Cohen is attempting to turn the company around, and that is the required catalyst for the short squeeze. What is happening know is such a small part of the whole story.

Still love you duders! Just wish you had done a little bit more of a dive, other than reading the mainstream press!

Soy sauce and horse radish would be a no-go for me.

@alex I work at a hedge fund. (We invest exclusively in European structured credit and don't short stocks -- we have been content to watch the GameStop excitement from the sidelines).

Our three largest investors are the public pensions of two US states and one Canadian province. I don't know who Melvin's investors are, but I assume that many of them are also institutional investors like public pensions. I just wanted to point out that situations like GameStop aren't necessarily black-and-white cases of millionaires losing money and normal people making money. The losses suffered by those hedge funds will ultimately get passed along to teachers, firefighters, and their various other end investors (who hopefully made some money trading GameStop on RobinHood to make up for the hit their pensions took by investing in hedge funds who were shorting the stock).

For the french fry question, Bakalar was onto something when he said mouth wash. Obviously that doesn't meet the food criteria, but something mint flavored in general would. I think a mint-flavored french fry would be horrendous.