The HotSpot - Episode 373

Audio seems out of sync on this... I'm going to look at that if you see it go down for a moment.

Boy, I always love to hear about children, makes me happy I don't have any.

40GB of Hotspot is here

Looking forward how they handle the Launch stream

Having a baby sounds like lots of fun.

@nickfoley: It only takes about 18 years and then..... well not even then haha. Kids are great, but your life is completely changed forever once you have them.

Really appreciate the open and honest conversation about the challenges of pivoting to streaming from home. You guys are the best and I look forward to see what you come up with next.

Who's gonna recompress the video down in DIVX or XVID format and upload to cdrom.com into

/ETC/ ∙∙·▫▫ᵒᴼᵒ▫ₒₒ▫ᵒᴼHOTSPOTᴼᵒ▫ₒₒ▫ᵒᴼᵒ▫▫·∙∙ ? - Make sure you follow the rar scene rules for it please.

Got Cuteftp here ready to go.

There was a lot of raw emotions in this one, especially at the top of the stream. I know I can't speak for everyone, but I feel pretty confident in saying we all love you all.

Really appreciate the crew laying it out like that, fingers crossed for the stuff that comes next. Also wanted to latch onto this messge and repeat;

And I'm glad the Shoemakers and Navarroses seem well enough. 👍

Love the real talk!

Jeff I checked out Freddurst2000 and no audio comes from any clip, think u were copyrighted

Jeff's story was great. Can relate. We didn't travel much during the first 3 years for either of my kids. Too much cargo and potential for chaos!

Jeff continuing to validate my child free lifestyle choices.

It is no surprise that Vinny owns a generator. I just assumed he had his family run emergency drills once a month. "Max grab the go-bag and MREs while I fetch the shotgun!"

@vinny and the rest of the GB crew

First off, thank you very much for getting me through the lockdown. It's really appreciated.

I use Sneakemail.com to create mail aliases that forward things like order confirmations and newsletters to my real mail address (hosted elsewhere) as well as obfuscate my real address if I ever need to send a reply the other way.

It basically has a simple web interface for what Jeff described you can manually do at the MX-level.

Don't be scared by the truly ancient looking design – I've been a paying member (36 USD/year) for more than 16 years and have nothing but good things to say about their reliability and service. It does exactly one thing and it does it well.

I can also recommend Fastmail.com as a premium mail provider (50 USD/year).

Besides being an awesome and fully featured mail service that isn't the complete privacy disaster that Gmail is, I have also got it setup with my own domain and website-specific aliases that forward to my real address (similarly to what Sneakemail does but with a domain and naming I control myself). These aliases can be easily added with Fastmail's web interface.

Either method works well if you combine it with a password manager giving you both a unique username and a unique password – changing username and password is quickly done and gives you peace of mind in case of spam or a website hack.

100% agreed. I'm too old for the internet. Give me the option to pay for ALL internet to have no ads. I'll pay ALL the dollars. Let me browse without all the fuckin' accidental redirection. Especially on touch screens. It's fucking maddening.

About ads being too much, gotta say, the few times I’ve come to Giant Bomb on my work computer without logging in this site is downright awful to browse with all the ads on. I would almost say unbearable but at least there aren’t pop-ups.

@jeff I use [A VPN company name] and they a custom firmware for a router than basically does that. you can choose the VPN on/off at the router level. Everything connected to that router is then going on that that VPN.

I believe it can even have two SSIDs and one access VPN and other doesn't.

I don't need to say their name since I'm sure if they do it, most other ones do.

@vinny

Discard any perishable food (such as meat, poultry, seafood, milk, eggs, or leftovers) that has been at refrigerator temperatures above 40°F for 4 hours or more.

Personally I don't want you guys to be streamers either. How much solo streaming that has gone on has been a bummer for months now and I've watched less GB, even tho I have more free time, than I ever have before since the site existed. I'd be super happy if you guys instead went back to multi person videos however you can. Less output and videos coming out is more than fine.

Right now seems like no one is happy and I don't know why you guys don't make a change.

Same, I know it's not necessarily their fault. Doing the type of content they did in the office is no easy task.

But yes, it's sort of just turned into twitch. Which for a lot of people is fine, but that's what originally drew me to Giant Bomb. The fact that they were like their own little TV network with all the various shows/content they would come up with.

I don't want to say I have the answers, because I have no idea what each persons setup is like and what they can do to bring them all together.

@reap3r160: Yeah, I certainly know it would not be easy to just do it like they have before. But they have had Mass Alex for example going out and seeming great to me. I know it all takes more work but again I'm happy with way less output than they are doing now (but its almost all solo stuff).

I would love to feel like this wasn't a twitch and also there was some creativity going on instead of "boy we have to fill these hours" approach they've taken which no one really asked for. i don't mean to sound like a big jerk about that but I have heard them complain more and more about streaming in general, having to "be on" all day and their streaming set ups and the whole thing and I don't think anyone was asking for them to fill the whole day with solo streams or do their content like this. It's just like dudes, listen to yourself and stop doing this.

As I've said before on this topic, it's just not Giant Bomb. I get trying something new for a few weeks but at some point I'd love it if they got back to what the site always was before.

Also in this Jeff says them streaming solo streams and a podcast plus minecraft is the same as UPF. It's absolutely not. It doesn't feel the same or fill the same role. I'm not a big UPF fan even but it's obviously a lot different.

Then after there is the response to solo stream criticism with "hey guys HALF our videos have more than one person in them come on" when Giant Bomb almost never had solo videos in its history before at all. If half of your videos are that now and that isn't a change? I would also say a bunch of those are just different version of the same stream. Acting like that's not different is silly.

I say all this knowing its a tough time but if you aren't real about the changes and issues you won't figure anything out. I was encouraged hearing them finally talk about making some changes but it was not the best response either.

@toughshed: While for me it’s hit or miss with the shows, what I do enjoy a lot about the new setup is the consistency of it. Not that I want them to be a factory churning out content on a hard schedule but I like that like Jan started Bloodborne and finished it and Jason likewise finished a few games. It’s nice to see them commit and follow through.

Great episode. Hearing candid serious concerns, solutions, and hopes was both interesting and cathartic.

hopefully minor request: could be fewer gameplay streams with mouselook?

This was great. Love hearing the team talk candidly about the site.

The knowing look on Papa "Been There Done That" Vinny's face as Jeff was describing his Airbnb saga was priceless.

Jeff's baby throwing up story... My daughter did the same. For years. By the time she was 4 she would not even cry, she would just ask us "You want me to throw up?"

@Jeff if you or ANYONE else is looking for THE best all around router on the market I have the answer, take it or leave it. Synology Router RT2600ac, period bro.

As someone who is over 40, I love these honest (and beautifully anachronistic) conversations. Where will we be in six months? Probably where we are now...

Set up that Gopher server, Brad!

Are Brad and Alex roommates?

Man I loved this show. The conversation about bandwidth and 4k content is happening everywhere and there isnt really a great solution.

The only real solution is have CBS pay users to build server racks and get some enterprise level storage in every user's kitchen.

great show, last 45 minutes were golden and very interesting \oI

Airbnb is a nightmare. My first experience with it was wild - in a bad way. We had instructions to answer that we were "friends of Paul" (or whatever his name was) if we were questioned why we were there, but otherwise to not talk to anyone. When we arrived, there were workers inside the place, working on a window! Apparently, the window had been broken, and the landlord set up the workers to fix it without the dude we were renting from knowing. The Airbnb renter absolutely freaked out when we called him to tell him this. He was not supposed to be renting his place out, but was doing so anyways. Which is why there was all the secrecy about it. He was afraid the workers were going to tell the landlord that some people had showed up, because the landlord would know what was happening. All in all, it was a terrible experience.

I've enjoyed the Minecraft streams. It even got me to get back into Minecraft for a few weeks myself. (I am kind of glad it's ending, though. Was getting a bit long in the tooth.) But it is not UPF. Playing one game for multiple weeks on end is not the same as a week-ending variety show. Not saying UPF is some perfect thing, nor do I necessarily want it back in the current climate, but they are not equivalent.

Overall, I think GB has handled these epidemic times fairly well, but I do hope this is not the new normal. Of course, that can be said about a lot of things during this epidemic.

Probably because reopening in a major fashion in the US right now is an absolute mistake, especially schools. I'm guessing the shot-callers at CBSi at least have their heads on straight

Thanks a bunch for the information. Looks like sneakemail is exactly the kind of thing I'd like to try. When I just tried signing up it seemed their account creations was "temporary disabled" but I'll try again another time. Thanks again.

The main issues I've been having listening to podcasts with everyone being in a different location is the delay between people and when a mic lowers someone's voice because two people are talking at the same time and you can't understand anyone. I'm slowly getting used to it but I still hate it.

I'm glad that Alex is adamant about beating Def Jam: Fight for NY. I legit have been thinking about it since quarantine happened and it's comforting that we're on the same page.

Fuck yes, Alex. Beat Snoop Dogg. Save America. Music is the weapon...? No. Wrong game.

YouTube 4K is really not that bad. The bitrate is somewhat low but because the resolution is so much higher, it still looks pretty good even on a large TV. It looks exponentially better than 1080p on YT which is super blurry.

@moda: Some schools are, some aren’t. Some already opened and then had to temporarily close due to positive tests.

Really great listen. Thanks for being so transparent and honest about this all. Stay safe and well everyone.

Really appreciated and enjoyed the conversation behind the curtain this week. Thanks folks. Stay safe.

I am so happy the hotspot is back. I love these podcasts so much. Getting all the behinds scene stuff you guys go into and the talk of the old days that happens is wonderful.

All those production problems they’ve described - there are equivalents in software development. No creation process runs smoothly, because creation implies something that has never existed before... which means there‘s always a chance you hit something you’ve never encountered before...

You guys should know that everyone thinks you're doing a great job, yeah I'm sure you get negative comments that weigh on your mind but that's just a minority. Keep up the good work and keep experimenting to try and make your great content that much better :) (Personally I also really appreciate/respect the transparency in this video).

Jeff's Router: