Tag Archives: reason

Technology

Qualcomm can beat Apple M1 chip, says CEO, for one reason

Leave a comment

Qualcomm can beat Apple’s M1 chip, says the company’s CEO, for one good reason: It has a team of chip architects who formerly worked on Apple Silicon. This includes former A-series chip lead Gerard Williams.

You may recall Apple was so upset at Williams leaving the company that it sued him, accusing him of exploiting Apple tech and poaching other key engineers…

Background

Williams and two other former Apple chip execs left the company in 2019 to create a new chip company, Nuvia. The trio said at the time that they were planning to compete with Intel and AMD.

Apple didn’t believe them, and said their true intention was to force Apple to acquire the company, effectively buying back its own tech.

That dispute was still unresolved when there was a fresh development earlier this year: Qualcomm bought Nuvia for $1.4 billion. That gave the chipmaker access to much of the expertise behind the development of Apple’s M1 chip.

Claim that Qualcomm can beat Apple M1

Reuters reports on the latest development.

Longtime processor suppliers Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices have no chips as energy efficient as Apple’s. Qualcomm Chief Executive Cristiano Amon told Reuters on Thursday he believes his company can have the best chip on the market, with help from a team of chip architects who formerly worked on the Apple chip but now work at Qualcomm.

Amon doesn’t seem totally confident in this claim, as he does have a plan B in mind.

If Arm, which we’ve had a relationship with for years, eventually develops a CPU that’s better than what we can build ourselves, then we always have the option to license from Arm.

Qualcomm currently remains an Apple supplier, making modem chips for iPhones. A lengthy legal battle between the two companies over patent royalties got extremely heated before it was finally settled in 2019. This latest development could inflame tempers again, though Qualcomm may figure it has little to lose as Apple gets closer to designing its own wireless chips.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:

Read original article here

World

‘No reason to celebrate’: Canada Day muted as country reckons with dark colonial history

Leave a comment

OTTAWA, July 1 (Reuters) – Multiple cities scrapped Canada Day celebrations on Thursday after the discovery of hundreds of remains of children at former indigenous schools sparked a reckoning with the country’s colonial past.

Calls to scale back or cancel celebrations snowballed after, beginning in May, almost 1,000 unmarked graves were found at former so-called residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, that were mainly run by the Catholic Church and funded by the government.

Traditionally the holiday is celebrated with backyard barbecues and fireworks much like July 4 in the United States, however this year Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the day would be “a time for reflection.”

A #CancelCanadaDay march is being held in Ottawa, the capital, and Toronto is hosting rallies to honor the victims and survivors of Canada’s residential school system. The schools forcibly separated indigenous children from their families, in what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide” in 2015.

“Canada is having a reckoning with its history,” said Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, a University of Toronto sociology professor who studies race, crime and criminal justice.

“I don’t think we can celebrate this country for what it is without recognizing this country for what it isn’t: a utopia and a bastion of equality and freedom and equal opportunity for all members of society,” he said.

Canada’s reputation for tolerance was built on its efforts, starting in the 1970s, to create a multicultural society, but inequalities abound both for indigenous communities and among visible minorities, data show.

STARK DISPARITIES

Indigenous people, who make up less than 5% of the population, face higher levels of poverty and violence and shorter life expectancies.

The unemployment rate for visible minorities, who make up more than 20% of the total population, was 11.4% in May compared with 7.0% for whites, according to Statistics Canada. In 2020, the unemployment rate for indigenous people in Ontario was 12.5% compared with 9.5% for non-indigenous people.

Some 30% of visible minorities and indigenous peoples feel treated like outsiders in their own country, according to an Angus Reid Institute poll on diversity and racism published on June 21.

The discovery of the remains and a deadly attack on a Muslim family in June that killed three generations of members has led to soul searching in Canada about the country’s oft-touted reputation for tolerance. The suspect is accused of murder and domestic terrorism.

Hate crimes against Muslims rose 9% to 181 in 2019, according to the latest data by StatCan. Some 36% of indigenous people and 42% of visible minorities said Canada is a racist country, according to the Angus Reid survey.

A number of Muslim women who wear hijabs have also been attacked in Alberta in recent weeks, while in Quebec a law banning public servants from wearing the hijab is facing legal challenges, and critics have called the measure a form of institutionalized racism.

New Democrat lawmaker Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, who is Inuk, said she felt unsafe in the House of Commons as an indigenous woman, and last month announced she would not be running for re-election.

“I don’t think there’s any reason for celebration (on Canada Day),” Qaqqaq said.

Reporting by Steve Scherer, additional reporting by Julie Gordon; Editing by Aurora Ellis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Read original article here

Science

NASA Is Going To Crash A Probe Right Smack Dab Into An Asteroid For A Really Good Reason

Leave a comment

Image: NASA

Normally, NASA likes its probes to make contact with other objects in space in a very controlled manner. You want to land a rover on Mars, not drop a rover on Mars, for example. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is different. This time, NASA is going to stomp the ion pedal and just ram the damn thing with their spaceship, because fuck you, asteroid. Also, they’ll learn a lot about potentially diverting dangerous asteroids from becoming meteors that hit Earth. But mostly because they don’t like how that asteroid is looking at them.

Image: NASA

You know the DART project is exciting because it’s in the Planetary Defense section of the NASA website, which sounds like part of a movie involving lasers and at least one astronaut tumbling away into space.

The DART spacecraft is a boxy, ion-engined kinetic impactor with interesting roll-out solar panels, and looks like this:

Image: NASA

G/O Media may get a commission

The ion engine is especially interesting, because it’s a first application of a propulsion system likely to be used on future spacecraft:

“The DART spacecraft will demonstrate the NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster – Commercial (NEXT-C)solar electric propulsion system as part of its in-space propulsion. NEXT-C is a next-generation system based on the Dawn spacecraft propulsion system, and was developed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. By utilizing electric propulsion, DART could benefit from significant flexibility to the mission timeline while demonstrating the next generation of ion engine technology, with applications to potential future NASA missions.”

The target asteroid is an interesting choice, because it’s really two asteroids. The asteroid is called Didymos, and is a binary asteroid, because it has its own little “moonlet,” a smaller asteroid that orbits Didymos. This moonlet is DART’s target.

Image: NASA

Using the solar-powered ion engine and advanced autonomous targeting software, DART will ram itself into the moonlet, which will change the speed of the moonlet’s orbit around Didymos, a change that can be studied by telescopes on Earth.

Image: NASA

Studying the change in the orbital path can help us figure out how to most effectively smack a potential Earth-impacting asteroid off course enough to miss our planet, where we not only keep our stuff, but is also the location of every Shake Shack known to humankind.

Also, like any good, modern fight, there will be a witness getting the whole thing on video, in this case a small Cubesat that will be released prior to impact and may or may not upload the footage to Worldstar.

Over at Vice, there’s a good interview with astronomer Andy Rivkin who gives a great explanation of the DART mission and what it hopes to accomplish:

So, yeah, take that, asteroid. That little punk moonlet has until November 24 to February 15 of 2022 to get its shit together, since that’s the current launch window for DART.

Read original article here

US

White House: GOP has ‘struggled to articulate a reason’ to oppose infrastructure plan

Leave a comment

The White House said Saturday that Republicans have “struggled to articulate a reason” to oppose President BidenJoe BidenJobs report adds to Biden momentum White House says bills are bipartisan even if GOP doesn’t vote for them Trump calls for boycott of MLB for moving All-Star Game MORE’s $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan.

In a White House memo obtained by The Hill, adviser Anita Dunn touted growing momentum for Biden’s proposal, citing positive reports from bond credit rating company Moody’s, and growing support from climate experts, economists and others. 

Republicans, however, have criticized the proposal’s price tag, arguing that it advances progressive agenda priorities unrelated to infrastructure.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellAddison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellWhite House says bills are bipartisan even if GOP doesn’t vote for them Officer slain in vehicle attack at Capitol identified Overnight Defense: 1 officer dead, 1 injured after car rams Capitol barrier | Army suspends multiple service members over sexual assault allegations MORE (Ky.), said on Wednesday that “the latest liberal wish-list the White House has decided to label ‘infrastructure’ is a major missed opportunity by this Administration.”

Other members of the GOP have railed against Biden’s plan to spend billions on electric vehicles, a corporate tax increase and other measures to combat climate change that are included in the proposal. 

In Saturday’s memo, Dunn said that Republicans have struggled to articulate a reason to oppose a plan that has support from the public. 

“In the face of massive support from the public, it’s no surprise that Republicans have struggled to articulate a reason to oppose the President’s plan. And in trying to attack the President’s proposal, Republicans have had to run away from their own record of supporting critical investments in our infrastructure,” Dunn wrote.

“And while President Biden plans to more than pay for this plan by asking big corporations to pay their fair share, Republican lawmakers have been quick to come to the defense of multinational companies,” Dunn continued.

Biden unveiled the plan in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, which aims to repair 20,000 miles of road, 10,000 bridges, expand broadband access to rural and underserved communities, replace the nation’s lead and service pipelines to ensure clean water, invest in research and development and manufacturing and expand access to home and community-based care.

The president proposes to fund the plan over 15 years by raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent.

Dunn noted that in a recent poll conducted by Morning Consult and Politico, 1 in 2 voters said they approved of an infrastructure plan funded by raising taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations.  

But amid zero support from the GOP and a 50-50 Senate, it is likely that Democrats will have to push the legislation through Congress through budget reconciliation, a process which allows the Senate to bypass the 60-vote filibuster. 

The Biden administration announced this week that it hopes the plan will be passed by the summer. 

Morgan Chalfant contributed to this report 



Read original article here

Health

Covid-19 variants aren’t the only reason for a spike in US cases, expert says 

Leave a comment

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday that while Covid-19 variants are playing a part in recent spikes in the number of cases, they’re not the only reason. 

“The variants are playing a part, but it is not completely the variants,” Fauci said. “What we’re likely seeing is because of things like Spring Break and pulling back on the mitigation methods that you’ve seen now several states have done that, I believe it’s premature.” 

Fauci added there is a risk that as numbers come down from a peak and reach a point where new case figures start to plateau, if “you stay at that plateau, you’re really in danger of a surge coming up, and unfortunately that’s what we’re starting to see.”  

Fauci said that the US “got stuck” at around 50,000 new cases per day and then went up to 60,000, something which he said is “really a risk.” It has been seen in the US and also in several European countries, he said. 

“That’s why we say it really is almost a race between getting people vaccinated and having this peak that we may want to see and we don’t want to see that,” he added. “And again, it isn’t just the variants. Variants we take seriously and are concerned, but it is not only the variants that are doing that.”

Read original article here

Science

We Finally Know The Genetic Reason Why This Bunny Walks on Its Front Paws

Leave a comment

Selective breeding by humans has led to some incredibly odd and unfortunate pets over the years, and the sauteur d’Alfort rabbit is among the strangest of the lot.

This rare breed of bunny does not hop or walk like any other rabbit or hare in existence. When the sauteur is ready to go, it kicks its hind legs into the air and bounces forward on its front paws, like a human acrobat walking on their hands.

 

While this may seem like an amusing trait, it sadly comes with other debilitating problems too. Now, the one bunny that can’t hop properly has helped us better understand the genetics of hopping in mammals.

Crossing a single male sauteur with a single female of the New Zealand white breed and then crossing the resulting offspring, researchers raised 52 bunnies, 23 percent of which carried two copies of the mutant gene similar to the original father. These numbers match the statistics expected when there is only one recessive gene involved in a mutation.

Pooling the DNA of the sauteur and non-sauteur young, researchers used whole-genome sequencing to compare the two groups. In the end – as they anticipated – there was only one gene that stood out.

The cause of the sauteur’s defective jumping appears to lie with a mutation in an evolutionary conserved site of a gene known as RORB, which provides instructions to mammalian cells so they can create certain proteins. 

RORB proteins are generally found throughout the rabbit nervous system, where they help turn genetic code into a protein building template. This particular mutation, however, causes a particularly sharp decrease in the number of spinal cord neurons that can actually produce this protein.

Two copies of the RORB mutation, in fact, resulted in no proteins in the spinal cord at all, and this was tied to an inability to hop. Other rabbits in the litter capable of jumping with their hind legs showed no such protein loss. 

 

The RORB gene, the authors conclude, must be what allows rabbits to bound around. It could also be the key to other mammal hopping, too.

Over the years, there’s been a lot of scientific interest in the special physiology and biomechanics that allow mammals – like kangaroos, bunnies, hares and some mice – to hop, but the underlying genetics of this feat have rarely been considered.

One of the few studies out there recently found mice with the same RORB mutation as sauteur rabbits also cannot hop like normal. Instead, these rodents waddle around on their front paws like a duck, with their tails and hind legs sticking up in the air. 

“I spent four years looking at these mice doing little handstands, and now I get to see a rabbit do the same handstand,” neuroscientist Stephanie Koch from the University College London told Science News. “It’s amazing.” 

Koch’s study on rabbits is the first to describe a specific gene required for leaping or hopping, and it lines up extremely well with what she’s been observing in mutant mice.

 

Similar to mutant rodents, sauteur rabbits also show other anatomical defects beyond their strange walk. Many are born blind and develop cataracts in their first year of life. RORB knock-out mice also show retinal degeneration.

In mice, the RORB gene appears to play an essential role in differentiating cells in both the brain’s cortex and the retina. It might also do something similar in the spinal cord, which is involved in the regulation of sensory information and locomotion among mammals.

As such, this lack of proteins might be what is causing the hind legs of rabbits and mice to lift instead of leaping. In sauteur rabbits, for instance, the RORB mutation appears to cause defects in the differentiation of spinal cord interneurons, although whether this is actually causing the bizarre locomotion remains unclear. 

“In addition to its expression in the spinal cord, RORB is also expressed in many regions in the brain such as the primary somatosensory, auditory, visual and motor cortex, in some thalamus and hypothalamus nuclei, in the pituitary gland and in the superior colliculus,” the authors write.

“Thus, we cannot exclude the possibility that an alteration of RORB function in the brain contributes to the locomotion phenotype characteristic for the sauteur rabbits.”

The effects of the RORB mutation will require more study, but it’s obvious it’s involved somehow. This was the only variant identified in the whole genome sequence of rabbits that had any impact on hopping.

While there might well be more genes involved in bunny hopping, it seems that poor sauteur rabbits have certainly pointed us in the direction of one.

The study was published in PLOS Genetics. 

 

Read original article here

Entertainment

Allison Janney Reveals the Real Reason Mom Is Ending

Leave a comment

“It’s going to be very hard to just have it, all of a sudden, it’s gone,” Allison continued. “And no matter how much I prepare myself for it, I know I’m just going to be tears, buckets of tears. Because it’s been so incredible, all the amazing letters I get from people who are in the program, or people who got sober with us.”

She added, “It’s been a great show to be part of. And it’s so rare when you do something like that, and it affects people in a positive way out in the world. It makes me sad, but onward.”

Luckily, viewers were able to enjoy the laughs for eight great years, and after the finale airs on May 6, we can all just go back and watch the episodes again.

Read original article here

Business

Costco is running out of some cheese. The reason why is complicated

Leave a comment

ATLANTA (CNN) — On your next trip to Costco, don’t be surprised if you can’t find your favorite cheese.

Costco is having trouble stocking imported cheeses because of a shortage of shipping containers around the globe and bottlenecks at key West Coast ports, such as Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland and Seattle. The combination has led to delays for suppliers shipping their goods, retailers like Costco receiving products, and higher costs along the supply chain.

“Overseas freight has continued to be an issue in regards to container shortage and port delays. This has caused timing delays on certain categories,” Costco chief financial officer Richard Galanti said on a call with analysts last week.

The problem isn’t just limited to cheese, but also seafood, olive oils, furniture, sporting goods and lawn and garden equipment, Galanti said.

He expects the “pressures to ease in the coming months, but it’s impacting everyone.”

Supply chain pressures

Supply chain pressures have been a constant for retailers throughout the pandemic. But a chorus of chains, including Crocs, Urban Outfitters, Foot Locker and Dollar Tree, in recent weeks have described the container shortage and backlogs at West Coast ports as the latest challenges in securing merchandise for consumers.

“Importing product from Asia, getting it through Long Beach and other ports, and getting it shipped to customers is really challenging right now,” Crocs CEO Andrew Rees said on a Feb. 23 call with analysts. “I think that will smooth out over time, but it’s going to take a little while.”

“We’re experiencing some delays in receiving import merchandise as a result of worldwide equipment shortages and issues with port congestion,” Dollar Tree CFO Kevin Wampler said last week.

And home goods at Anthropologie have also been delayed arriving in the United States because of container shortfalls in Asia, said Urban Outfitters COO Francis Conforti on a call with analysts.

“We are starting to see some very, very slight improvement, and we’re hopeful that the improvement will continue at a moderate pace.”

Pandemic demand

Demand for food, furniture, appliances and home goods has spiked in the pandemic as consumers spend more time at home. It hasn’t let up.

U.S. seaborne imports climbed 20% in January compared with last year, according to the latest data available from Panjiva, a global trade data research firm. Imports of consumer discretionary goods such as household appliances were the biggest driver of the growth, according to Panjiva.

Higher demand and supply chain disruption are driving up costs, too: The total cost of shipping to the United States by sea reached $6.36 billion in January, compared to $2.46 billion a year earlier.

“The supply chain has been maxed out,” said Jon Gold, vice president of supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation, a trade group for the retail industry. Gold said U.S. ports were “not able to handle the volume that is coming in” because of a surge in demand, as well as hundreds of workers who have been sickened by Covid-19.

“Containers have been sitting at the port longer than they typically do” and “the availability of empty containers has been a challenge, both here and overseas,” he said.

The pressures have led more companies to turn to air cargo to ship goods. Until now, air freight was “always a last resort because it was eight to ten times more expensive than ocean freight,” he said.

Gold said companies are trying to avoid passing off the higher costs they are facing to consumers, but some retailers may be forced to offset the rise by raising prices on the shelves.

The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

Related Stories

Nathaniel Meyersohn Business

More stories you may be interested in

Read original article here

Technology

Nintendo Switch games are too expensive and have every reason to be

Leave a comment

When The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword launched for the Nintendo Wii back in 2011, the motion-controlled adventure was priced at $49.99. This week, Nintendo announced a remastered version of the game for the Switch: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD, priced at $59.99, adding a dollar to the price tag for every year that’s passed since the original game’s release. 

Nintendo fans everywhere let out a quiet sigh of resignation. Skyward Sword, a 10-year-old Wii game, is more expensive than it was when it first came out a decade ago — and it’s going to stay expensive, because first-party Nintendo Switch games almost never get price drops. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a port of a Nintendo Wii U game that launched in 2017, still sells for full price almost four years later. Super Mario Odyssey does too, as well as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Party, and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe.


Now playing:
Watch this:

Nintendo reveals The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD…



4:07

Everyone dislikes this. In fact, it feels wrong. Nintendo’s competitors, like Sony, routinely and permanently drop prices for big-budget AAA games. God of War for PS4 launched in April 2018 for $59.99, but by October the price was permanently lowered to just $39.99. Today, it costs under $20. Marvel’s Spider-Man was released that same year and was given a similar $20 price drop in February 2019. Xbox, PlayStation and PC game releases often see big price drops within the first year, or not long after. It feels like an industry standard practice. As buyers, we’ve come to expect it, and that expectation makes Nintendo’s consistently high prices feel jarring. Like Nintendo is being unfair.

But Nintendo isn’t being unfair. It’s just following our lead — because as much as we’d like to pay less for the Nintendo Switch versions of reissued Wii U games, we don’t. We pay full price, and continue to pay full price, no matter how old the games are.

As usual, math and economics ruin everything. According to Nintendo’s latest fiscal earnings report, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has sold over 33 million copies since launch — earning Nintendo a potentially staggering windfall. And the game is still a top seller: It’s still the fifth-best-selling game on the Nintendo Switch eShop and to this day is Amazon’s ninth-best-selling Nintendo Switch game. 

Who doesn’t love Mario Kart? 


Nintendo

To put that in perspective, one of the PlayStation 4’s best-selling games, God of War, had sold an estimated 12 million copies by June 2019, and is Amazon’s 23rd best-selling PS4 game. PlayStation had to cut its price to keep buyers interested in Kratos; meanwhile, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has been selling in record numbers at full price since launch. 

Nintendo games are expensive. Everyone Hates it. And yet Nintendo has no reason to drop prices — it’s selling more copies of its games than its competitors and making more money on each copy sold. 

And, for better or worse, Nintendo fans have gotten used to expensive games. On social media we bitterly joke about the “Switch tax” that prices modern ports of older games at a premium. We often try to rationalize those higher prices — sure, Doom (2016) and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt cost more on Switch, but developers had to rebuild and optimize those games to work on Nintendo’s lower-powered hardware. Sometimes, we have to rationalize harder: Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster costs less than $30 on Steam and PS4. The $20 price hike to $49.99 is the devil’s deal we make to play it on a portable platform. 


Óscar Gutiérrez/CNET

Nintendo has cultivated an expectation of expensive games, and even though we don’t like it, we’ve come to accept it. Consumers have spoken with their wallets, and Nintendo has heard us loud and clear: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is worth $59.99, despite being a port of a decade-old Wii game that originally sold for $10 less.

It feels wrong, like Nintendo is being unfair — but the data doesn’t lie. We’re going to buy it anyway and, once again, Nintendo will print money. 

See also: Best Nintendo Switch controllers for 2021

Read original article here

Technology

CodeMiko talks reason behind Twitch ban, her approach to streaming, and plans for return stream

Leave a comment

Popular VTuber and Twitch streamer CodeMiko is known for her creative streams that allow viewers to get involved by influencing parts of the broadcast. She uses her setup and virtual character rig to engage with her audience—which averages nearly 8,000 viewers per stream—and fellow content creators through various segments and interviews.

The Technician, or the developer behind Miko and the stream, does all of the coding, engineering, and rigging herself and is always pushing the level of interactivity with the broadcast forward, describing it as “a quasi interactive, RPG.”

The nature of some interviews, however, has led to Twitch banning Miko from the platform, including two short-term suspensions in September 2020. She found herself suspended from the platform yet again when her account was banned on Jan. 19—this time for two weeks. Neither Miko nor Twitch clued the streamer’s audience of nearly 360,000 followers in to what caused the ban.

Following her third ban, Miko spoke with Dot Esports about what led to the suspension, how she approaches content creation, and her future plans, including details about her return stream planned for Feb. 5 at 2pm CT. 

You said you had more details about why your channel was banned and it wasn’t because of your usage of the word “simp.” What was the reason this time? How long is the ban?

Miko: It was not because of the word simp. It is a long story, but the short of it is, I messed up when I was chatting with a friend and fellow streamer and kind of got lost in the moment. 

Was it something specific that broke the Twitch Terms of Service?

So I have this interview content and basically feature other streamers. During an interview, they often share things with me and send it to me to show on stream. So they will share it and I will put it on screen. 

At this particular moment, we were talking about female harassment online and I asked her what was like the worst comment she had ever received. When I saw the email, it was pretty bad and was more like a threat than a comment. From my experience, threats are almost never from a user’s actual email address, but when I threw up the screenshot, that is basically what got me banned. I violated terms [of service] around privacy.

Obviously, my friend didn’t mean for this to happen, she is very sweet, and I think we both overlooked it because we were so focused on the threat of the email, but I learned my lesson.

What made this ban different from the two your channel was given in September?

Yeah, those were also little slip-ups. It is unfortunate, but I just have to be more careful with things like that and work to prevent them from happening in the future. 

My content isn’t about that stuff, it is about the innovation behind livestreaming and I just want to show what I can make and the innovative side of my stream. I’m actually really excited about coming back because I have been using this time to work on some new stuff and it has been good. 

The suspension is horrible, but at the same time it has kind of given me this time to really really work on my stuff and I am really excited to show it off when I come back. 

How has Twitch been communicating with you since your ban?

I am getting myself an account manager and I think that will help a lot when it comes to communication with Twitch. Once I get one, I hope communication will go a lot smoother in the future. 

Are you going to approach streaming any differently when you get back?

I want to focus more on the innovative side of my content and really push more in the direction of creating fun things to drive that live interaction, in terms of mini-games I can play with chat and the guests during our interviews. I imagine it will be like my interviews but on steroids. 

Basically, I want to focus on adding more interactive aspects to chat that will help the humor of the interviews and situations within the interviews and just adding a lot of color to the content. 

I am always super excited for new stuff. Currently, I was only working on interview content, but now, I am going to implement game show aspects to it as well. I have been going head-on with the live, interactivity part of it. I am planning my return stream to have big streamers that I have worked with and making it into a really fun event. 

I am also just planning out my everyday content as well and it will have different things other than interviews.

You touched on it a bit there, but with how you have been working on your content during the ban, what are your plans for your return stream?

I want to have it be a big game show with my big streamer friends and I am going to hype it up! It will be something that has never been done before on Twitch, in terms of like how I am going to run my version of the content. 

Twitch has done game shows before, but they have done them in a way that is very 2D with cameras and an overlay type of thing where it is flat. But with my VTuber capabilities being in the 3D space I can have it feel more like they are actually inside a studio. 

In my interviews, the streamers come in on a monitor and that is how I interview them, but this way I am going to do this by giving them robot bodies but their heads will be like the computer screen. So they will have certain controls for how they can move their robot bodies and it will feel like they are more inside the space because they will have additional elements that are used in game shows, like a podium and there will be camera cuts to the streamer with their face on the robot head. It will just feel a lot more immersive that way.

They will be able to interact with a wheel that they spin, there will be animations, so when they spin their character spins the wheel we can still see the streamer’s expression because their camera is being fed on the PV screen of the robot. Stuff like that is what my game shows will feel like and chat can always throw fun things at us during the show to throw the streamers off or make things happen to the avatars. I’m excited to debut this when I come back. 

Your content has picked up dramatically in recent months. How have you been able to grow your channel? What have you been doing that you feel works?

I have been streaming since the end of March beginning of April and throughout those first few months, it was just me trying new things every day. My schedule used to be really crazy, where I would go to sleep at around 9pm, wake up at 2am, dev until 12pm, and then stream. I would stream for like four or five hours and then eat and do some other stuff and then repeat all over again.

During that time, it was very rough developing because I would quickly code things in to just see what would happen in chat. It was just testing as I went because there was no rulebook when it comes to that kind of live content that tells you stuff like “chat prefers when they can spawn random things, mini-games, and interaction that is more in the background.” I had to figure out what chat likes in that interactive space because there have been a lot of things that have worked, but a lot of things I have built I have had to scrap because in my head it worked, but when I tested it out live, chat just got really bored. 

Those early months were a lot of RnD and trying to figure out how I could have fun with chat. And then I got to the point where I was doing interview content, just over a Discord call, and I noticed that chat really liked just sitting and watching me talk and interact with another person while being able to affect the interview in various comical ways. So I just pushed that more and created a new environment for it with the TV and format I use and chat really liked it. 

It did really well so I decided to stick with that for now, but I am still researching and developing more things that I can do. One of the biggest projects that I have is I want to create an RPG world where Miko can go on adventure and the bosses would be like big streamers, and chat and Miko have to work together to defeat the boss, like Hasan [HasanAbi], maybe it would be a giant Hasan. 

It is a process that I am constantly going through and that idea might not even end up working. Chat might not feel like it is fun and, in that case, I will scrap it and try something new, but it has just been an ongoing development process and I think that is what I enjoy the most. I love making things and seeing if they are fun, and if they aren’t fun, I scrap it. If it’s fun, I keep it, and I just keep going like that. 

Other than chat liking the content, what made you pivot so hard into interviews on stream? What was the idea behind it? 

Before I started the interviews I would just talk to chat all the time, but having another person that I could interview, I don’t know. I just feel like my content became funnier because I could bounce off of someone, what they said, create more humor with that back and forth. It just led to more funny moments and chat really liked the interactivity with the streamer I am interviewing. I think it kind of created a very fun, sometimes chaotic, sometimes more serious atmosphere. 

When I interview someone I can figure out where their comfort level is, which I do ask them prior to the interview what they are comfortable with sharing and not sharing and if they are okay with me occasionally trolling them on some things, all of those things. Some streamers I take a very laid back approach and we can be more calm or serious to have a nice talk, but with others, I know they are all for being trolled and the humor part of it so I can mess with them a little bit and it becomes a fun back-and-forth. 

Overall, the interview format was just really fun, and was doing really with chat so I decided to keep going and innovating with it. 

What are your thoughts on the growing impact of VTubers and similar styles of creators becoming more common in streaming and content creation, specifically as it starts to expand into Western markets more and more?

I think it’s great! I really like the creative side of Twitch, and it is really exciting to see different content creators try new things and bring new, innovative content out because it just shows that you can do really cool things with just livestreaming. 

I feel like it makes the future of entertainment in this livestreaming and digital format really exciting. So I hope it keeps expanding and more new things pop up on the creative side of Twitch.

Read original article here