Sir Gene Speaks

0094 Sir Gene Speaks with Dude Named Defango

• Gene Naftulyev • Season 2022 • Episode 94

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Sir Gene:

Hey, this is Sir Gene, and today

I wanted to thank Lisa for the donation that she sent in. I appreciate that. Donations. It's certainly not necessary, but if you guys feel like you're getting value for value. Go ahead and send something in to that address and i will certainly appreciate any money that does come in but anyway

Sir Gene:

joining me is Deeno, and this is his second time on the podcast. It's always been over a year, I think. Is that right?

Defango:

about a year. It's been about a year. I think it's since last year, last December.

Sir Gene:

A lot of things have changed in the last year, huh?

Defango:

Yeah, I guess, I mean, it seems like the world is a, a much different place than it was,

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

but there's still people that are trying to change things for the better, I guess. Maybe for

Sir Gene:

I, there, there's a few of'em out there, but Sure. Seems like there's a lot of people trying to change things for the worst though.

Defango:

Yeah. But that's just like humanity at this point.

Sir Gene:

Well I've been, you know, I've said for a while I, I'm just, I think maybe it's time to let some other species take, take a turn.

Defango:

You think so? For

Sir Gene:

I kinda like bears. I think bears they, they need to have a chance to run things.

Defango:

Yeah. Well, I, I mean, don't they already kind of run things? They just run things up on the mountain.

Sir Gene:

Well, they're an apex animal. I mean, I wouldn't really even call'em a predator cuz they, they eat plenty of vegetation as well as meat. But there's really nothing other than people that kill bears. But I guess wolf packs sometimes can as well. But yeah, it just, it, it seems like they're, you know, compared to the monkeys of. A million years ago, it, it's interesting that it wasn't bears who have bigger brains than the monkeys that ended up taking the reins and moving technologically forward.

Defango:

Mm. Yeah, that's actually kind of strange. But then again, bears don't have thumbs.

Sir Gene:

Well, you know, it's interesting you say they don't have thumbs, but they can actually hold things be by curling their fingers. So bears have been, you know, documented as being able to hold tools quite effectively.

Defango:

Oh,

Sir Gene:

Like a bear can grab a drill and, you know, drill a hole.

Defango:

That's scary.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm. And one of my favorite videos out there is I, I think from Yellowstone, which is a video of a bear slowly walking down the, a paved road and coming up to a, a cone, you know, a plastic red cone that is tipped over sideways where there's a the edge of the road's kind of washed out a little bit and the bear stops and picks up the cone, stands it straight up and then keeps on going and as merry way.

Defango:

What a nice bear.

Sir Gene:

Well, it's clearly a bear that's got a little bit of OCD happening. It's just, you know, the cone just being sideways like that just doesn't feel right.

Defango:

He's like, no, this is supposed to be standing up.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. So he, he fixed it and kept on going. So I'm

Defango:

are good, crazy animals. I mean, there's bears that come around where I live, and honestly, I just wave at them and they

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Well, that's what, that's all they expect of you.

Defango:

Yeah, just wave.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm. just say, Hey, I see you. You see me? I see you. We're good.

Defango:

We're good Mr. Bear. Don't eat me. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

No, I like bears. When I was a kid, I used to play with bears all the time,

Defango:

That's weird. What do you,

Sir Gene:

but they're,

Defango:

Russian? Russian

Sir Gene:

yeah, yeah. There, they're there's a lot more bear pets in Russia than in this country. Like, I don't, I don't think there are any here.

Defango:

There are. There's a few, it's generally frowned upon in the United States.

Sir Gene:

Like, I remember watching Grizzly Adams TV show back in the late seventies, early eighties, and I, I thought like that was a normal thing and that everybody who lived out in the country had a pet bear. And, and then I was disappointed to learn that's not the case.

Defango:

You're gonna move out to the country. You're already looking at bears,

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

and then you got there and you're like, wait a minute, I can't own a bear. This sucks.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. What the hell? What's up with that? It's, it's not even about owning a bear. It's just like, you know, a bear's a cool animal that can sit there on the porch, smoke a pipe and eat some honey, and, you know, you can both sit there and watch the, the leaves changing in the fall. It's just, it's a beautiful thing.

Defango:

Yeah, I'd be down for that. I'd be down for a bear friend.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Bear friends are cool. And,

Defango:

cool.

Sir Gene:

and, and they, they sleep a lot. Like all winter long.

Defango:

That's how I sleep

Sir Gene:

All winter

Defango:

all winter long.

Sir Gene:

Are you getting ready for your vibration for the season?

Defango:

I'm already in my hibernation

Sir Gene:

Oh, well I, sorry to wake you up for, for the recording here.

Defango:

Yeah. I don't usually wake up before like 11 o'clock just because there's no reason

Sir Gene:

by the way, you sound like you just moved about four feet away from the mic.

Defango:

I moved. What? How does

Sir Gene:

Yeah, you got, you got quieter.

Defango:

that's weird. I should be louder.

Sir Gene:

Really? I don't know.

Defango:

messed anything.

Sir Gene:

Well, that's weird

Defango:

setting in the same spot.

Sir Gene:

are you really? Because if you look at your your waveform pattern in the zencaster that we used to record these, it's definitely gotten a lot smaller

Defango:

well, yours looks really big. Mines looked always small for.

Sir Gene:

now. Was it? Look at that small. Okay, well nevermind then. Let's just keep going. I thought some reason something happened that, that the mic got further away from you. So Dego, what what is going on in your world? I know you've got a YouTube video now. Do you do that daily or is that every few days? Because I catch it maybe once a week.

Defango:

It's whenever I feel like it,

Sir Gene:

Okay. That's probably why I only catch it once a week.

Defango:

yeah, it's whenever I feel like it. I used to do it daily. I mean, I used to do multiple, like videos and shows a

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

I'm just, just tired and you know, I, I don't get his, I don't get the same amount of viewership that I used to for my content. So, you know, like I've had to adjust how I'm doing things. So I'm just trying to pretty much keep my YouTube channel alive and on the partnership program. But outside of that, I haven't really tried to do much. I mean, it's just, it's kind of hard, you know, you get, I, you get, you get discouraged or you get, you get fed up. I've worked really, really hard for many, many years and I've been through a lot of ups and downs and I think this last year I've just kind of like tried to work and take a break on it. And I haven't really seen any differences. I always get the same amount of people watching the show, you know, but I'm not getting any growth, which is sad. But, you know, it's, it's what happens, you know,

Sir Gene:

Well, you may be missing some bear videos if I could suggest something.

Defango:

Yeah. Some what?

Sir Gene:

Bear videos.

Defango:

Oh, bear videos.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm. videos of bears.

Defango:

Oh yeah. Maybe.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. People like those.

Defango:

I guess I could try that.

Sir Gene:

It's,

Defango:

I only have one video of bears on my channel.

Sir Gene:

do you, yeah. Yeah. You might wanna get more of those and get some videos of you waving to bears. People like that

Defango:

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene:

would be

Defango:

Oh, I haven't seen a bear in a while.

Sir Gene:

Oh. Hmm. Well, that's not a good sign.

Defango:

Oh, I mean, they're already asleep.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Yeah. Actually this time of year, in your neck of the woods, they probably are already

Defango:

Yeah, they're sleeping by now. They usually come out in like November and then they disappear. We don't see them at all.

Sir Gene:

Yep. Taking a little, little nap. I haven't seen a whole lot of videos of you doing SAR either,

Defango:

Oh. Just cuz I haven't been playing Star Citizen.

Sir Gene:

and I'm gonna explain it.

Defango:

Yeah, I just haven't been playing it. I mean, I was having some fun in three 17

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

dropped the patch, but I mean, it's just more of the same. There isn't anything for me new to do. I've literally done it all in

Sir Gene:

Well, three 18 is now in the P T U,

Defango:

Yeah, that's what I heard.

Sir Gene:

so it should be coming out probably February is my guess,

Defango:

Yeah. Probably.

Sir Gene:

main server. That's realistic. Guess most people are saying next week, but that's not a realistic guess. February's probably closer to reality. Hus stripping is, you know, it's a new thing. The more they add, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Is it something that super fun's gonna take up a lot of people's time? Probably not.

Defango:

yeah, I can think it would be, I mean, it's cool, but the one thing that I thought you were supposed to be able to do was like cut into the inside of a ship is not, and so I just don't care. at that

Sir Gene:

Yeah, yeah. Well, and then maybe that'll come later, but I know there's a game called hole Breakers, I believe, or Ship Breaker. Ship Breaker, which I've played before. And it, like, that's all you do in the game is you, you take apart ships and you wanna maximize the collection of the materials without any, like, minimize waste, maximize sorting and collecting the stuff, whether it's something that's a component that gets reused, or whether it's like recycled material or whether it's metal that you're gonna melt and then reuse. That's a pretty fun game. And in that game, like you definitely completely rip the ship apart and then salvage the actual components that they're still operational from it. I would love to see something like that in star but who knows if it's ever gonna happen.

Defango:

I don't know, maybe it might, I mean, I'm looking forward to when three 18 drops so I could actually try to play and, you know, get back into it. Cuz obviously they said that they're gonna be changing flight models and things again. And I mean, this is like, this is like a, I don't know how many times since I started playing, I started

Sir Gene:

Ev every other year.

Defango:

Yeah. Like, I think I started playing it just before 3.0. So like, I've been through every different flight model that they've basically done except for the ones before that. And I mean, the best model that they had was the original flight model that I came into. I mean, that was perfect. It, it felt good. Everybody had an equal footing in the way that they could fly. It wasn't as technical per se. And then, you know, you, you really just didn't have a bunch of the cheese balls that think they're fighter pilots. You know, like Avenger would, all these guys that believe that they have all of the answers on all the fighting, but you know, they just can't fucking, they just can't let everybody know that they're, you know, actually just utilizing a. Which is something that I've been talking about for a while about a lot of different content creators. But basically the way it boils down is that, you know, ever since Star Citizen allowed the reshape binary, so it's a d l A dynamic link library that's injectable into the game since they allowed the reshape binary, there's been basically a hacked version of this re-shaped binary floating around Discords and all over the place. And I mean with that one little binary you could get around the EAC and it's pretty clear to see whenever somebody's, you, you're fighting somebody and they don't miss, right? Like it's pretty easy for them to toggle that often on. They could have it on their joysticks.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

mean, I've gone through countless hours of footage on different channels cuz like I watched Star Citizen, you know, if people aren't gonna watch me, I'll go watch somebody else or whatever. And I've seen that, you know, for now it seems that a lot of these guys are starting to get caught for it. But at the same time, you know, like that's something that needs to get fixed big time in three 18. Like what's the point of reshape other than doing something.

Sir Gene:

I don't understand why they would allow reshape, reshape serves no purpose at all. And if you wanna have people give them the ability to do what reshape does, make it be a part of the official game.

Defango:

Yeah, exactly. Make it be part of the game.

Sir Gene:

not some after party, third party thing that people, some people have, very few people have and most people have never heard of. Instead of doing that, just put it in options in their graphic settings.

Defango:

Yeah, just gimme some options so that I can fix that or give me more control over the way the game is rendered. Because right now, you know, you really only have one graphic setting high or very high. The difference between the two or basically negligible, one of'em uses the g p more than the other one. And then if you put it on low, it does some weird stuff with the sizing of things, but like used to have a lot more granulation and a granular ability to fix it. Like I had star citizen running at a solid, like 70 to 90 frames per second back in 2017 because I used to be able to edit my files so that like I could make it run the way that I wanted to run. Like I could change the size of tessellation and things

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

nature so that my rig could be perfectly running it and I was getting like consistent. No leg, no drops nowadays. I get better than that. Like I'm sitting probably around anywhere from 70 to 90, but I've lost that like entire ability to change the granularity for little things here and there on my card. Like you're basically limited to whatever this graphics, card settings, operations that are, you're allowed, you know, like limiting stuff. That's basically all you can do. But I mean, I'd like more ability to change how they are, you know, like more granular options for like the different graphic settings. So like I can completely turn something off that I don't want running because like, that's just normal PC gaming, I'm sure very, very happy to see all this extra stuff, but I honestly don't care about the little flower pedals and shit falling at Orison. So like, I want to be able to turn that shit off, you know, like to me that's, that's important. If they're gonna be making a game that's going to fit for everybody.

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Defango:

I've been out of it for a while, you know?

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Well, more options is generally a good thing, and I'm not a fan of a lot of things they've been doing lately because it seems like they're dumbing things down rather than adding more options for us to use.

Defango:

Yeah. They're dumbing things down and making me have more buttons, which is, I mean, I still have the same T 1600 th masters that was going to purchase some like, newer sticks, but I realized that The newer sticks that I was gonna purchase those v kb is to have basically the same issue that these other ones that I'm using already have. So unless I pay like, you know, verbal, verbal levels, I'm not going to get this like one thing that I really, really have a problem with in star citizen. And it's just like the flight going up and down. Like, you know, when you're trying to actually dog fight with somebody and your joystick has a dead zone, that's massive. You know, like that, that's really hampering, hampers you and your ability to fly. And I mean, this is only for a very small percentile, people that actually care about dog fighting. But like, it's something that I think translates pretty clearly. When you start rolling around on the mouse and keyboard and then you start playing around with it on like a joystick, you start to see the, you know, that granularity is really necessary. And it's just weird that they haven't been able to fix it. Like they're focused on fixing the flight where it all or making it better, whatever. But I don't know, you know, the last fight model they did, they slowed everything down and it just made fighting boring.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Yep.

Defango:

it's more of, now it's not a skill-based thing, it's more of a, oh, I did this one little macro trick that. I do all the time and you know, oh, I got'em. Or you have a combination of a couple of factors, you know, like them utilizing the reshape injection in order to get a little bit better aiming, that sort of thing. I mean, it's sad, but I'm looking, I'm like looking to the future. I'm looking to get back in. I just had to take, you know, a clean break. Like I played three 17 for a while and then as soon as they announced that they were gonna be doing a wipe, I was just kinda like, Hmm, I'm gonna go play New World. You know, they, they came out with some new content. I'm gonna go waste some hours and that. And honestly I like it because I could just sit on the auction house, buy and sell stuff, and I just make money all day.

Sir Gene:

There you go. Yeah, it's a again, I, you know, I've obviously, I've. put money in the game. I bought some spaceships, but it's a,

Defango:

You've bought a lot of spaceships,

Sir Gene:

Well, okay. I bought a few spaceships.

Defango:

bro. You're you, I told you not to buy all them spaceships

Sir Gene:

you're the main reason that I got into buying spaceships cuz you're

Defango:

I told you to buy one.

Sir Gene:

I bought it and then, and then I realized that there's a better one.

Defango:

Yeah, well there's always gonna be a better one. That's the way it is. Game gets you, like, I didn't have that much into the game, but then I finally got, you know, my what, what do they call the certification? You know,

Sir Gene:

Which one?

Defango:

certificate you get whenever you spend a thousand bucks. They give you some kind of certificate. That's your certificate of dumbass.

Sir Gene:

thing. Yep.

Defango:

There you go. Concierge. You know, when I, once I made it to concierge, I was just like, oh,

Sir Gene:

Well the thing that I love in that game is they don't show you anything expensive until you've spent a thousand dollars. Once you've spent a thousand dollars in the game, then they open up the The shades and they're like, oh, would you be interested in some of these things as well?

Defango:

Yeah. Would you be interested in these gigantic packs of a bunch of

Sir Gene:

Uhhuh, Uhhuh, Yo. They're a special deal that we only only give to our preferred members like you cuz you're special

Defango:

Yes. We found that you spend lots of money on, in-game or on virtual spaceships. So we wanna milk if for some

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Yeah,

Defango:

I don't have a problem with that.

Sir Gene:

I don't either. You know, people should be able to spend money on whatever they want. A lot of people spend money in more dumb ways than video games.

Defango:

Yeah, dude, NFTs were a thing. Okay. You know, like NFTs existed before NFTs, they were called JPEGs and Robert Space Industries and Cloud and Purium Gaming had that shit lock before anybody else. Okay.

Sir Gene:

Oh, and they're, they finished off the year with a hundred million this year, so they're doing very well.

Defango:

Yeah. So they made a hundred million last year. They made a hundred million this year. And that's, I mean, the game's not going anywhere, which is great. But the thing is, is that now that I've been in this like cycle for nearly five years, I've realized that. You know, it's gonna be another five years before they even are, are, are even close to even trying to talk about beta, right?

Sir Gene:

Well, I don't, I think that the problem they run into is that their business model now is very successful and it's built on the idea of never leaving Alpha.

Defango:

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene:

So it would be financially costly for them to go to beta, and, which is why I think they're really focusing on Squadron 42, which is a single player game that's built in the same universe as the m o and that they can make and then sell. And then make the next one and then sell that one. And that doing that also allows them to keep the MMO game in perpetual alpha.

Defango:

yeah. Well, I mean, the MMO game's always gonna be a perpetual alpha. It was never really what the game was supposed to be like. The part of the reason that they're so focused on Squadron 42 is because their terms with Kickstarter basically says that. That's part of the thing that has to be out, or they can be sued for not basically doing what they said that they were going to do in the first place. So like, they've been focusing a lot on SCO 42. That's the thing that they're gonna put out there. But let's be, let's be frank here, about like the single player game. And they don't, people aren't buying single player games in the same way that they used to be. Right? So it's either gonna have to be the best single player experience that anybody's ever seen, or they're simply not gonna make money on this game. I mean, even now, the, when you look at the way that it's going they're making a single player game to get people in, but that's basically, ultimately just gonna serve as the tutorial for their other more major, you know, product. And like right now, the only reason that they've been able to make so much money is because of the p you know, the persistent universe. Because if it wasn't for the persistent universe, do you think that people would be paying thousand, a thousand dollars for a spaceship? You know, would, would anybody have a reason to buy a carer for a thousand dollars if the PE didn't?

Sir Gene:

No. No. Well, Carrick's only 600. Only.

Defango:

you know, I'm only 600. But you know, just an example, right? Like the more that you start looking at these ships that they're selling is that the, their entire business model is hinged on the pu the MMO experience that we don't have, you know, our, our MMO experience is a hundred players. That's what they can do. You know, I go play New World, I can be you know, I could be on a server with up to, I think it's 20,000 players, but you know, generally I'm seeing 700 to 800 people all on the same shard, right? Like all on the same note. And to me that's pretty cool. It's pretty, sometimes it gets laggy or whatever, you know, it ain't perfect. Amazon servers pretty much suck, but you know, that's because I don't like them because I've used them for other things. So, you know, if they didn't work for me, doing something on the web that was pretty simple that didn't involve graphics and things, you know, anything that actually involves graphics and things that's running on Amazon has never been, you know, something that I would put myself behind. But hey, you know, they're pretty locked up in Amazon AM or Star Citizen is, and I mean, it's good because it's not going anywhere, right? Like Bezos and the gang aren't going, are gonna push to make sure that this thing stays around. But. You know, we're so slow on the things that we get. Like I was able to play through every conceivable play style in that game in about three years. And then after that, like there really hasn't been too many extensions of things to do. You know? Like I can go experience the new ai, go run some bunkers, go loot some stuff, but

Sir Gene:

Yeah. You run out of things to do. And then that's the thing is I think when you're brand new, and I, I'm just remembering back two years to when I started playing the, it, it's so massive in terms of how many different things it seems you can do. The problem is extremely shallow. So when you've done one bunker, you know what every other bunker looks like

Defango:

correct.

Sir Gene:

you've done one. You know, E R e h r t or, or like the, any level of really a mission to do a bounty for an npc. The only thing that changes for levels is the ships they bring, but the actual process is exactly the same. And then once you've done the top tier of those NPC Bounty missions, everyone is identical to the previous one. So it's just not sh it's, it's very shallow. It's not deep at all. There's no real differences. And then it was while both of us were playing that they removed all differentiation between guns and components, which just seemed insane.

Defango:

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene:

We went from being able to pick and choose what's gonna work really well to all the sudden everything is the same. It doesn't matter what gun you pick. Yeah,

Defango:

so, so it's like when you're dog fighting, basically it leaves it up to only one's type of gun is really gonna get used at any given point in time. And sure, there's a bit of a differentiation between ballistics and the other one, but even then, like we went from having a flight model that gave you the freedom to move and fly how you felt without any type of like limitations on you. And that was fantastic. And I mean, you could shoot lasers all day long. I mean, you could just sit there and roll Cole all day long and nothing would've been a, you know, like you could just have battles where you were just shooting at each other for like five minutes and that was cool. But when they shifted to the new flight model, their genius idea was that, oh, well we're going to make all the guns the same because we want to get people out of the meta, right? We we're trying to kill the meta, and ultimately they didn't kill the meta whatsoever. It was just that they changed the way that your plane would fly. So basically, whoever can get on target faster and stay on target. Is always going to win the engagement every single time, which I guess makes it more like a traditional dog fight, but it, it

Sir Gene:

and yeah. And, and then this is something that I notice and I've been repeating cuz I think it's true, is that Chris Roberts is a big fan of World War II fighter pilots and simulations,

Defango:

War II planes are garbage.

Sir Gene:

and they are garbage. And so what he's done is he's created a space game because that's what people paid for, that has World War II fighter plane physics in it. It, it's, and that's the part of the game that I really hate is that I just feel like, and especially now that I've been going back to Lee Dangerous a lot more and realizing just how much better flight model that has is, is getting into. Star citizen and then trying to do fights. And that you basically have to force yourself to ignore everything you know about actual you know, space flight and the way that physics actually work in space. Because in Star Citizen, the way everything works is pretend you're flying a World War II aircraft, then you'll be a lot closer to the way the game's set up.

Defango:

Yeah. And that's the big problem. Like, if I wanted to play fly a P 52 or something, I would go play a World War II game. When I'm flying an Invil arrow spaceship, the smallest, most sleekest fast, most agile fighter, like it should fly like that. I should be able to turn on a dime. I should be able to go up and down, like my life depended on it. If I jam on the thruster and hit those bottom jets, like I should be flying up so fast that I get Glock, you know, almost get Glock. And that's how it used to be. It used to be a space combat game. And when it was a space combat game, I shit on all of these other so-called pilots because back then they couldn't hack the game like they can now. Okay. And now with this new combat system, it's basically the same thing over and over and over again. Slow down.

Sir Gene:

an easy example of that is that if you watch Avenger one, and not to pick on him all the time, it's just he's very popular and his videos are, are very good production quality. I like what he's done. But you know, they're talking about doing these J turns and then merging and it's like, dude, none of these things would ever be done in actual space with real physics because you don't need to, because the beauty is of a spaceship compared to an airplane is the airplane always has to have the nose pointing in the direction of travel. Because if you don't, you're gonna lose lift and you're gonna create a tremendous amount of pressure from directions you don't want on the plane from aeronautic pressure that is, are gonna either tear the plane apart or just flip it around and make it go in a crazy direction. None of that exists in space. So in space you can literally go in direction A and then spin your ship around to where the nose points in any other direction and then stay pointing in that other direction while you correct what your flight path is like. You literally, a spaceship will always be pointing at the enemy regardless of what direction it's flying. But you can't do that in this game because this game star citizen, this setup as though you're doing World War II dog fights.

Defango:

Exactly. So like you try to flip your play, you try to flip your ship around to be going backwards. And this is something that I

Sir Gene:

it's like it's resisting in space. It's resisting flipping around. That's insane.

Defango:

yeah, it's just absolutely insane. So like, I remember playing like fly games back in the day. Like I've floated on F 16 simulators to F 18 simulators. I played, you know, Falcon at 4.0 and all the other like space sim or flight simulator games that were available. And I, I still remember, like back in the day, it was like a feat. It was something that was crazy to see when, you know, You're flying your F 16, one of your engines get shot out, you try hitting the extinguishers, they don't go off. So you're basically, your only move is to cook both engines and flip the plane so that it's flying backwards. And that was something back in the day that you could do that you would probably lose your flight license for. But you know, like I was able to commit to something like that, get my engine turned off, turn it back on and somehow save the plane. And that was like some cool ass shit that, you know, made sense for a plane that flies in the atmosphere. But then we get into start Citizen and like the flight model used to make sets going into the atmosphere, you had to fly slower because of the atmosphere and everybody was okay with that. There was a strong differentiation between when you were in space and when you were on the planet. And now it's not like that. It's

Sir Gene:

No, there's like no difference.

Defango:

time. The only difference now is that you could either fly faster or slower, basically. So like they're limiting your speed, they're limiting your ability to move around. And I'm like, cool with that for atmo. You know, like if the flight model only changed for the atmosphere to what it is now and the space combat was still the same, I would've been a happy camper. But then again, you know, they've been discussing

Sir Gene:

And there's a lot of stuff that, that could be improved. And I just sent you a couple links to spreadsheets I've put together around the game. Let's see if you're curious about what I've been up to here. But so, and the thing the game does have going for it is, at least right now, there still is no other games that have the visual quality, the detail of the models. And that's, you gotta give big props to the art team at Robert Space Industries at, at c I g for creating these awesome spaceships. The, the problem is that that team is great. Marketing is really good at what they do, which is pulling money out of people. But there, there's a lot of problem with development, a lot of problem with testing, and a huge problem with actually fixing.

Defango:

Yeah. Well, I mean, the bug thing has been a problem for them because they've just laid on that excuse that, oh, well, you know, we'll start fixing bugs when we're in beta.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Yeah. It's like we don't care about the bugs. We're an elephant. It's like, that's not how it works, guys. That's totally not how it works.

Defango:

Yeah. It's literally not how it works. The first thing that you're supposed to do is optimize the games so that you know your testers can play it without it being garbage,

Sir Gene:

yeah.

Defango:

and they still haven't done that either.

Sir Gene:

It's not really testing if what people are, quote unquote playing res doesn't at all resemble the final product.

Defango:

Correct, correct.

Sir Gene:

Like, that's not testing guys.

Defango:

Yeah, that's not testing. But then again, you know, like their idea of testing is what we don't know. I mean, sure they try to be really transparent about what they're doing, but ultimately it's just a production, right? Like they don't, they don't give us hardly any information about what's happening other than the future. And I mean, what's the future for us? They've been, again, really, really heavy on changing the flight model and flight characteristics of everything to be more, I think, like elite dangerous, which is what it sounds like to me, having flight modes. But, you know, when I heard that we were getting flight modes, all I really heard was that I had to add another button, another key bind to my joystick that already doesn't have enough buttons.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's definitely the case. And I, I don't know, but anyway.

Defango:

then I look at my keyboard and then I think, okay, so what button and this, what button on this c of buttons am I going to have to press to do that? How am I gonna work that into my playing

Sir Gene:

I just grabbed a, a huge set of icons for the stream deck for star citizen to be able to use the stream deck as controls.

Defango:

Oh, nice.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, I think that's kind of neat. I mean, it's not hugely different than the keyboard. It's just on the keyboard. You have to memorize all this crap on the stream deck. There's an actual picture of gear up or whatever. So that you can hit the button that looks like what you're trying to do. But obviously the, the, as much as possible, I try to keep on the joysticks themselves and I run a dualt sticks setup, so I've, I think I'm using every single button I have, but, but it's

Defango:

button than I do.

Sir Gene:

oh, I'm sure I do. Yeah, I've got two of the the the two VK B sticks. They're new ones that just came out and

Defango:

get.

Sir Gene:

yeah, man, I love these things. I got both of'em have a 40, 45 degree angle in them. I

Defango:

you got the weird thing.

Sir Gene:

well, it, it looks unusual, but it's so much more comfortable. Like my, my wrists don't get tired anymore.

Defango:

Yeah. See that was one thing that I want reason I wanted to get is cuz I have a wrist injury I don't want to do it. And that's the other thing is I haven't been playing a lot of star citizen because part of me having to do all that stuff like it, it really does exasperate my wrist. Interesting. Every time that I twist the

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm. Well, and this is, so I would highly recommend you do the same thing I did then and get the bent, the 45 degree angle ones, because then you're not twisting left to right. You're twisting forward and back just like riding a motorcycle. And that motion, I think is more natural cuz you're not, your wrist is not having your wrist in a position that normal joysticks are up and down is not a normal position for your wrist. If you just loosen up your, your, your hands and you kind of shake out your, your wrists and, and hands and stuff. They don't go into the position of a joystick. They naturally fall in the position where your hands are flat on the table. And that's a, that's a more relaxing position to be in. But anyway, I didn't wanna just talk about games especially games. You're not really playing a whole lot anymore. So if people didn't hear your original appearance on this podcast give us a little background about yourself.

Defango:

Well, I'm an internet professional who's been through a lot of different things. I used to perform with a improv comedy group called The Jive Joint at many music festivals across the country. And I also was running a YouTube channel where I would talk about conspiracies and other types of internet things that were happening. And I was also behind QAN on conspiracy theory to the point where I amassed a group of individuals to basically get it started, and then it had morphed into something that even I don't recognize.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

So, you know, like that's, I guess, is a TLDR on who I am and what I.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. And you've done other stuff too, like obviously you've got a, a tech background you've done plenty of it and coding stuff but you also worked as a chef.

Defango:

Yeah, I worked as a chef. Oh, I mean, I went to culinary school so I could learn how to cook, but I worked as a chef for a couple of years, did some culinary with some chefs at Ladon Blue College of Culinary Arts.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

few like food network competitions with those guys. And you know, like that was during my time when I felt like I needed to get out of computers because I had gotten too much heat because, you know, I was a huge online pirate back in the day.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

you know, I can't say I never really didn't get caught, but, you know, I didn't really do anything that was supposedly gonna get me into any trouble. So

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

I just made sure to keep my head, I just made sure to keep my nose clean nowadays,

Sir Gene:

Well, that's a good policy. Yeah. No, that's I think definitely a good policy, but yeah. You've, you've not been a stranger to a lot of the discussions about conspiracy theories out there, and, and this year has been a just an avalanche of conspiracies being proven to be true.

Defango:

Yeah, everything that I was saying like four or five years ago started is more and more coming true every, becoming true, every single day. And I just laugh because it sucks. You know, I've gotten censored for my viewpoints and ideologies, and I'm considered to be what's called the super forecaster. So, there's people out there that forecast the future on things, and I did a competition where I went up against them and I beat all of them to the point where I have no I'm not, it's, I'm not an expert in these fields. I have no, you know, idea where half of this stuff come from, but, you know, I could accurately predict a future on things to a level that's so much higher than a regular forecaster. And I mean, they ha they call it super forecasting. And I'm part of like a very small group of people that can make very, very accurate future predictions based on, you know, just simple information online. And to me, it's just a normal thing that I do. I don't

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

you know, I never thought it was a big deal that, you know, I was always right about certain things, but now it's starting to be even more strange because it's like, I was right back then about it, but I got censored for it.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

now, and then all of a sudden people are saying the same thing, but. Now it's like super big information that nobody's ever talked about before. And I'm just kind of sitting in the back going, well, actually that's not true, but you know what Fme, you know, screw me.

Sir Gene:

So were you able to predict the downfall of Bitcoin and take advantage of the price drops?

Defango:

No, I don't buy or trade or sell in cryptocurrencies. I've always thought that that's like a bad move. I got, I got 27 Bitcoin stolen off of Mountain GOs, whether that thing got hacked. And back then I learned my lesson about like putting my money on other people's exchanges. So like, I don't really trade at all. Like I've mined all of the crypto that I have and I've really not bought that much period since then. So it's like, you know, I was one of the original 12 people that was mining Bitcoin, so that like in 2009 for the entire year, there was a total of 12 people mining. And, you know, put that into perspective is nowadays there's still not many more than that, that are still running the network. It's just a, you know, small group of individuals that basically keep the whole thing running. But you know, like I've been in since then and that's why, you know, I've stayed out of that. So, like I've been telling people for the last couple of years that, you know, any increases to the prices of Bitcoin is all just basically inflated. Value. If you're getting in now, if you're buying in now, whatever, you're just making a mistake. And some people listened to me and followed me on that and other people didn't. You know, like there was a cutoff on in my area, I think it was in the middle of 2017, when I was like, well, basically this is your last chance to get in to make money. If your only goal is to just get into Bitcoin, make a shit load of money and get out. And I was like, outside of this, you know, for the next couple of years it's gonna be bad. And sure there was people that I knew that had made money off of it, and then there was more people that I told to sell when it was at its peak. And I was like, yo, this is it. You know, if you got Bitcoin, you know right now this is, and you're wanting to make money, you sell it down unless you're like me and then you just hold onto it because you know, like my Bitcoin, sure, you know, it would've been a couple million dollars, but it's not real to me, number one. Number two, there's no way that I'm going to cash that out through Coinbase or something like that in order to make it real. And three, like it's a retirement plan for a reason. You don't cash out your retirement plan 30 years before you retire.

Sir Gene:

sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, that I, I think that makes a lot of sense, and I've said it similar, if not identical things. It's that I, I've always looked at the Bitcoin, well, initially when I mined Bitcoin and I was mining probably around 2011 or so what I discovered is it wasn't worth the electricity that I was putting into the machine. So it didn't prove to be a particularly good experiment for me. And I certainly didn't have any foresight into how much it would eventually be worth. So I just stopped mining cuz it was like, well, this ain't worth it. But

Defango:

people did.

Sir Gene:

yeah, but once it, it kind of got over the let's say the probably a thousand dollars mark once it got over a thousand bucks, a Bitcoin mon, from that point on, my take on it was it's way too erratic and chaotic to try and use it as an actual currency. But there might be a good play here just from a accumulation standpoint. And if all you do is, you know, twice a month you buy a hundred bucks worth of Bitcoin at whatever price it is, with the plan of not touching it for many, many years, it's probably not a bad thing to do. And, you know, don't, don't buy it to sell it a week later. And like some people made good money, but those same people quite often lost all the gains they had a month later. you

Defango:

Yeah. Well, they lose all their gains simply by cashing it out. So, oh, they're Bitcoin. Goes for being worth a hundred dollars to being worth$200. So they go cash out the dividends, not realizing that the cash out itself is like eating into their profit. Sometimes it's more than their profit. So I, I get that, you know, that's why when I started doing stuff like I ran a Altcoin website where I would talk about all of the different, all coins that were out there and basically I wasn't trying to promote them. I was trying to like, you know, show them to people and say, Hey, look at the next scam. And it wasn't until my business partner and that started actually accepting coins and stuff from these like people for promotion. And, and when I got out of it, cuz I was like, well yeah, I'm not accepting money for paid promotion. Like that's totally the antithesis of antithesis of what we're doing here. You know, we're supposed to be telling people about all of these all points so that we can come back later and make fun of them when, you know, they rob pull us or they do this or they do that. And like, I've been huge on the anti exchange policy for, you know, since I got my ba some of my Bitcoin stolen at least, like, you know, what I thought was a small amount is now worth, you know, lots and lots and lots of money. But I even still to this day look at what happened then and apply it to now, you know, with the FTX stuff, with what's happening. Excelsius finance, I mean all of. Huge exchanges are basically the same Ponzi scheme over and over and over again. They're always pointing fingers at each other and saying, oh, they're worse than ira. We are, but like, I mean, they're basically all the same. They're all doing the same thing. I mean, how many exchanges have gone

Sir Gene:

the, the key thing is that nobody should be storing any Bitcoin in any of these places. If you're buying'em through an exchange, just get'em out of there as quickly as possible. And if you're selling, if you want to convert'em to other, you know, between the different cryptos or you want to cash out again, just have that one transaction and then you're done with that. Don't leave anything at the exchange, cuz that's where they screw you,

Defango:

Yep. That's how it always happens. You know, the only one out there that's even safe for you to have up to a certain amount of money on, I believe is Coinbase, just because they're the only ones with the F D I C, you know, insurance. Right. So you could put up to, I think it's a hundred thousand dollars into there and have a peace of mind that, you know, you, you're probably gonna get your money back if anything happens. But for any other exchange out there, that's just simply not the case. And sure, there's people that wanted to trade and arbitrage and all of this stuff, and I tried that at one point and. I didn't, you know, like I just thought it was dumb. Like I was like, this is just dumb in my opinion. But, you know, I did spend a lot of time, you know, exploring NFTs and you know, like, that to me was when the NFTs blew up. It was two years after I had already gone through NFTs and shown people that, you know, 80% of the different games slash you know, projects that were out there were basically just rug bull scams and you know, like all that, all of this bad stuff happened and this little tiny chamber where not very many people were. And then it all happened again when the NFTs went big. And, you know, this is more me throwing shade towards Ethereum. But, you know, Ethereum's been probably the biggest scam projects in the cryptocurrency space that still somehow seems to survive

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

besides itself.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. It's still trading over a thousand right now.

Defango:

Yeah, well they just switched over to proof of stake. Right. And everybody said that that was gonna be a big move. It was gonna change things. But essentially all the proof of stake move did was centralized all of the mining to very, very powerful miners that have the 10,000 e that it was required to stake, you know, their system so that they can actually earn. So ultimately all it really did was make the network way less robust. Way more centralized. And it took away that one thing that made a theory of cool, which is the fact that anybody could make it or anybody could be a part of the network. Now it's only certain people that are gonna be a part of the network. And from what I could see already is that, you know, like they said that it was supposed to increase the speed of the network, but it's literally seen no increase in speed whatsoever across the board. And I mean, Ethereum is vaporware because it doesn't work in the way that it's described. I mean, they say that you can make these games and all this really cool stuff, but after over 10 years, basically at all, it amounts to our JPEG game. So they can show you a picture, they can make this picture and this other picture mix themselves together and create a new picture. And then basically that's about, that's about the short and skinny of everything that you could do with it. You know, like I hear people talk about voting or, oh, we're gonna have like digital deeds for your house, yet nobody has actually created it. Or there's been a bunch of companies that said that they were gonna create something and then they all of a sudden disappear on the wayside is because, you know, four to five months inside of their development cycle, they just finally realize outright. Yeah, this is never gonna work on this network. So then they go look at Solana or another Ethereum clone that works a bit better, but still suffers that, you know, same issue. And I mean, honestly, if Satoshi Nakamoto was around right now, I'm pretty sure that he would be like, well, you do realize that you can create NFTs with Bitcoin, right? Like you can upload files to the Bitcoin blockchain and then you can charge people through Bitcoin for the download of said files. Like you do realize that that's a thing that you can do. And it's because it wasn't directly stated in the white paper that most people aren't even aware that this is a possibility. So it's like

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Defango:

is just, it's a worst

Sir Gene:

th there were, you know, there was already a message that was enclosed, like right in the white paper where they d discussed how this blockchain's gonna function. So the, the groundwork is laid out.

Defango:

yeah, it was laid out in the white paper, like whoever wrote the white paper knew enough about what was going on with Bitcoin to put it out there. But the white paper only really discusses like very specific things about Bitcoin. There was a lot of other stuff. That were a part of it that didn't make it into the white paper. Namely the uploading and like removing of files like that was something that it actually took a couple of years for Shashi Nakamoto to upload the file uploader itself. So like that was something that he kept in his back pocket for a few years before he sneakily uploaded it to the blockchain. And then like some people were like, what is this thing Shashi downloader, what is this for? And then that's when people started figuring out that on top of, you know, making transactions and sending messages on the network, you could actually also upload files and things, which is strange. And, you know, just a anecdotal pieces of evidence if you go to the actual block where Satoshi uploaded the Satoshi Uploader, there's a lot of other really interesting things that were uploaded with that namely links lots and lots of links that go to like CP Jailbait, that sort of things like whoever Shashi Nakamoto was uploaded, the Shashi Uploader as well as a bunch of links to like, you know, exploitation material in the very same post. And it was Shashi was, it was Shashi Nakamoto that actually did it cuz you could trace back like the actual wallet that did all the uploading because every file that's uploaded is connected to the address that the uploader used to put it in.

Sir Gene:

Yep.

Defango:

I mean, you can see that, you know, Shashi, Dako Moto was into some other more strange things, and this is stuff that nobody even talks about. People talk about the downloader, but they don't talk about all the extra stuff. And then there's the thing that on the Bitcoin blockchain, there is actually CP uploaded to the blockchain and image form. And I think somebody attempted to upload a video at one point, but it's still there on the chain. And I mean, some people thought it was some other rando that did it, but I mean, according to the blockchain analytics, it was Chati himself. So you know, like there's a lot more to I think, chati than people cared to

Sir Gene:

Well, there maybe there's a reason the guy wanted to remain anonymous, right?

Defango:

Yeah, you know, there's a reason he wanted to remain anonymous. He didn't want people knowing what he was up to. But you know, it was soon after that, you know, when Satoshi finally disappeared. A lot of people don't remember that around that time. It was because people who were discovering this sort of thing, they were discovering these things. So like it was time for Satoshi to basically just bow out at that point.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Maybe Satoshi's Epstein.

Defango:

yeah, maybe Satoshi is Epstein. Nobody, I don't

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I mean, he is a banking genius, apparently.

Defango:

yeah, he was a banking genius. He knew a lot about money. And I mean, for all intensives purposes, The Bahamas has been the cryptocurrency hub for a very, very long time.

Sir Gene:

for sure.

Defango:

if you. Look back at some of the bigger names that they still have out there. Like there's that one guy that was in that movie, an Open secret from Gabe Hoffman what was his name? He was a child actor that, you know, was working with another like director, Brian Singer. And they had like some dead entertainment company where they were like the imp pedos basically. And that was part of the reason when, what's his face? I can't remember his name. David Brock Pierce, that's what his name is. Brock Pierce, you know, went to The Bahamas. Like they got raided by the cops and they had all kinds of exploitation materials and other things that were there. So, you know, that's a big thing in the Bitcoin space is that, you know, Shi Nakamoto was more than likely probably a pedo actually. Like, and one of his main ideologies.

Sir Gene:

Bitcoin was created for pets to be able to buy pedophilia from each other?

Defango:

Yes. That seems to be one of the main things. And I mean, this isn't something that, you know, I've just developed and made up on my own. I mean, the evidence is all there. You know, like I was one of the first 12 people that was on it mining it, and I had heard about it through a cyberpunk cipher punk slash Ninja video pirate forum. And, you know, we were discussing it before it even went out, like over the wire on this cyberpunk email list. So like we were aware of who this guy was or we were aware of what he was up to. I mean, he used to post on that website a lot. He used to post on that website a lot. But like the same links that he would post over on Bitcoin talk were the same kind of stuff that he was posting over in our area. And I mean, when, once you get into this idea that, you know, like Shashi Makumoto was more of a criminal mind than he was something else, than, you know, a lot of this stuff that he did back in the day makes a lot more sense. You know, uploading a cp, you know, all these different dudes that are all into CP that decided to become Bitcoin evangelists and things of that nature. That's the scary stuff that I think some people have just

Sir Gene:

But it, it does make some sense because it sure seems like people that are into CP tend to be rich and they would want a way of encrypting any kinda connections between themselves and be able to transfer, whether it was money or something else in a way that kind of kept kept them off of the normal network. So, it, it makes logical sense.

Defango:

Yeah, it's very logical. And I mean even more so, there was fluffy. There's the guy that created Manero. Well, he's not the creator, he's not the writer of the paper and stuff. He says that he's not the guy that created it, but at this point you'd have to be a fucking moron. Not to, you know, read between lines. But Mr. Fluffy created Manero because he wanted a private ledger. Cause you know, Bitcoin's a public ledger. Sure. You know, all the rich motherfuckers, as long as nobody knows that that's your Bitcoin address, it's really hard for them to use chain analytics to figure out that it's your address. Unless you've fucked up somewhere. Sometimes sense yourself some money into some public thing that they've seen that is yours. There's no way for them to figure that shit out. So a lot of that stuff is moved over into the more privacy oriented currencies like Zcash and Manero specifically. Like they're still around, people are still using those and those are truly private, right? Like that's, we're all of this ideology from the original version of Bitcoin went to. And I'm fine with that because Bitcoin was a test. It was a test to see if the network would operate, if it would work. You know, it was not designed to be the end all, be all. It was not designed to be the. Last one, it was designed to be the test so that in the future, and I'm talking like 20, 30 years, when the chain is completely done, then I guarantee you that Shashi Nakamoto character will be back with something new. And it's gonna have a lot of things because I mean, we live in a world where it takes 10 years for people to even start warming up to an idea that is brand new. Okay. You know, like how long did it take people to warm up to computers?

Sir Gene:

Yep.

Defango:

You know, once you had the in-home computer and you know, anybody could buy an in-home computer, it still took 10 years for people in the nineties to get with the times and start making it an actual physical thing that everybody needed to have. And now we're in the 2020s, not having a cell phone is like unheard of. Right. You know, you need that for everything.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. It's, and it's annoying too. I'll tell you, I, I ran into this just recently where, I was trying to log into, let me remember what it was. I was logging, oh, I was trying to log into a, a Google Voice number that I have just like, you know, for miscellaneous reasons, let's say. And so I don't use it very often. It's, it's rarely used, but it's still out there. And so I was trying to log in and Google said you know, you're haven't logged in in a long time, so we need to verify your identity. So you need to authorize this login through YouTube on your cell phone. And I was logging in from my iPad, and it's like, there was no other option. It was the only way to get into this account, into this Google Voice was by going into YouTube on my phone and then clicking the authorized button.

Defango:

Mm-hmm. this is weird, right?

Sir Gene:

the, it's, it's, first of all, it's strange that they would use YouTube as an oth app, right? That's just kinda weird, but okay, whatever. They figured it's installed in every phone, so it's, it's probably the most commonly installed app. So they. They've decided to use it, but also there was no way to do it without having your phone. What if I would've lost my phone? That means I can't log in. And then the whole reason I was logging in on my iPad was because I was upstairs and my fucking phone was downstairs and I'm a lazy fucker. And so consequently, it's kind of like, you know, I wouldn't have been trying to log into that Google voice on an iPad. If I had the phone on me, I would've just logged in on the phone. So making me then go downstairs and grab the phone just to be able to log in upstairs on a different device defeats the whole point of being able to log in on multiple devices. Cuz if, if their assumption is, well you always have your phone on you, well, it might be in the house doesn't mean it's within, you know, a few feet of me could be in a whole different part of the house than I am. I might have a huge house. Who the hell knows? You know? So it, it's just, they clearly take it for granted that everybody is going to have their phone active and working within a few feet away from them. Cuz that's what they want. They wanna be able to track your location all the time.

Defango:

Mm-hmm. and they want to be able to know where you are, what you're doing at any point in time. I mean, I've had the same issue with my iPad as well, where I'm like trying to log into one and the other one. But it's worse when you've already been logged in and you're just like, this is a device that I've already used, and you're making me go click on something in another spot. I mean, it's ridiculous. Like imagine losing your Google account nowadays. That's like a hard thing. Like you change your, you change your phone number. You are screwed. It's just like that with Apple too,

Sir Gene:

Yep. Totally.

Defango:

I worked for Apple in their support department taking phone calls from people that, you know, had problems with iPhones and their Mac and shit, like, swear to God, the number one thing that sucked to help out with is, was, was somebody would be like, oh, I'm trying to log into my account. And I'm like, oh cool. So what kind of changes this have you made? Oh, my phone got stolen, so I had to get a new one, but I'm trying to log in, but it's not sending me the text message. And I'm like, oh, okay, cool, cool, cool. I can help you out with that. So what's, what's the number it's sending you to? Oh, it's my old phone number. I came into the store and got a new phone, but I got a new number too because it was cheaper. And then I'm like, well, unfortunately you were not going to be able to access your Apple account ever again. And then people would be like, what? And I'd be like, yeah, since you changed your phone number, the phone number is the only way for you to get back into the account. So you don't own that phone number anymore. So that text message is going to that, that old number that you no longer own. So there's nothing that we could do for you. And I mean, people would be pissed about this, but it their own fucking fault because they didn't seem to understand the very simple way that, you know, their devices worked. But that's like a thing that consistently happens. And yes, there's still a way of getting your account back, but it takes.

Sir Gene:

yeah. Well, and the, there are more and more apps that now will require you to put in a phone number and they just won't work without one. And they don't like using Google numbers. They'll, they'll only use an actual carrier number. It's like, well, what makes, do you think that I even have a phone? I might not have a phone. Like, that's a crazy assumption to make. And I know the reason they're asking is because they're just trying to tie an email address to a phone number to have a more valuable marketing profile.

Defango:

Mm-hmm. it's also that they do for bots, like, I've seen the login flows that certain of these websites use and whenever it's got a phone number, like they're automatically taking whatever you type in and searching it against the database. And if they detect that it's a Google Voice or any other non-carriers style number, they're just gonna block you from being able to connect pretty much. Period. And I mean, that's part of them, that's the way that they look at, you know, trying to get rid of bots. But you're, you're right, when it's really them just trying to make sure that they have the, the most verified information on you, because I mean, your money,

Sir Gene:

no, a, a profile with a phone number is worth a lot more if you're marketing it than a profile without a phone number

Defango:

Mm-hmm. That's right. And I mean, that's what Twitter's going to too. Well, I mean, they were there for a long time. I mean, Twitter now owned by Elon Musk has had huge changes. It, it, it seemingly had huge changes, but let's be frank and honest about what's happened. Elon Musk hasn't actually changed anything at Twitter. All he did was just fire a bunch of people that were in places that were needless to the operation of Twitter.

Sir Gene:

Well, it's fired over 70% of the company at this point,

Defango:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

or I should say technically between firing and people leaving of their own accord. Over 70% of the company is now gone, and yet Twitter is running faster now.

Defango:

yeah, Twitter's running faster and is getting more additions because they weren't doing anything before other than spending most of their time censoring people. And that's a huge operation. It takes lots of people to be able to

Sir Gene:

absolutely. It's total Big Brother stuff.

Defango:

Mm-hmm. And now we're looking at how the platform is changing slightly, but I mean, is it, it's effectively still the same exact place that it was before. It's just that now different people are getting silenced and we're getting science before.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Yeah. And it totally is. I just find great Chad and Freuder in being able to see people that literally posted tweets saying it's a private company, they can do what they want. Now saying Elon is doing things that we don't like, and the government needs to step in and control it.

Defango:

Exactly. It's because, you know, they had control and they want to get it back. Well, as soon as they had control and they want to get it back. And now, you know, Elon is in control, but, you know, is, is anything really different? And you know, I say no, you know, I tried to apply to get my account back. Did I get my account back? No. But you know, did the Nazis get theirs back? Yep. Did you know all the people that actually did something bad get their shit back?

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Well, I, I didn't even bother. I just signed up with a new account.

Defango:

yeah, I mean, I signed up with the new

Sir Gene:

yeah, mine's been gone for over two years, so it really makes no difference to me if I got my actual account back or not.

Defango:

No, well, I mean, it may, the only difference it would make to me is it would show me that, you know, Twitter and her Elon Musk actually is trying to do the right thing. And

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

it's just like with Tesla, it's like, you know, like they're not, he's trying to do the right thing by like the money, but like, is he trying to do the right thing by the users? Absolutely not.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, there's plenty of things that I dislike about Tesla cars. There are plenty of things I, I like about'em as well, but they're not really user friendly and they're just, you know, they're, they're built very efficiently. They're built com almost completely by robots. But you know, when I get into a Volvo or a bmw, it just feels a lot more like somebody thought through the placement of things and how things interact a lot more than the Tesla does. And most of my friends drive Teslas, so it's kinda like I've been in plenty of'em. And I've got a Tesla truck on order right now, but I, I probably will end up selling my place in line to somebody who wants it more.

Defango:

That's funny. Yeah. Cuz those things are probably still pretty far from coming out, right?

Sir Gene:

Well, I don't know. I mean, it's been, I think four years since they announced it, and they're supposed to come out within two years. So it's two years behind May. Maybe it'll come out in 2023, maybe. But I, I got first day reservation, so, you know, it's worth something.

Defango:

Yeah. It's gotta be worth something. You'll be able to make some money on that reservation folks Show.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. And you know, there, and, and look, let's put it this way, if I, if I had worked completely for the last couple of years instead of part-time I may very well have just gotten the Tesla truck as well and just had several cars and, and that would've been the one that I drove occasionally. But right now, like having a hundred thousand dollars extra vehicle is just not not really something that, that's in my bank account.

Defango:

Yeah. I can barely afford to pay for the Prius that I got, so, you know, I know the feeling.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, it's yeah, and I, I'm very happy. I have no car payments, like I've paid off all my cars, so,

Defango:

I'll have mine paid off by the end of this new coming year.

Sir Gene:

nice. Yeah, it's a good feeling and it's something that obviously if you can manage to save for a car, then buy it with cash instead of getting a car, a lease or, or a purchase where you're paying interest, that's preferable. Now, occasionally, there have been plenty of times in the last 20, 30 years that I've been driving. Probably driving over 30 years at this point. But occasionally you will get deals where you can literally, and I've had two of them so far where I've I've bought a car with 0% interest. Now, if you get a deal like that, obviously take that. There's no point in paying cash if you can get money over time for free. But if you have to pay interest on a car loan, it's better to just wait until you can buy it for cash.

Defango:

No, I agree with that. I mean, I've never been into a spot where I could buy, you know, a car like that outright cash. I mean, I have been, you know, Bitcoin wise, but you know, I can't just go buy a car with Bitcoin and every time I've tried, it's always been a hassle. So most of the time, you know, like I got, I decided to try to actually, you know, like have credit use it. Cuz I've been one of those people that's like literally never had credit. So like, I never had credit, I never financed anything. I always paid cash for everything. And you know, like that worked out fine for me until it didn't. And I mean, I used to be the guy that would go on Craigslist. I would buy a car, I would fix it up, I would flip it, I'd buy another car. But you know, for the longest time I just had like the same car. And then I would buy new cars every now and again. Fix'em up and sell'em. And like, I never had to worry about it, but it was like over the pandemic, used cars got really expensive.

Sir Gene:

they did. Yeah.

Defango:

The, yeah, the options were shitty. So I had to go get a freaking car loan and it was my first one and I got like crazy bad interest rates and whatever the fuck. But you know, I'm just doing it because I'm like, well I guess I gotta have this stupid number. Right.

Sir Gene:

Well,

Defango:

I went

Sir Gene:

having credit is definitely important. It, but there's a difference between having credit and using credit. You know, if you can build credit basically by paying off your bill every month with a credit card, and then you can do the same thing with a car loan. Incidentally, if you get a car loan with a shitty interest rate, but you wanna still have that show up on your credit report instead of buying the car for cash, you could go through the process, get a car loan, and then simply pay it off within a few months. And then you know, you just have to be careful that you look at the details in the loan. Some loans have no prepayment penalties, meaning that if you pay the loan early, then there's no interest charged, obviously, because you're not borrowing the money anymore. So if you do it three months after you start the loan itself, you literally just paid for three months of interest and that's it, and the whole thing. But there are also some loans that are, crappy loans that are written where there's an early prepaid penalty where even if you pay it early, they will still charge you the interest as though it took you the full duration of the loan to pay. The loan off and you wanna avoid those at all costs. But yeah, having credit is good. That's a, that's an important thing, but just cuz you have credit doesn't mean you have to use it. And that's a trap a lot of people fall into. I've certainly have in the past as well, where, ooh, I've got like$50,000 available to me, maybe I'll go out and spend something. Well, that's fine until all of a sudden you, you don't have the money to pay it back.

Defango:

Exactly. Yeah. That's why I've always stayed away from loans or anything else of that nature. I mean, I have this one and I'm just using it to build myself up, but I mean, I built myself up from like having like a six, like a fucking five 20 to like a six 80 in like an air.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

Like my, my low score was because I literally had never had anything and I think I had like some collection shit for a student loan and like that shit dropped my shit for

Sir Gene:

oh, student loans will fuck you big time. Yeah. And, and that's something that I think a whole generation of people is going through right now. Because here's the thing that people don't realize too, is like when Joe Biden says you don't have to pay your student loan, or you, you like, defer your student loan, or We're gonna take 10 grand off your student loan. It doesn't actually mean anything because the data is being accumulated by private companies about your paying habits. And those private companies are just simply showing that you weren't paying for these six months. It doesn't matter whether Joe Biden said that's okay or not, he's not your parent, he's not the guy deciding how your credit rating is built. And what we're gonna end up with is a whole generation of Americans on by end up, meaning we're already there right now is a lot of people 30 and under, have really shitty credit, which means they'll never be able to buy a house. And they're ha they're gonna overpay for car loans and any other loan things. They're gonna have credit cards with 20% interest instead of credit cards with 8% interest.

Defango:

No, you're explaining, you know, my situation pretty much to a T and it's not like I couldn't pay shit off. I just chose not to have credit because I was like, well, if I don't have the money for it, I'm not gonna fucking buy it. And I was going through trying to buy a home myself, you know, get a home loan, like I've owned a house before, but you know, like I paid cash. You know, me and my friend bought a house together and I think the whole thing cost us like 50 grand and I think I put up 15, which is the most that I've ever had, like cash liquid for anything to put up. And I mean, we bought the house, we fixed it up, he broke me off. You know what? He paid me back plus interest and it was, you know, like a pretty good deal. But my whole goal was like, at that point, which was like fi like 10 years ago, probably, maybe, no, actually longer than that, to be honest, it was probably like 14, 15 years ago. And I tried to take that and go put it down on a house, but it was the recession 2008 and it just, you know, didn't really cut out. So I've been trying to now, so I'm in the middle of saving to pay off my car, which is, you know, like the main thing. And then after that, you know, I'm trying to get a house itself and I mean, I don't have to get out of the nice little place that I'm living in, it's just that I'd rather, you know, own the place as opposed to, you know, keeping having to pay somebody rent. Right. My ranch cheap though.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. No, I, I hear you. And I, I've I'm definitely kind of changing what I am looking for in terms of space moving forward too, because, you know, when I moved to Austin, I, I live just south of downtown. I'm like two and a half miles from downtown. And I was planning to, and I actually did spend a lot of time in downtown. I just kinda like being in the middle of, of things that are happening, and also did a lot of water stuff. I, I had a jet ski and a boat. did a lot of stuff cause I've always enjoyed, like fishing or just being around the water in general. And then with Covid, like everything just changed. Like there was nothing happening in downtown. A lot of the bars, restaurants closed permanently. And so the more I've been thinking about it lately, it's like, you know, what I really want is I don't need to be close to downtown, to Austin or any other city. I I think I just wanna buy like 40 acres or, or somewhere in that neighborhood and just have a place away from everybody. I don't, I don't need anybody around. And with having starlink, you got internet literally anywhere in the world, certainly anywhere in the us. And of course if they have gigabit ethernet where where I'd be looking at property, that'd be even better. But but there's a lot fewer limitations on how far away from civilization you are. You got your own well for water, you're not dependent on anybody else. So the only thing you're really kind of importing, as it were, is electricity. And getting a nice solar setup with a Tesla wall would offset the electricity needs by quite a bit as well. And I'm not like doing it because I give a shit about the environment. I think the environment is exactly what it should be and always has been and always will be regardless of what people do. But I'm just thinking of it from a purely selfish standpoint. If I can have solar panels then my electric bill might be, and this is based on other people I know, might be in like 10 to$15 a month. Whereas, because in Texas, you know, it's, there's a lot of sun here for about two thirds of the year. It's nonstop sunlight with no rain, so it's not hard to make electricity through solar panels. And then of course the Tesla wall battery keeps that going during the day. Whereas like with no solar right now I'm paying around 300 bucks a month for electricity.

Defango:

Yikes.

Sir Gene:

Well, we, you know, air conditioning is a huge part of that.

Defango:

Well, yeah, cuz I mean it gets hot as balls.

Sir Gene:

over a hundred degrees almost every day. Yeah. So you end up paying for that. But either way, like I just, I think my mentality of having to be around people and at places where there's stuff happening and tons of restaurants and bars and activities, maybe I'm just getting older. I mean, that's a part, part of it too is as I, as I get older, maybe there's a lot less of a interest in being around others and more, more of that sort of grumpy old curmudgeon get off my lawn kind of mentality to where I just want to have my own place and have a little gun range, be able to shoot guns right from the back of the house.

Defango:

Yeah, that would be sick actually.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

That would be sick. That's what I want.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. And, and one of my buddies literally did that. Now he is, he's not super far away from Austin. But he, his gun range is literally like 200 feet away from his house. And and I think he's got 50 acres, if I remember correctly. But it's, it's awesome. Like whenever I drive out there and I, I shoot on his range, it just reinforces me, like, how cool would it be to just have this in my own place.

Defango:

It would be really cool, honestly. I mean, that, that's what I was looking at when I got out here cuz I haven't ever planned for the future. But when I moved out here to like, Nevada, Carson City, you know, up in the mountains the lady that I'm living with, that I came out here to help out. I mean, she had a family. Her dad was like the propane king. He was, you know, the guy from Hank, king of the hill, Hank Kills boss. That's him.

Sir Gene:

Okay.

Defango:

so if you think about it, he owned every single propane tank from basically Oregon all the way down into Arizona before AmeriGas ever existed.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

So like when AmeriGas turned into, that's, they got all their shit from him basically. And honestly, like, I came out here because this lady just needed help and she was like, you know, you seem like you might be able to assist me. So I came out here to help and that's when I started to realize that, you know, maybe I do want different things because I used to be like you, I lived in the city, you know, I was working in bars and stuff. So I was in Tempe, Arizona. I was on Mill Avenue every single night because that's where I worked. I mean, I lived five minutes from where I worked, so I could just walk home. You know, so it was like a different lifestyle and I enjoyed it. For many years, I would be out there par partying, throwing parties promoting events making friends, whatever. It was great. But after a while, I think after everything that had happened, like by like 2017, I was just like, tired, man. I was just tired because I felt like I kept on doing more and more cool stuff and getting more and more big things happening. But like the, the people I was around and the people I was with were not moving forward to the same things that I was. Right. So like they've taken over the entire scene now, you know, like it was a scene that I built, right? Like, I started at Scratch and decided that, hey, you know, this would be a cool place to do it. This is where we're gonna do, and now I'm not even involved whatsoever. But like, you know, the, the entire space that they have with they're doing stuff in now wouldn't exist without, you know, all the work that I put in. And it was just, it blows me away sometimes because like, I was like begging for these guys to help me, right? Like, I was begging for them to help me promote shows and to get into this cause it was going to be the next big thing. And, you know, when it was me talking about it, it didn't matter. But the second that, you know, somebody else brings it up to them, it all of a sudden becomes like the biggest idea. So it's like crazy to think that, you know, like this is how these things goes. But you know, now that I'm older, I'm out here in the mountains. Sure. I don't talk to half of the people that I used to, but you know, I'm not really, you know, fucked up about it, I

Sir Gene:

Yeah. So are you thinking it's sticking around Nevada for a while, or are you thinking about moving somewhere else?

Defango:

Well, I might move somewhere else. I mean, if I could find somewhere cheaper, I mean, honestly at this point I don't really need to be anywhere. Right. So I'm trying to find some place with some cheap property, you know, where I can get like a du like where I can get my me a nice little mobile home.

Sir Gene:

Yep.

Defango:

You know, just go get a cheap mobile home somewhere. Doesn't even have to be built this fucking decade or even, you know, like maybe by the seventies, seventies, say seventies. But

Sir Gene:

well, they were built better in the seventies than there today.

Defango:

exactly, that's what I'm saying. You know, like some seventies freaking manufactured home will do me just fine if it's like an acre. Like that's, that's pretty conservative. I would have to say to say an acre with a manufactured home is not a Exactly a huge ask. But then again, it is, man, you know, like they want 150,000, they want sometimes 250, 300,000. Like looking at my old, where I used to live in Arizona, you know, like I'm priced out of the housing market almost for pretty much everything. Unless it's a piece of garbage like

Sir Gene:

Dude, Austin, you can't, you can't touch anything for under a million.

Defango:

Yeah. Well that's how it is out here too, man.

Sir Gene:

it's like the minimum going rate these days. And, and there's a lot of people moving here because their companies moved. A lot of companies moved from San Francisco to Austin, and so they're bringing all these$200,000 plus a year salary it people with them. And they're, they're literally, you know, paying six, eight grand a month to live in the 700 square foot apartment in downtown.

Defango:

Which is crazy.

Sir Gene:

It's absolutely crazy. I mean, it's like you've got, okay, your location, that's a check mark. You got that, but you have very little space. You, you have neighbors crawling up your ass and you're throwing so much money away. Yes, you're making a lot, but you're also throwing that money away because it's not your property, you're just. Paying rent on it. But you know, it's convenient. People, people do it. They don't think about it and they're like, well, I get 22 grand a month anyway, so what do I care if I spend six on, on my apartment?

Defango:

Yeah, they don't really care at all cuz they're getting it all from the bosses.

Sir Gene:

includes a lot of the Twitter people here and, and yeah, I mean, it's everybody here. Facebook, Twitter you know, Amazon's got a huge campus. Apple's got a gigantic we're the second largest Apple campus in the country. Oracle moved their headquarters here.

Defango:

they wanted me to go there into

Sir Gene:

did they? Yeah.

Defango:

the Apple thing because I was a work at home person.

Sir Gene:

Right.

Defango:

When I was working for them, like I kept on going off book, but every time I went off book, I did something that was both amazing and then they had no idea was possible on their own shit. So they wanted me to get more involved with that, but I was just like, fuck, now I'm not moving to Texas I can't afford that shit.

Sir Gene:

Texas is awesome though. I love Texas. So wherever I end up moving out of Austin is still gonna be inside of Texas. In fact, some people would say, I will be moving into Texas as Austin is not part of Texas.

Defango:

Yeah. That's like fucking, that's Democrat country or

Sir Gene:

Oh, big time. Yeah. It, that Austin is, is very, very blue.

Defango:

Yeah. I

Sir Gene:

I don't, one of the things, I don't know if you heard, cuz it's kind of more, more local off story, but the legislation session that's coming up is is extremely fed up with the way that Austin's been run and they're actually putting a bill into the state legislature to disin incorporate the city of Austin and basically turn Austin into the same thing that Washington DC is, which is not a city with a mayor and a city council, but simply a district that is operated by the state legislature.

Defango:

Yikes.

Sir Gene:

be hilarious if they can pull that off. I would just be laughing my ass off. It's like, yep, you guys blew it. You fucked Austin up and now you don't have a city anymore.

Defango:

Yep. They, they might actually be able to do that. I mean, when I was in Texas, it was a few years ago, and I mean, I had like a pretty big Texas guy. Like I, my journey to Texas consisted with hanging out with egg bartowski who's like, I guess a rich money made or whatever, and, you know, go into the, in Dallas to the bigs, like what is the, what is the place there where they have everything that happens, it's like a big sports arena or whatever, like sitting in a box and then meeting the goddamn ag in Texas, like Ken Ps and having like breakfast with him after I had just smoked a shit load of weed and I was just, you know, a surreal experience. Like Texas was a surreal experience. But I mean, it, it's, it's always been off of the places that I would actually consider to live because of their stance on marijuana. Like that's why I was part of the

Sir Gene:

Well, I, I'd say it's, it's a pretty soft stance. I mean, it's still not legal here, but it's also readily available.

Defango:

Yeah. I know it's readily available, but it's not legal.

Sir Gene:

No.

Defango:

if it's not legal, and if I could get pulled over and a cop says, smoke, I could smell your weed and give me a ticket for it, then, you know, it's not, it's not a viable zone. Like in Arizona, I was part of the groups that fought to get legalized

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

you know, I definitely worked with people in Nevada and I even talked to people in Texas and that was one of the things is that when I was in Texas, like I was talking to, you know, the ag in Texas about that and he was actually very supportive of legalization and, you know, there was a strong chance that it could have gotten done if the activists that were there would've gotten out of their own way. But like right now, like that's the big issue I think with activism has always been a huge issue for getting anything done. Because when I got into, you know, activism for weed, I realized that I didn't wanna be an activist. I actually just wanted to get something legalized. So like, I was always focused. Doing it in a way that made sense for legalization because you know, like this has to be for business. But then I was constantly coming up against these fucking idiots or pine cones that were like, no man, it's a tree dude. We need, we need to free the tree bro. Me and mother earth man. And you know, they'd always go to these very low hanging arguments or for why, the reasoning why they wanted something to be done. And then I'd be like, guys, like everybody gets that. We all got that. We fucking got that 20 years ago. What we need to come up with is the legal framework because we have to give and take. We can't just say that everything's legal and nobody gets arrested for anything cuz then there wouldn't be any fucking revenue. We have to play the game. If we don't play the game, it's not gonna go there. And that's just where it was in Texas, is that the legalization game was basically this one gigantic super company that's been working with all the legalization efforts all across the country. And they were completely out of Texas because they just didn't see it as a go. And the other side was basically a bunch of like pothead activists that just, you know, were never gonna get any real laws done because they just refused to even try to like put something on a piece of paper. Like they had no idea of the process that they actually needed to go file. And be like, yo, you guys can do this. You just need to write it down. You need to file it. And it, you know, like we could get it done. And it was just finding a group of people in Texas, to me seems just like a super fucking hard thing to do because the place is so big, right? It's so

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm. Oh, it's huge. Yeah.

Defango:

like the amount of people are disparate. Like how are you supposed to connect all those different groups of people from all the different areas? Like it'd be easy in Austin to find people to get the le weed legalization thing done, but getting those Austin people to the other areas and getting them to talk those people into it,

Sir Gene:

Yeah. There's more and more cities that, that have passed legislation to decriminalize it in the city. So at least the local cops aren't gonna do anything about it. The state law is still on the books. But you know, the state laws are more enforced outside of cities and in counties and I think things will end up flipping around on it. The, the thing that I don't think any state can pass up is they look at what the western states have done and how much the taxation comes out of that. It's it's just free money. You know? It's free money that right now is going to Mexican cartels.

Defango:

Oh yeah. And then they don't, they don't see, they see that, and it would really stop the cartels. But the thing is, is like what it, with the way that the border shit's going on right now, like I feel like if. Texas were to do some crazy shit like legalize weed, like we would literally be seeing border clashes on the United States border between the Mexican cartel and border patrol agents and shit. I think they would be straight up like a fucking war going on

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Defango:

that's what the car that would piss off the cartels to.

Sir Gene:

oh, it would totally piss off. I mean, that's the irony is like the Texas Law Enforcement Association is literally on the same side as the cartels on this.

Defango:

mm-hmm.

Sir Gene:

Like they don't want marijuana legalized. So why? Why? Because it creates less work for the police. That's such a stupid idea for not legalizing it. And I say that as somebody that's not a user of marijuana, and I, in fact, I've talked about it. I'm not really. Like, it doesn't do anything for me. I have to have extremely high quantities of THC to feel anything. I, I have a very high tolerance for thc and so it, it's, to me, it's not anything I'm interested in, but also it just seems extremely inconsistent with a lot of other things that we've done. And if we're gonna ban marijuana, then why the hell is alcohol and tobacco allowed?

Defango:

Well, that's the thing is that they already tried to ban alcohol and

Sir Gene:

They did. They did, but that's what I mean. It's like none of this shit should be banned. People ought to be able to do whatever they want whatever they want in their own homes. The biggest thing is what you need is you need laws against people being under the influence of anything, including prescription medication, getting on the highway and then hitting other cars. Like, that's the thing that I don't want happening. Whether somebody lights up a joint in their own house, honestly, who gives a shit?

Defango:

Yeah, I don't, I've never really cared about what people do on their own time, but at the same time, there's all of these accidents and things that have happened over the years that have changed my perception on that reality. And I mean, hey, I've been one of those guys that got a dui. You know, I got a d Y at six o'clock in the fucking morning.

Sir Gene:

Hmm.

Defango:

You know, I thought I was totally fine or whatever, but apparently not. You know, I blew just over, I blew the legal limit basically. And in Arizona, it's a zero tolerance state. So, you know, I had to go through that whole entire SLM meal and, you know, here I thought, oh, I, you know, stopped drinking last night, went to sleep, I'm gonna, you know, sleep it off, everything's fine. And I was in for a very rude awakening throughout all of this. And then, you know, like that's only changed. That only changed like, you know how thehe I was about. Things because, you know, like I simply wasn't educated, I guess, to the facts. I figured, you know, like I didn't drink that much, you know, by the time I wake up in the morning, I should be totally fine. And you know, I was just like, basically shit wrong. And it cost me a lot, man. Like that was an expensive mistake, you know, I had to fucking couldn't drive and shit. And like years later it's expunged and off of my record or whatever, but it still stays with me. People can still see it and whatnot. It's like they, it's not pulled up anymore, but like the evidence is still there, you know, it's, it's all there. And honestly, it changed the way that I operated fully. So like, you know, I changed the way my living situations to accommodate for drinking and stuff of that nature. That's part of the reason when I, after I got outta college, like I was living so close to where I worked is because, you know, like I didn't want to even have the ability, you know, I wanted to make it so stupid to drive home or drive anywhere drunk That.

Sir Gene:

Yep.

Defango:

And then on top of that, you know, I got really lucky too, which is why I've never paid for an Uber ride. But like Uber had just barely started coming out. And since I was in the tech industry before and people knew I worked in bars, they were like, Hey, you know, do you just want to be a brand ambassador? And you know, all you do is you promote Uber. So like they gave me cards. I would literally just get people to download the app and put it on their phone. But like, I was constantly in bars, so like people were just like, what the fuck? I'd be like, Hey man, how are you getting home tonight? And you know, I would see somebody drinking or I'd see somebody talking about, you know, like driving home drunk. And I'd be like, Hey, how you get home? And they'd be like, oh, well I was just planning on, you know, driving home. And I'd be like, how far do you live? And then they'd tell me, you know, like X amount of miles and I'd just hand them a black card and I'd be like, I'm just like, I don't want you to drive home tonight. Here's$30. You know, this'll basically pay for your ride

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Defango:

There's, I was like, oh, you gotta do is download the app and sign up, put your card on it. And I was like, and then you type in this little promo code and your first ride's on me. And I was like, but I want you to take this car home. And every time it would be like some fucking nice ass town car or like a big s u v and people we're really into it. And I got a lot of, I got a lot of people signed up. But you know, like, to be frank is like, you know, I spent a lot of money learning the DUI lesson on my end, but like the amount of money that I made saving people from getting DUIs, technically I didn't make the money, but like I really never had to pay for an Uber ride in all of these years that Uber's existed because of all of the promotional credits that

Sir Gene:

Right? Yeah. You got all the credits going. Oh, that's

Defango:

Yeah. Yeah. So it's like I, I was, I was in New York, right? And I took a ride from the airport to the middle of fucking, you know, NYC didn't pay a dime. And I took that ride like three or four times. And like most people would be bitching at that. And, you know, like I was experiencing what it would be like to be one of those really super rich people that just did not give a fuck about what it cost them to get them right. And it was a good feeling. It was a good feeling.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. No, that's awesome. No, that, and that's a worthwhile way to do it because you're probably saved a lot of people, a lot of money and headaches and potentially even.

Defango:

Yeah. You know, my fuck up turns into helping somebody else out. And that's really all I've ever wanted, right? Like, all I wanted was to help out other people, but at the same time, you know, like, I wish I was more educated. I wish I didn't make, you know, certain stupid mistakes. But overall, like, it's not about the mistakes that you've made, it's how you take those mistakes and you like fix it for the future. Because I could be negative about it, but the reality is I don't need to be anymore. You know? It was, it ended up being a positive thing,

Sir Gene:

Well, I, I think that's the right attitude to have, and mistakes aren't the problem. Repetitive mistakes are the problem. If you make a mistake once and, and that makes you learn from it to not make that mistake again. And, and even better, help other people not make that mistake, which by the way is the main reason that I've written the books that I've written, is to help people not make mistakes that either I've made or I've watched other people make. It's really mistake avoidance. So if you read a book and you actually take that advice, it's gonna help you avoid mistakes. And it's not just true of my book. That's kind of the goal of most non-fiction books in general. Is there lessons that you should learn, not from making your own mistakes, but from reading about what other people have done. so you can avoid those mistakes. Believe me, there'll be plenty of other mistakes to make yourself anyway. So if you can avoid some other mistakes that people have made by learning about'em that's just gonna make your life easier.

Defango:

Oh, agree. Agree. Yeah. Mistakes are a thing that we all make, but it's learning from them that really makes you the king. And it's cool, you know, like I've been working on a book about the Q situation because I see it as a mistake,

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

I don't really, that's not true though. I don't see it as a mistake. I see it as a necessary, I think I see it as something that was super necessary. I think I saw something that nobody else could see, and no, that's not the right way of putting it. I saw something that very few other people saw about a place. And I kept on trying to tell people about it. I would tell, I would show people how it operated, how it worked, how, how it, you know, it, it went down and nobody was listening. Nobody was listening. So I decided to get it done for myself. And the only way I knew, and I used all the stuff that I had learned about the thing and made a new thing happen, and I finally got people to care about what was going on. Like, you know, it was always, it was always about Fortune eight chan and the dark secrets of what's happening

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

these things go viral, like exposing the pipeline basically

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

job, what I wanted to do. And I think that ultimately we got it done. You know, we got rid of a chan, it's no longer around, it's now a coon and it's a shadow of its former self, and I'm totally fine and happy with that. You know, my goal was to get rid of a chan and it got done. But the thing is, is that now the internet is different, you know,

Sir Gene:

in

Defango:

know, well, it's different in the fact that censorship is way up. All of these companies are starting to take actions that they would've never taken before.

Sir Gene:

Oh, sure. Yeah,

Defango:

it's deleting servers, black hole, d n s, like. That used to just be reserved for the worst of the worst, like that used to, they used to do that to the pirates of the C P P and actual

Sir Gene:

criminals, yeah.

Defango:

So me seeing that happening to actual, going from happening to actual criminals, to it just happening to everyone is crazy to me. And I think that, you know, it needed to happen, right? Like the internet needed this shock because there's been so many insidious, like little secret organizations and things that have cropped up over the internet over the years that have, you know, caused real harm. Whether it's an cult like, oh, chink, you know, the ones that did the Sarga attacks in fucking Japan back in the day, that was before the internet dog.

Sir Gene:

Yep.

Defango:

You know, think about that. Like people were doing crazy shit and blowing shit up and doing nuts stuff before the internet. And now that we have the internet, the acceleration, you know, before what used to take a year or two now can be done in a fucking week, sometimes even in a day. And it's all associated to. The individual that you're targeting, right? Because certain people get sucked up. It's like you and Star Citizen, like me and you, we start talking about Star Citizen. You already wanted to play Star Citizen, you already wanted to get in there, but you were looking for somebody else who already played it to like, you know, give you the okay to get into it, to help you justify it, right? And then as soon as you get into it, you know, here we are a year later, you know, you're like super deep into the amount of ships that you have. You're making star citizen videos and stuff. And it's like an

Sir Gene:

Yep.

Defango:

If you didn't talk to me or if you would've only spent time like, you know, with the tomato or

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Defango:

still taken like a year for you to get shoved into that pipeline, but it's because you went to somebody like me, you got into the pipeline faster.

Sir Gene:

Well, and I, I'll, yeah, I certainly, I like kind of tongue in cheek. There's a couple of people, you're one of'em that I like to kind of blame from me getting into buying ships. But realistically speaking, obviously it wasn't that. It was, I think what it was like with you and this other dude as well is that both of you guys had bought ships. And it kind of opened my eyes to this idea that, oh, well, you know, people that I play with have bought ships and it's not a big deal. It's like, because in a lot of games there's a very strong push against the pay to win kind of players. And, and they're seen as being kind of, you know, people that have no skill and therefore they're, they have to resort to buying shit in the game. And I don't think that's the case in this game. And you totally can earn your way up along the way. But it was more of like the people that I played with, including you and a couple other people you all had bought ships for real money that were making the game play more fun. And I think in some ways it didn't change my mind, but it probably accelerated a little bit. My My interest in doing this exact same thing is like, oh, well yeah, I guess if I could just go to this website and buy this ship and it's gonna get me there right away, instead of like playing a ship, I don't like for the next three months to earn enough money in game to buy the other ship. This is like a quicker way to do it. I've got the money to do it. Yeah, why not?

Defango:

Yeah, makes sense. And you know, you're older now too. I mean, if you were like a young ass kid with no fucking money,

Sir Gene:

Oh, I wouldn't be spending any money on this shit.

Defango:

you wouldn't be spending money. Right. Like I shouldn't have spent it as much money as I did on this game as it was. It's just that I had my credit card on there for the subscription thing and you know, and two, three, no, in five years of subscription payments, I've made it to be in a concierge player. Right.

Sir Gene:

Well, yeah, that's 200 bucks a year, so that adds up.

Defango:

Yeah. Adds up pretty quickly when you really look, when you

Sir Gene:

Incidentally, I, I hope for a money savings standpoint, you're buying the yearly subscriptions where you get two months free

Defango:

oh no, no, no, no, no. Pay it every month. Like a like, like the fucking scrub. I am.

Sir Gene:

Well, right now is a good time to buy the yearly sub because it's on discount not to mention the coupon that you get. Oh, you did? Okay. Well that's, so that's

Defango:

might get another one, you know? I might get another one.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, so e either do the yearly or or just don't do'em and only like, you could do a one month here and there if there's something interesting that month,

Defango:

Yeah. I haven't even logged into that game, so I'm gonna log in right now.

Sir Gene:

okay, well to see that now I'm being a better influence on you.

Defango:

Well, I mean, I figured I

Sir Gene:

how that works.

Defango:

look around and see what's up.

Sir Gene:

Well, you

Defango:

that's the thing is like, there's nothing that I've missed, right? Like I want to get into the P T U

Sir Gene:

yeah. You could get into PT U and

Defango:

Oh wow. I'm in prison.

Sir Gene:

Oh, are you really? My

Defango:

Yes, I am still

Sir Gene:

in prison if you hadn't logged in in months,

Defango:

because the last time I logged out I was in.

Sir Gene:

but shouldn't have that time, like gone by and, oh, I guess all, yeah, so you,

Defango:

weeks ago,

Sir Gene:

so, oh, okay. Well, a couple of weeks. That's a little

Defango:

I'm not li I'm not playing like every day, but like I,

Sir Gene:

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you don't have any prison time. You just need to leave prison

Defango:

Yeah. I'm just in prison. Just,

Sir Gene:

And incidentally, did you see they fixed that that bug where if you get into prison and we're, I'm sure we've like lost the audience at this point. Prison. What the hell are you talking about? This is a video game. In this video game. They have a prison that you end up in, or jail, prison, whatever. If you do bad stuff in the game and it's all part of the game loop, it's just sort of like, if you're playing as a criminal, there's a chance you'll end up in prison. But but you used to be able to sneak in there. With a crime stat. And then by just simply leaving in the elevator, you got rid of your crime stat. And I remember you showing me that like a year ago.

Defango:

Yep.

Sir Gene:

May, maybe longer. And they just fixed that in this latest patch. And then they credited the YouTuber citizen Kate for finding this bug and telling him all about it. I'm like, you gotta be shitting me. Everybody was using this. She's by nowhere near the first person that found this. She's just the first person that made a big deal about it and got'em change it.

Defango:

That's, that's horseshit because I literally emailed

Sir Gene:

Yeah. You reported. Yeah. You reported it.

Defango:

Well, I mean, I reported it in the B to actually break into prison through like fading through the fucking ground.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, I remember watching that as well.

Defango:

to go up through like that whole entire thing and then we made like tickets for it. They never did anything about it. But you know, they go and they create citizen Kate for all this stuff when I'm the one that actually put it all out there

Sir Gene:

Yeah. And like multiple people I've played with have known about it and done that stuff and, and put in reports like I, I, lately I've been playing a lot with Grumpy and I've been kind of guessing in his live streams as well. And you know, he's got, he's showed me a whole bunch of reports that he's filled into the uh, the what do you call it, the bug council or whatever. And talked with, like, including videos of all kinds of things that are broken. Nothing ever happens. Most of his reports come back as saying that issue couldn't be confirmed internally. Like they couldn't replicate it.

Defango:

We

Sir Gene:

I was like, okay, well watch the fucking video. What do you need to replicate the bug? If you just watch the video, you can see what the bug does now go into code and fix it.

Defango:

Yeah. That, that, that's the

Sir Gene:

But then Citizen Kate does a video and is like, oh, well thanks so much. No one told us about this. Now we fixed it.

Defango:

really.

Sir Gene:

it's just

Defango:

such horseshit, dude. Like I've made stream after stream

Sir Gene:

she is definitely the current, sort of like the, the streamer slash YouTuber. They're promoting big time because you got, you got a

Defango:

and that Gabby,

Sir Gene:

Yeah, yeah,

Defango:

I, I created that monster. I fucking feel bad dude. I, I completely, I ruin my star citizen career as a streamer

Sir Gene:

Uhhuh,

Defango:

boosting that girl because like, I had spent six fucking months every night, overnight building up the star citizen community. Over time I was like, up to 10, 15, started getting up to like 30 people and I was like, sweet dude. And one day I see a new person on the thing because I used to just go host who was ever at the bottom of the list and be like, just bless them up. Because I was like, Hey. And I saw Miss Gabby, so I fucking boosted her up. And then ever since that day, like my entire audience disappeared. They all just went over to her stuff and then like, it's like I didn't even

Sir Gene:

Hmm.

Defango:

exist and I was just like, wow. That's why I stopped streaming star citizen is cuz I was just like, dude, there's no way that I'm going to have to, you know, like there's no way that I can compete with a young, cute girl.

Sir Gene:

no, she's not even that young or cute, but just being female makes a huge difference to all that stuff because it's such a rarity, you know? Like there's just not that many women that play games at all, and in the game as incomplete as star citizen and with so little non PVP stuff to do. There's even fewer women. So when you get a woman, like the game, the, the, the company itself is promoting the hell out of women players right now.

Defango:

Yeah. Well that's what they've been doing for a while now. They want to have the ladies up there like they, is it, it all started with the Anna Demetrio character. That

Sir Gene:

yeah, yeah.

Defango:

for me because like I saw what was happening to Cobra TV

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

he was there and I was a part of his like crew for a while. I would show

Sir Gene:

I remember

Defango:

day, you know, I wasn't trying to be, you know, like anything. I was just there to be a solid person for this guy because I knew he used to watch my stuff. So I was like, you know, I want to support him. So like I paid the money and I was there, but what I didn't know was that they was like a whole entire fucking group of people that disliked me. And I think that they all thought that I was like anti-gay or something like that, which is completely not the case. I just don't give a shit about people's, you know, sexual orientation. I don't think your sexual orientation makes you who you are and

Sir Gene:

Well, it's nobody's fucking business in the beginning. It's like people shouldn't be talking about that shit. Do whatever you want behind closed doors

Defango:

Exactly. But you know, like they would always be.

Sir Gene:

pornography. Don't do that.

Defango:

Yeah, don't do that at all. So like, these guys would always be making like gay, homophobic and all kinds of lately homophobic comments and things, and I would just be all like, inappropriate, right? Like, like, you know, I'm, I'm a good Christian Catholic. I'm fine that you guys butt fuck each other or whatever. You could do whatever you want. Don't care. Just don't fuck me, right? And like, I just was like, okay, you know, that's fine. You know, I was always respectful and kind. One guy came out one time and I was just like, congratulations, you know, like, and apparently they just didn't like it. So like I noticed that when this Anna Demetrio chick started showing up, she was like a voice actor for star

Sir Gene:

Right.

Defango:

and in the game and you know, like they were trying to build her up, but she was like doing the rounds and all of the big things and overnight, you know, she became a star Citizen sensation and

Sir Gene:

And it makes no sense to me. She's a wet rag personality on YouTube. I don't enjoy watching somebody who doesn't understand how the game works. And that's the biggest problem with a lot of these sort of pushed up to the top artificially personalities is most of the time you watch'em is them failing at things that almost any other player knows how to do.

Defango:

yeah. Very well

Sir Gene:

And I like, that's not really fun for me,

Defango:

Yeah, it's not, I don't, it's not fun for me. It's fun for other people though. I mean, you know,

Sir Gene:

I guess.

Defango:

speci specified audience and I mean, like, I don't ever, I don't find too much success over there with it. I mean, for a while, you know, like the only thing that ever felt me success is when I was just being a fucking piece of shit and flying around and blowing people up. And it's because I sandbag very hard. Like, you know, like I de, I never go a hundred percent on pretty much anybody because like, I want them to blow me up. I want people to, you know, fight me and I want it to be exciting where, you know, I'm like fucking up on purpose so that, you

Sir Gene:

Dude, I remember flying with you in, in the Turt and like, I'm thinking, okay, we're gonna get, there's no way you can finish killing this dude. We're gonna get killed. We're gonna respond again. The half the plane have plane, half the spaceship doesn't exist. It's, it's blown off. We're just flying around in you know, a vanguard with like no wings and, and you managed to actually kill the dude and then limp your way back to a, a base for repairs. I was like, shit, that's some good flying.

Defango:

Yeah, it's all about like skill. And then like, I wouldn't be able to do that when I first started playing, like when I was on keyboard and mouse, but I was still pretty good back then. And I would go af you know, I would fight whoever. I would just bounty hunt, you know, I would meet all the different streamers and stuff and like get to understand their tactics and what they would do. And then I was just like, okay, well if this is what makes them popular, I'm gonna do, and I did it as like a f you, I changed my name and was like, just fire out. And that's when I saw success is because that's what people really like seemingly wanted to see. They were like, yeah, we just wanna see somebody like, you know, fucking farming tears. And I had fun doing that, right? Like it was actually fun. I could let loose and have some pretty good fights. And I mean, you know, still to this day, I think the best dog fights that I probably had were with moist Noodle because they were the most realistic and natural. Like, you know, it was clear to me that he's just a fucking fantastic pilot and he has excellent equipment and that's why he's so fucking good. It's because he understands his equipment. He's an excellent pilot and he doesn't have anything phony. There's no funny business going. When he's flying and you can tell because he actually screws up, right? Like there's no way that you can fly perfectly and shoot perfectly a hundred percent of the time. And there's other guys out there that do this and it's just unnatural. Like, you know, the way that they fly is unnatural. The things they can do are unnatural. You're like, how the hell did he just do that boost like that? Like when he had no boost yet he's catching me and he, he's trying to tell me that I did a fucking, he did a fucking J drift turn or some shit like that. Like, you know, get the fuck outta here. You, you fucking liar.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. You just don't need those in space.

Defango:

yeah. Like, you don't need that in space. Like, I should just be able to catch you, you know? Like if I fucking take off from you and I'm going 700 and you're going 200, there is no fucking way you could catch up to me. Right. Especially if I'm in like a fucking if I, if I'm in a, like, what, what's the, the blade that's a really fast accelerating ship. It's like when I fight everybody else and you, they're in an arrow, they can't catch me, but I fight you. You could catch me every single time and then you tell me that this is how you're

Sir Gene:

Yeah. In the gladius.

Defango:

I try to do it, I can't do it. Everyone else tries to do it. They can't do it. But you, you could do it. So you know, like,

Sir Gene:

there's a video going around. We, we watched this on salty Stream a couple days. of a bunch of hacks in the game and people having infinite ammo, infinite boost, all kinds of things like that. I mean, it's in there, it's happening.

Defango:

It's there. It's happening. You know, it's pretty easy for them to do it, and it's all wrapped up with the reshape binary that's been reported, which is, you know, but the thing is they said it's okay. So like, they're not gonna do anything about this stuff. And physically it's like, what are you gonna do?

Sir Gene:

yeah, it, that's it's unfortunate cuz it, it really has no business. There's no real reason for allowing, reshape, reshape should not be a thing.

Defango:

Yeah. If they disallowed, reshape all of those, I tell you what, right after they disallowed, reshape, all of a sudden all of these hacks that people be using are gonna go away. And then the P V P meta is gonna be fucking different. Because if you go back and there's one event that happened, it was like at mo eSports, they did the fight or flight, and it was like all of the creme de la cran PVP people. I didn't even apply because A, I didn't have any teammates at the time because I had just got kicked out of the co force and b, I figured, you know, my name probably didn't need to be around at that point. So like, I just hung back and I watched the whole thing, right. And it was almost apparent immediately if you go back and you watch the pips and you know, you just watch every single fight, you can see who's, who's fucking cheating and who's not fucking

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm.

Defango:

Right. And there was one group that won, the group that won. Those guys don't cheat. Those guys are just the best of the best, right? They're the actual good players and they don't mess around with any of this bullshit that some of these other guys are talking about. And all of a sudden, you know, like, you know, you watch the fights between those guys and certain people that were like the crowd favorites or whatever, and they just got obliterated almost immediately you were just like wow. And you know, that's what happens

Sir Gene:

Well, and the, the, a good telltale sign for me is you'll watch somebody that's supposed to be an expert in space combat one of these self-proclaimed guys, right? You're watching their video and they're flying their ship without God, I'm blanking on the word without decouple on. So they're flying coupled. It's like, who the fuck flies coupled? If you're doing pvp, you should always be flying decoupled because you can't do a lot of maneuvers if you're flying coupled. So decoupled gets you closer to a good spaceship model. It's still not really there, but it gets you closer. So if somebody's like talking about how awesome a uh, PVP or they are, and then you watch their videos and, and they have couple on, it's like, dude, you're clearly not doing it right.

Defango:

Well, that's the funny thing is that I always fly coupled, so all the PVP that I've done has been coupled

Sir Gene:

Oh, you are, you, you clearly suck, man.

Defango:

yeah, I think I clearly am just the worst ever. But no, it's, it, it must be the handicap that I give myself or something like that because like I, I've never find the need to fly decoupled

Sir Gene:

Well, I can explain to you what shit you can't do coupled that you can do decoupled. Like, there's plenty of things that, for one thing, if you're flying decoupled, you'll never pass out. Ever. Because it, because you shouldn't the way the game works. You can, you can, instead of making a big old loop around somebody, you can go directly at them regardless of what position they're in, which takes less time, gets you in distance a lot faster. So when I watch these guys flying coupled, I'm like, you're, you're like adding an extra layer of pretending you're flying an atmosphere for some reason. And there's no reason to do it in space. And even with decoupled, the model still is far from good. Like the decoupled model in Elite is better, but that's not even completely accurate. If you want real accuracy, you gotta look at games like Kal Space Program that have real orbital mechanics in them. And if you want to catch somebody, what you need to do is go down below. If you want to you know, like you don't do things that you would if you're flying around an aircraft in in air, in space, especially in orbit, you do completely different maneuvers to achieve the same result. And people don't know this because most people have never bothered actually studying orbital dynamics. So a game that can simulate that to me is so much more fun than a game that simply takes airplane combat and then moves it into space.

Defango:

Yeah, that's not that cool

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Anyway let's wrap up. So I'm sure there's a few folks that really enjoyed the, the talk about video games. Probably a whole slew of people that were like, oh my God, can you guys not shut the fuck up about video games already? It's definitely a mixed crowd, but you know what? We don't have to talk about politics all the time. I, I enjoy plenty of other topics and it's kind of nice to not have to constantly be yammering about all the bad shit happening in this country and, and all the mistakes that the US government's currently making. Sometimes it's just fun to talk about things that we enjoy. So I appreciate you being on. Where can people find.

Defango:

Oh, you guys can find me on YouTube at defang. Go. Just search for Defang. Go. You can find me there or you can find me on Twitter at kang underscore pirate. That's usually the best way to find me.

Sir Gene:

K underscore pirate. Is that K for kick ass or

Defango:

Kang. Yeah, with the K a n g underscore

Sir Gene:

Oh, Kang Pirate, that's right. Yeah. Got it. Very cool man. Thanks for coming on. And I will be back in about a week with some other guest.

Defango:

All right, sounds good.

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