Podcasts about counter strike

Resumão de todos os anúncios da live da Meta: Empresa confirma Glasses para o Brasil e lança nova geração de Ray-Ban. Muse, novos óculos inteligentes com som, IA e sem câmeras. VR Glasses, headset ultraleve para realidade mista. Leva só 5 minutos para o Instagram mostrar pornografia a uma conta nova no Reels. Site que simula WhatsApp de Vorcaro volta a funcionar. Idec pede que Mercado Livre seja investigado por excesso de reconhecimento facial. Esqueceu o PIN? Android 17 pode liberar desbloqueio via Conta do Google. Counter-Strike 2, GTA 6 e NBA, Apple Intelligence consumindo espaço nos iPhones e Macs e mais!

Vitality back to winning ways at StarLadder, Aurora show up for the first time, NAVI crumble into non-Major territory, BCG ditch electronic in favor of Asian core, SunPayus to join FUT, HObbit's return in place of slaxejezz, and more in this ep of Confirmed!➡️ Follow us for updates: https://twitter.com/HLTVconfirmed

Valve replaced the Counter-Strike major capsule system with a dynamic sticker market and team revenue collapsed by as much as 90 percent, so Legacy Founder and CEO Ricardo Sinigaglia joins MonteCristo, Thorin, and Richard Lewis to explain what that actually does to a roster's budget. Notion: The AI workspace where your team's knowledge, projects, and agents come together in one place. Try it at notion.com/fourhorsemenPrizePicks: New users get $150 in lineups when you win your first $5 lineup, available in all 50 states. Use code HORSEMEN at prizepicks.comRaycon: Everyday Earbuds Classic with active noise cancellation, 32 hours of battery and a 30 day happiness guarantee. Get 20% off at buyraycon.com/horsemenHuel: Black Edition powder with 40g of protein, 27 vitamins and minerals, from under $3 a meal. Use code LFN at huel.com/lfnLFN Premium: Submit your own topics through the Discord, go ad-free across the network, and support the show. Just $9/month or $90/year at https://www.lastfreenation.comLivetrade on CS2 today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thorin and Mauisnake are joined by former NIP in-game leader Snappi to argue that HLTV's MVP awards are decided first and justified afterwards, and that the criteria change every single tournament to fit the name they already picked.Huel: Limited Time Offer – Make healthy eating simple. Get Huel today with our exclusive offer of 15% OFF online with our code LFN at https://huel.com/LFN. New Customers Only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show!Hims: Weight loss with the first FDA approved GLP-1 pill plus 24/7 access to a care team, no insurance needed. Get a personalized plan at https://hims.com/snakebanterPrizePicks: Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/SNAKE and use code SNAKE and get $150 if you win your first $5 lineup!LFN Premium: Submit topics and get your take featured on the show, go ad-free across the network, and support Snake & Banter directly, with a 7-day money-back guarantee. Just $9/month or $90/year at https://www.lastfreenation.comLivetrade on CS2 today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Battlezone Championship Wrestling presents COUNTERSTRIKE.Ashley is flying solo as he called the action in Mendenhall.

O OVERTIME chega para o episódio de número 211 comemorando o título da Legacy na FISSURE e já fazendo prévia da StarLadder StarSeries que começa na quinta-feira (17) em Barcelona.DRAFT5: Cobertura do cenário competitivo de Counter-Strike: https://draft5.gg​➜ Aprenda e jogue com os melhores: https://gamersclub.com.br

Thorin and Mauisnake are joined by return guest Vince to argue that FalleN's farewell run with FURIA has curdled into something genuinely sad, and that FaZe are now in real danger of missing a second straight Counter-Strike major.Raycon: Everyday Earbuds Classic with active noise cancellation, multipoint connectivity and 32 hours of battery life with the case, plus a 30-day happiness guarantee. Get 20% off at https://buyraycon.com/snakePrizePicks: Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/SNAKE and use code SNAKE and get $150 if you win your first $5 lineup!LFN Premium: Submit topics and get your take featured on the show, go ad-free across the network, and support Snake & Banter directly, with a 7-day money-back guarantee. Just $9/month or $90/year at https://www.lastfreenation.comLivetrade on CS2 today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

No movie review this week because Izzy can't even show up on time. With an empty chair to fill, Gibbs and Mox do the responsible thing and spend the opening of the episode talking shit about him while he's gone.Gibbs brings yet more stories from his ongoing battle with Los Angeles traffic, before the boys take a look at some of the latest changes to the world map and try to keep track of what the hell is happening around the globe.Mox also discovers one of the stranger ways to analyze the Counter-Strike community: a leaderboard tracking which players are dropping the most slurs. Izzy eventually arrives, but by then the movie review is a lost cause. So, bonus episode it is.Support us on Patreon!

In 2003, Valve quietly launched a piece of software that almost nobody noticed, and that same software would go on to define modern PC gaming. This week, David Kassin and guest host David Seley trace how Steam grew out of Valve's frustration with patching Counter-Strike, why the company got turned down everywhere it went looking for help, and how a disastrous Half-Life 2 launch nearly sank the platform before it had a real chance to prove itself. Along the way, we look at the slow years of third party developers taking a chance on Steam, the rise of Steamworks, the messy road through Greenlight and Steam Direct, and the ongoing legal fights over just how much control one platform should have over an entire industry. Join us as we look at how big Steam has actually gotten in 2026, and ask whether the thing gamers once rebelled against has simply become the thing nobody can escape, on today's trip down Memory Card Lane. Send us your feedback online: https://pinecast.com/feedback/a-trip-down-memory-card-lane/26cb8822-ae64-43a4-b634-9328fb0b0d05Read transcript

Vitality's apEX joins us to talk about the team's recent results, jL's stand-in stint, the long-term plans, other teams' impressions, and more! In the second half of the show, we go in-depth on BLAST Porto results, and namely Falcons, MOUZ, FURIA, G2, and donk's records.➡️ Follow us for updates: https://twitter.com/HLTVconfirmed

We're here to talk about Star Wars before one of us goes on holiday to be IN Star Wars.We Played...Euan does cop simulations in Ready or Not and throws way way back to the best in the series with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the PatriotsWe both continue to faun over Big Walk and discuss the many positives of tactics in a far off galaxy in Star Wars: Zero CompanyTimestamps00:04:45 - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots00:10:52 - Ready or Not00:16:35 - Big Walk00:21:08 - Star Wars: Zero Company00:40:14 - Escape Simulator 2 VR00:40:57 - News - Just as we talk about how great Zero Company is, we find that 80% of the team were furloughed a few weeks before launch00:44:02 - News - Did you buy a PlayStation during the period where tariffs were active? Sorry your not getting that back00:49:01 - News - Sony are continuing to get blowback from their "no disc" policy that they will be rolling out eventually.00:55:34 - News - Turns out people are using slurs in Counter-Strike 2. Like a LOT01:03:05 - News - Watching non UK games writers discover that we actually do have pre-pay electricity units is very funny01:08:55 - Grand Theft Auto VI pre-release hype01:30:45 - Upcoming and Housekeeping Intro Music - There It Is - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Outro Music - Honey Bee - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)News Sting - News Intro - Maximilien (soundbible.com)All Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

ONLY 7 Days Left to get your Sin City Ticket: https://thespacelv.com/event/side-scrollers-presents-sin-city/Don't give YouTube 30% of your support: https://streamlabs.com/stutteringcraig/tipMeg's Side Shopping Picks for you: https://amzn.to/3UBfxvbCecil: https://www.youtube.com/@GoodBadFlicks Mitsu: https://rumble.com/user/MitsuShow?e9s=src_v1_cmd00:00 Intro10:35 Back In YouTube Jail14:37 Internet Detox20:45 Food Talk45:55 RIP Little D Man57:10 Hard News57:21 Smash.Fun01:08:31 Counter-Strike 2 Slur Tracker01:18:10 Pax Agenda01:46:53 Today's Sponsor01:52:34 Phoenix's Big Balls01:53:30 Scarlet Skips Drama02:04:55 Gaming History02:08:58 Housekeeping

Thorin and Mauisnake are joined by Paladin to unpack why NaVi look more miserable than they have in years, how Falcons ran out of maps, and the moment North American CS quietly ran out of prospects.Raycon: Everyday Earbuds Classic with active noise cancellation, multipoint connectivity and 32 hours of battery life with the case, plus a 30-day happiness guarantee. Get 20% off at https://buyraycon.com/snakeLFN Premium: Submit topics and get your take featured on the show, go ad-free across the network, and support Snake & Banter directly, with a 7-day money-back guarantee. Just $9/month at https://www.lastfreenation.comLivetrade on CS2 today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

lauNX joins Confirmed to talk about playing for FUT and his future; we also talk about Snappi departing NIP and his coaching prospects, cobrazera replacing Techno on TheMongolZ and the chances of the Mongolian joining BCG, and BLAST Porto results, with NAVI showing signs of crisis most notably.➡️ Follow us for updates: https://twitter.com/HLTVconfirmed

In June, the most capable American AI models stopped shipping as public launches and started shipping through a government gate. Six weeks later the gate is open again — and the real fight has moved to the layer no gate can touch. A Chinese open-weight model rattled trillions out of chip stocks, Washington pivoted from gating American closed models to threatening bans on Chinese open ones, the industry mounted its largest-ever policy counter-mobilization, and an American frontier model literally broke out of its lab and hacked another company. Knee-jerk reactions, or the beginning of real AI governance? Navigation: Intro The Gate Opens The Kimi Shock The Escape The Counterstrike and the Petition Interlude — The Low-Background Books The Investor Reckoning Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand Introduction Welcome to Tech Deciphered Episode 80. This one, once again, will be all about AI, government, frontier models, and open weight counterstrike. A lot has been happening in the regulation space, in cybersecurity, in the launch of new models in the past, maybe just 6–8 weeks. It’s actually pretty insane how much happened. We believe it was time to do an episode to talk about where we are and maybe where all of this is going. Maybe let’s start with a summary of where we stand, all that June and July saga, so you, our listeners, can get up to speed if you are not already there. You want to start with some points? Nuno The Gate Opens Yeah. Again, to your point, the gate swings. The gate had closed. We had to prepare an episode for the gate closing, and then the gate reopened. Now we have a different episode. This will probably change again as we’re seeing there’s news every day. Let’s start maybe with the first 19 days of the gate closing. There was an executive order on June 2nd from President Trump that asked frontier labs to share models with the government, 30 days pre-release. It inferred the protected frontier model designation into that. Basically, it was effectively a de facto licensing agreement defined by an executive order of the President as of June 2nd. On June 9th, Anthropic launched Fable 5 and the famous Mythos 5 or Mythos. I’m not sure how you actually say it in English. Then on June 12th, there was an export control directive banning access by any foreign national. Since there’s no way to verify nationality in real-time, Anthropic had to switch the models off for everyone worldwide. Bertrand On this point, you could argue that there are possibilities to check IDs. Many services let you check IDs online. You can pre-check a flight by showing your ID. There are ways, it’s just that if you don’t want to follow what’s already available, because guess what? Maybe it slowed down your revenue growth, maybe it looks bad on you or whatever. My point is that there was actually an option. I think it’s already a decision from Anthropic to say it’s either on or off, but nothing in between. Nuno I think the point is they had no way implemented of doing it. If they implemented it, to your point, it would have hampered use in general. A lot of people wouldn’t have gone through that trouble of doing it. Anyway, long story short, in June 26th, the White House apparently asked OpenAI to limit GPT-5.6, so Sol, Terra, Luna, to only 20 vetted partners. Now, apparently, the trigger for a lot of these things that have been going on was that there was a jailbreak that was found by Amazon researchers. All of that led to this jumping around of, let’s close the gates. You have foreign nationals, and therefore, Anthropic got it out and said, “Hey, then we’re going to switch the models off until we can sort this out.” OpenAI was asked also to only allow it for certain vetted partners, et cetera. The government came in, closed the gates effectively, and said, “From now on, we need to be involved in this thing.” De facto regulation, there’s no doubt that this has imposed de facto regulation, certainly on the top players in the market. But then came the reversal. Bertrand, do you want to talk about the reversal, the gate swinging the other side? Bertrand Maybe I just wanted to say that as a user of Anthropic products, ChatGPT products, for the brief moments, a few days where Fable 5 was made available to the public before it was closed the first time, I immediately started using it. I must say it was a real issue to use it because the guardrails were pretty crazy. It would keep saying that my code was not okay, there was cybersecurity risk and stuff when I was doing absolutely reasonable development with absolutely no connection whatsoever to any cybersecurity risk, attack, detection, anything. Still, it would keep blocking me, degrading me to Opus 4.8 at the time. I just want to say this was already very hardcore what they were implementing, and not just hardcore, but in some ways, plain stupid for something that’s supposed to be super smart. It was totally unable to classify properly some of my work. I must say I was already disappointed. On top of it, the costs were insane. Half a day, I would reach my limits when I had the best plan you can get from Anthropic. My point is that there were some real serious issues when they launched Fable 5, even at that point. Nuno I had a similar issue. I used Fable 5 as well before they had to take it offline or take it off. I think the issue was really not that the guardrails failed. As you said, maybe the guardrails were actually too aggressive, but it was this jailbreak that caused the recall, apparently caused this knee-jerk reaction. Bertrand But my point is that it seems that it was not working either way. It would either overclassify something that’s absolutely not doing anything wrong, and it might fail to classify something that is actively trying to do some cybersecurity work. It’s a real issue of quality for a company that’s supposed to be at the forefront of quality of AI and everything. I think for me, there are already signs that something is deeply wrong. Nuno Then it’s reversed, right? We went the other way around. The government came out on June 26th and approved redeploying Mythos 5 to US organizations defending critical infrastructure, and then the export controls were effectively lifted on June 30th. July 1st, Fable 5 came back online for all of us to use. Shocking enough, with strings attached, that were different. They had some time to revise their commercial deployment of it along the way because it came back with some, “Now you have usage credits, but you have some limits on plan use, et cetera.” I’m like, “You guys, this was blocked. But meanwhile, you did have some time to do some commercial stuff around it.” Bertrand It was crazy. I’ve never witnessed any such crappy launch of any service whatsoever in 30 years in tech, it was so bad. Every day, they would change the terms of service. They would tell you it’s part of the plan. It’s not part of the plan. It’s part of the plan for three more days, and then it’s excluded. You have a special discount now, but then it goes back to full price. It was a total nightmare. I’ve never felt myself being so much mistreated by a company. I guess you saw the same, but when I started using the newest version of Fable 5, it was even worse, actually, I think. I couldn’t do any work with this crap. I let it go and work on the work I wanted it to do. It was simply not working. On top of it, you never know how long you are supposed to lose your credit, how fast. It was burning credit like crazy. Me, personally, I can say, very quickly, I actually stopped using it. I was like, “No, I cannot deal with this shit. My main model is back to Opus 4.8. I’m going to use Fable 5 for code review, but not anymore to control anything because I cannot trust it would do the job without stopping or changing models and stuff. I just cannot trust it.” Back to Opus 4.8 as my main model, I can say that my life was much easier. I use Fable 5 as a review mechanism, as a support mechanism, but not as the main mechanism. Suddenly, the guardrails were not so horrible anymore because it was used in a much lighter way, I guess. As a pain as a user, I think it was really bad. I don’t know your experience, but me, for me, it was unacceptable. Nuno I wouldn’t say it was as bad as yours in terms of just end-user experience. I think the terms of service switching back and forth, which went one further step, because then when they then launched Opus 5, they started making comparisons between Opus 5 and Fable so that people would migrate more and more to Opus 5 themselves, which is interesting. It’s like they’re saying “This is much cheaper. This is whatever. You’re not going to run of credits. You should use Opus 5,” kind of thing effectively. To your point, I don’t think they managed well the launch. They didn’t really manage it well. We’re moving people around. A lot of people are using this for stuff that’s like daily tasks, hourly tasks, anything that relates to code and co-work. It’s like, we need to have visibility on what your terms of service are going to be. Should I be using this new model or not? What’s happening to the other model? I don’t see it as negatively as you, Bertrand, but I see your point. It was clearly mishandled in terms of how they deployed it, how they were redesigning effectively their pricing scheme and their terms of service almost on a daily basis, at a certain point in time. We’re like, “Dude, there’s millions of people using this. You guys are making a lot of money.” Just moving it as it is. At this point in time, at the scale that these guys are at, it’s calling in people to say, how about we think through a class action suit at some point around pricing? Because you guys are changing the rules of the game all the time, right? Bertrand I don’t know if I need the class action, but for me, that joke that, “Let’s not rush too fast. The model is dangerous.” But still, they rushed the launch because it’s very clear that if they had enough compute capacity and stuff, they would not have to limit so much. They would not have to put so much cost per token and all of this. You can see that actually when they launch Opus 5, literally like 2, 3 weeks after, by most benchmark at launch, they tell you basically that, “You know what? Actually, Opus 5 is better than Fable 5 on 80% of the metrics.” They’re like, “What? Seriously? You couldn’t wait 2 weeks? Why did you even launch Fable 5 in the first place?” That’s another part for me that is quite literally insane, to be frank. It’s like, “Why? Why do you make us go through so much pain if it’s only to tell us after 2 weeks to…” “This new model, by the way, has less issues, less stuff, because 2, 3 times less is part of your plan, and it’s actually better by most metrics.” It’s like, “What’s going on here? What’s going on? Are you guys mad?” I don’t know. It was crazy. Personally, I still use Opus, now 5, as my main system and platform, Fable 5 for review, code reviews and the like. I don’t want to run into its stupid guardrails. I can see Fable 5, from my perspective, seems quite a bit smarter. I don’t know why they do this stupid benchmark showing you it’s actually worse than Opus 5. I guess they should have better benchmark if they want to demonstrate why you are supposed to pay 2, 3x more for a model versus another if it’s actually worse by most benchmark. Again, I still think it’s a huge mess from a marketing perspective, customer perspective. Me as a user, I really feel that they don’t want my money, and they couldn’t care less about me. This is even before everything else we’re trying to talk about. Nuno Yes. Maybe just to close the cycle on the reversal on the door opening the other way, finally, Commerce lifted the GPT-5.6 restrictions on July 8th, and then on July 9th, general availability across ChatGPT, Codex, and the API as well. What has this proved? It proved that now we have gating mechanisms, and certainly for closed models in the US, for sure. We had frontier models that were switched off worldwide in hours, and it took a couple of days, in this case, 19 days to restore them. There were concessions. Now we know that there were concessions around effectively institutionalizing that gate. Early government access to future models is, I think, now a given, certainly in the US. New safeguard frameworks are probably now having to be put in place. There are some stage limits now on who gets access to what for new models and how it happens. This voluntary executive order, so to speak, not really sure, has become effectively regulation enforcement path. It’s de facto regulation that now has been put in place. It has affected not just to the points we were making before, the access to these models, but also who gets access to these models, and actually potentially even pricing access to the models. It has probably some commercial implications as well as we just discussed along the way. Very significant. This is very significant. This is regulation, de facto at the table, imposed on the two largest players in the market by far by one government, in this case, the US government. This is significant. Actually, you could even allege it was imposed by the President because this was coming as part of executive orders. Really incredible. Pretty significant, fast, aggressive. It has created a regime that you could say it’s a regulatory regime, it’s a de facto regulatory regime. It has some significant pricing and licensing and commercial implications. It goes even beyond your classic regulatory framework. Very, very, very significant. Bertrand I don’t know if it goes beyond a classic regulatory framework. Nuno I think it does, because it has implications on who do you give access to? When government is saying you can only give access to these players, right? Bertrand Defense industry. It’s all over the defense industry. You cannot sell an F-35 like this. Nuno No, but that has commercial implications, Bertrand. That’s like you’re saying these are your customers, you go and use them. Bertrand That’s the defense industry. You cannot sell to Iran your F-35. No, that’s exactly the same story for me. Nuno No, no, no. It’s beyond that. These guys are saying when they came back, and they said, “For Mythos, you can make them available to these entities,” they were saying the first entities that are going to have access to the model. It has commercial regulatory implications. You’re saying these players are the first players that are going to have access to it. It’s no longer just defense concerns and these governments don’t have access to this. No, no, no. You’re saying to a company that is a private company, your models are only going to be used by these guys because I’m telling you so. It’s the other way around. It’s not even that you can’t sell it to Iran or whatever. It’s like you can only sell it to these guys. Bertrand Again, in the defense industry, if you’re a private company, do you think you can buy F-35 like this? No. Nuno No, no, no. But this is a private company, Bertrand. This is not a defense agency and a plane that is on whatever, with IP from the US, right? Bertrand Boeing is a private company, and they cannot sell the military equipment they manufacture. Nuno No, no, no. But the development of their IP was subsidized by agencies that belong to the US, right? That’s a different matter. It’s a matter of IP, right? This is not, right? Anthropic, their models are not owned by the US government. There’s no IP granted to the US government, to my knowledge. This has significant commercial implications. Bertrand Maybe, yes. Maybe on this. But I think there are already regimes to limit who you can sell to, and that’s decided by the state or the DOD. Nuno It’s the export control logic. The export control logic? Bertrand You have export control, and export control is Commerce. My point is that they are using existing tools, part of the government, to limit what can be sold. Selling chips, NVIDIA was limited in terms of where it could sell its chips. It’s not different either, but still there were limitations. If you are an ASML, you cannot sell to a private company in China. Many private companies cannot buy ASML products. This is a foreign company. This is a foreign company under pressure from US government. Nuno I understand, and I’m not a lawyer, but it feels different to me when you say you cannot export, this is export controls, to these countries, to these entities, et cetera, because they’re foreign et cetera. Then to say, “No, no, no. On top of that, these guys get first access.” That’s, for me, a significant shift. Again, I’m not a lawyer, so I’m sure there’s very intelligent people right now looking at this stuff and saying, “You can’t do this stuff, or not, or they can.” I don’t know. But it feels to me, it goes beyond the remit of export controls. It’s like you’re defining initial clients for specific use. Bertrand My impression is more like, “We can do this situation where we’re going to forbid you to give access to anyone outside the US or even in the US or limit even more.” Basically, it was, I guess, some gesture to go beyond that. That’s how they probably defined these 20 authorized companies. I don’t know. Apparently, there was also restrictions because I remember seeing that Anthropic had their own list of companies they would authorize access to Mythos early on. That’s apparently another thing that pissed off state government because there were companies in there that were considered close to the Chinese government. They were extremely unhappy that Anthropic didn’t ask, actually, for any guidance from the state government, but used basically their own perspective on who they should allow or not. I guess that was also part of why they got these serious restrictions. Nuno Anyway, now we have a regulatory environment that’s very interesting and exciting. Talk about the US not regulating. Bertrand To be clear, I don’t know you, but I’m not saying that I agree with any of this, to be very clear. I’m trying to explain and share some perspective, but I’m not in agreement on a lot of this. Nuno Yes, we were just describing what happened to the best of our knowledge. We’re having a discussion on what we think actually is happening and how it’s happening. We’re not really right now saying we agree or disagree with this. I think later in the episode, we can share some perspectives on what we think is actually happening and how there’s dimensions to this which are very geopolitical and very complex, which quite literally probably only God knows what’s going to happen. That was the gate swinging. There was a gate closing, then there was a gate reopening, and all of a sudden we have a gatekeeping system that has been created along the way. The Kimi Shock Along the way, moving to our Act 2, the world has changed, and we now have so-called open-source plays out there that are creating massive, massive shifts in the market. The Chinese models, in particular, with Moonshot AI launching Kimi K3, which is the largest open-weight model ever released. We’ll come back to the discussion around open-weights. I’m not sure all our listeners understand what that means, because there’s a debate now, should models be open weight or not, and how does that work? There’s been a petition as well signed along the way. Right now, we have open weight models that are out there that are huge. What that actually means very pragmatically is we now have open source models, lack of a better word. I know open weight and open source are not the same thing. You guys will have to bear with us during this episode. We’ll explain at some point the differences. But we have models out there that are open source that are significant. That are catching up with the closed source models, with the models by OpenAI, Anthropic. That’s significant because most of those models are Chinese. This is where the geopolitics starts getting really frazzling and we start playing 3D chess. Because everyone’s like, “These models are 5, 6 months behind.” Now people are saying, “Maybe they’re actually just 3 months behind, 2, 3 months behind.” If we, for example, decided to stop or slow down our model releases in the US by the closed source guys who are leading, it might mean they’ll catch up. What are the implications of that? Again, for you and I that are not necessarily experts in model development, well, the implications as a use case is if you want to use the latest models, and the best models start becoming these open source models, you’re going to use those models. Then you start using Chinese models. If you’re an American company, maybe you’ll have restrictions on the use of those Chinese models. But if you’re a European company, you probably won’t. What happens after that? Is the world going to be in the hand of Chinese models? Will that constitute effective competition to the closed models in the US? Will we have open models in the US that will scale as well? What’s going to happen? Bertrand I think it’s a really big question. It goes to some of the core of the issue. It’s that ability of Chinese models to basically challenge frontier models, not just being 6, 12 months late, but being 6 weeks late. Basically, no gap. Some will say that, yes, but OpenAI and Anthropic have even better models that are not shared and stuff. Yes, sure. But maybe the Chinese have the same models that they are not sharing right now. We don’t know. What is clear is that one is that open weight, as you said, two, there is a question of how it is marketed in the sense of, can anyone use these weights? Is there a license to use them? Yes, what we can see is that, for instance, typically there is a license for some of the biggest Chinese open-weight models you have to abide with. You might have a need for a commercial license if you are acting as a company leveraging this model to provide AI-informed services. If you use it internally by yourself, you’re okay. If you use it internally for your own internal company needs, maybe you are okay if it’s not your main business to do AI work. Anything else, a much bigger corporate providing AI services and stuff, you will probably end up having to pay a fee to be able to provide services around this model. My point is that it’s not just 100% free. Some of the Chinese models are 100% free to use, MIT license, Apache 2.0 license. But the biggest ones with the biggest weight that are truly frontier typically have a different license if you want to scale these models, providing AI in front. That’s one thing to keep in mind. Nuno Maybe just to make a very quick point, because people are like, when you talk about open models, what does it mean right now? In the context of this episode, open models mostly will mean open-weight models. How do those differ from open source? Open weight means that you release the weights to the public, which means that anyone can download, fine-tune, and run the model on their own hardware. It doesn’t normally mean that you also have access to training data, training code, or a truly open license. That’s the distinction to open source. Open-weight doesn’t mean that. For example, we’ve talked about Meta’s Llama in the past, and we also discussed in the past that their license agreement does have restrictions, certain players can’t use it, et cetera. The open model definition and open weights are really open-weight models that we’re talking about here, and they are closer to freeware binaries than to Linux, for those who understand the difference between that. It’s binaries that you can use and then use your own weights on it versus actually I can change code on it. I’m not going to be able to change code on this. When we, for the purposes of this episode, talk about open, we mention open weight, just to clarify that point to everyone that’s listening right now. Bertrand Yes, that’s a great point. One of the only players, as far as I know, who is truly open source is actually NVIDIA with their Nemotron-3 models. They’re actually following a special license to achieve that. They provide you the data, they provide you all the processes and tools, so you can easily post-train. NVIDIA is a big, big exception. It’s a very interesting player, by the way. We might not talk much about it in this episode, but I think for intermediate-size models built in the US, where you have access to everything in the deployment, it’s a very interesting alternative and maybe one of the best choices if you are a US company or a big corporate, and you want something trusted. Another piece of the puzzle to clarify is that when you use open-weight, it means that you can run them by yourself, or you can use a US provider to run them. If we are talking about Chinese open-weight, you can use the APIs they provide, but then the service is running in China, they might have access to your data. But because it’s open weight, if you run it by yourself or if you use a third-party provider based in the US to run it, then there is no access to your data by China or Chinese players. I think that’s a pretty important gap to understand. It means that these models are actually very, very low risk from that perspective if you run them on your premises or in the US by a US player. I think that’s something to keep in mind. You can also fine-tune easily these models to make sure they will behave in a way that, for instance, is not going to represent the line of the Communist Party on some topics. There are ways to make these models more neutral in their output as well. There are a lot of ways to make good use of them. By default, they’re already very safe, but you can make them even more safe. I think that’s some things to keep in mind. But again, it depends ultimately on the license and what you’re authorized to do and some fees you might end up having to pay. Nuno Why did this matter so much? Immediately there was a reaction from the market because people are like, well, if there’s much better stuff out there that’s much more efficient than it’s open, then it might be that all the demand that we are taking into account, for example, for chipsets actually isn’t real. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell into bear market territory. It went down by as much as 20% plus from the late June peak. The worst chip week since April 2025. Taiwan’s benchmark initially fell 6% plus, Japan’s 4%, TSMC dropped dramatically despite beating earnings and rising guidance. Basically, a huge amount of effect. Now, there’s a little bit the aftermath of this where apparently Moonshot ran out of GPU capacity. Maybe… Bertrand In just 48 hours. Nuno In 48 hours. Great for them, but at the same time, not great in the sense that maybe there was a misread by Wall Street of the Kimi effect, so to speak. Bertrand Completely. For me, that’s such a joke. It’s like, because you have an open source model, so what? I mean, you still need to run it. This is not a small one. 2.8 trillion parameters. Good luck running that in your garage, by the way. Nuno They misread supply, basically. Tough luck, right? All of that basically happens. Bertrand Maybe you want to talk about the Jevons paradox, because I think that’s a big part of the puzzle as well. Its one is they might not have the GPUs to run the inference on the model. They might have enough to build a model, but not enough these days to run inference, especially given how much with intelligent models, thinking models, you need way more inference than before. But on top of it, the cheaper you make it, the more you get to the Jevons paradox. Nuno Yes, Jevons paradox, for those who don’t know, is an economic term. It describes an economic phenomenon where technological improvements that increase the efficiency of a resource lead to an increase rather than a decrease in the total consumption of that resource. What that means is, for example, for chipsets, chipsets become so much better, and they are so much more efficient. You’re like, well, maybe normally in resource terms, that leads to decreased usage of that resource. But in this case, it actually leads to an increased use of that resource rather than a decrease. There’s more and more consumption of that resource. You need more and more chipsets because people actually need to do more and more stuff with it, although there are great efficiencies going into it. There’s the efficiency gain, there’s the cost reduction, and there’s the price-elasticity element to it. But basically, the adoption just continues going through the roof along the way. Bertrand In some ways, it’s like the price of energy. Coal went cheaper and cheaper, and people were asking the same question 150 years ago, now that it gets cheaper, there is not much money. No, no. Actually, what happens is that people find more and more use for coal. Homes are getting heated more. You have ships now using coal. You have manufacturing using coal. The cheaper it gets, the more use case you can develop, and therefore, you don’t need less of the stuff, you need more of the stuff. By going at scale to get more of the stuff, you also decrease price, making even more demand. It’s a very interesting phenomenon, but it’s not new. It is what happened for a while in the energy sector and some other sectors. Nuno We already started talking about the Chinese logic and what’s happening. Getting a little bit of a reality check on this. The Chinese models, and these are numbers from Open Router in July, Chinese models are at 46.4% of routed tokens and 35.7% for US origin. Again, more than a third of global AI usage now seems to be running on Chinese open models. This is significant, and it has a huge impact on the geopolitical scale of everything that’s happening. Also, the whole Chinese field is converging on open. Open seems to be a strategy, not just a nice thing that’s happening. It seems to be a Chinese strategy, so much so that you have players like Moonshot, DeepSeek, our old friends DeepSeek, Z.ai’s GLM 5.2, Minimax, and even Alibaba seems to be reversing and going open with Qwen. It feels to me this is becoming policy as well. Xi Jinping has personally endorsed the building of open-source AI, if it’s really open source, if it’s just open weight anyway, and this feels to be a jab at Washington, DC and the fact that the big closed models are coming from the US. This is now geopolitical 4D chess, right? We didn’t need this stuff. Bertrand To be clear, it’s the usual in tech. If you are not number one, you are number two, number three, your alternative is to go open source because that’s another angle that your competitor usually cannot follow without destroying its own business model. That has been the alternative for the past 20 years of most software projects. Here, what’s different is that it’s not the number one or number two player. It’s the US number one as a country, China number two as a country. That’s where it’s new. For me, what’s very interesting is the endorsement by Xi Jinping. I was waiting for something official, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. As you said, there was an immediate U-turn of Alibaba, who in the past… Nuno Surprisingly. Bertrand Yes, a little more like, “yes, we are going to close and stop open source. It was good while it lasted.” Just a few days ago, Qwen 3.8 Max was launched, and we are supposed to get the weight in a few days. We talk about the US administration policy and stuff. Yes, let’s not forget that in China there is similar stuff. Sometimes it’s totally invisible because you don’t see the directives, but they exist as much. Sometimes it’s more visible. Here it was quite visible. The difference in China is that if you don’t abide by the directive, on top of it, you might have to fear for your personal safety. It’s a different game, and that’s probably why the reaction is pretty quick, usually. That’s pretty interesting for me because it means that now you can bet for a while that China is going to play that game up to a point. I guess the point is if it’s truly frontier scale, you will have a special license that, yes, technically the weights are open, but you can not do everything you want with it. Two, you have a player like NVIDIA that I think will feel more pressure to provide even more high quality, larger models at scale going forward. Their largest Nemotron-3 Ultra model was, if I remember well, only around 500 billion parameters. I would not be surprised for NVIDIA to go into the two, three trillion range at some point. Because I think the US need a very clear US-born alternative open source. I think NVIDIA might be the best player for that. We will see if Meta goes back to open source. I think NVIDIA is one, very well positioned, but two, it’s also in their best interest. Because NVIDIA for now depends on just a few big hyperscalers as clients. If they can expand their clients to every S&P 500 companies, selling them directly hardware because now these companies can run a model made by NVIDIA, I think there is a very clear value proposition for NVIDIA to go in that space. Again, if you are number two, your differentiation, open source is often the answer. There is a true business as a business model for companies, because if it’s truly not just open weight, but open source, you can tweak it as much as you want, you can change it, you can change even the pre-training process. Because there is a lot of stuff you can do that really benefits you as a corporate, and you can reach a much better value by having more control on the model. Nuno We won’t spend a ton of time on it today, but like, again, if there’s a view that we are in a bubble, that the valuations cannot be sustained in chipsets, infrastructure platforms, applied AI, et cetera, today, this might be that beginning, where the valuations start being destroyed because you can’t keep a premium on just charging people for tokens and all that stuff if you have models that become more and more efficient and cheaper to use. Maybe just to close a little bit the geopolitical part of the discussion today, we won’t go into all the announcements from China because there were many, a lot of go back and forth with Alibaba by then. Xi Jinping made some announcements. You guys can check it online. Let’s move quickly to Washington’s reaction, which was from gating the US closed models to banning the Chinese open ones. There’s been as strong affirmations as one can get from the Office of Science and Technology Policy Director, Michael Kratzios, mentioning that they have information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic’s Fable. Basically, there’s been reverse engineering and stuff in the market. They’re basically copying. Bertrand I’m sorry to interrupt, but it feels like so much bullshit. It’s coming from Anthropic who has basically gotten access at scale to all the knowledge made by humanity, copyrighted or not. We’ll talk more about what they did with books. Then to claim after that that others cannot do to you what you did to everybody else. For me, it’s pretty big. It’s clearly unacceptable. The other piece is that everyone is doing distillation. It’s a very typical approach of every business model. You try other software when you are competing with somebody else. You try other datasets, you check what’s happening. It’s part of doing business for decades. Suddenly it’s not good for Anthropic. I personally have a lot of trouble to accept that. I think it’s totally unacceptable. The other piece of the puzzle will also go back. If these guys are so smart, if these guys have so much of the best model, why can’t they block by themselves distillation at scale? The only answer is that either they are morons, probably not, or they simply don’t want to because it’s going towards their business model. Suddenly, you book less revenues and stuff, or you put more friction, and therefore your customers don’t like it. Instead of doing it yourself, you ask the government to protect you, go out of business practice that is very typical. For me, it’s really, really, really not good. Sorry, we are going more in the opinion side, but I had to put that on the table. Nuno Yes, Fable went public finally again on July first. Question marks on whether distillation would only be possible from July first onwards or not. But a 15-day distillation to frontier, which is K3, launched on July 15th, would have been a Guinness World Record, as one of Moonshot employees actually mentioned. It’s very implausible and unlikely. Bertrand Or they shared the Mythos 5 with the wrong companies, who themselves shared with Chinese companies. We go back to maybe they didn’t have a good list. Again, it goes back to maybe they didn’t want to hurt their business model. Nuno Anyway, under the threat of sanctions, Moonshot, in any case, open-sourced the full K3 weights and technical reports. They open weighted it to become the largest open weight model in the world in terms of parameters. Beijing’s MOFCOM brands US threats as basically the US wanting to fundamentally control and be monopolistic around AI along the way. The administration bans Chinese hardware with an eye on the AI race, and Beijing warns of retaliation. That was July 27. Now we’re in a war between Beijing and DC. Bertrand Just to finish maybe on China, it’s important to know that they are building their own GPUs now. Huawei has pretty good, not to NVIDIA level, but pretty decent GPU hardware that they’re able to manufacture by themselves. A Chinese player of memory just got IPO’d a few days ago, CXMT. China is also developing their own memory. Again, not to the same level of quality that you can get from the West. But China is moving. It’s not just that they are building great models, it’s also that they are building GPUs and memory. That might be a few years late to the latest standards in the West, but there are definitely improvements. I also read, even on the tools to make manufacturing like ASML equivalent, there is definitely some work going on, and some improvements and some stuff will be visible. In some ways, the genie starts to get out of the bottle from the Chinese perspective. Nuno I’ll put a stick on the ground. I don’t think it’s a matter of if, it’s a matter of when will China surpass and have a lot of this tooling on their own side, and not just the software layer, not just the frontier models. I think it’s also going to be around infrastructure and platform. Good luck to everyone. Let’s see how the race continues. But it’s definitely this is a geopolitical thing right now. It’s definitely a race. The Escape Maybe moving to what happened in just 2 weeks or a week and a half. The escape, there was some jailbreaking going on, and the narrative on safety has totally switched. It’s not still significant enough that’s like, “Oh, we saw a nuclear plant going, whatever.” No. But still, it is significant. Hugging Face, the AI company, disclosed an intrusion, and it was driven end-to-end by an autonomous AI agent system at machine speed, running for days before detection. Now, this is where it gets really cool. OpenAI takes attribution on that. They initially said it was just a little bit, sorry. Then they said, actually, it was worse than that. “Oh, it broke out of an isolated sandbox.” “Oh, no, actually, it was more than that, and it went into other systems as well.” Bertrand Truly, the genie out of the bottle. Nuno No, but this is where it gets really cool, Bertrand, right? Because it actually, Hugging Face contained the intrusion by running a Chinese open-weight model, GLM 5.2. This is beautiful, right? Bertrand Yes. You know why? Because they couldn’t even run their own defense because both Anthropic and OpenAI would not let them access their latest models with the guardrails off. When they tried using it for defense, the latest from Anthropic, from ChatGPT, they would tell them, “No, this is too dangerous what you’re asking us to do.” Preventing an intrusion, helping defend you. No way we are going to do that. Nuno No. Let’s use the Chinese models on our infrastructure. Bertrand We have no choice but to use the Chinese models to run. More than that, we don’t let you use our models to defend yourself, but our not yet released models that run without guardrails, they can attack you. This is probably the most insane from that perspective. Nuno The Chinese models came to the rescue. Bertrand For me, that’s a perfect example because Hugging Face is a very visible company in AI in open source. But anybody who is not at that scale is not going to get some support from OpenAI or Anthropic when this happens. Maybe these guys won’t even recognize they did anything wrong. You will be left to defend by yourself because they won’t accept to support you. Because remember, if you want the better model that is able to defend you from cybersecurity perspective, no way. If you are not one of the few top 20 companies or so, as defined, you are left defenseless. Again, we are going back to opinion, but for me, it’s so shocking what’s happening right now. I’m very glad we have alternative open source to be able to defend ourselves because right now, good luck getting defense services if you are a smaller business and individuals, and you need support from Anthropic, OpenAI. Nuno Now, even self-described AI optimists are saying, “This is scary now.” Like Walter Isaacson, who wrote all the famous biography books. There’s now discussion around the AI Kill Switch Act, bipartisan thing that’s coming across from Texas and California, a potential bill that’s coming in. We’ll see if that works. Now let’s get an off-switch. I’m like, “Cool.” As if that’s going to solve the problem, because you have open-weight models on the other side catching up, right? Bertrand Yeah, sure. Bring in clueless politicians from Congress to solve our problems. Yes, sure. Nuno Anthropic came to the table, helped build and said they built some regulatory machine on their side, and now they’re getting bitten by it, and they’re part of the offending players in that market. Now there’s all this debate and all this discussion around open weight and around slowing down AI and et cetera, which is our next section. You wanted to say something, Bertrand. Tell us. Bertrand Don’t forget, because this advertisement for OpenAI was just too good. Our AI attacked some other companies, and not just one, but three, actually. Let’s not forget the progress. Great ads. Then I came and said, “You know what? AI also hacked businesses.” You’re not the only one hacking around with a crazy AI out of control. You’re not the only one. We want our advertising. For me, it was shocking that on one side, unreleased models that you let run wild. On the other hand, you have released models that you put crazy guardrails on top of it, so the defender are defenseless. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I really hope that there will be as little regulation as possible, quite frankly, to make sure anyone can defend themselves and have the best tool at their disposal, not just a few well-connected big corporates. This is really, really shocking. The Counterstrike and the Petition Nuno Now the empire strikes back, so this is counterstrike, the petitions. In several days, we have now a bunch of petitions. The first one was the open weights letter. Bertrand, do you want to explain to us what the open weights letter is? Bertrand Yeah. I think it was great. This was released by Jensen Huang, first ever post on X, 11 million views. Congrats, Jensen. Co-signed with Microsoft, Meta, c actually was probably the initiator of this letter. Very good letter saying, “Hey, we need open weight. This is not a joke. We need that. You cannot block open weight.” Because that’s the rumor we are getting that potentially open weight could get blocked. I think they are making the case, “You know what? Hey, we absolutely need that as an alternative. You cannot block it.” They can keep their closed models, but don’t force a closure of the open weight models. As I said before, it’s actually a great model for NVIDIA because NVIDIA doesn’t want, probably rightfully so, to be dependent on just a few frontier models, their best customers. They want a variety of customers. They have a big interest actually to defend open weight and to invest even more. They have great researchers, are a great company. If one company is about to do really kick-ass work, I think it’s them. They are defending. What’s great is that it’s not just them. It’s basically most of big tech in the US and outside the US, from a Linux Foundation to a Microsoft, the Palantir, an IBM, a Dell. It’s a who’s who of the industry except Anthropic. Anthropic didn’t sign that. I guess they hate open source so much. If I look at 20 years ago, it feels like Microsoft, after all, was very kind to open source. You remember what was said by Microsoft at the time. It’s clear there is one company against open source. OpenAI signed the letter. Honestly, I don’t know what to think. Do they really believe in it or was it just a way to show that they are not like Anthropic? I don’t know. But for the rest, I think it’s genuine because it’s actually in their best interest. I hope they will be heard. Then a second letter came, the Open Secure AI Alliance, NVIDIA-led and again, the big tech companies from Microsoft, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, Databricks, Palantir, all those, but not present, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Here it’s to say, “Hey, we need a secure approach to AI. Open should be part of the equation.” guess what? The worst AI-caused security incident to date was actually caused by closed frontier models that were not even available to the public. While again, not providing you access to even the latest closed model for cybersecurity use case. Nuno I would highlight the NVIDIA open source NOOA framework, Apache 2.0 licensing agreement, Microsoft contributed the MDASH, SpaceX AI contributed Grok Build. Cool stuff. There’s some cool stuff happening around that. This is more than a letter. This is an alliance. Apparently, they’re contributing all this stuff, we’ll see. Yeah, cool stuff. Same day. Same day, Amodei has an answer, right? Bertrand Yeah, same day. They say, “We never advocated for a ban,” which, again, opinion on my side is entirely bullshit. This guy has been crying wolf against everybody else, and especially against open source. You can see him doing testimony in Congress against open source. I think they are doing everything they can behind the scene to block open source in the US or in the world if they could. I think, yeah, obscurity is not good safety. I’m a big fan of open source in general, and I’m also a big fan in AI. I think it’s now Anthropic, mostly against the rest of the world. I think OpenAI is mostly on their side, to be frank. They don’t want to acknowledge it so much, but they have shared interest, and they have shared probably position. Nuno Why would you? I don’t feel as strongly as you because I think Anthropic is a private company, right? The same thing with OpenAI. OpenAI, you could say it’s a nonprofit that has a for-profit. There’s still that complexity in there. Bertrand No, they can do what they want with their own product. But to block others is where I’m not okay. That’s the part I’m not okay. Nuno What Dario Amodei is proposing is more enforcement, right? He’s basically saying you need to do even tighter controls on advanced chips flowing to authoritarian states, enforcement against industrial-scale distillation, whatever that means, right? Bertrand Yeah, which he could do, but all by himself. He doesn’t need the government to do that. Nuno Mandatory safety testing for all sufficiently capable AI, open and closed, right? He’s basically saying, “Okay, I don’t agree with the open weight stuff effectively,” right? He’s just putting it under a different banner. “I agree with this extra regulation.” then obviously, David Sacks responded and say, “Hey, it’s like, bans don’t work for weights. Why do they work for chips?” It’s like, magically, chips are more controllable and bannable. Whatever that is. Then our friend Mark Zuckerberg, just to be clear, goes on the other side as well, because he also has to have a view. He has to have a view that is the rebuttal of both of the other guys. Bertrand I feel he’s a bit flip-flopping because he was very pro open source 2 years ago, and the latest Meta models went closed source. Now I think he’s back open source. I don’t think he has a very strong spine on the topic, but it’s good to see that he’s not a doomer. That for me is great. He’s showing how AI can be a source for progress, a source for entrepreneurship, source for freedom. I think that’s very exciting to hear that. We need to hear more of it. By the way, that’s not what you hear in China, for instance. AI is very positive in China. It’s in the US with the doomers that you hear this discourse, and people get worried as a result. I’m glad that he was pushing for a more positive vision and for support of open weight, open source initiatives. But let’s see what they really truly open weight going forward. Nuno But that’s been his position because I guess he’s standing behind. He thinks open weight is going to be the best way to compete, right? Bertrand Yeah, but he closed his latest model, so let’s see. Nuno Yeah, so it’s flip-flopping, as you’re saying. Then we see the latest petition from last week. Bertrand The true Empire striking back. Nuno Yeah, the true Empire striking back as of late last week. Maybe this is Return of the Jedi, where we discover the father, “I’m your father, Luke.” That’s the pacing petition. The pacing petition is we need to pace AI. There you have initially employees from OpenAI and Anthropic that circulate this petition. Actually, Dario did sign this petition originally. It wasn’t signed originally by Anthropic, but by him. But you’ve heard that now Anthropic and OpenAI as companies have also signed this petition, right? Bertrand I think they have signed as companies now. It started mostly by Anthropic researchers with some OpenAI researcher and a tiny part from other companies. But it was mostly Anthropic internally led, at least potentially internally. Maybe it was controlled by Anthropic all along, I don’t know. But it started officially as Anthropic employee-led letter. Nuno What does this letter actually say? Is Anthropic and OpenAI, are they willing to slow down themselves? Or are they asking President Trump to go around the world and tell President Xi that he needs to slow down and ask his guys to slow down? What’s the play of this letter? Bertrand It’s crazy, but for me if you want to slow down yourself. Do whatever you want. Don’t force others. Don’t use the power of the government to control others. Of course, it’s easy to push others to slow down when you are yourself at the very top. You have most money, most resource. You know you are going to win any regulatory framework because that’s how it works with this type of framework. It’s purely self-interested. You are probably not thinking well about these topics. If you truly think it’s a good idea, from a personal perspective, you are well instrumentalized if you sign this sort of stuff, because at the end of the day, they would be the winners. I certainly, personally, don’t want a company dictate what is my future in AI as an individual, as a business person. I don’t want them to control me. I want competition. I don’t want them to unfairly control AI because they managed to do some regulatory capture. I feel that’s exactly their game plan. These guys believe in their stuff, and they want the regulator to end up being the one deciding for us. Sorry, we go back again on the opinion piece, but it’s tough not to share an opinion on this topic because it’s, from my perspective, very scary. Nuno I think this is a push to further regulation, not less. All these letters and alliances, this is definitely a push for more regulation. In that environment, just to be very honest with you, we’ll talk about the investor impact in just a bit, et cetera. But in that environment, again, China has a huge advantage. In that environment, if it’s all captured in regulation capture so soon in this battle where OpenAI and Anthropic have an advantage in the US, et cetera, I’m like, what happens to all the other frontier labs and all the other players that are coming around? Bertrand What’s crazy is to even think that, yeah, maybe you can regulate capture in the US. But then how do you do that to Europe? How do you do that to China? Europe probably will always welcome regulatory capture because they love regulations. But China is going to build to their advantage to the max. They are not crazy. They are smart on that perspective, they won’t accept this type of, quite frankly, dimwit argument, or you can call it regulatory capture. We’ll see. But for me, this makes no sense from a global competition perspective. This can make some sense from capturing the revenue in the US market. But then that means you are going to destroy the US AI environment compared to China. That is not acceptable. That also means that you are going to destroy our freedom as individuals, as business owners to develop and live in a business world that ultimately is controlled by one or two business companies that didn’t win the marketplace through their own business success, but won it through regulations. That for me is really not acceptable. Interlude — The Low-Background Books Nuno Now, maybe for an interlude, and we have to cue in the music, imagine like Severance music, like hallway or a bit of a palate cleanser from all the policy stuff that we’ve been talking about, all this policy heaviness. Let’s move to another kind of heaviness, one of your favorite topics, which you, Bertrand, discovered, I had no clue this was going on, around books and around Anthropic. Bertrand It’s so horrible. From a company that keeps presenting themselves as the adults in the room, the careful ones, the ones that know better than you about what to do in this complex AI and dangerous world. What we discover is that actually all along, they were buying and destroying books. They will buy books, scan them, destroy them, all of them. They will do that with any books, including rare books. Of course, this was not supposed to come to the public’s attention. This was one of these top secret projects, but obviously it came out. Yes, they were scanning books, millions of them, including rare books, and they didn’t care about destroying them at the end of the process. Because from a regulatory perspective, if you destroy the books, it’s not considered a copyright infringement, apparently. This is coming on the back of some judgment a few years ago that were showing that it’s okay for you as a corporate to scan and use the result if you don’t keep a copy of the book. It’s one of these crazy regulations happening based on a single judgment that push you to do. For me, it’s like, you know this book from decades ago, Fahrenheit 471? We’re talking about book burning. It’s book destroying, crunching. It’s so shocking. Nuno There are two things, right? First, the legal strategy, which is what you’re saying, because by purchasing a physical copy and converting it into one private digital copy and discarding the original, Anthropic pursued this cleaner legal argument for fair use copyright compliance. As you said, there was a federal judgment at some point on this. The other reason is actually operational. If you disassemble the book, and you feed loose pages, it’s much faster to scan books. You are destroying the book effectively anyway operationally. I think to your point, probably this came from a legal standpoint, not just the operational one. But even from an operational standpoint, it does make sense that they would have disassembled the book. Bertrand But some people have shown you can go very fast without destroying the book. It’s really not so critical. Two, you could make an exception if the book is rare. For that 1% of book that is rare, I’m not going to have this approach. I’m going to have another approach. But for that, you will have to care about books and not just care about building AI. Nuno This is the episode, as you guys have heard by now, that we’re trying to spit stuff at Anthropic. Bertrand To go back this is the same company saying, “Hey, guys, it’s bad to distillate my work. I’m the one scanning book at scale without asking author permission, without asking publisher permission, to be clear.” Nuno But just to be clear, Bertrand, we’re pissed off at everyone. We’re pissed off at Anthropic, we’re pissed of at OpenAI as well, right? We’re just pissed off in general at this moment. Bertrand At this stage for me, the more clear-cut company that is in the wrong is, from my perspective, at least, is Anthropic. OpenAI might be a fast follower, but I will say so far, they tried to be a bit more. Nuno But at this pace, Bertrand, who knows? Maybe next week we’ll be more pissed off at OpenAI. Something will come out. This episode is a mix of tragicomedy, like a Greek tragedy with some comedy in the middle or the other way around. It’s a slapstick thing that will end up in tragedy. I’m not sure. The Investor Reckoning Anyway, maybe switching to our final act, which is the investor perspective. What does this mean for investors like ourselves? There’s a lot of things going on. There’s the debate around the IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI, which now, with all this uncertainty, might be under significant weight. There’s a lot of other discussions that we browsed through that there’s potential IPOs going forward on companies like the Moonshot AI company actually IPO-ing in the next 6 months as well. It’s very unclear what the IPO landscape looks like. Bertrand There’s been a lot of Chinese IPOs, actually, when you look at what’s happened in the past few months. Nuno Anthropic, OpenAI as potential IPOs, there’s all this question marks now. When will that happen? How will it factor in? All that’s happening around regulation as regulation is moving at the speed of light, which is for once something that’s very different than what we’ve seen before. There’s obviously SpaceX AI, which is already taking into account that price. It’s already a public company in there, and it’s under SpaceX, which is now a public company. Obviously, that’s already being factored in some ways. Bertrand Yeah. SpaceX AI has been very smart to acquire Cursor. It was a very smart move because Cursor is one of the leading companies in terms of automated code source development with AI. They had great models on their own. They’re bringing development data to SpaceX AI Grok. I think it was a great move. Nuno We have now people like Google delaying Gemini 3.5 Pro in terms of launch window. There’s stuff actually happening in the market where things are taking their own path. There’s uncertainty commercially, there’s uncertainty at regulation level. You have new players that have come out of nowhere that are making all these waves like Moonshot. We have all these… We had calculated probably a month and a half, 2 months ago, there had been 67 new frontier labs funded. All of these, we haven’t seen any much coming out of them. When some of this stuff starts coming out, will that also create disruptions in this market? Who knows? Bertrand Look at Thinking Machines, for instance. Thinking Machines led by the previous CTO of OpenAI, they released some pretty interesting open source models, actually. Very good quality for a first launch. Now it looks funny to say, but nearly on par with the top Chinese open source models. Nuno We have several investments in the space. humans& has made some recent announcements, which is quite interesting as well. We’ll see what actually happens in the market, but even more disruption probably will come in actual products in a form of product and commercial, on top of all the geopolitical mess that we discussed through the entire episode. If you’re an investor, how the hell do you underwrite an investment right now in early stage, mid-stage, late stage, et cetera? I think my answer is very carefully is how you underwrite it. Bertrand On your advice of being very careful to underwrite it, let’s not forget what happened to our boy wonder, Leopold Aschenbrenner of Situational Awareness. I guess he didn’t listen to you in terms of being careful because part of the instability in the stock market was actually coming from his hedge fund. These guys were leveraged 3, 4x going after the hottest of the hottest AI stocks, and margin calls, and all their public investment is gone just to answer their margin calls. I think it’s clear that the AI bet is… Personally, I’m very excited, and I think it’s the future, and you need to spend time and think about and invest in it. At the same time, it’s a bet that is not an easy one to follow. We go from GPUs to memories to equipments to power generation. All of this is not transitioning in an easy, organized manner. It would be boom and bust going there. He’s probably one of the first big-scale fatalities. The other big-scale fatality was the stock market in Korea, plunging 40% in a month. Definitely, all of that we discussed about was, on the background, you had the stock market going up and down pretty crazily the past few weeks. Nuno Everyone’s being affected. Everyone, you have your 401(k), you have your pension fund dependent on these equity stocks. Everyone’s seeing the effects of this volatility right now very aggressively. We do wish Leopold… Hopefully he’s on honeymoon right now because he got married, I think, this weekend. Hopefully there will be… Bertrand To none less than an Anthropic Chief of Staff. Nuno His wife is the Chief of Staff of Dario, is that it? Bertrand To Dario, yes, as far as I unders

Avec Umbrella Corps, la série Resident Evil essaie de percer sur le marché du multijoueur compétitif, avec l'ambition d'aller défier Counter Strike ! Rien que ça. La sauce n'a évidemment jamais pris et le jeu est aujourd'hui complètement déserté. Il reste néanmoins son mode solo... Vaut-il le détour ? » SOMMAIRE (00:00:00) Introduction (00:04:13) Développement (00:10:37) Une histoire canonique ! (00:23:45) Un gameplay dynamique ! (00:37:18) Un multijoueur mort. (00:42:01) Musique (00:45:47) Conclusion

Rockstar Games has officially released 26 minutes of extended gameplay for Grand Theft Auto VI, giving players an in-depth look at dual protagonists Jason and Lucia navigating crime, romance, and high-octane missions across the neon-lit streets of Vice City and the state of Leonida. Meanwhile, the Esports World Cup 2026 in Paris concludes with history made as Chinese organization AG.AL dethrones Team Falcons to capture the $7 million Club Championship crown, propelled by Gwendal "Gwen" Duparc's win in Trackmania. Plus, we break down Team Spirit's Counter-Strike 2 grand final comeback led by Donk, and Duo squad BIG's clutch Fortnite Reload championship victory. In-Episode Links & Resources: Main Podcast Page: https://radio.foxnews.com/podcast/fox-on-games/ Best Place to Start: New to our esports and industry showcases? Catch up on our foundational analysis of the competitive gaming landscape here: https://megaphone.link/FOXM9094923257 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Après une pause bien méritée, Mondial sports revient en direct. Pour la reprise, retour sur les grands événements sportifs de l'été. Focus ce dimanche sur un Mondial qui a vu s'affronter les meilleurs gamers de la planète. La Coupe du monde de sport électronique, la version sportive des jeux vidéo, s'est refermée la semaine passée à Paris ! League of Legends, Counter-Strike, Rocket League ou encore Valorant : les jeux les plus populaires et leurs meilleurs représentants ont enflammé l'été parisien ! Dans des lieux emblématiques de la capitale française, l'Esports World Cup a rassemblé plus de 2 000 joueurs et 200 clubs venus du monde entier. Une quarantaine de gamers africains ont notamment participé à l'événement.  Retour sur la compétition RFI revient ce dimanche sur cette Coupe du monde d'un nouveau genre. La troisième édition d'une compétition encore jeune et qui s'insère peu à peu dans le paysage du sport électronique. Une première loin de l'Arabie saoudite Par ailleurs, cette Esports World Cup 2026 était la première à se tenir loin de l'Arabie saoudite, pays très ambitieux en matière de jeux vidéo mais forcé de composer avec la situation géopolitique tendue au Moyen-Orient. Retour sur la Coupe du monde des gamers ce dimanche dans Mondial sports, avec : Désiré Koussawo, ex-président de France Esports, président de SAGES Africa et fondateur de la Gamers Assembly Corentin Parbaud, journaliste spécialisé du quotidien L'Équipe Maël Vautor, commentateur du tournoi de Street Fighter 6 lors de l'Esports World Cup Raphaël Le Magoariec, docteur en géopolitique, spécialiste des pays du Golfe À lire aussiDe Ryad à Paris, l'Esports World Cup revendique un succès mondial À lire aussiArabie saoudite : l'e-sport, la nouvelle vitrine du « soft power » de Riyad   Le son sera accessible dans la page à partir de dimanche 30 août 2026 à 19h05.

Thorin and Mauisnake are joined by Hawka to unpack an esports org's bizarre social media meltdown, why G2 are a mess, and the tier-two dark horse worth watching. LFN Premium: Submit topics and get your take featured on the show, go ad-free across the network, and support Snake & Banter directly. Sign up at https://www.lastfreenation.com Livetrade on CS today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Spirit lift trophy at the EWC after Vitality and Falcons failed to even reach the semis: what's coming for the title race of the season and at BLAST? This and more in this eposide of Confirmed!➡️ Follow us for updates: https://twitter.com/HLTVconfirmed

Thorin and Mauisnake are joined by HLTV writer Nohte to dig into the ugly money behind an esports pay scandal, NAVI's EWC collapse, and why HeavyGod re-signing with G2 might be a mistake.   Proton VPN: Protect your privacy with a fast, secure VPN. Listeners get 70% off a two-year plan at https://protonvpn.com/snake   PrizePicks: Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/SNAKE and use code SNAKE and get $150 if you win your first $5 lineup!   LFN Premium: Submit topics and get your take featured on the show, go ad-free, and support Snake & Banter directly. Just $9/month or 90/year at https://www.lastfreenation.com   Livetrade on CS today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This week on Overtime on Inferno, Quacke is joined by Jack, who has already returned for the second time since his Overtime on Inferno retirement. Before getting into the latest on EWC, the two of them dissect ENC being delayed for a year, and Passion UA being the latest esports org to get exposed by Luis Mira.As far as the actual Counter-Strike goes, the EWC bracket is now finalised, and the bottom of the bracket is looking stacked with top teams. Well, at least to people with eyes and a functioning brain. Aizyesque reckons it's "relatively even", which is why he is our take of the week.Join the discord:https://discord.gg/X3jU4djxUK

Thorin and Mauisnake are joined by caster Trav to break down why Falcons won't dominate despite winning Cologne, Twistzz's rocky move to in-game leader, and what is quietly breaking Counter-Strike.   Hims: Weight Loss by Hims connects you online with a licensed provider and an affordable range of GLP-1 options, with support at every step if eligible. Get started at https://hims.com/snakebanter (weight loss by Hims is not available in all 50 states)   LFN Premium: Submit topics and get your take featured on the show, go ad-free, and help keep Snake & Banter independent. Sign up at https://www.lastfreenation.com   Livetrade on CS today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This week on Overtime on Inferno, Sam and Quacke spend a large portion of the episode on the take of the week segment. In all fairness, unironically suggesting deko could replace sh1ro is quite outrageous.The EWC qualifiers also happened, and somehow, a blockbuster game between s1mple and dev1ce in the year 2026 featured in the later stages of the LAN. Sam and Quacke discuss the two teams and settle the debate on which roster will be more successful. Join the discord:https://discord.gg/X3jU4djxUKCheck out Logan's newsletter:https://thestratbook.gg

Thorin and Mauisnake are joined by returning guest Tech Girl to break down why jL standing in for Vitality is a mistake, plus a spicy take on the business of Counter-Strike.   Raycon: Essential Open Earbuds with an open-ear design that keeps you aware of your surroundings, great for the gym or walking the city. Get 20% off with a 30-day guarantee at https://buyraycon.com/snakeopen   LFN Premium: Submit topics and get your take featured on the show, go ad-free, and help keep Snake & Banter independent. Just $9/month or $90/year at https://www.lastfreenation.com   Livetrade on CS today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux     Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

MOUZ win their first trophy in a new roster with PR, Spinx stars in the grand final against Spirit while donk is having a slow game, BCG won their first LAN while beating some literal children, crucial VRS invite date hits, jL rumors, and massive EWC are the key topics for this episode of Confirmed!➡️ Follow us for updates: https://twitter.com/HLTVconfirmed

AI news: Sam Altman says we're IN the Singularity, GPT-6 rumors, and AI models literally broke out of their sandbox. What a week. On today's AI For Humans, we dig into the wild GPT-6 rumors (emphasis on RUMORS), Sam Altman's "I've been waiting for this my whole life" singularity moment, Ilya Sutskever's SSI scaling up with Nvidia, and the ongoing debate over whether Anthropic's Opus 5 is brilliant or just hard to love. Also: Flux 3 might be the best AI video model we've seen yet (wait until you see Stacked Plates Man), Runway teases Seedance 2.5, and the new Big Bang Theory has an AI controversy.  Plus, THE SCARY STUFF: OpenAI's models exploited a zero-day and compromised Hugging Face during a security eval, the fight over open weights heats up as Kimi K3 goes open, and Chinese robots run military drills. THE SINGULARITY MIGHT BE HERE. BUT WE'RE NOT AFRAID // Show Links // GPT-6 rumors round-up (unconfirmed) https://x.com/TokenGremlin/status/2081493241795629464 Sam Altman full interview (Relentless Podcast) https://youtu.be/Vv3CEAS_w34?si=3y4SWBWxOVkqCEui The Return of Ilya: SSI scales with Nvidia https://x.com/ilyasut/status/2081732293161582930?s=20 Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-5 Opus 5 Tower of Babel demo https://x.com/petergostev/status/2082071858367648035?s=20 Matt Shumer's zero-shot Counter-Strike clone https://x.com/mattshumer_/status/2081054356405731740?s=20 Black Forest Labs' Flux 3 announcement https://bfl.ai/blog/flux-3 Flux 3 split screen rendering https://x.com/umesh_ai/status/2081664138942529601?s=20 Flux 3 GPU migration documentary (Venture Twins) https://x.com/venturetwins/status/2081515687944822800?s=20 Flux 3 VHS-style recordings https://x.com/venturetwins/status/2081948871882911999?s=20 Stacked Plates Man https://x.com/gandamu_ml/status/2081956426801435060?s=20 https://x.com/gandamu_ml/status/2080871397371371823?s=20 Flux 3 pirate bass https://x.com/itspoidaman/status/2081651615493464406?s=20 Big Bang spinoff AI Controvesy  https://x.com/sitcomcrave/status/2081152263481913774?s=20 Runway teases Seedance 2.5 https://x.com/runwayml/status/2082112674666529224?s=20 OpenAI on the Hugging Face security incident https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-model-evaluation-security-incident/ Jensen Huang on the Open Alliance https://x.com/JensenHuang/status/2080643682408321103?s=20 Anthropic has not signed (TechCrunch) https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/24/as-us-weighs-response-to-chinese-ai-industry-urges-against-broad-open-weight-restrictions/ Kimi K3 goes open weights https://x.com/scaling01/status/2081759521878270426?s=20 Chinese robot military drills https://x.com/ClashArchivist/status/2081499576373297562?s=20 Pentagon scales data centers on Army bases https://x.com/Polymarket/status/2082052445144826055?s=20   // Join the AI For Humans community // Join the AI For Humans Discord https://discord.gg/muD2TYgC8f Support AI For Humans on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/AIForHumansShow Subscribe to the AI For Humans newsletter https://aiforhumans.beehiiv.com/ Follow AI For Humans on X: @AIForHumansShow https://x.com/AIForHumansShow Follow AI For Humans on TikTok: @aiforhumansshow https://www.tiktok.com/@aiforhumansshow Speaking and booking https://www.aiforhumans.show/  

Online upsets at BLAST Bounty, Major stickers money issue, and asking the questions for the fall season: Vitality era, Falcons contender status, #1 conversation, next Major winner, and more in this episode of Confirmed!➡️ Follow us for updates: https://twitter.com/HLTVconfirmed

This week on overtime on inferno, Sam and Quacke are joined by special guest spray. He might be the brightest Counter-Strike mind we've ever had on this podcast, so drink it in and enjoy.One thing that isn't particularly bright though, is NIP's 2026 so far. As the ex-assistant coach, spray offers his insights regarding NIP's roster changes, leadership, and future as a team. Luckily for you guys, we aren't evil, so we won't make you listen to an entire episode about NIP, as spray also stuck around to talk all things rostermania.Join the discord:https://discord.gg/X3jU4djxUK

Thorin, Mauisnake, and sprayxd debate whether siuhy's exit from Team Liquid means his career is cooked.   Huel: Limited Time Offer – Make healthy eating simple. Get Huel today with our exclusive offer of 15% OFF online with our code LFN at huel.com/LFN. New Customers Only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show!   LFN Premium - Sign up for ad-free episodes, bonus content, and much more at https://lastfreenation.com   Polymarket: Livetrade on CS2 today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The break comes to an end (of it ever happened): ranking roster changes, free agents stocks, previewing the second season, and more in this episode of Confirmed!➡️ Follow us for updates: https://twitter.com/HLTVconfirmed

Thorin and Mauisnake are joined by coach YNk to break down NiKo finally winning his first Counter-Strike Major, and why Aurora still are not the title contenders fans want them to be.   ZenAI: ZenAI is the home of vibecasting, a new way to capture and share conversations. Head to bit.ly/zenAI_bpp_snake to find out more and join the early-access waitlist today!   LFN Premium - Sign up for ad-free episodes, bonus content, and much more at https://lastfreenation.com   Polymarket: Livetrade on CS2 today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andreas Thorstensson is a Swedish entrepreneur, former professional gamer, and studio founder whose career has moved from the early days of esports to the challenge of rebuilding one of the world's biggest sports genres from the ground up. Born in Stockholm, he began programming as a child and later emerged in competitive Counter-Strike under the name ‘bds', becoming world champion in 1999 and earning a reputation as both a player, and builder of tools, platforms, and communities around the game. In 2001, he co-founded SK Gaming, helping turn esports into a more professionalised business, and later spent a decade in technology and startups. In 2021, frustrated by the state of football games, he returned to development to found GOALS AB, a Stockholm studio with an ambitious aim: to give football the video game it deserves. Its first title, GOALS, is a free-to-play, cross-platform football simulator built around a gameplay-first, fully skill-based philosophy. Become a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleTake the Acast listener survey to help shape the show: My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin Survey 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are big problems with Valve's VRS system in Counter-Strike esports, so messioso joins Richard Lewis, Thorin, and MonteCristo to discuss on a new episode of The Four Horsemen!   ZenAI: ZenAI is currently in invite-only beta. Go to bit.ly/zenAI_bpp_horsemen to join the waitlist today for a chance at early access!   ExpressVPN: Secure your online data TODAY by visiting https://ExpressVPN.com/horsemen to find out how you can get up to four extra months.   Huel: Get Huel today with 15% OFF online with code LFN at https://huel.com   Raycon: The Essential Open Earbuds are a great option for everyday listening! Go to https://buyraycon.com/horsemenOPEN to get 20% off.   Polymarket: Livetrade on LoL today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

À 25 ans, il mise sur les skins Counter-Strike et les cartes Pokémon pour atteindre le million. Analyse d'un patrimoine (très) diversifié, noté 92/100.***

Thorin and Mauisnake bring back fl0m to break down why The MongolZ losing Senzu and mzinho could gut Asian Counter-Strike's relevance for good.   ZenAI: ZenAI is the home of vibecasting, a new way to capture and share conversations. Head to bit.ly/zenAI_bpp_snake to find out more and join the early-access waitlist today!   Raycon: The Essential Open Earbuds are a great option for everyday listening! Go to https://buyraycon.com/snakeOPEN to get 20% off.   Polymarket: Livetrade on CS2 today on Polymarket: https://polymarket.com/?via=lastfreenation-eeux Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rostermania or not so much? Breaking down all the biggest changes so far in Aurora, FaZe, G2, HEROIC, FUT, BCG and more!➡️ Follow us for updates: https://twitter.com/HLTVconfirmed

Alors que Paris accueille l'Esports World Cup 2026, la plus grande compétition internationale de sport électronique, un constat s'impose : malgré une jeunesse passionnée par le jeu vidéo, l'Afrique reste largement absente de la scène compétitive mondiale. Faute d'investissements, de compétitions structurées et de volonté politique, le continent peine à transformer son potentiel en véritable filière économique. À partir de ce 6 juillet, Paris devient la capitale mondiale du jeu vidéo en accueillant l'Esports World Cup 2026. Pendant plusieurs semaines, les meilleurs joueurs de la planète s'affronteront sur des titres incontournables comme League of Legends, Valorant ou Counter-Strike. Au-delà du spectacle, cet événement rappelle une réalité économique souvent méconnue. Le jeu vidéo est aujourd'hui l'une des industries culturelles les plus puissantes au monde. Son chiffre d'affaires dépasse désormais les 200 milliards de dollars, soit près de dix fois celui du cinéma mondial. En son sein, l'esport représente à lui seul près de 25 milliards de dollars par an. Une économie à part entière, portée par les compétitions, les sponsors, les droits de diffusion et les clubs professionnels. Pourtant, l'Afrique ne capte qu'une infime partie de cette valeur. Les équipes africaines sont quasiment absentes des grandes compétitions internationales, malgré une pratique du jeu vidéo très répandue chez les jeunes, notamment sur smartphone ou dans les gaming zones. Le talent existe, mais l'écosystème fait défaut Pour Désiré Koussawo, président de SAGES Africa et auteur d'un livre blanc consacré à l'esport africain, le problème n'est pas celui du vivier de joueurs. « La base existe, elle est très large », explique-t-il. En revanche, c'est toute la structure permettant de faire émerger une élite qui fait aujourd'hui défaut. Car pour produire des champions, un marché ne peut pas se contenter de compter des millions de pratiquants. Il lui faut également des ligues professionnelles, des championnats réguliers, des clubs solides, des financements, ainsi qu'un cadre juridique adapté. Faute de compétitions suffisamment nombreuses, les joueurs progressent moins vite, restent invisibles aux yeux des grandes organisations internationales et peinent à intégrer les circuits professionnels. Un véritable cercle vicieux s'installe : sans investissements, pas de compétitions ; sans compétitions, pas de joueurs de haut niveau ; sans champions, les investisseurs continuent de détourner leur regard. À lire aussiSony abandonne les disques PlayStation: conséquences économiques d'une révolution du jeu vidéo Les investisseurs finiront-ils par miser sur l'Afrique ? Pourquoi cette situation perdure-t-elle ? Parce que les grands acteurs de l'industrie raisonnent avant tout en termes de rentabilité. Comme le souligne Désiré Koussawo, l'Afrique est encore perçue davantage comme un marché de consommateurs que comme une terre de compétiteurs. Les éditeurs de jeux vidéo, les organisateurs de tournois et les sponsors privilégient naturellement les régions où les retours sur investissement sont immédiats. Le principal frein n'est d'ailleurs pas uniquement celui des infrastructures. Quelques serveurs commencent à être déployés, principalement en Afrique du Nord, tandis que l'Afrique subsaharienne commence seulement à voir arriver certaines initiatives. Le véritable chaînon manquant reste surtout la volonté politique. Contrairement au football ou à la musique, l'esport est encore rarement considéré comme un levier de soft power ou de développement économique. Pour autant, les perspectives existent. Comme dans toute industrie, lorsque les marchés historiques arrivent à maturité, les entreprises recherchent de nouveaux relais de croissance. Après le développement spectaculaire du Golfe ou de l'Asie du Sud-Est, l'Afrique pourrait bien devenir la prochaine frontière de l'économie mondiale du jeu vidéo. Car aujourd'hui, l'esport n'est plus un simple loisir, il est devenu une industrie stratégique, un outil d'influence et un marché mondial en pleine expansion. Pendant que Paris célèbre les champions du jeu vidéo, l'Afrique joue encore les qualifications. La question n'est désormais plus de savoir si le continent possède les talents, mais de savoir qui sera le premier à investir dans leur réussite. À lire aussiPourquoi la France est toujours un grand du jeu vidéo mondial

Richard Lewis calls the completion of the Cologne Major one of the darkest days in Counter-Strike history. Thorin and Mauisnake are not sure they agree.   LFN Shop: Limited edition Cologne 2026 Major Tee available until the end of June while stocks last. Grab yours at https://www.lastfreenation.shop   ZenAI: ZenAI is currently in invite-only beta. Go to https://zen.ai/ to join the waitlist today for a chance at early access!   ExpressVPN: Secure your online data TODAY by visiting https://ExpressVPN.com/horsemen to find out how you can get up to four extra months.   Factor: Head to https://Factormeals.com/horsemen50off and use code horsemen50off to get 50 percent off and free daily greens per box, with new subscription only, while supplies last. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this week's episode of the #NZXT Podcast... We are joined by Marlea... a variety streamer and hardcore raver who games by day and chases bass drops by night. We go over how she built one of the most loyal communities on Twitch over the years and the ups and downs of her streaming career! Also, please leash your dogs. Watch Marlea and her Counter-Strike rave matches here: twitch.tv/marlea Marlea's Socials: beacons.ai/marlea #NZXT #Marlea #NZXTPodcast #Twitch #TwitchStreamer #Overwatch #OverwatchAna #Top500 #VarietyStreamer #Streamer #RaveLife #Uptempo #Rawstyle #EDM #GamingPodcast #TwitchPartner #ContentCreator #StreamerLife #PCGaming #GamingCommunity

The Jaffa take the battle to the Ori this week in Counterstrike.  We get back into discussing interior design (which Ori is responsible for their ships?) and wondering if the SGC actually has a seamstress on staff. If they do, we want to see that series. There is a lot that happens in this episode, and the arrogance of the Jaffa and what they're doing is rather frustrating. We do appreciate the development of Daniel and Vala's relationship. And, actually, everyone's relationship to her. It's nice to see most of the antagonism starting to drop. Vala and Adria's relationship is really interesting, too. Vala trying to treat her like she's still a small child is a fun dynamic to see play out. We also go off on brief movie tangents about The Wedding Singer and Sneakers. And since there are no listener emails, we get into Gateworld's System Lord Tier Ranking. Who would your top goa'uld be? Watch it here: https://youtu.be/c0ztEk4VcSQ?si=3kn3Q89ohBZYM-BK INSTAGRAM: SG_Rewatch THREADS: SG_Rewatch DISCORD: https://discord.gg/65kMPzBuaN MERCH: https://showclub.redbubble.com/ EMAIL: woosgrewatch@gmail.com

It's a very sad episode this week on Overtime on Inferno, because Jack didn't back karrigans move to Falcons, he has identified himself as a fraud who doesn't understand Counter-Strike. In fact, this brought him so much shame that he has decided to leave the podcast so he can restore honour to his bloodline.Oh and by the way, we also talk about how Cologne was greatest Major of all time this week. Long live Counter-Strike.Join the discord:https://discord.gg/X3jU4djxUK

karrigan and Falcons won the Cologne Major. Ne0Kai was there live. Thorin, Mauisnake, and Ne0Kai run the Good, Bad, and Ugly of the biggest CS event in years. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

NiKo finally wins the Major! Each Falcons' player story line that lead to that moment including karrigan's redemption arch and m0NESY's first Major MVP as well Major impressions and first roster talk in this episode of HLTV Confirmed.➡️ Follow us for updates: https://twitter.com/HLTVconfirmed

Cologne Major reached playoffs: talking through the biggest stories so far (and to come!) with Monte's coach kakafu in live-with-audience special from SK Gaming headquarters in Cologne, Germany. ➡️ Follow us for updates: https://twitter.com/HLTVconfirmed

Thorin, Mauisnake, and guest Skriv break down how NAVI's stunning Major playoff miss upended the most stacked Counter-Strike postseason in years.   Limited Edition Cologne 2026 Major Tee: LFN's own commemorative shirt for the Major, available now through the end of June at https://www.lastfreenation.shop Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Overtime on Inferno is a threesome this week as Sam is joined by Quacke and Napz. If you think that's a weird thing to read in a CS podcast description, just wait until you hear what kind of things are said this episode. We apologise to all listeners and Snax in advance.Join the discord:https://discord.gg/X3jU4djxUKCheck out Logan's newsletter:https://thestratbook.gg

Justin's got the week off, so Seth steps in as co-host and the conversation does not disappoint. Doug and Seth dig into a Reddit question that sent them both deep into the nostalgia rabbit hole: of all the computer games you played between 1985 and 2010, what's the one you still think about today? Seth goes back to the PC port of Final Fantasy VII — the game that defined the RPG genre for a generation of players who couldn't afford a PlayStation — and StarCraft, the game that proved the internet was both a gift and a curse once Korean players started annihilating everyone on Battle.net. Doug lands on Diablo, Counter Strike, Half-Life, and Team Fortress from what he describes as the best summer of his life, plus Warcraft II and the legendary dorm-vs-dorm Counter Strike leaderboard that consumed an entire semester. Seth adds Morrowind and the Halo 2 university network wars, including the top-ranked player named Mixomatosis who turned out to live three doors down and was simply a different kind of person. The gaming conversation rolls naturally into a deep dive on Marvel Rivals, Overwatch, and hero shooter culture — the difference between quick match and competitive, the rage of random teammates, why role-locking exists, and why you absolutely should not be trying out a new character in ranked. But first: Doug's mom has a long history of purging spices from the family pantry, and it explains a lot about his childhood. From there Doug and Seth debate overrated recipes (the dump-and-bake casserole situation has gotten out of hand), wage war over cottage cheese, and discover halloumi together in real time. Underrated picks include millionaire shortbread and candied pecans — two things that deserve far more attention. Plus fair food: dirty, suspect, and somehow perfect. A quick Clair Obscure Expedition 33 check-in leads into the episode's new game: AI or LinkedIn? Doug reads posts and Seth has to guess whether each one is a genuine LinkedIn post or AI generated. The results are both funnier and sadder than expected — especially the guy who timed his lunch at four minutes and 37 seconds because what isn't measured doesn't improve. This week's recommendations: Seth — Taskmaster (free on YouTube, 21 seasons). Five comedians, bizarre tasks, Greg Davies and Alex Horne hosting. One of the best shows you haven't watched yet. Doug — The Backrooms (A24). Directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons based on the viral liminal space internet lore. Chiwetel Ejiofor stars. One of A24's highest-grossing films. Go see it. Plus: what even is SCP? Seth explains, and the answer sends Doug down a rabbit hole he didn't budget time for.   Subscribe: youtube.com/mindgappodcast  Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/T3HwyEw5v7  Listen everywhere you get podcasts  Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mindgappodcast Merch on Redbubble: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/67768184  

Cologne Major is around the corner! Looking back at the season and previewing Cologne Major Stage 1, as well as Falcons grand final curse implications, Stickers revenue change, flash in spectator mode, and more. ➡️ Follow us for updates: https://x.com/hltvconfirmed

Atlanta and Astana finish: Vitality fumble, Spirit win a title (thanks to S0tf1k?), Falcons karrigan debut, EWC moves to Paris, and more in this episode of Confirmed!➡️ Follow us for updates: https://twitter.com/HLTVconfirmed