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here we go you ready Colton i'm ready for whatever do you love christmas i

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love christmas wow it's the best

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hey everybody it's christmas day the day people have celebrated for over two

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millennia by gathering together and going through the biggest tech stories

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of the year that's right Colton james isn't here right now

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he doesn't believe in christmas there's nothing that makes me feel warmer inside

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than repeating traditions for no other reason than people have repeated them many times before except perhaps for a

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mug of hot cocoa this is what this episode is cold and in case you were wondering i didn't know christmas so

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christmas so grab a cup of hop coco yourself and snuggle up with your

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favorite squishy blanket next to the aku log because it's the 2020 christmas

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special and you know what i'm bringing the star wars mug back nice

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you haven't watched the mandalorian i haven't watched season two

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but you will you oh yeah it's the only reason you should get

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disney plus or whatever skip the last five minutes yeah okay now in a normal

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year we talk about stuff like companies one-upping each other with misleading

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marketing product releases and price drops and we'll get to that but in 2020

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the tech world went through more changes than i did in seventh grade which isn't

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saying much real late bloomer the global pandemic caused by the covet-19

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coronavirus ever heard of it caused tech giants like apple and google

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to close offices and stores worldwide and also caused the cancellation or

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virtualization of nearly every tech event scheduled for this year that

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includes mwc gdc gtc pax east e3 f8

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google i o sxw wwdc computex and even

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ltx the Linus tips expo which is even more of a shame because those tips are

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even better in person you that you were sad about that i'm very sad you went all

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by yourself just when just went to the venue we

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rented hey where is everybody come on where's everyone

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movies delayed their theatrical releases on mass causing a huge boost in

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streaming service usage which in turn caused them to reduce streaming quality

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for a bit before they realize the series of tubes can handle it just fine in fact

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many internet service providers lifted data caps proving that they're not

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really necessary before slapping them back on since they realized ooh this uh

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virus thing is gonna it's gonna keep going i guess their profits

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are profits zoom came out of nowhere to become the kleenex of video chat apps do

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you know what i mean by that yeah the brand name becoming a generic

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yeah it's pretty straightforward but all video chat apps got a boost as did tech

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giants as a whole google and facebook both saw healthy bumps in profits but

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amazon more than tripled their net income from 2.1 billion in q3 2019 to

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6.3 billion this year wow

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just imagine how hard jeff must be working to make that much money he must

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be exhausted he's just at the money crank

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all day you know what i don't want to think about that let's end this story on a

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positive note folding the process of donating your spare computing power to

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scientists working on medical research surged in popularity to the point where

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the folding at home network is now over 16 times more powerful than the world's

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most powerful super computer and that project has directed their power towards

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researching therapies for coven 19. see

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even when things suck technology can help make things better

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before it makes things worse again and that's what christmas is all about

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next up it's the battle between epic games and apple for the hearts and souls

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of fortnite players who probably don't care about any of this and just want to play fortnite to be fair that's an

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admirable goal i'm with you however before epic went and made a scene

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developers and litigators were already drawing attention to the 30 revenue cut

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and myriad restrictions and guidelines that apple that happle that's what i

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like to call them apple has in place in its iOS app store but epic really

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blasted the issue open when it added a direct payment option to both the

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Android and iOS versions of fortnite bypassing the so-called apple tax apple

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and google removed fortnite from their app stores but epic was ready with

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lawsuits against both of them and a parody of apple's infamous 1984 ad

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what fun epic apparently wants apple to either reduce the 30 cut or to open up

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iOS to alternative app stores and payment methods and they're not alone in

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their quest either news conglomerates microsoft and other devs criticized

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apple's app store policies and all the pressure apparently had some effect and

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apple allowed developers to challenge app store rules and drop the stores cut

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to 15 for devs who made less than 1 million

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in 2019. epic and apple have a trial set for may 2021 so we'll have to wait till

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then to see whether the industry shattering effects that epic wants will

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actually happen or whether this was all the multi-billion dollar company

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equivalent of a reality show yelling match that's all it turned out to be

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well thanks for the laughs is apple scrooge

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sorry i'm sorry is apple scrooge

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i think there's two scrooges in that story and there wasn't much tech lovers

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could do except laugh if they were in the market for a new graphics card or

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console this past fall because literally all of them suffered from stock

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shortages both due to the pandemic and

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scalpers the playstation 5 took the brunt of fan criticism early on because

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retailers launched pre-orders early confusing all those gamers who set their

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alarms an hour too late and mashed f5 on the product page to no avail

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scalpers bought up a ton of stock and while microsoft said that wouldn't happen during the xbox series xn series

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s launch it did NVIDIA's rtx 3000 series

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cards also got scalped big time god you got scalped dude you got hardcore scalp

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for some reason that conjugation of the verb that led to ebay

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listings for the cards getting inflated into the tens of thousands of dollars

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for a single unit similar things happened during the launch of the ryzen

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5000 series cpus and Radeon 6000 series graphics cards a story about one scalper

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group made up of 12 people making off with over 2400 ps5s made it clear who

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the bad guys were here sony what

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no Colton scalpers got robbed at meetups and things got so bad people were

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watching a stock checker bot stream a never-ending list of product skus hoping

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to snag a GPU the moment it was available i mean if they didn't get a

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new model how are they supposed to play the most anticipated game of the year

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cyberpunk 2077 when it launched a rave reviews

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oh what a cliffhanger and we'll get back to it right after this

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now it's time for quick bits brought to you by curiosity curiositystream the

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experts plus it's available on tons of devices including Android iOS and even

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i can tell you're curious so why don't you click the link in the description below and use code TechLinked to get a

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year-long subscription for just 14.99 how is this possible you can find out

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quick bits drop them in a mug of hot cocoa and you'll definitely get a tingle

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in your mistletoes

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yep after being delayed multiple times cyberpunk 2077 launched in december to

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mostly grade reviews that mentioned the game had a few bugs but it quickly

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became apparent this was about to get ugly while those blessed with high-end

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rigs could run the game all right for many players it was unplayable and some

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were even getting seizures from flashing light sequences

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with no explicit epilepsy warning what a mess what an absolute mess beat the

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entire game did you beat it i did i know life did i play on ps4 no

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oh dear lord no initially cd project red

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offered refunds that players couldn't get because there was no refund

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agreement in place and sony ultimately removed the game from the playstation

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store in order to fill some of those refunds now the developer is facing

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lawsuits from investors and on top of all that they've also been criticized

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for promising to host the controversial taiwanese game devotion then giving in

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to what is clearly pressure from china who has suppressed the game's release on

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other platforms turns out that this tweet from july 2018

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was actually pretty prophetic 2020 will be remembered as the year apple got in

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some big fights but it's also the year they won a big victory because the

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company's new max powered by the custom-designed ARM-based m1 chip got

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even the most step skeptical step to pill pc diehards to admit that

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ARM processors may just yet have a future on desktop including Colton

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you hated those things yup but it seems the rest of the industry has already

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taken the hint amazon google and microsoft are all developing their own

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ARM-based chips meanwhile ARM the actual company had an interesting

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year as well they were bought by NVIDIA for 40 billion and the ceo of the

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chinese division went rogue refusing to leave his office after he was fired come

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to think of it i never heard that story resolved

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next up the tick tock band remember that everyone was talking about it at least

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until president trump remembered there was an election coming up yes the u.s

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government was concerned about the app's ties to china so starting around august

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the us government tried to force tick-tock's chinese parent company bike

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dance to sell the app to microsoft within 45 days well that deadline passed

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as microsoft seat at the table was taken over by oracle and not the lady from the

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matrix china wasn't a fan of the whole scheme obviously and called what the us

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was doing theft well the us doubled down and added wechat to the band which was a

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bigger deal because wechat is owned by 10 cent and they're a big deal they're

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worth a lot more than 10 cents i'd looked it up another deadline was

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largely ignored and while tick tock did end up making a deal with oracle as part

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of a new partnership people seem to have largely forgot about the whole thing

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which is fine by me frankly the less time i spend thinking about tick-tock

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the more time i have just hit my coco

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that is very good what's in that

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what are you drinking quick bits the tail end of 2020 saw the u.s discover

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that it had been the victim of one of the biggest cyber attacks in history and

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it had been ongoing since march hackers believed to be a part of the cozy bear

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group which has ties to the russian government were able to exploit a flaw

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in the orion it software made by a company called solarwinds that gave them

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access to the internal networks of multiple us government agencies and

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corporations including microsoft as of filming this episode the breach is still

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being investigated but you know what i'm tired of all this negativity same stop

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hacking things Colton leave it alone you know what let's end up by celebrating

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one of the weirdest most wonderful trends to emerge in 2020 installing the

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game doom where it doesn't belong programmers and tinkerers have figured

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out how to play doom on a pregnancy test a smart fridge and even nintendo's brand

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new game and watch thing that takes hope that takes courage it

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takes knowledge and it takes a lot of free time so i guess in the end maybe

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2020 was sort of a gift after all

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sort of that's big that's a big sort of that sort of is

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doing a lot of work in that sentence

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prob basically not i take it back and this is a lot of work

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so it's time to go to bed everybody thanks for watching i hope we all do a

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little better in 2021 and from my tech news to yours and for even from Colton's

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brandon do you have any tech news to give thank you

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merry christmas and a happy holla longer days

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i moved things over well there we go you look like my dad trying to use the

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remote well i am a dad now

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i as soon as you become one you forget how to use remotes

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watch out the best part about editing yourself though is that you don't have to apologize to the editor it's just me

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yeah did i have it tied up i did

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two seconds you tie these up you should once you're

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degenerate unless you're some kind of cyberpunk