It sounds more like a socket issue than a cable issue. The metal rings you see on the male end(from the tip to the cable) correspond to left channel, right channel and ground. As you can see here, the lead that connects to the left channel functions both as an electrical connection and as (part of) the mechanism to keep the jack in the socket by way of a spring retainer. If it starts to wear out, it will lose some of its spring and won't fully bounce back and make a good connection. You can imagine that if you wiggle the jack around, it will sometimes make a connection with the spring arm, but it will be very shifty. Then there is also the problem of cheaply made things having sockets that are slightly too deep or shallow or having a pathetically weak spring arm, which can mean it barely works even when completely new.

TLDR;
Buy reputable brands and perhaps read a review, even if it's for something as simple as a cable. Even then you can just get unlucky.

I used to get this periodically on my old smartphone with a hopelessly out-of-date operating system(hello incompetent cellphone carriers and manufacturers) and had it once before on PC and turned on Ad Block from that point on. I've seen this on all sorts of official business, news and sports websites as well, not just TFtv.

I like how he's just sitting there cross-legged, meditating in mid-air in the video thumbnail.

This has been suggested many times by many people for a long time as the simplest way to explain class limits to new players; it's definitely not new. With the upcoming Pyro rebalance, this could even be really cool in "our version" of 6s. If Pyro's airblast was less of a "stuff-them-back-into-the-doorway" mechanic and could be used more offensively and the class had more lightning gun mechanics, you might just see a Scout and a Pyro or even two Pyros being run on select maps instead of the regular two scouts.

Gives Valve a class limit excuse, creates more gameplay variation, forces a proper Pyro fix and unifies Valve's vision with ours. One can but dream.

Roaming scout: Starkie by a country mile
Pocket scout: B4nny or Astt
Roamer: Mike
Pocket: Kaptain, though shout-out to Geoh's übers
Demo: Woof
Medic: Raymon by a million light years
Off-classer: Starkie, used literally all of them to great effect

Overall best player: Raymon or Starkie

I also hope that in-game coaching won't become a thing in any game, not just TF2. Coaches should only be allowed to be involved during a tactical time-out(maybe the time between rounds + limited number of tactical pauses per team), between maps and in practice.

That being said, because of the unfortunate circumstances with Kaidus no longer being able to play, I don't mind it as much in this instance even though I would prefer that it doesn't make a return in the future. There's also the downside of the added time to react because things have to go through Kaidus before someone reacts instead of the caller just instantly reacting on their own because they already know what they want to do.

I think in the end the best team did win. Stark delivers the intelligent ninja plays and 1v1s/1v2s every single bloody time, Kaptain is an absolute rock both with his damage output/denial and his positioning relative to his team and Raymon's arrows(seriously, if you watch back and pay attention to this specifically, the amount of times he saves people or turns the health advantage on its head with a few quick ones), positioning/surfing and milking was as good as any medic at an i-Series ever.

Congratulations to Crowns; I have always enjoyed watching you even if I seem to be the only one who does. The top 4 all entertained me and all would have deserved to win, but in the end you played best when it mattered and won. Thank you for the nail-biting entertainment.

Thank you to poor Dashner, the production team(special shout-out to David for stepping up, cheers! And Arie for always being there whenever the community needs him), tournament admins(RIP Nymthae's day 1 schedule every year), observers, casters, analysts, eXtine, photographers, camera operators, sound guys, video/graphic design writers/editors, Omni for the HUD, article writers, general communications and chores staff, the guys who write all of the infrastructure(plug-ins, broadcasting software, websites, databases etcetera), and, of course, the players(you always end up falling in love with the Australians and then they break your heart by finishing 4th). All of you were so entertaining on camera as well, from the crew to the crowd to the players, there was never a dull moment.

Thank you to Multiplay(get better server admins), Crowns, Xenex, everyone who donated to the teams and production, Toshiba, Geel and the other TF2 sponsors of which I'm not sure who owns them. Thank you Seagull for hosting TFtv.

Hope I didn't miss anyone, thank you so much.

P.S. Valve, if you're reading this, please show the i58 outro video in your break room or something so some more of your staff might join in on developing TF2, because the current team is overworked and incomplete(you need people who better understand game design/balance and dedicated communications/opinion gathering figures).

http://puu.sh/qPiSR.png

Last year it was Multiplay's servers that were the problem as well, wasn't it?

How can a stalemate ever be 30 minutes long if the entire match is 30 minutes long and you need to get ahead first to park the bus? Both rule sets are equally prone to stalemates because one of the win conditions is being ahead when the timer hits 0, except with EU rules you only have to watch it for 30 minutes instead of 2x 30 minutes.

And before you say "but they can get to 5 and win that way", that is complete non-sense as well because the entire situation arose in the first place because neither of the teams felt confident enough to push their advantage home and score rounds. If they did, they would try to push for mercy rule in EU, or build a bigger cushion regardless of the rule set used. It's literally the same except EU isn't preceded by 30 more minutes of possible stalemates.

Is the VOD for this coming soon(before i58)? I tried watching it on Twitch, but part of it is muted at the beginning and for some reason the sound is muted throughout the entire VOD for me and not turning back on.

Pretty nice to have an actual sponsor from outside the scene. Looks like they're only sponsoring TF2 as well, not any of the other tournaments. Thank mr Toshiba!

Teams can do this right now except you have to watch it for 10 minutes instead of a shorter amount of time. It would lead to an equal amount of stalemates which don't last as long, not more stalemates. Not to mention it would provide more incentive for the attacking team to try to quickly break the stalemate in a more aggressive fashion instead of just sitting there for 10 minutes trying very safe options like sacing a roamer until they get lucky. So either it stays exactly the same or teams get better at pushing last; it definitely won't get worse.

https://youtu.be/W3iFv4JAGFU?t=223 Spudd sure is good at trolling his medics with the loose cannon.