What grinds my gears

One of the biggest narratives of this modern feminist anti-gamer movement is that women always and constantly have to face harassment when they play online games. That's of course bad in itself, when it does happen. However, there's a degree of dishonesty in that complaint: It completely disregards the fact that men, too, receive lots of harassment in online gaming. In fact, study after study has shown that men actually get on average more harassment than women. However, this is ignored or even outright denied by feminists. (In fact, a common claim is that a man does not have to fear harassment in online games. This is absolutely and completely false. Yet these feminists get away making claims like that, and lots of people, even many gamers, actually believe them.) What is the major difference between men and women who are the targets of harassment in online games? The difference is that men don't complain about it. Most of them couldn't care less. Many of them la...

Catching as many pokémon as possible (ie. completing the pokédex, ie. the list of descriptions of all pokémon), and trading pokémon between two players have been staples of the games since the very beginning. And of course leveling up your "alpha team" of pokémon. It can be quite addictive and rewarding. In the first generations, however, there was a problem: You could not transfer your pokémon from a game of one generation to a game of the next (eg. you couldn't transfer, at least not officially, pokémon from a first-generation game to a second generation game). This even though there wouldn't have been a technical reason that would have stopped that from happening. (Every pokémon game fully supports all pokémon of all previous generations.) This meant that you couldn't transfer your level 100 shiny ultra-rare legendary powerhouse from one game to the next, even though you spent so much time catching and leveling it up. Generation IV (the first generation for...

Nowadays, when you go to a movie theater, the protocol is rather simple and clear: You buy a ticket prior to the start of the movie, you enter the theater, and when the movie ends, you have to leave. (Most theaters won't sell you a ticket for a showing that has already started, although it depends on the country and the theater. In many theaters you are allowed to enter the showing in the middle of it, if you have a valid ticket, but also this varies. Many theaters stop accepting people after a certain time after the movie has started.) This makes sense, and it has been so for a pretty long time. However, it hasn't always been so. You see, prior to about the 1960's, at least in the United States (and many other places) most movie theaters operated quite differently. It wasn't a business model (nor a moviegoing culture) of "you pay to see one movie, you enter when the movie starts, you get to watch it, then you have to leave". No, it was a business model of...

Assume that somebody made a high-budgeted big-profile video game where the player takes control of one or more Nazi officers in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942, and is tasked with handling the prisoners, with everything that it entailed, including the mass extermination part. This game would be completely "neutral" in the sense that it simply would depict the day-to-day duties of such officers in a very realistic manner, and there would be no political or ideological message, no "preaching". There would be no happy ending. (The game could end, for example somewhere around 1943, when the camp was still in full operation.) Such a game would cause an outrage. Morality guardians, the media, and basically everybody would be all over it, classifying it as the worst thing that has ever come out of the gaming industry. But why? This kind of depiction (especially if neutral, like described above) is in fact more or less "allowed" for other forms of ...

When I was in the military (yeah, military service is mandatory here in Finland), at one point there appeared in our barracks a box for making suggestions. I got an idea: The rooms didn't have mirrors in them. I thought that mirrors could be great, especially since we often had to put on ties for special occasions, and so on and so forth. When I presented this idea to the other guys (there were something like 12 of us in total), to my complete puzzlement every one of them disagreed, and not a single one of them could give any rational reason why. They just disagreed, period. To this day I don't have the faintest idea why. I don't even have a layman's hypothesis of the psychology behind it. There would have been zero drawbacks in us having a mirror in the room (and if there had been, they would have certainly used it), yet they all disagreed, and couldn't give a single reason why. They just did, period. Thus we got no mirrors. This isn't a unique case. Of cou...

Consider this advice: Whenever you connect to the internet with a computer or other such device, you are taking a conscious risk. Your computer may be hacked, your information may be stolen. While technology has worked hard to erase all this risk, and while a lot of progress has been made we are not still there. The risk of being hacked is always there, and you should be aware of it. However, there are things you can do to minimize the risk. Use firewall software, keep your anti-virus and anti-malware software always updated, never send critical information (such as credit card information) over an unsecured connection, never send private personal information through email, skype or any other form of unsecured communication, do not answer to emails or other communication offering you deals that are too good to be true (such as somebody offering to transfer millions of dollars to your bank account, or any other "get rich quick" schemes.) If a strange email has an attachment,...

In the 90's id Software was one of the most influential game developers in the world. If talking about the first-person shooter genre, arguably the most influential. While Wolfenstein 3D was somewhat of a hit, perhaps no other game in history has had such a big impact and influence in video gaming than their next hit, Doom . This was the first-person shooter. Heck, for several years all subsequent first-person shooters by other companies were called "Doom clones". (The term slowly changed to "first-person shooter", but for quite many years "Doom clone" was in widespread use.) Doom had many technological innovations unseen at the time, and it hit the market at the right time. And that was one of the staples and defining characteristics of id Software: Innovation. Their games were always technologically ahead of most competitors, and they were essentially the leaders of first-person shooter gaming technology, while all other companies were foll...

I am most certainly not a lawyer, and some of the things I'm writing here may be wrong, so keep that in mind. Many companies have a tendency of claiming rights they don't legally have, or putting restrictions on their clients that can't be legally enforced. As a concrete example, Finnish law is unusually clear on the question of whether you are allowed to make backup copies of software you have a current legal right to use: Absolutely yes. Moreover, any usage license that says otherwise is explicitly mentioned to be unenforceable (in other words, it has no legal force behind it, and can't be enforced by law, even if you fully agree with the license. You agreeing with the license does not override your legal rights.) Yet many software usage licenses explicitly forbid making backup copies of the software. As said, even if you agree with the license, you can still ignore that limitation and make as many backup copies as you want. (Your right to those copies ends when y...

Assume that I had a political or ideological agenda that compelled me to prove that a good portion of the population thinks that murder is acceptable, and I want to prove this with a questionnaire. How would I do this? If I were an honest person, I would pose the claim " murder is acceptable " and then provide two answers, "agree" and "disagree" for people to answer. Of course this method wouldn't give me the result I want, unless I'm so devious as to outright lie about the results. The vast majority (if not all) of the people will obviously answer "disagree". That won't do at all. There are, however, other methods that can be used besides just outright lying about or distorting the results. Suppose that instead the claim posed is " killing another person is acceptable " and now the range of possible answers is between 0 and 5, where 0 means "completely disagree" and 5 means "completely agree". What...

The late 70's and the 80's were, in some way, the "golden age" of eastern kung-fu movies (mainly those made in Hong Kong and China.) These movies are often quite "campy" to the extreme, with severe over-acting, very simplistic plots, and lots and lots of over the top fight choreography (although exceptions to all these "flaws" exist, of course.) There's one distinguishing feature in most (although admittedly not all) of these movies: All the fights are "real" in the sense that they are 100% fight choreography without any external aids or camera trickery. In other words, what you see on film is exactly what the actors / martial artists did in real life. Sure, it's usually not any "real fighting" in any sensible way (because it's often very over the top and choreographed), but everything is done "for real". These fight scenes are really fun to watch. For some reason this art seems to have been lost. The v...

This is written mainly with video game reviews in mind, but the same holds true to some (although a bit lesser) extent for movie reviews as well. There seems to exist this very common and widespread notion that the review of a work of art (especially a video game in this case) has to contain a summary of its first act. In other words, a brief explanation of what the story is about. I don't really understand this. That is a spoiler, plain and simple. And I really, really hate spoilers with a passion. If I start playing a game, I don't want to know anything about it. Nothing at all. I want the story to come as a surprise, for it to develop as I play the game, and everything being new. With video games in particular, the idea in the story is not a deciding factor on whether I'm interested in playing it or not. I can't think of a single example of a game that I would have thought that it could be interesting to play, except that the summary in the review sounded s...

One very common sentiment I see from old-time "hardcore" gamers (especially PC gamers) is that the vast majority of modern first-person shooter games are "dumbed down" compared to the greats of the 90's (ie. Doom, Quake and the other popular ones back then). While I can appreciate what they feel, I really can't agree on the sentiment. In fact, I can actually present an argument for the exact opposite position. Doom and Quake were essentially nothing more than shooting galleries. No story, no characters, no interaction with NPC's. It was simply one abstract level after another, levels with no storywise design or consistency (eg. trying to depict an actual location, like an actual spacestation or a factory), and your only mission was to kill enemies, push buttons and find the exit. That's it. There was absolutely nothing more to either game (nor to myriads of other similar games that are highly regarded by these people). How much more "dumbe...

I have been wondering for quite some time now: How many of our memories are false? I think most people have had the experience of disagreeing with a friend on some past event: You are completely and absolutely certain that the event happened in one way, and your friend is absolutely certain that it happened in another way. You can't both be right. At least one of you has to be wrong. If both of you are certain of remembering the event correctly, then at least one of you is having a false memory. (Perhaps even both of you?) Many people have experienced also another form of this: You are quite certain that some event happened in a certain way, and later you get undeniable proof that you remembered incorrectly. (The mildest case of this is remembering the events of a movie you saw long time ago: You are certain that something happened in the movie in a certain way, but when you watch the movie again years or decades later, you notice that you misremembered it. It comes back to y...

The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset has been in development for over 3 years now. There's nothing wrong in that. It's better that they polish the technology to be as perfect as is possible with current (and affordable) technology than to rush a half-baked product which will be clunky and work poorly, and then have upgraded versions coming to the market as they develop them. Those years of development have not been for nothing. The headset has developed quite a lot compared to its first prototype. It has become smaller and lighter (although that has always been their goal), more responsive and accurate, and with additional features (such as detecting head tilting, and the physical placement of the headset, rather than simply its orientation, neither of which the original prototype supported). Other companies have quickly jumped onto the bandwagon, even before the OR has even been released. (For example Sony has been developing their own version for the PS4. We'll se...

I wrote in a previous blog post about the problems I saw with the Xbox One a bit over half a year ago. (You should read that post before this one because this is just an update on it. I'm not going to repeat the same points.) It seems that Microsoft has really learned their lesson. There were two major features about their E3 conference that people clearly noticed: Not a single mention of the kinect. Not the device itself, not a single kinect game. The presentation was 100% about games, rather than multimedia. This was, in a sense, a rather 180-degree turn compared to their console pre-launch presentations, where they constantly hyped the kinect and the multimedia capabilities of the console. That didn't sit well with the public, and Microsoft clearly learned their lesson. There's one small problem with that, though: While Microsoft has not technically speaking abandoned the kinect (they have said that they have some kinect games in development), in practice it se...

"Affirmative Consent" law means that if you are a man and have sex with a woman, you must explicitly ask her for consent first, and unless she explicitly verbally gives consent, you are a rapist. These laws, as written and enacted, are completely unilateral. Notice that it's always " he must ask her for consent", never the other way around. These laws never require a woman to ask consent from a man. But never mind that; it's not the main point in this post. Assume this scenario: You are a man, and you are so drunk that you pass out. Some woman then performs oral sex on you, without you knowing, being aware, or being able to do anything about it, because you are unconscious. Later she accuses you of rape. According to the Affirmative Consent principle, she is right: You had sex (by legal definition) with a woman, you did not ask her for consent prior to the act, and she did not explicitly give you consent. Therefore de jure you are a rapist. Never mi...

The current social justice zeitgeist is moving more and more towards the direction where our society will be forcefully "equalized" completely blindly. In other words, if there's a disproportionate amount of people of a certain demographic in, for example, company management positions, then this will be "equalized" by forcing that company to hire people of other demographic groups into those positions (regardless of whether they are qualified for it or not.) In other words, hiring quotas will be implemented. This is not something that's still in the future. This is something that is already happening with some jobs at some places. For example, see: Woman Flunks Fitness Test, Gets Firefighter Job Anyway . This is sometimes called "positive discrimination". That's quite an oxymoron if there ever was one. It's as insane as saying "positive theft" or "positive rape". Discrimination of people based on their gender, race o...

The monicker "oreo" is used mainly in certain parts of the United States as a derogatory term for black people who, as some see it, behave and live in a very typical "white" fashion. (The metaphor alludes to the expression "black on the outside, white on the inside", like Oreo cookies.) I'm not exactly sure of this, but it's my understanding that the term probably started mainly as a racist term used by some white people against black people who were atypical of "black culture" (ie. were rich, highly educated, lived in rich neighborhoods among rich white people, etc.) and was later "appropriated" if you will by black people. In this case, however, the appropriation didn't change it to a positive term (like happened with the word "nigger"), but retained its negative connotation. In other words, the term "oreo" is used by many black people in the United States as a derogatory term for other black people...

The batteriser is a small device that can be attached to an AA battery, and which taps into the extra charge left over after the voltage has dropped below the cutoff threshold of whatever device you were using the battery in, thus prolonging its life. It does this by increasing the voltage of the battery back to 1.5V (using a voltage increaser circuit). The site claims that this can extend the battery life to up to 8 times. To understand the claim, consider this typical battery discharge curve: As the battery is drained, its voltage decreases. Battery-powered devices have a minimum voltage that they require to operate, which is the cut-off voltage. When the battery charge drops below that voltage, the device can't work anymore. The website claims that the typical cutoff voltage for most everyday devices is between 1.35 and 1.4 volts per battery. If you look eg. at the blue curve above, you'll notice that after the battery has dropped below that amount, there's sti...

Answer: The director. (With one caveat, explained at the end of this post.) When you are watching a movie and it turns out to be absolutely horrible, there may be many reasons why. Perhaps the actors are just untalented or doing a piss-poor job at it, like their heart is not in it. Perhaps the script is just bad, full of ridiculously poor dialog, naive plot twists, plot holes and illogical events. Or perhaps the story is just outright boring, or badly written. Perhaps the props, costumes and visual effects are so bad that they ruin the movie (and aren't even of the "so bad it's good" kind). However, there is one person who always carries the ultimate blame for a bad movie: The director. The movie director is the person who is responsible to make the movie good. He or she is the person who is ultimately responsible for catching mistakes and fixing them. For noticing bad actors, and fixing (or replacing) them. To make sure that props and effects are good even if t...

Some people have presented the wild hypothesis that the current console generation (ie. the Xbox One and PS4) is likely to be the last game console generation, at least in its "traditional" form. (Most of these people agree that the Nintendo consoles will go on for at least one generation because Nintendo's position and marketing strategies are quite different from those of Sony and Microsoft.) Several reasons for this have been presented: Firstly, sales of "traditional" (ie. desktop) consoles are showing signs of waning. The major reason for this is that (by some estimates) about 70% of video game consumers are casual gamers, and there exists nowadays a set of platforms that are somewhat of a console killer from a casual player point of view: Smartphones and touchpads. There is less incentive for casual gamers to buy the latest desktop console given that they can play casual games on their phones. This may mean that in the very near future (if not even righ...

Many commenters have noticed and talked about, especially during the past decade or so (and at an increasing rate) how anti-scientism is on the rise in many parts of the western world. These are your typical modern conspiracy theories and denialism (such as climate change denialism, anti-vaccination, anti-evolutionism, all the typical conspiracy theories, and so on) getting more and more widespread acceptance in the general public. In general, science is for some reason more and more distrusted, and its claims attributed to a conspiracy. Many such commenters have been saying how we are, essentially, going back to the dark middle ages. Nowadays, almost invariably, if someone writes eg. a newspaper article online on this subject, the comment section will be filled with people supporting the denialism and the conspiracy theories, often with a very smug and "knowledgeable" tone. These anti-science attitudes are often described as superstition. I, however, would describe it as...

I have written in some previous blog posts how I hate leaving video games unfinished, and how doing so is a relatively rare occurrence. Sometimes I wade through a game to the end even if it feels more like a chore than a joy. (While it's a very fair question how much sense that makes, I still like to do it, rather than leave it unfinished. Having finished a game, rather than leaving it permanently in an unfinished state, is a kind of mental reward in itself.) In a few cases this principle actually pays off. Some games may feel quite boring and tiresome at first, during the first hours of gameplay, and one easily gets the urge to stop playing them. However, when you keep playing, you might eventually find out that it's actually quite a good and enjoyable game. Most recently I experienced this with Dragon Age Inquisition . The first about 5-10 hours of gameplay felt like a chore, with interest in the game lessening by the hour. Maybe it was the lack of interesting quests, a s...

Many western universities have so-called "gender studies" departments and curricula. Here are some reasons why you shouldn't enroll in those courses: It's a complete waste of time and money Unless you happen to live in one of the very few countries were University is free or very cheap, studying at a University is extremely expensive. We are easily talking about tens of thousands of dollars (or your regional equivalent). University is also a very unique and extremely important part of your life, if you get to enroll in one. It can be the most important period of life where you learn an actual profession, which you will probably be working on for the rest of your life. Universities are usually the places with the highest education standards and content, which allow you to reach the most prestigious and most useful careers. Wasting this unique opportunity, and all that enormous amount of money, is one of the stupidest things you could ever do in your life. You...