What grinds my gears

I have written in the past a couple of blog posts about how messed up the copyright system on YouTube is (among other things, How to steal people's ad revenue from YouTube , and How YouTube helps big corporations steal your videos ). However, to be fair, and while there are many things that Google could do better regarding those problems, these are measures that Google is pretty much forced to do in order to protect itself, and its users, from copyright lawsuits. Some things could be done better (such as not automatically and irrevocably giving ad revenue to somebody who merely claims intellectual property on a video), but overall it's something that they just have to do. There is, however, something that Google is, at least so far, doing that deserves a huge amount of praise. You see, so far, Google appears to be one of the very few social media corporations who are standing for the freedom of speech of its users, rather than placating to entities, media, and sometimes ev...

If the election of Donald Trump showed us something, it's that the traditional media is dying. Newspapers, television, radio... it's all dying. They used to have a huge influence over the population, pretty much telling them what to think and how to vote. And they tried, on man how they tried, to make the population not vote for Trump. And they failed. It was the final wakeup call. The final nail in the coffin. For years the media has been dying, and this was the final piece of evidence. But the Old Media isn't going to give up just like that. They are not going to just admit defeat and go away silently. They are the establishment, dammit. They dictate how people must think, and how they must vote. They elect and run governments. The biggest threat to the Old Media is undoubtedly YouTube. The "problem" with YouTube is that it allows people to communicate with millions of other people directly, without the filtering and biases imposed by the media. There is n...

The most recent terrorist attack in London is showing, once again, how Orwell's vision, and warning, of a totalitarian society is becoming more and more true. The slogan of "The Party" in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four is: War is Peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Ignorance is strength. And cowardice is courage. What is, once again, the cookie-cutter message that the politicians of England, and everywhere else, are giving to the citizens of London? That this terrorist attack will not make them fall into despair, that they will not let fear overcome them, and that they will go on with their lives with courage. Or, in other words, that the citizens should just ignore the problem and pretend that it doesn't exist. That they should put their fingers into their ears and cover their eyes, and just keep going on like before, like nothing has happened. In other words, the coward's way: When there is a problem, just pretend it doesn't exist, and m...

Back when the internet was a commodity that only very few people had, and buying games online was something that nobody had yet even dreamed of yet, and thus all video games were sold as physical discs in stores, it sometimes might have made sense to pre-order certain games. After all, there were only so many physical discs that a video game store could have in stock at one time. If a game was expected to be immensely popular and you really, really wanted to get it on day one, pre-ordering the game made sure that you would indeed get it. While most other people were walking out of the store empty-handed because the game was sold-out, you would simply walk into the store and ask for your copy of it, which you had reserved. Or even have one sent to you by mail. People who didn't pre-order the game would need to wait for days or even weeks before getting their copy. Not that this scenario was very common, but I suppose that in some cases it could have been. Since every single ga...

There's this really hilarious video made by Glamour Magazine called " Confronting the Pay Gap: Two Sales Executives Compare Salaries ." It's about a white man and a black woman in similar jobs talking about the "pay gap", and how women, especially black women, are disadvantaged and paid less than white men. Firstly, just look at them: The woman is laid back, comfortable, and confident. Her posture, demeanor and manner of speaking is that of a person who is in control, and knows it. Leaning back, open arms, relaxed posture. She is confident, she is in control The man's posture, however, speaks volumes. He looks extremely meek and timid. He looks like a person who has been beaten into submission, if not physically, at least psychologically. Hands closed, legs closed, crouching posture. He's not leaning back, but instead looks like he's subconsciously cowering from a threat. He looks uncomfortable, timid and almost fearful. He is subconscio...

There have been a few absolutely infamous cases of astonishingly shoddy game developers trying to silence negative criticism of their video games by trying to abuse copyright laws. In other words, the developer tries to remove all negative criticism from the internet by claiming copyright on the material and, of course, abusing DMCA takedowns. In some cases it has gone to astonishing lengths, such as the case of Digital Homicide pursuing a year-long lawsuit against the video game critic Jim Sterling , for the sole reason that he made negative review videos about their games. The whole process was really long and really ugly, with Digital Homicide, piling up claim after claim, and after they were all dismissed by the court, the main owner of the company transforming it into a personal slander lawsuit, again piling up claim after claim. After about a year he just gave up, and the lawsuit obviously didn't achieve anything. There's also a very similar copyright/slander/whateve...

As I have written previously , there is a lot of confusion out there about whether the PlayStation 4 Pro supports running games at native 4k resolution (ie. 3840x2160 pixels), or whether it always renders games at a lower resolution and upscales for the 4k display. I think that much of the blame on this confusion can be put on Sony, who haven't made it clear enough in their promotional material. The answer is, of course, that yes, the PS4 Pro can render games at native 4k, without upscaling. This, however, is a choice made by the games (or, more precisely, the game developers) themselves. Games can choose the resolution at which they will be rendered on the PS4 Pro, and 3840x2160 is a perfectly valid option, and there are already several games with this support. The confusion probably stems from the largely advertised property of the PS4 Pro that it will render existing games (ie. those made for the base PS4 model before the Pro was published, and which have not been patched w...

Many people seem to think that YouTube is a good free service to permanently store their videos. Small PSA: Don't! YouTube has no backup system for your videos. If you, for instance, delete one of your videos from YouTube, then it's permanently gone. If you don't have a copy of it somewhere else, you will have lost it forever. Why is this important? There have been several cases of people having their YouTube account hacked, and all of their videos deleted. Hundreds of them. *Poof* Gone forever. Permanently out of existence. No possibility of retrieval. It is understandable that not many people have enormous amounts of disk space, especially if they are prolific with their video creation (or they make really long videos). But do not consider YouTube a safe storage space for them, especially if the videos are important, or your livelihood depends on them. (After all, many people get income from YouTube ad revenue. Some people even make a living on it.) They could be al...

In many, perhaps most, western democracies there almost invariably is at least one, and often several "workers'" political parties. Quite often at least one of them will have "workers" or "labor" in their official name to indicate this. Yet, in the modern world, it seems very rare that such parties actually promote the interests of the working class, who they supposedly represent. Too many times they pass laws and make decisions that harms the working class, and is protested by them. But why? I have a theory. Workers' parties usually start from within the working class, to represent their interests in parliament. They quite often tend to become very big parties because the working class is invariably by far the largest class in society, and thus they tend to vote for the party that promotes their interests the most. The representatives are from that same class themselves. However, once the party becomes big enough, it usually means that the p...

How do we learn social skills, and how to act with other people in social interactions? How do we learn to act in a manner that makes us socially acceptable, and even pleasant to interact with? In part, by us being taught by our parents. However, that's only part of it. Perhaps the smallest part. The most important way is by learning from our mistakes. By us not knowing, because of lack of experience, how to act in a given situation, acting badly, ie. making a mistake in our behavior, and either making a fool of ourselves or sometimes even hurting someone, and then realizing the consequences of it, and learning from it. An important part of this process is other people telling us of our mistake. Criticizing us. Pointing out where we went wrong. When this happens, especially if it's a really bad mistake, it can be very shameful and embarrassing, and it can even hurt. But that's the process of learning. We learn from our mistakes, and know how to do better next time. Ho...

There are plenty of YouTube videos (and of course web pages) out there where people engage in the task of building a PC at the same price as a console (currently the PS4 Pro being of course the most popular comparison) to see if the PC offers the same performance, or even better. Almost invariably, it does. However, these projects are often deceptive because they are ignoring hidden costs. Almost invariably they will have a budget of approximately the price of the console... and will spend the entire budget on the base PC hardware and that's it. In other words, the motherboard, PSU, CPU, GPU, RAM, a hard drive, and the PC case. Then they test its performance at playing games, and compare it to the same games on the console. However, this is deceptive. They are actually spending more money on the hardware than they should, and are ignoring the hidden costs that you would need to pay if you actually wanted to build such a PC to play games. They are also not actually offering ...

I have an i5-2500K CPU in my PC. This particular CPU is rather famous among PC enthusiasts in that it's amazingly overclockable. Its official base clock rate is 3.3 GHz, with an official maximum boost frequency of 3.7 GHz (which is a technique supported by more modern Intel processors where, if enabled, the CPU will automatically and dynamically "overclock" itself depending on the current load.) However, with proper cooling, people report the CPU being completely safe to be overclocked even up to 4.6 GHz without problems, which is rather astonishing. I have an efficient CPU heatsink by CoolerMaster, which keeps the CPU incredibly cool even under full load. With this heatsink, without overclocking, the CPU stays, when idle, at about 35 °C and even under. At full load (all four cores at maximum load) the temperature is under 55 °C, which is quite remarkable. I have overclocked the CPU to 4.2 GHz, and under full load the temperature is about 63 °C, which is still well ...

Strict turn-based combat has traditionally been one of the staples of JPRGs. This means that combat consists, effectively, of the player and the enemy/enemies taking turns to attack each other (or do other actions). During your turn, the action effectively pauses, and you have all the time in the world to select an action (most traditionally from a menu, increasingly by other means the more modern the game). Some games and game franchises still use this traditional form of combat, one of the most quintessential examples being the main Pokémon games. However, this has become rarer and rarer with time, especially from the 2000's forward. Game companies, who have traditionally made, and still make JPRGs have tried all kinds of other combat systems, almost invariably bringing it closer and closer to real-time combat with actions bound to controller button presses, rather than being selected from some kind of menu. The combat system has also become increasingly less turn-based and mor...

Nor should "Men's Day", or any kind of "Day" celebration dedicated to a group of people based on their gender, race, sexual orientation, or any such inconsequential characteristics. Consider this description that, for example, Facebook gives of Women's Day: " Let's celebrate the amazing contributions women make to our world and our future." "Women" is taken as a homogeneous group, and contributions made by some of them are attributed to all of them. Like they were some kind of hive mind that acts in unison. This is such a collectivist way of thinking. As a devout individualist, this kind of thinking clashes badly with my principles. As an individualist, I strongly endorse the rights of the individual, as well as treating and judging people based on their personal merits, qualifications, achievements, actions, personality and content of character, regardless of what their gender, race or sexual orientation may be. If an indiv...

A trademark is a legal protection that a person or corporation can acquire for a certain distinctive brand name as well as distinctive brand image characteristics (such as certain styles, fonts, shapes, colors, etc.) when used in a certain context. The purpose of trademarks is to protect the owner from counterfeit products that are deliberately made to look the same, or very similar, for the intent of being mistaken for the original product. A product name, when used in a certain context, can be trademarked. (For example, the name of a detergent can be protected in this way, when used in detergent containers. Or the name of a beverage, when used in soda cans.) Moreover, certain styles, shapes, fonts, etc. can be trademarked ("trade dress") when used in such a context. For example, not only the name itself of a beverage may be trademarked, but if it's printed with a very distinctive way, like using a certain font and coloring, that can be trademarked as well (so that sim...

This is a rather marvelous, and hilarious, excerpt from a news cast by MSNBC . It ends with the news anchor saying: "... (Trump) could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think, and that is our job." Sure, sure, we can give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she didn't actually intend to say it like that. However, it does work beautifully as a Freudian slip .

Game consoles can be quite convenient for many people, as they are much less hassle to use and to play games than a PC. They are pretty much "plug&play". They also tend to be cheaper than a PC with comparable capabilities and accessories. Oftentimes they also have pretty good exclusive games, which isn't something to dismiss lightly. For these and many other reasons consoles are not just for casual gamers, but also much more "hard-core" gamers (even those who are also avid PC players). There is one thing, however, that annoys me about consoles quite a lot: Games made for them deliberately lack support for keyboard&mouse controls. These are often the exact same games that on the PC have full support for keyboard&mouse, or optionally a game controller. The exact same games on the consoles, however, deliberately lack support. There is no technical reason why they shouldn't support them. The hardware and the operating system supports them just ...