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...