All posts by Richard Yes

Pfft Free Speech

I have been listening to these three great minds (below) for quite some time. These are three advocates of free speech and three self-proclaimed journalists, who think that Twitter is a cesspool and *needs to close, and Redditt needs to grow up and trash the “bad” subreddits. Facebook is fine because Zuckerberg, a man obsessed with profit, already unilaterally decided that on his site, home to billions of people, a kid in flip flops, all alone will decide what you can say.

Three Great Minds who Don't Like Name Calling
Three Great Minds who Don’t Like Name Calling

In 1980 you would be shunned if you said gays should be allowed to marry. In 1960 you could be lynched if you screamed blacks should use the same toilet as whites. In 1940  Germany you could be shot for advocating hiding a Jew in your home. In 1520 you went to jail for proposing that the Earth is flat.

Sometimes the majority is wrong: true that.

Maybe free speech has some draw backs, like trolling, but it is still kinda important, heck it’s even in some documents in famous museums.

Genius or Lucky Nerd?
Genius or Lucky Nerd?

We can either let hipsters with beards running websites determine what is allowed and what isn’t, or we can just like, sorta allow all free speech, like how the founding patriarchs of America intended. Jeff Jarvis or Thomas Jefferson? Lance Ullanoff or John Adams? Sometimes, once in while, here and there, the unpopular opinions are even right. Some of those opinions even change the world. (Albeit, not the ones about the TWiT CEO)

I can cut them some slack when curtailing opinions on a small medium like an irc, but don’t these intellectuals realize that if the pillars of the internet, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, disallow free speech, it sorta creates a problem. Kinda like  if all the TV stations refused to air what they don’t like. Yea, I kinda sorta make sense sorta.

Just to be clear douche-bags; having the pillars of the internet prohibit free speech is effectively prohibiting free speech.

Who knows why the symbol for justice is a scale?
Help, I can’t see!

Perhaps Jeff Jarvis should have to deal with someone calling him a shill on Twitter and Leo should have to deal with someone calling him fat. There is a reason lady justice holds a scale, some issues are more important than others. Lastly, whenever you take “haters” and put them in a ghetto away from normal people you excasserbate the problem. If you’re a lone racist in a crowd of normal people you will be quieted. If you are a racist amongst racists you create peer pressure to be even racist-ier.

Full disclosure I could not care less about Free Speech, it’s just the hypocrisy I can’t stomach.

UPDATE: This is in response to a comment: I am well aware that these are public companies and they are not bound by law to comply with any Free Speech doctrines. Yet, I feel that companies of their size should voluntarily adhere to these Free Speech principals in order to retain credibility as a platform.

* Per Jason Cortez – they never said “it needs to close” that was an assumption by the author regarding the critique of these sites for allowing trolls
**Please alert me in comments for spelling and grammar mistakes
***Sorry for America centric notions but that’s my hometown. And all you other countries like California copied us anyway.

Bruce Almighty

Leo Laporte has millions of fans worldwide. He is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show. He was once known as the President of the Internet. A few people don’t like him and put together a wordpress blog about him, some made Twitter accounts and some made funny videos and others did both.

Laporte identified one member of this group, Bruce,  who is responsible for about 5% of the content. Laporte then used his pulpit to ridicule this man, make up stories about him and blame him for the actions of countless others in an attempt to divert attention from, well you know what. Laporte got only one fact right, Bruce does cross fit and like all Vegans, Crossfit enthusiasts and people without TVs, he can’t shut up about it. But everything else Leo says is untrue.

Bruce says "Helloworld"
Bruce says “Helloworld”

Bruce grew up in a small Canadian fishing town to a family without a penny to their name. He was often forced to work after school as his friends played ice hockey. He was chastised for being smart and having an interest in computers. But he never fought back and always turned the other cheek.

That was until Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Bruce enlisted in the American army and fought bravely in the Persian Gulf War, where he was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor and two Purple Hearts. The medal was earned for single handedly rescuing his entire four hundred man brigade who were captured by a savage band of Iraqi Republican Guard with ties to the Taliban, ISiS and weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately he took machine gun fire to his spinal cord and was told he would never walk again.

That was until he met a little red headed girl diagnosed with a terminal disease. Bruce couldn’t bear to see her give up. She promised that if he were to walk again, she’d fight the illness. Needless to say; Bruce began to walk again without a pesky spinal cord and that little girl beat her disease and became President of Canada. (Prime Minister, Czar, Supreme Leader or whatever it’s called there) Bruce was overjoyed.

That was until, while on a field trip, Bruce was bitten by a radioactive spider. This bite gave him super powers so he went on to fight crime by night and do tech support by day.

All Bruce according to Laporte
All Bruce according to Laporte

Ok maybe that is not 100% true but it’s closer to reality than the tall tale Leo has spun which Padre regurgitates. More-so, at least one member of Leo’s staff and one of the illustrious chat-mods was in Drama with myself, Bruce and many others when HelloWorld came on the scene. (Helloworld is the name of the guy who produces the content driving the #soupguzzler batty) Those people have told Leo that he is way off base and they are not the same person. #Soup actually came up with a Hulk/Dr Banner parallel to explain the glaring differences between Bruce and Helloworld rather than accept reality and the physical laws of space and time.

Nevertheless he continues to publicly malign an individual with full knowledge that, not only is he making a poor guess, but he is blatantly wrong. Leo doesn’t care, what’s important to him is that he gets people to stop talking about his incident and if he disparages an innocent someone publicly, well F it.

[Redacted]
[Redacted]
5/27/2015  CEO/Wife Lisa Laporte “But it seriously crosses a line when it becomes targeted harassment, cyberstalking, and there are threats of violence–especially when your children are in the crosshairs.”

Seriously, threatening children? Seriously? And this “threat” that no one saw just happened to occur on the same day Leo accidentally released a picture of his penis on the live stream. Are there really people over the age seven who believe this fabrication?
A quote from one of  Leo’s mentally stable fan base:

<cr1> Leo, you are experiencing what China is doing to the rest of the internet on a smaller scale

Post Script: Something is up with the mods, I think they may be getting tired of defending Leo. One thing is certain, whatever he says publicly is going on is not what is actually going on. Paying mods is odd.

The gloves come off

Leo went too far.

Fact: If you are in the public eye you have to deal with critics.
True: Haters can go too far and warrant a  reaction……

In communist Russia we kill anyone who speaks against regime.
In communist Russia we kill anyone who speaks against regime.

However, I have not seen Skieast cross any lines. I have seen him point out that the host of a show can’t host. He may have even committed the crime of saying a show sucks. Does this give Leo permission to dox him and threaten that he is coming “up North” to see him? And must his rabid dog rush to his aid?

Should I be afraid to say that the guy playing Kingpin on Daredevil is doing a terrible job because the actor may come after me? They are breaking social etiquette and protocol. This is not the first time. Someone contacted my office via fax and set me on my #drama path. I was also the recipient of &Dan giving out my name in his chat to remind me who-is -boss. Did Leo intimidate Skieast? No, all he probably did was encourage him and others to do more.

d
P C is for cookie and if Leo goes after a critic so does effen

No one sees themselves as the bad guy, not Attila the Hun, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden. We all must occasionally look at ourselves. Has Drama gone too far? Yes, and I have to look at myself for that. Do you think the Petalumaites ever introspect? Have you ever heard an apology uttered from Keller street?

So don’t lump Skieast in with anyone else, we are all responsible for our own actions. I ask again, what did Skieast do? What if Skieast was a 14 year old kid and actually felt threatened? Doesn’t TWiT champion shutting down Twitter because* someone tweeted a gamer girl that they want to kill her?

Critics are important. If TWiT does not have a woman on after rotating through 15 guests or if TWiT has 70 hosts/independent contractors and not one is black maybe they should be called out. If they destroy peoples hard work (Framerate, NSFW) maybe fans have a right to know. The reason they get mad is because the illusion they built is coming down. That is it.
An AMA is supposed to be a love fest, no critics (trolls) allowed.

Does anyone want to play a game with no rules? It would get out of hand.

*I do not actually follow the gamergirl story so my details are probably wrong.

Apple better watch out!

The difference between the philosophy of Apple & Google was never more pronounced then when the two companies released their set-top boxes and respective remotes. Compare these two remotes and you will discover everything about the souls of these two companies.

An elegant remote
An elegant remote, from a more civilized age.

Apple favored simple and avoided confusion like #soup avoids trolls. Their customer’s complaints were always why can’t you; add an app store, add games, add web browsing, add anything? Apple would just say, “no, three buttons is plenty. We will give you more buttons in a few years. We eventually gave you notifications on your iPhone, and copy-and-paste, so relax kids.”

Is this calculus?
Is this calculus?

Conversely, Google could not say “no” to any function. Any engineer could walk up to the lead engineer with an idea and it would be incorporated into the product. My god, look at that thing, have they no sense of what normal non-engineer mammals are like?

I just perused the Apple Watch guide available in iBooks and I instinctively made myself crib-notes to cheat on any surprise pop-quiz. Apple is straying too far. Tap crown, double tap crown, long hold crown, tap side button, double tap it, tap screen, force tap, tap and hold, long tap, scroll crown, swipe up, down, sideways, drag. #WTF

In 2010, there would have been zero third party apps, one button, and much less functionality. Simple.

Will there be math on this text? You said no math.
Will there be math on this test? You said no math.

Google to Sell Milk

Search Milk?
Search Milk?

On the heels of their foray into the wireless service industry, Google Inc announced it will be entering the dairy game. Google will be buying milk farms across Montana and selling Google branded Milk. Google cows will only be fed natural grass. The milk will be available for  purchase by December 2015 in a beta program.

The milk will be sold at a cost equal to 85% of the price of other milk brands. Google will not be making any profit on the milk. In order to be eligible to buy the milk you must have Google set as your default search engine and use an android phone.

Asked for comment the professor said, “This is great, Google cares about people drinking milk. Google is not exercising monopoly power”
Asked for comment the Gum said, “It is a free country and people will benefit by cheaper milk. Google is not exercising monopoly power”

Daity Queen, Maines Own and 365 Milk have all announced plans to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The paradox of paradoxes

The following was sent to me from Captain Juno. The Captain is afraid and receiving threats.

Is he in danger
Is he in real danger?

The captain has made all his videos private (except one) due to these threats. We must unite and get YouTube to change its policies. This bill cosby (if that is his real name) is a troll. Junogate is out of control.

Update 1: In case anyone missed the point. The Captain is not a victim of online harassment. The Captain is not in fear for his life.  YouTube, Twitter and every other online service do not need to change their policies. People are silly on the internet and say silly stuff. Ignore it. We do not need the YouTube API to write an anti-troll script.

Update2: I am sad to report that Captain Juno was killed in a car bombing.

Update 3: Just kidding

Diamond Club Sweeps Podcast Awards

I'll huff and I'll puff
I’ll huff and I’ll puff

Once upon a time there was a very clever wolf who spotted some delicious looking grapes high up in a tree. The shrewd wolf tried everything to get at those grapes. He howled as he tried to learn to climb a tree,  he flung what he could at the grapes and he tried to shake the grapes loose.  But he couldn’t get the grapes. Eventually, he gave up, walked away and muttered, “sour grapes anyway!”

TWiT Employee Hilton could not be reached for comment
TWiT Employee Hilton could not be reached for comment

Diamond Club swept the 2015 Podcast Awards; Night Attack won two awards, DTNS won and Frogpants won, it was a Bona-fide shellacking.  Ever the bitter, ugly step sister, TWiT mods went on to tell their chat room that the trouncing  was the result of an illicit script and they all but accused <> of cheating. Had Elgun been nominated and subsequently lost, we expect he would have shifted the blame to Chinese hackers but alas TNT was not nominated. (Nominations may have been compromised by the Russians following the China model.)

Adam Curry succumbed to the propaganda and neglected his mission of propagating the truth, as he faithfully repeated the mantra about a magic script and the haters, on his No Agenda podcast. Even J.C.D., the 4th place winner of the ‘2014 Sexiest People in Tech award,’ complained about the haters. JCD, what if people claimed you were really only the 8th sexiest, how would you feel?  Why not just complain that Diamond Club fans have higher powered graphics cards and better track wheels in their mice?

It is fan voting and the fans voted, deal.

If #TotalDrama ever lost an award we would be gracious. I know this in my heart of hearts.

GO BACK TO SAN FRANCISCO UBER, no one likes you in NY

Take those stars and shove them...
Take those stars and shove them…
A healthy yellow stream
A healthy yellow stream

Moron driver does not know how to use the app and the estimated arrival time of 2 minutes turns into 4 then 2 then 5 minutes. It is not fun watching him drive in circles. But, no big deal even though I had a reservation to get to. Idiot doesn’t bother using the navigation to get to me-whatever.

Out of the kindness of my heart when we were half way to the destination I tell the driver to make sure he logged the pickup into the app  because my app was showing him still “on the way.” The rest of the ride my headphones were on and i was quiet as a cup. Although, I was amazed his app was not showing a route to the destination, so he took the wrong avenue and didnt know which streets trafficked West and which traveled East.

The lovely & talented & happy Sarah Lane
The lovely & talented & happy Sarah Lane

How does he give me 3 stars. I am the most bestest passenger. I have never given a driver less then 5 stars in my life. This guy I gave 1 to. This retaliatory rating thing is so childish. If you want to gamify travel make it fair. I forgot to mention that he didn’t look that much like his picture yet I didn’t ask for identity proof.   The same bad rating happened to the lovely and talented Sarah Lane although she probably doesn’t stop correcting driver routes.

Was the android experiment a failure?

I will preface this ground breaking article by proclaiming myself both an Apple-fan and a Google-hater. I do like some Google stuff like YouTube and Google-fiber, but let’s save why I dislike Google for another time.  This preamble would not be complete without my declaration that I have never even owned an Android product. However I am willing to stipulate for the record that Android is as functional, useful, utilityish and versatile as Apple’s IOS and possibly more so in many cases. (Albeit quite ugly)

Dumb and not cute
Dumb and not cute

Android has been a phenomenal success. The sales are incredible and they have become #1 while hurdling the obstacle of being second-to-the-party. Android adoption continues to grow and everyone agrees it generally gets better and better. This doesn’t sound like a failure.

Dream big!
Dream big!

The Android experiment was not built just to be a competing operating system to IOS. It was novel, an open platform to be built upon and improved upon by major manufacturers and anyone with a good ideas. That was the experiment, can we build a better OS by making it open to the world. On a basic level, the failure becomes clear when we look at how everyone prefers pure android and not the garbage affixed to it by Samsungesque manufacturers. But the disappointment is greater than that. The same independent (non-Apple) developers who made the iPhone a significantly better device by adding their ingenuity via applications were now supposed to take Android to the next level. Many of us had hoped for more than phones, we wanted the OS to infiltrate technology. Here, It’s free, now go make something great!

We got shit from 3rd party people, nada, zilch, zero. Android is a full OS, it could be stripped down and combined with a crap screen and pottered into a fridge, or you can add to the OS and attach it to a robot. Android was a major ingredient for many new technologies and no one cared.

3rd world like China
3rd world like China

I want some kid in a third world country on a castaway 2009 MacBook and Android to build the next big thing. We got enough from the Amazon, Google and Apple think factories. Instead I see IOS getting more like Android and Android getting more like IOS. Are all the great minds wasting time thinking up new addictive games for my phone.  Enough with the apps engineers.

The Real Official Review

Former producer and former guest
Former producer and former guest

If you read any review and see the following phrase in the review be wary – the reviewer is a “fanboy” and unqualified to do a review.

“It feels good in the hand”

Thinks about it, why would anyone say that?

In related news, on my way home from work someone harassed me  on the train by bumping into me, then the guy at the deli harassed me by calling me “chief” and then a Starbucks barusta kept a penny of my change. Hello , any lawyers out there.

“A star takes time out for the little people”