Apple Pioneers Radical New Concept: Paying Musicians for Their Material

June 23, 2015 Leave a Comment

DISCLAIMER: The title of this post is sarcastic.

Until this weekend, Apple was so confident in its new streaming service that it didn’t even feel the need to pay royalties for the music it would be streaming during the 90-day consumer trial period. It took a scathing Tumblr post from Taylor Swift to make them change their minds.

tumblr-404

Give yourself more credit, Tumblr. You can be useful in extremely rare cases.

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I Knew Grooveshark. Grooveshark Was a Friend of Mine.

June 10, 2015 Leave a Comment

Grooveshark collage

In the spirit of digital copyright infringement, the image for this blog entry is composed of illustrations from (clockwise from top left) The Atlantic, Slate, Billboard, and Gizmodo.
Also the Grooveshark logo cleverly turned upside down like a dead fish. It’s clever.

I’m not yet sure how I feel about Apple Music. Or rather, I know it bothers me, but I’m not exactly sure why yet. A rant is probably forthcoming in the next few days. But it has made me think more on the fate of Grooveshark, a streaming service that shut down on April 30.

Despite claiming 35 million users, Grooveshark never amassed much mainstream mindshare. That’s surprising, because it was a vast repository of easily linkable and shareable songs, all completely free. It looked slick, it was easy to use, and listeners could even upload songs for the whole world to enjoy.

Which was pretty much the problem.

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Gender Balance in Carcassonne: About as Good as it Gets

March 23, 2015 2 Comments

Gender Balance in Carcassonne: About as Good as it Gets

There’s something weird about the Android and Windows versions of the city-building board game Carcassonne: they feature a precisely equal number of apparently male and female playable characters.

Perhaps that shouldn’t be remarkable, but, well, it kinda is. Carcassonne’s characters are used as both user avatars and computer opponents, so they either have their own personalities or reflect the player’s. Representations of women in video games, when they exist at all, tend to be sexualized and unrealistic.

Since Carcassonne is the creation of our more enlightened cousins in Europe, it should be able to avoid those tropes.

Right?

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Your IQ Test Thinks You’re Smart Because It’s Dumb

August 13, 2014 Leave a Comment

Your IQ is ... ?

The latest viral pandemic spreading across social media is a test proclaiming how smart you are. Perhaps I have particularly brainy friends, or anyone with a supposed IQ beneath genius level is too ashamed to share their score, but I’ve come to the scientific conclusion that the test is utter bunk. Read more of this post

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Windows XP is Dead. Long Live Windows XP.

April 8, 2014 1 Comment

Windows XP Professional CD

Twelve and a half years ago, Microsoft released its first operating system that most users were actually reluctant to give up. Today, April 8, 2014, after three service packs, two browser updates, and dozens of hotfixes, Windows XP gets its final security patches. Read more of this post

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