Clash and Byte, Two of TikTok’s Competitors, Are Merging

Yesterday, Clash announced it was acquiring Byte, a short-form video app launched by Vine cofounder Dom Hofmann. The announcement comes “at a time when TikTok itself now appears to be here to stay,” reports CNN. From the report: Dubsmash, another TikTok competitor with a similar algorithmic feed serving up entertaining videos, was acquired last month by Reddit. Meanwhile, Adam Mosseri, the…

Twitch Users Protest Its DMCA Policy By Streaming Videos With Homemade Sound Effects

Wednesday Twitch warned its users to delete any videos containing copyrighted music. PC Gamer reports on what happened next: Since October, Twitch has been deleting significant quantities of videos over copyright claims, leaving the affected streamers with no way to respond or issue counter-claims. Twitch eventually explained that the number of DMCA notifications it receives from major record labels has surged,…

RIAA’s YouTube-DL Takedown Ticks Off Developers and GitHub’s CEO

An RIAA takedown request, which removed the YouTube-DL repository from GitHub, has ticked off developers and GitHub’s CEO. Numerous people responded by copying and republishing the contested code, including in some quite clever ways. Meanwhile, GitHub’s CEO is “annoyed” as well, offering help to get the repo reinstated. TorrentFreak reports: Soon after the RIAA notice took YouTube-DL offline many developers spoke…

AI Can Make Music, Screenplays, and Poetry. What About a Movie?

Want a movie where a protagonist your age, race, sexuality, gender, and religion becomes an Olympic swimmer? You got it. Want a movie where someone demographically identical to your boss gets squeezed to death and devoured by a Burmese python? Your wish is its command. From a report: Want to leave out the specifics and let fate decide what never-before-imagined movie…

CNET Remembers 1995, the Year Hollywood Finally Noticed The Internet

CNET is celebrating its 25th anniversary with articles remembering the 1990s — including that moment “when Hollywood finally noticed the web,” calling it “a flawed but fun snapshot of the moment the internet took over the world…” “Twenty-five years ago, cinema met cyberspace in a riot of funky fashion, cool music and surveillance paranoia. It began in May 1995 with the…

We’ll have 2 Friday the 13ths in 2020

And 2020’s first Friday the 13th is coming up on March 13. It’ll be exactly 13 weeks after the previous Friday the 13th in December 2019. Zoinks! Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/scared-2-friday-the-13ths-in-2020…

World Chess Champion Plays Recklessly Online Using a Pseudonym

World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen has been sneaking onto online chess sites using stupid pseudonyms and taunting his opponents by using pointless maneuvers with names like “the Bongcloud.” One YouTube commenter calls it “a revolution in the history of chess.” Slate documents the antics in an article titled “DrDrunkenstein’s Reign of Terror.” “DrDrunkenstein” is one of many aliases Magnus Carlsen has…

How Is Computer Programming Different Today Than 20 Years Ago?

This week a former engineer for the Microsoft Windows Core OS Division shared an insightful (and very entertaining) list with “some changes I have noticed over the last 20 years” in the computer programming world. Some excerpts: – Some programming concepts that were mostly theoretical 20 years ago have since made it to mainstream including many functional programming paradigms like immutability,…

How to Motivate Yourself to Achieve Your Goals

Once you’ve set a goal or New Year’s Resolution, how do you find the motivation to achieve it? Dr. Richard Ryan, who co-developed the Self-Determination Theory, one of the leading theories of human motivation, shares research-backed tips to do just that. Dr. Ryan is also a Professor at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education […]
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