Today, the Kickstarter-funded project "Shadowrun Returns" announced... a modification of sorts to their original project. You see, they had originally promised DRM-free copies of their project as part of their Kickstarter rewards. The key phrase is "DRM-free": Many modern PC game stores - yes, including Steam, this is why people used to HATE Steam - have technologies that allow the owners of those game stores to remotely disable copies of games arbitrarily.

Rupert Murdoch's media empire is on the rampage again about a new tech startup called Aereo. Specifically, how Aereo is eating it's retransmission fees lunch; and how Fox (the affiliate network station, not Fox News Channel) will have to cease over-the-air broadcasts and go cable-only.

I've pushed SimKit (my 3D rendering code I've been working on) to git. It's a work-in-progress, and doesn't even have any renderers or material system code written yet. But it's designed to be a fairly good 3D engine for doing game development in C++. Maintaining this is the reason why I had no February 1GAM release, and why March will similarly be absent barring a miracle.

So let's talk about HTML5 - the much touted "open web" that kicks proprietary, insecure plugins like Flash, Java, or Silverlight to the curb. Specifically, it adds audio and video handling functionality to the browser specification so that you don't need to use Flash anymore. You just add a <video> tag and bam, you have a functioning video player in your browser. It almost makes handling video and audio in the browser as easy as handling images.

When I started seeing the hashtag "copyreform" trending on Twitter I was... slightly interested. Copyright laws are horribly broken and need to be cut down. Cut down to the point of terminal bleeding. I generally hold an incredibly skeptical view of modern copyright and patent laws - to the point where I think it would be fair to call myself an IP-Skeptic. I'll eludiate as to what that means in another rant.

Yesterday me and a friend (@Stranton on twitter) decided to play the Bitcoin currency arbitrage game. In it we discovered that the primary reason why there is such a wide gap between different exchanges' bid and ask prices is because they have absolutely asinine ways of transferring money between the two.

Yesterday, notoriously controversial (for no real reason) YouTube video producer Anita Sarkeesian released the first episode of her "Tropes vs. Women in Videogames" series. For those who don't remember, this was a series which was funded by Kickstarter and resulted in one of the largest Internet backlashes on record: "Shitstorm Picard"*, ranking a 10 on The Weather Channel's proprietary TROLL:CON circlejerk impact index.

Whenever a fan project is shut down by the company that actually owns the work, a lot of stupid misconceptions seem to start to float around regarding "intellectual property" law. I typically avoid this word if at all possible because it's a confusing term which tries to lump several laws together. The problem with confusing several laws together is that it results in stupid statements like "They have to protect their IP or they'll lose it, that's why they just took down 200 fan projects". Ignore the fact that out of the four things most commonly cited as "intellectual property", only trademarks and trade secrets (not relevant to 99% of fan project litigation) can be lost through inaction.

Non-commercial videogame developer Mane6 has reported that their current development project, "My Little Pony: Fighting is Magic", has been cancelled due to a cease & desist letter from Hasbro, the owner of the "My Little Pony" franchise. This is pretty much the end of the line for the project, as Hasbro shows no interest in allowing the fan project to continue in any form.

All copies of the Nintendo 3DS game "Fire Emblem: Awakening" have been rendered useless after SEGA of America filed a DMCA takedown request to Nintendo. The takedown request, claiming ownership over nonexistent videogame Shining Force 4 and "any videogame, media, or human utterance even remotely similar to it", was filed yesterday, causing all copies of the game to be replaced with a notice that "Fire Emblem: Awakening is currently unavailable due to a takedown request by SEGA of America, Inc.".