Monthly Archives: October 2020

wordpresser

Listening to Kelpe – "Ex-Aquarium"

Forget about conventional “power music”. This is it! Contained, yet systematically “growing”, not in beats-per-unit-of-time, nor in a linear fashion, but, overall, in stage size and/or “crafting” of a particular audio ambiance; effectively embracing, even invading of the listener’s attention, sometimes releasing after peaks.
Highly captivating music, combining instruments, as simple as single chords and basic drum plates, with laboriously thought, felt, loved!, musical environments.

Congratulations to “Kelpe”, Kel McKeown! This particular “Ex-Aquarium” (2008) album I am listening to, is a wonderful and intelligent creation. I am glad I found it – pay special attention to track #2, “Whirlwound”.

sw, wordpresser

youtube-dl – an absurd, sad situation

What follows is my briefest introduction to “copyright”, as I limitedly understand it, followed by my personal thoughts on yesterday’s RIIA initiated DMCA takedown of the project “youtube-dl” from github.com.

The full request for the takedown of “youtube-dl”, and many of its forks, is at
https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/10/2020-10-23-RIAA.md

Intro
“Copyright”, from an economic perspective, is a set of monopolies given to creators, to incentivize “creation”. The rational for these incentives is that creation is hard, failure-prone, and copying is relatively trivial.
However, if these monopolies were excessive, for example lasting “forever”, then creators, their heirs, or to whom the rights/monopolies were sold, would constitute a permanent bottleneck between the creation and the opportunity for society, as a whole, to benefit from it, with unrestricted freedom. Thus, the monopolies are time-limited – they have an expiration date.

There are also exceptions in the law. In the USA, “fair use” is the chapter to read, to understand exceptions. For example, showing a copyrighted video to a class of students, in an educational context, will likely be valid.
In Europe, exceptions are similar – international treaties signed by most countries have “harmonized” national copyright systems -, but include explicitly enunciated use-cases, that bypass the chance of litigation and will not require a judge to interpret particular situations as “fair use” or not, namely some learning acts at public libraries.

The creator alone has the exclusive rights to decide who/what can be done with the creation; if/how it can be modified, and if/how it can be distributed. Societies, in the so-called “Knowledge Economy” we are living in, will mostly progress fueled by better knowledge, so creators are the professionals that modern societies need and “Copyright” law must keep evolving to keep the proper balance between the creators’ rewards and the societal benefits.

The “DMCA” (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) is one of the many changes that Copyright law incorporated, in the USA. However, it is an ugly one, because until year 2000 clean reverse engineering practices would probably be legit, and since then, if for bypassing certain TPMs (Technology Protection Measures) that can “compromise” the creator, they might not be.

My thoughts
Clean reverse engineering practices usually are extraordinary innovations and should not be barred. The perverse effect of making certain TPM-defeating processes illegal, even when identified cleanly, with absolutely no access to the source intellectual property, is that the knowledge of the available bypasses will rest in the hands of the very few who do manage to find them. The chance for improvement is lost and asymmetries intensify, with solutions only available to few, definitely not available to the entire community, leaving most under the false believe that the current fruition model is the single possible one. This has fueled “bug bounty” programs, thus contributing to alternative reward systems.

These are very hard topics to discuss lightly, and this post sure is light. But, right now, I find it very negative, wrong on many levels – economical and intellectual -, damaging for all in the long-run, and intensely disrespectful for the thinkers, writers and coders involved, that RIIA is attacking years of hard labored source code developed by a community of intellectuals.

The “youtube-dl” source code has probably done nothing more than to promote the exact same artists that, allegedly, are being hurt by it. This is truly unfair. Have common sense! Some of the referenced artists themselves should take a good look at the mirror and try to assess if these tools are taking food out of their tables – what they are indirectly doing, is taking the creation pleasure out of the lives of innocents, who just enjoy creating software. Have some decency. Live and love, and let live and love.

I also tweeted about this:
https://twitter.com/my_dot_com/

gaming, racing, wordpresser

Prost’s 1988 McLaren F1 @Algarve = 01:27:594

This is a 01:27:594 lap around the Algarve track, racing Alain Prost’s 1988 F1 McLaren. As I write, the lap record is only 11 seconds faster, in a F1 2020 car.

From 2020-10-23 to 2020-10-25, the Formula 1 Championship is at a new racing circuit, where F1 cars have never raced before: the “Autódromo Internacional do Algarve”, in Portimão, Algarve, Portugal. F1 never officially raced, but did test there, in the past.

In a season so competitively poor and lacking dispute for the wins, the interest is beyond the podium. Tracks like Algarve’s are a very welcome addition to the calendar, not just because they are new, but mainly because they are different: in this case, the layout brings variance in the Z-axis. Cars go up and down, frequently! Corners are blinder and wider than usual, allowing and even inviting alternative trajectories, enabling a human-factor not so evident in other locations. I am enjoying it! It is unique and F1 needs variables that can contribute to less predictable race results.

I decided to try it myself, racing Alain Prost’s 1988 McLaren F1.
I have also upped my simulator’s resolution, from 2560×1600 to 3440×1440. The wider ratio is more immersive. I changed for productivity reasons, not expecting gaming benefits, but they are there.

Here is a video of a 01:27:594 (minutes:seconds:milliseconds) lap, using rFactor 2. Contrary to many, I never found the sound of this car’s Honda engine particularly enjoyable or spectacular. In-car, the noise is too regular, providing relatively poor acoustic queues for when to shift gears, up or down. Modern F1 cars literally beep the drivers when it is time to up-shift. This car also had no speed limiter and no driver-assists, and that is good.
I find the McLaren heavy, high down-force, trustable. That is its key positive attribute: it is predictable – after a short time, you know how it will behave, except when on the limit on old tires, when it becomes less clear how the tire wear will condition outcomes.
I dislike the slow gearbox and there is nothing the driver can do, to compensate it: the setup only allows different gear ratios.

Regarding the track itself, it is ever-changing in altitude, and challenging to the left-front tire under braking, because there are two right-corners which require heavy braking while not in a straight line.

The video has two segments: the first ~90 seconds are captured from in-car, exactly as seen, when playing. The second half is footage from the “TV” camera. Enjoy!