My Polar Sea Ice Page may soon be dysfunctional thanks to Trump

If Donald Trump goes on with his War on Truth, he will likely drain the source I tap with my page. I use data provided by the US National Snow & Ice Data Center and it is very likely that Trump will do anything he can to stop them from providing current data about the sea ice coverage. For the very simple reason that the plain data alone already clearly shows that the world's climate is going haywire. This is because the Arctic and Antarctic region is hit hardest by climate change in terms.

Copyright Claims vs. Hatsune Miku Youtube Videos

As you may know, I am a member of the German pirate party. An important reason for joining was that I disapprove a system where the mere claim (without the need for providing any evidence) that certain content infringes copyright is sufficient for its takedown. Not only does this approach collide with my view that guilty until proven guilty should be a universal principle not just for penal codes, it also makes the abusive use of false claims way to easy.

In the case of YouTube’s automated system things are even worse. Not only can false claims be made – they can made by anybody, not just by persons who are authorized by the copyright holder to do so. I am a huge fan of vocaloids in general and Hatsune Miku in particular and while I have an account at nicovideo (the site where most vocaloid music is uploaded), I prefer accessing them on youtube because there you can build a virtually infinite number of playlists.

I now learned that there seems to be a concerted action to have high-ranked Hatsune Miku videos removed from youtube by making false claims of copyright infringement which not only results in those videos being removed but also in accounts being closed due to such claims and the three strikes rule.

The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku from YouTube

This is incident is sad in may ways including:

• A means created for a just cause is abused for a hidous one (first and foremost copyright is not about making money but about empowering creators of content so that they have a say in how it is used – this is so central that German law does not even allow you to give up this right).
• Damage is done to the community because many Hatsune Miku songs usually are happy ones that brighten your day.
• As vocaloids allow every hobby composer to use vocals without having to paying quite a lot of money on a singer or having to find people willing to sing without payment, they allow talents that would otherwise have been lost to give a world-wide audience delight.

For more please visit Recent Copyright Claims Affecting Miku Youtube Videos at Vocaloidism. Please help spread the word about this attack on wonderful music created for what likely is the oldest reason to make music: the fun of making it and listening to it.

Fittingly, the song that you hear as BGM for the above video is The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku.

I wonder if the incident may have to do with the top position at Singers You'd Like to Perform at the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremonies

I can't has lolcats?

Do you love lolcats? If so, the following image is for you.

I has a sad tewdai

PIPA, SOPA and other FU-KYA ideas may mean that you will no longer be able to see any more lolcats.

The Day The LOLcats Died

For more see cheezburger’s This is Your Internet … after Congress passes new censorship laws. For tweets and the like there is a short URL you may like to use: http://j.mp/lifeaftersopa+

Padlock

Padlock brings back the padlock icon which will be shown when connecting successfully to a site using the https protocol. I find this tool useful because while I can understand the reasoning behind it, I find the new color-encoded information not too helpful.

ProxTube

ProxTube unblocks youtube videos. It is useful because in some countries like Germany YouTube videos are blocked for rather questionable reasons. Please do not abuse it for accessing videos of which you know that they are violating your local penal code.

Two questionable reasons for why videos are blocked in Germany:

1. The copyright holder possibly (in contrast to actually) does not allow the content to be  online.
2. The video contains symbols of unconstitutional organizations.

The latter is very annoying. In general, German laws outlaw the use of symbols of unconstitutional organization but not if they serve to further civil enlightenment, to avert unconstitutional aims, to promote art or science, research or teaching, reporting about current historical events or similar purposes.

However, I repeatedly had to circumvent youtube's blocking to watch videos that use original footage from the NS era to illustrate the terrible crimes committed by Nazi Germany. They were blocked due to the ubiquitous swastikas, not due to their message that simply put was: We must never let this happen again.

Some like it hot

The current prediction for climate change by 2100 is that we are heading for an increase in temperature of 6 Kelvin (6 degrees Celsius or 11 degrees Fahrenheit). And here are some short National Geographics videos outlining an increase in temperature of 1 through 6 Kelvin

Could Just One Degree Change the World?

2 Degrees Warmer: Ocean Life in Danger

3 Degrees Warmer: Heat Wave Fatalities

4 Degrees Warmer: Great Cities Wash Away

5 Degrees Warmer: Civilization Collapses

6 Degrees Warmer: Mass Extinction?

Strange Google+ sharing behavior

I only add people to my circles who already are on Google+. You can surely understand my surprise when while being about to share a link I was presented the option

☑ Also email 1 person not yet using Google+

1 person not yet using Google+

I beg your pardon? The person in question is not in my mail address book and supposedly is not yet using Google+ so one has to ask what has happened.

My first hypothesis was that Google messed up th message and that the option in fact should read

☑ Also email 1 person currently not using Google+

The obvious next step is verifying someone originally using Google+ has stopped doing so. Said, done.

Elvis has left the buidling

Initial hypothesis turned out to be right. I guess a tactical facepalm is appropriate.

YouTube meets German history, fails miserably

Believe it or not: YouTube recommended SS (Nazi) March songs because I have been listening to the national anthem of the strongly antifascist German Democratic Republic. Now this clearly is an epic fail.

Are you kidding, YouTube?

If you wonder about the brown area in the thumbnail: After consulting the German penal code I covered the SS logo that originally was present because it would have been legally too risky for me to leave them unaltered.

Censorship in Germany

I am quite pissed at the moment. You may recall that I recently wrote the blog entry »Video advertising German military« in which I embedded a youtube video that was put online by bundesregierung, the official youtube channel of the German government.

For several reasons I am currently adding text links pointing to the already posted videos and in this process noticed that the video has been made unavailable by making it private. Here is a backup copy someone made:

Die Bundeswehr online

I do not have an issue with people making videos private but I do have an issue with governments removing information for the only reason that it possibly sheds a negative light on them. Let’s see what wikipedia has to say about political censorship:

Political censorship exists when a government attempts to conceal, distort, or falsify information that its citizens receive by suppressing or crowding out political news that the public might receive through news outlets.

I’d call the youtube channel such an outlet and while the video is an advertisement for the Bundeswehr, it also transports information, namely that the government does not want the Bundeswehr to be the very last resort when having to defend the actual German territory (the purpose for which it was set up) but to take an active role wherever and whenever it is deemed necessary.

Regardless what I personally think about the message (I grew up when the GDR still existed and the shared hope at that time was that the Bundeswehr would never have go to war) it is unacceptable to first put the video online and then a) make it unavailable and b) do so by not altogether taking it offline but simply marking it private.

I am not pissed because they removed the video but because they only pretended to do so while in fact they left it online and only made sure it is not available for the masses. Here is what I wrote to them:

message to bundesregierung (youtube)

Translation: For what purpose has the Bundeswehr video with the ID neNdW5Qx5IM been later [after being put online] made private? Or has it been assumed that this event would go unnoticed?

Cosmic rays causing global warming

A video by potholer54 on fact (what a certain scientific article actually says) and fiction (what certain blogs report it says).

Are cosmic rays causing global warming?

Keith Olbermann on Michael Bloomberg

Actually he speaks of morons in general and why morons were the people who actually brought forward the USA and then picks Michael Bloomberg as a fine specimen of moronhood.

Keith Olbermann Special Comment On Michael Bloomberg

Video advertising German military

An advertisement for the German Bundeswehr.

Die Bundeswehr online
Video has been made private, investigating why
Fortunately there is a backup version

One thing is for certain: the version of the national anthem you hear in this video definitely does not fit in. Why didn’t they use a rock version like this one?

Deutsche Nationalhymne - Rockversion

Update on “Google+ and YouTube”: Issue has been fixed

The issue I reported in “Google+ and Youtube” has been fixed. You can again add YouTube videos to Google+ posts by simply pasting the URL.

Mad bull prevails over matador

In this video a mad bull prevails over a matador in a very funny manner. You could also say that the matador fails on an epic scale.

Diablo Loco - A Spanish Matador
Aniboom Animation by Stuart Hallock & Heath Grant

Google+ and YouTube

YouTube – like Google+ – is operated by Google. This however does not stop them from showing only limited compatibility. Here is an example:

I first tried to add the video on Google+ by just pasting the youtube URL and only got an annoying message. This is strange as it used to work until recently. You still can add videos but only in a more time-consuming way.

Update (2011-11-15, 2000 Zulu): The above issue no longer exists. Thank you, Google.