On June 29, 2021, I took the CompTIA PenTest+ certification beta exam (PT0-002) for $50 US. That exam went official this week and I found out my results. I failed the beta exam.
That I failed the beta exam didn’t surprise me.
I only had six weeks to study for a certification that I never heard about.
The Rolling Stones and Boston Dynamics reenacted the “Start Me Up” music video with the Spot robots. Some people may recall that “Start Me Up” was the them song that launched Windows 95 on August 24, 1995. Microsoft paid the Rolling Stones $3M US to license the song and perform at the launch event. This parody video recreates an ending that too many Windows users are well familiar with.
Mark Zuckerberg will announce at Facebook Connect that Facebook will become a “metaverse” company. That could be Facebook:
Changing its name to Metaverse
Creating a corporate holding company called Metaverse.
Creating a virtual world to replace the Internet called Metaverse.
Metaverse, however, wasn’t a new idea. Neal Stephenson coined the word for his science fiction novel, “Snow Crash,” in 1992. I started my tech career as an QA intern at Fujitsu’s WorldsAway in 1997. One of many “metaverse” worlds during the dial-up days of the early modern Internet.
I’ll explain what the 1990s Metaverse was and what the Facebook Metaverse could be.
On my YouTube channel, there are two types of videos that get copyright claims I can do nothing about.
Copyrighted music at public events
Videos I make on purpose with copyrighted music
A copyright claim allows a collection agency — a third-party working on behalf of a copyright owner — to collect ad revenues from videos with copyrighted music.
A third type of video that sometimes get copyright claims are the videos that I make with Creative Commons music. I always appeal to release the copyright claim on these videos.
Creative Commons is an irrevocable license. If a musician signs a label deal, their new licensing doesn’t affect my usage of the music under the Creative Commons license.
The relevant part of the license is this: “The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.”
When I cite that line in a appeal, the collection agency releases the copyright claim within hours or a few days.
A recent copyright claim on the behalf of Storyblocks took a bit more effort to resolve because they tried to assert their licensing over the Creative Commons licensing. That was unacceptable.
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I tweeted last month that I replaced the Cougar Minos X5 mouse with the Cougar Minos X2 mouse. The scroll wheel on the X5 became “twitchy” when cycling through inventory in FortNite. The last thing I want to pull out during a firefight is an unloaded weapon. The X2 was half the cost of the X5, similar in size, and didn’t have RGB. That created a controversy for some viewers of my YouTube channel. Why do I buy a $20 US mouse when I have a $300 keyboard on my desk?
William Shatner (Captain James T. Kirk of “Star Trek: TOS”), became the oldest person at 90 years old to go into space aboard the second human Blue Origin flight on Wednesday, 10/13/2021. This montage video features scenes from the flight and inside the capsule, and the song, “Rocket Man” by Elton John, that Shatner performed at the Science Fiction Film Awards on January 20, 1978.
YouTube cracked down on Gleam, a popular contest management service, in early 2019. Two dozen small content creators got community guideline warnings for having Gleam links in the description. Nobody cared about them. When JayzTwoCents got a warning for using Gleam for his giveaway, it became a real big deal. He could have avoided the warning if he had paid attention to YouTube policy changes. I’ll explain what happened then, what changed since then, and JayzTwoCents’s new giveaway.
