SoylentNews

I'm seeing this all over the place, but I simply don't get it:

Me: Mom, I want to have random item!

Mom: No, we have random item at home.

Random item at home:

And yes, it stops at that point.

Can anyone explain to me what this is supposed to tell me?

Once upon a time, screens were 4:3, video equipment produced 4:3 video, YouTube videos were 4:3, and all was well.

Then the industry said: Let there be 16:9. And there was 16:9. And the chaos began.

It began with 16:9 TVs which deformed 4:3 material to fit the 16:9 screen, and players that allowed to configure a 4:3 screen for output, but deformed 16:9 material to fit the 4:3 screen instead. But not only that, even TV stations did deform 4:3 material they used in 16:9 broadcasts (like old 4:3 recordings showed in new 16:9 news). It continued with pure 4:3 broadcasts no longer being broadcast in 4:3 (although still technically possible and understood perfectly by any 16:9 TV), but 16:9 with black bars left and right, which on a 4:3 TV causes a black frame around an image that is much smaller than necessary.

But at least those were professionals, so while their decisions were not always what you would wish, what they did was at least halfway sensible. But on YouTube, you'll find an even worse situation: 4:3 material converted from 16:9 to 4:3. What this results in is a square image surrounded by black bars left and right, and certainly again the ugly distortions which non-proportional rescaling brings.

In short, since the advent of 16:9, there are masses of terribly distorted videos. And strangely, I've not even seen a single comment about that terrible distortion (but maybe having a minimal sense for aesthetics is strongly correlated with having no desire to get an account with Google — which actually is the main reason why I didn't leave such a comment on such videos).

OK, granted, I no longer see any comments on YouTube, so I can't tell if it has changed (I guess it's related to Google+ integration). But I'd expect such comments to have been made early on anyway.

How to find the most useless page of SoylentNews:

From the dropdown selection button below the story (the one offering "Threaded", "Nested", etc. for comments) select "No Comments", then click "Change".

The option delivers what it promises: No comments. Also no story. Just the settings bar.

Note that this is not a critique (it's clearly just an artefact of how Slashcode works, and not harmful in any way). I just considered it amusing.

Just before, while moderating, I got this enormous error message:

Internal SAN check blew up checking moderation rights. Please let the powers that be know how and where you recieved this error Internal SAN check blew up checking moderation rights. Please let the powers that be know how and where you recieved this error Internal SAN check blew up checking moderation rights. Please let the powers that be know how and where you recieved this error Internal SAN check blew up checking moderation rights. Please let the powers that be know how and where you recieved this error Internal SAN check blew up checking moderation rights. Please let the powers that be know how and where you recieved this error Internal SAN check blew up checking moderation rights. Please let the powers that be know how and where you recieved this error Internal SAN check blew up checking moderation rights. Please let the powers that be know how and where you recieved this error Internal SAN check blew up checking moderation rights. Please let the powers that be know how and where you recieved this error

I have no idea where to properly report this, though. Thus I just put it here and hope that either the right person finds it, or someone who sees it can tell me where to report.

FWIW, apart from that message, everything seemed to be fine (including moderation, reduction of mod points, and no longer being able to moderate after using up my mod points).