travisalber

Net neutrality lede

An article I found recently, while from a… questionable source, actually had a pretty decent lede. It answers the who, what, when, and how. It leaves out the where and why because the where is irrelevant (it’s the whole internet) and the why is a much longer story than the lede can provide.

lede

I think this is a good lede because it is only two sentences on four lines, but you get the main point of net neutrality getting repealed soon. Now this isn’t a perfect lede, in fact I would say that it is rather far from one. The lede implies, at least to me, that ISPs and cable companies are malicious and instinctively going to take advantage of the situation, which is not completely true. At least they get the important information right.

Youtube breaks out new rules

Youtube is cracking down on creaters… again. Youtube is enforcing new policy changes on their platform that will deterimine who can upload what, and if it can be monetized or not. The new rules include some basic things like “don’t break community guidelines” and some rules that feel like they dont need to be said like “no hateful or hurtful comments, no graphic content, no nudity”

what it do

But why does Youtube need to do this in the first place? Because some creaters feel that they have unlimited freedom to upload whatever they want. The most recent and well known instance of this is Logan Paul. Who recently uploaded his controversial “sucide forest” video which featured a dead body.

y tho

After having his video removed and apologizing Logan Paul proceeded to upload a new video that included two instances of animal cruelty. Youtube responded by taking the new video down and demonetizing his channels so he can no longer make money on the platform. This is an unprecedented step in the right direction by Youtube because instances before this have generally created a blanket statment on the Youtube platform without the responsible creators being directly addressed. Leafyishere? New community guidelines. Pewdiepie? Adpocalypse… twice. But now, Logan Paul? Direct action against the responsible creator and a more hands on approach by Youtube. We will have to see what the future holds for the platform, but it is looking brighter that it has in the past.

Surprising cost of colleges in Michigan

So, as many of you know we recently had to do data analysis of the cost of certain colleges in Michigan. It came as a great surprise to me that the most expensive public four year college is not The University of Michigan. Because my family is a Michigan family I alway heard stories of the cost of attendance for Michigan, so I blindly assumed that The University of Michigan was the most expensive. But its not!

tuition

Some off-shoot of Ferris State is actually the most expensive school to attend. Looking at the cost per credit hour and the ridiculous requirement of owning a MacBook Pro it is not that surprising that Kendal College passes The University of Michigan. Other than Kendal beating out Michigan the rest of the table has nothing up its sleves. Michigan beats Michigan Tech and Michigan State, and they beat other smaller schools like Western and Central.

The Know

The news branch of Roosterteeth’s company may not be as well known as the gaming branch, but that doesn’t mean it is any less entertaining or enlightning. The Know, as stated, is Roosterteeth’s news branch reporting on anything in the gaming, electronic, and entertainment area. Acting as more of a news curator rather than a reporting organization they upload videos all week long to Roosterteeth’s website as well as their Youtube channel about the biggest stories in the nerd world.

Admittedly not the fastest network, they can sometimes be a day or two behind, they are extremely accurate with their reporting. They make sure to cover all angles of the stories they present. Though they are not a perfect source, they have fallen victim to the epidemic that seems to grip all Youtube uploads, they somtimes have clickbait videos. In a recent video they talk about the potential for Microsoft’s Xbox division to buy out the game publisher EA.

In that video I feel that they did a good job of summarizing the speculations everyone has about the two companies as well as explain why some deals would be plausable while others would not. Finally The Know also did a good job being entertaining in the video making jokes about EA and loot boxes as well as some of the dead game series from both compaines. Just like other news companies The Know benefits from entertaining news, however they may have an advantage in this department being a branch of Roosterteeth.

RAM prices on the rise

For my data story I would like to report on the rise in the price of RAM, specifically DDR3 and DDR4 RAM. A good data set to do this is found on PCpartpicker.com under their memory price trends. PC part picker is a website that tracks the prices of computer parts on multiple websites such as Amazon, B&H photo, and Newegg. The nice thing about this data is that it is broken up into several categories like 2×4’s and 2×8’s, like this graph of DDR4 3000 4×4 kits.

ddr4_3000_pricetrends

The memory price trend is fascinating to me because of the shortage of fast high capacity RAM and the inability for the manufacturers to keep up with demand as well as the obsoletion of DDR3 in recent months. These data sets could be shown next to the release dates of the processors that made DDR3 obsolete and the enormous jumps in price they caused. I could also report on how the companies that consume RAM far exceed the companies that manufacture RAM and how that lead to the inflation in price.