10 hilarious, brutally devious ways game developers punish pirates

The Sims 4 goes pixel-shaped

The Sims 4 was released this week, but some people who eagerly snatched up a copy soon found themselves perplexed by an apparent bug: The entire game eventually becameblurry and pixelated, with the effect beginning as a way to obscure nude Sims and blossoming out from there. Did a major error slip through EA's playtesting?

Nope. Those blurry pixels are intentional—and they appear only if you're using an illegitimate version of The Sims 4. Yes, EA is messing with game pirates.

This isn't the first time a developer's decided to get cute with its anti-piracy measures. In fact, some of the methods game makers have used over the years to thwart pirates have been downright insane. Here are some of the craziest, most hilarious examples.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2602876/10-hilarious-brutally-devious-ways-pc-game-developers-punish-pirates.html

READ MORE

Grid from Pinterest

Users can expect an almost infinite number of new items in their feed every time.





www.pinterest.com/leighhl/soup-recipes/

READ MORE

CSS Shadow Experiments

We use CSS box shadows to take a trip to the dark side of the moon, create a periodical table and make a radioactive love concoction. We even throw some CSS animations in there to add to the party.

Learn more »

READ MORE

This is a modal.

This is a modal.

Reveal makes these very easy to summon and dismiss. The close button is simple an anchor with a unicode character icon and a class of close-reveal-modal. Clicking anywhere outside the modal will also dismiss it.
×

READ MORE

Alibaba to let employees buy shares in IPO: WSJ

Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (IPO-BABA.N) will allow employees and people close to the company to buy shares in its forthcoming initial public offering, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The program, informally known as a "friends and family" plan, allows employees and people buy shares at the IPO price before it starts trading publicly. Normally, the IPO price is available only to professional investors and a few individual investors.

Such programs were a popular practice by U.S. companies during the 1999-2000 dot.com boom as a way to reward employees but has declined since then, the newspaper said. (http://on.wsj.com/1u6O1jz)

Alibaba is nearing the launch of its hotly anticipated offering, which could raise more than $20 billion, making it the biggest technology listing in the United States.

READ MORE

SCHEDULE PAGE

READ MORE

FIRST SHOT !

READ MORE

Avoid Landing Page Redirects

This rule triggers when PageSpeed Insights detects that you have more than one redirect from the given url to the final landing page.

Overview

Redirects trigger an additional HTTP request-response cycle and delay page rendering. In the best case, each redirect will add a single roundtrip (HTTP request-response), and in the worst it may result in multiple additional roundtrips to perform the DNS lookup, TCP handshake, and TLS negotiation in addition to the additional HTTP request-response cycle. As a result, you should minimize use of redirects to improve site performance.

Here are some examples of redirect patterns:

• example.com uses responsive web design, no redirects are needed - fast and optimal!
• example.com → m.example.com/home - multi-roundtrip penalty for mobile users.
• example.com → www.example.com → m.example.com - very slow mobile experience.

Recommendations

Learn the fundamentals of responsive design to deliver a great multi-device experience and eliminate unnecesary redirects.

If your site requires redirects, please see our Redirects and User-Agent Detection guidelines.

READ MORE