A short(ish) note about disclosure

I thought I'd better put one of these notes up again ...

And there's that too but I'll hopefully get some energy back over the weekend.

A topic which ended up being a bit hot on the internets this week which you may have missed is about disclosure. Basically, a couple of youtube people were saying they'd won some fairly valuable game skins on a website which I won't mention here (no advertising for scumbags).

This was really bad because they failed to put any disclosure in and there was a lot to put in :

They own the gambling website where they won the skins;
They rigged the winning of the skins;
And they're basically a pair of scumbags.

And because they're pulling this kind of fraud, it makes it worse for everyone else using the internet to publish stuff. I like a few of those people, I don't want them not producing the content I enjoy because they've been forced off the internet due to the actions of idiots.

I thought I'd better do my own disclosure note, so I can stick it over to the side somewhere in the links list. It gets me off the hook for any questions about why do I recommend the people I recommend.

First up - any opinions here are mine and mine alone. Ok, I may have borrowed a few from other people by listening to their arguments and coming round to their way of thinking. But that's part of keeping an open mind about things. Where that gets dodgy is where there is some kind of recompense to changing your opinion.

Like politicians with dodgy relationships with organisations like the NRA.

I don't like advertising and don't believe anyone visiting here should see it. Couple of reasons for that :

1 - third party advertising is hella dangerous. I would recommend you run an ad-blocker on most of the internet, except where you are a regular enough visitor to want to support the site you are visiting. Like I turn my ad-blocker off for Youtube and Twitch. The advertising is dangerous because Naughty People will legitimately buy advertising space and ... seed it with malware that infects your PC. Beware.
2 - I just don't like advertising and don't need the money. Sure, more money would be handy but I would want to have full editorial authority over what I write. One of the sites I look at occasionally has been ruined in my opinion due to being dominated by kit that is sent to them for them to look at. That stuff usually gets their Approved stamp. I don't trust their opinion any more.

So - monetisation. I haven't received any compensation for anything I've posted here. I buy all my own kit from places I trust, because I've been to them a fair bit or they've been recommended.

Advice on where to buy from - shop around. Always shop around. Sometimes places like PC World or Argos will surprise you in being better value than the online places. And they're more accessible. The AOC monitor I have my eyes on is £10 cheaper in PC World than Novatech. The Turtle Beach keyboard I got was available at Argos for similar prices than at Amazon.

So - do your research, the solution that is better for you will not be the same solution as everyone else.

Oh and the thing I've noticed most about advertising is that the more a product is pushed, the worse it actually is. Bad manufacturers (like Asus) will remain successful by attempting to sway the opinions by pure volume. I've added a warning note to the PC build post below this one because of having my older opinions about Asus confirmed by another person's continuing experiences with their boards. (She keeps getting knocked offline on streams and it's partly down to a shoddy implementation on the motherboard she has - I've seen that before from Asus).

I better wrap up !

I haven't taken any money for anything posted here. If the happy situation comes when someone legit does offer money for a hardware review and I can give an honest opinion, I'll put disclosure all the way through that post. But no freebies for me yet.

The opinions I give are based on what I experience, or are informed by what others experience. I'm a fairly lazy old soul, so I try to avoid trouble. If that means picking one hardware group over another, that's what I'll do. If I can get my bits and pieces from somewhere local instead of having to make time for deliveries - you betcha I'll be happy to spend a couple more £. The reason I quote Novatech so much is because they used to have a shop just down the road. Plus they're with Scan and Old-(Pre BT)-Dabs as being amongst the cheapest people on the internet for bits.

I was going to wrap wasn't I ?

No news from up norf, which is good. I'm tired but should improve over the weekend. Having the radio on snooze mode (where it turns off on its own after a while) seems to be helping me get to sleep. My outsides are still very fragile but are steadily improving. My insides hate me but they'll get over it. Mentally I'm pretty beat up but I'm really looking forward to something happening on Tuesday. It'll be awesome.

Ok.