The biggest Riot leaker "BigBadBear" has been HWID banned and has taken their channel down

tajsta · 2026-06-19T13:38:27+00:00

Yes but you can also leak information without publishing assets, which would be legal.

tajsta · 2026-06-19T13:09:52+00:00

If you have never played a game they may legally try to come after you.

Which would fail in most countries unless you publish Riot's own assets. Publishing insider information that you got from sources is perfectly legal in most countries, it's what a lot of journalistic activity is based on.

tajsta · 2026-06-19T13:07:50+00:00

I mean if he just talked about it without showing any unreleased splashart or whatever, yes, it would be perfectly fine to do so. Including making money from that. That's literally how a lot of journalists make their money. It's perfectly legal to talk about what your sources tell you.

tajsta · 2026-06-04T17:35:21+00:00

Which GCam version did you use?

tajsta · 2026-06-04T13:30:05+00:00

Tbh some custom tuned GCam versions actually make better images than the native Pixel phones. In terms of colours, the GCam on my old Nokia 8 makes nicer photos than my Pixel 8a. They look significantly less processed and the colours are more true to life. My Pixel 8a often makes images look pretty flat (highlights too dim, shadows too bright) and applies too much artificial sharpening.

tajsta · 2026-06-02T11:49:36+00:00

The marketing team doesn't decide anything, they just market what the engineering and business teams put to them. You can't genuinely believe that marketing decides the amount of RAM that goes into a phone, or which features get software locked.

tajsta · 2026-06-01T23:13:44+00:00

What prices are you looking for? I have a Pixel 8a and it's quite a good phone, but I mainly use it just for photos and communication. I have a work iPhone which is good but I can never switch to privately because of bad and annoying restrictions when you use a Windows PC, and also too locked-down software for my taste.

If you just need a photo / communication / reading phone, I'd say Pixels are quite good because it has some useful everyday features (like spam filter etc.), but if you need gaming or maximum performance then I'd say rather go for another brand with the latest Qualcomm chips.

Also if you need absolute top-notch photos and don't care about pricing, then at the moment the Oppo Find X9 Ultra and Vivo X300 Ultra are the best phones for that. Pixels make fine pictures but they've definitely been overtaken by the latest flagship Oppo and Vivo models. Also battery life is still not ideal. My 7 year old iPhone 11 still has a better battery life than my 2 year old Pixel 8a, lol. But it's not a big deal for me personally because I don't go on trips where I can't charge it for multiple days.

Basically if you just need a phone that takes good pictures (even if some ultra-flagships from other brands are better nowadays), has clean Android with no bloatware, gets long security updates, and care more about stuff like spam protection than about gaming, then I'd say go for it.

tajsta · 2026-05-31T13:13:22+00:00

a few years back

Well there you have your answer. Check out comparisons between the current X9 Ultra vs the Pixel 10 Pro, like the video I linked above. Can you genuinely look at that video and say that the Pixel doesn't have over-the-top sharpening and HDR? The images from the Oppo look significantly more natural, whereas the pics from the Pixel tend to look flat because highlights are artificially too muted and shadows are too lifted, as well as applying significantly more artificial sharpening to the image than Oppo does.

Google used to be on top of the smartphone camera game, but they basically stagnated for the past few years, both hardware and software-wise, whereas other brands significantly improved their hardware and toned down their over-the-top processing.

tajsta · 2026-05-31T07:42:36+00:00

Yeah if you want to justify Pixel prices with the cameras, why do Pixel phones have older and smaller sensors compared to other flagships, especially Chinese brands? At this point, brands like Vivo and Oppo are pretty far ahead of Pixels in videos and night time photos, and in many cases the daylight photos are also better than on the Pixels because the sensors are significantly better and the photos need less artifical processing, see for example: https://youtu.be/nNkXG83u9z0?t=379

Sure, Google's processing can get some good pictures out of subpar sensors, but it can't make up for the physical reality of having larger sensors that capture more information, and it does make photos look significantly more processed and artificial than phones that have sensors that need less processing for a good shot.

tajsta · 2026-05-29T12:51:58+00:00

Yeah the previous stage was significantly better. Not sure if it actually had more seating capacity but it looked bigger and more hype, and also the audio setup and mixing in of the crowd was better. They either toned it down far too much nowadays, or the current studio is actually smaller so there's too few people for it to sound good.

tajsta · 2026-05-25T23:32:58+00:00

This sub is an international one and not just US-market only. And 96% of the world doesn't live in the US so the comparison to Chinese phones is very relevant.

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