Daemon Silverstein

Sorry, YouTube is not available to systems without a functioning camera

Actually, a fixed camera (on a laptop, for example). Because any webcam connected by cable can be moved, which means the algorithm cannot detect whether you are actually looking at the screen.

blares a loud siren

IIRC, it was a high-pitched sound, like a screeching cicada.

a Black Mirror episode where if you close your eyes, the ad stops playing

And a deafening high-pitched sound started to play, until the character opened his eyes to resume viewing the ads.

Or just… ditch Youtube and de-google the digital life.

I ditched Youtube many months ago. I really try to avoid, at all costs, to access Youtube videos, preferring Odysee, for example.

I guess they have no decentralized CDNs as YouTube does, but… paid streaming services still have their weaknesses (there certainly are tools that fetches content from there because of, e.g: entire Netflix movies/series became torrents without screen recording).

It still lasts because there’s no easy way YT can offer their own content without the video being available as a file stream (through CDNs at googlevideos subdomains). If they centralize everything to a single, controlled domain (so to allow things as one-time HTTPS request, better session checking and so on), they’d lost the capability of load balancing allowed by the decentralized nature of CDNs. YouTube downloaders (and, by extension, third-party YT frontends such as Invidious) exploit this CDN aspect to download the videos.

It’s common to see Invidious instances momentarily blocked. The blockage can’t last forever for two reasons: firstly, IPs (especially IPv4) changes due to how ISPs offer IPv4 addresses through CGNAT, so the instance IPv4 (generally domestic servers) will eventually change (often to a completely different IPv4 range) and YouTube won’t know that the new IP is a former “offender”. Secondly, as IPv4s works through CGNAT, Google can’t keep the bans forever because this IPv4 will be eventually rotated to another client from ISP that’s completely unrelated and unaware of how their IPv4 was a former address for a downloader. It’s like how Signal/WhatsApp/Telegram/Facebook/phone-required services can’t really keep a permanent ban for a specific prepaid number (especially on countries like Brazil, where ANATEL allows for phone number rotation when the mobile plan is cancelled), because the number will be potentially owned by another person with nothing to do with the former owner.

So, in summary, Google can either end with YouTube CDNs (ditching their load balancing), or they can try to implement an innovative way to keep load balancing while serving the request one-time only, or they won’t be able to do nothing but to perpetually catch themselves drying ice cubes.

yt-dlp is only affected when YT changes their algorithms (breaking yt-dlp data scrapping capabilities) or when it’s used frequently with the same IP address (leading to automatic IP blockage). If you’re using yt-dlp sporadically, it shouldn’t be affected.

Not exactly related to technology, but I wished for a LLM that could talk with me (and giving me valuable insights) about things like black magick, chaos magick, summoning practices and rituals involving literal “demons” (as in Goetia and demonolatry), as well as very dark poetry and enchants (texts involving very sensible elements symbolically and metaphorically, such as very deep gory goth). These “ethical boundaries” also affects how LLMs can talk about such topics, because LLM deem them as “dangerous topics” (especially Claude, a very sensitive LLM that even refuses to talk about Lilith).

Ah, got it. Thanks for the reply!

A sincere question: why they don’t place some relay/repeater for the robot’s signal so they could control it from anywhere in the world through internet (or even some very private wireless communication network, outside internet due to security concerns)? The fact that they have to switch personnel every 15 minutes is a sign that they’re doing this in situ, rather than remotely.

Drones with mobile network connectivity are already a thing, for example. If you consider that internet exposure is dangerous (connection could be hacked, etc), ham transceiver repeaters are also a thing, and you can even chain many of them across many kilometers. It’s called mesh network.

Isn’t a file browser needed for browsing the saved documents and spreadsheets?

Not to mention that office suites (such as WPS, OpenOffice and LibreOffice) will inevitably pop up a file browser when the “Open” or “Save” buttons/menu items are clicked.

Actively criticizing how both USSR and US secretly gave citizenship and hired nazi-fascists (and history is there to be checked) (therefore actively positioning myself against nazi-fascists and against everybody who “sits at a table with nazis and stays at the table”) is “carrying water for nazi-fascists”? WTH?!

Reeducation won’t revive nazi victims. USSR and US were no necromancers.

I’m not supporting conspiracy theories (they don’t even matter to me anymore), but people fiercely attacking conspiracy theories generally are unbeknownst to how some few conspiracy theories became facts (not every crazy-fetched theory, but a little few): back in 2012, I was aware of the existence of an annual meeting called “Bilderberg Meetings”. Around 2014, an official website popped up, finally listing matters and subjects being discussed at their secret meetings, as well as its attendees, but the group existed since 1954, so decades of talking about global matters behind closed doors. It took a journalist (now deceased) nicknamed as “Big Jim” to disclose the topic list, attendees, meeting dates (beginning and ending) and location (such as which 5-star hotel to be paid with taxpayers money), before the site finally became to disclose such things.

I remember being called “crazy” when I pointed to the fact that such meetings existed, now it’s simply normal and well-accepted (but it doesn’t take back the offenses I received that time). That’s OK for me, because I moved on. As I said, it doesn’t matter to me anymore, now I’m really numb to it all. There are worse things than rich people and politicians gathering behind closed doors, such as impending weather disasters and scorching temperatures due to the now irreversible climate change (in parts, some of the corporations that attended such meetings to be blamed, but not only them; if they were transparent about their discussions about climate change, maybe people opened their eyes earlier about how impending were the now climate disaster, uniting and charging companies and governments to earlier actions with the needed transparency).

TL;DR: For a fun, I tried the mentioned bot. I talked to it about the former secrecy of Bilderberg meeting (before 2014, when their official website got online).

He “agreed” but pointed on how “this level of privacy is not uncommon in high-level discussions” and regarding “media spotlight and pressure, which is a reason why the meetings are private”. I counter-argued by pointing out how the phrase “If you got nothing to hide, you got nothing to fear” does not only apply to “mortal citizens” but also to CEOs and politicians, but it insisted on how such meetings needs “discretion”.

One thing it pointed is valid, tho: “correlation doesn’t imply causation”. Indeed, the fact that such meetings were undisclosed doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re criminal or conspiratory. But does the same rule apply for citizens? The same rules should apply for both the “powerful” and the citizens.

As I said, time passes, really bad things happened so far (climate change, rise of bigotry and inflation worldwide, COVID-19 with seven million fatalities reported but up to 30 million estimated deceases including one of my uncles, etc) and I became really, really numb, so I don’t care anymore. Humanity (even the richest men) is deadwalking towards extinction, anyways. Unfortunately. Sorry for my sadness and numbness.

Indeed, but even hiring and giving citizenship for such people (nazi scientists, military and engineers), especially considering how they got their “knowledge” isn’t an “ok” thing. Neither for US’s Paperclip.

Both US and USSR secretly hired nazi personnel, such as scientists and engineers. Later, both operations were disclosed respectively as Operation Paperclip and Operation Osoaviakhim. USSR didn’t destroy nazi-fascism, they secretly incorporated it (that is, if I correctly understood the reference from the meme, maybe I’m needlessly “ranting”).

What about Operation Osoaviakhim?

Bots are like microplastics. No place on Earth is free from them anymore.

or they can keep using their old Windows 10 install without security updates.

Sure they can… It’s just a matter of clicking “Stay on Windows [old version] for now” on those ever-occurring popups (while Microsoft kindly offers this button to be clicked)

Simultaneously, Microsoft has been expanding their efforts so to require Windows users to upgrade to Windows 11, even those who own old machines that don’t have TPM 2.0, while those machines are prohibited to really upgrade to Windows 11, meaning that their owners would need to buy another PC/laptop. Several Windows users were using a cheat to install Windows 11 without TPM 2.0, but Microsoft has been patching it, so it’s going to be a no more. Users of Windows 10 will have two options: buy another PC or migrate to Linux. I’d bet Microsoft already knows the latter possibility. Several distros generally come with the option “dual-boot installation” as default, so there are many novel Linux users, migrating from Windows, that chose to keep Windows together with Linux (so to not lose files and configs they made on Windows). What if something broke Linux and these users that are trying to escape Windows are now forced to use Windows?