Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide • Hacker News Board

Re: Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide

#421

Post by doomjunky » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

pavs wrote: post #396

flukus wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is literally a handful of companies who can financially and technically pull it off at youtube-scale. Only a few companies that can do it centrally. Peer to Peer technology was doing it before youtube existed.

Youtube is anything but centralized, they literally pioneered distributed video content with their GGC nodes, with at least 10s of thousands of nodes all over the world. They may not be the first, but almost definitely the largest. I don't understand why you are mentioning peer to peer technology? What does that have to do with anything? Youtube is not a cute side project where your viewing experience depending on ho…

> I don't understand why you are mentioning peer to peer technology? What does that have to do with anything?

The super-seeding / swarming approach developed for the BitTorrent protocol is quite interesting. One original seeder just needs to upload to a few leechers. Then this leechers become seeders themselfs and start to upload to a next layer of leechers and so on. This approach scales exponentially meaning you can cover the whole internet in just a few steps. Further more you can start uploading yourself even before you have completed receiving the file.

E.g. if every node just has 10 uploading connections then you just need 8 steps to cover 100 million = 10^8 peers. Remember the traffic on the original seeder (and every other node) is just 10 uploading connections.

Re: Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide

#422

Post by doomjunky » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #58

pavs wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only things were so simple. This reminds me how not too long ago, how everyone was trying to make a clone of HN and Reddit within 24 hours in x programming language. It's one thing make a service for few 100 users, it's a different beast to serve millions of users. In case of Online Videos, it is not only extremely difficult, it still remains very expensive. There is literally a handful of companies who can financ…

I don't disagree. Consider that perhaps you can't serve videos online and expect it to be entirely free. Can you run your compute for free? No. Can you host your database for free? No. Why would serving videos be any different? (Let's ignore limited free tiers for this argument). The more popular the content, the cheaper per unit it'll be to serve (based on bandwidth/transit costs and how they scale, and that you mos…

Pure p2p networks scale by O(log n). This means if the popularity of your video scales with n then your infrastructure just scales with log(n). The idea is that leechers become seeders. So with every new layer of distribution the coverage increases exponentially.

Re: Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide

#423

Post by bordercases » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

notroot wrote: post #293

bordercases wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopoly of convenience and loyalty capture There's no good reason why, but that's why we try to regulate monopolies

There are a lot of good reasons why monopolies should be regulated.

I meant why Google should pay for hosting free stuff

Re: Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide

#424

Post by JackCh » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #358

JackCh wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who reward companies like Alphabet are the reason we don't have nice things.

You need a lesson in economy. By using an ad-blocker and not paying for a subscription you’re telling them that they should be continuing to serve ads and track users, while at the same time you’re not encouraging their competition, which ensures their continued monopoly on the market. Out of all possibilities, not paying for a subscription while at the same time blocking their ads, is the worst path you can take.

You need a lesson in common sense. Throwing more of your money at Alphabet is not going to make them a nicer company. You're deluding yourself if you honestly think that. You're in a wildly asymmetric relationship with a multi-billion dollar international corporation and you think you can win their favor by sucking up to them; it isn't hyperbole to compare this to Stockholm Syndrome.

Teach the general public to use adblockers, mpv/vlc, etc to encourage increasingly desperate responses from Alphabet. Teach people to use youtube-dl to exfiltrate data they care about, to eliminate leverage the corporation has over them. As Alphabet responds with increasing harshness, use that as further justification to get more people on your side. Every time their hand is forced and they screw over content creators even more, they lose that much more control over the situation. This form of accelerationism is a standard modern guerilla warfare tactic with proven effectiveness. This is how you fight them. Not by signing up to give them more money. No matter how much money you give them, you will never be friends with them.

Re: Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide

#425

Post by JackCh » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 7:21 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #357

Martus wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it look like they are starving to death there when in fact it's about generating MORE revenue every year despite the costs because this is what Wallstreet expects you to do.

That they aren’t “starving” or the amount of revenue they generate is irrelevant. What wallstreet expects or not is also irrelevant. If users refuse to pay for subscriptions and keep blocking ads for reasons that have nothing to do with privacy or security, pretty soon as-blockers will become illegal. It happened before with DRM, it can always happen again. At which point people will cry out in support of privacy or…

> "If users refuse to pay for subscriptions and keep blocking ads for reasons that have nothing to do with privacy or security, pretty soon as-blockers will become illegal."

When an embattled government tries to kill a single insurgent sniper by leveling an entire city block using artillery, which side gains from that? Provoking responses that are perceived as wildly disproportionate is an intermediate objective of insurgents.

Re: Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide

#426

Post by burnte » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 8:06 PM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #216

burnte wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that Blender started as proprietary software created by a Dutch company. The software was close source from its inception until 2002 when the parent company went bankrupt and the creator started a crowdfunding campaign to buy and open the source from the holding company's liquidation sale.

Yes, and then it was able to start slowly taking over the world. I see the value of a proprietary cash-fueled kick start, but it wasn't the driving factor in blender's adoption, and other projects show it's clearly not necessary in the general case.

I'm just pointing out it was originally proprietary and that's where it built a reputation that made it worth opening and supporting. Software doesn't know if it's proprietarily licensed or not. Great ideas are only GPL. OSS is great, but it doesn't mean proprietary software is bad or evil.

Re: Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide

#427

Post by optimuspaul » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 8:20 PM UTC

JackCh wrote: post #133

optimuspaul wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit of a stretch to call it a contract I think. Terms of service may in fact be a contact, but IANAL, but calling it a contract might imply that there are things to be gained on both sides. If a contract is no longer providing value for one of the contractees then it is fair, and should be provisions for such, to renegotiate or terminate the contract. I do agree that they are abusing their position, but I don'…

> "Are they being unreasonable? Maybe, but it's not my, or your, place to decide that." What a ridiculous statement. It's everybody's right and place to decide for themselves whether or not they think youtube is being reasonable.

Well, it's not my place because I don't put videos on Youtube and rarely if ever watch them. Sorry, I may have assumed too much. We also don't know all the details as to why they are doing this. We can only assume it is unreasonable. We shouldn't assume anything.

Re: Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide

#428

Post by e12e » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #291

e12e wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I'm against corporate power in general, and worried about Google in particular : I very much doubt that this is an editorial move from youtubr: it seems much more likely that this is automated monetization machinery run amok. I mean, we're talking about the company that's drowning its users in chat applications/protocols. That said, the i agree that archive.org or Wikimedia might be good ways to publish. S…

You don't seem to have read the link. There were humans in the loop.

Sure; a semi-automated monetization machinery run amok, then.

But the fact that sales drones at Google are handed broken procedures and ordered to chase forced monitization at cross-purposes of certain prominent users - still doesn't mean there's any editorializing working against the Blender foundation in order to further sketchup.

I'm sure Google management would be thrilled if they were able to organize half such a conspiracy to straighten out their own chat apps.

Re: Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide

#429

Post by rhizome » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 10:46 PM UTC

lrvick wrote: post #413

AsyncAwait wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are people upset when a service that is run by a for-profit entity decides to change how it runs? I don't know, maybe because it leads to destruction of valuable content, regardless of whether it is legally ok. The notion that just because something is legal, it can't be upsetting is absurd. What about if the government decided to use eminent domain to acquire your land? It would be legal, but probably still up…

Always expect for-profit organizations will take the most profitable path at your expense. Your choice is to try to avoid having anything that will get in their way or set up your life to not rely on their services. Recently Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and others are showing the dangers of for-profit data monopolies and are pushing many people to open federated alternatives like PeerTube, Mastodon, Riot.im etc. This i…

Your choice is to try to avoid having anything that will get in their way or set up your life to not rely on their services.

I'm not sure Anabaptism is really as clean a solution as you propose.

Re: Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide

#430

Post by faceplanted » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 12:40 AM UTC

sumanthvepa wrote: post #213

It seems to me that YouTube's business model is ad supported. They need to run ads to pay for infrastructure to support the service and make profit for themselves, since they are not charging the user. So a sufficiently large channel that does not permit ads will eat into their revenues.i.e. it becomes an expensive free rider. This, I guess, is the reason behind the decision. I suppose it makes sense. But I don't see…

The argument against that idea is that YouTube freely offers the choice to monetise or not monetise any video, if popular videos being hosted without monetisation is an issue for them then it's their duty to make it clear that clicking that button might mean having your entire channel destroyed without warning or explanation.

Which is frankly ridiculous anyway, if they want to change the rules for unmonetised videos, they should actually change the rules, have a setting on the button that says "if the video becomes popular enough, YouTube reserves the right to run our own advertising against the video" and just run ads.