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One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

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Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On non-incognito I get a page full of 6 second twitch clips. On incognito I get a page full of 6 second soccer clips and Turkish music videos (I live in a partly Turkish-speaking country, in my whole life I have never clicked on a single Turkish video) Fingerprinting is used almost exclusively for anti-spam/anti-fraud. If a company wanted to use it for anything else they'd have to deal with a whole bunch of legal and…

Since Youtube fingerprints your device with WebGL[0], it builds a shadow profile tied to that device, so that even in incognito/private sessions, you will get recommended videos that you recently watched, despite the anecdotal claims of others that they don't encounter this. The only way to defeat that is to use an entirely separate device on a separate network that has a different fingerprint. [0] https://jonatron.g…

https://imgur.com/a/07XSabz

An experiment by me, I went into incognito mode and none of the recommended was what I usually get. I then fully watched a video that was recommended to me on my main account, and even after that, youtube failed to recognize me, instead, it only proceeded to recommend videos specifically in the category of the one video I had watched.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand Eh it doesn't work like that. Youtube is actually very good at reliably determining it's you who's in that private window and Youtube is even known to track you with WebGL fingerprinting tactics to determine it's the same device. Doing things like spoofing your IP and useragent and using private mode browsing doesn't work. (I still get recommendations…

I find that strange, I use Firefox as well, along with containers, ublock origin, and privacy badger (if those might make a difference) but my private browsing YouTube looks nothing like my non-private browsing youtube

Same. I've got uBlock and the whole kit and kaboodle and my private window YouTube experience is nothing like my signed in one in any way. If I knew it was about my add-ons I would have rephrased it, but it's too late.

My point still stands. If someone went to YouTube having never seen it before and they created an account, what they are introduced to is half mainstream drivel and half animal videos, reactions, viral videos, etc. Unless you are already interested in intellectual content, I doubt that most people are ever exposed to content that's... more meaningful. I'm not saying average Joe and Jane should be watching Lex Fridman, but it they at least knew that these kinds of conversations were taking place on social media then their perspective of the world might be different.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#253
post #207
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German 3D printing channels are the best. Whereas others will simply say "let's see if we can put sawdust in a resin print to make it stronger", German channels tend to ask "let's see if adding sawdust makes resin prints stronger".

Oh yeah, the niche channels are pretty good, but we don’t have personalities like Sam Harris, Joe Rogan etc. the closest that comes to mind is maiLab but she’s not exactly polarizing or unconventional.

Hey! Jumping in, because I'm learning German: do you have other suggestions appart from MaiLab?

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#254

Living in Shenzhen, it’s shocking how easy it is to go out and repair stuff. Living in Palo Alto, it’s frustrating how hard it is. I’m thinking maybe, just maybe, introducing repairability laws won’t solve the problem. I am perfectly happy upgrading the memory on my MacBook Air with a reflow air station rather than swapping out some dims if it means my laptop is half as thick and twice as rugged. I’m also just as hap…

I've watched my fair share of Strange Parts [1].

The reason why you can get any device fixed is the availability of parts, yes. But also all of the highly specialized tools available combined with the skill of people in there.

Even if someone in the US could get the exact same parts, they wouldn't be as able to fix the devices due to the lack of devices and necessary skills. This is also the reason why most electronics are made there, it's a staggering concentration of skilled electronics workers.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO8DQrSp5yEP937qNqTooOw

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#255

Sadly, you and I watch a different YouTube than probably 95% of people. Almost nobody I've talked to has heard of Lex or Louis, or Bret Weinstein, or Sean Carroll, and so forth. Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand. Even if the average person watched some of Louis Rossmann's videos on the right to repair, I just don't think the importance of the issue would compute with them. Almost nobody…

I associate general consumers who don’t repair things and instead purchase to replace with the poor. It is a matter of the ability to command of labor. Repairing is cheaper. The loss of the ability to do so is the loss of the ability to command labor. So yes, perhaps in 20 years when manufacturing practices are so common as to relinquish control from the purchaser everyone will be all the more poor, because the idea…

Huh? Mass production means that replacement is often cheaper than repair or one off crafting.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a factor is overestimating just how many people 'get into' YouTube culture. Only roughly 74% of American Adults use YouTube[0], and the average daily watch time is only 42 minutes[1], not much time to explore and watch videos outside of your own interests. Vsauce's videos are great (including the recent ones), but they're mostly a remnant of YouTube culture past, and 10-20 million views a video[2] is not a lo…

Ya, I’m a heavy YouTube watcher (a couple of hours a day maybe?). I’m aware of vsauce and clearly I retested in tech but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a full video. I mostly watch conference talks when it comes to tech videos.

For me, vsauce exists in the mental zone I have assigned to things that are clickbaity popular science. Sort of the same place as the "I fucking love science" network. Likewise, I've never actually seen a single video, so I suppose it's possible that I'm just inferring that it's bad on the basis of the fact that it's popular. I don't know that I've ever seen a really good Youtube channel with more than a few million subscribers: to be that popular, you have to paint with too broad a brush. Even 3Blue1Brown has fewer than 4 million.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#257
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that apple products is what he work on/specialize in, right? Or do you rather that Rossmann talk about what he doesn't know?

Also, Rossmann clearly views himself as a Right to Repair leader. Fair enough. But if you are going to be a leader of a broad movement, you have to be willing to speak about issues that plague broader computing, not laser-focus on one company when others are doing similar or even worse faux pas.

Have you been actually paying attention to the actual right to repair content? It is still relatively Apple heavy, because that's his business, but he's had medical device repair people on, and he's talked about the much broader scope of the issue basically every single time. I'm very confused by this criticism tbh.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#258
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting your speculative estimates? I just googled it and see numbers about a tenth of what you’re suggesting for 1.5M subscribers. It doesn’t seem probable at all that his channel is more lucrative. I also don’t understand why you emphasized “revenue” for the repair business, when the YT income is also revenue, or how you know what his YT channel expenses are. Care to elaborate?

There are a number of sources that put him in that league given his number of videos and engagement. As to why I emphasized revenue, the expense to run a YouTube channel from a little room is a world removed from running a repair business with 15 employees.

Please, do share a “number” of sources, that was my question: where are you getting the info you’re using to speculate? From my own sources (Google search), it seems like you might be exaggerating.

What is your point is about the YT revenue vs the repair revenue? Why do you assume they’re separate things? Maybe the YT channel is marketing for the repair business, and both operate as a single entity? Highly monetized YT channels frequently require a staff to maintain, to do filming and editing, writing and research, marketing and SEO, not to mention the time investment to produce a lot of content. How do you know what’s involved behind the scenes of this particular channel? Why are you certain the expenses are negligible and don’t involve employees? People just baselessly assuming YT vids are easy and cheap is one of the reasons so few people make money on YT, and so many people share myths about who’s getting lucky and by how much.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give us your best-of list then lad!

Steve Mould: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEIwxahdLz7bap-VDs9h35A Technology Connections: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q Verge Science: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxJFU9DgUhfr2J2bveCHkQ Mathologer: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1_uAIS3r8Vu6JjXWvastJg Sebastian Lague: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmtyQOKKmrMVaKuRXz02jbQ Captain Disillusion: https://www.youtube.com/channel/U…

Don't miss this one: Tech Ingredients - https://www.youtube.com/user/TechIngredients

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#260
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you would say that. Some critics on this thread have given pretty good reasons for why they "dislike" Rossman. while it may seem like some (not most) of those points are attacking Rossmans character, I don't see how some of his character doesn't have a direct impact on his arguments. If he always goes for clickbait titles, has a tendency to exaggerate, prefers to perpetually rant/glorify himself or l…

Bob says "2 plus 2 is 4" > Look, I think Bob is a smart person and knows a lot about math, but personally I don't like him. He's balding, he collects plastic folding chairs in his garage, and he has a Youtube channel with clickbaity titles. Why does that matter? He's right, `2 + 2 == 4`. Why are you posting personal attacks instead of debating his argument? It's impossible to have a productive discussion like that, a…

Reducing a complicated situation to a mathematical fact is basically strawman argument. If a an expert is talking about a complicated area with a lot of nuance and no concrete right answer, then that expert's credibility matters.
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