I really wish there was an independent lightweight mesh network for data, unblockable by design. Of course we still will need a broadband for heavy lifting, but the idea of governments deciding what we can access and what not on a technical level (domains, IP ranges) seems ridiculous for me, connected since 1990s.
VLC media player banned in India
151–160 of 172 posts
Re: VLC media player banned in India
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
governments write their own checks and set their own pay rate. You can bet they are quite rich.
Actually, that’d be great. The most likely reason it got banned is because of corruption. One reason for corruption is that politicians aren’t paid well. What smart competent sane person would rationally choose to be a politician? Maybe if it paid competitively. I wonder if there is a study on the ROI?
The poor politicians got together and plotted against VLC. Now it's all making sense.
Re: VLC media player banned in India
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had an old laptop, on which VLC struggled with a video, but MPV worked fine. I like keep multiple of these critical applications around. Sometimes, for a use case, one works better than the other.
With old hardware, better use ffplay, to play a video direct from the command line with no overhead.
That's a good idea, thanks! I already use ffmpeg and ffprobe, so this will fit into my toolset nicely.
Re: VLC media player banned in India
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
governments write their own checks and set their own pay rate. You can bet they are quite rich.
Actually, that’d be great. The most likely reason it got banned is because of corruption. One reason for corruption is that politicians aren’t paid well. What smart competent sane person would rationally choose to be a politician? Maybe if it paid competitively. I wonder if there is a study on the ROI?
The tree-pruners in the major city near me make 150k a year. I'm guessing that's pocket change to those wacky astrologers. Didn't really mention anything about politicians.
Re: VLC media player banned in India
#155[deleted]
Re: VLC media player banned in India
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please watch my FOSDEM talk from 2020, it explains the similar effect in Russia: https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/sdnpof/ The most likely explanation is: the government does not want to block your website, it is collateral damage. They want to block something else, but there is no technical possibility to block that without also blocking your website. This also explains variation between ISPs: there is…
I hold a Class B ISP license. We get letters (not emails, physical letters)from Department of Telecommunication asking us to block http://www.example.com We don't bother with blocking http://example.com or its https cousin. In this case we have not received any letter for VLC
Do they not also ever request blocks on particular IP addresses? A lot of collateral damage happened due to blocking whole ranges from AWS and such when Russia was trying to ban Telegram.
Re: VLC media player banned in India
#157It is cute to see non-indians trying to guess the reason. We were like you once. It is an exercise in futility. Our government is run by monkeys. They are stubbornly uneducated about science and technology, at the same time pretending to know everything about it. How does our government take decisions? My best guess is they consult a successful team of astrologers.
> Our government is run by monkeys
except the fine print is decided by bureaucrats, and not politicians themselves. your bias against the current government is blinding your logic.
Re: VLC media player banned in India
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That surprised me because I thought VideoLAN was and is French. It is a French non-profit whose address is my parents place :)
When the project got this large, I'd say it's safer to use an actual business address before too late than a private one as any weird people may target your parents' house for no good reason.
Wayyy tooo late for that.
Re: VLC media player banned in India
#159President of VideoLAN here: we got banned since a few months, and we don’t know why. (According to my stats, it is since the 13 February 2022) . We’ve asked the Indian government and we got no answer. We probably did not ask the right place though. I wish I knew how to ask properly. The weirdest is that some ISP are blocking it and some are not. So why is that the case? Are some ISP not listening to the government? V…
Do you use Cloudflare? If yes, this could be the cause, but I'm not sure. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12091900
No, we don’t.
Re: VLC media player banned in India
#160It is cute to see non-indians trying to guess the reason. We were like you once. It is an exercise in futility. Our government is run by monkeys. They are stubbornly uneducated about science and technology, at the same time pretending to know everything about it. How does our government take decisions? My best guess is they consult a successful team of astrologers.
> Our government is run by monkeys except the fine print is decided by bureaucrats, and not politicians themselves. your bias against the current government is blinding your logic.
Have you encountered any Indian bureaucrats recently? They are so far detached from technology and science it's hilarious. But they are very smart (cunning) in imitating whatever the ruling government is doing. So if government is trigger-banning everything, bureaucracy will do the same (and double down in most cases) without ever questioning it.