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Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

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101–110 of 646 posts

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#101

I remember when QuickTime came out in 1991 and it was obvious to everyone that video should be copied, pasted and saved like any arbitrary data. It's absolutely insane to me how bad the user experience is with video nowadays, even video that's not encumbered by DRM or complex JavaScript clients.

1991 was the vibrant, exciting, crazy "adolescence" of the PC age and well into the period where it was cool to have a desktop PC and really learn about it.

Phones are dominant now and have passed the PC generation by - in number, not capability. The concept of copy/paste/save for arbitrary data lives on for the non-tech masses only in the form of screenshots and screen recording features.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#102

From https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/EJS it looks like deno is recommended for these reasons: > Notes > * Code is run with restricted permissions (e.g, no file system or network access) > * Supports downloading EJS script dependencies from npm (--remote-components ejs:npm).

It's fine for this project since google is probably not in the business of triggering exploits in yt-dlp users but please do not use deno sandboxing as a your main security measure to execute untrusted code. Runtime-level sandboxing is always very weak. Relying on OS-level sandboxing or VMs (firecracker & co) is the right way for this.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#103
post #27

More and more recently with youtube, they seem to be more and more confrontational with their users, from outright blocking adblockers, which has no bearing on youtube's service, to automatically scraping creators content for AI training and now anything API related. They're very much aware that there is no real competition and so they're taking full advantage of it. At the expense of the 'users experience' but these…

>outright blocking adblockers, which has no bearing on youtube's service The scale of data storage, transcoding compute, and bandwidth to run YouTube is staggering. I'm open to the idea that adblocking doesn't have much effect on a server just providing HTML and a few images, but YouTube's operating costs are (presumably, I haven't looked into it) staggering and absolutely incompatible with adblocking.

YouTube had a $10B Q3. I cannot imagine them spending $10B on servers and staff in three months.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#104
post #3

In ten years time YouTube will be entirely inaccessible from the browser as the iPad kids generation are used to doomscrolling the tablet app and Google feels confident enough to cut off the aging demographic.

i think a lot of millenials and older gen-z use youtube on browsers. It has more and more alternative competitors too, like bilibili in China.

Ooh thanks. If the 21st century is going to belong to China, then BiliBili, along with v2ex.com, is gonna need to get added to my doomscrolling itinerary.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#105
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube web app is so full of bugs it's almost unusable on a phone. Comments also disappear regularly on all platforms...

And the YouTube web interface is full of issues too. For example, livestreams had transient memory leaks for months already, thought to be related to their chat implementation. In the meanwhile, YouTube spends its effort on measures against yt-dlp, which don't actually stop yt-dlp. What the fuck is wrong with Google corporate as of late.

> livestreams had transient memory leaks for months already

maybe it's vibe coded nowadays

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#106
post #3

In ten years time YouTube will be entirely inaccessible from the browser as the iPad kids generation are used to doomscrolling the tablet app and Google feels confident enough to cut off the aging demographic.

They'll never leave money on the table like that. The older demographic are the only ones that can buy things.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have a cron job or something? i know it is probably trivial but eh

Popular self-hosted solution: https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist

Damn, one can really build an offline internet for themselves these days huh?

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#108

Perhaps a stupid question, but is there some reason I can't potentially fall back to recording my screen / audio in realtime and saving videos that way? yt-dlp is obviously far superior to this, but just thinking about what my fallback points are.

With browser's and hardware's support for DRM they could make it impossible if they want to. Basically the OS / recording software sees a blank screen. I was on live TV recently and wanted to keep a recording for myself, that wasn't just filming the screen with my phone. I first tried screen recording watching the show in my browser in their streaming service. Got a black video. Then I tried their phone app, got a bl…

I imagine there would be ways around this. I know from personal experience that Kazam screen recorder on Firefox on Ubuntu can record anything and everything, including YouTube as well as DRM content on Disney+ and Prime Video.

I bet that it Google really wanted to it could force Firefox in line, but I imagine that actually preventing screen recording would require compliance at the OS level too, and I don't think that even Google could demand changes like that to Linux. Best they could do is block Linux clients from YouTube, but user agent spoofing or emulation could probably circumvent that.

And even if Google does somehow manage to entirely block screen recording, we can always exploit the analog loophole.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#110
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are a digital hoarder. I have taken so many pics that I wouldn't even bother to look back that them (do we ever?) but Google memories is really a neat feature, it refreshes memories. I think you should run a similar service to refresh memory of your favourite videos like they are on speed dail.

I compulsively take pictures of the sky, same never to be looked at

Taking pictures is important to getting better. Be glad that each one doesn't cost $.30 in film like it would have in 1980 - not inflation adjusted (prices from memory so perhaps off a bit). That is just the cost of the film you used, if you want to look at the negative you have development costs, and even more costs to get a print. Today you don't have to worry about costs of a photo and so can take a lot of them without worry will it be good, if it is bad just learn from the mistake and throw it away.
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