YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos

#111

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 8:50 AM UTC

drdeadringer wrote: post #24

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #7

This is the consequence of monopolies. Before YouTube gobbled up the world there were great, niche video sites ran by fans of the coolest things. They are mostly gone now. It is sad. The web really used to be an adventure. I miss that part of the internet. You felt like you found these secret underground worlds where people were really into something. Now it’s different. Maybe what we have now it what is needed for c…

> Before YouTube gobbled up the world there were great, niche video sites ran by fans of the coolest things True Honest Question. What were these sights? I was a teenage in the 1990s. I seriously and literally do not know and now I want to.

I sincerely doubt there was much video distribution online prior to ~2005. Even YouTube's early growth was fairly modest.

US "broadband" (apparently: any connection speed >56.6kbps, mostly early T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps) crossed the 50% threshold in October, 2004.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0506/

Video quality and bitrates are tightly related. 240p video (320x240) requires 300-700 kbps for live streaming, well beyond the capabilities of modems. 360p is in the 700kbps - 1.5 Mbps range, now considered low-end DSL. 720p, a reasonable HD resolution (1280×720) runs at 2-4Mbps, and 4K is 15-25Mbps.

https://teradek.com/blogs/articles/what-is-the-optimal-bitra...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2017/12/10/you...

My own recollections are that live streaming video wasn't a commonly-encountered thing until the mid-2000s, that Netflix was still mailing (rather than streaming) video as of 2007, and adoption of that service took considerable time.

https://qz.com/887010/netflix-nflx-launched-streaming-video-...

As of the late 1990s, online audio was a relative rarity, and much of that RealAudio based, witness early archives of programming from NPR and other sources locked in inaccessible, and very low-quality, audio codecs.

Assertions of a pre-2004, let alone pre-1999, golden age of Internet Video are implausible.

Re: YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos

#112

Post by tiborsaas » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 8:53 AM UTC

herpderperator wrote: post #47

kipchak wrote: post #46

I hate how removed videos don't retain a title. It's one thing for a video to be taken down, it's another to see a mystery box taunting me from my favorites playlist. What forbidden knowledge (cat video) is forever lost to time?

Depending on how long ago it was removed, if you Google the YouTube video ID, you may find the title in the search results.

That's what I did, I managed to recover dozens of music titles from my favourite playlist.

Re: YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos

#113

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 8:53 AM UTC

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #7

This is the consequence of monopolies. Before YouTube gobbled up the world there were great, niche video sites ran by fans of the coolest things. They are mostly gone now. It is sad. The web really used to be an adventure. I miss that part of the internet. You felt like you found these secret underground worlds where people were really into something. Now it’s different. Maybe what we have now it what is needed for c…

Sorry, but having been there at the time, and looking at technical requirments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21256674), I'm calling bogus.

Online downloadable audio was barely tractable in 1999 or earlier, let alone streaming video. What was this golden age, what were the sites, and what was the usage?

Streaming video is almost wholly 2004 and later, generally years later.

Re: YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos

#114

Post by CapricornNoble » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 8:55 AM UTC

jkoberg wrote: post #49

otakucode wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does YT have a quantifiable monopoly it abuses in an economic sense? I really don't see how YouTube could be seen as anything but anticompetitive in many of its practices. Primarily, the fact that they have used and continue to use revenue driven by search from Google to maintain the tremendous infrastructure necessary to run YouTube. This means that anyone who wishes to compete with YouTube needs to be able to find…

The US government can't put MP4 files on a web server?

The Department of Defense does:

https://www.dvidshub.net/

Re: YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos

#115

Post by simonh » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 8:58 AM UTC

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #7

This is the consequence of monopolies. Before YouTube gobbled up the world there were great, niche video sites ran by fans of the coolest things. They are mostly gone now. It is sad. The web really used to be an adventure. I miss that part of the internet. You felt like you found these secret underground worlds where people were really into something. Now it’s different. Maybe what we have now it what is needed for c…

I see this sentiment mentioned often, but all the things we could do back in the day are not only still possible, they are actually still being done by people out there.

What has happened is that, whereas 10 years ago we would individually spend the time to track down these communities and niche sites, nowadays we can't be bothered and just go to Youtube or Facebook. That's on us though.

Fortunately, in my experience niche sites and communities are still thriving through social transmission, and the fact that so many more people are active online nowadays.

Re: YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos

#116

Post by wazoox » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 9:22 AM UTC

simonh wrote: post #115

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #7

This is the consequence of monopolies. Before YouTube gobbled up the world there were great, niche video sites ran by fans of the coolest things. They are mostly gone now. It is sad. The web really used to be an adventure. I miss that part of the internet. You felt like you found these secret underground worlds where people were really into something. Now it’s different. Maybe what we have now it what is needed for c…

I see this sentiment mentioned often, but all the things we could do back in the day are not only still possible, they are actually still being done by people out there. What has happened is that, whereas 10 years ago we would individually spend the time to track down these communities and niche sites, nowadays we can't be bothered and just go to Youtube or Facebook. That's on us though. Fortunately, in my experience…

> That's on us though.

I'd like people to stop harping on "individual responsibility". It's not "on us". We are social monkeys, we are not perfectly rational autonomous individuals. Monopolies are emerging from collective behaviour that can't be subsumed into the simple aggregation of random personal choices.

Re: YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos

#117

Post by StavrosK » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 9:24 AM UTC

simonh wrote: post #115

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #7

This is the consequence of monopolies. Before YouTube gobbled up the world there were great, niche video sites ran by fans of the coolest things. They are mostly gone now. It is sad. The web really used to be an adventure. I miss that part of the internet. You felt like you found these secret underground worlds where people were really into something. Now it’s different. Maybe what we have now it what is needed for c…

I see this sentiment mentioned often, but all the things we could do back in the day are not only still possible, they are actually still being done by people out there. What has happened is that, whereas 10 years ago we would individually spend the time to track down these communities and niche sites, nowadays we can't be bothered and just go to Youtube or Facebook. That's on us though. Fortunately, in my experience…

How would you track them down today? In the old days, you typed "knitting" into Lycos and you got this wonderfully weird site of someone for whom knitting was a passion, along with a webring full of similar sites.

Today, everything is hyper-optimized SEO for maximum ad views run by a huge faceless corporation. How do you discover anything good in that noise?

My only hope at this point is Neocities.

Re: YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos

#118

Post by sschueller » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 9:24 AM UTC

StudentStuff wrote: post #57

pjbk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which leads to their production becoming better and better, which leads to a better product, but less innovation. "Better" in the sense that they are more polished and edited, but unfortunately that means more filtered, targeted and biased. There is an intrinsic, authentic value in raw productions that gets lost or doesn't exist in the former.

Hence https://joinpeertube.org/en/ existing and growing. YouTube has demonetized & banned LGBTQ+ mentioning videos[1], and continues to tighten the noose around those that make it a viable platform. 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21110752

I wrote an Android client [1] for PeerTube in case anyone is interested. Help is welcome.

[1] https://github.com/sschueller/peertube-android

Re: YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos

#119

Post by At1C » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 9:25 AM UTC

Ask yourself who put alphabet and their sibling companies in charge of policing and censoring internet, the users have choice find alternatives. https://www.thetatoken.org/

Re: YouTube is taking down educational hacking videos

#120

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

FillardMillmore wrote: post #54

motohagiography wrote: post #39

I learned security from t-files, 8lgm, phrack, and bugtraq. The people who taught me learned it from mentorship. The only meaningful progress in security is by people who work against it. It's a craft subculture, and the real value of it is in securing the freedom of people to not be subjects of platforms. YouTube is lame for doing this, but it's a net positive for innovation. Let them have their walled suburb. Innov…

What, if any, advice would you offer someone who would like to begin learning about security today?

What is your (or your client's or firm's) risk model?

What is within control?

What is outside it?

What are the risks of both non-action and action.

Sean Gallagher's "Threaty McThreatface" model is actually among the better high-level approaches I've seen:

• Who am I, and what am I doing here?

• Who or what might try to mess with me, and how?

• How much can I stand to do about it?

• Rinse and repeat.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/how-i...