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Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views

astronaut.io

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Re: Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views

#81

Post by angry-hacker »

gk1 wrote: post #71
keyle wrote: post #63

This, really scared the crap out of me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqaGFV-s3Hs ? [Edit] Maybe I'm wrong and I hope I'm wrong.

That's a strange conclusion. What makes you think it is anything of that sort? The word on the handwritten sign beneath the date is "soon." Maybe they're recording their "before" body shape before they start a diet or physical regimen.

It's written in Cyrillic and the word скоро... It just says right now or today is and the date. Most likely some kind after before thing..

Re: Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views

#82

Post by freeflight »

CM30 wrote: post #64
dmix wrote: post #3

About 50% of the videos were by Chinese people. Interesting to think how Asian a random sampling of the earth's population would be. North America is only 7.6% of the global population but overwhelmingly dominate in popular media. Great site.

Not just popular media. The internet in general seems to assume being 'American' is the default and online communities seem to have a lot more American users than those from other regions (even compared to other places that also speak English). If you ever want proof... well, go through your YouTube subscriptions and ask yourself how many of the channels are by people from the US. For me the number is about 50-60%.

That's probably got more to do with you hanging out at "American places" due to a language barrier. Many countries that don't speak English have online platforms with vast communities of their own. There are massive social and video platforms in Asia/Europe you probably never heard of.

Russian/European version of Facebook is called "VKonakte". Chinese version of YouTube is called "YouKu", Chinese Facebook is called "Weibo". In those places you will barely find any American users or people that speak a lot of English.

Re: Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views

#83

Post by angry-hacker »

dmix wrote: post #3

About 50% of the videos were by Chinese people. Interesting to think how Asian a random sampling of the earth's population would be. North America is only 7.6% of the global population but overwhelmingly dominate in popular media. Great site.

What makes you think so? You just hang out where the rest of the Americans are too :)

Re: Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views

#84

Post by SuperPaintMan »

Did the same thing with XNXX's DB dump. Had my code scrape the new DB every 24h and present a tube-like interface for browsing. I removed everything with over 100 views and a few other filters.

Turns out you get a ton of revenge porn (with drunken tags and titles), badly tagged home videos and strangely tagged CP. Never got off localhost for obvious reasons and promptly deleted every bit of GreaseTV.

Re: Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views

#85

Post by wonga »

This is Andrew Wong (@wongavision), one of the creators of astronaut. I'm amazed this has appeared on HN on it's own, thanks KeatonDunsford! Reading these comments is heartwarming, as it appears like many of you are experiencing and feeling what James Thompson (@astrojams1) and I set out to make. The idea was to create a glimpse into the unedited world. The videos are current and to some extent unbiased and of the world. The lack of 'control' is by design -- sometimes you have to just sit and watch to really see whats out there.

As an embarassed engineer (i wasn't ready to launch! :D): apologies for this not working on mobile! i'm controlling a few youtube players to create this 'no spinner' experience for the videos, but haven't gotten it to work on mobile. I'm still figuring out what is the best way to do preserve the fluid feeling between videos on mobile browsers -- any suggestions are welcome!

I think one of you discovered this on your own: [spacebar] goes into 'theater' mode. I threw that in and started tearing up while watching. I hope you can experience the same. For those wondering, yes the feed is syncronized across everyone so you should be all seeing the same videos at the same time. The videos also are constantly updated, so when it's christmas time, you should start to see family dinners :)

I love all the feedback so far and the anecdotes, keep them coming!

Re: Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views

#87

Post by ohnotthatguy »

A puppy on it's back in a basket of flowers. A teenage asian girl singing the national anthem. A gymnast preparing to do a flatground set. Several Japanese men in a room full of pipes pointing around and asking questions. Two children sticking there tongues out at the camera and saying "Hi grandma!"

And then a cock fight... Like a real one.

Re: Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views

#88

Post by wonga »

astrocat wrote: post #7

PSA: Watch in an private/incognito tab/window. If you are currently logged into your google account, this WILL pollute your watched history: https://www.youtube.com/feed/history That said, I really do like the concept. It's literal reality TV. Very cool.

(creator here) thanks for the heads up! i had disabled my youtube history completely and didn't notice this...

Re: Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views

#89

Post by notgood »

lawrencegs wrote: post #77
hacker_9 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter they appear in your history?

Kind of. It matters for me because it will ruin my video recommendation list.

You can delete those from your history, somewhere in profile settings.

Re: Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views

#90

Post by garysieling »

mastazi wrote: post #58

I am increasingly at odds with the concept of curation. Youtube, Netflix, Google News, Facebook and many other web portals increasingly try to serve what "suits me" using sophisticated algorithms, but what if I don't want that? Every traveller knows that the best trips are those that you didn't really plan that much, which end up being an adventure. If you are driven by curiosity the unexpected is a blessing. For thi…

Totally agree. I'm trying to do something discovery oriented with https://www.findlectures.com - ideally to help find videos on topics you didn't know existed
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