Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide - <AUTHOR> https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ <comment><USER2> So this seems to have happened because Youtube wants The Blender Foundation to agree to have their videos monetized.

I'm not clear if they want that because of bogus copyright claims, EU legislation etc, or just because they favour making money over not making money?

Edit: Either way looking for alternatives seems like a good idea.

<comment><USER3> I made a video about this in January, before YouTube strongarmed Blender. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ksbTTXHw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ksbTTXHw8)

I am pretty dismayed to be this right. I didn't think YT would be nearly this aggressive in service of the ideas I outlined.

Basically, they take a cut off that activity. In some cases they could take most of or all the money, which is a clear win for them, but even when they pay out they're earning revenue on the transaction. It's been their core business model, so the problems with advocating an adfree behavior become obvious.

I would add that this becomes more urgent if they're in crisis. Makes me wish I could get the master copies I'd uploaded back, but there's no chance of that.

Bottom line: shots fired. You must work with YouTube the way they want you to work with YouTube, or you'll get punished.

<comment><USER4> Eventually this is going to get them in trouble with the Sherman Antitrust Act.

From Wikipedia:

> "Innocent monopoly", or monopoly achieved solely by merit, is perfectly > legal, but acts by a monopolist to artificially preserve that status, or > nefarious dealings to create a monopoly, are not. The purpose of the Sherman > Act is not to protect competitors from harm from legitimately successful > businesses, nor to prevent businesses from gaining honest profits from > consumers, but rather to preserve a competitive marketplace to protect > consumers from abuses.

It's pretty clear that Google used their dominant position(s) in web search and web advertising to then dominate the user-generated video space. And now they're engaging in the type of abuse of customers that the Sherman Antitrust Act was designed to mitigate.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act)

<comment><USER5> > It's pretty clear that Google used their dominant position(s) in web search > and web advertising to then dominate the user-generated video space.

That's not particularly clear to me. YouTube was already pretty huge when Google bought them in 2006: according to Wikipedia, the fifth most popular website, albeit of a far smaller Web. Google, meanwhile, had their own video- uploading service, Google Video, which launched three months before YouTube but was not nearly as successful. Sure, there's no doubt that YouTube has benefitted massively from Google's resources in the decade since, including their willingness to let it run without a profit. But based on that history, it seems far from inevitable that Google would be the one to dominate video.

It also doesn't seem like YouTube's growth is all that directly linked to Google Search's monopoly status, other than in that the latter powered Google's profits (but there are plenty of sources of money in the world). Google Search's video results have always shown videos from all websites rather than being YouTube-specific; who knows what they might have done if there had been more serious competition, but there wasn't, so they don't have that particular blood on their hands. You could argue that Google used its Search leverage to promote Web videos in general, as opposed to some other form of media, but I don't know what other form would be or why it would be preferable to video. (Perhaps live video? There might be another universe in which justin.tv was successful early on, rather than waiting most of a decade for the unexpected explosion of Twitch. But I think that given the state of Internet connections at the time, it made more sense for YouTube to happen first.)

<comment><USER6> The internet today vs 12 years ago seems heavily biased towards video content. Different landscape, where Facebook and Google/YouTube now account for a majority of all internet traffic. If YouTube manipulates people, they'll lose support and maybe risk a lawsuit. I'm not very familiar with the specifics here, but YouTube is the dominant video platform. If Facebook cleaned up their design and embraced an open web with public links, they could probably destroy YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The comments here are more interesting than the article itself. Looks like the real issue was a UX snafu on YouTube's part that support had trouble resolving for too long. Let's hope YouTube does better in the future.

However, if you read the comments here, they paint a sinister portrait of YouTube that has nothing to do with Blender's issue. Some examples:

\- ads are required for big channels (false)

\- demonetization of content creators (unrelated)

\- anti-trust based on search or social networking (unrelated)

\- SketchUp is blocking YouTube videos (false)

We might as well change Hacker News from an article based format to a topic based format if everyone is just going to bring in their unrelated and false pet peeves to every discussion.

<comment><USER8> Blender were asked to sign a monetization agreement.

[https://torrentfreak.com/youtubes-piracy-filter-blocks- mit-c...](https://torrentfreak.com/youtubes-piracy-filter-blocks-mit-courses- blender-videos-and-more-180618/)

        "Update 2: Blender's Ton Roosendaal notes that YouTube wants the organization to sign a monetization agreement."

<comment><USER7> TFA has updates after this and this update turned out to be misinterpretation.

<comment><USER9> I am not seeing this update you are referring to, it looks like it stops after Update 2.

<comment><USER7> Not your article, the original article:

"Last night the Youtube Support team contacted Francesco Siddi by phone. As we understand it now it's a mix of coincidences, bad UIs, wrong error messages, ignorant support desk staff and our non-standard decision to not monetize a popular Youtube channel."

<comment><USER9> I see it now (sorry the comment was confusing to me).

To your original comment, Yes, in this case it was a "UX snafu". In the future, how many of those will actually be fixed? Will YouTube look at other instances for smaller ones where there won't be a social media backlash? Or will it be business as usual until YouTube gets enough bas PR again to manually fix it again and still nothing gets fixed?

The reason that the comments in Hacker News are what they are is because of much deeper issues between YouTube and content creators. YouTube and Google have had many customer support issues in the past, it seems that YouTube has burned a lot of good will with a lot of content creators, and the only way to truly get to them is via "social media shaming".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't believe this has been going on for three days. YouTube seems like it is actively sabotaging its independent content creator's channels. But in this case it's not just some random kid living with their parent's. MIT and Blender are both respectable orgs.

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty annoyed, I was planning on using a bunch of MITOCW video series to level up some on some computer science and information theory this summer and I hadn't even gotten through the first lecture of the first series on my list (6.001 with Sussman from 1986, classic and awesome) when this stopped me in my tracks.

I've been waiting patiently hoping it comes back, but at this point I feel like I'm going to have to use archive.org or download directly from them.

I was slowly warming up to the idea of paying for Red for commercial-less music and maybe checking out some other paid content, but this has been a bucket of cold water on that notion.

<comment><USER12> I know this has been posted before but youtube-dl is a godsend when it comes to archiving content. Considering how quickly youtube is taking down educational channels, it's prudent to create a backup just in case.

<comment><USER13> which other educational channels have youtube shut down?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Side note: PeerTube is part of the same federated network as Mastodon. You can follow Blender's PeerTube account from Mastodon by entering @firstname.lastname@example.com into the search bar and clicking follow on the result!

<comment><USER15> oh no, now I just have even more questions, what is mastodon?

<comment><USER16> A good replacement for Twitter. Where "good" means:

\- Decentralised. Anyone can run their own instance, but instances are federated so everyone on any instance can see your toots (Mastodon's tweets). So if you're paranoid about privacy or hate Nazi bootboys, you can run your own instance with complete control.

\- A nice progression of feeds from only people you follow; to all toots of your instance; to toots from all instances.

\- Polite discourse, at least on the mastodon.social instance which I belong to. Different instances have different rules, so maybe there is one for Nazi bootboys.

\- Open, so if you don't like the interface, you can make your own. The stock web interface is fine for me.

\- No ads!

\- Trump isn't on it.

If you enjoyed Twitter more in the past when real people tweeted about real things, Mastodon is definitely worth checking out.

<comment><USER17> Don't worry, either your Eternal September is coming, or it will never take off.

Unfortu steely I think there's no way around that at this point, as I suspect any growth curve that actually allows a group to keep a culture will never be growing fast enough for the vastajoriry of people to put up with for long enough for it to grow sizable enough. :/

<comment><USER17> Wow, I really butchered that last night while using my phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm curious what YouTube's real numbers are for YouTube profitability. Are these channels at such high subscriber rates that they're cutting into YouTube's ability to sustain themselves?

They recently demonetized all of the Salad Fingers videos, causing David Firth to remove all those videos from YouTube and only allowing them to Patreon subscribers via Vimeo.

I hope this pushes towards more independent, distributed toob sites. YouTube is simply too big a monolith.

<comment><USER19> I think that the single search box with consistent UX is the killer feature. Subscription is too, in another way. Alternatives need to address these; I believe federated video services / toobs are the only way to aim for the first. Subscriptions should be replaced with RSS.

<comment><USER20> I stopped using the YouTube site long ago. I only subscribe via Feedly/RSS and watch the videos I want directly with 99% no ads even without an adblocker via the embeded video player.

<comment><USER21> Where do the creators you follow host their videos?

<comment><USER22> Not op, but op may be using the Youtube Subscription RSS feed. Go to [https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager](https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager) and scroll to the bottom. You should see a section labeled "Export to RSS readers".

<comment><USER23> Oh wow, how have I never noticed that.

In fact there are individual channel feeds ([https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<>](https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<>)) and this is a wrapper around that. That's great!

I currently receive email notifications for subscriptions, but I've noticed I don't always get emails for all the uploads of some of those channels. A direct RSS feed should solve that problem too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From Google's point of view, the Blender Foundation are the bad guys. They host a very popular channel on their servers, using up a lot of bandwidth, storage, and resources, they don't pay a cent to the hosting provider, and on top of that, they actively try to prevent their content from paying up for itself. I don't see it as shocking that Google is forcing them to enable ads.

What I find surprising is that Google did not see this coming and thus A. never limited ad-free content to small channels in their ToS, and B. does not provide a paid hosting option.

<comment><USER25> Or doesn't at least C) clearly explain what the policy is. You want to require ads on channels over x views, make that your policy.

But these guys have priority support, and still go around for months with youtube without getting any answers, only to then have their whole channel killed without comment.

Why do so many tech companies have these Kafkaesque exception paths?

<comment><USER26> > Why do so many tech companies have these Kafkaesque exception paths?

Support doesn't scale. Better that a million users have a terrible experience than one user takes up staff time getting their problem fixed.

<comment><USER27> I don't understand if you truly believe that or are trying to be sarcastic (poorly).

<comment><USER28> Either way it's a comment that adds nothing constructive to the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So YouTube created an effective monopoly through social networking, and now is abusing that position.

Not surprising but disappointing. Hopefully people leave YouTube in droves and remind them that their position is not static.

First time hearing of PeerTube, but looks good so far.

<comment><USER30> > now is abusing that position

Offering to host your videos for free and display ads along them hardly seems like "abusing that position"...

<comment><USER29> Blocking your videos and holding them hostage until you agree to a new contract would be abuse, yes.

<comment><USER30> Wait, are you suggesting that it should be forced to continue to distribute your videos for free (to you) even if you don't agree to their terms of service?

<comment><USER29> No, I'm suggesting that you can't change a contract (ToS) after it's been accepted without consideration.

Blender already had an account and videos hosted on Youtube. Blender did not change their videos. YouTube changed their rules - and is holding Blender's videos hostage until they accept _NEW_ terms.

These aren't terms already part of Blender's contract - which is why Youtube is literally trying to force Blender to sign a new contract and refuses to execute their original ToS.

<comment><USER31> It's a bit of a stretch to call it a contract I think. Terms of service may in fact be a contact, but IANAL, but calling it a contract might imply that there are things to be gained on both sides. If a contract is no longer providing value for one of the contractees then it is fair, and should be provisions for such, to renegotiate or terminate the contract.

I do agree that they are abusing their position, but I don't agree that they shouldn't be allowed to act the way they are acting. Are they being unreasonable? Maybe, but it's not my, or your, place to decide that.

<comment><USER32> > _" Are they being unreasonable? Maybe, but it's not my, or your, place to > decide that."_

What a ridiculous statement. It's _everybody 's_ right and place to decide for themselves whether or not they think youtube is being reasonable.

<comment><USER31> Well, it's not my place because I don't put videos on Youtube and rarely if ever watch them. Sorry, I may have assumed too much. We also don't know all the details as to why they are doing this. We can only assume it is unreasonable. We shouldn't assume anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> PeerTube is awesome and needs more visibility. Coincidentally, they're having a fundraiser right now to be able to ship a 1.0, so if you like the idea of a federated, decentralized YouTube alternative that can also talk to other ActivityPub software like Mastodon etc. consider donating[1].

1 - [https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a- free...](https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and- federated-video-platform)

<comment><USER34> And you should also consider _contributing_!

It's Typescript on client and server.

[https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> 4 days now (since the 15th at least) and nothing out of YT. I realize that the portion of their viewers interested in MIT OCW or Blender is small, compared to the portion interested in FNAF and dental surgery on characters from Frozen... but it's also probably the portion they want to piss off least as an internet company.

ed: see below comment from OscarCunningham

<comment><USER36> This will barely register as a blip for YouTube. They'll survive and be more profitable afterwards.

<comment><USER32> The hope for many, perhaps a vain one, is that negatively impacting technical organizations (open source projects or MIT's ability to host computer science course videos) will have a disproportionate effect on the developers of youtube who on average might care about about these sort of organizations more than others. It could hurt youtube developer morale and/or their ability to recruit.

<comment><USER37> More basically, I only see their ads because there are non-ad videos that draw me to the site and give me a reasonable average impression of the combination of content and ads I see. Remove non-ad videos from YouTube and you would need to cut ads down by 50% to retain viewers like me.. the lower split of sharing on all content and/or lower viewer numbers will further dustress people with ads enabled on their content.. pushing them further into a death spiral of low profitability, poor content and inadequate incentives for the commercial content they apparently want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> PeerTube fundraiser: [https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a- free...](https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and- federated-video-platform)

<comment><USER39> For those not familiar with this fundraising platform, it appears to be legit. I asked them about it last month: [https://cybre.space/@Riley/100131447697085131](https://cybre.space/@Riley/100131447697085131)

<comment><USER34> It is indeed, and is quite popular in France for nonprofit or social projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It seems to me that YouTube's business model is ad supported. They need to run ads to pay for infrastructure to support the service and make profit for themselves, since they are not charging the user. So a sufficiently large channel that does not permit ads will eat into their revenues.i.e. it becomes an expensive free rider. This, I guess, is the reason behind the decision. I suppose it makes sense. But I don't see why they don't offer a paid option to entities like Blender who don't want ads?

<comment><USER41> Actually YouTube has started a patronage "Sponsorship" system, where users pay $5 a month to support a channel (and get "perks").

<comment><USER40> Yes. But this puts the burden on blender's viewers. That may not result in sufficient revenue. (Generally charging the viewer is not a winning revenue generation strategy.) The creator may more resources to pay and definitely more incentive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Blender is the epic example of free software slowly eventually eating the big proprietary guys' lunch. Volunteers spending countless hours writing software, because they were fed up with the very high pricing point of the alternatives (Maya, 3DS). Now hopefully they can kick off the eating of large internet incumbents like Youtube, maybe using some decentralized free video sharing like PeerTube. I love watching blender tutorials. I hope this creates more competition in this space (online video hosting).

<comment><USER43> Remember that Blender started as proprietary software created by a Dutch company. The software was close source from its inception until 2002 when the parent company went bankrupt and the creator started a crowdfunding campaign to buy and open the source from the holding company's liquidation sale.

<comment><USER44> Yes, and _then_ it was able to start slowly taking over the world. I see the value of a proprietary cash-fueled kick start, but it wasn't the driving factor in blender's adoption, and other projects show it's clearly not necessary in the general case.

<comment><USER43> I'm just pointing out it was originally proprietary and that's where it built a reputation that made it worth opening and supporting. Software doesn't know if it's proprietarily licensed or not. Great ideas are only GPL. OSS is great, but it doesn't mean proprietary software is bad or evil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Am I the only one who thinks it would be better if Blender uploaded directly to archive.org or archive.is? As much as it's interesting on a technical level, the fact that PeerTube is by nature decentralized and self-hosted is going to reduce Blender's overall visibility (which is what I think Alphabet/Google wants).

Whether Alphabet is still making any money off SketchUp, or whether one of the 3D companies is paying them something, I think this move was intentionally targeted on their part. And unfortunately, like most of the things that have happened ever since Google completely dropped the first word from "Don't Be Evil", I'm terrified that they're going to win.

<comment><USER46> What is terrifying about this? Why should Google pay for hosting and distributing your video online forever without making any money? How's that "evil"?

<comment><USER47> Because they allowed it until now and it's been years since.

Changing their policies now hurts non-profit organizations like the Blender Foundation and is in effect a _bait and switch_. Google is using at this point its monopoly to coerce their partners and users into accepting whatever the heck they want. Personally I don't understand them. This is clearly about a very popular channel that is bringing them eyeballs.

I also have no sympathy for their need to monetize — several years back we had a protest in my country against a gold mining company and the YouTube videos made by protesters where preceded by ads of the mining company, ads which were lying and that couldn't be reported for that.

Ads on YouTube are dangerous as they aren't just about products or services, but about social and political issues too and whomever has the bucks to pay wins more attention. As an author, having the ability to disable ads for certain videos is common sense.

\---

Also, Google, I would have registered for YouTube Red to pay cash for an ad free experience, but you haven't made it available in my country yet and I've been waiting for a long time.

<comment><USER45> >Also, Google, I would have registered for YouTube Red to pay cash for an ad free experience, but you haven't made it available in my country yet and I've been waiting for a long time.

Pay them for no ads? Nope, that's why I have Disconnect, Ghostery, uBlock Origin, and some userscripts enabled along with a fairly extensive HOSTS file.

<comment><USER47> Well, people like you are the reason for why we can't have nice things.

<comment><USER48> You make it look like they are starving to death there when in fact it's about generating MORE revenue every year despite the costs because this is what Wallstreet expects you to do.

<comment><USER47> That they aren't "starving" or the amount of revenue they generate is irrelevant. What wallstreet expects or not is also irrelevant.

If users refuse to pay for subscriptions and keep blocking ads for reasons that have nothing to do with privacy or security, pretty soon as-blockers will become illegal.

It happened before with DRM, it can always happen again. At which point people will cry out in support of privacy or security, but it will be too late, because the truth is the vast majority don't care about privacy or security.

So yeah, keep sticking it to the man.

<comment><USER48> No it's not irrevant what Wallstreet expects. Please don't be ignorant. This is not some church or club we're talking about.

> If users refuse to pay for subscriptions and keep blocking ads for reasons > that have nothing to do with privacy or security, pretty soon as-blockers > will become illegal.

We Ad-Blocking software users laughed about that already in the 90s. Think about it. Same goes for DRM. A giant waste of money.

The net grew from then on and it still is while computing power, web design, etc. got cheaper. So how do you explain it to yourself? Just think about it for a moment.

There is no other justification then the need to generate MORE revenue. This is why you get less for more.

The more google rapes here those who make the content for them, the essence of their existence, the more they threaten this part of their business because with every step away from centralized businesses like YouTube, they'll lose revenue or good. It won't come back. Nobody is coming back to Myspace or Facebook. In the end they just need to not be popular anymore and that doesn't take much or long those days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The next step will be that you won't be indexed by Google's web search engine if you don't have AdSense for Content ads. Why? Because the steam is going out of Google's ad business[1], and Google has no other business. They have added just about all of the advertising on their own pages they can get away with and they started by squeezing channels with fewer than 4k views a month, and now their squeezing channels that choose not to show ads.

Thinks about what this means in the big picture, Google _cannot get enough people showing ads on their videos_ to support people who choose not to show ads. What percentage of Youtube videos don't show ads? 5% ? 10%?

Don't hate me for it, but my prediction is that the next lifeline Google will reach for will be charging money for turn by turn directions in maps. They really need to find some way other than search ads to make money.

[1] This is hyperbole, I don't think they will deindex sites but I can see it affecting the page rank.

<comment><USER50> Is the charging for turn by turn directions also hyperbole? Because I don't see how that could happen. For one, taking something free and then charging for it generally doesn't really work. More importantly, though, the free competitors are too sophisticated, so the vast majority would just switch to them.

<comment><USER49> Not hyperbole. I really do think Google will start charging for that at some point in the next 5 years.

<comment><USER51> Good luck with that when Apple offer the same thing for free on iOS.

<comment><USER52> And FLOSS on OsmAnd

<comment><USER32> I've found that OsmAnd's directions are high quality, but it's UX needs some more TLC. It's something I can use because I found poking around at it somehow enjoyable, but it's not something I can yet recommend to people who aren't peculiar in that sense.

<comment><USER52> I'm not saying they are perfect, but I installed it on my parents' phone and the learning curve is not that steep. They are perfectly usable by mere muggles.

OsmAnd is being developed at a steady pace, and the UX is being improved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> It makes sense that YouTube would do this. I've been expecting YouTube to go after channels that are primarily supported by Patreon donations with full teeth and claws for awhile now, and still expect it is coming. Channels not running ads reduced YouTube to a free video hosting service and cuts them out of the revenue loop completely. Their main goal, as I see it, is to transition into a centralized and much more controlled content platform run much more like a traditional TV network used to be. This will enable them to achieve Eric Schmidt's stated goal of taking the reins of human culture to protect the poor from themselves (which he states, though not in those words, in his book 'The New Digital Age'). They also think it makes them more attractive to advertisers (although there is abundant proof now that no 'adpocalypse' ever occurred and YouTube has only grown as an advertising platform... they see this as 'in spite of' niche content being present, not 'because of').

So if there are large channels that have milquetoast content that is non- controversial (for now, it won't take long before all educational content beyond elementary school level is de facto controversial) but aren't monetized, that really leaves YouTube out in the cold. Paying the hosting costs AND they don't have any increased leverage to regulate those channels contents? Worst case scenario as far as they're concerned... but they also don't want that content hopping to a different platform. Google didn't run YouTube at a staggering loss for a decade for nothing, they did it to suppress competition in the video space and guarantee no one could afford to compete with them unless they also had a search engine advertising business that could prop up the titanic losses.

<comment><USER54> > I've been expecting YouTube to go after channels that are primarily > supported by Patreon donations with full teeth and claws for awhile now...

An alternative solution would be for youtube to compete with patreon, allow sponsorship directly and take a cut. They have in fact been testing this on select channels. On some big channels you see a "sponsor" button next to the "subscribe" button.

<comment><USER55> Yeah, but much like with live streaming, that ship has already left port. Twitch.tv (aka, Amazon) has like 80% of the market. YouTube's streaming has only recently been good enough to use.

Patreon's also got inertia for crowd funding and donations. Twitch has had paid subscriptions for a fairly long time and you _still_ see Twitch streamers talking about their Patreon. Twitch only recently added multi tier support, but their bits for donations has essentially killed PayPal (largely since PayPal's service isn't very good).

There are people throwing cash at the screen, and YouTube is taking the slow road and they're going to end up as far behind as IBM was in the 90s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I never thought I would see the day that Google removed Big Buck Bunny, the definitive copyleft short film, on copyright infringment grounds, against the actual creators, and there would actually be some argument over whether or not this was proper....

</comment><comment><USER57> Wait, am I reading this right? If you're a particularly popular channel, you're _required_ to monetize and YT will block you if you don't?

That's ridiculous, and it's totally shooting yourself in the foot. The vast majority of creators with many views _do_ want to monetize, YouTube is losing almost nothing by allowing people not to if they choose. They must be really be desparate for revenue over there.

<comment><USER58> If its not monetized, then YouTube has no way to make money off the views; no way to recoup the costs associated with hosting those videos. History, morality, and good will aside, its in their financial best interest to not allow videos which are not monetized.

<comment><USER59> Sure, but YouTube gives the option to not monetize your videos. You can't give your users and option and then be upset when some users pick that option.

If people picking that option is causing problems for your business, you take that option away.

<comment><USER60> But isn't that what YouTube was essentially trying to do here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Since I'm a paying YouTube Red customer, I filed a complaint.

I think if enough people write in, they'll change their mind.

<comment><USER62> Is this something you do via the YouTubeRed app or did you literally write a complaint and emailed it in? I would like to do the same.

<comment><USER63> I sent feedback from the YouTube app while on a blocked video. It gives you the options to contact them via chat, phone or email (the last one is composed all within the app, not in your email client).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> One reason why I will never, ever work at Google. They are a reprehensible company on so many levels.

</comment><comment><USER65> Why not switch to Vimeo, a well-established and stable video hosting platform? There's no advertising and no shenanigans of ads being forced on your video. The hosting is not free, but at least you have control over your videos and privacy issues.

Peertube, d.tube, and other federated/decentralized streaming service are really not that reliable, at least from my experience.

<comment><USER66> Vimeo only accepts content that it deems "artistic". Way back in 2008, a site called stage6 shut down, at the time it was the only streaming site that allowed 1080p videos and was the go to site for video game content creators to upload videos. After it shut down many of those users tried out vimeo since they were allowing 720p videos compared to youtube's 480p. Vimeo then deleted the videos and disallowed the content. For a period, things went back to direct downloads instead of streaming, but youtube increased quality and the content shifted over with it.

Edit: Apparently vimeo reversed its position in 2014. [https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload- rules](https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-rules)

<comment><USER67> Huh? The company I work for hosts all of its marketing videos on Vimeo. Are you sure about this?

<comment><USER66> I just looked it up, apparently they reversed their position in 2014.

[https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload- rules](https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-rules)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> And the next thing would be... let's think... block all gmail accounts for people who use adblock?

<comment><USER69> Actually, that's an interesting thought. I have a Gmail account I don't use much, but I almost never access it from the web. I only use it with a mail client. I never see any of the ads they would show if I accessed it through the web. I do wonder now if they'll cut it off. I've been trying to move away from using them at all anyway, so no loss if they do, but certainly an interesting idea.

<comment><USER70> Your emails are too valuable for them already...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> If you're interested in Blender, but come from a ${'insert your favorite creative tool'} background, and want less cognitive load (adaption to quirks that only exist within Blender), check out Bforartists! It's a fork of Blender with better, more familiar UX and behavior.

[https://www.bforartists.de/](https://www.bforartists.de/)

<comment><USER72> I didn't know this!

The Blender team is working on Blender 2.8 which will bring __a lot __of new features, including a lot of UI changes.

There was an article about some of these changes a while ago on their blog [1], and more recently a video showing a lot of these UI changes... available on the Blender Developers Youtube channel (how ironic!) [2].

[1] [https://code.blender.org/2018/04/tools-toolbar-and-tool- widg...](https://code.blender.org/2018/04/tools-toolbar-and-tool-widgets/)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufGqRP6Gc8&t=6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufGqRP6Gc8&t=6s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Correct me if I am wrong, but if content creators take their content off YouTube and use PeerTube, does this mean that there will be separate instances of PeerTube (e.g., video.blender.org) for each channel/creator? Another example could be if ol' Pewds decided to also do this - would his content be hosted on something like video.pewdiepie.org?

<comment><USER74> Each instance of peertube is like youtube. There can be many users and users can have many channels. You can choose which instance you want to upload to, since different instances will have different storage limits, user limits, content policies, content focus, moderation, site layout, etc. Or you can run your own instance if you want full control over your content and the site as a whole.

Different instances of peertube can follow each other (doesn't have to be mutual - think twitter follow) and essentially share content to improve discoverability (think twitter timeline showing content from all the instances you follow).

<comment><USER73> I see, thanks for the clarification.

When it came to searching for all content across all instances (in a way like how we can search all content on YouTube) is this something that would be possible?

<comment><USER75> According to [0]:

> The administrators of a PeerTube instance can follow each other. When your > PeerTube instance follows another PeerTube instance, you receive the videos > preview informations from this instance. This way, you can display the > videos available on your instance and on the instances you decided to > follow. So you keep control of the videos displayed on your PeerTube > instance!

[0] [https://joinpeertube.org/en/](https://joinpeertube.org/en/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> So I had a look at Peertube and had the friendly reminder

"The sharing system used by this video implies that some technical information about your system (such as a public IP address) can be accessed publicly."

Which is then expanded on in an about page:

"PeerTube uses the BitTorrent protocol to share bandwidth between users. It implies that your public IP address is stored in the public BitTorrent tracker of the video PeerTube instance as long as you're watching the video. If you want to keep your public IP address private, please use a VPN or Tor. "

Seems like a large privacy leak that can be exploited by anyone who signs up to the tracker.

Requiring a VPN or Tor just for privacy from other users seems like an excessive requirement.

<comment><USER77> Is there a reason I don't want to expose my public IP address? Every server I connect to knows my IP address.

Connecting to bittorrent would give you the following information:

* Key (IP) to connect to other data sources (but joins will be dirty, IP addresses change, people use multiple ip address, multiple people use the same ip address).

* ISP name

* Rough location (mine says I'm in a suburb about 20 miles away, when I'm actually in the city)

* Which files you have and are willing to share.

* Which files you are requesting.

There is no PII, and the only thing interesting would be to do location analysis or to try to cluster the files based on taste (people that watch movie A are likely to also watch movie B)

<comment><USER76> > Is there a reason I don't want to expose my public IP address?

Yes, I like my privacy.

> Every server I connect to knows my IP address.

And in this case it is every server _plus_ every peer which is a much larger number of people having this information.

> * Key (IP) to connect to other data sources (but joins will be dirty, IP > addresses change, people use multiple ip address, multiple people use the > same ip address).

Not always. IP addresses can be correlated with other data sources. IP Addresses changing depends on the ISP. People using multiple IP addresses isn't always the case. Multiple people using the same IP address is not always the case.

> There is no PII

IP addresses can be PII depending on who you talk to. e.g. [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/eu-dynamic- stati...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/eu-dynamic-static-ip- personal-data/)

This is just another chink in the armour of online privacy no matter how noble the intentions.

<comment><USER77> > People using multiple IP addresses isn't always the case. Multiple people > using the same IP address is not always the case.

I think sharing ip addresses, and using multiple ones, is probably the most common case in The United States.

Most households have multiple internet users and one ip addresses. Most people have a cellphone connected to the internet. A lot of people access the internet in locations like offices, school, and libraries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Blender is running their PeerTube test from a _European_ datacenter. I wonder what will happen to the legality of hosting a PeerTube site with public uploads if EU's upload filter law gets passed. Also I wonder how the GDPR will affect them (and anyone else hosting PeerTube in Europe or with EU users)...won't they need to get explicit consent from everyone for getting things like user IP address (so they can protect against spam and DDoS attacks) and won't they have a tough time ensuring everyone who uploads could delete their videos?

</comment><comment><USER78> Why has YouTube blocked their videos worldwide?

<comment><USER79> Looks like it's connected to the fact that they had the "Allow advertisements to be displayed alongside my videos" setting turned off. [https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks- blende...](https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender- videos-worldwide/)

<comment><USER80> Interesting. From the linked contract between Google and Blender:

" _4\. ADVERTISING_

" _4.1 Delivery, Ad Revenues, Payments, Reports._

" _Google will have the right, but not the obligation, to serve advertising in any and all Google Services, including but not limited to the display of ads on the Playback Pages and within the YouTube Video Player in conjunction with the display or playback of Provider Content and Monetized Content. Provider will receive 55% of Ad Revenues recognised by Google . If one or more Google content providers claim a portion of Monetized Content for monetization through the Content ID system, Provider will receive a pro rata share of the Ad Revenues that would otherwise be due, with such pro rata share to be determined by Google in its reasonable discretion . Recognized revenues do not include items listed in clause 4.3 or taxes. Payments to Provider for Ad Revenues will be sent by Google within approximately sixty (60) days after the end of any calendar month, provided that Provider's earned balance is $100 or more in the aggregate. When Provider's monthly earned balance is less than $100, there will be no payment and the balance will accumulate until it exceeds $100, at which time it will be paid to Provider in accordance with the preceding sentence. Any payments to Provider will be made in the manner that Google pays its partners. Google reserves the right to retain all other revenues derived from Google Services, including without limitation any revenues from ads that may appear on any search results pages. Within thirty (30) days of the end of each month, Google will provide Provider with usage reports in the form generally made available to partners at that time . Google may create an account for Provider to access information about payments owed to Provider. To ensure proper payment, Provider is responsible for providing and maintaining accurate contact and payment information associated with its account._ "

The interesting statement is the first sentence: "Google will have the right [...] to serve advertising in any and all Google Services, including but not limited to the display of ads on the Playback Pages and within the YouTube Video Player in conjunction with the display or playback of Provider Content and Monetized Content."

"Monitized Content", judging by other parts of the license, appears to be those videos that have "allow ads" checkbox; "Provider Content" are those without that check.

<comment><USER81> Yeah, I could see them demanding adding ads to the videos / pages. YouTube is a business and expecting them to host and stream videos worldwide for free is unrealistic. This seems like they would have the right to run ads anyway so I'm not sure why they would need to force them to select that option. (I can also see blenders desire to not have ads but I don't think youtube is at fault for not wanting to actively wanting to lose money on their videos. If that is really the problem it might be interesting to have youtube open a paid option for the cretors to pay for the service and not have any ads / user tracking stuff.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Okay, the Youtube/political angle of this is pretty horrendous and is deserving of discussion. But they pose a question about Peertube: how well does it hold?

In my limited testing from central San Francisco: it doesn't. Which makes me sad. Anybody have any insight into the pros/cons/ultimate performance/scalability limits for Peertube? Is the flakiness a function of immature technology or inviable technology?

<comment><USER83> For video serving encoding technology is good enough that we don't actually have to shovel that much data over the network. Latency is the biggest issue from what I understand.

Most of the amazing work google has done to make youtube fast is the magic behind google's omni-presence established world wide. Like they say in the post they have one datacenter in the EU serving this content. If they used AWS and spun up an instance serving content from every AWS region available the performance would be much better.

I was able to play the video but it lagged a bit to get started until I was able to find peers near me. This is likely a latency thing to the remote host in the EU.

PeerTube should scale much more easily than a conventional site because viewers, I assume, are peers of the content. More people looking at something means more people serving that content. The biggest con is that if you're viewing the video you're shoveling data to other viewers which, previously, you've likely not done.

I hope more people try things like this tech.

<comment><USER84> >If they used AWS and spun up an instance serving content from every AWS region available the performance would be much better.

This actually could be done by anyone since PeerTube uses WebTorrent. Good samaritans could run a webtorrent-hybrid or WebTorrent Desktop instance and help serve those videos from their home connection or personal server(s).

<comment><USER85> > help serve those videos from their home connection

While it's what we usually do when we uses BitTorrent and similar protocols, this is ignoring network topology, and somewhat inefficient. Of course, theoretically not the global bandwidth, but the pipes congestion.

Home connections are not connected to the internet, but to a service provider connected to the internet. Home are behind distribution trees connected to the internet graph.

Nothing forces ISPs to optimize routing flow inside their AS to distribute content. Could be at their root tree. How can we expect people with capped upload speed and high latency to IX servers, while some global CDNs are already closer to homes on ISPs regional level PoP?

And besides, traffic shaping, throttling, protocol blocking on private ISP infrastructure is now unregulated in some parts of the world. Massive outbound traffic could unbalance their (massively inbound) peering contracts, this is a threat.

The principles of free, open and decentralized internet do not necessarily apply to users of ISP infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> All Blender needs to do is to publish a few videos that offend everyone, and get demonetized. Problem solved!

</comment><comment><USER87> Does PeerTube provide a way to have any server other than the originating instance act as a tracker/seed? The readme diagrams make it seem like the long-term video hosting is still effectively centralized, with only metadata being federated.

<comment><USER88> It is planned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> just host your code on github, tutorials on youtube, chats on slack, forums on reddit...

</comment><comment><USER90> YouPHPtube could be a nice option for the Blender Foundation if they don't mind paying for their bandwidth usage. It is pretty easy to install (the hard way). I'm going to make a docker container for it and the encoder sometime. One advantage is that it can use amazon s3 storage and there are instructions for setting up live streaming. AFAIK, peer tube doesn't have a live stream capability (though I realize that the blender foundation may never use such a feature).

<comment><USER91> I was interested. Then I looked at github

> This Software must be used for Good, never Evil. It is expressly forbidden > to use YouPHPTube to build porn sites, violence, racism or anything else > that affects human integrity or denigrates the image of anyone.

Sigh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Wait, is it really solved now? I get the following error for many videos:

> This video contains content from BlenderFoundation. It is not available in > your country.

For example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kes2qmijy7w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kes2qmijy7w) and all other videos in "Blender Fundamentals" playlist.

I'm located in Sweden.

<comment><USER39> Same in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> I would love to buy a preinstalled peertube instance on a Raspberry Pi and plug it in somewhere around the house.

<comment><USER94> From [https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/...](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/doc/production.md)

> Please don't install PeerTube for production on a small device behind a low > bandwidth connection (example: a Raspberry PI behind your ADSL link) because > it could slow down the fediverse.

<comment><USER95> I am looking for a technical explanation.

Would this be because of fear of establishing a precedence where if a lot of people did that you'd have a situation of a lot of leechers but few seeders.

If thats the case, its the same situation where you have a lot of users watching videos on a server. The server can limit membership to protect itself I suppose but a personal instance would be better then a user that just watches but does not contribute.

I suppose somebody could make a RPI client that becomes a member to one or more instances and just downloads. Just let the servers protect themselves by limiting use here and there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> Direct link to blog post: [https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube- blocks-blende...](https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks- blender-videos-worldwide/)

</comment><comment><USER97> I've been meaning to cancel for a while. Just got around to it and it felt amazing.

</comment><comment><USER98> Blender videos are back: [https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009358627839381505](https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009358627839381505) Read about the chain of coincidences, bad UIs, wrong error messages, ignorant support desks and being non-standard here: [https://www.blender.org/media- exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...](https://www.blender.org/media- exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/)

</comment><comment><USER99> I've noticed a trend on reddit to link outside of YT for short clips. I hope the pace picks up, I get the impression that YT is actively hostile to a lot of content

</comment><comment><USER100> One of the huge problems with YouTube etc is the centralised nature means normal methods of telling good from bad are limited.

Recently the Peppa Pig shock videos thread started up again. As a parent it does worry me - but if we had to visit "grot-peppa-porn-1234.com" before viewing the video instead of choosing "bbc.com" I think managing the problem would be easier.

So, peertube is nice. Perhaps it's not the right solution still?

</comment><comment><USER101> Excellent performance on all videos but one (Elephants Dream). That video hangs forever strangely reporting a total length of 10:50:04 in the lower left corner, that is, over 10 hours which is of course incorrect. Maybe a problem during upload? All other videos start immediately even in full HD; so far I've watched a couple in their entirety with no glitches at all.

</comment><comment><USER102> Reminder that PeerTube is doing a crowdfunding to develop the project further. Available at [https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a- free...](https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and- federated-video-platform/)

</comment><comment><USER103> The most shocking thing to me is that YouTube didnt't have the presience to handle Blender with better care..

</comment><comment><USER104> You know, the value proposition of YouTube Red/Premium (extra features in the Android app, no ads on any device) is just starting to blossom as YouTube alienates a major portion of their most productive creators, in an apparent bid to build yet another TV channel nobody wants to watch or pay for.

</comment><comment><USER105> Does this have anything to do with Google removing their "Don't be evil" trademark? Maybe huh?

</comment><comment><USER106> Wow this really cool! Never saw PeerTube before. It's UI is far away better than Youtube!

</comment><comment><USER107> [https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/21/an-offer-creators-cant- ref...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/21/an-offer-creators-cant-refuse/)

</comment><comment><USER108> PeerTube is using WebTorrent for videos. This means user's IPs are exposed to other users. Wouldn't it be possible to abuse this to track others by associating IPs with types of videos/content viewed?

</comment><comment><USER109> YOUTUBE STOP PAYING MILLIONS OF CREATORS WITH SMALL INCOME BY THE FACE, BY THE FACE. WITH YOUR CHANGES NOW ADD METHODS OF PAYMENT, AND NOW YOU WANT TO REDUCE CHARGES.

Well if that is not to take advantage of the user. What is it?

</comment><comment><USER110> They should publish everything on IPFS too, maybe even peertube should support IPFS.

</comment><comment><USER111> Great. Just when my daughter has installed Blender to learn 3D modelling.

<comment><USER112> As someone who recently started learning Blender I recommend the YouTube channel Blender Guru. They guy makes great tutorials for both beginners and more advanced users.

<comment><USER113> I will second Blender Guru as an excellent resource! (Might want to increase the playback speed though--his videos take a while...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> I can't wait for a real competitor to YouTube to pop up.

</comment><comment><USER115> Cool.

</comment><comment><USER116> Influencers MUST CO-OPERATE!

</comment><comment><USER117> Url changed from [https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009077941676986368](https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009077941676986368), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER118> They should just seed a nice torrent for all their videos.

</comment><comment><USER119>
      :-/

This PeerTube-based Blender's webpage NOT working in _Links2_ [0] (or any other browser without JavaScript) and _Pale Moon_ [1,2].

[0] [https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009218500383080449](https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009218500383080449)

[1] [https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009208842494906368](https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009208842494906368)

[2] [https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/675](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/675)

<comment><USER120> Uhh... it's a streaming _video_ site. It's not going to be viewable in a terminal-based browser, regardless of whether it uses JS or not.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Run Code Snippets in Any Language Inside Your Blog - <AUTHOR> https://tech.io/blog/runnable-code-snippets/ <comment><USER2> > Our platform uses Docker images to run the code

Hopefully you've already thought this through and you left out all of the copious complex security details of the sandboxing out of this announcement.

But just in case you haven't:

\- containers don't provide the best sandboxing on their own

\- if I get sufficient privilege in your container, I can read/write directly to the device nodes inside the container to impact the host

\- you should also fear cryptocurrency miners burning your cycles

But, kudos to you -- this looks like a really neat feature. A quick skim of your homepage seems to suggest that sandboxing should be core to your product's success, so I'll just hope for the best. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I _love_ this, but I worry about longevity -- if we convert all our code snippets to this, and then this dies, all the older blog posts become useless. You'd be surprised how many reads even 5+ year old blog posts can get.

<comment><USER4> One of the nice things about the way we do things with RunKit embeds ([https://runkit.com/docs/embed](https://runkit.com/docs/embed)) is that the code lives in your site, not on ours. The API generates the embed the same way something like highlight.js generates syntax-colored code on your site. That means if we're ever down, your site gracefully degrades to a not-runnable snippet, as opposed to merely disappearing like this seems to or with embedded gists.

<comment><USER5> RunKit is awesome, highly recommend it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given that every OS, even OpenBSD is frequently vulnerable to privilege escalation exploits, it always makes me nervous to run someone else's code.

</comment><comment><USER7> repl.it has had this capability for a while, although the embedded environment can be a little heavy.

[https://repl.it/site/docs/embed](https://repl.it/site/docs/embed)

</comment><comment><USER8> The code running part seems to have been hugged to death, but I like the idea. Any chance the snippets could be made to run locally, either on my own server, or better yet within the user's browser itself?

<comment><USER9> Well, there is [http://code.runnable.com/](http://code.runnable.com/) which does something similar. I don't remember if it outputted a dockerfile, but I do know it runs everything inside docker. I used to work at the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How would one build something like this securely and ensure fairness to all those who wish to execute (avoid DOS)?

Surely there is more to it than just running the code in a Docker container, right?

</comment><comment><USER11> Edit: I skimmed the article but I missed part. Apologies.

<comment><USER12> Did you read the linked article?

> Our platform uses Docker images to run the code, so you can use code > snippets in virtually any technology. _A lot of contributors have already > made the most of our technology and have crafted playgrounds of impressive > quality._

Emphasis added by me.

<comment><USER11> I did read that part but I also went to the website and tried the service and could only find out how to do it via the pre-made templates.</comment></comment></comment>


You might not need a WebSocket - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fanout.io/2014/06/24/you-might-not-need-a-websocket/ <comment><USER2> I live in Africa.

Websockets _suck_ here. BGP routers here flap very often, nuking TCP connections because hey, power cuts. Guess what happens?

Tip: If you're "out to change the world", make sure you can turn your wifi card every 30 seconds and still get a decent-ish experience (yes, long-polling HTTP works, so does good old timer-based polling).

<comment><USER3> Indeed. These days, you have to expect users will wander out of their wi-fi range or have crappy mobile connections. Whenever I ride the train with my 4G tether, my TCP sockets die every few miles.

I lose ssh and my websockets, but long-polling apps keep working. Kind of ridiculous, but that's the world we live in.

Making your websockets resilient means pinging and aggressive reconnecting.

<comment><USER4> It would be nice if you could drop the http overhead for long-polling though, which is the main reason I use websockets.

<comment><USER2> I'm fine with sending a couple of extra kb if that means I actually get an answer :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Long-polling gets a bad rap.

Yes it does, but not for the reasons you mentioned. The main objection against long-polling in the olden days was that it would spin up a new server process every time, leading to server overload. Websockets solved this by allowing a single server to handle multiple connections on the same socket.

However, these days that is arguably not the case anymore. I think most servers don't make a new process for every request anymore, but I could be wrong. Am I wrong?

Regardless, long-polling has left a sour taste in people's mouths and now they've moved on.

But I agree, websockets are overkill for most cases and I have personally never found them to be a very reliable piece of technology. They're super fragile and finnicky and I never liked working with them.

<comment><USER6> >> most servers don't make a new process for every request anymore

That's correct. Most designs use either a prefork model (e.g. Apache) or an asynchronous event-driven model (e.g. Nginx). With prefork, a number of worker threads or processes are created on start up, and each services one request at a time. In the asynchronous model, a smaller number of (typically single- threaded) processes are created on start up, and each services one event at a time. An event could be an incoming request, a database query returning, etc. In either model, thread/process creation typically happens entirely on start up.

<comment><USER7> Side-note: Apache 2.4 finally has an event-driven mpm. A little late, as nginx rules the web now, but it's still nice to see they finally realized their style didn't scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Justin, this is awesome! The overhead of websocket is also surprising when all layers are considered including TCP Frames [http://tavendo.com/blog/post/dissecting-websocket- overhead/](http://tavendo.com/blog/post/dissecting-websocket-overhead/)

<comment><USER3> Interesting! I'm surprised that browsers wouldn't batch up many outbound messages into single TCP frames. The server behaves more the way I would expect.

That reminds me of a related point: The number of TCP frames can be considered more important than the number of bytes-per-frame when it comes to network performance. Most message exchanges, whether over WebSocket or HTTP, will occupy a comparable number of TCP frames, even if HTTP uses more bytes for the headers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you are interested in Server-Sent-Events, I made a small library a while ago that may be helpful: [https://github.com/boppreh/server-sent- events](https://github.com/boppreh/server-sent-events)

</comment><comment><USER10> Some use cases for applying websocket in finance/banking: a) near real time quotes b)order fill notifications c)miscellaneous alerts generated by background(regulatory monitoring) tasks.

We also support long polling etc. but websocket servers are idling while our polling/push servers are at higher cpu utilization with comparatively lower loads.

<comment><USER11> If notifications only go one way, server side events should also be considered.

...but I don't remember the advantages anymore :)

<comment><USER12> Have a look at this [0]:

\- Automatic reconnection

\- Event ids

\- Straightforward protocol built on plain old HTTP

[0] [http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/eventsource/basics/](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/eventsource/basics/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> WebSockets are super easy to use and the proper solution to real time data communication between browser and server.

Yes, there are other ways to accomplish this, but why would you choose a kludgey way like long polling when an elegant solution is available? It makes no sense to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> WebSockets are super easy to use (we still love it offer support for it), but if your users are on older devices or browsers you're going to run into problems.

You also have to take into consideration different network issues, for instance last year Verizon 3G blocked WebSockets without any documentation. Or fragile wireless networks where the socket will break.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While adding chat to a site, I realized the same conclusions. I started adding browser->server commands to my WebSocket instance, but then I realized I had everything already setup to do that in my API, and I was just splaying browser->server logic over two transports.

WebSockets definitely complicate the code, since you now have to deal with the connection before you can send a request. Keeping it constrained to realtime events cleaned things up nicely.

I was also trying to build some persistence into replaying chat messages on reconnection (data sync), but it was way easier to just turn "get_last_messages" into an endpoint that gets called on page load, or on socket reconnection.

<comment><USER15> If I understand your first problem correctly, you could have setup an RPC system so you only write your apis once. Use the same 'endpoint' of your api as the data call in your socket connection, and you only end up writing your api once.

<comment><USER14> I can definitely hit the API from the websocket server, but I just didn't even bother! :D I just wrote the websocket server to do publishing events, and left syncing issues to the API

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So I'm curious, what's the difference between fanout.io and something like pusher.com?

My company's application has some real-time components and we've just been using pusher to handle it because it's simple and cheap. Is fanout something I should consider instead?

<comment><USER3> Fanout's great for powering a public-facing realtime API. For example, you can see what Superfeedr did with it here: [http://blog.superfeedr.com/stream- superfeedr/](http://blog.superfeedr.com/stream-superfeedr/)

If you're not making an API, and you're just pushing data to your own client applications that you control, then Pusher and Fanout are more or less the same. Although you might like Fanout's simpler pricing model and our more open philosophy.

<comment><USER17> What would be the best technology for building real-time browser based chat application available today where I own the client?

<comment><USER3> I think I'm too biased to answer this properly. :) All of the realtime-as-a- service options have good resiliency. Pair one of them with RESTful AJAX for the chat db/logic and you'll do well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting bit from Derby's FAQ[0]

      Why racer-browserchanel uses long pooling and not web sockets?
      Web sockets does not guarantee order of messages between client and server, which is critical for OT.

[0] [https://github.com/derbyparty/derby- docs/blob/master/faq.md#...](https://github.com/derbyparty/derby- docs/blob/master/faq.md#why-racer-browserchanel-uses-long-pooling-and-not-web- sockets)

</comment><comment><USER19> Server Sent Events aren't used enough. I'm a big fan, so I wrote a little Node.js library which wraps (with options for preprocessing) an event emitter in an express middleware for the company I work for. [https://www.npmjs.org/package/nudge](https://www.npmjs.org/package/nudge)

</comment><comment><USER20> by the way, if anyone is dealing with websocket implementations for the web, have a look at SockJS, it makes things much easier and includes fallbacks for situations where sockets are not supported.

[https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-client](https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs- client)

(no affiliation, I just like it)

</comment><comment><USER21> Probably not, but they're so addictive! The novelty is yet to wear off, for me anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you using WebSockets in a big production environment or just for hacks/projects?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Author here. For what reasons do HN folks choose WebSockets? Is it purely technical? Joining the bandwagon? Used by preferred frameworks? Would love to hear some opinions.

<comment><USER20> Conceptually, polling just seems dirty.

if (some event occurred){ do something over and over every so often that requires multitudes of processes including authentication, DNS etc. across many machines, that might not even ever return any value to the user. }

is not as nice as,

on('the arrival of a message', doSomething)

edit: pardon the sloppy pseudo syntax...

<comment><USER22> agreed but "long polling" is not really polling because you're blocking on the HTTP request. Something over UDP sounds like the answer to the complaints about TCP connections getting dropped though. TCP was built for streaming...

<comment><USER23> TCP _technically_ relies only on state on the endpoints, so it "should" never be dropped unless the endpoints agree. But NAT and various other interlopers ruin this model, as state is then kept in middle-boxes.

UDP would evince the same problem when traversing NAT, since it also would require state to be kept in middle-boxes. The only difference is that instead of periodically reconnecting, you'd need to periodically ping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> But when you're in a good, stable, wired network on your PC, websockets means a faster experience right?

Maybe we just change the user to long poll after a couple disconnects?

<comment><USER3> I like this. The other day we were thinking about how the suggested practice these days is to start with long-polling first, then attempt to upgrade to WebSockets (as opposed to the other way around). But, in some cases it's not the browser but the network that prevents WebSockets from working. This means if you wander to another network that doesn't support WebSockets, you actually still want a way to downgrade back to long-polling.

Maybe such best practices could also include some kind of poll/ping interval that adjusts based on the apparent stability of the link. Stable or wired connections could have very large intervals.

<comment><USER2> That will introduce yet another delay/flapping point for people on unreliable connections:

You start with a longpoll and get some data, then negotiate websockets (hey, my network and browsers _are_ websockets capable!). Then the connection drops. And then you go through another round of everything again when you get back online (http + longpoll + websockets, instead of just http + longpoll).

Odds are, your website _doesn 't_ need websockets anyway, and 99% of your users are just fine with waiting a couple of seconds more to get their notification (and in the process, people with unreliable connections can still use your site).

Of course, if you're doing online stock trading notifications or something like that, you might actually need these two seconds. But then I'll strongly question your choice of using a browser for that :)

EDIT: fixed stray "*"

<comment><USER24> > Odds are, your website doesn't need websockets anyway

Odds are your website doesn't need CSS, but it certainly can benefit from it! I don't disagree that almost all websites _could_ get by just fine without websockets, but that seems like an incredibly anti-innovative approach to web development to me. Instead we should focus on making the experience better, as opposed to just avoiding innovation altogether.

> 99% of your users are just fine with waiting a couple of seconds

Pretty much every study done in the last few years has suggested that is completely false, that as wait times rise above a second, the number of visitors who simply close out rises exponentially.

<comment><USER2> I question the value of websockets in most cases, because in most applications I can think of (except maybe games and high-frequency trading), they don't bring me any value and actually prevent me from interacting with the website in a meaningful way (yes my connection is crappy, but that is the case for a big chunk of the online population).

Sure, I can't think of _all_ applications that would benefit from websockets, but so far, none of the ones I've seen do. I'm certain you can find at least a few exceptions, but my point is that it is only this: exceptions.

<comment><USER25> Anything that has a volume of changing data that needs to be close to real time would benefit. Anything that has that requirement and also wants to be available on the web would most certainly benefit. High-frequency trading and games/betting/TV-related-data (e.g. NASCAR), etc are definitely cases. How about just anything that is currently done via polling and wants to reduce network overhead? There are a lot of those types of applications. (full disclosure - I work for Kaazing, the leading enterprise WebSocket company, though I'm most definitely not speaking for them in any capacity).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introduction to Operating System Abstractions Using Plan 9 from Bell Labs (2007) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://lsub.org/who/nemo/9.intro.pdf <comment><USER2> Original thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16253193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16253193)</comment>


The Angel Investor Blog List - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/the-angel-investor-blog-list

<comment><USER2> I made a list of Tipjoy angel investors. It's actually a pretty awesome blogger list too. Add angels you know & admire: <http://etherpad.com/ghtyLsk0a5>

</comment><comment><USER3> This list is filled with group blogs by no-name angels and angel groups, instead of blogs by well known angels. It's not a surprise that miscellaneous angel group blogs don't get a lot of feed love, but it's not an indication of low blogging activity by angels.

For example, they completely missed Dave McClure (1651 feedburner subscribers, 135,290 Alexa Rank) and Mark Cuban (44,839 Alexa).

The author also doesn't explain if he's compiling blogs FOR angels vs blogs ABOUT angel investing - it looks like he includes both.

<comment><USER4> Technically Dave is now a VC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kinda odd how lame that is compared to a list of top VC blogs. I guess the average angel investor tends to keep a low profile, whereas VCs (who have to raise money) tend to be more visible. Not really surprising.

<comment><USER6> Theres still a strong trend in angel investing to remain quite and lay low. Thats changing with the new guard (sacca, lindzon, dave, etc) and its starting to trickle down to other parts of the country.

Soon enough I think people will see the benefits of being visible and having good deals come to you, like Fred and AVC....

<comment><USER7> The problem is that you have to filter out the 99.5% of non good deals, and most angels don't have the time/resources/interest to do that. (That's why they come to YC- pg does a lot of prescreening for them)

Besides, what's the likelihood you'd invest in a random person that comments on your blog? I'd trust that person only slightly more than I would a Nigerian scammer.</comment></comment></comment>


Roger Ebert reviews the movie "Atlas Shrugged" - <AUTHOR> http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110414/REVIEWS/110419990 <comment><USER2> I tend to use Movie Review Query Engine to quickly find reviews of movies. (The Ebert review isn't there yet, but it will no doubt appear soon.)

The link for this movie is: <http://www.mrqe.com/movie_reviews/atlas- shrugged-m100058649>

The Variety review absolutely pans the movie too. I'm a little disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ebert gave the film 1 star. The current user-voted rating is 4 stars. I've _never_ seen such a mismatch between Roger Ebert and the voting of actual users.

Now I don't know what to think.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't that usually happen when ideology is involved?

<comment><USER5> To be fair though, it doesn't seem as if Ebert is panning this on ideology. He's clearly not a fan of Ayn Rand, but he seems to dislike the actual movie more than its message.

<comment><USER6> It would seem to be impossible to dislike Rand's ideology as presented in Atlas Shrugged and enjoy any film that is dedicated to the novel. I read most of Atlas Shrugged, but didn't finish it. I was bored to tears and turned off by the stereotypical nature of the characters.

I like many of the ideas presented in objectivist philosophy, but I'm not quite a kool-aid drinker. Still, I'll reiterate, I have respect for the ideas. The problem I had with Atlas Shrugged was that it was rather transparently philosophy first, story second.

Have you ever hung out with someone who purposefully complicated their speech? The kind of person who subscribes to every "word of the day" feed they come across. The kind of person who says, "but I digress" more than any one person should be allowed? The characters in Atlas Shrugged all come across like this to me. I kept finding myself thinking, "Who talks like this?" The follow up thought was, "I hope I never meet them."

The characters in Atlas Shrugged are vehicles for communicating Rand's philosophy, but the philosophy shines through their actions like the mid-day sun through plate glass. I started out reading Atlas Shrugged and feeling like, "Yeah, damn those government men for getting in the way of progress," but by the time d'Anconia revealed that he _intended_ his mine to become nationalized, all I could muster was an "Oh gaaaaaawd," followed by a lengthy sigh. The story had crossed over in to some strange form of industry-worship.

I have no idea how the film will deal with the lengthy inner monologues present in Atlas Shrugged, much less the contrived conversations and scenarios, but I believe even the most skilled filmmaker would have a difficult time crafting this work in to something that a film critic would enjoy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Secrets of Overnight Success - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1826976/the-dirty-little-secret-of-overnight-successes

<comment><USER2> Mistakes are only data</comment>


The Digital Karnak Project - <AUTHOR> http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Karnak/ <comment><USER2> A bit of a non-sequitur, but I knew very little about Egyptian history and recently decided to listen to a Great Courses series about it. The professor who delivers the lectures, Bob Brier, was amazing. His affect is that of a guy from Brooklyn discussing the Mets, but focusing on pharaohs and hieroglyphs. The course was so well done it inspired me to but a few of his other books and recommendations and start thinking about taking a trip to my Museum's Egyptian collection.

[https://www.audible.com/pd/History/The-History-of-Ancient- Eg...](https://www.audible.com/pd/History/The-History-of-Ancient-Egypt- Audiobook/B00DICD9BE?ref_=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl&qid=1494956751&sr=1-1)

</comment><comment> awinter-py if you look at nothing else on this page check out their 'timemap' here [http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Karnak/timemap](http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Karnak/timemap)

Mixing geo & chronology is something I hope catches on everywhere, but glad it caught on in archaeology.

Overemphasis of the new is an unpleasant side effect of the search/news driven web.</comment>


Modify NoScript so it can detect and block nontrivial nonfree JavaScript code  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/tasks/noscript

<comment><USER2> Wtf!!

By applying the "AJAX makes it non-free" logic, every HTTP request is non- free. I mean, I don't release my httpd.conf so everything server side is a secret - i.e. mod-rewrite rules.

If you value freedom of your devices you'd be better off promoting Coreboot than this silly nonsense.</comment>


Netflix Caught Using "Pirated" Subtitles in Finland - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/netflix-caught-using-pirated-subtitles-in-finland-121019/ <comment><USER2> I've also seen Hulu using fansubs for some of their Korean TV [1]. I'm curious what the legal status is of text-only subtitle work. Unlike the translation of a book, translated subtitles are not the complete work. They're also a creative work in their own right.

Ironically, many fansubs are of higher quality than official subs, especially when it comes to idiomatic expressions in the source language.

[1] e.g. <http://www.hulu.com/watch/290239#i0,p0,s1,d0> skip to the beginning of the credits to see "Subtitles by HaruHaruSubs", a fansub group.

<comment><USER3> > I've also seen Hulu using fansubs for some of their Korean TV [1].

Hulu wasn't "caught" using fansubs - they have a legitimate deal with DramaFever[0][3], which in turn gets the subtitles from K-drama fansubbing groups like Haru2subS (the group you mentioned) and WITH S2:

> DramaFever has been working closely with the broadcasters as well as fansub > groups such as WITH S2 to make dramas available with high quality subs.[1]

> Today we are presenting a drama that needs no introduction: _Boys Over > Flowers_. We are proud to be the first to legally release this online for > our US audience along with the amazing subtitling from WithS2.[2]

As for this:

> Ironically, many fansubs are of higher quality than official subs, > especially when it comes to idiomatic expressions in the source language.

It makes perfect sense when you consider that official subbers are required to make the subs as accessible as possible, to create a broad audience. On the other hand, fansubbers translate how they _want_ to. Although this might put off some newbies, most watchers get acclimated to and eventually come to expect the fansubbers' approach. A similar phenomenon can be observed in the anime fansub community.

0: <http://www.dramafever.com/>

1: <http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/viewtopic_77984.htm>

2: <http://blog.dramafever.com/2009/04/we-got-boys-over-flowers/>

3: <http://www.hulu.com/companies/311>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is confusing, first we have:

> To cater to the local audience, on some of its programming the company > displayed "unauthorized" fansubs. Unlike regular subtitles, fansubs are > created without permission from content owners and often used alongside > pirated content.

But then:

> "It's nice to see that the texts are used, but they [Netflix] did not ask > permission," they [DivX Finland] wrote, adding a link a clip from the > Netflix video where DivX Finland's credits are clearly visible.

So DivX Finland made an authorized derivative work -- from content which Netflix has licence to -- and DivX Finland is calling out Netflix?

IANAL and certainly not Finnish, but wouldn't Netflix just need to make a call to the rights owner of the work in question? I wouldn't think the original content [Andromeda (2000–2005)] would be public domain or that this would be considered "fair use" or not.

It would seem like DivX Finland should just be happy that they haven't been sued YET...but now they're drawing attention to themselves (even though they were getting free advertising).

<comment><USER5> While DivX Finland didn't have permission to produce translations, many countries consider translations to have their own distinct copyright. Translation is a creative process, rather than a mechanical one. (This is why you can't pass that French course by pushing everything through Google Translate.)

Also, generally when you start making the claim that so-and-so are just getting free advertising, you're arguing in the wrong direction 99% of the time. ;)

<comment><USER6> In the US, there was Pickett v. Prince [1], wherein Pickett made a guitar out of Prince's symbol and Prince copied the guitar. Both the trial court and the appellate court agreed that Pickett had no copyright because he had no permission to make the derivative work.

Pickett's argument was based largely on an interpretation of 17 USC 103(a) [2] that implied he could own the copyright on the portions that were non- infringing, and the court soundly rejected this argument. Internationally the wording is similar:

From a translation of the Finnish Copyright Act [4]:

"Art. 4. A person who translates or adapts a work or converts it into some other literary or artistic form shall have copyright in the work in that new form, but his right to dispose of it shall be subject to the copyright in the original work"

The Berne convention states: "(3) Translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other alterations of a literary or artistic work shall be protected as original works without prejudice [3] to the copyright in the original work."

I haven't read any Finnish caselaw. However, I expect it to be incredibly rare for a functional legal system to determine the act declares it acceptable to create derivative works sans permission in a manner that inhibits the owner's management of derivative works. (With the exception of mechanically licensed derivatives, such as song covers.)

[1] <http://openjurist.org/207/f3d/402/ferdinand-pickett-v-prince>

[2] <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/103>

[3] "Without any loss or waiver of rights or privileges" - West's Encyc. Of American Law

[4] <http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text.jsp?file_id=127088>

[5] [http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html#...](http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html#P85_10661) (Article 2, Item 3)

<comment><USER7> Interesting. IANAL, but I was under the impression that an important part of the Berne Convention was to give authors the right to approve translations in other countries, ie so that an American company could not translate and sell copies of Crime and Punishment without getting the approval of (and therefore compensating) Dostoyevsky.

This the interpretation I've seen repeated amongst many fan translation groups, the implications of which vary amongst mediums from "we don't have a legal right to anything we translate, but we'll try to voice our disapproval anyway," typically said by manga scanlators to the giant, quasi-legal online manga sites who they have little power over, to "we may not have a right to our translation, but we do own the rights to our code, and we will use that ownership to send DMCA takedown producers of pirate 'reproduction' cartridges" in the translation hacking scene.

In response to the, uh, great grand parent post, even if they are not legally entitled to protection for their unauthorized derivative works, I think they are justified in their feelings of ownership toward them. People in the various fan translation scenes put a hell of a lot of their own free time into their works; even if the law does not support it, in a "common sense" kind of way, I find it difficult to believe that they do not have the moral high ground here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I always wondered about Netflixes subtitles. I've noticed that in many Korean, or Anime shows they use the fansub instead of hiring their own translators.

For one show in particular City Hunter (episode 20 I think), I saw for a split second the words "Our subs are not for rent or resale", which I seriously doubt would be there if Netflix had paid for the subtitling.

I think they generally take fansubs then remove the credits. And in the case I noticed, they failed to do so on one episode.

<comment><USER9> Does Netflix actively subtitle anything? I thought I'd read that they only get subtitle files from the video rights holder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel bad for Netflix right now. First they get sued for not having subtitles for movies they didn't make[1], and now it looks like they are scrambling to get subtitles up.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/netflix- settles-w...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/netflix-settles-with- deaf-rights-group-agrees-to-caption-all-videos-by-2014/)</comment>