matze79 wrote on 2024-01-21, 19:25:

i personally dont like videos where minutes of minutes are talked instead then getting to the point.

You have to stretch videos, change Thumbnails at least 3 times and use vague clickbait titles so the Youtube algorythm picks it up...
Recently youtube seems to prefer hour long videos. So everybody stretches 5 minutes of content to an hour...

The content changed to soulless stuff perfectly made to please the algorythm...

DerBaum wrote on 2024-01-21, 19:59:

You have to stretch videos, change Thumbnails at least 3 times and use vague clickbait titles so the Youtube algorythm picks it up...

And most importantly, put a silly/surprised/shocked face in the thumbnail.

Thankfully, that nonsense is still fairly rare among retro channels. Any video that does it gets an instant skip from me. I also dislike seeing AI generated "art" in the thumbnail.

matze79 wrote on 2024-01-21, 19:25:

i only watch retro channels some times if they have a solution to a problem i face. but its boring to watch a 30 minute video ju […]
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i only watch retro channels some times if they have a solution to a problem i face.
but its boring to watch a 30 minute video just to find a few second solution.

Sometimes comparision videos are useful.
But yeah content exploded and is already exploited commercially.

Like the bushcraft youtubers.. they all do their kind of advertising for weird "energydrinks" and other stuff..

i personally dont like videos where minutes of minutes are talked instead then getting to the point.

I suppose that's at least partially somehow related to monetizing and YouTube/Google being an US company.

To what I have learned so far by watching various YouTube videos,
the US world of media might be very different to what we have here (it's a different format).

TV channels are unregulated, over-commercialized (so many ads on screen you barely can see the host),
full of gossip, news shows with opinions rather than facts,
sensationalism, melodramatism, dubious health care ads and various political ads that
would be considered as illegal propaganda material in my country.

Under such circumstances, it's maybe understandable why YouTubers have to shoe horn ads into their episodes or have to beg for subscription.
The format is being given by YT/Google/Alphabet.
If they don't follow the rules, they will be demonetized quickly.
They also need to have a specific number of subscribers or views in order to be considered successful.
The rate at how much new content appears (so often a week) matters, too, I suppose.

Btw, that reminds me a bit of the intro of an ancient DOS era point&click adventure, "Mission Supernova 2".
During his flight (-he escaped from an alien prison in part 1-),
the main character Horst Hummel sees an TV interview of himself (-a robot imposter actually-) which is being sponsored by a tooth brush company.
During the interview, the robot imposter is constantly being expressing how wonderful the tooth brushes
on the alien planet are and that earth hasn't such great quality tooth brushes.
The alien moderator is being irritated, of course.
That was meant as a sideblow to or parody of those trashy talk shows of the day, I believe.

Edit: The development of YouTube can be compared to that of eBay, maybe.
Both started out as a platform for the individual.

eBay originally assisted you in selling your second-hand stuff, but now tries to rival Amazon (which was a book seller, originally).

Likewise, YouTube provided the individual a platform to get heard. To upload and share non-commercial videos of your own life.
Now it's a commercial video entertainment company that tries to rival linear TV, Netflix, Amazon Prime etc.
In short, aims for world domination. That's how it looks, at least, in my opinion. Speaking under correction.

Edit: Wikipedia also comes to mind. It stated out as a collective memory of layman's knowledge.

Everyone could participate and add information, of varying quality.
Now the atmosphere is more that of an elitist club. The poor layman nolonger is good enough, has become a bungler in the eyes of the people there.

Wikipedia rather has become sort of a nerd club with rigid rule sets and aim for perfection, with the goal to build largest encyclopedia ever seen.

Sure, looking back there was a lot of false information and very unprofessional writing in the early years.

But back then it was still known that Wikipedia was no legit source of information yet, but rather a humble layman's database.

A starting location to get some first information that's meant to be verified elsewhere later on.

That's at least how I do remember things. Speaking under correction, again.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2024-01-21, 10:13:

What's perverse is encroaching on the natural rights of hundreds of millions of people in an effort to assuage the suffering of a tiny handful.

When the "natural right" in question is owning an assault rifle then yes, those millions should gladly give up that right for the greater good. Reducing poverty or unemployment or domestic violence - these things are hard. Reducing gun violence is not hard - just start limiting the population's access to certain guns.

I feel like maybe guns are just symbolic in this case, it's actually the fear of losing "freedoms" or "rights" that's behind your position. That's easier for me to understand, but still not something I agree with in this case. There are dangerous things that people really need - cars, chainsaws, etc. But the general public do not need assault weapons.

While I don't mean to join the 'Bashing on 8-Bit Guy Is Cool' bandwagon, today he released his second of 'Can I go for 24hrs on battery power?' and his tests always strike me as weird. As someone who lived through both the 1998 Ice Storm and the 2003 Northeast Blackout, your 'worst case scenario' is an environmental disaster with no clear timeline for the return of power and you have to ration resources as much as possible. His approach is more 'How can I keep as comfortable and nerdy as hell with all kinds of stuff turned on' on the assumption that power can't be out more than 24hrs. There's just a weird hubris with his metric being 'Living as normal a life style as possible till the batteries die'.

Also, as a Canadian, I'm just laughing at -10'C being 'Bitter Cold'.

Fujoshi-hime wrote on 2024-01-22, 05:36:

While I don't mean to join the 'Bashing on 8-Bit Guy Is Cool' bandwagon, today he released his second of 'Can I go for 24hrs on battery power?' and his tests always strike me as weird. As someone who lived through both the 1998 Ice Storm and the 2003 Northeast Blackout, your 'worst case scenario' is an environmental disaster with no clear timeline for the return of power and you have to ration resources as much as possible. His approach is more 'How can I keep as comfortable and nerdy as hell with all kinds of stuff turned on' on the assumption that power can't be out more than 24hrs. There's just a weird hubris with his metric being 'Living as normal a life style as possible till the batteries die'.

Also, as a Canadian, I'm just laughing at -10'C being 'Bitter Cold'.

-10c is shorts and t-shirt weather right, -5 is sunbathing weather.

The Finnish might say winter doesn't begin till its -50c

Fujoshi-hime wrote on 2024-01-22, 05:36:

While I don't mean to join the 'Bashing on 8-Bit Guy Is Cool' bandwagon, today he released his second of 'Can I go for 24hrs on battery power?' and his tests always strike me as weird. As someone who lived through both the 1998 Ice Storm and the 2003 Northeast Blackout, your 'worst case scenario' is an environmental disaster with no clear timeline for the return of power and you have to ration resources as much as possible. His approach is more 'How can I keep as comfortable and nerdy as hell with all kinds of stuff turned on' on the assumption that power can't be out more than 24hrs. There's just a weird hubris with his metric being 'Living as normal a life style as possible till the batteries die'.

Also, as a Canadian, I'm just laughing at -10'C being 'Bitter Cold'.

"People say"™ its just an Ad for this battery stuff...

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-01-20, 17:35:

I'm going quote what 8-Bit specifically said, because I think people are still missing my point. […]
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maxtherabbit wrote on 2024-01-20, 16:48:

I'll defend it. The anti gun side has abused the public's susceptibility to "feelings" for decades to advance their political agenda. Many on our side are fed up with that and overtly rejecting the entire precept that feeling sad about a tragedy is justification for gun legislation.

I'm going quote what 8-Bit specifically said, because I think people are still missing my point.

This is what he said verbatim: "Hey, Moms Demand Action. Look, I'm out shopping with my rifle. You know, I get a perverse pleasure out of this because it makes steam come out of Shannon Watts' ears. See you all later."

These comments are accompanied with what I can only describe as a maniacal-looking grin.

What rubs me the wrong way is the comment about taking "perverse pleasure" in what he is describing as deliberately antagonizing other people. He's being deliberately mean. And especially when the context involves murdered school children, I can't understand how he thought this was okay. At best, it's grossly insensitive. At worst, he is demonstrating the qualities of being a cruel person.

That's why I don't watch his videos any more.

Honestly, you have put it much kinder than I could ever in words. This is not morally defendable in my mind.

Fujoshi-hime wrote on 2024-01-22, 05:36:

While I don't mean to join the 'Bashing on 8-Bit Guy Is Cool' bandwagon, today he released his second of 'Can I go for 24hrs on battery power?' and his tests always strike me as weird. As someone who lived through both the 1998 Ice Storm and the 2003 Northeast Blackout, your 'worst case scenario' is an environmental disaster with no clear timeline for the return of power and you have to ration resources as much as possible. His approach is more 'How can I keep as comfortable and nerdy as hell with all kinds of stuff turned on' on the assumption that power can't be out more than 24hrs. There's just a weird hubris with his metric being 'Living as normal a life style as possible till the batteries die'.

Also, as a Canadian, I'm just laughing at -10'C being 'Bitter Cold'.

His next video, I suppose, will be 'Can I last a month on the revenues from 'Can I go for 24hrs on battery power?' video?'

ThinkpadIL wrote on 2024-01-21, 10:37:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2024-01-21, 10:13:

badmojo wrote on 2024-01-21, 03:11:

So the number of children being killed in American schools by gun violence needs to hit a certain percentage of the population before it's worth worrying about? What a perverse view of the world.

What's perverse is encroaching on the natural rights of hundreds of millions of people in an effort to assuage the suffering of a tiny handful.

I bet you thought locking down the entire populace over a virus with a <1% mortality rate was justified too.

There is a small logical problem in your philosophy that, it seems, you do not recognize. When you're talking about statistical insignificancy what you're saying is actually something like that- "100 kids killed in school shootings is too little for changing the law, let's wait when will be killed at least 100,000 and then we will change it". In other words you simply propose to sentence to death 99,900 innocent people before making any changes.

If you are incapable of drawing a line somewhere regarding now serious a problem must be to justify change, then you are essentially saying that any single instance of anything bad happening to anyone is now sufficient to drive public policy. Not only is this hopelessly impractical, it also demonstrates that you don't appreciate the gravity of what it means to legislate. When you make something illegal, you are actually saying: "I am willing to use the state's monopoly on violence to force the citizenry to obey this law, up to and including deadly force if they resist."

Being sober minded enough to "reduce people to statistics" is a necessary virtue when it comes to governance. Without the understanding of acceptable cost it is impossible to make just policy, because the fact is you are, in a sense, condemning people to die regardless of what you choose.

badmojo wrote on 2024-01-21, 23:34:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2024-01-21, 10:13:

What's perverse is encroaching on the natural rights of hundreds of millions of people in an effort to assuage the suffering of a tiny handful.

When the "natural right" in question is owning an assault rifle then yes, those millions should gladly give up that right for the greater good. Reducing poverty or unemployment or domestic violence - these things are hard. Reducing gun violence is not hard - just start limiting the population's access to certain guns.

I feel like maybe guns are just symbolic in this case, it's actually the fear of losing "freedoms" or "rights" that's behind your position. That's easier for me to understand, but still not something I agree with in this case. There are dangerous things that people really need - cars, chainsaws, etc. But the general public do not need assault weapons.

Remember what I said in an earlier post about having radically different answers to foundational questions about life? This is an example.

The United States was founded on the belief that every citizen has the right, and even duty, to adequately prepare themselves for violent conflict with other men. This is what the second amendment actually means. You clearly do not share this belief, nor do many modern Americans for that matter, but many of us still do.

Going even deeper, the Traditionalist position is that violence is an inexorable component of nature. Trying to prevail over the natural order and create a society where it simply does not exist at all is naive and arrogant. Such efforts are bound to do more harm than good. This does not mean that societies should not attempt to regulate bad behavior, public safety is indeed an essential function of government, but policy should be made with realistic expectations weighed against cost.

Simply put - protecting the weak by punishing those who deliberately prey on them is just and honorable, protecting the weak by knee-capping the strong is unjust and evil.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2024-01-22, 09:39:

Simply put - protecting the weak by punishing those who deliberately prey on them is just and honorable, protecting the weak by knee-capping the strong is unjust and evil.

Except, this is a complete strawman argument.

If anything, NRA actually argue that gun prolification is what protects the weak, not vice versa.

Regardless, the people advocating for gun control are not arguing to knee-cap neither the strong, nor the weak.

This is not about power. It is about law and order. Not something that is easy to understand by people who try to invade the Capitol when their candidate is not elected.

The gun issue is similar to the dangerous dog issue. Certain breeds are notorious for attacking people, especially children. Whenever there's such an attack, you hear calls for such breeds to be banned. This naturally riles up responsible dog owners, who train and socialize their animals correctly, but face the prospect of their pets being destroyed because of the actions of irresponsible dog owners.

Errius wrote on 2024-01-22, 10:04:

The gun issue is similar to the dangerous dog issue. Certain breeds are notorious for attacking people, especially children. Whenever there's such an attack, you hear calls for such breeds to be banned. This naturally riles up responsible dog owners, who train and socialize their animals correctly, but face the prospect of their pets being destroyed because of the actions of irresponsible dog owners.

Owners who could and should have trained less dangerous breeds in the first place. I could breed and train lions in my front yard and keep them docile. That would still not merit making it legal. If something is dangerous enough to kill a child 0.01% of the time, it is still too dangerous to let happen.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2024-01-22, 09:39:

Simply put - protecting the weak by punishing those who deliberately prey on them is just and honorable, protecting the weak by knee-capping the strong is unjust and evil.

I do appreciate you trying to explain this whole thing but I just can't empathise with this at all.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2024-01-22, 09:08:

Remember what I said in an earlier post about having radically different answers to foundational questions about life? This is a […]
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badmojo wrote on 2024-01-21, 23:34:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2024-01-21, 10:13:

What's perverse is encroaching on the natural rights of hundreds of millions of people in an effort to assuage the suffering of a tiny handful.

When the "natural right" in question is owning an assault rifle then yes, those millions should gladly give up that right for the greater good. Reducing poverty or unemployment or domestic violence - these things are hard. Reducing gun violence is not hard - just start limiting the population's access to certain guns.

I feel like maybe guns are just symbolic in this case, it's actually the fear of losing "freedoms" or "rights" that's behind your position. That's easier for me to understand, but still not something I agree with in this case. There are dangerous things that people really need - cars, chainsaws, etc. But the general public do not need assault weapons.

Remember what I said in an earlier post about having radically different answers to foundational questions about life? This is an example.

The United States was founded on the belief that every citizen has the right, and even duty, to adequately prepare themselves for violent conflict with other men. This is what the second amendment actually means. You clearly do not share this belief, nor do many modern Americans for that matter, but many of us still do.

Going even deeper, the Traditionalist position is that violence is an inexorable component of nature. Trying to prevail over the natural order and create a society where it simply does not exist at all is naive and arrogant. Such efforts are bound to do more harm than good. This does not mean that societies should not attempt to regulate bad behavior, public safety is indeed an essential function of government, but policy should be made with realistic expectations weighed against cost.

I heard about this in a documentary, too.
To me as an European, that "stand your ground" thing is confusing. Honestly.

Does that mean that, say, a post man can be legally shot if he approaches the house?

What I heard makes it seems like that's fine, because of self-defense reasons.
It just must be represented in a plausible way.
There are even lawyer who're specialized on this, or so I heard. They support the shooters, though.

Makes me wonder how many "friends", colleagues or neighbors had been lured to someone's house in the states, through invitations to a party etc, then being shot in so-called self-defense.

Anyway, no offense, I'm not judging this time, just wondering.
Because I've heard about such crime stories in TV series like "Medical Detectives" that do air in my country during nighttime.

Edit: Seriously, I'm just wondering/thinking out loud here. I'm not entirely anti-gun per se, either.
A family member has a riffle, the classic hunting type model. But it's registered and locked in a weapon safe, with the location of the keys being unknown to the rest.
It's a memento/family heirloom sort of. The owner holds a license, also.

Self defense law requires you be able to articulate a credible threat. If the postman approaches your home wearing a suicide vest full of dynamite you could probably shoot him and not be charged with a crime. If you shoot him just because he looks at you funny, you're going to prison.

I think this will be my last post in this thread. I've made my defense of the 8-bit guy, and further debate is fruitless. No one's mind is being changed and we're way off topic.

ThinkpadIL wrote on 2024-01-22, 08:02:

His next video, I suppose, will be 'Can I last a month on the revenues from 'Can I go for 24hrs on battery power?' video?'

The thing is, it's actually a fascinating topic, especially as the rate of environmental disasters damaging infrastructure increases. But yeah, in a practical test, his setup would be like this:

Day 1) Living it up in the blackout, laughing at our neighbors who are all just trying to charge one phone off a half charged Anker power bank.

Day 2) It's dark and cold now and maybe we should not have blown all our stored power running computers and non-essential appliances like sewing machines...

Especially since there's so many efficient ways to consume power that could keep you entertained for a week on the battery power he has, if his intention was not to just burn it all keeping whole offices lit up.

Fujoshi-hime wrote on 2024-01-22, 05:36:

While I don't mean to join the 'Bashing on 8-Bit Guy Is Cool' bandwagon, today he released his second of 'Can I go for 24hrs on battery power?' and his tests always strike me as weird. As someone who lived through both the 1998 Ice Storm and the 2003 Northeast Blackout, your 'worst case scenario' is an environmental disaster with no clear timeline for the return of power and you have to ration resources as much as possible. His approach is more 'How can I keep as comfortable and nerdy as hell with all kinds of stuff turned on' on the assumption that power can't be out more than 24hrs. There's just a weird hubris with his metric being 'Living as normal a life style as possible till the batteries die'.

Also, as a Canadian, I'm just laughing at -10'C being 'Bitter Cold'.

Though if I had a battery backup system I'd probably do kinda the same thing, while keeping note of what power I'm actually drawing, to load test it, you think you've got a couple of kWh or so, but do you really? So I'd do a relatively fast discharge as a test and then real emergency, obviously I'd be scrimping every watt. The usual advantage of a faster discharge is you "have at least that" whereas longer discharges are more affected by temperature and cell recovery, so you test it in ideal conditions and might think you have hours longer than you get, whereas a faster one is more like "worst case".

But yes, it's very hard to gauge how serious an emergency is at the outset. There's loads of prepper types say they'll run for the cabin at first sign of trouble, but either they're jumping the gun a couple of times a year, or they're probably gonna end up stuck in a no infrastructure / no transport hole for a week or longer with the rest of us. They'll be all "The gubbermint ain't stoppin' me drivin there I got extra tanks" yah but maybe multiple trees down per mile, and the abandoned vehicles that already tried in the way and you ain't gonna bullshit or shoot your way any distance either. Fastest bugout vehicle then is probably a bike (not in snow obv)

Winter though in particular, unless it's a late storm in April, you've no idea how many steps down the failure cascade has yet to go, especially if you haven't had a big storm in many years and this one was only big enough to knock down all the weak trees and poles, do some weeding out, then you get two more behind it, one that knocks out the medium strong stuff, then the real real doozy behind it that takes out everything. Could be same at start or middle of hurricane season vs near the end. So yah, only a day, or only a week, could be optimism unjustified. I think some of Quebec had to go 2 and 3 weeks in that big ice storm.