[HN Gopher] IMG_0416
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       IMG_0416
        
       Author : bewal416
       Score  : 2000 points
       Date   : 2024-11-10 20:45 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ben-mini.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ben-mini.github.io)
        
       | renewiltord wrote:
       | This is genuinely amazing. The complete lack of editing. And
       | strangely some of the videos were allowed to have copyrighted
       | content in the background (meaning ContentID wasn't live or
       | hasn't been retroactively applied) really sells the scene. Like,
       | the last one has Taio Cruz's Dynamite playing in the background.
       | Amazing. The Ea-Nasir Tablet of our time.
        
         | pavlov wrote:
         | For me, the YouTube embed player wants a login:
         | 
         | "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot."
         | 
         | (iPhone Safari)
         | 
         | The Ea-Nasir tablet is in a museum, but at least I can see
         | pictures of it without giving my personal information to a
         | multi-trillion dollar corporation.
        
           | jervant wrote:
           | Do you use iCloud Private Relay? YouTube gives that message
           | and Google requires a CAPTCHA for web searches very often
           | when iCloud Private Relay is enabled.
        
             | pavlov wrote:
             | No, I don't have that enabled.
        
         | Tiberium wrote:
         | >allowed to have copyrighted content in the background
         | 
         | I might be wrong in your specific case, but generally YouTube
         | doesn't just remove videos with copyrighted audio. Often
         | copyright holders instead make it so that the video with their
         | songs will have ads and they'll receive all the ad revenue.
         | 
         | https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7002106?hl=en
         | 
         | "Depending on the copyright owner's Content ID settings,
         | Content ID claims can:
         | 
         | - Block content from being viewed.
         | 
         | - Monetize content by running ads on it and sometimes sharing
         | revenue with the uploader.
         | 
         | - Track the viewership statistics on the content.
         | 
         | Any of these actions can be geography-specific. For example, a
         | video can be monetized in one country/region and blocked or
         | tracked in a different country/region."
        
           | sailfast wrote:
           | When this happens don't you typically also see the track
           | registered at the bottom? ContentID took them a long time to
           | develop if I'm remembering right.
        
       | carlos-menezes wrote:
       | > However, this two-click upload feature was short-lived when
       | Apple severed ties Apple severed ties with YouTube by removing
       | its homegrown app in 2012.
       | 
       | "Apple severed ties" repeats.
        
         | moffkalast wrote:
         | Time Cook doesn't wear ties. Coincidence? I think not!
        
         | bewal416 wrote:
         | Thanks! Gonna fix this later tonight
        
       | veidelis wrote:
       | It worked, I guess - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y31wZNbbrUI
        
         | Affric wrote:
         | Beautiful.
        
       | justsomehnguy wrote:
       | There were a time when you could had a 8" tablet on Win8 with
       | People app having a feed from Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin and
       | something else too (Twitter?)
       | 
       | In a mere months it was gutted on every side and Windows tablets
       | (rspecially 8" favour) gone the way of DoDo
        
         | mardef wrote:
         | That was the remnants of windows phone. The people app would
         | automatically sync all of their social accounts for a person.
         | 
         | As Microsoft moved more of those apps out of the inbox image
         | and to the store, the functionality slowly stopped working.
         | 
         | The sunset of windows phone ended the rest of those features.
        
           | justsomehnguy wrote:
           | Yes but my feel (at the time, by the sources slowly dropping
           | and degrading the functionality) it wasn't MS who slowly
           | strangled that functionality. Do you have any articles on
           | that? I'm really interested on what ecactly happened that
           | time and considering the whole Nokia debacle...
        
             | toast0 wrote:
             | Whatever Microsoft was doing, it's also the case that the
             | social apps pulled back the APIs, as they wanted to own the
             | feed views and push recommendations over chronological
             | view. When Cambridge Analytica hit the news media, that was
             | a nail in the coffin of open social APIs, but they were
             | already dead.
        
       | mastazi wrote:
       | The website http://astronaut.io/ does a similar thing but for
       | recent videos, and not just from iPhones. From the home page:
       | 
       | > These videos come from YouTube. They were uploaded in the last
       | week and have titles like DSC 1234 and IMG 4321. They have almost
       | zero previous views. They are unnamed, unedited, and unseen (by
       | anyone but you).
       | 
       | At one point you might be at a school recital in Malaysia, and
       | the next minute you are at a birthday in Ecuador. It's amazing!
        
         | Elfener wrote:
         | For those using firefox's autoplay blocker,
         | http://astronaut.io/ doesn't work at all unless you whitelist
         | it.
        
           | folmar wrote:
           | Works for me (current ESR on Linux).
        
           | mastazi wrote:
           | It works if you use the default autoplay blocker setting
           | ("block audio"). Probably you are using the setting "block
           | audio and video" as default (I use that too) and in our case
           | we have to whitelist it.
        
         | mikae1 wrote:
         | There were a bunch of subreddits based on obscure videos with
         | default filenames.
         | 
         | https://old.reddit.com/r/IMGXXXX/
        
           | Cthulhu_ wrote:
           | There is / was also r/DeepIntoYoutube which was dedicated to
           | good videos that only had a handful of views.
           | 
           | It reminds me of this grandma that played Skyrim for ages but
           | never had any views, but thanks to one of these discover
           | pages, she got a following of tens of thousands.
        
             | qznc wrote:
             | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Curry
             | 
             | Seems like she retired recently.
        
         | ljoshua wrote:
         | I love astronaut.io! Open it in an incognito window so that
         | your YouTube watch history doesn't get too crazy.
        
           | giancarlostoro wrote:
           | Or maybe its a good way to reset it
        
             | hanspeter wrote:
             | If I visit Youtube without being logged in, all I see is
             | junk.
             | 
             | Why would a regular user of YouTube ever want to reset
             | their watch history?
        
           | prmoustache wrote:
           | why would you stay logged on all the time?
        
         | ruthmarx wrote:
         | > At one point you might be at a school recital in Malaysia,
         | and the next minute you are at a birthday in Ecuador. It's
         | amazing!
         | 
         | The same as if you just used a website or extension to play
         | random youtube videos?
        
           | mastazi wrote:
           | > play random youtube videos?
           | 
           | I feel like that would result in a lot more "hey guys don't
           | forget to like and subscribe" type of videos.
        
             | kube-system wrote:
             | Probably not unless they're weighted by popularity. There's
             | a very long tail of content on YouTube. Most videos are
             | viewed by nobody.
        
         | AI_beffr wrote:
         | if anyone know the person who maintains that site or if that
         | person reads this: this site would be massively improved if the
         | speed of the ISS footage playing in the background were simply
         | slowed down a little. right now it gives this feeling of
         | rocketing forward which is a very different vibe from the
         | premise of the site. the user should float slowly to emphasize
         | the thoughtful nature of the activity and enjoy the sensation
         | of watching the world go by.
        
         | albert_e wrote:
         | I just opened it in incognito in Chrome on Android
         | 
         | noticed that the YouTube videos continue playing without
         | interruption even when I switch to another tab or minimize
         | chrome altogether and switch to another app.
         | 
         | how can we harness this power to play our favorite audio tracks
         | in background (without any ads to boot ... shhh don't tell
         | Google)
         | 
         | I also notice that the website triggers a browser warning when
         | loading that it is not secure.
        
           | jraph wrote:
           | There are browsers extensions for this. I can't recommend one
           | because I don't use this anymore. On Android this would mean
           | using Firefox or another browser allowing extensions. Or you
           | can give a YouTube address to MPV with the --no-video
           | parameter. Or use NewPipe or one of its forks and open the
           | YouTube kink with it in audio only mode. Or use invidious,
           | but this last option is harder and harder to use. Or yt-dlp
           | -x to download the audio of course.
        
             | shawnz wrote:
             | Background playback just works with Firefox on Android with
             | no extensions required.
        
           | miki123211 wrote:
           | There was an iOS app that used to let you do this; it would
           | play music via Youtube embeds in a hidden web view, exposing
           | its own UI for all the functionality you'd expect from a
           | music streaming app.
           | 
           | Whether this was legal is... a gray area, it was a somewhat
           | legitimate company that won some kind of Canadian startup
           | contest on TV, but the music industry was, very predictably,
           | furious at their business model.
           | 
           | Eventually, Apple got scared enough of being sued along with
           | them that they caved in and removed the app, but that took
           | far longer than I thought it would.
           | 
           | There's a good article at https://torrentfreak.com/apple-
           | removes-parasitic-streaming-a...
        
             | wongarsu wrote:
             | On Android you can use NewPipe for a similar experience.
             | For obvious reasons it's not on Google's Play Store, but
             | you can get it from F-Droid or Github.
        
               | mxmilkiib wrote:
               | The Tubular fork of NewPipe is worth noting,
               | https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular n a Revanced
               | patched YT app would also work.
        
           | l3x4ur1n wrote:
           | I use Brave android. No ads and I can close phone or do
           | anything on it and the video will be playing with no problem
        
           | bionoid wrote:
           | I use Video Background Play Fix [1] (along with uBlock of
           | course). "Firefox for Android can continue playing video even
           | if you switch to another tab or app. However, sites can
           | detect these user actions with the Page Visibility API and
           | the Fullscreen API. This add-on is designed to block events
           | and properties exposed by the APIs."
           | 
           | [1] https://github.com/mozilla/video-bg-play
        
           | aryonoco wrote:
           | Many ways to do that on Android. NewPipe or its fork Tubular,
           | Clipious, LibreTube, or host a local instance of Invidious or
           | ViewTube and access them using the browser.
           | 
           | F-Droid and the ability to still run software outside of
           | Google's walled garden is the last remaining reason
           | preventing me from switching to iPhone. I've tried Yattee on
           | iOS and it's okay on Apple TV but seriously doesn't come
           | close to the power of Tubular on Android.
        
         | LeoPanthera wrote:
         | There's something magical when one location becomes the default
         | for something. A site like this would be impossible if YouTube
         | wasn't _the_ place for videos.
         | 
         | It's why I'm sad that we no longer have one obvious default for
         | microblogging. It was such a rich source of thoughts. That's
         | all gone now.
        
           | paledot wrote:
           | And the former default is no longer developer friendly. (Or
           | friendly to anyone else, really.)
        
             | a1o wrote:
             | I can't tell if this trail of talk is about Tumblr,
             | Blogger, or something else - idnk, does anyone else
             | remembers Astroatlas?
        
               | Wingy wrote:
               | I'm pretty sure they're referring to Twitter.
        
               | briandear wrote:
               | Twitter still exists. Renamed. Same exact thing. You can
               | create an account and post whatever random things you
               | want. Some people might follow you. Some might not. If
               | you see something that makes you sad, you can block the
               | person who posted the sad thing.
        
               | staplers wrote:
               | It's a walled garden. Unless you are logged into an
               | account it's basically a private network.
        
               | lenkite wrote:
               | All social media have to be walled gardens or be free-
               | prey for ravenous AI bots. Evolution at work.
        
               | danieldk wrote:
               | _or be free-prey for ravenous AI bots_
               | 
               | Have you recently been on X?
        
               | latexr wrote:
               | I think your parent comment is talking about AI bots
               | _consuming_ the content, while you seem to be making a
               | point about AI bots _posting_ content.
        
               | darkwater wrote:
               | There are thousands of bluecheck AI bots that just copy-
               | paste/regurgitate or just make up stupid content and post
               | it continuously to get engagement views and money.
               | 
               | It is really worse than before.
        
               | mavhc wrote:
               | Why are you following them?
        
               | Uehreka wrote:
               | You don't need to follow someone to see their content.
               | When you open the app the default timeline is the "For
               | You" one. Sometimes you don't even notice that the app
               | has switched back to "For You", X definitely doesn't
               | really want you staying on the "Following" tab.
        
               | 5040 wrote:
               | The regurgitated content is often in the form of comments
               | in popular threads.
        
               | drusepth wrote:
               | "Popular" tweets (of which these bot accounts often fall
               | into, because they're propped up by bot responses and
               | engagement farming) are pushed into your feed even if
               | you're not following (or engaging) with them.
        
               | hmry wrote:
               | "no longer developer friendly" referring to them re-
               | pricing their API to make aggregating data for fun
               | monetarily infeasible.
        
               | danieldk wrote:
               | Not just aggregating data for fun. It made third-party
               | clients like Tweetbot impossible. Similar to non-
               | old.reddit.com, the web interface has been crappy for a
               | pretty long time, but was easily worked around by using
               | better clients.
               | 
               | No more.
        
               | latexr wrote:
               | > Same exact thing.
               | 
               | It very much is not. No third-party clients; can't see
               | threads without an account; owner inserting himself and
               | his ideology at the centre; fewer and less diverse
               | participating people; diminished trust in the platform;
               | more spam; different verification rules... _Even the
               | character limit is different._
        
               | walthamstow wrote:
               | Even blocking has changed!
        
               | eru wrote:
               | Probably Twitter? Tumblr and Blogger were for regular
               | blogging, not micro-blogging.
        
             | johtso wrote:
             | Youtube certainly isn't developer friendly.. their APIs
             | have very strict limits that often force people to go down
             | the scraping route
        
           | hoseja wrote:
           | Oh you'll be back.
        
           | adr1an wrote:
           | We don't need centralization for this. Federated protocols
           | like mastodon have friendlier APIs than some of the most
           | popular walled gardens of today...
        
             | xattt wrote:
             | Discovery sucks, though.
        
               | fsflover wrote:
               | Just like in the Internet?
        
               | culi wrote:
               | it's getting better
        
             | JasserInicide wrote:
             | Mastodon is a walled garden
        
           | Dylan16807 wrote:
           | I don't see why a site like this couldn't search one or more
           | of the top video sites if there was healthy competition.
        
         | 0134340 wrote:
         | Found Footage Festival on Youtube does the same thing. They
         | have fans of the show "mine" for img's and submit
         | interesting/weird/funny ones. It's part of their bi-weekly
         | shows where they review weird and interesting VHS tapes and old
         | public access shows.
        
         | albert_e wrote:
         | It would be very interesting to get a view of the source code
         | for such a site. There are other interesting ideas that could
         | be done by mixing videos selected using other filters etc.
         | 
         | By any chance is this or similar on github :)
        
           | cypherpunks01 wrote:
           | https://github.com/wonga00/astronaut
           | 
           | I remember looking through the code awhile ago, it's nice and
           | simple!
           | 
           | Uses socket.io w node.js + express, a crawler script searches
           | YT periodically to keep the videos fresh. The server iterates
           | randomly through the video list, telling all clients through
           | socket.io which video is next, and when to switch.
        
         | sharpshadow wrote:
         | I can imagine that it gets boring really quickly to skim
         | through random untitled YouTube uploads. Maybe back then when
         | YT did have a weak filter and initially waved through the
         | videos there could have been something worth finding.
         | 
         | Would be cool to see some statistics on how many videos over
         | the years get removed with each new protection and censorship
         | update. For example the latest medical disinformation campaign
         | not only forces creators to avoid certain words completely, but
         | also flagged and deleted pre-existing videos.
         | 
         | It's sad and dangerous that any topic could get forbidden and
         | erased not allowed to keep a history. The Internet Archive is
         | unfortunately a target now and efforts are being taken to
         | undermine it partly. It's already a thing to have records
         | deleted from the archive which should be the most worse thing
         | when your whole concept is to archive.
         | 
         | I strongly suggest IA mirrors around the world in various
         | countries with different legislations so that the censorship of
         | each country is not reflected in the IA mirror of the other.
        
           | MarioMan wrote:
           | >It's already a thing to have records deleted from the
           | archive which should be the most worse thing when your whole
           | concept is to archive.
           | 
           | IA doesn't delete archives, they merely make them
           | inaccessible. Perhaps that's a distinction without a
           | difference in the near-term, but it means things like
           | copyrighted content will be republished after copyright
           | expires.
        
         | HPsquared wrote:
         | Feels like an Adam Curtis documentary.
        
         | rwmj wrote:
         | http://www.insecam.org/ is another fun one. Random unsecured
         | security cameras from around the world.
        
           | yapyap wrote:
           | Insecam is truly a pearl among websites, when you're in your
           | feels at 3 am on a random (work)day and then you can look at
           | somewhere at the opposite side of the world that's already
           | going through the day, maybe it's already noon there or
           | something.
           | 
           | The vibes hit different
        
           | casenmgreen wrote:
           | This site has the cookie permissions dialog which has "reject
           | all", but I think this rejects only the "opt-in" cookies.
           | 
           | The "legitimate interest" cookies, which are equally
           | comprehensive but are on a different tab, are not rejected by
           | this, and to reject them you have to turn each one of them
           | off by hand, scrolling down a massive list.
           | 
           | If you select "reject all", the dialog instantly closes, I
           | think with the legitimate interest cookies all in use - but I
           | can't check, because I know of no way to get the dialog back
           | up again, which is why I'm saying "I think".
           | 
           | When sites pop this one up, I leave - and notably, The
           | Register, the UK news site, started using it a year or so
           | ago.
        
             | newaccount74 wrote:
             | Do you think that websites really don't track you if you
             | switch all the toggles?
        
             | NavinF wrote:
             | I enabled the uBlock Origin Annoyances filter to block most
             | of those cookie popups. It's not enabled by default.
             | Clicking "reject all" has no practical effect on my
             | privacy. If I wanted to keep something secret, I'd use e2e
             | encryption instead of making websites do a pinkie promise
        
         | AlfredBarnes wrote:
         | What a lovely idea!
        
       | LeoPanthera wrote:
       | Lots of digital cameras use an incrementing number in the
       | filename. If you ignore the prefix part, I wonder what is the
       | most commonly uploaded filename number for photos and videos?
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | IMG_XXXX is actually a standard for digital cameras
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_rule_for_Camera_File_sy...
         | 
         | TFA, "Apple uses the 'IMG_XXXX' naming convention for all
         | images and videos captured on iOS devices, where XXXX is a
         | unique sequence number." isn't very accurate, as the numbers
         | are not unique. They're just sequential. if you take 1001
         | images, the file system will actually create a new folder and
         | roll the digits back to 0000 to avoid overwriting
        
           | bewal416 wrote:
           | Thanks for fact-checking me on this. When writing this, I
           | didn't consider what would happen on the 10,000th image. I
           | will add an asterisk on this line!
        
           | kalleboo wrote:
           | Although as that link says, the prefix depends on the
           | manufacturer. My Sony Mavica cameras have MVC_, newer Sony
           | cameras are DSC0, my Fujifilm cameras have DSCF, I think IMG_
           | is pretty unique to Apple
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | >I think IMG_ is pretty unique to Apple
             | 
             | You'd be thinking wrong. Canon cameras also use the IMG_
             | format. It's been a while since I've dealt with GoPros, but
             | I'm pretty sure they are IMG_ as well.
             | 
             | While it's nice to hold onto what you know from experience,
             | extrapolating that to end-all-be-all knowledge is just not
             | a good stance. Especially in the light of information from
             | people with wider breadth of information.
        
       | jsemrau wrote:
       | Ah, this is where this comes from. There has been rumours flying
       | around in Stable Diffusion / Flux circles that you would get much
       | more realistic pictures when you include a photo id like
       | IMG_0416.
        
         | Sharlin wrote:
         | I don't think it comes from these Youtube videos - Flickr and
         | other photo upload services are a more likely source of
         | training images with default file names.
        
           | jsemrau wrote:
           | Maybe its a combination of both.
        
             | Sharlin wrote:
             | It seems exceedingly unlikely to me that frames from random
             | YouTube videos would have been used to train image
             | generation models. First off, they're difficult to extract
             | and second, the quality of individual video frames is very
             | low, _especially_ if we 're talking about 15 year old phone
             | videos at what, 480p at the very best!
        
               | jsemrau wrote:
               | You are probably right. I approached it from a high-value
               | dataset perspective but would agree that fuzzy frames
               | probably don't help much.
        
         | aydyn wrote:
         | Its not a rumor, you really do and you can try it out yourself.
         | Unfortunately its very finnicky and you cant really leverage it
         | to produce a realistic image of what you want since any further
         | prompting seems to override it.
         | 
         | Its like a ghost in the machine prompt.
        
           | jsemrau wrote:
           | Makes you wonder if its possible with the right seed,
           | scheduler, and prompt to complete recreate the original.
        
       | bewal416 wrote:
       | Hey, OP here! This is my first ever HN post- I appreciate the
       | warm reception.
       | 
       | A couple hours after posting this on my site, I found this
       | incredible vid of a woman telling her partner she's pregnant.
       | Incredibly heartfelt, and only 16 views
       | https://youtu.be/refKFdcojlE?si=l-PssLVYmmOPjjjA
       | 
       | It was posted over 10 years ago. I wonder if the family even
       | knows that this video still exists.
        
         | theandrewbailey wrote:
         | > Mar 14, 2014
         | 
         | That kid will be 10 soon.
        
           | pavlov wrote:
           | Eleven in four months?
        
             | meowster wrote:
             | Presumably there are still about 9 months to go in that
             | pregnancy before the child is born.
        
               | lukan wrote:
               | I always thought, that would make way more sense. But a
               | bit harder to find exact dates probably ..
        
             | kelnos wrote:
             | Assuming it takes someone roughly 4-6 weeks to realize they
             | are pregnant, the child was probably born in or around
             | November 2014, and will be turning 10 in the next couple
             | weeks.
             | 
             | I suppose the woman filming the video could have taken much
             | longer to realize (unlikely, but possible), or chose to
             | wait to tell the father until several months later (also
             | unlikely, but possible), but either way, the kid is turning
             | 10 now-ish, not 11.
             | 
             | It's also possible that this video was posted well after it
             | was taken, in which case we can't say much about the age of
             | the kid, except that it likely happened before this "Share
             | to YouTube" functionality was removed from iOS.
        
             | theandrewbailey wrote:
             | Only if your culture measures age from conception instead
             | of birth.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | this is you why can't reuse calendars
        
             | meowster wrote:
             | I don't understand your comment.
             | 
             | (By the way, presumably there are still about 9 months to
             | go in that pregnancy before the child is born.)
        
         | urbandw311er wrote:
         | Why does he walk off at the end? Did he still not believe her
         | do you think?
        
           | adriand wrote:
           | He also said, "My heart just dropped". That's a curious thing
           | to say.
        
             | averageRoyalty wrote:
             | I guess as in 'dropped a beat'. The news was so surprising
             | his heart stopped momentarily.
        
               | pbhjpbhj wrote:
               | It's the opposite, usually. "My heart dropped" is a sense
               | of doom, foreboding, a realisation of oncoming cataclysm.
               | Like 'as I saw the second plane come into view my heart
               | dropped'.
               | 
               | Of course, people don't use language in a consistent way,
               | and people will use terms thinking they mean e.g. their
               | antonym.
               | 
               | It's probably a common initial reaction to learning of
               | impending parenthood. Life will never be the same.
               | Initially one might only see the looming challenge of the
               | mountain to climb.
        
           | JawsOfALion wrote:
           | I was going to explain the way i saw it, but i erased it and
           | decided it's probably best not to give my thoughts in case he
           | or someone in his life came across the comments out of
           | respect.
        
         | aricooperdavis wrote:
         | The first one I clicked on was similarly heartwarming - it's
         | just a video of an ultrasound, zooming in on the heartbeat:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_N4rAauRvU
        
         | smusamashah wrote:
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepIntoYouTube is a reddit sub to
         | bring up videos like these.
        
       | flpm wrote:
       | This makes me hopeful, the internet can still be interesting when
       | we manage to break away from the attention trap of infinite feed
       | and the prepared content designed to optimize likes. Feels like
       | the raw homepages of a long time ago.
        
       | divbzero wrote:
       | I love the potash game! That's hilarious.
        
       | mikae1 wrote:
       | There were a bunch of subreddits based on obscure videos with
       | default filenames.
       | 
       | https://old.reddit.com/r/IMGXXXX/
        
       | tokioyoyo wrote:
       | A little bit tangent, and I'm definitely looking at it from rose
       | colored glasses... but been playing with it for the 30 minutes,
       | and most of the videos look so real? Like when you go on TikTok /
       | Instagram nowadays, there are obviously unlimited amount of
       | content. But there's this sense of everything being edited
       | multiple times, people trying to create their own "brand",
       | nothing looking real. It's a shame how we over-financialized
       | everything and sucked out the fun. Or maybe I just got old.
       | 
       | Side note, I'll also recommend people to look up "X city in 1990s
       | / 2000s" on YouTube. San Francisco, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Toronto,
       | London and etc. have cool slice of life content from people who
       | were very into camcorders.
        
         | andai wrote:
         | I see parallels with this and RuneScape. Now it's all about
         | efficiently grinding stats or flipping stuff on the exchange.
         | Back in the day it was all about trimming armor and buying gf.
        
           | durumu wrote:
           | I think that has more to do with being a kid vs being an
           | adult. Kids are probably still buying gfs on Roblox and
           | Minecraft today (disclaimer: I have no idea what kids play
           | these days lol)
        
         | epcoa wrote:
         | > I'm definitely looking at it from rose colored glasses
         | 
         | It's not rose tinted glasses, it's just a poor comparison.
         | 
         | The absolute vast majority of these videos have double digit if
         | not _any_ views. You 're seeking them out, using a little quirk
         | of naming and the poster's DGAFism. There is no pretense of
         | promotion to a large audience or virality. Anything spoonfed
         | you on a Tiktok or Instagram feed could not be more different.
         | The default Youtube experience is the same as mass Tiktok.
         | Moreover you can find plenty of similar material like this on
         | Instagram and Tiktok if you go looking for it, that is after
         | all what most people are using it for, bumming around with
         | their friends. The algorithm isn't going to spoonfeed this to
         | you, and obviously Youtube never did either.
        
           | durumu wrote:
           | I believe Reddit in particular actually has gotten much more
           | optimized in the past 15 years. I don't think this is rose
           | colored glasses, the content really is much more engaging and
           | addictive, with more short form videos and content that can
           | be understood immediately at a glance.
        
             | epcoa wrote:
             | This may be so, but I don't know how it counters the fact
             | that there is more essentially unwatched and obscure
             | content produced on these platforms than ever.
             | 
             | And it's not like this particular content was once popular
             | in the "good old days", the view counts are literally 0 in
             | some cases.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | 2:30am at a 7-11 near Disney World - 1987
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYbe-35_BaA
        
           | thedrexster wrote:
           | The smoking is the most shocking part to me!
        
           | beowulfey wrote:
           | was about to post this myself. such a great example of this
        
           | kawsper wrote:
           | There's a 2014 update to that video made by the same people:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8n11y2lxrE
        
         | mprast wrote:
         | I was on tiktok in 2019/2020 and for a brief period it was just
         | ordinary users messing around and posting whatever they felt
         | like. No tiktok shop, very few ads or thinkpieces, nobody was
         | trying to build an audience. A lot weirder and a lot more fun
        
           | abixb wrote:
           | Commercialization and infiltration of advertising-dollars-
           | seeking "influencers" ruins social media sites.
           | 
           | I miss the early days of the internet (and especially
           | YouTube) so fucking much. I'm 28 now, and I've been online
           | since 2009. I think 2009-2014 was the GOLDEN AGE of the
           | internet for me, especially on YouTube.
        
             | mprast wrote:
             | yeah agreed. I don't think Cory Doctorow is right about
             | everything but I think he was dead on with enshittification
        
             | antod wrote:
             | I'm old enough to have seen multiple golden ages / phases
             | of the internet and was thinking about pointing out every
             | era has one based on your age.
             | 
             | But then again, I kinda suspect there's some deeper truth
             | going on where your mentioned golden age might be one of
             | the last though?
        
               | abixb wrote:
               | Yeah, the ubiquity of smartphones and the rise of
               | Facebook and Instagram (post-acquisition) as an open
               | platform for advertisers versus mostly for early
               | adopters/enthusiasts really killed the "fun" of the
               | internet.
               | 
               | Also, I remember how many different frameworks and "rich
               | internet application" technologies existed back then
               | (Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Apple QuickTime,
               | etc.). In many ways, the internet was a much more diverse
               | and a much more 'unpredictable' place back then.
        
               | eCa wrote:
               | > really killed the "fun" of the internet.
               | 
               | The original eternal September[1] predates my entry to
               | the internet by a couple of years, but the cycle repeats
               | eternally.
               | 
               | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
        
               | antod wrote:
               | Yeah, I'm of the same vintage. Never really felt eternal
               | september impacted the newsgroups I frequented as they
               | didn't appeal to AOLers, and felt it was exaggerated. But
               | it feels real now with engagement metric following
               | content creators and influencers, and the way platforms
               | enable it now.
        
             | 101008 wrote:
             | For me it was 2003 to 2010. I said this multiple times, and
             | it is that I'm working on a essay about qhy Internet was
             | more enjoyable back then.
             | 
             | But sometimes I think the only reason (or the main reason)
             | is that I was a teenager. It isn't about internet, it is
             | about the user and how they saw the worldwide at that
             | time...
        
             | tokioyoyo wrote:
             | I'm a couple of years older, and I generally agree with
             | you. But even up until 2016 it was generally tolerable.
             | There was a point in time when every single social media
             | changed from "you and your friends" to "you and the world".
             | Which opened the hellscape of influencer and branding
             | world. I'm not sure what exactly accelerated it -
             | Facebook/IG going algo-view first, TikTok starting to get
             | traction even when it was just a dancing app, or the entire
             | A/B science. Oh well...
        
               | Eisenstein wrote:
               | What happened right around 2016 was a combination of the
               | internet being weaponized in the political space and the
               | destruction of of revenue for legacy media because of
               | Facebook and Google and other walled systems which
               | ingested their IP and served it to their users. This
               | effectively made people paranoid of data that didn't
               | immediately fit into their world view because the concept
               | of any shared truth was shattered and at the same time it
               | felt like everything and everyone on the internet was
               | targeted to misinform you.
               | 
               | The 'mainstream media' was never taken seriously by
               | people savvy in the early tech spaces, so the loss of it
               | didn't really hit us as particularly impactful. But that
               | loss made it so that the 'mainstream' no longer had any
               | 'ground truth' they could all fall back on that would be
               | the arbiter of correct and incorrect information, and so
               | truth became whatever felt most right to a person at the
               | time.
               | 
               | This of course has more to do with the people and culture
               | you most identify with, rather than any kind of objective
               | comparison of data, so groups looked more inwards and
               | became ossified in dogma and refused to look at any other
               | perspective in good faith. And here we are.
        
             | com2kid wrote:
             | I've been on the Internet since 1995.
             | 
             | I remember the first banner ad!
             | 
             | Wikipedia didn't exist. It was possible to run out of
             | websites to visit. People were, in general, super friendly,
             | aside from the trolls on AIM trying to crash other people's
             | clients. (IRC was a separate place though, I mostly spent
             | time on websites.)
             | 
             | Forums had horrible UIs, the latency was awful. Compared to
             | dial up BBSs that came before the user experience was much
             | worse.
             | 
             | Everything was authentic. People just doing stuff, posting
             | about what they loved. Uploading art they made and photos
             | they took. The barrier to entry was high (you needed to own
             | a scanner and be able to figure out how to set it up!), but
             | not so high that determined non-technical users couldn't
             | muddle through and still make great things.
        
               | usefulcat wrote:
               | Same. For me, usenet was "social media", long before
               | social media was a thing. I remember in college hanging
               | out in a newsgroup for people looking for a pen pal, and
               | later exchanging letters with someone on the other side
               | of the country whom I never met in person.
               | 
               | Pretty crude by today's standards, but also a lot more
               | genuine and less risky. At that time there were a lot of
               | people on the internet like me, college kids discovering
               | it for the first time.
        
               | qingcharles wrote:
               | I got on in late '93. I definitely feel like I visited
               | every web site. I seem to remember most of them being
               | HTML tutorials :D
        
             | susam wrote:
             | I've been on the Internet since 1999, and I feel a strong
             | sense of nostalgia for those early years. For me, the
             | period from 1999 to 2010 was the "golden age" of the
             | Internet. It was a time of exploration, creativity, and
             | genuine connection. I imagine that people who joined even
             | earlier might feel a similar nostalgia for their own era on
             | the web.
             | 
             | I also wrote about my experiences and why I consider this
             | time the golden age in a blog post here:
             | <https://susam.net/web-golden.html>.
        
             | 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
             | IMO we need to move past the follower/following model on
             | social media.
             | 
             |  _Having_ followers is the best way to _get_ followers,
             | which creates a fame snowball.
             | 
             | The result is that a few uploads get a bunch of attention,
             | and most uploads get very little attention. The typical
             | user feels lonely, isolated, neglected. Jealously means the
             | attention-rich users, the ones with lots of followers,
             | become targets for bullies -- and that leaves them
             | miserable too. No one is happy.
             | 
             | Platforms with a more equal distribution of attention, such
             | as IRC, didn't have these problems.
             | 
             | Virality was a mistake.
        
             | racefan76 wrote:
             | You might like this website: https://www.cameronsworld.net/
             | 
             | It's a Geocities archive containing websites hosted on the
             | platform from the 90s/00s. I really like the creativity and
             | authenticity in the archived sites, it's like looking at a
             | mirror into the past.
        
           | doctorpangloss wrote:
           | The absolute freak show that is the TikTok top daily videos
           | isn't weird enough for you?
        
             | lolc wrote:
             | People doing a weird thing for clicks is not the shtick for
             | me. People sharing their weird life, maybe.
        
           | wkirby wrote:
           | TikTok's vine era. Sadly gone.
        
         | cdchn wrote:
         | I think a big part of it is that this search doesn't involve
         | "the algorithm" at all. There is no recommendation engine here,
         | what you search for by pure ID is nothing but the unfiltered
         | schism of what people record with their phones and
         | unpretentiously/accidentally click "Upload" with no hope of
         | clout chasing or really even a bare inkling that anybody might
         | actually WATCH what they recorded.
        
         | dlisboa wrote:
         | There's definitely a lack of authenticity these days.
         | 
         | I was on the park the other day and there were these two dudes
         | and one was filming the other walking and talking to the
         | camera. They'd look at the shot and then he'd walk back and do
         | it again and again. Multiple times.
         | 
         | I've also seen people talking regularly to their friends and
         | then suddenly go into "influencer mode" and yell "tell us what
         | you think in the comments! :kissy_face:" then go back to
         | regular talk like nothing happened.
         | 
         | The word "cringey" is overused but it feels like such an
         | inhuman behaviour and so weird to see live. Like the person
         | just suddenly got possessed by some entity other than
         | themselves.
        
       | pg_bot wrote:
       | "Turn roll Nate roll some little" might be burned into my brain
       | now.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOSWZduStYs
        
       | meindnoch wrote:
       | I want to play the potash game.
        
       | mrtksn wrote:
       | Digital version of "I just bought some films from a yard sale".
       | The good old days before enshitification.
        
         | AI_beffr wrote:
         | this is valid of course but it makes me think about how totally
         | different this is to that. the world has changed even more in
         | this case i think.
        
       | petercooper wrote:
       | /r/DeepIntoYouTube addict here. There are a lot of patterns like
       | this you can use to find bizarre YouTube videos with next to no
       | views, based upon the default numbering scheme of various
       | cameras. Just one example:
       | https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=MVI_7812.MOV .. and
       | yes, you can rattle through thousands of numbers for just that
       | one.
        
         | joezydeco wrote:
         | If you want to look for GoPro videos, start at GX010001.MP4 and
         | increment from there.
        
           | 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
           | Mine start with GH, like GH011634.MP4
        
         | abixb wrote:
         | Here's another ADORABLE one I found of a little kid _almost_
         | getting the soccer ball into the net (MVI_1012.MOV) --
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6eYAxaXijc
        
       | blululu wrote:
       | This is cool. In a similar vein with a more continuous display,
       | check out astronaut.io
        
       | butnougat43 wrote:
       | Worked great for me!
        
         | thelastparadise wrote:
         | Likewise. Got an error at first, then it was working fine.
        
           | butnougat43 wrote:
           | Ah, yeah I did get a couple errors at first, but kept trying
           | then it worked great.
        
       | redpandadolphin wrote:
       | I did this and the 2nd video I found was of a recording of "Disco
       | 2000" by the Pulp at a festival:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DCFCQ9GYUY
       | 
       | By coincidence this is one of my favourite songs by one of my
       | favourite bands.
        
         | nocoiner wrote:
         | Nice find. Also one of my favorite bands and one of my favorite
         | songs of theirs.
         | 
         | Edit: I found the set list for that show:
         | 
         | https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/pulp/2011/hyde-park-london-en...
        
       | AI_beffr wrote:
       | this is what youtube and reddit was like during 2011. it was
       | calm, serene, accepting, warm, human. it was just this perfect
       | mixture of user friendliness, people knowing how to type and use
       | computers and just before the internet was taken seriously by
       | anyone and corrupted by money. before social media became a
       | serious political consideration. i remember very clearly that
       | even at the time it felt too good to be true. these videos
       | capture that feeling pretty well. it was all unfiltered and it
       | made you feel like you were connected to the world. like you had
       | your finger on the pulse of the world. or like the entire world
       | was inside your computer. really warm fuzzy vibes. i still miss
       | that. but now i am too busy to spend so much time on the computer
       | anyway.
        
         | aucisson_masque wrote:
         | You're speaking of a world that doesn't exist. Even back then
         | people were trying to make money out of YouTube.
        
           | ziddoap wrote:
           | > _Even back then people were trying to make money out of
           | YouTube_
           | 
           | It's a matter of degree. Early YouTube was much closer to
           | what the parent poster describes than the YouTube of today.
           | 
           | When I first discovered YouTube and uploaded videos, the
           | thought of making money (let alone making a living) was
           | nowhere in my mind.
        
         | 5040 wrote:
         | I miss those days too, but my recollection of Youtube is a
         | little different. Lots of piracy for example.
        
       | brap wrote:
       | I understand that these videos were made public, but still this
       | kinda feels like violating people's privacy. They most likely
       | never intended for us all to watch their personal videos a decade
       | later.
        
         | aucisson_masque wrote:
         | It's no different of inadvertently watching your neighbor naked
         | through her window because you happened to look at the wrong
         | time.
         | 
         | You know it's wrong but you won't look elsewhere...
        
           | brap wrote:
           | True but I would probably not share her naked video on HN
        
           | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
           | It's more like you're continually checking hundreds of
           | windows, just in case it happens...
        
           | 93po wrote:
           | i mean i personally look elsewhere, bc getting caught looking
           | would feel really shitty for them probably.
        
           | ronsor wrote:
           | I think that is neither a normal situation to be in nor a
           | normal thing to do.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | It's from a time before the internet became full of people
         | trying to hurt you.
        
           | dirtyhippiefree wrote:
           | FTFY - It's from a time when those people weren't as brazen
           | about it.
        
         | rkagerer wrote:
         | I'm surprised yours is the only comment from this perspective.
         | I get the draw and innocence of such videos, but I agree
         | spreading them knowing they were most likely uploaded
         | accidentally seems a violation of these people's privacy.
        
           | fortyseven wrote:
           | Why on earth would you assume that most of these are an
           | accident?
        
             | necovek wrote:
             | Even the OP has this to say:
             | 
             | > In fact, many were likely uploaded by accident or with a
             | misunderstanding that complete strangers could see it.
             | 
             | Throughout the article, there are reasons why one would
             | think that (like most having zero views, no descriptions,
             | no engagement etc).
        
         | ronsor wrote:
         | If you upload a video and set it to public, you're responsible
         | for that. End of story.
         | 
         | It is not the responsibility of others to guess your
         | intentions.
        
           | kube-system wrote:
           | > and set it to public
           | 
           | That's the issue. These people likely didn't affirmatively do
           | that.
        
           | switch007 wrote:
           | Do you know for sure they agreed explicitly to it being
           | public?
        
         | renewiltord wrote:
         | This is what I don't get about historians reading old people's
         | letters to each other. Most of Alexander the Great's letters
         | that are read are fake, but for the ones that are real, did
         | anyone ask for his consent first? What makes anyone think that
         | we should be privy to their inmost thoughts put to stone? Even
         | if he did, is it informed consent if he did so not knowing that
         | billions could one day consume this idly? People really need to
         | learn consent.
        
           | eCa wrote:
           | I think a case could be made that it's fair that a person of
           | his influence on the world loses a bit of his privacy a
           | couple of thousand years after his death.
        
           | necovek wrote:
           | This is even true for "celebrities" today: there are
           | different rules about where they still get to keep their
           | privacy, and even then the society's thirst for the most
           | intimate details is unrelenting. I am not saying this is
           | "fair", but that it's recognized that "celebrity" has quite
           | some downsides too.
           | 
           | OTOH, people featured in these videos are not going to hold a
           | press conference when they start a new job (eg movie filming,
           | sport team changes, winning elections), or even about a
           | terminal illness they might be facing, where all of those are
           | quite common with celebrities.
        
           | Sakos wrote:
           | People need to learn consent for people who've been dead for
           | hundreds or thousands of years? Why? In the end, everything
           | we leave behind belongs to our species' history and culture.
           | There's no moral obligation for privacy under these
           | circumstances the same way there is for somebody who's alive
           | now. It just makes it unnecessarily difficult for future
           | historians to put arbitrary restrictions on what they're
           | allowed to read and share.
        
           | danielbln wrote:
           | To future historians: once I'm dead for 2+ generations, feel
           | free to consider any information of mine as public domain.
        
         | necovek wrote:
         | Indeed: I would feel bad looking over them even if I know that
         | most are innocous enough.
         | 
         | It's the usual, the fact that we can does not mean that we
         | should.
        
         | switch007 wrote:
         | I feel exactly the same
        
       | siva7 wrote:
       | You're all acting like these videos are from ancient times.
        
         | efilife wrote:
         | In tech, ~12 years is a lot. Judging by how fast our devices
         | evolve, they are ancient
        
           | wussboy wrote:
           | But judging by any other criteria, they're just yesterday.
        
       | corobo wrote:
       | I'd love a tech write up from the YouTube folks starting from
       | when someone was wondering "Why is all this data waking up from
       | the lukewarm storage layer today lmao" _opens HN_ "ah ok"
        
       | spuds wrote:
       | I love the rawness of this. I've noticed I tend towards a feeling
       | of everyone else in the world being so alien, living some totally
       | different incomprehensible life from mine. (Or more than I'm the
       | alien, and everyone else is living a normal, enviable life.)
       | Seeing little snapshots like these, most of them seemingly just
       | for memory's sake, makes me feel a little more human. Hard to get
       | on any social media, where there's also some curation going on.
        
         | anileated wrote:
         | > I've noticed I tend towards a feeling of everyone else in the
         | world being so alien, living some totally different
         | incomprehensible life from mine. (Or more than I'm the alien,
         | and everyone else is living a normal, enviable life.)
         | 
         | Same.
         | 
         | > Seeing little snapshots like these, most of them seemingly
         | just for memory's sake, makes me feel a little more human.
         | 
         | For me these videos only highlight the previously mentioned
         | state of affairs.
        
       | slmjkdbtl wrote:
       | Wow, I hope there's a similar video platform now, filled with
       | casual everyday videos of normal people, it'll be precious
       | documentation for human kind.
        
       | DidYaWipe wrote:
       | Is what?
        
       | theyknowitsxmas wrote:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xF-wxS1_ZE
        
       | cedws wrote:
       | Watching these videos made me sad. It's a stark reminder that the
       | old internet I grew up with is over. And I'm not even that old. I
       | miss the candid content, from when people just uploaded whatever
       | they felt like without incentive. YouTube is an industrial
       | clickbait farm now. Social media is driving people apart and
       | turning them into narcissists.
        
       | fiatpandas wrote:
       | Used to have a raspberry pi + small hdmi screen on a shelf, and
       | it would randomly play these raw uploads 24/7, new video every 2
       | minutes. It was fun to encounter random home movies all day. Very
       | hard to maintain due to use of YouTube-dl, plus legacy search API
       | that I was eventually kicked off of after unsuccessfully arguing
       | for my continued use as an art project. My version searched for
       | 4-5 different camera prefixes including IMG_. Would be fun to
       | remake the backend with a headless browser framework + YouTube-
       | dl.
        
         | akersten wrote:
         | > I was eventually kicked off
         | 
         | Woah, can you expand on that? Did you get IP banned from
         | YouTube?
        
           | fiatpandas wrote:
           | No, to my memory they were phasing out the API except for
           | case-by-case allowed usage. I think I opened a support ticket
           | to justify continued access, with a description of my
           | project, but they denied my use case. I can't remember now if
           | access was cut off, or if limits were dropped so low it was
           | unusable, but the project became infeasible.
        
             | Ginger-Pickles wrote:
             | Same thing reported by author of: https://default-filename-
             | tv.neocities.org/
        
         | 1una wrote:
         | > Very hard to maintain due to use of YouTube-dl, plus legacy
         | search API
         | 
         | With yt-dlp you can do this:                 yt-dlp
         | ytsearch5:IMG_0416
         | 
         | which searches for IMG_0416 and downloads the first 5 of them.
         | There is no need to use YouTube API.
        
           | fiatpandas wrote:
           | Great tip! Would love to not have to maintain a headless
           | script. Just set YouTube-dl to update on a cronjob.
        
       | kayyyy wrote:
       | Surprised that nobody is talking about the other obscure file
       | name "Webcam video from" that was attached to untitled videos
       | made in the webcam recorder that used to be built into the site.
        
       | tolerance wrote:
       | This comes across to me like a sort of "voyeur porn"...in the
       | sense like how "food porn" excites the stomach...and sports
       | excites competitive spirit.
       | 
       | What I'm gathering from the comments here is that these videos
       | excite faculties of man that are less carnal than the other
       | examples.
       | 
       | Be that as it may.
        
       | totetsu wrote:
       | Once upon a time you could do this directly on google with things
       | like "index of" and find candid things from people's shared
       | folders
        
       | cambronnes wrote:
       | This is so wholesome.
        
       | wkjagt wrote:
       | Tangent, but I miss that iPhone era. I remember holding an iPhone
       | for the first time. Someone showed me a map app (maybe Google
       | Maps) and it took me a second to realize I was looking at a map
       | of where I was, and remember thinking "how does it know?", and
       | just being so mesmerized by it.
       | 
       | And Angry Birds.
        
       | yeldarb wrote:
       | It's sad that only Google can (and honestly a bit surprising that
       | Google hasn't) use multimodal video models to index the semantic
       | contents & transcripts of these videos for search. Huge long tail
       | of unique content.
        
         | DriverDaily wrote:
         | It is! I've often wanted to search for something that happens
         | in a video instead of just the title, description, and
         | keywords.
        
           | tonyhart7 wrote:
           | it would be a totally game changer and super helpful for
           | months then people start abusing it to gain views anyway like
           | the current web
        
       | pppoe wrote:
       | This reminds me the trick to make recent text-to-image model
       | generate highly realistic (but amateur) photos by adding
       | "IMG_XXXX" into the prompt. Although these videos have nearly
       | zero views on YouTube, they may be part of the training data
       | behind these models.
        
         | sen wrote:
         | It's also the default naming for every digital SLR, phone
         | camera, etc... lots of which upload with file name as title to
         | Flickr and many other photo sharing services, most of which
         | have also been used in training data.
         | 
         | DSC _, IMG_ , etc etc.
        
       | wingworks wrote:
       | omg, where is this from? (some kinda app that overlayed 3d
       | animations?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOSWZduStYs
        
         | all2 wrote:
         | That looks like a 2D image with an alpha channel based on the
         | background color of the image. Watch the shadow of the bot as
         | it crosses the edge if the desk.
        
       | blahgeek wrote:
       | Reading half way through the post, I thought what the author
       | going to do was to analyze the distribution of numbers in the
       | filename, and, I don't know, maybe give an estimation about how
       | often people take photos or videos, based on the time, country,
       | etc. That would be an interesting study.
        
         | BandButcher wrote:
         | ironically, im glad this post wasn't about that. that would've
         | been too typical of HN imo. why talk about metadata when you
         | can just enjoy the data itself??
        
       | dools wrote:
       | In about 2007 or so my brother and I used to find super obscure
       | blogs with no comments, read them and then write detailed
       | responses to the author and share it with our friends. We always
       | kept it positive, and said encouraging things. Most of the time
       | the posts had been written in the 90s or early 2000s. We just did
       | it knowing that probably one or two people would get notified of
       | a new comment and maybe feel happy that someone read their post.
        
         | ddingus wrote:
         | Cool! I have done that myself a time or two.
         | 
         | Ever get a good response back?
         | 
         | I have been surprised a time or two ending up in a conversation
         | with someone who took the time same as I did. Just because we
         | could.
        
         | necovek wrote:
         | I think "blogs" as in "web logs" with features like comments
         | (trackbacks and linkbacks came later) only appeared around 2000
         | or 2001.
         | 
         | But still, plenty of blog posts from early 2000s to comment on
         | in 2007, especially on the likes of LiveJournal or Blogger.
        
         | mr90210 wrote:
         | I think I am going to start doing that =D.
         | 
         | I wonder what keywords or tricks I might use to find such blogs
         | in the current days.
        
       | pradn wrote:
       | Twitter used to have an app, Periscope. You could start a
       | livestream any time, anywhere. And viewers could fine live
       | streams on a world map.
       | 
       | For a few months, it was possible to feel the incredible
       | simultaneity and richness of human lives. Someone biking, another
       | person cooking. Day in one place, night in another place.
       | 
       | It was ahead of its time. And too expensive for Twitter to keep
       | running for too long. But it was a precursor to today's
       | Snapschat's map view and Instagram live streams.
        
         | tonyhart7 wrote:
         | they should bring it back
        
           | ttul wrote:
           | I'm struggling to imagine Elon Musk doing that.
        
             | gpmcadam wrote:
             | Isn't that exactly what he did when live-streaming on X
             | last year?
             | 
             | https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1653608284606312448
             | 
             | "This is 2015 Periscope code. Yeah, seems like we just need
             | to improve it a bit."
        
           | cylemons wrote:
           | I think Twitter is losing enough money already, doubt they
           | could afford to do that
        
         | rasapetter wrote:
         | And before that, there was Bambuser which was very similar to
         | Periscope but launched some 8 years earlier. It never gained
         | the popularity of Periscope, likely at least partly due to its
         | Nordic rather than Bay Area roots - but, oh boy, was it fun!
         | 
         | At any time of the day you could go to the website and watch
         | normal people around the globe doing random stuff. And chat
         | with them!There weren't any real influencers at the time (at
         | least not on the platform) and monetization wasn't possible, so
         | people's motivations for live streaming stuff was not to make
         | money but rather the joy of sharing a moment or just
         | experiencing new cool technology. It got a bit less joyful when
         | the Arabic Spring started and the platform got used by many in
         | very dire situations but it remained incredibly interesting to
         | follow.
         | 
         | The company still exists, though they stopped offering free-to-
         | use consumer services long ago.
        
         | cdchn wrote:
         | GPS spoofing ruined any potential for local-first content.
        
       | azhenley wrote:
       | I wish I would _just_ create and share, instead of getting stuck
       | in analysis paralysis trying to perfect it.
        
       | FactKnower69 wrote:
       | >YouTube automatically removes harmful or violent content
       | 
       | What a bizarre and obviously false claim to make for no reason in
       | the middle of the article
        
       | Lammy wrote:
       | > Apple uses the 'IMG_XXXX' naming convention for all images and
       | videos captured on iOS devices, where XXXX is a unique sequence
       | number.
       | 
       | For what it's worth, Apple are just conforming to the JEITA/CIPA
       | DCF standard:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_rule_for_Camera_File_sy...
       | 
       | "DCF file names" specification sez...
       | http://www.kronometric.org/phot/std/DC-009-2010_E.pdf#page=2...
       | 
       | "File names conforming to the following rules are called DCF file
       | names.
       | 
       | * The file name is 8 characters (not including the file
       | extension).
       | 
       | * The first four characters consist only of the upper-case
       | alphanumeric characters shown in Table 1
       | 
       | * These are referred to as the DCF file name Free characters.
       | They shall not contain two-byte characters or special codes.
       | 
       | * The four characters that follow are a number between "0001" and
       | "9999". "0000" shall not be used. These four digits are referred
       | to as File number.
       | 
       | * Files with the same file number stored in the same DCF
       | directory are considered to be object component files as defined
       | in 4.3.2."
        
         | rob74 wrote:
         | ...and collisions between filenames that would happen because
         | of the "wraparound" after 9999 images/videos are avoided by
         | storing them in different directories.
        
         | agilob wrote:
         | It's really cool that such standard exists, the worst thing
         | about Pixel phones is stupid filenames of pictures and videos,
         | not only it's not following this standard, but contains WRONG
         | timestamp. For example, picture with name
         | `PLX_20241101_115855.jpg` was taken at 12:58:55, not 11 as the
         | name suggests, but also picture with name
         | `PLX_20240913_191525.jpg` was taken at 19:15:25. A video on the
         | other hand would have a timestamp offset -1, the offset changes
         | depending on time of the year and it's different for pictures
         | and videos. It's annoying af, because pictures and videos in
         | the same folder will not be sorted chronologically by filename.
        
           | nasretdinov wrote:
           | Potentially daylight savings related? E.g. file names are in
           | UTC, whereas local time obviously isn't
        
             | agilob wrote:
             | Yes, it's DST related. Now explain why DST offset is
             | different for pictures and videos ;)
        
               | nasretdinov wrote:
               | Well they need to be different in _some_ way, right :)?
               | Why not use timestamp offset for this
        
               | berkes wrote:
               | While this comment is a joke, it's tragicomically true as
               | well.
               | 
               | Way too often have I encountered, or hacked in myself,
               | such "business rules".
               | 
               | "Except for these seven transactions from before [random
               | date/time] all transactions made between 01:00 and 01:15,
               | with a round amount, are recurring payments to X. Can we
               | not just use that instead of this data-migration that
               | you've budgetted?" (not literal request, but close
               | enough).
               | 
               | The danger -off course- lies in that this over time
               | becomes actual business logic and that meaning is
               | assigned to (meta)data that was never intended to carry
               | such meaning.
               | 
               | The solution -I've found- starts with what DDD calls
               | "ubiquitous language", where everyone (within a domain!)
               | assigns the same meaning to the same things1. And model
               | the software around that, never the other way.
               | 
               | 1 So maybe there's a 150 year old rule that states that
               | recurring transactions are those that happen between
               | ...etc. etc. That this is actually a settled and used
               | meaning within the domain experts/users/stakeholders. In
               | that case - IMO - it's far better to lean into it rather
               | than assign some is_recurring_for_x boolean or such that
               | has _no_ meaning in the domain.
        
               | catsma21 wrote:
               | because the extensions are already different. jpg and mp4
        
               | nasretdinov wrote:
               | Ok, fair point... I guess it's just that different teams
               | were doing photo and video then
        
               | InDubioProRubio wrote:
               | Programming employment-creation measure - to prevent them
               | doing damage elsewhere by adding abstraction madhouses.
        
           | walthamstow wrote:
           | British? Sounds like it's recording UTC time in the file
           | name, which is only correct during winter.
        
             | agilob wrote:
             | > British?
             | 
             | Nope, but it's a Pixel thing
        
             | sampo wrote:
             | 2024-11-01 is in winter, 2024-09-13 is in summer. So the
             | effect seems to be the opposite of what you say.
        
           | jval43 wrote:
           | FWIW that is not a Pixel-specific issue. I encountered this
           | on other cameras (IIRC Olympus and GoPro) as well. It's
           | maddening.
           | 
           | The issue stems from the fact that images are written with
           | proper EXIF time and timezone metadata while videos from the
           | same camera might only store a timestamp field. Whether
           | that's local time, UTC, or something else depends on the
           | camera and how you configured it.
        
           | rob74 wrote:
           | A lot of the DCF standard is designed around the limitations
           | of FAT file systems, e.g. filenames limited to 8+3
           | characters, directories limited to 9999 "items" (which I
           | assume is to make sure that there won't be more than 65,536
           | files in a directory). As Pixel phones don't use FAT, Google
           | probably doesn't feel bound by this standard. Their naming
           | convention allows the phones to store all photos/videos in a
           | single directory.
        
       | UberFly wrote:
       | So many touching snapshots into the actually important things in
       | life. Very cool.
        
       | ttul wrote:
       | https://youtu.be/9oAP2A98qLc?si=MaRGwcJlIyV0-Iff
       | 
       | "THE CULT- SHE SELLS SANCTUARY- LIVE DETROIT 2010"
       | 
       | Pretty great.
        
       | adamredwoods wrote:
       | Very heartwarming. I have an "android named" video uploaded to
       | YouTube a few years ago, and because there is copyrighted
       | background music going on (which I didn't realize at the time)
       | YouTube is threatening to delete it. I don't know if they will or
       | not, not sure when they put the "will delete" tag on it.
       | 
       | My late wife is in it. She died recently. I didn't know that
       | video was still up there until I read your post. And now my heart
       | breaks.
        
         | mtwshngtn wrote:
         | If you remember the account details to log in to the account
         | which uploaded that video, you can go to
         | https://studio.youtube.com, click "Content", and under the
         | 3-dot menu for each video you can click "Download" to get
         | Youtube's copy of your video.
         | 
         | Hoping that helps. Otherwise, you might try something like
         | https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp.
        
         | walthamstow wrote:
         | If you can send me the link I will happily rip it from YouTube
         | for you and send it to you via any method you prefer. Sorry for
         | your loss.
        
       | benreesman wrote:
       | Oh man this is so great: I've been having a shitty day and I've
       | been smiling from ear to ear since about the second paragraph of
       | this post. When no one is trying to actively distort the Internet
       | for monetization it's every bit as magical as it was in September
       | of 1994 and I remember why I took this up as a trade.
       | 
       | Good job on putting this #1 HN.
        
       | energy123 wrote:
       | Scrape and preserve these videos, someone
        
       | ddingus wrote:
       | I found a band I really like by searching on the ampersand, "&"
       | 
       | https://youtu.be/pLJ85XExZtQ?si=75ZykQeUjgItcpDM
       | 
       | Not sure what triggered it, but I began odd searches a while ago
       | and want to echo many of the "feels like the good old days" type
       | comments.
       | 
       | Video made without any real production intent is compelling. It
       | is pure, raw, just human and many of us hunger for that because
       | the big media players dominate hard for fear of losing to their
       | peers it seems.
       | 
       | And that behavior is expensive to us.
        
       | binary_slinger wrote:
       | This reminds me of something I've been thinking a lot about.
       | which i think is big techs greatest failure: interoperability
       | 
       | I first thought of this when seeing someone take a picture of
       | their computer screen. There is just so much friction in moving
       | data.
       | 
       | I should be able to take anything off any screen and move the
       | source material to any other screen on any device or cloud with a
       | simple 1-click process. Including the devices of a friend or
       | family member.
       | 
       | Microsoft forced OEM's to replace the right ctrl key with a
       | copilot key. really it should have been an 'interoperability'
       | key.
        
         | itsgabriel wrote:
         | It's not a failure, it's big techs greatest feature. Try to
         | imagine the likes of Windows, Office, Apple, AWS, Social Media
         | etc. without lock-in, network effect or all the other names for
         | missing interoperability.
        
         | eproxus wrote:
         | I usually joke that the hardest problem in computer science
         | that is not yet solved is sending a file between two devices.
        
           | siriushacker wrote:
           | Email baby!
        
             | layer8 wrote:
             | Only up to 18 MB or so. ;)
        
         | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
         | Tech giants consider interoperability as a bug, not a feature.
         | They want you locked into their ecosystems.
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | It's the tragedy of product lock-in and closed systems.
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | I have uploaded a bunch of similar stuff...
       | 
       | Videos are so big and cloud storage for it pretty expensive.
       | since nothing I film is nuclear launch codes, I just upload it
       | all to youtube as a way to store it for free.
       | 
       | Also gives me a handy sharing link for sending to friends too.
        
       | agilob wrote:
       | >Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a
       | feature called "Send to YouTube" that allowed users to upload
       | videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app.
       | 
       | A feature Nokia with Android One used to have too, but Android
       | itself doesn't have.
        
       | redbell wrote:
       | Excellent read, OP! I really enjoyed this, especially being your
       | very first post here. I hope to see more posts from you in the
       | future.
       | 
       | I didn't know this feature existed back in the days, and you just
       | cannot ignore the _haptic feedback_ feeling when you watch
       | _original_ , unedited content from random people who were filming
       | not for the sake of publishing to the mass but just for
       | themselves and friends/family to keep these records as memories.
       | This reminds me of the pre-smartphone era where people used to
       | own handheld, personal cameras to capture special moments of
       | their lives as _souvenirs_.
       | 
       | Also, regarding these "IMG_XXX" videos, one notable pattern is
       | that they all have very low number views, for an obvious reason.
       | The odd one to this pattern is this _pregnancy_ video, which had
       | the number of views jumped from 16 in ten years to to 1,650 in 10
       | hours. Also, checking the comments ' section, they are all new,
       | with the first (oldest) one being posted 9 hours ago.
        
       | mrs6969 wrote:
       | Just entered my birthday too, and found one of the cutest baby
       | video ever
       | 
       | Thanks for the article
        
       | guardian5x wrote:
       | I wonder if we will soon have Data Archeologists, who will try to
       | find these hidden long forgotten gems on the Internet.
        
       | hacker_88 wrote:
       | It's like one day on earth project, but for every day
        
       | CMay wrote:
       | From my notes. Maybe it's useful to someone. Not comprehensive as
       | there are other brands and other iterations I'm sure. Many
       | dpreview.com sample galleries show original filenames. Some
       | forums list filenames, youtube descriptions can list model names,
       | pdf manuals and manufacturer websites sometimes list the names.
       | There isn't really a good list of these that I know of.
       | * Apple        - IMG_0001            * BlackMagic Design        -
       | A001 * C001            * Canon        - 100-0001        -
       | 101-0001        - 10x-0001        - IMG_0001        -
       | MVI_0001.MOV            * Casio        - CIMG001        -
       | CIMG0001            * Fuji        - DSCF0001            * GoPro
       | - GX010001.MP4        - GH010001.MP4            * HP        -
       | HPIM0001            * Jenoptik        - JD0001            * JVC
       | - MOV_0001.mpg            * Kodak        - P0000001.KDC        -
       | DCP_0001        - 102_0001            * Konica Minolta        -
       | PICT0001            * Kyocera        - KIF 0001            *
       | Nikon        - DSCN0001        - DSC_0001            * Nokia
       | - DCM001        - DCM0001            * Olympus        - Pmdd0001
       | * Panasonic        - Pmdd 0001        - P1000001        - P0001
       | * Pentax        - IMGP0001            * Polaroid        -
       | DSCI0001            * Ricoh        - R0010001        - R0020001
       | * Samsung        - P1000001        - SAM 0001        - SH100001
       | - SV100001        - S7000001            * Sanyo        - SANY0001
       | * Sigma        - IMG0001            * Sony        - DSC0001
       | - DSC00001        - DSC_0001        - MAH00001            * Misc
       | - Mmddyy-hhmmss        - Yymmdd-hhmm-ss        - yyyymmdd_hhmmss
       | - VID_yyyymmdd        - mmddyy 3g2        - mmddyy 3gp        -
       | PXL_yyyymmdd_hhmmssms.mp4
       | 
       | Though in writing this and looking something up, I just came
       | across this github that could be useful:
       | https://github.com/thorsted/digicam_corpus
        
         | eftpotrm wrote:
         | Nikon defaulted to DSC_0001 for some time now, may still do but
         | I don't have any Z series gear to check.
        
           | CMay wrote:
           | In my notes the Sony section was listed Sony / Nikon, but
           | there was non-Nikon pattern in there and I removed the Nikon
           | label to reduce inconsistency. Then I didn't update the Nikon
           | section to include the other pattern. :) Should be fixed now.
           | If you notice anything else, let me know!
        
         | smusamashah wrote:
         | Somewhat related, this list of names is useful to generate
         | these casual real looking images using images generation
         | models.
         | 
         | It was discovered recently with Flux that using just
         | IMG_1234.jpg as a prompt gives you a very casual photo like
         | images.
         | 
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/1fxkt3p/co...
         | 
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/1fxdm1n/i_...
        
         | CarVac wrote:
         | Pro-level (1D) Canons let you set the three prefix letters.
        
         | colanderman wrote:
         | Fujifilm also uses _DSF0001 for Adobe RGB images.
        
         | matsemann wrote:
         | > GoPro GX010001.mp4
         | 
         | What annoys me is that when a video is split into multiple
         | files (because of sd card limitations etc), it increases the
         | first number, giving you files that sort really weird. So I
         | film GX010001.mp4, then after 8 minutes it starts a new file
         | GX020001.mp4, GX030001.mp4 etc., and then later that day when I
         | make a new clip, it has GX010002.mp4. This breaks sorting by
         | filename. Can sort by creationdate, but for the chaptered
         | videos they often share the same original datetime as well,
         | making it quite confusing when dealing with loads of gopro
         | videos. (I just published some tooling I've written for
         | creating street view content from gopros, so felt all the
         | quirks lately https://github.com/Matsemann/matsemanns-
         | streetview-tools/ the gopro max starts with GS btw)
        
       | sourcepluck wrote:
       | > YouTube automatically removes harmful or violent content, so
       | what remains exists in a unique, almost paradoxical state:
       | forbidden, yet harmless.
       | 
       | What exactly is forbidden, by who? I don't get the use of that
       | word there.
       | 
       | Also, anyone who doesn't know the "before" and "after" search
       | operators is missing out on some excellent nostalgia-trawling
       | similar to what is described here.                 "cat
       | before:2007" -> 2005 to 2007, the OG cat videos       "skateboard
       | before:2010" -> yes       "assange interview before:2016" -> then
       | filter for longer videos       "parkour after:2009 before:2015"
       | -> parkour videos from 2009 to 2015
        
         | bewal416 wrote:
         | Hey! My intention with this sentence is to say that although
         | the content is publicly available, the viewer may feel like
         | they're still "not allowed" to be watching it.
         | 
         | Others in the comments articulated this better than me: > I
         | understand that these videos were made public, but still this
         | kinda feels like violating people's privacy. They most likely
         | never intended for us all to watch their personal videos a
         | decade later.
         | 
         | I tried to distill it in a couple words in the blog, bc I
         | didn't want to harp on it. In retrospect, I could've explained
         | it better.
        
         | elboru wrote:
         | Thanks for this, a few months ago I was trying to find an old
         | video but it was impossible to find with regular queries,
         | there's just too much SEO garbage recently added to YouTube.
        
         | kentosi-dw wrote:
         | Thank you so much for this! I love & miss all the videos from
         | the old days.
        
       | plingbang wrote:
       | Some time ago there was a website that showed you a random
       | YouTube video. Like truly random. The biggest discovery to me was
       | that a typical video has 0-1 views, nearly always <10. I bet most
       | people don't realize this is how YouTube actually looks like. And
       | I guess it's also a good small reminder to all people trying to
       | become famous on social media.
       | 
       | I believe the website tried to find videos with least bias
       | possible by doing some clever searches using YouTube API (so not
       | just videos titled IMGXXXX). Maybe it was trying to do partial
       | matches on video ID.
        
         | danhau wrote:
         | > The biggest discovery to me was that a typical video has 0-1
         | views, nearly always <10. I bet most people don't realize this
         | is how YouTube actually looks like.
         | 
         | This is also interesting when thinking about how to optimize a
         | video platform. You can see how the vast majority of videos
         | could be evicted to cold / slow storage.
        
       | shark1 wrote:
       | All of these ordinary footages should be preserved.
        
       | brandonpelfrey wrote:
       | I personally don't have a problem with this, but this really made
       | me feel like I don't understand the community of this forum
       | sometimes. HN every day has multiple posts which drive so many
       | comments about how privacy is lost and everything needs full
       | E2EE, trust no one, etc. Then there is this post which is also a
       | breach of privacy (much more than some things complain about),
       | and yet the reaction is "wow, this is so pure and amazing to view
       | into these candid moments". It feels like some cognitive
       | dissonance. Still, personally I thought this was a cool post.
        
         | philipwhiuk wrote:
         | This website isn't a breach of privacy. The original upload
         | process wasn't privacy preserving.
         | 
         | The videos are already public on YouTube.
        
         | virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
         | How is this a breach of privacy?
        
           | dewey wrote:
           | If it's that easy to upload a video from your camera roll to
           | YouTube (Two clicks) it's not that hard to imagine that this
           | can happen by mistake or by someone who doesn't know that it
           | uploads as "public" by default.
           | 
           | Maybe they just wanted to send this video to a friend and
           | didn't have the technical understanding that this will then
           | be visible for everyone searching for it on YouTube.
        
         | kartoffelsaft wrote:
         | There are a few things that come to mind that make this
         | different:
         | 
         | 1. This isn't really privacy breaching. For someone who taps
         | the "share to youtube" button without knowing what it means,
         | sure, but even that is pretty explicit that you're sharing it.
         | Not sure why the article itself says people didn't know what
         | the button would do before tapping it, so I'd like some further
         | explanation of this point.
         | 
         | 2. It's opt in, not opt out. Spending time with most "normal"
         | people has shown me that very few people give a crap about
         | going into settings menus to configure exactly how ther data is
         | used or collected, or otherwise switching to a service that
         | gives them that control. When HN complains about privacy being
         | dead, they are complaining about this apathy end how it gets
         | exploited. This feature does not exploit that apathy.
         | 
         | 3. This gives us something that we actually want. When most
         | services invade your privacy, it's usually for things like
         | advertising, targeting content, and data brokering. Things that
         | I know I personally have a lot of issues with, and I feel I'm
         | not alone. This button doesn't do those things, it just gives
         | us interesting videos. So much so that most of the fascination
         | with these videos is that you can _feel_ the absence of those
         | issues.
        
       | skp1995 wrote:
       | I am missing the link to the thread, but diffusion models also
       | give a very consistent output when prompted with `IMG_{number}`
       | part of the reason could be the training data distribution
        
       | nullsmack wrote:
       | Other/older digital cameras used similar sequences of letters and
       | numbers like DSC_0001 and a few more I can't remember atm. It
       | might be fun to search for those too.
        
       | aalchek wrote:
       | Very cool- always good to appreciate how tech has evolved and
       | some of the culture and technical branches that have stemmed from
       | that
        
       | omiid wrote:
       | I can't believe how many random memories YouTube may contain!
       | It's amazing!
        
       | BillTthree wrote:
       | Gunshots at 1:00
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR3mv5SbAi4&t=17s Maybe a
       | slamming door, why so many slams? Obvious barking dog, then the
       | wicked desperate woman's scream
        
       | facialwipe wrote:
       | The article is mildly infuriating.
       | 
       |  _Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included
       | a feature called "Send to YouTube"_
       | 
       | Proceeds to feature two videos from 2015.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-11-11 23:01 UTC)