[HN Gopher] Grayjay Desktop App
___________________________________________________________________
Grayjay Desktop App
Author : pierrelf
Score : 475 points
Date : 2024-12-20 17:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (grayjay.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (grayjay.app)
| pvg wrote:
| Thread last year https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37924776
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Grayjay - Follow Creators Not Platforms_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37924776 - Oct 2023 (106
| comments)
| IronWolve wrote:
| We always been missing good 3rd party search/trending for online
| videos.
|
| I've been using a youtube frontend called pockettube, where I
| could make lists(channels) for content I like, without youtube
| forcing me what to watch.
|
| Example. I have an Art and Food channels with my favorite content
| creators, I get to see the list in order of newest videos first,
| totally bypassing youtubes forced interface.
|
| In fact, if people started creating front ends to youtube with
| real search/suggestion engines, you could find new content and
| help the less viewed but good content that gets bypassed.
|
| Grayjay is great, since it uses multiple video providers, but you
| still have to "Know" who to follow. The search "Knowing" part is
| still word of mouth, random change of seeing a creators video, or
| the platforms showing it to you. Combine the 2, and it would be
| unstoppable.
|
| I think if someone came up with a external database of content
| providers on multiple platforms that allows apps like
| grayjay/pockettube/etc to find new content, that is the missing
| piece.
| duxup wrote:
| Finding content is so hard.
|
| All YouTube wants me to watch are "OMG YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE
| WHAT THIS COP DID" content. I have no idea why they want me to
| watch those videos, I never do and I block the videos and the
| channels from recommendations but they keep coming ...
|
| All I get are ads for weird suspect drugs and products, just
| going on these platforms is such a bad vibe.
| johan914 wrote:
| YouTube has become especially horrific. It seems a couple
| years ago they gave up on video search- after 5 videos it
| will suddenly start recommending random videos under "you may
| like". If I watch one UFC video I am flooded with
| recommendations of Joe Rogan, despite my subscriptions all
| being unrelated.
| slater wrote:
| Best thing is, if I search for something it'll give me
| hundreds of search results. But if I then decide to filter
| by upload date, whooopsie! there are no search results,
| sorry!
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| You watch 2-3 videos on autopilot and Joe Rogan always pops
| up eventually. With that kind of promotion I dont
| understand why he's not bigger.
| macinjosh wrote:
| He's pretty big. He helped tip a presidential election.
| layer8 wrote:
| I don't remember ever getting a Joe Rogan recommendation.
| hollerith wrote:
| I have (recently).
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| Have you tried informing YouTube that you are not
| interested in Joe Rogan? There are several places and ways
| to do so in the application, and they seem to have worked
| for me.
| pmontra wrote:
| No idea about who Joe Rogan is, maybe because I'm not
| American and because I use YouTube via NewPipe on Android,
| almost never inside a browser on my laptop and anyway never
| logged in with my account.
|
| NewPipe doesn't need an account. I can subscribe to
| channels, bookmark videos and save them to playlists. It's
| all I need.
|
| Not having an account has the disadvantage that I don't
| have a common list of videos across my devices. I could
| export and import but it's too inconvenient. I just share
| videos to the other device if I have to, via KDE Connect.
| easyKL wrote:
| On your desktop please try Freetube. You can also import
| your NewPipe backup (history and subscriptions) Freetube
| will also allow you to have different profiles, that you
| could use one per device and regularly import their
| backups.
| pmontra wrote:
| I do have Freetube but I forget to use it. I developed
| the instinct of reaching to my phone or to my tablet when
| I want to watch a video. The only source of videos on my
| desktop would be technical stuff embedded in pages from
| HN but videos are too long (as in time) compared to text
| so either I read the transcript if available or I skip to
| the next interesting post.
| munificent wrote:
| My experience is that YouTube recommendations are heavily
| weighted based on my watch history. If I watch a single video
| on, say, videogames, all of a sudden my recommendations are
| all gamer stuff.
|
| Fortunately, you can easily edit your watch history. I just
| go through mine periodically and remove any kind of video
| that I don't want recommendations related to. Doing that has
| given me a very dialed in recommendation feed. If anything,
| it's _too_ dialed in, and I rarely get serendipitous
| recommendations.
| haltcatchfire wrote:
| My YouTube recommendations are like 80% RC planes
| johnny22 wrote:
| > it's too dialed in, and I rarely get serendipitous
| recommendations
|
| Youtube is doing better here for me in that respect than it
| used to. Once a week for the past month I get a button that
| asks if i want to see things it doesn't usually show me and
| I've even watched some of them. It's not perfect, but it
| does seem like they are trying.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It's biased by your watch history, but it's never _just_
| that. In my experience (browsing without accounts, in
| private browsing with no cookies, on rotating IPs), there
| seems to be a distinct spot in the algorithm for some
| inflammatory engagement bait regardless of your history.
| That bait is not dependent on your watch history and is
| based on your geographic location by the looks of it.
|
| Regardless of what I watch, in the middle of otherwise on-
| topic recommendations, there will always be one or two
| videos that are attempts at getting me to engage with some
| complete off-topic inflammatory political bullshit. Of
| course, once you click on that, the "regular"
| recommendation system takes over and feeds you more of that
| (which is _somewhat_ fine), but the fact that it 's trying
| to suck the user into this in the first place despite no
| indications the he desires to be exposed to such content in
| the first place is disgusting.
| 20after4 wrote:
| There is strong incentive for youtube creators to create
| this kind of "clickbait" content (and especially
| clickbait titles and thumbnails) which perpetuates that
| situation regardless of whether the algorithm explicitly
| rewards it. As long as engagement is a factor and
| creators are rewarded for it then it seems like what you
| observed is kind of unavoidable.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I don't mean usual, on-topic clickbait consistent with
| the watch history. I mean that in the middle of said on-
| topic clickbait, one or two of the recommendation slots
| are always explicitly allocated to a broader, regional-
| level pool of inflammatory political clickbait completely
| unrelated to watch history.
|
| So for example, I could be watching some niche technical
| videos, and my recommendations would be more of that for
| the most part. Except that on an English-speaking-country
| IP address, I'd also get some inflammatory Trump-related
| video among the usual recommendations. On a French IP I
| get the French equivalent, and so on.
|
| So either consumers of various niche content (in
| unrelated fields, from retrocomputing to farming or
| vehicle repair) _also_ all happen to be into political
| trash in various languages so much as to outcompete other
| on-topic videos in the recommendations, or the
| recommendation engine has an explicit feature to push
| inflammatory crap in addition to "organic"
| recommendations. I strongly suspect it's the latter.
| jfim wrote:
| My completely unsubstantiated pet hypothesis about this
| is that it's cheaper and easier to cache the same click
| bait for everyone instead of different well tailored
| recommendations.
| imiric wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| The most insidious thing is when you see kids hooked on
| it. Not only are they fed the same garbage content and
| ads, some of it is actually harmful, like Elsagate. Some
| of those videos are still available on the site, and more
| get added all the time.
|
| We can argue whether parents should let their kids use
| YouTube, and if the YouTube Kids app works well enough to
| protect them from this, but at the end of the day we're
| just data mines and not customers, so nothing besides
| public outrage and regulations could improve this. It's
| also an incredibly difficult problem given the amount of
| videos uploaded every day, but I'm sure Google could
| solve it if they had good reasons to.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| > I block the videos and the channels from recommendations
| but they keep coming
|
| Part of this is channels opening side or mirror channels that
| they upload their videos to as well (since you'll sometimes
| see the exact same video but no ContentID strike) so they can
| get around people doing that.
| grahamj wrote:
| It's funny eh, the world's largest personal data collection
| company and they still have no idea what videos you want to
| watch lol
| rel_ic wrote:
| Their goal is not to show you videos you want to watch!
| layer8 wrote:
| Select "not interested" for those videos. There's also "don't
| recommend this channel". "Like" videos that you like. Your
| feed will quickly adjust.
| duxup wrote:
| Done that, no joy.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > Your feed will quickly adjust.
|
| It does adjust in _some way_ , but somehow it never picks
| up on the signal that actually made me like or dislike a
| video. It's very clear that some video-makers have figured
| out how to exploit this poor signal reception to shove
| really crappy content at people. Other video-makers, who
| aren't trying to dominate youtube revenue, are buried and
| difficult to find.
|
| TikTok, meanwhile, takes about an hour of scrolling and
| reacting to cultivate a feed that is _very_ tailored to my
| taste. It 's truly remarkable. If the app gets banned it'll
| be a huge loss for finding people and content with similar
| interests.
|
| (I also just don't have the desire to watch an entire
| 10-minute video packed with filler when I'm trying to relax
| unless it's very dense, and that's the entire revenue model
| of youtube. edit: I forgot youtube has shorts now)
| layer8 wrote:
| While the YouTube algorithm could be better (e.g. its
| recency bias is much too strong), 99% of what it
| recommends me is in line with stuff I watched or liked
| before. So, I don't know what to tell you.
|
| Maybe your interests are shared by a lot of people who
| also like crappy stuff? Just joking, but there must be
| some reason for the difference in experience.
| nkrisc wrote:
| The problem is it never stops recommending stuff. So if I
| say to never show me some channel (because maybe it's
| irrelevant to me), then it just fills that spot with the
| next slightly more irrelevant channel.
|
| Pretty soon all the recommendations are way far off what I
| would ever watch, because of course _i don't want to watch
| everything YouTube has_. There is a point where there is
| nothing left that I will ever wanted to watch.
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| How do I tell it to not show me any short clips with all
| caps font on them like it's a news headline?
| franczesko wrote:
| Watching hobby channels every now and then is very
| refreshing. I wish YT would recommend me more of those
| worthless-trash wrote:
| A strong recommendation for the crafman, he's the Bob Ross
| of crafting.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| For you. My recommendations are tech videos, documentaries
| and good music. I find YouTube to have a great recommendation
| engine. I do use ublock origin.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Look into DeArrow https://dearrow.ajay.app/
|
| Cuts down a ton of crap and shows you thumbnails and titles
| of things for what they really are.
| sellmesoap wrote:
| I've been using DeArrow
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36273890 it calms down
| the thumbnail clickbait on YouTube, I feel like I enjoy
| YouTube more by watching less.
| damiante wrote:
| The Grayjay Android app (which I use regularly) has a
| "Recommended" tab under each video that provides anonymous
| recommendations based only on the video you're watching. I
| recall them asking me to opt-in to the creation of a database
| like this as well recently, but I don't think it's available
| yet.
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here, the idea is to have a plugin system for
| recommendation engines in the future. You can choose whichever
| recommendation engine you like and it will tell you what data
| will be sent to the recommendation engine in order to be able
| to make recommendations for you. There will likely also be
| recommendation plugins that run fully offline for people who
| care a lot about privacy.
| IronWolve wrote:
| Be interesting if someone makes a nice recommendation engine
| (search) that does trending of real videos by views/votes,
| not fake hand picked curated trending like yt.
|
| Seems like people are finally annoyed at being controlled on
| what they are fed while they consume content. Thats what i
| like about grayjay, it embraced that freedom of the original
| internet, not letting corps control what you, putting the
| control back into the hands of the viewers.
|
| I toyed with an idea for a patreon clone, that would allow
| users to post a thumbnail to their video, and underneath
| quick links to other hosting providers. So the main choice is
| upto the creator, but also allow users to choose a different
| content streamer. I always hated how these services
| controlled creators too. What stores they can use.
|
| The idea of a "plugin" or provider, creators could pick their
| merch store provider even. Such ideas of opening a system to
| different companies, making competition.
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here. What you suggest you can already do in
| the Grayjay Android app. Support has not been added in the
| desktop app yet. Harbor is the app you can use to claim
| that you own a specific account and then you can configure
| for example which Merch to show. It supports the largest
| storefronts if you input an URL it will automatically
| scrape that specific page and cache the results. You can
| however also input a JSON.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| Linux version seems to work good. Was able to sync with my phone
| with no issues. My only complaint with either of them is YT
| Shorts support. I'll have to stick with Freetube for that I guess
| since there is a couple of creators that I follow that only
| release shorts
| tonijn wrote:
| Having no Shorts would be a huge plus imho
| grahamj wrote:
| yeah this is a feature not a bug lol
| em-bee wrote:
| i think the problem with shorts is not their length but how
| youtube presents them.
|
| freetube shows shorts in the same way it shows normal videos,
| just in a separate category. you have to look for them and
| click to see them and they don't push you to jump to the next
| one, and most importantly they are not random, just your
| subscribed channels.
|
| some channels use them as intro/overview for their longer
| videos which i find useful. other channels use them for
| stupid stuff which i ignore.
|
| you can ignore them completely if you want. freetube also has
| a category for livestreams, which i ignore to the point that
| i forget it's there.
|
| grayjay could support shorts in the same way.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| Exactly
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here, shorts will come, but on a tab you can turn
| off.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| Can't wait!
| ddingus wrote:
| YES! And thank you for a great app that is getting better.
|
| I bought in right away too. Louis gave a rundown on the
| idea; namely, you can pay for it, or not pay for it, and in
| either case we are going to do our best to make it work for
| you, and maybe those you recommend it to.
|
| Nice. Happy to support thinking like that.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Does freetube has macos arm app yet? I found emulated one
| unbearably slow.
| Hadriel wrote:
| What about Tiktok? Add that and i'm interested
| k3vinw wrote:
| Lol. Don't hold your breath. I used to enjoy TikTok until they
| forced me to create an account and install their spyware.
| philsnow wrote:
| What spyware? I don't have a tiktok account
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Because TikTok is a Chinese company most people just
| consider the app to by spyware. It's probably not any more
| spyware than other similar apps, but being owned by China
| makes it a little more worrisome to some people.
| k3vinw wrote:
| I don't care where they come from. Why do they force you
| to signup to see a video that can be played using
| standard web technology?
| radicality wrote:
| Take a look at the following blog post that looks at
| TikTok's encrypted VM and how it profiles you. And this is
| just on the website, without even installing the app.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34109771
| k3vinw wrote:
| Yep. My point exactly!
| k3vinw wrote:
| And you can't use TikTok without an account because they
| need that to "spy" on you.
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here, TikTok plugin pretty much works already, we
| just need to add the respective UI for both mobile and desktop
| to make it work nicely.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| I'd like to believe it but I'm so jaded at this point. Give you,
| one vendor, all my data from these different platforms to
| 'protect my privacy', that I only have at this point because my
| behavior is dispersed across platforms. Hmmm.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| I don't have a FUTO, Grayjay, or Youtube account and use the
| app just fine
| RobotToaster wrote:
| You're right to be sceptical, they still have their proprietary
| license that basically forbids forking.
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here, forking is not forbidden.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| So the license has been changed from the previous futo one,
| but there's still heavy restrictions on what anyone can do
| with it:
|
| > You may distribute the software or provide it to others
| only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial
| purposes.
|
| >Notwithstanding the above, you may not remove or obscure
| any functionality in the software related to payment to the
| Licensor in any copy you distribute to others.
|
| >You may not alter, remove, or obscure any licensing,
| copyright, or other notices of the Licensor in the
| software. Any use of the Licensor's trademarks is subject
| to applicable law.
|
| To me that says that if FUTO decide to paywall the entire
| app, nobody is allowed to fork it to remove that.
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here, you are not giving us any data. You can
| review the source code, the only data being sent to us is a
| single data on bootup to let us know how many users we have.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| I believe you.
|
| I'm coming from the perspective that lots of great
| intentioned ppl who want to buck a social norm, run up
| against obstacles and the have to start compromising,
| eventually reverting back to the norm. A founder has to make
| an unsavory deal with an investor, or they get fired, or they
| cash out...
|
| Jim Jones started out as an idealist. Putin was super popular
| early on.
|
| Generally I put my faith in systems, and consider human
| nature as more of a constant, dependent more on situation
| than individual over the long term.
| koen31 wrote:
| The license we use allows forking and distributing just not
| commercially.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Okay?
|
| Your pitch mentions 'privacy centered design'. Yet what
| you add to my world from a privacy perspective is a new
| custodian of my data on par with my telecom provider
| (highly regulated for me in California) or my Apple
| Browser. Apple I currently trust, because they continue
| to show signs of being good stewards, and they make
| enough money elsewhere to continue to afford the moral
| high ground. You guys, I need to trust that 1) you permit
| no 3rd party managed plugins in the client, 2) you won't
| inject analytics software of your own.
|
| I'm not managing the version of the client I download
| from your site, you guys do that.
|
| EDIT: We are transitioning to a world where Govt jobs are
| currently being handed out by party affiliation, right
| now Charlie Kirk is vetting candidates for DOGE based on
| loyalty. There is nothing to stop companies doing the
| same, and I assume many of them do, with a simple review
| of a person's social media activity before hiring.
|
| This next political cycle is going to be dominated by
| data weaponization at a personal level IMO.
| rollcat wrote:
| Bug report (macOS): the app does not allow copy/paste, text
| selection, or even quitting thru Cmd-* shortcuts - it has no
| entries in the top menu bar whatsoever. There are also no context
| menus.
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here, noted. Thank you.
| tines wrote:
| Instead of having to visit several drug dealers, this will
| aggregate all my favorite drugs into one convenient place.
| Fantastic!
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Works well so far! Good work!
|
| Nit: the Linux release should use a compressed tarball, not .zip
| smithza wrote:
| What is the functional difference? unzip is installed as a
| default on linux distros just as tar is...
| dgreensp wrote:
| The site CSS is a little broken on iPhone, causing elements to
| hang off the screen or overlap. FAQ link gives a 404.
|
| Technically, I think this is against YouTube (for example) TOS,
| though I don't expect that would be enforced against end users.
| aniviacat wrote:
| It's broken on Android/Firefox, too.
| xyst wrote:
| The modern day "Trillian" for video/musiv
| nurettin wrote:
| The Trillian I knew was a jabber client
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Jabber and AIM and ICQ and MSN messenger...
| ramon156 wrote:
| I don't get the motivation. You want to prevent doom-scrolling? I
| don't doom-scroll on Spotify, why is that there?
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I think the point is to follow a creator. So if you like an
| artist, you'd follow them and get their Instagram, YouTube,
| Spotify, Twitch, etc. all in one place.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| Seems like a verry brittle setup. Since it adds adblock by
| default all this will do is make youtube crack down on adblock
| even more.
| duxup wrote:
| It feels like there is a trend of apps out there that are
| "about" creators, but then happily shaft them ...
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| I thought so too when I started using the android version. I
| was surprised when GrayJay's Youtube plugin was promptly
| updated the same day Youtube broke it. NewPipe needed a few
| days to work again.
| leshokunin wrote:
| This seems cool. Will test on Mac later today. Would like an iOS
| app
| duxup wrote:
| This feels like a central hub for media you like?
|
| I would assume these privacy claims would also include a ToS
| violation for the given platform?
|
| And then of course the user has given Grayjay a lot of info so
| privacy?
|
| Are they scraping the actual content too or just accessing it in
| some different way?
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| It doesn't use any API (at least the YouTube plugin). So they
| are (according to their lawyers) not bound to any TOS. All it
| does is open the page (like a browser) and grab it and only
| show stuff to the user that's "relevant".
|
| You can check it yourself, while it is not "open-source" or
| "free" in the usual sense its source is available.
|
| More details from Rossmann himself:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqTYg6vnQvw
|
| edit: TOS not API
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Grayjay may not be bound to TOS but users of Grayjay are
| still accessing YouTube services in a way YouTube would
| prefer they didn't. OTOH videos are available without having
| to log in or having an account at all so I don't know if
| there's any implicit agreement between someone accessing a
| URL and the service provider.
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| True. And they might close your account if you login.
|
| How I display, download or request data without an account
| and which browser or app I use to do it is still my choice.
| I'd guess if they could do anything about it, they would
| have half a year ago. The only way would be to DRM/widevine
| all videos and apparently they aren't ready for that yet.
| If they block my IP I'll just get a new one.
|
| I wouldn't even be thinking about using a 3rd party app or
| blocking the ads if their service was reasonable. No way I
| will endure that, if they block it I'll just watch
| something else.
| pmontra wrote:
| I don't think that's a problem: you can browse to YouTube's
| home page and search for and watch videos without logging
| in. Grayjay is just another user agent, as if it was
| another web browser.
| ethagknight wrote:
| This looks really interesting. Specifically I would love to be
| able to set up something like this for my kids so that I have
| control over what they are able to watch on YouTube. I want to
| offer my kids whitelisted shows and creator accounts. I know
| theres a lot of interesting and high quality stuff out there but
| I do NOT want YT recommending things to my kids without going
| through me first.
|
| Grayjay looks like it may be a solution!
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| I have NewPipe on my kid's tablets which is pretty good too,
| but it breaks more often. But it's great to have no ads +
| sponsorblock.
|
| Between that and pirated shows/movies my kids are absolutely
| puzzled by commercials when we stay at a hotel or with family.
| foxbarrington wrote:
| This is the most maddening thing about all content now. It's
| all platform based and every platform wants to constantly
| push/"recommend" things to you and your kids. Right now I use
| Roku and Plex but even both of those are constantly trying to
| break down the wall.
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here, this is for sure a use case we have in mind.
| The idea is in the future to allow you to share subscription
| groups you've made for your kids with friends.
|
| Maybe there can be a website where people share subscription
| groups with each other in general. Good archery channels, good
| fitness channel, kid safe channels, etc.
|
| Another thing I am pondering is if it is worth adding a mode
| that prevents your kids from accessing other content then what
| is in a specific subscription group.
| ethagknight wrote:
| Thanks for the reply, I will give Grayjay a shot.
|
| I think just letting the primary account specify
| creators/channels and then have a sub accounts with no
| ability to modify would be sufficient.
|
| Im sure there are already all sorts of recommendation groups
| or sites, maybe just provide links to quality ones?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Looks interesting, does it allow for offline caching or archiving
| of media?
|
| It mentions using the Harbor identity service, that's new to me.
| https://harbor.social/
| AnonHP wrote:
| I'm getting a 404 error for the FAQ link in the footer. It seems
| like this is similar to FreeTube [1] (which is YouTube only
| though, whereas Grayjay supports multiple platforms). Does
| Grayjay allow downloading videos (and if yes, does it also allow
| choosing the quality/format)?
|
| [1]: https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| Yes, you can download on both the mobile app and the desktop
| program.
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| What is this app? Avast blocks the site as malware. False
| positive?
|
| "This URL contains malicious code that could harm your computer.
| If you're willing to risk it, you can turn off your Avast Web
| Shield to continue. But we strongly recommend walking away from
| this one."
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Somewhat ironic trusting malware to tell you what's malware and
| what's not
| SpaghettiCthulu wrote:
| Definitely a false positive
| mawise wrote:
| Oh cool, it's like RSS consumption for video content (I think). I
| worry that since it isn't using blessed APIs it would get shut
| down by the platforms if it gets much traction. Also "trust me
| instead of them" can be a tough sell to the privacy-focused
| crowd. I'd love something that makes it trivial effort for the
| creators to directly publish on more open platforms--more like
| RSS publishing for video content. But youtube gives you discovery
| and a cut in the ad revenue, so I'm not sure how to get the
| incentives to align...
| altairprime wrote:
| You don't need APIs if your app includes a web browser, though;
| you just need the patience to hook into the browser's APIs,
| rather than the page's, in order to backup content when viewed.
| User-operated Selenium is legitimately the biggest threat model
| to content islands. It's too bad a third-party had to invent
| Grayjay as a standalone, rather than one of the browsers
| figuring this out and shipping it as subscription-payment
| functionality :/
|
| (It has to be subscription payment to deal in a scaleable and
| timely manner with sites changing their page schemas
| anticompetitively.)
| daft_pink wrote:
| I'm excited. Are we ever going to see an iOS version?
| NotPractical wrote:
| The App Store forbids any app that violates the terms of
| service of any company [1], regardless of the legality [2].
| Since YouTube forbids alternative clients in their terms of
| service, Apple will not allow Grayjay onto the App Store. Even
| in the EU, where multiple app stores are available, you still
| need to follow a subset of the App Store guidelines. I looked
| through them and it appears that the ToS violation guideline is
| in fact exempt for EU apps [1], so they could release a version
| in the EU exclusively. However, they may be subject to the Core
| Technology Fee.
|
| [1] 5.2.2, 5.2.3: https://developer.apple.com/app-
| store/review/guidelines/#int...
|
| [2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/federal-judge-rules-
| it...
| ferbivore wrote:
| There is some precedent for Apple allowing apps that can be
| used for ToS or even copyright infringement, as long as they
| have a plausible legal purpose and all the infringement
| happens through third-party plugins that are not advertised
| in the app. The example I'm most familiar with is Paperback.
| There's also precedent for Apple not caring about Google's
| terms in particular, e.g. with Musi, though I guess that did
| get taken down in the end.
|
| Grayjay also uses a plugin model, possibly for this exact
| reason. On the other hand, the infringing plugins are first-
| party and advertised via their website, so I somewhat doubt
| that either Google or Apple would allow it on their stores.
| alex-robbins wrote:
| "Source First License 1.1" is an interesting choice. Sounds like
| something specific to this developer (so far, at least). I'm not
| savvy enough to be sure, but it doesn't sound compatible with any
| of the commonly accepted-as-FOSS licenses.
|
| https://github.com/futo-org/Grayjay.Desktop/blob/373cd8448cb...
| bramhaag wrote:
| > it doesn't sound compatible with any of the commonly
| accepted-as-FOSS licenses.
|
| Correct, it violates the four essential freedoms by placing
| restrictions on commercial use amongst other things.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| It's closer to source available than proprietary
| srid wrote:
| NixOS packaging request if anybody would like to contribute:
| https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/366543
| high_priest wrote:
| I love the dictation (STT) app from the same (FUTO) creator. It
| has completely replaced any other dictation solutions on my phone
| & it is fully offline!
| mh-cx wrote:
| Can someone explain what this is? The page has almost no
| information (on mobile) and I don't want to install just to find
| out.
| moralestapia wrote:
| "Grayjay combines video content from multiple platforms, such
| as YouTube, PeerTube, Twitch, and others, into one app,
| removing the need to switch between different platforms."
| infotainment wrote:
| Aside from vaguely implying it's some kind of media player
| that plays content from the internet, that doesn't tell a
| whole lot.
|
| Some screenshots would be a nice addition to their page.
| lewiscarson wrote:
| Screenshots disappear for some reason on mobile. Home page
| has screenshots but only of the mobile app.
| burkaman wrote:
| There are a bunch of screenshots on the linked page, you
| might have a plugin that is interfering with the content if
| you don't see them.
| nfriedly wrote:
| Grayjay is a video player for YouTube and other services. I
| believe its ad-free and "algorithm-free", meaning it just gives
| you every video from every channel you subscribe to, in
| chronological order. It was initially for Android and iOS.
|
| It's backed by Louis Rossmann, who does a lot of right to
| repair advocacy, among other things.
| grahamj wrote:
| This looks cool. Sort of a FreeTube with plugins?
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Content overflows viewport in iPhone SE
| NotPractical wrote:
| The best feature of alternative YT clients IMO is "multiple
| subscription lists". I have so many subscriptions, when using the
| official YouTube app or site the "subscriptions" feed is
| overwhelming, and I prefer not to use the algorithmically-
| generated "home" feed. Since YT has kind of become the de facto
| "place to upload videos on the Internet", video topics are broad
| enough to constitute multiple web sites, and I like to be able to
| filter channels by topic rather than having them all grouped
| together.
|
| If you're opposed to using a separate app just for this, you can
| achieve something similar using an RSS reader and YT's official
| RSS feeds (which I'm surprised they still publish tbh).
| jimmydddd wrote:
| Great point. There are many yt channels that I would subscribe
| to if yt had multiple subscription lists. Channels I find
| interesting, but not enough so that I want them to "clog up" my
| main subscription channel.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Reddit had the same issue not too long ago. I remember a
| popular post where a user described their workaround of
| creating an account for each field of interest. To Reddit's
| credit, they did implement custom feeds not to long after,
| which lets you group batches of subreddits. Not something I'd
| expect YouTube to do.
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| I can still save multireddits. Did they remove that on
| new.reddit.com ? Try https://old.reddit.com/r/multihub/
| hysan wrote:
| Did you know that YouTube used to have this exact feature? It
| was called subscription collections and they publicly promised
| that they would replace that feature with something better when
| they removed it. That never happened. It's been 9 maybe 10
| years since they said that. [1]
|
| The removal of that feature was an intentional push to take
| away user agency and push them into using YouTube's
| recommendation algorithm. The lying was a way to misdirect user
| complaints until it was too late.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38101629#38104494
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Never trust the platform. User sovereignty or bust.
| gryn wrote:
| Yup. I really liked that feature, but hey who cares about
| user preferences. the only thing that matter is engagement
| metrics. it's not like there's any real competition to
| YouTube you can run to. and the hunt for ad-blockers is
| getting fiercer.
|
| my workaround to getting different topics separated have been
| to have multiple YouTube channels inside a single account,
| each with separate likes/sub channels/recommendations etc.
| one per Firefox container.
| em-bee wrote:
| freetube has multiple subscription lists. they call it
| profiles. any channel can be in multiple profiles of your
| choice.
| pixxel wrote:
| Shh.
| uxjw wrote:
| Seems similar to the updated Reeder app for mac/iOS. Its an RSS
| reeder that now works with Youtube channels, Reddit subreddits,
| Bluesky, Flickr, etc. https://reeder.app/
| lkurtz wrote:
| Recommending (and running) `xattr -c` can be extremely dangerous.
| I would suggest withholding Mac releases until they can be
| distributed/run safely.
| crazygringo wrote:
| As someone not very familiar, is there any legitimate reason
| why they say "Our Apple signing/notarization is not entirely
| done yet"?
|
| It feels extremely suspicious, given that I download lots of
| other popular utility software from independent devs and I've
| never had to do that before.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| As a platform that basically started as a way to watch
| Youtube without tracking and ads, I think Grayjay should be
| sceptical of any third party code signing validation
| requirements. The copyright lobby has gone after software and
| its distributors before, even if it doesn't inherently pirate
| any content without user configuration.
|
| I don't know why this app would need Apple's signature in the
| first place, seeing as it's not distributed through the app
| store. Is this like how you need to pay for a certificate to
| make the "are you sure you want to run this" prompt look less
| scary?
| lkurtz wrote:
| There are certainly valid, conflicting opinions around
| signing/notarization requirements for software. But
| notarization does provide end users with some safety
| guarantees that legitimately make running the software less
| risky. The scariness of "are you sure you want to run this"
| prompts is fairly grounded in real risk assumed by the end
| user.
| lkurtz wrote:
| There are a couple of legitimate reasons, namely the
| expense/KYC process of an Apple Developer Program membership
| and/or the complexity of integrating signing + notarization
| into existing build pipelines (but XCode does makes it pretty
| straightforward to cut an ad-hoc release that is signed and
| notarized).
|
| In my opinion at least, the most likely reason is that Apple
| is refusing to notarize the software. If this is the case,
| people really should not be running it.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Once you buy a Mac, Apple doesn't own it anymore, so them
| not wanting you to run a piece of software isn't a good
| reason why you shouldn't.
| dishsoap wrote:
| This used to be true. It is, in fact, not true anymore!
| josephcsible wrote:
| It's still true. Why do you think it isn't?
| margana wrote:
| Apple refusing to notarize it actually makes me want to use
| it more. That means Rossmann and his associates have got
| under Apple's skin enough that they would try to sabotage
| projects that he is involved with.
| rane wrote:
| Not everyone wants to pay $99/year to be able to notarize
| software that is not going to make them any money.
|
| https://github.com/disable-gatekeeper/disable-
| gatekeeper.git...
| josephcsible wrote:
| That doesn't map to safety or danger at all. It's purely a way
| of opting out of the developer having to pay the Apple tax.
| margana wrote:
| Do you also suggest never releasing any software for Linux
| because there is no megacorporation there policing what
| software you should and shouldn't run?
| kfajdsl wrote:
| It's about as dangerous as running a Linux or Windows binary.
| AiAi wrote:
| Trying this since YouTube just started blocking my ad blocker. It
| seems to be working well on Linux.
|
| I didn't find a feedback button on the app itself, so if the
| authors are reading, some things I miss from using YouTube's
| website:
|
| - Videos in new tabs; - Search bar always visible.
| jhund wrote:
| I also noticed that Youtube prevents me from watching videos on
| their site starting today because I have an adblocker
| (uBlockOrigin) installed.
| tspng wrote:
| Same here. But for the time being, I can just click away the
| modal (don't click any of the buttons) and the video starts
| anyway. I assume that will change soon.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Huh, weird license: https://github.com/futo-
| org/Grayjay.Desktop/blob/master/LICE... Not sure what this means,
| guess I'll have to treat it as good old "source available"
| software.
| smcleod wrote:
| Weird that it disables the use of right click, paste and
| seemingly your password manager when trying to login to services
| via the app.
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here, good point, will add right click, paste.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Why wasn't it supported all along? Doesn't basically every
| text field support it by default?
| bisby wrote:
| Launching the Linux release and noticed in the logs:
|
| Directories:User Directory: /home/bisby/Grayjay
|
| And there is a directory there now. I absolutely hate having
| stuff automatically create anything in my home directory like
| this. Ideally, this should be following XDG directory guidelines
| on linux: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-
| spec/latest/
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here. If you want it to use your user directory
| like other apps, just remove the file called "Portable". Keep
| in mind that it just uses your working directory to write files
| otherwise.
| godDLL wrote:
| That's a windows-ism, we don't like that kind of stuff. Not
| on any other OS we don't.
| freedomben wrote:
| Parent is not wrong, but definitely could have some
| improved manners and tact.
|
| As a linux user I wanted to make sure to say thank you for
| supporting and thinking about linux!
| santoshalper wrote:
| Actually, parent is wrong. You're not supposed to do that
| shit on Windows either. That's what AppData is for.
| Writing configuration files and folders to "Documents" or
| the user's home folder is sloppy shit.
| sunshowers wrote:
| I agree that this should be in the XDG directory or
| AppData, but be kind, y'all -- this is open source, it is
| a gift someone has labored over and given you. There are
| much nicer ways to suggest improvements than calling it
| "sloppy shit".
|
| edit: it's not actually open source by the OSI definition
| it seems [1], but it is reasonably close.
|
| [1] https://futo.org/about/futo-statement-on-opensource/
| StrangeDoctor wrote:
| Sure, things can always have gone better, but this is
| data loss/corruption territory. It's asking for trouble
| and hurt feelings. I think a strong response is ok.
| Teever wrote:
| What exactly is wrong with how they expressed themselves?
|
| Is the word "hate" really so odious?
| bisby wrote:
| I was very blunt and impersonal. People worked hard on a
| thing and my first reaction was criticism, without even
| the added overall view of "I love this thing, but here is
| a small thing that bothers me." I could have been more
| courteous and human about things.
|
| I stand by the points I made, but I could have been
| friendlier. I normally make an effort to be friendly as I
| can about things, but I absolutely did not here. I hope
| that nothing I said came across as vitriol, but rather,
| valid criticism. I'm a strong believer in criticizing the
| things you love, but I need to remember that random
| comments on HN aren't the place where people know I love
| the thing, and my criticism needs context.
|
| So no, it wasn't really that odious, but it was other
| things. Do I feel stricken with guilt or remorse about
| what I said? No. Could I have been friendlier? yes.
| Should I have been friendlier? Probably.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I appreciate the reflection here.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Parent is not wrong, but definitely could have some
| improved manners and tact.
|
| I don't understand the weird tone policing that people
| are trying to do, there is literally nothing wrong with
| the parent's comment and pretending otherwise is weird.
| gtsop wrote:
| I didn't see it as tone policing. From my point of view,
| I saw a very interesting application being shared and I
| hoped it would be good and prosperous so i can use it.
| When the first comment says "i hate that you do X" it is
| a bit discouraging towards a team of developers who have
| probably poured tons of free hours into making this.
| Words play with psychology, and it is my personal
| interest that these devs have good morale to make this
| app great, and that meand giving them feedback about
| obvious mistakes in a tone that does not hurt this
| morale. I hope that make sense
| Suppafly wrote:
| "i hate that you do x" is perfectly normal, you're being
| weird.
| braiamp wrote:
| And that's not even the words used, they said:
|
| > I absolutely hate <stuff that does X> like this
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Taking "I hate that you do x" as a combative or rude
| dismissal is perfectly normal too.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I don't think it's badly worded either.
|
| And FUTO is a commercial for-profit operation, not
| voluntary driven. Their devs are paid.
| virtualritz wrote:
| This is a cultural problem.
|
| What is considered impolite in the US or the UK is
| considered just being straightforward in e.g.
| Scandinavia.
|
| I am German, we're kind of in the middle between someone
| from e.g. Finland and someone from e.g. or the UK or US
| with what we consider "ok" or rather crossing into rude
| territory.
|
| A common exchange I witnessed in a meeting at work
| (Nokia):
|
| Finnish developer: And if we follow this suggestion we
| will all look like idiots.
|
| UK developer: I hear you.
|
| Deciding which one is more impolite or impolite at all is
| left as an exercise to the reader. ;)
|
| You get my point.
| indrora wrote:
| Even Windows has %appdata% which is where you put stuff on
| disk that you need to stash away. There's also function
| calls iirc which will give you a handle to a temporary file
| if you need it.
| LeonB wrote:
| And if you're feeling particularly Sadomasochistic
| there's always the Windows Registry.
| chupasaurus wrote:
| Hey, that's NSFW content on HN!
|
| Also I still find it funny that OpenSSH client shipped
| via feature uses %HOMEDIR%\\.ssh
| SpaghettiCthulu wrote:
| You should be using `~/.local/share`, `~/.config`, and other
| standard directories on Unix systems. macOS has its own
| conventions.
| zamalek wrote:
| You shouldn't even use those, at least hardcoded. Follow
| the XDG Base Directories spec:
| https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/
| SpaghettiCthulu wrote:
| Ah, right. Good point!
| Lariscus wrote:
| Is a Flatpak release planned? I am interested in Grayjay but
| don't really want to deal with a binary that lives outside of
| my distros package manager.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| NixOS user here, where running precompiled binaries from your
| downloads folder won't work.
|
| Could you look at supporting a Flatpak for Linux? If unsure,
| I'll happily throw a manifest together and post it on a MR.
| Zefiroj wrote:
| nix-ld[1] and envfs[2] provide a decent workaround for
| unpatched binaries, in case you haven't heard of these
| tools yet.
|
| [1] https://github.com/nix-community/nix-ld [2]
| https://github.com/Mic92/envfs
|
| The blog post linked by [1] is quite good.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| I use NixOS for the base system and Flatpak+Containers
| for everything else. I would rather keep it this way as
| it keeps everything nice and separated, and less chance
| of things breaking from Nix being rolling.
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here, we want to provide the app however people
| want to consume it (binaries, flatpak, appimage, ...) but
| it will take us some time to get everything as it should
| be.
| znpy wrote:
| thank you for the great work!
| bisby wrote:
| Sorry, to be clear, I dont wan't Grayjay data in my user
| directory AT ALL. Portable is basically what I want, I'm just
| very untactfully dropping feedback about where the data is
| placed.
|
| Even with the "Portable" file, it creates a directory
| `/home/bisby/Grayjay`. I don't want that. No app should ever
| put a file or directory directly in `/home/bisby` without me
| asking it to. The Linux standard for "where should an app put
| it's files" is defined the XDG spec that I had previously
| linked (https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-
| spec/latest/).
|
| The summary is that user specific data should live in
| $XDG_DATA_HOME and config should live in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME
| (and various other things like $XDG_CACHE_HOME). If these
| values are unset, there are predefined places to put the
| files (eg, data in $HOME/.local/share or config in
| $HOME/.config, cache in $HOME/.cache).
|
| This puts all the Grayjay data in places like
| /home/bisby/.config/Grayjay (instead of /home/bisby/Grayjay)
| which is nested away inside a hidden directory and structured
| in a consistent way.
|
| This would be the equivalent of putting data in %AppData% in
| windows instead of cluttering someone's "My Documents" (or
| whatever the modern equivalent of that is).
|
| Some of the Linux decisions feel a bit like linux is a
| complete afterthought, but included because Linux users tend
| to agree with the FUTO philosophies. That is a reasonable
| thing given the Linux market share, and for "Build Version:
| 2" that I'm seeing the app info, I'm grateful that linux is
| included this early. This looks like it can probably replace
| freetube for me. However, it would go a long way if things
| are done to make sure they are done the "right way" on Linux
| (ie, on packaging and on directory specs).
|
| Thanks for the work you've done on freeing up the web.
| karlgkk wrote:
| If you're launching it as "Portable", and you're launching
| it from your home directory, it's going to place the
| mutable data in the current directory. This is very
| standard for portable apps.
|
| So no, "portable" is not what you want. If you launch it as
| non-portable and it drops a folder in ~, then that is a
| problem.
| bisby wrote:
| In both modes it creates a ~/Grayjay directory, even when
| launching from ~/tmp/grayjay/Grayjay.Desktop-
| linux-x64-v2/ so ~/Grayjay was inevitable. In portable
| mode it makes the directory and does nothing with it. In
| non-portable mode it dumps a ton of data into the
| directory. I didn't pay attention to what the data
| actually was. So yes you're probably right.
|
| But either way, Portable mode isn't behaving portably
| because it's touching directories outside of the current
| directory, and non-portable mode is putting data in
| ~/Grayjay instead of ~/.config/Grayjay so it doesn't do
| what I want it to do in any mode.
|
| I'm quite happy actually that while this is a HUGE
| annoyance... It's also only an annoyance, and VERY simple
| to fix (as long as they do). Which means that this app is
| likely going to wind up as a daily driver for me once a
| few things get ironed out. I see the concept and
| structure of the app, and I like it.
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here, empty dir is definitely not intended
| and has been written down on the issue list.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| Typically portable apps place their data in the folder
| where the executable file is located, not the current
| dir.
| gf000 wrote:
| Well, ideally I would like the OS solving this problem by
| simply chrooting/sandboxing apps to their own little
| worlds, with a proper API giving them optionally a way to
| the user's file system, similarly to android and iOS.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| That is possible on Linux [0], but this kind of
| separation comes with its own can of worms. However, if
| your only worry is access to folders, Flatpak
| applications keep all of their data in a folder away from
| your home directory and use "portals" to access your
| system [1]. The security of the sandbox is debatable [2],
| but I would say if your biggest goal is containing non-
| malicious but badly behaving applications from messing
| with your system, then it's a very good solution, given
| you are comfortable with using Flathub (as most
| distributions won't build Flatpaks) and with the
| performance/integration impact this distribution method
| has.
|
| [0]: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/basic-
| concepts.html
|
| [1]: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/sandbox-
| permissions.html
|
| [2]: https://flatkill.org/2020/
| isametry wrote:
| ...and macOS. Sandboxed Mac apps get their own little
| home directory in `~/Library/Containers/`. To access
| anything else, they need to ask through system APIs.
| atoav wrote:
| Please just adhere to the XDG-standards. Although my co-
| poster here didn't use the most diplomatic way of phrasing
| their grievance Grayjay is better off if it sticks to well
| established standards.
|
| You would probably look weird at an software that installs
| itself in C:\MYAWESOMEAPPLICATION instead of using the
| Windows program folder like literally every other piece of
| software (except for legacy stuff like LTSpice). Creating
| visible directories in the home folder without asking is the
| Linux equivalent of doing just that.
|
| Check if the XDG environment variables are set and store your
| stuff in these places -- as it is now can be used as a last
| resort fallback. For reading config/data you do the same.
| nullpoint420 wrote:
| This. Hopefully the other post won't discourage them!
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| I gave too many shits about my home dir once too..
|
| My only correct way today is create your own home dir inside
| your home dir to combat this hell hole of never ending config
| junk in your home dir
| quotemstr wrote:
| It's a "green m&ms" thing. If the developers can't be
| bothered to adhere to something as basic as XDG, they're
| getting a ton of other things wrong, and my life is too short
| to spend on buggy slop.
| lsowen wrote:
| FYI, the FAQ link in the footer (https://grayjay.app/faq) appears
| to be broken (throws a 404)
| withinboredom wrote:
| FYI: I accidentally logged into my wrong patreon account and
| expected "logout then login" to prompt me to login again. It
| doesn't. It just logs me back in with the same user.
| koen31 wrote:
| Grayjay dev here, that's a bug, I wrote it down. You can
| probably work around it for now by logging out -> restart app
| -> log back in.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Please remove "Also available on FDroid" from the page. This app
| is not available on F-Droid and isn't allowed to be added to it
| since it isn't open source.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Indeed, it is "Source First" license, dev(s) reasoning here:
| https://futo.org/about/futo-statement-on-opensource/
| globular-toast wrote:
| They make a very good case against corporate-friendly
| licences like MIT/BSD, which I definitely agree with, but say
| nothing about why they don't use AGPL. Honestly I think the
| problem with A/GPL is that they are considered "uncool". You
| just can't use them, because reasons.
|
| Who decides what is cool? That's right, the marketing
| departments of huge corporations...
| xmcqdpt2 wrote:
| AGPL would still allow a third party to fork their code and
| create a commercial product out of it, which is what they
| are opposed to.
|
| The AGPL only requires that the host also provides their
| code.
| globular-toast wrote:
| No, it also requires that it's licensed under the AGPL,
| meaning the users get free software.
| graemep wrote:
| I agree that is misleading. It has its own F-droid compatible
| repo so you can use an F-Droid client. When I hear "available
| on F-Droid" I assume it means its in the F-Droid repo.
| risho wrote:
| where it says available on fdroid it links to their personal
| fdroid repository. plenty of projects both open source and not
| have their own fdroid repository. fdroid is both a repository
| that only allows open source software and a packaging
| infrastructure tool for people hosting their own repositories.
| based on the fact their claim that they are on fdroid literally
| hyperlinks to their fdroid repository i don't see how anyone
| could find that misleading. if anything it's fdroids fault for
| giving their own repository the same name as their
| infrastructure tool instead of doing what every other project
| did and give them separate names. for example docker and
| dockerhub, flatpak and flathub, etc.
|
| here is a list of 100+ not official fdroid repositories.
| https://github.com/userkilled/FDroid-List-Repository
| paulnpace wrote:
| > if anything it's fdroids fault for giving their own
| repository the same name as their infrastructure tool instead
| of doing what every other project did and give them separate
| names. for example docker and dockerhub, flatpak and flathub,
| etc.
|
| F-That
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Yep, as a user I didn't find it confusing at all. F-Droid is
| designed for and around adding custom repos. FUTO links to
| their own repo and it all works fine.
|
| I'd definitely consider this as being "available on F-Droid".
| exikyut wrote:
| Should say "Available Via", that would further reinforce
| the status quo.
| 627467 wrote:
| It is available in fdroid on my ungoogled phone. I don't know
| what you're talking about
| josephcsible wrote:
| https://search.f-droid.org/?q=grayjay&lang=en
|
| > It looks like F-Droid does not have any apps matching your
| search string "grayjay"
|
| You're using a third-party repo that allows proprietary apps.
| The real F-Droid only allows FOSS ones.
| nalinidash wrote:
| It should be written like "available as a f-droid repo"
| moeffju wrote:
| Maybe F-Droid should just call their official blessed repo
| "F-Repo" to end the confusion, because this is clearly
| available through F-Droid, just not in the F-Droid official
| repo...
| lrvick wrote:
| Being able to side-load a random unsigned binary via the
| fdroid app, or getting it from the F-Droid repository where
| they do independently signed (and ideally reproducible)
| builds, are very different things.
|
| The F-droid team does not have a high bar to be dicks. They
| do it to ensure their users get binaries that match the
| published code to prevent increasingly supply chain attacks.
|
| The standards are there for good reason, and if you do not
| understand those reasons, then use a license that allows the
| people that do understand to distribute your software for
| you.
|
| Very very few software engineers understand supply chain
| attacks or how to prevent them.
| Arnavion wrote:
| For anyone who wants a lo-fi solution to subscribing to a youtube
| channel without having to deal with the youtube.com website,
| every channel has a built-in Atom feed that contains an entry for
| each video. My pipeline for watching subscribed channels is to
| just run a feed reader in one terminal (newsboat) and then copy-
| paste new videos from that into an adjacent terminal running a
| loop that runs `yt-dlp` on each pasted line.
|
| You can find the feed URL by inspecting the HTML of the
| youtube.com/channel/.../videos page and searching for "rssUrl";
| it'll look like
| `www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC...`
|
| Downside: this feed will contain premieres, shorts and
| livestreams in addition to videos and AFAIK there's no way to
| filter those out. Depending on the channel, the title might make
| it obvious whether it's one of those.
| harryvederci wrote:
| You can use yt-dlp to get:
|
| - the channel id by youtube channel url
|
| - the duration + aspect ratio (<= 3 min + vertical = short)
|
| - whether or not it's a live / future video
| Arnavion wrote:
| Yes, I do do that. I meant that there's no way to filter them
| out of the feed directly, eg via some URL query parameters.
| ddingus wrote:
| Request: When I use NewPipe, I can drop a YT URL into the search
| bar, which then treats it just like an address, more or less
| immediately playing the video
|
| This would be nice to see in GreyJay.
|
| Edit: Oh never mind! I just took the update, and it is in the can
| now!
|
| You guys rock. Thank you.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| The screenshot in the "Add and configure sources" section has the
| YouTube plugin with the caption: "One of the biggest video
| platforms owned by Google".
|
| The stupid thing is that it's _entirely believable_ that Google
| would have multiple competing video platforms. Certainly they
| tend to have half a dozen competing chat things alive at any give
| point in time, two or three with the same name for bonus
| confusion.
|
| (The sentence could do with a comma: "One of the biggest video
| platforms, owned by Google".)
| H_Coronatus wrote:
| the FAQ page on the grayjay site is broken/404ing:
| https://grayjay.app/faq
| metadat wrote:
| How is this different from Jellyfin?
| lrvick wrote:
| I love the right to repair work Louis Rossmann does, and this
| project goal as a whole, but this license is a major step
| backwards for software distribution with high assurances of
| security, freedom and privacy.
|
| Debian, Arch, Guix, F-droid or any other independent signed
| reproducible build channels require a true Open Source license to
| function legally.
|
| The license thus forces users to download unsigned non-
| reproducible binaries off grayjay servers and trust blindly that
| their build server is creating binaries from exactly the
| published code and not compromised to inject tracking or malware
| not in the public repo (an increasingly common attack they may
| not even know about for years!). Or say the grayjay domain is
| hijacked or even a BGP attack or a LAN MITM. All sorts of ways
| they could be helping distribute malware and not know it with no
| signatures or reproducible build proofs.
|
| Thing is, your team would not have to solve these problems if you
| licensed it so the community could solve them for you, as we do
| for thousands of open source software projects.
|
| I really want to see a project like this take off and would
| gladly donate, but only if it can be opened up for accountability
| via third party compilation and distribution channels so it can
| never be backdoored or co-opted for surveillance if your
| leadership or release engineers are ever compromised.
|
| Said license: https://github.com/futo-
| org/Grayjay.Desktop?tab=License-1-ov...
|
| There are other licenses like AGPL that would kill any attempt
| for someone to rip your code off to make their own proprietary
| offering, without locking yourself out of established freedom,
| security, and privacy preserving software distribution channels.
|
| If anyone from the team is reading this, I would be happy to
| detail and discuss my concerns further as a software supply chain
| security specialist. Hit me up.
| ferbivore wrote:
| FUTO develops, for the most part, proprietary software that
| they plan to monetize. The license choice isn't some mistake
| that you can get them to recant by explaining the virtues of
| the AGPL and third party distributors. (They're already aware
| of these things; one of the products under their umbrella is
| Immich, which was relicensed to AGPL after they started
| employing the original developer, as a compromise between his
| goals and FUTO's.) They're deliberately going for the same
| model as Unreal: source access is only provided a courtesy to
| users, and/or as part of a marketing strategy, and they have
| zero interest in allowing you to fork their software.
| em-bee wrote:
| while that is technically mostly correct, that does not
| properly reflect their intentions. they most certainly are
| interested in allowing you to fork their software as a user.
| but what they are also interested in is to prevent a fork to
| take revenue from the original developers.
|
| so you can most likely (i don't know the details) fork and
| change and redistribute the code. what you can not do is
| exploit that commercially.
|
| this goes in the directions of the discussions started by
| bruce perens that we need to rethink FOSS, because funded
| companies are taking advantage and making a profit from FOSS
| without paying the developers.
|
| it is not obvious that FUTO's approach is the right one. it
| is an attempt at addressing the problem, and i expect that it
| will take more such experiments to shake out what the best
| approach to this problem really is.
| ferbivore wrote:
| That's not a fork in the sense normally used by the free
| software community. It's better than nothing, to be sure,
| and if Xerox had adopted this license back in 1980 maybe we
| wouldn't even be talking about free software today. But
| FUTO still maintains some control over what your fork can
| and cannot do, which violates freedom 1.
|
| I don't have a strong opinion on whether this licensing
| approach is right or wrong, I just doubt "anyone from the
| team" would find lrvick's post a compelling argument for
| switching to a free software license considering their
| stated goals.
| j1elo wrote:
| I read the license and of course IANAL but it seems clear that
| _Debian, Arch, Guix, F-droid or any other independent signed
| reproducible build channels_ can package and distribute their
| own reproducible builds of this software, as long as it is "
| _free of charge for non-commercial purposes_ ", isn't it?
|
| (a FOSS license would also work, but if I have learned
| something in HN before, is that don't FOSS if you ever want to
| make money from something while preventing others from making
| money off of it)
| xmcqdpt2 wrote:
| You can take a copy of Debian and resell it or put it in a
| product and sell that. That's a pretty important freedom of
| free software.
| j1elo wrote:
| And Debian is OK with that, because Debian is not a for-
| profit company that paid it's developers money to make a
| product, thus they don't care that others get it and resell
| it.
|
| For a company, the product itself, what makes money, cannot
| be OSS, as it makes its resell value effectively zero. If
| the software was OSS, then the software is _not_ the
| product, but added values are (support, consulting, etc...
| the classic trope)
|
| But if the software itself wants to be the product, and is
| created by devs who require their monthly salary,
| _typically_ the question is between a non-FOSS license or
| it not existing at all to begin with. Not between a non-
| FOSS and a FOSS license.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > You may distribute the software or provide it to others only
| if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes.
|
| >Notwithstanding the above, you may not remove or obscure any
| functionality in the software related to payment to the
| Licensor in any copy you distribute to others.
|
| >You may not alter, remove, or obscure any licensing,
| copyright, or other notices of the Licensor in the software.
| Any use of the Licensor's trademarks is subject to applicable
| law.
|
| To me that says that if FUTO decide to paywall the entire app,
| nobody is allowed to fork it to remove that.
| apex_sloth wrote:
| As I understand it, GrayJay is not free (as in they want to be
| paid, which is I think is reasonable). How does this work with
| something like AGPL?
|
| I'm curious to hear more, because I'm in the process of
| evaluating licenses for a software I'm planning to build and
| sell. For me it's important that users can feel safe with
| running my code and build it themselves - and keep using the
| software if I'm no longer around to maintain it. Looking
| forward to hearing your thoughts.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > as in they want to be paid, which is I think is reasonable
|
| Considering the whole point of this app is to remove
| monetisation from YouTubers, I think this is completely
| unreasonable.
| saintfire wrote:
| Well that's not actually the point. It's heavily focused on
| preventing deplatforming creators.
|
| There is much more to monetization than AdSense, which is
| adblocked away very frequently already. If it wasn't
| already removed by YouTube for saying something pg-14 or
| falsely copywright striked.
| akdev1l wrote:
| There's literally nothing in any open source software license
| that stops the author from getting paid.
|
| It is literally one of the fundamental freedoms mentioned by
| Richard Stallman. Freedom to sell the software.
|
| AGPL just closes the cloud service loop where someone can
| take your code, modify it and deploy it and offer it as a
| cloud service. As they're not technically "distributing" the
| modifications they wouldn't be required to release their
| changes by regular GPL but they would by AGPL.
|
| IANAL
| bitexploder wrote:
| Can't you say this about virtually every single closed source
| binary only release software? Steam, 1Password, etc? Why is
| Grayjay special here. Just curious.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The license lets you do whatever you want except rip off FUTO.
| What does the license prevent you from doing?
| vanjajaja1 wrote:
| will grayjay do the push/creation side as well, or is that a
| different product?
| thih9 wrote:
| > Our Apple signing/notarization is not entirely done yet, thus
| you have to run the following command once to run the application
|
| This is unclear to me, what does "not entirely done" mean in this
| context? Has the process been started and they are waiting for
| Apple?
| monkeynotes wrote:
| Last thing I want is even more ways to distract myself. I want an
| anti-algorithm or something to permanently ban me from addictive
| content.
| pxoe wrote:
| Does this app has any creator monetization in mind, or does 'your
| way' means 'fuck you, i'm not paying you for shit, i'm just
| taking it'? None of it is "your content", or their content, it's
| just someone else's content they're leeching on. "full ownership"
| - of what?
|
| literally just, what are their thoughts on that. do people
| deserve being paid? or don't? and if they don't and it's not
| worth paying for, how is it still worth watching? what is this
| bizarre mix of disdain and yet desire and entitlement to things,
| that they'll try to get them in whatever roundabout way, instead
| of just not watching the thing?
| Liquix wrote:
| creators deserve to be paid. viewers deserve to not be
| psychologically manipulated by advertisements and algorithms.
|
| insisting viewers "pay" by subjecting themselves to ads is an
| unethical business model; refusing to support the practice is a
| rational reaction.
| pxoe wrote:
| "rational" as in, rationalizing the contradiction of "not
| paying" and "getting content anyway". just don't watch. don't
| support the practice entirely. it's not really as much of a
| stance as it is just a contrived way to excuse away getting
| the thing you simultaneously hate and crave. like, the
| content has already manipulated you even without you paying
| for it and refusing to pay for it, by making you do this
| little dance, of trying to get it and trying to rationalize
| getting it.
| cxr wrote:
| > a contrived way to excuse away getting the thing you
| simultaneously hate and crave
|
| > just don't watch
|
| Is your position a value judgement on the morality of not
| watching ads + technology that enables you to watch as few
| as possible? Or on the societal fixation to consume junk?
|
| If the former, please elaborate on your position as it
| relates to VCRs and DVRs of the sort that are built-in to
| DirecTV receivers.
| pxoe wrote:
| i just find the tension and contradictions of piracy
| kinda fascinating. "i hate this so much but i have to get
| it cause i apparently need it so badly". something being
| deserving to be obtained, yet not deserving to be paid
| for. and most of all, somebody feeling so entitled to it
| that they just can't actually refuse it completely.
| cxr wrote:
| You didn't answer the question, and overall you're being
| very mercurial in this thread. Write coherently.
|
| > i just find the tension and contradictions of piracy
| kinda fascinating
|
| You're calling watching a TV show without watching the
| commercials "piracy"? That's a _very_ broad definition of
| "piracy" that I'd venture has almost no support outside
| of your comments here.
| navane wrote:
| No one is taking YouTube away from you. People make choices.
| There are many alternatives yet to explore. The network effect,
| the fact that many people, including me, are on the platform,
| is a benefit to the platform, more users more worth, yet no one
| is paying me to be there either.
| weberer wrote:
| Well its a two way street. Take it up with Google for not
| offering paid API access so people wouldn't have to rely on
| hacky web scraping solutions.
| paweladamczuk wrote:
| Creator support is probably the reason why Grayjay doesn't have
| SponsorBlock integration.
|
| What it's trying to bypass is walls being put in place by
| Youtube after it established itself as a monopoly by leveraging
| technologies that worked and succeeded because of their no-
| walls philosophy.
| figmert wrote:
| Grayjay does have SponsorBlock
| augstein wrote:
| I pay for Youtube premium to not have to see ads and
| potentially be manipulated by them.
|
| Yet I still have to watch a lot of ads there, since for a large
| chunk of content creators, the economic model of Youtube
| doesn't seem to work and they additionally include inline ads.
| cxr wrote:
| There is way too much incoherence and righteous indignation in
| this comment for it to be the top thread here.
|
| > "full ownership" - of what?
|
| By a reasonable and charitable reading: full ownership over
| your legally-obtained copy of the material that folks (the
| creators/rightsholders themselves) are publishing for gratis
| online for anyone to watch, and likely some non-gratis stuff
| that you are paying these creators for if you are a subscriber
| and decide to enter your account details into the app.
|
| This whole app looks to be a video player that works like an
| alternative frontend to the official players by e.g. YouTube,
| Twitch, and so on, in the vein of "unity of interface"[1] and a
| continuation of the spirit of the Miro player (see also:
| virtually every podcast app in existence).
|
| You seem, bizarrely, to be responding to it like a new KaZaA or
| Popcorn Time or other torrent-backed something-or-other.
|
| 1. <https://www-archive.mozilla.org/unity-of-interface>
| emaro wrote:
| Grayjay allows you to view member (pay only) content if you log
| in with an account that has access. That allows creators to
| monetize their content.
|
| I'm glad Grayjay includes an adblocker, I wouldn't use it
| otherwise.
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