And how long is it going to work?

Do we really want to play cat and mouse with Google? I don’t.

I don’t worry about that. There are other markers of AI that are much more reliable:

1. Extreme verbosity.
2. Low S/N - i.e. lots of words to say not much at all.
3. Perfect grammar.
4. If you drill down into the subject, often completely incorrect - but you don’t know without having to read a whole bunch of tedious text.

And here’s how you recognize AI:

• High-schoolers turning a paper on a subject they know nothing about often fluff up their paper - at least when students still wrote their papers themselves - and hit 1. and 2., but rarely 3.

• Good writers always hit 3. They can be terse or verbose, and they may or may not hit 1., but never 2. or 4.

• Internet writers don’t write like journalists. Only journalists writing for a journal that happens to also publish on the internet write like journalists. Internet writers don’t quite hit 3, knowledgeable ones don’t hit 2., and almost none of them ever hit 1. Or said another way, when you read something about Linux networking that looks like an Atlantic op-ed, it’s AI.

Only AI hits 1., 2. and 3. AI almost always writes in a tone and form that doesn’t befit the venue.

As for 4., if you want an example of this, try to search “NFC unlock” on DDG or Bing (same AI-laden Microsoft trash search engine): you will find scores of perfectly-written article that explain in painful details how you should buy NFC tags (they don’t say which), program them (they don’t say how), then present the tags to your device (they don’t say what devices) to program them to unlock upon presenting the tags. If you know anything about NFC, you know this is all shades of wrong. But amazingly, each article on the subject is many pages long, perfectly written, and there are countless such articles.

It’s been a little surreal watching everything as a self contained file

Yes the main .py is quite a pile of code 🙂

It’s one of those projects that grew organically and never got reorganized. I maintain a niche open-source project like that that has a few dozen kilobyte main Python file and I’m ashamed of it. But then it’s so niche I don’t really want to spend the time reorganizing it.

yt-dlp would benefit from that though…

You guys ever wonder if maybe if the answer is to stop stealing s*?

There are two ways to be honest with normal companies:

1/ You pay them and they stop monetizing your data
2/ You don’t patronize their services and you choose a competitor instead

Unfortunately, with Google as with most other surveillance capitalism monopolies, it doesn’t work that way:

1/ If you don’t pay Google, they violate your privacy and abuse your data. If you pay them, they don’t stop: you just gave them extra money because you’re gullible.
2/ Youtube is a virtual monopoly. There is no valid competition to speak of. And unfortunately, a lot of the societal discourse now happens on Youtube. So it’s kind of unavoidable.

Therefore, Google being the abusive monopoly that it is, you have no way to deal with the essential service they provide honestly and pay your fair share - which I honestly would gladly do - without compromising your privacy. They put themselves in a position to be this abusive.

Therefore, I consider my duty towards paying honestly for Youtube waived. That’s why I’m happy to pay for a FUTO license for the work they do with the Grayjay client, but I’ll never give Google a cent: FUTO respects me while Google spits in my face.

The poster would be more convincing if you hadn’t inverted apt-get update and apt-get upgrade…

I wasn’t aware there was a x64 Grayjay desktop app. I’ll check it out. thanks!

The dementia is really starting to show…

What next? It’s available at your local Sharper Image?

What better accessory for your Trump Med Bed than a Mike Lindell MyPillow.
All you need for a restful thought-free MAGA night.

As long as sideloading is a thing, I don’t use the Google app store. And I don’t install malware like Instagram - not that it’s very likely to work on my deGoogled Android cellphone.

Of course, now that fucking Google has declared war on deGoogled ROMs, what I’m saying here is pretty much a dead-end. But as of today, it’s still an option.

Fuck Google.

Also, in case it bore repeating: fuck Google.

And finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Google can go fuck itself.

If you come to me with this always-on Facebook spycam pointing at me on your gormless face, you’d better take it off pronto, because I didn’t consent to be filmed. And if you don’t comply, I’ll make you.

If I ever get oppressed for my speech

You already are.

Ask yourself: can you say or post absolutely everything that falls under free speech - i.e. not calls to violence of civil disturbance? Do you feel like you can safely talk about all subjects without being cancelled or sued?

As soon as you start thinking twice about whether you can say something safely, that’s censorship. Censorship isn’t someone breathing over your neck saying “Be careful what you say”, it’s you self-censoring so you don’t get into trouble.

I saw this coming in 1999 when Scott McNealy inadvertantly spilled the beans on what his hateful industry was up to, and I have been extremely cautious about what I’ve been posting ever since. People have called me a paranoid crackpot for decades. I guess I hate to tell you I told you so…