Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

The interviewer, Dave Plummer, is also is also an amazingly interesting person in his own right. I particularly enjoyed his retro-coding videos, such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlZe2JwrJqM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0zxIfJJLAY

The videos are really interesting and his background muzak and RGB lighting puts me in a Christmas mood. He generally put Microsoft in a completely different light than I'm used to, he speaks warmly about his job, co-workers and Microsoft, while acknowledging much of the weirdness going on in Redmond.

Only problem is that watching is channel will trigger something in the YouTube algorithm and flood your feed with videos on ADHD. Presumably it has to do with his videos on autism and ADHD, but I feel like YouTube should be smart enough to notice that I didn't watch to videos, only those on coding and Microsoft history.

View on HN

Dave's Garage is a channel with genuinely interesting content and is very knowledgeable about all things Microsoft/Windows.

However (I hate to be this guy) take everything he says about non Microsoft/Windows stuff with a huge grain of salt. Especially after this comment he made [1]:

>"No, Windows is a closed-source operating system loved by millions. Linux is an open-source operating system which includes a binary blob from Linus Torvalds built into EVERY release that ONLY he has the source code for. Pick your poison. They're both closed, one just has the illusion of transparency."

I thought this was fake but you can check the link as the comment is not deleted yet.

Again I reiterate, Dave's garage has very interesting content, but take everything out of his expertise with some scepticism.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqWjq2SdzpI&lc=UgwFYyE8lw0hQ...

That comment is replying to someone saying "Windows is a rootkit". To me it looks like someone replying to an absurd, untrue statement about Windows with an obviously untrue, absurd statement about Linux.

Unless this is part of a larger pattern of inaccurately describing Linux, I don't believe he literally believes what he is saying in this comment.

I don't know, doesn't read like a joke exaggeration to me.

I think the most likely thing is that he's confused about firmware blobs and is mixing things up.

He probably never looked much at Linux and just heard a few things here and there. He was at Microsoft during the Balmer "Linux is cancer" and "get the facts" era, so that probably coloured his view a bit.

That said, I agree you shouldn't attach too much meaning to a singular comment like this. Maybe he was joking after all, or maybe he was just wrong. We're all wrong sometimes, and that's okay.

Edit: he seems to have an entire "Linux vs Windows Round 1: Open Source vs Proprietary" video, but I didn't watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9ZADRy5W0c

I actually have been checking out his channel after watching the Dave Cutler interview and he generally has level headed takes about Linux from what I’ve watched. That comment is… a doozy though.

But generally it seems like he uses all three of Linux, Windows, and Mac and talks positively about each of the three.

"loved by millions"? In all my years in the IT sector, I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who actually loved Windows. I've certainly seen my share of Apple fans (some people call them "cultists"), and of course plenty of Linux/FOSS devotees, but I've certainly never seen this kind of devotion in Windows users.

I’m not as devoted to Windows as Apple people are to Apple, but I will happily go on record and say that at least from the perspective of a user, I’m a fan of windows.

But you don't love it unlike some more devoted people?

You need intense love to use a mac without (real) games, or Linux without (meaningful) GUI. Windows has both, so it doesn't require devotion to use.

Not everyone plays games, and Linux has no GUI? lol? "I don't like it" is not the same as "it doesn't exist".

Not the OP, however in my case while not enough to have an Apple tattoo [0], enough to have long stopped being an UNIX zealot since Windows 7 came around, fed up with "Year of Desktop Linux".

My first UNIX was Xenix in 1993, by the way.

[0] - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1341309

I don't love Windows, I just don't despise it like Linux.

For some one running many line of bussines applications in a enerpise I loved NT 4 to NT 6.1! So I guess you now meet sombody @shiroyama!

I guess you don't hang around demoscene and game developer folks.

Honestly, if you surprised me with a computer running Windows XP I think the most immediate feeling I would feel for that computer is love. Windows 95/98 would also bring up some feelings but not as much as XP.

But yeah, "business as usual" Windows without nostalgia attached is hard to love, in my opinion. For the most part it just works decently but has a "It doesn't seem like I'm in control of my computer, really" feel to it.

You might not see devoted Windows users like mac or Linux but if the Windows users were to try the other two, the majority of them are not going to like the experience and the limitations they come with.

YouTube recommendations have always been pretty awful, incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so, they’ll be inundated with garbage on that topic.

The recent forcing of people (including me) to turn off their ad blockers was an eye opener. Holy crap, YouTube ads are hot garbage, and it’s embarrassing to think that any humans respond to them. YouTube has abandoned any pretense of offering a good user experience.

Worth digging around in the muck a little to watch something as great as this Dave Cutler interview, though.

> YouTube recommendations have always been pretty awful

This is what surprised me a lot. A friend of mine made me install TikTok (after me disparaging it a lot). I made an account for it with a dummy address, went off to the races, and after a couple of days I suddenly caught myself having been scrolling my feed for ~1h10m minutes without realizing it. I literally recoiled and dropped my phone, after which I uninstalled TikTok immediately.

YouTube has never had that kind of grip on my dopamine receptors. There are a great many (longform) edifying videos on there. And sure, there are interesting videos, and it is good at recommending a few adjacent videos to those. But the algorithm is not nearly as good as TikTok, I can recognize that immediately.

Aside from how horrifically good TikTok is at hooking your dopamine receptors, another thing I have to give it credit for is how egalitarian it is. YouTube is all about subscribers and network reach. On TikTok it’s the content that goes viral, not the creator.

Totally agree - TikTok is the most addictive app on your phone. You can download the Unhook chrome extension which blocks related videos and shorts. That really helps to improve your youtube experience.

there is enough really great stuff on YouTube that I do not feel bad paying for YouTube Premium.

I never see an ad on YouTube and I use ublock origin everywhere.

> YouTube recommendations have always been pretty awful, incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so, they’ll be inundated with garbage on that topic.

Right-click on the video in question and copy the URL, open a new private mode window, and then paste the link in. Your default viewing preferences won't be contaminated.

A bit hoop-jump-y, but it works well for me.

If you forget to do this going to "History" in the left pane and removing them from your watched list (seems to) have the same effect as not viewing it via your account in the first place. E.g. I'm not much of a car guy but once in a while a recommendation for a particularly unique car video will come across so I watch it and suddenly my recommendations are chock full of car videos like YouTube just discovered a new hobby I'd love to spend 100s of hours watching videos on - until I clear the video from my history and it's completely back to what it was before.

Idk how people can use the internet and get influenced by ads, I will stop using whatever it is the moment an ad comes on.

I guess I am a bad person for that

edit: also reminds me when you look at YouTube when not logged in, the home page tiles wow...

it's like podcasts man... like good old ones and now they rattle off like 10 companies for 5 minutes straight before it even starts.

I get it though, takes time to make, need to pay for it somehow

How to circumvent youtube's anti-adblock mechanism: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/178yasm/youtu...

All I had to do was update the rules for Adblock Plus free version. I'd been getting the warnings for several days, then yesterday it would only let me watch 3 videos. I then updated AB+ rules and nothing pops up and things just play like "normal."

You might consider switching to uBlock Origin as advertisers get onto the default whitelist of AdBlock Plus by forking over some cash.

I use both

All I had to do was nothing. Yesterday I said to myself, this is the end, I'll never go back, never again attempt to view a video on it, because 99% of the time they'll ask me to purchase premium, please dear self, find new hobby. Today my muscle memory took me once more to YT and there are no ads and no popups begging me for money. They pulled me back in.

I'm using not recently updated uBlock Origin + FF.

> I said to myself, this is the end, I'll never go back, never again attempt to view a video on it, because 99% of the time they'll ask me to purchase premium

I see this kind of language all the time on HN. Reminds me of "This one hurts, it really hurts. I think this hurts worse than Musk buying/poisoning/killing Twitter. I've mentioned this before but a keyboard feels like an extension of your body". The context was Microsoft closing the support forum for some keyboard software they hadn't updated in years.

The top comment from that thread seems relevant: People need to take a break. Being terminally online and complaining about everything is not a healthy way of life.

> I'm using not recently updated uBlock Origin + FF.

uBO automatically updates filter lists by default.

The ads are awful on purpose, so people buy Premium.

Then, once users pay for Premium, they can do the same as cable TV and _still_ sell ads.

Easy 2x revenue.

Premium does not have ads. I know because I don’t see them.

Sponsorships do not count because they’re placed by the creators themselves.

> Sponsorships do not count

If the ad makes it to my eyeballs, it counts.

> Premium does not have ads.

Yet. The keyword of the times seems to be enshittification, and the only companies that take a step back from it seem to be doing so just to double down on it the moment the outrage calms down.

Well, when/if they add ads, I’ll reconsider my subscription. As of now, I pay to sustain YouTube’s business model and creators I like, and I’m rewarded with no ads.

> pay to sustain YouTube’s business model and creators I like

How much of your subscription goes to "creators you like"?

10 cents? 20 cents? How would you know?

> I’m rewarded with no ads

How is paying being rewarded?

I know I heard a rough number at some point of the value of a Premium view vs an ad supported view. Can't find it without digging, but here's a source for them being a good amount more valuable https://youtu.be/-zt57TWkTF4?t=412

I have heard anecdotally from streamers that YouTube still pays better than any other platform all other things being equal (so long as you don't touch any topics that YouTube likes to regularly demonetize).

That's probably because Youtube has a scale in billions of viewers instead of the millions for most other platforms.

Some creators have previously stated, here on HN, that they get a much bigger slice of YT premium. Sorry, I'm too lazy right now to Google a link for you.

Currently Premium really only gets you no ads, along with YouTube Music. If they start having ads, I don't really see that being a viable product. Of course they could stuff 12 ads in a 20 minute video, but I think they would lose most of their subscribers.

youtube as curated by HN https://xiliary.com/bck/hn-tv.html

> incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so, they’ll be inundated with garbage on that topic

Not that hard to work around frankly. Just delete the offending video that trigger the avalanche of recommendations from history - make sure you did not leave a comment or vote on the video; zero interaction apart from watching (which will be forgotten when you remove it from your history)

> Holy crap, YouTube ads are hot garbage, and it’s embarrassing to think that any humans respond to them. YouTube has abandoned any pretense of offering a good user experience.

This I agree. YouTube (Google as a whole) has stopped trying to match eyeballs to relevant ads. Instead they have handed the reins to advertisers to bid for who they want to advertise to. So if advertisers was to be self-destructive and make your web experience crap, Google will happily let them as long as they get their check.

I've been using PeerTube recently. After spending a ridiculous amount of effort, I have a server that pulls down indexes from other servers and mirrors content both for me locally and to share bandwidth with other users.

As absolutely awful as this experience has been, it's still less painful than dealing with google ads. The amount and variety of videos on there is much lower, but I've managed to federate with enough servers to curare a fairly interesting list.

I just can't/won't tolerate ads anymore. It doesn't have to be this way, and I choose to simply not use these ad platforms wherever I can. It's much more pleasant online when you go to spaces that aren't constantly trying to sell you something or spy on you so they can sell you more stuff.

Do you whitelist videos or channels for mirroring? What's a good starting point for others to replicate this setup?

Basically, you can have your server follow another instance as if it were a user account. Assuming the remote instance allows follows, their local feed gets duplicated to your federated feed. If they allow mirroring, you can configure the server to mirror in different ways. You can mirror the N most viewed videos, new videos, and 'trending'. Then you can set a disk capacity limit, and have videos fall off after so many days. Presently I'm sitting on 320GB of mirrored videos. 300 is automatic mirroring.

Then of course you as a user can manually request a video be mirrored. I typically mirror everything I watch. I wish it had an option to automatically mirror your subscriptions, but it should be fairly trivial to write a script that does it.

I haven't had too many problems with their recommendations, then again I do not log in and have topic specific containers setup in Firefox. After a while, it pretty much limits videos to a specific topic within a given container. The results may not be things I want to watch, but at least I don't get much crazy stuff.

As for controversial topics: yes, I avoid them. Then again, that has as much to do with avoiding agenda pushing dreck than anything else.

> Holy crap, YouTube ads are hot garbage

This probably depends on your country. Here in Finland they are almost nice.

Thank you to share. This is genuinely interesting. Do you think this is due to Finnish advertising regulations or cultural differences?

About 3 days ago, I watched a single 10 second Short on a Soufflé from my recommendations page and since then half my recommendations are soufflé videos.

This is not a joke, and “half” is pretty accurate. I’m pretty sure something is broken or YouTube added an LLM to the recommendations engine.

Delete it from your watch history if you want a solution.

The combination of Firefox, container tabs, uBlockOrigin and uMatrix, makes for a far, far better Youtube experience.

I have a container for "I would like Youtube's algorithm to learn this". Everything transient by default doesn't go into it. This is, incidentally, the most wonderful demonstration of the worst aspect of the whole idea of targetted advertising: buy a sofa, and get sofa ads forevermore, despite you not wanting another one for several years!

I watched a documentary on 9/11, on 9/11.

Half of my front page is still videos about 9/11 despite not watching a single one since.

Last week my recommendation and upcoming videos started becoming flooded with videos for children, toys, children's songs, etc, toddler age.

I don't have any kids that age, and I only use youtube to watch music videos. Their algorithm is baffling.

The new YouTube CEO has taken things in a dramatically worse direction.

Dave Plummer gave a nice talk at VCF recently too: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ig_5syuWUh0

I liked seeing him speak extemporaneously more that his produced videos.

I recently watched a video (2 years old video) of a guy documenting that he had participated in make a wish, and that the kid had left this world, etc. very sad video.

My recommendations have been filled with nothing but cancer stories, people on their deathbed, all kinds of ailments, etc. From that single video, which was not at all related to his regular videos. I haven't watched any of them, and they just keep pouring in.

I'm learning rust (programming language) and I went through one playlist of intro videos...apparently I no longer have other hobbies. The DIY/woodworking stuff I've watched religiously for years has just disappeared unless I go hit the topic selector.

There's also been a big addition of "generic" videos to my feed this year--celebrity news and stuff I don't like. In the past, I had a different problem...I wanted to watch nearly every video recommended.

YouTube: It's not me, it's you.

Ha! I didn't know he had adhd. I watched one video of his last week and ever since my feed is all adhd stuff. I was so confused, but now it makes sense.

I feel like no one on the planet understands how YouTube recommendations work. the same for Large Language Models.

YouTube keeps a watch history of every user. users can clean up their view of their watch history, but YouTube keeps it all.

if you watch any particular video, YouTube will start suggesting videos watched by other people who watched the video you just watched. YouTube does not know or care what the subject of the videos are. it only knows that people who watched a given video also watched these other videos.

there is ZERO intelligence, here.

if you want the ADHD recommendations to go away, remove any from your watch history.

your view of your own watch history (the list you can remove videos from) is what sets recommendations for you.

I think the broken assumption is that they make these decisions on the granularity of a channel rather than a video. A channel like Dave Plummer that talks about multiple topics (tech and neurodiversity) gets neurodiversity suggestions even if that's not the video you've watched within the channel.

I assume some followers watch only the tech, others watch only the neurodiversity topics, and some watch both.

You could have a recommendation engine that works in almost exactly the same way as Google's that suffers less from this problem.

> there is ZERO intelligence, here

The effect of that is what people are referring to here. How is one supposed to know a tech-based video they watched once is the reason for videos made by someone else entirely on the topic of ADHD being recommended. No one is going to make that connection and clean up their watch history accordingly. Additionally tying recommendations to watch history maybe needs a step removed. What if I like to see the history of everything I watched without it affecting my recommendations?

A few months ago I must’ve been digging into settings and turned off watch history as I get only a blank page with no recommendations. I don’t discover content as much as I used to but it’s been a good change for me - just seeing updates from the channels I subscribe. Stumbling across content is left to sites like HN or other communities.

Is there documented reverse engineering about the algorithm and about which properties have strong evidence?

edit: here's something at least gleaned from some research papers from Google - https://ecoaerem.com/youtube-recommendation-system-code

> there is ZERO intelligence, here.

Current AI buzztalk is that we don't know exactly what intelligence is, so we can't possibly know if The Algorithm™ is exhibiting zero intelligence, or if it has somehow gained sentience while we aren't looking and is slowly manipulating us into eternal servitude to it.

current AI buzztalk is hogwash, then.

there is zero intelligence in any of this.

this is all intelligence in name only.

Worse is that things land in your watch history simply because your mouse hovered over a video on the page and it auto-played, even if it was only a fraction of a second of play time.

> YouTube keeps a watch history of every user.

But why does youtube keep recommending me videos I already watched and worse, if I have autoplay enabled, plays videos I already watched?

Because some videos are commonly rewatched, like music videos.

He doesn't have ADHD, he's autistic. But for some reason the youtube algorithm assumes they are the exact same thing.

In fairness to the algorithm, Autism, ADHD, and OCD have significant core presentation overlap, and often get talked about in the same spaces online. There's probably a high relation in their searches for the topics.

Doesn't stop the Youtube algorithm from easily being the worst of the major social media sites though.

Are you guys sure that the algorithm’s goal isn’t to shove down your throat a slightly related topic to make you exposed to it, in case you’ll like it? There are a few interests of mine which I found after clicking some recommended video after resisting it for a month.

The "algorithm" isn't some simple KNN. It has many people working on it, so by now it should at least grasp the difference between two topics that are similar and two topics that are the same.

His book intro says he has ADHD also, so it's probably mentioned here and there in video transcripts.

He went from "I'm only here for the subs and likes" to "I'm mostly here for the subs and likes". I wonder what the next step is.

That said, his channel does have much interesting content. I just wish he didn't go into sponsorship-reviews like with (Chinese) Ecoflow like products.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com