Louis Rossmann

Short Summary

1. The video discusses a violation of YouTube's terms of service by a product/service named "redacted."
2. It highlights the importance of displaying the privacy policy of the API client prominently for users.
3. The need to inform users about the usage of YouTube API Services and how their information is processed and shared is emphasized.
4. Downloading, storing, or promoting copyright infringement materials is strictly prohibited.
5. Compliance with YouTube's terms of service, API services terms, and developer policies is urged.
6. Any content gathered in violation of these terms and policies must be deleted.
7. The YouTube team requests cooperation in correcting and ceasing the offering of the client that violates their terms within seven days.
8. The need to provide API project IDs if accessing or using YouTube API services is mentioned.
9. Futo, the distributor of the "redacted" application, claims it respects content creators' rights and does not agree to the API terms of service or developer policies since it does not use YouTube API services. Futo expresses willingness to cooperate with YouTube in supporting content creators.
10. The transcript concludes with a statement criticizing YouTube's actions and expressing confidence in the organization's ability to challenge them based on past achievements. The speaker also shares their dedication to their work, including fixing motherboards and standing up against bullying, and their readiness to hire legal representation if necessary.

Haier issued a legal notice to the developer of a Home Assistant plugin used to control various Haier appliances (such as washing machines and AC units) without the user needing to use their hOn mobile app.

They state that the plugin is causing "economic harm" to their company.

The developer will be taking down the following repositories in the coming days:

• https://github.com/Andre0512/hOn
• https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn

This will also affect connected appliances branded under "Candy" and "Hoover" in Europe.

Piped link in comments

If a firmware update fails on your Mach-E, you're stranded... There's no backup or emergency boot ROM to at least allow you to drive home.

This is pretty disappointing for a "premium" EV IMO, considering other devices like PCs and smartphones will automatically revert to the last working update if they fail to boot.

Most modern PC motherboards even have this feature implemented at a hardware level for the BIOS, where the previous firmware is restored from an independent "flashback" ROM if a startup failure is detected following an update.

In this video Louis is pretty frustrated about these poor engineering decisions being blamed on EV technology, rather than pointing the blame at the manufacturer's poor engineering decisions - as it allows the manufacturers to continually get away with making things worse, and not being held accountable.

Imagine a world where billionaires having petty arguments result in functionality being remotely removed from your $40,000 device...

TL;DW: Disney decided to cease advertising on X (formerly Twitter) and not long after, the Disney+ app was removed from many owners' Tesla vehicles. Users who have already used the app shouldn't be affected by this, however those who haven't will no longer have access to this functionality.

This video follows on the heels of GM announcing removal of CarPlay and Android Auto from their future vehicles, indirectly reducing the freedom granted to vehicle owners of what they can run on their infotainment system. Running apps that provide traffic warnings and additional functionality will be no more, likely paving the way for more unnecessary subscription addons - and even situations like this where functionality can just be taken away without warning

The quality of stuff being sold on Amazon has been a race to the bottom for a while now, somewhat following in the steps of Ebay.

In this video Louis has two crimp butt connectors: one bought from Amazon and one bought from a hardware retail store - the Amazon purchased one, which a regular user of the site may consider as reputable at a glance, fails to crimp the wires securely. The hardware store one however securely crimps the wires in place.

It's a pretty mundane example, but extends across to other products in other industry verticals too. A pretty major concern raised in the video was that the failure of this specific product would cause excess heat, potentially leading to an electrical fire in the worst case scenario.

There's also the issue of reputable brands not even listing their products on Amazon anymore, leaving users with mostly poor quality alternatives shown prominently in search results.

Personally I find myself preferring to shop at dedicated or independent online storefronts, where it's a bit more obvious what exactly I'm purchasing, and where there's at least some minimum guarantee of quality - in contrast to a Prime "dropshipped", generic product from Amazon. Also kind of like the fact that by purchasing from sites that aren't massive marketplaces or outlets, real individuals benefit from my custom, not massive behemoths that don't need the sales to survive

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One would assume that if you paid for the 4K Netflix plan, you'd be able to watch media in 4K on all your devices? Unfortunately not, Netflix maxes out at 720p if you're watching in the browser.

If 🏴‍☠️ can watch whatever media they want in 4K from any device, but paying customers can't... the choice here is a no brainer.

Bonus: Louis has a mini rant about his $3000 LG TV which is packed with trackers, all enabled by default. A bit greedy of LG to also track user activity after paying that much money for the TV?

Watch elsewhere:

Invidious / Piped link in comments

https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=b8gFTiAMR95D1x3E&v=_GARcKCaUfI&feature=youtu.be

Invidious link https://invidious.privacydev.net/watch?v=_GARcKCaUfI

His cited articles https://www.wired.com/story/youtubes-ad-blocker-crackdown-spurs-record-uninstalls

https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-ad-block-installs-3382289

With YouTube cracking down on Adblockers two things are happening, people are finding out adblockers exist at all and people are moving to better adblockers that can still block YouTube ads. One example I can think of is Ublock Origin and their efforts to keep it working blocking ads on YouTube.

Louis Rossmann unveils Grayjay - a video client similar to Revanced and NewPipe, but shows your subscriptions from various video sites in a single feed.

Site: https://grayjay.app/
Source: https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay

The app is OSS but not Free, which I'm personally completely OK with.

Watch elsewhere: Invidious / piped link in comments

So I downloaded Futo Voice Input: this thing is the best piece of software I've tried in a very long time. It work fabulously well, it works offline, it's open-source, it gives Google the finger... What's not to love eh?

So I went to pay for it - because frankly, $10 for all that is cheap. But lo, I have to pay through... Google Play.

...

Really? Come on...

This is a piece of software specifically designed to help me escape the Google surveillance collective and the only way you found to get a reward for your efforts is to ask me to open a Google account to pay you?

Welcome to 2023, where you can say hello to a jail cell for being signed in to Google... at the wrong place, at the wrong time

Watch elsewhere: Invidious / Piped link in comments

A young Louis appears on the radio to share some pro gaming tips.

A fairly comprehensive take by Louis on owning a Framework laptop after two years - seems pretty positive overall!

The durability in particular seems to be a really strong point of the repairable design.

A few issues are mentioned, such as the unimpressive keyboard, a battery drain during sleep issue under Linux, and a design error where the RTC battery can soft-brick the laptop if left unattended for a long period of time.

Despite those, Framework seems to have really knocked it out the park with a great repairable first gen laptop IMO

Watch elsewhere: Invidious, Piped link in comments

YouTube | Invidious | Piped link in comments

It's probably too early to get excited over this - Apple needs to implement repair friendly measures first before we take this at face value, instead of their previous IRP program & self-repair 'token gestures' to appease legislators.

Youtube / Invidious / Piped link in comments

Louis repairs a marital aid.

Amazon and Walmart continue to sell old discontinued Chromebooks which no longer recieve security updates, while independent repairers have restricted ability to sell on the platform due to "quality control".

YouTube/Invidious/Piped link in comments

Links:

YouTube/Invidious/Piped link in description

The IAA considers privacy enthusiasts and users who block ads to be extremist.

They also criticise Apple's decision to give users the option to opt out of 3rd party tracking in apps. I'm not sure if the IAA realises advertising can still exist without tracking being a part of it!

Synopsis

In this video Louis reads the transcript of a meeting held by the International Advertising Association back in January this year.

YouTube/Invidious/Piped link in comments

Louis has been recieving emails showing a general dislike towards electric mobility, primarily due to the restrictions on how freely people can work on and operate these machines.

In this video he makes the point that electric mobility isn't the problem - companies are choosing to make these machines restrictive.

The primary example cited is VanMoof, an e-bike company that has folded, leaving most users unable to unlock their bicycle or transfer ownership. Unlocking the bicycle usually requires an app & key stored on VanMoof servers. A rival company "Cowboy" released an app that extracts the bike key from VanMoof servers, so owners can continue using their bike until it breaks down.

He makes the comparison to his own ebike built using off-the-shelf parts, choosing products that gave the most autonomy to the buyer. He designed his bicycle to be able to keep up with New York traffic speeds, something that many prebuilt ones cannot do due to either an underpowered motor or speed limiter.

Some criticisms are raised towards prebuilt e-bikes that use speed limiters and proprietary technologies - personally I see no problems with restrictions as long as they can be bypassed with sufficient technical skill, however that can become a slippery slope where artificial limits get normalised, possibly reaching a point where bypassing them is no longer feasible (such as unlocking the bootloader on a modern Android device).

YouTube/Invidious (Piped link in comments by bot)

Steam dropping support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 means users who purchased games for their PC during that era are SOL if their machine is not capable of running the latest Windows.

Synopsis

In the video, Louis reads a discussion thread between a Steam customer and their support team regarding older Windows versions being dropped. The customer is admittedly a bit salty in their writing. Steam doesn't directly answer the customer's questions, and instead points the customer to Steam's existing statements made about dropping support for older Windows versions.

Louis makes the argument that even though he agrees with Steam's stance on things such as piracy and their general consumer-oriented attitude, if we are dependent on Steam to launch games, especially on older systems where we can't unplug the ethernet and be able to still launch the game, do we really own the game to begin with?

Commenter views

Some commenters mentioned that this is a Chrome issue, as Steam's interface itself is a web browser and if Chromium drops support for older systems, Steam is stuck.

Other commenters mentioned it's a Microsoft issue, as more issues surface in unsupported Windows versions, it would be in Steam's best interests to drop support for these.

Another one mentioned that the DMCA provides an exemption for cracking games that you already own, if it is no longer being supported.

Links

What's your take on this?

Youtube/Invidious (A piped link should be posted by a bot below)

Brave Browser has started running "Block this ad" ads on Youtube, following a recent change where Youtube is blocking users that use an adblocker.

Pretty ballsy move by Brave IMO.

Louis has switched over to Brave for unrelated reasons, which was interesting to know! Personally I'll be sticking with Firefox.

YouTube/Invidious

It's unsurprising but disappointing that most authorised repair places are bound by policies that kind-of force customers to purchase a new device, especially in cases where their existing faulty device can be repaired on the spot for little cost.

I'm happy this repair shop owner (who decided to stay anonymous, for obvious reasons) carried out the minor repair for the customer despite Samsung not allowing this.

There's some people in the comments also talking about times where they carried out minor repairs for customers in situations where their company policy would have forced an expensive and unnecessary parts replacement.

Right to repair should create more repair options for consumers, leading to a reduction of expensive parts swaps in cases where they aren't necessary IMO

YouTube/Invidious

Been seeing a lot of Blackberry as of late but I don't think we've seen Oreo since the Framework video 😭

crosspost @wxboss@sh.itjust.works to Technology@lemmy.ml