Bonum Certa Men Certa

Sticking It to YouTube (Google, Alphabet) by Self-Hosting Videos and Making Galleries

Let's weaken Internet monopolies

Gallery of Techrights videos



Summary: We've entered the next step in our plan to become fully self-hosted for videos, including facilities by which to browse past videos

BACK in December we started recording and sharing many videos. Almost 40 gigabytes later, and having created .gif (GIF) animations with previews, we can now automatically produce clickable video galleries (screenshot above), more or less like YouTube sans the text and sans the JavaScript.



"Putting videos on YouTube isn't free; the cost is hidden and becoming a slave of masters like Facebook or Google is a huge cost."The implementation is extremely simple and generally occurred to me as a reasonable possibility when I was in the kitchen a few weeks ago. Rather than attempt to do anything fancy with JavaScript the previews can be done 'offline', then uploaded with the same filename as the WebM file, except the extension. We already explained how to streamline the GIF file. That was 20 days ago. Once you have enough GIF files in place, try something like this (for our setup it's all in ~/public_html/videos/):

cd ~/public_html/videos/
find *.gif > /tmp/gif
sed 's/.gif//' /tmp/gif > /tmp/gif-raw



echo '' > ~/public_html/videos/index.html while IFS= read -r line; do echo "<a href=\"$line.webm\"><img width=\"300\" hspace=\"20\" vspace=\"20\" style=\"padding: 17px 17px 17px 17px; box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #222;\" src=\"$line.gif\" alt=\"$line\" /></a>" >> ~/public_html/videos/index.html done < /tmp/gif-raw


Of course it would be nice to add header, footer etc. That would actually be the vastly easier part (with commands like cat for concatenation). Appending and prepending bits of HTML:

Gallery of Techrights videos

We hope that over time fewer people will moan about YouTube censorship (it's a form of social control media, connected closely to the US government). Instead, people should shoulder the cost and burden of self-hosting. Putting videos on YouTube isn't free; the cost is hidden and becoming a slave of masters like Facebook or Google is a huge cost. One day it can cost as much as an entire channel (getting zapped over political differences, not even obscenities). They typically use terms like "community guidelines", which include not 'offending' particular views or beliefs.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Nonfree Software in My Bank, by Richard Stallman
Updated 8 hours ago
Richard Stallman is Usually Right Because He Thinks "Outside the Box"
he is able to observe society (mores and norms) as somewhat of an outsider
 
This Monday WebProNews Absolutely Flooded the Web With Fake (LLM Slop) 'Articles' About "Linux", Google News Promoted Them as Legitimate
All of the following are fake articles attributed to pseudonyms or authors that don't exist; the images are also slop. Why does Google promote these?
Linuxiac is Not a Slopfarm, But at Least Some of Its Articles Are Machine-Generated Fakes
what we said about it was correct
Expect More Microsoft Layoffs
"Are more job cuts coming?"
Microsoft Behaving Like It's Running Out of Money to Pay Salaries
Does that seem like the behaviour expected from a company which claims it is "worth" trillions?
LWN Downtime Due to Linode, Not LLM Bots
"I’ve received an email letting me know that there is a potential for data loss."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 28, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 28, 2025
Links 28/07/2025: Science, Health, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Healthy Self-Image With Autism and a "New Life"
Links for the day
Links 28/07/2025: COVID-19 Sped up Brain Aging, "Circumvention is More Popular Than Compliance"
Links for the day
LWN Has Been Down for a Long Time, Another Casualty of LLM Bots?
Time will tell. How much time though?
Slopfarms Versus 'Linux' (and Against People Who Write Real Articles About GNU/Linux)
LLM slop in slopfarms by Brian Fagioli and Redazione RHC
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray and Running pkgsrc in a FreeBSD Jail
Links for the day
Microsoft Turns News Sites Into Spamfarms
Is the site The Register MS the next IDG?
The Register MS/The Register US
On Saturday I contacted them for a comment (before issuing criticism)
Hacking revelations at Vatican Jubilee of Digital Missionaries
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 27, 2025
The Week to Come
Planning ahead
LLM Slop Has Only Been a Boon for Misinformation Online
The very same companies that were supposed to maintain quality (again, not limited to Google with PageRank) are now actively participating in generating and spreading slop
When They Tell You It's Free, Does That Mean No Charges (If So, Who's Paying and Why)?
there's "no free lunch"
We're Going to Focus Less on the Molotov Cocktail-Throwing Microsofters and More on Patents
We can get back to focusing on what we wanted to focus on all along
Just Trying to Keep Web Sites Honest (Journalistic Integrity)
the latest articles in LinuxIac are real
Links 27/07/2025: Political Affairs, Data Breaches, Attacks on Freedom of the Press
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: Hot in Japan and Terminal Escape Codes
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs Coming, Science and Hardware News
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: FSF Hackathon and "Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: DAW Mixer Chains and Simple Software
Links for the day
The Register MS is Inventing or Giving Air Time to New Conspiracy Theories so as to Distort the Narrative As High-Profile Agencies Fall Prey to Microsoft Holes
But the problem is holes, i.e. Microsoft making bad products; the problem is Microsoft
Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
Unlike systemd
"New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
When Silence Says So Much
Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
The Register in Trouble
There is not much that can be done at this point
Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
Something isn't right at The Register
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
Misinformation in Social Control Media
Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles