It always surprises me when ppl don’t know about torrents. They were the only way to get things before streaming services privatized all this content, and still remain better, by using the latest encodings and quality formats for media.

I did know enough about torrents to do practically use them to download things since the Limewire/Ares times. But what I meant is that I never actually knew how they work at a technical level - I never opened a torrent file and looked inside, or knew what a magnet link was. So, then, the topic as a whole is still opaque to me. But I did some reading today and I’m getting into it.

So new content would be no different than the thousands of people seeding existing content.

I see it, but I also see why this concept might be intimidating to some. I (and probably many others) make use of torrents in rare occasion when I cannot find a movie, a series, or want an album. I associate torrenting with acquiring a large file for long term storage. Streaming feels different - videos exist in my computer only while I need them, and then they leave no trace. As I understand it, a torrent-based system would actually download all (or some) videos to disk to be able to seed them.

Still, I do think that a youtube-like torrent-based client would be successful - especially if implemented in a way that is simple for the user. An interface to find content, transparent and adjustable torrent settings with control over disk space allocation, and the torrents/magnet link management mostly hidden from the user.

Yeah, I’m still looking. This is the closest I found so far

Thanks. I don’t know much about torrenting other, and I never looked into the concept of what Magnet links are.

It is actually very interesting! Such an elegant and simple solution.

And I think it is even simpler than what the instructions imply… I can write the following into the terminal:

transmission-cli "magnet:?xt=urn:btih:563cf8f2a0bdd5564ae9ef3d3302eecef639328b"

And that’s enough to pull the first episode of alien earth that you shared. That unique hash is all it takes to search for seeders. Very cool.

It is still not obvious to me who would seed when implementing the torrent-based YouTube alternative. Would it make sense that users set some torrenting ratio, a file lifetime, and a size limit, and ‘collect’ videos as they watch them so that they can seed for other users?

All that’s needed is for people to learn how to seed their own videos, and post magnet links around.

I’m in! Looking into it. Now I need to go make something worth sharing.

It seems like as of right now meshtastic devices don’t have the ability to finely control LEDs/button actions to work for my use case. Which is a shame since I was hoping I could just buy a meshtastic device that has some programmable buttons inside a pre-built enclosure.

Maybe they do have that ability already. I am not sure. I have mostly used Meshtastic devices for communication and I have played a little bit with LoRa modules for more basic sensors and logging. Perhaps someone else knows more about the Meshtastic-specific features when it comes to telemetry and triggering devices.

Ha, maybe! I don’t remember if I ever saw a 180 flip. This is the closest I could find from a quick search: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZpIglVnYuY

If you have a video with the 180 degree flip I would really like to see it. This context seems like a plausible place to see such a move in modern days. I would imagine that in some martial arts this effect would be well known.

Some of these ‘games’ do trigger real physiological mechanisms. A well-documented example is the Valsalva maneuver, where forcefully exhaling against a closed mouth and nose affects heart rate and blood pressure.

In some games, this maneuver (or similar) is combined with a second action that normally increases blood flow demand to the brain. The mismatch between reduced blood pressure and sudden demand can cause dizziness or brief loss of consciousness due to insufficient oxygen reaching the brain.

Actually, there is a similar effect sometimes seen during heavy deadlifts, suddenly releasing can sometimes make people pass out. There are many “deadlift passing out” videos online.

So, those ‘games’ can work. I have known of kids breaking their teeth after face-planting against the floor while playing those games. Not a very smart thing to do.

If you catch a frog in between your hands and quickly flip it around, you can get the frog into a kind of paralyzed state called ‘tonic immobility’.

Here is a photo from Wikipedia:

OK, well, many years ago I was very interested in this phenomenon and decided to look into the literature.

I found a paper from 1928 titled “On The Mechanism of Tonic Immobility in Vertebrates” written by Hudson Hoagland (PDF link).

In this paper, the author describes contraptions he used to analyze the small movement (or lack of movement) in animals while in this state. They look kind of like torture devices:

OK, but, that’s still not it… The obscure fact is found in the first footnote of that paper, on page #2:

Apparently this or a similar effect can be observed in humans too?! In this paper, the author himself claims to have done this and that it works! I tried to locate more recent resources describing this phenomenon in humans but I could not find them… Is this actually possible? If so, why is this not better documented? Or, maybe it is better documented but understood as a different type of reflex today? Not sure.

Hmm this is what I think about this:

On the device by the gate:

Continuous loop:

• Switch to transmit mode

• Check if the gate is open or closed

• Transmit the result

• Switch back to receive mode and wait 15 seconds

When a message is received:

• Run a security check

• If the message is the Open or Close command, forward it to MQTT

On the device in the car:

Continuous loop:

• Decrease the timer value

When a message is received:

• Set connection state to connected

• Enable the Open/Close display and set it to the received state

• Reset the timer to 45 seconds

If the timer ends:

• Set connection state to disconnected

• Disable the Open/Close display

On button press:

• Stop receiving

• Generate a secure message (Open or Close)

• Transmit the message

• Resume receiving

Option 1: Use an ESP32 with WiFi and a LoRa module near the gate. This device can handle both the LoRa interface and the MQTT push with relatively simple firmware. For the device in the car, WiFi is not needed, so you can choose any microcontroller and a LoRa module.

For the interface, LEDs are the simplest. Map the GPIOs to four LEDs (Red, Green | Red, Green). For example:

• Red and Off = Disconnected

• Green and Red = Connected and Closed

• Green and Green = Connected and Open

Two more GPIOs in input mode can handle the two physical buttons for Open and Close.

If you want a screen, there are many options. You can use a small OLED, touch screen, or colored E-Ink. The choice depends on whether the car device is battery powered or has constant power, and how much complexity you want in the code.

Option 2: Use Meshtastic. The device by the gate can be connected to something like a Raspberry Pi, and a Python script can process incoming messages and handle the heartbeat transmissions. Meshtastic gives you some built-in security, but you still need to be careful. The difficulty is keeping track of the connected state and the Open/Close state from the heartbeat, and then mapping that to a display or LEDs. That would probably require customizing Meshtastic firmware.

Because of that, I think writing custom firmware is easier than trying to adapt Meshtastic for this use case. BUT - I have not been keeping up to date with the newest Meshtastic versions, and I don’t know all of the sensor-related features. So it is possible that there is already some built-in method that replicates this and I just don’t know about it.

That’s a very interesting resource!

Actually, the countries where I have been able to purchase anonymous SIM cards are in the list “As of 2021, the following countries do not have mandatory SIM card registration laws”. So, it appears like I just happen to have been lucky and I should not make this as such a general recommendation…

Funny, about Mexico it says:

Countries expected to implement mandatory SIM registration in 2022: Philippines, Mexico.

I can at least confirm that I was not asked for ID when buying SIM cards last year in Mexico.

I just looked it up and found the proposed law for Mexico on Wikipedia. It was struck down in 2022 as unconstitutional.

So, then, I really have no anecdotes to say that it is easy in places where it is formally illegal.

I am not sure about France. When I search online, I often find resources stating “Yes, ID is required”, even for the countries where I know that I have bought SIM cards with cash. Well, the SIM is usually free and what I pay for is the top-up code.

I would imagine (but I’m not sure) that if you try to buy a SIM card at an airport or at an official store from a large telephony provider you are more likely to get asked for an ID. I find them in shops that have signs with the names of smaller MVNOs. Something like what is shown in this image that I found online, where you can see signs of ‘Lyca Mobile’ and ‘Lebara’:

But, your mileage may vary. Probably some locations are more strict than others.

I like it.

I find the feature of pulling comments from cross-posts even more desirable now that I see how it interfaces with PeerTube videos, pulling the comment history as well. I still think that improvements can be made. With regular cross-posts, you have different people sharing the same link, often to a resource outside of the Fediverse. But, in the case of a federated piece of content such as a PeerTube video, the original does live within the fediverse. There is a master post, which is the video itself. I feel like there is some way to design a special kind of fedi-cross post that allows to share with a community without breaking the interaction… At least for upvotes.

It does get a little complicated and confusing. And for some reason it only works for some PeerTube instances, not for all…

But, for example, let’s say I like this video: https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/c8c6a9df-121e-4a00-95c1-b7af4beb73a1

By pasting that URL into the search box, the video is brought into the instance as a post. The channel is also pulled as a “locked” community. If anyone in the instance subscribes to that community, then future uploads to the PeerTube channel will be brought into the community.

Look, here is the channel pulled into your instance: https://sh.itjust.works/c/bpt11_channel@tilvids.com

If a user upvotes post, then the original video will get a “like”. If one comments, the comment will appear under the original video.

But let’s be honest, Peertubés problem is discoverability of content.

I’ve discovered lately that there is a Firefox extension which lets you use Youtube and signals you when a video is already on Peertube. This could be great.

Yeah… I have been going through the effort of pulling channels and subscribing to them from within the instance so that future videos also populate the instance. It is some effort to discover these channels, but hopefully over time we can have a nice library of channels interacting with Lemmy.

Thanks. Yeah, I was thinking of writing this as an “enhancement” issue, but figured it might be worth to refine this before bringing it up there.

Id love to get peertube spread throughout my feeds. My biggest reason for not using it was the fact I’d have to use a different platform and my device is already maxed out on storage. Here’s hoping it would be a quick fix!

I’ve been looking for channels, pulling them into the instance, and subscribing to try to increase the number of channels in my feed.

According to the SX1261/2 datasheet, the maximum RAW bit rate of this LoRa chip is 62.5 kb/s for 500 KHz bandwidth and spreading factor of 5.

The bit rate is constrained by the spreading factor and the bandwidth. Bandwidth is constrained by law, spreading factor is constrained by design. You can find the details in LoRa™ Modulation Basics, AN1200.22, section 4.

For 250 KHz Lora, you can use the equation to get the theoratical max:

If we set SF = 5, BW = 250,000, bit rate is 39.0625 kb/s for a raw bit stream.

So, I think that the limit of 62.5 kb/s is a safe speed ceiling to consider. I am not sure how you would get 125 kbps using LoRa and current constraints. You could switch the chip to FSK mode and pull at 300 kb/s IF the FSK link is strong enough.

Depending on where you are travelling to and from, you can often get an anonymous prepaid SIM card. That is what I do: buy one with cash, put it into a MiFi router, and only switch it on when I need internet. That way I stay off the records of whoever else is with me and I am not relying on their identity as a shield. I have not found an eSIM provider that gives me the same level of anonymity, so I have avoided those.

If you really have to register a SIM with your identity, it depends on the situation. For example, if you buy a SIM in the EU, activate roaming, and then use it in Mexico, the Mexican authorities can’t instantly demand your subscriber info from the EU. On the other hand, if you or your family buy local SIMs while showing ID, then travel together and check in to hotels together, it makes little difference whose SIM is whose. For Mexico specifically, you can walk into an OXXO store, pay cash, and get a prepaid SIM with a data package, no ID required. Many countries have similar cash options so you check ahead of time.

About whether the worry is justified. The type of surveillance you mention, such as stingrays, requires both strong capability and strong motivation. If a government wanted to, they could stop your entire family at the border before you ever left. But from what you describe, you are just a foreigner who might pass by a protest. That is unlikely to trigger the level of targeting you are thinking of.

Still, I would not call it “in vain.” Building habits that protect privacy and understanding how information flows is always useful. But if you can get a prepaid SIM anonymously with cash, it is usually a cleaner option than tethering from family.

Thanks!

Yeah, I get that. I think that this camera + lens combination would meet your criteria while giving you pretty decent quality and the ability to upgrade. It is what I have recommended in the past to people asking this same question and they have been very happy with it. You can pass the idea through Grok, I think it will agree ;)

Instead of a “compact camera”, I’d recommend getting a used Lumix DMC-GX80 + the 20 mm pancake prime lens. If you don’t like primes and prefer to zoom, you can get a compact zoom lens instead.

Some people really don’t like buying used camera equipment… but I have had only positive experiences so far.

I like the idea of PeerTube, but I tried running an instance and was unable to sustain the experiment for too long. I made it very open and it got quickly flooded by pirated TV series and spammy and heavy content.

After that, I had a difficult time at some point finding an instance to host some videos I wanted to upload - and, having had that failed experiment before hand, I can see why the instances that do survive are often those with more stringent filters and less generous with resources.

So, I am sorry to “chime in about the shortcomings”, but hosting a PeerTube instance can be a demotivating experience. You set up the infrastructure expecting to contribute to a space reminiscent of the old youtube, and you see it filled with spam. The signal-to-noise ratio is just awful and it is expensive. To avoid this, you can be an aggressive gate keeper - but this makes the platform less friendly to people who are looking to find a space to share their original content. Gate keeping is also an additional effort that you need to make. In the end I chose to just shut it off as it was more of a hassle than fun. By comparison, hosting a Lemmy instance is fun, much much cheaper, and little hassle.

I still haven’t given up on the idea of Peertube, though… I have some video ideas, and when I finally get to making them I plan to make another instance to host only my channel. Then, I would be able to host my own channel using my own infrastructure via a federated network. This use case would work very well for me, and it can probably work for many others. So that is one way of building the Peertube network.

General permissive video uploads is something that makes YouTube such a powerful platform though, and that is very difficult to replicate.