Elliot Shares Links (2021)

I can’t imagine myself treating DD this way 15 years ago. The thought of me purposefully not clicking an unlabelled link from DD back then is absurd. Similarly, today, if Ayn Rand were alive and sharing unlabelled links, I would click all of them. So I think you just don’t like/respect/value me much. You act like you don’t think I’m a great, Rand-like thinker, but you don’t say or discuss that. Meanwhile you’re asking for my help in another thread (with substantial ambiguity about what you’re asking for). But if you think I’m not a great thinker – if you place a much lower value on my help than how valuable I think it is – then I shouldn’t help you personally.

PS I am aware that some similar issues apply to other people.

Isn’t the fact that Elliot posted it enough? He’s posting them for a reason, and filtering them for you (and all of us). The videos each have a point to them (sometimes more than one). Also, if he added comments to all the links – thats overhead + primes ppl so they will react differently if they know his opinion. I don’t think I’ve watched any TT he’s posted and thought well that was a waste of a few minutes (and ofc you can always just close the tab if it’s not interesting or relevant).

I click on many of the tiktok links (it’s the only time I use tiktok) – I’m sure I’ve missed some, or clicked on 5 and gotten distracted before finishing them all (often b/c one of them inspires something). Like I hadn’t seen that one you linked about foster kids and neglect. I thought it was good and worth watching.

Here are two reasons that I don’t click on links: either I’ve seen it (mostly applies to speedrun related stuff) or b/c it’s not interesting (like some of Asmondgold’s stuff about WoW or other games specifically – I have watched multiple of his vids tho and enjoy a lot of his content, just not all).

I know I’ve missed some too b/c I’ve scrolled to the bottom – discord doesn’t track my last actual read post then. I’ve done that b/c sometimes I want to see the latest post. Thinking about it now, I should use anon mode for that or just open the thread in an incognito window (so I’m not signed in).

That’s how it works for me.

That makes sense. Similarly, I would not expect everyone to watch chess links (though I do think skimming at least one chess video a bit would be reasonable for a non chess player just to see what it is. There are a few types btw. Currently I’m watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTtc1LEtUrg which is a tournament video with announcers, which is done a bit like a live sports broadcast. There are also videos with one guy teaching something or playing or analyzing a game.).

Testing after re-enabling TikTok Oneboxes (which were buggy a few months ago):

https://www.tiktok.com/@thatradicalfostermom/video/7006469137098624262

EDIT: I just see the URL text but the preview was:

idk I’ll just turn tiktok oneboxes (link previews) back off for now.

my experience: I don’t play chess (like mb 10-20 games so far over my life) but I usually like those vids. There was one the other day about why ppl don’t progress (:+1:) and I watched a few when there was some drama. I find them valuable and entertaining mostly (tho with some I have watched ~5% and closed). Even tho I don’t play chess, and usually don’t enjoy watching games, I still find the ones you’ve posted valuable.

If anyone else is reading this and hasn’t clicked on them b/c they’re chess vids, I suggest giving some a go. Esp like during downtime and things (is the YT alg really going to consistently suggest better vids?)

This sounds interesting. I’m going to check it out (tho not right now). I probs wouldn’t if I hadn’t started climbing:

What you said reminds me a bit of competition climbing vids; having the commentary makes a big difference (example vid – women’s bouldering finals, streamed 7 hours ago) and elite athletes/players are often interesting to watch, esp if they become familiar. I usually watch at 1.5x or 1.6x (IDK how well that’d work for the linked chess vid). Before climbing I didn’t watch any sport-esq/competition/finals stuff – i include the chess championship in that category btw based on what you said (announcers, competitive, etc). Actually one thing I did used to watch was the WSOP (poker), but not for many yrs now.

I normally watch chess vids at 3x, which is my default YouTube speed.

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I do text browsing (like CF) in Firefox but most video watching in Chrome because of the speed control extension. So when I “click” a link that is or I expect to contain a video I’d want to watch I actually copy/paste it into Chrome.

The Chrome extension Video Speed Controller is also available for Firefox. For Safari I use Accelerate, which has fewer features.

I looked at how discourse tracks links the other night: when you click it opens a link in a new tab and sends a post request back to discourse server (/clicks/track).

this only happens for left-clicks, not middle-clicks (which is how I usually open tabs b/c the tab doesn’t change, unlike left click)

Just now: Left clicking “2021 Champions Showdown | Chess 9LX: Day 3 - YouTubein Elliot’s quote also didn’t send a click event. left clicking the original post did though.

left clicking your own link (one in your own post) does send a track event.

From the above I’d expect that the vast majority of my clicks are not tracked by discourse. (Note: I use FF with duckduckgo privacy enhancements and some other things, so those might interfere, but I haven’t noticed anything that would indicate that)

ps. I use “Video Speed Controller” in firefox, and I’ve just started using this and I really like it Tree Style Tab – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

edit: right clicking a link and selecting ‘open in new tab’ doesn’t send a track event either

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I think additional info would be nice and useful, and I think it’s shitty that onebox doesn’t work for tiktok, but I don’t think that lack of info is a good reason to not click Elliot’s links.

I’m curious if there’s something about the context of it being a link in a forum post that’s relevant. Like if Elliot was still doing newsletter and had an “Interesting TikToks” section with bare links, would you click on some of those?

https://www.tiktok.com/@kimber621/video/7007164236564647174

didn’t know whales could play fetch (it’s not that surprising given that they train orca whales for shows)

I wonder if it was trained? It looks like open ocean. Actually, the poster is from the US, so she’s probably on a tourist thing, and there’s plenty of opportunity for training in that sort of case. I think it’s a Beluga whale - Wikipedia and that page mentions some populations don’t migrate.

Also, didn’t know landscape tiktok vids were a thing

A post was merged into an existing topic: Elliot’s Microblogging

Ya, I knew that VSC was available for Firefox. When it came out (after I already had it on Chrome) I decided I didn’t want to install it on Firefox because it can read content from all tabs. I do stuff where security and privacy is relevant in Firefox, and I avoid doing security or privacy relevant stuff in Chrome, both because of Google spying and because of extensions which might also spy.

I don’t use Safari much because it’s limited to only my Apple devices.

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Ah. I take it you do some private/secure stuff in non-private tabs? Cuz I believe the extensions can’t spy on private tabs unless you let them.

IDK about @Lebowski’s case, but one example that comes to mind for using non-private tabs like this is operating in multiple AWS accounts (or other devops-y / cloud stuff). I have made extensive use of profiles (both Chrome and Firefox support this, though I found chrome’s easier to use (~2019)). From memory at least these things are isolated: extensions, saved passwords, associated google/firefox account sign-in, history, themes, cookies.

I created profiles for each of the 3 main environments (dev, test, prod) and then would use my main profile for personal AWS stuff (which was still useful to have even with the other 3 envs). I also color-coded the themes so it was immediately obvious which one I was using and I wouldn’t accidentally do stuff in the wrong environment. (There were other safeguards, too)

One reason I liked chrome profiles was that (at least on windows) I could have multiple chrome buttons on the taskbar. Equiv in macos would be multiple chrome icons (one for each profile) on the dock. That made it v easy.

I hardly ever use private tabs. When I looked into it (a long time ago) I got the impression that private tabs are mainly good for preventing correlations between your activities. Like, without private taps certain networks or advertisers could know: Person A uses Facebook with ID joe, has an account at Chase bank, and searched for snow shovels. Instead, with private tabs what can be known is Person A uses Facebook with ID joe. Person B has an account at Chase bank. Person C searched for snow shovels. Persons A, B, and C all have the same origin IP address, but might or might not be the same human being. That kind of “protection” did not seem worth the trouble. It seemed more like a false sense of security to me.

I wasn’t aware that private tabs could prevent an extension with permissions to read site content from reading the site content of a private tab. Maybe that’s a recent development or maybe it’s something I overlooked when I investigated the use case for private tabs. Video speed controller was the first extension I remember using. It’s possible I formed my opinion of private tabs before that and never updated.

2 posts were split to a new topic: The Canadian Mass Grave Hoax (video)

I like effort to understand details and get them right.