wonga (u/wonga) - Readit News

wonga commented on Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views astronaut.io/... · Posted by u/KeatonDunsford

blakeyrat · 9 years ago

Good site, but don't you think it's a tad sleazy to use these people's videos without at least letting us click-through to their YouTube channel? I mean it's the absolute least you could do to give them due credit.

wonga · 9 years ago

with a quick pointer from Mithaldu, the videos are now back to being linkable via the logo. see my response to him regarding some thoughts on this.

wonga commented on Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views astronaut.io/... · Posted by u/KeatonDunsford

Mithaldu · 9 years ago

You can't link, since whoever made this site disabled any and all controls on the videos. Even the youtube button in the corner is blocked off.

This is one of the most evil implementations of video embedding i've ever seen.

wonga · 9 years ago

the videos are linkable back to youtube via the logo now :D

i think the main side effect is if you accidentally click the video, it stops, which ruins the illusion of a continuous live stream (like television), but that's the tradeoff at the moment i guess ever since the old embed api was deprecated.

wonga commented on Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views astronaut.io/... · Posted by u/KeatonDunsford

blakeyrat · 9 years ago

Good site, but don't you think it's a tad sleazy to use these people's videos without at least letting us click-through to their YouTube channel? I mean it's the absolute least you could do to give them due credit.

wonga · 9 years ago

yup the logo is supposed to be clickable but i think i put up a mask while trying to get the new embed api stuff to work, i'll have to check what that was about.

wonga commented on Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views astronaut.io/... · Posted by u/KeatonDunsford

Jackim · 9 years ago

This is my favourite that I stumbled upon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaN0NkyLj8

wonga · 9 years ago

that was amazing

wonga commented on Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views astronaut.io/... · Posted by u/KeatonDunsford

mcjiggerlog · 9 years ago

This is a really beautiful piece of art. I just wanted to say well done. It's a very grounding experience watching it for a few minutes

If you could click through to the source video then that would be great.

wonga · 9 years ago

(creator here) thank you! yeah i think i masked the youtube logo during my failed attempts to get this to work on mobile. i'll see if i can bring it back.

wonga commented on Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views astronaut.io/... · Posted by u/KeatonDunsford

astrocat · 9 years ago

PSA: Watch in an private/incognito tab/window. If you are currently logged into your google account, this WILL pollute your watched history: https://www.youtube.com/feed/history

That said, I really do like the concept. It's literal reality TV. Very cool.

wonga · 9 years ago

(creator here) thanks for the heads up! i had disabled my youtube history completely and didn't notice this...

wonga commented on Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views astronaut.io/... · Posted by u/KeatonDunsford

wonga · 9 years ago

This is Andrew Wong (@wongavision), one of the creators of astronaut. I'm amazed this has appeared on HN on it's own, thanks KeatonDunsford! Reading these comments is heartwarming, as it appears like many of you are experiencing and feeling what James Thompson (@astrojams1) and I set out to make. The idea was to create a glimpse into the unedited world. The videos are current and to some extent unbiased and of the world. The lack of 'control' is by design -- sometimes you have to just sit and watch to really see whats out there.

As an embarassed engineer (i wasn't ready to launch! :D): apologies for this not working on mobile! i'm controlling a few youtube players to create this 'no spinner' experience for the videos, but haven't gotten it to work on mobile. I'm still figuring out what is the best way to do preserve the fluid feeling between videos on mobile browsers -- any suggestions are welcome!

I think one of you discovered this on your own: [spacebar] goes into 'theater' mode. I threw that in and started tearing up while watching. I hope you can experience the same. For those wondering, yes the feed is syncronized across everyone so you should be all seeing the same videos at the same time. The videos also are constantly updated, so when it's christmas time, you should start to see family dinners :)

I love all the feedback so far and the anecdotes, keep them coming!