
Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views - KeatonDunsford
http://astronaut.io/
======
wonga
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!

------
mastazi
I am increasingly at odds with the concept of curation. Youtube, Netflix,
Google News, Facebook and many other web portals increasingly try to serve
what "suits me" using sophisticated algorithms, but what if I don't want that?
Every traveller knows that the best trips are those that you didn't really
plan that much, which end up being an adventure. If you are driven by
curiosity the unexpected is a blessing. For this reason I enjoy Astronaut and
other projects such as GeoGuessr
([https://www.geoguessr.com/](https://www.geoguessr.com/)) because they are a
reaction to an overly curated, safe-space, no-surpises web experience.

~~~
croon
I've been thinking of this problem ever since Google started serving up
different search results for each person (which was a whole lot of years ago).

Sure in the beginning it adapts (according to some unknown algorithm) to what
you feed it (in best case scenario who you are). I would however suggest that
most people here are like me in that they every day try to learn and become
less of an idiot, and thus incrementally grow as a person. I'm not the same
person I was 10 years ago, and if I can't control how services see me (through
my 10 year old history of my accounts), it will try to reinforce the me from
10 years ago, instead of showing me incrementally different results for the me
I want to be tomorrow.

I'm sorry if this rant is confusing, I'm not sure how to coherently convey
what I mean, but I'll try a TLDR;

If services only show you results/content based on how you were before, and
force you onto a straight path (or rather, not even moving forward), isn't
that what gets people stuck in echo chambers with only reinforcing
information, never challenged, never growing?

~~~
mastazi
> ever since Google started serving up different search results

True, it was the same process for me, that's when I started looking for ways
to avoid that, such as clearing cookies at every session or using incognito
tabs; I was (unfortunately) working in the SEO space at the time and having
personalised results was completely unacceptable.

I find your comment not confusing and not a rant, your "10-years-ago-me"
analogy explains very well what I meant with the "unplanned trip" analogy in
my previous comment, except it's much clearer because not everyone is a
traveller while, I guess, everyone is subject to the process of growing up
and/or learning.

------
astrocat
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](https://www.youtube.com/feed/history)

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

~~~
464192002d7fe1c
Oddly the videos don't end up there for me. Which is somewhat disappointing
because I would like to share some of them with others.

This tool needs a "link to video" or "share video" button.

~~~
mikegreen
I had to disable uorigin adblock and use incognito.

~~~
464192002d7fe1c
Ah, you're right. Privacy Badger (which I love for exactly this reason) was
breaking it.

------
jmduke
Wonderful.

If you like this, you might like these other two pages which exist -- like
this page -- to demonstrate the breadth of human experience:

[https://paperplanes.world/](https://paperplanes.world/)
[http://radio.garden/](http://radio.garden/)

~~~
up_so_floating
Semi-related:
[http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/](http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/)

------
j6m8
Everyone keeps saying they saw such beautiful things

I just got stuck watching a guy eat an entire jar of mayonnaise without
stopping

[EDIT] Just realized that the websockets that fuel the video transitions are
suffering the same 503s as the other assets — so the feed 503'd, and I got
stuck on an unending, non-changing video of a guy looking into the camera as
he ate so, so much mayonnaise.

~~~
pokemon-trainer
As someone who regularly searches IMG_0123 to see things like "mayonnaise man"
before astronaut.io existed: you must share the link to the video. There's no
excuse for the lack of a link.

Also, this service does not work with iOS, which is a shame.

~~~
Mithaldu
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.

~~~
spyder
Yes it's blocked by CSS: #player { pointer-events: none;} and it's against the
YouTube TOS:

 _" G. if you use the YouTube Player on your website may not modify, build
upon or block any portion or functionality of the YouTube Player including but
not limited to links back to the Website;"_

[https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms](https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms)

~~~
Mithaldu
Thanks for pointing that out, i raised the issue on their repository:
[https://github.com/wonga00/astronaut/issues/5](https://github.com/wonga00/astronaut/issues/5)

------
mcjiggerlog
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
(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.

------
dmix
About 50% of the videos were by Chinese people. Interesting to think how Asian
a random sampling of the earth's population would be. North America is only
7.6% of the global population but overwhelmingly dominate in popular media.

Great site.

~~~
CM30
Not just popular media. The internet in general seems to assume being
'American' is the default and online communities seem to have a lot more
American users than those from other regions (even compared to other places
that also speak English).

If you ever want proof... well, go through your YouTube subscriptions and ask
yourself how many of the channels are by people from the US. For me the number
is about 50-60%.

~~~
jerf
OK, now go through your Baidu Video subscription list and tell me how many are
American: [http://video.baidu.com/](http://video.baidu.com/)

Oh? You don't have any Baidu video subscriptions?

Are you sure it's the "internet" assuming that you're an American? Or is it
just that you hang out on the internet where Americans tend to hang out?

------
fallenshell
My favorite:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaN0NkyLj8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaN0NkyLj8)

~~~
awqrre
"This video has been removed by the user."

~~~
chki
Yeah, sadly; this could have gone viral. The las time I checked there were
about 200 views and a 22 to none like/dislike ratio. Although it is probably
better this way.

------
gk1
Things like this make me want to travel more. There is _so much_ out there to
see and experience, so many people to meet and learn from, each with their own
story and world entirely oblivious to yours.

------
Jackim
This is my favourite that I stumbled upon:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaN0NkyLj8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaN0NkyLj8)

~~~
mattlevan
"Thank you, and goodbye! _click_ "

Hahaha. Very good.

------
keyle
This, really scared the crap out of me:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqaGFV-s3Hs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqaGFV-s3Hs)
? [Edit] Maybe I'm wrong and I hope I'm wrong.

~~~
gk1
That's a strange conclusion. What makes you think it is anything of that sort?
The word on the handwritten sign beneath the date is "soon." Maybe they're
recording their "before" body shape before they start a diet or physical
regimen.

~~~
pokemon-trainer
It's a stereotype. The account name is "vika kusheva" which is a woman's name.

~~~
gk1
I don't get how that's any indication of this being a bride for sale. I didn't
sense any sarcasm in parent's tone, either.

~~~
pokemon-trainer
I don't think it's evidence of human traffic because they used their own name.

------
fallenshell
I saw a guy with the ISIS flag making a speech... I'm probably on some list
now.

------
ldev
So, how do I press "go" that's mentioned in text in the overlay?

~~~
kaoD
Same here. I'm now getting 502 Bad Gateway but maybe Disconnect or uBlock were
blocking something.

------
pryelluw
This feels like I'm inside a sci-fi movie set in some space colony. While
being the main character, who is sick of being out there. Alone. I watch
videos to remind me of Earth. Of people. Its a beautiful sense of sadness and
longing.

------
goldenchrome
Very cool. I wish you could easily go to the original video.

~~~
agildehaus
The video ID shows up in the developer console. Not ideal, but a method you
can use.

~~~
dmix
Click the YouTube logo on hover.

~~~
agildehaus
Isn't showing on most videos.

------
phaed
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

------
danso
Love it. Reminds me of the Vinepeek project (vpeeker) that was a Show HN a few
years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5120301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5120301)

[http://www.vpeeker.com/](http://www.vpeeker.com/)

Vinepeek/vpeeker is still functioning. Wonder what happens on Jan 17th, the
day of the Vine app's shutdown?

------
SuperPaintMan
Did the same thing with XNXX's DB dump. Had my code scrape the new DB every
24h and present a tube-like interface for browsing. I removed everything with
over 100 views and a few other filters.

Turns out you get a ton of revenge porn (with drunken tags and titles), badly
tagged home videos and strangely tagged CP. Never got off localhost for
obvious reasons and promptly deleted every bit of GreaseTV.

------
ohnotthatguy
A puppy on it's back in a basket of flowers. A teenage asian girl singing the
national anthem. A gymnast preparing to do a flatground set. Several Japanese
men in a room full of pipes pointing around and asking questions. Two children
sticking there tongues out at the camera and saying "Hi grandma!"

And then a cock fight... Like a real one.

------
jyriand
This is quite addictive. Spend a good 15 minutes watching this before "waking
up" from this collective dream. There were video-snippets that disturbed
me(dog fighting, voyeurism of sleeping people in transportation[not sure if
there is a special category for that]), but otherwise it was a pleasant
experience.

------
spyspy
Seems to be down.

------
Franciscouzo
There's a subreddit for a pretty similar concept:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IMGXXXX/](https://www.reddit.com/r/IMGXXXX/)

~~~
yread
also
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepIntoYouTube/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepIntoYouTube/)

------
irpapakons
I got a talking brain
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw5vI5wk_BM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw5vI5wk_BM)

------
benballjr
Really interesting concept here socially. I'm not sure this kind of discovery
mechanism really exists with services like YouTube. Likely there are
randomizers, but this is really scraping from the "every day" user, which is
so different from what most of us are used to seeing on YouTube.

~~~
degenerate
Not so much the "every day" user, but more specifically those people not savvy
enough to title their videos or set them to private. I'll guess that 1/3 of
these videos the author didn't even know they were public. The other 1/3
doesn't really care if they are or not, and the final 1/3 got as far as
uploading the video from their mobile device and didn't even know it made it
online for all of us to see.

I bet if you did an analysis of users leaving the default titles on their
videos, it would be the same group of people that leave the default name on
their home routers. Technology simply doesn't fuel these people, it is just a
vessel they hop on and hop off when they want to accomplish something. We, on
the other hand, live in it every day. This astronaut site is very interesting
in that it shows you what a disparity there is between the savvy and the non.

~~~
benballjr
Ah, you've put it in a much better light. "Every day" is clearly not the right
description here. I think an interesting look anyway.

------
cma
I got this one (illegal cock fighting, maybe not illegal in the country it was
filmed in)..
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZIS_5SyxSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZIS_5SyxSg)

~~~
jzwinck
That is Thailand. It is theoretically illegal but still popular. The birds
usually don't die. Here's more: [http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-
news/751760/coc...](http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-
news/751760/cockfighting-in-thailand-popular-pastime-big-business)

I was recently in Lao and saw village boys around ten years old training these
birds to fight. In context it looked totally normal and reasonable.

------
keehun
This is an amazing idea, and beautifully executed. Many of these videos are
wonderful to witness.

My only wish was that there was a skip button. Some of the videos were quite
loud and/or in a few cases, not interesting (at all).

------
koytch
I'm stuck in a strange loop: videos change, but the music doesn't. I think
it's Debussy, the effect is very strange (and nice too). Bug or not? :)

Oh, and the small button below has disappeared.

~~~
ChrisGranger
It is indeed Debussy, "Clair de Lune" from this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFH_6DNRCY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFH_6DNRCY)
although embedded on astronaut.io as
[http://astronaut.io/audio/debussy.mp4](http://astronaut.io/audio/debussy.mp4)
...

------
efangs
Cool! I made (almost the exact same) thing as a twitter bot awhile ago:
[https://twitter.com/sub500](https://twitter.com/sub500)

------
jrheard
This one's beautiful:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxX6ZWeK18Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxX6ZWeK18Q)

~~~
BoorishBears
How are people finding the video ids? Even the developer console doesn't seem
to show any URLs with parameters that lead to the videos

~~~
ympek
If you're logged in, the videos are saved to your YT history
([https://www.youtube.com/feed/history](https://www.youtube.com/feed/history))

------
innernette
Source code is available at
[https://github.com/wonga00/astronaut](https://github.com/wonga00/astronaut)

~~~
akras14
Thanks!

------
aarkay
Would make an awesome background for chromecast.

------
gigatexal
Clicked a previous post about this without a subtitle and thought I was going
to see something space related. Lol.

------
kovek
An idea: trending low view videos from uploaders with not many subscribers or
not many total channel views.

------
orf
This is... beautiful. Utterly beautiful. I don't know how and I don't know
why, but it just is.

------
KeatonDunsford
Just randomly stumbled upon this and almost teared up a bit. Absolutely
beautiful, and brilliant.

------
rdiddly
I feel like this would be good stimulation for artists or anyone trying to be
creative.

------
andreasmb
Hypnotic experience. Great concept! Congrats @wongavision and @astrojams1

------
dpatac
Yes, I really do not like that this polluted my google watched history.

~~~
dragonwriter
Why? You actually watched whatever you watched with it. Why wouldn't it be in
your watched history?

------
suhith
I guess you could say that "YouTube is the final frontier"

------
goodplay
Could you enable https?

------
pmcpinto
This is an amazing concept, so raw. I love it

------
blubb-fish
wow ... that's surprisingly cool - the videos are not as degenerated as I
would have expected

------
mypalmike
I just saw a splash screen, no videos.

Then 502 bad gateway.

:-/

------
s3f3f3feggg
spacebar changes to a soundtrack

------
kevin488
The link is not working for me.

------
abe_duarte
Amazing, so many moments.

------
digitalmaster
Simple. Brilliant.

------
hacker_9
Oddly addictive.

------
alexmingoia
This is art.

------
yeukhon
Nice idea, but the domain name - not a fan, just saying. I'd better reserved
astronaut.io for something actually related to being an astronaut.

~~~
ChrisGranger
So amazon.com should be related to the Amazon rainforest? Domain names haven't
worked like that since... ever.

~~~
yeukhon
My opinion is my opinion.

------
blakeyrat
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
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.

~~~
blakeyrat
Well for next time, maybe you could do this thing called "testing" or "QA"
before you put a product out there for hundreds of people to use.

EDIT: sorry I know it's negative, but while you're posting stuff about "oh I'm
tearing up", what I'm seeing is some guy who wrote a website that _steals
people 's videos without attribution_. I realize you didn't "intend" it to do
that, but that's what it's doing, and I don't have the psychic powers to know
what you "intended" to do with the site.

~~~
monkeywork
Oh and he isn't stealing... this would count as a view for them on YouTube and
they get the revenue not him... if anything he is driving tonnes of views to
them all at once.

Those who rip the video and claim to be the creator on fbook is where you
should aim your anger.

~~~
RubyPinch
Short view times (e.g. opening a video, watching X seconds of it, thinking its
going to be boring, and switching away from it) actually count as a negative
in terms of youtube's internal rankings

(though this is just what I remember from a pewdiepie video on the topic, I
may or may not be remembering correctly)

~~~
91bananas
Do you think people posting videos without taking time to edit the video's
filenames are concerned with youtube rankings?

