Shout out to Louis Rossmann for doing a ton of work on Right to repair.
He started a website called Consumer Rights Wiki to document anti-consumer practices.
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page
He's also involved with FULU Foundation which has a bounty of 25k to get Ring cameras working without Amazon's servers.
I appreciate everything he stands for - he's on the right side of just about every issue. I just wish he could make more succinct and effective videos.
You really want more succinct videos than what he already makes? Although they may seem long in a modern day where people have the attention span of a gnat -- his videos are fantastic and to the point. He literally ignores a lot more complexities and drama surrounding a lot of issues. Does he ramble sometimes? Maybe, but the talks so fast at times that the video is over before I've even gotten half way through with my own research. And this is from someone who has followed him since he posted videos on spinning on your own VoIP server and when he was still based in NYC.
"An account of human suffering" (assuming I remember the approximate title) is one of his earlier videos that sticks out in my mind and one I'll never forget. It was a tongue-in-cheek nod to the fact board diagnostics for hardware that has obviously been abused by the end user is a tedious and often thankless process.
I learned a LOT from watching his videos, and I don't even do board repair! Psychology, business, the human condition...
Personally I think if he did that people wouldn't pay attention. My experience is that when you complain to people about digital rights they just glaze over unless you walk them through all the ins and outs and the implications.
It's an uphill battle to inform the public. Most people just don't understand and don't care to understand the issues until it actually hits them, such as with the farmers who bought JD.
I'm one of the people who mostly ignores his videos due to their length and the 'old man angry ranting about things' vibe they give me.
Everyone should be as angry as him, then companies wouldn't keep screwing us over.
"I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
Ditto. I love his ideology, and have watched a few of his videos over the years, but his lengthy roundabout style of delivery doesn't keep me engaged.
Super glad he does what he does / is who he is though.
I share his videos here but nobody seems to see them and/or care enough to vote; all I get is crickets. It's baffling to me. Examples:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48802162
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48395520
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043208
HN audience prefers text to video; videos rarely do well here compared to other sites.
This. I never watch video posts. I can skim-read a text site in seconds to see if it's worth a real read. I can't do that with video, and there's always some ads in it, whether the author put them there or not. I hate ads.
And it's not just HN either, video is a very poor substitute for a well written article. Video can augment a well-written article, but it can't replace it.
If you have YouTube Premium, you can use their Gemini AI to summarize videos. I've "consumed" tons more videos since I discovered it, since I can get a good idea from the summary if it's worth actually watching the video.
My overall minutes of YT have gone down, but I probably interacts with 2-3x more videos. Just like skimming on HN!
Put podcasts in this category.
Posting here for anyone who might not know this: you can click and hold on most YouTube videos and they will play at 2x. I find that to be a good test at whether the host is communicating effectively. If I can understand them perfectly clear at 2X they are talking too slowly.
Then you get things like the ATP (I can't bring myself to say ATP podcast because La Brea Tar Pits and all that) where two hosts are fine at 1.5x and the third becomes a chipmunk.
Maybe they can make Overcast have dynamic speed based on speaker.
Who of the three do you feel speaks much faster naturally?
Here's where I admit that I can't identify them - but offhand I think it was Siracusa. I know because I tried speeding up a recent episode and he started talking and I had to slow it back down.
Definitely Siracusa.
I watch everything other than songs or something cinematic at 2x anyways.
I ignore video posts. Why would I spend 20 minutes watching something when I can read the same in one or two minutes?
I read inhumanely fast.
I didn’t realise you were committing literary war crimes! Please read more humanely! Books have rights too!
No, if he reads humanely he reads slowly.
I'm not sure if you got it, that inhumanely != inhumanly. Where inhumanely is without consideration for the human race, whereas the other is non-human-like.
> I'm not sure if you got it, that inhumanely != inhumanly. Where inhumanely is without consideration for the human race, whereas the other is non-human-like.
Note they're also synonyms, so the confusion is understandable:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/inhum...
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/inhum...
The person presenting is also important. I may be interested in the topic but if I don't like the presenter or their delivery then I'm still not going to watch it. Text doesn't have this issue.
^This. I find it frustrating with how so many things seem to be moving to video, even simple instructions.
Monetization. It's incredibly hard to monetize text content, particularly these days where Google's search AI has all but killed clickthrough rates. Youtube however, that will reliably give you revenue share.
That may be so, but are you skimming, or actually retaining the the things you care about? Video can have a lot more impact and staying power when it comes to things that matter in this context.
For me personally, I retain much less information from video vs reading it.
For text, I change my reading speed based on comprehension, going faster for things I know, and slower or rereading for things that are new or complicated. For video, you're expected to consume the info at the rate provided in the video, losing attention when they spend too long on info you're already finished with, and then blowing by other info that I want to spend more time considering.
There are options like adjusting video playback speed and rewinding, but that's not how video is typically consumed and is much less convenient than just altering your reading speed.
I ignore video posts because my video watching time is after-hours.
I browse HN at work in-between GH Actions runs, compiling and Claude thinking, so no time for videos.
But do you comprehend it?
These says I just ask YouTube's AI for a summary of the video. Then I can decide whether the presenter is worth another 20 minutes of my time.
I do that too, and meditate if YouTube wounded themselves by adding that feature.
View rates must have dipped for a percentage we don't know of, but definitely made a dent.
I read at talking speed so not as much to gain with text.
Agree. I almost never watch them when posted in comments. Sometimes if it’s a main article I might.
But still, there are many many HNers who binge watch YT videos all the time, and share it here, or suggest YT videos as "dive deeper" links on many topics.
Too much "Hey guys".
Video content, particularly on youtube, gets very little traction here generally.
I watch his videos, but not from links here and that is probably what you are seeing: those of us who might follow your link have already seen the video (likely via grayjay rather than youtube) and will skip over it to the next interesting new thing. People who don't already watch him will see “[video] (youtube.com), 1 point, discuss” and think “oh, another video that could be a few paragraphs of text which would be much faster to read than watch, that so far no one else has seen as worth interacting with, preceded by two unskippable adverts”.
A link to youtube is only going to get much attention if it is lucky to have a title that jumps out to a few people so it gains the first few votes and/or comments that get the ball rolling. Even then Louis' videos aren't going to get a hot debate going: most people either entirely agree so don't see the point commenting further, or they aren't the sort of people who are reading HN at all or are but don't follow video links.
Oh that guy, I like him.
He puts his money where his mouth is too. Weighing in and challenging people to sue. Good guy, intense but good.
I think it is a shame youtube is forcing creators into longer videos
I watch long form videos on topics I care about. If I care about the topic, I likely have already seen the videos. But I'm not going to watch a 20 minute video posted to HN to discuss it. If it's not something I can skim over in 3 minutes, it's too long. Take the post we're on right now. You can read through the entire contents of the article in 1 minute.
Unless the video is about an extraordinary natural phenomenon that can be seen, video (and audio) is strictly inferior to text for communicating information.
that seems pretty easily falsifiable. Sometimes you want want to consume content while doing something else that precludes reading. Sometimes you want to relax your eyeballs after staring at a screen all day. Theres plenty of reasons to consume audio or video.
I clicked on one, he was rambling about wearing sunglasses because of studio lights, seems like pointless drivel, so I stopped watching.
Have you tried SponsorBlock? https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock
Voting on hackernews is a bit weird compared to reddit. The whole UI is strange to me.
Having said that, I noticed that there is in general too much content to consistently e. g. vote or do similar actions. I was watching Rossman's video almost daily in the past; stopped doing so a while ago simply because of lack of time on my part. I need to choose more carefully where I invest my time. (Also, for some reason, when Rossman was in New York, his videos had a better punch; not sure if I am the only one noticing this but he seemed to have a better focus when he was still in New York, even though I understand he relocated, to stop getting milked by politicians in New York.)
Not needing to be at the top of his game anymore makes anyone lose that sharpness. As you just said, he doesn't need to fight New York politicians anymore.
I stopped coding for the past year or so and I'm considering going back because I definitely feel my own sharpness lost.
I love his videos. He makes you feel like we can actually fight back and win. If he changed his style I think something great would be lost
Sometimes the problems are so complex and entangled it's hard to fit solutions into sound bites (vis: taxes, healthcare(USA) and apparently product "ownership".
Deere is a long way from the user accessibility of the Model A or B.
After this he should work on "Right to buy products that don't work against the user".
His video style is just fine, him and his cats. I don't mind the expletives as the people/companies he uses it against deserves them but I had instances where I couldn't show his videos to some elderly people because of the expletives.
The videos work because they deliver also some entertainment. The signal that Louis really cares is strong in them
Does YouTube monetization force creatives to do these longer videos to earn more?
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I wish he wasn’t such an ass. Had a never meet your heroes moment outside defcon a few years ago. Not a friendly person and went from big fan to disdain when I hear his name.
I think it's a trait with these types that makes them what they are to begin with. They don't just turn it on and off for the bad guys, they're like this all the time with everyone.
Never meet your heroes is just great advice, same as it ever was.
I've met hundreds of celebs, and 99.9% of them are unbelievably nice and kind. The only two that have ever been gruff were Bill Shatner and Dean Stockwell, and honestly, they could have just been sick/tired/having a bad day.
I would say "meet your heroes"; most of them are probably going to be better than your expectations.
> Never meet your heroes is just great advice, same as it ever was.
I respectfully disagree. I do meet my heroes, I just don't expect them to have an aura of benevolence or to be kind.
What I've learned from meeting my heroes is that they are humans too, but don't necessarily need to be humane, and sometimes they are just that wonder trait they have and that's all.
I would, for example, like to meet Elon Musk but I don't expect him to drink tea with me and spend the whole afternoon rambling about tech. He's busy, I don't even expect him to shower regularly or whatever. He's probably focused on higher priorities, 100% signal, no noise (and yes, that includes preserving humanity by having multiple children as much as he can, going to Mars, etc.).
Elon Musk, that talentless neonazi, is your hero?
LOL, that's funny
Not everyone is pleasant to interact with, but that's not quite the same as whether or not they are a good person. The world's a better place with him around.
Perhaps disagreeableness is a necessary trait for these kinds of results. Unfortunately, that can is also an innate personality trait rather than something easily turned on/off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
Same thing with people like Evgeny Poberezkin who made SimpleX, and Elon doing Starlink. Some amount of irrationality seems required.
Irrationality isn’t one of those big five personality traits though, unless you say it overlaps with neuroticism
Not to be rude, but what explicitly, made him an ass from your perspective?
Look at it from his standpoint. He has an untold amount of people vying for his attention, comments that hopefully are managed by a 3rd party/other folks, and who knows quantity of people contacting him with ideas for a story, video, or some such. I don't even know if he still even runs or manages his repair business at all at this point. When you combine all those things, you end up getting into a mindset of filtering out what matters to you and/or others very quickly and having little time for much else especially if people wax on and are not good at getting to the point.
I get that HN isn't Reddit in the sense that you don't see long form comments like this, but I've dealt with this a lot in the Information Security industry. I think that's what may separate people who get shit done from infosec rockstars and other folks who talk a big talk, but when you get to know them, they are deep down, jerks. I could share my own stories of Deviant Ollam, JohnnyXm4s or other individuals -- but how much of that is my own bias and frustration with what I did, or did not get when interacting with those people? It does not make them assholes just because I did not get the experience I expected.
Years ago, when he was still in NYC, I posted a minor technical correction under one of his videos on reddit and received a rambling essay-length reply plus an aggressive DM from him about how "people like me" are trying to bring him down, all at ~4am his time. That's not "filtering out what matters" it's evidence of paranoid mania, and that's all I see in his videos now.
I'm glad he's been able to turn this into a career doing genuinely good work that I agree with, but he is first and foremost a drama youtuber and that requires a confrontational personality.
"I wish he wasn’t such an ass."
What did he to you to give off that impression?
I've never met him just can't stand how bitterly angry he is / appears to be. He has the anger of someone who is recovering from a beating and plotting his revenge. I don't know if that's how he is normally, or a result of getting thrust into this right to repair. But I'm not going to spend my time watching a jaded, pissed off guy.
It is very easy to confuse intense passion with anger and blind rage.
The man is an icon.
Reminds me of old internet, when activists we doing it for The User.
Reminds me of a line from Tron, where the other programs ask Flynn in disbelief:
> You fight for the users?
What about Cory Doctorow? I heard about this from him, I don't know Rossmann
I feel like Cory Doctorow is trying to tackle a bit broader issue (enshittification) than just right to repair. Rossmann is more specific and hands-on to RoR
Sure, but Doctorow does mention John Deere a lot as a great example of enshittification :-).
Extra props for tilting thw windmill that is tech behemoths funneling data to government agencies without oversight. Aiming at Amazon is certainly something not to be taken lightly.
Your "tilting at the windmill" phrasing is interesting. I don't get the sense from your tone otherwise that you disapprove of it or think it's pointless.
I took it as doing what too many people feels like tilting the windmill. As a society (and frankly in myself on too many issues) I notice way to much "well what can we do" defeatist attitude.
Isn't the phrase "tilting at windmills?"
It comes from Don Quixote, as I recall, and suggests a fruitless effort. A waste of time.
I agree with this. Louis has done a ton in the last decade and deserves thanks for sure.
he is one of the very few people who inspires me today.
Wouldn't it be easier to build an open hardware/source alternative to Ring cameras.
Why would someone buy one? It would be three times as expensive, harder to set up, and require a self-hosted video server.
The point is there are already many millions of Ring cameras installed. Most people aren't just going to rip them out for open source ones.
The other home security camera companies already make cameras in a doorbell form factor.
Point is to do what you want with the hardware you supposedly "own".
Design and manufacture open hardware for 25k?