20 ms·

Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views

429 points by KeatonDunsford 10y ago

KeatonDunsford 10y ago
Just randomly stumbled upon this and almost teared up a bit. Absolutely beautiful, and brilliant.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
dmix 10y ago
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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- CM30 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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?
  - freeflight 10y ago
    That's probably got more to do with you hanging out at "American places" due to a language barrier. Many countries that don't speak English have online platforms with vast communities of their own. There are massive social and video platforms in Asia/Europe you probably never heard of. Russian/European version of Facebook is called "VKonakte". Chinese version of YouTube is called "YouKu", Chinese Facebook is called "Weibo". In those places you will barely find any American users or people that speak a lot of English.
- Retra 10y ago
  It's not a random sampling of Earth's population. It's a random sampling of the "video uploader" population.
  - spyder 10y ago
    It's a random sampling of the "YouTube video uploader" population.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  What makes you think so? You just hang out where the rest of the Americans are too :)
gk1 10y ago
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.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
astrocat 10y 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 https://www.youtube.com/feed/history That said, I really do like the concept. It's literal reality TV. Very cool.
- 464192002d7fe1c 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    I had to disable uorigin adblock and use incognito.
    - 464192002d7fe1c 10y ago
      Ah, you're right. Privacy Badger (which I love for exactly this reason) was breaking it.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mistermann 10y ago
    Ya I wish it would leave a trail on the side of the videos you've gone through.
  - poc_champ 10y ago
    Check out youtube history :D
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    The youtube embed normally has all of that by default. They explicitly prohibit the user from accessing any of those.
goldenchrome 10y ago
Very cool. I wish you could easily go to the original video.
- dom96 10y ago
  I had the same thought. I'm also curious what that brownish circle toggle does.
  - MaxLeiter 10y ago
    I think if you select it you'll stay on the current video
- mintplant 10y ago
  Yes, I saw a few videos I liked that I suppose I'll never find again.
  - 0003 10y ago
    Check your youtube history.
    - mintplant 10y ago
      Apparently YouTube's history page doesn't include videos watched while signed out. Thanks, though.
- agildehaus 10y ago
  The video ID shows up in the developer console. Not ideal, but a method you can use.
  - dmix 10y ago
    Click the YouTube logo on hover.
    - 10y ago
benballjr 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.
digitalmaster 10y ago
Simple. Brilliant.
- a12dfasdf 10y ago
  You might like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
mcjiggerlog 10y 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 10y 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.
spyspy 10y ago
Seems to be down.
jmduke 10y ago
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/
- 464192002d7fe1c 10y ago
  I've never seen/used the raido one before but I did see/use paperplanes. While I enjoyed paper planes, it was quite brief. I played with it for 15-20m max before I stopped. I've been watching this (on another monitor) for probably half an hour. Way more engaging and deep. Love this.
- up_so_floating 10y ago
  Semi-related: http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/ http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/
- jzwinck 10y ago
  Paper Planes told me "This experience requires WebGL and a modern browser." I have a MacBook Air, fully updated, with Google Chrome. It redirects me to the Google Chrome download site. Any clue what I'm doing wrong?
j6m8 10y ago
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.
- brod 10y ago
  whole site's throwing 502's intermittently, here's a list of video id's of what sorta content it shows (for people interested but can't use it). q2XBK_PZgWY RQjdcyRwwP8 P9bcm3uT0NY I4WgpPg9EcA UOZVb91HwrQ rlZKRgtI3bs ovAjtEWUEGc BzVuPNSzP1E Y1fqjCxkdI8 R3HILwnTfTc 0gip2UCMc5o 6G8rpU3jZCw rNZeQ1UXP7Y DHa7hX-43a4 LpeRgRl8HG4 4Fs9rj9uLyk NnWE6QMczfQ Lqbya6dBfDA QRrAGrxDYCE DjaZ2LKwhfI
- josscrowcroft 10y ago
  I got the mayonnaise guy as well!
  - knieveltech 10y ago
    Link! This is useless without a link!
- pokemon-trainer 10y ago
  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.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - AndrewNCarr 10y ago
    Agreed, "mayonnaise man" sounds like an internet legend in the making. To claim it is not beautiful without a link, but give such a fascinating description...
jyriand 10y ago
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.
phaed 10y ago
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
keehun 10y ago
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).
ldev 10y ago
So, how do I press "go" that's mentioned in text in the overlay?
- kaoD 10y ago
  Same here. I'm now getting 502 Bad Gateway but maybe Disconnect or uBlock were blocking something.
- jldupinet 10y ago
  Had the same issue, Just refreshed a couple of times and it appeared. I guess the site is overloaded
- Jackim 10y ago
  I think one of my extensions was blocking it, try in an incognito window.
- amagasaki 10y ago
  I had to disable PrivacyBadger for it to work
mypalmike 10y ago
I just saw a splash screen, no videos. Then 502 bad gateway. :-/
s3f3f3feggg 10y ago
spacebar changes to a soundtrack
kevin488 10y ago
The link is not working for me.
fallenshell 10y ago
I saw a guy with the ISIS flag making a speech... I'm probably on some list now.
Franciscouzo 10y ago
There's a subreddit for a pretty similar concept: https://www.reddit.com/r/IMGXXXX/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IMGXXXX/
- yread 10y ago
  also https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepIntoYouTube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepIntoYouTube/
Jackim 10y ago
This is my favourite that I stumbled upon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaN0NkyLj8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaN0NkyLj8
- wonga 10y ago
  that was amazing
- mattlevan 10y ago
  "Thank you, and goodbye! click" Hahaha. Very good.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
fallenshell 10y ago
My favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaN0NkyLj8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaN0NkyLj8
- Jackim 10y ago
  Ha! I got the same one and just posted the same comment.
  - fallenshell 10y ago
    I absolutely died! It was so funny.
    - mitchty 10y ago
      Its honestly hard to be mad at the thing, I was laughing for a good minute. I want more youtube like this.
- lisivka 10y ago
  My favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX8EYfGDyXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX8EYfGDyXg .
- awqrre 10y ago
  "This video has been removed by the user."
  - chki 10y ago
    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.
- YZF 10y ago
  Video removed by user... What was it?
aarkay 10y ago
Would make an awesome background for chromecast.
yeukhon 10y ago
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 10y ago
  So amazon.com should be related to the Amazon rainforest? Domain names haven't worked like that since... ever.
  - yeukhon 10y ago
    My opinion is my opinion.
efangs 10y ago
Cool! I made (almost the exact same) thing as a twitter bot awhile ago: https://twitter.com/sub500 https://twitter.com/sub500
efangs 10y ago
Cool! I made (almost the exact same) thing as a twitter bot awhile ago: https://twitter.com/sub500 https://twitter.com/sub500
abe_duarte 10y ago
Amazing, so many moments.
mastazi 10y ago
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.
- garysieling 10y ago
  Totally agree. I'm trying to do something discovery oriented with https://www.findlectures.com https://www.findlectures.com - ideally to help find videos on topics you didn't know existed
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- croon 10y ago
  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 10y ago
abe_duarte 10y ago
Amazing, so many moments.
pryelluw 10y ago
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.
gigatexal 10y ago
Clicked a previous post about this without a subtitle and thought I was going to see something space related. Lol.
keyle 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    It's a stereotype. The account name is "vika kusheva" which is a woman's name.
    - gk1 10y ago
      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 10y ago
        I don't think it's evidence of human traffic because they used their own name.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - angry-hacker 10y ago
    It's written in Cyrillic and the word скоро... It just says right now or today is and the date. Most likely some kind after before thing..
- awqrre 10y ago
  I've seen another one just like it but with a different girl... it seems a bit strange... (with the sheet of paper in-between her feet and everything).
cma 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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/cockfighting-in-thailand-popular-pastime-big-business http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-news/751760/coc... 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.
hacker_9 10y ago
Oddly addictive.
orf 10y ago
This is... beautiful. Utterly beautiful. I don't know how and I don't know why, but it just is.
irpapakons 10y ago
I got a talking brain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw5vI5wk_BM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw5vI5wk_BM
SuperPaintMan 10y ago
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.
wonga 10y 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!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ohnotthatguy 10y ago
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.
danso 10y ago
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?
blakeyrat 10y 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 10y 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.
  - blakeyrat 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      Try not assuming the worst in people and instead ask a question instead of being a Dick by default and you'll likely live with less stress.
    - monkeywork 10y ago
      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 10y ago
        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)
kovek 10y ago
An idea: trending low view videos from uploaders with not many subscribers or not many total channel views.
suhith 10y ago
I guess you could say that "YouTube is the final frontier"
suhith 10y ago
I guess you could say that "YouTube is the final frontier"
innernette 10y ago
Source code is available at https://github.com/wonga00/astronaut https://github.com/wonga00/astronaut
- akras14 10y ago
  Thanks!
alexmingoia 10y ago
This is art.
jrheard 10y ago
This one's beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxX6ZWeK18Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxX6ZWeK18Q
- BoorishBears 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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)
goodplay 10y ago
Could you enable https?
rdiddly 10y ago
I feel like this would be good stimulation for artists or anyone trying to be creative.
pmcpinto 10y ago
This is an amazing concept, so raw. I love it
blubb-fish 10y ago
wow ... that's surprisingly cool - the videos are not as degenerated as I would have expected
koytch 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 ...
dpatac 10y ago
Yes, I really do not like that this polluted my google watched history.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Why? You actually watched whatever you watched with it. Why wouldn't it be in your watched history?
andreasmb 10y ago
Hypnotic experience. Great concept! Congrats @wongavision and @astrojams1

429 points by KeatonDunsford 10y ago

KeatonDunsford 10y ago

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

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

dmix 10y ago

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.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
CM30 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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?
- freeflight 10y ago
  That's probably got more to do with you hanging out at "American places" due to a language barrier. Many countries that don't speak English have online platforms with vast communities of their own. There are massive social and video platforms in Asia/Europe you probably never heard of. Russian/European version of Facebook is called "VKonakte". Chinese version of YouTube is called "YouKu", Chinese Facebook is called "Weibo". In those places you will barely find any American users or people that speak a lot of English.
Retra 10y ago
It's not a random sampling of Earth's population. It's a random sampling of the "video uploader" population.
- spyder 10y ago
  It's a random sampling of the "YouTube video uploader" population.
angry-hacker 10y ago
What makes you think so? You just hang out where the rest of the Americans are too :)

gk1 10y ago

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.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

astrocat 10y 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 https://www.youtube.com/feed/history That said, I really do like the concept. It's literal reality TV. Very cool.

464192002d7fe1c 10y ago
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 10y ago
  I had to disable uorigin adblock and use incognito.
  - 464192002d7fe1c 10y ago
    Ah, you're right. Privacy Badger (which I love for exactly this reason) was breaking it.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mistermann 10y ago
  Ya I wish it would leave a trail on the side of the videos you've gone through.
- poc_champ 10y ago
  Check out youtube history :D
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  The youtube embed normally has all of that by default. They explicitly prohibit the user from accessing any of those.

goldenchrome 10y ago

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

dom96 10y ago
I had the same thought. I'm also curious what that brownish circle toggle does.
- MaxLeiter 10y ago
  I think if you select it you'll stay on the current video
mintplant 10y ago
Yes, I saw a few videos I liked that I suppose I'll never find again.
- 0003 10y ago
  Check your youtube history.
  - mintplant 10y ago
    Apparently YouTube's history page doesn't include videos watched while signed out. Thanks, though.
agildehaus 10y ago
The video ID shows up in the developer console. Not ideal, but a method you can use.
- dmix 10y ago
  Click the YouTube logo on hover.
  - 10y ago

benballjr 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.

digitalmaster 10y ago

Simple. Brilliant.

a12dfasdf 10y ago
You might like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

mcjiggerlog 10y 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 10y 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.

spyspy 10y ago

Seems to be down.

jmduke 10y ago

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/

464192002d7fe1c 10y ago
I've never seen/used the raido one before but I did see/use paperplanes. While I enjoyed paper planes, it was quite brief. I played with it for 15-20m max before I stopped. I've been watching this (on another monitor) for probably half an hour. Way more engaging and deep. Love this.
up_so_floating 10y ago
Semi-related: http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/ http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/
jzwinck 10y ago
Paper Planes told me "This experience requires WebGL and a modern browser." I have a MacBook Air, fully updated, with Google Chrome. It redirects me to the Google Chrome download site. Any clue what I'm doing wrong?

j6m8 10y ago

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.

brod 10y ago
whole site's throwing 502's intermittently, here's a list of video id's of what sorta content it shows (for people interested but can't use it). q2XBK_PZgWY RQjdcyRwwP8 P9bcm3uT0NY I4WgpPg9EcA UOZVb91HwrQ rlZKRgtI3bs ovAjtEWUEGc BzVuPNSzP1E Y1fqjCxkdI8 R3HILwnTfTc 0gip2UCMc5o 6G8rpU3jZCw rNZeQ1UXP7Y DHa7hX-43a4 LpeRgRl8HG4 4Fs9rj9uLyk NnWE6QMczfQ Lqbya6dBfDA QRrAGrxDYCE DjaZ2LKwhfI
josscrowcroft 10y ago
I got the mayonnaise guy as well!
- knieveltech 10y ago
  Link! This is useless without a link!
pokemon-trainer 10y ago
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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- AndrewNCarr 10y ago
  Agreed, "mayonnaise man" sounds like an internet legend in the making. To claim it is not beautiful without a link, but give such a fascinating description...

jyriand 10y ago

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.

phaed 10y ago

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

keehun 10y ago

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).

ldev 10y ago

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

kaoD 10y ago
Same here. I'm now getting 502 Bad Gateway but maybe Disconnect or uBlock were blocking something.
jldupinet 10y ago
Had the same issue, Just refreshed a couple of times and it appeared. I guess the site is overloaded
Jackim 10y ago
I think one of my extensions was blocking it, try in an incognito window.
amagasaki 10y ago
I had to disable PrivacyBadger for it to work

mypalmike 10y ago

I just saw a splash screen, no videos. Then 502 bad gateway. :-/

s3f3f3feggg 10y ago

spacebar changes to a soundtrack

kevin488 10y ago

The link is not working for me.

fallenshell 10y ago

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

Franciscouzo 10y ago

There's a subreddit for a pretty similar concept: https://www.reddit.com/r/IMGXXXX/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IMGXXXX/

yread 10y ago
also https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepIntoYouTube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepIntoYouTube/

Jackim 10y ago

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

wonga 10y ago
that was amazing
mattlevan 10y ago
"Thank you, and goodbye! click" Hahaha. Very good.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

fallenshell 10y ago

My favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaN0NkyLj8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaN0NkyLj8

Jackim 10y ago
Ha! I got the same one and just posted the same comment.
- fallenshell 10y ago
  I absolutely died! It was so funny.
  - mitchty 10y ago
    Its honestly hard to be mad at the thing, I was laughing for a good minute. I want more youtube like this.
lisivka 10y ago
My favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX8EYfGDyXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX8EYfGDyXg .
awqrre 10y ago
"This video has been removed by the user."
- chki 10y ago
  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.
YZF 10y ago
Video removed by user... What was it?

aarkay 10y ago

Would make an awesome background for chromecast.

yeukhon 10y ago

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 10y ago
So amazon.com should be related to the Amazon rainforest? Domain names haven't worked like that since... ever.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  My opinion is my opinion.

efangs 10y ago

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

efangs 10y ago

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

abe_duarte 10y ago

Amazing, so many moments.

mastazi 10y ago

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.

garysieling 10y ago
Totally agree. I'm trying to do something discovery oriented with https://www.findlectures.com https://www.findlectures.com - ideally to help find videos on topics you didn't know existed
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
croon 10y ago
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 10y ago

abe_duarte 10y ago

Amazing, so many moments.

pryelluw 10y ago

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.

gigatexal 10y ago

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

keyle 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  It's a stereotype. The account name is "vika kusheva" which is a woman's name.
  - gk1 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      I don't think it's evidence of human traffic because they used their own name.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  It's written in Cyrillic and the word скоро... It just says right now or today is and the date. Most likely some kind after before thing..
awqrre 10y ago
I've seen another one just like it but with a different girl... it seems a bit strange... (with the sheet of paper in-between her feet and everything).

cma 10y ago

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 10y ago
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/cockfighting-in-thailand-popular-pastime-big-business http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-news/751760/coc... 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.

hacker_9 10y ago

Oddly addictive.

orf 10y ago

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

irpapakons 10y ago

I got a talking brain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw5vI5wk_BM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw5vI5wk_BM

SuperPaintMan 10y ago

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.

wonga 10y 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!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ohnotthatguy 10y ago

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.

danso 10y ago

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?

blakeyrat 10y 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 10y 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.
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    Try not assuming the worst in people and instead ask a question instead of being a Dick by default and you'll likely live with less stress.
  - monkeywork 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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)

kovek 10y ago

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

suhith 10y ago

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

suhith 10y ago

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

innernette 10y ago

Source code is available at https://github.com/wonga00/astronaut https://github.com/wonga00/astronaut

akras14 10y ago
Thanks!

alexmingoia 10y ago

This is art.

jrheard 10y ago

This one's beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxX6ZWeK18Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxX6ZWeK18Q

BoorishBears 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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)

goodplay 10y ago

Could you enable https?

rdiddly 10y ago

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

pmcpinto 10y ago

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

blubb-fish 10y ago

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

koytch 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 ...

dpatac 10y ago

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

dragonwriter 10y ago
Why? You actually watched whatever you watched with it. Why wouldn't it be in your watched history?

andreasmb 10y ago

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