Snooping on YouTube

 

If you are curious about something but nobody is willing to tell you, what do you do?

Recently, BBC reported on an interesting method of gathering market intelligence. The question researchers at the University of Massachussetts were trying answer was - how big is YouTube?

This may sound like a simple question but for various reasons - commercial, or otherwise - this is not the kind of information YouTube, or its parent company, Google, would like to place in the public domain. As the article puts it - 

In its 20 years of operation, YouTube has shaped entire generations' sensibilities and redefined global culture. Surveys show YouTube is the most popular social media site in the US by far, with 83% of adults and 93% of teenagers among its patrons. It's the second-most-visited website on Earth by most estimates, topped only by Google.com itself. But as the platform enters its third decade, the most basic facts about YouTube are still a closely guarded secret.

So how did the researchers at UoM get this information?

They started with the URLs that appear for almost all YT videos. They all start with  "youtube.com/watch?v=", and a unique 11-character identifier. Eg - Gangnam Style's identifier is 9bZkp7q19f0. 

This is where the raw computing power comes in. 11 random alpha-numeric characters can be arranged in more than 18.6 quintillion ways! So the researchers then wrote a program that would trawl the internet with random addresses and download the videos that scored a hit. It seems to collect the first 10,016 videos, the scraper tried more than 18 trillion potential URLs!

The conclusion?

When Google first acquired the platform in 2006, around 65,000 videos were uploaded every day. By 2022, they calculated that YouTube housed more than nine billion videos. By mid 2024, that number had grown to 14.8 billion videos, a 60% jump!!

In the cat and mouse game of corporates and snoops, perhaps it is just a matter of time before YT/Google comes up with ways to foil this kind data-collection and verification. 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250213-youtube-at-20-a-computer-that-drunk-dials-online-videos-reveals-statistics-that-google-doesnt-want-you-to-know

Non Volatile Memories

 

Last Sunday I got a big scare - one of my newest external hard disk drives (HDD) let out a few scratchy noises and suddenly stopped working. Its LED light went out and the icon just disappeared from my desktop screen. Disbelief, panic!

I checked the plugs and ports, tried changing the USB port, tried restarting the system but the HDD just would not turn on. I had purchased this Seagate 2TB model just before Covid lockdowns! For a while, I just stared at the screen, shocked, confused, bewildered, wondering if I had just lost my collection of thousands of photographs, music, movies and other important documents.

Not sure of what to do next, iI checked for possible solutions online, hoping for some tips on how to resuscitate a cold metal box that held some of my prized collections and memories.

A YT video, "How Safe Is Your Data?" seemed like a good place to start. I was hoping to learn something reassuring from Christopher Barnatt, the acclaimed guru of Explaining Computers - on the lifespan of hard-drives, solid-state drives (SSDs), and other magnetic, solid-state and optical media. Far from being reassured, this video raised the panic levels!

Consider these facts presented by Barnatt -

• Magnetic tapes can last up to 30 years
• Most hard disk drives will last 3-7 years (!)
• SSDs depend on type of cells and number of re-writes, but should last 5-10 years. However if left un-powered for 1-2 years, data may be lost!

  In other works, as with everything else in life, nothing is permanent. More so in the world of charged electrons - a hard disk drive just wears out of spinning in circles; there is nothing solid about solid-state memory; Non Volatile Memory (NVMe) may be the latest thing when it comes to packing in superlative amounts of memory into tiny spaces but it is still volatile!

I have three HDDs - one each from Transcend, Western Digital, and Seagate. The oldest one is from Transcend and I had purchased it online in Japan in 2010 (15 years old!), and it stopped working last year. I tried accessing it from older laptops and Macs but it just refuses to show up on the desktop even after powering on.

So what is the solution? According to Barnatt, the most durable option (30+ years) is to burn all your important files into optical laser disks (high quality DVRs - read only). This however demands access to specialized equipment. Optical drives have all but disappeared from the new laptops. So the next best option could be to have multiple backups.

 As a first step I urgently needed a full backup of all my photos. Since the total size across HDDs came to around 750GB, I decided to try out the new kid on the block - NVMe SSDs. One thing I liked in particular about this option was that unlike traditional HDDs, you could order these à la carte. You could get the memory chips from the company you wanted (Samsung /WesternDigital / Crucial / Seagate), choose the capacity that I could afford (higher the better + you need to leave some space free for maintenance) and fit it into a a box enclosure of your choice.

So, after doing a bit of research and checking some options, this was my final configuration - 

• M.2 NVMe SSD enclosure from PI India (INR899) - comes with a GPT drive (GUID partition table), connecting cables (USB-C to C / USB 3.0), heat-sink sticker, pouch
• Gum-stick card - 2280 Western Digital/Sandisk Blue 580 M.2 NVMe 4gen (INR5399) -- a YT video from PI was useful for making sure it was fitted in properly
• Formatted on MacBook Air - exFAT (for MacOS+Win access) + GUID partition table (GPT seems more robust than MBR - master boot record) 

 So far the set up has been working beautifully. NVMe cards are so much more compact and seem sturdier than the clunky old HDDs! Now I hope the NVMe card will live up to its claim of being non-volatile.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

 
SSDs

• Explaining Computers (EC) - https://youtu.be/xA9Xq7hb6Q0
  
• M.2 SSD, PCIe adapters and USB enclosures - https://youtu.be/Ktqa11VT1xI (EC)
• SSD Life Expectancy - https://youtu.be/bv-IGhkcbP8
• M.2 NVMe Enclosures (desi gyan - BabaTech) - https://youtu.be/_huh7wb6Res - 
• How to Choose M.2 NVMe SSD - https://youtu.be/eGT-EIJNb_0 
• SD cards 2025 - EC - https://youtu.be/HtgIHfqQiC8
• SSDs - EC - https://youtu.be/F8k_XIEhKWo
• M.2 NVMe SSD explained (animated) - https://youtu.be/HvfIeTieXOI
• Wiki on M.2 SSD cards - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2
  

• Partitions - GUID/GPT vs MasterBootRecord/MBR - https://www.howtogeek.com/193669/whats-the-difference-between-gpt-and-mbr-when-partitioning-a-drive

 

 

Boston 11 - A Biting Problem

 

Adidas Adizero Boston11 Refuel. Quite a mouthful for a brand-name but it certainly counts as the most unusual pair of marathon shoes I have used so far.

Long ago when I stepped into the world of distance running, shoe-salesmen used to emphasise on flexibility. They would hold up a pair and twist and roll the running shoes, making the heels touch the toes, to show you how easily they would adapt to your feet. Over the years the sales-pitch has changed completely - now they make a big show of how inflexible the soles are. They now sing praises of shoes with rigid soles and claim that flexible, soft soles trigger injuries to your ankle and feet.

I have been using an Asics Amplifoam for a few years now and it has stood me in good stead. Its semi-rigid sole shows little signs of wear but the fabric upper had got torn in a couple places, so it was time to buy a new pair. I checked out a few new models in all the major brand-stores - Asics (old loyalties!), Nike, Puma, New Balance, and finally, Adidas. It is at the last store that the Boston11 caught my attention. 

It was different. Even though it was relatively lightweight, the shoes felt quite sturdy. Being an older model it was also going for an attractive discount. Still,  the compulsive skeptic in me had to  step out of the shop to check the reviews, and confirm that it was not available cheaper online before deciding to make a purchase decision.

A few days later when I took out the Boston11 for my usual Sunday 10k run, I found my feet would not get in easily. Unlike any other pair of running shoes i had used so far, this one had a full fabric sleeve under the tongue which was meant to grip your ankles, but the broader part of the feet would not get in easily unless a shoe-horn was used. Once you managed to get the feet in, the shoes fit snugly on your arch, instep, heel and ankle.

The second problem came up after the 5k stage. The upper part of the sleeve would bite into the bridge - the part of your feet just under the shoelaces - every time the ankle flexed while running. At first I thought the laces were too tight but no amount of adjusting would ease that biting pain in the upper ligament. I looked it up on the web and found that the pain point was exactly at the junction of the superior and inferior extensor retinaculum. Ultimately, I figured that if the extra-long shoe-tongue on the Boston11 was folded inwards the bite would be eased to a large extent.

Was this a common problem for runners using Boston11? 

So far I have not come across any review specifically highlighting this problem. Many of them do indicate that this particular model has a longer break-in period. 

Apart from this glitch the new Adidas  Boston11 has been absolutely solid for road-running. Rigid soles have their uses i guess :)

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REFERENCES & LINKS

Boston 11 - https://www.adidas.co.in/adizero-boston-11-refuel-shoes/HQ3701.html

Review - https://runrepeat.com/adidas-adizero-boston-11

https://sportsmedalabama.com/contents/patient-education/foot-and-ankle/