Categories
software

Ryan Gordon Building a Media Player in New Video Series

Ryan “icculus” Gordon is building what he calls a simple media player with SDL in C over a series of videos, embedded above. It’s fun to watch smart people demonstrate how to solve problems and the description for each video links to a blob of code changes that Gordon makes over the course of the video.

Categories
learning german

Learning German, Day 666!

666 days of learning felt like a pretty big achievement ?

Categories
video games

Part 2 of Elden Ring on Nuclear Monster Live

Lotta dying in this one!

Categories
learning german

Learning German, Day 665

I’ve been learning German daily for a few years now and thought it was time to record my progress. I try not to let streaks define my life but it can be helpful to have people watching your progress to keep you on track.

And besides, tomorrow is day 666!

Categories
apple internet

1Blocker Stops YouTube Ads on Mac, iPad, and iPhone

Soon after Apple allowed “content blockers” to block advertisements (six years ago! ?) the 1Blocker app became my favorite tool to do so. With iOS 15 and iPad OS 15, as well as Safari 15 on the Mac, that usefulness expands to allow blocking ads on YouTube via the newly supported Web Extensions in Safari.

There are considerations here for the consequences of blocking ads and especially on YouTube where the people who make the videos are essentially spec workers without any guarantees. I have had generally pleasant interactions with the workers for YouTube as a creator, but the ads and content are often extremely objectionable. Beyond Coke ads, the ads on YouTube include ads for hate groups , grifters, and scam artists, selling everything from Bitcoin to literal poison. There are other, better ways to support the people making good things on YouTube.

Blocking ads on YouTube isn’t a perfect experience, sometimes not loading an ad will also mean you need to reload the page to continue watching the video but I would rather be slightly inconvenienced than accidentally exposed to YouTube’s advertising. Of course this method of blocking ads also won’t work inside the YouTube app, it only works through Safari.

If you decide to use the new support for blocking ads on YouTube through 1Blocker or another web extension, I recommend supporting the people you enjoy watching on YouTube through other means.

The 1Blocker FAQ has a guide to enabling their Web Extension for YouTube ad-blocking. 1Blocker itself is free with an in-app purchase subscription to enable more features.

This is a link to the 1Blocker website where you can find out more about the tool.