If the video is encoded using a codec your hardware doesn't handle, it would be left up to the CPU to decode. Av1 can slow everything down to a crawl over CPU. You'd think the browser would be smart about the stream selection though.
That's intentional on YouTubes end, they aim to serve more bitrate-efficient codecs wherever possible, even if it's a high burden on the client due to a lack of hardware acceleration. They'll only fall back to older codecs if the client is completely incapable of handling the modern ones. It's annoying but at their scale it no doubt saves them a shitload of bandwidth.
It also encourages users to upgrade to newer hardware since older devices are known to get slower as they age due to software increasing complexity and hardware mitigations (yes, they are also for phones). Most users will just blame the device.
Not saying that is the cause of this slow down, but since the mpeg4 patents don't expire till 2027(?) (and one of those patents prevents hardware decode on Linux) we as a society have given Google every incentive to do this and I welcome them to make mpeg4 irrelevant.
I believe Youtube's player is driving codec selection, not the browser (i.e. the player requests a list of supported codecs and then picks the one most beneficial for Google, not the other way around).
That said, I've solved this problem for myself on macOS and Firefox by setting media.webrtc.codec.video.av1.enabled to false on about:config, as all other codecs used by Youtube are hardware accelerated on my Mac.
> I believe Youtube's player is driving codec selection, not the browser (i.e. the player requests a list of supported codecs and then picks the one most beneficial for Google, not the other way around).
The way the browser can still participate in choosing is by e.g. not listing AV1 as supported when there is no hardware decoder on the local system. Both Safari and Edge took (approximately) that style of approach, but it comes with the downside that if the server only has AV1 video then the client gets nothing.
Practically, that downside isn't a big deal until codec support is high enough sites start assuming the codec is just supported and they don't need to host alternative options.
Yes, I think Safari even did so dynamically based on the mac being plugged into external power or not for a while, which I think is a nice compromise.
Apparently, there's even an API attribute that indicates whether a given codec is power efficient (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MediaCapabi...), which Google must also be ignoring – not their problem, after all. (I wonder if anybody did the math of the opportunity cost of losing a few ad impressions due to the user's battery dying early vs. the incremental bandwidth cost?)
I run an extension that allows to automatically request h.264 streams from YouTube even when av1 is also available. Saves a lot of CPU, at the cost of some bandwidth.
It’s funny that this kind of browser extension has recurred over the years. Originally it was to replace the awful CPU hog flash player with an HTML5 h.264 player[1], then it was to sidestep YouTube’s insistence on VP* codecs, and now it’s to sidestep AV1.
In a beautiful world, there would be a link to each codec to let the user decide, or the browser itself would override the web site's preference and provide such links. It's sad that we keep having to resort to browser extensions to circumvent terrible web site and browser software.
Assuming you have hardware support for VP9 as well, setting media.webrtc.codec.video.av1.enabled to false on about:config achieves the same outcome without an extension.
Yep, that's what I use. It took youtube from using 100% cpu, to the point where my little xps13 was thermal throttling, to 50% cpu running 1080p at 2-3x speed.
It's pretty old, like from 2016 so it's only got an i5 7200U (2 core 4 threads) @ 2.5ghz.
Mostly fast enough for what I use it for (content consumption, web browsing, light gaming and coding). It's mainly limited by it's 8gb of ram which isn't upgradable.
I looked now and noticed that I actually reject VP8 and VP9 and accept AV1. I run Linux on a Ryzen 4750U, for the record. It did not have trouble chewing through VP8 / VP9 without skipping frames, but it ran unpleasantly hot.
> A big thing not often spoken about with eye strain is dry eye caused by the lack of blinking due to focusing on screens too close to our face. This is an evolutionary phenomenon--close dangers cause extreme focus without blinking. Extreme focus on close items reduces our blinks.
Our eye lids have glands in them that release oils on your eye with each blink. These oils help prevent the watery part of your tears from evaporating. When it evaporates your eyes dry out causing discomfort and potentially pain.
> If you don't blink enough, the oil doesnt get on your eyes and eventually, in extreme cases, the glands can even die. A lack of oil in tears can cause extreme eye fatigue and even pain.
> This is why dry eyes is on the rise. Remember to blink!
> I actually built a little web app to count my blinks. See https://dryeyestuff.com/. Not perfect, just a prototype. 100% free.
> How Americans are allowing this circus to go on is completely beyond me. The country is a laughing stock.
Most European countries have had significant shifts to the right in recent elections. Many European leaders have acknowledged Trump was right regarding a lot of things in his first term, and that Europe would have been better off had they listened to him.
The laughing stock on the world's stage is far left politics. Their foothold on Western society has crumbled, and wide scale incompetance and corruption has been exposed. If this wasn't the case, elections wouldn't be abandoning leftist policies to move to the right.
The laughing stock on the world's stage is far left politics. Their foothold on Western society has crumbled, and wide scale incompetance and corruption has been exposed.
I hear this so, so much but I've seen next to know evidence presented. I've lived in Europe under "lefty" governments and it would be pretty hard to say it was a "corrupt" system?
All I remember is high taxes, good public infrastructure and healthcare and social benefits. To say it was corrupt is ridiculous.
> Many European leaders have acknowledged Trump was right regarding a lot of things in his first term, and that Europe would have been better off had they listened to him.
>Many European leaders have acknowledged Trump was right regarding a lot of things in his first term, and that Europe would have been better off had they listened to him.
Well, no, this didn't happen in many countries and not even being right on a lot of things
> Anyone operating in good faith knows to curb spending, everything Musk has been saying won't make a dent until you get to DoD, Social Security, or health care
This isn't accurate. Anyone who's managed a large and complex budget knows death by a thousand cuts is a very real thing. Yes, there may be bigger opportunities in the larger pots of money, but to suggest saving a billion here or few million there isn't worth the time is simply wrong.
Simply having the finances be looked at will have an impact on behavior. I see it in my own personal spending. If I'm not watching it, I spend way more. Now what happens if its not even my bank account the spending takes money out of and no one is paying attention? And then it goes on like this for decades?
> And of course, any savings are going to be totally swamped by big tax cuts for the billionaire class.
Aside from 2020, collected tax revenues did not drop under Trump in his first term, even after 2017 tax cuts. The one exception was for 2020 when the economy ground to a halt due to covid and gdp shrunk by a few %.
The point is, the problem is not that the government needs more money. The government needs pressure to be more effecient with the money it has. Thats the root of the issue that needs solved. Until that is solved, increasing tax revenue (which may not even be needed) won't make any difference whatsoever.
Well they specifically said "renewal" so the business just wouldn't renew them and therefore not cost them any more money.
Obviously some services like insurance or storage don't work like this, though. I don't want to use them, but I want them to be there if I do need them.
Could you just give the option for them to delete the account if they want to at the same time? I assume most wouldn’t want to, but if it costs them money to keep inactive accounts then they can choose to. Out of interest what sort of services were you thinking of there?
There's a good chance its due to dry eye. If so, you need to blink more. Get an eye compress (heat it up in microwave, toss on eyes for 10 minutes). That can help release oils from glands onto your eyes. Artificial tears can help with comfort but wont solve the underlying problem--we don't blink (enough) when we focus on screens that are close to our face.
I don't think that is the case but I could be wrong. My eyes do not feel dry at all and drops or hot washclothes haven't made much difference. Maybe that compress you speak of is better though
Hot wash clothes don't maintain the heat long enough to release the oils. Decent eye compresses are $20. Here's a decent one. Certainly others work too.
I got a fancier one from Tear Restore that has little cut outs, so I can see while using it (instead of keeping eyes closed). It may not work quite as good as the bruder, but it lets me get things done while using it.
A big thing not often spoken about with eye strain is dry eye caused by the lack of blinking due to focusing on screens too close to our face. This is an evolutionary phenomenon--close dangers cause extreme focus without blinking. Extreme focus on close items reduces our blinks.
Our eye lids have glands in them that release oils on your eye with each blink. These oils help prevent the watery part of your tears from evaporating. When it evaporates your eyes dry out causing discomfort and potentially pain.
If you don't blink enough, the oil doesnt get on your eyes and eventually, in extreme cases, the glands can even die. A lack of oil in tears can cause extreme eye fatigue and even pain.
This is why dry eyes is on the rise. Remember to blink!
I actually built a little web app to count my blinks. See https://dryeyestuff.com/. Not perfect, just a prototype. 100% free.
I used to have this dry eye problem a lot, but turning down the brightness of the display really helped with that. The eyes can adapt to very low settings, almost at the bottom of the range on macs at night for example.
I find it is also important that whatever is behind the screen is lit indirectly equally to the brightness of the display. A bright screen in front of a dark wall is a perfect recipe for dry eyes for me.
Optometrist recommended I take daily fish oil and give it a month to see result. Sure enough, roughly a month later, I stopped having dry eyes. My eyes feel good even now during winter, when both outside and inside air is quite dry.
I, too, experienced dry eyes and found it challenging to consciously blink regularly. A few years ago, someone gifted me one of these "3-D puzzles" (similar to this: https://www.amazon.ca/Bookend-Miniature-Bookshelf-Birthday-B...). I kept it on my desk and it helped me somewhat regulate my constant focus on the screen by prompting me to glance at it occasionally. That's just something that worked for me.
This is a great idea, and it seems surprisingly accurate.
I know it's a prototype, but in case you're interested in feature requests: if I have multiple webcams, it seems to just choose the first one without a way to select another.
> Could an external stimulus trigger a subconscious blink?
you could set something up where a water gun squirts you on a random interval between 2-5 minutes. heh i think i would kill someone if they did that to me.
I'm not aware of any triggers to cause subconscious blinking. That'd be fantastic if there was an option though.
The web app can trigger a notification if your blinks / minute drop too low. Only challenge is modern browsers throttle websites that aren't visible, so the blink counting gets messed up.
Someone just shared an extension that inserts random jump scares onto social media sites that you want to avoid. Maybe adding jump scares to work applications can help people blink more often, too.
