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DDoS-Style YouTube Dislikes For Sale
An anonymous reader writes: Dell's Joe Stewart chronicles the tale of the YouTube channel that came under attack in the form of an avalanche of 'dislikes' for any videos that touched upon a certain company or even which examined themes around the company's product without mentioning it. The number of dislikes was so disproportionate to the casual number of viewers for the channel, and so concentrated as to constitute a particular type of net-attack — one that appeared to originate in Vietnam. Stewart eschews the notion of a "cottage industry" of Vietnamese YouTube "dislikers" in favor of the fact that any network exploits are eminently reproducible in a country which has only five ISPs among nearly ninety million people — and a widely distributed vulnerable router.
Dave Jones from EEVblog noticed this after debunking some myths about a kickstarter project (the infamous batteriser) Here's his video about it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Likes and dislikes alter youtube's video sorting algorithms. A pile of dislikes may be enough to bury a video under irrelevant search results.
dave has said himself that youtube told him that likes vs dislikes does not effect the sorting, its all about activity, dislikes is a form of activity, so it would actually boost his video in the sorting algo.
Sure but these factory dislikes that were purchased don't even correspond to any views whatsoever.
Personally I found his video very enlightening. I appreciated how in-depth he was explaining from the various data sheets what really happens to batteries.
He could have shortened things a lot with the following summary:
- most electrical devices are engineered to work with lower-voltage rechargeable batteries which have a cutoff of 1.1 volts
- Thus most devices work on a voltage all the way down to 1.1 volts per cell, not the 1.35 or 1.4 volts claimed by the company
- hence there's very little "wasted" power in an alkaline cell once it hits this 1.1 cutoff.
- Claims of 8x battery life are completely false
- Even if a badly-designed device cut off at 1.4v, the efficiencies of the voltage booster circuit would eat up a lot of the remaining power trying to hold the voltage to 1.5v, especially at low amperages.
Like I say I appreciated his clear explanations of the physics, electronics, and science behind battery operation.