YouTube suggesting Six Videos at a Time
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YouTube suggesting Six Videos at a Time

Byrichard

Yesterday when looking at YouTube over lunch I noticed that they now show six videos at a time, compared to the 20-30 videos they used to show, back in the good old days. This means that you have six videos to choose from. The algorithm is cutting down our choice constantly from 30 videos down to 20. and now 6.

Pigeon Holed

If we watch one channel’s content then that content will be shown exclusively until we grow tired of it, and then we will have to choose from a dozen or less content creators. Sometimes videos will appear in three or four categories. It’s hard to browse when there is so little choice.

Plenty of Choice

In the days of renting DVDs for a night or two we would go into the shop and there would be a few recommendations but then we could go into the library and search for a while, trying to find content by genre, mood or more. Today that browsing experience is getting worse.

When I look for something to watch on YouTube or Netflix and Prime I want to have a real choice. I want to see a breadth of choice within a single screen. I don’t want to be forced to watch what algorithms force people to watch. If you recommend content because it’s popular, but it’s popular because it has been pushed on people, then it is not popular. It is spoon fed. The algorithms are cheating us and content creators. We’re being cheated because we have no choice, and content creators are cheated because they are invisible.

The Paradox

What I liked about YouTube is that it provided us with a breadth of content to choose from. We might have browsed for a few minutes and skimmed through thousands of videos but we had real choice to find ideal content. Now, with six videos being shown at a time we’re forced to pick out of six. This isn’t choice. This is scarcity. Thousands of hours of content are uploaded to youtube every minute and yet the algorithms get everyone to watch the same thing.

The problem is that I don’t know what I want to watch for half an hour to an hour so I don’t have key words that I want to look for. If I’m forced to see six videos, rather than browse, then I’m likely to give up rather than search. Usually we look at YouTube and similar sites to discover new content.

Prime

YouTube wants us to pay for prime but they take our ability to choose. They use algorithms that, because content is pushed on us, become worse and worse with recommendations. We can give feedback, but not proper feedback. I sign up for Prime, enjoy it for a few weeks, and then it becomes toxic and I take a break. The algorithms pigeon hole us, rather than learn about us.

And Finally

I love the medium of video. I love well produced content. I love content of a certain type. Google’s algorithms looks at users and recommends the content that it would give to teenagers to 40 years olds, and vice versa. The recommendation engine knows our age, and our viewing habits over a decade and a half. If people are worried about privacy, just look at ads and YouTube recommendations and you will realise that algorithms know nothing about us. Algorithms, by now, should know that I hate sensationalism. I realise that hating sensationalism is sensationalist. The point is that if recommendations for content are bad, then we are likely to take a break.

Flying a Toy Plane 22 Miles
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Flying a Toy Plane 22 Miles

Byrichard

James May is interesting. People like me know him from Top Gear and Grand Tour with Clarkson and Hammond but his side projects are interesting. Instead of farming like Clarkson, or driving cars with his daughter Clarkson plays with grown up toys. When I say toys I don’t mean adult cars, planes and more. I mean actual toys. In the video below James May sets himself the project of building a model plane that can fly 22 miles.

The video shows footage of him as a child playing with a model plane, and then as an adult playing with a slightly bigger model plane, then a prototype and then the finished project. In the episode I watched he built and played with a model plane but in others he tries to build other things and succeeds.

What I like about Naked Science, produced by Pioneer TV, is that they produce proper documentaries, rather than breathless crap like so many others do. This is television production quality content, rather than youtube content. I recently noticed that youtube content creactors use the same sound effects, the same music, the same editing, the same chaotic jumble, that makes their content tiring to watch.

In contrast when you watch James May play with model airplanes you get a well produced, well edited, well paced documentary that is interesting to watch. This is a fifty three minute video where you don’t stare at your phone, or get distracted. You watch it from the start to the end without being distracted, or fatigued.

There was a time when I would watch every documentary in the morning, and then do something else on satellite TV. I don’t do this anymore. Too many programs are designed to distract people from adverts so they’re constantly repeating themselves.

I loved watching Mythbusters but that was the decline of Discovery Channel Documentary making.

What makes James May’s Naked Science shows stand out is that they are watchable by a “dinosaur” like me. When a documentary is well paced, and edited to be watched without commercial breaks it becomes engaging. YouTubers should strive to make content that is equal to television rather than scrape the barrel of throwaway culture.

And Finally

The premise of my post is simple. We live under the illusion that content has to be sensationalist to be worth watching, and we live under the illusion that youtube content needs to be sensationalist to stand out but that notion is wrong. Television quality content should be edited and produced to be shared on YouTube. In this day and age the notion that something has to be two minutes is wrong. The notion that something has to be in “YouTube style” to be noticed on YouTube is wrong. In my eyes we should produce long form content that is well produuced, for YouTube and social media.

YouTube is big enough for content that appeals to my generation and others to be produced and thrived. Algorithms should take this onboard. I want YouTube’s algorithms to provide me with content that is relevant to my age group and interests. I want more content recommendations such as the video above.

Experimenting with Pi Hosted and Portainer

Experimenting with Pi Hosted and Portainer

Byrichard

Yesterday I watched a video about setting up a so I experimented with using the Pi-Hosted script to install docker and then portainer. Pi Hoster uses two scripts. One installs Docker and the second one installs Portainer. Portainer is a web interface to install docker containers instead of doing the same thing via the command line. It allows you to install Pi-Hole, Ad Guard, PhotoPrism, Nextcloud and many other solutions on a single server with relative ease.

Opaque Installations

I say relative ease because I find that with Docker containers and Portainer it installs things without making it clear where things are installed. Docker and portainer also have the bad habit of putting things on a network that is internal to Docker and Portainer. It simplifes things so far that you are not fully aware of what it has done. It took trial and error before I managed to learn what the admin user name was, and I had to reset the password, before I could use it. I think that PhotoPrism did not like my password so it ignored it, without portainer warning me, so I had to look for instructions on how to reset the password manually.

Several Apps on a Single Machine

Once I had achieved this I had NextCloud and PhotoPrism running side by side as docker containers setup by Portainer. I don’t like not knowing everything I need to know about an install. I also wish that Docker, and portainer would make adding devices to the home wifi network more intuitive. That’s one of the things I need to learn more about.

Backup and Replicate

One useful feature of portainer, and the reason I wanted to experiment with it, is that you can backup the setup from one machine, and replicate it on another. If I have a Raspberry Pi and I configure it to have Home-Assistant, Pi-Hole, NextCloud, PhotoPrism and one or two apps then I can save the backup file, and launch it on a second machine and it will install the same apps with the same configs to that machine.

You might spend minutes, hours or days trouble shooting but once you find a solution that works it becomes replicable. This is a key part of modern computing.

And Finally

If you’re looking to learn about setting NextCloud and PhotoPrism up manually then you can find tutorials for that but it takes time, and trial and error to get things to work well together. The second option is to download dedicated images where a Pi runs NextCloud, or a Pi runs Pi Hole, or a Pi runs PhotoPrism. The drawback is that you need one Pi per project, which takes space.

By using Pi-Hosted to install Docker and Portainer with ease, and then using the Pi specific template, you are able to install Pi friendly docker images with ease, through docker, although some trial and error still takes place. I would recommend using Docker and Portainer once you know what you want to install and you want to shift from experimentation to production, at least within the home. Once the Portainer apps are setup, and you backup, you can migrate to another Pi, without cloning SD cards, or going through the same steps every time.

Pi-Hosted is useful to know about, to save time with future installs.

YouTube and AI

YouTube and AI

Byrichard

According to a recent article YouTube will use AI to direct the content that people make, how it looks how it sounds and more. In so doing YouTube will be even less interesting.

AI tools will also begin informing what kind of content creators make. A new AI feature in YouTube Studio will generate topic ideas and outlines for potential videos. The AI suggestions will be personalized to individual creators, YouTube says, and based on what’s already trending with audiences. Additionally, an AI-powered music recommendation system will take a written description of a creator’s video and suggest audio to use.

Human Interest

The beauty of YouTube, back in the day is that it was user generated content. People would go out, live their lives, film something interesting and then choose to share that on YouTube, whether it was a bird flying in an interesting place, a swollen river, and more.

Clickbait and Uniform

The problem with YouTube, with algorithms is evident enough. The videos have clickbait descriptions with absurd images and the videos that are promoted are those with hundreds of thousands, or even millions of views. With AI chosen topics, AI generated backgrounds and AI chosen music everything will become as formulaic as the Hollywood film industry. Nothing will be unique and creative. Everything will be uniform.

Personal Content

The entire reason for using YouTube was to find original content created by individuals. With the imposition of AI driven content so the originality and imagination will take a back seat.

He said that YouTube creators have expressed that editing and brainstorming can often be time-consuming. The tools were developed to assist with these tasks.

source

That’s the entire point. I spend hours trying to think of a topic blog post, and then I spend yet more time writing. With video it’s the same thing. We think of a subject, we shoot the material, and then we spend time thinking about how to edit the video so that it’s interesting.

Creativity Takes Time

It’s time consuming because it’s creative, because it’s artistic. It’s time consuming because it’s about learning to think for the edit. The more experience you have as an editor, the faster you become. That time consuming moment is about learning to be creative. If AI replaces the thought process then, with time, all content on YouTube will be boring and unimaginative.

Bland Uniform Content

To some degree it already is, which is why I stopped paying for Premium and reverted to conventional video content sources. Television shows, films and more. YouTube forces us to see specific content, and makes it impossible to browse. They did it for viewers, and now they are doing it for viewers.

It is not that I don’t like AI. It’s that I don’t like AI to replace imagination and the decision making process of content producers. It goes back to my old question. If you can’t be bothered investing the time to create content and find new ideas, then why should others take time to watch that same content?

The Mountainous Levelling

In a cnn article Neal Mohan said, “We want to make it easier for everyone to feel like they can create, and we believe generative AI will make that possible,” which, in theory is fantastic, except that when you login to YouTube to see videos you see content with millions, or at least tens of thousands of views. You don’t see video content with 15 views, or even zero views. You see the content that is already popular, either because of algorithms, or large subscription numbers.
Those ordinary people, for whom the field has been levelled, is now even more uneven, because videos with millions of views will be shown to everyone, and so become more popular, whilst other videos will have five views. The algorithms don’t allow us to find niche content, like they should.

The Cult of the Amateur

One of my personal gripes with YouTube, TikTok and other platforms is that they encourage amateur producers with no film and television theory, to create content, seen by millions of people. Back in 2007 or so I joked that it was User Generated Crap, and I still feel that way today. Rather than worthwhile content we’re encouraged to watch dull content.

As the film and television industries have been drained of funds they have been replaced by amateurs creating content for online platforms. People who love music hate auto-tune because it allowed people who never learned to sing to be seen as singers, and so music has degraded over time. The same is true of youtuber, TikTokker and other content. The rules and conventions that made film and television art forms, have been undercut for mediocre modern videos. What was once seen as crap, is now seen as good, and those that want to create legacy content are forced to create clickbait rubbish.

And Finally

I went from potentially watching several hours of YouTube content a day to watching a few minutes every few weeks. I grew tired of the clickbait headlines, and mediocre content that the promoted accounts produced. I found myself thinking “Why am I watching this rubbish” and eventually stopped.

If AI generates topics, video backgrounds, chooses music and recommends what to watch then we have lost the freedom to find and watch spontaneous content and ideas.

YouTube and Ad Blockers

YouTube and Ad Blockers

Byrichard

One of the pleasures we would enjoy many years ago was to browse YouTube, and eventually find something worth watching. This was possible for one key reason. There were no ads being loaded that would block us for thirty seconds or more. Today I read that YouTube test threatens to block viewers if they continue using ad blockers.


YouTube video surfing and channel surfing are the same thing. You hop from channel to channel, or from video to video, until you find something to watch. You watch a few seconds at a time before deciding that you prefer some other form of content. The issue with ads is that they slow you down. If you watch 3 or four videos and see 30 seconds of ads before watching five seconds of video then you spend all of your browsing time watching adverts, rather than content.


Pay For Premium, Get No Ads


That’s fantastic in theory, and in practice this is a good alternative to ad blockers. The issue that I have with this solution is that we’re paying to have clickbait pushed on us, rathre than actually browse YouTube. We’re facing the same problem as with ads. We’re still struggling to find worthwhile content.


Ads Encourage People to Leave


When I grew tired of seeing ads I left YouTube for days or even weeks at a time. It’s only because I used ad blockers that I came back, and I still felt that I was being conned. The first con is that the content is UGC, User Generated Content, or as I prefer to call it, User Generated Crap. A lot of the content that YouTube pushes on us is crap. You would never watch it on television.


The second problem is that the ads themselves are crap. For all of the data that Google has on me, their ads are completely off the mark. They market products that I have no interest in using. The ads are also of low quality. In some cases the ad is a music video, that is being played before you watch the content you wanted to watch.


YouTube Ads Don’t Need to be Video Ads


YouTube makes the mistake of playing video ads when there is no need to. Other types of ads would be just as effective, and would not detract people from watching the videos that they’re watching. Plently of videos on YouTube are product reviews. Given that this is the case those videos, can, in and of themselves be seen as adverts. If we watch a video about barefoot shoes then that content should be seen as an advert. That’s what it does. Imagine if advertisers paid content creators, when their videos are played, after someone searches for a specific product. The idea that you need to play an ad, for ad revenue, is obsolete at this moment in time.


Content as Advert


To elaborate on the idea, if I watch three videos about types of shoe then the brand that is being covered in the video should contribute financially to that video. I’m watching a promotional video, about a product. I don’t need a pre-roll add before watching a video about a specific product, or a specific lines of product.


YouTube said that they want people to either get premium, or see ads, to pay for content creators to create content. I think they’re missing the purpose of an entire segment of YouTube videos. Tutorials, hiking videos, cycling videos and more are already marketing products, without ever needing to show ads. In some cases the ads are paid for by being mentioned directly in the videos themselves. I tend to skip those ads, though.


Why Do We Skip Ads


One of the questions that YouTube and others should ask is “why do people skip ads?” Why do I force quit iOS games to avoid seeing ads. Why do I avoid seeing ads on YouTube. The short answer is “because I have seen manscaped adverts hundreds of times, because I have seen the iOS game adverts once per game play. If the adverts were updated, and if we had more ads to watch, then we wouldn’t skip them. The reality of the situation is that we’re skipping ads that we have already seen. In some cases I will see the same ad when playing iOS games, ten times, in ten puzzles solved or failed.


US Influence


People in the US have an extremely high tolerance for being bombarded with ads. American football has adds every few minutes. European Football has ads after fourty five minutes of game time. You’re watching the sport, and ads are put at reasonable intervals in Europe. If people use ad blockers, reduce the frequency of ads, and increase the rotation of ads, so that they see five to ten adverts, rather than one advert ten times.


Pre-Roll Ads Before We Have Even Committed


One of the things I hate most about YouTube and other video sharing websites is that they play 30 seconds of video before you watch the content. Sometimes it starts to play without you deciding to watch the content in the first place. More often than not, if I get a pre-roll ad, before I have watched the video I will not watch the video at all. Sometimes you’re about to watch a 45 second, or a 1 minute 30 second video, and you have 30 seconds, to a minute of advert.


And Finally


The question that YouTube, Google, Daily Motion and others should be asking is not “How can we force people to watch ads or pay for premium access to our content?” but “Why are people so aggressive about blocking ads?”. The reason is simple. Ads are invasive, ads are too frequent, ads are always the same. Facebook should be working to make ads appealing, rather than threatening to block users.

Hiking With Cats
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Hiking With Cats

Byrichard

Usually when we hear of people hiking with cats we think of them walking with the cat, or cats, on a leash. In a Pass Moi Les Jumelles (PAJU for short), we follow two guys who go for a walk with four cats. The report is funny because the cats, or some might even say kittens, are allowed to roam and explore with the human companions. They can leap across streams over and over. Occasionally they, the cats, fall into the water. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogbW8Wo1Bu4


It is refreshing and fun to see a report like this because it shows that cats can roam with humans, without harnesses and other equipment. They automatically follow the humans. 


Of course there is a flaw with walking with cats. They’re nocturnal, and sleep a lot. This means that you have to walk at a different rate than you would usually walk. At one point the two principle people decide to have a siesta in the middle of the day, because the cats are lazy and tired after playing so much the previous day. 


We see them walking with their cats on the back of their bags, in order to rest and recover. 


As I watched this short documentary I was led to believe that the person who filmed this loves cats. You can tell they love cats because they know what to expect, they know what cats will get up to and capture it. It’s a fun and pleasant documentary, especially if you understand french. The visuals are nice too. 


I enjoy the idea of hiking with cats, without leashes, of expecting them to stay around, rather than stray too far. I like the idea of them galivanting, exploring and playing on a linear walk. It is amusing to think of them sheltering in sleeping bags to keep warm. 

YouTube And Sensationalism

YouTube And Sensationalism

Byrichard

I love the medium of video and I have love having a choice of thousands, or even millions of videos to choose from. In effect my love of the medium of video should mean that I love YouTube. I don’t, because of sensationalism and clickbait. 


I have paid for YouTube prime twice now, to cut out all the adverts, and I love that. In theory plugins do the same thing, for free, and I did use plugins for years before finally deciding to spend money on YouTube Prime. 


The thing that paying for YouTube Prime can’t remove is the sensationalist headlines and clickbait titles. It also doesn’t remove the content creators with a million viewers saying “please like and subscribe” ten seconds into a video. It doesn’t cut out of them saying “with my half a million viewers” and other grating phrases. 


The second thing I don’t like is having videos with hundreds of thousands, or even millions of views recommended. I want to find the smaller content creators that are sharing video for pleasure, rather than as a job. I want to use YouTube on a human rather than a broadcast scale. If I want to be an anonymous statistic I can watch mainstream media content. 


By showing content with hundreds of thousands or even millions of views it feels like an enormous amount of content is being ignored and silenced. We are seeing what the algorithms think everyone wants to see, rather than what individuals want to see. 


A content creator camps in interesting places with a diversity of equipment. It’s interesting until you notice that the content has a million or more views, for what would be considered junk, or a waste of time in other scenarios. 


It feels like a positive feedback loop. Popular content gets promoted so people watch it, and because people watch it it gets promoted even more. When I refresh YouTube today I get 6 videos, where I used to see 20 videos. The most popular content is forced upon us, making it even more popular. It feels like we’re being compelled to watch certain content, rather than free to choose. 


And Finally


I come from a time when we browsed the web. We had 20-30 articles and bits of news on a single page and we chose which content we wanted to view. Today browsing has been replaced by algorithm driven recommendations, so we are forced to see sensationalist, populist content, rather than something that is unique and interesting. We need to revert to browsing again. I don’t want recommendations. I want choice. I want to feel that I am not being forced to see content that an algorithm chose for me. I get fatigue, with YouTube today. 

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YouTube and the Million Follower type

Byrichard

I used to really like YouTube. It was a place where normal people could share videos of their normal lives, for normal people to enjoy, and to discover organically. Today YouTube is a way of forcing people to watch adverts before watching content that has been seen half a million to a million times by people with a million subscribers who keep saying “i have a million subscribers” and showing off. This makes most YouTube content unpleasant.


Don’t boast about your audience, or about your community. Give me good quality video content that I want to keep watching. Give me content, not boasting about how you got awards, got a big audience etc. I am not on YouTube to flatter your ego. I am on YouTube to watch content that is interesting as I eat dinner. If you don’t fill this niche then I can slide towards another content creator, or video network.


Content viewing, at this point in the pandemic has become hard. If the content is about friends and family then this is a long distant memory, in the middle of the pandemic, with no hope of an end.


Documentaries would be fun, if they weren’t edited by a hyperactive bumblebee. If I watch a documentary, speak, give me information, and don’t sensationalise it. If you do I will tune out within minutes, or even seconds in some cases.


I would watch films but either modern story writing makes them so dull that I lose interest within a few minutes, or they make me long for pre-pandemic, or post pandemic life.


Content is not made for single people living in solitude during a pandemic but it should. Good documentaries, good films, good series.


I enjoyed watching people play computer games for a while, but then eventually I grew tired of the content. I felt that at least one or two people were playing towards a stereotype, rather than being genuine, Eventually I stopped watching.


I often listen to audible books as I cook. Recently I thought about listening to audiobooks as I ate, or even in the evening, rather than watch video content. The beauty of audio books is that they’re 3-20hours long. Find a good book and you will be entertained for a week to 20 days.


Recently I have been listening to Louis L’amour books and I find them fun. They’re not the genre I used to listen to. I am in the right frame of mind. I like these books because they’re light, easy reading. They’re not like Gulag, or other books. It’s a trip back in time to frontier America, when bison were plentiful, land was being taken away by the Whites, and more.


As I read Louis L’Amour I know that some topics may anger or frustrate people who feel that the writing is from another age, and it is. Listening to such books is a cultural trip to see what life was hypothetically like, and to explore a different genre. I usually read factual books.

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Apollo Comms – A Series on YouTube

Byrichard

I have not studied electronics but I have studied the Google IT support course among others so I have some basics of how computers and tech work. This type of documentary series is interesting because it brings history to life, and explains how things work. It is not sensationalist, does not use too much music and more. It just guides you through how technology works.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v49ucdZcx9s


I was surprised to hear that transmission was as low as 2 watts and as high as just 11 watts. I also learned that for some communications they used just two watts of power for Apollo 13, 57 hours into the mission, to reduce power consumption. Of course on Earth they had a 270ft antenna to receive the signal. Compare this to a radio station that may use 50,000 watts. I don’t remember how many watts were used in satellite broadcasting but from a quick skim it’s about 20 watts but this goes to smaller and smaller dishes on earth. Starlink uses about 2 watts of power.


I frequently heard about travelling wave tubes over the years, but I didn’t understand how they work, until this video. I still don’t understand how they work. If my understanding is correct the cathode emits electrons at 20 percent of the speed of light. An RF signal is sent into the tube but has to travel a far greater distance. This slows it down enough for the electrons and the RF signal to synchronise, and the result to be used to transmit. I still don’t understand how it works but I have a starting point. More info can be found here.


There are at least twelve episodes, so if you watch all of them you will get a better understanding of how the comms systems worked during the Apollo space missions. This content is for geeks, who have a basic understanding of at least some of the key topics.


Although this content doesn’t count as archeology in the conventional sense I have put it in that category because it is the study of modern history. People are looking at, and trying to understand objects from a different time. It is within living memory. Living memory doesn’t exclude it from being archeology.

Online Learning – Alternatives to YouTube

Online Learning – Alternatives to YouTube

Byrichard

Between adverts that play too often, videos that encourage people tho shift to the Right side of the political spectrum and sensationalism I decided to stop using YouTube. I have spent two months without YouTube. I use alternative video platforms. I use Udemy, Prime Video, Linkedin Learning, Vimeo and other platforms.


I stopped using YouTube because it went from being a video sharing platform for individuals to being a broadcast platform where algorithms force some types of content rather than others. I saw an increasing amount of sensationalist headlines and video titles and grew tired of them. I was tired of having to filter out the emotional politically slanted content from worthwhile content. I had to spend more time reporting and ignoring content designed to make me angry or emotional. Clickbait was another challenge to overcome.


YouTube, although relied on by plenty of people to share video content, has become toxic. Take a look at video tutorial websites, Vimeo and other video distribution platforms and you will see how stark the contrast is. Add to this the flood of video adverts and you have a service that becomes unusable. Sometimes I had two to five minute videos as pre-roll before a two minute video of content I wanted to watch.


YouTube then asks for 20 CHF or more per month for the same content, without adverts. 240 CHF per year, for user generated content. That is far too expensive, especially when they de-monetised content from normal video content producers with small audiences, and low viewing hours.


Within the last month I did return to YouTube, but between the sensationalist headlines, and the pre-roll adverts I found that the cost of use became too high. They have made it so that you can no longer browse for content without eventually giving up and watching what the algorithms think you should watch. This is unhealthy. This is dangerous because of how it can polarise people who have not made up their minds about moral, or other issues.


I bring this up today because I saw that someone said that YouTube is a great school for developers but I do not believe that it is. I do not believe that it is because it is exploitative of content creators. Content creators need to invest hundreds of hours in creating content, sensationalising it to appeal to the algorithms, and then get thousands of minutes of viewing time before they can monetise it.


I believe that Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Coursera and other platforms are more interesting for makers of tutorial and learning videos because you can charge people for content. You can provide them with certificates of completion and you can split courses into units and chapters. You can also include files and test them on what they have learned, and get them to revise, if they fail.


Linkedin Learning


One of the strengths of Linkedin Learning is that it is bound to your company or NGO e-mail account so you can study for free, via the company that you are working for. When you complete courses your skills are highlighted in your Linkedin Profile, as are your certificates. This is useful to show that you are an active learner.


Coursera


I used Coursera for the Google IT Support course, and although the course is 28 USD per month until you complete the course, it is a great learning platform because it integrates with online learning solutions that force you to learn in a practical manner. You have to setup and take down servers, you have to create and remove directories, show that you understand binary, network topologies and more. You also take quizzes and if you fail you need to revise for an hour before you can try again. If you fail again you need to wait 24hours or more before retaking a test. You learn by practicing, and by reviewing. You can give up, but as long as you are motivated you can pass the course. I like their system.


Udemy


Udemy is more like Linkedin Learning except that rather than pay per month or per year, you pay per course. The courses are often 200 or more dollars a piece, but they often have promotions where you can get courses for 12 USD or less. This means that if you’re attentive you can get three or four courses for the price of an Entrecote in a swiss restaurant. There is no time limit on these courses, so you are not forced to do every course within a month or year, of purchasing a course.


And Finally


Learning is a process. Splitting it into manageable pieces is important. Being clear of distractions is also important. To learn we need to be active, through listening to instructions, and then checking that we have understood what we are doing, and then moving on to the next part. With Udemy, Coursera and Linkedin we can do this easily, and at the end of it we have a certificate of completion. In some cases it is automatically added to our Linkedin profile.


With YouTube we are flooded with distractions, we are forced to filter through the irrelevant before we come to the relevant, and in many cases tutorials are several hours long. I prefer to learn via platforms where the instructors are forced to be systematic about the courses they provide. If YouTube wants to be a serious contender in the Online learning environment then it should create a new product, YouTube learning, and provide relevant features, to formalise what, for now is a chaotic system.


I realise that people like to watch five to ten minute videos explaining how to do something specific, via YouTube. For me though, YouTube is too chaotic. I prefer to find a written explanation.