Out for a dog walk this morning along the Nevern Estuary, I spotted this brave fellow rowing his way (at least) half naked across the bay, on a route that pitted him against the wind, rain, and tide!
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Dan Q found GC9FHDP Kiln-ing me softly
This checkin to GC9FHDP Kiln-ing me softly reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
The geopup and I took a walk from the Parrog to Newport Sands and back, this morning, and I’m glad we opted to find geocaches on the way back, rather than the way out, because it made this particular cache extraordinarily easy. The rocks that ought to have concealed it were absent and I was able to make out the familiar shape of this kind of container from the path, no searching required!
Returning it to its spot, I attempted to reconceal it with the help of some nearby slabs if slate. But given how much of an obvious magnet to playful children this entire structure is (I’m pretty sure mine had a go at dismantling it on a previous visit, predating this cache, circa 2019!) I’m not sure how long it’ll remain!
TFTC. Great to walk this path once more!
Dan Q found GC5JRP3 T’drath #3
This checkin to GC5JRP3 T'drath #3 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
I tried to find this cache back in 2016 without success. I’m confident I’d have looked in the place it’s now hidden – which was today basically the first place I looked! – so maybe fast previous visit was during one of the cache’s periods of absencennIn any case, I returned today and brought my faithful geohound on a morning walk from Parrog to Newport Sands and back, finding this cache on our return leg. She wasn’t much help, but fortunately I didn’t need her to be! TFTC.
DB13W3
I’d like to nominate DB13W3 for Most Cursed Connector. I mean, just look at that thing!
Bonus: there were at least two different, incompatible, pinout “standards” for this thing, so there was no guarantee that a random monitor with this cable would connect to your workstation, even if it had the right port.
The Difference Between Downloading and Streaming
What’s the difference between “streaming” and “downloading” video, audio, or some other kind of linear media?1
They’re basically the same thing
Despite what various platforms would have you believe, there’s no significant technical difference between streaming and downloading.
Suppose you’re choosing whether to download or stream a video2. In both cases3:
- The server gets frames of video from a source (file, livestream, etc.)
- The server sends those frames to your device
- Your device stores them while it does something with them
So what’s the difference?
The fundamental difference between streaming and downloading is what your device does with those frames of video:
Does it show them to you once and then throw them away? Or does it re-assemble them all back into a video file and save it into storage?
Buffering is when your streaming player gets some number of frames “ahead” of where you’re watching, to give you some protection against connection issues. If your WiFi wobbles for a moment, the buffer protects you from the video stopping completely for a few seconds.
But for buffering to work, your computer has to retain bits of the video. So in a very real sense, all streaming is downloading! The buffer is the part of the stream that’s downloaded onto your computer right now. The question is: what happens to it next?
All streaming is downloading
So that’s the bottom line: if your computer deletes the frames of video it was storing in the buffer, we call that streaming. If it retains them in a file, we call that downloading.
That definition introduces a philosophical problem. Remember that Vimeo checkbox that lets a creator decide whether people can (i.e. are allowed to) download their videos? Isn’t that somewhat meaningless if all streaming is downloading.
Because if the difference between streaming and downloading is whether their device belonging to the person watching the video deletes the media when they’re done. And in virtually all cases, that’s done on the honour system.
When your favourite streaming platform says that it’s only possible to stream, and not download, their media… or when they restrict “downloading” as an option to higher-cost paid plans… they’re relying on the assumption that the user’s device can be trusted to delete the media when the user’s done watching it.
But a user who owns their own device, their own network, their own screen or speakers has many, many opportunities to not fulfil the promise of deleting media it after they’ve consumed it: to retain a “downloaded” copy for their own enjoyment, including:
- Intercepting the media as it passes through their network on the way to its destination device
- Using client software that’s been configured to stream-and-save, rather than steam-and-delete, the content
- Modifying “secure” software (e.g. an official app) so that it retains a saved copy rather than deleting it
- Capturing the stream buffer as it’s cached in device memory or on the device’s hard disk
- Outputting the resulting media to a different device, e.g. using a HDMI capture device, and saving it there
- Exploiting the “analogue4 hole”5: using a camera, microphone, etc. to make a copy of what comes out of the screen/speakers6
Okay, so I oversimplified (before you say “well, actually…”)
It’s not entirely true to say that streaming and downloading are identical, even with the caveat of “…from the server’s perspective”. There are three big exceptions worth thinking about:
Exception #1: downloads can come in any order
When you stream some linear media, you expect the server to send the media in strict chronological order. Being able to start watching before the whole file has downloaded is a big part of what makes steaming appealing, to the end-user. This means that media intended for streaming tends to be stored in a way that facilitates that kind of delivery. For example:
- Media designed for streaming will often be stored in linear chronological order in the file, which impacts what kinds of compression are available.
- Media designed for streaming will generally use formats that put file metadata at the start of the file, so that it gets delivered first.
- Video designed for streaming will often have frequent keyframes so that a client that starts “in the middle” can decode the buffer without downloading too much data.
No such limitation exists for files intended for downloading. If you’re not planning on watching a video until it’s completely downloaded, the order in which the chunks arrives is arbitrary!
But these limitations make the set of “files suitable for streaming” a subset of the set of “files suitable for downloading”. It only makes it challenging or impossible to stream some media intended for downloading… it doesn’t do anything to prevent downloading of media intended for streaming.
Exception #2: streamed media is more-likely to be transcoded
A server that’s streaming media to a client exists in a sort-of dance: the client keeps the server updated on which “part” of the media it cares about, so the server can jump ahead, throttle back, pause sending, etc. and the client’s buffer can be kept filled to the optimal level.
This dance also allows for a dynamic change in quality levels. You’ve probably seen this happen: you’re watching a video on YouTube and suddenly the quality “jumps” to something more (or less) like a pile of LEGO bricks7. That’s the result of your device realising that the rate at which it’s receiving data isn’t well-matched to the connection speed, and asking the server to send a different quality level8.
The server can – and some do! – pre-generate and store all of the different formats, but some servers will convert files (and particularly livestreams) on-the-fly, introducing a few seconds’ delay in order to deliver the format that’s best-suited to the recipient9. That’s not necessary for downloads, where the user will often want the highest-quality version of the media (and if they don’t, they’ll select the quality they want at the outset, before the download begins).
Exception #3: streamed media is more-likely to be encumbered with DRM
And then, of course, there’s DRM.
As streaming digital media has become the default way for many people to consume video and audio content, rights holders have engaged in a fundamentally-doomed10 arms race of implementing copy-protection strategies to attempt to prevent end-users from retaining usable downloaded copies of streamed media.
Take HDCP, for example, which e.g. Netflix use for their 4K streams. To download these streams, your device has to be running some decryption code that only works if it can trace a path to the screen that it’ll be outputting to that also supports HDCP, and both your device and that screen promise that they’re definitely only going to show it and not make it possible to save the video. And then that promise is enforced by Digital Content Protection LLC only granting a decryption key and a license to use it to manufacturers.11
Anyway, the bottom line is that all streaming is, by definition, downloading, and the only significant difference between what people call “streaming” and “downloading” is that when “streaming” there’s an expectation that the recipient will delete, and not retain, a copy of the video. And that’s it.
Footnotes
1 This isn’t the question I expected to be answering. I made the animation in this post for use in a different article, but that one hasn’t come together yet, so I thought I’d write about the technical difference between streaming and downloading as an excuse to use it already, while it still feels fresh.
2 I’m using the example of a video, but this same principle applies to any linear media that you might stream: that could be a video on Netflix, a livestream on Twitch, a meeting in Zoom, a song in Spotify, or a radio show in iPlayer, for example: these are all examples of media streaming… and – as I argue – they’re therefore also all examples of media downloading because streaming and downloading are fundamentally the same thing.
3 There are a few simplifications in the first half of this post: I’ll tackle them later on. For the time being, when I say sweeping words like “every”, just imagine there’s a little footnote that says, “well, actually…”, which will save you from feeling like you have to say so in the comments.
4 Per my style guide, I’m using the British English spelling of “analogue”, rather than the American English “analog” which you’ll often find elsewhere on the Web when talking about the analog hole.
5 The rich history of exploiting the analogue hole spans everything from bootlegging a 1970s Led Zeppelin concert by smuggling recording equipment in inside a wheelchair (definitely, y’know, to help topple the USSR and not just to listen to at home while you get high) to “camming” by bribing your friendly local projectionist to let you set up a video camera at the back of the cinema for their test screening of the new blockbuster. Until some corporation tricks us into installing memory-erasing DRM chips into our brains (hey, there’s a dystopic sci-fi story idea in there somewhere!) the analogue hole will always be exploitable.
6 One might argue that recreating a piece of art from memory, after the fact, is a very-specific and unusual exploitation of the analogue hole: the one that allows us to remember (or “download”) information to our brains rather than letting it “stream” right through. There’s evidence to suggest that people pirated Shakespeare’s plays this way!
7 Of course, if you’re watching The LEGO Movie, what you’re seeing might already look like a pile of LEGO bricks.
8 There are other ways in which the client and server may negotiate, too: for example, what encoding formats are supported by your device.
9 My NAS does live transcoding when Jellyfin streams to devices on my network, and it’s magical!
10 There’s always the analogue hole, remember! Although in practice this isn’t even remotely necessary and most video media gets ripped some-other-way by clever pirate types even where it uses highly-sophisticated DRM strategies, and then ultimately it’s only legitimate users who end up suffering as a result of DRM’s burden. It’s almost as if it’s just, y’know, simply a bad idea in the first place, or something. Who knew?
11 Like all these technologies, HDCP was cracked almost immediately and every subsequent version that’s seen widespread rollout has similarly been broken by clever hacker types. Legitimate, paying users find themselves disadvantaged when their laptop won’t let them use their external monitor to watch a movie, while the bad guys make pirated copies that work fine on anything. I don’t think anybody wins, here.
Note #26631
Today’s Hide And Seek With The Kids is brought to you by the Bishop’s Palace, St. David’s, Wales.
Note #26629
Cwm-yr-Eglwys, on the West coast of Wales. Time for a (bracing) swim!
Note #26627
I was happy to get out of the traffic jam and get some fresh air, but the dog is REALLY happy! Running, rolling, sniffing, jumping… so excited to be able to move around!
Note #26625
Off to Pembrokeshire on holiday I’ve had to stop near Cardiff to put some more charge into the car… which provides the perfect opportunity for the doggo and I to explore a nearby sports field and take in All. The. Smells. 🐶
Google Shared My Phone Number!
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YouTubeEarlier this month, I received a phone call from a user of Three Rings, the volunteer/rota management software system I founded1.
We don’t strictly offer telephone-based tech support – our distributed team of volunteers doesn’t keep any particular “core hours” so we can’t say who’s available at any given time – but instead we answer email/Web based queries pretty promptly at any time of the day or week.
But because I’ve called-back enough users over the years, it’s pretty much inevitable that a few probably have my personal mobile number saved. And because I’ve been applying for a couple of interesting-looking new roles, I’m in the habit of answering my phone even if it’s a number I don’t recognise.
After the first three such calls this month, I was really starting to wonder what had changed. Had we accidentally published my phone number, somewhere? So when the fourth tech support call came through, today (which began with a confusing exchange when I didn’t recognise the name of the caller’s charity, and he didn’t get my name right, and I initially figured it must be a wrong number), I had to ask: where did you find this number?
“When I Google ‘Three Rings login’, it’s right there!” he said.
He was right. A Google search that surfaced Three Rings CIC’s “Google Business Profile” now featured… my personal mobile number. And a convenient “Call” button that connects you directly to it.
Some years ago, I provided my phone number to Google as part of an identity verification process, but didn’t consent to it being shared publicly. And, indeed, they didn’t share it publicly, until – seemingly at random – they started doing so, presumably within the last few weeks.
Concerned by this change, I logged into Google Business Profile to see if I could edit it back.
I deleted my phone number from the business listing again, and within a few minutes it seemed to have stopped being served to random strangers on the Internet. Unfortunately deleting the phone number also made the “Your phone number was updated by Google” message disappear, so I never got to click the “Learn more” link to maybe get a clue as to how and why this change happened.
Last month, high-street bank Halifax posted the details of a credit agreement I have with them to two people who aren’t me. Twice in two months seems suspicious. Did I accidentally click the wrong button on a popup and now I’ve consented to all my PII getting leaked everywhere?
Such feelings of rage.
Footnotes
1 Way back in 2002! We’re very nearly at the point where the Three Rings system is older than the youngest member of the Three Rings team. Speaking of which, we’re seeking volunteers to help expand our support team: if you’ve got experience of using Three Rings and an hour or two a week to spare helping to make volunteering easier for hundreds of thousands of people around the world, you should look us up!
2 Seriously: if you’re still using Google Search as your primary search engine, it’s past time you shopped around. There are great alternatives that do a better job on your choice of one or more of the metrics that might matter to you: better privacy, fewer ads (or more-relevant ads, if you want), less AI slop, etc.
Dan Q found GCB4434 A Road Anarchy – A40 TB Hotel
This checkin to GCB4434 A Road Anarchy - A40 TB Hotel reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
On a diversion from my cycle from Witney to Eynsham I came along the A40 cyclepath to find this cache. And what a cache! An excellent container perfectly suited to it’s hiding place. SL, TNLN, FP awarded for a large and well maintained container, TFTC.
Dan Q found GCAARWW Green All Around
This checkin to GCAARWW Green All Around reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
After cycling into Witney on an errand, put a slight diversion in my return route to find this cache. Didn’t see anything at the coordinates so hit the hint, and there’s been enough fresh green growth here that effect even then it took me a while to find the hint object! It probably used to be more visible! Once I’d found it (a few metres North if the GZ) the cache was found soon after. TFTC.
Philadelphia
Shower thought for the morning was: why is cream cheese spread ‘Philadelphia’ called that? Is it from Philadelphia? (My box isn’t, of course: it came from Ireland.)
Nope, it turns out that it was originally invented in New York in the 19th century and named for Philadelphia because Philadelphia, PA was at that point famous for its dairy industry. Just another bit of parasitic branding leveraging a borrowed association, like the Quaker Oats guy or the Rolls Razor. Now I’m wondering how many other examples I can find!
Note #26591
Off to London. BRB!
Queer Coded 🌈
Paraphrased from a conversation in a Manchester pub last night –
Them: Your [dyed blue] hair is queer-coded, right? Like… you’re telegraphing you’re queer?
Me: I mean… I’m also wearing a pride rainbow t-shirt and my watch strap is a ‘bi pride’ flag. I don’t feel like I’m being
subtle.
Them: Nah. The hair’s the giveaway.
