commit 5cc4d1eddc864c8740bfb256d5b80bf9a8b63538
parent 85435794036411aafd71f8cda99a37be3858fe4b
Author: Andrew Laack <andrew@laack.co>
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2026 03:26:15 -0500
Conversions + link fix
Diffstat:
7 files changed, 135 insertions(+), 137 deletions(-)
diff --git a/posts/entries/you-dont-need-anything.md b/posts/entries/you-dont-need-anything.md
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ The words we say have an impact on how we think. A word I find problematic is th
## Definition
-Need: a requirement, necessary duty, or obligation.
+Need: a requirement, necessary duty, or obligation [1].
## My Thoughts
diff --git a/posts/gemini/the-sustainability-of-youtube.gmi b/posts/gemini/the-sustainability-of-youtube.gmi
@@ -0,0 +1,100 @@
+# The Sustainability of YouTube
+
+## Date: 2025/9/28
+
+## Context
+
+I dislike using cloud services because they may discontinue my service or they may do something stupid that negatively impacts me. These concerns, along with concerns about privacy, have led me to keep information and content I care about away from cloud services. This does make me wonder, how many people would be distraught about the loss of their content if YouTube terminated their accounts? This is not the topic today, nor is it something I can easily answer, but it is something I wonder about and would like others to consider.
+
+=> https://killedbygoogle.com/ Killed By Google
+=> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-cloud-accidentally-nukes-customer-account-causes-two-weeks-of-downtime/ Google Deletes Pension Fund
+=> https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-surveillance.html Proprietary Surveillance
+
+Similarly, I am skeptical of "free" services. It's incorrect to say "if something is free, you are the product" because charity does exist, but when it comes to Google, they aren't a charity. Their current model with YouTube is to have people upload videos to their site and show ads to some users when they watch said videos. There are also paid subscriptions, but their primary monetization comes from ads. An important point is they don't purge content on a regular basis, except in cases of ToS violations. As such, there is a (nearly) monotonically increasing function that describes the storage requirements of YouTube. This motivates my question below.
+
+## Question
+
+When will YouTube's storage costs exceed their revenue if they don't start purging old content, assuming their revenue does not increase over time?
+
+## How to Answer This Question
+
+We need the following information to answer this question:
+
+- What is YouTube's annual net profit?
+- How much data does YouTube store?
+- How much does data storage cost?
+
+## YouTube's Profit
+
+According to Alphabet's 2025 Q2 earnings release, YouTube ads made a revenue of $9.769 billion. Annualized, this is $39.076 billion, but this is only revenue, not net profit. If we assume the operating margin across Alphabet matches the operating margin of YouTube (32%), we find an approximate net profit of $12.50432 billion / year. Actual net profit could differ from this, but since we are concerned with how much data storage this could support, we don't need to factor in how this would be taxed.
+
+=> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204425000056/googexhibit991q22025.htm Alphabet Earnings
+
+## Storage Needs
+
+### Total Videos
+
+YouTube states on their official blog there are over 20 million videos uploaded per day. While I don't trust YouTube very much, and they don't have many incentives to be honest on this topic, they seem more trustworthy in this context than the slop factory sites as they are, in fact, the ones who are hosting the content. As such, I will accept this metric.
+
+=> https://web.archive.org/web/20250911091711/https://blog.youtube/press/ YouTube Blog Post
+
+### Average Video Size
+
+I wrote a python script that uses a curated list of popular Google Trends searches over the past few decades to search YouTube for recently uploaded videos. I ran this script and compiled a list of ~7.65 million YouTube videos.
+
+=> https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/dhruvildave/google-trends-dataset Search Trends Dataset
+
+Before continuing, I will list a few limitations of this approach:
+
+- YouTube likely imposes some amount of algorithmic filtering when sorting by 'recently uploaded'
+- The videos in question are all public (not inclusive of private/unlisted videos)
+- Less popular search terms may have a different distribution of video sizes
+
+These are the main flaws in my methodology, but any approach will be imperfect without being able to get the data directly from YouTube.
+
+Of these 7.65 million videos, I sampled 615,222 of them and queried YouTube using `yt-dlp` to find all video resolutions and formats YouTube will serve.
+
+=> https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp YT-DLP
+
+
+It seems unlikely to me that YouTube stores each of these resolutions on their servers, but I think it is very likely that YouTube is storing the highest resolution version they are willing to serve to users.
+
+Based on my findings, I propose a lower bound of ~396.17 MB / video, which assumes they are only storing the highest resolution version and all other versions are generated in real time via transcoding (I am confident this isn't the case, but it provides a nice lower bound). I also propose an upper bound of ~1.44 GB / video, which assumes they are storing every resolution and format for each video they are serving.
+
+All of the code used for this is available on my git server.
+
+=> http://git.laack.co/blog/log.html Code
+
+### Annual Storage Increase
+
+Using my findings above about video size and YouTube's stated video upload rate, we find:
+
+Lower bound:
+
+- 7.923 PB / Day
+- 2.89 EB / Year
+
+Upper bound:
+
+- 28.895 PB / Day
+- 10.547 EB / Year
+
+Note: These values may vary depending on rounding, but they should be similar to what anyone else would find.
+
+## Storage Cost by Volume
+
+GCP currently charges $26 / month for 1 TB of standard multi-region, US based, cloud storage. If we assume the same 32% profit margin as before, this would cost ~$17.68 / TB / month or $212.16 / TB / year. I don't know if this is high or low relative to what they actually pay. YouTube requires quick access to many of their videos, but many of their videos are likely retrieved infrequently. Additionally, it seems likely Alphabet's cloud storage margins are higher than the average margins across the organization. Additionally, these are only US storage prices so this could vary depending on the regions this data is being hosted in. In any case, I think this is a fair estimate.
+
+=> https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing#multi-regions GCP Pricing
+
+## Answer to the Question
+
+Given YouTube's approximated net profit of $12.50432 billion / year and an estimated cost of $212.16 / TB / year for cloud storage, we find their profits can support an additional ~58.94 EB of data.
+
+At the lower bound of 2.89 EB / year we find YouTube's storage costs will surpass their current profits in ~20.39 years.
+
+If we assume our upper bound of 10.547 EB / year we find YouTube's storage costs will surpass their current profits in ~5.59 years.
+
+## Conclusion
+
+These are very rough bounds, especially given how difficult it is to estimate the cost per TB / year for storage of this data given their retrieval needs, but we find that in ~5.59 - ~20.39 years, YouTube will be forced to start purging old content to remain profitable at their current profit rate.
diff --git a/posts/gemini/the-sustainability-of-youtube.md b/posts/gemini/the-sustainability-of-youtube.md
@@ -1,100 +0,0 @@
-# The Sustainability of YouTube
-
-## Date: 2025/9/28
-
-## Context
-
-I dislike using cloud services because they may discontinue my service or they may do something stupid that negatively impacts me. These concerns, along with concerns about privacy, have led me to keep information and content I care about away from cloud services. This does make me wonder, how many people would be distraught about the loss of their content if YouTube terminated their accounts? This is not the topic today, nor is it something I can easily answer, but it is something I wonder about and would like others to consider.
-
-=> https://killedbygoogle.com/ Killed By Google
-=> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-cloud-accidentally-nukes-customer-account-causes-two-weeks-of-downtime/ Google Deletes Pension Fund
-=> https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-surveillance.html Proprietary Surveillance
-
-Similarly, I am skeptical of "free" services. It's incorrect to say "if something is free, you are the product" because charity does exist, but when it comes to Google, they aren't a charity. Their current model with YouTube is to have people upload videos to their site and show ads to some users when they watch said videos. There are also paid subscriptions, but their primary monetization comes from ads. An important point is they don't purge content on a regular basis, except in cases of ToS violations. As such, there is a (nearly) monotonically increasing function that describes the storage requirements of YouTube. This motivates my question below.
-
-## Question
-
-When will YouTube's storage costs exceed their revenue if they don't start purging old content, assuming their revenue does not increase over time?
-
-## How to Answer This Question
-
-We need the following information to answer this question:
-
-- What is YouTube's annual net profit?
-- How much data does YouTube store?
-- How much does data storage cost?
-
-## YouTube's Profit
-
-According to Alphabet's 2025 Q2 earnings release, YouTube ads made a revenue of $9.769 billion. Annualized, this is $39.076 billion, but this is only revenue, not net profit. If we assume the operating margin across Alphabet matches the operating margin of YouTube (32%), we find an approximate net profit of $12.50432 billion / year. Actual net profit could differ from this, but since we are concerned with how much data storage this could support, we don't need to factor in how this would be taxed.
-
-=> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204425000056/googexhibit991q22025.htm Alphabet Earnings
-
-## Storage Needs
-
-### Total Videos
-
-YouTube states on their official blog there are over 20 million videos uploaded per day [5]. While I don't trust YouTube very much, and they don't have many incentives to be honest on this topic, they seem more trustworthy in this context than the slop factory sites as they are, in fact, the ones who are hosting the content. As such, I will accept this metric.
-
-=> https://web.archive.org/web/20250911091711/https://blog.youtube/press/
-
-### Average Video Size
-
-I wrote a python script that uses a curated list of popular Google Trends searches over the past few decades [6] to search YouTube for recently uploaded videos. I ran this script and compiled a list of ~7.65 million YouTube videos.
-
-Before continuing, I will list a few limitations of this approach:
-
-- YouTube likely imposes some amount of algorithmic filtering when sorting by 'recently uploaded'
-- The videos in question are all public (not inclusive of private/unlisted videos)
-- Less popular search terms may have a different distribution of video sizes
-
-These are the main flaws in my methodology, but any approach will be imperfect without being able to get the data directly from YouTube.
-
-Of these 7.65 million videos, I sampled 615,222 of them and queried YouTube using `yt-dlp` [7] to find all video resolutions and formats YouTube will serve.
-It seems unlikely to me that YouTube stores each of these resolutions on their servers, but I think it is very likely that YouTube is storing the highest resolution version they are willing to serve to users.
-
-Based on my findings, I propose a lower bound of ~396.17 MB / video, which assumes they are only storing the highest resolution version and all other versions are generated in real time via transcoding (I am confident this isn't the case, but it provides a nice lower bound). I also propose an upper bound of ~1.44 GB / video, which assumes they are storing every resolution and format for each video they are serving.
-
-All of the code used for this is available on my git server [8].
-
-### Annual Storage Increase
-
-Using my findings above about video size and YouTube's stated video upload rate, we find:
-
-Lower bound:
-
-- 7.923 PB / Day
-- 2.89 EB / Year
-
-Upper bound:
-
-- 28.895 PB / Day
-- 10.547 EB / Year
-
-Note: These values may vary depending on rounding, but they should be similar to what anyone else would find.
-
-## Storage Cost by Volume
-
-GCP currently charges $26 / month for 1 TB of standard multi-region, US based, cloud storage [9]. If we assume the same 32% profit margin as before, this would cost ~$17.68 / TB / month or $212.16 / TB / year. I don't know if this is high or low relative to what they actually pay. YouTube requires quick access to many of their videos, but many of their videos are likely retrieved infrequently. Additionally, it seems likely Alphabet's cloud storage margins are higher than the average margins across the organization. Additionally, these are only US storage prices so this could vary depending on the regions this data is being hosted in. In any case, I think this is a fair estimate.
-
-## Answer to the Question
-
-Given YouTube's approximated net profit of $12.50432 billion / year and an estimated cost of $212.16 / TB / year for cloud storage, we find their profits can support an additional ~58.94 EB of data.
-
-At the lower bound of 2.89 EB / year we find YouTube's storage costs will surpass their current profits in ~20.39 years.
-
-If we assume our upper bound of 10.547 EB / year we find YouTube's storage costs will surpass their current profits in ~5.59 years.
-
-## Conclusion
-
-These are very rough bounds, especially given how difficult it is to estimate the cost per TB / year for storage of this data given their retrieval needs, but we find that in ~5.59 - ~20.39 years, YouTube will be forced to start purging old content to remain profitable at their current profit rate.
-
-## Citations
-
-[6] - [https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/dhruvildave/google-trends-dataset](https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/dhruvildave/google-trends-dataset)
-
-[7] - [https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp)
-
-[8] - [http://git.laack.co/blog/log.html](http://git.laack.co/blog/log.html)
-
-[9] - [https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing#multi-regions](https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing#multi-regions)
diff --git a/posts/gemini/you-dont-need-anything.gmi b/posts/gemini/you-dont-need-anything.gmi
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+# You Don't Need Anything
+
+## Date: 2025/10/17
+
+## Context
+
+The words we say have an impact on how we think. A word I find problematic is the word need.
+
+## Definition
+
+Need: a requirement, necessary duty, or obligation.
+
+=> https://www.dictionary.com/browse/need Dictionary
+
+## My Thoughts
+
+**Do You Really *need* Anything?**
+
+I often say this when people use an unqualified need. An unqualified need is as follows:
+
+**I *need* to eat food, I'm starving!**
+
+Aside from the fact that they likely aren't starving, they don't *need* food. This can be thought of in a similar way as the is-ought problem. If someone says they *need* something, you can ask them, "Why do you *need* it?". In the case of food they may say, "I *need* food to survive", and to this you may say, "Why do you *need* to survive", and this can continue indefinitely as needs are predicated upon something. Often need has an implicit qualification as is the case of, "I *need* food" implying that it is needed to survive, but you don't *need* to survive. I don't want you to die, but it is not necessary for you to live. Tying this to the definition of need, there is no requirement, duty, or obligation for someone to be alive. There are no universal requirements to do things, no one has a universal duty to do things, and no one has a universal obligation to do anything. You may *need* to complete a project at work to not get fired, but you don't *need* to complete the project, you can just get fired, you are not obligated to not be fired.
+
+The danger in statements like, "I *need* to eat food", is they create a dependence upon something. By saying you *need* something you are telling yourself that without it you are incomplete. You are beholden unto this thing. This is dangerous because it leads to acts of immorality because of the perception that something must be done. I believe this is what has led to mass surveillance. People think they *need* to do what their boss tells them to do even when they know it's wrong.
+
+YOU DON'T NEED ANYTHING. You want it because you perceive the consequences of not having it are worse than having it. This is not a need. This is a want. Understand the difference.
+
+You don't need to live. You don't need food. You don't need water.
+
+=> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem Is-Ought Problem
diff --git a/posts/gemini/you-dont-need-anything.md b/posts/gemini/you-dont-need-anything.md
@@ -1,33 +0,0 @@
-# You Don't Need Anything
-
-## Date: 2025/10/17
-
-## Context
-
-The words we say have an impact on how we think. A word I find problematic is the word need.
-
-## Definition
-
-Need: a requirement, necessary duty, or obligation.
-
-## My Thoughts
-
-**Do You Really *need* Anything?**
-
-I often say this when people use an unqualified need. An unqualified need is as follows:
-
-**I *need* to eat food, I'm starving!**
-
-Aside from the fact that they likely aren't starving, they don't *need* food. This can be thought of in a similar way as the is-ought problem [2]. If someone says they *need* something, you can ask them, "Why do you *need* it?". In the case of food they may say, "I *need* food to survive", and to this you may say, "Why do you *need* to survive", and this can continue indefinitely as needs are predicated upon something. Often need has an implicit qualification as is the case of, "I *need* food" implying that it is needed to survive, but you don't *need* to survive. I don't want you to die, but it is not necessary for you to live. Tying this to the definition of need, there is no requirement, duty, or obligation for someone to be alive. There are no universal requirements to do things, no one has a universal duty to do things, and no one has a universal obligation to do anything. You may *need* to complete a project at work to not get fired, but you don't *need* to complete the project, you can just get fired, you are not obligated to not be fired.
-
-The danger in statements like, "I *need* to eat food", is they create a dependence upon something. By saying you *need* something you are telling yourself that without it you are incomplete. You are beholden unto this thing. This is dangerous because it leads to acts of immorality because of the perception that something must be done. I believe this is what has led to mass surveillance. People think they *need* to do what their boss tells them to do even when they know it's wrong.
-
-YOU DON'T NEED ANYTHING. You want it because you perceive the consequences of not having it are worse than having it. This is not a need. This is a want. Understand the difference.
-
-You don't need to live. You don't need food. You don't need water.
-
-## Citations
-
-[1] - [https://www.dictionary.com/browse/need](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/need)
-
-[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem)
diff --git a/posts/site/feed.xml b/posts/site/feed.xml
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
<language>en-us</language>
<managingEditor>andrew@laack.co</managingEditor>
<webMaster>andrew@laack.co</webMaster>
-<lastBuildDate>Sun, 26 Apr 2026 03:20:13 -0500</lastBuildDate>
+<lastBuildDate>Sun, 26 Apr 2026 03:25:40 -0500</lastBuildDate>
<atom:link href="https://blog.laack.co/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/>
<item>
<title><![CDATA[Config Files Suck]]></title>
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
<item>
<title><![CDATA[You Don't Need Anything]]></title>
<link>https://blog.laack.co/you-dont-need-anything.html</link>
-<description><![CDATA[<h2 id="context">Context</h2><p>The words we say have an impact on how we think. A word I find problematic is the word need.</p><h2 id="definition">Definition</h2><p>Need: a requirement, necessary duty, or obligation.</p><h2 id="my-thoughts">My Thoughts</h2><p><strong>Do You Really <em>need</em> Anything?</strong></p><p>I often say this when people use an unqualified need. An unqualified need is as follows:</p><p><strong>I <em>need</em> to eat food, I’m starving!</strong></p><p>Aside from the fact that they likely aren’t starving, they don’t <em>need</em> food. This can be thought of in a similar way as the is-ought problem [2]. If someone says they <em>need</em> something, you can ask them, “Why do you <em>need</em> it?”. In the case of food they may say, “I <em>need</em> food to survive”, and to this you may say, “Why do you <em>need</em> to survive”, and this can continue indefinitely as needs are predicated upon something. Often need has an implicit qualification as is the case of, “I <em>need</em> food” implying that it is needed to survive, but you don’t <em>need</em> to survive. I don’t want you to die, but it is not necessary for you to live. Tying this to the definition of need, there is no requirement, duty, or obligation for someone to be alive. There are no universal requirements to do things, no one has a universal duty to do things, and no one has a universal obligation to do anything. You may <em>need</em> to complete a project at work to not get fired, but you don’t <em>need</em> to complete the project, you can just get fired, you are not obligated to not be fired.</p><p>The danger in statements like, “I <em>need</em> to eat food”, is they create a dependence upon something. By saying you <em>need</em> something you are telling yourself that without it you are incomplete. You are beholden unto this thing. This is dangerous because it leads to acts of immorality because of the perception that something must be done. I believe this is what has led to mass surveillance. People think they <em>need</em> to do what their boss tells them to do even when they know it’s wrong.</p><p>YOU DON’T NEED ANYTHING. You want it because you perceive the consequences of not having it are worse than having it. This is not a need. This is a want. Understand the difference.</p><p>You don’t need to live. You don’t need food. You don’t need water.</p><h2 id="citations">Citations</h2><p>[1] - <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/need">https://www.dictionary.com/browse/need</a></p><p>[2] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem</a></p>]]></description>
+<description><![CDATA[<h2 id="context">Context</h2><p>The words we say have an impact on how we think. A word I find problematic is the word need.</p><h2 id="definition">Definition</h2><p>Need: a requirement, necessary duty, or obligation [1].</p><h2 id="my-thoughts">My Thoughts</h2><p><strong>Do You Really <em>need</em> Anything?</strong></p><p>I often say this when people use an unqualified need. An unqualified need is as follows:</p><p><strong>I <em>need</em> to eat food, I’m starving!</strong></p><p>Aside from the fact that they likely aren’t starving, they don’t <em>need</em> food. This can be thought of in a similar way as the is-ought problem [2]. If someone says they <em>need</em> something, you can ask them, “Why do you <em>need</em> it?”. In the case of food they may say, “I <em>need</em> food to survive”, and to this you may say, “Why do you <em>need</em> to survive”, and this can continue indefinitely as needs are predicated upon something. Often need has an implicit qualification as is the case of, “I <em>need</em> food” implying that it is needed to survive, but you don’t <em>need</em> to survive. I don’t want you to die, but it is not necessary for you to live. Tying this to the definition of need, there is no requirement, duty, or obligation for someone to be alive. There are no universal requirements to do things, no one has a universal duty to do things, and no one has a universal obligation to do anything. You may <em>need</em> to complete a project at work to not get fired, but you don’t <em>need</em> to complete the project, you can just get fired, you are not obligated to not be fired.</p><p>The danger in statements like, “I <em>need</em> to eat food”, is they create a dependence upon something. By saying you <em>need</em> something you are telling yourself that without it you are incomplete. You are beholden unto this thing. This is dangerous because it leads to acts of immorality because of the perception that something must be done. I believe this is what has led to mass surveillance. People think they <em>need</em> to do what their boss tells them to do even when they know it’s wrong.</p><p>YOU DON’T NEED ANYTHING. You want it because you perceive the consequences of not having it are worse than having it. This is not a need. This is a want. Understand the difference.</p><p>You don’t need to live. You don’t need food. You don’t need water.</p><h2 id="citations">Citations</h2><p>[1] - <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/need">https://www.dictionary.com/browse/need</a></p><p>[2] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem</a></p>]]></description>
<pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
<guid>https://blog.laack.co/you-dont-need-anything.html</guid>
</item>
diff --git a/posts/site/you-dont-need-anything.html b/posts/site/you-dont-need-anything.html
@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@
<h2 id="context">Context</h2>
<p>The words we say have an impact on how we think. A word I find problematic is the word need.</p>
<h2 id="definition">Definition</h2>
-<p>Need: a requirement, necessary duty, or obligation.</p>
+<p>Need: a requirement, necessary duty, or obligation [1].</p>
<h2 id="my-thoughts">My Thoughts</h2>
<p><strong>Do You Really <em>need</em> Anything?</strong></p>
<p>I often say this when people use an unqualified need. An unqualified need is as follows:</p>
