On Thursday 20 August 2020 15:19:41 Janek Stolarek wrote:
> > Now why, I ask, should Google get something via wget from my machine when
> > Vivaldi starts up?
>
> What happens if you got Vivalid Settings -> Privacy and disable using of
> Google's DNS and privacy protection services? (I totally realize the irony
> of this - Google offering privacy protection against 3rd parties. Duh.)

I don't use Vivaldi enough to care, but I will give this a try, and report 
back if I find out anything interesting or worth mentioning. I have managed 
to force private mode (or incognito) on most browsers as the default, but 
again, this takes some patient finagling. 

>
> > but my point is, I CAN MAKE IT DO WHAT I WANT -- and nothing else.
>
> Yes, that's ultimately what matters. And I do respect your choice of
> browser. I also tend to be cautious when it comes to many aspects of modern
> technology (e.g. don't use a smartphone due to privacy concerns).
>
> Also, thank you for reminding me about youtube-dl. I've used it once or
> twice but then completely forgot about it. I do wonder though - how do you
> know what to download without visiting YT?
>

I use DDG (the onion version): You can either use the YouTube "bang" 
(enter !yt and your search terms), or just search on DDG (or your search 
engine of choice), for "youtube [and your search terms]. 

It used to be that I could search YouTube directly through DDG, and still can, 
to some extent; except that now YouTube has decided I can visit their pages, 
but cannot actually view anything; so I glean my information about their 
videos at second-hand, but it still works. 

Also, you can try finding or creating archived versions of webpages; prefix 
one of these URLs to your youtube URL: 

to search for archived pages
https://web.archive.org/web/

create archived pages (where none exists) or create new updated versions 
https://web.archive.org/save/

From there you can extract the YT address that is needed. (And by the way, 
youtube-dl also works on a lot of other sites, which probably model their 
pages on YouTube.) 


> Janek
>

If you ever feel like giving Icecat another try (or Palemoon, or any other 
Mozilla-based browser), here's a tip: they are *almost* interchangeable. 

The trick is, just copy over the relevant files or folders from one browser to 
another; e.g., extensions, your about:config xul file, and a few other items. 
I can basically make any Mozilla browser do (almost) anything I want, with a 
little finagling. And once you have got it done for one Mozilla browser, it's 
pretty quick to replicate. (Instead of "installing" extensions, for example, 
I just copy over the folders of the extensions that were already installed in 
a different mozilla browser.) At first, though, expect to be frustrated; but 
when the deed is done, and your browser suddenly does exactly what you 
want ...! 

Most of my browser hacks are the same: once I get it to do what I want, I just 
copy over the relevant files or folders into another browser. (Make sure to 
backup the entire browser folder before you attempt this stuff.) 

My Mozilla browsers are all built up like this; then I used them for dedicated 
tasks, and save Icecat (at the moment) to use as my primary browser over Tor. 

Bill