App Discovery: Cobalt.tools, the video downloader that just works

One of the biggest pet peeves about Youtube is it's impossible to simply transfer your video to a different channel, when you have several. You have to download your videos, then re-upload them to the other channel, then re-enter the information. 

While for channel owners there is an option to download individual videos, there is no mass download option, so you need to click on each one individually to download each file individually, and you are now at the mercy of your browser's downloader. And every once in a while, you run into a few videos that just refuse to download. You click on download, you somehow get dumped back to the content tab, or the download simply "failed" with no error given. 

Yes, there are all sorts of shady sites and apps that claims to download Youtube videos for you, many of them want money, subscription, or more. Just search for "Youtube downloader" on Google... They all look shady for one reason or another. 

Then I found https://cobalt.tools , yes, that's the whole URL. 

No registration, no payment, no subscription. 

Simply paste in the URL of the video you want downloaded, and voila, it downloads. Even the ones previous you can't download from Youtube itself as the owner of the video. 

It has other options, like get audio only of a video, or download from other platforms (not just Youtube, but all the Chinese ones, like Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, as well as the Western ones). 

It just works. 

WTF? Youtube removed harp video (with a distortion pedal) due to... "child endangerment"?!?!?! UPDATE: RESTORED! And idea about a better moderation system

 First, I suck at instruments. So much kudos to anyone who can play a harp. And Emily Hopkins briefly owned the YT one day by attaching a distortion pedal (that's something usually used with electric guitars) to a harp's output. It was... interesting. 

Then came news that some griefer had apparently flagged her video for "child endangerment"?!?!?! And YT took it down briefly (video response). It has since been restored. 

Frankly, Youtube's enforcement of its terms is just outright WEIRD and inconsistent, and too easily "gamed" by griefers or people with agendas wanting to silence the opposition. Want to call out people who are scamming other people? Get flagged for "hate speech" or "harassment". 

And it's also been flooded by mememakers who publish outright crap (such as videos featuring recipes that are impossible to do in life) just so it looks good enough to be shared. It's the equivalent of urban legends that it spawned a new category: debunking videos explaining why some videos are crap and bogus. 

Then there are the reaction videos where people post reactions of themselves watching certain videos. This is basically YT version of "selfies", which are so... last century. 

Youtube's confusing policies had lead to various alternative platforms such as Twitch and Vimeo and in some way, OnlyFans. Twitch has its own problems such as "hot tub" streams and later... "ear lick streams", when it's supposed to be for gamers. and OnlyFans... Basically known as an adult site without the word "porn" in the title. 

Can something be done? Maybe. Hear me out...

Introducing: reputation points. For every X minutes of videos you watch, rate, or otherwise engage with the content (subject to filters to stop abuse / robots) you get reputation points. An account sitting idle does NOT get such points. 

If you want to make a complaint, you are asked if you want to reinforce the complaint with your reputation points. Basically, you are putting your own reputation at risk to prove you are SERIOUS about that complaint. It can still be anonymous. I would set the minimum to make a complaint to be at least a typical "week's worth" of points. The points are taken from your account. 

The complaint then goes to the review team, who probably will take the ones with reputation points attached more seriously or more expeditiously. At least, that's the idea. 

If the complaint was validated, you get your points back, plus maybe a small bonus (10%?) to reward you for helping the community. 

If the complaint was dismissed, nothing else happens. 

If you consistently make the right complaints (i.e. your complaint was validated by mod team) many times you may be invited to sort through the mod queue and offer some suggestions as a "sorter", like "please prioritize this" or "this is bogus" (thumbs up or down). Obviously your votes will be taken in aggregate with other "sorters". This will help the mod team prioritize the review queue. Not sure how YT can reward you for it, or this will just be a volunteer position. This will last one month or one week, depending on how YT wants to run it.  

If your thumbs up/down agrees with most of the team you may be asked to come back. 

So what does reputation do for the rest of YT? Good question. 

Don't Trust Youtube Reason ??? of ???: The setting was already optimized

Have you seen the promise on Youtube before: "change one setting and your internet connection speed will be 3 times faster (or more)!" 

Hint; it only shows that dramatic increase because they had ruined their previous settings for force the speed down, in order to show you the "dramatic" differences, like going from 150 mpbs to 450 Mbps. 

TheTechieGuy was guilty of this, and so was TheDealGuy, who basically relayed the same lesson. 

What did they do? They optimized the MTU. 

Optimizing an MTU is a legitimate "hack". Basically, it's to coordinate between the router and the client. Router basically says "I can handle this many bytes at a time". The client can send a smaller packet, but that would be "under-utilizing" the router. So to optimize the settings, one should set the MTU on the client to "match" the router's allowable size. 

I had recently swapped out my older AC router for a more advanced AC2600 router from D-link. I know I didn't change the MTU on router OR client. 

Why not do the test? Who doesn't want more speed? 

So I did the test. I got the result of 1472. 

C:\WINDOWS\system32>ping www.yahoo.com -f -l 1474

Pinging new-fp-shed.wg1.b.yahoo.com [74.6.231.21] with 1474 bytes of data:

Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.

Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.

Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.

Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.

Ping statistics for 74.6.231.21:

    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\WINDOWS\system32>ping www.yahoo.com -f -l 1472

Pinging new-fp-shed.wg1.b.yahoo.com [74.6.231.21] with 1472 bytes of data:

Reply from 74.6.231.21: bytes=1472 time=79ms TTL=48

Reply from 74.6.231.21: bytes=1472 time=79ms TTL=48

Reply from 74.6.231.21: bytes=1472 time=79ms TTL=48

Reply from 74.6.231.21: bytes=1472 time=78ms TTL=48

Ping statistics for 74.6.231.21:

    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

    Minimum = 78ms, Maximum = 79ms, Average = 78ms

Add 28 to that, the optimal MTU size is 1500. 

So I checked the Win10 MTU size via the same cmd (administrator) prompt  (use netsh interface ipv4 show subinterfaces)... It is ALREADY set to 1500. 

So it's pretty obvious that if the DEFAULT router settings are already optimized pretty much, any of those "change one setting" and show dramatic speed increase is rigged. 

And now you know... Don't trust Youtube advice on something important. Study what they have to say and why they say it, UNDERSTAND the actual advice, and see if it really works for yourself. 

And don't be surprised if it doesn't.