termux-packages VS SponsorBlock

I installed Termux on my Samsung S24, set up a PRoot Ubuntu 22.04 environment with everything I needed, and moved the whole workflow to my phone. That was it. Now I could walk around campus with just my phone and run everything on the spot.

Some Termux repositories are outdated or moved — check GitHub issues if you face errors.

Termux

This fully reflects my own Android experience (https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Paul+Lutus) -- writing Android apps is by no means a write-and-forget experience. As time goes by more of my apps are dropped from the platform from my unwillingness to drop everything and rewrite code for each new Android version.

My original intent was to put my free, open-source apps on the platform, much as I had done before Android existed. But no -- Android doesn't work that way.

My best-known Android app is SSHelper (https://arachnoid.com/android/SSHelper/), a Secure Shell server meant for file transfers. Still work perfectly, dropped some time ago.

TankCalc (https://arachnoid.com/android/TankCalcAndroid/), same story. It's a well-known multi-platform app tank farm managers use to profile storage tanks. Still works, dropped from the platform.

And not just mine. Many other free, first-rate Android apps -- Termux (https://termux.dev/) comes to mind -- have been driven off the platform by Google's onerous demands and commercial focus.

It's as though a wall is going up between people who like programming and people who like money.

If you don’t have Termux installed, download it from the official source. Once installed, open Termux and update it with the following command:

No, but yes.

https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/blob/master/packag...

I just installed the package called `racket` from Termux's upstream, and it seems that they're using racket-minimal for that. But of a gotcha, but at least it doesn't seem like there's a bug.

You might be interested in the SponsorBlock[1] browser extension for Firefox and Chromium based browsers. It deals with this issue, and is open source.

[1] https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock

SponsorBlock is available on just about every type of device these days -- works perfectly on Android with YouTube ReVanced. The options on iOS are naturally a bit more limited, but apparently it's possible on a jailbroken device (or through some other slightly-janky methods on non-jailbroken devices): https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/wiki/iOS

Yes, no ads from Google's side and ads by creators themselves (e.g. Raid Shadow Legends, SquareSpace, Manscaped, NordVPN etc. etc.) get skipped via a community-sourced database called Sponsorblock.

https://sponsor.ajay.app/

(Sponsorblock is also available as a browser extension for most browsers but has an open API for other developers to use)

On top of that you probably want SponsorBlock, because sponsor segments are also ads.

https://sponsor.ajay.app/

SponsorBlock (https://sponsor.ajay.app/)

It works amazingly well provided a video's been out for at least a half hour or so. It also has the option to skip the "like and subscribe" parts too.

I also tried the https://dearrow.ajay.app/ extension to replace clickbait titles, but decided I'd rather know when a channel/video is too clickbait-y so I can block/unsubscribe.

I wonder if this is the solution something like SponsorBlock is looking for[1][2]. They have a similar-ish problem. How to replicate crowdsourced data that trickles in slowly, but ideally you want replicated quickly.

WAL replication, rsync, bittorrent, etc all things that don't quite work as needed.

[1] https://github.com/mchangrh/sb-mirror/blob/main/docs/breakdo...

[2] https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/issues/1570

You should check SponsorBlock out: https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock.

Another tip for youtube is to use https://sponsor.ajay.app/ -- helps skip the ads that are increasingly embedded in the video itself.