I recently had to upload a large (1TB) file from a Wikimedia server into a Google Cloud Storage bucket. gsutil was not available to me, but s3cmd was. So here is a little how to post for uploading to a Google Cloud Storage bucket using the S3 API and s3cmd.
S3cmd is a free command line tool and client for uploading, retrieving and managing data in Amazon S3 and other cloud storage service providers that use the S3 protocol, such as Google Cloud Storage or DreamHost DreamObjects.
Back in April 2022 I got annoyed by how prevalent cryptocurrency scams were still on YouTube years after I had first seen them. I spent a few minutes going through the scams that I easily found with a search for live streams including either “ETH” to “BTC” and reporting them via the YouTube flag / report system. Many hours later there were eventually taken down, but not before more scam live streams were already running to take their place.
Really I wanted (and still want) YouTube to do a better job… They have all of the information that should make shutting these down in the first seconds of them being live. But I figured I’d see how easy this would be to automate as a system using only the public APIs etc.
This post covers the initial prototype, followed by the scam-hunter web app which ran for some months before I sunset it last week. TLDR; lots of money was stolen while I was looking at these scam streams.
Example of the scam
When running, these streams are very easy to find by just searching for them (Live streams that mention “BTC” or “ETH”. You’ll either end up with streams displaying charts of the values compared with other crypto assets, or scam streams.
The scam streams take a variety of different forms, but not of them make use of pre-recorded videos of conversations with folks such as Elon Musk talking about cryptocurrencies, while also promoting a website such as MuskLiveNow.Tech (I made this one up) which claims to be running a giveaway event.
Screenshot of a crypto scan on YouTube from April 2022
