`I wrap the entire thing up in some shell script as a .bashrc function which takes a URL, touches the downloaded file (since youtube-dl saves the youtube file modified date), then opens it in vlc. '
Just install mpv, dude.
It works right out of the box, if youtube-dl is in your PATH.
mpv (mpv.io) also has support for using it to stream videos. (play from the internet, rather than downloading)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-with/ is available for firefox and chrome, and lets you open URLs from the context menu. Massive time saver, as you can just right click on a link to a video, and it'll start playing in a separate media player.
Jaywalking isn't a thing here. You can just walk across any road that's not a motorway, as long as you don't get hit by anything.
Same with Simple trespass. Although that's the case in a lot of places.
The two things I don't see bittorrent utilized for nowadays are livestreaming, and file matching.
Sure, there's some demos of bittorrent live, but it's not hit the mainstream yet. 30-60 second stream delay should be plenty of time to sync video to everybody.
File matching would be neat too. Just scan your files against a DHT database and you'll never have to worry about losing them again. Just as long as there's seeds.
Is there any foolproof way of detecting if some video or audio is a commercial or not?
A TV tuner that just replaces commercials with a placeholder image and a countdown to when the break is over would make broadcast TV just about tolerable for me. (time-shift, and skipping past commercials is a better solution, but there's some things you want to see live)
Where? I can't see it on that page now.