8 ms·

Sadly, you and I watch a different YouTube than probably 95% of people. Almost nobody I've talked to has heard of Lex or Louis, or Bret Weinstein, or Sean Carr

Sadly, you and I watch a different YouTube than probably 95% of people. Almost nobody I've talked to has heard of Lex or Louis, or Bret Weinstein, or Sean Carroll, and so forth. Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand. Even if the average person watched some of Louis Rossmann's videos on the right to repair, I just don't think the importance of the issue would compute with them. Almost nobody my age fixes any of their own things, whether they're electronics or other household items. The concept of repair may be totally antiquated in another 20 years. EDIT: By the way, I sent my Macbook to Louis for repair last year. His team did a great job! Easy to communicate with too. I got it back in the mail really fast once the repair was complete.

howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
| I sent my Macbook to Louis for repair last year Water damage. Sad little Macbook into a happy little Macbook. I hope you learned something.
Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
It's the same kind of tragedy that happens with free software. I once spent an entire year using nothing but free software, all the way down to the peripheral firmware. It's still important to me, but as I grow older I get more and more important things competing for time, money and attention. Especially things you do outside, away from technology, with other people. It's all subject to the same FUD too. If every proprietary EULA was replaced with the GPL overnight, and if a webshop where you could buy all the parts to repair anything was to spring up overnight, everybody would still use the same software and devices they know and love, and would not be any worse off than before. But the opponents of either try to make it about protecting the consumers.
jarenmf 5y ago
I'm surprised when people don't even know more mainstream science YouTubers like vsauce or veritasium. I've asked a class of ~20 college students whether they know vsauce and I was surprised no one knows him.
- judge2020 5y ago
  I think a factor is overestimating just how many people 'get into' YouTube culture. Only roughly 74% of American Adults use YouTube[0], and the average daily watch time is only 42 minutes[1], not much time to explore and watch videos outside of your own interests. Vsauce's videos are great (including the recent ones), but they're mostly a remnant of YouTube culture past, and 10-20 million views a video[2] is not a lot in the grand scheme of YouTube's 2 billion strong user base[3]. 0: https://www.journalism.org/2021/01/12/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-in-2020/ https://www.journalism.org/2021/01/12/news-use-across-social... 1: https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-youtube-advertising-2020#:~:text=viewers%20ages%2018%20and%20older%20will%20spend%2041.9%20minutes%20per%20day%20on%20youtube%2C%20across%20all%20devices%2C%20including%20mobile%2C%20desktop%20or%20laptop%2C%20and%20ctv https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-youtube-advertising-202... 2: https://www.youtube.com/c/vsauce1/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/vsauce1/videos 3: https://blog.youtube/press/#:~:text=Features-,YouTube%20by,the%20numbers,-YouTube https://blog.youtube/press/#:~:text=Features-,YouTube%20by,t...
  - cat199 5y ago
    Exactly.. i watch youtube for "whatever i'm searching for", which has never been a science video. Cars, computers, music, other random interests sure, but not science.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Generally, I'm the same and I'm also probably only on YouTube a few days a week and often just to watch one or two short things, e.g. to see if there's a review of something that would benefit from watching a video.
  - sodapopcan 5y ago
    Ya, I’m a heavy YouTube watcher (a couple of hours a day maybe?). I’m aware of vsauce and clearly I retested in tech but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a full video. I mostly watch conference talks when it comes to tech videos.
runlevel1 5y ago
> Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand. I often don't notice I've been logged out of my Google account until I visit YouTube. It's a bit frightening how dumbed down and scammy the content they recommend by default is.
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
I associate general consumers who don’t repair things and instead purchase to replace with the poor. It is a matter of the ability to command of labor. Repairing is cheaper. The loss of the ability to do so is the loss of the ability to command labor. So yes, perhaps in 20 years when manufacturing practices are so common as to relinquish control from the purchaser everyone will be all the more poor, because the idea that the common man be able to flourish is becoming antiquated.
- lupire 5y ago
  Huh? Mass production means that replacement is often cheaper than repair or one off crafting.
kingTug 5y ago
Those IDW characters have shown themselves to be pretty fraudulent. The Weinsteins especially.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  How come? Got a link to any article on this? Because as far as "IDW" characters are (and I agree most of them are either shady or outright shallow intellectual frauds) Brett seemed to be pretty genuine and less full of himself. But it wouldn't surprise me considering just how intense and widespread political gifting is (across pretty much the entire political spectrum though to be honest).
  - prezjordan 5y ago
    Bret’s claim to fame is making a novel discovery about telomeres that was supposedly stolen by another author after an email exchange. He, of course, has yet to show any proof of this claim (a simple email would do). See also: Eric’s Theory of Everything that he won’t publish for some reason, claiming the entire system of peer review is rigged against him. Very good podcast on this history: https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/eric-and-bret-weinstein-a-dark-horse-gallops-through-the-portal https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/eric-and-bre...
emsy 5y ago
At least the US has personalities like this. In Germany we have all the YT clickbait BS and very few truly brilliant minds that go against the mainstream.
- 34679 5y ago
  German 3D printing channels are the best. Whereas others will simply say "let's see if we can put sawdust in a resin print to make it stronger", German channels tend to ask "let's see if adding sawdust makes resin prints stronger".
  - emsy 5y ago
    Oh yeah, the niche channels are pretty good, but we don’t have personalities like Sam Harris, Joe Rogan etc. the closest that comes to mind is maiLab but she’s not exactly polarizing or unconventional.
    - Nodraak 5y ago
      Hey! Jumping in, because I'm learning German: do you have other suggestions appart from MaiLab?
      - emsy 5y ago
        Maybe the German version of kurzgesagt or Technikfaultier for some tech reviews , other than that I don’t really sorry. The other German youtubers I occasionally watch all speak English in their videos (Sabine hossenfelder for example).
wintermutestwin 5y ago
The problem is that discovery is broken. This random post on HN led me to more subscribe worthy channels than months of looking at Youtube recommendations has.
- the_other 5y ago
  Google doesn’t care if you discover useful things. It only cares if you discover things it can charge a lot for.
- helmholtz 5y ago
  Give us your best-of list then lad!
  - ehsankia 5y ago
    Steve Mould: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEIwxahdLz7bap-VDs9h35A https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEIwxahdLz7bap-VDs9h35A Technology Connections: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q Verge Science: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxJFU9DgUhfr2J2bveCHkQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxJFU9DgUhfr2J2bveCHkQ Mathologer: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1_uAIS3r8Vu6JjXWvastJg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1_uAIS3r8Vu6JjXWvastJg Sebastian Lague: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmtyQOKKmrMVaKuRXz02jbQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmtyQOKKmrMVaKuRXz02jbQ Captain Disillusion: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOXxzW2vU0P-0THehuIIeg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOXxzW2vU0P-0THehuIIeg Stuff Made Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj1VqrHhDte54oLgPG4xpuQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj1VqrHhDte54oLgPG4xpuQ Just a few, there's definitely a lot more like CGPGrey, a bunch of PBS channels, 3Blue1Brown, Veritasium (the production quality on his recent videos!), Mark Rober, Tom Scott, Johnny Harris, Legal Eagle, etc Also, not really HN content but if you like cooking, check out Adam Ragusea and Ethan Chlebowski, much better than the more popular cooking channels imo.
    - kevinak 5y ago
      Don't miss this one: Tech Ingredients - https://www.youtube.com/user/TechIngredients https://www.youtube.com/user/TechIngredients
stephenr 5y ago
> By the way, I sent my Macbook to Louis for repair last year. His team did a great job! Easy to communicate with too. I got it back in the mail really fast once the repair was complete. Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of what you’re claiming to want? Or is the guy you’re talking about more interested in this for his own reasons: wanting the repair money, not wanting to have to actually get certified to do authorised repairs.
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  Right to Repair is not just about repairing things yourself, it’s about the freedom to choose who you would like to repair something for you. I can’t repair my own MacBook but I don’t think I should be forced to pay outlandish prices to Apple for the privilege if I don’t want to.
  - stephenr 5y ago
    I don't understand. Is Apple holding a gun to your head if you take it to an unauthorised repairer?
    - rubyist5eva 5y ago
      They are doing their damndest to make it almost impossible to find someone that can. They want my only options to be a) pay their ridiculous repair fees because there is no other option that can do it for less, or b) just outright buy another macbook because they want to sell more computers.
      - 34679 5y ago
        There is another option: Buy a PC and be done with this nonsense forever.
        rubyist5eva 5y ago
        When your livelihood includes supporting Apple platforms, that's not really an option.
______- 5y ago
> Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand Eh it doesn't work like that. Youtube is actually very good at reliably determining it's you who's in that private window and Youtube is even known to track you with WebGL fingerprinting tactics to determine it's the same device. Doing things like spoofing your IP and useragent and using private mode browsing doesn't work. (I still get recommendations in incognito windows for videos I recently played no matter how much I tweak Firefox and mess with the browser to defeat tracking!) Edit: Since Youtube fingerprints your device with WebGL[0], it builds a shadow profile tied to that device, so that even in incognito/private sessions, you will get recommended videos that you recently watched, despite the anecdotal claims of others that they don't encounter this. The only way to defeat that is to use an entirely separate device on a separate network that has a different fingerprint. [0] https://jonatron.github.io/webgl-fingerprinting/ https://jonatron.github.io/webgl-fingerprinting/
- Hnaomyiph 5y ago
  I find that strange, I use Firefox as well, along with containers, ublock origin, and privacy badger (if those might make a difference) but my private browsing YouTube looks nothing like my non-private browsing youtube
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    Same. I've got uBlock and the whole kit and kaboodle and my private window YouTube experience is nothing like my signed in one in any way. If I knew it was about my add-ons I would have rephrased it, but it's too late. My point still stands. If someone went to YouTube having never seen it before and they created an account, what they are introduced to is half mainstream drivel and half animal videos, reactions, viral videos, etc. Unless you are already interested in intellectual content, I doubt that most people are ever exposed to content that's... more meaningful. I'm not saying average Joe and Jane should be watching Lex Fridman, but it they at least knew that these kinds of conversations were taking place on social media then their perspective of the world might be different.
- hhh 5y ago
  In incognito, I get nothing similar to what I would actually watch. Nothing is even remotely similar. It's scarily different, and none of it interests me.
devwastaken 5y ago
Steve Lehto had a video on this - When you explain the law and such peoples eyes glaze over, but when you put it into the context that this does affect them, then they generally 'get it'. In my view if you need to get your dell laptop fixed, you can get it fixed by someone else when dell wants to charge you for a whole new laptop, or refuses to fix it. That's what right to repair is for.
dang 5y ago
(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27254865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27254865.)

howmayiannoyyou 5y ago

| I sent my Macbook to Louis for repair last year Water damage. Sad little Macbook into a happy little Macbook. I hope you learned something.

Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago

It's the same kind of tragedy that happens with free software. I once spent an entire year using nothing but free software, all the way down to the peripheral firmware. It's still important to me, but as I grow older I get more and more important things competing for time, money and attention. Especially things you do outside, away from technology, with other people. It's all subject to the same FUD too. If every proprietary EULA was replaced with the GPL overnight, and if a webshop where you could buy all the parts to repair anything was to spring up overnight, everybody would still use the same software and devices they know and love, and would not be any worse off than before. But the opponents of either try to make it about protecting the consumers.

jarenmf 5y ago

I'm surprised when people don't even know more mainstream science YouTubers like vsauce or veritasium. I've asked a class of ~20 college students whether they know vsauce and I was surprised no one knows him.

judge2020 5y ago
I think a factor is overestimating just how many people 'get into' YouTube culture. Only roughly 74% of American Adults use YouTube[0], and the average daily watch time is only 42 minutes[1], not much time to explore and watch videos outside of your own interests. Vsauce's videos are great (including the recent ones), but they're mostly a remnant of YouTube culture past, and 10-20 million views a video[2] is not a lot in the grand scheme of YouTube's 2 billion strong user base[3]. 0: https://www.journalism.org/2021/01/12/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-in-2020/ https://www.journalism.org/2021/01/12/news-use-across-social... 1: https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-youtube-advertising-2020#:~:text=viewers%20ages%2018%20and%20older%20will%20spend%2041.9%20minutes%20per%20day%20on%20youtube%2C%20across%20all%20devices%2C%20including%20mobile%2C%20desktop%20or%20laptop%2C%20and%20ctv https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-youtube-advertising-202... 2: https://www.youtube.com/c/vsauce1/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/vsauce1/videos 3: https://blog.youtube/press/#:~:text=Features-,YouTube%20by,the%20numbers,-YouTube https://blog.youtube/press/#:~:text=Features-,YouTube%20by,t...
- cat199 5y ago
  Exactly.. i watch youtube for "whatever i'm searching for", which has never been a science video. Cars, computers, music, other random interests sure, but not science.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Generally, I'm the same and I'm also probably only on YouTube a few days a week and often just to watch one or two short things, e.g. to see if there's a review of something that would benefit from watching a video.
- sodapopcan 5y ago
  Ya, I’m a heavy YouTube watcher (a couple of hours a day maybe?). I’m aware of vsauce and clearly I retested in tech but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a full video. I mostly watch conference talks when it comes to tech videos.

runlevel1 5y ago

> Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand. I often don't notice I've been logged out of my Google account until I visit YouTube. It's a bit frightening how dumbed down and scammy the content they recommend by default is.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

I associate general consumers who don’t repair things and instead purchase to replace with the poor. It is a matter of the ability to command of labor. Repairing is cheaper. The loss of the ability to do so is the loss of the ability to command labor. So yes, perhaps in 20 years when manufacturing practices are so common as to relinquish control from the purchaser everyone will be all the more poor, because the idea that the common man be able to flourish is becoming antiquated.

lupire 5y ago
Huh? Mass production means that replacement is often cheaper than repair or one off crafting.

kingTug 5y ago

Those IDW characters have shown themselves to be pretty fraudulent. The Weinsteins especially.

mardifoufs 5y ago
How come? Got a link to any article on this? Because as far as "IDW" characters are (and I agree most of them are either shady or outright shallow intellectual frauds) Brett seemed to be pretty genuine and less full of himself. But it wouldn't surprise me considering just how intense and widespread political gifting is (across pretty much the entire political spectrum though to be honest).
- prezjordan 5y ago
  Bret’s claim to fame is making a novel discovery about telomeres that was supposedly stolen by another author after an email exchange. He, of course, has yet to show any proof of this claim (a simple email would do). See also: Eric’s Theory of Everything that he won’t publish for some reason, claiming the entire system of peer review is rigged against him. Very good podcast on this history: https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/eric-and-bret-weinstein-a-dark-horse-gallops-through-the-portal https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/eric-and-bre...

emsy 5y ago

At least the US has personalities like this. In Germany we have all the YT clickbait BS and very few truly brilliant minds that go against the mainstream.

34679 5y ago
German 3D printing channels are the best. Whereas others will simply say "let's see if we can put sawdust in a resin print to make it stronger", German channels tend to ask "let's see if adding sawdust makes resin prints stronger".
- emsy 5y ago
  Oh yeah, the niche channels are pretty good, but we don’t have personalities like Sam Harris, Joe Rogan etc. the closest that comes to mind is maiLab but she’s not exactly polarizing or unconventional.
  - Nodraak 5y ago
    Hey! Jumping in, because I'm learning German: do you have other suggestions appart from MaiLab?
    - emsy 5y ago
      Maybe the German version of kurzgesagt or Technikfaultier for some tech reviews , other than that I don’t really sorry. The other German youtubers I occasionally watch all speak English in their videos (Sabine hossenfelder for example).

wintermutestwin 5y ago

The problem is that discovery is broken. This random post on HN led me to more subscribe worthy channels than months of looking at Youtube recommendations has.

the_other 5y ago
Google doesn’t care if you discover useful things. It only cares if you discover things it can charge a lot for.
helmholtz 5y ago
Give us your best-of list then lad!
- ehsankia 5y ago
  Steve Mould: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEIwxahdLz7bap-VDs9h35A https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEIwxahdLz7bap-VDs9h35A Technology Connections: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q Verge Science: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxJFU9DgUhfr2J2bveCHkQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxJFU9DgUhfr2J2bveCHkQ Mathologer: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1_uAIS3r8Vu6JjXWvastJg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1_uAIS3r8Vu6JjXWvastJg Sebastian Lague: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmtyQOKKmrMVaKuRXz02jbQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmtyQOKKmrMVaKuRXz02jbQ Captain Disillusion: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOXxzW2vU0P-0THehuIIeg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOXxzW2vU0P-0THehuIIeg Stuff Made Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj1VqrHhDte54oLgPG4xpuQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj1VqrHhDte54oLgPG4xpuQ Just a few, there's definitely a lot more like CGPGrey, a bunch of PBS channels, 3Blue1Brown, Veritasium (the production quality on his recent videos!), Mark Rober, Tom Scott, Johnny Harris, Legal Eagle, etc Also, not really HN content but if you like cooking, check out Adam Ragusea and Ethan Chlebowski, much better than the more popular cooking channels imo.
  - kevinak 5y ago
    Don't miss this one: Tech Ingredients - https://www.youtube.com/user/TechIngredients https://www.youtube.com/user/TechIngredients

stephenr 5y ago

> By the way, I sent my Macbook to Louis for repair last year. His team did a great job! Easy to communicate with too. I got it back in the mail really fast once the repair was complete. Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of what you’re claiming to want? Or is the guy you’re talking about more interested in this for his own reasons: wanting the repair money, not wanting to have to actually get certified to do authorised repairs.

rubyist5eva 5y ago
Right to Repair is not just about repairing things yourself, it’s about the freedom to choose who you would like to repair something for you. I can’t repair my own MacBook but I don’t think I should be forced to pay outlandish prices to Apple for the privilege if I don’t want to.
- stephenr 5y ago
  I don't understand. Is Apple holding a gun to your head if you take it to an unauthorised repairer?
  - rubyist5eva 5y ago
    They are doing their damndest to make it almost impossible to find someone that can. They want my only options to be a) pay their ridiculous repair fees because there is no other option that can do it for less, or b) just outright buy another macbook because they want to sell more computers.
    - 34679 5y ago
      There is another option: Buy a PC and be done with this nonsense forever.
      - rubyist5eva 5y ago
        When your livelihood includes supporting Apple platforms, that's not really an option.

______- 5y ago

> Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand Eh it doesn't work like that. Youtube is actually very good at reliably determining it's you who's in that private window and Youtube is even known to track you with WebGL fingerprinting tactics to determine it's the same device. Doing things like spoofing your IP and useragent and using private mode browsing doesn't work. (I still get recommendations in incognito windows for videos I recently played no matter how much I tweak Firefox and mess with the browser to defeat tracking!) Edit: Since Youtube fingerprints your device with WebGL[0], it builds a shadow profile tied to that device, so that even in incognito/private sessions, you will get recommended videos that you recently watched, despite the anecdotal claims of others that they don't encounter this. The only way to defeat that is to use an entirely separate device on a separate network that has a different fingerprint. [0] https://jonatron.github.io/webgl-fingerprinting/ https://jonatron.github.io/webgl-fingerprinting/

Hnaomyiph 5y ago
I find that strange, I use Firefox as well, along with containers, ublock origin, and privacy badger (if those might make a difference) but my private browsing YouTube looks nothing like my non-private browsing youtube
- ravenstine 5y ago
  Same. I've got uBlock and the whole kit and kaboodle and my private window YouTube experience is nothing like my signed in one in any way. If I knew it was about my add-ons I would have rephrased it, but it's too late. My point still stands. If someone went to YouTube having never seen it before and they created an account, what they are introduced to is half mainstream drivel and half animal videos, reactions, viral videos, etc. Unless you are already interested in intellectual content, I doubt that most people are ever exposed to content that's... more meaningful. I'm not saying average Joe and Jane should be watching Lex Fridman, but it they at least knew that these kinds of conversations were taking place on social media then their perspective of the world might be different.
hhh 5y ago
In incognito, I get nothing similar to what I would actually watch. Nothing is even remotely similar. It's scarily different, and none of it interests me.

devwastaken 5y ago

Steve Lehto had a video on this - When you explain the law and such peoples eyes glaze over, but when you put it into the context that this does affect them, then they generally 'get it'. In my view if you need to get your dell laptop fixed, you can get it fixed by someone else when dell wants to charge you for a whole new laptop, or refuses to fix it. That's what right to repair is for.

dang 5y ago

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27254865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27254865.)