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Comment by quxbar | Hacker News Reader

I've quickly become addicted to longform (10+ minute) nonfiction youtube videos, whether it be a comprehensive analysis of Neverwinter Nights or 24 minutes on the advanced features of the laserdisc. Most, if not all of the content creators have Patreon pages, and I even contribute to a few. The content is so niche it's unimaginable that Netflix or any other content behemoth would develop their own version of it.

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I'm exactly the same. Some favourites I've collected over the years:

3Blue1Brown - math essays

AlfieAesthetics - Bushcraft, botany and survival skills with some fun english humour mixed in

CNLohr - fun hardware hacking livestreams

Eliminator Performance - mechanical troubleshooting and maintenance vlogs

Engineering Explained - Automotive engineering explainers and mini-lectures

FearlessFront - Mechanical engineering, welding, and vehicle hacking

How to make everything - multi-skill projects on making things from scratch as much as possible

Kurzgesagt - Philosophy and science essays

Lie Likes Music - Music essays

Mathologer - Advanced (to me) Maths essays

Matthew Cremona - Woodworking

Matthias Wandel - Woodworking

Nativlang - Essays on the history of spoken and written language

Nerdwriter1 - Essays on Art, philosophy, and the sciences

Nightmare Masterclass - Essays on fringe culture

Numberphile - Mini-lectures on Maths

Polyphonic - Essays on Music

Primitive Technology - Vlogs on primative/ancient building techniques

Rick Beato (specifically his "What makes this song great" series) - Essays on what separates iconic music from the rest

Strange Parts - Hardware hacking projects, mainly based in Shenzhen, China

The Drug Classroom - Scientific essays on recreational drugs

This Exists - Essays on cultural oddities and internet culture specficially

Uri Tuchman - Very intricate woodworking and engraving Wendover Productions - Video Essays on a variety of subjects including economics, travel, geography

Wisecrack - Essays which examine pop culture through a philosophical lens.

Alec Steele - A hyperactive Brit makes swords in Montana

Invitica - essays on ancient civilizations

Wintergarten - a Swede in France making a musical marble machine to millisecond precision. Good project management tips are included.

Man At Arms ReForged - Baltimore swordsmiths make ridiculous videogame sized swords that are mostly unusable.

EDIT: A few others

Bon Appetite's "Brad Makes": A New Jerseyian mumbles his way through fermenting anything edible. Frequent field trips ensue.

Kiwami Japan: A very very strange Japanese man makes the same knife, over and over, from various materials such as jello, underwear, and pasta. ASMRy.

Primitive Technology: The journey of a mute, nearly naked QLD programmer in the forest and his attempts to make a nuclear reactor from local mud. Turn on English subtitles.

Contrapoints: A trans PhD dropout comments on current issues through the lens of grad-level philosophy and copious innuendo. Impeccable set design and pacing.

You can't mention Brad from Bon Appetite and not mention "Half-sour Saffitz"! She recently got brought back onto the team to continue her "Professional chef makes oreos/twizzlers/twinkies etc" videos.

Yes! Brad's "it's alive" and Claire's "Gourmet makes" are both great. I started making Kombucha and Sauerkraut because of Brad's video on the subject. Giardiniera next!

OMG, they're my favourite youtube people. So, much, joy.

Thanks, I've subscribed to them as they all sound really interesting :)

I use it for free audio books: for example, HP Lovecraft is great for medium car trips.

Joe Pieczynski, mrpete222, clickspring: machine shop skills. I finally bought a lathe due to these videos.

Shango066: revive old TVs and radios in Los Angeles

Mustie1: revive old engines in New Hampshire

ADVChina/Laowhy86/Serpentza: x-pats in China. If you really want to know about life in China, watch these.

Mine Explorers: shango066 underground

Scott Manley: rocket science

w2aew: RF electronics

Applied Science: for the garage science lab

Isaac Arthur: futurology

Kombi Life: living as a VW bus nomad

Curators Corner: some shorts from the British Museum

Machine Thinking: history of technology

CuriousMarc: old computers

Practical Engineering: civil engineering

bigcliveotcom: for his soothing voice

glasslinger: DIY vacuum tubes

Lots and lots of food channels: recently I enjoyed the "Modern History TV" ones on medieval food.

Also I watched the YouTube original "Origin" recently- not bad, but not quite at the Netflix level.

Great list. I love when people do this, as I inevitably find new channels to follow.

Thanks,

Good list! I met Rick Beato at Summer NAMM this year. Really nice guy.

12tone - Excellent music theory in fast, whimsically illustrated episodes

agadmator - Best chess channel I've found

I'll second you on agadmator, the explanations are excellent.

I'd recommend adding Ishitani Furniture to your woodworking list. Very relaxing and the he makes gorgeous stuff.

Brilliant, added!

Nerdwriter is just psuedo-intellectual trash that panders to already popular opinions

I'm not really qualified to be able to tell the difference; what makes you say that?

He tends to over-explain things and perhaps looking too deeply into things that aren't there. He does have a substantial following, so there must be a lot of people who like that style.

Example, his 9 minute explanation of the Las Meninas painting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKRKrpz09Fk

I much prefer this shorter 3 minute explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loMy3sbW64g - concise and easy to understand

Contrapoints - applied philosophy, set design.

I already liked Contrapoints but I hadn't subscribed until now. Thank you!

What's to stop Netflix from overnight coming out with "Netflix Communities" which'll just be their community-edition YouTube + Patreon and/or ads, similar to how YouTube is moving into Netflix's and Amazon's space with YouTube Originals?

There's a lot of disruption potential there given how large of a percentage Google keeps for itself from YouTube ad revenue.

Profit.

YouTube has struggled to make money.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2970777/YouTube-rou...

Amazon is already heading in this direction with Prime Video. In fact they already have different streams you can pay to subscribe to like Starz and HBO and some pretty niche ones like Curiosity Stream that I think is only $1.99/month or something like that.

There doesn't seem to be the right niche. Maybe if they restricted it to fiction and documentaries but Vimeo already has that niche covered. Maybe Netflix could acquire Vimeo. btw imo Vimeo has a lot of excellent videos. They're more open to trying new things so sometimes they have something really good or deep that you would never find on YouTube or Netflix.

One thing that can't be discounted is I would use the Netflix version of this over all the others for the simple fact of already having Netflix open on all my TVs or having a shortcut on my remote for it. It might not be in the consumers best interest for one app to have so much power, but I dream of a day when I can use only one for 90% of the things I want to view.

hmm, yeah, I might too once their recommender system gets a little better. It would definitely save time.

"You just clicked on a video about making a mostly square block of metal into an even more square block of metal. Just saying." -ThisOldTony

Here's a link to the video being referenced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW8HNAlUXxU

ThisOldTony is very entertaining with his machining and dad jokes, I can highly recommend his channel. This video is not a bad starting point.

Though describing ThisOldTony as nonfiction is a bit of a stretch ;)

You mean I will never learn how to karate-chop stock in order to break it into a dozen perfectly-machined repeats of the prototype I just made? D:

Techmoan is an amazingly soothing 'slow tv' channel in this regard.

But all that content is not the property of Google.

If Netflix wakes up and opens up its platform and start convincing content creators to switch to Netflix, it would be huge.

Same for me but world of warcraft lore, lol

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