Comment by icu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by icu | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of an 80s tv show called MacGyver which impressed on me as a kid that you can use what you got to get out of tricky situations. I've done loads of different things as a result of this attitude. The only time I stopped to think about the show's wider influence was when I was at University (some time ago) in the Engineering building with my best friend (an Engineering student) and a phone went off with the MacGyver theme. When I told my friend I thought that was cool (these were the days when you had to pay for novelty ringtones) he casually remarked that a lot of the Engineering student body had the MacGyver ringtone and MacGyver had a huge influence on students enrolling for Engineering.

After reading this article I wonder if there are MacGyver-esque influences on younger generations? I haven't come across any YouTube channels or shows on Netflix, Prime or Disney Plus that would interest my 7 year old son and capture his imagination like MacGyver did for me as a kid.

Having said that, in true MacGyver fashion I started teaching my son Chemistry last weekend using a whiteboard, YouTube and some Minecraft analogies.

>After reading this article I wonder if there are MacGyver-esque influences on younger generations?

Just type "Lifehack" into youtube and search. Extremely low signal to noise ratio in videos made with monetization above all else. It's quite tragic.

A counterexample would be colinfurze[0] who makes very entertaining and inspiring videos. Apart from being a two legged OSHA violation his content is top notch. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/user/colinfurze

Thank you very much! I think my son will love the 'real life' Minecraft digging a secret tunnel series colinfurze has made.

One of the few genres of YouTube videos I can stand is "old man dismantles electronics". It's a very peaceful and educational genre.

Here are some channels I like:

https://www.youtube.com/c/Techmoan

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA

The latter channel is perhaps not great for children because of his somewhat relaxed attitude toward mains voltage, but it's great for me.

>The latter channel is perhaps not great for children because of his somewhat relaxed attitude toward mains voltage, but it's great for me.

PhotonicInduction is the extreme version of this, he's an electrical engineer / "mad scientist" who builds ridiculous things such as enormous capacitor banks for blowing things up, power supplies that deliver many kV for feeding to various household appliances, record players that spin at 10,000 RPM and that kind of thing. He also demos old tech you wouldn't see in other places like mercury arc rectifiers. Definitely "don't try this at home" but it's usually really interesting to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Photonvids

For those ever so slightly more lazy than me and beyond :P

There are certainly plenty of counterexamples. But there are also probably an unhealthy number of examples of things that people would have considered hobbies or just clever improvisation of one sort or another that are now, in many cases, about monetization/"side hustles"--with a lot of the negative baggage that can come from that when it becomes the primary goal.

We're all just trying to be good little capitalists, extracting value from someone/something as cheaply as possible and selling it to someone else for profit. See ya at the bottom! ;)

One of my favorites in this vein is the channel below. This guy really knows how to "do what you can with what you have available".

https://www.youtube.com/c/K%C3%AAnhs%C3%A1ngt%E1%BA%A1oVN-tr...

People like the lockpicking lawyer come to mind - https://youtube.com/c/lockpickinglawyer

It's as tho there's nothing he can't figure out a hack for, and sometimes it's a matter of simply getting a nail gun to do the work.

Depends - on YouTube, there's definitely a lot of channels that encourage engineering and science of some kind, though not always in a safe way. We had Shitty Robots into just general engineering with Simone Giertz, William Osman and Michael Reeves with their dumb robots.

I would definitely include some of Simone's builds in the super serious club especially now, but Mark Rober and Build Stuff Better definitely have a more engineering focus to their videos.

I would say that some of AvE's stuff falls into that but he does not filter his language/attitude at times so he is off putting to some people.

https://www.youtube.com/c/arduinoversusevil2025

I feel like he isn't producing as much of that content any more. I liked it better when it was more watch me make a milling machine from a cheap chinesium drill press and less watch me press go on the $200,000 Haas CNC. I feel like he is a bit of a victim of his own success. I still love the BOLTR content.

(Author here) Thank you for the reminder. I've heard of this show in so many different contexts and I've yet to come watch any of the episodes.

If you start a channel, I'd follow along, btw.

The entertainment industry has a lot of influence over young minds, I often thought that could be the way to get more students into STEM subjects.

Mark Rober comes to mind.

Lots of my friends were watching myth busters, which I think would qualify for this.

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