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Comment by VerminOctopus1 | Hacker News Reader

I am highly suspicious of the Real Engineering channel. It seems like he does full on marketing videos for whoever is willing to pay or provide access. The video on Helios was suspect and so is this one.

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I don’t see the issue. Videos like the one on Helios is one of the reasons I subscribe to his channel. I want to learn more about companies doing ground breaking innovation. Of course such a video has some PR aspects to it. Everyone knows that a company granting such access wants something out of it. This is almost high school level media literacy. You should take such videos with a heavy dose of healthy scepticism, but it’s still very interesting to watch.

And if he gets some money out of it which he can use to help fund production of some high quality videos on historical engineering topics now and then, that’s just a win-win IMO.

I am very skeptical of a fusion startup claiming to provide commercial power in the 2020s, and I would like any media to be appropriately skeptical as well. If it’s not, then I wouldn’t feel informed at all.

> This is almost high school level media literacy.

Was that necessary? Did it contribute anything to your comment? (It did for me, but not in a good way.)

I've noticed the same is happening with the Undecided with Matt Ferrell channel. I really enjoyed his content on green energy projects at the beginning, but it seems like lately he's just creating press releases in video form.

I've always felt Matt's channel was a bit too "cheerleady" (for lack of a better term) regarding the topics it covers. A lot of the videos seem to be in the format of: "Here's some long-shot green energy idea still in the concept/early planning stages of development. Here's a list of all the positives of this technology, and none of the downsides or challenges. What do you think? Is this the future? Leave a comment and subscribe!"

It just feels like I can't trust anything the videos say because they're completely unskeptical of everything they cover, which makes them feel way less informative.

Personally I thought the video was interesting. Even if it’s promoting a company agenda, the technology itself is cool. I learned some stuff.

All the "Real Engineering" videos I've ever seen were full of egregious factual errors, so I stopped watching them.

I follow the channel, can you give me few examples of these errors, as I have not noticed any (I'm not a subject matter expert, or maybe not paying attention enough)

I checked my bookmarks file to see if I had summarized any of their videos there, but if I did, I didn't tag them with the channel name, as I usually do for especially terrible videos. So, unfortunately, to give you examples, I would have to watch another Real Engineering video, which I'm unwilling to do unless someone pays me.

that channel is fine. Obviously, there are errors, especially if you happen to know a certain topic very well. Otherwise, the videos are info are fine for surface-level information.

The video being discussed in this thread started off with a rather contentious claim about the Earth being a giant fission reactor that was heavily debated in the comments. I’m not knowledgeable about the subject at all, but it certainly made me double take (and even open the comments!) and seems to be overstated at best.

The Earth definitely does not produce much heat in its core. Most heat produced in the Earth by fission is produced in the crust. Whether that amounts to "being a giant fission reactor" is a question of semantics; it's like an RTG, but doesn't sustain chain reactions.

His videos are genuinely very interesting and informative. If he does a promoted piece once in awhile that primarily dig into the science + engineering behind something while also getting a company's name out there, I don't really mind. (So long as it's disclosed)

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