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Comment by srejk | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate everything he stands for - he's on the right side of just about every issue. I just wish he could make more succinct and effective videos.

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You really want more succinct videos than what he already makes? Although they may seem long in a modern day where people have the attention span of a gnat -- his videos are fantastic and to the point. He literally ignores a lot more complexities and drama surrounding a lot of issues. Does he ramble sometimes? Maybe, but the talks so fast at times that the video is over before I've even gotten half way through with my own research. And this is from someone who has followed him since he posted videos on spinning on your own VoIP server and when he was still based in NYC.

"An account of human suffering" (assuming I remember the approximate title) is one of his earlier videos that sticks out in my mind and one I'll never forget. It was a tongue-in-cheek nod to the fact board diagnostics for hardware that has obviously been abused by the end user is a tedious and often thankless process.

I learned a LOT from watching his videos, and I don't even do board repair! Psychology, business, the human condition...

Personally I think if he did that people wouldn't pay attention. My experience is that when you complain to people about digital rights they just glaze over unless you walk them through all the ins and outs and the implications.

I share his videos here but nobody seems to see them and/or care enough to vote; all I get is crickets. It's baffling to me. Examples:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48802162

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48395520

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043208

HN audience prefers text to video; videos rarely do well here compared to other sites.

Agree. I almost never watch them when posted in comments. Sometimes if it’s a main article I might.

I ignore video posts. Why would I spend 20 minutes watching something when I can read the same in one or two minutes?

I read inhumanely fast.

The person presenting is also important. I may be interested in the topic but if I don't like the presenter or their delivery then I'm still not going to watch it. Text doesn't have this issue.

I ignore video posts because my video watching time is after-hours.

I browse HN at work in-between GH Actions runs, compiling and Claude thinking, so no time for videos.

I didn’t realise you were committing literary war crimes! Please read more humanely! Books have rights too!

No, if he reads humanely he reads slowly.

I'm not sure if you got it, that inhumanely != inhumanly. Where inhumanely is without consideration for the human race, whereas the other is non-human-like.

> I'm not sure if you got it, that inhumanely != inhumanly. Where inhumanely is without consideration for the human race, whereas the other is non-human-like.

Note they're also synonyms, so the confusion is understandable:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/inhum...

^This. I find it frustrating with how so many things seem to be moving to video, even simple instructions.

Monetization. It's incredibly hard to monetize text content, particularly these days where Google's search AI has all but killed clickthrough rates. Youtube however, that will reliably give you revenue share.

These says I just ask YouTube's AI for a summary of the video. Then I can decide whether the presenter is worth another 20 minutes of my time.

I do that too, and meditate if YouTube wounded themselves by adding that feature.

View rates must have dipped for a percentage we don't know of, but definitely made a dent.

I read at talking speed so not as much to gain with text.

That may be so, but are you skimming, or actually retaining the the things you care about? Video can have a lot more impact and staying power when it comes to things that matter in this context.

For me personally, I retain much less information from video vs reading it.

For text, I change my reading speed based on comprehension, going faster for things I know, and slower or rereading for things that are new or complicated. For video, you're expected to consume the info at the rate provided in the video, losing attention when they spend too long on info you're already finished with, and then blowing by other info that I want to spend more time considering.

There are options like adjusting video playback speed and rewinding, but that's not how video is typically consumed and is much less convenient than just altering your reading speed.

But do you comprehend it?

This. I never watch video posts. I can skim-read a text site in seconds to see if it's worth a real read. I can't do that with video, and there's always some ads in it, whether the author put them there or not. I hate ads.

And it's not just HN either, video is a very poor substitute for a well written article. Video can augment a well-written article, but it can't replace it.

Posting here for anyone who might not know this: you can click and hold on most YouTube videos and they will play at 2x. I find that to be a good test at whether the host is communicating effectively. If I can understand them perfectly clear at 2X they are talking too slowly.

I watch everything other than songs or something cinematic at 2x anyways.

Then you get things like the ATP (I can't bring myself to say ATP podcast because La Brea Tar Pits and all that) where two hosts are fine at 1.5x and the third becomes a chipmunk.

Maybe they can make Overcast have dynamic speed based on speaker.

Who of the three do you feel speaks much faster naturally?

Here's where I admit that I can't identify them - but offhand I think it was Siracusa. I know because I tried speeding up a recent episode and he started talking and I had to slow it back down.

Definitely Siracusa.

I prefer to download the video using yt-dlp and then watch at 2.5x in mpv.

Put podcasts in this category.

If you have YouTube Premium, you can use their Gemini AI to summarize videos. I've "consumed" tons more videos since I discovered it, since I can get a good idea from the summary if it's worth actually watching the video.

My overall minutes of YT have gone down, but I probably interacts with 2-3x more videos. Just like skimming on HN!

If you're Google you could transcribe and summarize all videos on upload for easier consumption, but then you lose your ad revenue so...

But still, there are many many HNers who binge watch YT videos all the time, and share it here, or suggest YT videos as "dive deeper" links on many topics.

Too much "Hey guys".

I watch plenty of videos but it doesn’t coincide with my reading of HN.

I clicked on one, he was rambling about wearing sunglasses because of studio lights, seems like pointless drivel, so I stopped watching.

Have you tried SponsorBlock? https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock

Voting on hackernews is a bit weird compared to reddit. The whole UI is strange to me.

Having said that, I noticed that there is in general too much content to consistently e. g. vote or do similar actions. I was watching Rossman's video almost daily in the past; stopped doing so a while ago simply because of lack of time on my part. I need to choose more carefully where I invest my time. (Also, for some reason, when Rossman was in New York, his videos had a better punch; not sure if I am the only one noticing this but he seemed to have a better focus when he was still in New York, even though I understand he relocated, to stop getting milked by politicians in New York.)

Not needing to be at the top of his game anymore makes anyone lose that sharpness. As you just said, he doesn't need to fight New York politicians anymore.

I stopped coding for the past year or so and I'm considering going back because I definitely feel my own sharpness lost.

I watch long form videos on topics I care about. If I care about the topic, I likely have already seen the videos. But I'm not going to watch a 20 minute video posted to HN to discuss it. If it's not something I can skim over in 3 minutes, it's too long. Take the post we're on right now. You can read through the entire contents of the article in 1 minute.

Oh that guy, I like him.

He puts his money where his mouth is too. Weighing in and challenging people to sue. Good guy, intense but good.

I think it is a shame youtube is forcing creators into longer videos

Video content, particularly on youtube, gets very little traction here generally.

I watch his videos, but not from links here and that is probably what you are seeing: those of us who might follow your link have already seen the video (likely via grayjay rather than youtube) and will skip over it to the next interesting new thing. People who don't already watch him will see “[video] (youtube.com), 1 point, discuss” and think “oh, another video that could be a few paragraphs of text which would be much faster to read than watch, that so far no one else has seen as worth interacting with, preceded by two unskippable adverts”.

A link to youtube is only going to get much attention if it is lucky to have a title that jumps out to a few people so it gains the first few votes and/or comments that get the ball rolling. Even then Louis' videos aren't going to get a hot debate going: most people either entirely agree so don't see the point commenting further, or they aren't the sort of people who are reading HN at all or are but don't follow video links.

Unless the video is about an extraordinary natural phenomenon that can be seen, video (and audio) is strictly inferior to text for communicating information.

that seems pretty easily falsifiable. Sometimes you want want to consume content while doing something else that precludes reading. Sometimes you want to relax your eyeballs after staring at a screen all day. Theres plenty of reasons to consume audio or video.

I'm one of the people who mostly ignores his videos due to their length and the 'old man angry ranting about things' vibe they give me.

Ditto. I love his ideology, and have watched a few of his videos over the years, but his lengthy roundabout style of delivery doesn't keep me engaged.

Super glad he does what he does / is who he is though.

Everyone should be as angry as him, then companies wouldn't keep screwing us over.

"I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

It's an uphill battle to inform the public. Most people just don't understand and don't care to understand the issues until it actually hits them, such as with the farmers who bought JD.

Almost every conversation I've had over the years goes two ways: "Why do you care so much about <Flock, Ring Cameras, big tech name>? If you have nothing to hide, why are you so concerned?"

Or:

"Why do you care so much about <Flock, Ring Cameras, big tech name>? We already walk around with cell phones in our pockets 24/7."

I used to be more passionate about persuading people about privacy, but I've pretty much given up. I've come to the conclusion that the majority of the population doesn't care what is happening around them as long as they have internet access and their iPhone.

My response is typically, "I have literally everything to hide. I don't want you to know my middle name. I don't want you to know what I had for breakfast. It's none of anyone's business."

And weirdly, the response I get is, "Oh yeah, fair."

I love his videos. He makes you feel like we can actually fight back and win. If he changed his style I think something great would be lost

Sometimes the problems are so complex and entangled it's hard to fit solutions into sound bites (vis: taxes, healthcare(USA) and apparently product "ownership".

Deere is a long way from the user accessibility of the Model A or B.

His video style is just fine, him and his cats. I don't mind the expletives as the people/companies he uses it against deserves them but I had instances where I couldn't show his videos to some elderly people because of the expletives.

After this he should work on "Right to buy products that don't work against the user".

The videos work because they deliver also some entertainment. The signal that Louis really cares is strong in them

Does YouTube monetization force creatives to do these longer videos to earn more?

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