The Hydraulic Press Channel Is the Internet Sensation of Our Time | Hacker News Reader

The Hydraulic Press Channel Is the Internet Sensation of Our Time

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42 pointselsewhen23 comments

Big fan of the channel. I was looking at buying a high speed camera for work and emailed Lauri for advice. He had reciently put up a video comparing the budget friendly Kronos camera to the much more expensive Phantoms. He wrote back a comprehensive email that addressed all my concerns and helped me decide to pull the trigger on buying a Kronos 1.4 camera. That was a few years back and I still have no regrets with the purchase. I am still very grateful that Lauri took the time to help me out.

I have been enamoured and fascinated with the YouTube sreetips channel. He goes over chemistry and processes of refining silver and gold (which for him is very lucrative seeing as silver and gold spot prices are nearly all-time highs).

Start with his most recent massive (25 troy ounce bar) gold series:

Part 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRvZ0SQFmCA

Part 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWmLm4fvX3E

Part 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iktnV8jIMQ

I've always been partial to "Will It Blend?" That is the question.

I wonder if anybody involved knows that David Letterman did this on TV in 1984!

No.

I don't like this channel because it grossly misuses machinery without explaining it's real purpose.

It's just classical pop science. Do something fancy with no substance.

"It's a machine that is really good on just crushing things. It uses hydraulic pump and piston to generate huge amounts of force. And it pushes against the table, and then you're gonna put whatever you want there between the table and the piston and it's going to get crushed."

No, that's not what hydraulic presses are used for...

Okay then, what's its real purpose?

Manufacturing and servicing machinery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_fit

IMHO it is a little sad reflection of humanity that people enjoy destroying things purely for entertainment, as I'm sure most of their viewers aren't watching for any scientific aspect. On the other hand, YouTube has plenty of content on creation and restoration; a lot of the latter which are unfortunately also fake.

Best I’ve heard for the primate-cruelty phenomenon is “the brain seeks stimulation.”

First-world countries are spoiled and don’t have to make do - easy to run over the latest iPhone with your car and get 1.3M clicks. I agree; it’s lazy.

Not Russian, but as a Hacker News old timer: “old soviet tools restoration” [sic] by “Great idea” on YouTube is what you’re after. (Restoration of rusty old anvil.) It’s very hacker meta... building child tools to fix the parent tools is heartwarming, and at some level reminds me of many a build script.

> as I'm sure most of their viewers aren't watching for any scientific aspect

Watching what happened when he compressed a book was very very scientific to me, I've wondered that for ages, and the answer was not what I expected at all.

The scientific value you get depends entirely on the questions the viewer has. I'm 100% certain that there's at least one object that any particular viewer is curious "what would happen", as opposed to just "see it break".

The sheer depth/breadth of Youtube's maker scene is awe inspiring. There's orders of magnitude more people creating/restoring stuff on Youtube than there are people destroying stuff.

The number of channels dedicated to restoring cars, building dioramas, making knives/tools, restoring old electronics, inventing new electronics, cooking, painting, etc etc... it's truly awesome (in both meanings of the word) and I personally love that Youtube has brought all this to the world.

I don't even watch TV/movies anymore, I just have 200+ subscriptions to talented makers of all varieties, even stuff I personally have no intention of ever trying, just because it's so great to watch.

After all that, I don't really fault people enjoying some things being crushed, same reason lots of people like seeing big crashes in motorsports or big explosions. It's a part of human nature.

Whats your top reccomendations for channels we might not know? I like Rose Anvil for boot deconstruction and learning how good boots are made.

They have quite a few videos where they make things. Their videos get recommended to me alongside videos from machinists and fabricators.

What the difference between destroying a toy helicopter for millions of viewers and eating a large steak at a restaurant and shitting it out?

The helicopter is far less destructive and people get to moral grandstand? It's highly efficient.

Eating the steak will at least provide sustenance to my body.

Perhaps need to find a different comparison..

> I'm sure most of their viewers aren't watching for any scientific aspect.

How do you measure what's on other peoples' minds?

Let's be honest - the viewers of the creation / restoration videos do it primarily for fun too. The common creator / community / lurkers ratio split applies to those videos as well. Who's to say that watching creation of something simple is better than watching a hydraulic press ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is absurd. Crushing stuff is entertaining, and the hydraulic press channel does a great job. Building stuff is fun, and so is destroying it.

I would love to crush my phone or laptop sometimes.

I also really enjoy the 11foot8 channel. Pity they raised the height of the bridge.

Wait really? 11foot8 is no more?

It was raised to 12'4" in 2019 but people still hit it.

http://11foot8.com/

Sadly there exists things I don't like. On the other hand, there are plenty of things I do like, but those are also unsatisfactory for vague ill-defined reasons. A sad reflection of humanity.

It's always better to have a million people watch a video of one book being destroyed by a hydraulic press than to have a million people destroy one book each with a hydraulic press.

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