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Comment by hsjqllzlfkf | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of amazing content on YouTube. It's just not mainstream and so unlikely that it'll be recommended to you.

It's weird, I feel like the people who refuse to use YouTube with an account are the same people who insist all the content is garbage. I use it logged in and ~70% of my recommendations are math videos or other things I would like. When I see something I don't want to watch, I just select "not interested" and I feel like it immediately improves my reccommendations. This way I see maybe one reactionary/misogynist/conspiracy video every two months, and I just don't watch it and say I'm not interested.

On the contrary, I use youtube exclusively without account. I use a Firefox container to ensure cookies don't stick. I follow a bunch of channels via RSS.

Oh I'm sure there is, but dealing with all the awfulness is enough to make me not bother. Those stupid faces people pull in their thumbnails actually have quite a strong repellent effect on me (yes, I've got clickbait remover installed, yes I also use Vinegar because the YouTube player is deliberately designed for mis-clicks). The whole thing is just Idiocracy and I end up angry at the sheer stupidity and lack of dignity of the human race.

What I've been doing for 3 or so years, which works great for me, is have a Firefox container just for YouTube with cookies disabled, ublock origin, subscribe to these channels via RSS, and crucially don't discover content via YouTube's own discovery.

What are some of those channels?

Oh man! I watch a ton of YouTube. I'll take up an opportunity to promote some of my favorites. Presented in no order, just scrolling through my subscriptions:

Older tech: LGR, Cathode Ray Dude, Techmoan

Video games: Cinemassacre, Masahiro Sakurai, Jeremy Parish, Cybershell, Basement Brothers, Retro Game Mechanics Explained, Brian David Gilbert, GTV Japan, Displaced Gamers

Synthesizers/music theory: Red Means Recording, Alex Ball, Andrew Huang, Rob Scallon, Rachel K Collier, David Bruce

Hardware/engineering: Element14, Technology Connections, Applied Science

Guitar: Justin Johnson, Rhett Shull, Guitar Salon International, Andertons, Brandon Acker, Philip McKnight, Alamo Music Center

For Guitar, I'd remove Rhett Shull, dude is just a YouTube channel hocking gear he gets for free. It used to be interesting when he talked about touring but now that he's a full time YouTuber and doesn't play live or touring he's just selling ads and his courses. Courses, which, frankly are not that unique or good.

I'd add a few different guitarists in here though. Paul David's genuinely seems like a great dude. Stewmac has fun stuff though it is generally driven around selling their stuff, but I think they're still highly educational most of the time. Emerald City Guitar's has some really cool videos now and again, and I dig their videos on some of the vintage gear they have and find inspiration in that. Gracie Terzian has great music theory videos, she's the one that helped me fully understand the circle of fifths. I also really enjoy Eric Haugen, he has a few courses on TrueFire now as well.

I also dig Alamo Music Center, watching Cooper shred an acoustic is always a good way to spend 10-15 minutes. Dude can play.

I still like him, but yeah, that's a totally fair take :) Will look into some of your suggestions, thanks.

Awesome! Most of those are new to me! Thank you

It really depends what you're into and the languages you speak. Given we're on hackernews, maybe you're an English speaker who could be interested in math? 3Blue1Brown[1] is a nice channel.

1: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw/vid...

I love 3Blue1Brown! So good!

One of my favorites lately is SmarterEveryDay

https://www.youtube.com/@smartereveryday

A super solid recommendation is the series on nuclear submarines, I also really enjoyed the one about how carburetors work (he makes a clear plastic one to use as a demo, it's... wildly cool). In general this channel is just _full_ to the brim of really great stuff.

A fellow Michigander Alexis Dahl has really cool videos about a bunch of unique places in Michigan and the state's history:

https://www.youtube.com/@AlexisDahl

Diana, aka Physics Girl, who is currently still suffering greatly from long COVID hasn't posted in awhile but her back catalog is amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/@physicsgirl

A good recommendation that I really enjoyed was the video on Rodney Mullen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFRPhi0jhGc

There's some really great stuff on YouTube, I'm sad that it's only offered on YouTube and wish some would move to something else simultaneously, like Floatplane or something where I could just pay a small monthly fee to get the videos at the same time.

Awesome, thanks! I love SmarterEveryDay. I’m subscribed (to his email list, which I appreciate a lot). Physics Girl is amazing too. I really hope she gets better.

I’ll definitely check out the Rodney Mullen video.

I think both floatplane and Nebula are promising. There are some pretty solid creators or Nebula (though they also tend to be some of the bigger more recommended YouTube channels)

Some I enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/@BenEater (electronics, computers)

https://www.youtube.com/@Tantacrul (music software ui)

https://www.youtube.com/@LinusBoman (graphic design)

https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections (tech)

https://www.youtube.com/@Astrobiscuit (astrophotography)

https://www.youtube.com/@CityBeautiful (city planning)

https://www.youtube.com/@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER (synthesizers)

https://www.youtube.com/@Wintergatan (engineering, building musical marble machines)

I love tech connections, and haven’t heard of any of the others. I’ll check some of them out!

I don't follow channels. But...

I watched a 23-episode Yale class on the History of Ukraine, by prof. Tim Snyder. In fact I binged it. Then I went out and bought Bloodlands and On Tyranny. On Tyranny is a thin book, I read it in a couple of hours. But Bloodlands is fat; I read it in two days.

Snyder is a very engaging lecturer. I wish even one of my uni lecturers had been half so engaging.

In the first lecture, he asked his students to report back on whether any other universisty was offering classes on Ukrainian history; several students researched it, and came back in lecture 2 to tell him his class was unique in the USA. Which in the light of contemporary events seems pretty sad.

I won't be dropping my UBlock pants for Youtube. I watch about an hour every two weeks, on average; I certainly don't rely on it, and I certainly won't pay for Premium.

Super interesting, I’ll have to check it out.

I remember seeing him earlier in the conflict, when a Ukrainian soldier was pictured reading his book and later met him: https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/121j5f1/sometime_a...

I’ll definitely check the channel out, and probably the book too

The channels that I had in mind when I wrote that are channels by experts in their fields, which somehow often happen to be low production value - because you know real scientists are about substance, not style :-)

So here's a random one in that category: this guy decided to try and build a mass spectrometer from scratch

https://youtube.com/watch?v=nIKhUizkXxA

Sounds awesome! I’ll check it out!

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