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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

I intended no shade on Veritasium and my comment that the video is 18 minutes long wasn't an expression of disdain, merely a statement of fact. Rather, my intent was to offer an alternative for folks who prefer to read instead of or before watching a video.

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This is a general problem. If you want to get a good answer to a certain class of problems (especially in the diy domain, and now even math problems), YouTube videos are the best. But you have to watch 20 minutes. This is not scalable.

For me , 99% of the time, obtaining information from a video is less time efficient than a written piece. I almost always ignore video links.

After reading the NYT article, I would say there was no need for me to spend an additional 15min watching the video.

Then you will be missing the coin paradox and the relevance of the sidereal astronomical computation towards the end of the video, your loss.

For the shade tree mechanic and/or handyman, YouTube is a tremendous boon. A few years ago I needed to replace the cooking elements in my double-oven and I found repair videos on Vimeo[1]. So I built a dolly and pulled my oven out[2]. It takes all the fear and uncertainty out of a repair you've never done before.

Videos have all the tips and tricks missing from conventional repair manuals and shop guides.

For academic material, I prefer the written word. For repairs around my home? I'll go to YouTube.

[1] https://vimeopro.com/fisherpaykeltechnical/training-videos/v...

[2] https://i.ibb.co/fkL0r3Q/IMG-2416.jpg

I appreciated it. Most of the time I would be interrupting my music or silence or disturbing those around me if I played videos. Friends send me links to video after video and I just can’t even review whether they are worth my time because of the above issues. At least text I can quickly scan to get a sense. I really regret how video has come to utterly dominate.

Thank you for sharing the articles.

I did not want to watch a video and preferred reading about this irrespective of the length of the video.

The video used modern social media length dragout techniques that make virtually all modern podcast like media so tiresome to listen to.

"You won't BELIEVE what everyone got wrong"

Here's the trumped up drama from people involved.

Here's an interview

Here's a restatement of the cliffhanger

Oops the author dropped enough info that I can read the Wikipedia article in 30 seconds. End streaming media.

The amount of "good podcasts" that are ultimately a Wikipedia page drawn out over 20-30 minutes is just ridiculous.

"Good tv" like a good john Oliver show or Frontline is chock full of information, further avenues of research if interested, and dense.

Geewhiz podcasts like these seem like the result of YouTube algorithmic game theory result rather than an improvement to the access and organization of info that Wikipedia represented.

I'm cranky this morning, sorry

That's not modern, that's been media since time immemorial. Geraldo spent 2 hours talking about what could be in Al Capone's vault only for them to finally open it up and it was empty. Magazines would print stories in serial format so you had to buy the next issue.

Writing and structuring to fit the length you want/need has been the norm for a century or two at least before social media came about. Hell, there's evidence that Shakespeare padded out a couple of his plays to fit the 4-pages per folio printing techniques of the time so that there weren't blank pages at the end.

Geraldo’s vault! Haven’t thought about that in a good while…

Or the camera in the great pyramid…3 hours of opening a door, entering a tunnel only to find another door.

Veritasium is much better than Shakespeare. If you dropped his videos 500 years ago it would have caused a minor revolution.

> "Good tv" like a good john Oliver show or Frontline is chock full of information, further avenues of research if interested, and dense.

I have seen John Oliver state errors or misrepresent data/leave out information in favor of the comedy/supporting a particular viewpoint. A good HN thread with people knowledgeable about the subject or in the field about a John Oliver episode will usually be full of more information.

This is the same reason I can't watch Dateline, where telling the story linearly and with just the facts would actually take about 3 minutes.

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