I am in a new job as of lately, and found myself wandering a lot in youtube, reddit and twitter. I also used ublock for removing the recommendation section and it makes my life much simpler. We should use an adversarial approach to all those UX hyper optimizations from big cos. I also had to install LeechBlock to limit my time on time wasting activities, now I sleep better and have an easier time focusing on work stuff, even just freeing some mind-CPU to accomplish more meaningful tasks. Glad that I am not alone in this battle for our own sanity.
How I spend less time on YouTube
171–180 of 220 posts
Re: How I spend less time on YouTube
#172> Am I the only one who launches YouTube just to watch a single tutorial and ends up devouring dozens of fine-tuned recommendations? I'm hitting 40 next week, and seeing others asking for recommendations of videos on "programming a microcontroller" (or programming related) is something I can't understand. One day I sat and watched some of the videos they were recommending, and in most of them there were a person talk…
I am a teen and I feel about it exactly like you, so it's not you getting old.
Re: How I spend less time on YouTube
#173> Am I the only one who launches YouTube just to watch a single tutorial and ends up devouring dozens of fine-tuned recommendations? I'm hitting 40 next week, and seeing others asking for recommendations of videos on "programming a microcontroller" (or programming related) is something I can't understand. One day I sat and watched some of the videos they were recommending, and in most of them there were a person talk…
for many things i prefer <2 min videos over text. I.e. how to create a graph in excel. Video would go like click here, here and then here. Article would go like first press ctrl+L then next to this, below that, your version may be different, click the button, then you will see xyz, on bottom right select this, .......
Re: How I spend less time on YouTube
#174What helped me was moving channels from YouTube subscriptions to RSS feeds. Thus I stopped opening YouTube homepage and play videos straight from RSS client. RSS URLs are " rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=
I’m getting a 404.
See where the OP put ?
You have to copy and paste the YouTube channel ID into that space, and then you can use the whole URL in an RSS feed reader.
Re: How I spend less time on YouTube
#175> Am I the only one who launches YouTube just to watch a single tutorial and ends up devouring dozens of fine-tuned recommendations? I'm hitting 40 next week, and seeing others asking for recommendations of videos on "programming a microcontroller" (or programming related) is something I can't understand. One day I sat and watched some of the videos they were recommending, and in most of them there were a person talk…
Every now and then I find a video tutorial for some computer thing very helpful—specifically, the kind where someone does something beginning to end with a screencast—simply because every single damn text tutorial was skipping one or more steps or pieces of context that I guess they thought were too obvious to mention. This is usually for set-up or config stuff, though. For programming I agree that videos are almost…
For me it depends on my mood. If I am in a rush and I quickly need to find how to do something, it can be hard to find Youtubers who are concise. But other times I want to hear everything there is to know about the process.
As a good example, across the PC building space, there are two Youtubers who actually refer to each other both Gamers Nexus and JayzTwoCents. In Jayz videos he knows he provides a summary so will refer you to GN for more in-depth detailed content.
Re: How I spend less time on YouTube
#176Youtube's recommendations for some reason are pitiful next to TikTok.
It may be an inherent advantage of the super-short format.
Re: How I spend less time on YouTube
#177> Am I the only one who launches YouTube just to watch a single tutorial and ends up devouring dozens of fine-tuned recommendations? I'm hitting 40 next week, and seeing others asking for recommendations of videos on "programming a microcontroller" (or programming related) is something I can't understand. One day I sat and watched some of the videos they were recommending, and in most of them there were a person talk…
Video tutorials are great for when the thing being interacted with is a user interface. They suck when they are just narration. People talk too slow.
They become great again when the video is stuffed with visual information and you kick the speed up to 1.5x.
I say this as some one who hates video being the default information channel.
Although to be fair I don't think it's just you getting old. Maybe the number of examples you need to see to classify something new goes down as you get older, but it's not like there aren't an endless stream of videos that could be short paragraphs of explanatory text (or 30 second clips instead of ten minutes of 'hey it's ya booooi SaladStreams here to hit YOU with the latest windows 10 tips!!!')
Re: How I spend less time on YouTube
#178My big problem with YouTube recommendations isn't that they're so good that I get sucked in; it's that they're so bad. I would happily spend more time on the site watching interesting videos if they only would show up in my recommendation feed. Instead, I get recommended the same old crap, all coming from a small set of the same video categories over and over again (except for the occasional America's Got Talent or a…
I've found the same thing. I like snowmobiling and I like Dota 2. Surely in the billions and billions of hours of content on YouTube, there's something else I would like as well, but the algorithm seems content to only ever serve me up videos from two categories.
Some kind of forced flavor in an "I'm Feeling Lucky" or "Discover Weekly" format would be a great improvement I think.
Re: How I spend less time on YouTube
#179The best way I’ve found to spend less time on YouTube is realizing that the vast majority of content is pure garbage and just stay the hell away from it. These days I only visit it when I need something specific (a tutorial on how to do a particular thing, a video the kid wants to watch, etc). And of course uBlock origin is enabled to spare me from the “unskippable ads that are longer than the video itself” experienc…
YouTube has some of the best, highest quality free content available on the internet today. Stay away from the crap, remove it from your recommendations, subscribe to some good channels. It’s that simple. Don’t if that’s not your thing but you’re missing out. If you change your mind here are a few exceptional channels to get you started, they should cater well to a HN style audience: Technology Connections (misc tech…
I personally disagree with the Wendover rec. Sure, they talk about logistics, but I find that they offer little to no new information that you couldn't glean from a cursory Google search. Sure it might not be something I knew about, and I might be interested in it every so often, but they clearly prioritize quantity of quality. Since they often cover random topics, I find myself questioning why I should even care.
Re: How I spend less time on YouTube
#180The best way I’ve found to spend less time on YouTube is realizing that the vast majority of content is pure garbage and just stay the hell away from it. These days I only visit it when I need something specific (a tutorial on how to do a particular thing, a video the kid wants to watch, etc). And of course uBlock origin is enabled to spare me from the “unskippable ads that are longer than the video itself” experienc…
YouTube has some of the best, highest quality free content available on the internet today. Stay away from the crap, remove it from your recommendations, subscribe to some good channels. It’s that simple. Don’t if that’s not your thing but you’re missing out. If you change your mind here are a few exceptional channels to get you started, they should cater well to a HN style audience: Technology Connections (misc tech…
Sad to see 'Not Just Bikes' lumped in with these great informative videos.
Not Just Bikes is extremely opinionated and is frequently swept up in emotional arguments and comparing apples to oranges. Shame really. But it definitely gives people the ammunition to pretend to fight for change (where in reality they are fighting for unrealistic expectations and to get their oranges into apples) and this leads to a feel-good feeling.
The rest of the list are extremely informative and interesting to many with next to no bias.