Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it's ridiculous)

jeffgeerling.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 199 posts

Re: I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it's ridiculous)

#91

Post by dylan604 »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #76
geerlingguy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe me, I had a nice discussion yesterday with my sister (who helped me take pictures for the thumbnail), and we both agreed it's one of the dumbest things about current YouTube... The thing is, from all my own A/B testing, a face vs. no face will automatically get 20-30% more views (all else equal). And an exaggerated face, a bit more than that.

> an exaggerated face, a bit more than that Have you tested a difference between a regular expression (intrigued, skeptic, smiling...) and a goofy face? For science?

s/[intrigued|skeptic|smiling]/goofy/

guessing not the regex you were implying though

Re: I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it's ridiculous)

#92

Post by yessirwhatever »

rym_ wrote: post #7

I get so frustrated with the idiotic thumbnails on youtube video these days. I am sure it's all optimized for the maximum number of clicks/views but if I see a still that looks the way it does at the bottom of this page I generally just don't watch it on principle.

I came into the comments just to say exactly that. What’s worse is that OP is aware and admits it’s stupid, yet continues to engage in this shady, annoying, and extremely stupid tactic.

I don’t click on crap videos and content like that on principle. Interesting or not.

Re: I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it's ridiculous)

#93

Post by hinkley »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

The headline buries the lede: It’s a NAS build that uses expensive SSDs. I’m looking forward to the day that I can retire my spinning-disk NAS, but at $700 per 8TB SSD I think it’s going to be a while before they’re cheap enough that I want to take that leap. Like this article concludes: Using a Raspberry Pi for an SSD NAS is a huge waste. There are plenty of low-power Mini-ITX or smaller x86 boards with substantiall…

It's starting to look like we'll get spinning rust that speaks NVME, which will let people transition to SSD more gracefully.

Re: I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it's ridiculous)

#94

Post by geerlingguy »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #76
geerlingguy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe me, I had a nice discussion yesterday with my sister (who helped me take pictures for the thumbnail), and we both agreed it's one of the dumbest things about current YouTube... The thing is, from all my own A/B testing, a face vs. no face will automatically get 20-30% more views (all else equal). And an exaggerated face, a bit more than that.

> an exaggerated face, a bit more than that Have you tested a difference between a regular expression (intrigued, skeptic, smiling...) and a goofy face? For science?

Yes. Goofy face always wins :(

Though it gets an insane amount of backlash on HN (case in point: this thread).

Re: I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it's ridiculous)

#95

Post by opheliate »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #80
opheliate wrote: post #39

Really sad to see so many people dismiss this just based on the YouTube thumbnail at the bottom. Jeff consistently makes very high quality content, I really enjoyed his series on Kubernetes, I would urge you to look past any preconceptions there. The fact is, if YouTube makes up a sizeable portion of your income, and that can increase by a factor of 10% just by making a dumb face, you’d be silly not to do so. It’s un…

> The fact is, if YouTube makes up a sizeable portion of your income, and that can increase by a factor of 10% just by making a dumb face, you’d be silly not to do so. Sorry, I don't believe profit motive alone should ever be acceptable justification for making the world a worse place. You might argue that stupid faces and clickbait titles don't really make the world a worse place, and if that's the case we'll just h…

I agree if we’re talking about YouTubers who are already making millions, but if you’re a smaller channel making high-quality videos, I would imagine that view bump is the difference between being able to work on producing videos full time, and having to work multiple jobs.

At that point then, maybe the thumbnails do make the world a worse place, but I believe that’s offset by having more of the good-quality videos produced (since more time can be spent on them if you don’t have to work 2 jobs).

I’d be interested to hear your perspective on this. Obviously the same utilitarian calculus doesn’t apply if the content a channel is producing is crappy alongside the obnoxious thumbnails.

Re: I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it's ridiculous)

#96

Post by qwertox »

colechristensen wrote: post #72
geerlingguy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe me, I had a nice discussion yesterday with my sister (who helped me take pictures for the thumbnail), and we both agreed it's one of the dumbest things about current YouTube... The thing is, from all my own A/B testing, a face vs. no face will automatically get 20-30% more views (all else equal). And an exaggerated face, a bit more than that.

The question not being asked is how your audience changes A vs B in other ways than size. You can easily A/B test yourself into mediocrity by constantly optimizing for a larger, dumber audience. They stop liking your old content (despite your dumb faces, etc) so you make new content they like more, keep that cycle up for a while. And you end up making emotionally charged rage-porn political videos and have become the…

Also, I believe Jeff would have even more viewers if he held a bra instead of a Pi in his hand, with his facial expression being the same.

Jeff, could you do a test and report the results? ;) Maybe dealing with Raspberry Pis isn't as lucrative as you thought.

Other than that (I also get triggered by the thumbnail thing), your channel is one of the very best on YouTube.

Re: I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it's ridiculous)

#97

Post by geerlingguy »

0des wrote: post #75
geerlingguy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that can increase by a factor of 10% just by making a dumb face Think more like 20-30% — and not doing it leads to a much quicker falloff from YouTube recommendations, where over 90% of video views come from. I overlook dumb thumbnails when the content is actually enjoyable/entertaining/educational.

Noting the username, are you the guy in the video?

Yes.

Re: I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it's ridiculous)

#98

Post by yessirwhatever »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #86
colechristensen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question not being asked is how your audience changes A vs B in other ways than size. You can easily A/B test yourself into mediocrity by constantly optimizing for a larger, dumber audience. They stop liking your old content (despite your dumb faces, etc) so you make new content they like more, keep that cycle up for a while. And you end up making emotionally charged rage-porn political videos and have become the…

> The question not being asked is how your audience changes A vs B in other ways than size. That's not how it works. The most important factor to get views on YouTube is the recommendation algorithm. It makes a huge difference. YouTube will not even push your videos to people who are subscribed to you if the recommendation algorithm doesn't favor them. As the click-through rate is an important part of how the algorit…

What the parent comment said still applies. Algorithm or not, you can become a top pop singer either by having a really good voice and being talented or by being singling about how you enjoy something controversial just to create outrage. The only difference is your audience.

Re: I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it's ridiculous)

#99

Post by geerlingguy »

MR4D wrote: post #82

Jeff - you mentioned "Pi's bus being only Gen 2 and x1". Do you see a linear scaling if those interfaces on the Pi are improved - i.e. is there anything else that looks like a near-term bottleneck if those are improved? Great article - I love watching your youtube channel as well

Right now the CPU itself is also a bottleneck quite often. I'm often puzzled by why certain things slow down and find often the Pi's CPU architecture is slightly 'weird', especially in how the PCIe bus works.

I hope whatever comes next will have a more standard PCIe bus, and if nothing else Gen 3.1 or Gen 4, even if only x1 (that bandwidth would be a great boost).

Re: I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it's ridiculous)

#100

Post by cyberge99 »

Yeah don’t get all the gruff towards this. It’s an experiment and he took the time to put together a compendium and video about it. I’ve learned quite a few thongs from Jeff and not every creation is going to be an award winner, but at least he did something.
Post reply on HN