HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ tgsovlerkhgsel

The obvious way to both utilize the unique properties of lasers, and solve the diffusion problem, would be operating this at a larger distance.

What he has can probably cook the steak from a hundred meters away.

⬐ Tuna-Fish

What he doesn't have is a hundred-meter room, and operating the laser array outdoors would be criminally negligent.

Of course, plenty of mirrors arranged just right could give the same effect with limited space, and also allow him to cook the steak from all directions at once. Clearly there are opportunities here.

⬐ tgsovlerkhgsel

Money can be exchanged for good, services, and access to some abandoned industrial facility with a long windowless corridor or even tunnel.

Sometimes, it doesn't even take money, just knowing someone who knows someone...

⬐ avian

I wonder, how many people will give themselves RF burns or permanent laser damage to their eyesight trying to replicate stuff they see in these click-baity videos?

YouTube is full of content that tries to give the impression of a random, edgy, not-quite-knowing-what-they're-doing guy just messing around with stuff in their parent's garage, woefully ignoring all safety concerns on camera.

I'm sure many of their viewers don't realize that in reality they are highly skilled, do in fact take care of safety behind the scene and basically run a successful business off videos attacting millions of views.

Seems unethical to me.

⬐ sandworm101

If you think these laser vids a bad, don't look at the chemistry ones. A laser might blind you or give you a nasty burn, but it won't kill you. Chemistry will see you, and potentially some of your neighbors, dead on the floor very quickly.

And those skydiving wingsuits channels. That is very dangerous. And the skiing ones. And don't even talk about all the crazy drifting/stunting/driving channels. I once saw a kid on a snowboard break his arm attempting a trick on that he had seen one youtube ... or was that the olympics coverage? Either way, such stuff is far far too dangerous to be allowed on the internet.

⬐ lgvld

;-)

⬐ vnchr

Forget it. No more Internet for anybody. Far too dangerous.

⬐ joe-collins

Circa the one minute mark:

> Oh yeah, and I should warn you that all the crazy stuff you're about to see was done completely for educational purposes. I mean if you were to try any of this stuff at home you'd probably die, so yeah, please don't try this at home.

This guy is a extremely casual in his attitude, but he never fails to talk about the danger of the devices he builds or of the relevant components.

⬐ asddubs

I mean, that video was so light on actual information, you would have a hard time attempting to replicate any of this without already knowing how to do it. That's what usually bugs me about youtube videos like this, it's a lot of showboating and gags, but the interesting part of how the build actually goes together is barely worth a mention. (Of course, you'd be greatly limiting your potential target audience if you really went into the weeds of things, so here we are)

He does mention laser safety in the video though

⬐ Rastonbury

If he mentioned how to do it the people who commented would be even more upset.

⬐ asddubs

Well yeah, I agree they probably would, I'm just saying that as it stands that complaint kind of falls flat (not that I'd agree with it if the video was more detailed, as long as there was some kind of warning). Although to be honest I think that danger is higher for relatively simple yet very dangerous projects like a microwave oven transformer jacobs ladder, rather than something that involves a fair bit of modification and equipment.

⬐ petermcneeley

I have an issue with your accounting. Educational videos like this lead to interest in science and technology. Some of those people will then become scientist/engineers/innovators. They may make contributions directly related to these topics. For example microwave beaming of energy that would eliminate our dependence on coal. These innovations will save hundreds of thousands of lives and create a better world.

Yet you choose to focus on the extremely tiny (and of yet no statistically provided citation) number of people that might be harmed by playing with the power of science that is simply beyond them.

So taking the total accounting into consideration; it would be unethical not to promote this content.

⬐ avianlyric

This YouTuber really seems to be taking the piss. Most of the others usually make it clear that they’re taking safety precautions far beyond what’s obvious in the video.

Do the experiments in the video safely requires strong knowledge in RF safety, laser safety, and high voltage electronics/power safety. And hopefully good knowledge of the underlying fields of work as well. It’s easy to get wrong with terrifying consequences, and takes time to get right and properly test your safety processes.

Having worked with high voltage systems, and laser systems (separately) it terrifies me seeing someone take such a casual approach. I spot all the safety precautions he's taking because I have the experience needed to look for it, but he’s blends it so well into the chaos that you wouldn’t notice them if you weren’t looking.

⬐ oceanghost

Honestly, he convinced me to take lasers much more seriously, and I purchased a set of proper laser goggles specifically because he said the cheap ones that come with Chinese lasers often don't work. Which I otherwise would have simply used.

⬐ oceanghost

I can't edit my post anymore so I'm replying to myself. Styropyro also did a review of a laser system I was planning on purchasing. Not only did he show me it was half price at another vendor but then admonished the watcher for doing something absolutely stupid.

⬐ mrfusion

Personal responsibility. We don’t need to baby proof life, brother.

⬐ ravi-delia

See that's why I love Electroboom. No one could possibly walk away from one of his videos thinking they should repeat an experiment without knowing what they're doing and expect not to get shocked. Slapstick showmanship might be the most ethical way to teach electronics.

⬐ reddog

Agree. I found it interesting but incredibly irresponsible. Grown up me knows enough to stay away from this kind of project but 14yo me would have been sourcing laser LEDs and junked microwaves minutes after viewing.

Don't understand how something like this can stand while other videos are pulled and the creators banned for life for simply expressing a politically incorrect opinion. Where is that editorial control when its really needed?

⬐ stevespang

I reported this video for it danger / safety issues - - - but YouTube is making tons of money off this "pretty boy" video with almost 2 million views - - at the expense of peoples lives.

We need more smart people to report this video - - put the heat on YouTube.

⬐ pengaru

> Seems unethical to me.

Wait, wait, hold on, let me get this straight; are you suggesting YouTubers act unethically?

⬐ junon

This isn't a clickbaitey video. This is styropyro, one of the most knowledgeable YouTubers when it comes to lasers and the related engineering. He's not just some dude who hooks up lasers to a wall outlet. He knows very well what he's doing. He always makes a point about proper laser safety.

Another one is Photonicinduction, an electrical engineer that plays with insane voltages in his attic basically. I'd never want to replicate anything he does because I would surely kill myself doing it.

That doesn't mean we should censor such channels. They're insanely educational, insightful, and fun. If some idiot thinks they're god and wants to emulate something they're clearly not capable of doing safely, that's not the fault of all of the rational viewers who know better.

⬐ kube-system

The person you are replying to isn’t at all suggesting that this person isn’t very skilled. Obviously they are.

The issue is, while many of us pick up on the shtick, there are many in the general YouTube audience who might not understand this.

I don’t think it should be censored either, I just think these people should take some time to talk about the safety precautions they use. Because some people who watch these style of videos don’t realize there are unspoken safety precautions happening in the background.

⬐ bdamm

He does talk about how fast his eyes would burn if exposed to the laser.

If it helps people get off the couch is it really that bad? I want my kid to grow up too, but protecting him from all harmful information is just going to turn him into a potato or worse.

⬐ kube-system

I never suggested anyone be "protected" from this information. Rather, that people should be given the whole story, instead of omitting information for shock value, entertainment value, provoking engagement, etc.

I am aware that he did give some information about the dangers during the video, but they were mostly presented in a "look how dangerous I am!" style, rather than a "this is dangerous but because of precautions [x, y] and understanding [z], this is not actually putting anyone at harm"

⬐ jrootabega

I think it is/isn't a clickbait video regardless of the credentials of who produced it. I agree this one is. It's padded out to 20 minutes, stealth mid roll ads inserted, etc. You don't get to be well-known on youtube by making non-clickbait content. I don't dispute that he's knowledgeable, though.

⬐ ubercow13

That’s not clickbait. The thumbnail/framing/title of this video isn’t deceptive. It delivers exactly what it says. What do midroll ads have to do with clickbait?

⬐ jrootabega

Eh, I think that's like saying gutting a fish is not fishing.

⬐ karmickoala

Parent didn't mention censorship.

You're considering that everyone watching this video knows who styropyro is and have watched all his past videos, including the ones with safety instructions (which may sound like a waste of time to some people with other cooler videos to watch). This looks like the curse of knowledge at play, because there is a demographic that may think it's fine to try this at home. My suggestion would be to simply include more visual disclaimers, because his presentation makes it look like it isn't dangerous, despite him warning sometimes (but always half joking). The current disclaimers are easily missed since there are some people who skip the video to the good parts and don't watch everything.

And just making clear that I want him to keep the jokes (like the moment at 3:20). Those are the best parts. ElectroBOOM does stuff like that too and it's great, but I think it conveys better how painful/dangerous it is. Perhaps if he includes an intro where he warns without jokes, and then adds some visual warnings throughout the video, would be enough. For instance, in this joke, it wasn't shown to a newcomer what he did to ensure it's safe to poke the microwave around like that.

⬐ amelius

I guess the guy was lucky that his laser goggles which were designed for 0.5 watts also worked for 700 watts.

⬐ junon

StryoPyro is 100% aware of the ratings for his goggles.

⬐ amelius

Why is he not promoting a more safe way to do things, though?

Often the safety measures take about as much time as setting up the experiment itself. In these videos, it looks nothing like that.

⬐ michaelt

Find me a better promotion of laser safety than this video by styropyro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbzbIGkPW-o

No amount of warnings could be as convincing as seeing a cheap "medical" laser that can ablate metal... even through the safety glasses that were supplied with it.

⬐ amelius

He's acting in a very careless way though. Saying things like "oh, let's try this on my hand", without thoroughly thinking about the possibilities where it could go wrong, looks really stupid. Perhaps he thought about it before he made the video, but in that case he still sends the wrong message.

⬐ gaze

Styropyro is one of the most universally reviled science YouTube channels among practicing scientists. Beyond doing really dumb shit, he runs an absolute cesspool of a discord server overrun with 14 year olds who build very dangerous laser contraptions, and then buy the cheapest, shittiest laser safety goggles, which are completely ineffective. He makes doing dangerous things in a completely unprepared way look cool.

⬐ mutant

No joke about that discord. It's abysmal.

⬐ daniel-cussen

You know those 14 year olds could very well go on to become great scientists. Doug Osheroff, a Nobel Laureate, says he knows several other Nobel Laureates who lost fingers from chemical experiments when they were children.

⬐ junon

> among practicing scientists.

Source please. First I've ever heard of this.

⬐ gaze

Myself and my colleagues.

⬐ junon

That's not a source. That's an anecdote. Don't passively dismiss people's work, it's insulting and against the guidelines of HN.

⬐ gaze

I am a source. I’m a practicing physicist, and have been cited numerous times. I’ve not passively dismissed anyone’s work, I’m actively dismissing it for good reasons according to my professional judgement.

⬐ junon

Okay but you are not an authoritative voice when it comes to generalizing the sentiment of an entire field against a single youtuber. Your being cited means very little in this context.

⬐ jimmaswell

Any "scientist" who "reviles" styropyro is no more than a gatekeeping elitist with a chance of envy. He clearly knows what he's doing, stresses safety all the time, and makes great, informative, entertaining content. I've never seen him do anything dumb or unsafe.

⬐ gaze

Why are you in a position to make those judgements?

⬐ avs733

I love that society has reached “I dislike you because you are teaching children to do dangerous things” is “elitist” point in its development.

Civ didn’t prepare me for this.

⬐ jimmaswell

Wanting to keep information vaulted away from the public and only available to the "right" people is elitist.

⬐ gaze

Quit being a baby —- there’s a huge gap between vaulting the information up and selling it to children. This information has been available for 60+ years for those who seek it out and put the work in.

⬐ micromacrofoot

the “wrong” people in this case are children, and the information is likely to cause injury…

⬐ jimmaswell

That's a parental supervision problem, not a reason to censor information on youtube.

⬐ geoduck14

I'm trying to assess your experience.

Can you please let me know:

How many kids do you have? Their ages? What activities they do? Your level of participation?

⬐ LargoLasskhyfv

In a very detached way of view kids are a renewable resource. Let Darwin do his thing.

⬐ micromacrofoot

The problem with parental supervision is that everyone tells you you're either doing too much or too little. No one is ever doing the right amount.

In general no one can fully monitor what their kids are doing online, and the tooling is woefully behind because it's antithetical to companies measuring engagement as success.

⬐ avs733

there is a difference between 'keeping information from the public' and 'being concerned that partial information is being presented'.

Free Solo is one of my favorite movies of the last decade. In the movie, they are fundamentally and consistently transparent about the sheer danger involved. It probably seems obvious to everyone, but there is danger. If the movie was just artistic shots of Alex Honnold climbing rock without a rope, that were shot in a way that 'simplified' the narrative to the climbing instead of the danger I would have a problem with that.

no one called for keeping information from anyone, they expressed concern that the method of communicating left out critical details that could injure children in a way they do not understand. You can point and laugh at me for doing the 'think about the children' thing but honestly you see children do stuff like this fairly often, because they are children. Your same logic could be used to say we should let children vote, drive cars, own guns, etc. Screw the game operation or doctor with friends, lets give them real scalpels!

⬐ dang

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. This was a noticeable step in that direction, hence the low-quality responses it evoked.

Your comment would have been just fine without the first sentence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

⬐ avianlyric

> If some idiot thinks they're god and wants to emulate something they're clearly not capable of doing safely

It can be difficult to know if you’re capable of doing something safely. Unfortunately you only find out that you’re not capable when it goes wrong.

There’s a reason why labs and engineering firms force people through long detailed safety training courses. There’s a lot of things out there that can kill or serious maim you, which look completely innocuous at first sight. Additionally there are many naive safety protocols that create the appearance of safety, without actually protecting people. Normally people only recognise poor safety setups because they’ve either been shown why it’s bad (plus accompanying horror story), or they’ve suffered the failure personally.

Simply opening up the side of a microwave while it off and disconnected exposes you to a shock risk capable of killing. Unless you take specific steps to make the microwave safe, it’s not hard to imagine someone taking the side of a microwave off after watching this video, without realising the danger within.

⬐ joe-collins

03:11

> Now I gotta say it, poking around in a microwave is not for the inexperienced. When electronics hobbyists get killed by their projects, it's almost always because they're messing around with microwave parts like these.

⬐ djmips

Do you have a source for that claim?

⬐ avianlyric

I think he could have done better and worked more warnings into his delivery as he went.

Simply saying something dangerous isn’t enough. People need to understand _why_ it’s dangerous, or they’re likely to ignore the warnings.

When he was messing around with the capacitors (the really dangerous bit in a microwave). It would have been easy to work in a sentence about how they have a high voltage, and touching them could kill you.

Equally when he was messing with the lasers, he didn’t explain the risk at all, or even demonstrate any safety equipment. Him simply wearing this laser googles on his forehead for the second half of the video would be enough to make it clear that he’s using safety equipment and not just winging it.

⬐ junon

I think you're making a lot of assumptions about someone based off of one video. If you've been a styropyro fan for a while, you'd know how serious he takes safety. He has whole videos about proper safety glasses and whatnot, and even destroys some to demonstrate that not all glasses are safe or even made correctly.

Almost every video of his mentions "if these lasers were on for even a second and I'm not wearing glasses, I would immediately go blind".

⬐ avianlyric

I’ll go watch more of his videos then.

To be clear I really enjoyed the video, and love videos like this, and want to see more. They’re incredibly educational, and do a fantastic job of lifting the curtain on the modern miracles of science we take for granted everyday, and demonstrating that normal people can understand them. With luck it’ll encourage more people to pick up science and engineering, and build new and interesting things.

But I do worry that sometimes the internet makes it very easy for people to put themselves into very dangerous situations without realising it. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for educational community on YouTube to be constantly trying to find new ways of teaching about the risks, in addition to messing around with the science.

⬐ azinman2

I absolutely agree. There will be laypeople who don’t understand because he hasn’t shown all the precautions taken. It could be actually interesting and informative for him to create a parallel video of the things he did to make it ok and link to it in the main video.

⬐ jowsie

These are all great points, for someone putting out a single video. When an entire channel covers a single subject matter with the same precautions etc each time, it's easier to just create dedicated videos to that information, otherwise each video you release comes with a 30 minute safety training section. Nile Red is another channel who does a lot of things that are potentially dangerous, and in editing will gloss over some of the safety precautions taken. He also has dedicated videos to lab safety for this purpose.

⬐ azinman2

If that’s the case he should at least point out and link to that video at the appropriate time. That wasn’t the case here. When he says “usually it’s because of touching parts like these” and then touches all of them, its not clear to a lay person that he might have discharged all the relevant bits and taken appropriate precautions.

The reality of YouTube is people send links to individual videos, much like this going on HN. People are going to watch a one off (such as myself right now) and not scan a channel for a meta-level warning video.

⬐ LargoLasskhyfv

No risk, no fun. Why so serious?

⬐ junon

> It can be difficult to know if you’re capable of doing something safely

Not really. Opening up electronics, fiddling with them, and then plugging them in, is pretty typically considered dangerous. It's such a ridiculous argument to say we should be censoring this stuff because it's dangerous to the untrained.

Should we censor professional cooking videos where they chop food really fast with sharp knives? Someone could cut themselves!

Should we censor videos of people who free climb large mountains? Someone could fall and die!

It's this sort of collective dumbing down of people that results in us having warning labels on hair dryers that say "do not use while sleeping". Censoring instead of educating is directly part of the problem.

⬐ avianlyric

> Not really. Opening up electronics, fiddling with them, and then plugging them in, is pretty typically considered dangerous.

With a microwave, just opening it up and fiddling is dangerous. No need to plug it in. The main capacitor inside stores enough charge at a high enough voltage to kill you. Unless you take explicit steps to discharge it, it’ll hold that charge for hours to days.

> It's such a ridiculous argument to say we should be censoring this stuff because it's dangerous to the untrained.

I’m not advocating for censorship. But there are plenty of other YouTubers out there doing similar videos, but they do a substantial better job of explaining the risks and danger, and do so in an entertaining way. I think it’s reasonable to expect YouTubers like this to place appropriate warnings in their videos to make it clear how dangerous their work can be. Those warnings don’t need to be boring or distracting to be effective, it just requires some imagination to integrate them well into a video.

> Should we censor professional cooking videos where they chop food really fast with sharp knives? Someone could cut themselves!

People encounter knives on a day-to-day basis. It’s reasonable to assume that everyone knows that knives can be dangerous when misused. The same can’t be said of lasers and microwaves.

Lasers and microwaves are particularly dangerous due to reflections and refractions, and can pose a significant danger to more than just the experimenter. Lasers bounce around a room, if that room isn’t properly sealed there’s the potential for escaped light to blind someone outside your lab. If you don’t have proper access control on your lab, then you can accidentally blind someone entering it without the correct PPE. If someone grabs a cheap high class 4 IR laser off the internet (which really isn’t hard) and plays with it in a bedroom or garage, there’s an extremely high risk they’ll blind family members. If they’re wearing the wrong type of laser goggles, then they also risk blinding themselves. With an IR laser, you can’t even see the beam. You’ll only know you’ve walked into it when your retina starts burning.

With microwaves, the signal can easily penetrate walls and other non-metallic objects. If you don’t have a faraday cage, or it’s not properly tuned for the frequencies you’re working with, then those microwaves can travel into other rooms and cause significant interference with other electronics (including pacemakers) and cause metallic objects to accumulate significant voltage potential.

All of these risk are non-obvious because the electricity, and RF radiation behave in extremely non-intuitive ways. We have no natural fear or understanding of these phenomena because they’re only dangerous in purely artificial, man made, conditions.

Knives, mountains, fire etc we’ve got thousands of years of evolution telling us those things are dangerous. Laser, electricity and microwaves only became a danger a human is likely to encounter 100 years ago.

> It's this sort of collective dumbing down of people that results in us having warning labels on hair dryers that say "do not use while sleeping".

I don’t think people have ever been very good at evaluating these risks and acting appropriately. If we were, then safety courses would be unnecessary. The only thing that’s changed in the past 100 years, is that we’ve figured out how these technologies will kill and maim us. Now we have the knowledge, it seems stupid to make further blood sacrifices to relearn it.

⬐ junon

Sorry, I simply don't agree with your point of view.

⬐ avianlyric

Out of interest, have you ever worked with equipment like this? Or in an environment that contains this type of equipment?

Trying to avoid a personal attack here. But having worked in environments that deal with high voltage equipment, and high power lasers, been through the safety training, and also been prevented by co-workers from touching/doing something that would have seriously injured me. I’ve developed a healthy fear of electricity, microwaves and lasers.

Once you make enough silly mistakes that injure you, and meet enough people missing fingers, have serious, work induced, chronic illnesses and know people that died. You start understand how little stands between you and the abyss.

I think I can be tricky for people to really comprehend the danger until you’ve seen the photos, met the people, and made your own mistakes.

⬐ junon

> Out of interest, have you ever worked with equipment like this? Or in an environment that contains this type of equipment?

Yes.

⬐ kortex

Not junon, but I agree with them. I have a chemistry degree, years of chemical safety training, years of practice as a fire artist and performer, and a huge fan of all these high energy science channels. My hobby is basically doing this same kind of "don't try at home" content, sans uploading it, and in fact the thought has crossed my mind to start a channel.

There is only so much "don't try this at home" disclaimers can do. NurdRage and NileRed probably have the best disclaimers, but even then they are no excuse for actual safety training and experience. There is too much to cram into one safety brief.

Should we censor all woodworking videos of old timers with outdated safety habits?

There comes a point of "we are all adults here" and if you are not, you are probably a dumbshit teenager doing dumbshit stuff without adults knowing. I got my start doing dumbshit dangerous chemistry without any assistance of YouTube, it was all forums for me and there were no warnings, it was just implied that what you are doing has risks and you should look into them. And yeah I had my injuries and near misses, nothing awful thankfully.

If you have any inkling of self preservation, you learn what is required for at least a modicum of safety, and you ask questions of those also in the hobby how to do things safely. The great thing about these channels is that they nucleate and create a nexus for people interested in this stuff, often on Reddit, which is like the one-forum-to-rule-them-all (though I do rather miss the phpbb ones depth)

I think what bugs me about this attitude is it basically implies sharing dangerous knowledge is unethical. Let's say we censor StyroPyro, are people going to suddenly not be tempted? No, they are just going to find other outlets for their curiosity.

⬐ avianlyric

Again, at no point have in endorsed censorship. In fact I quite explicitly said I don’t endorse censorship.

I just saying that people can do a better job of sign posting the risks, and pointing people to resources to help them learn about the risks, and how to mitigate them, without having to sacrifice fingers and toes.

> you are probably a dumbshit teenager doing dumbshit stuff without adults knowing.

Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to help them understand the risks. We’ve all been dumb shit teenagers at some point. The lucky one have adult mentors that help do dumb shit without killing themselves, I don’t see why we can’t aspire to make videos that provide that guidance to everyone.

⬐ kortex

I can definitely get behind the sentiment, but it becomes a game of "how much is enough?" Like take woodworking. There are a lot of operations on the table saw which require certain techniques to prevent pinching and firing the piece at high speed. Does every video that features a table saw deserve a safety brief on all the things you shouldn't do with a table saw? Or can we just delegate to a safety FAQ and maybe the manual of the saw in question?

More topically, what if we just put all the laser safety stuff in a laser FAQ?

https://styropyro.com/laser-faq/

⬐ avianlyric

Don’t see anything wrong with putting it all in an FAQ. But then you should at least call out the FAQ in the video at the relevant point. Something simple like “this is very dangerous, make sure you educate yourself before trying anything similar, see my FAQ linked in the description as a place to get started”.

⬐ LargoLasskhyfv

Fire in a built-up environment, or indoors can be very counterintuitive, too. Fast. If you haven't experienced it, you can't know. Also the next one can be counterintuitive differently, depending on environment. I'd guess the same is true for large forest fires, but I haven't experienced those, so far. Phew!

⬐ crmd

I would rather see my kid risk a burn taking lasers and motors apart, versus her risking depression and body dysmorphic disorder from passively following toxic video game streamers and Instagram influencers.

The amount of gatekeeping-cum-concern trolling in the tech community is as abundant as it is timeless. I hope more of the next generation of young scientists get their start from nilered, photonicinduction, styropyro, etc.

⬐ avianlyric

I’m all for kids doing dumb shit, getting hurt, and learning valuable skills and life lessons. It can be very educational and fun for all parties involved.

Where I get concerned is when people are playing with tech can a easily move from “skin burn that heals in a week” to “partial / complete loss of sight in one eye” with little obvious indication that you’ve crossed that boundary.

Lasers in particular can be very nasty in this space. An simple 1mW green laser will look basically identical to a 1mW IR laser. But the IR laser has a real risk of causing partial sight loss because it not visible, so you don’t blink or look away when it shone in your eyes. Instead the first indication of a problem will either be pain or partial loss of sight, at which point the damage is done and can’t be repaired.

To further complicate things damage to eye can also depend on if the laser is pulsing or running continuously. So laser that seems “safe” when operated continuously can become extremely dangerous when pulsed.

Finally if you’ve got a laser that burn your skin. Then it’ll annihilate your eyes in a instant. The optics in your eyes have a focal magnification of about 100,000x so 1mW/cm2 becomes 100W/cm2 once it hits your retina. Which itself is not the most robust organ in the body.

In short things like lasers create a difficult to control hazard that pretty much targets on of the most sensitive, important and difficult to repair parts of the body, the eyes. People live perfectly normal lives missing fingers and toes, with 3rd degree burns and horrific scars. But permanent sight loss is a totally different ball game, it’s high impact, life long, and we have pretty much no technology that can reverse it.

So please, encourage your children to mess around with technology, take stuff apart. Burn fingers, break bones and slice up hands. But for the love of god, protect them permanent sight or hearing loss. Let them lose that stuff at music festivals or too old age. And doing that mean making sure they really understand how dangerous lasers can be, and how something a simple as taking your goggles of at the wrong moment can have huge life altering ramifications, before they start playing within anything more powerful than a DVD player.

⬐ crmd

With respect, I feel like you have some phobias relating to electricity and magnetism and accidental blindness. I understand your recommendation and hope you find relief and stay safe.

⬐ gaze

No, that’s a completely healthy level of respect. Maybe you just don’t value your eyes or understand lasers. I’m sorry to tell you that you have to live in a world where other people do value their eyes.

⬐ avianlyric

It’s not a phobia when it’s informed by the lived experience of others. I’ve messed with lasers before, I still have my eye sight, but it was a little horrifying to discover how innocent and non-descript a laser capable of blinding is.

If we were talking about working with extremely strong acids, or radioactive sources, I doubt you would consider being worried about severe chemical burns, or radiation poisoning from accidental ingestion a phobia.

For some reason people think lasers aren’t dangerous, or need be high power CO2 lasers for metal cutting to be dangerous. I suspect it’s because the majority of lasers that people encounter (such as DVD players) have scary warning on them, and yet staring into them is hardly dangerous. But eyes are extremely delicate and easy to damage. Our blink reflex provides all the protection you need for pretty much every normal day-to-day scenario you’re gonna encounter. But lasers are not a normal risk, and the blink reflex frequently isn’t enough to save you.

I guess you also believe that safety glasses when using a saw is a waste of time as well. And there’s no point wearing a mask while welding either.

⬐ londons_explore

Each of those laser array chips is ~$300 when bought as a factory reject from China.

He has 9 of them...

Is YouTube really profitable enough to spend $2.5k just in parts, not to mention the other components and a few days to assemble test and film this?

⬐ tgsovlerkhgsel

This video has 1.7 million views. Old estimates, before YouTube cranked up the ads to an unbearable level, were $1-$3 per 1000 views, and that's just for ads, not the sponsorship.

Besides, it's also his hobby. I have no doubt his channel is at the very least financing his hobby.

If you look at even more popular Youtubers, yes, YouTube can be extremely profitable and justify immense production values.

⬐ djmips

You've probably spent that on a vacation. Is your life so profitable that you can spend that money on a vacation? Get some perspective. This is also his hobby.

⬐ gusgus01

It's of course dependent on a lot of factors, but after the twitch leak a video game content creator released a video about his revenue via YouTube and twitch: https://youtu.be/0DtTwGFwcQs

Plus he has utilized them for several videos which helps amortize the cost.

⬐ wruza

>138K yt subs, most popular videos around 220K

And this isn’t even that high! It almost hurts, smh.

⬐ wodenokoto

Prime subs make up almost half his revenue. It might seem like that is expensive for Amazon, but it is almost impossible to watch a stream without the streamer talking about Amazon Prime multiple times throughout the stream.

It must me the most heavily advertised in-stream / in-content thing of all time! Advertisement time for VPN's got nothing on Amazon Prime!

⬐ wruza

You didn’t watch it to the end, did you?

⬐ wodenokoto

Not knowing the man hour seen on twitch and youtube, I don't know how I'm supposed to begin comparing those numbers.

⬐ Rastonbury

It seems you aren't aware but he has 1.8m subscribers, he probably makes enough that he does not need a full time job as with most youtubers that size

⬐ agumonkey

Maybe he earns money elsewhere too. Tips, side gigs. The dude is highly educated he probably figured out various schemes to fund his passions.

⬐ boldslogan

quick googles says $4.18 per 1,000 views

and that has 1.4M views so maybe it looks like it? Not to mention the cool brand building etc. I mean youtube is the new tv shows and maybe they want to make videos for a long time so why not.

⬐ sdfhbdf

There is no average CPM that can easily let you calculate revenue from AdSense from view count alone. It’s often cited by youtubers that their individual rates vary vastly: https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-creators-say-ad-reve...

> YouTube creators are paid a certain rate for every 1,000 views, which varies depending on a variety of factors.

⬐ base698

I have no idea if true but I've heard a heuristic is 1 subscriber equals $1/year.

⬐ blamazon

Styropyro has been making videos with high view counts for around ten years.

⬐ wodenokoto

Have you seen the insane studio and production value of MKBHD?

They use better cameras than what some theater releases are shot on.

I definitely can't work out the budget of a youtuber either, but there is money to be made.

Speaking of which, does anyone know if Mr. Beast is actually giving away wads of cash and expensive cars on his channel? The only TV show I can think of that gave away more money was when Oprah gave everyone in the studio a car.

⬐ tgsovlerkhgsel

Using the old $1-$3 per 1000 views rule of thumb, Mr. Beast could surely afford doing that, especially once you consider sponsorships, merch, and other sources of revenue.

⬐ pell

The MKBHD studio tour was very entertaining to watch and definitely taught me that I have no idea about YouTuber economics. They have a permanent fixed multiple thousand dollar camera just for those topdown shots.

⬐ jowsie

Mr Beast is 100% giving away everything he claims too. There are a few videos of him talking about the process, which basically involves convincing sponsors to bank roll the giveaways.

⬐ jakoblorz

It's interesting to see the learning/development styropyro documented with in videos. If you like this one, his other videos might be interesting too

⬐ Fiahil

Wait, cooking a banana with a microwave oven can destroy it ?

⬐ wruza

You can make plasma bolts^W balls in it with just two grapes.

⬐ avianlyric

Cooking a banana in a microwave oven operating at 3x it’s design power can destroy it.

Also worth remembering that consumer microwave ovens are commodities that have been value engineered to within an inch of their life. They operate well under “normal” usage, but there isn’t much slack in the design to accommodate more creative uses.

⬐ JKCalhoun

For me the presentation/presenter puts me off the video/channel.

⬐ tinco

Instant subscribe for me, what's wrong with the presentation? If you don't have anything nice or productive to say maybe refrain from commenting in the future.

This guy obviously put a lot of effort into this video, it's a cool project, impressive display of skills and knowledge and he manages to be both funny and educational at the same time. What's not to love?

⬐ kristopolous

the largest demographic on youtube, by far, is children. if you ignore that and you're trying to make a living from youtube you're doing it wrong.

⬐ randombits0

I get what you’re saying. It takes a bit to get it. My first impressions were likely similar to yours. But…

Then it starts to sink in. This guy knows more than most experts on the topic. Either he’s playing to the gag or he simply is the way he is. That’s when it becomes entertaining.

⬐ amelius

To get a more even heating, he should try heating with a moving gamma knife.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosurgery#Gamma_Knife