It is an interesting application of technology, and hits the "good use of oil and gas tech" button as well. So there is a chance that this was just a natural pickup from the company press release.

... But it definitely smells like a guerrilla marketing campaign.

I am highly suspicious of the Real Engineering channel. It seems like he does full on marketing videos for whoever is willing to pay or provide access. The video on Helios was suspect and so is this one.

Personally I thought the video was interesting. Even if it’s promoting a company agenda, the technology itself is cool. I learned some stuff.

I've noticed the same is happening with the Undecided with Matt Ferrell channel. I really enjoyed his content on green energy projects at the beginning, but it seems like lately he's just creating press releases in video form.

I've always felt Matt's channel was a bit too "cheerleady" (for lack of a better term) regarding the topics it covers. A lot of the videos seem to be in the format of: "Here's some long-shot green energy idea still in the concept/early planning stages of development. Here's a list of all the positives of this technology, and none of the downsides or challenges. What do you think? Is this the future? Leave a comment and subscribe!"

It just feels like I can't trust anything the videos say because they're completely unskeptical of everything they cover, which makes them feel way less informative.

All the "Real Engineering" videos I've ever seen were full of egregious factual errors, so I stopped watching them.

I follow the channel, can you give me few examples of these errors, as I have not noticed any (I'm not a subject matter expert, or maybe not paying attention enough)

I checked my bookmarks file to see if I had summarized any of their videos there, but if I did, I didn't tag them with the channel name, as I usually do for especially terrible videos. So, unfortunately, to give you examples, I would have to watch another Real Engineering video, which I'm unwilling to do unless someone pays me.

that channel is fine. Obviously, there are errors, especially if you happen to know a certain topic very well. Otherwise, the videos are info are fine for surface-level information.

The video being discussed in this thread started off with a rather contentious claim about the Earth being a giant fission reactor that was heavily debated in the comments. I’m not knowledgeable about the subject at all, but it certainly made me double take (and even open the comments!) and seems to be overstated at best.

The Earth definitely does not produce much heat in its core. Most heat produced in the Earth by fission is produced in the crust. Whether that amounts to "being a giant fission reactor" is a question of semantics; it's like an RTG, but doesn't sustain chain reactions.

I don’t see the issue. Videos like the one on Helios is one of the reasons I subscribe to his channel. I want to learn more about companies doing ground breaking innovation. Of course such a video has some PR aspects to it. Everyone knows that a company granting such access wants something out of it. This is almost high school level media literacy. You should take such videos with a heavy dose of healthy scepticism, but it’s still very interesting to watch.

And if he gets some money out of it which he can use to help fund production of some high quality videos on historical engineering topics now and then, that’s just a win-win IMO.

I am very skeptical of a fusion startup claiming to provide commercial power in the 2020s, and I would like any media to be appropriately skeptical as well. If it’s not, then I wouldn’t feel informed at all.

> This is almost high school level media literacy.

Was that necessary? Did it contribute anything to your comment? (It did for me, but not in a good way.)

His videos are genuinely very interesting and informative. If he does a promoted piece once in awhile that primarily dig into the science + engineering behind something while also getting a company's name out there, I don't really mind. (So long as it's disclosed)

Even Sabine Hossenfelder did a video about it today too: https://youtu.be/dOIlMdIqXbQ?si=FG4ZdDq6jkjk_nMp

Real Engineering video is here (I posted it then I saw this thread)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_EoZzE7KJ0

Pretty common PR for a company/organisation to reach out to various media to get coverage. There was probably a embargo of 1st March so everybody publishing right after that.

This phenomenon is something I would like to learn more about. Of course there is an element of frequency illusion mixed in, but this happens every now and again. Some random subject is all of sudden talked / written about by unrelated actors.

It doesn't necessarily have to be anything nefarious about it, papers and YouTubers need stuff to write and talk about after all. But at the same time that can be very beneficial for e.g Quaise in this case. How does it work, I'm guessing a "publicist" is involved somehow? How much does it cost? Has anyone here done something similar?

I worked both as a reporter and in public relations (not at the same time) and stuff like this happens for various reasons:

  - an institution can publish a report as part of a regular schedule (e.g. unemployment by the BLS) or as one shot thing (e.g. a study on clowns distribution in arid areas). This leads many reporters to publish articles about basically the same subject, but in an uncoordinated manner;  

 - PR agencies often coordinate with media outlets from various backgrounds and markets to publish about some particular topic (company, product, campaign, ...) either at the same time, or in coordinated waves;  

 - trends and public discourse can make it so that many sources cover almost the same thing at the same time (e.g.: bitch resting face, rat boy summer, ...);  

 - luck is, always, a factor.

My 2c would be:

- tech-oriented publicists / marketers definitely do know that HN exists and matters

- there are “benign” ways to game HN, like releasing at an optimal time for readership / upvotes

- there are less nice ways, like sock puppet accounts / botting

- all of these things are certainly done regularly

- it doesn’t mean that everything you read was an astroturfed psy-op or whatever.

It's apparently publicists "pitching" stories to 'relevant' reporters and 'influencers'/YouTubers.

I recently saw a xeet, from a columnist, complaining about irrelevant PR pitches; it gives some insight into how they work. See: https://x.com/dhume/status/1892994787734602001

I can confirm that this sort of phenomenon has happened to me and am as curious as you are to find out more about it

I mean, puff pieces exist, and basically every media outlet is a corporate mouthpiece. Don't be surprised by this.

Paul Graham has an essay on this subject from 20 years ago that's still very relevant.

>Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.

https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Probably closer to 100%, in the sense that everything you read is being pushed by someone, but accurate nonetheless.

In some sense, I supose, but that's now how I woud characterize traditional media covering e.g. natural disasters.

Thank you for calling this out. I noticed the same thing over the last few days but didn't recall the specific places I'd seen the topic popping up.

They are likely raising a round or preparing to, so would like to raise awareness of what they're doing. I think it's fine - you work on something by yourself for 2 years, you have something neat to show to world and need more money to keep going, so you invite folks over and show them what you've done.