Documentaries HN loves
Curated by Claude · 10 videos · 14 hr 9 min
Feature-length and long-form documentaries that HN commenters recommend to each other, most of them an hour or more. It opens with the most welcoming of the lot, then moves through the history of computing and the hacker world, on to stories of science and the people behind it, and ends with films about how ideas spread and how societies fall. Pick one, settle in.
Play all on YouTube- 11:30:28
AlphaGo - The Movie | Full award-winning documentary
38.5M views • 6 years agoGoogle DeepMindFeature-length documentary following DeepMind's AlphaGo program as it prepares for and plays the 2016 match against Go champion Lee Sedol. It covers the team, the games, and the emotional reaction of the Go world to an AI beating a top human.The story of DeepMind's 2016 match against Lee Sedol works for technical and non-technical viewers alike, and one commenter calls it a timeless classic.
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James Burke Connections, Ep. 1 "The Trigger Effect"
764K views • 7 years agoDRS_EducationThe first episode of James Burke's 1978 BBC series Connections traces modern dependence on complex technological networks, starting with the 1965 New York blackout, and moves through ancient agriculture to Kuwait's oil-driven leap.James Burke's 1978 opener starts with the 1965 New York blackout to show how fragile our interlocking technology is, and HN brings it up in every blackout thread.
- 31:45:00
The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz | full movie (2014)
2.5M views • 12 years agomoviemaniacsDEThe full documentary 'The Internet's Own Boy' about programmer and activist Aaron Swartz, with interviews with family, friends and internet figures. It covers his work on access to information and the legal case preceding his death.The life of Aaron Swartz and the prosecution that ended it, which commenters call a must-watch for anyone who belongs to hacker culture.
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Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware (Full Documentary) | Future Cities | WIRED
15.7M views • 10 years agoWIRED InvestigationsA WIRED Future Cities documentary on Shenzhen, covering its hardware-prototyping culture and shanzhai copycat manufacturing. It looks at how the city's ecosystem evolved and what the rest of the world can learn.WIRED's tour of Shenzhen's prototyping markets and copycat factories, the film HN links whenever hardware startups and fast manufacturing come up.
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33:45Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED
56.9M views • 2 years agoVeritasiumVeritasium tells the story of how Shuji Nakamura and others made the blue LED, long thought nearly impossible. It covers the materials challenge of gallium nitride and the persistence it took.Veritasium's account of Shuji Nakamura's stubborn pursuit of the blue LED, which HN enjoys as a story of persistence against the consensus.
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42:30The man who almost faked his way to a Nobel Prize
4.2M views • 6 years agoBobbyBroccoliBobbyBroccoli's first of three parts on Jan Hendrik Schon, the Bell Labs postdoc whose fabricated organic semiconductor results nearly won a Nobel Prize. It covers his rise and the context around Bell Labs.The first part of BobbyBroccoli's series on Jan Hendrik Schon's Bell Labs fraud, the film HN cites whenever research misconduct comes up.
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1:25:52TempleOS | Down the Rabbit Hole
7.8M views • 7 years agoFredrik KnudsenFredrik Knudsen's 86-minute documentary on Terry A. Davis, creator of TempleOS, tracing his work, his schizophrenia and his decline. It is a chronological video essay built on his public posts and videos.Fredrik Knudsen's heartbreaking portrait of Terry Davis, his operating system and his illness, regarded on HN as the definitive account.
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3:54:44The Century of the Self (Full Adam Curtis Documentary)
3.8M views • 11 years agoDavid LessigAdam Curtis' multi-part documentary on how Freud's ideas and Edward Bernays' public relations shaped consumer culture and political control. It argues that business and government learned to manufacture desires.Adam Curtis traces how Freud's ideas and Edward Bernays's public relations shaped consumer culture, which one commenter says finally explained the why of American society.
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1:16:17In Search Of A Flat Earth
4.9M views • 6 years agoFolding IdeasDan Olson's 76-minute essay on flat earth belief, built around a hike to a lake to test earth's curvature. It examines the community, how YouTube promoted it, and how it connects to wider conspiracy thinking and QAnon.Dan Olson's compassionate essay on how people fall into flat earth and wider conspiracy thinking, called by HN commenters the best documentary on the subject.
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1:03:452. The Bronze Age Collapse - Mediterranean Apocalypse
8.2M views • 6 years agoFall of CivilizationsAn episode of Fall of Civilizations on the Late Bronze Age Collapse around 1100 BC, when many Eastern Mediterranean societies were destroyed in a short span. It explores the Sea Peoples and the lessons for modern globalised societies.Fall of Civilizations on how a connected Mediterranean world came apart around 1100 BC, a long view to end on after Burke's fragile networks at the start.