8-bit computing

A minutephysics explainer showing that the Moon's path around the Sun is not a spiral but closer to a 12-sided polygon with curved corners. It argues the Moon arguably orbits the Sun rather than the Earth.

Veritasium explains why analog computing may suit AI workloads, covering old analog computers, The Analog Thing and Mythic's analog chips that use flash memory for neural network inference. It argues digital hardware is hitting limits.

Eager Space examines the practicality of putting data centers in orbit, walking through three scenarios with cost calculations and the launch cost reductions that would be required.

Veritasium explains how cosmic rays and other particles flip bits in computer memory, with examples including a Belgian election count error, plane incidents and game glitches. It is inspired by a RadioLab episode on bit flips.

8-Bit Show And Tell walks through the BASIC source code of the original Commodore 64 Sid Meier's Pirates!. It covers bugs, quirks and traces of abandoned features and scenarios left in the code.

Quanta Magazine explains the 2022 experiment that claimed to create a holographic wormhole on Google's quantum computer. The description now notes that a later independent analysis questioned whether any wormhole was created.

Scott Manley analyzes the idea of putting data centers in orbit, prompted by Lumen Orbit's funding. He examines the claimed advantage of constant solar power against launch cost, cooling and mass.

Kurzgesagt explores the idea that life might have arisen shortly after the Big Bang, when the whole universe was warm enough to be habitable. It discusses what that would mean for the origin and spread of life.

An Asianometry explainer on why the Soviet Union, once a leading computing power, fell far behind the US in computers by the 1980s. It traces the gap from the 1960s onward despite strong state support for science.

An episode of Plogue's chipresearch series on emulating the Yamaha DX7 from the hardware up. It covers the sub CPU and main CPU, address map investigation, cartridges, firmware analysis and a skeleton MAME driver.

A step-by-step animated explanation of how SHA-256 works, from padding and message schedule to the compression function and final hash, with source code for the animations.

Huygens Optics explains the Fourier transform and shows how a lens performs one optically. A DLP projector is used as a Fourier filter to do simple pattern recognition on lithographic character patterns.

Veritasium traces analog computers from the Antikythera mechanism and Kelvin's tide-predicting machines to fire control and modern analog approaches. It explains how these machines computed continuously rather than digitally.

A walkthrough of the Quake III fast inverse square root, explaining where the constant 0x5f3759df comes from. It covers IEEE 754 floats, the bit hack that approximates a logarithm, and a Newton's method refinement.

Scott Manley examines why SpaceX, Google and others are looking at orbital data centers. He walks through the economics, heat rejection and solar power arguments, with links to the Lumen/Starcloud and Google Suncatcher papers.

Scott Manley explains the thermal balance of spacecraft and how a satellite could be configured to radiate away the heat from datacenter-scale computing in space. His rough numbers suggest it is feasible.

Moon Channel, run by a lawyer, explains the legal basis for emulation, including the history of emulation case law and Nintendo's takedown of Dolphin's Steam release. It argues the legality of emulators is more fragile than most people assume.

Retro Game Mechanics Explained shows how the Atari 2600 draws images with almost no video memory, by having the CPU race the CRT beam line by line. It walks through the techniques in detail.

CGP Grey argues for picking a theme for the year or season instead of setting goals or new year's resolutions. He explains how a theme gives direction without a pass/fail target.

Dave Plummer tours the IBM z16 mainframe from design through factory assembly, test lab, accelerators and water cooling. He explains why mainframes still exist and what makes them reliable.

VFX supervisor Jonas Ussing examines what studios mean by "no CGI", showing how much invisible CGI hides behind practical-effects marketing. It is the first part of a multi-part series that includes analysis of doctored behind-the-scenes footage.

Veritasium's explainer on Godel's incompleteness theorems and the limits of mathematical proof, tracing set theory, Hilbert's program and the road to Turing and modern computing.

Climate Town traces the history of American parking minimums, how they came from shaky research and ITE guides, and how they shape zoning, cities and housing costs. It is a long, comedic video essay.

A 36-minute animated deep dive from Branch Education into how DRAM works. It shows how memory connects to the CPU and how billions of bits are stored in nanoscale capacitor cells. It also covers why DRAM sits between SSDs and the processor.

3Blue1Brown's discovery-oriented introduction to error correction codes, building up Hamming codes from the puzzle of locating a flipped bit. It explains the parity-check idea and why it is so efficient.

Real Engineering explains the engineering behind the James Webb Space Telescope, including its folding mirror, sunshield, orbit and cooling systems, and why deployment was so difficult.

Asianometry explains why India, a chip design powerhouse, cannot fabricate chips, tracing the 1980s government attempt to build a national semiconductor champion and how it collapsed. It includes the sabotage at the SCL fab.

Joe Scott takes a serious look at space sunshades as a climate fix, asking how big they would need to be, what they would cost and whether they would work. He draws on Roger Angel's paper and launch options.

Tom Scott explains how decades of deep coal mining sank parts of Germany's Ruhr Valley and changed its drainage. Pumps run by Emschergenossenschaft must now work permanently to keep towns and cities from flooding.