8-bit computing

IBM's Dr. Talia Gershon explains quantum computing to five people of increasing expertise: a child, teen, college student, grad student and professional. The WIRED series format moves from simple analogies to technical detail.

A demonstration of SymbOS, a multitasking operating system for 8-bit Z80 machines, running on a real MSX turboR with an MP3MSX card and a CF IDE interface. It shows the OS playing audio and running a graphical desktop on very old hardware, captured from the real machine and not an emulator.

A short Google video introducing the Quantum AI Lab, a partnership between Google, NASA, USRA and a 512-qubit D-Wave Two quantum computer. It covers the lab's early goals and some potential applications of quantum computing.

CGP Grey's sarcastic animated video adapted from the book How to Be Miserable, listing habits that reliably make people unhappy. By inverting the advice, it shows what to avoid and prompts reflection on goals and routines.

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.

BJ Fogg of Stanford's Persuasive Tech Lab argues that lasting change comes from tiny habits, such as flossing one tooth or doing one pushup, anchored to things you already do.

A Reason TV segment, drawing on Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation, argues that Bitcoin works as an escape hatch for people living under authoritarian governments and inflating currencies.

A 1973 AT&T training film made for new employees at Bell Labs' Holmdel Computing Center, when Unix was in its third version and running at 16 computer centers in the Bell System. It shows how users submitted jobs and used the center's machines.

In a CNBC interview with Becky Quick, Warren Buffett explains why he sees bitcoin as an asset that produces nothing. He contrasts it with productive assets such as a farm.

Andreas Antonopoulos answers a Bitcoin Q&A question about energy consumption in mining. He argues that mining is arbitrage for the cheapest electricity, drives investment in renewables, and that the traditional financial system has hidden externalities.

An animated Gabbard diagram of objects in low Earth orbit from 1959 to 2021, showing altitude over time. It highlights major debris-generating events and how low-altitude debris decays out of orbit.

The 8-Bit Guy explains how character LCD screens work and how to control them directly, first part of a series.

A PBS Infinite Series episode explaining the mathematics of quantum computers, including how qubits store complex numbers and how quantum computation differs from classical computation. Hosted by Kelsey Houston-Edwards.

CuriousMarc runs the program 'Edith' on a 1959 IBM 1401 mainframe at the Computer History Museum. The program prints a famous line-printer image on the vintage machine. The video is part retro-computing demo and part joke.

Andreas Antonopoulos answers a question about how to secure your Bitcoin. He covers holding your own keys, backing up the 12 to 24 word seed phrase, and the tradeoffs of custodial accounts, phone wallets and hardware wallets.

Motherboard's 2014 visit to a secretive Bitcoin mining operation in a repurposed factory in Liaoning, China, one of six sites producing about 4,050 bitcoins a month. It shows the machines and the workers' living conditions.

A tool-assisted speedrun of Pokemon Yellow by MrWint that uses arbitrary code execution to push Game Boy hardware to its limits. Through crafted inputs it injects code and ends up running other programs, such as Tetris, inside the game.

Dave Ackley gives a high-level introduction to robust-first computing, which prioritizes robustness over efficiency in computer architecture. A sorting demo illustrates the idea.

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.

A live performance at AGDQ 2014 in which Super Mario World is made to execute arbitrary injected code, running other games like Pong and Snake on the cartridge. It is done through a TASBot feeding precise controller inputs.

The 8-Bit Guy covers IBM's 1981 CGA graphics system, including how composite output and artifacting produced extra colors beyond the nominal palette. He argues CGA looked better in period than it does on RGB monitors.

The 8-Bit Guy explains the color limitations of 1980s computers and consoles such as the NES and Commodore 64. It shows how sprites, attributes and palettes shaped the look of old games.

The 8-Bit Guy reviews the Color Maximite 2, a modern ARM-based computer that boots straight into BASIC. He shows what it can do as a retro-style machine.

PBS Infinite Series explains how Shor's algorithm lets a quantum computer break RSA encryption, building on earlier episodes about cryptography and the math of quantum computers. It works through the idea step by step.

Ben Eater's short update announcing his plan to build another 8-bit computer from scratch on camera. It kicks off the breadboard computer series that became widely known.

The opening episode of Ted Nelson's Computers for Cynics series, in which he casts doubt on conventional accounts of computer basics. He argues that conventions and packaging are mistaken for technology.

An 8-minute explainer on the Lightning Network and how it relates to Segwit, Bitcoin and Litecoin. It covers how off-chain payment channels route payments to scale blockchain transactions.

Coffeezilla investigates the company behind the Rabbit R1 AI gadget, alleging a shady history as a crypto and NFT startup and questioning its large action model claims.

Builder Matt Risinger freezes water-filled copper and PEX piping capped with SharkBite fittings to see which survives. The video compares how each pipe type handles freezing.

An excerpt from Russell Barkley's lecture on ADHD, focusing on inhibition, impulsivity and emotional regulation. It explains ADHD as a problem of response inhibition and emotional impulsivity.

Scott Manley uses a realistically scaled Kerbal Space Program setup to show why dropping something into the Sun is far harder than it sounds. It demonstrates the need to cancel orbital velocity.

A 2017 video arguing that banks and Blockstream steered Bitcoin toward the Lightning Network. It is partisan commentary from the Bitcoin Cash side of the scaling dispute.

A Fully Charged episode on Ubitricity, a German company that turns ordinary street lamp posts into roughly 5 kW overnight EV charge points, with a locking cable and managed billing.

CuriousMarc connects a restored 1930 Model 15 Teletype to a Linux machine and uses it as a terminal, after commenters requested it. The video shows the challenges of linking a 5-bit mechanical device to a modern OS.

A documentary by Stuart Brown (XboxAhoy) on the history of first-person shooters on the Amiga and how Doom's arrival affected the platform.

Making-of video about ROM City Rampage, the NES version of Retro City Rampage, covering how the game's core was crunched to run on real 8-bit hardware and how NES games are made.

Onslaught's Bad Apple 64 is a Commodore 64 demo that streams over 2000 frames of the Bad Apple animation from a single disk side at 12fps, with each frame packed to around 70 bytes.

Freespin is a demo that runs on a Commodore 1541 floppy drive. It makes sound by vibrating the drive head and video by toggling the serial bus lines, and it keeps running after the C64 that booted it is disconnected.

A short demo reel of the 1985 Silicon Graphics IRIS 2400 workstation animating flat-shaded polygons on a 68010 CPU. It shows the early SGI graphics that preceded their later fame.

Eon is a demoscene production by The Black Lotus, released at Revision 2019 and designed for an Amiga with OCS chipset, 512 kB chip and 512 kB fast memory. This is the party version, which has some known glitches.