behind the scenes

A 1983 behind-the-scenes film about making the HBO 'Feature Presentation' starship logo sequence. It shows the handcrafted miniature city, motion-control cameras and practical effects.

Ivan Krstic's Black Hat talk on Apple platform security, including the Find My design that uses elliptic curve key diversification to locate offline devices privately. It also covers hardware features such as the T2 chip and secure boot hardening.

Destin of Smarter Every Day goes behind the scenes at the 23andMe lab to show how genotyping works. He also discusses DNA testing and privacy.

Matt Godbolt tells the story of Compiler Explorer, from a hacky basement server to a cloud-scaled service handling tens of thousands of daily requests. He also shows its features and how it is built.

Roman Elizarov compares Kotlin Coroutines with OpenJDK Project Loom virtual threads, looking at their design goals and how those translate into different implementations and tradeoffs. He addresses how the two can coexist.

Apple security head Ivan Krstic gives a Black Hat 2016 talk on iOS security, covering HomeKit, Auto Unlock and iCloud Keychain. He explains key hierarchies and how data can stay safe even in adversarial clouds.

Tom Scott and Matt Gray talk at Electromagnetic Field about making Emojli, an emoji-only messenger that began as a joke, how it was built and why they never want to do it again.

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.

Jenny Nicholson's roughly four-hour review of her two-night stay on Disney's Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser immersive hotel. She goes through the experience, its story and production, and why it failed.

Super Eyepatch Wolf analyzes why The Simpsons declined after its golden age, pointing to changes in the writers' room and a shift in the style and complexity of its comedy.

The wordless city montage from Mamoru Oshii's 1995 film Ghost in the Shell, in 1080p, showing the city and its people as Motoko travels by boat.

Mick Gordon's GDC 2017 session on composing the Doom (2016) soundtrack. He details his compositional process, production techniques and the experimental instrument and synth design behind the music.

A compilation of the hacking scenes from the 1995 film Hackers, featuring flashy visualizations of computer intrusion.

The Thought Emporium's update on the home-brewed gene therapy he took to cure his lactose intolerance. It reports how the effect held up over two years and what future versions might look like.

Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind gives the first of two mini-lectures on "ER = EPR", the idea that quantum entanglement and wormholes are related. It covers what lies behind black hole horizons.

The Thought Emporium synthesizes chicken noodle soup from pure chemicals, following an original patent for artificial chicken flavor. The video explores how many chemicals it takes to make a convincing soup.

The first lecture in Bartosz Milewski's category theory series for programmers. It covers the motivation and philosophy behind category theory and why composition matters for handling complexity.

Shaun's roughly 2.7-hour video essay on The Bell Curve. It covers intelligence, the g factor, IQ tests, IQ versus environment and the politics behind the book, with a critical reading of the sources.

Kyle Hill of Because Science explains and demonstrates, using real cards, how Magic: The Gathering can be used to build a Turing machine, a computer inside the card game.

A short clip from John Carpenter's They Live showing how the special sunglasses reveal hidden messages behind ads and media.

A three-minute side-by-side comparison of scenes from Star Wars (1977) and the WWII film The Dam Busters (1955). It shows how closely the Death Star trench run mirrors the earlier film.

Captain Disillusion's VFXcool episode, led by Alan Melikdjanian, takes a 41-minute nostalgic look at how the visual effects of Flight of the Navigator were made. It covers early computers, motion control, in-camera effects and practical crafts.

The first part of Lindsay Ellis's video essay series on the troubled production and critical reception of The Hobbit film trilogy.

Captain Disillusion explains the visual effects behind the Back to the Future trilogy. He covers ILM's motion-control, computer-controlled camera work and clever pre-CGI tricks.

A roughly two and a half hour YMS video on Kimba the White Lion that investigates the claim that Disney's The Lion King copied it.

A video essay from Pop Culture Detective arguing that The Big Bang Theory normalizes sexism and toxic masculinity through its portrayal of nerd men. It analyzes recurring tropes in how the male leads treat women.

Will Wilson explains autonomous testing: using deterministic simulation and fuzzing, building on FoundationDB's approach, to test software continuously. It sets out the ideas behind his later company Antithesis.

An hour-long video essay on Elite, the 1984 BBC Micro game by David Braben and Ian Bell. It covers how they fit a 3D engine, economy and universe into 22KB on a 2MHz 6502.

Thomas Garrity discusses mathematical maturity, a concept mathematicians use for professional development, and how it can inform teaching, mentoring and careers. It was given at the IAS/PCMI Park City Mathematics Institute.

Adam Neely examines Phil Ewell's paper arguing Western music theory is framed by a white racial perspective. He covers North Indian theory, alternative frameworks, Schenker and responses to the paper.

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.

Dean Friedman's near-hour-long introduction to synthesis, covering the building blocks of sound and the controls on a synthesizer. He slowly adjusts knobs so viewers hear what each parameter does.

Mathematician Kevin Buzzard explains why he believes the Lean theorem prover will shape the future of mathematics, and describes digitizing his university curriculum in Lean with undergraduates, plus the cultural challenges.

The first episode of Clickspring's series on reproducing the Antikythera Mechanism by hand, laying out the plan and the history. The series follows a machinist building the ancient Greek device with traditional tools and methods.

Physicist Angela Collier's roughly hour-long video on how string theory was hyped to the public and what that did to science communication. She traces the history of the theory as a narrative and argues it is interesting but was oversold.

PBS Space Time explains Noether's theorem: conservation laws such as energy and momentum are consequences of deeper symmetries. It also covers why those laws hold only under certain conditions.

An animated 11-minute tour of the whole field of mathematics as a single map, showing how pure and applied math and their sub-fields relate to each other.

MinutePhysics, with 3Blue1Brown, explains Bell's theorem using a Venn diagram paradox and polarizing filters. It shows why no local hidden variable theory can reproduce quantum correlations.

Andrew Huang teaches the basics of music theory in about half an hour, covering intervals, chords and patterns. He stresses understanding how music works over memorizing terminology.

Coffeezilla gives a comprehensive history of Tether, the stablecoin issued by a company controlled by the owners of Bitfinex. He lays out accusations that it is not fully backed.