big data

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment explains how data brokers collect and sell personal information, including a stunt in which his team bought data to identify members of Congress.

Tantacrul examines sonification, the practice of turning data into sound or music, and critiques how scientists and musicians, including NASA and CERN projects, use it well and poorly.

Linus Tech Tips documents a major RAID failure on its Whonnock server and the attempt to recover the lost data with a data recovery firm.

A two-minute Big Think clip of Slavoj Zizek arguing that happiness is a conformist, even unethical goal. He asks why one would want to be happy when one could be interesting.

A Philosophy Tube video essay on data, surveillance and the algorithms built on personal information, touching on Cambridge Analytica and the 'nothing to hide' argument.

Physicist Angela Collier rants for 42 minutes about why violin plots are a poor way to show data, citing papers on violin and bean plots. It is part lecture on how to read distributions and part opinionated critique.

Tony Heller argues that US thermometer data shows a century of cooling and that NOAA adjusts the record to produce a warming trend.

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.

A Last Week Tonight segment on the tension between public and private weather forecasting, including NOAA data and AccuWeather's lobbying against free public weather data.

Coffee Break analyzes about 40,000 videos from seven months of YouTube's trending tab. It examines whether trending is biased toward mainstream media and late-night shows.

A long video essay by Kraut arguing that Trump's biggest failure was his handling of China. It spends much of its length on Chinese history, culture, the trade war, and the rise of a communist superpower.

Casey Muratori shows how typical 'clean code' object-oriented patterns can cost large factors in performance. He benchmarks them against simpler data-oriented code.

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.

Innuendo Studios' Alt-Right Playbook episode, drawing on Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind, argues that conservatism defends hierarchy and a shrinking in-group.

Tony Heller presents a short video arguing that climate science relies on data truncation, cherry-picking and selective presentation of statistics. It is a one-sided polemic against mainstream climate claims.

Physicist Angela Collier gives an hour-long critique of Avi Loeb's alien claims and reputation, placing them within the broader topic of physics crackpots. The Loeb discussion starts around the 24 minute mark.

Patrick Boyle analyzes SpaceX's IPO prospectus, covering its financials, speculative products, AI business, related-party dealings, compensation, and a governance structure with minimal shareholder rights.

Physicist and YouTuber Angela Collier argues in this hour-long video that AI as commonly described does not really exist. She covers the limits of the tools, biased datasets, and why they should not be used to make decisions.

Y Combinator partners Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell discuss how startups shifted from attracting outsiders to status- and money-seeking conformists. They give advice for nonconformist founders.

The Hated One argues that Apple tracks users and shares their data despite its privacy marketing, pointing to Apple's own privacy policy. It is a critical take on Apple as a corporation rather than a friend of privacy.

Nassim Taleb argues that evidence on terrorism risk presented in media is statistically naive, using extreme value theory without math to separate fat-tailed risks like Ebola and terrorism from thin-tailed ones.

Tom Scott recounts the worst typo he ever made, a subtle mistake in code with destructive consequences at a previous job. It is a cautionary tale about irreversible operations.

Patrick Boyle examines why birth rates are falling in nearly every country and argues the standard explanations do not hold up. He presents data suggesting fewer couples forming is a major driver.

Linus Tech Tips gives its 2020 breakdown of how the company earns money, including ads, sponsors, merch and affiliate links. It includes a pie chart of revenue sources.

A Last Week Tonight segment on tech monopolies, their hidden harms and possible remedies such as antitrust reform. John Oliver covers lobbying and legislation along the way.

Brian Will makes the case for procedural programming over object-oriented programming, arguing that OOP's promised encapsulation and decoupling are largely illusory. He analyzes real code examples and the problems of tying data to behavior in classes.

Folding Ideas uses the rise and fall of the YouTube competitor VidMe to examine why platforms are not friends to creators. It argues that alternatives to big platforms tend to attract the users banned from the original and lack a core vision.

A long video essay arguing that Koko the gorilla probably could not actually use sign language. It examines the cherry-picked data and the lack of transparency behind the claims, drawing on published critiques.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on the NCAA, arguing that the organization profits enormously from college athletes while insisting they remain unpaid amateurs. It covers the money in college sports, including big-school athletic spending, and the case for paying athletes.

CityNerd lays out a data-driven method for deciding where high-speed rail should be built in North America and identifies 56 city pairs that justify it, based on population and distance.

Patrick Boyle examines SpaceX's planned IPO at a roughly $1.75 trillion valuation. He covers the merging of other Musk companies, orbital data center claims and the fast-track index rules that may help the listing.

William Osman describes helping build parts of the MrBeast Squid Game event, including hacking together hundreds of wifi-controlled blood packs in about three weeks. He covers the chaos and near-failures along the way.

Linus Tech Tips argues that big air coolers beat AIO liquid coolers for most PCs. They compare quietness and temperatures, using the Noctua NH-U12A as the example.

A data-visualization style timeline of the early coronavirus outbreak events by YouTuber Nathan Rich. It lays out dates of key developments in China.

A short clip based on Zbigniew Brzezinski's views about the erosion of national sovereignty and his criticism of the war on terror. It is titled Political awakening.

Clip from a John Oliver segment showing Newt Gingrich arguing that feelings about crime matter more than FBI statistics at the 2016 RNC.