co-location

Tom Scott's long explainer on YouTube's copyright system, Content ID and the DMCA. He argues the platform's system is a workaround for a broader copyright system that does not fit the modern world.

Technology Connections explains why brown is not a spectral color but a context-dependent perception, essentially dark orange seen against brighter surroundings.

Mike Pound explains the discrete cosine transform and how it underpins JPEG compression. It is part two of Computerphile's JPEG series.

Technology Connections explains how old-fashioned non-electronic rice cookers work, using a magnet and spring switch tripped by the Curie point. It shows the thermodynamics and magnetism behind a simple appliance.

Technology Connections explains how the simple American drip coffee maker works, including the bimetal valve and bubble-pump heating, and compares the original Mr. Coffee with modern machines.

Technology Connections explains why single-hose portable air conditioners are inefficient and often a poor choice compared with window units. It details how the single hose pulls in warm outside air and wastes energy.

Tom Scott explains why confetti and snow wreck video quality, using interframe compression and bitrate. He demonstrates it live by changing the quality on screen.

Technology Connections explains the early history of analog color television, from the 1954 start of modern color broadcasting, and how shadow masks work in CRTs. It is the first in a series on how analog color TV works.

Technology Connections explains in 33 minutes why thermoelectric (Peltier) cooling is far less efficient than compressor-based refrigeration.

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.

A two-minute animated introduction to Bitcoin from 2011, explaining it as a peer-to-peer digital currency. It was widely shared in Bitcoin's early days as the standard newcomer explainer.

Technology Connections looks at why awnings disappeared from houses and how effective they are at cutting solar heat gain and cooling costs. It argues they are a simple, forgotten cooling technology.

Tom Scott explains Gricean maxims, the unwritten guidelines that shape how we understand each other. He uses examples such as why 'asbestos-free cereal' sounds suspicious.

Tom Scott features Kurtis Baute inside a sealed homemade biodome as carbon dioxide builds up, showing how stale air with elevated CO2 affects cognitive function. Sources include studies on CO2 and cognitive scores.

Technology Connections explains how RGB light and color work, from hue and saturation to color vision and how objects appear under different lighting. It uses a studio setup with colored lights to demonstrate the effects.

A short TED-Ed animated lesson by Anita Collins on what happens in the brain when people play a musical instrument. It argues that playing engages many brain areas at once, like a full-body workout, with long-term benefits.

Tom Scott explains for Computerphile how Unicode and UTF-8 grew out of messy older character encodings to become the web's standard. It covers why the design works and how it handles worldwide text.

David Kipping presents his proposed Terrascope, a telescope that uses Earth's atmosphere as a lens to achieve enormous magnification. He covers the history of telescopes and his path to the idea, plus Sol-scope and Jupiter-scope variants.

Ray Dalio's 30-minute animated video explains how the economy works through credit, debt, interest rates, and short- and long-term cycles. It is based on his template for understanding the economy.

3Blue1Brown explains the math and mechanics behind Bitcoin visually: ledgers, digital signatures, proof of work and the blockchain, building up a decentralized payment system from first principles.

Robert Miles explains instrumental convergence: why an AGI with almost any goal would tend to pursue sub-goals like self-preservation and resource acquisition. It builds on Omohundro's basic AI drives and his orthogonality thesis video.

An 11-minute animated introduction to P vs. NP and the wider landscape of complexity classes, inspired by the Complexity Zoo wiki. It assumes no background in computer science.

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.

A visual scale comparison of stars and cosmic objects, from planets up to some of the largest known stars, set to music. It is meant to convey the vastness of the universe.

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.

MinutePhysics explains that computers store brightness nonlinearly, so blurring and blending colors in raw RGB gives wrong, dark results. It shows why mixed colors, such as in gradients, look off.

Wendover Productions explains why Boeing's efficient 787 beat Airbus's giant A380, contrasting hub-and-spoke with point-to-point routes. It covers the economics of long-haul flights.

CGP Grey explains that postal codes are routing instructions for mail rather than geographic regions. He looks at the quirks and problems this causes.

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.

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.

CGP Grey's five-minute animated explainer on how copyright terms grew from 14 years to life plus decades. It uses Disney and Star Wars examples to argue the system has gone wrong.

Science journalist potholer54 examines the claim that SARS-CoV-2 came from a Wuhan lab, tracing the sources behind it and the weaknesses in the evidence.

A PBS Space Time episode asking whether Venus would be a better colonization target than Mars. It covers Venus's habitable altitudes, floating balloon habitats, and the term surfacism.

Vox explains the Berlin and Kay research showing that languages around the world tend to invent color words in the same order. It walks through the hierarchy and the debate around it.

Captain Disillusion's comedic, fast-paced explainer on how color works in cameras, displays and video. It covers the biology of color perception and what it means for screens.

An Every Frame a Painting video essay analysing how Edgar Wright creates visual comedy through framing, camera movement, editing, sound effects and music.

Sabine Hossenfelder asks whether complex numbers are just a convenient tool or necessary in physics. She discusses a recent paper arguing that quantum mechanics cannot be done with real numbers alone.

Smarter Every Day shares a binaural audio recording of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch made by Trevor Mahlmann, with explanations of the sounds including the sonic booms of the landing boosters. It is meant to be heard with headphones.

Veritasium debunks common climate change myths in under seven minutes, with references to NASA and published research. Topics include CO2 sources, sea ice and 1970s predictions of cooling.

An Adam Ruins Everything segment on the real facts of the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, covering the severity of the burns and the corporate PR campaign that painted it as frivolous.