control algorithms

Dave Jones of EEVblog looks at a sub-3-cent microcontroller from Padauk and other obscure Chinese manufacturers. He shows how to find such parts and where to buy them in stock.

Tom Scott-style absurdist tour by Tom7 of SIGBOVIK chess projects: a tournament of 30 weird chess algorithms used to rate a color- and piece-blind chess program. Topics include mirrors, arithmetic encoding, perverted game tree search and a diluted Stockfish.

Reducible's visual walkthrough of the Fast Fourier Transform, motivated by polynomial multiplication. It shows how the FFT's key ideas can be discovered by asking the right questions.

Mark Rober digs into bed bugs, testing popular beliefs about where they come from and how to get rid of them. It mixes entertaining experiments with research-based advice on what works and what does not.

Mentour Pilot, a 737 instructor, explains the approach-to-stall and escape manoeuvre and why the 737 MAX needs MCAS while the 737NG did not. He covers the jackscrew and pitch behavior in terms a general viewer can follow.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day explains how a US Navy nuclear submarine surfaces through Arctic ice, filmed during the ICEx exercise. It shows ballast and control systems and the physics involved.

Matt Parker follows the community effort to speed up his slow Wordle-solving code, which ended up running hundreds of millions of times faster. He walks through the techniques contributors used.

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.

Wendover Productions explains why Amtrak trains run late: most Amtrak routes run on freight-owned track, and the law giving passenger trains priority is rarely enforced. The video covers rail ownership versus control and how freight carriers hold the leverage.

A Veritasium video on how a feud between Russian mathematicians led to Markov chains and the modern prediction algorithms built on them. It covers the history and the math behind them.

A 3D-animated walkthrough of a heavy-haul diesel-electric freight locomotive, covering the frame, coupling, draft gear, engine and drive systems. Made in Blender by Animagraffs.