copy-and-patch

Karl Fogel's 2006 Google Tech Talk traces copyright from a 16th-century English censorship law to a distribution monopoly. It then surveys alternative economic bases for creation and distribution.

Randy Pausch's 2007 last lecture at Carnegie Mellon, given as he was dying of pancreatic cancer. He reflects on achieving childhood dreams, overcoming obstacles and helping others reach theirs.

A 1993 interview in which Steve Jobs talks about designer Paul Rand, who created the NeXT logo. He recounts Rand's insistence on presenting a single design and his uncompromising professionalism.

Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd, gives an Authors@Google talk in 2007 about the webcomic and his background, followed by audience Q&A. Donald Knuth and Guido van Rossum ask questions during the session.

Larry Lessig's TED talk argues that copyright law chokes creativity, drawing on John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights and the ASCAP cartel to make the case for reviving remix culture.

Nate Harrison's 2004 video history of the Amen Break, a six-second drum sample from a 1969 b-side that became the basis of hip-hop sampling, jungle and drum and bass. It is also a meditation on cultural ownership and creativity.

Douglas Adams gives a talk at UCSB, recorded shortly before his death, about the odd lives of animals and what they suggest about humanity's future. It draws on his Last Chance to See work and is funny and wide-ranging.

Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch gives a lecture on time management at the University of Virginia in 2007. He covers practical habits such as tackling important tasks first and distinguishing important from urgent work.

A short video of stretching and hand exercises for preventing and easing tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome, from a percussion teacher. The exercises were shown to him by a doctor.

Earliest known footage of Ivan Sutherland's MIT PhD work, Sketchpad, the first computer graphics system, with commentary by Alan Kay. It shows light-pen drawing with constraints in a short clip.

A short animation reconstructing a planet's looping orbit using Ptolemy's epicycles and deferents, with the epicycles tracing out the face of Homer Simpson. It shows how enough circles can reproduce nearly any shape.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt presents his moral foundations research in a TED talk. He argues that liberals and conservatives weigh a different set of moral values, which helps explain political divides.

John Allspaw and Paul Hammond's Velocity 09 talk on how Flickr achieved ten or more deploys per day through close cooperation between development and operations.

A short demo from the Ishikawa Komuro Lab of a high-speed robot hand paired with a 1000fps vision system performing dexterous manipulation. It shows what very low-latency vision and actuation can do.

The 1951 US civil defense film 'Duck and Cover', starring Bert the Turtle, which taught schoolchildren to drop and shield themselves during a nuclear attack. It was shown to millions of children and is preserved in the National Film Registry.

Lin-Manuel Miranda performs an early version of the Hamilton idea, then called "The Hamilton Mixtape", at the White House poetry and spoken word evening in May 2009. He is accompanied by Alex Lacamoire and the audience laughs along at the premise of a hip-hop song about Alexander Hamilton.

Noam Chomsky gives a Talks at Google lecture covering his work on politics and language. It touches on his linguistic theory, including universal grammar, alongside his political criticism.

A That Mitchell and Webb Look sketch in which a hospital A&E is staffed by homeopaths who dilute everything, leaving patients with nothing.

A short classic Sesame Street clip in which a mother sends her young daughter to the store to buy a loaf of bread, a container of milk and a stick of butter.

A one-minute clip of Alexander Overwijk drawing a near-perfect freehand circle, one metre across, in under a second on a chalkboard. He is a repeat winner of the World Freehand Circle Drawing Championship.

Penn and Teller help Rob Pike and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs play a prank on Nobel-winning physicist Arno Penzias. The clip shows the gag and its setup.

A short Fry and Laurie sketch in which a man returns from vacation to find his local police station has been privatized, with paid tiers of service. It satirizes privatization of public services.

An SNL skit featuring Tom Brady in a mock workplace training video on sexual harassment, where the difference between welcome and unwelcome advances depends on who makes them. It is a satirical sketch.

A Google Tech Talk by Steve Weis that introduces modern cryptography and its use in practice and at Google. It covers proofs of security and security definitions and a special topic. HN commenters treat it as a talk on verifiable electronic voting.

Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor on organ, shown with a Music Animation Machine bar-graph score instead of traditional notation.

Gary Vaynerchuk's Web 2.0 Expo keynote on building a personal brand in social media. He urges keeping a day job while building something on the side, with passion and persistence, in a loud and profane style.

A 1947 US military film that deconstructs how the Nazi regime used divisive propaganda and prejudice to split and control a population. It teaches viewers to recognise demagoguery tactics.

A short video advising how to handle a police stop by politely refusing searches and not answering questions, citing Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights.

Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Conservancy speaks at the 2009 Law of the Commons Conference about free and open software as a model for a new intellectual commons. The talk covers the legal and social case for sharing knowledge.

A clip of George Carlin riffing on advertising and the nonsense around it, taken from a longer piece tied to the Zeitgeist movie.

A short 2007 demo of Pizza Party, a command line program that orders Domino's pizza from a UNIX-like terminal. The video shows the designers placing an order using the software.

A clip from Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill about having a flag as justification for claiming a land.

A 1999 Qwest commercial in which a weary traveler at a remote motel is told every room offers every movie ever made, on demand. It was shot at Roy's Motel in Amboy, California.

The 1992 SIIA anti-piracy rap video Don't Copy That Floppy, warning kids against copying software, remastered and uploaded.

A two-minute animation of an Alan Watts talk arguing that life is like music: it is meant to be danced to in the moment, not rushed toward a final goal. It is a short, accessible take on living in the present.

Australian comedy group Axis of Awesome perform a sketch showing that dozens of pop hits share the same four chords. It was recorded at the 2009 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

An 8-minute clip of George Carlin's 1992 stand-up bit on the environment, arguing the planet will be fine and it is people who are in trouble. It leans on the contrast between Earth's 4.5 billion years and humanity's 200,000.

Matthias Wandel shows his wooden machine that adds binary numbers using marbles. It demonstrates computation with purely mechanical logic.

The first lecture of MIT's 1986 6.001 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, given by Harold Abelson, introducing Lisp and the idea of computer science as the study of process.

A Google Tech Talk by sleep researcher Dr. William Dement on healthy sleep and performance. He argues sleep debt must be repaid and describes the three characteristics of healthy sleep.