dead reckoning

Raw 1991 home footage of a working Etak Navigator, the 1985 in-car navigation system that predated consumer GPS. It shows the system's cassette-based map display and explains its augmented dead reckoning using wheel sensors.

The classic Monty Python sketch in which a customer tries to return a dead parrot to a pet shop owner who insists it is only resting.

A Jimquisition episode by Jim Sterling demonstrating the Copyright Deadlock, where a video includes footage owned by several companies so that competing YouTube Content ID claims cancel each other out. It highlights how absurd the system is.

A Deadspin compilation of local news anchors at Sinclair-owned stations reading the same scripted message about irresponsible one-sided news. It was assembled by Timothy Burke.

Jim Keller gives a UC Berkeley EECS colloquium arguing that Moore's Law is not dead. He surveys upcoming technologies and the multiple innovation curves that can keep transistor density and performance scaling.

Armor expert The Chieftain explains why tanks still have a place on the modern battlefield despite drones and guided weapons. He responds to the 'tank is dead' debate, noting that tanks have been declared dead repeatedly since 1919.

David Sachs of InvenSense explains how gyroscopes, accelerometers and compasses work on their own and together, demonstrated on a modified Android handset. He covers sensor fusion algorithms and why rotation math such as Euler angles matters.

Louis Rossmann argues that reballing flip-chip GPUs is not a real fix for dead laptop GPUs. He explains why such repairs and oven reflow tricks fail and what is actually happening with failing hardware.

A 3-minute CGI animated sci-fi short by Dima Fedotov. An automated war system keeps a lone bomber attacking a long-dead city after humanity has been wiped out, until life finds a way to survive.

A Thoughtworks conversation among Martin Fowler, Kent Beck and David Heinemeier Hansson on whether TDD is dead. They discuss the tradeoffs of test-driven development, mocking and where TDD helps or hurts design.

BigClive explains why microwave oven transformer projects are extremely dangerous, since the high voltage and high current can kill. He contrasts them with spot welder builds where the secondary is replaced by low-voltage heavy wire.

Engineering Explained argues that internal combustion engines are far from dead, and discusses the continued development of ICEs and the problems facing electric vehicles.

A clip from Lex Fridman's podcast in which chip architect Jim Keller argues that Moore's Law is not dead and that transistor scaling still has lots of room. He also discusses how to break down hard problems.

Dwarkesh Patel interviews Richard Sutton, reinforcement learning pioneer, Turing Award winner and author of The Bitter Lesson. Sutton argues LLMs are a dead end because they cannot learn on the job, and that continual learning from experience will require a new architecture.

An IIHS news release video showing crash tests in which truck underride guards fail at relatively low speeds. The institute petitions for a stronger federal standard.

Dave Thomas, a co-author of the Agile Manifesto, argues at GOTO Amsterdam 2015 that Agile as a branded industry has lost its meaning. He says agile is an adjective, not a noun, and urges developers to reclaim agility.

Jack Rusher's Strange Loop 2022 talk argues that most programming languages are still designed around punchcard-era assumptions. He makes the case for live, interactive programming environments, drawing on Lisp, Smalltalk and REPL-driven development.

Dan Olson of Folding Ideas spends months in the virtual world Decentraland and delivers a long critique of the metaverse, NFTs and DAOs, and why virtual worlds fail as places.

Leo Dirac explains how transformer models have replaced LSTMs in NLP. He gives background from bag of words through RNNs and LSTMs, then a technical deep dive into multi-headed self-attention and positional encoding, with sample code.

An animated Kurzgesagt explainer on bacteriophages, viruses that kill bacteria, covering how they infect and burst cells and their potential as therapy against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The pilot of the British comedy series Look Around You, a deadpan parody of 1970s and 80s school science programmes, in which the scientists examine calcium.

A Computerphile video in which Rob Miles warns against assuming a general AI will think like a human. He uses the thought experiment of a stamp-collecting AI to show how a goal-driven system could pursue its aim with dangerous results.

A CppCon 2018 talk arguing that OOP has failed to deliver on reuse and performance, and presenting data-oriented design for C++ with practical worked examples from real systems.

PolyMatter's first part of a series on China's demographic collapse, covering the effects of the one-child policy, shrinking workforce and economic consequences.

Ori Bernstein gives an overview of Plan 9 at a NYC*BUG meeting. He explains what the system is, how it is built, what has happened since Bell Labs, and what its design teaches, with a live demo.

Not Just Bikes explains why crossing streets is dangerous in the US and Canada, where roads are designed to move cars fast, and contrasts it with Dutch designs for pedestrians.

A Movieclips excerpt from the 1989 film Fat Man and Little Boy in which John Cusack's character assembles a bomb core and a criticality accident occurs. It is a film dramatization of a real Manhattan Project accident.

Footage of the US Navy's Phalanx CIWS, a radar-guided 20 mm Gatling gun, firing in live target practice. The Phalanx serves as terminal defense against anti-ship missiles.

LegalEagle analyzes Katko v. Briney, the Iowa case about a homeowner whose shotgun booby trap injured a burglar, and the limits on deadly force in defending property.

A deadpan comedy video offering mock advice on defending your car from supermaneuverable fighter jets and air-to-surface missiles. It jokes about installing close-in Gatling guns and radar.

A short video promoting the claim that Madeleine Albright said the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children from sanctions were 'worth it', timed to her receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It reuses a 1996 Sixty Minutes interview clip.

A comedy song by onedeadtroll, from the Windows XP and OS X 10.3 era, lamenting that every operating system is bad. It features Wes Borg and Chris Smith.

A short compilation showing many local news anchors across different stations reading the same scripted statement verbatim. It is presented as evidence of centralized message control in local media.

A short clip of a Garry Kasparov press conference interrupted by a flying object in a prank. It is a brief, crude stunt video.

Tom Murphy (suckerpinch) shows 'reverse emulation', using a Raspberry Pi in an NES cartridge to give an unmodified NES new abilities such as playing SNES games. The video starts in a strange way and gets stranger.

CGP Grey explains why European diseases devastated the Americas while few deadly diseases traveled the other way. He ties it to livestock domestication, dense cities, and the ideas of Guns, Germs and Steel.

A short SIGBOVIK 2017 presentation by Tom Wildenhain showing that PowerPoint animations are Turing complete, with a working Turing machine built in slides. The talk is delivered deadpan as a serious research result.

Doug Zongker's deadpan conference presentation of his famously chicken-filled paper, given at the 2007 AAAS humor session. It satirizes academic talks while showing the pitfalls of bad presentation.

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.

Patrick Boyle's deadpan account of Saudi Arabia's Neom and The Line megaproject, a planned 170 km linear city that has been scaled back to a fraction of its size. He covers the feasibility problems and the financing.