engineering progress

A short side-by-side demo of a large image loading over a slow connection in JPEG, progressive mozjpeg, JPEG XL and AVIF. It shows how each codec renders partial data.

A short clip demonstrating a phone-based social engineering trick in which a crying baby in the background is used to pressure a customer service rep. It shows how attackers exploit human sympathy rather than technical flaws.

A Consumer Reports and IIHS crash test pitting a 2009 Chevy Malibu against a 1959 Bel Air. It shows how much better modern cars protect occupants.

The earliest filmed version of the Turbo Encabulator technical-jargon parody, shot in the late 1970s with narrator Bud Haggert. It deadpans a stream of meaningless engineering language.

The trailer for Tim Hunkin's series The Secret Life of Components, eight guides to mechanical and electromechanical parts for designers and makers.

A spoof industrial promo for the Rockwell Retro Encabulator, a deadpan stream of technobabble about an imaginary machine. It is a classic engineering in-joke.

Sir Mashalot blends six formulaic pop country songs into one seamless mashup using Pro Tools. It shows how similar the songs' chords and structure are.

A short comedy video of the Turbo Encabulator, a piece of technobabble nonsense describing an imaginary machine in deadpan engineering language.

Bill Hammack of engineerguy uses slow motion video to show how the IBM Selectric typewriter works. He focuses on its fully mechanical digital-to-analog converter, which turns key presses into rotation of the type ball.

Tourist footage of the 660-ton tuned mass damper in Taipei 101 swaying during tremors from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The damper hangs from the 92nd floor.

Tom Lehrer's satirical song about Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who went from the Nazi missile program to the US space program. It includes the famous line about not caring where the rockets come down.

A short video of a Boeing 777 wing being tested to destruction, finally breaking at 154 percent of its designed limit load. The wing is flexed upward until it fails.

A short clip of Louis CK on Conan riffing that everything is amazing and nobody is happy, about complaining over modern wonders like air travel and wifi. The uploader added a note about the comedian's later misconduct.

Tom Lehrer performs his satirical song about rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, with an introduction. It is a two-minute musical clip.

A short clip of the Snowbird, a human-powered ornithopter built by University of Toronto students. On August 2, 2010 it sustained altitude and airspeed for 19.3 seconds, the first such flight.

A two-minute excerpt of Robert Kennedy's 1968 University of Kansas speech criticizing GDP as a measure of national worth. He notes it counts harmful spending while ignoring what makes life worthwhile.

A short satirical video, originally titled Broccoli Man, in which an engineer who only wants to serve 5 terabytes gets tangled in Google's internal resource and production processes. It is the source of the phrase about forgetting how to count that low.

A one-minute clip of Scotty from Star Trek giving advice to engineers about managing expectations in estimates. It is a comedic bit of workplace wisdom.

A short Boeing-supplied clip where the 737 MAX program's chief project engineer explains how the lengthened landing gear of the MAX 10 folds up. It shows the gear model in motion.

A Belgian bank-safety campaign video in which a supposed clairvoyant stuns people by revealing personal financial details, then shows he found them all online. It warns viewers to be careful about what they share and about online banking security.

Short British Pathe newsreel footage of the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as it twisted and swayed in the wind. The only casualty was a dog left in a stalled car.

A one-minute National Geographic clip of researchers Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo testing a theory that Easter Islanders used ropes to rock the moai statues upright to walk them to their platforms.

A Margin Call clip in which Will Emerson tries to persuade Eric Dale to return to the firm, and Dale recounts calculating the lifetimes saved by a bridge he helped build.

A short KRAZAM comedy sketch in which engineers explain an absurdly tangled microservices architecture to a manager. It parodies how backend complexity gets justified with jargon.

A short clip of Senate testimony in which Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is asked whether the NSA collects data on Americans and answers in the negative. The uploader presents it as a flat-out lie, later contradicted by the Snowden disclosures.

A short clip of John McCain, asked about Iran, singing 'Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran' to the tune of the Beach Boys' Barbara Ann.

A short video of Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 speech criticizing Gross Domestic Product as a measure of progress, saying it counts everything except what makes life worthwhile.

Boston Dynamics shows its Atlas humanoid robots running a parkour course with jumps, balance beams and vaults, demonstrating whole-body athletic control.

OpenAI's short demo of agents playing hide-and-seek in a simulated environment. Through self-play, the agents develop six progressively more complex strategies and counter-strategies, including tool use.

A three-minute clip of Richard Feynman using the rules of chess as an analogy for how science works, discovering rules by observation and sometimes meeting surprises like castling. It touches on incremental progress versus revolutions.

Additional camera angles of the 1988 Sandia National Laboratories rocket-sled test in which an F-4 Phantom was crashed at about 500 mph into a block of reinforced concrete. The footage shows the aircraft disintegrating against the wall.

A short Simpsons clip from Who Shot Mr. Burns Part 1 in which Mr. Burns declares the sun his enemy and plans to block it out.

A two-minute 2011 clip of an early uBeam wireless power demo. It shows a short-range ultrasound charging demonstration.

A one-minute Tesla clip showing multiple Tesla-built Optimus bots walking and learning about the real world.

Waymo's 2017 announcement that its fully autonomous vehicles are test-driving on public roads with no one in the driver's seat. It gives a short overview of the project's history and plans.

Boston Dynamics' New Year video shows its Atlas, Spot and Handle robots dancing to 'Do You Love Me?'. It showcases the company's progress in legged dynamic balance.

A Berkeley PR2 robot autonomously folds a pile of five previously unseen towels, shown at 50x speed. The video accompanies a 2010 ICRA paper from Pieter Abbeel's group.

A short CMU Robotics Institute clip on NavLab 1 from 1986, the first self-driving car to carry people on board. It was very slow but revolutionary for its era's computing power.

Boston Dynamics unveils a new, smaller Atlas humanoid robot that is electrically powered and hydraulically actuated. It balances with body sensors and uses lidar and stereo vision to navigate and manipulate objects.