error recovery

Joe Armstrong, inventor of Erlang, gives a GOTO Chicago 2018 talk on building fault-tolerant systems. He covers what to do and avoid when handling errors, arguing for letting processes fail and recover.

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.

Max Brunsfeld introduces Tree-sitter, a parsing system for developer tools that offers incremental parsing and robust error recovery through a uniform C API. The talk explains the design, based on LR extended to GLR parsing.

Nassim Taleb argues that evidence on terrorism risk presented in media is statistically naive, using extreme value theory without math to separate fat-tailed risks like Ebola and terrorism from thin-tailed ones.

An update from the Strange Parts YouTuber on his recovery from a brain injury caused by a metal pipe while filming, and his plans for the channel.

Linus Tech Tips documents a major RAID failure on its Whonnock server and the attempt to recover the lost data with a data recovery firm.

Chris Houser's Clojure/conj talk on why Clojure's exceptions destroy information as the stack unwinds, unlike Common Lisp's condition system, which can resume from the error site. He surveys the existing libraries that approximate conditions, explains why they don't compose with each other, and considers what a better design would look like.

Matt Might's Curry On talk on ending errors in code, both software and the human genome. He covers conservative approximation of the halting problem via static analysis and a computational approach to precision medicine.

Matt Parker's Royal Institution talk based on his book Humble Pi, covering everyday mathematical mistakes and spurious patterns that went wrong in engineering and software. It mixes stand-up comedy with stories of coincidence and error.

Veritasium explains how cosmic rays and other particles flip bits in computer memory, with examples including a Belgian election count error, plane incidents and game glitches. It is inspired by a RadioLab episode on bit flips.

MIT researchers show that sound can be recovered from silent video by analyzing tiny vibrations in objects such as a potato chip bag. It works even with consumer cameras by using rolling shutter.

The short printer-destruction-adjacent clip from Office Space built around the cryptic 'PC LOAD LETTER' error message. It pokes fun at unhelpful printer errors.

Nickolas Means recounts the 1979 Three Mile Island accident minute by minute, from the control rod insertion to the operator's decision to switch off emergency cooling. He argues that finding systemic causes is more useful than blaming individuals.

NASA JPL engineers explain the final minutes of the Curiosity rover's entry, descent and landing on Mars, which combined aerobraking, a parachute and a skycrane. It lays out the tight sequence of events that all had to work automatically.

Herb Sutter's CppCon 2019 talk on the split in the C++ community over exceptions and RTTI. He proposes making exceptions cheaper and more usable, including a zero-overhead, Result-like design.

NASA's animated explanation of the Curiosity rover's Mars landing, which relied on a complex automated sequence taking about seven minutes. It features NASA engineers discussing the risks before the 2012 landing.

Luca Sas's ACCU 2021 talk on Modern C, a style of C and C-like C++ aligned with data-oriented design. It covers centralized memory management, zero-is-initialization, error handling and API design.

Michael Feathers' GOTO Chicago 2018 talk on reducing error checks and conditional logic in code. He offers a framework for handling errors and decisions at the level of code and architecture.

A Second Thought video arguing that the CIA is responsible for serious crimes, coups and unrest around the world, with historical examples and further reading.

Veritasium builds a QR code by hand to explain how it works. It covers the history of Morse code and barcodes, how QR codes encode data, why damaged codes still scan, and how safe they are.

An ETH Zurich lab demonstration of a failsafe algorithm that lets a quadrocopter detect the loss of a propeller and recover, returning to its original position.

Real air traffic control audio of the Air Astana flight whose flight controls had been wired in reverse by a maintenance error. The pilots struggle to keep control while ATC tries to help.

A short clip based on Zbigniew Brzezinski's views about the erosion of national sovereignty and his criticism of the war on terror. It is titled Political awakening.

Cody's Lab collects a sample of dust from the side of a highway and refines it to recover platinum-group metals deposited by catalytic converters. The video walks through the chemistry of separating and assaying the precious metals.

Physics Girl creator Dianna Cowern shares an update on her health, struggling with long COVID and ME/CFS. It includes documentary footage and links for supporting her recovery.

Jason Scott's DerbyCon 2012 talk on rescuing the Prince of Persia source code from old floppy disks, working with the game's author Jordan Mechner. It is a story of digital archaeology and recovering data from ancient media.

Actress Claudia Christian tells how she overcame alcoholism using the Sinclair Method, which uses naltrexone to gradually reduce cravings. She discusses fresh perspectives on treating alcohol use disorder.

Clinical psychologist Dr Michael Yapko draws on forty years of practice and research to explain skills that help people recover from, and even prevent, depression. He emphasizes cognitive and social factors beyond medication.

Joe Grand recounts being hired to hack a Trezor One hardware wallet and recover $2 million of cryptocurrency. He describes three months of experimentation, voltage glitching, failures and high-stakes attempts with only one chance to get it right.

Peter Shor tells the story of how he discovered Shor's Algorithm, from his early mathematics days to the quantum factoring breakthrough. It was recorded at MIT at the Physics of Computation conference.

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.

Tom Scott recounts the worst typo he ever made, a subtle mistake in code with destructive consequences at a previous job. It is a cautionary tale about irreversible operations.

A short documentary clip of Japanese railway workers and Toyota staff using pointing-and-calling, a safety practice of physically pointing at and naming things while working. It includes examples from several railway companies.

A Google Tech Talk by Raymond Blum on how Google backs up massive amounts of data such as Gmail and Picasa. It covers scaling challenges, failure types, and approaches that did not work, including tape.

Cockpit footage of an approach to the Megeve altiport in France that ends in a gear-up landing, with the warning horn audible throughout. Everyone aboard survived and the crew had thousands of flight hours.

Chess YouTuber agadmator reports that YouTube took down his podcast with Hikaru Nakamura as harmful or dangerous content. It was later restored.

Internet Historian tells the story of No Man's Sky, from its over-hyped and badly received launch to years of updates by Hello Games that redeemed the game. It is a long, comedic mini-documentary.

An 11-minute guided Wim Hof breathing session built around an expanding and contracting bubble to pace the breath. Wim breathes along with the viewer over ambient sound.

Casey Muratori argues against smart pointers and RAII, advocating grouped-element thinking, zero-is-initialization and stubs as better ways to structure memory and handle errors.

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.