government licensing

A short clip of Milton Friedman explaining who benefits from occupational licensing requirements, arguing they mainly protect practitioners from competition.

Peter Schiff, during his 2010 Senate campaign, argues that government loan programs and subsidies push college tuition up.

A two-minute clip from a March 2005 House Budget Committee hearing in which Paul Ryan asks Alan Greenspan about personal retirement accounts and social security solvency. Greenspan replies that nothing prevents the government from creating as much money as it wants.

John Oliver interviews Edward Snowden about NSA surveillance, including street interviews showing people have not thought about what the government can see. The segment famously frames the issue through private photos.

An Onion News Network satirical panel segment debating whether the government should stop pouring money into a giant desert hole during a recession.

A short TFiR clip of Linus Torvalds explaining why he thinks GPLv3 violates what GPLv2 stood for. He describes why he chose GPLv2 for kernel development and his view of the FSF's approach.

A Yes Minister sketch in which Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey meet the BBC and discuss its independence from government pressure. It is a satirical look at the relationship between the state and the broadcaster.

A short clip of Milton Friedman explaining his free-market view of monopoly, namely that monopolies persist mainly through government help. It is excerpted from the Milton Friedman Speaks series.

Rob Landley compares Toybox and BusyBox and surveys options for embedded system command-line tools, including GNU. He also tells the story of leaving BusyBox, Toybox becoming Android's command line, and licensing.

A satirical 'honest' government ad from The Juice Media about Australia's 2018 Assistance and Access anti-encryption bill. It lays out in blunt terms what the law would let authorities do.

A DEF CON 24 talk on how a cyber mercenary group could forge identities and create the conditions for overthrowing a government. It is entertainingly outlandish and includes a drone-mounted saw for cutting power lines.

A satirical 'Honest Government Ad' from The Juice Media that mocks Australian carbon capture and storage policy. It lays out the fossil fuel industry's influence and the weak results of the technology in a comedic format.

Milton Friedman lectures to physicians on the economics of medical care, arguing that government involvement raises costs and leads toward socialized medicine. He also discusses licensing and protecting patients from quacks.

Bryan Cantrill's OSCON 2015 talk on moving a proprietary product to open source, drawing on Sun's history with Solaris and illumos, licensing choices and the relicensing after Oracle's acquisition.

Jon Stewart interviews Ezra Klein about his book Abundance and why progressive goals get stuck in procedure and regulation. They discuss how to streamline government and what could be built without bureaucratic obstacles.

Keith Packard traces the 35-year history of the X Window System at linux.conf.au 2020. He uses X to examine licensing, corporate interests and community dynamics in free software, including Unix workstation vendors and Stallman's influence.

A Gamers Nexus investigative documentary on the black market for Nvidia AI GPUs, following smugglers, middlemen, and buyers, including reporting from China. It examines how export-restricted chips reach their users.

A short anarchist-leaning video by Larken Rose arguing that the Constitution and similar documents cannot legitimately grant anyone the right to take other people's property. It uses a rhetorical 'paper that lets me rob you' setup to challenge belief in political authority.

Gaming Historian recounts how Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in the Soviet Union and how a fight over publishing rights spanned the West, Mirrorsoft, Nintendo and the Cold War. It runs about an hour with chaptered parts.

Mikey Dickerson's keynote at Velocity NY 2014, one year after the healthcare.gov launch failure. He recounts how a small team rescued the site and what the episode showed about government IT contracting.

A three-minute clip in which Douglas Crockford explains why he allowed the JSLint reference implementation to be used for evil. It recounts the license clause and how corporate lawyers reacted.

Trevor Paglen's 30C3 talk on photographing and documenting the secret state, including CIA flights, spy satellites and military sites, to reveal the geography of covert programs.

A former libertarian argues against libertarianism, describing the worst-case scenario if government disappeared overnight. It is drawn from the School Sucks Podcast episode on the natural state.

Mark Blyth's Talks at Google presentation based on his book on austerity. He argues that government debt came largely from bailing out banks, and that budget cuts are a misguided response to the financial crisis.

A George Carlin stand-up routine arguing that rights are really temporary privileges that can be taken away. The uploader frames it with conspiracy-leaning tags.

A short Los Alamos National Laboratory safety video on how to use stairs, including handrail advice in a music-video style. It was posted as an example of government spending.

A one-minute clip from Yes Minister in which Sir Humphrey explains the role of a civil servant, listing the contradictory policies he has loyally served across eleven governments.

A short Newsweek clip of White House press secretary Jen Psaki saying the administration is flagging problematic posts to Facebook that spread COVID-19 and vaccine disinformation.

CGP Grey explains the City of London's unusual governance, including the Lord Mayor, guilds, and how it differs from the rest of London.

Naomi Wu visits the Shenzhen offices of smartphone maker UMIDIGI in person to get them to release source code they owed under the GPLv2, and they comply.

Douglas Crockford tells how JSON was discovered rather than invented, and how its simplicity made it a dominant data interchange format. He also covers surrounding history such as earlier Netscape usage and the 'Good, not Evil' license story.

A dotScale 2014 talk by Robert Kennedy, a former healthcare.gov SRE who later worked at Google, about the engineering effort to rescue the troubled site. It explains the technical and organizational problems behind the failed launch.

Bryan Cantrill's talk on corporate open source anti-patterns, first given at FISL 2012 and again at the Liferay Symposium. He lays out the mistakes companies make when open sourcing code, such as announcing future open sourcing, and discusses licenses.

TechAltar's history of Philips, once Europe's largest tech company and a world leader in lighting, radio and physical media. It traces how the company sold off or spun out its businesses, until little remains but the licensed name.

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 four-minute extract from the documentary The Fog of War in which Robert McNamara discusses the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He acknowledges that the second reported attack did not happen.

A subtitled upload of the leaked February 2014 phone call between US diplomat Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing Ukraine's future government, including the profane remark about the EU.

Level1Techs' Wendell shows Intel's Flex 170 GPU providing GPU-accelerated virtual desktops on Proxmox 8.1 without subscription licensing, using SR-IOV, and demonstrates many desktop instances running at once.

Louis Rossmann recounts calling NYC's Department of Consumer Affairs after his repair business was fined, only to find the agency staff could not explain what the law required. The call starts around 3:14.

CGP Grey's animated adaptation of The Dictator's Handbook, explaining how rulers stay in power by keeping a small group of key supporters happy rather than ruling fairly. It lays out selectorate theory and how resources shape regimes.