grasp lab

A podcast episode in which GPT-4 red teamer Nathan Labenz describes using the model before release, finding it human-level but not human-like, and discussing its weaknesses and worrying capabilities. It closes with speculation about GPT-5.

Computerphile with Professor Brailsford on how a 1979 Bell Labs team reverse engineered a Linotron 202 phototypesetter over a summer to get high-quality print output. It covers typesetting history and the later 2013 rebuild of the famous vacation memo.

Brian Kernighan interviews Unix co-creator Ken Thompson at VCF East 2019. Thompson recounts how he was hired at Bell Labs, writing the Unix kernel in about three weeks, the origins of B and TMG, pipes, and other anecdotes.

Charlie Rose interviews Sir James Goldsmith in 1994 about the coming GATT free-trade agreement. Goldsmith predicts that global capital mobility will upset the balance between capital and labor.

An episode of This Week in Virology in which Vincent Racaniello interviews Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance about virus spillover, bats and wildlife sampling. It was recorded in 2020 during the early pandemic.

A two-hour Computer History Museum oral history interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, conducted by Paul McJones in 2015. It covers his youth, education at Aarhus and Cambridge, his career at Bell Labs and elsewhere, and the design and evolution of C++.

A short Frank Zappa interview clip on the decline of the music business, contrasting old cigar-chomping executives with younger industry people.

A short clip of molecular biologist Cristina Sanchez describing her lab research on how THC affects cancer cells. It is uploaded on a channel promoting cannabis as a cancer treatment.

Stripe's John Collison interviews Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about growth to around $5 billion ARR, model economics, agentic AI and vitalism.

Jellyvision hosts Basecamp founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson for a Q&A about open source, productivity, feature requests and taking care of customers.

The full-length Numberphile interview with mathematician and hedge fund founder Jim Simons. He discusses his path from mathematics and codebreaking to founding Renaissance Technologies, his use of algorithms in markets, and his philanthropy.

Sandy Munro interviews Elon Musk at Boca Chica about Tesla production, mega-castings, seats, structural battery packs and the difficulty of mass production.

A 1979 CBC radio interview in which Ted Nelson tries to explain how computers could serve as tools for thinking and visualizing. The interviewer keeps failing to grasp the idea, and Nelson patiently answers again and again.

A Computer History Museum interview in which John Markoff of the New York Times talks with Douglas Engelbart about his life and research. It covers the influences and struggles behind his work on the mouse, hypertext and collaborative computing, and his aim of helping humanity tackle complex problems.

A clip of Frank Zappa appearing on CNN's Crossfire in 1986, debating censorship and copyright. Zappa argues his position against record labeling and content restrictions.

A five-minute clip in which Erich Fromm asks whether the purpose of work is just making money. He argues that white-collar workers end up selling their personality, relating to others the way goods relate to each other on a market, and he points to creative pleasure, participation and usefulness to society as what work could offer instead.

A one-minute clip from the 1995 Steve Jobs interview in which he describes what he saw at Xerox PARC and what he missed. He says he grasped the graphical interface but not the networking and object-oriented parts.