hot air

David MacKay, scientific advisor to the UK energy department, gives a Harvard talk on sustainable energy at macro and micro scale, drawn from his book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air. It stresses the land area renewables require.

A one-minute rap by George Hotz (geohot) aimed at Sony, made as an entry for a contest while Sony was suing him over the PS3 jailbreak. It is a humorous diss track delivered from the middle of the lawsuit.

Rick Hartley's AltiumLive keynote on differential pairs in PC boards. He argues the rules from cables and twisted pairs do not carry over, and covers which pair geometry gives the best impedance control, the right spacing, routing practice and how much skew is acceptable.

Wendover Productions explains how airlines make money from different cabin classes and why premium seats matter so much to profits. It also touches on how this shaped decisions such as the decline of supersonic travel.

The first lecture in an 18-part series on digital photography from Marc Levoy's Stanford CS 178 course, recorded at Google in 2016. The series covers how digital cameras work and computational photography, with slides and assignments available on the course site.

David Heinemeier Hansson explains what he learned about indoor air quality after his new house made his family sick. He covers CO2, VOCs, off-gassing, HVAC and ventilation, and cognitive effects, presented at a Basecamp meetup.

A University of Michigan Medicine demonstration of building a cheap DIY air purifier from a box fan and a HEPA or high-MERV filter using hardware-store parts. It explains why this helps against dust, smoke and viruses and ties it to local air quality readings.

An animated account of Day 1 of the Desert Storm air war on 17 January 1991, covering the 2,775 sorties flown against Iraqi strategic targets in the first 24 hours.

A Wendover Productions explainer arguing that major airlines make much of their profit from loyalty programs and co-branded credit cards rather than flying. It frames airlines as quasi-banks that sell points in bulk, using United's pandemic-era loan as a hook.

Louis Rossmann argues that Apple's Independent Repair Program is a PR stunt that misleads the public and burdens independent repair shops. He discusses parts access restrictions and program limits.

Huygens Optics shows through a laser interference experiment that the question of a photon's size is really about coherence length. It argues that photons exist as energy exchanges between radiation and matter, not as little particles in free space.

Huygens Optics shows how DIY photon sieves shape a laser's wave front, explaining how they differ from zone plates and how aperture count affects the focal point, with time-resolved visualizations of the diffraction.

An episode of the comedic You Suck at Photoshop series in which Donnie Hoyle teaches distort, warp and layer effects while vandalizing a Vanagon in the image. It won Webby awards as a how-to and comedy series.

A Wendover Productions explainer on how airport security is designed, covering screening layers, x-ray scanning, and the contrast with Israel's profiling-based approach. It walks through the logic behind why security works the way it does.

A Wendover Productions explainer on how budget airlines can sell tickets for under 10 euros. It covers the costs airlines face and how low-cost carriers structure their business.

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 Motherboard documentary episode from Nebraska about farmers and mechanics fighting manufacturers like John Deere over access to the diagnostic software needed to repair modern tractors. It shows how software locks have taken away farmers' traditional self-reliance.

This Old House's Ross Trethewey explains MERV filter ratings and how air filtration works, then shows how to build a localized DIY air filter, including a box fan with multiple filters.

Researcher Kamal Meattle describes how an arrangement of three common houseplants placed in specific spots can measurably clean the air in a home or office. It is a short TED talk based on his work in a plant-filled building.

An Engineering Giants documentary episode following a British Airways Boeing 747-400 through a D-check, the heaviest maintenance inspection, in Cardiff. The aircraft is stripped down and inspected nearly everywhere.

Adam Conover argues that billionaire philanthropy is harmful, using examples like Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard. He says we should stop accepting the myths about benevolent billionaires.

Hugh Jeffreys tears down the iPhone 13 and assesses its repairability, showing how Apple ties parts like the display and Face ID hardware to specific devices. He demonstrates that swapping parts, even genuine ones, can disable features.

A long Tsoding Daily programming stream in which he implements hot code reloading in C by loading a dynamic library at runtime without stopping the main program. It also touches on migrating struct versions across reloads.

Peter Sripol shows his homemade Part 103 electric airplane flying, built from hobby brushless motors and batteries. The video covers the first flight out of ground effect.

A one-minute clip from Insider showing an Airbus airliner's wings flexing far more than most people expect during a wing load test. It is meant to reassure nervous flyers about turbulence.

Louis Rossmann reacts to lobbyist ads in the Massachusetts right-to-repair ballot fight that suggest repair access would enable domestic abuse and discrimination, and urges support for the campaign.

Hugh Jeffreys tears down the iPhone 12 and assesses its repairability, focusing on how parts are serialized and tied to the device so swapping components between phones does not work.

A comedy song by the Irish duo Foil Arms and Hog about the experience of flying Ryanair, with its many upsells and indignities.

Hugh Jeffreys tests the iPhone 14 Pro and finds that swapping genuine parts between phones disables features, concluding that third-party repair is not really viable despite Apple's Self Service Repair program.

Boeing rehearses its 2015 Paris Air Show flying display of the Vietnam Airlines 787-9 Dreamliner, including a very steep takeoff and tight turns.

Louis Rossmann visits Apple Authorized Service Providers to see what repairs they can actually do. He finds, for example, that an iPhone 6 headphone jack is not repairable and requires an expensive board replacement.

Louis Rossmann examines a 2012 MacBook Pro logic board that Apple refurbished for GPU failures and that failed again. He criticizes the quality of Apple's authorized repair work and argues for right to repair.

A one-minute Rheinmetall promotional demo of Oerlikon Ahead air burst ammunition, which throws a cloud of sub-projectiles to destroy small air targets.

Louis Rossmann criticizes Apple's independent repair provider program as a PR move with invasive contract terms. He argues it does little for independent shops or customers.

A one-minute clip from HBO's Silicon Valley in which Gavin Belson describes the supposed persecution of billionaires in modern America by comparing it to the Holocaust. It is a satirical scene about tech-executive self-pity.

Louis Rossmann's half-hour teardown criticism of the Microsoft Surface Laptop, arguing its soldered SSD and glued construction make it effectively unrepairable. It ties into his right-to-repair advocacy.

A short Conan on TBS segment mocking Apple's new wireless AirPods and the removal of the iPhone 7 headphone jack, in the form of a parody ad.

A long George Hotz live-stream from June 2023 in which he works on tinygrad and rants about AMD's drivers, ultimately declaring he is giving up on AMD. It also touches on hardware and compiler topics.

Adobe's sneak-peek demo of Content-Aware Fill ahead of Photoshop CS5, showing objects being removed and areas repaired seamlessly with the delete key.

Dan Abramov live-codes hot reloading with time-travel debugging at React Europe 2015, debuting Redux and its devtools. The slides themselves are driven by application state.