hot code swapping

SethBling uses Super Mario World glitches to inject and run Flappy Bird code on an unmodified SNES, entering it purely with controller inputs. It was the first time a human completed this kind of exploit by hand.

A tool-assisted speedrun of Pokemon Yellow by MrWint that uses arbitrary code execution to push Game Boy hardware to its limits. Through crafted inputs it injects code and ends up running other programs, such as Tetris, inside the game.

MattKC fits a playable Snake game into a QR code by writing tiny x86 machine code and patching the ZBar scanner so it can run the decoded data.

OpenAI's 2021 live demo of Codex translating natural language into code, from Hello World to building a game and a Microsoft Word plugin.

A short film about the Erlang language, showing telecom systems built from lightweight processes and demonstrating hot code swapping. It is an edited version of the original Ericsson video.

A long George Hotz livestream in which he explores the coronavirus genome and molecular biology from scratch using a browser and Python, hacking on the science in real time.

The SIGGRAPH 2005 demo of dual photography from Stanford, which swaps the roles of projector and camera to render a scene from the light's point of view. It includes the reveal of a hidden playing card.

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.

A short demo of Code Bubbles, an IDE interface built around editable code fragments in bubbles instead of files. It was a research prototype for Java development.

A GameTrailers walkthrough from E3 2012 of an Unreal Engine 4 real-time tech demo with Epic's Alan Willard. It shows live code changes and hot reloading while the game runs.

A DevOps YouTuber tests GitHub Copilot on a range of Leetcode problems and finds it solves most immediately, with a few needing tweaks and some far off. He concludes it would outperform him in a FAANG-style interview.

A tool-assisted speedrun of Super Mario World that achieves arbitrary code execution through frame-precise controller inputs, finishing in 2:25. It was also performed live on real hardware at AGDQ 2014.

A live performance at AGDQ 2014 in which Super Mario World is made to execute arbitrary injected code, running other games like Pong and Snake on the cartridge. It is done through a TASBot feeding precise controller inputs.

A short Ericsson film demoing Erlang, showing concurrent processes, debugging tools, and hot code reloading, including crashing parts of a running system while calls continue.

A video presenting an Intel research paper on enhancing the photorealism of synthetic images. A convolutional network uses rendering intermediates, shown on GTA V footage that comes out looking like real street scenes.

A tool-assisted speedrun of Pokemon Yellow on Game Boy Color that uses glitches and frame-precise inputs to make the game execute an arbitrary program. It was later obsoleted by an improved run.

A WiebeTech marketing demo of HotPlug, a device that moves a running computer onto battery or another power source so it can be transported without shutting down.

A six-minute clip of Adobe's MAX 2011 sneak peek showing a Photoshop prototype that removes motion blur from photos. The audience reacts with astonishment as blurry images become legible.

Bruce Hauman live-codes Flappy Bird in ClojureScript in about six minutes, using figwheel to hot-reload changes into the running game. The demo shows game behavior being changed interactively without restarting.

The old announcement trailer for Hyperbolica, CodeParade's Unity game set in hyperbolic and spherical space. The creator has since posted devlog videos on building it.

Avi Bryant demos Dabble DB, a web-based spreadsheet-like database for building apps without code. It shows how users can model and relate data through a smooth interface.

A SIGGRAPH Asia 2013 research demo of 3-Sweep, a tool for extracting editable 3D objects from a single photo using a few user strokes. It predates modern AI image tools.

A tool-assisted speedrun of Ocarina of Time at Summer Games Done Quick 2022, using TASBot and arbitrary code execution to reach an alternate ending in about 53 minutes. The run is introduced by its creators and followed by an interview.

Jon Gjengset spends about three hours livecoding complex changes in a Rust codebase with agentic AI tools, testing his hypothesis that AI is weak at non-pattern work. He documents where Claude Code helps and where it struggles.

Mark Rober builds a hot tub filled with sand fluidized by air blown from below, so that the sand behaves like a liquid. He explains how fluidized beds work and shows people swimming in them.

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.

Fully Charged episode where Elliot drives the NIO ES8 SUV and visits a battery swap station that replaces the pack in about three minutes. It covers the ownership model of swapping and what it could mean for EV charging.

Tom Scott borrows a Nio electric car in China and shows its automated battery swap station replacing the whole battery in minutes. He explains how swapping serves as an alternative to charging.

Toyota's short promo clip showing a Mirai carbon-fiber hydrogen tank shot with a .50 caliber round at point blank range. The bullet pierces the tank, which does not burst, and the gas simply escapes and disperses.

A 3-minute demo of a tiny IOCCC 2012 winning C program that simulates fluid dynamics in an 80x25 terminal, using any text (including its own source) as input. The video shows the simulation running to Handel's Water Music.

Casey Muratori follows up his refterm proof-of-concept, a GPU-based terminal renderer, with a second part covering memory usage, glyph sizing and correct Unicode and VT handling. It is built to show that a terminal can be fast and correct without heroic effort.

A recording of the TASBot block at Awesome Games Done Quick 2017, where a robot plays games via tool-assisted speedruns, including Super Mario 64 and Portal on an SNES via arbitrary code execution, and ending with a Twitch Plays segment. It showcases console exploits and creative hardware hacking.

Tom Scott shows a full-size real-life emoji keyboard built from 14 keyboards and over 1,000 hand-placed stickers, covering all of Unicode 8.

Footage shot with a Nikon P1000 superzoom camera showing extreme optical zoom on distant targets from Ben Lomond in Scotland.

Big Clive tears down a cheap eBay digital caliper, explaining its capacitive linear encoder and measuring its quiescent current. He finds it surprisingly accurate and repeatable for its price.

Samuel Falvo II live-codes a text preprocessor and blog engine in Forth over about an hour. It shows Forth's dictionary being snapshotted and restored in place of mutation, and how a small Forth system gets real work done.

OpenAI's livestream demo of GPT-4 with Greg Brockman, showing its capabilities and limitations. Highlights include writing code, turning a hand-drawn sketch into a website, and a tax-question example.

Short HD closeup of a Tesla Model S battery swap, showing the pack lowered out and another pushed into place.

Declassified footage of 1950s tests of Project Orion, the nuclear pulse propulsion concept, including the Hot Rod prototypes flown on conventional high explosives. It shows the pusher-plate idea working in small scale.

A short visualization from HotNets researchers of routing and latency over SpaceX's proposed Starlink constellation, based on its FCC filings. It shows orbital shells, link topology and how inter-satellite routes could beat terrestrial fiber on long distances.