id software

A short clip of the Super Mario Bros 3 proof-of-concept PC port built by id Software's founders to pitch Nintendo on a PC version. Nintendo passed, and the same technology led to Commander Keen.

Folding Ideas examines weird, algorithm-gamed children's content on YouTube, from automated toddler videos and educational spam to exploitative prank channels. It looks at how autoplay and recommendation systems reward this material.

A short animated explanation of the power split device in Toyota-style hybrids, a planetary gearset that works as an eCVT. It shows how engine and motor power are combined.

The 1992 SIIA anti-piracy rap video Don't Copy That Floppy, warning kids against copying software, remastered and uploaded.

Andrej Karpathy's Databricks talk on Software 2.0, the shift from human-written code to code produced by neural network training. It covers how developer work moves toward curating datasets, the advantages and challenges, and opportunities for new tooling.

An LGR Oddware episode looking at Sony's MDH-10 MD Data drive from 1995, which used MiniDisc for computer storage years before Hi-MD. The host tries out the drive with its original drivers and software.

The official music video for David Hasselhoff's synthwave track True Survivor, written for the film Kung Fury. It is an 80s-style pop song from the Kickstarter-funded movie.

CGP Grey explains the history of the US Social Security card and number, and why they became a de facto national ID despite never being meant for it. He also covers why America resists a proper identity card.

Practical Engineering's explanation of the February 2021 Texas winter storm and the resulting power grid outage. It lays out the facts about ERCOT, the grid's isolation, and how generation across fuel types failed in the cold.

A Last Week Tonight segment on the US opioid epidemic, tracing how prescription painkillers fed addiction and heroin use. It is the first of three episodes the show devoted to the crisis.

Practical Engineering explains why connecting solar and other inverter-based generation to the grid is hard. It covers grid stability, load balancing and the behind-the-scenes engineering challenges of renewables.

Not Just Bikes explains missing middle housing, such as duplexes, townhouses and small apartment buildings. The video argues that zoning in the US and Canada has made these options almost illegal.

Dick Hardt's fast-paced OSCON keynote on Identity 2.0 and the move toward user-centric digital identity. It is also famous for its rapid-fire, many-slide presentation style.

A Blender-animated explanation of the Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive, showing how the engine, two motor-generators, planetary gearset and battery work together as an eCVT.

A 12-minute beginner lesson from Nick Milo's Linking Your Thinking series introducing the Obsidian note-taking app and the first steps to start using it.

A short excerpt from The Pervert's Guide to Ideology in which Slavoj Zizek analyzes John Carpenter's They Live. He uses the film's fight scene and sunglasses to explain how ideology works.

Tom Scott explains why confetti and snow wreck video quality, using interframe compression and bitrate. He demonstrates it live by changing the quality on screen.

Richard Stallman's TEDxGeneva 2014 talk describing how nonfree programs give companies control over users and what users can do to regain control. It introduces the free software movement and the four freedoms.

Technology Connections shows a cheap method for capturing analog video: a composite-to-HDMI upscaler feeding an HDMI capture dongle, aimed at digitizing home movies and VHS tapes.

A BBC Earth clip from The Hunt showing Portia jumping spiders, which leap many times their body length and ambush prey larger than themselves.

A Channel 4 News undercover investigation in which Cambridge Analytica executives are filmed discussing bribes, honeypots, fake identities and manipulating elections around the world.

The official music video for Kylie Minogue's Come Into My World, directed by Michel Gondry, built around a looping scene with multiplying copies of Kylie.

Anders Puck Nielsen clears up common misunderstandings about what legally counts as genocide, then compares the situation in Gaza with the genocide case against Putin. The chapters cover the definition, individual intent, and the two case comparisons.

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.

MedCram's Dr. Roger Seheult summarizes a discussion with Dr. Michael Mina on cheap, paper-based at-home COVID-19 antigen tests. It explains why lower sensitivity can still work well for screening infectious people.

Asianometry examines why Japan's software industry has lagged despite its hardware strengths. It looks at dependence on US software and the low prestige of programming.

A short documentary about the 1980 Lake Peigneur accident in Louisiana, where an oil rig drilled into a salt mine beneath the lake. The lake drained into the mine, creating a whirlpool that swallowed barges.

Linus Tech Tips warns against cheap Android TV boxes, many of which ship with preinstalled malware. It looks at several boxes and suggests safer alternatives such as Chromecast and Nvidia Shield.

A ten-minute clip from Jonathan Blow's talk on preventing the collapse of civilization, arguing that software quality and the knowledge to build it are in decline.

A short urbanism video presenting original observations of how drivers treat stop signs, to argue that cyclists rolling through them under an Idaho stop is no different. It filmed intersections in Ottawa.

A short Cracked video arguing, tongue in cheek, that the world of the film Idiocracy would actually be a utopia. It plays with the movie's premise and today's politics.

OK Go's music video for The One Moment, in collaboration with Morton Salt. It is a choreographed real-time scene that took about 4.2 seconds to film and is shown slowed down to the length of the song.

Tom Scott explains YouTube's 11-character video IDs, which are base-64 encoded 64-bit numbers, and whether YouTube could ever run out of them. It covers counting systems and base 64 briefly.

Two Minute Papers covers a paper on speeding up fluid and smoke simulation with convolutional networks. It contrasts the approach with earlier regression forest methods.

Afroman's music video for a song about police damaging his door, built from home security footage of an officers' raid on his house.

Steve Mould explains motion amplification and video magnification, techniques that find tiny changes in video invisible to the eye and exaggerate them. He covers the MIT research and industrial uses such as diagnosing vibrating machinery.

The official music video for A$AP Mob's Yamborghini High featuring Juicy J, known for heavy datamoshing and glitch effects with hue shifting.

An animated Sprouts video presenting Dietrich Bonhoeffer's argument that stupidity is more dangerous than evil, because reason cannot reach stupid people. It frames stupidity as a social and moral phenomenon.

The Geopolymer Institute presents Joseph Davidovits's theory that the Egyptian pyramids were built from cast artificial limestone, a geopolymer concrete, rather than carved blocks. It demonstrates how few people could make blocks.

Scott Manley's short animation shows every asteroid discovery from 1970 to 2015 plotted over time in 8K. It makes visible how survey technology made discoveries accelerate and where telescopes looked.