information freedom

The first lecture of David MacKay's Cambridge course on information theory, pattern recognition and neural networks. It introduces the core ideas of his book Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms.

A PBS Space Time episode asking whether the universe's information can ever truly be lost, tying quantum mechanics, determinism and black holes together. It sets up the black hole information paradox.

Clay Shirky argues at Web 2.0 Expo NY that the problem online is not information overload but filter failure. He says the real challenge is building better ways to filter and organize what we see.

3Blue1Brown uses Wordle as an excuse to teach information theory and entropy, building a solver that picks guesses by expected information and incorporating word frequencies.

Eben Moglen speaks at NYU in 2010 about freedom in the cloud, arguing that centralized services and handing over personal data and server logs erode privacy and freedom. The talk lays out the motivation for FreedomBox, a personal server for your own data.

PBS Space Time episode on the black hole information paradox, covering how black holes seem to destroy information, the no-hair conjecture and the proposed role of the event horizon. It is part of a series on black holes.

A New York Times Opinion documentary tracing Soviet and KGB disinformation, from the 1980s AIDS origin hoax to modern campaigns like Pizzagate. It features former KGB officers and the people who tried to counter the lies.

David MacKay's 2007 Google Tech Talk presents Dasher, a text-entry system driven by continuous gestures and a language model, reaching about 35 words per minute with one finger and 25 hands-free. It explains the information-theory reasoning behind the design.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day explains Multi-Domain Operations through footage from his last mission at RIMPAC 2018. He covers missile and torpedo testing and interviews military leaders about the cyber and information domains.

Daniel Dennett gives a Royal Institution talk toward a unified theory of information, tying together evolution, learning and engineering. He argues that design can arise bottom-up through small steps without a designer.

A Wendover Productions explainer on the political agreements, from the Chicago Convention onward, that determine which airlines can fly where. It lays out the five freedoms of the air.

Daniel Schmachtenberger discusses why the information ecology is damaged and what healthy public sensemaking would take. The conversation ties this to the meaning crisis and to improving discourse.

Eben Moglen's re:publica 2012 talk argues that media which spy on and data-mine the public threaten freedom of thought, and that free technology and free culture are needed to protect it.

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.

The secret project cutscene for The Planetary Datalinks from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, featuring a quote about free information flow as the safeguard against tyranny.

Eben Moglen's 2011 Personal Democracy Forum talk on the loss of anonymity and privacy on the internet. He proposes building an alternative net of personal servers, the idea behind FreedomBox.

A very short clip from the children's cartoon Arthur riffing on the line about not believing everything you read on the internet.

An illustrated 23-minute summary of David Friedman's talk based on The Machinery of Freedom. It describes how law, police and courts could work as market services in a stateless society, covering private law, polycentric law and objections.

Sacha Baron Cohen's speech accepting the ADL International Leadership Award, in which he criticizes social media companies for amplifying hate and propaganda. He argues that freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.

Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind gives a public lecture on the holographic principle, the indestructibility of information and the nature of black holes. It asks whether the world could be a hologram.

A Royal Institution event with Sean Carroll and Jennifer Ouellette on what happens if you fall into a black hole, covering the firewall paradox, the information problem and the holographic principle.

A long information session where The Boring Company presents its vision for Loop, an underground high-speed transit system, and the traffic problems it aims to solve. It includes discussion of faster tunnel boring and electrification.

A vlogbrothers video tracing how the claim that people eat a credit card of plastic every week spread. It walks through the funded talking point, the misleading amplification, and the peer review that missed it.

A short video promoting the claim that Madeleine Albright said the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children from sanctions were 'worth it', timed to her receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It reuses a 1996 Sixty Minutes interview clip.

The full 1984 interview with Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB operative, in which he lays out four stages of ideological subversion. It is a long interview with G. Edward Griffin.

Herb Sutter's CppCon 2016 talk on lifetime safety in C++, aiming for code free of leaks and dangling pointers by default. It covers smart pointers, ownership, reference counting pitfalls and deferred reclamation resembling garbage collection.

Leonard Susskind lectures at Stanford on how gravity and quantum information theory have merged into a new way of thinking about physics. He covers entanglement and complexity, with applications from black holes to strange metals and the foundations of quantum mechanics.

The final codec conversation from Metal Gear Solid 2, in which the AI 'Colonel' explains that the Patriots filter out junk information and curate truth for humanity. It plays as a dark meditation on information overload, manipulation and shared reality.

A Kurzgesagt video arguing that social media's problem is information flooding and tribal polarization. It suggests a return to smaller online communities and more in-person interaction.

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.

Tom Nicholas critiques Veritasium's sponsored video on driverless cars, using it to examine YouTube sponsorships, science-channel credibility and how statistics and misinformation can be used in branded content.

Aaron Swartz's keynote at Freedom to Connect 2012 describing how ordinary people helped defeat the SOPA censorship bill. He recounts how the Senate unexpectedly united behind the bill and how grassroots action stopped it.

Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Conservancy speaks at the 2009 Law of the Commons Conference about free and open software as a model for a new intellectual commons. The talk covers the legal and social case for sharing knowledge.

A ten-minute clip of Noam Chomsky on the Faurisson affair and free speech. He argues that supporting free speech means defending views you despise.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment takes on Dr. Oz and the dietary supplement industry. It explains what is problematic about both, with a comedic wrap-up.

A BBC News segment on University of Washington research that synthesized a photorealistic Obama video, modeling mouth movement so any audio can be put in his mouth.

A friendlyjordies video on the legal fight between Jordan Shanks and then-Deputy Premier John Barilaro, including footage of the arrest of the creator by police. It is presented from one side.

MSNBC's clip of the April 2020 White House coronavirus briefing in which President Trump responds to a DHS presentation on disinfectants by musing about injecting disinfectant into the body. The segment is three minutes long.

A one-minute UK road safety advert showing a family car crash in which an unbelted rear passenger kills his mother in a head-on collision. It is a notoriously graphic public information film.

A short clip of former KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov in 1984 describing Soviet ideological subversion of Western societies. It is a political commentary excerpt from his longer lecture.