internet access

Kurzgesagt examines how AI-generated content is flooding the internet, from video and music to news and books. It looks at how this makes verifying what is real harder.

Branch Education explains how Starlink works, from the ground dish and satellites to phased-array beam steering and data routing. Animations cover how a beam stays connected to a satellite moving at 27,000 km/h.

A short BicycleDutch episode showing how people with disabilities use Dutch cycle tracks on hand-cycles, tricycles and mobility scooters.

Dr. K of HealthyGamerGG explains why people feel unmotivated and unable to start tasks after hours of YouTube or similar distractions. He frames it as a result of how social media is designed to capture attention, and says not to blame yourself.

Tom Scott visits Cloudflare's San Francisco office to show the wall of lava lamps whose camera feed is used as a source of entropy for random number generation. It is a short explainer on how this helps secure internet encryption.

Tom Scott makes a short descriptivist argument that language keeps changing and that casual internet writing conventions, like lowercase typing and dropped full stops, are legitimate. It is part of his Language Files series, written with Gretchen McCulloch.

Tom Scott explains the famous Dutch flower auction clock at Royal FloraHolland in Aalsmeer, a literal Dutch auction, and how the internet changed it. It is a short look at how the system worked then and now.

Real Engineering explains why SpaceX is building Starlink, including the economics of satellite internet. It covers the latency advantage of light in vacuum over fiber for long-distance links.

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.

BigClive explains why microwave oven transformer projects are extremely dangerous, since the high voltage and high current can kill. He contrasts them with spot welder builds where the secondary is replaced by low-voltage heavy wire.

Answer in Progress investigates why Japanese websites look different from those elsewhere, using an AI clustering approach to test the 2013 claim. It then looks at possible explanations.

Mark Handley of UCL looks at how SpaceX's November 2018 revisions to the Starlink constellation affect network behavior. The video visualizes the orbits and routing and estimates latencies, building on his earlier video and research paper.

Not Just Bikes looks at the tiny microcars such as the Canta seen around Amsterdam. It discusses how they serve people with mobility issues, can use bike paths under certain rules, and where they fit in a 21st century city.

The Signal Path takes apart a Starlink dish layer by layer, analyzing the phased array RF design, system architecture and integrated circuits, with an X-ray of the RF stack.

A one-minute clip about Paul Otlet, the Belgian bibliographer who in 1934 imagined users accessing a remote database through an electric telescope over a phone line. It presents his vision as a precursor of the web.

A short video explaining the Intel Management Engine, a hidden embedded computer inside Intel machines with deep access to hardware. It is presented from an insider's perspective and raises backdoor and NSA concerns.

A short animation that pairs the sound of a dialup modem handshake with a graphic explaining what each phase of the sound means.

Tom Scott explains for Computerphile why handling time and timezones in code is so hard, walking through a simple web app that computes how long ago something happened. It covers the quirks of timezones and calendars and ends in an exasperated rant.

A two-minute animation of an Alan Watts talk arguing that life is like music: it is meant to be danced to in the moment, not rushed toward a final goal. It is a short, accessible take on living in the present.

Veritasium's explainer on Godel's incompleteness theorems and the limits of mathematical proof, tracing set theory, Hilbert's program and the road to Turing and modern computing.

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.

Matt Parker talks Numberphile through the different kinds of numbers: algebraic, transcendental, computable, normal, and beyond. It shows how few numbers we can actually name or describe.

Veritasium tells the story of Thomas Midgley Jr., who introduced leaded gasoline and CFCs, and covers the science behind lead exposure and ozone damage. It also touches on isotope geochemistry used to uncover the history.

Isaac Arthur explains the orbital ring, a megastructure launch-assist system that could move bulk cargo cheaply to orbit and beyond. He compares it with space elevators and discusses power transmission.

An Extra Credits episode on China's Sesame Credit, which gamifies obedient citizenship through a social score. It covers how the system rewards conformity and pressures people through their friends' behavior.

The first part of Extra History's animated miniseries on the South Sea Bubble. It explains how England's government debt led Robert Harley to turn to financier John Blunt, whose schemes began inflating artificial demand for shares.

A 30-minute animated film explaining how money, banking and the Federal Reserve work and arguing that the American economy is heading for collapse. It is opinionated and has a strong point of view.

Mark Rober makes a plant-based burger for Bill Gates and explains why meat production strains the environment. Gates also appears and discusses his worry about steel and cement.

A short explainer on the physiological differences between fasting and simply eating less. It covers ketosis, ghrelin and hunger waves, and the hormonal effects of fasting.

Veritasium explains why analog computing may suit AI workloads, covering old analog computers, The Analog Thing and Mythic's analog chips that use flash memory for neural network inference. It argues digital hardware is hitting limits.

3Blue1Brown visualizes Feynman's lecture on the refractive index, explaining why light appears to slow down in glass and why the effect depends on color. It builds the idea from waves produced by oscillating charges in the material.

MinutePhysics explains that computers store brightness nonlinearly, so blurring and blending colors in raw RGB gives wrong, dark results. It shows why mixed colors, such as in gradients, look off.

Vsauce's Michael Stevens takes viewers past infinity using transfinite numbers, ordinals and cardinals, with input from mathematician Hugh Woodin. It is a fast-paced, mind-bending tour of different sizes of infinity.

A What I've Learned video arguing that industrial seed and vegetable oils have displaced saturated fats and harmed health. It covers the history of vegetable oils, the American Heart Association's role, and rising consumption.

Kurzgesagt makes a selfish case for improving the world, arguing that helping people far away raises prosperity and innovation for everyone, including yourself. The animated video frames this as egoistic altruism and positive-sum cooperation.

Numberphile interviews cryptographer Ron Rivest about end-to-end verifiable voting. He explains how homomorphic encryption and receipts let a voter confirm their ballot was counted without being able to prove how they voted to anyone else.

Robert Miles asks whether corporations can be thought of as artificial general superintelligences and how far the analogy holds. He argues the differences, such as being limited by employees' capabilities, matter for AI safety.

Not Just Bikes explains how small pockets of shops and restaurants inside residential Dutch neighbourhoods create liveliness and help reduce traffic. It argues this kind of mixed-use design has been illegal in most of the US and Canada for a century because of zoning, and should be brought back.

Sabine Hossenfelder explains how the greenhouse effect actually works, given that infrared is mostly absorbed low in the atmosphere already. She walks through why more CO2 still warms the surface.

MinutePhysics, with 3Blue1Brown, explains Bell's theorem using a Venn diagram paradox and polarizing filters. It shows why no local hidden variable theory can reproduce quantum correlations.