learning from data

Eager Space examines the practicality of putting data centers in orbit, walking through three scenarios with cost calculations and the launch cost reductions that would be required.

Scott Manley analyzes the idea of putting data centers in orbit, prompted by Lumen Orbit's funding. He examines the claimed advantage of constant solar power against launch cost, cooling and mass.

3Blue1Brown's first chapter on deep learning explains what neurons and layers are and the math underlying a basic neural network, using handwritten digit recognition with visual animations.

Veritasium debunks the idea of learning styles, such as being a visual learner, with an interview with Daniel Willingham and a memory experiment. It argues that a multimodal approach helps everyone.

3Blue1Brown's third deep learning chapter gives a visual, intuitive account of backpropagation and what happens to a neural network as it learns. A follow-up video covers the underlying calculus.

Veritasium explains that the Higgs boson accounts for only a small fraction of everyday mass. Most of a proton's mass comes from the energy of the gluon field binding its quarks.

Two Minute Papers covers OpenAI's multi-agent hide-and-seek experiment, in which agents learned emergent tool use and found ways to break the game's rules. It summarizes the 'Emergent Tool Use from Multi-Agent Interaction' paper.

Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths demonstrates MENACE, Donald Michie's 1961 machine made of matchboxes that learns to play noughts and crosses through reinforcement. He builds and trains a physical version.

3Blue1Brown's chapter 4 on deep learning gives a more formal, symbol-based account of backpropagation calculus, connecting the intuition from the previous chapter to the math found in textbooks and code.

3kliksphilip summarizes Valve's GDC talk on VACNet, a deep-learning system that flags CS:GO cheaters and feeds the Overwatch review queue. It covers Trust Factor, VAC, and how the data is collected and analyzed.

Hans Rosling uses augmented-reality animation to show 200 countries over 200 years in four minutes, built from 120,000 data points. It tracks life expectancy and income to show the world's development.

Veritasium examines which experts have real expertise, drawing on chess research and work by Klein and Kahneman. It explains that expertise comes from pattern recognition built through deliberate practice in valid, feedback-rich environments.

A CAD-based animation from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics showing how the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator is configured and what its fusion research aims to achieve. It runs about 11 minutes.

Linguist Simon Roper reconstructs how a London accent would have sounded from the 14th to the 21st centuries, reading passages in period pronunciation. It draws on the Cambridge History of the English Language.

Robert Miles explains reward modelling, in which an AI learns what humans want from their preference comparisons instead of a hand-written reward function. He walks through the 2017 paper on deep reinforcement learning from human preferences.

Kurzgesagt examines who is responsible for climate change, comparing historical, current and per-capita emissions by country. It argues that individual footprints are a distraction from larger responsibility.

CGP Grey explains jury nullification, a juror's power to acquit despite the law, and why mentioning it can get you struck from jury selection.

A short cartoon explaining how language models like ChatGPT work, from autocomplete and conditional probabilities to neural networks, gradient descent and backpropagation. It shows how networks act as universal function approximators.

minutephysics, in collaboration with the US Census Bureau, explains differential privacy and why the 2020 census adds noise to protect individuals' data. It walks through how statistics can leak private information.

Engineering Explained argues that internal combustion engines are far from dead, and discusses the continued development of ICEs and the problems facing electric vehicles.

Musician Benn Jordan uses AI to detect AI-generated music and digs into music industry data, including streaming payouts and sample library copyright problems. He covers ways to tell whether a track is human-made.

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 video telling how Xerox PARC invented the graphical user interface and how Steve Jobs's 1979 visit influenced Apple's Lisa.

Yuta asks whether native Japanese speakers can actually write kanji by hand, showing that many struggle to recall characters from memory.

Paolo fromTOKYO explains why foreign tourists get arrested in Japan, covering strict laws and the justice system's very high conviction rate.

CGP Grey argues that your brain treats a whole home as one room during lockdown, blurring work, rest and leisure. He recommends creating separate spaces and routines for different activities to stay balanced.

Roy Beck's short gumball presentation using World Bank and Census data to argue that letting people immigrate to the US cannot solve world poverty because the numbers are so large. It is made by NumbersUSA, an immigration-restriction advocacy group.

A Kurzgesagt explainer on why the human population exploded and why growth is slowing, drawing on Our World in Data. It argues that birth rates fall as countries develop, easing overpopulation fears.

Guitarist Jim Lill methodically tests what in an electric guitar affects its tone, swapping parts on a partscaster and even trying a 2x4 body. He finds that wood and construction matter far less than people assume.

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

Zack Freedman gives advice on why makers fail to finish projects, including scrapping bad ideas, showing work publicly and writing a plan that keeps projects fun. It is aimed at hardware DIY but generalizes.

A 20-minute S3 episode touring Terraform Industries, a startup making synthetic natural gas from air and solar power. It walks through the reactor, injection system, direct air capture and electrolyzer, plus the company's cost goals and next milestone.

Veritasium examines research suggesting science explainer videos like Khan Academy's make students feel they understand while tests show they have not learned, because misconceptions go unaddressed. It suggests how to partly fix this.

An episode of Journey to the Microcosmos, hosted by Hank Green, about diatoms, single-celled algae with glass shells. It covers their role in producing a large share of Earth's oxygen and their uses in beer filtering, paint and kitty litter.

Technology Connections praises a 1940s-50s Sunbeam toaster and explains what makes a toaster well designed, drawing on a vintage Sunbeam video.

Matt Parker examines claims that Biden's 2020 vote counts violate Benford's Law, explaining the law and why it often does not apply to precinct-level election data.

Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths explains single-pile Nim and the trick that wins it, using Dr NIM, a 1960s mechanical plastic computer that plays perfectly. He teaches the strategy so viewers can beat friends.

A short TED-Ed animated lesson by Anita Collins on what happens in the brain when people play a musical instrument. It argues that playing engages many brain areas at once, like a full-body workout, with long-term benefits.

A Veritasium explainer on how the brain works and how we learn. It is inspired by Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow and covers System 1 and System 2 thinking and why harder learning builds skill.

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.