little boxes

The full Malvina Reynolds recording of the folk song 'Little Boxes', a satire of identical suburban tract housing, later popularized as the Weeds theme. The upload includes the lyrics.

David Christiansen gives a Strange Loop 2018 introduction to dependent types, where one language serves for both compile-time and run-time code and programs unite with proofs. It draws on his book The Little Typer.

A Little Britain sketch featuring the 'Computer says no' catchphrase, in which a clerk refuses requests by deferring to her computer.

A clip from Little Britain in which a bureaucrat answers every request with 'computer says no'.

The Little Britain sketch in which call-center worker Carol types into her computer and replies 'computer says no' to every request.

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 Jimquisition episode examining the human cost of predatory videogame monetization, focusing on loot boxes and microtransactions. It features testimonials from people harmed by gambling-style game mechanics.

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.

A Movieclips excerpt from the 1989 film Fat Man and Little Boy in which John Cusack's character assembles a bomb core and a criticality accident occurs. It is a film dramatization of a real Manhattan Project accident.

Stephen Malinowski performs Bach's Little Fugue in G minor on organ, accompanied by an animated graphical score. Pedalboard playing carries one of the melodic lines.

Sandi Metz takes an ugly section of conditional code and refactors it into a few simple objects, bridging object-oriented theory and practice. The talk includes her take on the Gilded Rose refactoring kata and the idea that duplication is cheaper than the wrong abstraction.

Wendover Productions explains why Boeing's efficient 787 beat Airbus's giant A380, contrasting hub-and-spoke with point-to-point routes. It covers the economics of long-haul flights.

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.

Reggie Watts performs at TED 2012, blending vocal looping, beatboxing, poetry and comedy across musical genres in a larger-than-life improvised set.

Extra Credits explains from a game developer's perspective why AAA games have stayed at $60 despite inflation, and how that pressure drives DLC, microtransactions and loot boxes.

An Extra Credits episode on how games use Skinner box operant conditioning and reward schedules to keep players playing and spending. It argues for more immersive design mechanics than simple reward loops.

Footage of an unmanned Apollo boilerplate capsule launched on a Little Joe II booster to test the launch escape system. The booster went out of control and broke up, but the escape system worked and the capsule was recovered undamaged.

Stuntman Gary Connery jumps from a helicopter at 2,400 feet in a wingsuit and lands without a parachute on a runway of stacked cardboard boxes, the first such landing.

Pannenkoek explains how Super Mario 64 handles wall, floor and ceiling collisions, including triangles, normal vectors, quarter steps and out of bounds. It is a detailed 37-minute technical walkthrough of the game's physics.

A 2016 conference talk by a mobile game CEO on the tricks of free-to-play monetization, including player profiles and how to target high-spending whales.

Boston Dynamics introduces Stretch, a prototype robot that moves boxes in warehouses and distribution centers. Its mobile base lets it unload trucks, build pallets and assemble orders.

A short clip from the film Idiocracy showing a hospital reception computer where staff pick a condition from a board of simple pictorial buttons.

Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) traces the history of software from 1948 to today, looking at the problems programmers faced, how they were solved, and what mistakes the profession made. He then projects where the field is going, including professionalism and regulation.

Timothy Roscoe of ETH Zurich delivers the joint USENIX ATC/OSDI 2021 keynote arguing that operating systems must reckon with modern hardware, which is a heterogeneous collection of processors, firmware and coprocessors rather than a simple machine. It shows how much runs below and beside Linux.

CGP Grey explains the Single Transferable Vote, a proportional ranked-ballot system, and why politicians have little incentive to adopt it. It is a short animated explainer of how multi-winner ranked voting works.

Adam Conover's talk at a millennial marketing conference argues that generations are an unscientific, condescending idea and that millennials do not exist as a real category. The description notes that researcher Jean Twenge later said he misrepresented some of her work.

Julia co-creator Stefan Karpinski explains why multiple dispatch makes Julia code and types reusable across packages with so little friction. He covers sharing basic types and sharing generic algorithms.

People Make Games investigates how Roblox relies on young, often child, developers to build its content while paying them very little. It covers Roblox's monetization model, the revenue split, and the harms to kids who make games on the platform.

A PBS clip in which Richard Feynman explains the strange nature of light and electromagnetic radiation. He conveys how little of it we actually see and how radio waves are present everywhere.

Rhonda Patrick interviews Dr. Bill Harris, co-inventor of the Omega-3 Index and author of more than 300 papers on fatty acids. They cover EPA and DHA dosing, fish oil studies such as REDUCE-IT, and how omega-3 levels relate to health and longevity.

Technology Connections' hour-long guide to electric vehicles, covering costs, trade-offs and especially how little home charging power most drivers need.

A short CGP Grey animation showing how the US electoral college lets a candidate win the presidency with as little as about 22 percent of the popular vote. It lays out the arithmetic of winning states by narrow margins.

An SBS Dateline short documentary on Danish forest kindergartens, where children play freely outdoors, climb trees and use knives with little adult intervention.

Huygens Optics shows through a laser interference experiment that the question of a photon's size is really about coherence length. It argues that photons exist as energy exchanges between radiation and matter, not as little particles in free space.

Aging Wheels tests how towing trailers affects the range of electric trucks, including a Silverado EV. It shows that trailer aerodynamics matters far more than added weight.

Benn Jordan argues that Spotify's business model undermines the music it sells, using streaming payout figures and the economics for artists and labels.

A short film of Alex Honnold free soloing El Sendero Luminoso, a 2,500-foot route in El Potrero Chico, Mexico, in a little over three hours with no rope. It was made by The North Face with climbing footage and music.

Alan Kay demonstrates GRaIL, a graphical input language system from around 1968 in which hand-drawn strokes become boxes, connections and dataflow-style programs.

Hans Rosling's TED@Cannes talk uses boxes and animated data graphics to show how world population will grow to about 9 billion. He argues that raising living standards for the poorest is what reduces population growth.

A short clip of Steve Jobs arguing that the best people are self-managing and that professional managers who cannot do the work add little. He says leadership is about a shared vision.