macos big sur

Database pioneer Michael Stonebraker argues that 'big data' is really at least four different problems: big volumes with small analytics, big analytics, velocity, and variety. He comments on where each market is heading.

John Oliver interviews Edward Snowden about NSA surveillance, including street interviews showing people have not thought about what the government can see. The segment famously frames the issue through private photos.

Slavoj Zizek and Paul Holdengraber discuss surveillance and whistleblowers at the International Authors' Stage, ranging over Snowden, Assange, Pussy Riot and humor.

A Numberphile interview with Donald Knuth about how he came to write the first book on surreal numbers after a lunch with John Conway. He tells the story casually in about 14 minutes.

A Veritasium video on survivor bias, explaining how an observed sample can be incomplete and skewed. It uses examples such as bombers and famous success stories.

John Gruber interviews Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak after WWDC 2020 about the Mac transition to Apple silicon, macOS Big Sur and iOS 14.

A one-minute trimmed clip from The Dark Knight showing the cell phone sonar surveillance system.

A VPRO documentary in which Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff explains her book on surveillance capitalism. It covers how Google and Facebook turn personal data into raw material for prediction and behavioral influence.

A look at how granite surface plates are inspected, calibrated and reconditioned using an autocollimator, a repeat meter and diamond-charged cast iron laps. Measurements are at the level of millionths of an inch.

A 2007 parody mocking Microsoft's Surface touch table, made by SarcasticGamer.

A short clip about DARPA's ARGUS-IS, a 1.8 gigapixel wide-area camera array flown on a Boeing unmanned helicopter. It produces a huge mosaic video that can watch a city-sized area from 20,000 feet.

A profane video review in the Your Product Sucks series that picks apart the Apple Music app on macOS Catalina and its usability problems.

A two-minute Big Think clip of Slavoj Zizek arguing that happiness is a conformist, even unethical goal. He asks why one would want to be happy when one could be interesting.

Big Clive tears down a cheap eBay digital caliper, explaining its capacitive linear encoder and measuring its quiescent current. He finds it surprisingly accurate and repeatable for its price.

Aral Balkan's re:publica 2015 talk argues that people are the product of surveillance-based business models. It makes an ethical case against data monopolies and for privacy as a human right.

A 29C3 panel with whistleblowers Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake and William Binney. They talk about what happens when exposing secret government power becomes a crime, and about surveillance abuses.

A VICE documentary that visits Agafia Lykova, last surviving member of the Lykov family of Old Believers who fled into the Siberian taiga in 1936. It shows how she lives in remote isolation and the outside world encroaching on it.

Adam Savage shows a set of Mitutoyo ceramic gauge blocks and uses them to explain metrology, the science of measurement. He argues that accuracy and precision work differently than most people assume, which changes how you think about every measuring tool.

Ben Krasnow of Applied Science shows that a plain laser diode can measure sub-micron vibrations from centimeters away using self-mixing interferometry, and can also be used for range-finding.

A DEFCON 20 panel with NSA whistleblower William Binney, journalist James Bamford and ACLU lawyers on the NSA's mass collection of communications and its conflict with the Constitution.

A clip from the 1998 film The Big Hit featuring the 'trace buster buster buster' scene, where characters try to defeat a phone trace.

Apple's WWDC 2020 keynote covering iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, privacy, tvOS and macOS, and the announcement of the move of Macs to Apple silicon. It includes demos of Rosetta translation and virtualization on ARM.

A short video of a Microsoft Surface multimedia coffee table, with a pointer to making a homemade multi-touch screen. It shows the original touch-table concept.

A short George Carlin routine in which he says the owners of the country run a big club and ordinary people are not in it.

A one-minute clip of an Atlas Agena rocket losing pressure on the pad and collapsing. The Atlas relied on tank pressurization for structural integrity, so a simple failure tore it apart.

Louis Rossmann's half-hour teardown criticism of the Microsoft Surface Laptop, arguing its soldered SSD and glued construction make it effectively unrepairable. It ties into his right-to-repair advocacy.

Gil Tene of Azul Systems explains common pitfalls in measuring latency and response time, including why averages mislead and the problem of coordinated omission. He introduces open source tools like HdrHistogram for better measurement and reporting.

Benn Jordan details security vulnerabilities in Flock Safety license-plate-reading cameras and how easily they can be compromised. It includes citations from security researchers and discussion of police surveillance.

A clip from Yes Prime Minister in which Sir Humphrey shows how leading questions can make a survey support or oppose national service. It is a short satirical scene.

Rune Skovbo Johansen explains Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering, a technique he invented and released as open source. It makes dithering stick to 3D surfaces and covers the experiments and shortcomings along the way, inspired by Return of the Obra Dinn.

On Peter Attia's podcast, Tenet Healthcare CEO Saum Sutaria, formerly of McKinsey, walks through the structure and financial flows of the US healthcare system. They cover insurance, drug pricing, how the system evolved and possible reforms.

Boston Dynamics' March 2008 video of BigDog, a four-legged robot, walking on ice and snow, climbing rubble and recovering from slips and kicks.

Alexander Nix of Cambridge Analytica presents at the 2016 Concordia Summit on using big data, psychographic profiling and behavioral microtargeting in elections.

An hour-long absurdist Lasagna Cat video in which John Blyth Barrymore muses philosophically on a single Garfield strip. It is set to the full score of Philip Glass's Kundun.

Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths asks whether a country's reported land area accounts for hills and mountains, working through how surface area depends on the resolution of elevation data. It follows up on a question from a viewer and work by researchers who measured it.

Dave Jones of EEVblog shows hand soldering of surface-mount parts, including drag soldering and tack-and-reflow of 0.5mm fine-pitch ICs, with solder paste and hot air.

A 1080p widescreen capture of the Deus Ex conversation between JC Denton and the AI Morpheus. It is a philosophical exchange that includes surveillance as a replacement for God.

Bryan Cantrill presents Manta, an object store with in-situ compute that lets tools like grep, awk, and sed run map-reduce style over huge data. He frames it as bringing the Unix philosophy to big data.

A three-minute demonstration of professional hand-soldering techniques for multi-lead surface mount parts, to IPC class 3 criteria.

A School of Life animated overview of Albert Camus, covering his existentialism and absurdism and his answer to the question of meaninglessness.