model predictive control

The opening lecture of Steve Brunton's Control Bootcamp, covering the kinds of control and why closed-loop feedback matters. It starts a series that follows the control chapter of the Brunton and Kutz data-driven science book.

Tom Scott tells how John Reber's plan to dam San Francisco Bay was disproved by the Army Corps of Engineers' giant hydraulic Bay Model in Sausalito. The model showed the plan would have been dangerously wrong.

A clip from Jim Jefferies' Netflix special BARE in which he comedically dissects American gun culture and gun control arguments.

The official tour video of Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, the world's largest model railway. It shows the 1,300 square meter layout with trains, aircraft, cars and ships moving around.

A Daily Show segment in which John Oliver examines the argument that gun control does not work, using Australia's experience after the Senate rejected the Manchin-Toomey amendment. It is a comedic, man-on-the-street style piece.

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.

An engineering explainer on why Tesla abandoned the induction motor for the Model 3 and used an IPM-SynRM design. It covers the reluctance torque and permanent magnet principles behind the choice.

Andreas Antonopoulos argues that money has a fourth function beyond store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account, which is as a system of control. He covers the history of money and why it does not flow freely.

Autoline's John McElroy visits Sandy Munro's shop, where a Tesla Model 3 is being prepared for a teardown benchmarking study. Munro, with deep design and manufacturing experience, points out issues he dislikes about the car's build.

Real air traffic control audio of the Air Astana flight whose flight controls had been wired in reverse by a maintenance error. The pilots struggle to keep control while ATC tries to help.

A 1953 US Navy training film on the basic mechanisms in fire control computers: shafts, gears, cams and differentials. It shows how these mechanical parts compute ship and target firing solutions.

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.

PBS Space Time explains the Standard Model Lagrangian, the single equation encapsulating the particle physics theory, and visualizes what its terms mean.

CuriousMarc inspects a newly arrived Teletype Model 19, an early military unit built around a Model 15 keyboard and printer, after an initial rough cleaning. It is the first part of a restoration series and touches on 5-bit Baudot code.

Neuroscientist Anil Seth argues in this TED talk that perception is a controlled hallucination: the brain constantly predicts the world and our shared agreement is what we call reality. He also touches on the construction of the self.

A JuliaCon talk by a NASA Launch Services Program engineer on modeling spacecraft separation dynamics in Julia. He describes replacing a Simulink-based workflow for checking launch vehicle separation requirements with Julia and ModelingToolkit, with large speedups and much shorter code.

Munro Live's Model Y episode 36 has Sandy Munro walk through the disassembled Tesla Octovalve and heat pump system. He explains how the components are made and what each one does.

Freeman Dyson recounts how Enrico Fermi rejected his team's meson scattering model, noting that it had too many free parameters. It is the source of the quote about fitting an elephant.

Munro Live's team breaks down the thermal management system of the Ford Mustang Mach-E and compares it with the Tesla Model Y. They look at parts count, coolant loops and heating approaches.

Fully Charged gets an exclusive first drive of the Porsche Taycan, running 0-200 km/h launch control repeatedly. It covers the car's twin-motor 800-volt specs, claimed range and fast charging.

Ben Heck modifies a keyboard with magnets, Hall effect sensors and an Xbox controller so the WASD keys give analog control. He walks through the hardware build.

A short Al Jazeera animation narrated by Amy Goodman presenting Noam Chomsky's five filters of the mass media: ownership, advertising, media elite sourcing, flak and a common enemy. It is part of the MediaTheorised series.

Blender Guru's beginner tutorial series, in which you model, light, texture and render a donut while learning Blender's core features. This is Part 1 of the Blender 3.0 version.

Kevin Spacey, giving the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival, urges TV channels to give viewers control. He points to Netflix's House of Cards release as evidence that audiences want to watch on their own terms.

Joe Barnard of BPS.space shows his model rocket Scout F landing vertically like a SpaceX booster after seven years of attempts. The video documents the successful landing and the build-up to it.

In a TEDGlobal talk, Raffaello D'Andrea demonstrates quadcopters that play catch, balance, learn and coordinate, using algorithms that treat them like athletes. It includes Kinect-controlled quads.

Innuendo Studios' video from the Alt-Right Playbook series on how bad-faith actors control the conversation through debate tactics and moving goalposts.

A DIY demonstration of a fan-and-screen mosquito trap that uses carbonated water as a CO2 attractant. The creator reports catching about 8,000 mosquitoes in two nights.

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.

Johns Hopkins APL shows Les Baugh, a bilateral shoulder-level amputee, controlling two Modular Prosthetic Limbs by thought after a short training period. Nerves rerouted to his chest drive the arms.

Captain Disillusion explains the visual effects behind the Back to the Future trilogy. He covers ILM's motion-control, computer-controlled camera work and clever pre-CGI tricks.

An MTA video on communications-based train control, the system meant to replace the New York City subway's century-old signaling. It also shows the mechanical interlocks and signals in use today.

A 2013 research demo of simulated bipedal creatures whose natural gaits are found by optimizing muscle-based controllers, with no motion capture or keyframe animation. It shows physics-based walking and running emerging from musculoskeletal models.

Wendover Productions explains counterintuitive riot control techniques based on research, showing that effective tactics tend to avoid violence.

A controlled demonstration by Wabash National of a tank trailer collapsing under vacuum, staged at an industry expo. The tank implodes as air is pulled out.

A demo of Deldo, an Emacs package that lets Emacs hooks trigger vibration events on computer-controllable sex toys. It is an absurd teledildonics project that is half performance art.

A short CNBC clip from 2018 in which President Trump criticizes Germany for paying billions of dollars to Russia for energy, saying Germany is 'totally controlled' by Russia. It comes from a NATO summit news segment.

National Geographic footage showing the cordyceps fungus infecting ants and other insects and steering their behavior so it can reproduce.

A five-minute excerpt of Rich Hickey's Clojure Made Simple talk, with new slides, ranting about HttpServletRequest and specificity. He argues for using generic maps instead of many specific classes and getters.

Cody's Lab builds a 200-billionth-scale model to show how far away the nearest stars are, using parallax and light speed. A short astronomy explainer on interstellar distances.