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Technology Connections explains how touch lamps work and traces them back through patents to the 1950s, far earlier than most people assume.

SethBling shows MarI/O, a program using neural networks and the NEAT genetic algorithm to learn to play Super Mario World. The description links the source code, the paper and background reading.

A long Machine Learning Street Talk interview with Kenneth Stanley, creator of NEAT and novelty search, about his book on why greatness cannot be planned. They discuss open-endedness, the tyranny of objectives, serendipity and the evolution of ideas.

Dylan Beattie's conference talk explores the history and mess behind plain text: encodings, Unicode, line endings and the many ways text goes wrong. It argues that the tidy idea of plain text hides a lot of complexity underneath everyday software.

Cliff Click of Azul Systems asks what a JVM is supposed to do, in a Google Tech Talk from 2011. He covers the services a JVM provides, such as garbage collection and compilation, and the messy reality beneath the abstractions.

Kevlin Henney's GOTO 2018 talk argues that much of what looks new in software is a recycling of concepts with long histories. It draws on history to show the slow, steady current beneath constant churn in frameworks and trends.

David Beazley's workshop screencast builds asynchronous programming in Python from scratch, starting from callbacks and continuations and replacing threads to show how concurrency works underneath.

Numberphile with Dr Holly Krieger shows how the digits of pi surprisingly emerge from the Mandelbrot set. A short, accessible math explainer.

An overview of the PTVS 2.0 beta feature for debugging Python and C/C++ together in one session in Visual Studio.

A short documentary about Eric Maundu's Arduino-controlled aquaponics setup in West Oakland, where contaminated soil rules out ordinary farming. Fish and circulating water grow plants without soil.

A short documentary about the 1980 Lake Peigneur accident in Louisiana, where an oil rig drilled into a salt mine beneath the lake. The lake drained into the mine, creating a whirlpool that swallowed barges.

Numberphile with Daniel Erman on the Josephus problem, where people in a circle are eliminated in turn. It shows how the survivor's position follows a neat pattern tied to powers of two and binary.

Der8auer visits Tescan and uses an electron microscope to compare real transistor sizes on Intel 14nm and AMD 7nm chips. It shows that process node names do not match physical measurements.

Stand-up Maths explains why the perimeter of an ellipse has no simple closed-form equation, showing the infinite series and presenting approximation formulas.

A side-by-side edit lining up footage of the Wuppertal Schwebebahn suspended monorail filmed in 1902 and in 2015. It lets you compare how the buildings and surroundings changed over 113 years.

A JuliaCon 2016 talk by Shashi Gowda showing an APL implementation in Julia. APL code is translated to Julia and JIT compiled to machine code.

Mentalist Derren Brown plays nine skilled English chess players, including four grandmasters, simultaneously on his TV show. The trick behind the apparent win is the point of the segment.

A Technology Connections video on JVC's LCCS, a display hybrid that cycles a color LCD shutter over a monochrome CRT to produce field-sequential color without dots or stripes. It builds on his earlier videos about analog TV and compatible color.

Steve Mould shows that LEDs and solar panels are both diodes made from semiconductors, so a solar panel can emit light and an LED can generate electricity. He demonstrates a small solar panel lighting up.

LGR reviews the Book 8088 and Hand 386, newly built DOS retro PCs sold on AliExpress that use real legacy chips on custom boards. He covers what is neat about them and their compromises and odd design decisions.

AvE tears down a broken Dyson Animal vacuum and its expensive replacement, criticizing the molded plastic, flimsy switches and overall engineering, with his usual profane commentary.

A one-minute clip from Cambridge's Prof. Holger Babinsky that debunks the equal transit time explanation of lift. It shows how air actually flows over a wing.