note-taking

A long, sarcastic critique of Elon Musk's Loop tunnel transit idea and related Boring Company and Hyperloop claims. It leans on transit-planning arguments about capacity and throughput.

Tom Scott writes a more honest VPN ad, with the sponsor's name redacted, and explains why the typical claims in VPN advertising are misleading. He notes the sponsor was not happy about it.

A 2020 video by laowhy86 arguing that the coronavirus did not originate outside China, pointing to evidence about the Wuhan institute and a possible patient zero. It cites sources in the description.

A short clip of Stephen Fry defending swearing as a rich and essential part of the English language and rejecting the idea that it is unnecessary.

Jonathan Blow's hour-long livestreamed response to a RustConf 2018 closing keynote about entity systems in Rust. He argues that index-based entity systems amount to manual memory management that sidesteps the borrow checker, and he talks about friction for game developers.

A former fusion scientist argues why fusion power by 2040 is unrealistic, covering the physics challenges, neutron issues and optimistic company claims, with a brief note of good news.

Tantacrul critiques the UX and UI of Steinberg's Dorico music notation software, comparing it with Sibelius and user testing it with real musicians alongside his own attempt to compose in it.

Blender Guru's Andrew Price proposes a redesign of Blender's user interface, answering the usability problems raised in earlier parts of the series. He later noted the proposal had flaws and posted a follow-up.

Ted Nelson, in his Computers for Cynics series, gives a critical history of Xerox PARC's vision of personal computing. He lists what he sees as the limitations and wrong turns in PARC's approach to the desktop and documents.

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.