old computers

A 1953 US Navy training film explaining the basic mechanisms in mechanical fire control computers aboard ships. It shows how gears, differentials and cams solved mathematical problems in permanent mechanical form.

Norwegian climber Magnus Midtbo spends a day climbing with Alex Honnold on exposed routes, shot as a vlog. The video shows the stark contrast between Midtbo's visible nerves and Honnold's calm.

A CBS News (60 Minutes) profile of free solo climber Alex Honnold, who scales sheer rock faces without ropes. Lara Logan reports on his climbing and his apparent lack of fear, including his Half Dome ascent.

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.

A dramatization of a hypothetical Soviet first strike that destroys US bombers and Minuteman missiles, filmed with US Air Force cooperation. It is a short version of the 1979 documentary First Strike.

Folding Ideas' long essay on why playing poorly in World of Warcraft feels rude. It traces how raiding culture shifted from relaxed fun to optimization, theorycrafting and wikis.

Part one of Montemayor's animated-map documentary on the Battle of Midway, told using only the information available to the Japanese side. It focuses on Nagumo's dilemma.

The trailer for Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old, a WWI documentary built from restored, colorized archival footage and BBC interviews with British soldiers.

Kirsten Dirksen visits the Providence Arcade, the oldest US indoor mall, which was converted into 225-square-foot micro-lofts classified as a rooming house.

A VICE documentary profiling Wim Hof, the Iceman, covering his feats of cold endurance, his breathing and meditation method, and scientific studies of his control over his autonomic and immune systems.

Dan Olson's 76-minute essay on flat earth belief, built around a hike to a lake to test earth's curvature. It examines the community, how YouTube promoted it, and how it connects to wider conspiracy thinking and QAnon.

Dan Olson's roughly two-hour video essay critiques NFTs, cryptocurrency, and Web3, covering their technical, economic, and ideological flaws. It is heavily sourced and ends with the advice to ask whether a project needs crypto to work.

A 1982 AT&T Bell Labs film for students about the Unix system and how it can be used practically. It includes Lorinda Cherry building a talking calculator by piping together Unix commands, and a spell checker made from Unix utilities.

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.

Tim Hunkin's 1987 TV series episode on how vacuum cleaners and related household machines work, remastered and upscaled in 2021. It is part of the six-episode 'Secret Life of Machines' series with hands-on demonstrations of everyday technology.

Machine Thinking tells the story of the Cold War Heavy Press Program, the giant forging presses that make parts for aircraft, missiles and turbines.

A one-hour documentary on XBAND, the 1994 modem network for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. It covers matchmaking, chat, email, leaderboards and how games were patched at runtime to cope with lag.

A short film by Max Joseph about his anxiety in bookstores and how to read more books amid constant streaming, social media and news. He looks for ways to rebalance his content diet in favor of reading.

Part 1 of an episode of the British educational TV series The Secret Life of Machines, about how vacuum cleaners work and their history. It mixes humor with explanation of household technology.

A Channel 4 Equinox documentary on the NK-33 engines built for the Soviet N1 moon rocket and how they ended up in the USA. It includes rare footage and interviews with veterans of the early Soviet space program.

The first episode of the BBC's 1982 television series The Computer Programme, introducing home computing to a general audience. It surveys mainframes, early personal computers such as the BBC Micro and Commodore PET, and the changing computer market of the time.

A 1993 episode of The Computer Chronicles on the early Internet, with guests including Howard Rheingold discussing online community. It is a window into how the internet was seen and what hardware was in use at the time.

Dan Olson's long Folding Ideas video on the GameStop meme stock phenomenon, its online community and the conspiracy thinking around it. It runs over two hours.

A ColdFusion documentary on the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma, tracing their role in the opioid crisis that has killed over 200,000 people.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day tries to manufacture a grill scrubber entirely in the United States. Along the way he runs into missing supply chains, tooling and institutional manufacturing knowledge.

A 1995 episode of The Computer Chronicles devoted to Gary Kildall, creator of CP/M. It works as a retrospective and tribute to the personal computer pioneer.

A short vintage film clip of Seymour Papert, creator of Logo, on using computers to spark children's imagination and learning.

Part one of Sandia National Labs' first-person documentary on the use control, detonation safety and survivability of US nuclear weapons. It covers nuclear sharing in NATO and how control of use was separated from possession, leading to the always/never problem.

Asianometry examines how East Germany tried and failed to build a native semiconductor industry despite heavy investment, including the espionage involved in acquiring Western microelectronics technology.

A two-minute clip from the documentary The Fog of War in which Robert McNamara recalls Fidel Castro explaining how close the world came to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Josef Holzer walks through his family's Krameterhof, one of Europe's oldest permaculture farms in the Austrian mountains, with fish ponds, terraces, fruit trees and grazing animals. It showcases water management and microclimates.

The official trailer for The True Cost, a documentary on the fast fashion industry and who pays for cheap clothing. It touches on garment worker conditions and the Rana Plaza collapse.

The first episode of the 1996 PBS documentary series on the creation of the Boeing 777. It follows the design, build and certification process, including meetings with subcontractors.

Episode 4 of James Burke's Connections series, tracing how commercialism, climate change and the Black Death shaped the move to the Renaissance. It follows threads through waterpower, the printing press, the Jacquard loom and the Hollerith punch card toward modern computing.

The first part of a long series documenting Dave Bull's Tokyo woodblock workshop as it produces a reproduction of Hokusai's The Great Wave. It follows the carving, proofing and printing of the reward print for Kickstarter backers.

An HBO special in which Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Ricky Gervais and Louis CK discuss the craft of stand-up comedy. They talk about writing jokes, technique and how they handle old material.

Kirsten Dirksen visits retired mailman Russ Finch in Alliance, Nebraska, who grows oranges, figs and pomegranates in a backyard greenhouse without paying for heat. The greenhouse uses the stable temperature of the earth, with underground earth tubes, to heat and cool itself.

An episode of Gwynne Dyer's 1983 documentary series War, about how military basic training turns recruits into soldiers. It covers the psychological side of conditioning.

Summoning Salt traces the speedrunning history of Mario Kart 64's Choco Mountain track and its famous shortcut, through the successive record holders and discoveries. It carries an epilepsy warning for flickering lights.

Captain Disillusion's VFXcool episode, led by Alan Melikdjanian, takes a 41-minute nostalgic look at how the visual effects of Flight of the Navigator were made. It covers early computers, motion control, in-camera effects and practical crafts.