proof of work

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.

An episode of Tim Hunkin's The Secret Life of Machines that explains how a washing machine works, using models, cut-aways and animations. It was first aired in 1988.

A feature-length documentary on how the City of London and Britain's overseas territories built a global web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions after the empire declined. It traces how this network captured and hid wealth from around the world.

Cloth Map documents Havana's SNET, a community-built private network that Cubans created because internet prices were high. It is used for gaming and sharing.

The Eames Office's 1977 film Powers of Ten starts at a picnic in Chicago and zooms out by a factor of ten every ten seconds to the edge of the universe. It then zooms inward to a proton in a carbon atom.

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.

Geoff Lawton documents a permaculture project that turned barren Jordanian desert into green, productive land. It covers the techniques he used.

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 29-minute cinematic timelapse by melodysheep that journeys trillions of years into the future, covering the death of the sun, the end of stars, proton decay, black hole evaporation and the fate of the cosmos.

The first part of Adam Curtis' documentary series on Sigmund Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, who invented public relations. It shows how Bernays used Freud's ideas to link mass-produced goods to unconscious desires and create modern consumer persuasion.

NASA JPL engineers explain the final minutes of the Curiosity rover's entry, descent and landing on Mars, which combined aerobraking, a parachute and a skycrane. It lays out the tight sequence of events that all had to work automatically.

In an Ars Technica War Stories episode, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner describes how he made the game on the Apple II, fighting hardware memory limits and the platform's decline. It covers the rotoscoped animation and the engineering tricks involved.

A long documentary-style video arguing that slavery in the US effectively continued through convict leasing and the prison system until around 1942. It covers the constitutional carveout and the history of neoslavery.

NativLang's 47-minute animated documentary traces the birth and evolution of writing, from early cave marks to modern scripts. It presents the history of the world's writing systems as a story.

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.

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison visits the chinampas, the floating gardens of Xochimilco in Mexico City. He looks at this ancient Aztec agricultural system and the project restoring it.

Tantacrul walks through how the MuseScore 4 team was built and how design decisions were made for the overhaul of a huge legacy notation app. It covers playback and engraving quality improvements.

Neil Halloran's animated, data-driven documentary visualizes the human cost of World War II and compares it with other wars and the trend toward fewer war deaths in recent decades.

Michael Oswald's documentary, based on Richard Werner's book, argues that Japan's 1990s crash was engineered by the central bank and powerful interests. It focuses on the Bank of Japan's hidden influence over the economy.

A 1984 AT&T film showing the live cutover of a Glendale, California central office from step-by-step switching to an electronic switching system. Installers prepare the site and then cut cables in a coordinated operation.

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.

A short BBC Planet Earth clip from the Pole to Pole episode showing the courtship displays of birds of paradise.

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.

Coffeezilla's investigation into the Counter-Strike 2 skin gambling ecosystem, covering casino sites, influencers and esports teams that profit from it. It is part of a multi-part series on Valve's skin economy and its effects on young players.

A NOVA documentary with neuroscientist Heather Berlin exploring the subconscious and what drives our decisions. It uses sleepwalking, anesthesia, improvised rap in an MRI and game theory to probe how much of the brain's work is hidden.

The official trailer for the documentary General Magic, about the secretive Apple spinoff that tried to build a handheld communicator in 1990 and whose ideas shaped the smartphone era.

A two-hour episode of Fall of Civilizations on the Nabataeans, from humble desert traders to masters of Petra, and what finally brought down their empire.

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.

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.

A New York Times Opinion documentary tracing Soviet and KGB disinformation, from the 1980s AIDS origin hoax to modern campaigns like Pizzagate. It features former KGB officers and the people who tried to counter the lies.

A Dartmouth-produced documentary on how professors John Kemeny and Tom Kurtz, with a group of undergraduates, invented the BASIC language. It covers the creation of BASIC and the early time-sharing environment at Dartmouth.

Machine Thinking argues the 1751 machine, a metal-cutting lathe associated with Vaucanson, triggered the biggest explosion of wealth in history by enabling precise manufacturing of other machines.

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

Revolution OS is a feature-length documentary on the history of free software and Linux. It covers Stallman and the GNU project, Torvalds and the kernel, and Raymond and Perens on open source, starting from the era of freely shared hobbyist code.

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.

Gaming Historian recounts how Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in the Soviet Union and how a fight over publishing rights spanned the West, Mirrorsoft, Nintendo and the Cold War. It runs about an hour with chaptered parts.

First part of a four-part video history of Japan's electronics industry, covering the birth of the transistor and the rise of Japanese semiconductors. It appears to draw on NHK documentary material.

Bloomberg's Hello World episode in which Ashlee Vance visits Shenzhen, a hub of electronics manufacturing and cloning. He meets tech-fueled entrepreneurs working under an authoritarian regime.

An independent feature documentary in which 23 economists, advisers and financiers discuss how the financial system works and what a more just economic model might look like. It covers money creation, debt and the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Remastered episode of Tim Hunkin's The Secret Life of Machines about the radio, covering its development including Hertz and Marconi experiments and Armstrong's FM radio in animated form.