reference frames

Dave Plummer tours the IBM z16 mainframe from design through factory assembly, test lab, accelerators and water cooling. He explains why mainframes still exist and what makes them reliable.

Veritasium visits NIST to explain Standard Reference Materials, the carefully characterized items such as peanut butter used to calibrate instruments and keep measurements consistent. It covers why they exist and why they are expensive.

AlphaPhoenix uses a custom high-speed measurement setup to watch voltage waves travel down wires and split at a fork. It answers how electricity knows where to go and how quickly that process happens.

Veritasium explains why the one-way speed of light has never been measured, only the round-trip speed, since measuring it requires synchronized clocks that assume the answer. It explores the implications for relativity.

Veritasium explains why analog computing may suit AI workloads, covering old analog computers, The Analog Thing and Mythic's analog chips that use flash memory for neural network inference. It argues digital hardware is hitting limits.

Practical Engineering explains what a black start is: restarting a power grid after total collapse. It shows why most plants need outside power to start and why rebuilding a synchronized grid is delicate and high-stakes.

3Blue1Brown explains why positive results on accurate medical tests are often false positives, and reframes Bayes' rule using likelihood ratios (Bayes factors) to update odds. It uses visual examples to make the reasoning intuitive.

Martin Donald explains the Wave Function Collapse algorithm using Sudoku-like constraint solving and shows how he implemented it with Blender and Godot. It links demos and reference articles.

A Wendover Productions explainer arguing that major airlines make much of their profit from loyalty programs and co-branded credit cards rather than flying. It frames airlines as quasi-banks that sell points in bulk, using United's pandemic-era loan as a hook.

Animator Noodle explains why frame interpolation does not make animation better, covering timing, easing, smear frames and using the wrong tool for the job. A pinned correction says the video is partly outdated given later AI developments.

Kurzgesagt examines how AI-generated content is flooding the internet, from video and music to news and books. It looks at how this makes verifying what is real harder.

Branch Education walks through a semiconductor fab and the dozens of steps used to turn silicon wafers into microchips, with 3D animation. It covers lithography, deposition and etching at a high level.

Not Just Bikes explains how Dutch traffic lights use early detection, transit priority and conflict-free design to cut waiting. The aim is to move as many people as possible rather than as many cars.

Dr. K of HealthyGamerGG explains why people feel unmotivated and unable to start tasks after hours of YouTube or similar distractions. He frames it as a result of how social media is designed to capture attention, and says not to blame yourself.

Technology Connections explains why car turn signals appear to drift out of sync at stoplights and how thermal and other flasher designs work. It also covers how synchronization could be achieved.

Mick West shows new night-vision reference footage indicating the Navy's supposed flying pyramid UFO is just an out-of-focus light, likely a plane near LAX, rendered triangular by bokeh. He identifies other lights as Jupiter and stars.

CGP Grey investigates why the name Tiffany spiked in popularity and then faded, with help from onomastics experts. It is a short, playful look at how names spread.

A Kurzgesagt animation on longtermism, arguing that because the future could hold trillions of people, our actions' effect on future generations may be what matters most.

Not Just Bikes visits Paris to see how Mayor Anne Hidalgo's policies are turning it into a '100% cyclable' city. It looks at the changes that took space from cars for bikes and people.

An animated Sprouts video presenting Dietrich Bonhoeffer's argument that stupidity is more dangerous than evil, because reason cannot reach stupid people. It frames stupidity as a social and moral phenomenon.

Not Just Bikes reflects on five years in the Netherlands and tours small towns and cities, from Haarlem to Veenendaal. It argues that good urbanism with walkable streets, bike infrastructure and transit is found almost everywhere there, not just in Amsterdam.

Scott Manley tells the story of a computerized telemetry system built to sit at the heart of a nuclear test device in place of the plutonium pit, designed to transmit data in the microseconds before it was destroyed.

Tom Scott visits an eHighway test in Lubeck, Germany, where electric trucks with pantographs draw power from overhead wires. He explains how this could electrify road freight.

Veritasium visits the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory to see the world's strongest magnets and demonstrate effects like eddy currents. It covers what intense magnetic fields do to materials and objects.