research

Sabine Hossenfelder reads a confidential email and uses it to explain her worries about academia and incentives in theoretical physics research. She ties it to her earlier Nature Physics comment on research quality.

John Oliver's second Last Week Tonight segment on the opioid epidemic, covering the role of large companies in driving it. It touches on Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family.

Kurzgesagt addresses whether viewers can trust its videos, describing its research process and how it handles older videos with errors or overstated claims.

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.

Tantacrul dissects the UX and UI of Avid's Sibelius music notation software, going through a long list of bad design choices. The review is both a comic rant and a practical lesson in interface design.

Dan Olson of Folding Ideas investigates the Mikkelsen Twins and the ghostwritten-audiobook passive-income course industry, even playing along with the scheme. It is a long video essay on get-rich-quick publishing grifts.

Folding Ideas uses the rise and fall of the YouTube competitor VidMe to examine why platforms are not friends to creators. It argues that alternatives to big platforms tend to attract the users banned from the original and lack a core vision.

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 Last Week Tonight segment on the US opioid epidemic, tracing how prescription painkillers fed addiction and heroin use. It is the first of three episodes the show devoted to the crisis.

A short clip of Penn and Teller arguing, in blunt and profane language, for vaccination and against anti-vaccine claims. It covers risk versus benefit and herd immunity.

Veritasium explains why clickbait titles and thumbnails work, how he tests them, and why educational creators feel pushed to use them. He classifies types of clickbait and discusses the trade-offs.

Tantacrul gives a detailed UX and UI design review of the MuseScore 3 notation software and compares it with Sibelius. It examines visual appeal, navigation and notation quality.

An animated, profane rant critiquing Windows 8, especially its touch-first interface on desktop PCs. The author draws on a background in tech journalism to lay out the UX problems.

Razbuten has his wife, who has never played games, try a sampling of titles and shows where she struggles. It highlights unspoken game conventions that experienced players take for granted.

Accursed Farms' hour-plus critique of the modern desktop GUI. It argues that current interfaces are a regression from older designs such as Windows 7 and proposes principles for better ones.

Jon Stewart appears on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and discusses the pandemic, vaccine science and the Wuhan lab origin theory. He jokes that the disease shares its name with the lab.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on the Sackler family and how they have handled opioid lawsuits. It covers how hard they fought to defend their name and is the third of three segments on the opioid crisis.

hbomberguy examines whether a product can be truly progressive, looking at brands that adopt social causes in their marketing, with the Gillette ad as a prompt. It argues the behavior is driven by profit, not politics.

Dave Plummer, a retired Microsoft engineer who wrote Task Manager, responds to the claim that Windows sucks. He describes how he would fix common annoyances, in what he calls a love letter to Windows wrapped in a rant.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on vaccines, arguing that the benefits far outweigh the minuscule risks and discussing why some parents still doubt their safety.

An episode of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj exposing how tax-prep companies like TurboTax make filing confusing and costly even though many Americans can file for free. It combines comedy with reporting on lobbying and dark patterns.

A John Oliver Last Week Tonight segment on native advertising, showing how ads are disguised as editorial content in news media, including BuzzFeed and major newspapers.

MegaLag investigates PayPal's Honey browser extension, showing how it swaps affiliate attribution and was promoted by large YouTube influencers. It includes technical demonstrations of the affiliate tag replacement in browser dev tools.

Jake Archibald argues that URLs are nearly impossible for humans to interpret, especially for security. He walks through what browsers do about it, including highlighting the registrable domain, and floats a possible better design.

The Game Theorists analyze how PewDiePie rose to become the most subscribed channel on YouTube. The video looks at why let's plays and gaming channels thrive on the platform.

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.

Veritasium's Derek Muller explains his hypothesis that YouTube's algorithm, not viewer preference, drives views, and that click-through rate has become the key metric. He argues this pushes creators toward clickable titles and thumbnails and leads to burnout.

Hank Green, a TikTok creator with millions of followers, explains why he thinks TikTok underpays creators. He compares its fixed-pot creator fund with YouTube's revenue sharing.

ArtosisTV's commentary on Game 1 of DeepMind's AlphaStar (Protoss) against top Zerg player Serral at Blizzcon 2019. Artosis analyzes the match with beginner-friendly commentary.

A Last Week Tonight segment on sponsored content in local news. John Oliver explains why local news integrity matters and how paid content disguised as news erodes it.

Louis Rossmann lays out evidence that a Yelp salesperson had friends leave negative reviews of his repair shop after he declined advertising. He frames it as extortion and defamation.

Physicist and YouTuber Angela Collier argues in this hour-long video that AI as commonly described does not really exist. She covers the limits of the tools, biased datasets, and why they should not be used to make decisions.

A Last Week Tonight segment on how pharmaceutical companies spend billions marketing drugs to doctors. It uses comedy to lay out the industry's questionable practices.

Linus Tech Tips gives its 2020 breakdown of how the company earns money, including ads, sponsors, merch and affiliate links. It includes a pie chart of revenue sources.

GothamChess walks through AlphaZero's famous games against Stockfish, highlighting its unusual pawn sacrifices and positional style. It is aimed at chess fans rather than ML specialists.

Linus Tech Tips addresses criticism of its clickbait-style thumbnails in an Honest Answers episode, explaining that the YouTube algorithm pushes creators toward them.

Louis Rossmann explains how Google delisted his repair business site for almost a year, and how having AI rewrite his authentic content into corporate-style text finally restored his rankings.

Linus Tech Tips explains how Windows Modern Standby causes laptops to drain battery while asleep, arguing it makes Windows laptops hard to recommend compared to MacBooks.

Tantacrul tells the story of Audacity, the widely used free audio editor, and announces his involvement in the project. It includes an interview with the original developers and a look at the software's usability.

A two-minute remix-style video set to Hall of the Mountain King that mocks Anthony Fauci's Covid pandemic statements. It circulated widely among vaccine and mandate skeptics.