reverse engineering

A short clip demonstrating a phone-based social engineering trick in which a crying baby in the background is used to pressure a customer service rep. It shows how attackers exploit human sympathy rather than technical flaws.

Aamer Rahman of Fear of a Brown Planet delivers a stand-up routine on so-called reverse racism, arguing about power imbalance and why criticism of a dominant group is not equivalent to racism.

A Belgian bank-safety campaign video in which a supposed clairvoyant stuns people by revealing personal financial details, then shows he found them all online. It warns viewers to be careful about what they share and about online banking security.

The earliest filmed version of the Turbo Encabulator technical-jargon parody, shot in the late 1970s with narrator Bud Haggert. It deadpans a stream of meaningless engineering language.

The trailer for Tim Hunkin's series The Secret Life of Components, eight guides to mechanical and electromechanical parts for designers and makers.

A spoof industrial promo for the Rockwell Retro Encabulator, a deadpan stream of technobabble about an imaginary machine. It is a classic engineering in-joke.

A Consumer Reports and IIHS crash test pitting a 2009 Chevy Malibu against a 1959 Bel Air. It shows how much better modern cars protect occupants.

A short comedy video of the Turbo Encabulator, a piece of technobabble nonsense describing an imaginary machine in deadpan engineering language.

Steve Mould messes with an automated phone bot by telling it to forget its previous prompts and give him a bolognese recipe. It is a short demo of prompt injection against an AI voice agent.

A LockPickingLawyer video in which a locksmith claims his videos are fake and challenges him; he responds by picking the lock. It is a short, typical LPL demonstration.

A short Coding Secrets episode explaining why hitting a Sonic 3D cartridge triggers a hidden level select. The cause was a custom crash handler that redirected CPU error interrupts to the level select screen.

A tool-assisted speedrun of Pokemon Yellow on Game Boy Color that uses glitches and frame-precise inputs to make the game execute an arbitrary program. It was later obsoleted by an improved run.

A four-minute 2006 explainer on trusted computing, describing what it is and whether users should support it, with a skeptical DRM angle.

A short demo of a playable Space Invaders game built inside Dwarf Fortress, with a downloadable map. It shows the game's mechanics used as a computing substrate.

A one-minute clip from the 1992 film Sneakers in which characters defeat a voice-authentication system by splicing recorded phrases, ending on the line "My voice is my passport." It was posted to illustrate a post on government surveillance.

A very short clip from The Matrix Reloaded in which Trinity runs nmap and then uses an SSH exploit. The scene is notable for showing a real tool.

A short clip from the 2013 LinuxCon Linux Kernel Panel in which Linus Torvalds is asked about being approached to insert a backdoor into Linux. He answers no verbally while nodding yes, which became a much-shared moment.

A one-minute political ad from a PAC tied to Missouri Governor Mike Parson attacking a reporter who disclosed a state website flaw as a hacker.

A short clip from the 1995 film Hackers in which the characters attempt to hack the Gibson supercomputer, shown with flashy stylized visuals of digital intrusion.

Footage of the 2007 Aurora test, in which a cyberattack was used to destroy a large generator at a test facility in Idaho.

A tool-assisted speedrun of Super Mario World that achieves arbitrary code execution through frame-precise controller inputs, finishing in 2:25. It was also performed live on real hardware at AGDQ 2014.

A short video of someone playing Doom on a TI-83+ graphing calculator, with a link to the version used.

A demo of Quake's E1M1 rendered as vector graphics on a Hitachi oscilloscope. A laptop generates the audio signal that the scope draws.

A short CSI clip in which characters try to track a killer's IP address by writing a Visual Basic GUI. It is a famous example of absurd TV hacking.

A LockPickingLawyer video showing that a padlock sold as an Amazon's Choice high-security product can be opened trivially, with no picking needed.

A one-minute demonstration of iOS 14's new paste notification, which revealed popular apps silently reading the clipboard each time they were opened. It credits the mysk research write-up.

The scene from the 2001 film Swordfish in which Hugh Jackman's character is forced to hack while under pressure. The clip is widely known for its absurd depiction of hacking.

Bill Hammack of engineerguy uses slow motion video to show how the IBM Selectric typewriter works. He focuses on its fully mechanical digital-to-analog converter, which turns key presses into rotation of the type ball.

Tourist footage of the 660-ton tuned mass damper in Taipei 101 swaying during tremors from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The damper hangs from the 92nd floor.

Tom Lehrer's satirical song about Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who went from the Nazi missile program to the US space program. It includes the famous line about not caring where the rockets come down.

A short video of a Boeing 777 wing being tested to destruction, finally breaking at 154 percent of its designed limit load. The wing is flexed upward until it fails.

Tom Lehrer performs his satirical song about rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, with an introduction. It is a two-minute musical clip.

A short clip of the Snowbird, a human-powered ornithopter built by University of Toronto students. On August 2, 2010 it sustained altitude and airspeed for 19.3 seconds, the first such flight.

A short satirical video, originally titled Broccoli Man, in which an engineer who only wants to serve 5 terabytes gets tangled in Google's internal resource and production processes. It is the source of the phrase about forgetting how to count that low.

A one-minute clip of Scotty from Star Trek giving advice to engineers about managing expectations in estimates. It is a comedic bit of workplace wisdom.

A short Boeing-supplied clip where the 737 MAX program's chief project engineer explains how the lengthened landing gear of the MAX 10 folds up. It shows the gear model in motion.

Short British Pathe newsreel footage of the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as it twisted and swayed in the wind. The only casualty was a dog left in a stalled car.

A one-minute National Geographic clip of researchers Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo testing a theory that Easter Islanders used ropes to rock the moai statues upright to walk them to their platforms.

A Margin Call clip in which Will Emerson tries to persuade Eric Dale to return to the firm, and Dale recounts calculating the lifetimes saved by a bridge he helped build.

A short KRAZAM comedy sketch in which engineers explain an absurdly tangled microservices architecture to a manager. It parodies how backend complexity gets justified with jargon.