shor's algorithm

A Channel 4 News interview with technologist Jaron Lanier, who argues that social media damages people's lives. He discusses how Facebook, YouTube and Google use algorithms and data collection to shape what users see.

A short street interview from Invisible People with Keith, a homeless man in Los Angeles who lost his housing-industry job in the crash and moved from painkillers to heroin because it was cheaper. He talks candidly about the grip of addiction.

A short clip of Stephen Fry explaining the differences between American and British comedy. He attributes them to cultural attitudes such as optimism versus pessimism.

The full-length Numberphile interview with mathematician and hedge fund founder Jim Simons. He discusses his path from mathematics and codebreaking to founding Renaissance Technologies, his use of algorithms in markets, and his philanthropy.

A short excerpt from a 1994 interview of Steve Jobs in which he says everything around us was made up by people no smarter than you, and that you can change and shape the world.

A short clip of Richard Feynman answering an interviewer's question about why magnets repel, explaining that a 'why' question depends on a shared framework of understanding. It illustrates how hard it is to explain fundamentals to a layperson.

A short clip of Steve Jobs at the 2010 D8 conference, interviewed by Walt Mossberg, defining privacy as people knowing what they are signing up for, in plain English and repeatedly. The discussion centered on location data.

A short excerpt from Werner Herzog's film Lo and Behold in which Ted Nelson lays out his ideas about hypertext and interconnection. Herzog concludes that Nelson is the only sane person in computing.

A Numberphile interview with Donald Knuth about how he came to write the first book on surreal numbers after a lunch with John Conway. He tells the story casually in about 14 minutes.

A short clip of George R.R. Martin asking Stephen King on stage how he writes so fast. King describes setting daily page goals, around six pages a day, and keeping focused hours.

A short CNN clip of Peter Thiel telling Google chairman Eric Schmidt that Google has huge cash reserves and does not know how to invest them. Thiel argues this signals a lack of innovation.

A short TFiR clip of Linus Torvalds explaining why he thinks GPLv3 violates what GPLv2 stood for. He describes why he chose GPLv2 for kernel development and his view of the FSF's approach.

A short clip of Simon Peyton Jones talking about the future of programming languages, saying Haskell is useless in the sense that pure programs cannot have effects, while mainstream languages are useful but unsafe. He describes languages converging, with ideas such as STM and LINQ moving between them.

Brian Kernighan explains how grep came to be, written overnight by Ken Thompson, and how it got its name from the ed command g/re/p. He also covers the lineage from QED to ed that led to it.

John Conway talks in a short Numberphile interview about his mixed feelings toward the Game of Life, his most famous invention. He says he is not especially pleased that it overshadowed his other work.

A short BBC HARDtalk clip from 2014 in which Senator John McCain says Putin aims to rebuild the Russian empire, starting with eastern Ukraine and then Moldova and the Baltics. He also criticizes Obama for not arming Ukraine.

A short TFiR clip in which Linus Torvalds explains his view that respect should be earned rather than given, in defense of his blunt and insulting style.

A short clip of Steve Jobs explaining how sales and marketing people take over mature companies from product people, leading to product decline.

A short clip from the Dutch program Nieuwsuur in which Julian Assange appears to suggest that murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich was the source of the WikiLeaks DNC emails.

Kevin Rose interviews Elon Musk in 2012 about his companies PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla. It includes Musk's short explanation of reasoning from first principles versus by analogy.

A short excerpt of Elon Musk, interviewed by Kevin Rose, explaining first-principles reasoning with the example of the car versus improving horse carriages. He warns it takes much more mental energy than reasoning by analogy.

A short clip of Steve Jobs explaining why Xerox failed to capitalize on its inventions. He says monopoly profits let sales and marketing people take over from product people.

A short clip of Leo Laporte interviewing Bill Atkinson about developing HyperCard, including his story that the idea came during an LSD experience.

A short clip of molecular biologist Cristina Sanchez describing her lab research on how THC affects cancer cells. It is uploaded on a channel promoting cannabis as a cancer treatment.

A short excerpt of Noam Chomsky telling a BBC journalist that he does not accuse him of self-censorship. He argues that people who believed differently would not have been hired into that position.

A short NYT Op-Doc by Laura Poitras profiling NSA veteran William Binney, who says a program he helped design collects Americans' personal data.

A short compilation of Steve Jobs giving his opinions on Microsoft, including calling it opportunistic and lacking taste. It also touches on the role of big tech companies in showing what is possible.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian responds in a short interview to Anderson Cooper's on-air criticism of Reddit over child exploitation content.

Short archival film footage of an 87-year-old farmer interviewed in 1929, born in 1842, talking about life and change.

A short clip in which Carl Icahn tells the story of his first activist investment and of firing 12 floors of people, arguing activism need not be short term.

A short audio clip of a 1981 interview in which Republican strategist Lee Atwater explains to a political scientist how the party could win racist voters without using overtly racist language. It was published by The Nation with analysis by Rick Perlstein.

A short Charlie Rose interview clip of Eric Schmidt discussing Google's direction for search. It is remembered for his remark that returning more than one result is a bug.

A short clip of Steve Jobs at the D8 conference discussing the post-PC era, including his analogy of PCs as trucks that will remain for a minority of users.

A short Channel NewsAsia interview clip in which MasterCard's Southeast Asia president voices distrust of cryptocurrencies produced by anonymous computers in anonymous places. It is part of the Perspectives series and runs about four minutes.

A short excerpt from a 1973 Yorkshire TV film in which Richard Feynman explains that knowing the name of something is not the same as knowing it.

A short clip of Bill Gates appearing on David Letterman's show in 1995 trying to explain the value of the internet. Letterman is visibly unconvinced.

In a short interview clip, physicist Murray Gell-Mann talks about working alongside Richard Feynman at Caltech. He describes how the two men clashed in personality and image despite similar brilliance.

A short clip of Bernie Sanders in conversation with Ezra Klein of Vox, where he rejects open borders as a proposal that serves the Koch brothers. It is an excerpt from a longer interview on global poverty.