tech bubble

Adam Tornhill's GOTO Copenhagen 2019 talk on how to prioritize technical debt in large codebases. It argues for combining code complexity with change frequency (hotspots) from version control data, rather than trying to quantify debt in the abstract.

A Last Week Tonight segment on tech monopolies, their hidden harms and possible remedies such as antitrust reform. John Oliver covers lobbying and legislation along the way.

A conference presentation by Bert Hubert on how companies lose their technological edge and become outsourcing hubs. It argues the same dynamic applies to whole countries and continents, and ends with suggestions for reversing it.

Technology Connections looks at why awnings disappeared from houses and how effective they are at cutting solar heat gain and cooling costs. It argues they are a simple, forgotten cooling technology.

An Asianometry documentary-style video on the rise and collapse of China's dockless bike-share boom. It covers the startups, the heavy subsidies and the price wars.

Bryan Cantrill's Monktoberfest 2017 talk on leadership and organizational principles, ranging from the Gettysburg Address to Uber and Amazon. He argues for the difference between principles and values and criticizes vague corporate principles.

Technology Connections explains how the simple American drip coffee maker works, including the bimetal valve and bubble-pump heating, and compares the original Mr. Coffee with modern machines.

A demo of writing technical documents in Emacs Org mode using org-babel, so that code blocks and generated content stay consistent when things change. The author shares the demo files and his dotfiles.

A political commentary video arguing that tech billionaires such as Thiel, Musk and Andreessen, along with figures like Yarvin, are using the new administration to push their agenda. It connects Yarvin's ideas with Project 2025.

Marques Brownlee explains why iMessage's blue and green bubbles matter, covering the technical, commercial and social side of Apple's messaging lock-in. It also discusses RCS and what could be done about it.

The 1972 documentary based on Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock, narrated by Orson Welles. It is a dystopian look at the accelerating pace of technological change and its psychological toll.

In Ars Technica's War Stories, Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin explains how the team squeezed Crash Bandicoot onto the original PlayStation. They overwrote Sony library code in RAM, built custom animation compression, and streamed assets around slow seek times.

Christian Schafmeister's Google Tech Talk on designing spiroligomer molecules and building Clasp, a Common Lisp on LLVM that interoperates with C++, to program molecular design. It covers the chemistry, automatic differentiation for force fields, and how the compiler is built.

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.

Myst co-creator Rand Miller recounts how the HyperCard-built game struggled to run on 1x CD-ROM drives. He and his brother Robyn compressed image and audio data heavily to get acceptable performance. Part of Ars Technica's War Stories series.

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.

A 2008 Google Tech Talk making the case for the liquid fluoride thorium reactor as an abundant, safe source of electrical power. It covers the technical motivations and design of thorium molten-salt reactors.

A long Techlore video documenting what it presents as hostile conduct by GrapheneOS leadership and community members, including lead developer Daniel Micay, toward CalyxOS and others.

Technology Connections explains how modern EV fast charging can fill a battery in about 10 to 20 minutes, covering charging standards and EV road trips.

The first episode of James Burke's Connections series, 'The Trigger Effect', explores how modern society depends on interlinked technological systems and how quickly it breaks down when they fail, starting with a power blackout.

Veritasium visits the US Navy's Crane facility to test top night vision goggles. It explains how image intensifier tubes and thermal or digital systems work and compares the generations of the technology.

Tanya Reilly's LeadDev talk on glue work, the invisible coordination and support tasks engineers do that keep teams successful but can hurt careers.

Technology Connections explains how heat pumps work as reversed air conditioners and why they can deliver several times the heat of resistive heating per unit of energy. It also tackles common myths such as poor cold-weather performance.

Technology Connections explains how dishwashers work, why detergent pods underperform powder, and how to use the pre-wash and main-wash compartments. It argues you don't need to pre-rinse dishes.

Technology Connections takes a long, detailed look at how a 1970s electromechanical pinball machine works, from relays to stepper motors and mechanical logic. It is the first part of a series.

Technology Connections explains how dishwashers work and how to use them well, including detergent use, the prewash cycle and why pre-rinsing hurts. It follows his earlier dishwasher videos.

Techmoan's 45-minute retrospective on Sony's MiniDisc, covering the first and last machines, ATRAC, MD-LP, Net-MD and HiMD. It argues the format deserves more credit than its US failure narrative suggests.

Technology Connections' hour-long guide to electric vehicles, covering costs, trade-offs and especially how little home charging power most drivers need.

A 2009 Google Tech Talk by Nicholas Zakas on the hidden performance pitfalls of JavaScript. It covers what is fast and slow in the language and how to avoid common bottlenecks.

Technology Connections takes apart a 1970 Wurlitzer 3400 jukebox to show how electromechanical relays and switches automated its behavior without a computer.

The first episode of Caltech's The Mechanical Universe, a 52-part introductory university physics series. David Goodstein introduces ideas from Copernicus to Newton, linking the physics of the heavens and the earth with computer animation.

Technology Connections explains in 33 minutes why thermoelectric (Peltier) cooling is far less efficient than compressor-based refrigeration.

Technology Connections explains what forced-air furnaces are, how they work and why they need electricity. He covers combustion, airflow and the parts of a modern furnace.

Technology Connections gives a deeply researched history of RCA's CED video disc system, a capacitance-based format that took over a decade to reach market. Part one covers its development and strange technology.

Technology Connections explains how an ordinary tank water heater works, including twin-element designs, and why it is cleverer than it looks.

Technology Connections takes apart the step-by-step electromechanical logic of a 1970s pinball machine. He shows how relays, steppers and switches track state and score without electronics.

Linus Tech Tips documents a major RAID failure on its Whonnock server and the attempt to recover the lost data with a data recovery firm.

A 2006 Google TechTalk in which SQLite's author Richard Hipp introduces the embeddable, zero-configuration C database library. He covers its history, strengths and weaknesses, and where it beats client/server databases.

Technology Connections spends 22 minutes on the humble can opener and what its design shows about products and why people don't know what to look for. It uses an everyday tool to draw broader lessons.

Technology Connections explains how RGB light and color work, from hue and saturation to color vision and how objects appear under different lighting. It uses a studio setup with colored lights to demonstrate the effects.