technical debt

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.

Ward Cunningham explains the history and intent of the debt metaphor, which he coined while refactoring the WyCash product. He says debt means code reflecting an incomplete understanding of the problem, not sloppy programming.

David Graeber's Talks at Google presentation on his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, covering the history of debt, the myth of barter and the Jubilee tradition.

Tom Chi gives the opening talk of a Foresight Institute competition on clean energy and clean air, framing excess CO2 as a carbon debt to repay and discussing large-scale tree planting, including by drone.

The Futurama clip where Hermes is told he is technically correct, the best kind of correct. It comes from season 2, episode 14.

Not Just Bikes explains how many American suburbs, built all at once rather than incrementally, cannot cover their infrastructure costs and survive on growing debt. It draws on Strong Towns' work on the growth Ponzi scheme.

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.

An animated documentary by Paul Grignon explaining how modern money is created through bank lending as debt. This is a combined upload of the revised 2009 edition.

Paul Grignon's animated documentary presenting his view of how banks create money as debt and why that system requires continuous growth. It outlines the historical background of modern banking.

A 2006 Saturday Night Live fake infomercial with Steve Martin and Amy Poehler selling the sure-fire way out of debt: don't buy stuff.

A clip of Yanis Varoufakis answering a question about China versus the EU on debt conditions. He contrasts Chinese non-interventionist lending with EU conditionality, drawing on the Piraeus port.

John Oliver covers student debt and the for-profit colleges that push students into it, including Corinthian-style schools and ITT Tech. It is a segment from Last Week Tonight.

The classic 1950s recording of Tennessee Ernie Ford singing 'Sixteen Tons', a song about a coal miner trapped in company-store debt.

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

A 30-minute condensed version of the documentary I.O.U.S.A., which examines the growing US national debt and its consequences.

Ray Dalio's 30-minute animated video explains how the economy works through credit, debt, interest rates, and short- and long-term cycles. It is based on his template for understanding the economy.

An animated 44-minute summary of Ray Dalio's book Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order. It lays out the Big Cycle of rising and declining nations, covering debt cycles, internal conflict, and shifts in global power over the past 500 years.

Daniele Procida's PyCon AU 2017 talk presents a system that divides documentation into four kinds, usually drawn as four quadrants. He explains why mixing them makes docs poor and how separating them improves writing.

Roaring Kitty's July 2020 analysis of GameStop, arguing a bullish deep-value case when the stock was about $4 and short interest exceeded 100%. It covers fundamentals, cash balance and technicals.

An independent feature documentary in which 23 economists, advisers and financiers discuss how the financial system works and what a more just economic model might look like. It covers money creation, debt and the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Quentin Perret of Google gives a technical deep dive into protected KVM (pKVM) on Arm64, a confidential computing approach for CPUs without hardware extensions. It explains how the nVHE hypervisor manages stage-2 MMU access control to protect guest memory.

A scene from The Big Short in which Jared Vennett pitches credit default swaps on mortgage bonds to a hedge fund team, using a Jenga tower to illustrate collateralized debt obligations.

A Google Tech Talk by sleep researcher Dr. William Dement on healthy sleep and performance. He argues sleep debt must be repaid and describes the three characteristics of healthy sleep.

Episode 4 of Mike Maloney's Hidden Secrets of Money, explaining how currency is created through a chain of IOUs among the Treasury, banks and the Federal Reserve. It covers bonds, Fed checks, debt, taxes and fractional reserve lending, from a gold-and-silver advocate's viewpoint.

A live mock programmer interview in which Casey Muratori interviews game developer Shawn McGrath using a less confrontational format devised by Chris Hecker. It gets deep into technical details while showing how the candidate actually thinks and works.

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.

A GDC 2015 talk by Arc System Works technical artist Junya Motomura on how Guilty Gear Xrd rebuilt a classic 2D fighter in full 3D while keeping a hand-drawn look. It covers the art and programming R&D and the stylistic decisions behind it.

Kevin Rose interviews Chris Sacca, founder of Lowercase Capital, for his Foundation series. The conversation covers Sacca's path in venture capital and angel investing, including his early financial ups and downs.

Mark Blyth's Talks at Google presentation based on his book on austerity. He argues that government debt came largely from bailing out banks, and that budget cuts are a misguided response to the financial crisis.

Tom Scott visits Yale's archives to look at a 367-year-old bond from a Dutch water authority that is still paying interest. Finance professor Geert Rouwenhorst explains how it works.

A short scene from the Amazon series Patriot in which a spy character gives a deadpan, jargon-filled lecture about pipes and nut plate spacing. It is a comedic bit of corporate-cover absurdity.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on auto lending, showing how lenders steer vulnerable buyers into subprime loans and crushing debt. It uses comedy sketches to explain the practices.

A short clip of the famous Hitchhiker-style circular narration of a missile guidance system explaining how it knows where it is by knowing where it isn't. It is a deadpan bit of technical-sounding absurdity about subtraction and navigation.

Robert Martin's RailsConf 2009 talk looks at why Smalltalk lost out despite its technical strengths. He draws lessons about language communities and arrogance that he argues could hurt Ruby too.

A 30-minute animated film explaining how money, banking and the Federal Reserve work and arguing that the American economy is heading for collapse. It is opinionated and has a strong point of view.

The introductory lecture of Richard Hamming's capstone course, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn. It focuses on style of thinking and on educating rather than training, using technical material only as illustration.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on municipal violations. It shows how small fines and fees escalate for people who cannot pay and how private probation and ticket revenue can ruin lives.

Moishe Lettvin, a former Google engineer, shares lessons from 250 interviews and his time on the hiring committee. He tells how the committee given anonymized packets, including its own, would hire almost none of them.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on payday loans and predatory lending, covering how they trap borrowers and target the elderly and military. It features Sarah Silverman.

MIT 22.01 lecture by Michael Short explaining the Chernobyl accident technically, including RBMK reactor positive feedback, xenon poisoning and the cascade of human errors during the test.