test fire

A short clip from a Richard Feynman interview in which he explains fire, describing how burning wood releases sunlight stored by the tree, which built itself mostly from air. It showcases his curiosity and plain-spoken explanations.

An IIHS crash test pitting a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air against a 2009 Malibu in a frontal offset collision for the institute's 50th anniversary. The old car's occupant space collapses while the modern car's protects its driver.

Jon Stewart appears as a guest on CNN's Crossfire in 2004 and criticizes hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala for turning political debate into partisan theater that hurts America.

Misko Hevery's Clean Code Talk shows how to use object-oriented techniques such as polymorphism to remove repeated if and switch statements. The result is code that is easier to test, understand and maintain.

Footage of a Minuteman III ICBM test launch and its reentry vehicles striking the Kwajalein atoll target area. It shows the missile climbing through clouds and the warheads descending.

Short US Missile Defense Agency footage of the December 2008 free-flight hover test of Lockheed Martin's Multiple Kill Vehicle. The test showed it hovering for 20 seconds while tracking a simulated target.

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.

Footage of an Airbus A380 engine blade-off test, in which a fan blade is deliberately released at full thrust to show the engine contains the failure.

A clip of Frank Zappa appearing on CNN's Crossfire in 1986, debating censorship and copyright. Zappa argues his position against record labeling and content restrictions.

A Whitest Kids U Know sketch built around the idea that saying certain things about the President is illegal.

Footage of Boeing test pilot Tex Johnson barrel-rolling the Boeing 707 prototype over Lake Washington, followed by his explanation of the stunt.

The official music video for Firestarter by The Prodigy, the 1990s electronic hit featuring Keith Flint.

Footage of Airbus's 2006 certification evacuation trial of the A380, in which 873 people left the aircraft within the required 90 seconds using half of the 16 doors. The test was supervised by EASA and the FAA, and one passenger broke a leg.

A short clip of Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony in which he says it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. It comes from questioning about Monica Lewinsky.

An early 2009 tech test by Notch of an Infiniminer-style cave game running about 700 fps on a 256x256x64 tile map. It is the prototype that grew into Minecraft.

The official music video for Billy Joel's 1989 song We Didn't Start the Fire, a rapid-fire list of historical events.

A short street-level clip of Joe Ades, the New York pitchman who sold vegetable peelers to crowds on the sidewalk. It shows his patter, showmanship and crowd handling in action.

Short archival footage of a USMC KC-130F Hercules making unarrested landings and takeoffs on the USS Forrestal in 1963. It is the largest and heaviest aircraft to have landed on a carrier, and the tests were judged successful but too risky for routine use.

A 2007 video of someone trying to write Perl code using Windows Vista's speech recognition, with hilariously bad results.

A 2007 video of someone trying to write Perl scripts using Windows Vista speech recognition, with comically bad results. The footage shows the recognizer repeatedly mangling commands.

The Original Caste's recording of One Tin Soldier synced to Cher's animated video. It is a protest song about war and greed.

The official music video for Rick Astley's 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up, the song behind the Rickroll internet prank.

The official video for Brother Ali's 'Uncle Sam Goddamn', a politically charged rap song critiquing the United States, produced by Ant.

A short clip of a Garry Kasparov press conference interrupted by a flying object in a prank. It is a brief, crude stunt video.

A short 2001 Tom's Hardware clip that runs Quake 3 on several popular CPU and motherboard combinations of the era, then removes the CPU cooler to see which chips survive. It shows how different processors handle losing their heatsink or fan.

A 1957 Walt Disney film in which he explains and demonstrates the multiplane camera, the animation tool that gave 2D films depth. It is a short behind-the-scenes piece from Disney's archives.

A short clip, titled Orwell Comes to America, on reasoning and perception. One HN user links it repeatedly as the science showing human minds are bad at reasoning and do not see reality as it is.

Julia Ecklar's recording of "The Eternal Flame," a filk song about God writing the universe in Lisp, written by Bob Kanefsky. It is a geek-humor song set to a familiar tune.

Steve Jobs's 2005 Stanford commencement address, built around three stories: connecting the dots, love and loss including being fired from Apple, and death. It is a 15-minute talk on finding work you love.

Ted Nelson demonstrates Xanadu Space, his software for representing hypertext in three-dimensional space with linked, referenced content fragments.

Dick Hardt's fast-paced OSCON keynote on Identity 2.0 and the move toward user-centric digital identity. It is also famous for its rapid-fire, many-slide presentation style.

The official video for Baba Yetu, Christopher Tin's Swahili-language choral piece written as the theme to Civilization IV. It was the first video game music to win a Grammy.

Dan Pink's TED talk argues that traditional carrot-and-stick rewards often fail for creative work, drawing on the candle problem and social science research. He points to autonomy, mastery and purpose as better motivators.

A two-minute demonstration of the loudness war, showing how heavy dynamic range compression in CD mastering makes music louder while degrading sound quality. It uses audio examples so you can hear the distortion.

Geoff Cumming uses a simulation to show how wildly the p value varies from one replication to the next because of sampling variability. He argues for estimation and confidence intervals over null hypothesis significance testing.

A two-minute Rouxbe cooking-school demo of how to heat a pan properly before cooking. It uses the Leidenfrost effect, where water beads and skates across a hot pan, to show when a stainless steel pan is ready.

Short footage of the 1983 Soyuz T-10-1 pad fire, in which the launch escape tower pulled the crew away seconds before the rocket exploded.

A Google Tech Talk arguing that the best interface requires the fewest clicks and choices, with Google search, Facebook, the iPod and Firefox as examples. It shows how minimizing interaction makes interfaces easier to learn.

A cappella parody song by The Richter Scales, set to Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire', lampooning the Web 2.0 startup bubble. It won a Webby for viral video in 2007.

James Houston's entry to Radiohead's Nude remix contest, performing the 6/8, 63bpm song on obsolete hardware such as hard drives, a dot matrix printer, a scanner and a ZX Spectrum.