trailing-edge

Theo de Raadt presents pledge, a new OpenBSD security mechanism that kills processes which exceed the system calls they declared they need. The talk was given late at night at Hackfest 2015.

Jonathan Blow's DevGAMM 2019 talk argues that software knowledge is being lost between generations and that growing layers of abstraction could lead to a decline in technological civilization.

WIRED has UCLA professor Amit Sahai explain zero-knowledge proofs to a child, a teen, a college student, a grad student and an expert. Each round goes deeper into the cryptography and why it matters.

Part one of a 1996 BBC Modern Times documentary on the training to become a London black cab driver. It follows candidates learning the Knowledge and facing stressful repeated exams with Public Carriage Office examiners.

Asianometry explains that the worst of the 2021-22 chip shortage sits in trailing-edge semiconductors, not the leading-edge chips usually covered. It covers why those older-node fabs are so hard to expand and fix.

Apple's late-1980s Knowledge Navigator concept video, produced under John Sculley, showing a professor using a tablet-like device with a conversational software agent. It envisions hypertext, touchscreens and voice assistants.

A Google talk from the Chisel community in which engineers recount designing the Edge TPU with the Chisel hardware construction language. It covers the productivity gains and the problems they hit.

Apple's 1987 Knowledge Navigator concept video imagines a conversational voice assistant, multi-touch tablet and video calling used by a professor. It was made years before the graphical web existed.

Leaked internal Google X video, 'The Selfish Ledger', a speculative thought experiment about treating user data as a ledger that could guide and shape human behavior, including products sold to fill data gaps.

A trader channel clips Jim Cramer describing market manipulation techniques hedge funds use. The clip is framed as context for odd short-term market moves.

Apple's 1987 Knowledge Navigator concept video, made for John Sculley's EDUCOM keynote, showing a professor conversing with a tablet-based AI assistant.

Tom Scott races a London black-cab driver who has memorized The Knowledge against a phone GPS across the city, comparing local expertise to navigation software.

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 DevGAMM talk by Jonathan Blow arguing that civilizations can lose technological capability and that software quality is already deteriorating. He discusses how knowledge fails to transfer between generations.

SQLite creator Richard Hipp gives a history of SQLite and explains where it shines as a database at the edge of the network with no DBA. He covers long-term support, testing and how it is used in products.

An RSA Animate in which Steven Pinker explains how the mind builds infinite meanings from finite language, and why people often speak indirectly. It covers ambiguity, politeness and mutual knowledge, including the emperor's new clothes example.

Destin of Smarter Every Day learns to ride a bicycle whose steering is reversed, taking about eight months, and compares it with how his young son learned much faster. It illustrates knowledge versus understanding and brain plasticity in adults versus children.

A two-minute clip in which Milton Friedman uses a humble pencil to show how thousands of strangers across many countries cooperate, without central direction, to make a simple product. It is a short visual version of the 'I, Pencil' essay's argument about free markets and dispersed knowledge.

David Deutsch's TED talk arguing that humanity's survival depends on solving problems through knowledge growth. He frames people as improbable "chemical scum" capable of understanding distant quasars.

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.

Alexander Rose of the Long Now Foundation describes the design and construction of the 10,000 year clock conceived by Danny Hillis. He covers the project's history, methods, and how different cultures built things to last millennia.

A Big Think talk in which hedge-fund manager William Ackman goes through the basics of finance and investing in under an hour. It is pitched as a crash course on the most important concepts.

Medlife Crisis asks whether academic research should sit behind paywalls, covering publisher profit margins, unpaid reviewers, Sci-Hub and Aaron Swartz. It includes an interview with Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan.

Noam Chomsky's 2011 University of Oslo lecture on Newton's contributions to the study of mind. He argues Newton abandoned mechanical explanation and lowered the bar for scientific intelligibility, with consequences for the limits of human understanding. Q&A starts at 45:33.

David Rock gives a Google Tech Talk based on his book Your Brain at Work, using neuroscience to explain why focus and productivity are hard at the office. He gives strategies for managing mental energy and distraction.

Smarter Every Day host Destin Sandlin tries to hover a helicopter and finds it very hard. The video shows how the constant coordinated corrections across several control axes feel at first and how learning makes them automatic.

A ten-minute clip from Jonathan Blow's talk on preventing the collapse of civilization, arguing that software quality and the knowledge to build it are in decline.

A QCon London 2020 talk by Tesla engineers on the architecture of Tesla's Virtual Power Plant. It covers aggregating distributed batteries and solar with vertically integrated hardware and software across cloud and edge.

Short Curious Droid video on why NASA could not simply rebuild the Saturn V's Rocketdyne F-1 engine for the SLS boosters. It explains that the engines were hand-tailored and that much of the know-how was never documented, so the blueprints were not enough.

A one-minute demo comparing RetroArch shaders on the Sonic the Hedgehog waterfall, where Sega Genesis dithering creates a transparency effect. It shows how different shaders emulate the CRT look.

AutoX shows its fully driverless robotaxi navigating dense, chaotic urban village streets in Chinese cities. The vehicle nudges through crowds, bikes, scooters and pets.

A NASA video on the 29 days after the James Webb Space Telescope's launch, when thousands of parts must deploy in sequence on the way to its destination a million miles away.

A 12-minute beginner lesson from Nick Milo's Linking Your Thinking series introducing the Obsidian note-taking app and the first steps to start using it.

An excerpt from an RSA event in which physicist David Deutsch makes the case for optimism as a driver of progress in the 21st century. It is a short highlight of a longer discussion.

Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Conservancy speaks at the 2009 Law of the Commons Conference about free and open software as a model for a new intellectual commons. The talk covers the legal and social case for sharing knowledge.

A short clip from a 1973 NOVA episode in which Richard Feynman recalls his father teaching him that knowing the name of a bird in many languages tells you nothing about the bird.

JJRicks rides a driverless Waymo in Phoenix when it gets confused by traffic cones, blocks traffic, and evades the support vehicles sent to retrieve it. The episode is one of a long series of rider-view Waymo videos.

A short supercut showing many Sinclair-owned local news anchors reading the same scripted warning about biased news, word for word.

A short clip from The Matrix in which Agent Smith tells Morpheus that humans behave like a virus. It is shared as a standalone monologue.

Ali Rahimi accepts the NIPS 2017 Test of Time Award and argues that machine learning has become alchemy, with practice running ahead of understanding.