tv hacking

A one-minute NCIS scene in which two characters type on the same keyboard to fight off a hacker. It is widely mocked as absurd TV hacking.

A 1983 interview clip in which David Bowie questions MTV VJ Mark Goodman about why the channel played so few videos by black artists.

Linus Tech Tips warns against cheap Android TV boxes, many of which ship with preinstalled malware. It looks at several boxes and suggests safer alternatives such as Chromecast and Nvidia Shield.

A short CSI clip in which characters try to track a killer's IP address by writing a Visual Basic GUI. It is a famous example of absurd TV hacking.

A clip from Charlie Brooker's BBC show Screenwipe showing how reality TV uses editing to manufacture emotion and narrative. It demonstrates how the same footage can be cut to give very different impressions.

Tantacrul analyzes how stock music in reality TV uses blunt, repeated tropes to manipulate viewers, comparing it to nature documentaries. He ties it to ideas of reification and cultural homogenization.

A compilation of the hacking scenes from the 1995 film Hackers, featuring flashy visualizations of computer intrusion.

A 2017 Apple TV commercial for the iPad Pro in which a kid asks "What's a computer?" while using the tablet. It pitches the all-screen iPad Pro as something that goes beyond what people think of as a computer.

An overview of the PTVS 2.0 beta feature for debugging Python and C/C++ together in one session in Visual Studio.

Technology Connections explains the early history of analog color television, from the 1954 start of modern color broadcasting, and how shadow masks work in CRTs. It is the first in a series on how analog color TV works.

Jeff Geerling looks at a Sharp NEC commercial display with a slot for a Raspberry Pi Compute Module. It is a large screen without built-in smart TV features or tracking.

A clip from the BBC series Britain from Above showing UK peak power demand. It shows a grid engineer preparing for the surge as millions put the kettle on when a popular show ends.

A 33c3 talk by marcan on reverse engineering the PS4 hardware to run Linux with 3D acceleration. It covers how the console differs from a PC and includes a story about tunneling PCIe over RS-232.

The fail0verflow team (bushing, marcan, sven) present console hacking at 27C3, covering Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 exploits. They explain how the PS3 was cracked after Sony removed Other OS.

The scene from the 2001 film Swordfish in which Hugh Jackman's character is forced to hack while under pressure. The clip is widely known for its absurd depiction of hacking.

Deviant Ollam and Howard Payne give an in-depth DEF CON 22 explanation of how elevators work, from the pit to the penthouse. It covers their control modes and how pen testers use elevators to bypass building security.

Matt Parker explains the history behind NTSC television running at 29.97 frames per second rather than 30, tracing it to the backward-compatible addition of color. He walks through the arithmetic behind the odd ratio.

Ben Krasnow of Applied Science explains how electrophoretic e-paper displays work and how he modified the driver firmware and waveform lookup tables of a 4.2-inch panel to reach roughly 3Hz partial refresh. It covers the tweakable constants in the refresh process and touches on colored e-ink microcapsules.

A 57-minute account of Clifford Stoll's tracking of a KGB-linked hacker through Lawrence Berkeley Lab computers in 1986, the story of The Cuckoo's Egg. It covers the FBI and Chaos Computer Club involvement.

A one-minute 2012 Microsoft television commercial for Internet Explorer 9, set to Alex Clare's 'Too Close'. It pitches a 'more beautiful web' with fast one-click access to favorite sites.

Samy Kamkar demonstrates OpenSesame, a device that opens many fixed-code garage doors in seconds by exploiting a newly found attack, built around a Mattel toy. The video explains the attack and which brands are affected.

A very short clip from The Matrix Reloaded in which Trinity runs nmap and then uses an SSH exploit. The scene is notable for showing a real tool.

A short clip from the 1995 film Hackers in which the characters attempt to hack the Gibson supercomputer, shown with flashy stylized visuals of digital intrusion.

The opening credit sequence of the 1960s British spy series The Prisoner, with Patrick McGoohan. It is a short intro to a cult TV show.

A comedic Kung Fury spinoff in which Hackerman demonstrates 'hacking' household objects through time. It parodies 1980s hacker tropes.

Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind gives a public lecture on the holographic principle, the indestructibility of information and the nature of black holes. It asks whether the world could be a hologram.

An Adam Ruins Everything comedy segment on why US hospitals are so expensive, covering opaque price lists, surprise bills and penalties for the uninsured.

An Onion News Network sketch in which two teenage girls appear on TV to plead for their kidnapped friend's release, then start gossiping about classmates. It is a satirical parody of teen behavior and sensational news.

A roughly hour-long live hacking session in which Go team members Andrew Gerrand and Brad Fitzpatrick write the new version of tip.golang.org, the site serving leading-edge Go documentation. It is unedited pair programming on a real Go project.

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.

DIY Perks shows how to turn old or smashed TVs and monitors into realistic artificial window lights, using the backlight and Fresnel lens to simulate distant daylight.

A long George Hotz livestream in which he explores the coronavirus genome and molecular biology from scratch using a browser and Python, hacking on the science in real time.

Channel 4's George Clarke visits a council estate in Vienna and is surprised by amenities such as swimming pools and private TV channels. It showcases Vienna's high-quality social housing.

Hartverdrahtet by Akronyme Analogiker, the winning PC 4k intro at Revision 2012. It is a realtime demo with music and fractal visuals in 4096 bytes.

In a long live-coding session, Andreas Kling works on making the Cookie Clicker game playable in the Ladybird browser from SerenityOS. He tracks down bugs in the browser engine and fixes them.

The Slow Mo Guys film a TV and screens with a high-speed camera to show how displays build an image. The footage includes CRT-style scanning and how pixels light up over time.

The BBC TV version of the Babel Fish passage from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with Ford and Arthur aboard a Vogon ship, narrated over the show's hand-drawn animated Guide entry.

An ABC7 News Bay Area reporter rides in a driverless Waymo robotaxi through San Francisco and documents the trip, including a couple of awkward moments. It is a short TV news segment showing what a robotaxi ride is actually like.

Kevin Spacey, giving the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival, urges TV channels to give viewers control. He points to Netflix's House of Cards release as evidence that audiences want to watch on their own terms.

Technology Connections explains how analog television produced moving images without computers, covering scanning, CRTs and standards like NTSC and PAL. It is part of a series on analog TV.