ukraine war

RealLifeLore explains with maps why Russia invaded Ukraine, focusing on energy resources, security buffers, Black Sea access and Crimea's strategic value.

A recording of the leaked 2014 phone call between US diplomat Victoria Nuland and ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt about the future of Ukraine's government, republished by The Tribune.

A King's Politics interview with University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, recorded days before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. He lays out the realist argument about NATO expansion and Russia's view of Ukraine.

A 2016 documentary by Igor Lopatonok that gives a historical perspective on Ukraine's divisions, the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Maidan uprising. It argues that Western media painted Russia as the sole perpetrator.

University of Chicago lecture in which John Mearsheimer argues the West, through NATO and EU expansion, bears primary responsibility for the Ukraine crisis. He also discusses how to end it and its consequences.

A 2014 BBC Newsnight report by Gabriel Gatehouse on the presence and influence of far-right and neo-Nazi groups in the new Ukrainian government after the Maidan. It is a short news investigation.

Perun's hour-long analysis of how institutional lying, cover-ups and corruption ("vranyo") undermined the Russian military in Ukraine. It examines how false reporting up the chain degrades readiness and decision-making.

A short clip of Robert Mueller speaking about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.

The first class of Timothy Snyder's Yale course on the making of modern Ukraine. It introduces the course and asks what it means for a nation to exist in light of the Russian invasion.

An Empire Files documentary by Abby Martin presenting a critical account of the Afghanistan War, from the CIA's role in the 1980s to the stalemate of the 2010s and 2020. It argues the war was driven by imperial interests.

A C-SPAN clip from a joint press conference with Olaf Scholz in which President Biden says that if Russia invades Ukraine, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. Pressed on how, he promises it can be done.

A three-and-a-half-hour Lex Fridman interview with international relations scholar John Mearsheimer. He discusses war and power politics, covering Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and the risk of a larger war.

Elon Musk joins the All-In Summit 2023 by Starlink for an interview on Ukraine and Starlink, X, the creator economy, China, AI and self-driving.

A WIRED Future Cities documentary on Shenzhen, covering its hardware-prototyping culture and shanzhai copycat manufacturing. It looks at how the city's ecosystem evolved and what the rest of the world can learn.

A /noclip interview with Tarn Adams of Bay 12 Games about Dwarf Fortress: where the ASCII simulation came from, how it works, and the plans for its Steam release. It includes his telling of the famous bug in which cats were poisoned by alcohol.

Ronald Minnich of Google explains how UEFI firmware is a large closed attack surface and describes Google's work replacing it with Linux-based boot firmware. It also touches on Intel ME and other security coprocessors.

A 36C3 talk by Bunnie Huang arguing that open source is necessary but not sufficient for trustworthy hardware, because verifying hardware is destructive and so creates a time-of-check/time-of-use gap. It surveys supply chain security and classes of hardware attacks, and presents the Betrusted approach to narrowing that gap.

PBS Space Time introduces Miguel Alcubierre's warp drive, explaining how spacetime itself could be warped rather than moving a ship through it, and whether it is physically possible.

The full documentary 'The Internet's Own Boy' about programmer and activist Aaron Swartz, with interviews with family, friends and internet figures. It covers his work on access to information and the legal case preceding his death.

Bryan Cantrill's Craft 2019 talk on the ethical dilemmas software engineers face as software eats the world. He explores cases where engineering thinking conflicts with the law or personal morals, including Facebook's news feed experiments.

Richard Stallman's TEDxGeneva 2014 talk describing how nonfree programs give companies control over users and what users can do to regain control. It introduces the free software movement and the four freedoms.

Glenn Vanderburg asks whether software development can be real engineering, surveying other engineering disciplines and decades of programming experience. He envisions what a software engineering worthy of the name might look like.

Simon Brown's Agile on the Beach 2019 talk presents the C4 model, a lightweight approach to diagramming software architecture with a shared vocabulary and simple notation.

Glenn Vanderburg argues at the O'Reilly Software Architecture Conference that software development is an engineering discipline, even if immature. He contends the discredited body of knowledge called software engineering has led people to wrongly reject the label.

Last Day of War is an award-winning CGI animated short by Dima Fedotov in which automated machines keep following orders and prepare a bomber after all humans are dead.

Asianometry examines why Japan's software industry has lagged despite its hardware strengths. It looks at dependence on US software and the low prestige of programming.

A HandmadeCon 2016 panel where Chris Hecker, John Miles, Sean Barrett and Chris Green give an oral history of software texture mapping in 90s games.

The climactic lesson scene from the 1983 film WarGames, in which the computer learns that the only winning move in nuclear war is not to play. It includes the character entering zero players and the famous closing line.

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.

An overview of the Quiet Logistics warehouse using Kiva Systems robots, narrated by company executives. The robots bring storage racks to human pickers at stations.

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.

Andrej Karpathy's Databricks talk on Software 2.0, the shift from human-written code to code produced by neural network training. It covers how developer work moves toward curating datasets, the advantages and challenges, and opportunities for new tooling.

A short clip of Richard Stallman singing the free software song, recorded during a visit to Ecuador.

PBS Space Time explains how general relativity permits warp drive in principle and covers recent theoretical advances toward solving the negative energy problem.

A short demo from the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania showing a swarm of nano quadrotors flying in coordinated formations. The vehicles were developed by KMel Robotics.

A one-minute clip from the All Things D conference in which Steve Jobs says Apple is fundamentally a software company, with iPod, Mac and iPhone all being software. He says the hardware is where the money is but the value is in the software.

A three-minute side-by-side comparison of scenes from Star Wars (1977) and the WWII film The Dam Busters (1955). It shows how closely the Death Star trench run mirrors the earlier film.

Home video of the 11 March 2011 Japan earthquake, filmed as an early warning system detected the P wave and gave seconds of notice before the shaking began. The raw footage shows the warning in action.

Anders Puck Nielsen analyzes the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage using Kilcullen's theory of liminal warfare and prospect theory. He argues from the operational design that Russia is the most likely culprit, then discusses how hybrid warfare might be used against Europe.

Perun analyzes how corruption and theft in defence procurement hollowed out the Russian military before its invasion of Ukraine. It explains the mechanics of graft and how it degrades capability.