user interface

Tom Scott stands by a construction site and explains why reversing vehicles now use a white-noise hiss instead of beeping. The sound is easier to locate directionally and less annoying to neighbours.

Vox's Joe Posner, with help from 99% Invisible, explains why bad doors are everywhere. It covers Don Norman's long-running complaint about doors and the idea that good design should not need instructions.

A short video telling how Xerox PARC invented the graphical user interface and how Steve Jobs's 1979 visit influenced Apple's Lisa.

Kurzgesagt's short animated take on optimistic nihilism. It argues the universe has no inherent meaning, so we are free to create our own and enjoy life.

Potholer54 presents the climate science case and a market-oriented, conservative-friendly approach to addressing global warming, with sources listed. It is part one of a two-part series.

A 2011 remix of over six hours of talks by Kirk Sorensen and other thorium advocates, explaining thorium as a nuclear fuel and the liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). It argues LFTRs could produce energy without long-lived transuranic waste.

A short Not Just Bikes video on continuous sidewalks in the Netherlands, where the sidewalk runs unbroken across side streets so cars must visibly cross pedestrian space. It places them within Dutch sustainable safety and Vision Zero efforts.

Comedian Dominic Frisby gives a ten-minute explanation of land value tax. He argues it would fix problems of rent-seeking and the economics of land ownership.

A five-minute animated explainer of liquid democracy, in which voters can delegate their vote to trusted people. It starts from the origins of democracy and contrasts direct and representative models.

Matt Cutts of Google explains what cloaking is: serving different content to search engine crawlers than to users. He covers why it violates Google's webmaster guidelines.

An animated map showing the borders and populations of European countries for every year since 400 BC. Vassal states and colonies are excluded from population counts.