zach gage

At GDC 2019, Bennett Foddy and Zach Gage ask why game developers rarely sign their work. They argue that indie developers could benefit from putting their names on their games.

Peter Schiff's November 2006 speech to the Western Regional Mortgage Bankers Conference, in which he warned an audience of mortgage bankers that the housing bubble would collapse. The clip runs about 73 minutes.

Deviant Ollam's DEF CON 17 talk explains how legally checking a firearm in luggage can be the most secure way to fly with valuable tech. It covers firearm transport rules and luggage locks.

ITS Tactical demonstrates how a ballpoint pen can open a zippered suitcase without leaving a trace, bypassing its lock, and suggests countermeasures.

Zach Hartwig of MIT introduces the key concepts of magnetic fusion energy and the state of fusion research. He then presents MIT's proposed pathway of using high-field superconducting magnets to build smaller, cheaper tokamaks on a climate-relevant timescale.

Zach Tellman's Clojure West talk covers the basics of queueing theory and its practical use in systems, including backpressure, how queues break down under load, and pitfalls of naive core.async use.

A panel at The National WWII Museum on the Battle of Kursk, moderated by Keith Huxen with historians Robert Citino and John Parshal. The discussion covers the armored engagement and the German, Soviet and US approaches to tank production.

Zach Oakes explains why Clojure suits making games at runtime, so designers can experience their work as they build it. He combines abstract discussion with live demonstrations, drawing on his play-clj library and Nightmod tool.

A scene from The Big Short in which Jared Vennett pitches credit default swaps on mortgage bonds to a hedge fund team, using a Jenga tower to illustrate collateralized debt obligations.

Ben Felix argues that common beliefs about renting versus buying are wrong: homes are not great investments, mortgages are not a wealth hack, and ownership does not reliably bring happiness.

A clip from the 2015 film The Big Short in which FrontPoint Partners investigate mortgage lending in Florida and place their first trade. It shows brokers and a stripper-adjacent loan scene illustrating subprime lending to unverified borrowers.

A five-minute clip from The Big Short (2015) in which FrontPoint Partners confront Morgan Stanley risk assessors and an S&P ratings representative about inflated mortgage bond ratings.

Veritasium's Derek Muller argues that Facebook's business model works against pages and creators, because it charges them to reach the audiences they built. He explains how filtering and paid promotion undermine the value of likes.

A Google Tech Talk by Sebastian Deterding on gamification. It looks at what points and badges get wrong and what lessons game design offers for non-game applications.

A short Globe and Mail animated explainer on why renting can leave you as well off as buying a home. It walks through a rent-versus-buy comparison using Toronto numbers and the opportunity cost of a down payment. The video notes it dates from 2015 and the housing market has changed since.

Rational Reminder podcast episode with Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money. They discuss how investing success depends more on behavior than knowledge, the role of luck and the dangers of emulating top investors.

A 1993 VHS demo of Lucid Energize, a database-backed, incremental C/C++ programming environment built on XEmacs. It shows features like incremental compilation, live debugging and hyperlinked output.

An RSA Animate drawn from a Sir Ken Robinson talk arguing that current education systems are modeled on the industrial age. It discusses divergent thinking, standardization, and how schools disengage kids.

Bret Victor's closing keynote at UIST and SPLASH 2014 argues that our tools for thinking ignore most of human sensory and motor capability. He sketches representations that engage more modalities beyond screens and keyboards.

Technosociologist Zeynep Tufekci argues that the machine-learning systems used to serve ads also decide what political and social information people see. She explains how opaque algorithms can nudge, segment and manipulate users, and warns that the real danger is powerful people using AI to control populations.

Kurzgesagt makes a selfish case for improving the world, arguing that helping people far away raises prosperity and innovation for everyone, including yourself. The animated video frames this as egoistic altruism and positive-sum cooperation.

Black musician Daryl Davis tells how a chance encounter led him to befriend Ku Klux Klan members and seek the source of racial hate. He argues that sitting down and talking with people can change them.

Adam Savage and engineer Zach Radding examine Lumafield CT scans of Apple's $130 Thunderbolt 4 cable alongside cheaper USB-C cables. They explain the internal components that distinguish Thunderbolt from ordinary USB-C.

Veritasium argues that Facebook's ad revenue relies partly on fake likes, after paying to promote his page and gaining tens of thousands of followers in developing countries who never engaged. He shares his experiment and cites other cases.

Tony Schwartz of The Energy Project speaks at Google about managing energy rather than time. He draws on The Power of Full Engagement and his work on stamina and sustained performance.

Jayson E. Street's DEF CON 19 talk shows photos from real security engagements where he was already inside client facilities, illustrating how social engineering and physical intrusion can cause huge losses. For each attack he also explains what defenses would have stopped him.

John Bird and John Fortune satirize the investment banking mindset in a mock interview about the subprime mortgage crisis. The sketch lampoons structured credit products and the banks' reassurances shortly before the crash.

An Extra Credits episode on how games use Skinner box operant conditioning and reward schedules to keep players playing and spending. It argues for more immersive design mechanics than simple reward loops.

Louis Rossmann explains why NYC commercial landlords keep storefronts vacant rather than lowering rents. He points to commercial mortgage-backed security loan terms and inflated property valuations.

A short TED-Ed animated lesson by Anita Collins on what happens in the brain when people play a musical instrument. It argues that playing engages many brain areas at once, like a full-body workout, with long-term benefits.

AI Addict films a Tesla FSD Beta 8.2 drive through Oakland, annotating close calls, disengagements, pedestrians and wrong-lane moments with timestamps.

Harvard professor Arthur Brooks explains why boredom is useful rather than something to avoid. He describes how a wandering mind engages the brain's default mode network, which supports creativity and curiosity, and suggests it may protect against depression.

Dave Carroll's song and music video about United Airlines baggage handlers breaking his Taylor guitar and the airline's refusal to compensate him. It became a viral example of a customer fighting a company.

Nicolai Josuttis's CppCon 2018 talk walks through the many forms of initialization in C++, including uniform initialization, and how their rules and effects differ. He argues the situation is confusing enough that nobody can say what to teach beginners.

A fireside chat at TNW Conference where Reddit CEO Steve Huffman discusses Reddit's growth, user engagement and monetisation plans.