zero-cost abstractions

Chandler Carruth argues in a CppCon 2019 talk that C++ has no truly zero-cost abstractions. Using examples like unique_ptr, ABI constraints and compile-time costs, he shows that abstractions cost runtime, compile time or human effort.

Without Boats, a Rust language team member, explains the design of Rust's async/await at RustLatam 2019. He covers the history and constraints behind zero-cost, allocation-free async state machines.

agadmator walks through a game in which DeepMind's AlphaZero beat Stockfish, ending in a famous zugzwang that leaves the engine helpless. He gives commentary on the moves.

GothamChess walks through AlphaZero's famous games against Stockfish, highlighting its unusual pawn sacrifices and positional style. It is aimed at chess fans rather than ML specialists.

A two-hour Computer History Museum oral history interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, conducted by Paul McJones in 2015. It covers his youth, education at Aarhus and Cambridge, his career at Bell Labs and elsewhere, and the design and evolution of C++.

Merlin Mann's 2007 Google Tech Talk on Inbox Zero, covering Getting Things Done, why an empty inbox matters, and strategies for handling high-volume email. It is a talk on attention and processing mail rather than on emptying it for its own sake.

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.

Scott Manley analyzes the idea of putting data centers in orbit, prompted by Lumen Orbit's funding. He examines the claimed advantage of constant solar power against launch cost, cooling and mass.

John Green explains why the US spends far more on health care than other countries, going through insurers, drug companies, hospitals and lawyers. He argues the causes are complicated rather than a simple blame game.

OK Go's music video for Upside Down & Inside Out, filmed during parabolic flights so the band and performers are weightless in the plane.

The Tokyo Llama channel details how the creators found and bought an abandoned akiya minka house in Japan. It covers process, costs, taxes, financing and risks of renovation.

A 37C3 talk by Kaspersky researchers on Operation Triangulation, a zero-click iPhone attack that targeted their own colleagues. They describe capturing every stage of the chain, four zero-days and a previously unknown spyware active for years.

Elizabeth Warren's 2007 Berkeley lecture, when she was a Harvard law professor, on why middle-class families are under growing financial strain. She draws on bankruptcy research to examine rising costs of housing, health care and education.

Bruce Dang of Microsoft gives a 27C3 talk on how the Stuxnet vulnerabilities were found and analyzed. He walks through the techniques used to triage them and the details of each zero-day exploit, down to the opcode level.

A Wendover Productions explainer on why train tickets, especially Amtrak in the US, cost so much compared with flying. It breaks down staffing, speed and the cost components behind a ticket.

Kirsten Dirksen tours new Earthships, homes built from tires, bottles and cans that generate their own energy, collect water and grow food. The video covers the newer, cheaper Encounter model and its passive systems.

A short KRAZAM comedy sketch satirizing corporate tech life, where a worker reckons with having delivered value at the cost of his soul, complete with Slack chimes.

A Jimquisition episode examining the human cost of predatory videogame monetization, focusing on loot boxes and microtransactions. It features testimonials from people harmed by gambling-style game mechanics.

The official trailer for The True Cost, a documentary on the fast fashion industry and who pays for cheap clothing. It touches on garment worker conditions and the Rana Plaza collapse.

Aaron Boodman of Replicache asks why sync engines have not yet fixed web app complexity and what is missing for them to go mainstream. The talk lays out the ideas that led to the Zero sync engine.

Bill Gates' TED2010 talk on the energy future, arguing for zero global carbon emissions by 2050 and the need for energy miracles. He explains why he is backing a different type of nuclear reactor.

Matt Risinger covers installing a Zehnder ERV fresh-air system in a tight passive house, explaining balanced ventilation, the benefits of heat recovery and the costs involved.

A Vox reporter tries to learn what his son's birth would cost before it happens and fails, showing how opaque US hospital pricing is even for the most common procedure.

CGP Grey breaks down what the British Royal Family costs the UK versus what it brings in, including income from royal-owned land. He concludes the government nets a profit from the arrangement.

A clip of Milton Friedman answering an audience member about Ford's decision not to recall the Pinto, in which he defends weighing safety costs against benefits. The uploader's framing is strongly hostile to Friedman.

James Hamilton of AWS gives a Velocity 2010 keynote on datacenter infrastructure innovation, focused on power and cooling costs and a breakdown of where datacenter spending goes.

Johnny Chung Lee shows how infrared light pens and a Wii Remote can make a very low-cost multi-point interactive whiteboard or tablet display. Software is available for download.

A short FIRE-published video of Yale students confronting a faculty member over a Halloween costume email in 2015. It documents a heated campus protest.

A Vox explainer on how mandatory parking minimums and free parking impose hidden costs on cities. It draws on Donald Shoup's work and gives the history of parking requirements.

A five-minute 4K 60fps HDR travel montage of Costa Rica by the Mystery Box video team. It is a remastered version of their popular scenic footage.

A two-minute clip from the film Fight Club in which the narrator, a former recall coordinator, explains the formula companies use to decide whether a recall costs more than paying out settlements.

CityNerd's Ray Delahanty tallies the personal costs of driving and then the externalities that car dependency imposes on everyone else, with numbers for each. It is an urbanist case that driving is heavily subsidized and costs society far more than drivers pay.

Thunderf00t argues that Zero Mass Water's solar-powered atmospheric water generator is essentially a dehumidifier with solar panels. He critiques its economics and physics, especially in arid places.

Not Just Bikes explains the Strong Towns argument that car-dependent American suburbs cost more to maintain than they generate in taxes. It describes the growth Ponzi scheme that props up municipal finances.

Casey Muratori's University of Twente guest lecture is a case study in how straightforward code can cut thousands of lines and tens of seconds of runtime down to a few dozen lines running in under a second. It uses concrete examples to show why software is often an order of magnitude slower than it should be.

Casey Muratori argues against smart pointers and RAII, advocating grouped-element thinking, zero-is-initialization and stubs as better ways to structure memory and handle errors.

Peter Thiel's lecture from the How to Start a Startup course on business strategy and monopoly theory, arguing that competition destroys profits and that startups should aim to build monopolies. It covers the ideas of Zero to One.

A 2020 video by laowhy86 arguing that the coronavirus did not originate outside China, pointing to evidence about the Wuhan institute and a possible patient zero. It cites sources in the description.

Utah State plant scientist Bruce Bugbee presents his analysis of the energy and environmental costs of vertical and indoor farming. He argues artificial lighting cannot compete with sunlight in fields or greenhouses.

Cheng Lou's react-europe 2016 talk lays out a mental framework for thinking about abstraction levels in JavaScript tooling, from Angular and Grunt to Webpack and React. It uses that framework to reason about the cost of abstractions and how to choose between competing solutions.