The Fermi Paradox Compendium
Isaac Arthur · 3 HN recommenders
Isaac Arthur surveys the popular proposed solutions to the Fermi Paradox in a 71-minute compendium. He weighs the strengths and weaknesses of each argument.
THE ARCHIVE · EVERY DISCOVERY
Video directory / 48
3,553 videos with summaries and linked Hacker News recommendations, arranged by title.
The Fermi Paradox — Where Are All The Aliens? (1/2)
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 2 HN recommenders
Kurzgesagt introduces the Fermi paradox: with so many stars and planets, why do we see no sign of aliens? It sets up the question and what it might imply for our own future. It is part 1 of 2.
The Fermi Paradox: Dark Forest Theory
Isaac Arthur · 2 HN recommenders
Isaac Arthur examines the Dark Forest theory, Cixin Liu's proposed solution to the Fermi Paradox in which civilizations stay silent and may destroy any that reveal themselves. He tests the theory's underlying assumptions and arguments.
The Fight for the Soul of Seattle | A KOMO News Documentary
KOMO News · 2 HN recommenders
A KOMO News documentary about Seattle's homelessness, addiction and street crime. It examines the City Council's policies, shows conditions on the streets and the impact on local businesses, and explores possible solutions.
The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything | Josh Kaufman | TEDxCSU
TEDx Talks · 5 HN recommenders
Josh Kaufman's TEDx talk argues that you can reach practical competence in almost any skill with about 20 hours of focused practice, rather than the 10,000 hours often quoted. He describes how becoming a parent led him to rethink how adults learn, and lays out a short method for rapid skill acquisition.
The First Video Game
Ahoy · 4 HN recommenders
An hour-long, carefully sourced video essay from Ahoy asking what counts as a video game and which one was truly first. It examines Tennis for Two, Spacewar, Pong, the Brown Box and a 1947 CRT device.
The Five Freedoms of Aviation
Wendover Productions · 3 HN recommenders
A Wendover Productions explainer on the political agreements, from the Chicago Convention onward, that determine which airlines can fly where. It lays out the five freedoms of the air.
The Forgotten Art of Structured Programming - Kevlin Henney [C++ on Sea 2019]
cpponsea · 2 HN recommenders
Kevlin Henney revisits structured programming, from Go To Statement Considered Harmful to block-structured code and object orientation. He argues it still matters for how we write code today.
The Functional Programmer's Toolkit - Scott Wlaschin
NDC Conferences · 4 HN recommenders
Scott Wlaschin demystifies functional programming terms like monads, monoids, functors and catamorphisms by showing how they fit into a small toolkit. He applies them to problems such as missing data, list handling, and functional dependency injection.
The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse
Folding Ideas · 6 HN recommenders
Dan Olson of Folding Ideas spends months in the virtual world Decentraland and delivers a long critique of the metaverse, NFTs and DAOs, and why virtual worlds fail as places.
The Future of Humanity's Energy No One Knows About | Terraform
S3 | Science, Startups, & Stories · 3 HN recommenders
A 20-minute S3 episode touring Terraform Industries, a startup making synthetic natural gas from air and solar power. It walks through the reactor, injection system, direct air capture and electrolyzer, plus the company's cost goals and next milestone.
The future of Linux Containers
dotcloudtv · 2 HN recommenders
Solomon Hykes shows Docker to the public for the first time in a five-minute lightning talk at PyCon 2013. It demos Linux containers and the simplicity of a Dockerfile.
The Future of Mathematics?
Microsoft Research · 9 HN recommenders
Mathematician Kevin Buzzard explains why he believes the Lean theorem prover will shape the future of mathematics, and describes digitizing his university curriculum in Lean with undergraduates, plus the cultural challenges.
The Future Of Reasoning
Vsauce · 2 HN recommenders
Vsauce explores how human reasoning works, drawing on the social theory of reason and the extended mind thesis, made in partnership with Bill Gates around climate change.
The Future of War, and How It Affects YOU (Multi-Domain Operations) - Smarter Every Day 211
SmarterEveryDay · 4 HN recommenders
Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day explains Multi-Domain Operations through footage from his last mission at RIMPAC 2018. He covers missile and torpedo testing and interviews military leaders about the cyber and information domains.
The Gambler - Fuck You
Youtube Videos · 2 HN recommenders
A short clip from the film The Gambler in which John Goodman's character gives a monologue about the 'position of fuck you': building enough financial security that you owe nobody anything. The scene is a compact statement of financial independence as freedom.
The Geometry of Causality
PBS Space Time · 2 HN recommenders
PBS Space Time explains how spacetime geometry and light cones determine the order of events and what can cause what. It visualizes causality in special relativity.
The Golden Ratio (why it is so irrational) - Numberphile
Numberphile · 3 HN recommenders
Numberphile's Ben Sparks shows why the golden ratio is the most irrational number, using seeds, continued fractions and rational approximations. He also explains why plants use it for spacing leaves and seeds.
The Great 202 Jailbreak - Computerphile
Computerphile · 2 HN recommenders
Computerphile with Professor Brailsford on how a 1979 Bell Labs team reverse engineered a Linotron 202 phototypesetter over a summer to get high-quality print output. It covers typesetting history and the later 2013 rebuild of the famous vacation memo.
The Great Global Warming Swindle Full Movie
Kazza0423 · 2 HN recommenders
A 2007 Channel 4 documentary by Martin Durkin arguing that human-caused global warming is overstated or a scam. It features contrarian scientists such as Richard Lindzen and promotes sunspot and cosmic-ray explanations for temperature change. Its claims are rejected by mainstream climate science.
The great porn experiment | Gary Wilson | TEDxGlasgow
TEDx Talks · 10 HN recommenders
Gary Wilson's TEDxGlasgow talk argues that internet pornography hyperstimulates the brain's reward system and can cause symptoms that reverse when people stop. TED notes that several claims are not supported by respected academic studies.
The Great Stranding: How Inaccurate Mainstream LCOE Estimates are Creating a Trillion-Dollar Bubble
RethinkX · 2 HN recommenders
RethinkX summarizes its report arguing that mainstream LCOE estimates are inflating a bubble in coal, gas, nuclear and hydro assets. It claims solar, wind and batteries will strand conventional energy investments.
The Great Wave - Part 1
David Bull · 4 HN recommenders
The first part of a long series documenting Dave Bull's Tokyo woodblock workshop as it produces a reproduction of Hokusai's The Great Wave. It follows the carving, proofing and printing of the reward print for Kickstarter backers.
The Greatest Shot In Television
MoonEyes Plays · 2 HN recommenders
A one-minute clip from James Burke's 1978 BBC series Connections in which he walks past a Saturn V rocket and a timed take-off happens behind him in a single shot, with no green screen.
The Grille Trend that Kills 509 People per Year
FortNine · 5 HN recommenders
FortNine looks at the data on why newer pickup trucks with tall, blunt grilles kill so many pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. It argues that lowering hood height would substantially cut fatalities.
The GUI should be better. A lot better.
Accursed Farms · 4 HN recommenders
Accursed Farms' hour-plus critique of the modern desktop GUI. It argues that current interfaces are a regression from older designs such as Windows 7 and proposes principles for better ones.
The Gym of Life
Not Just Bikes · 4 HN recommenders
Not Just Bikes argues that people in walkable, bikeable Dutch cities stay healthy because exercise is built into daily life, which he calls the gym of life. It contrasts this with car-dependent cities that require deliberate workouts.
The Halo Drive
Cool Worlds · 3 HN recommenders
Astrophysicist David Kipping presents the halo drive, a proposed way to propel a starship to a good fraction of light speed by gaining energy from a black hole. The video is based on his peer-reviewed paper and explains why energy is the main obstacle to interstellar flight.
The hardest problem on the hardest test
3Blue1Brown · 8 HN recommenders
3Blue1Brown walks through a very hard Putnam competition problem and its elegant solution, emphasizing the visual intuition and the thought process behind solving it.
The hidden background noise that can catch criminals
Tom Scott · 3 HN recommenders
Tom Scott explains Electrical Network Frequency analysis, where hum from the power grid in a recording is matched against grid logs to date and place it. He talks to a researcher and sets them a challenge.
The Higgs Mechanism Explained | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
PBS Space Time · 3 HN recommenders
PBS Space Time explains the Higgs field and how the Higgs mechanism gives particles mass within quantum field theory. It is a ten-minute overview for a lay audience.
The History of Tetris World Records
Summoning Salt · 2 HN recommenders
Summoning Salt's roughly two-hour documentary traces the history of Tetris world records, from early play through the modern competitive scene. It is a long, well-researched narrative about the players and techniques that pushed the records.
The Hobbit: A Long-Expected Autopsy (Part 1/2)
Lindsay Ellis · 3 HN recommenders
The first part of Lindsay Ellis's video essay series on the troubled production and critical reception of The Hobbit film trilogy.
The Holographic Universe Explained
PBS Space Time · 2 HN recommenders
A PBS Space Time episode explaining the holographic principle: the idea that our 3+1 dimensional universe may be described by information on a lower-dimensional boundary. It walks through black hole entropy and the AdS/CFT correspondence.
The horrible truth about Apple's repeated engineering failures.
Louis Rossmann · 2 HN recommenders
Louis Rossmann, a Macbook repair shop owner, goes through a long list of Apple hardware engineering failures, from GPU defects to keyboards and repair practices.
The House I Live In Official Trailer #1 (2012) Drugs Documentary Movie HD
Rotten Tomatoes Trailers · 4 HN recommenders
Official trailer for Eugene Jarecki's 2012 documentary The House I Live In, an investigative look at America's war on drugs and its effect on the criminal justice system. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
The Houses that Can't be Built in America - The Missing Middle
Not Just Bikes · 4 HN recommenders
Not Just Bikes explains missing middle housing, such as duplexes, townhouses and small apartment buildings. The video argues that zoning in the US and Canada has made these options almost illegal.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D
Deep Astronomy · 2 HN recommenders
A short video built around an animation of the roughly 10,000 galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, placed at their measured redshift distances. It gives a brief history of deep field images and ends with a 3D fly-through.
The Hustle
KRAZAM · 3 HN recommenders
A KRAZAM satirical sketch about hustle culture and productivity obsession in tech.
The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences (@Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club)
Qualia Research Institute · 3 HN recommenders
Andres Gomez Emilsson of the Qualia Research Institute presents a model of DMT experiences using hyperbolic geometry and dynamical systems theory. He describes how different intoxication levels correspond to changing curvature and information content of experience.
The Hyperloop: BUSTED!
Thunderf00t · 7 HN recommenders
Thunderf00t, a physicist, critically assesses the Hyperloop concept, covering the vacuum, pressure, safety, and cost problems of high-speed tube travel. He argues the media accepted the claims uncritically.
The IBM 1401 compiles and runs FORTRAN II
CuriousMarc · 2 HN recommenders
CuriousMarc and colleagues at the Computer History Museum try to compile and run a FORTRAN II program on a 1959 IBM 1401. The machine has only 16k of memory and a CPU not meant for scientific work, so success is far from guaranteed.
The IBM 1401 mainframe runs "Edith"
CuriousMarc · 2 HN recommenders
CuriousMarc runs the program 'Edith' on a 1959 IBM 1401 mainframe at the Computer History Museum. The program prints a famous line-printer image on the vintage machine. The video is part retro-computing demo and part joke.
The illusion of consciousness | Dan Dennett
TED · 2 HN recommenders
Philosopher Dan Dennett argues in a TED talk that we do not understand our own consciousness and that our brains often fool us. He uses perceptual examples, including a painting that invites the viewer to fill in detail.
The Immune System Explained I – Bacteria Infection
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 3 HN recommenders
A Kurzgesagt animation of how the immune system responds to a bacterial infection, depicting immune cells as an army defending the body.
The Implementation of Rewind in Braid
GDC Festival of Gaming · 2 HN recommenders
Jonathan Blow's GDC talk explains how the time-rewind mechanic in Braid was designed and implemented, including the technical hurdles such as memory limits and state history. It covers both design and engineering concerns.
The Incredible Sounds of the Falcon Heavy Launch (BINAURAL AUDIO IMMERSION) - Smarter Every Day 189
SmarterEveryDay · 5 HN recommenders
Smarter Every Day shares a binaural audio recording of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch made by Trevor Mahlmann, with explanations of the sounds including the sonic booms of the landing boosters. It is meant to be heard with headphones.
The Infinite Pattern That Never Repeats
Veritasium · 4 HN recommenders
Veritasium explains how Penrose tilings and quasicrystals overturned the belief that 5-fold symmetry and non-periodic crystals were impossible, including an interview with Paul Steinhardt.
The Ingenious Design of the Aluminum Beverage Can
engineerguy · 9 HN recommenders
Bill Hammack of Engineer Guy explains the engineering behind the aluminum beverage can: why it is cylindrical, how it is manufactured, why it narrows at the top, the double seam, and how the pull tab works.
The Inner Life of the Cell Animation
XVIVO Scientific Animation · 5 HN recommenders
An award-winning 3D animation by XVIVO for Harvard's BioVisions showing the molecular machinery inside a cell as a white blood cell responds to a stimulus.
The Insane Battle To Sabotage a New Apartment Building Explains San Francisco's Housing Crisis
ReasonTV · 3 HN recommenders
ReasonTV tells the story of Bob Tillman, who spent nearly five years and $1.4 million trying to convert his San Francisco laundromat into apartments. It walks through the permitting, appeals and neighborhood opposition he faced.
The Insane Engineering of James Webb Telescope
Real Engineering · 3 HN recommenders
Real Engineering explains the engineering behind the James Webb Space Telescope, including its folding mirror, sunshield, orbit and cooling systems, and why deployment was so difficult.
The Intense 8 Hour Hunt | Attenborough Life of Mammals | BBC Earth
BBC Earth · 6 HN recommenders
A clip from Attenborough's Life of Mammals following a San tribesman in the Kalahari on an eight-hour persistence hunt, running down a kudu through harsh heat. It shows tracking, endurance running and the hunter's reaction after the kill.
The Internet is Worse Than Ever – Now What?
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 5 HN recommenders
A Kurzgesagt video arguing that social media's problem is information flooding and tribal polarization. It suggests a return to smaller online communities and more in-person interaction.
The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz | full movie (2014)
moviemaniacsDE · 3 HN recommenders
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.
The IOU Machine: How Currency Is Created | Hidden Secrets of Money Ep. 4
GoldSilver · 5 HN recommenders
Episode 4 of Mike Maloney's Hidden Secrets of Money, explaining how currency is created through a chain of IOUs among the Treasury, banks and the Federal Reserve. It covers bonds, Fed checks, debt, taxes and fractional reserve lending, from a gold-and-silver advocate's viewpoint.
The Iroquois Confederacy
Historia Civilis · 2 HN recommenders
Historia Civilis explains the origins and governing system of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy. It covers the Great Law and the league's surprisingly intricate legal and political structure.
The Josephus Problem - Numberphile
Numberphile · 2 HN recommenders
Numberphile with Daniel Erman on the Josephus problem, where people in a circle are eliminated in turn. It shows how the survivor's position follows a neat pattern tied to powers of two and binary.
The Joy of Programming in Jai - Part 1: Hello World
Nuno Afonso · 3 HN recommenders
The first part of a series on programming in Jai, Jonathan Blow's in-development language. It covers compiling, writing hello world and using code from other files.
The Kennedy Assassination: Inside the Book Depository
LEMMiNO · 5 HN recommenders
A 98-minute LEMMiNO video reconstructing what happened inside the Texas School Book Depository before, during, and after the Kennedy assassination. It draws on testimony to map people's movements and discrepancies.