THE ARCHIVE · EVERY DISCOVERY
3,553 videos with summaries and linked Hacker News recommendations, arranged by title.
FraKctured · 2 HN recommenders
The 1997 novelty song by Komar and Melamid with composer Dave Soldier, built from survey results on what listeners dislike most in music. It features bagpipes, an opera singer rapping, and a children's choir urging shopping at Wal-Mart.
Marcel · 8 HN recommenders
The full recording of Douglas Engelbart's 1968 demonstration, which introduced the mouse, hypertext, video conferencing, word processing, and real-time collaborative editing. It runs about 100 minutes.
Foundation for Economic Education · 2 HN recommenders
Hillsdale historian Burt Folsom lectures at a 2011 seminar on the 'robber barons' of the Gilded Age. He argues that figures like Vanderbilt and Rockefeller were market entrepreneurs rather than monopolists.
LastWeekTonight · 3 HN recommenders
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on the NCAA, arguing that the organization profits enormously from college athletes while insisting they remain unpaid amateurs. It covers the money in college sports, including big-school athletic spending, and the case for paying athletes.
Adhd Videos · 3 HN recommenders
Dr. Russell Barkley lectures on the neuroanatomy of ADHD and how to treat it, linking executive function and working memory to the disorder. It is part 3 of a CADDAC series.
The Royal Institution · 4 HN recommenders
Neuroscientist Anil Seth gives a Royal Institution lecture on the science of consciousness. He separates conscious level, content and self, and argues that experience arises from the brain's predictive inference.
Microsoft Developer · 2 HN recommenders
A Microsoft Build 2019 session in which the WSL team explains the new WSL 2 architecture, which runs a real Linux kernel alongside Windows on a hypervisor. It covers faster file performance, Linux file access from Windows and better application support.
Windows Developer · 2 HN recommenders
Microsoft's short announcement video for the new Windows Terminal, a modern terminal app for Command Prompt, PowerShell and WSL. It is a stylized trailer for the unreleased project.
GiantGrantGames · 2 HN recommenders
A video essay arguing that the next major real-time strategy game will fail unless it gets the fundamentals right. It covers the playerbase and demographics, what older RTS games did well, and the roles of the engine, spectacle, development tools and player-generated content.
TED · 2 HN recommenders
Bill Gates's 2015 TED talk, given after the 2014 Ebola outbreak, argues the world is unprepared for the next fast-spreading epidemic. He calls for scenario planning, vaccine research, and trained health workers, in the way countries prepare for war.
About Here · 4 HN recommenders
About Here looks at the housing crisis and argues for non-market solutions such as co-op and social housing, drawing on Vancouver's situation. It discusses how public supply can hold down rents.
Gamers Nexus · 4 HN recommenders
A Gamers Nexus investigative documentary on the black market for Nvidia AI GPUs, following smugglers, middlemen, and buyers, including reporting from China. It examines how export-restricted chips reach their users.
Jason Fung · 3 HN recommenders
Dr. Jason Fung lectures on why obesity became an epidemic since the 1970s, arguing insulin and hormones rather than calories drive weight gain. He explains why calorie counting fails and touches on low-carb eating and fasting.
Wendover Productions · 4 HN recommenders
Wendover Productions explains why Amtrak trains run late: most Amtrak routes run on freight-owned track, and the law giving passenger trains priority is rarely enforced. The video covers rail ownership versus control and how freight carriers hold the leverage.
Cathode Ray Dude - CRD · 3 HN recommenders
Cathode Ray Dude's hour-long retrospective on the ABIT BP6, the dual-Celeron motherboard. He covers early multiprocessing, its legend, a build, running NT 4, benchmarks and the pros and cons of early SMP.
CGP Grey · 4 HN recommenders
A five-minute CGP Grey explainer arguing that a phone is effectively an extension of your mind, and that any backdoor or master key into encrypted devices will inevitably be abused or leaked. It frames the encryption debate as locks that are either unbreakable or absent.
Molly Rocket · 12 HN recommenders
Casey Muratori's lecture, originally given at the Technical University of Madrid, arguing that Conway's Law is the only viable candidate for a true law of software architecture. He explains how software mimics the organization over time, using examples like Windows' multiple volume controls.
LeadDev · 3 HN recommenders
Nickolas Means tells the story of Lockheed's Skunk Works and how its engineers built the U-2, SR-71 and F-117 under tight deadlines and budgets. He draws lessons for modern software teams.
Catherine Lathwell · 2 HN recommenders
A 1974 talk-show-style interview with the original developers of APL, including Iverson, Falkoff and Breed. They discuss how the language originated.
Computer History Museum · 2 HN recommenders
Linus Torvalds tells the story of Linux in a 2001 talk at the Computer History Museum, from writing code as a graduate student in Helsinki in the early 1990s to becoming an icon of open source. It covers the project's origins, its growth, and his views on licensing and kernel design.
Kraut · 3 HN recommenders
Kraut traces centuries of political development, from Mongol rule and the Orthodox church to Muscovite autocracy, that shaped Russia's authoritarian state. It uses countryball animation and compares Russia with Europe and China.
TED · 4 HN recommenders
Psychologist Barry Schwartz argues in this TED talk that abundant choice makes people more paralyzed and dissatisfied rather than freer and happier.
Knowing Better · 4 HN recommenders
A long documentary-style video arguing that slavery in the US effectively continued through convict leasing and the prison system until around 1942. It covers the constitutional carveout and the history of neoslavery.
Austin Meyer · 6 HN recommenders
Austin Meyer, developer of the X-Plane flight simulator, explains how he was sued by a patent troll over a trivial claim about an app's license server. He walks through how the shell-company litigation works and why ignoring the suit makes things worse.
Premium Movies · 2 HN recommenders
The 1998 HBO dark comedy based on Col. James Burton's book about the 17-year development of the Bradley fighting vehicle. It satirizes how military procurement goes wrong.
Bloomberg Originals · 2 HN recommenders
Bloomberg's Hello World episode in which Ashlee Vance visits Shenzhen, a hub of electronics manufacturing and cloning. He meets tech-fueled entrepreneurs working under an authoritarian regime.
LifebyMikeG · 4 HN recommenders
A short, nearly wordless demonstration of making sourdough pizza at home using a cast iron pan and the oven. It shows a Neapolitan-style result without a pizza steel or stone.
Vulk Coop · 6 HN recommenders
A SXSW talk by W Watson that uses Lacanian psychoanalysis, with nods to Zizek, to critique popular programming languages. It argues that people choose and defend languages for emotional and ideological reasons rather than rational ones.
The Royal Institution · 5 HN recommenders
Physicist Carlo Rovelli gives a public lecture at the Royal Institution on how our understanding of time has changed, from Boltzmann and Einstein to quantum theory and loop quantum gravity. He blends physics, philosophy and art to argue that time is stranger than everyday intuition suggests.
PBS Space Time · 2 HN recommenders
PBS Space Time, together with It's Okay to be Smart and PBS Eons, asks how a universe drifting toward disorder produced something as complex as life. It presents the idea that the laws of physics, through thermodynamics, may actually favor the emergence of life.
Omid Malekan · 2 HN recommenders
A one-minute scene from The Gambler in which John Goodman's loan shark explains the 'position of f you': having enough money to walk away from any employer or deal.
TEDx Talks · 3 HN recommenders
Eduardo Briceno gives a TEDx talk on mindset, contrasting fixed and growth views of ability. He argues that believing abilities can be developed encourages challenge, deliberate practice and grit.
Concordia · 4 HN recommenders
Alexander Nix of Cambridge Analytica presents at the 2016 Concordia Summit on using big data, psychographic profiling and behavioral microtargeting in elections.
Real Engineering · 2 HN recommenders
Real Engineering explains why biofuels, especially corn ethanol, are a poor energy source, looking at energy inputs, efficiency and carbon cost.
2veritasium · 3 HN recommenders
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.
Jonas Čeika - CCK Philosophy · 2 HN recommenders
A philosophy video critiquing the concept of human rights from a Marxist perspective, drawing on Locke, Marx, Nietzsche, Hegel and Rawls. It examines what human rights actually mean and presuppose.
Real Engineering · 4 HN recommenders
Real Engineering looks at why Africa's abundant solar potential is hard to turn into usable power, especially for Europe. It covers the transmission, infrastructure and economic obstacles, and the pivot from concentrated solar to photovoltaics.
Computerphile · 12 HN recommenders
Tom Scott explains for Computerphile why handling time and timezones in code is so hard, walking through a simple web app that computes how long ago something happened. It covers the quirks of timezones and calendars and ends in an exasperated rant.
TED · 2 HN recommenders
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo explains how ordinary people can be pushed into doing evil by situations and systems. He draws on the Stanford prison experiment and unseen Abu Ghraib photos, then turns to the opposite case: how ordinary people can become heroes.
BuffettMungerWisdom · 6 HN recommenders
Audio of Charlie Munger's 1995 Harvard speech on the psychology of human misjudgment, laying out a framework of cognitive biases and mental models for decision making. It covers factors like incentives, social proof and denial.
Vikas Ojha · 2 HN recommenders
A recording of Charlie Munger's 1995 Harvard speech on the psychology of human misjudgment. He walks through a list of cognitive biases such as incentives, social proof, and overoptimism.
TED · 3 HN recommenders
Dan Pink's TED talk argues that traditional carrot-and-stick rewards often fail for creative work, drawing on the candle problem and social science research. He points to autonomy, mastery and purpose as better motivators.
Google TechTalks · 11 HN recommenders
Ron Garret's Google Tech Talk argues that quantum mechanics is no harder to understand than relativity and that popular accounts wrongly rely on the Copenhagen interpretation. He presents measurement as entanglement and explains phenomena like the quantum eraser.
Economics Explained · 4 HN recommenders
An Economics Explained video on the different kinds of billionaires, from founders to oligarchs. It explains how wealth is held in illiquid stock and why diversification is a problem for some.
PBS Space Time · 4 HN recommenders
PBS Space Time explains the proposal to use the Sun's gravity as a giant lens, sending a train of small light-sail spacecraft to the focal point roughly 550 AU out. It covers how such a telescope could image exoplanets in surprising detail and the engineering challenges involved.
Garys Economics · 3 HN recommenders
Gary's Economics argues that the UK housing crisis stems from wealth inequality, treating housing as an asset like shares that rich people bid up. He contends that simply building more housing won't fix affordability.
Vox · 2 HN recommenders
Vox explainer arguing the two Boeing 737 Max crashes were not just a software bug but the result of a company's drive to beat its rival, with a flawed MCAS design.
Johnny Harris · 8 HN recommenders
Johnny Harris investigates why McDonald's ice cream machines are so often broken, covering the Taylor machines, the repair restrictions on franchisees and the Kytch workaround device.
Linux.conf.au 2013 -- Canberra, Australia · 4 HN recommenders
X.Org developer Daniel Stone explains the history and technical limits of the X Window System and why Wayland was created, debunking myths from forum comments. He covers topics such as network transparency and blocking calls.
Mladen Mijatov · 13 HN recommenders
Daniel Stone, a longtime X and Wayland developer, explains at linux.conf.au 2013 why X11's design became untenable and what motivated Wayland. The talk walks through X's history and accumulated cruft.
NCommander · 4 HN recommenders
NCommander investigates why Space Cadet Pinball disappeared from Windows Vista, building on Raymond Chen's explanation about 64-bit incompatibility. He tests it on 64-bit Windows including Itanium and walks through the debugging.
Benn Jordan · 3 HN recommenders
Benn Jordan examines the role of bots and propaganda accounts on X and other social platforms, including the platform's decline and the influence of Russian operations. It covers more than bots, discussing bias and how the platform changed.
TED · 2 HN recommenders
In this TED talk, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman distinguishes the experiencing self from the remembering self, using examples such as vacations and colonoscopies. He explains how the two perceive happiness differently and what that means for economics, policy and self-awareness.
Veritasium · 2 HN recommenders
Veritasium explains how jet engines run hotter than their components' melting points, using cooling air and single-crystal superalloy turbine blades. It covers how the blades are grown as aligned crystals.
bart40330 · 2 HN recommenders
A short video advising how to handle a police stop by politely refusing searches and not answering questions, citing Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights.
plgDavid · 3 HN recommenders
A Plogue developer shows the custom electronic test rigs built to measure the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis sound chip (YM2612) for the chipsynth MD emulation. It covers the years of testing and reverse engineering needed to reproduce the chip's quirks accurately.
Doug DeMuro · 3 HN recommenders
Doug DeMuro reviews the Rivian electric delivery van built for Amazon, walking through its quirks, features and design innovations. It is a long, detailed tour of the vehicle inside and out.
PlayStation · 6 HN recommenders
PS5 lead system architect Mark Cerny gives a deep dive into the PS5's architecture, covering its SSD, I/O, audio and design goals. He explains how removing bottlenecks shapes future games.
ChariotSolutions · 5 HN recommenders
Zig creator Andrew Kelley justifies why Zig exists and tours its distinctive features, including C interoperability and comptime, along with what people had built and what 1.0 would bring. It was given at Philly ETE 2019.
Oxford Real Farming Conference · 2 HN recommenders
Soil microbiologist Elaine Ingham speaks at the Oxford Real Farming Conference on how soil organisms cycle nutrients, unlock minerals from rock and air, and why pesticides and fertilizers harm soil life. Slides are linked in the description.