THE SAGAN SERIES - The Frontier Is Everywhere
Reid Gower · 3 HN recommenders
A short unofficial NASA-style spot from Reid Gower's Sagan Series, setting Carl Sagan's words about humanity spreading through the Solar System to visuals and music.
THE ARCHIVE · EVERY DISCOVERY
Video directory / 51
3,553 videos with summaries and linked Hacker News recommendations, arranged by title.
The Scariest Episode Yet - Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project - 10/30/18
Adam Savage’s Tested · 2 HN recommenders
An episode of Adam Savage's Still Untitled podcast with molecular biologist Joe DeRisi. They discuss his work, including sequencing to detect rare infections, in a conversation Savage calls possibly the show's scariest.
The Scientific Method-Richard Feynman
Sképseis · 2 HN recommenders
A one-minute clip of Richard Feynman describing the scientific method: guess a law, compute its consequences, and compare with experiment. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong.
The Search for the Perfect Door - Deviant Ollam
Shakacon LLC · 2 HN recommenders
Deviant Ollam shows that most physical attacks on doors bypass the lock, with photo and video examples of how doors, frames and hardware get defeated. It is a physical security talk from Shakacon.
The Secret Chinese War for Your Opinion!
serpentza · 3 HN recommenders
Serpentza, a Westerner living in China, describes Chinese influence efforts abroad and the cultural conflict between Shen Yun and Confucius Institutes. It is a commentary from his personal perspective.
The Secret History of Silicon Valley
Google TechTalks · 5 HN recommenders
Steve Blank tells how World War II, Stanford's Frederick Terman and military and intelligence agencies shaped the rise of Silicon Valley. The talk centers on the Cold War electronic warfare and signals intelligence work that seeded the region's tech industry.
The Secret Life of components. A series of eight guides for designers and makers by Tim Hunkin
tim hunkin · 2 HN recommenders
The trailer for Tim Hunkin's series The Secret Life of Components, eight guides to mechanical and electromechanical parts for designers and makers.
The Secret Life of Machines - Vacuum Cleaners 1/2
Buddy Runyan · 3 HN recommenders
Part 1 of an episode of the British educational TV series The Secret Life of Machines, about how vacuum cleaners work and their history. It mixes humor with explanation of household technology.
The Secret Life of the Radio - Remastered
tim hunkin · 2 HN recommenders
Remastered episode of Tim Hunkin's The Secret Life of Machines about the radio, covering its development including Hertz and Marconi experiments and Armstrong's FM radio in animated form.
The Secret Life of the Vacuum Cleaner - Remastered
tim hunkin · 3 HN recommenders
Tim Hunkin's 1987 TV series episode on how vacuum cleaners and related household machines work, remastered and upscaled in 2021. It is part of the six-episode 'Secret Life of Machines' series with hands-on demonstrations of everyday technology.
The Secret Reason Horses Let Us Ride Them
CGP Grey · 3 HN recommenders
CGP Grey explains why horses could be ridden and why other animals like zebras and bears were never domesticated for war or riding. It is a follow-up on the topic of animal domestication.
The Secret Reason We Eat Meat - Dr. Melanie Joy
Beyond Carnism · 2 HN recommenders
Social psychologist Melanie Joy introduces the concept of carnism, the belief system that conditions people to eat some animals but not others.
The Secret War
Sergio IQ · 4 HN recommenders
A compilation of the 1977 BBC series The Secret War, a documentary on British scientific and technical efforts in WWII, including radar, German navigation beams and V-weapons. It features interviews with people who were there, including Albert Speer.
The Secrets Of Cornwall - Part 1 - Communications
Mark Thomas · 3 HN recommenders
A documentary on how Cornwall became a hub for the world's communications, from the first transatlantic radio signal to modern undersea fibre cables. It describes how cable landing stations and the systems are put together.
The Senseless Ambiguity of North American Turn Signals
Technology Connections · 2 HN recommenders
Technology Connections explains why North American tail light rules, which allow red turn signals and flashing brake lights, make signals ambiguous. He argues for amber signals and cites studies showing a safety benefit.
the sham legacy of Richard Feynman
Angela Collier · 5 HN recommenders
Physicist Angela Collier's nearly three-hour critique of Richard Feynman's public legacy. She examines how his books, written with Ralph Leighton, shaped a mythologized great-man image, and covers his personal behavior.
The Simple Essence of Automatic Differentiation - Conal Elliott
Microsoft Research · 3 HN recommenders
Conal Elliott presents his paper on automatic differentiation, deriving a simple, generalized AD algorithm from a natural specification. Varying the representation of derivatives yields forward and reverse mode algorithms that avoid the complexity and statefulness of backpropagation.
The Simple Path to Wealth | JL Collins | Talks at Google
Talks at Google · 7 HN recommenders
Author JL Collins discusses his book The Simple Path to Wealth at Google, covering avoiding debt, simple index fund investing, and retirement accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs. It is an hour-long interview in plain language.
The simple, clever sensor behind automatic windshield wipers
Technology Connections · 2 HN recommenders
Technology Connections explains how automatic windshield wiper rain sensors work, using an infrared light source and total internal reflection in the glass.
The Skinner Box - How Games Condition People to Play More - Extra Credits
Extra Credits · 2 HN recommenders
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.
The Smartphone CPU Review You NEED to Watch!
Geekerwan · 4 HN recommenders
Geekerwan reviews smartphone CPUs by power efficiency rather than benchmark scores, with test methodology and chapters on Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung and Google chips. It explains why high benchmark scores can coexist with heat and poor battery life.
The Solar Gravitational Lens will Map Exoplanets. Seriously.
Launch Pad Astronomy · 10 HN recommenders
Explains the proposed NASA JPL plan to use the Sun as a gravitational lens, sending solar sail craft to its focal region to image an exoplanet's surface. It covers the distances involved, how imaging with the Sun would work and the mission design.
The Soul of Erlang and Elixir • Sasa Juric • GOTO 2019
GOTO Conferences · 16 HN recommenders
Sasa Juric explains what makes Erlang and Elixir suited to server-side systems, focusing on the BEAM concurrency model rather than syntax or ecosystem. He demonstrates processes, supervision, and fault tolerance.
The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel
Jenny Nicholson · 4 HN recommenders
Jenny Nicholson's roughly four-hour review of her two-night stay on Disney's Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser immersive hotel. She goes through the experience, its story and production, and why it failed.
The Speed of Light is NOT About Light
PBS Space Time · 8 HN recommenders
PBS Space Time argues that the speed of light is better understood as the speed of causality, the universal limit on how fast cause and effect propagate. Light travels at that speed because it is massless, but the limit itself is a property of spacetime.
The spelled-out intro to language modeling: building makemore
Andrej Karpathy · 2 HN recommenders
Andrej Karpathy builds a bigram character-level language model from scratch, introducing torch.Tensor and the framework of training, sampling and loss evaluation. It is the first step toward a GPT-style Transformer in his makemore series.
The spelled-out intro to neural networks and backpropagation: building micrograd
Andrej Karpathy · 17 HN recommenders
Andrej Karpathy's first Neural Networks: Zero to Hero lecture, which builds micrograd, a tiny autograd engine, from scratch in Python. It explains backpropagation and neural network training step by step, assuming only basic Python and some high-school calculus.
The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire | The Secret World of Finance
Independent POV · 6 HN recommenders
A feature-length documentary on how the City of London and Britain's overseas territories built a global web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions after the empire declined. It traces how this network captured and hid wealth from around the world.
The Stealership Trap - Why We Need the Dealership "Rip Off"
FortNine · 3 HN recommenders
FortNine explains the economics of the dealership model, arguing that dealers absorb inventory risk and help manufacturers' finances. It looks at whether cars and motorcycles could be sold more cheaply without them.
The Stellar Consensus Protocol | David Mazières | Talks at Google
Talks at Google · 2 HN recommenders
David Mazieres presents the Stellar Consensus Protocol at Google, introducing federated Byzantine agreement. The model lets participants choose whom to trust rather than assuming fixed membership.
The Story Behind Audacity
Tantacrul · 3 HN recommenders
Tantacrul tells the story of Audacity, the widely used free audio editor, and announces his involvement in the project. It includes an interview with the original developers and a look at the software's usability.
The Story of Another World on the Amiga | MVG
Modern Vintage Gamer · 2 HN recommenders
Modern Vintage Gamer explains how Eric Chahi built Another World on the Amiga 500, using 2D polygons, rotoscoping and clever techniques to run well on a stock 7MHz machine.
The Story of RollerCoaster Tycoon | Noclip Greatest Hits
/noclip · 2 HN recommenders
A Noclip Greatest Hits documentary on the legacy of RollerCoaster Tycoon, covering its original design, Chris Sawyer and the OpenRCT2 community that keeps it alive.
The Story of Tetris
Gaming Historian · 4 HN recommenders
Gaming Historian recounts how Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in the Soviet Union and how a fight over publishing rights spanned the West, Mirrorsoft, Nintendo and the Cold War. It runs about an hour with chaptered parts.
The Strangest Implication of Quantum Mechanics
Veritasium · 3 HN recommenders
A Veritasium video that follows the principle of least action from Bernoulli and Newton to quantum mechanics, asking whether light takes all possible paths at once. It includes experiments showing quantum waves.
The Stuff of Thought | Steven Pinker | Talks at Google
Talks at Google · 2 HN recommenders
Steven Pinker presents his book The Stuff of Thought at Google in 2007. He covers language as a window into human nature, including taboo words, swearing and the psychology and game theory of indirect speech like bribery.
The Suburban Traffic Contradiction
Oh The Urbanity! · 4 HN recommenders
Oh The Urbanity! questions the framing that urban planning reforms like bike lanes and traffic calming wage war on suburbanites. It argues that suburban and urban residents alike want less traffic on their own streets.
The Suburbs Are Bleeding America Dry | Climate Town (feat. @NotJustBikes)
Climate Town · 2 HN recommenders
A snarky, comedic video essay from Climate Town, with a guest appearance by Not Just Bikes, arguing that American suburban sprawl and single-family zoning are financially and environmentally unsustainable. It covers how zoning rules shape housing and what viewers can do locally, such as attending zoning meetings.
The Super-Fast Logistics of Delivering Blood By Drone
Wendover Productions · 2 HN recommenders
A Wendover Productions documentary-style video on how Zipline delivers blood and medical supplies by drone in Rwanda. It covers the catapult launch, parachute drop and the logistics behind it.
The Superheterodyne Radio: No really, that's its name
Technology Connections · 3 HN recommenders
Technology Connections explains why the superheterodyne radio has its name and how mixing frequencies lets it tune stations well. It walks through the underlying wave phenomena and algebra and why the design solved a hard tuning problem.
The Surprising Efficiency of Canal Locks
Practical Engineering · 2 HN recommenders
Practical Engineering explains how canal locks work, including the water-saving basins of the new Panama Canal locks.
The Surprising History of Copyright and What It Means For...
Google TechTalks · 2 HN recommenders
Karl Fogel's 2006 Google Tech Talk traces copyright from a 16th-century English censorship law to a distribution monopoly. It then surveys alternative economic bases for creation and distribution.
The surprising pattern behind color names around the world
Vox · 4 HN recommenders
Vox explains the Berlin and Kay research showing that languages around the world tend to invent color words in the same order. It walks through the hierarchy and the debate around it.
The surprising science of happiness | Dan Gilbert
TED · 2 HN recommenders
Psychologist Dan Gilbert argues in this TED talk that our psychological immune system lets us become happy even when things do not go as planned. He challenges the idea that we will be miserable if we do not get what we want.
The Thirty Million Line Problem
Molly Rocket · 11 HN recommenders
Casey Muratori's long talk arguing that modern software has ballooned to tens of millions of lines because of hardware and OS diversity. He proposes a stable ISA for entire system-on-a-chip packages and recalls when games shipped with their own boot disk.
The Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor: Why Didn't This Happen (and why is now the right time?)
Google TechTalks · 4 HN recommenders
Kirk Sorensen's Google Tech Talk on thorium molten-salt reactors (LFTR). He covers why the technology was shelved after early development and argues that now is the right time to revisit it.
The Three Rocketeers-2012:BBC-Future of Space trav
FirstSecondThoughts · 2 HN recommenders
A BBC Four documentary following Alan Bond and Reaction Engines as they pursue the Skylon spaceplane and its SABRE engine. It covers the history from HOTOL and the heat-exchanger breakthrough.
The Time America Almost Stopped Climate Change | Climate Town
Climate Town · 2 HN recommenders
Climate Town tells the history of the period when the greenhouse effect was not politically controversial and the US came close to acting on climate. It covers Exxon's early climate science and the policy failures that followed.
The Tragedy of systemd
linux.conf.au · 16 HN recommenders
FreeBSD developer Benno Rice traces the history of init and bootstrap systems at linux.conf.au 2019 to explain why systemd was seen as necessary and why it provokes such strong reactions. He also discusses why change is scary.
The Trolley Problem in Real Life
Vsauce · 3 HN recommenders
Vsauce's Michael Stevens stages a realistic version of the trolley problem with unsuspecting subjects who believe they must decide a life-or-death outcome. The Mind Field episode compares what people say they would do with what they actually do.
The True Nature of Matter and Mass | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
PBS Space Time · 3 HN recommenders
A PBS Space Time episode asking what matter, mass, and energy really are, starting with inertial versus gravitational mass and what mass-energy equivalence means.
The Truth about American Cities - Part 1 - Strong Towns [ST01]
Not Just Bikes · 7 HN recommenders
The first video in Not Just Bikes' Strong Towns series explains the financial instability of North American cities, based on Strong Towns research. It argues that low-density suburban growth costs more to maintain than it brings in.
The Truth About Electric Towing
Aging Wheels · 4 HN recommenders
Aging Wheels tests how towing trailers affects the range of electric trucks, including a Silverado EV. It shows that trailer aerodynamics matters far more than added weight.
The Truth about Hydrogen
Real Engineering · 5 HN recommenders
Real Engineering examines the efficiency of hydrogen as an energy carrier. It follows production, storage and fuel cell conversion losses and compares hydrogen cars with battery electric vehicles.
The Truth about Rust/WebAssembly Performance
Greg Johnston · 2 HN recommenders
Leptos creator Greg Johnston examines Rust/WebAssembly frontend frameworks against JavaScript frameworks using the JS framework benchmark. He argues that WASM is no longer too slow for DOM-heavy rendering.
The UK Election Results Were the Worst in History
CGP Grey · 3 HN recommenders
CGP Grey explains how the 2015 UK general election showed the flaws of first-past-the-post voting, with parties like UKIP winning many votes but few seats.
The UK Is a Country Made of Countries
CGP Grey · 6 HN recommenders
CGP Grey's quick, witty explainer on the differences between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England, and the countries that make up the UK.
The UK's Failed Experiment in Rail Privatization
Wendover Productions · 4 HN recommenders
Wendover Productions explains how UK rail privatization worked and why it failed. It covers the fragmented operator and infrastructure structure and why market forces apply poorly to rail.
The Ultimate AeroPress Technique (Episode #3)
James Hoffmann · 4 HN recommenders
James Hoffmann demonstrates his AeroPress technique with a short recipe: 11g of coffee, 200g of just-boiled water, a 2-minute immersion, then a press. He explains why he skips rinsing, preheating and inverting.
The Ultimate French Press Technique
James Hoffmann · 3 HN recommenders
James Hoffmann demonstrates his technique for a clean, sludge-free cup from a French press: stir, break the crust, wait, and carefully pour. It is a four-minute guide.