THE ARCHIVE · EVERY DISCOVERY
3,553 videos with summaries and linked Hacker News recommendations, arranged by title.
Cool Worlds · 4 HN recommenders
David Kipping presents his proposed Terrascope, a telescope that uses Earth's atmosphere as a lens to achieve enormous magnification. He covers the history of telescopes and his path to the idea, plus Sol-scope and Jupiter-scope variants.
Apogee Instruments Inc. · 3 HN recommenders
Dr. Bruce Bugbee walks through the calculations for crop yield potential when light is the limiting factor, from photosynthetic quantum yield through respiration efficiency and harvest index, using the Energy Cascade Model.
DIY Perks · 3 HN recommenders
DIY Perks shows how to turn old or smashed TVs and monitors into realistic artificial window lights, using the backlight and Fresnel lens to simulate distant daylight.
Fraser Cain · 3 HN recommenders
Fraser Cain interviews JPL physicist Slava Turyshev about using the Sun's gravity as a lens to image distant exoplanets. They cover how the lens works, how a spacecraft would align with it, and mission design.
Huygens Optics · 2 HN recommenders
Huygens Optics explores the idea that space is a non-linear elastic medium, and uses simulations to show how wave energy might be confined locally into particle-like objects. It touches on inertia, the Schwinger limit and the vacuum as a medium.
NANOG · 2 HN recommenders
A two-hour NANOG tutorial by Richard Steenbergen aimed at network engineers, covering optical networking technologies. This is the updated 2017 edition of a recurring talk.
Molly Rocket · 4 HN recommenders
Casey Muratori gives a fast tour of the RemedyBG debugger for Windows, which he uses daily. He shows its speed and features, especially the watch window.
ThisWeekinStartups · 3 HN recommenders
An episode of This Week in Startups in which Jason Calacanis interviews Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson. They discuss startups, bootstrapping and 37signals' approach to business.
Molly Rocket · 3 HN recommenders
Casey Muratori responds on-stream to a dismissive Twitter post by demonstrating how slow Visual Studio's startup and debugger watch window are, comparing it to much older software and machines. It is a long rant about software performance and bloat.
TED Blog Video · 2 HN recommenders
A short excerpt from Frans de Waal's TED talk showing a capuchin monkey fairness experiment in which two monkeys are paid unequally, one with cucumber and one with grapes. The shortchanged monkey reacts angrily.
Stuff Made Here · 3 HN recommenders
Engineer Stuff Made Here builds two new supposedly unpickable locks with different designs and sends them to the Lock Picking Lawyer to see whether they can be defeated. The video covers the novel anti-picking mechanisms.
TEDx Talks · 4 HN recommenders
Dr. Sarah Hallberg argues in a TEDx talk that type 2 diabetes can be treated and potentially reversed through diet, especially by restricting carbohydrates. TED flagged the talk as outside its guidelines and warned against taking it as medical advice.
Michigan TypeScript · 2 HN recommenders
An interview with Anders Hejlsberg, lead architect of TypeScript, about porting the TypeScript compiler to Go. He covers the 10x type-checking speedup, lower memory use, and why Go was chosen.
PeriscopeFilm · 11 HN recommenders
A 1953 US Navy training film on the basic mechanisms in fire control computers: shafts, gears, cams and differentials. It shows how these mechanical parts compute ship and target firing solutions.
LastWeekTonight · 2 HN recommenders
A Last Week Tonight segment on how century-old Supreme Court decisions left U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa without meaningful representation. It mixes comedy with a history of their legal status.
Jupiter Broadcasting · 4 HN recommenders
A BSD Now episode featuring a long interview with Joyent CTO Bryan Cantrill on dtrace, ZFS, pkgsrc, containers and more. It includes his rant on why Linux epoll is flawed and stories from Sun.
Thomas Schlijper · 2 HN recommenders
Nine minutes of unedited footage of a very busy bicycle and car crossing at Korte Prinsengracht and Haarlemmerstraat in Amsterdam. Cyclists, pedestrians and cars flow through without traffic lights.
GOTO Conferences · 2 HN recommenders
Michael Feathers' GOTO Chicago 2018 talk on reducing error checks and conditional logic in code. He offers a framework for handling errors and decisions at the level of code and architecture.
GV (Google Ventures) · 2 HN recommenders
A Google Ventures talk on how unconscious biases shape product decisions, hiring and workplace interactions. It draws on research, including work by Google scientists, on how to counter them.
Kirsten Dirksen · 2 HN recommenders
Kirsten Dirksen tours the underground ferro-cement dome home of Paula and Bill Lishman, the family behind the geese-led flight story. The skylit earth-sheltered house stays warm below the frost line.
WeberAuto · 2 HN recommenders
WeberAuto explains how the Honda E-Drive (i-MMD) hybrid transaxle works in the CR-V, Accord, Insight and Clarity hybrids. It walks through the system's three modes of operation.
Edward Capaldi · 3 HN recommenders
Clayton Christensen explains the jobs-to-be-done idea in five minutes, using the fast-food milkshake example. The point is that understanding the job a product is hired to do makes it easier to improve.
David Beazley · 4 HN recommenders
David Beazley's PyCon 2010 talk explains how the Python Global Interpreter Lock works and shows experiments where multithreaded code runs slower, even on more cores, due to lock contention and context-switching overhead.
CaspianReport · 2 HN recommenders
CaspianReport explainer arguing that Russia's geography, especially its vast size and indefensible Moscow core, shapes its political behavior. It frames Russian security thinking through the lens of geographic determinism.
WeberAuto · 3 HN recommenders
Weber State's Professor Kelly explains the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid transaxle, including its planetary gearset eCVT and all nine operating modes. It also covers how the engine reaches nearly 40 percent thermal efficiency.
Texas Exes · 3 HN recommenders
Admiral William McRaven's 2014 University of Texas commencement address, built around lessons from Navy SEAL training. It famously opens with the case for making your bed every morning.
FOAM · 4 HN recommenders
A short animated simulation comparing how Multics and Unix were developed, showing why Unix's small composable programs and pipes gave it a efficiency advantage. It frames Unix as a moonshot achievable by a small team.
AT&T Tech Channel · 6 HN recommenders
A 1982 AT&T Bell Labs film for students about the Unix system and how it can be used practically. It includes Lorinda Cherry building a talking calculator by piping together Unix commands, and a spell checker made from Unix utilities.
Merged Podcast · 3 HN recommenders
A 146-minute Merged Podcast episode in which UAP researcher Ryan Graves talks with economist Robin Hanson about UFOs. Topics include the Great Filter, Hanson's grabby aliens model, and the push for more inquiry into UAPs.
Strange Parts · 4 HN recommenders
An update from the Strange Parts YouTuber on his recovery from a brain injury caused by a metal pipe while filming, and his plans for the channel.
USCSB · 2 HN recommenders
The US Chemical Safety Board's updated animation of the 2005 BP Texas City refinery explosion, which killed 15 workers. It was released ahead of a process safety training application.
suckerpinch · 5 HN recommenders
Tom Scott-style absurdist research by tom7 for SIGBOVIK 2021, using machine learning to discover letterforms that are 'uppercaser' than uppercase A and lowercaser than lowercase. It is a comedic, technically inventive deep dive with fonts and a paper.
USENIX · 12 HN recommenders
Timothy Roscoe of ETH Zurich delivers the joint USENIX ATC/OSDI 2021 keynote arguing that operating systems must reckon with modern hardware, which is a heterogeneous collection of processors, firmware and coprocessors rather than a simple machine. It shows how much runs below and beside Linux.
USENIX · 10 HN recommenders
James Mickens's humorous USENIX Security keynote argues that improving security and trusting opaque technology like machine learning is far harder than the industry admits.
Linux Plumbers Conference · 6 HN recommenders
Paul Turner of Google presents kernel interfaces for user-level scheduling of real threads, aiming at a uniform synchronous programming model across C++, Java, Go and Python. It introduces the switchto-style system calls behind Google's fibers.
CuriousMarc · 4 HN recommenders
CuriousMarc connects a restored 1930 Model 15 Teletype to a Linux machine and uses it as a terminal, after commenters requested it. The video shows the challenges of linking a 5-bit mechanical device to a modern OS.
Mike Zamansky · 2 HN recommenders
The first episode of Mike Zamansky's Using Emacs series, covering setting up the package manager for new Emacs users as a start toward customization and efficient editing.
Mark Handley · 5 HN recommenders
Mark Handley of UCL explains, with simulation visualizations, how early Starlink satellites without inter-satellite links could still give low-latency wide-area communication by hopping via ground relays. He shows it can beat fibre on many long paths.
ryantravistate · 2 HN recommenders
A three-minute clip in which Douglas Crockford explains why he allowed the JSLint reference implementation to be used for evil. It recounts the license clause and how corporate lawyers reacted.
Next Day Video · 12 HN recommenders
Tavis Rudd describes how RSI forced him to program by voice, and shows the Python and Emacs Lisp system he built with voice recognition. A live demo creates and deploys a small system without touching the keyboard.
The Onion · 3 HN recommenders
A four-minute Onion Talks parody in which a social media consultant pitches never putting any effort into social marketing. It lampoons TED-style talks and marketing consultants.
LastWeekTonight · 3 HN recommenders
A Last Week Tonight segment on the US Postal Service's financial troubles. John Oliver explains why it matters, what pushed it to this point, and what viewers can do.
hbomberguy · 3 HN recommenders
hbomberguy's long video dissects the anti-vaccine movement, analyzing Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent MMR-autism study, the media's role and Wakefield's loss of his license. It combines detailed research with humor.
LastWeekTonight · 2 HN recommenders
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on vaccines, arguing that the benefits far outweigh the minuscule risks and discussing why some parents still doubt their safety.
FoundMyFitness · 4 HN recommenders
Rhonda Patrick interviews USC gerontologist Valter Longo about fasting, the fasting-mimicking diet, and their effects on longevity, cancer, and multiple sclerosis. They discuss mechanisms such as IGF-1 and autophagy and clinical trials.
Dan Wood · 2 HN recommenders
Dan Wood reviews the Vampire 2 FPGA accelerator for the Amiga 600. He covers how much faster it makes the machine and what it can run.
Every Frame a Painting · 4 HN recommenders
A video essay from Every Frame a Painting about Vancouver, a major film production city that almost never appears onscreen as itself. It shows clips of films and TV shot there that pass the city off as somewhere else.
Vintage Computer Federation · 11 HN recommenders
Brian Kernighan interviews Unix co-creator Ken Thompson at VCF East 2019. Thompson recounts how he was hired at Bell Labs, writing the Unix kernel in about three weeks, the origins of B and TMG, pipes, and other anecdotes.
3Blue1Brown · 17 HN recommenders
The first chapter of 3Blue1Brown's Essence of Linear Algebra series, introducing vectors with animated geometric visuals. It begins a series that builds intuition for linear algebra from the basics.
O'Reilly · 2 HN recommenders
John Allspaw and Paul Hammond's Velocity 09 talk on how Flickr achieved ten or more deploys per day through close cooperation between development and operations.
O'Reilly · 3 HN recommenders
Dr. Richard Cook, a physician and patient safety researcher, presents his ideas on how complex systems fail, at Velocity 2012. He argues for designing for resiliency rather than trying to exhaustively handle every failure mode.
O'Reilly · 4 HN recommenders
Richard Cook's short Velocity 2013 talk on resilience in complex adaptive systems, arguing systems operate near the edge of failure and that the surprise is how rarely they fail. He presents a model of how pressures push systems toward failure boundaries.
New York Times Opinion · 4 HN recommenders
A New York Times Op-Docs short in which actors perform a real legal deposition transcript. A lawyer gets tangled in an absurd argument with a county employee about what counts as a photocopier, in a dispute over fees for public records.
Tom Nicholas · 3 HN recommenders
Tom Nicholas critiques Veritasium's sponsored video on driverless cars, using it to examine YouTube sponsorships, science-channel credibility and how statistics and misinformation can be used in branded content.
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics · 6 HN recommenders
Veritasium's Derek Muller gives a Perimeter Institute livestream on how AI might change teaching and learning. He draws on past technology shifts and cognitive science to argue that learning requires effortful repetition.
Projects With Everyday Dave · 3 HN recommenders
A hobbyist compares vertical bifacial solar panels against south-facing angled panels using winter production results. It tests whether the usual mounting approach is actually best.
Corridor Crew · 4 HN recommenders
Corridor Crew VFX artists react to the visual effects of the 2021 Dune and compare them with David Lynch's 1984 version. They discuss which effects were practical and which were CGI.
Jon Gjengset · 2 HN recommenders
Jon Gjengset spends about three hours livecoding complex changes in a Rust codebase with agentic AI tools, testing his hypothesis that AI is weak at non-pattern work. He documents where Claude Code helps and where it struggles.
Landon Proctor · 15 HN recommenders
Nate Harrison's 2004 video history of the Amen Break, a six-second drum sample from a 1969 b-side that became the basis of hip-hop sampling, jungle and drum and bass. It is also a meditation on cultural ownership and creativity.
07272009july · 2 HN recommenders
A short 2009 video of Jeff Bezos talking about Amazon and Zappos. He discusses customer focus, invention and long-term thinking.