What Happened Before History? Human Origins
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 2 HN recommenders
Kurzgesagt's animated overview of human origins and the vast prehistory before recorded history. It covers how modern humans emerged and spread.
THE ARCHIVE · EVERY DISCOVERY
Video directory / 56
3,553 videos with summaries and linked Hacker News recommendations, arranged by title.
What Happened to Horses Is Happening to Us
CGP Grey · 11 HN recommenders
CGP Grey's video "Humans Need Not Apply" argues that automation will make a large part of the workforce economically obsolete, much as engines did for horses. It surveys robots and software replacing both physical and mental labor.
What Happens After the Universe Ends?
PBS Space Time · 2 HN recommenders
PBS Space Time explains Roger Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology, in which the far future of our universe becomes the big bang of the next. It explores what could come after the universe ends.
What Happens at the Event Horizon? | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
PBS Space Time · 3 HN recommenders
PBS Space Time explains what happens as you approach and cross a black hole's event horizon, using Penrose diagrams and light cones as the tool for understanding spacetime there.
What Happens When Maths Goes Wrong? - with Matt Parker
The Royal Institution · 2 HN recommenders
Matt Parker's Royal Institution talk based on his book Humble Pi, covering everyday mathematical mistakes and spurious patterns that went wrong in engineering and software. It mixes stand-up comedy with stories of coincidence and error.
What I Wish I Had Known Before Scaling Uber to 1000 Services • Matt Ranney • GOTO 2016
GOTO Conferences · 3 HN recommenders
Matt Ranney of Uber talks at GOTO Chicago 2016 about what Uber learned from growing past 1,000 production microservices. He covers regrets, sprawl and organizational effects.
What if Current Foundations of Mathematics are Inconsistent? | Vladimir Voevodsky
Institute for Advanced Study · 3 HN recommenders
Vladimir Voevodsky's IAS lecture starts from Godel's second incompleteness theorem to explore whether first-order arithmetic could be inconsistent. It motivates his vision of univalent foundations and computer-checked proofs.
What if you could only see the world in UV?
Veritasium · 2 HN recommenders
Veritasium shows what the world looks like through a UV camera. It covers how pigments absorb UV, how fluorescence works, and how UV imaging reveals sunscreen effectiveness and skin damage.
What if you swam in a nuclear storage pool?
xkcd's What If? · 2 HN recommenders
Randall Munroe of xkcd answers what would happen if you swam in a spent nuclear fuel pool, and how much radiation you would receive at the surface versus at depth.
What Is A Black Start Of The Power Grid?
Practical Engineering · 6 HN recommenders
Practical Engineering explains what a black start is: restarting a power grid after total collapse. It shows why most plants need outside power to start and why rebuilding a synchronized grid is delicate and high-stakes.
What is a Browser?
Ji Lee · 2 HN recommenders
Street interviews of over 50 passersby in Times Square, asked what a browser is. Many answers show people confuse browsers with search engines or the internet.
What is a genocide?
Anders Puck Nielsen · 2 HN recommenders
Anders Puck Nielsen clears up common misunderstandings about what legally counts as genocide, then compares the situation in Gaza with the genocide case against Putin. The chapters cover the definition, individual intent, and the two case comparisons.
What is a Geometry Kernel? C3D vs ACIS vs Parasolid
nickkallen1 · 3 HN recommenders
The Plasticity creator explains what a geometry kernel is and compares commercial options C3D, ACIS, and Parasolid, describing his months of research and why he chose as he did.
What is a rocket mass heater?
paul wheaton · 2 HN recommenders
A two-minute explanation of what a rocket mass heater is, starting from how a conventional wood stove works and why creosote and chimney fires occur. It shows how burning hot and storing the heat in thermal mass makes for an efficient heater.
What Is A Rotating Detonation Engine - And Why Are They Better Than Regular Engines
Scott Manley · 2 HN recommenders
Scott Manley explains rotating detonation engines, how they differ from pulsed detonation engines, and why thermodynamics predicts they beat traditional jet and rocket engines.
What is Bitcoin? (v1)
WeUseCoins · 2 HN recommenders
A two-minute animated introduction to Bitcoin from 2011, explaining it as a peer-to-peer digital currency. It was widely shared in Bitcoin's early days as the standard newcomer explainer.
What is Concrete?
Practical Engineering · 2 HN recommenders
Practical Engineering gives a short introduction to concrete, covering the difference between concrete and cement, the ingredients, and reinforcement. It includes a hydraulic press demonstration of compressive strength.
What is in a Lucene index? Adrien Grand, Software Engineer, Elasticsearch
LuceneSolrRevolution · 3 HN recommenders
Elasticsearch engineer and Lucene committer Adrien Grand explains the design decisions inside a Lucene index and what problems it can and cannot solve. The talk goes into how Lucene stores data for fast search and analytics.
What is Right to Repair? An introduction for curious people.
Louis Rossmann · 4 HN recommenders
Louis Rossmann gives a basic, non-technical introduction to right to repair legislation for people new to the issue.
What is the best diet for humans? | Eran Segal | TEDxRuppin
TEDx Talks · 2 HN recommenders
Prof. Eran Segal's TEDx talk on research showing that people's blood sugar responses to identical foods vary widely. It describes an algorithm that predicts individual responses and why one best diet for everyone does not exist.
What Is the RNA World Hypothesis?
Stated Clearly · 2 HN recommenders
Stated Clearly explains the RNA world hypothesis, which resolves the chicken-or-egg problem of genes versus enzymes by proposing that RNA once did both jobs. It outlines how evolution could begin with RNA chains alone.
What is the Ultraviolet Catastrophe?
Physics Explained · 2 HN recommenders
A detailed 40-minute explanation of the ultraviolet catastrophe, covering Rayleigh and Jeans' classical treatment of blackbody radiation and Planck's quantum hypothesis. It follows the Eisberg and Resnick textbook treatment.
What It Really Takes to Convert an Office Building to Apartments | Odd Lots
Bloomberg Podcasts · 3 HN recommenders
An Odd Lots podcast episode on why converting empty office buildings into apartments is hard. A managing director at Vanbarton Group walks through the zoning, financing and construction obstacles, mostly in New York.
What Languages Sound Like To Foreigners
Sara Forsberg · 6 HN recommenders
Finnish YouTuber Saara improvises gibberish that mimics how various languages sound to people who do not speak them. The sentences are mostly made up, and the clip went viral.
What Makes This Song Great? "Into You" MAX MARTIN
Rick Beato · 3 HN recommenders
Rick Beato analyzes the music and production of Max Martin through Ariana Grande's Into You, breaking down its layering and songwriting craft.
What nobody tells you about documentation
PyCon AU · 3 HN recommenders
Daniele Procida's PyCon AU 2017 talk presents a system that divides documentation into four kinds, usually drawn as four quadrants. He explains why mixing them makes docs poor and how separating them improves writing.
What P vs NP is actually about
Polylog · 4 HN recommenders
Polylog explains how algorithms can be turned into circuits and encoded as satisfiability problems, which lets you effectively run them backwards. It uses this to motivate breaking RSA, general reductions to SAT, and what P vs NP is really asking.
What People Get Wrong About Dense Urban Living
Oh The Urbanity! · 4 HN recommenders
Oh The Urbanity! argues that most city dwellers live in dense residential neighbourhoods outside downtown, which can be calm and peaceful. It draws on older, denser parts of Toronto and Montreal.
What People Get Wrong About Induced Demand
Oh The Urbanity! · 4 HN recommenders
Explains induced demand beyond roads, showing that it applies to transit, walking and cycling infrastructure too but with different consequences. It corrects common misunderstandings of the concept.
What prevents the poor from reaching the middle class? | VISION TALKS
American Enterprise Institute · 2 HN recommenders
Megan McArdle's AEI Vision Talk 'Capital and Poverty' argues that social and financial capital work differently in low-income communities, and that this explains barriers to reaching the middle class.
What Really Happened at the Millennium Tower?
Practical Engineering · 2 HN recommenders
Practical Engineering explains why San Francisco's Millennium Tower is sinking and tilting, covering how geology and foundation design (friction piles in the Colma Formation) affect skyscrapers. It also covers the fix being attempted.
What Really Happened During the Texas Power Grid Outage?
Practical Engineering · 6 HN recommenders
Practical Engineering's explanation of the February 2021 Texas winter storm and the resulting power grid outage. It lays out the facts about ERCOT, the grid's isolation, and how generation across fuel types failed in the cold.
What Shopping On Amazon Feels Like
Ryan George · 2 HN recommenders
A Ryan George comedy sketch about the absurdities of shopping on Amazon, including nonsense brand names, fake reviews and scammy sellers.
What the heck is the event loop anyway? | Philip Roberts | JSConf EU
JSConf · 16 HN recommenders
Philip Roberts explains the JavaScript event loop, call stack, callbacks and asynchronous behavior with live visualizations using a tool he built. It demystifies terms like non-blocking and single-threaded.
What Would You Do? Bike Theft (White Guy, Black Guy, Pretty Girl)
VladCantSleep · 2 HN recommenders
A hidden-camera social experiment in a park where three people try to steal a bike in the open: a white teenager, a black teenager and a young woman. It records how bystanders react to each.
What your Differential Pairs Wish You Knew with Rick Hartley - AltiumLive Keynote
Altium · 5 HN recommenders
Rick Hartley's AltiumLive keynote on differential pairs in PC boards. He argues the rules from cables and twisted pairs do not carry over, and covers which pair geometry gives the best impedance control, the right spacing, routing practice and how much skew is acceptable.
What's a Memory Allocator Anyway? - Benjamin Feng
Zig SHOWTIME · 3 HN recommenders
A Zig SHOWTIME talk by Benjamin Feng on what a memory allocator is, followed by an interview. It covers allocation strategies and different allocator types in Zig.
What's Bad About Julia | Jeff Bezanson | JuliaCon 2019
The Julia Programming Language · 2 HN recommenders
Julia co-creator Jeff Bezanson candidly lists fundamental problems with the language at JuliaCon 2019, including modularity, types and compiler latency, and how they might be solved.
What's It Really like Working at Valve?
People Make Games · 3 HN recommenders
People Make Games interviewed 16 current and former Valve employees to examine how the company's no-bosses, no-titles structure works in practice, and where it falls short.
When Wokes and Racists Actually Agree on Everything
Ryan Long · 2 HN recommenders
A short comedy skit by Ryan Long satirizing how woke activists and racists end up agreeing on many things.
Where Do Trees Get Their Mass?
Veritasium · 3 HN recommenders
Veritasium asks people where a tree's mass comes from, then explains that most of a dry tree's mass originates from carbon dioxide in the air. It combines street interviews with a short explanation of photosynthesis.
Where Does Growth Come From? | Clayton Christensen | Talks at Google
Talks at Google · 2 HN recommenders
Clayton Christensen speaks at Google on where growth comes from, covering disruption, market-creating versus efficiency innovation, and jobs to be done. He also touches on measuring your life.
Where in the world is it easiest to get rich? | Harald Eia | TEDxOslo
TEDx Talks · 5 HN recommenders
Sociologist and comedian Harald Eia argues in a TEDxOslo talk that Nordic social democracies produce more rich people per capita than the US or UK. He credits high taxes, welfare and strong unions for creating a safety net that enables risk taking.
Where The Real Chip Shortage Is
Asianometry · 2 HN recommenders
Asianometry explains that the worst of the 2021-22 chip shortage sits in trailing-edge semiconductors, not the leading-edge chips usually covered. It covers why those older-node fabs are so hard to expand and fix.
Where's the 'Collusion'?
The Real News Network · 2 HN recommenders
The Real News Network interview between Aaron Mate and Guardian reporter Luke Harding about Russiagate and Harding's book on alleged Russian collusion.
Which key is the saddest?
Adam Neely · 3 HN recommenders
Musician Adam Neely examines whether certain keys sound sadder than others, looking at the history of tuning systems and temperaments and at how instrument timbre shapes the emotional character we hear. It draws on historical aesthetics writing and audio examples.
Who cares about topology? (Old version)
3Blue1Brown · 4 HN recommenders
An older 3Blue1Brown video on why topology matters, built around the inscribed rectangle problem. It walks through how tori and Mobius strips appear in the solution. The channel later replaced it with an updated version.
Who Destroyed Three Mile Island? - Nickolas Means | The Lead Developer Austin 2018
LeadDev · 4 HN recommenders
Nickolas Means recounts the 1979 Three Mile Island accident minute by minute, from the control rod insertion to the operator's decision to switch off emergency cooling. He argues that finding systemic causes is more useful than blaming individuals.
Who else benefits from the Dutch cycling infrastructure
BicycleDutch · 3 HN recommenders
A short BicycleDutch episode showing how people with disabilities use Dutch cycle tracks on hand-cycles, tricycles and mobility scooters.
Who Is Responsible For Climate Change? – Who Needs To Fix It?
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 3 HN recommenders
Kurzgesagt examines who is responsible for climate change, comparing historical, current and per-capita emissions by country. It argues that individual footprints are a distraction from larger responsibility.
Who is Yahweh - How a Warrior-Storm God became the God of the Israelites and World Monotheism
ESOTERICA · 3 HN recommenders
An ESOTERICA episode tracing Yahweh from a warrior-storm god near Mt Seir to the god of the Israelites in the Judean highlands. It examines how Yahwism absorbed and contended with Canaanite religion.
Who Killed Captain Alex: Uganda's First Action Movie (English Subtitles & Video Joker) - Wakaliwood
Official Wakaliwood · 2 HN recommenders
Who Killed Captain Alex is Uganda's first action movie, made for under $200 by Nabwana IGG in Wakaliga. This version has English subtitles and a video joker (VJ Emmie) providing running commentary.
Who's faster around London: a taxi driver or a GPS?
Tom Scott plus · 2 HN recommenders
Tom Scott races a London black-cab driver who has memorized The Knowledge against a phone GPS across the city, comparing local expertise to navigation software.
Who’s Taking America’s Water? | Climate Town
Climate Town · 3 HN recommenders
A Climate Town episode on who uses America's water, particularly Western water. It looks at agriculture such as alfalfa and animal feed, and at water-rights rules that discourage conservation.
Why 50 Million Chinese Homes are Empty
PolyMatter · 3 HN recommenders
PolyMatter explains China's housing bubble and why around 50 million homes sit empty. It covers cultural and economic reasons behind the overbuilding and the government's bind.
Why 90% of Managers Are GARBAGE (The Professional Lie) | Steve Jobs
Evan Carmichael · 2 HN recommenders
A short clip of Steve Jobs arguing that the best people are self-managing and that professional managers who cannot do the work add little. He says leadership is about a shared vision.
Why Adults Can't Develop Perfect Pitch
Rick Beato · 4 HN recommenders
Rick Beato argues that adults cannot develop true perfect pitch, which he ties to critical-period brain plasticity and language acquisition. He says it can only be developed in young children, and discusses the research behind this.
Why Age? Should We End Aging Forever?
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 4 HN recommenders
Kurzgesagt's short animated video asks whether humanity should try to end aging, and argues the case for curing age-related disease. It is part one of a pair, with a second part by CGP Grey.
Why Air Quality Matters
David Heinemeier Hansson · 3 HN recommenders
David Heinemeier Hansson explains what he learned about indoor air quality after his new house made his family sick. He covers CO2, VOCs, off-gassing, HVAC and ventilation, and cognitive effects, presented at a Basecamp meetup.
Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 3 HN recommenders
A short Kurzgesagt animation explaining the Great Filter, the idea that finding alien life might be bad news because it implies something usually destroys civilizations. It connects the concept to the Fermi paradox.