The moonlight towers of Austin, Texas, are the last urban municipal lighting towers in the world: because before every street was wired to the grid, how else would you light up a city? ■ Austin Energy: https://austinenergy.com/ ■ Moonlight Towers https://www.austintexas.org/listings/moonlight-towers/5895/ Producer: Jodi Shores at Sparksight https://sparksight.com Director: Kelly Shores […]
Nio is a Chinese auto maker that offers an alternative to charging: just swapping out the whole battery whenever you need it. I borrowed one of their cars. ■ Nio: https://www.nio.com/ Camera: Dion Huiskes https://feedbuilders.nl/ Editor: Julian Domanski https://www.juliandomanski.com/ 🟥 MORE FROM TOM: https://www.tomscott.com/ (you can find contact details and […]
INT, BOOLEAN, STRING and FLOAT: these are the things that data is made of. • Sponsored by Dashlane — for free on your first device @ https://www.dashlane.com/tomscott MORE BASICS: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGLLeET0dOWaKHkAlPsrkcha Written with Sean Elliott https://twitter.com/SeanMElliott/ Directed by Tomek Graphics by Mooviemakers https://www.mooviemakers.co.uk/ Audio mix by Haerther Productions https://haerther.net/ I’m at […]
The short answer is: “because it’ll make things more secure”. The long answer involves Ronald Reagan. • MORE BASICS: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGLLeET0dOWaKHkAlPsrkcha Written with Sean Elliott https://twitter.com/SeanMElliott/ • Camera by Tomek • Graphics by William Marler https://wmad.co.uk Filmed at the Centre for Computing History, Cambridge: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/ Their current fundraiser: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/computermuseum Image of […]
Cornwall rises and falls by a few centimetres, twice a day. I didn’t believe that when I read it. In this video: “ocean tide loading”: why, how, and does it actually matter? Thanks to Prof. Peter Clarke, who is a professor of geodesy, not geodisy. Apologies for the typo! https://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/peter.clarke/ […]
Silfra, in Þingvellir National Park in Iceland, is where the Eurasian and North American continental plates are dividing. It’s a crack in the earth where you can snorkel or dive between the continents. Well, sort of. As ever, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Þingvellir geology: https://www.thingvellir.is/en/history-nature/nature/geologic-history/ https://notendur.hi.is/oi/geology_of_thingvellir.htm Þingvellir […]
Normally, the answer would be no. But in these very limited circumstances, at Iceland’s Blue Lagoon, you can swim in geothermal power plant wastewater, and it’s even healthy: although the marketing material doesn’t usually mention it. Here’s a story about geothermal energy, cheap heat, and how to keep some ducks […]
The Roadmachines Mono-Rail may have been the only truly useful, fit-for-purpose monorail in the world. Of the hundreds that were built, most were never meant for passengers. But they did carry a couple of famous people in their time, including a certain secret agent… Thank you to the staff and […]
Featuring binary versus linear search, and non-clustered indexes. Uh, indices. However you want to say it. • MORE BASICS: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGLLeET0dOWaKHkAlPsrkcha Written with Sean Elliott https://twitter.com/SeanMElliott/ • Camera by Tomek • Graphics by William Marler https://wmad.co.uk 🟥 MORE FROM TOM: https://www.tomscott.com/ (you can find contact details and social links there too) […]
Tim Berners-Lee envisioned a “universal information system”. What went wrong? • MORE BASICS: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGLLeET0dOWaKHkAlPsrkcha Written with Sean Elliott https://twitter.com/SeanMElliott/ • Camera by Tomek • Graphics by William Marler https://wmad.co.uk 🟥 MORE FROM TOM: https://www.tomscott.com/ (you can find contact details and social links there too) 📰 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER with good stuff […]
