For years, moderators of online forums and chat rooms have wielded a metaphorical “banhammer” to deal with anyone who steps out of line. Now it’s real. Well, a bit more real, anyway. THANKS TO: Mat Hill for design and coding: http://mat-hill.xyz/ Chris Joel for the idea, and for wielding the […]
Back in the 1920s, wingwalking claimed lives. Daredevils would move around on the top of a plane’s wings, in mid-flight, often without any harness or any safety line. Maybe they’d be able to clip onto something during takeoff and landing, but maybe not. There are still a few of those […]
In the 1830s, two French brothers, François and Joseph Blanc, pulled off the first telecoms scam in history. The optical telegraph, a line of semaphore towers stretching from hilltop to hilltop, was for government use only: but something as simple as the law wasn’t going to get in their way. […]
That’s right, we’re kicking Season 2 of the Basics off with a technical episode about a somewhat-obsolete technology! IT’S PARTY TIME. Wait, no, not party time. IT’S CODE TIME. Close enough. Let’s talk about seven-segment displays, and about the longest word you can write with them. Public domain list of […]
There’s a reason music videos look strange. I could just talk about framerate, cuts and continuity… or I could get an actual music video director. And a leaf blower. Directed by: Sammy Paul https://twitter.com/icoepr Produced by: Cambria Bailey-Jones https://twitter.com/cambriabailey Guy Larsen https://twitter.com/thisisguido Director of Photography: Ciaran O’Brien https://twitter.com/ciaranobrien Featuring: dodie […]
Ogham is an old Irish script made by carving notches into stones. It fell out of use more than a millennium ago – but it’s an interesting exception to a linguistics and computer-science rule that I’d never even realised existed. Let’s talk about the Ogham Space Mark. Thanks to all […]
Our traditional Wartime Badass Episode this week, albeit a wartime badass whose weapon included expense reports. BONUS MATERIAL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFFoDDhl9DA FULL PLAYLIST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGIo2odDuuPeYtb7BtQ1kBhp WEB SITE and MORE AUDIO EPISODES: http://techdif.co.uk Featuring: Matt Gray: http://mattg.co.uk – @unnamedculprit Gary Brannan: @garybrannan and Chris Joel, who doesn’t do this social media nonsense More from […]
No, a hail cannon isn’t for if you just want to accelerate a lot of hail really quickly. This week: pseudoscience and real science! BONUS MATERIAL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgerCSpxSWo FULL PLAYLIST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGIo2odDuuPeYtb7BtQ1kBhp WEB SITE and MORE AUDIO EPISODES: http://techdif.co.uk Featuring: Matt Gray: http://mattg.co.uk – @unnamedculprit Gary Brannan: @garybrannan and Chris Joel, who […]
I realise we never actually define “pumpy thing” in this video. I’m not going to define it here either. BONUS MATERIAL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_hjV2skRac FULL PLAYLIST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGIo2odDuuPeYtb7BtQ1kBhp WEB SITE and MORE AUDIO EPISODES: http://techdif.co.uk Featuring: Matt Gray: http://mattg.co.uk – @unnamedculprit Gary Brannan: @garybrannan and Chris Joel, who doesn’t do this social media […]
[See pinned comment for an important update.] In a field near Elberton, Georgia, USA, sit a set of mysterious standing stones: mysterious not because they’re ancient, but because they were funded by someone anonymous in 1980, perhaps as a message to any survivors of the end of the world. 🟥 […]
