PickVidsBest Hacker culture & free software Videos
The 58 Hacker culture & free software videos here were recommended by different people across different months. Choose by who it is for: 2 introductory, 5 intermediate, 50 for a general viewer, and 1 for someone who wants the harder derivation. Most of them are a talk. What they share is that one speaker finishes a claim, and the examples exist to hold that claim up. Channels you will keep seeing include TEDx Talks, Adrian Crenshaw, media.ccc.de.
Indistinguishable From Magic: Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips
A HOPE09 talk on how modern computer chips are manufactured, from 22nm transistors to ultra-clean fabs and the tricks used to pattern tiny features with light.
Project Code Rush - The Beginnings of Netscape / Mozilla Documentary
Code Rush is a one-hour documentary following Netscape engineers in Silicon Valley through the company's last year as an independent firm.
"Money doesn't interest me" - Ton Roosendaal 2017 Interview
A long interview by Blender Guru with Ton Roosendaal, creator of Blender.
28c3: The coming war on general computation
Cory Doctorow's 28c3 keynote argues that the copyright wars were just a skirmish and that the real fight will be a war on the general-purpose computer.
"The Hard Parts of Open Source" by Evan Czaplicki
Evan Czaplicki, creator of Elm, discusses the hard parts of running an open source project: online community conflict, why its patterns arise, and a cultural history of open source.
[HOPE X] Elevator Hacking: From the Pit to the Penthouse
A HOPE X talk giving an in-depth explanation of how elevators work, from their history in hacker culture to using their control systems to bypass building security.
Copying Is Not Theft - Official Version
Nina Paley's one-minute animated free culture anthem with vocals by Connie Champagne, arguing that copying is not theft.
Civil War General-Purpose Computing | Cory Doctorow | Talks at Google
Cory Doctorow's Talks at Google lecture on the coming civil war over general-purpose computing.
Netscape Mozilla Documentary 1998 - 2000 ProJect Code Rush - creative common licence
Code Rush is a 2000 PBS documentary following Netscape engineers during the year they open-sourced the browser as Mozilla.
2 1 1 Jason Scott Rescuing The Prince of Persia from the sands of time
Jason Scott's DerbyCon 2012 talk on rescuing the Prince of Persia source code from old floppy disks, working with the game's author Jordan Mechner.
"A Political History of X" - Keith Packard (LCA 2020)
Keith Packard traces the 35-year history of the X Window System at linux.conf.au 2020.
36C3 - BahnMining - Pünktlichkeit ist eine Zier - english translation
David Kriesel's 36C3 talk, in an English translation, analyzes a year of scraped Deutsche Bahn data covering every stop of every long-distance train in Germany.
36C3 - Open Source is Insufficient to Solve Trust Problems in Hardware
A 36C3 talk by Bunnie Huang arguing that open source is necessary but not sufficient for trustworthy hardware, because verifying hardware is destructive and so creates a time-of-check/time-of-use gap.
DEFCON 17: That Awesome Time I Was Sued For Two Billion Dollars
Jason Scott of textfiles.com tells the story at DEFCON 17 of being sued for two billion dollars by a scammer who plagued him and others for over a decade.
Eben Moglen - Freedom in The Cloud
Eben Moglen speaks at NYU in 2010 about freedom in the cloud, arguing that centralized services and handing over personal data and server logs erode privacy and freedom.
Introduction to LibrePCB A new, powerful and intuitive EDA tool for everyone
Urban Bruhin, LibrePCB's main author, introduces the open-source EDA tool at FOSDEM 2018.
ARCHIVE TEAM: A Distributed Preservation of Service Attack
Jason Scott of Archive Team describes how a loose band of volunteers rushes to copy sites like Geocities, Friendster and Yahoo Video before their owners delete them.
The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz | full movie (2014)
The full documentary 'The Internet's Own Boy' about programmer and activist Aaron Swartz, with interviews with family, friends and internet figures.
Revolution OS
Revolution OS is a feature-length documentary on the history of free software and Linux.
The Surprising History of Copyright and What It Means For...
Karl Fogel's 2006 Google Tech Talk traces copyright from a 16th-century English censorship law to a distribution monopoly.
DEF CON 31 - An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Ensh*ttification - Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow's DEF CON 31 talk describes how platforms decay in a pattern he calls enshittification.
Free software, free society: Richard Stallman at TEDxGeneva 2014
Richard Stallman's TEDxGeneva 2014 talk describing how nonfree programs give companies control over users and what users can do to regain control.
BSidesLV 2013 3 2 7 Sixteen Colors Archiving the Evolution of ANSI and ASCII Art Doug Moore Bren
A BSidesLV 2013 talk from the Sixteen Colors project on archiving the ANSI and ASCII art scene.
Should Knowledge Be Free?
Medlife Crisis asks whether academic research should sit behind paywalls, covering publisher profit margins, unpaid reviewers, Sci-Hub and Aaron Swartz.