Awesome TED Talks (and similar enlightening lectures)

[ThunderPeel2001]

This one wins the prize:

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[Sleepdance]

http://www.ted.com/talks/raghava_kk_five_lives_of_an_artist.html

[Thompson]

Awesome. :tup:

[MrHoatzin]

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[Armchair General]

Kingz, you should have a go at doing one of those videos (The RSA animations).

Build it, and we will watch it.

[Wubbles]

This isn't a lecture, but it probably belongs here more than it does in the other video thread.

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Skip to around 9:30 for particular coolness, but the whole thing is still worth watching.

[Thompson]

I guess this fits in here: "who killed video games?” (a ghost story)

(It's multi-chaptered.)

[Gwardinen]

I guess this fits in here: "who killed video games?” (a ghost story)

(It's multi-chaptered.)

I'm not usually the kind to ask for this, but could someone read that and tell me whether it's worthwhile? Tim Rogers has disappointed me in the past and his pieces are so sprawling that it's a genuine investment to get all the way through them, an investment that has sometimes failed to pay off for me.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Not sure why this isn't huge?

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[Roderick]

Very cool! It was quite exciting to see him drink from the bottle.

I wonder how he manufactured the filter though, what is it made from? How recyclable are the components in the bottle? Those are be important corollary questions to answer.

[ThunderPeel2001]

It's weird because that video is from 2009...

[syntheticgerbil]

I used something similar when backpacking once, but it wasn't anywhere as good. I hope this goes everywhere.

[vimes]

I thought the biggest issue might the cost (the bottle + 16 filters cost 150 dollars), but since it last for 4000 * 14 litres (about 75 years if you drink 2 liter of water a day), it shouldn't be that much of a deterrent.

On their website, you can even buy one for donation at a lower price, which is pretty cool.

[ThunderPeel2001]

At the end of the video he breaks down the costs in more detail.

[chickenontheceiling]

this guy is my favourite documentarian of all:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/

he is now producing specifically for the information superhighway.

also if you haven't seen his documentaries, start with the power of nightmares and then find yourself having watched all of them about a week later.

[Orv]

Alright, my coolness quota is filled for the week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=&v=SoHeWgLvlXI

[Armchair General]

Whoa! Mind blown!

[brkl]

The weirdest thing is how normal it looks. You would expect something stranger.

[Orv]

The weirdest thing is how normal it looks. You would expect something stranger.

Nail on the head there. I was expecting some kind of weird shit where... I don't know what I was expecting, but I definitely wasn't expecting "Oh, yes, that is how light works."

[brkl]

It just looks like particle effects in a video game.

[Nappi]

Very nice!

The focus on "seeing around corners" aspect of the technology is pretty bizarre. I find it hard to believe that even the researchers themselves think that future cars might pack a femtosecond laser, a special camera and a computer with massive processing power just to be able to see around those tricky corners. There are obviously a ton of real applications for such a camera, and I would rather have heard him speculate on those. Oh well, that's the nature of TEDTalks, I suppose. (Still love them though!)

[Armchair General]

Amazing. They've managed to develop a system for sending a 'bullet' of light and created a camera that takes a trillion frames a second, seen some unusual effects that have not been seen before and all brkl can say is 'yeah, whatever, it looks like a video game'

Bah humbug!

Still love you Seppanen you oaf.

[brkl]

But it's amazing that it looks like a video game! Blobs of light that move as fast as some dude on a bicycle are a staple of sci-fi and video games but totally alien to the real world. It's so odd that light would actually look like that in slow motion.

[Erkki]

Uh, but how would this actually work for seeing around corners when it's light? I thought their current thingie only works in the dark -- they can't distinguish photons flying at the camera from other sources, right?

[ThunderPeel2001]

Uh, but how would this actually work for seeing around corners when it's light? I thought their current thingie only works in the dark -- they can't distinguish photons flying at the camera from other sources, right?

Yeah, I was thinking that lying in bed last night... Surely this is easily defeated by turning on the lights? Also, I'm not sure if cars driving in pitch blackness will increase their safety...?