RIP you solid lad
He's not dead! His other projects are worth a look. Different kinds of content, but same creative spark.
Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]
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Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve also been watching Tom Scott since he started, and love his content. I’ve put a few others that I enjoy below, that also produce what I consider to be high quality and entertaining content. Mind sharing any others? Nile Red Nick Zentner Practical Engineering Real Engineering Ivan Miranda Joe Makes Tom Stanton Veritasium Numberphile Deep Sky Videos Objectivity (Honestly all of Brady’s channels are great) 3Blue1Br…
There are so many great channels on there! Here are a few of my recent favorites: Laura Kampf - german maker and problem solver, currently renovating a 120 year old house Jimmy Diresta - maker and designer, also renovating an old house in upstate New York Adam Savage - from MythBusters, interesting builds, and interesting discussion of shop and building techniques Rambling Wild Rosie - former long-distance hiker and…
Laura Kampf is new to me, and right up my alley! Subscribed!
Mattias Wandel for the woodworking channels list as well!
Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s something grounded in a very particular kind of 1980s/90s BBC Television content in the values Tom Scott’s videos embody. It’s sort of like he managed to give himself a job roleplaying as a Blue Peter / Tomorrow’s World presenter. He basically carried forward the kind of Reithian ‘mission to inform’ BBC values that largely disappeared in the John Birt era and somehow brought them onto YouTube.
He tried and AFAICT failed to do TV in the past — this is probably not a bad thing given how the tides have changed. I have always found his patterns of speech interesting. Quite measured but untrained. I've never met him but I know a few people who have and I'm told that he's exactly the same in person (at least at a formal dinner!) which probably tracks.
Which is interesting because he graduated with a degree in linguistics, so it's something he understands quite well.
Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even ignoring all the other advantages (mostly synchronization-related, which do objectively make implementing algorithms on UTF-8-encoded data simpler), "the number of set prefix bits is the number of bytes" doesn't seem meaningfully more complex than a single continuation bit.
> "the number of set prefix bits is the number of bytes" Except when it's 1, because that's an invalid start, and except when it's 0, because that means the character is a single byte. And it also means you're dealing with three classes of byte now. Plus UTF-8 has more invalid encodings to deal with than a super-simple format.
> Plus UTF-8 has more invalid encodings to deal with than a super-simple format.
If your format supports non-canonical encodings you're in for a bad time no matter what, so a whole lot of that simplicity is fake.
> And it also means you're dealing with three classes of byte now.
If you're working a byte at a time you're doing it wrong, unless you're re-syncing an invalid stream in which case it's as simple as a continuation bit (specifically, it's two continuation bits).
Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "the number of set prefix bits is the number of bytes" Except when it's 1, because that's an invalid start, and except when it's 0, because that means the character is a single byte. And it also means you're dealing with three classes of byte now. Plus UTF-8 has more invalid encodings to deal with than a super-simple format.
> Plus UTF-8 has more invalid encodings to deal with than a super-simple format. If your format supports non-canonical encodings you're in for a bad time no matter what, so a whole lot of that simplicity is fake. > And it also means you're dealing with three classes of byte now. If you're working a byte at a time you're doing it wrong, unless you're re-syncing an invalid stream in which case it's as simple as a conti…
The simple encoding already allows smaller characters to have the same bytes as subsets of larger characters. Non-canonical is not a big deal on top of that. Also there are other banned bytes you don't need to deal with.
> If you're working a byte at a time you're doing it wrong, unless you're re-syncing an invalid stream
It's very relevant to explaining the encoding and it matters if you're worried that invalid bytes might exist. You can't just ignore the extra complexity.
Also if you're not working a byte at a time, that kind of implies you parsed the characters? In which case non-canonical encodings are a non-problem.
Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Variable width encodings are inherently harder to understand. And while UTF-8 tries very hard to be simple whenever possible, it does have some nonobvious constraints that make it significantly more complex than the actual simplest variable-width encoding (a continuation bit and then 7 data bits).
Unicode is variable length even if you use 32 bits, because glyphs sometimes require multiple codepoints. People sometimes write as if using more bits will remove complexity from Unicode but it doesn't really, you still need to handle multiple units at once sometimes.
Sure but that's at another level entirely. Dealing with two types of variable width is double difficult.
Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Plus UTF-8 has more invalid encodings to deal with than a super-simple format. If your format supports non-canonical encodings you're in for a bad time no matter what, so a whole lot of that simplicity is fake. > And it also means you're dealing with three classes of byte now. If you're working a byte at a time you're doing it wrong, unless you're re-syncing an invalid stream in which case it's as simple as a conti…
The simple encoding already allows smaller characters to have the same bytes as subsets of larger characters. Non-canonical is not a big deal on top of that. Also there are other banned bytes you don't need to deal with. > If you're working a byte at a time you're doing it wrong, unless you're re-syncing an invalid stream It's very relevant to explaining the encoding and it matters if you're worried that invalid byte…
> Non-canonical is not a big deal on top of that.
Unless you want to actually do anything with the string beyond decode a codepoint.
Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
To continue with the transit/urbanism channels... * Not Just Bikes * City Beautiful * Alan Fisher * donoteat01 (not really uploading anymore since he has a podcast that takes all his time) * Eco Gecko (also doesn't really upload anymore) * Adam Something And also others... * Folding Ideas (popular topics video essays) * hbomberguy (popular topics video essays) * Epoch Philosophy (drier more academic video essays) * B…
More urbanism/transit on YouTube: * Oh The Urbanity! * CityNerd * Yet Another Urbanist * RMTransit * Miles in Transit * The War on Cars (audio) * The Urbanist Agenda (audio)
Geoff Marshall makes great videos mostly focused on UK trains too.
Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]
#159RIP you solid lad
A little premature on the Rest In Peace declaration...he's still alive (I hope)
Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve also been watching Tom Scott since he started, and love his content. I’ve put a few others that I enjoy below, that also produce what I consider to be high quality and entertaining content. Mind sharing any others? Nile Red Nick Zentner Practical Engineering Real Engineering Ivan Miranda Joe Makes Tom Stanton Veritasium Numberphile Deep Sky Videos Objectivity (Honestly all of Brady’s channels are great) 3Blue1Br…
Camden Bowen (dude is making a 3D printed internal combustion engine) AustinMcConnell (random shit) Two Minute Papers (ML paper review) Plainly Difficult (industrial accidents/disasters) Perun (military science) EEVBlog (electronics engineering) Summoning Salt (speedruns) High Performance Academy (cars/tuning) Ordinary Things (random shit) Grind Hard Plumbing Co (cars/fabrication) Engineering Explained (cars/explanat…
On the food topic, Tasting History with Max Miller is a favorite - it's interesting seeing him try to recreate recipes from historical primary sources and provide historical context.
Also, Adam Ragusea has some good content on food science, among his regular cooking videos.