Computerphile: the videos Hacker News recommends
Not the channel's most viewed videos: the ones HN commenters kept linking with real commentary. The top pick, "The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile", it is the go-to funny, accessible explanation of why you should never implement datetime handling yourself, linked in nearly every timezone thread.
- 12 HN recommenders 12 months 2014–2026explainerIt is the go-to funny, accessible explanation of why you should never implement datetime handling yourself, linked in nearly every timezone thread.
- 7 HN recommenders 6 months 2015–2025explainerIt is the go-to short explainer HN commenters link whenever e-voting, voting machines or online voting come up.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2015–2026explainerHN recommends it as an easy, clear intro to the DCT that finally made it click for several commenters.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2014–2025explainerHN treats it as the go-to short explanation of UTF-8, praised for making the topic stick.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2021–2024explainerHN recommends it as a good starting point on practical Enigma cryptanalysis with modern hardware.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2024–2026explainerHN recommends it as an accessible introduction to Gaussian splats, made by people who understand the subject.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2022–2025explainerPointed to as an accessible early explanation of transformers and attention for newcomers.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2016–2024explainerOften pointed to as an accessible first introduction to AI safety and why a superintelligent AI could be dangerous.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2017–2026explainerHN points to it as the standard response to the argument that we can just unplug a dangerous AI.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2015–2023explainerPointed to in AI safety debates as a short explanation of why encoding human values as simple rules is so hard.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2015–2024interviewRecommended alongside the original paper and Unix history threads as an engaging account of the typesetter hack.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2015–2018explainerHN points to it as a good overview of Chip and PIN attacks and the consumer-liability downsides.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2015–2023explainerRecommended as a simple, fun explanation of why floating point gives odd errors like 0.1 + 0.2.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2023explainerHN points to it as the accessible explanation of why glitch tokens exist whenever tokenizers or odd GPT behavior come up.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2019–2022explainerOffered as a short, clear explanation of the halting problem and its link to decidability.
- 4 HN recommenders 2 months 2023interviewHN commenters send it to people confused about ChatGPT's quirks, explaining how human-feedback training makes it a pleasing yes-man that bullshits.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2018–2020interviewHN commenters point to it as a short, charming first-hand account of Unix history from someone who was there.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2023–2026explainerLinked as the approachable explanation whenever HN discusses detecting or watermarking AI-generated text.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2015–2020explainerHN commenters point to it as the history of phototypesetters and a story about the freedom to control your own hardware.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2021–2025explainerHN points to it as an intuitive explanation of how NIST standardized a backdoored generator.
- cited 5× 0 months 2020–2023explainerHN commenters cite it as a concise explanation of GPT-3's scaling jump and surprising abilities at its release.
Questions
Which Computerphile video does Hacker News recommend most?
The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile: recommended in 12 different months by 12 HN users between 2014 and 2026.
Is this every Computerphile video?
No. Only videos that at least three different HN users linked, in at least three different months, with at least a sentence of their own commentary. That filter is what makes the list useful.
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.