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All Rational Approximations of Pi Are Useless
Investigation to find a better rational approximation for pi. Can we get out more digits than we put in? Chance to win a prize if you can do bette
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 258 posts.
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MIT team invents efficient shockwave-based process for desalination of water
MIT researchers have invented an efficient shockwave-based process for desalination of water.
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Plunge in lithium-ion battery costs
The cost of lithium-ion batteries for phones, laptops, and cars has plunged over the years, and an MIT study shows just how dramatic that drop has been. The change is akin to that of solar and wind energy, and further declines may yet be possible, the researchers say.
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Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
Researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington have developed an ultracompact camera the size of a coarse grain of salt. The new system can produce crisp, full-color images on par with a conventional compound camera lens 500,000 times larger in volume.
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Diluting blood plasma rejuvenates tissue, reverses aging in mice
New study suggests that plasma exchange could be the key to unlocking the body’s regenerative capacities
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Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design
1. Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.
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Weird pupils let octopuses see their colorful gardens
Scientists propose unique way in which ‘colorblind’ cephalopods can detect color
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This is what the year actually looks like (2018)
A few weeks back, I asked the Norwegian public what the year looks like inside their heads. It led to a deluge of responses. Here's a summary of more than 75 000 month placements, and nearly 40 000 questionnaire responses.
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Why it takes so long to get data back from New Horizons
As I write this post, New Horizons is nearing the end of a weeklong optical navigation campaign. The last optical navigation images in the weeklong series…
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Richard Dawkins' response to “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?"
Essentialism—what I’ve called "the tyranny of the discontinuous mind"—stems from Plato, with his characteristically Greek geometer’s view of things. For Plato, a circle, or a right triangle, were ideal forms, definable mathematically but never realised in practice. A circle drawn in the sand was an imperfect…