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GPT-4 and professional benchmarks: the wrong answer to the wrong question
OpenAI may have tested on the training data. Besides, human benchmarks are meaningless for bots.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,038 posts.
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Plane Lands/Takes Off in Only 20 Feet (2013)
I posted a video earlier today of a Super Cub airplane landing on the side of a mountain. Super Cubs are ideal for that undertaking because of their low stall s
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How We Knew Space Was a Vacuum (2021)
Question: At what point during the history of science did we discover outer space was a vacuum? I’m pretty sure it was before we actually went there, but when did we know for certain? — MC, Algoma, WI
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How to start a rocket engine
This article answeres the questions of how to start a rocket engine and takes you on a deep dive into spark plugs, torch ignitors and more.
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There’s no such thing as a tree phylogenetically (2021)
Dendronization – Evolving into a tree-like morphology. (In the style of “carcinization”.) From ‘dendro’, the ancient Greek root for tree.
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The False Promise of Chomskyism
Important Update (March 10): On deeper reflection, I probably don’t need to spend emotional energy refuting people like Chomsky, who believe that Large Language Models are just a laughable fa…
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Infra-Red, in Situ (Iris) Inspection of Silicon
Cryptography tells us how to make a chain of trust rooted in special-purpose chips known as secure elements. But how do we come to trust our secure elements? I have been searching for solutions to this thorny supply chain problem . Ideally, one can directly inspect the construction of a chip, but any viable inspection…
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Dividing a Square into 7 Similar Rectangles
This is a continuation of my post Dividing a square into similar rectangles, in which I discussed this puzzle: if you partition a square into n similar rectangles, what proportions can these rectan…
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Mars will have a lot of wicker furniture
So we've landed on Mars, now we need somewhere to sit. It's pretty expensive to ship furniture from earth, so time to start building some chairs.
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Poor sleep drove me insane, and my long path to recovery
I'm sharing my experience dealing with what might be the most underdiagnosed and under-treated health disorder today.
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How to date a recording using background electrical noise
Three men were accused of selling firearms to South London gangs. At their 2012 trial in Croydon Crown Court, the prosecution played the jury a recording, taken undercover, of the trio allegedly arranging a sale. But the men’s lawyers claimed that the recording was a fake, and that the police had fabricated it by…
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LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night
Yes, it’s a spicy title. Yes, I plan to back it with what I consider very reasonable evidence of the claims, in the form of a lot of research papers. I would simply ask that you read to the end before deciding I’ve lost it.
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Color of the Night Sky (2019)
What color is the night sky? Contrary to prevailing views, the moonless night sky is rarely, if ever, black or blue. It is actually much more colorful. In this article, I'll describe some of the colors and the physical reasons for those colors.
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Problem solving with dimensional analysis
A dimension is a physical quantity that can be measured, while a unit is a specific amount of a physical quantity. For example, time is a dimension, which can be measured in temporal units such as hours or seconds.
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I changed my mind about nuclear waste
I’ve feared it. I’ve protested it. Now I’m hugging it
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A 50-year quest: My personal journey with the second law of thermodynamics
Follow Stephen Wolfram's evolution of research on the 2nd Law from early interest as a 12-year-old to his current findings in the Wolfram Physics Project. View a large collection of images of early and published works.
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Some insects I found inside dried Turkish figs from Trader Joe’s
During an online wasp identification course I participated in several weeks ago, there was a fun discussion about whether commercially-produced figs contained fig wasps (Agaonidae, in the Chalcidoidea). Opinions varied, plus some asserted, as do many internet pages, that even if wasps were once insi
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The limits of "computational photography"
I was recently discussing laser etching with an engineer/font-designer friend of mine, and I wanted to show him a picture of some really good laser etching on a particular piece of optical equipment.
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Cargo airships could be big
A capital-intensive, high-risk way to revolutionize global commerce
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“Pigeon Neck” Illusion (2014)
An interactive demonstration of the “Pigeon Neck” Illusion
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Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?
No, but they’re probably good for you.
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An intutive counterexample to the axiom of choice
Time for some hard-core geeking-out. This comment on HN by /u/jiggawatts struck me as a brilliant idea: it's an intuitive counter-example t...
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The Point of the Banach-Tarski Theorem
One of my favourite Limited Audience Jokes (although technically it's actually a riddle) goes:
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What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] At around 7PM on the balmy evening of Saturday, December 3, 2022 , nearly every electric customer in Moore County, North Carolina was simultaneously plunged into darkness. Amid the confusion, the power utility was quick to di
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Liu Cixin's Technologies of the Future
Highlight of cool technologies mentioned in "The Dark Forest".
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I measured the pollution from my gas stove
Here's what I learned putting air quality monitors all over my house.