691
We're wasting money by only supporting gzip for raw DNA files
Stylised graphics of money with DNA helix in the foreground.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,038 posts.
692
Effects on the lips of horn players seated too close to the timpani (2014)
Timpani-horn interactions:
693
Death by vegetable oil: What the studies say (2020)
In a world without vegetable oil, we may be twenty pounds lighter, have half the amount of heart disease and cancer, live longer, think clearer, feel better, and be happier and less depressed.
694
How to slow down scientific progress, according to Leo Szilard
“Science would become something like a parlor game. There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashion would get grants”
695
Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
Just days after we celebrated my wife’s 40th birthday, she came down with COVID, meaning she’s been isolating and I’ve been spending almost all my time dealing with our kids. But …
696
Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
The world has enough lithium, but we need to scale up production this decade.
697
Why Not Mars
It's slow, expensive, the engineering is mostly port-a-potty chemistry, and the best-case outcome is that thirty years from now we’ll get to watch someone remotely operate a soil scoop from Mars instead of Pasadena
698
“Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
(First, Some Background)
699
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)
An allegory against complacency about aging and death.
700
Report on an Unidentified Space Station (1982)
By good luck we have been able to make an emergency landing on this uninhabited space station. There have been no casualties. We all count ourselves fortunate to have found safe haven at a moment when the expedition was clearly set on disaster.
701
Degenerate matter: How reality deals with uncertainty
Casual introduction to the uncertainty principle from quantum mechanics and how it leads to neutron stars and superfluids
702
First TV Image of Mars: Interplanetary color by numbers (2016)
For the longest time I had seen this framed image entitled “The First TV Image of Mars” in an out of the way place at JPL. I loved taking people there showing them this low res image and how it had been made by coloring numbers that were stapled to a wall. When I got to curate an exhibition about data and art, I had…
703
A seamstress who solved the ancient mystery of the Argonaut
“I armed myself with patience and courage, and only after several months managed to dissolve my doubts and see my research crowned with happy confirmation.”
704
705
Holography without Lasers: Hand-drawn Holograms (1999)
I've stumbled across a technique for drawing holograms directly upon a plastic plate by hand. It sounds impossible, but I've been sitting on the livingroom sofa making holographic images of floating polyhedra, words, 3D starfields, opaque objects, etc. No laser, no isolation table, no darkroom, no expensive film…
706
Eight studies reveal a bias in human imagination
Eight studies reveal a (possibly universal) bias in human imagination
707
How “See a Satellite Tonight” Works
See A Satellite Tonight is my most successful side project so far, with 5 million users since launch in 2019. It's been entirely a solo project, and I've used it as a proving ground for a bunch of tech that I wanted to learn. It took dozens of APIs and services to put together the experience I wanted: The front page…
708
People took some potassium and lost some weight
In November 2021, we finished our series A Chemical Hunger, where we argue that the obesity epidemic is the result of environmental contaminants, and that one of those contaminants might be lithium…
709
710
Astronomical Calculations for Hard SF in Common Lisp
Hard SF worldbuilding with the HYG database, Dijkstra's algorithm, and Lisp.
711
Special Relativity and Middle-Earth
This post is an unofficial sequel to one of my first blog posts from 2007, which was entitled “Quantum mechanics and Tomb Raider”. One of the oldest and most famous allegories is Plato&…
712
Why fusion will never happen (2012)
I like fusion, really. I’ve talked to some of luminaries that work in the field, they’re great people. I love the technology and the physics behind it. But fusion as a power source is n…
713
Nuclear power is too slow
One common and plausible argument against nuclear power is that it is too slow.
714
The rise and fall of peer review
Why the greatest scientific experiment in history failed, and why that's a great thing
715
What is a black start of the power grid?
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] November 1965 saw one of the most widespread power outages in North American history. On the freezing cold evening of the 9th, the grid was operating at maximum capacity as people tried to stay warm when a misconfigured relay tr
716
One does not simply destroy a nuclear weapon
It's the isotopes...
717
How do transistors work, anyway?
The internet is littered with explanations of how transistors work. Most of them don't really explain anything.
718
How thick is a three-sided coin?
Matt Parker, employing the enviably pithy prose typical of a content creator forged on the unforgiving fires of social media, asked the simple question back in 2018: > How thick is a three-sided coin? Translated into mathematician-ese, this means > What aspect ratio of a flipped coin leads to the chance of landing on…
719
Capsaicin is a psychoactive substance
Capsaicin, the active substance in chili peppers, acts on vanilloid receptors (TRPV1) and alters adrenaline and endorphine levels.
720
Whales dying from consuming plastics
Blame Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, the world’s worst plastic polluters, according to a new study