1771
Algernon's Law
Why most supplements fail: IQ improvement skepticism, Yudkowsky & Bostrom’s heuristics, nootropics
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,038 posts.
1772
The Existential Risk of Mathematical Error
Mathematical mistake/error-rates limit our understanding of rare risks and ability to defend against them.
1773
Melatonin
Melatonin improves sleep, & sleep is valuable
1774
The Arsenic DNA paper exposes flaws in peer review
a blog about genomes, DNA, evolution, open science, baseball and other important things
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Dual N-Back Meta-analysis
Does DNB increase IQ? What factors affect the studies? Probably not: gains are driven by studies with weakest methodology like apathetic control groups.
1777
Nicotine as a useful stimulant
On the benefits and lack of demerits of nicotine (research up to 2015)
1778
NASA paywalls first papers arising from Curiosity rover – I am setting them free
a blog about genomes, DNA, evolution, open science, baseball and other important things
1779
Temperature chart for the last 11,000 years
For the first time, researchers have put together all the climate data they have (from ice cores, coral, sediment drilling) into one chart that shows the “globa
1780
Go Pro on a soaring eagle [video]
What does it feel like to soar majestically like an bird? Maybe something like this video, shot with a camera strapped to the back of an eagle flying near Chamo
1781
Orbital Speed
What if a spacecraft slowed down on re-entry to just a few miles per hour using rocket boosters like the Mars-sky-crane? Would it negate the need for a heat shield?
1782
Rat Park Experiment: A New Theory of Addiction
We all learned this in DARE class. About the rats in a cage who can self-administer morphine who get addicted to the stuff, and then just hit that lever until they die. A seemingly keystone...
1783
How To Deconstruct Almost Anything (1993)
This is the story of one computer professional's explorations in the world of postmodern literary criticism. I'm a working software engineer, not a student nor an academic nor a person with any real background in the humanities. Consequently, I've approached the whole subject with a somewhat different frame of mind…
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1785
A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking
My book, Sous Vide for the Home Cook , came out in 2010. You can order the second edition directly from the US publisher. My book has over 200 delicious recipes for beef, pork, lamb, game, chicken, turkey, duck, fish, shellfish, vegetables, fruits, legumes, ice cream bases, sauces, and yogurt. I first cover the basics…
1786
A most bizarre and mysterious cocoon
by Matthew Cobb This bizarre photo was posted the other day on reddit’s “whatsthisbug” subreddit by Decapod73, with the following information: “Seriously, who makes egg case…
1787
Does Gravity Travel at the Speed of Light? (1998)
Updated 2011 by Steve Carlip, and 1998 by Steve Carlip, Matthew Wiener and Geoffrey Landis. Original by Steve Carlip.
1788
Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks
Tim Ferriss Intro Hundreds of people have asked me about Soylent, a controversial Silicon Valley team trying to replace food with a grayish liquid. “Does it really deliver all the nutrients the human body needs?” “Is it safe?” “Why hasn’t anyone tried this before?” [Hint: they have] And most often: “What do you think…
1789
On Hyperloop
Dr. Drang (And now it's all this)2013167 points203 commentscited by 6Society, Policy & Culture details
1790
When Einstein Met Tagore
Collision and convergence in Truth and Beauty at the intersection of science and spirituality.
1791
Gödel, Turing and Cantor: The Math
This is mathematical section of the parent essay Gödel Incompleteness for Startups Gödel Numbering A formal system is just a collection of axioms and rules. Just like we did before we can record ax…
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Wild Ideas
A wild idea is one that many people think is obviously quite unlikely. I'd say at least a third of these wild ideas are likely true. (Parenthetic links are to more of my writings .)
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What does it mean for light to be stopped or stored?
Physicist: We’ve gotten a handful of questions since this was published and led to articles like this, this, and, this. In a nutshell, some dudes in Germany (Georg Heinze, Christian Hubrich,…
1796
A back-projection algorithm to extract 3D volume from shadows
If you'd rather read python than english you can go straight to the code on github: https://github.com/jminardi/volume-from-shadow
1797
Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong
Yesterday several people asked my opinion of a preprint claiming to solve the Graph Isomorphism problem in deterministic polynomial time. I responded: If I read all such papers, then I wouldn’t hav…
1798
Hyperloop lets you travel on a resonant acoustic wave?
Elon Musk is a fascinating guy, and his Hyperloop concept equally so. Now that the details have started trickling out, almost in the form...
1799
Hillbilly Tracking of Low Earth Orbit Satellites
An adventure of the Southern Appalachian Space Agency, by Travis Goodspeed <travis at radiantmachines.com>, as presented at Summercon 2013...
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Hyperloop: riding sound’s density peak to exploit the drag equation?
Super short version: if you ride along with a low enough frequency soundwave at the speed of sound, you can trade reduced incoming particle velocity for increased incoming particle density; the dra…