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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 374 posts.
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Power Bends Light (2019)
Some notes about acquiring power that I wish I'd understood years ago.
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There is one, and only one strain of SARS-CoV-2
The moment a preprint emerges describing a new patient isolate of SARS-CoV-2, with a change in the genome sequence, the world seems to explode with concern ...
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The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Critical Thinking
Necessary cognitive fortification against propaganda, pseudoscience, and general falsehood.
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A brief introduction to the beauty of Information Theory
Lambdaclass's blog about distributed systems, machine learning, compilers, operating systems, security and cryptography.
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ESO Instrument Finds Closest Black Hole to Earth
A team of astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other institutes has discovered a black hole lying just 1000 light-years from Earth. The black hole is closer to our Solar System than any other found to date and forms part of a triple system that can be seen with the naked eye. The team found…
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A young Venus had water for 2B years, habitable for longer than Mars
Venus hosts brutal conditions today, but the planet may have once been more hospitable to life.
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What Happens Next? Covid-19 Futures, Explained with Playable Simulations
an interactive guide
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There are many SARS-CoV-2 strains with gene deletions
In my first post on a possible solution to COVID-19 I hypothesised that there would be gene deletion mutants to be found in the SARS-CoV-2 viral strains out in the world and that we would find them if we looked.
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Lab-made? CoV2 genealogy through the lens of gain-of-function research
Virologists have created dozens of chimeric coronaviruses in the lab over the past 20 years.
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How much power can we expect from rainfall?
Can the teardrops that fall after reading bad science writing generate renewable electricity? Yes, they can. 1. The puzzle of power from raindrops The usually excellent Marginal Revolution blog fea…
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UChicago doctors see ‘remarkable’ success using ventilator alternatives
The page you requested could not be found. Here are some suggestions to help you get back on track.
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Gravity assist maneuvers in space
Ingenious maneuvers by missions to go over the Sun, chase a comet and sail using the Sun.
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Adult immune systems ‘remember’ germs to which they’ve never been exposed (2013)
A new study shows that, contrary to established dogma, key immune cells in healthy adults somehow acquire "memory" of microbes that have never entered their bodies.
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An un-edited view of Saturn
Something that is kind of annoying about NASA photos is that they end up so touched up, and so many liberties taken with them that they become creatures of their own.
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Concerns with that Stanford antibody study of coronavirus prevalence
I’ve been following your blog for a while and checked in today to see if there was a thread on last week’s big-splash Stanford antibody study (the one with the shocking headline that they got 50 positive results in a “random” sample of 3330 antibody tests, suggesting that nearly 2% of the population has been infected…
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Climate-Driven Megadrought Is Emerging in Western U.S., Says Study
Scientists say a long-feared megadrought, worse than anything in recorded history, seems to be starting up in southwestern North America.
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Could the Earth be an evaporated gas giant planet?
Is Earth Potentially an Evaporated Gas Giant?
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Telescope Sees Star Dance Around Supermassive Black Hole, Proves Einstein Right
Observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed for the first time that a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way moves just as predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Its orbit is shaped like a rosette and not like an ellipse as predicted by…
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The Wolfram Physics Project
How does our universe work? Scientist Stephen Wolfram opens up his ongoing Wolfram Physics Project to a global effort. His team will livestream work in progress, post working materials, release software tools and hold educational programs.
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John Conway
I was greatly saddened to learn that John Conway died yesterday from COVID-19, aged 82. My own mathematical areas of expertise are somewhat far from Conway’s; I have played for instance with …
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FDA grants emergency authorization for first saliva-based coronavirus test
The new saliva collection method, which RUCDR developed in partnership with Spectrum Solutions and Accurate Diagnostic Labs, will allow for broader population screening than the current method of nose and throat swabs.
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Why We Sleep: A Tale of Institutional Failure
In our previous installment of this podcast, we learned from independent researcher Alexey Guzey that famed sleep researcher Matthew Walker seems to have committed research misconduct in his bestselling book, Why We Sleep. Walker is a University of California professor, Google researcher, and Ted talk star, and his…
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The formula for pi buried in a hydrogen atom
When most people think about pi, they associate the mathematical constant with arcs and circles. Mathematicians, however, are accustomed to seeing it in a variety of fields. But two University physicists were still surprised to find it lurking in a quantum mechanics formula for the energy states of the hydrogen atom.
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Systems that defy detailed understanding
Last week, I wrote about the mindset that computer systems can be understood, and behaviors can be explained, if we’re willing to dig deep enough into the stack of abstractions our software is built atop. Some of the ensuing discussion on Twitter and elsewhere lead me to write this followup, in which I want to run…