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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 15 posts.
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The calculus of caffeine consumption
Your life is the best story! Just start your blog today!
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500 Exabytes per Raindrop
People like to say this is the "information age". But just how much information are we talking about? I recently found a nice source of... umm... information about this question:
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Flickr reverse engineers the shapes of continents, countries, cities, and neighborhoods.
Almost ninety million, as I write this, and the numbers keep growing especially as nearly every new smart phone released to market has not only a camera but also the ability to capture location information with it.
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A programmer's view of the Universe, part 1: The fish
Bravo. Here's hoping I never reach the end of that vine. I like to think there's always more.
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Edward O. Wilson: Marx was right, he had the wrong species
Among many other things, Edward Wilson is a myrmecologist and two times Pulitzer-prize winner. There is a picture taken by him of an ant holding between its mandibles a banner with the words: 'Onward Sociobiolo�gy!'. Following the publication in 1975 of his book Sociobi�ology, the New Synthesis , he became both to…
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Why rats can't vomit, and why humans do
Rats can't vomit. They can't burp either, and they don't experience heartburn. Rats can't vomit for several related reasons: (1) Rats have a powerful barrier between the stomach and the esophagus. They don't have the esophageal muscle strength to overcome and open this barrier by force, which is necessary for…
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The Fourth Quadrant: a Map of the Limits of Statistics (by Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
Statistical and applied probabilistic knowledge is the core of knowledge; statistics is what tells you if something is true, false, or merely anecdotal; it is the "logic of science"; it is the instrument of risk-taking; it is the applied tools of epistemology; you can't be a modern intellectual and not think…
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Rutgers Graduate Student Finds New Prime-Generating Formula
Studying prime numbers is like playing the guitar. No, really, let me explain. The guitar is a simple instrument: six strings, some frets,...
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Top Ten Things that Math Probability Says about the Real World
Talk given at Cornell University, April 14 2008. Like most scientists, I habitually just write slides and extemporize the actual spoken words. For this one talk I wrote the following script, though (being hard to break the habits of 30 years) I didn't stick closely to the script. Each link is one slide.
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