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How we gave colors names
“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter in…
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 76 posts.
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What does randomness look like?
On 13 June 1944, a week after the allied invasion of Normandy, a loud buzzing sound rattled through the skies of battle-worn London. The source of the sound was a newly developed German instrument …
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23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers
A statement upon 23andMe reaching its first one million customers.
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Nobel Prize winning biochemist says all biofuels are nonsense
Similar posts from ClimateSanity Taking Measure of Biofuel Limits 9/24/2009 Biofuels Leading to Disasters 12/28/2011 Hartmut Michel won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on photosynthesis. …
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Elon Musk and the Hyperloop
For a while now there have been tantalizing hints that Elon Musk is at it again. His usual way of approaching a problem is to look at an industry, find some fatal flaw in it, fix that flaw and then leave everybody else in the dust, wondering why they didn’t do what he did. He’s one of the most interesting people on…
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The Year 2512
Usually when I speculate about the future, I stick to two areas; either the really near future (within the next couple of decades), or the really far future (so far out that signs of continental drift should be glaringly obvious). But what about the medium term?
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9 Gigapixel Image of the Milky Way
VISTA gigapixel mosaic of the central parts of the Milky Way
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Restoration of defocused and blurred images
Restoration of distorted images is one of the most interesting and important problems of image processing - from the theoretical, as well as from the practical point of view. There are especial cases: blurring due to incorrect focus and blurring due to movement - and these very defects, which each of you knows very…
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A new kind of fractal?
Experimenting with the "divisibility" of complex numbers, I stumbled across this thingy. It looks like a fractal. Although the formula does not do any iterations. It reminds me of something. But I dont know what. Doing a Google image search brings up a couple of galaxies :) This image shows the region from (-1/-1) to…
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What number is halfway between 1 and 9?
A new information-theoretical model of human sensory perception and memory sheds light on some peculiarities of the nervous system.
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Yale scientists explain how ketamine vanquishes depression within hours
Ketamine may regenerate synaptic connections between brain cells damaged by stress and depression, according to new Yale-led research.
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All Rational Approximations of Pi Are Useless
Investigation to find a better rational approximation for pi. Can we get out more digits than we put in? Chance to win a prize if you can do bette
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Droppings
If you went outside and lay down on your back with your mouth open, how long would you have to wait until a bird pooped in it?
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Building a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pis and Lego
Discover the latest news from the University, including news about our research, enterprise and teaching activities.
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Everybody Jump
What would happen if everyone on earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?
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Pascal's Apology, or why computer science is complicated
Blaise Pascal once famously ended a letter with an apology : I'm sorry that this was such a long letter, but I didn't have time to write you a short one. Computer science has pretty much the same problem. It's a young field, and young fields are, by their nature, messy. As we race to generate new knowledge, we also…
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Look at yourself objectively
In the 1840s, hospitals were dangerous places. Mothers who went in to give birth often didn’t make it out. For example, at Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, as many as 10% of mothers died of puerperal fever after giving birth. But there was some good news: at the Second Clinic, the number was just…
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Parrondo's Paradox: How two ugly parents can make a beautiful baby
"How two ugly parents (mathematically) can make a beautiful baby"