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When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)
A Cautionary Tale about Too Much Siloing and Not Enough Trust
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 2,038 posts.
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Seven basic rules for causal inference
Personal website of Dr. Peder M. Isager
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Full Disk Images of Earth from GOES-17
Geostationary satellites maintain their position relative to earth. This means a parabolic dish can be pointed at the satellite and receive continuous downloads.
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Symmetry in Chaos
The following is based upon systems of equations found in "Symmetry in Chaos, A Search for Pattern in Mathematics, Art, and Nature" (the second edition) by Michael Field and Martin Golubitsky. They ask the question whether there are aperiodic chaotic attractors that generate symmetric patterns? Can there be order…
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Lead is still bad for your brain
Wait, wasn't this solved by the Romans? Anyway, my grandma ate lead paint and she was totally fine.
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The falling nutritional value of crops
The mineral content of wheat and rice is lower today than sixty years ago. Why is that and what does it mean for how we eat?
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Death of the sampling theorem?
tl;dr: A team from Columbia University led by Ken Shepard and Rafa Yuste claims to beat the 100 year old Sampling Theorem [1,2]. Apparently anti-aliasing filters are superfluous now because one can…
699
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
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The Clock in the Mountain
A work crane at the Clock site in western Texas. There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the … Continue reading →
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Entropy explained, with sheep (2016)
An explorable blog post about entropy, with sheep.
702
Mr. Baby Paint and accidentally discovering a new cellular automata
On building Mr. Baby Paint, a radically simple co-op drawing app for toddlers & accidentally discovering a flood-fill cellular automata, plus developing pixel-fattening algorithms for bitmap fonts.
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100 Years to Solve an Integral (2020)
The integral of sec(x) is well known to any beginners calculus student. Yet this integral was once a major outstanding maths problem. It was first introduced...
705
Ramanujan's Easiest Formula
A while ago I decided to figure out how to prove one of Ramanujan’s formulas. I feel this is the sort of thing every mathematician should try at least once. I picked the easiest one I could f…
706
A CD Spectrometer (2006)
A simple spectrometer can be built from a CD and a box. Cut a slit on one side of the box. Place the CD on the other side with about 60 degree angle. Look down into the openning on the box. The slit should not be too wide, otherwise the spectrum lines will be blurred. It should not be too narrow either, otherwise the…
707
Diatom Arrangements
An odd post. Diatoms are single-celled algae with glass shells, and people arrange them into patterns under a microscope.
708
In Search of AI Psychosis
Folie a deux ex machina
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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.
711
Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
While most ghostwriting scandals in science involve physicians, the agrichemical company ran a unique and sophisticated campaign to promote GMO technology and attack critics.
712
Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?
It’s become fairly common knowledge that Yellowstone National Park, in addition to being incredibly beautiful, is sitting on top of an enormous supervolcano that catastrophically erupts every few hundred thousand years.
713
Geometry from Another Universe
You start on an enclosed lawn, surrounded by four walls with a doorway in one of them. If you go in and explore, you might begin to feel trapped. You'll find you can visit five different rooms in the house, or go back outside to the lawn, but there's no way to go anywhere else. It's not because there are walls…
714
I finally understand methane lifetimes
How to arrive at a number you can trust
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How do MRI Headphones work? (2022)
Thoughts and more by Tom Lingham
718
Richard Feynman: Cargo Cult Science (1974)
A carousel is a rotating set of images. Use the previous and next buttons to change the displayed slide
719
Reverse Engineering Source Code of the Biontech Pfizer Vaccine: Part 2
All BNT162b2 vaccine data on this page is sourced from this World Health Organization document. This is a living page, shared already so people can get going! But check back frequently for updates. Translation: Français / 日本語 In short: the vaccine mRNA has been optimized by the manufacturer by changing bits of RNA…
720
Why are Texas interchanges so tall?
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Dallas High Five, one of the tallest highway interchanges in the world. It gets its name from the fact that there are five different levels of roadways crossing each other in this one spot. In some ways, it’s kind of