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The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change
By Michael Nielsen, November 21, 2019
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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What makes for a stable marriage?
Randy Olson reviews a research paper that outlines what makes for a stable marriage in the U.S.
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If the universe is 13.8B years old, how can we see 46B light years away? (2018)
Distances in the expanding Universe don’t work like you’d expect. Unless, that is, you learn to think like a cosmologist.
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More on whether useful quantum computing is “imminent”
These days, the most common question I get goes something like this: A decade ago, you told people that scalable quantum computing wasn’t imminent. Now, though, you claim it plausibly is immi…
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Nicholas Polson has authored 258 academic papers in 2026 so far
Nicholas Polson has, by my count using his SSRN page, already written 258 working papers in 2026 alone. He’s already written (or at least published to SSRN), six papers today, August 26, 2026.
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The Mysterious Aging of Astronauts
When I took Physics courses in college, I learned about how astronauts should age a tiny bit slower than us. Of course, they would be exposed to a lot more radiation so they might develop more cancers. But all in all, I would have been excited about the prospect of living in space. Then the … Continue reading The…
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Homemade Memristor (2011)
Modified curve tracer is applying AC voltage. Horizontal axis represents voltage and the vertical axis represents current. In both cases, the curve always passes through zero voltage and current. This requirement must be met in order to be classified as a memristor.
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How the quantum search algorithm works
An explanation of how the quantum search algorithm works, & introduction to the design of quantum algorithms
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Sad Trombone Exoplanet Reality Check
Some people on the internet are getting very excited at the (unconfirmed) reports of an "Earth-like" exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri , a mere 4.25 light-years away from Earth. If correct, the planet is orbiting in the liquid water zone around our nearest stellar neighbour and is of the same order of mass as the…
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What caused the hallucinations of the Oracle of Delphi?
Why did the oracle of Delphi go into a trance state? Does it have anything to do with ethylene?
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Algernon's Law
Why most supplements fail: IQ improvement skepticism, Yudkowsky & Bostrom’s heuristics, nootropics
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Futurist prediction methods and accuracy
I've been reading a lot of predictions from people who are looking to understand what problems humanity will face 10-50 years out (and sometimes longer) in order to work in areas that will be instrumental for the future and wondering how accurate these predictions of the future are. The timeframe of predictions that…
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Potentially Habitable Planet Discovered
Complexity scientist and VC Samuel Arbesman
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Investigating the Galileo Satellite Navigation System Outage with a LimeSDR
You may have already heard that the Galileo EU satellite navigation constellation is out of service since last Thursday July 11th. Currently the Galileo constellation status page shows that the status of most Galileo satellites is not usable because of a service outage. The satellites not affected by this outage are…
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Will it be a golden age or a dark age for mathematics (and science)?
[This is a guest post by Francesco Maggi. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] Large language models (LLMs) and the research systems b…
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The James Webb Space Telescope – making 300 points of failure reliable
The JWST must perform a bewildering array of tasks — unfurling panels, mirrors and more — how can engineers trust telescope’s reliability?
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What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
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A Comparison of Differential Equation Solver Suites
Many times a scientist is choosing a programming language or a software for a specific purpose. For the field of scientific computing, the methods for solving differential equations are one of the important areas. What I would like to do is take the time to compare and contrast between the most popular offerings. This…
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Yann LeCun vs. Christopher Manning on Need for Priors in Deep Learning
Earlier this month, I had the exciting opportunity to moderate a discussion between Professors Yann LeCun and Christopher Manning, ti...
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1,700-Year-Old Board Game Found in Norwegian Burial Mound
Rare elongated dice and board game pieces from the Roman Iron Age have been discovered in western Norway. Last month, Norwegian archaeologists chose to excavate the remains of a small Early Iron Age grave cairn
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Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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"AI will cure cancer" misunderstands both AI and medicine
AI, science, education, & ethics
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High-intensity exercise, some new news
Several months I noticed something interesting (to me!) about my heart rate, and I thought about blogging about it…but I didn’t feel like it would be interesting (to you!) so I’ve been hesitant. But then the NYT published something that is kinda related and I thought OK, what the hell, maybe it’s time for an update…
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What does a kilowatt hour look like?
Some time ago I came across a very good read by David McCay - Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air. I’ve seen many good reviews of the book, so it didn’t t...
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