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Gears
Interactive article explaining how mechanical gears work.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 164 posts.
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Cameras and Lenses
Interactive article explaining how cameras and lenses work.
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What Gödel Discovered
In 1931, a 25-year-old Kurt Gödel wrote a proof that turned mathematics upside down. The implication was so astounding, and his proof so elegant that it was...kind of funny. I wanted to share his discovery with you. Fair warning though, I’m not a mathematician; I’m a programmer. This means my understanding is…
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Gravity is not a force – free-fall parabolas are straight lines in spacetime
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A (possible) solution to Covid-19
Notice. Since this seems to be such a common question I think I should describe my background. I have a PhD in molecular microbiology and I was once a tenured academic (professor). I now work in the biotech sector. I have published a number of peer reviewed papers in virology. If you really want to know more about me…
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Suspicious Discontinuities
If you read any personal finance forums late last year, there's a decent chance you ran across a question from someone who was desperately trying to lose money before the end of the year. There are a number of ways someone could do this; one commonly suggested scheme was to buy put options that were expected to expire…
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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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Why I Keep a Research Blog
Before I started taking writing seriously, I had a loose grasp of many mathematical and technical concepts; and I was not sure how to tackle open-ended problems. Maintaining this research blog has clarified my thoughts and improved how I approach research problems. The goal of this post is to explain why I have found…
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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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Reverse Engineering the Source Code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine
Translations: ελληνικά / عربى / 中文 (Weixin video, Youtube video) / 粵文 / bahasa Indonesia / český / Català / český / Deutsch / Español / 2فارسی / فارسی / Français / עִברִית / Hrvatski / Italiano / Magyar / Nederlands / 日本語 / 日本語 2 / नेपाली / Polskie / русский / Português / Română / Slovensky / Slovenščina / Srpski /…
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Free Textbooks from Springer, Categorised
Springer was very generous with free access to their material for some months, but this period has unfortunately passed. You can no longer access the following books for free, but you can still support them by purchasing the ones you find useful. 🙏😇
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What are the mysterious light sources on light pollution maps?
I got my first telescope in 2017, in time for the Great American Eclipse. I started paying attention to the concept of light pollution, including finding detailed maps of what places had high or lo…
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Good sleep, good learning, good life
Author: Dr Piotr Wozniak Date: 2000-2018 For an extended modular version see: Science of sleep
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Open Problems in Robotics
Robotics is one of those things the business funny papers regularly wonder about; it seems like consumer robotics is a revolutionary trillion dollar market which is perpetually 20-years away -more…
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Vitamin D, part 2: Shannon's story
How much Vitamin D should I take? This is still the looming question, and it’s time to address it. First, though, imagine that someone in a public forum online asked me, “How much metoprolol (a…
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20 Years Later
Almost exactly twenty years ago I started writing a short article about the problems with string theory. I had been thinking about doing this for quite a while, and the timing of entering the twent…
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The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
Discuss this study on my forum or see discussion on Hacker News (>400 points, >350 comments). Abstract I slept 4 hours a night for 14 days and didn’t find any effects on cognition (assessed via Psychomotor Vigilance Task, a custom first-person shooter scenario, and SAT). I’m a 22-year-old male and normally I sleep 7-8…
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Vitamin D, part 1: back to basics
Vitamin D is a big deal. Recent studies have shown that patients with low Vitamin D levels are more likely to die from Covid-19 than their Vitamin D-rich counterparts,(1) and deficiency in the…
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How Distortion Works in Music
Ben’s software blog. Mostly Scala, with a few other things.
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Lights and Shadows
Interactive article explaining how lights and shadows behave.
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Please Fund More Science
Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health, and the economy to return roughly to normal. Either we get a vaccine good enough that R0 for the...
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Six works of Computer Science-Fiction (2015)
Computer Science-Fiction 1 is not actually fiction. Instead, these are books of computer science and/or programming that when you read them you can’t quite believe that what they claim is reality. Indeed, very often works of Computer Science-Fiction push the limits of your understanding of just what constitutes the…
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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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Age Reduction Breakthrough?
If you eschew hyperbole and hang in for the long haul, maintaining a discipline of understatement in the midst of a flashy neon world, you may be offered a modicum of credence when you make an extraordinary announcement.
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Images Created from Prime Numbers
Inspired by James McKee’s Trinity Hall prime, physics researcher Gilles Esposito-Farese (of the self-descriptive pangram) has worked out that this 2,258-digit prime number: 53084469288402965415857953902888840109250315594591772197851275320 59910735745658243457138160802170063601085186072703319516241231606…
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It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine
As the first crop of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are being rolled out, we can start to see the light at the end of this pandemic tunnel. Still, in the US alone there will probably be another 200,000 deaths before we reach herd immunity. Further, as fast as this vaccine development and deployment was, it's not clear
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Outbreak – playable simulations of a disease outbreak
A playable disease simulation
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Do we really travel through time with the speed of light?
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science