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Experiments on a $50 DIY air purifier (2020)
You can make a DIY air purifier in 30s. To test if it works, I generated smoke, and measured how well it removes tiny particles.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 2,038 posts.
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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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How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub
A new article was published in The Chronicle about me running Sci-Hub, a project dedicated to providing free access to academic journals all over the world. Their goal is to present Sci-Hub and its…
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Things you can do with diodes
Paying homage to the component we usually don't think about.
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Old Soviet Venus descent craft nearing Earth reentry
That soon-to-reenter Cosmos 482 is getting increased attention by satellite trackers – and new imagery provides some interesting details.
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Another scientific body has debunked bitemark analysis
Even in the face of overwhelming evidence, the criminal legal system is incapable of admitting its mistakes
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How a Car Engine Works
Check out Animagraffs on youtube > .
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The Alpha Myth: How captive wolves led us astray
A wolf paces in captivity, teaching us all the wrong lessons about power
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Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant (1996)
SESSION 7: SPECIAL SESSION, 17th Annual EOS/ESD Symposium THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1995, 8:00 am SESSION 7: SPECIAL SESSION: ELECTROSTATIC CONSIDERATIONS IN INDUSTRY MODERATOR: D. Swenson, 3M 7.7 CASE STUDY - LARGE PLASTIC WEB ELECTROSTATIC PROBLEMS, RESULTS, AND CURE, D. Swenson, 3M Company Tremendous static charge…
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What can a technologist do about climate change?
Frustrated by a sense of global mispriorities , I blurted out some snarky and mildly regrettable tweets on the lack of attention to climate change in the tech industry (Twitter being a sublime medium for the snarky and regrettable). Climate change is the problem of our time, it’s everyone’s problem, and most of our…
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Can solar costs keep shrinking?
The costs of some parts of solar farms will drop to near zero. But some obstacles remain to make this energy cheaply available everywhere. As a result, the entire energy industry will change. What are those obstacles? How will the industry change?
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Why vampires live forever
The modern longevity movement's obsession with blood transfusions makes perfect sense — if you accept that Peter Thiel and Bryan Johnson are vampires.
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Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals
OR: the long overdue forest fire
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Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome
Нельзя заходить в спальню к богу, Даже если его там нет. Нельзя заходить в спальню к богу, За дверью большой секрет - Ундервуд. Буквально вчера, 02 июня 2015 года, исполнилось 60 лет колыбели мировой космонавтики и крупнейшей отечественной космической гавани - космодрому Байконур. За эти годы…
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Practical Facts about the Human Brain
I don’t think it’d have been possible for me to connect with the topic of emotional resilience without a really solid amount of scientific evidence and brain facts supporting it. As a self-identified left-brained male, I need a lot of safety signals from the world of science to really allow myself to go deeper into […]
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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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Mathematics has changed. Let's act like it
[This is a guest post by Frank Calegari. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] Why we should not be sad The release by OpenAI on Octobe…
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H5N1
Most of the time, we worry far too much about tail risk. We worry about terrorist attacks and necrotizing fasciitis, but not much about heart disease or car crashes. But in 2011, 17 US citizens...
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How Distortion Works in Music
Ben’s software blog. Mostly Scala, with a few other things.
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The magic of DC-DC voltage conversion (2023)
Resistor-based dividers, linear regulators, buck converters, and other ways to adjust voltages.
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Endometriosis is an interesting disease
5k words, 23 minutes reading time
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P vs. NP
For those who just want the survey itself, not the backstory, it’s here. (Note: Partly because of the feedback I’ve gotten on this blog, it’s now expanded to 121 pages!) Upda…
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Cargo airships could be big
A capital-intensive, high-risk way to revolutionize global commerce
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Why is electricity so hard to understand? (1989)
HEY NEWS-YCOMBINATOR , I think you're looking for my articles explaining electricity. This is the 1989 page of raw unedited notes NOT A FRIGGIN' ARTICLE!!! You're all critiquing a wad of crap written on napkins, while not actually reading any of the finished articles. WHY?! Perhaps try these instead: ...