Building the heap: racking 30 petabytes of hard drives for pretraining
How we spent under half a million dollars to build a 30 petabyte data storage cluster in downtown San Francisco
An Existential Guide to: Making Friends
Friends Friends What Glorious Friendly Friends!
The "Critical Minerals" Crisis of 100 Years Ago
I review a fascinating dissertation on interwar metals trading and the "Age of Alloy Steel"
21 Facts About Throwing Good Parties
Parties are a public service; here's how to throw them.
Open Printer Gives Makers a Fully Open Flexible Inkjet Platform
https://player.vimeo.com/video/1117858411 Traditional inkjet printers have become increasingly frustrating for anyone who values flexibility, repairability, or creative experimentation. Locked-down firmware prevents modifications, expensive proprietary cartridges drain budgets…
The natural clocks that can pinpoint someone's time of death
When something dies, a telltale radioactive signal ticks like a natural clock. Discovering it helped us solve all sorts of natural mysteries.
Can Sprouts Reach 1,400 US Stores While 'Ignoring' a Huge Cohort of Grocery Shoppers? - RetailWire
Sprouts CEO Jack Sinclair elucidated a goal of 1,400 U.S. stores for the grocer. But, can it get there while focusing on a smaller niche of broader shoppers?
What Are Some of the Most Prominent Medieval Myths? | TheCollector
Explore some of the best-known medieval myths, about legendary characters and perhaps even real people.
The Journey of Lapis Lazuli, Art’s Most Prized Pigment | TheCollector
What is Lapis Lazuli? What are its origins? How has it persisted throughout the history of art?
Cable nostalgia persists as streaming gets more expensive, fragmented
Cord reviving isn’t common but points to discontent with today’s streaming options.
[Linkpost] A Field Guide to Writing Styles — LessWrong
Windows, Mirrors, and Lenses: On Intentional Prose What is writing style? Is it a) an expression of your personality, a mysterious, innate quality, o…
Reverse impostor syndrome
Imposter syndrome is other people thinking you’re good, but you don’t believe it yourself. Reverse imposter syndrome is knowing you are good, but others don’t see it from the outside.
Understanding Dash: How to Transform Plotly Charts into Interactive Web Dashboards
Transform your Plotly charts into shareable web applications using Python Dash with minimal code changes.
Where Are Semiconductor Fabs Currently Being Built Around the World? - Z2Data
The semiconductor manufacturing landscape continues to grow, with new fabs and expansions to current production sites taking place in the U.S., Asia, and other key manufacturing regions.
The power GaN race: market growth, consolidation, and new entrants
The expanding role of GaN in power electronics. Gallium nitride (GaN) has emerged as one of the most disruptive semiconductor technologies of the decade, with a market projected to reach $3 billion by 2030. Consumer applications, particularly fast chargers, have been the early…
Category Theory Illustrated - Natural transformations
How to Read Code from the Showcase Ruby on Rails Engine
We are going to set up Showcase for a Rails application in the first part of this three-part series on Showcase.
Skee-Ball Is Selling Home Units Now, Because Dreams Do Come True
Forget quarters and tokens. Throw your bed out, turn your bedroom into an arcade, and play Skee-Ball at home for free.
What Exactly Is E-Ink—and How Does It Do Its Thing?
You see it mentioned on almost every e-reader device—that is, tablet specialized for reading e-books—but what is it, really?
The World’s Most Common Surgery
In 4,000 years, cataract surgery went from a crude procedure involving thorn instruments to a 20-minute operation with a 95 percent clinical success rate. The next step is broadening access.
Another setback for Firefly Aerospace’s beleaguered rocket program
“We will share more information on the path forward at a later date.”…
How Co-Ops Electrified America—Asterisk
In the 1930s, private utilities balked at the task of bringing electricity to rural America. A New Deal agency figured out how to do it more quickly and more cheaply than anyone expected.
Affordable Omakase Sushi Restaurants in Tokyo
We introduce five recommended spots for omakase experiences that won’t break the bank, located across central Tokyo.
Chinese physicists produce most powerful stable magnetic field on Earth
Development could have implications for power transmission, nuclear fusion and superconducting magnetic levitation.
Gobsmacked! Supernatural Sightings After a Kentucky Flood
Lora Eli Smith reports on mysterious goblin-like creatures sightings by Eastern Kentucky residents after the devastating 2022 floods.
Amd instinct mix has forced nvidia to make changes with the rubin ai chip
The Volunteer’s Dilemma - by Steven Pinker - Behavioral Scientist
Learning about something in public, even if everyone already knows it, can change everything—especially when and how we decide to help.
pytest documentation
How ‘Proportion Dominance’ Gets in the Way of Effective Giving - by Matthew Coleman - Behavioral Scientist
When it comes to helping others, it’s important to remember that it’s the size of the drop that matters, not the size of the bucket.
Top 10 Local LLMs (2025): Context Windows, VRAM Targets, and Licenses Compared
Compare top local LLMs for 2025: context windows, VRAM tiers, licenses, quantization, runtimes, dense vs MoE tradeoffs clearly
A Team Tries to Prevent Another Mass Shooting
A threat on a school bus from an alienated young man united dozens of agencies to answer a single question: Is it possible to stop potential mass shooters before they commit a crime?
Vintage Covers of Famous Fantastic Mysteries Magazine From the 1940s and Early ’50s
Famous Fantastic Mysteries was a U.S. pulp magazine that specialized in reprinting classic tales of science fiction, fantasy, and adventure. It debuted in 1939 under the Munsey Company, already known for popular titles like Argosy, and quickly gained a devoted audience. The…
How America cut deadly city fires in half
The major decline in city fires, explained in two charts.
Norway to Monitor Airborne Radioactivity in Svalbard
From October 1st, the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority will take over the operations of an air filter station near Ny-Ålesund in Svalbard. “This will be particularly important for nuclear preparedness in the north,” says section leader in the agency.
Olson Observation Tower in Hambleton, West Virginia
Climb the tallest remaining fire lookout tower in West Virginia for unparalleled views—if you dare.
Typst: a possible LaTeX replacement
Typst is a program for document typesetting. It is especially well-suited to technical material [...]
Woman hospitalized with pain and vomiting—diet soda cured her
Doctor’s dissolve mass in woman’s stomach by getting her to chug soda.
The Spinal Surgeries That Didn’t Need to Happen
As much as half of all spinal fusions don’t alleviate pain — why do doctors perform so many?
The Periodic Table of Cognition
I’ve been studying the early history of electricity’s discovery as a map for our current discovery of artificial intelligence.
Our employment of electricity exceeds our understanding of it.
The result that we call intelligence emerges from many different cognitive primitives such as long-term memory, spatial awareness, logical deduction, advance planning, pattern perception, and so on.
The Concise Guide to Monte Carlo Simulation
In this concise guide, we'll break down the essentials of Monte Carlo simulation, explain how it works, and provide a simple example using Python.
Why Frozen Food Gets an Icy Reception in China
Chinese diets are dictated by a culture of eating ingredients just hours after slaughtering or harvesting.
The Motorola 68000: A 32-Bit Brain in a 16-Bit Body
Motorola’s 68000 blended 32-bit power with a 16-bit bus, creating a balanced, orthogonal, and elegant architecture that powered everything from Macintosh to arcade machines.
5 Physics Equations Everyone Should Know
Our physics expert picks his top-five equations, plus a scheme to supply US power needs with a bucket of baseballs. Thanks, Einstein!
5 More Physics Equations Everyone Should Know
These five equations should be part of your mental toolkit. They might even improve your bowling score.
Review: The Molecule We Can’t Live With, and Can’t Live Without
Carbon dioxide is both a planetary threat and a driving force behind life on Earth, according to author Peter Brannen.
How the Spice Trade Redrew the World Map | TheCollector
In the 15th and 16th centuries, the desire to expand and control the spice trade was one of the driving forces behind the Age of Exploration.
How Underwater Shells Became the First Global Money | TheCollector
How did underwater shells from the Maldives become an instrumental form of currency in the Transatlantic Slave Trade?
Ice Cream, Sugar, Food Science & More
Great food writing from around the net
How Common Is Accidental Invention?
One of the most important inventions of the 19th century was mauve dye, the first synthetic aniline dye.
The rare disease that stops us feeling fear
Feeling fear is an evolutionary survival tactic. A small number of people have a rare condition that means they're not scared of anything. How do they live a life without fear?