Dailies Floating Point Explained An explanation [http://fabiensanglard.net/floating_point_visually_explained/index.html]of the IEEE 754 floating point standard that appeals to the intuition.
Dailies Modern Pangea 300 million years ago, all of the Earth's landmass was bunched together in a single super-continent called Pangea. Here's [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/incredible-map-of-pangea-with-modern-borders/] what it would look like if we mapped today&
Dailies A Pharaoh's Tomb in VR The Ministry of Tourism in Egypt has created VR simulations of popular historical sites. Here's [https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=NeiMEZa9d93&mls=1] one for the tomb of Pharaoh Ramesses VI.
Dailies Shakespeare's Life A short article [https://theconversation.com/william-shakespeare-archaeology-is-revealing-new-clues-about-the-bards-life-and-death-136803] on recent archaeological developments that tell us more than we previously knew about Shakespeare's life.
Dailies Why Books Don't Work A provocative essay [https://andymatuschak.org/books/]on the limited effectiveness of non-fiction books.
Dailies The Most Dangerous Place In History Palaeontologists have found [https://www.sciencealert.com/palaeontologists-say-ancient-sahara-was-most-dangerous-place-in-earth-s-history] a corner of the Sahara desert had ridiculously high concentrations of giant carnivores.
Dailies Why Large Engineering Teams Exist Why do software companies need thousands of engineers? Surely two people could put together a pretty good social network in six months? As your product is used by more people, you will have to hire hundreds or thousands of engineers to invest in a
shower-thought The Anthropic Principle Why is the Earth so perfect for life? Or even more broadly, why is the Universe so perfect for life? Well, if it wasn't, there would be no life in it, and therefore no one to ask the question 'Why is
Dailies Advanced Civilisations, Hungry For Energy Advanced civilisations are hungry for energy. Our own is estimated to use \( 6 \times 10^{20} J \) a year, and that number grows by roughly 1.1% every year. How could an advanced civilisation tap into a source of energy that could feed its
Dailies Escape To The Taiga A Russian family [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/] , escaping religious persecution by the Bolsheviks, escaped to the remote forests of the Russian Far East. They
Dailies The Silurian Hypothesis Was there a technologically advanced civilisation on Earth before ours? If there had been one, could we detect its existence from fossil and geological records? This paper [https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-silurian-hypothesis-would-it-be-possible-to-detect-an-industrial-civilization-in-
Dailies Efficiency and Resilience How [https://issues.org/learning-from-engineers/]the lack of margins of safety in our systems has made the COVID-19 crisis worse. > with all types of infrastructure, including the medical infrastructure system, efficiency and resilience are in conflict. The most efficient system
Dailies Paying for COVID-19 Speculation [https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/who-pays-for-this/]on how governments can pay for the huge debt needed to support the economy during COVID-19. > World War II debt was never repaid, at least at the aggregate level. Old bonds were
Dailies The Royal Game of Ur The Royal Game of Ur was a board game played for over three thousand years, starting from around 3000 BC in Mesopotamia. The British Museum brought it back to life and set up a game between their curator and a famous YouTuber: The gameplay
Dailies How Offshore Oil Rigs Work Interesting video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABIkWS_YavM] on how offshore oil rigs work.
Dailies Predicting the 21st Century In 1900 someone attempted to predict [http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/t/w/twa101/whatmayhappen.pdf] what life would be like 100 years later. Some of his predictions were incredibly accurate, and some seem laughably naive. Accurate Population growth: > There will probably
Dailies Surfing in Lakes An Australian company found a way to produce surf-able waves in lakes. The machinery basically seems to be a huge metal plunger installed in the middle of a lake.
Dailies Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo A review [http://thinkingcomplete.blogspot.com/2019/04/book-review-sleepwalkers.html] of the book Sleepwalkers that discusses the history of astronomy with a focus on Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Some interesting bits: On Galileo and the Church: > Koestler attributes Galileo’s persecution
Dailies How Copper Kills Viruses From [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/copper-virus-kill-180974655/] the Smithsonian Magazine: > Heavy metals including gold and silver are antibacterial, but copper’s specific atomic makeup gives it extra killing power, Keevil says. Copper has a free electron in its outer
Dailies How Torpedoes Work How torpedoes work [https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33018/modern-submarine-torpedo-attacks-are-nothing-like-what-you-see-in-the-movies] . I didn't realize that torpedo technology was so advanced that torpedoes can chase their targets for 100 kilometres!
Dailies COVID-19 Vaccine How [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/coronavirus-vaccine-prospects] various types of vaccines work and what the prospects are for a COVID-19 vaccine in the near future.
Dailies Build vs Buy Joel Spolsky on when to build and when to buy software [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/14/in-defense-of-not-invented-here-syndrome/] . > If it’s a core business function — do it yourself, no matter what. > Pick your core business
Dailies Engineering Career Stories A set of interviews [https://staffeng.com/stories] with senior engineers at tech companies.
Dailies COVID-19 Super Spreader Model Typical infectious disease modelling is done with an SIR (Susceptible-Infected-Recovered) model. We assume members of the population are either Susceptible (not infected yet), Infected (currently infected and capable of infecting others), or Recovered (immune and unable to infect others). The average number
Dailies Note Taking Advice This article [https://fortelabs.co/blog/how-to-take-smart-notes/] has some really solid advice on effective note taking.
