Apoorv Upreti - Observations (Page 14)

Debugging Distributed Systems

Some solid advice [https://blog.nelhage.com/post/systems-that-defy-understanding/] on how to debug and in general make sense of complex distributed systems. Deductive reasoning is unlikely to work; we need to rely on empirical methods instead.

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Aphantasia

TIL [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/science/aphantasia-minds-eye-blind.html] that some people are incapable conjuring mental images.

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How Owls Fly

How [https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/technology/2020/how-owls-fly-without-making-a-sound] owls are able to fly without making a sound.

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Good News About COVID-19

Refreshingly, there is some good news [https://80000hours.org/2020/04/good-news-about-covid-19/] on the COVID-19 pandemic.

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As We May Think

Vanevar Bush's vision [https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/02/23/as-we-may-think/] of machines that would augment human knowledge.

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Developing the Underlying Concepts for Contemporary Computing

This article [https://fermatslibrary.com/s/douglas-carl-engelbart-developing-the-underlying-concepts-for-contemporary-computing] discusses the life and work of Douglas Engelbart, who played a major role in modern computing – he invented the mouse, hyperlinks, and text and graphics editing, among other

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Paper: Inventing The Randomized Double-Blind Trial

This article [https://fermatslibrary.com/s/inventing-the-randomized-double-blind-trial-the-nuremberg-salt-test-of-1835] tells the story of the first known randomized double-blind trial. It was conducted in Nuremberg in 1835 to discredit a homeopathic treatment. Besides a bias

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Physics Intuitions

Physics Travel Guide [https://physicstravelguide.com] is an incredible resource for learning basic concepts from Physics and Mathematics. The killer feature is that each topic is explained with three levels of difficulty so it's easy to digest: intuitive, concrete and abstract. Here&

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COVID-19 Shortages

An interesting theory [https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0] on why supermarkets have run out of essential supplies during the pandemic. Focuses on the toilet paper shortage but applies more broadly. In a nutshell: Hoarding is

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Paper: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

Statistical testing is hard. Some of the common dangers are well known; repeat a study twenty times and there's a good chance you'll see a significant result at least once. The Replication Crisis [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis]

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The Best XKCD

https://xkcd.com/2287/

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More COVID-19 Simulations

Here's [https://www.meltingasphalt.com/interactive/outbreak/] another COVID-19 simulation that can be instructive to play with.

computer-science

Paper: MapReduce - Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters

This paper [https://research.google/pubs/pub62/] led to a revolution in computing after in was published in 2004. The basic idea behind map-reduce was that many data processing tasks could be expressed as a sequence of map and reduce operations, and these

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The Math Behind Social Distancing

A good illustration [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-math-behind-social-distancing/] of why social distancing works.

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Face Masks

A list [https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/] of questions you probably wanted to ask about face masks, with answers.

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Taiwan and COVID-19

Taiwan acted with incredible agility to the Coronavirus pandemic: * Jan 5: The government had implemented restrictions on flights from Wuhan. * Jan 30: Factories were producing 4 million masks a day. * Feb 6: all cruise ships were banned from docking at Taiwanese ports. * Feb 24:

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Ventilators 101

There's been a lot of interest in ventilators as they're in short supply during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article [https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/ventilators-101-what-they-do-and-how-they-work/] goes over what ventilators do

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Herbert Hoover

American history is filled with rags-to-riches stories. Herbert Hoover's story is as great as any of them. He is born in poverty, orphaned at 10, goes to Stanford on a scholarship, gets rich mining in Australia and Britain, saves Belgium

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Missile Guidance Computer Internals

Someone got their hands on a missile guidance computer for a 70's Titan nuclear missile and took it apart [http://www.righto.com/2020/03/inside-titan-missile-guidance-computer.html]. It's incredible how you could do sophisticated things with

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Peto's Paradox

Why don't blue whales die from cancer in ridiculous numbers? The probability of one cell turning cancerous in a organism should surely be proportional to the number of cells in that organism. Within species, we do see larger organisms are more likely

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Paper: Hints for Computer System Design

Butler Lampson [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butler_Lampson] worked on several ground breaking computing projects at Xerox's PARC laboratories – the laser printer, Ethernet, and WYSIWYG editors among other things. At PARC he wrote a paper: Hints for Computer System Design [https:

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Mammoth Bone Houses

The most interesting and bizarre thing I've read [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/60-mammoths-house-russia-180974426/] in a long while is that people during the Ice Age used to build houses out of.. mammoth bones. Life is truly stranger

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COVID-19 Scenarios

A group of researchers have built a simulation [https://neherlab.org/covid19/] for the spread of the Coronavirus outbreak. I'd say it's fun to play with but almost every combination of parameters seems to result in a massive overflow of

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Exotic Food

If like me you're exhausted by the COVID-19 news, lighten your mood by watching [https://www.youtube.com/user/migrationology]YouTuber Mark Wiens travel the world in search of delicious food.

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Pandemics In Context

A history of pandemics [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/history-of-pandemics-deadliest/], with the Coronavirus pandemic put in context.

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