The Euphemism Treadmill
I sometimes get annoyed with John McWhorter, but when he’s good he’s very good, and his Aeon essay on euphemisms is probably the best thing I’ve read on this vexed topic. The core of his point is in this paragraph: What the cognitive psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker has artfully termed ‘the euphemism treadmill’ is […]
Bioaccumulation of Microplastics in Decedent Human Brains
Abstract Rising global concentrations of environmental micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) drive concerns for human exposure and health outcomes. Applying pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) methods to isolate and quantify MNPs from human samples, we compared MNP accumulation in kidneys, livers, and brains. Autopsy samples from the Office of the Medical Investigator in Albuquerque, NM, collected […]
Crypto ‘pig butchering’ scam wrecks bank, sends ex-CEO to prison for 24 years
Shan Hanes in Morton County Jail, Kansas. Courtesy: Morton County Jail The former CEO of a small Kansas bank was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for looting the bank of $47 million — which he sent to cryptocurrency wallets controlled by scammers who had duped him in a “pig butchering” scheme that […]
Degrees of Kevin Bacon Using Postgres
Back in the 1990s, before anything was cool (or so my children tell me) and at the dawn of the Age of the Meme, a couple of college students invented a game they called the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon“. The conceit behind the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon was that actor Kevin Bacon could […]
How WW2 bombs across the Pacific are found and destroyed, decades after war
The Marshall Islands is a nation of atolls – hundreds of small islands carpeted in coconut palms and pandanus trees. While these atolls in the Pacific Ocean are a picture of tropical beauty, they are also home to explosive remnants of war. Eight decades after the guns fell silent, munitions left by the US and […]
Meticulous (YC S21) is hiring to eliminate E2E UI tests
Hey HN! I’m Gabriel, CEO and co-founder of Meticulous, https://meticulous.ai/?utm_source=hn. Backed by YC, Coatue, the CTO of GitHub, CEO of Vercel, CPO of Adobe and others, https://meticulous.ai?utm_source=hn monitors how developers interact with your app and automatically generates and maintains test coverage nearing 100%. Even for the most complex applications. All without needing to write or […]
Do low-level optimizations matter? Faster quicksort with cmov
Do Low-level Optimizations Matter? by Nathan Myers, ncm at cantrip dot org, 2020-01-09 Collectively, we have been thinking about sorting for longer than we have had computers. There is still an active literature ,,. We are taught that how the counts of comparisons and swaps vary with problem size is what matters: as problems get […]
Euclid’s Proof that √2 is Irrational
Euclid proved that √2 (the square root of 2) is an irrational number. He used a proof by contradiction. First Euclid assumed √2 was a rational number. A rational number is a number that can be in the form p/q where p and q are integers and q is not zero. He then went on […]
A Comparison of Arenas in Rust
Sometimes you just really need an arena. Sometimes for performance reasons, other times for lifetime-related reasons. In their most basic forms, they’re just a vec with some extra guarantees. However, it’s those extra guarantees that matter. I’ve found myself looking for the right kind of arena too many times, so here’s an overview of literally […]
Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid
Market highlights and explanations from a day of records in ERCOT. On August 20th, 2024, The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) saw records for demand, solar generation, net load, and battery discharge alongside prices near the cap; a prime example of how operations in the market are evolving. Solar and Demand Were High Throughout […]