The other day, I published my doorstop assessment of the thermodynamics and operational challenges that limit compressed gas storage solutions, pushing them into the 100 GW of also-ran capacities. In comments in various places, people reminded me of the long-defunct LightSail and … | Continue reading

This month Kurzgesagt takes on smoking. If you’re a non-smoker, this may help you understand why people like to have a puff: Smoking helps you focus at work and is an excuse to take regular breaks, which is good for you mentally. It’s a tool against boredom, it suppresses your ap … | Continue reading

West Cheshire has been known for its underground salt deposits for centuries, and people have been mining the salt since prehistoric times. Various processes had been used to extract the salt, including physically removing the solid salt, pumping freshwater through the salt layer … | Continue reading

Hi, this is David. As co-CEO of Datawrapper, I work at the intersection of Datawrapper’s... | Continue reading

The Sun is a hot mess right now. Solar maximum is fast approaching, and a giant dark spot on the surface of the Sun keeps growing while spewing radiation out to space in the process. Read more... | Continue reading

Bumble Founder and Executive Chair Whitney Wolfe Herd defended her dating app’s new AI feature on stage in San Francisco on Thursday. She went on to describe a version of the future where “AI-dating concierges” message each other on a human’s behalf. Read more... | Continue reading

I’m really enjoying Dolby Atmos, “spatial audio”, or “surround sound” as we used to call it. There is so much music in this format on streaming platforms, both new albums and classic albums. I wanted to listen to Björk’s first four albums in “spatial audio”, but they don’t curren … | Continue reading

You know what? After a long day in the office, sometimes it's nice to take the long way home. Gotta look after that grey matter. Reply to this post by email | Continue reading

Dyhia Belhabib’s journey to becoming a marine scientist began with war funerals on TV. Her hometown, on the pine-forested slopes of the Atlas Mountains in northern Algeria, lies only 60 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. But a trip to the beach was dangerous. A bitter civil war ra … | Continue reading

THURSDAY, MAY 9, 2024 Paraphrase can be powerful too: The propaganda came early and often on this morning's Fox & Friends TV program. Our "cable news" is built on a system in which no one disagrees or pushes back or questions anything anyone else has said. As a result, Ainsley Ea … | Continue reading

“Do you have it in you to make it epic?” That’s the question Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus asks in Furiosa: A Mad Max Story, and for at least one person that answer is yes. George Miller, director of Furiosa, does have it in him to make it epic. And, before you even see the movie, t … | Continue reading

We get 24 hours in a day. How do we spend this time? How does our time use change as we get older and priorities shift? Tags: age, time use | Continue reading

Dario and Daniela Amodei, siblings and founders of Anthropic, fired indirect jabs at OpenAI while not stating the company’s name on Thursday. The founders told a San Francisco audience that Anthropic’s AI was the best in the world, and defended their competitive advantage over in … | Continue reading

The planet's magnetic field may have collapsed around 600 million years ago, enabling a major oxygenation event and perhaps supercharging evolution. | Continue reading

Jennie Young nails it in this delightful little bit of satire about the misuse of learning outcomes in education, Forget the Magic of Discovery, It’s Learning Outcomes That Help Children Identify, Comprehend, and Synthesize Their Dreams. Learning outcomes do have their uses. They … | Continue reading

A standalone enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance. The post Read an Excerpt From Alexandria Warwick’s The North Wind appeared first on Reactor. | Continue reading

Taking inspiration from Alberto Giacometti and Lucian Freud, British artist Sean Henry specializes in sculpting lifelike clay and bronze human figures. Two of Henry's sculptures, a man and a woman, can be seen on High Street in Colchester, England, a city around 60 miles northeas … | Continue reading

We'll look at how to write GenAI applications with Java using the Spring AI framework and utilize RAG for improving answers. The post Spring AI: How to Write GenAI Applications with Java appeared first on foojay. | Continue reading

The enormous Dali container ship has been stuck in Baltimore since it hit and destroyed the Francis Scott Key bridge way back in March. The ship lost power and careered into one of the supports for the bridge, bringing it crashing down and killing six workers on the bridge. Now, … | Continue reading

This week’s “Let Loose” Apple event was filmed on the iPhone and edited on the Mac and iPad. During the event, filmmaker Stu Maschwitz noticed that some scenes featured a shallower depth of field than is possible with the iPhone’s cameras. Although he doesn’t cite a source, Masch … | Continue reading

We’re getting close to the end of Star Trek: Discovery, which means we’re getting close to a season finale. And if there’s one thing Star Trek: Discovery loves—more than love, more than time travel, more than being deeply unsubtle—it is presenting you with a scenario of hope that … | Continue reading

A review of Kaliane Bradley's new time travel novel. The post The Time Traveller’s Bridge: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley appeared first on Reactor. | Continue reading

During the first half of the 20th century, public mosaic works were common across Europe, often combining Symbolist themes with depictions of allegorical figures, historical events, and national heroes. One outstanding example is found in the arched street passage beneath the tow … | Continue reading

Where’s Gollum? Has anyone seen Gollum? Warner Bros. Discovery was certainly looking for him (or, more precisely, a way to cash in on their The Lord of the Rings’ intellectual property rights). Today, during the corporation’s first-quarter earnings conference call (via The Hollyw … | Continue reading