Interesting Stuff from the Internet
The forgotten priest who predicted black holes – in 1783 (bbc.com)
John Michell, a British clergyman and natural philosopher in the 18th century, surprisingly predicted the existence of black holes long before Einstein. Using Newtonian physics and the then-popular corpuscular theory of light, he theorized that massive stars could have such strong gravity that even light couldn't escape their pull, rendering them invisible. He suggested these "dark stars" could be detected by their gravitational effects on nearby celestial bodies. While his understanding of light's interaction with gravity differed from modern physics, his core concept of invisible stars foreshadowed our understanding of black holes. Michell's work, though brilliant, was largely forgotten until the latter half of the 20th century when black holes became an accepted concept in astrophysics.
Why we may have misunderstood the Universe (bbc.com)
For years, we have been under the impression that the expansion of our Universe was slowing down, but research by a Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist, Professor Adam Reiss, could prove that all wrong.
GitHub - major/yotagrabber: Retrieve inventory data from Toyota's GraphQL APIs
The Github repository "yotagrabber" was a tool designed to retrieve inventory data from both Toyota and Lexus by leveraging their GraphQL APIs. The tool allowed users to access information on a variety of models, including the 4Runner, Camry, Corolla, RAV4, Tacoma, Tundra, and more. However, the project has been archived by its owner as of December 1st, 2023, due to the increasing difficulty in keeping up with changes in Toyota's website protection. While the repository is no longer maintained, the creator encourages interested individuals to fork the project and continue its development if desired.
The Best Books of the 21st Century: Top 20 Reads - Duke University Libraries Blogs
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein) (2012)
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (2010)
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009)
The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2003)
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
2666 by Roberto Bolaño (translated by Natasha Wimmer) (2008)
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016)
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald (translated by Anthea Bell) (2001)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2004)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2007)
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
Outline by Rachel Cusk (2015)
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (2017)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)
The Sellout by Paul Beatty (2015)
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (2017)
Say Nothing by Patrick Keefe (2019)
Erasure by Percival Everett (2001)
75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time - What Is The Best Science Fiction Book Ever Written? (esquire.com)
Here are the 75 sci-fi books listed in the provided text, in order of ranking, along with their authors:
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Kindred by Octavia Butler
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Neuromancer by William Gibson
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Solaris by Stanisław Lem
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Dawn by Octavia Butler
The Martian by Andy Weir
Ringworld by Larry Niven
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
The Vorrh by B. Catling
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
The City & the City by China Miéville
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Blindsight by Peter Watts
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
The Peripheral by William Gibson
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
The Female Man by Joanna Russ
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter
The Gate to Women’s Country by Sheri S. Tepper
The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
Rosewater by Tade Thompson
Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
Redshirts by John Scalzi
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
Snippets from the Newsletters/ Newspapers/ Books
WSJ:
The top 10 companies in the S&P 500 make up 37% of the index’s market cap but contribute 24% to its earnings—the widest such gap since the third quarter of 1990.
Companies in the S&P 500 are trading at 21.4 times their projected earnings over the next 12 months, compared with the five-year average of 19.7, according to FactSet.
Nearly three-quarters of the net new jobs in June were in government, healthcare and social assistance. These industries also made up roughly half of the new jobs in May and more than 90% in April. Construction accounted for a large share of the rest. Nurses, social workers and plumbers are still in high demand, but less so others.
Nvidia alone accounted for nearly one-third of the S&P 500’s total return in the first half, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. Throw in Microsoft, Amazon.com , Meta Platforms and Eli Lilly , and 55% of the market’s return came from just those five stocks.
False rumors have an average half-life on social media of 149.6 hours (six days and 5.6 hours), while true rumors have a half-life of 71.6 hours (not even three days). Fake news stays twice as long as the truth on social media and spreads much more. Thus, spreading fake news helps you go viral and become more influential on social media than telling the truth.
Thanks to record stock rallies, Taiwan and India now command more than 19% weightings each in the MSCI EM Index. That compares to China’s 22.8%, whose standing has steadily shrunk over the past few years, Bloomberg-compiled data show.
Taiwan’s ascent is all the more notable considering its market capitalization — at $2.6 trillion — stands at less than a third of mainland China’s. The Taiex Indexhas risen 33% this year to become one of the world’s best-performing major benchmarks, bolstered by gains in Nvidia Corp. supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
Meanwhile, India’s Nifty 50 Index has advanced more than 12% in 2024, hitting a fresh high as Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised policy continuity.
“If your feet are in two buckets and the average temperature of the water is 90 degrees, you’re probably fine—unless one bucket is at 35 and the other is at 145 degrees. On average, you’re fine. Based on variation, though, you’re miserable.” – Seth Godin
Principle of Charity
Think of it like building a bridge, not a wall. Instead of approaching a disagreement to tear down the other person's argument, the Principle of Charity encourages us to build a bridge of understanding.Here's how that bridge-building works in practice:
Generous Reading: Imagine someone says, "School lunches are terrible because they're unhealthy." A less charitable interpretation might be, "This person is an idiot who wants kids to starve." A charitable interpretation would be, "This person is concerned about the nutritional value of school meals and their impact on children's health." See the difference?
Filling in the Gaps: Often, people leave things unsaid in their arguments, assuming shared knowledge or context. The Principle of Charity encourages us to fill in those gaps with the most reasonable assumptions rather than attributing the omission to malice or stupidity.
Seeking Steel, Not Straw: Instead of looking for the weakest version of an argument to knock down (a straw man) easily, the Principle of Charity encourages us to find the strongest possible version (a steel man). This makes our counterarguments more robust and forces us to grapple with the best the other side offers.
Important Caveats:
The Principle of Charity is not about blindly accepting everything you hear. It's about creating a foundation of understanding from which you can engage in critical analysis and debate.
There are limits. If someone is deliberately dishonest or their argument is demonstrably harmful, it's okay to call them out.
The Principle of Charity is a powerful tool for improving communication, fostering intellectual humility, and building stronger arguments. It's not always easy, but the rewards are worth the effort.
Hayekian point
The "Hayekian point," frequently discussed in economics, politics, and even knowledge, is more than a single concept. It represents a perspective emphasizing the limitations of centralized planning and championing the power of decentralized systems.
Here's a breakdown of some key aspects:
1. The Knowledge Problem: A Distributed Symphony
Imagine trying to orchestrate a symphony, but only one conductor controls every instrument, every musician's practice schedule and every note played. This conductor would need an impossible amount of information. Hayek would argue that centrally planning an economy is similar—it attempts to manage countless variables and individuals' knowledge, which is impossible for a single entity to do effectively.
Decentralized knowledge: Hayek emphasized that knowledge in society is spread out and context-specific. Each individual, business, and community holds unique insights into their circumstances and needs.
Markets as information aggregators: Prices in a free market act like signals, reflecting countless individuals' collective knowledge and preferences. This allows for a spontaneous coordination that central planning can't replicate.
2. Spontaneous Order: Embracing Unintended Consequences
Think of a bustling city. No architect planned its layout, diverse businesses, or vibrant culture. It organically emerged from countless individuals pursuing their own goals.
Emergence: Hayek believed that complex social orders, like languages or markets, arise not from deliberate design but from the unintended consequences of individual actions guided by simple rules.
The limits of human reason: He was wary of attempts to socially engineer outcomes from the top down, arguing that such efforts often lead to unintended negative consequences due to our limited ability to predict and control complex systems.
3. The Price System: More Than Just Numbers
Prices do more than just tell us how much something costs. They convey vital information about scarcity, demand, and the relative value people place on goods and services.
Information signals: Rising prices signal scarcity, encouraging producers to increase supply and consumers to conserve. Falling prices signal abundance, having the opposite effect.
Efficient allocation: This constant feedback loop allows markets to allocate resources far more efficiently than any central planner could, as it reflects the aggregated desires and decisions of millions.
4. Critique of Socialism: A Threat to Freedom
Hayek's critique of socialism went beyond its economic shortcomings. He saw it as a threat to individual freedom and a potential path to tyranny.
The road to serfdom: He argued that concentrating economic power in the hands of the state inevitably leads to the concentration of political power, eroding individual liberties.
The importance of individual choice: Hayek believed that a free society requires individuals to have the autonomy to make their own choices, even if those choices sometimes lead to imperfect outcomes.
The Hayekian Point in a Nutshell:
It's about recognizing the limitations of human knowledge and the power of decentralized, self-organizing systems. It's about trusting the crowd's wisdom, expressed through prices and individual choices, over the potential hubris of central planning. It's a call for humility in the face of complexity and a celebration of the spontaneous order that can emerge from individual freedom.
The administration of the government, like the office of a trustee, must be conducted for the benefit of those entrusted to one’s care, not of those to whom it is entrusted,” observed Cicero more than 2,000 years ago.
The Carnot efficiency formula describes the maximum theoretical efficiency of a heat engine operating between two temperatures. Here's the formula:
η = 1 - Tc / Th
Where:
η (eta) = Carnot efficiency
Tc = Temperature of the cold reservoir (in Kelvin)
Th = Temperature of the hot reservoir (in Kelvin)This formula shows that the efficiency of a Carnot engine depends only on the temperature difference between the hot and cold reservoirs. The greater the temperature difference, the higher the efficiency.
Some key points about Carnot's efficiency:
It's always expressed as a decimal or percentage less than 1 or 100%.
It represents the maximum possible efficiency for any heat engine operating between two temperatures.
No real heat engine can achieve Carnot efficiency due to practical limitations and irreversibilities.
Dennard scaling, also known as MOSFET scaling, is a principle in semiconductor device scaling observed and described by Robert H. Dennard in 1974. This principle describes how the performance of MOSFETs (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors) improves as their dimensions are scaled down.
Key aspects of Dennard scaling:
Transistor dimensions are reduced by a factor of k
Voltage is reduced by a factor of k
Current is reduced by a factor of k
Capacitance is reduced by a factor of k
The delay time is reduced by a factor of k
Power dissipation is reduced by a factor of k^2
Power density remains constant
The implications of Dennard scaling were significant for the semiconductor industry, as it allowed for continued improvement in performance and power efficiency as transistors became smaller. This principle was a driving force behind Moore's Law for several decades.
However, Dennard scaling began to break down in the mid-2000s due to various physical limitations, particularly increased power leakage and heat generation at smaller scales. This breakdown has led to new challenges and approaches in semiconductor design and manufacturing.