Science & Technology News & Debates

Survivor bias

I guess you all know how this works, right? Airplanes that returned safely from bombing runs were examined. All areas that had suffered bullet holes were considered "non-essential", as the plane still made it back. But areas that had NOT been hit were considered "essential", as they had allowed the airplane to return. That's actually an good way of looking at reality, though not necessarily exhaustive. Ford did the same - they examined old cars and checked which parts had NOT failed - then made those parts weaker.

100 years ago, on July 29, physics laureate Werner Heisenberg submitted a paper that revolutionized quantum mechanics. Heisenberg was only 23 years old when he submitted the paper "Quantum mechanical reinterpretation of kinematic and mechanical relations". For this theory and...See more

Even Nobel Prize winners are rarely recognized

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2788931/who-gave-king-sweden-awkward-questions-nobel-prize-winners-face-try-award-airport-security.html

Samsung is building a new FAB that will be capable of producing the most advanced chips in Texas:

Here it is, the 30TB HD

Sold for 600 CHF by digitec.ch To put this into perspective: My very first HD had a capacity of 5MB. I'm not kidding. 5MB. And it cost my client 10'000 CHF. But it was a life changer. Thanks to that HD, I no longer had to flip floppy disks 4 times just to compile and link my...See more

The evolution of air traffic is pretty amazing...