#46: MrBeast, Disney, Hacker News, Polaris Dawn, Cycling, o1, AI Music, Coughing AI, and more!
Hi everyone!
I unlocked a new achievement this month: getting featured on the front page of Hacker News! Someone submitted my blog post about building an NFC movie library for my kids, and people were interested in it!
My website welcomed 80,000 unique visitors that day and got 1384 points and 314 comments on Hacker News. Lots of people made cool suggestions for future improvements. Some even had built similar systems themselves!
Sorry for the shameless plug, but I was quite happy when I saw my website on the top of a website I visit daily.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming!
Enjoy,
Xavier
🤓 Cool Stuff I Found on the Internet
Leaked: MrBeast's Secret Playbook
A leaked onboarding document offers a glimpse into the inner workings of MrBeast's production company. The document outlines an approach to create engaging content on YouTube. It emphasizes catchy titles and thumbnails and a specific video structure. It even offers suggestions on how to follow-up with critical stakeholders and how to spend money to get more impact.
Paper types ranked by likelihood of paper cuts
Ever wondered which paper is more likely to give you a paper cut? Me neither, but someone did the research! The conclusion: thin paper and thick paper rarely causes cuts. It’s the in-between paper, the kind used in magazines or Post-It notes. Kind of obvious, but now we have the research to back it up!
Disney released a dataset from Moana
I'm a big fan of computer animated movies. So much goes into making these movies and I always watch in awe. Disney has released a dataset containing everything needed to render the Motonui island. It's over 200GB in size, and Disney hopes that this will lead to improvements in algorithms related to rendering.
⏳ On this day...
1905 - The Wright brothers pilot the Wright Flyer III in a new world record flight of 24 miles in 39 minutes.
1947 - President Truman makes the first televised Oval Office address.
1962 - Beatles release their first single “Love Me Do”
1984 - Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space.
🧠🤖 Artificial intelligence
OpenAI o1
I somehow forgot to mention this in the last newsletter, but OpenAI’s released a new model that’s designed to “spend more time thinking before responding”. The o1 model excels in complex reasoning tasks across science, coding, and math. Interestingly, OpenAI hides the raw train of thought of the model. OpenAI is even sending warnings to people: try to find out how this model “thinks” will get you banned.
Adding reasoning skills to Llama 3.1
Although OpenAI’s o1 model is very impressive, many people were already using similar techniques with “regular” models. This GitHub project adds reasoning skills to Llama 3.1, and it achieves this with clever prompting alone. It guides the LLM to explore multiple approaches and question its own logic. The results? This model is rivaling o1’s performance!
Generate music from lyrics
Want to make a song but can’t sing? Simply write your lyrics, drop it into Suno and it will generate a complete song for you. This isn't sponsored or anything. I was just impressed when a colleague played me a song about her D&D game.
Detecting disease based on coughs
Google’s latest AI model can analyse coughs and detect early signs of diseases like tuberculosis and COPD. It was trained on 300 million audio samples and Google hopes it can extend screening of tuberculosis more widely. I can't wait for the day we can cough into a microphone and get targeted medication delivered to our steps hours later.
👽 Space
First commercial space walk
SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission has made history with the world’s first commercial spacewalk. The private crew of four astronauts, led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, reached an altitude of 870 miles before conducting the spacewalk. The mission showcased new SpaceX-designed EVA suits, and a modified Dragon spacecraft with a specialized “Skywalker” hatch. Oh, and the mission also raised funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
The weirdest things we've sent to space
This article explores 15 unusual items sent beyond Earth's atmosphere, including human remains, golf balls, jellyfish, dinosaur bones, and even a gorilla costume. These launches serve various purposes, from symbolic gestures to scientific research and marketing stunts. I just hope the gorilla costume made it back to Earth and isn't littering space for all eternity...
The Man Who Refused to Launch Challenger
38 years ago, Allan McDonald refused to sign off on the launch of Space Shuttle Challenger. He was concerned about the O-ring seals on the solid rocket boosters. They weren’t rated for the cold temperatures of the night before the launch. His supervisors ultimately overruled him. After the disaster, McDonald played an important role in exposing the truth about events leading up to the launch. He was initially demoted, but then promoted to vice president and tasked with redesigning the rocket joints that failed during the Challenger launch.
⚡️ Energy & Environment
9V battery can loosen iPhone 16's battery adhesive
Swapping the battery of a smartphone can be dangerous when it’s glued into place. Prying out the battery can bend it and cause a short circuit. The iPhone 16 uses a new electrically releasable adhesive. Apple says to apply 9V on two specific points for almost 2 minutes to loosen the adhesive. Cool! The adhesive was likely developed by Tesa.
Mega Heat Pump for 30,000 homes
Helsinki is building the world’s largest heat pump to provide warmth for 30,000 homes! The pump will be powered by renewable energy sources and can operate at temperatures as low as -20°C. This project is expected to save 26,000 tonnes of CO2 annually and will begin operations in 2026-2027.
Cycling like the Dutch
A study from the University of Southern Denmark reveals that if everyone cycled as much as the Dutch (2.6 km per day), global carbon emissions could drop by 686 million tonnes annually. This reduction exceeds the entire carbon footprint of countries like the UK and Australia!