We're going around the Moon. Come watch with us. Artemis II's four-astronaut crew is lifting off from @NASAKennedy on an approximately 10-day mission that will bring us closer to living on the Moon and Mars. The launch window opens at 6:24pm ET (2224 UTC). https://t.co/X27QJejNDt
Bayes’ theorem is probably the single most important thing any rational person can learn.
So many of our debates and disagreements that we shout about are because we don’t understand Bayes’ theorem or how human rationality often works.
Bayes’ theorem is named after the 18th-century Thomas Bayes, and essentially it’s a formula that asks: when you are presented with all of the evidence for something, how much should you believe it?
Bayes’ theorem teaches us that our beliefs are not fixed; they are probabilities. Our beliefs change as we weigh new evidence against our assumptions, or our priors. In other words, we all carry certain ideas about how the world works, and new evidence can challenge them.
For example, somebody might believe that smoking is safe, that stress causes mouth ulcers, or that human activity is unrelated to climate change. These are their priors, their starting points. They can be formed by our culture, our biases, or even incomplete information.
Now imagine a new study comes along that challenges one of your priors. A single study might not carry enough weight to overturn your existing beliefs. But as studies accumulate, eventually the scales may tip. At some point, your prior will become less and less plausible.
Bayes’ theorem argues that being rational is not about black and white. It’s not even about true or false. It’s about what is most reasonable based on the best available evidence. But for this to work, we need to be presented with as much high-quality data as possible. Without evidence—without belief-forming data—we are left only with our priors and biases. And those aren’t all that rational.
Weekend win: The proof I submitted for Erdos Problem #397 was accepted by Terence Tao.
The proof was generated by GPT 5.2 Pro and formalized with Harmonic.
Many open problems are sitting there, waiting for someone to prompt ChatGPT to solve them:
When you start a chess game, you have 20 moves available (16 for pawn and 2 for one knight). After completing the first movement you have more than 40 different possibilities. And 8900 in the third and 197740 in the fourth. In the 40s there will be 10 puissance 40 possibilities. Number corresponds to the number of atoms in the universe. This is what make chess more magical.
Mathematician Terence Tao:
Training and running LLMs isn't mathematically difficult; any math undergrad could understand the basics
The mystery is that we have no theory to predict why models excel at certain tasks and fail at others
"we can only make empirical experiments"
Celebrating the combination of intuition and experimentation in the mathematical works of Srinivasa Ramanujan on the anniversary of his birth #WithWolfram
https://t.co/jNMVW5VbPR
Happy 40th birthday to the NES!
40 years ago, this little grey box made its way into our homes and into our hearts along with Super Mario Bros and changed the face of gaming forever!
What's your best game and memory of the NES?
Layers was AT&T’s proprietary windowing system, shipped with the UNIX PC (PC 7300), predating the widespread adoption of X11. Layers acted like a graphical multiplexer—a distant ancestor of tmux or screen—but ran directly on a bitmap display with rudimentary window management.
In 1985, AT&T introduced the UNIX PC (known as the PC 7300). It featured a Motorola 68010 CPU running at 10 MHz and ran UNIX System V. Its built-in monochrome green monitor had a resolution of 720×348. The system sold for $5,500 ($16,500 in today’s dollars)
From 1888 to 2025...a new chapter in education begins. McGraw Hill aims to empower every educator to engage their students by delivering personalized learning experiences that enrich the unique ways they learn, teach and grow.
$MH | @MHEducation
26-year-old Ozzy Osbourne in 1974. He passed away today at the age of 76 after helping raise $190 million for charity. It was the highest grossing charity concert ever, and I love that it was a metal show that did it.
It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love.
We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.
Sharon, Jack, Kelly, Aimee and Louis