Alexandre Storelli (Page 2)

Alexandre Storelli

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Measuring the energy impact of hybrid peer-to-peer / CDN video delivery: initial takeaways (Lumen)

Measuring the energy impact of hybrid peer-to-peer / CDN video delivery: initial takeaways (Lumen)

In this work, former colleagues have assembled the last pieces of a project on which I have contributed before leaving the company. Topic is video delivery, the biggest chunk of internet traffic in the last years, and how we can optimize the energy consumption of its delivery. Classical way to

Paintings by Turner and Monet depict trends in 19th century air pollution (Albright et al, PNAS)

Paintings by Turner and Monet depict trends in 19th century air pollution (Albright et al, PNAS)

Individual paintings by artists including Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch have been shown to depict specific atmospheric phenomena, raising the question of whether longer-term environmental change influences stylistic trends in painting. Anthropogenic aerosol emissions increased to unprecedented levels during the 19th century as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution,

Femme ou épouse ? (Bottin Mondain)

Femme ou épouse ? (Bottin Mondain)

Une charmante réception, d’aimables présentations et voilà un mari annonçant « son épouse »… Mais alors, nous aurait-on mal appris les usages ? Pour répondre à cette épineuse question, nous avons mené l’enquête et soumis le sujet à un spécialiste de la langue française. Voici sa réponse. L’un de mes

How The Good Place taught moral philosophy to its characters — and its creators (Dylan Matthews, Vox)

How The Good Place taught moral philosophy to its characters — and its creators (Dylan Matthews, Vox)

The only time I can remember feeling like a piece of culture was designed for me, specifically, was when I watched the premiere of The Good Place. (…) This is … not typically how showrunners think about ending their shows. But nothing about the ideas behind The Good Place is typical. The

Why Kids Are Afraid to Ask for Help (Kayla Good, Alex Shaw)

Why Kids Are Afraid to Ask for Help (Kayla Good, Alex Shaw)

Children as young as seven years old may hesitate to ask questions in school because they worry classmates will think they are “stupid”. Adults are often embarrassed about asking for aid. It's an act that can make people feel vulnerable. The moment you ask for directions, after all, you reveal

Inside the Proton, the ‘Most Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine’ (Quanta Magazine)

Inside the Proton, the ‘Most Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine’ (Quanta Magazine)

More than a century after Ernest Rutherford discovered the positively charged particle at the heart of every atom, physicists are still struggling to fully understand the proton. High school physics teachers describe them as featureless balls with one unit each of positive electric charge — the perfect foils for the negatively

Why are D-sharp and E-flat considered to be two different notes (Ethan Hein)

Why are D-sharp and E-flat considered to be two different notes (Ethan Hein)

(…) In this post, I’ll be talking about the [note] between D and E. You could think of it as a raised D, in which case it’s called D-sharp. You could also think of it as a lowered E, in which case it’s called E-flat. Guitars don’t

Du mensonge en politique

Du mensonge en politique

Petite compilation de lectures qui m'ont inspiré cet été au sujet de l'ambiance politique actuelle que je trouve follement délétère. Pourquoi les politiques se sentent-ils obligés de mentir ? (Luca Cortinovis, The Conversation) Quel rapport les politiques entretiennent-ils à la vérité ? (…) Il apparaît aisé de critiquer et de se scandaliser devant

Natural selection is complicated (SMBC Comics)

Natural selection is complicated (SMBC Comics)

The early bird gets the worm But the early fox gets the bird At some point the late bird shows up By the time the late bird arrives, only the slowest, least-motivated worms are surfacing And only the laziest of foxes are trying to catch him… [Alt text: The early

Why Does Pepperoni Curl? (Serious Eats)

Why Does Pepperoni Curl? (Serious Eats)

(…) There are times when I'll head into a bog-standard New York slice joint, see those pre-cooked squares with their flat disks of pepperoni, watch some poor sap order them, and think to myself: Ah, you've fallen victim to one of the two classic blunders, the most famous of which is

Zanclean flood (Wikipedia)

Zanclean flood (Wikipedia)

The Zanclean flood or Zanclean deluge is a flood theorized to have refilled the Mediterranean Sea 5.33 million years ago. (…) The Mediterranean Basin flooded mostly during a period estimated to have been between several months and two years. Sea level rise in the basin may have reached rates at

LavaRand: network security with lava lamps (Cloudflare)

LavaRand: network security with lava lamps (Cloudflare)

As some of you may know, there's a wall of lava lamps in the lobby of our San Francisco office that we use for cryptography. In this post, we’re going to explore how that works in technical detail. (…) LavaRand is a system that provides an additional entropy source to

$Réconcilier une France fracturée (David Djaïz, Revue Études)$

Réconcilier une France fracturée (David Djaïz, Revue Études)

La récente séquence électorale a révélé une France fracturée en blocs antagonistes. Comment élaborer un projet de société pour réconcilier ces groupes ? L’écologie comme sensibilité aux interdépendances remplit ce cahier des charges. Associée à la tradition solidariste, elle permet de penser un art de gouverner où chacun se sente

Why are nuclear reactors expensive?

Business & Economy

Why are nuclear reactors expensive?

Editors of website https://whatisnuclear.com/ do a great job explaining in (rather) simple words the concepts behing nuclear energy. In particular here, the main drivers of nuclear power economics. This sheds a light on why so few plants are being built, despite the desperate need to decarbonize our society.

« À quelles conditions la sobriété pourrait-elle devenir acceptable, non “punitive” ? » (Valérie Guillard, Le Monde)

« À quelles conditions la sobriété pourrait-elle devenir acceptable, non “punitive” ? » (Valérie Guillard, Le Monde)

La professeure de management Valérie Guillard explique, dans une tribune au « Monde », que le télétravail, l’usage du vélo, les achats d’occasion, etc., permettent de concilier pouvoir d’achat, plaisir et temps libre, sans susciter d’amertume. La question du pouvoir d’achat est au cœur de la campagne

Mechanical Watch (Bartosz Ciechanowski)

Mechanical Watch (Bartosz Ciechanowski)

Beautiful page that explains step by step how a mechanical watch works. Interactive animations help understand and are a pleasure to the eye! A fellow HN user [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31261533] noticed that the code running the WebGL animations is human readable and is available at https:

Massive Black Holes Shown to Act Like Quantum Particles (Quanta Magazine)

Massive Black Holes Shown to Act Like Quantum Particles (Quanta Magazine)

When two black holes collide, the titanic crash ripples out through the very fabric of the cosmos. Physicists have used Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity to predict the rough contours of these gravitational waves as they pass through Earth, and wave after wave has been confirmed by the LIGO

Climat : mon cerveau fait l'autruche (Arte)

Climat : mon cerveau fait l'autruche (Arte)

Pourquoi, en dépit de l'imminence de la catastrophe climatique, ne parvenons-nous pas à changer nos modes de vie ? Y a-t-il une explication scientifique à cette inertie ? Réponse dans cette riche enquête qui révèle les surprenants réflexes du cerveau humain. "Devant le danger, nous avons tendance à mettre la tête dans

Quand le code informatique prend la forme d'un poème

Quand le code informatique prend la forme d'un poème

Les développeurs aventureux connaissent pour certains le brainfuck [https://esolangs.org/wiki/Brainfuck], langage de programmation ésotérique volontairement illisible, dont le "Hello World" s'écrit de la façon suivante: > ++++++++[>++++[>++>+++>+++>+<<<<-]>+>+>->>+[<]<-]>>.>---.+++++++..+++.>>.<-.<.+++.------.--------.>>+.>++. Un collègue m'a récemment nerd-snipé [https://xkcd.com/356/] en m'introduisant au langage poetic [https://mcaweb.matc.edu/winslojr/vicom128/

Advertising and Mixed Motives (Sergey Brin & Larry Page, 1998)

Advertising and Mixed Motives (Sergey Brin & Larry Page, 1998)

The vision Google founders had in 1998 about the relationship between their search engine and advertising is, years later, quite ironic: > Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For

Equium: la thermoacoustique pour démocratiser les pompes à chaleur

Equium: la thermoacoustique pour démocratiser les pompes à chaleur

La société Equium développe un procédé permettant d'améliorer le fonctionnement des pompes à chaleur (PAC) actuelles. En exploitant les propriétés thermodynamiques d'ondes acoustiques intenses, il deviendrait possible de se passer de fluides réfrigérants polluants ainsi que de certaines parties mobiles dans les PAC. Si le projet franchit avec succès son

Décroissance, sobriété, minimalisme: des pratiques de riches? (Slate)

Décroissance, sobriété, minimalisme: des pratiques de riches? (Slate)

La crise climatique s'aggrave et pose nombre de défis environnementaux, sociaux et économiques, conduisant aujourd'hui 26% des Français à placer l'environnement en tête de leurs préoccupations. Alors que nos manières de consommer évoluent, la crise sanitaire semble avoir accentué le phénomène, venant développer la fibre du minimalisme et de la

The Joule-Thomson Effect and The Models We Know (Matt Ferraro)

The Joule-Thomson Effect and The Models We Know (Matt Ferraro)

Here's a brain teaser that seems easy but is actually very hard: We've got a cylinder split in half by a diaphragm. On the left side is some Helium gas at 0°C and 1 atmosphere of pressure. On the right side is a perfect vacuum. We're going to snap

The chase for fusion energy (Nature)

The chase for fusion energy (Nature)

(…) Long derided as a prospect that is forever 30 years away, nuclear fusion seems finally to be approaching commercial viability. There are now more than 30 private fusion firms globally, according to an October survey by the Fusion Industry Association (FIA) in Washington DC, which represents companies in the sector;

Teplator: heat cities with spent nuclear rods (DW)

Teplator: heat cities with spent nuclear rods (DW)

Czech researchers develop revolutionary nuclear heating plant – A team of scientists has come up with a radical solution to heat cities using spent nuclear rods, which they say is cost-effective and greener than natural gas. As the EU moves away from coal, many are interested. Almost every major city in