Rocket booster caught by giant metal arms! “Dark” oxygen found on ocean floor! Dyson spheres suspected around alien suns! A scan of headlines from 2024 would make anyone think they were living in a sci-fi novel. So how do you cap off such a spectacular year? What about a quantum computer chip so fast, its creators suggest it might be doing calculations in other universes? Yep, that should do it.
The fantastic claim was made by Google about its latest chip, named Willow. How fast are we talking? It reportedly performed a computation in under 5 minutes that would take a modern supercomputer 10 septillion years. Talk about a time saver. |
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Critics argue that Google’s multiverse claim is more science fiction than science. (Sorry, Marvel fans.) But the giant leap forward represented by Willow is real, and just one more sign that our sci-fi future may have arrived. Which raises many questions. Like, where are all the robot butlers? And, how can the rest of us even begin to understand these recent innovations?
Since multitasking in the multiverse is off the table (for now), we have another suggestion. It just takes resolving to spend a few minutes a day to learn something new. Who knows, by the end of 2025, maybe you’ll be unveiling your new robot butler. Seriously, we need this. |
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🚀 Jingle bell rock(et). Launch into the new year with a cozy fireplace courtesy of NASA. (Warning: may reach temps up to 5800°F.) |
🧱 User brickxperience. See how LEGO builds the perfect UI with this visual exploration of control panel bricks. |
🍞 BaguetteHub. Become a boule-ean operator with this free, open-source cookbook’s sourdough framework. |
🈹 Lost in transliteration. Worried you’re mispronouncing “Caroline?” Just see what other languages do to Chinese names. |
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Feeling lucky? A prize wheel features prizes worth $1, $3, and $10. The probability of spinning a $1 prize is 0.8, a $3 prize is 0.15, and a $10 prize is 0.05. With each spin, you can either take the prize you land on, or give it up and spin again. You get 8 spins total, and can collect only 1 prize.
If you play the game optimally, what’s the expected total value of your prizes?
Bonus: Now you have 10 spins total but can collect up to 2 prizes. If you play the game optimally, now what’s the expected total value of your prizes?
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We’ll randomly choose one correct respondent to each puzzle for a shout-out in next month’s email. |
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Congrats to Joseph Youngblood and Tripta, whose correct solutions were no joke.
The key to last month’s puzzle was recognizing that, to solve for at least one of the friends hearing the joke, you could start by solving for none of them hearing it, which is simpler to calculate. As for the bonus question, the key was realizing each person in the infinite chain of joke tellers is in the same situation as the person who told them the joke. This let the calculation turn into a recursion.
Check out the full solution here. |
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“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
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