Richard Dawkins demonstrates laryngeal nerve of the giraffe
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN uses it as the canonical example that evolution is not optimal and can get stuck in local maxima.
What it is
A clip from Channel 4's Inside Nature's Giants in which Richard Dawkins shows the recurrent laryngeal nerve of the giraffe during a dissection. The nerve takes a long detour down the neck and back up.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2012 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends ufo · 2024-09 · on “If I could dissect a sauropod”
The blog post recommended the TV show "inside nature's giants", and I second it. The bit about the recurrent laryngeal nerve of the giraffe is particulary memorable: [this video]
Cites ChrisNorstrom · 2012-12 · on “Desktop App for All Your Email”
A rule of thumb is not a law. Form doesn't always follow function even in nature and evolution: [this video] Also styles and fads like "minimalism" and "flat design" are forms that do not follow function but are really forms that enforce function. Which is why they're fads and go away after enough people jump on the bandwagon and realize the fad's flaw and limitations.
Cites adevine · 2016-01 · on “New finding: 600M years ago, a single mutation changed everything”
Evolution most certainly DOES get stuck in local maxima: [this video] . Also, it's quite easy for me to imagine an animal like an angel, with arms and wings. Tetrapods only have 4 limbs to work with though. For bats to gain wings they had to lose their front legs.
Cites fhoffa · 2017-03 · on “Operation Rosehub – patching thousands of open-source projects”
Good catch. It seems like an artifact of working and editing a query until they got what they wanted - certainly not a BigQuery restriction. (like this [this video] ) Note that the published query scans 2.25 TB of data. While impressive, for a better workflow and cost management I would split it into a 2 step process: - First extract all the files I'm interested in to a separate table (all pom.xmls?). - Then run whatever analysis you want over those files.