#022: Surviving a Helicopter Crash, Coding for Dune Tickets, Claude Beats Chat GPT

Hi All!

We are pleased to welcome you to this week's edition of Undiscovered, a newsletter with exclusive resources and insights expanding from the material found on our main site - becketu.com.

This edition is helped in part by the support of Boot.dev. Be sure to check them out in the P.S. for a special signup offer and more information. Let's jump into this week's finds:

Better than Chat GPT?

If you're a fan of Chat GPT, there is a large chance you will also like Claude by Anthropic. Besides being visually beautiful, it has some of the highest benchmarks out of any AI chatbot assistant.

People have been doing incredible things with it too. @spikedoanz used it to create an animation of a basic neural network. @mattshumer_ created custom prompts that help you learn any skill faster, review your code, and even generate SaaS product ideas.

What It's Like Being in a Helicopter Crash

This extraordinary footage shared by @KanekoaTheGreat shows how truly scary it would be to live through a helicopter crash.

You may think all helicopters sink immediately to the ground when experiencing engine failure, but the video shows how a calm pilot can guide the aircraft to the ground using a technique called autorotation. It's a thrilling video, but even more thrilling use of physics in a real life-or-death scenario.

Using Code to Secure Seats for Dune

As we prepare to see Dune 2 after patiently waiting and seeing it sell out its opening weekend, we take a look at someone who had a more ingenious approach to securing tickets.

​@giansegato showed us the power of coding by making a web scraper and fully automated Telegram massing system to send alerts for when the next day of showtimes would become live. He even did this to book an anniversary dinner through Resy!

If you're inclined to try it out yourself, here is the link to the source code.

A Beautiful Meditation on Empathy

'Imagine you are swapping bodies for a year with the person you love most in the world. How would you care for that body of theirs?... How much time will you spend in the sun, how much looking critically in the mirror, how much staring dead eyed at a small bright screen?"

This is one part of a beautiful post from Divya Vennan on empathy. This not only helps us understand others more, but by understanding what we would do for others we realize how we should care for ourselves.

Meditations such as the above go a surprisingly far way in helping develop our influence on the world around us.

The Physics of Island Creation

A new video out of Japan shows how an island is created after a recent volcanic eruption. But how does it actually become inhabitable? We read about the physics behind it, but we'll give you the TLDR below:

When a volcano erupts underwater, a crust begins to form when the lava contacts the surrounding cold ocean water. The newly formed island is barren, but over time soil starts to form. Plants begin to take root and kickstart the ecosystem, as seeds are carried by the wind, birds, and ocean currents to the new landmass. These landmasses act as blank canvases for evolution, and new life is formed!

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Always wishing you the best,

J.B.