The Best of Michael Nielsen
The most popular Michael Nielsen articles, as voted by our community.
Searching for the numinous 🇦🇺 🇨🇦, home in 🇺🇸 Research @AsteraInstitute http://michaelnotebook.com
Michael Nielsen on Bitcoin
How the Bitcoin protocol actually works
Many thousands of articles have been written purporting to explain Bitcoin, the online, peer-to-peer currency. Most of those articles give a hand-wavy account of the underlying cryptographic protocol,…
Michael Nielsen on Science
The Future of Science
In your High School science classes you may have learnt Hooke’s law, the law of physics which relates a spring’s length to how hard you pull on it. What your High School science teacher probably…
Michael Nielsen on Software Engineering
How changing the structure of the web changes PageRank
Suppose I add a hyperlink from a webpage to a webpage . In principle, adding that single hyperlink changes the PageRank not just of those two pages, but potentially of nearly every other page on the…
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks the most relevant links from around the web for you. is one of more than 10k sources we monitor.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
- Our community of active users gets the most relevant links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, mark as read, read later, «More/less like this», etc.
- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
How can I report a problem?
When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to hello@refind.com
Who uses Refind?
250k+ smart people start their day with Refind. To learn something new. To get inspired. To move forward. Our apps have a 4.9/5 rating.
Is Refind free?
Yes, it’s free!
How can I sign up?
Head over to our homepage and sign up by email or with your Twitter or Google account.