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Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible Christie Aschwanden. Nature 2021 591:7851.

Even with vaccination efforts in full force, the theoretical threshold for vanquishing COVID-19 looks to be out of reach. Even with vaccination efforts in full force, the theoretical threshold for vanquishing COVID-19 looks to be out of reach.
Source: nature.com

Using GPT-2 to generate Tweets

blog post image Last summer I blogged about using a Deep Neural Network to generate tweets but only used 3200 of my tweets. Since then I've used Twitter's archive mechanism to retrieve ALL my tweets (just over 30,000) to train a network. Not any old network - the GPT-2 model from OpenAI. This 'finetuning' of an existing...

Why European vaccine suspensions could have unintended consequences

Europe’s difficult rollout of covid-19 shots took another blow over the weekend, as several countries halted deployment of the AstraZeneca vaccine amid worries it could cause blood clots. On Monday Germany, Spain, Italy, and France were among those to suspend deployment of the vaccine, following similar...
Source: technologyreview.com

A.I. In Healthcare, 2021: 8 Exciting Insights From The E-Book - The Medical Futurist

We strongly believe that only digital health can bring healthcare into the 21st century and make patients the point-of-care.
Source: medicalfuturist.com

Instagram photos help Facebook AI 'teach itself'

The photos were used to help a Facebook algorithm learn to recognise images without supervision.
Source: bbc.com

Why does Netflix’s The Dig exclude the women who photographed Sutton Hoo? - Prospect Magazine

"The filmmakers’ massaging of the facts tells us a lot about how middle-aged women are regarded by Hollywood." Great piece by Emma Hartley in Prospect Magazine about the Netflix film The Dig at Sutton Hoo.
Source: prospectmagazine.co.uk

Best Way to Learn Online | Snapask

"Snapask App instantly matches students with tutors to answer difficult questions! Download and ask for free! Whether it is Primary or Secondary subjects (Malay, English, Mathematics, Phy, Chem, Bio) homework questions can be asked, and the tutor will reply instantly!" Snap a photo of your homework and...
Source: snapask.com

NOAN creates timber wedding chapel in Finnish woodland

"NOAN has designed a timber chapel within a forest overlooking the Tervajärvi at a campground in southern Finland." What amazing woodwork.
Source: dezeen.com

The Technology Behind Cinematic Photos

There has been some work by teams at Google looking at analysing images to extract their 3D features. They launched a new feature called 'cinematic photos' and this blog posted by Per Karlsson and Lucy Yu, Software Engineers, of Google Research tries to explain how it works. "Looking at photos from...
Source: googleblog.com

'How many dead bodies?' asked Myanmar protester killed on bloodiest day

Shocking news from Myanmar reported by Reuters. "The day before he was killed, internet network engineer Nyi Nyi Aung Htet Naing had posted on Facebook about the increasingly violent military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Myanmar." "“#How_Many_Dead_Bodies_UN_Need_To_Take_Action,” he wrote,...
Source: reuters.com

Google fires Margaret Mitchell, co-lead of its Ethical AI team

"Last December, Gebru was fired from Google after she tried to be outspoken about unethical AI. This prompted some 225 Google employees to club together to create a union, in the hope of preventing further unfair dismissal and protecting employee rights. Mitchell was a member of said union, but that...
Source: techspot.com

Eeek! or E484K mutation and the coronavirus pandemic

Rupert Beale · Eeek! · LRB 19 February 2021: "Uncontrolled spread – as we knew it would – led to an even greater wave of infections, hospitalisations and deaths than last spring. Children were sent to school for one day before the necessary ‘lockdown’ was reimposed. The impulse to keep schools...
Source: lrb.co.uk

Using the right tools for the job

Since this blog has been up I've fiddled with some text analysis stuff by analysing the text and making recommendations for similar blog entries. Did it all in PHP and MySQL just to understand how the algorithms work. Eventually it started to take about 5 hours to: tokenise and stemming the textcalculate...

Dreadful user experience can be expensive.

"Citibank just got a $500 million lesson in the importance of UI design: Citibank was trying to make $7.8M in interest payments. It sent $900M instead." The screenshot is from court records where the judge ruled against Citibank who had wanted to get their money back. The lesson is to always include...
Source: arstechnica.com

The 10 Biggest Trends in Entrepreneurship to Look For in 2021

Want to know what’s in store for entrepreneurs in 2021? Here’s a rundown of the top ten trends every entrepreneur should know about.
Source: neilpatel.com

Australian news app beats Facebook in App Store

"Take that Facebook. A homegrown app from Australia Broadcasting Company (ABC) topped iOS download charts in Australia, outpacing Facebook. That's important for one big reason: Facebook just banned news from appearing on Australian newsfeeds in response to a law that would require the social giant...
Source: mashable.com

Corporate diversity

Why you should look beyond the typical labels: This article highlights the benefits of having a diverse talent pool in your organization, taking into consideration their unique backstory.
Source: impactplus.com

Goondiwindi Argus says that Government sets talks with Facebook

"Frydenberg and Zuckerberg to talk on Friday in an attempt to resolve news stand-off." Apart from the fact that Facebook has blocked them - sharing news stories from Australian newspaper websites would be so much easier if they configured their pages for sharing.
Source: goondiwindiargus.com.au

Facebook and Australia's media bargaining law

In Australia, Facebook’s ban on sharing news stories has sent publishers’ traffic tumbling: Audience declines of 20 percent or more have followed Facebook taking its traffic ball and going home. "Even people outside Australia can no longer share stories [on Facebook] from Australian publishers big...
Source: niemanlab.org

Nasa's Perseverance rover in 'great shape' after Mars landing

"Perseverance will now spend at least two years looking for evidence of past life on the Red Planet. The American space agency has successfully landed its Perseverance rover in a deep crater near the planet's equator called Jezero. "The good news is the spacecraft, I think, is in great shape," said Matt...
Source: bbc.com