My favourite tech hacks ... a thread
I started a thread on Bluesky of my favourite tech hacks earlier in the year and just added a couple more. Will keep a parallel list running here. Invidious (YouTube alternative front end) Pixabay (photos with appropriate Copyright) Etherpad (collaborate on a document with colleagues very easily)...
Source: bsky.app
65 Reasons To Celebrate The 6502
"The legendary chip from 1975 that helped start the home computer revolution." I can remember sharing the manual for the 6502 with my school friend, Chris. He had a BBC micro computer and I had a Commodore Vic 20. To do the machine code I remember you had to: compile into 6502 instructions what you...
Source: substack.com
AI Watermarking Won't Curb Disinformation
"Generative AI allows people to produce piles upon piles of images and words very quickly. It would be nice if there were some way to reliably distinguish AI-generated content from human-generated content. It would help people avoid endlessly arguing with bots online, or believing what a fake image purports...
Source: eff.org
Predicting students’ academic progress and related attributes in first-year medical students: an analysis with artificial
"Background Dropout and poor academic performance are persistent problems in medical schools in emerging economies. Identifying at-risk students early and knowing the factors that contribute to their success would be useful for designing educational interventions. Educational Data Mining (EDM) methods...
Source: biomedcentral.com
Scientists identify first known prehistoric person with Turner syndrome
Studying skeletons could provide further insight into the past's gender variability.
Source: arstechnica.com
AI beats real doctors on 149 remote OSCE-style tests
"We tested performance in consultations with simulated patients (played by trained actors), compared to those performed by 20 real PCPs using the randomized approach described above. AMIE and PCPs were assessed from the perspectives of both specialist attending physicians and our simulated patients in...
Source: research.google
How the Post Office's Horizon system failed: a technical breakdown
"From bugs to unqualified staff, the Post Office's point-of-sale system was inadequate on many levels." The code was poor from the start and the small team of developers were not up to the job. However, the problems were apparent in 1999 before it was launched. Includes a discussion of the Dalmellington...
Source: theguardian.com
Apple’s iPhone Design Chief Enlisted by Jony Ive, Sam Altman to Work on AI Devices
Legendary designer Jony Ive and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are enlisting an Apple Inc. veteran to work on a new artificial intelligence hardware project, aiming to create devices with the latest capabilities.
Source: bloomberg.com
Discovery of a structural class of antibiotics with explainable deep learning.
One of the challenges with deep learning (neural networks) is that although they find patterns the reasoning disappears into an endless detail of numbers. In this paper the researchers built an 'explainable' AI to discover antibiotics instead of such a 'black box'. "The discovery of novel structural...
Source: nature.com
Citations show gender bias — and the reasons are surprising
Homophily is the tendency for people to stick with similar people. Could this partly explain some of the gender bias in citations? "Women still tend to build more on women’s work, and men still tend to build on men’s work more." "Gender bias in paper citations is less common among younger scientists,...
Source: nature.com
Machines may be better at assisting, not replacing us.
Journalist Kawandeep Virdee sees if he can be replaced by AI by writing some predictions for 2024. "I gave ChatGPT the last 13 years of Nieman Lab predictions ... [and asked it what I'd write about in 2024]" [ChatGPT suggested] Navigating the infodemic: Strategies for media in the era of misinformation...
Source: niemanlab.org
Ice Halos over Bavaria
"For suspended water to freeze into an ice fog requires quite cold temperatures, and indeed the air temperature on this day was measured at well below zero. The ice fog reflected light from the Sun setting behind St. Coleman Church."
Source: nasa.gov
Opinion: OpenAI's drama marks a new and scary era in artificial intelligence
Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, professors at MIT, lend their insight to the recent drama at OpenAI. "Sam Altman’s dismissal and rapid reinstatement as CEO of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, confirms that the future of AI is firmly in the hands of people focused on speed and profits, at the expense...
Source: latimes.com
Meta Trained Its New AI Image Generator on a Billion Of Your Facebook, Instagram Posts
Your cat photos, your friends’ selfies, and my desert landscapes are now a part of Imagine, whether we like it or not.
Source: extremetech.com
A systematic review of insight and reflection in post graduate medical education
Great literature synthesis on reflection. "We present a novel description of a hierarchy from discrete episodes of reflection, to cyclic processes that involve reflection, through to a state in which the practitioner is reflective. There is no unified understanding of how an individual ascends this...
Source: wiley.com
Jeff Sebo on digital minds, and how to avoid sleepwalking into a major moral catastrophe
"The general case for extending moral consideration to AI systems is that they might be conscious or sentient or agential or otherwise significant. And if they might have those features, then we should extend them at least some moral consideration in the spirit of caution and humility."
Source: 80000hours.org
AI information retrieval: A search engine researcher explains the promise and peril of letting ChatGPT and its cousins search
A new generation of artificial intelligence-based information access systems, which includes Microsoft’s Bing/ChatGPT, Google/Bard and Meta/LLaMA, is upending the traditional search engine mode of search input and output. These systems are able to take full sentences and even paragraphs as input and...
Source: ampproject.org
Recent waning snowpack in the Alps is unprecedented in the last six centuries - Nature Climate Change Carrer, Marco. Dibona,
Snow cover in high-latitude and high-altitude regions has strong effects on the Earth’s climate, environmental processes and socio-economic activities. Over the last 50 years, the Alps experienced a 5.6% reduction per decade in snow cover duration, which already affects a region where economy and...
Source: nature.com
Pharma recommends five priorities for future pandemic preparedness and response - IFPMA
As the global architecture for pandemic preparedness and response is discussed, IFPMA shares practical solutions and recommends focussing on five priorities.
Source: ifpma.org
In the ’80s, We Decided Bike Helmets Make Riders Safe. Cyclists Have Paid for It Ever Since.
Good review of the complex science around cycle helmets and safety. The article also touches on the unintended effects of helmet mandate laws (which have been repealed in many US cities). Shout out to Ian Walker of Swansea University and his heroic measuring of passing distance of vehicles with various...
Source: slate.com
RSS feed