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
Integrating basic sciences into clerkship rotation utilizing Kern’s six-step model of instructional design: lessons learned
Worked example of curriculum design using Kern's six-step approach. "Background It is generally agreed that basic and clinical sciences should be integrated throughout the undergraduate medical education, however, there is still need for continued formal integration of basic sciences into clinical...
Source: biomedcentral.com
OpenAI announces first partnership with a university
"Starting in February, Arizona State University will have full access to OpenAI's ChatGPT Enterprise." "With the OpenAI partnership, ASU plans to build a personalized AI tutor for students, not only for certain courses, but also for study topics. STEM subjects are a focus and are “the make-or-break...
Source: cnbc.com
Three Epochs of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care Michael D. Howell. Greg S. Corrado. Karen B. DeSalvo. JAMA.
This Special Communication examines the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) over the years, and how developments with AI can help decision-makers improve health care while also recognizing its risks.
Source: jamanetwork.com
Project Wayward: A wearable for the elderly and those with Dementia.
Get an instant alert for help if the elder falls down, wanders away outside, or in case of an accident. "Hemesh's grandmother was one of many, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. She had severe cases of wandering, where she would walk away without the caregiver noticing, resulting in a number...
Source: projectwayward.com
'It hasn't delivered': The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology Sam Becker.
Unstaffed tills were supposed to revolutionise shopping. Now, both retailers and customers are bagging many self-checkout kiosks.
Source: bbc.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
The Vulnerable World Hypothesis
"This paper introduces the concept of a vulnerable world: roughly, one in which there is some level of technological development at which civilization almost certainly gets devastated by default, i.e. unless it has exited the ‘semi-anarchic default condition’. Several counterfactual historical and...
Source: doi.org
Is Vaccination Approaching a Dangerous Tipping Point? Peter Marks. Robert Califf. JAMA.
This Viewpoint discusses declining vaccination rates in the US, specifically against COVID-19, and the ways in which clinicians and the Food and Drug Administration can counter the current large volume of vaccine misinformation.
Source: jamanetwork.com
Workplace well-being initiatives don't boost employee mental health
"The mental health of people who undertake mindfulness or meditation courses offered by their employer is generally no better than those who are not offered such programmes." "Instead of offering these initiatives, Fleming suggests that employers focus on bettering the work environment. For example,...
Source: newscientist.com
Elevated genetic risk for multiple sclerosis emerged in steppe pastoralist populations
"The last 10,000 years have seen some of the most extreme global changes in lifestyle, with the emergence of farming in some regions and pastoralism in others. While 5,000 years ago farmer ancestry predominated across Europe, a relatively diverged genetic ancestry arrived with the steppe migrations around...
Source: nature.com
Newspocalypse now
"We will learn that the less something looks like what we have now, the better chance it has of being the thing on the other side of death."
Source: niemanlab.org
Changes in Hospital Adverse Events and Patient Outcomes Associated With Private Equity Acquisition.
"Private equity acquisition of hospitals, on average, was associated with increased hospital-acquired adverse events despite a likely lower-risk pool of admitted Medicare beneficiaries, suggesting poorer quality of inpatient care."
Source: jamanetwork.com
We're getting closer to OpenAI's first device
Sam Altman and Jony Ive have tapped Apple executive Tang Tan to build their new AI device.
Source: businessinsider.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
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