"The Shockwave Runner" has aged vastly better than "Stand on Zanzibar", which I found unreadable. The first book predicts an early-21st century society full of smartphone users, ubiquitous privacy violations, and…
The paper by Paul Adams used an earlier version of AlphaFold that was publicly available, not AlphaFold 3 which is not.
It's kind of amazing in retrospect that it was possible to (occasionally) produce very good predictions 20 years ago with at least an order of magnitude smaller training set. I'm very curious whether DeepMind has tried…
I also worked with the same people (and share most of the same biases) and that paper is about as close to a ringing endorsement of AlphaFold as you'll get.
The DeepMind team was essentially forced to publish and release an earlier iteration of AlphaFold after the Rosetta team effectively duplicated their work and published a paper about it in Science. Meanwhile, the…
This must be some kind of sharp generational divide, right? I'm over 40 and I can't think of anything that has made me feel as old as I do reading the "green message shame" discourse.
Seconded, and it touches on the key themes he developed later. I love how a throwaway plot element became a central part of an unrelated novel later, like he had more ideas than he had time to fully explain.
I think it's also one of the best descriptions of living at the onset of massive, disruptive technological changes, and how disorienting (and occasionally terrifying) this would feel. The fundamental problem with that…
> Not evil for the sake of evil, but rather reasoned decisions with terrible prices The Emergents and their system are pretty clearly just evil, and there's never any indication given that they actually care about those…
The goal of protein folding simulations like Folding@Home is not to predict 3D structures - it's to understand how folding actually works, and why it sometimes doesn't work. When FAH came out it was already very obvious…
Don't forget, they also had to pass another remedial bill to add exemptions later!
If you haven't already read "The Ungoverned" I recommend it as well - although much shorter it's effectively the second part in a trilogy, bridging the two novels and featuring the same main character as "Marooned in…
I helped with similar experiments at LCLS-I and the first half of this comment is correct. The chemical reaction is carefully timed on the order of milliseconds, so they get a series of snapshots of the reaction at a…
Because raging against the spending habits of billionaires is always easier than self-examination and consideration of one's own wealth and privilege.
It's weird to me that we've completely normalized having to present ID to buy any medicine at all, especially one that has an excellent safety and efficacy record that I was buying without an ID for a decade. Why should…
> the relevant fields are controlled by different corporate interests As opposed to governments, which are famously cautious about deploying destructive technology, and scrupulously avoid civilian casualties.
> People have been talking about the threat of automation since the very beginning of the industrial revolution. And the prediction that only the ownership class would benefit from technological improvements is at least…
The only argument I'm making is that it's insane to draw sweeping geopolitical conclusions from the fact that Chinese scientists posted their attempts at reproducing a Korean lab's result on Twitter before the Americans…
And have since before I was born - but what does this have to do with invading Ukraine now?
> Would the United States welcome Chinese and Russian nuclear capable installations in Mexico or Cuba? Personally, it's none of my business what Mexico or Cuba do on their territory, but are you saying the US has…
> The frequent (incredibly petty) fights I've seen over publication authorship order demonstrate otherwise. Likewise, and this is one of the many reasons I left academia. I feel like everyone who criticized your…
[flagged]
> The molecules are developed by research funding. Also incorrect. The underlying scientific knowledge driving new therapies is overwhelmingly academic in origin, but academic research does very little actual drug…
> Same folks that historically develop most drugs and health advances, academic and national research labs. As far as drugs are concerned, this is simply not true, not even close. I believe the actual fraction of new…
It's not the meta-analysis part that's the biggest red flag, it's "a total of 113 subjects". That's the size of a Phase I trial, and the road to Phase III and clinical approval has a crazy high attrition rate.
"The Shockwave Runner" has aged vastly better than "Stand on Zanzibar", which I found unreadable. The first book predicts an early-21st century society full of smartphone users, ubiquitous privacy violations, and…
The paper by Paul Adams used an earlier version of AlphaFold that was publicly available, not AlphaFold 3 which is not.
It's kind of amazing in retrospect that it was possible to (occasionally) produce very good predictions 20 years ago with at least an order of magnitude smaller training set. I'm very curious whether DeepMind has tried…
I also worked with the same people (and share most of the same biases) and that paper is about as close to a ringing endorsement of AlphaFold as you'll get.
The DeepMind team was essentially forced to publish and release an earlier iteration of AlphaFold after the Rosetta team effectively duplicated their work and published a paper about it in Science. Meanwhile, the…
This must be some kind of sharp generational divide, right? I'm over 40 and I can't think of anything that has made me feel as old as I do reading the "green message shame" discourse.
Seconded, and it touches on the key themes he developed later. I love how a throwaway plot element became a central part of an unrelated novel later, like he had more ideas than he had time to fully explain.
I think it's also one of the best descriptions of living at the onset of massive, disruptive technological changes, and how disorienting (and occasionally terrifying) this would feel. The fundamental problem with that…
> Not evil for the sake of evil, but rather reasoned decisions with terrible prices The Emergents and their system are pretty clearly just evil, and there's never any indication given that they actually care about those…
The goal of protein folding simulations like Folding@Home is not to predict 3D structures - it's to understand how folding actually works, and why it sometimes doesn't work. When FAH came out it was already very obvious…
Don't forget, they also had to pass another remedial bill to add exemptions later!
If you haven't already read "The Ungoverned" I recommend it as well - although much shorter it's effectively the second part in a trilogy, bridging the two novels and featuring the same main character as "Marooned in…
I helped with similar experiments at LCLS-I and the first half of this comment is correct. The chemical reaction is carefully timed on the order of milliseconds, so they get a series of snapshots of the reaction at a…
Because raging against the spending habits of billionaires is always easier than self-examination and consideration of one's own wealth and privilege.
It's weird to me that we've completely normalized having to present ID to buy any medicine at all, especially one that has an excellent safety and efficacy record that I was buying without an ID for a decade. Why should…
> the relevant fields are controlled by different corporate interests As opposed to governments, which are famously cautious about deploying destructive technology, and scrupulously avoid civilian casualties.
> People have been talking about the threat of automation since the very beginning of the industrial revolution. And the prediction that only the ownership class would benefit from technological improvements is at least…
The only argument I'm making is that it's insane to draw sweeping geopolitical conclusions from the fact that Chinese scientists posted their attempts at reproducing a Korean lab's result on Twitter before the Americans…
And have since before I was born - but what does this have to do with invading Ukraine now?
> Would the United States welcome Chinese and Russian nuclear capable installations in Mexico or Cuba? Personally, it's none of my business what Mexico or Cuba do on their territory, but are you saying the US has…
> The frequent (incredibly petty) fights I've seen over publication authorship order demonstrate otherwise. Likewise, and this is one of the many reasons I left academia. I feel like everyone who criticized your…
[flagged]
> The molecules are developed by research funding. Also incorrect. The underlying scientific knowledge driving new therapies is overwhelmingly academic in origin, but academic research does very little actual drug…
> Same folks that historically develop most drugs and health advances, academic and national research labs. As far as drugs are concerned, this is simply not true, not even close. I believe the actual fraction of new…
It's not the meta-analysis part that's the biggest red flag, it's "a total of 113 subjects". That's the size of a Phase I trial, and the road to Phase III and clinical approval has a crazy high attrition rate.