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LeopoldS

Schumpeter: More than just a game | The Economist - 3 views

www.economist.com/news/business/21565926-video-games-are-behind-latest-fad-management-more-just-game?fsrc=nlw|hig|11-8-2012|4090557|36947788|

economics game

shared by LeopoldS on 08 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 08 Nov 12
     
    remember the discussion I tried to trigger in the team a few weeks ago ...
  • ...5 more comments...
  • Luís F. Simões on 09 Nov 12
     
    main quote I take from the article: "gamification is really a cover for cynically exploiting human psychology for profit"
  • Francesco Biscani on 09 Nov 12
     
    I would say that it applies to management in general :-)
  • Dario Izzo on 09 Nov 12
     
    which is exactly why it will never work .... and surprisingly "managers" fail to understand this very simple fact.
  • johannessimon81 on 09 Nov 12
     
    ... "gamification is really a cover for cynically exploiting human psychology for profit" --> "Why Are Half a Million People Poking This Giant Cube?" http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/11/curiosity/
  • pacome delva on 13 Nov 12
     
    I think the "essence" of the game is its uselessness... workers need exactly the inverse, to find a meaning in what they do !
  • LeopoldS on 13 Nov 12
     
    I love the linked article provided by Johannes! It expresses very elegantly why I still fail to understand even extremely smart and busy people in my view apparently waiting their time in playing computer games - but I recognise that there is something in games that we apparently need / gives us something we cherish .... "In fact, half a million players so far have registered to help destroy the 64 billion tiny blocks that compose that one gigantic cube, all working in tandem toward a singular goal: discovering the secret that Curiosity's creator says awaits one lucky player inside. That's right: After millions of man-hours of work, only one player will ever see the center of the cube. Curiosity is the first release from 22Cans, an independent game studio founded earlier this year by Peter Molyneux, a longtime game designer known for ambitious projects like Populous, Black & White and Fable. Players can carve important messages (or shameless self-promotion) onto the face of the cube as they whittle it to nothing. Image: Wired Molyneux is equally famous for his tendency to overpromise and under-deliver on his games. In 2008, he said that his upcoming game would be "such a significant scientific achievement that it will be on the cover of Wired." That game turned out to be Milo & Kate, a Kinect tech demo that went nowhere and was canceled. Following this, Molyneux left Microsoft to go indie and form 22Cans. Not held back by the past, the Molyneux hype train is going full speed ahead with Curiosity, which the studio grandiosely promises will be merely the first of 22 similar "experiments." Somehow, it is wildly popular. The biggest challenge facing players of Curiosity isn't how to blast through the 2,000 layers of the cube, but rather successfully connecting to 22Cans' servers. So many players are attempting to log in that the server cannot handle it. Some players go for utter efficiency, tapping rapidly to rack up combo multipliers and get more
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 16 Nov 12
     
    why are video games so much different than collecting stamps or spotting birds or planes ? One could say they are all just hobbies
Dario Izzo

Miguel Nicolelis Says the Brain Is Not Computable, Bashes Kurzweil's Singularity | MIT ... - 9 views

www.technologyreview.com/...the-brain-is-not-computable

Singularity AI Brain

shared by Dario Izzo on 28 Feb 13 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Dario Izzo on 28 Feb 13
     
    As I said ten years ago and psychoanalysts 100 years ago. Luis I am so sorry :) Also ... now that the commission funded the project blue brain is a rather big hit Btw Nicolelis is a rather credited neuro-scientist
  • ...14 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 28 Feb 13
     
    nice article; Luzi would agree as well I assume; one aspect not clear to me is the causal relationship it seems to imply between consciousness and randomness ... anybody?
  • Luís F. Simões on 01 Mar 13
     
    This is the same thing Penrose has been saying for ages (and yes, I read the book). IF the human brain proves to be the only conceivable system capable of consciousness/intelligence AND IF we'll forever be limited to the Turing machine type of computation (which is what the "Not Computable" in the article refers to) AND IF the brain indeed is not computable, THEN AI people might need to worry... Because I seriously doubt the first condition will prove to be true, same with the second one, and because I don't really care about the third (brains is not my thing).. I'm not worried.
  • Dario Izzo on 01 Mar 13
     
    In any case, all AI research is going in the wrong direction: the mainstream is not on how to go beyond Turing machines, rather how to program them well enough ...... and thats not bringing anywhere near the singularity
  • Luís F. Simões on 01 Mar 13
     
    It has not been shown that intelligence is not computable (only some people saying the human brain isn't, which is something different), so I wouldn't go so far as saying the mainstream is going in the wrong direction. But even if that indeed was the case, would it be a problem? If so, well, then someone should quickly go and tell all the people trading in financial markets that they should stop using computers... after all, they're dealing with uncomputable undecidable problems. :) (and research on how to go beyond Turing computation does exist, but how much would you want to devote your research to a non existent machine?)
  • Dario Izzo on 01 Mar 13
     
    [warning: troll] If you are happy with developing algorithms that serve the financial market ... good for you :) After all they have been proved to be useful for humankind beyond any reasonable doubt.
  • Ma Ru on 04 Mar 13
     
    Two comments from me: 1) an apparently credible scientist takes Kurzweil seriously enough to engage with him in polemics... oops 2) what worries me most, I didn't get the retail store pun at the end of article...
  • Dario Izzo on 04 Mar 13
     
    True, but after Google hired Kurzweil he is de facto being taken seriously ... so I guess Nicolelis reacted to this.
  • Ma Ru on 04 Mar 13
     
    Crazy scientist in residence... interesting marketing move, I suppose.
  • Luzi Bergamin on 05 Mar 13
     
    Unfortunately, I can't upload my two kids to the cloud to make them sleep, that's why I comment only now :-). But, of course, I MUST add my comment to this discussion. I don't really get what Nicolelis point is, the article is just too short and at a too popular level. But please realize that the question is not just "computable" vs. "non-computable". A system may be computable (we have a collection of rules called "theory" that we can put on a computer and run in a finite time) and still it need not be predictable. Since the lack of predictability pretty obviously applies to the human brain (as it does to any sufficiently complex and nonlinear system) the question whether it is computable or not becomes rather academic. Markram and his fellows may come up with a incredible simulation program of the human brain, this will be rather useless since they cannot solve the initial value problem and even if they could they will be lost in randomness after a short simulation time due to horrible non-linearities... Btw: this is not my idea, it was pointed out by Bohr more than 100 years ago...
  • Dario Izzo on 05 Mar 13
     
    I guess chaos is what you are referring to. Stuff like the Lorentz attractor. In which case I would say that the point is not to predict one particular brain (in which case you would be right): any initial conditions would be fine as far as any brain gets started :) that is the goal :)
  • Luzi Bergamin on 05 Mar 13
     
    Kurzweil talks about downloading your brain to a computer, so he has a specific brain in mind; Markram talks about identifying neural basis of mental diseases, so he has at least pretty specific situations in mind. Chaos is not the only problem, even a perfectly linear brain (which is not a biological brain) is not predictable, since one cannot determine a complete set of initial conditions of a working (viz. living) brain (after having determined about 10% the brain is dead and the data useless). But the situation is even worse: from all we know a brain will only work with a suitable interaction with its environment. So these boundary conditions one has to determine as well. This is already twice impossible. But the situation is worse again: from all we know, the way the brain interacts with its environment at a neural level depends on his history (how this brain learned). So your boundary conditions (that are impossible to determine) depend on your initial conditions (that are impossible to determine). Thus the situation is rather impossible squared than twice impossible. I'm sure Markram will simulate something, but this will rather be the famous Boltzmann brain than a biological one. Boltzman brains work with any initial conditions and any boundary conditions... and are pretty dead!
  • Dario Izzo on 05 Mar 13
     
    Say one has an accurate model of a brain. It may be the case that the initial and boundary conditions do not matter that much in order for the brain to function an exhibit macro-characteristics useful to make science. Again, if it is not one particular brain you are targeting, but the 'brain' as a general entity this would make sense if one has an accurate model (also to identify the neural basis of mental diseases). But in my opinion, the construction of such a model of the brain is impossible using a reductionist approach (that is taking the naive approach of putting together some artificial neurons and connecting them in a huge net). That is why both Kurzweil and Markram are doomed to fail.
  • johannessimon81 on 06 Mar 13
     
    I think that in principle some kind of artificial brain should be feasible. But making a brain by just throwing together a myriad of neurons is probably as promising as throwing together some copper pipes and a heap of silica and expecting it to make calculations for you. Like in the biological system, I suspect, an artificial brain would have to grow from a small tiny functional unit by adding neurons and complexity slowly and in a way that in a stable way increases the "usefulness"/fitness. Apparently our brain's usefulness has to do with interpreting inputs of our sensors to the world and steering the body making sure that those sensors, the brain and the rest of the body are still alive 10 seconds from now (thereby changing the world -> sensor inputs -> ...). So the artificial brain might need sensors and a body to affect the "world" creating a much larger feedback loop than the brain itself. One might argue that the complexity of the sensor inputs is the reason why the brain needs to be so complex in the first place. I never quite see from these "artificial brain" proposals in how far they are trying to simulate the whole system and not just the brain. Anyone? Or are they trying to simulate the human brain after it has been removed from the body? That might be somewhat easier I guess...
  • Luís F. Simões on 06 Mar 13
     
    Johannes: "I never quite see from these "artificial brain" proposals in how far they are trying to simulate the whole system and not just the brain." In Artificial Life the whole environment+bodies&brains is simulated. You have also the whole embodied cognition movement that basically advocates for just that: no true intelligence until you model the system in its entirety. And from that you then have people building robotic bodies, and getting their "brains" to learn from scratch how to control them, and through the bodies, the environment. Right now, this is obviously closer to the complexity of insect brains, than human ones. (my take on this is: yes, go ahead and build robots, if the intelligence you want to get in the end is to be displayed in interactions with the real physical world...) It's easy to dismiss Markram's Blue Brain for all their clever marketing pronouncements that they're building a human-level consciousness on a computer, but from what I read of the project, they seem to be developing a platfrom onto which any scientist can plug in their model of a detail of a detail of .... of the human brain, and get it to run together with everyone else's models of other tiny parts of the brain. This is not the same as getting the artificial brain to interact with the real world, but it's a big step in enabling scientists to study their own models on more realistic settings, in which the models' outputs get to effect many other systems, and throuh them feed back into its future inputs. So Blue Brain's biggest contribution might be in making model evaluation in neuroscience less wrong, and that doesn't seem like a bad thing. At some point the reductionist approach needs to start moving in the other direction.
  • Luzi Bergamin on 06 Mar 13
     
    @ Dario: absolutely agree, the reductionist approach is the main mistake. My point: if you take the reductionsit approach, then you will face the initial and boundary value problem. If one tries a non-reductionist approach, this problem may be much weaker. But off the record: there exists a non-reductionist theory of the brain, it's called psychology... @ Johannes: also agree, the only way the reductionist approach could eventually be successful is to actually grow the brain. Start with essentially one neuron and grow the whole complexity. But if you want to do this, bring up a kid! A brain without body might be easier? Why do you expect that a brain detached from its complete input/output system actually still works. I'm pretty sure it does not!
  • johannessimon81 on 06 Mar 13
     
    @Luzi: That was exactly my point :-)
Nina Nadine Ridder

Why Explore Mars? : Discovery News - 5 views

news.discovery.com/...why-explore-mars.html

Mars NASA rover

shared by Nina Nadine Ridder on 04 May 10 - Cached
  • Nina Nadine Ridder on 04 May 10
     
    "NASA's proposed budget for 2011 is $19 billion," Brown says. "That's about three weeks of the war in Iraq." + interesting video on new rover design ("tumbleweed" rover)
  • Christos Ampatzis on 05 May 10
     
    that's why I quit ESA - I'll join NATO, more promising career ahead
  • LeopoldS on 05 May 10
     
    I thought you became an EC bureaucrat ...
Luís F. Simões

Seminar: You and Your Research, Dr. Richard W. Hamming (March 7, 1986) - 10 views

www.chris-lott.org/...kaiser.html

science research Methods methodology Nobel Bell Labs Los Alamos

shared by Luís F. Simões on 07 Jan 11 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • This talk centered on Hamming's observations and research on the question "Why do so few scientists make significant contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?" From his more than forty years of experience, thirty of which were at Bell Laboratories, he has made a number of direct observations, asked very pointed questions of scientists about what, how, and why they did things, studied the lives of great scientists and great contributions, and has done introspection and studied theories of creativity. The talk is about what he has learned in terms of the properties of the individual scientists, their abilities, traits, working habits, attitudes, and philosophy.
  • Luís F. Simões on 07 Jan 11
     
    Here's the link related to one of the lunch time discussions. I recommend it to every single one of you. I promise it will be worth your time. If you're lazy, you have a summary here (good stuff also in the references, have a look at them):      Erren TC, Cullen P, Erren M, Bourne PE (2007) Ten Simple Rules for Doing Your Best Research, According to Hamming. PLoS Comput Biol 3(10): e213.
  • ...3 more comments...
  • pacome delva on 11 Jan 11
     
    I'm also pretty sure that the ones who are remembered are not the ones who tried to be... so why all these rules !? I think it's bullshit...
  • Luís F. Simões on 11 Jan 11
     
    The seminar is not a manual on how to achieve fame, but rather an analysis on how others were able to perform very significant work. The two things are in some cases related, but the seminar's focus is on the second.
  • pacome delva on 12 Jan 11
     
    Then read a good book on the life of Copernic, it's the anti-manual of Hamming... he breaks all the rules !
  • LeopoldS on 12 Jan 11
     
    honestly I think that some of these rules actually make sense indeed ... but I am always curious to get a good book recommendation (which book of Copernic would you recommend?) btw Pacome: we are in Paris ... in case you have some time ...
  • pacome delva on 12 Jan 11
     
    I warmly recommend this book, a bit old but fascinating: The sleepwalkers from Arthur Koestler. It shows that progress in science is not straight and do not obey any rule... It is not as rational as most of people seem to believe today. http://www.amazon.com/Sleepwalkers-History-Changing-Universe-Compass/dp/0140192468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294835558&sr=8-1 Otherwise yes I have some time ! my phone number: 0699428926 We live around Denfert-Rochereau and Montparnasse. We could go for a beer this evening ?
LeopoldS

Global Innovation Commons - 4 views

www.globalinnovationcommons.org

innovation open IP

shared by LeopoldS on 31 Oct 09 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • LeopoldS on 31 Oct 09
     
    nice initiative!
  • ...6 more comments...
  • Ma Ru on 31 Oct 09
     
    Any viral licence is a bad license...
  • Francesco Biscani on 31 Oct 09
     
    I'm pretty confident I'm about to open a can of worms, but mind explaining why? :)
  • LeopoldS on 01 Nov 09
     
    I am less worried about the can of worms ... actually eager to open it ... so why????
  • Francesco Biscani on 01 Nov 09
     
    Well, the topic GPL vs other open-source licenses (e.g., BSD, MIT, etc.) is old as the internet and it has provided material for long and glorious flame wars. The executive summary is that the GPL license (the one used by Linux) is a license which imposes some restrictions on the way you are allowed to (re)use the code. Specifically, if you re-use or modify GPL code and re-distribute it, you are required to make it available again under the GPL license. It is called "viral" because once you use a bit of GPL code, you are required to make the whole application GPL - so in this sense GPL code replicates like a virus. On the other side of the spectrum, there are the so-called BSD-like licenses which have more relaxed requirements. Usually, the only obligation they impose is to acknowledge somewhere (e.g., in a README file) that you have used some BSD code and who wrote it (this is called "attribution clause"), but they do not require to re-distribute the whole application under the same license. GPL critics usually claim that the license is not really "free" because it does not allow you to do whatever you want with the code without restrictions. GPL proponents claim that the requirements imposed by the GPL are necessary to safeguard the freedom of the code, in order to avoid being able to re-use GPL code without giving anything back to the community (which the BSD license allow: early versions of Microsoft Windows, for instance, had the networking code basically copy-pasted from BSD-licensed versions of Unix). In my opinion (and this point is often brought up in the debates) the division pro/against GPL mirrors somehow the division between anti/pro anarchism. Anarchists claim that the only way to be really free is the absence of laws, while non-anarchist maintain that the only practical way to be free is to have laws (which by definition limit certain freedoms). So you can see how the topic can quickly become inflammatory :) GPL at the current time is used by aro
  • Francesco Biscani on 01 Nov 09
     
    whoa, the comment got cut off. Anyway, I was just saying that at the present time the GPL license is used by around 65% of open source projects, including the Linux kernel, KDE, Samba, GCC, all the GNU utils, etc. The topic is much deeper than this brief summary, so if you are interested in it, Leopold, we can discuss it at length in another place.
  • LeopoldS on 01 Nov 09
     
    Thanks for the record long comment - am sure that this is longest ever made to an ACT diigo post! On the topic, I would rather lean for the GPL license (which I also advocated for the Marek viewer programme we put on source forge btw), mainly because I don't trust that open source is by nature delivering a better product and thus will prevail but I still would like to succeed, which I am not sure it would if there were mainly BSD like licenses around. ... but clearly, this is an outsider talking :-)
  • LeopoldS on 01 Nov 09
     
    btw: did not know the anarchist penchant of Marek :-)
  • Ma Ru on 01 Nov 09
     
    Well, not going into the discussion about GPL/BSD, the viral license in this particular case in my view simply undermines the "clean and clear" motivations of the initiative authors - why should *they* be credited for using something they have no rights for? And I don't like viral licences because they prevent using things released under this licence to all those people who want to release their stuff under a different licence, thus limiting the usefulness of the stuff released on that licence :) BSD is not a perfect license too, it also had major flaws And I'm not an anarchist, lol
Alexander Wittig

Calling Bullshit - 2 views

callingbullshit.org/index.html

science

shared by Alexander Wittig on 27 Feb 17 - No Cached
LeopoldS and jcunha liked it
  • Alexander Wittig on 27 Feb 17
     
    A college course at University of Washington on "Calling Bullshit". We should invite them to give a lunch lecture at ESA... Our aim in this course is to teach you how to think critically about the data and models that constitute evidence in the social and natural sciences. While bullshit may reach its apogee in the political domain, this is not a course on political bullshit. Instead, we will focus on bullshit that comes clad in the trappings of scholarly discourse. Our learning objectives are straightforward. After taking the course, you should be able to: * Remain vigilant for bullshit contaminating your information diet. * Recognize said bullshit whenever and wherever you encounter it. * Figure out for yourself precisely why a particular bit of bullshit is bullshit. * Provide a statistician or fellow scientist with a technical explanation of why a claim is bullshit. * Provide your crystals-and-homeopathy aunt or casually racist uncle with an accessible and persuasive explanation of why a claim is bullshit. We will be astonished if these skills do not turn out to be among the most useful and most broadly applicable of those that you acquire during the course of your college education.
  • LeopoldS on 01 Mar 17
     
    love it: "Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Higher education rewards bullshit over analytic thought. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. Advertisers wink conspiratorially and invite us to join them in seeing through all the bullshit - and take advantage of our lowered guard to bombard us with bullshit of the second order. The majority of administrative activity, whether in private business or the public sphere, seems to be little more than a sophisticated exercise in the combinatorial reassembly of bullshit. We're sick of it. It's time to do something, and as educators, one constructive thing we know how to do is to teach people. So, the aim of this course is to help students navigate the bullshit-rich modern environment by identifying bullshit, seeing through it, and combating it with effective analysis and argument."
Isabelle Dicaire

Chocolate Consumption, Cognitive Function, and Nobel Laureates - NEJM - 7 views

www.nejm.org/...NEJMon1211064

shared by Isabelle Dicaire on 12 Oct 12 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Isabelle Dicaire on 12 Oct 12
     
    Funny study about the correlation between chocolate consumption and Nobel laureates. Let's all eat chocolate then! :)
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 12 Oct 12
     
    And the winner is... Finally I know why I'm so smart :D. Would like to meet Dr. Messerli (verry Swiss name, by the way) and have some dark Lindt chocolate together!
  • LeopoldS on 14 Oct 12
     
    why Lindt chocolate ...??
  • Luzi Bergamin on 15 Oct 12
     
    "Dr. Messerli reports regular daily chocolate consumption, mostly but not exclusively in the form of Lindt's dark varieties."
Christos Ampatzis

Why We Can't Solve Big Problems | MIT Technology Review - 4 views

www.technologyreview.com/...why-we-cant-solve-big-problems

science space technology

shared by Christos Ampatzis on 21 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Christos Ampatzis on 03 Jan 13
     
    interesting article - what happened to real innovation? "Thiel is caustic: last year he told the New Yorker that he didn't consider the iPhone a technological breakthrough." - Is it?
Marcus Maertens

Pouring Milk All Over Yourself: The Next Extremely Bizarre Trend? - 1 views

www.theatlanticcities.com/...4030

fun

shared by Marcus Maertens on 23 May 13 - No Cached
  • Marcus Maertens on 23 May 13
     
    So... who is in?
  • ...1 more comment...
  • johannessimon81 on 24 May 13
     
    I thought you were supposed to do this with petrol... |:-[ It's by the way cool to see how the milk seems to flow very differently from what one might expect from water: it seems to flow in a few thick streams instead of wetting the whole person... Since the surface tension of milk seems to be lower than that of water (http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=908B02C3825E97162B9D60DA615EAC96.journals?fromPage=online&aid=5146540) this is surprising. It might very well be an effect of the colloidal nature of milk as it is water in which semi-solid fat particles are suspended. So like the cornstarch mix that we have seen in the office there might be some dynamic jamming going on leading to a higher viscosity (at high shear rates). After all they might be doing science...
  • LeopoldS on 28 May 13
     
    nice comment Johannes ... if you add a bit of Kleopatre, e.g. why bathing in milk helped her fool Marcus Antonius, your comment would be fully interdisciplinary :-)
  • johannessimon81 on 28 May 13
     
    you mean it would include History or Psychology? I would understand why Marcus Antonius might get fooled by a bathing beauty - but milk? DONKEY MILK?!? That's just wrong... :-[
Dario Izzo

Space Oddity - YouTube - 4 views

www.youtube.com/watch

shared by Dario Izzo on 27 May 13 - No Cached
  • Dario Izzo on 27 May 13
     
    And thats why we do what we do :) Enjoy!!
  • ...2 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 28 May 13
     
    did you see the comment "This is the greatest thing to come out of ISS." :-)
  • johannessimon81 on 28 May 13
     
    Coming next: Dancing bear jumps through burning hoop! ... on Asteroid!!! :-P But seriously - Chris Hadfield did an amazing job in getting ordinary Earthlings interested in space. His educational videos can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUaartJaon3LV-ZQ4J3bNQj4VNVG2ByIG
  • Luís F. Simões on 28 May 13
     
    and to poison the waters of an amazing performance, here's the relevant(?) copyright law: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/economist-explains-12?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/how_does_copyright_work_in_space_
  • Ma Ru on 28 May 13
     
    And in case you wonder, this is *not* the most expensive music video ever made. Also, launching his guitar to the orbit was still far cheaper than the cost of some guitars sold on earth. Where else can this info come from if not http://what-if.xkcd.com/45/
LeopoldS

North Korea's Satellite Is Out of Control: Why This Is Very Bad News - 2 views

gizmodo.com/...trol-why-this-is-very-bad-news

Fun

shared by LeopoldS on 14 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 14 Dec 12
     
    Nice gif...
jaihobah

New Boson Claim Faces Scrutiny - 0 views

www.quantamagazine.org/new-boson-claim-faces-scrutiny

PHY

shared by jaihobah on 18 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • jaihobah on 18 Aug 16
     
    "The Atomki group has produced three previous papers on their beryllium-8 experiments - conference proceedings in 2008, 2012 and 2015. The first paper claimed evidence of a new boson of mass 12 MeV, and the second described an anomaly corresponding to a 13.45-MeV boson. (The third was a preliminary version of the Physical Review Letters paper.) The first two bumps have disappeared in the latest data, collected with an improved experimental setup. "The new claim now is [a] boson with a mass of 16.7 MeV," Naviliat-Cuncic said. "But they don't say anything about what went wrong in their previous claims and why we should not take those claims seriously." One naturally wonders, he said, "Is this value that they quote now going to change in the next four years?""
jcunha

Why does deep and cheap learning work so well? - 2 views

arxiv.org/1608.08225

technology PHY deep learning

shared by jcunha on 19 Sep 16 - No Cached
Dario Izzo liked it
  • jcunha on 19 Sep 16
     
    Physicists from MIT explain why deep learning is that much successful using physics.
Alexander Wittig

Why a Chip That's Bad at Math Can Help Computers Tackle Harder Problems - 1 views

www.technologyreview.com/...mputers-tackle-harder-problems

technology INF

shared by Alexander Wittig on 18 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Alexander Wittig on 18 Apr 16
     
    DARPA funded the development of a new computer chip that's hardwired to make simple mistakes but can help computers understand the world. Your math teacher lied to you. Sometimes getting your sums wrong is a good thing. So says Joseph Bates, cofounder and CEO of Singular Computing, a company whose computer chips are hardwired to be incapable of performing mathematical calculations correctly.
  • jcunha on 18 Apr 16
     
    The whole concept boils down to approximate computing it seems to me. In a presentation I attended once I prospected if the same kind of philosophy could be used as a radiation hardness design approach, the short conclusion being that surely will depend on the functionality intended.
LeopoldS

Why Are We Drugging Our Soldiers? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-we-drugging-our-soldiers.html

medical neuro BIO

shared by LeopoldS on 22 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 22 Apr 12
     
    Very interesting article on use of neuro drugs in military ...
Luís F. Simões

Doctor... we have this pet physicist and... - 2 views

www.smbc-comics.com/index.php

PHY fun

shared by Luís F. Simões on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Luís F. Simões on 21 Mar 12
     
    :D  so that's why the ACT recycles physicists every 2 years !!
santecarloni

Red Wine, Tartaric Acid And The Secret Of Superconductivity  - Technology Review - 2 views

www.technologyreview.com/...27664

technology science

shared by santecarloni on 22 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • santecarloni on 22 Mar 12
     
    Last year, physicists discovered that red wine can turn certain materials into superconductors. Now they've found that Beaujolais works best and think they know why -- I soo knew it !!!
LeopoldS

Cold storage - an Arctic solution to the data storage cooling problem | In-depth | The ... - 0 views

www.theengineer.co.uk/...1011201.article

IT

shared by LeopoldS on 19 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 19 Dec 11
     
    from Andrés (don't ask my why he is not putting it directly on diigo ....) quite an old issue, though still of high actuality ... and a nice summary in my view ...
santecarloni

Why Don't We Have Abundant Solar Power? Blame Financing, and Industry, not Science | Si... - 3 views

singularityhub.com/...ncing-and-industry-not-science

solar power technology science

shared by santecarloni on 23 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 28 Jan 12
     
    The linked queen Mary report is the actual interesting part of this post ...
santecarloni

Has 'new physics' been found at CERN? - physicsworld.com - 1 views

physicsworld.com/...47844

LHC Phy science

shared by santecarloni on 18 Nov 11 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • santecarloni on 18 Nov 11
     
    Physicists working on the LHCb experiment at the CERN particle-physics lab have released the best evidence yet for direct charge-parity (CP) violation in charm mesons....While more data must be analysed to confirm the result, the work could point to new physics beyond the Standard Model and help physicists understand why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.
  • LeopoldS on 22 Nov 11
     
    lot of new physics this year ...
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