Light Posting Notice

Admin note: Due to external obligations, posting may be lighter than usual this week.

Freezing Water

"The Enduring Mystery of How Water Freezes"

AI And Democracy

Bruce Schneier: "How AI will change democracy"

Pretending To Be AI

21st century headline: "Photographer Disqualified From AI Image Contest After Winning With Real Photo"

Industry Secrets Revealed

Reddit: "What is an industry secret that you know?"

Definitely agree about physicians using Google much more than patients realize.

Bad Business Buzzwords

"The 24 Worst Business Buzzwords of 2024"

Next-Gen Antibiotics

"Next-gen antibiotic kills harmful bacteria, spares healthy gut microbes". (Via H.R.)

Monitoring Remote Workers

Ars Technica: "'Simulation of keyboard activity' leads to firing of Wells Fargo employees".

A modern "cat-and-mouse" tech game, where remote employees use mouse-movement simulators to pretend they are working and supervisors try to identify employee fraud.

Apple Watch For Veterinary Use

Veterinarian Dr. Chloe Buiting explains: "The Apple Watch can measure a lions heart rate if you strap it to the tongue". (Via H.R.)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dr Chloe Buiting | Wildlife Vet (@jungle_doctor)

Lowe On Bad Science

Derek Lowe: "Keeping Up With Fakery"

Predicting Dementia

"New test promises to predict dementia nine years before diagnosis"

Link to academic article in Nature Mental Health: "Early detection of dementia with default-mode network effective connectivity".

Frozen Embryos

"How Can You Part With the Embryo That Could Have Been Your Child?"

Deciding what to do with the leftovers can be surprisingly emotional and morally thorny; even those who are not religious or who support reproductive autonomy might still feel a sense of responsibility for their embryos. 

So some patients are turning to a lesser-known alternative: a method called "compassionate transfer." The procedure is essentially an elaborate form of medical make-believe, in which clinicians place a spare embryo in a patient's body at a time in her menstrual cycle when she is unlikely to get pregnant. It mimics the steps of a traditional embryo transfer, but here, it's designed to fail; the embryo will naturally flush out.

Hiding Likes On Twitter/X

"X is about to start hiding all likes"

AI Antibiotic Generation

"AI used to predict potential new antibiotics in groundbreaking study"

Bronze Age Armor Reviewed

"Have Wine for Breakfast, Put On a 51-Pound Suit and Get to the Battlefield"

Robot Cube Record

"Watch a 6-axis motor solve a Rubik's Cube in less than a third of a second". (Via H.R.)

Good Court Decision In Libel Case

If you falsely accuse someone of murder based only on "tarot readings" and "psychic intuition", you can be held liable for libel. A good court decision.

Updated Drake Equation

"Updated Formula on Alien Intelligence Suggests We Really Are Alone in the Galaxy"

Planetary scientists Robert Stern from the University of Texas at Dallas and Taras Gerya from ETH-Zurich, the two co-authors on the study, suggest that the presence of both continents and oceans, along with long-term plate tectonics, is critical for the emergence of advanced civilizations. They consequently propose the addition of two factors into the equation: the fraction of habitable planets with significant continents and oceans and the fraction of those planets with plate tectonics operating for at least 500 million years. This adjustment, however, significantly reduces the value of N in the Drake Equation.

(Via Marginal Revolution.)

AI Weather Forecasting

"No physics? No problem. AI weather forecasting is already making huge strides." (Via H.R.)

Welcome To The Adult World

Today's adult life lesson.

My 10 year old used to be happy-go-lucky and carefree until yesterday when my parents gave him $$$. I have never seen anyone more racked with anxiety about what he should spend his money on and realizing that if he buys one thing he wants the he won’t be able to afford another.

— Adele Scalia (@AdeleScalia) June 5, 2024

Trusting AI In Medicine

"Technology and the Future of Healthcare". One eye-opening statistic:

64% of respondents said they would trust a diagnosis made by AI over a human doctor. This percentage grows even more with Gen Z, with four out of five in this generation stating they’d trust AI over a physician. This result indicates a significant shift in public perception and trust toward technology.

(Gen Z is defined as born between 1997-2012.)

Running Math

Running math.

 

Shire Economics

"The Moral Economy of the Shire"

Diverging Diamond Interchanges

"When driving on the wrong side of the road is the right way to speed up traffic"

AI Headphones

"AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd, by looking at them just once". (Via J.Z.)

Engineers have developed an artificial intelligence system that lets someone wearing headphones look at a person speaking for three to five seconds to 'enroll' them. The system then plays just the enrolled speaker's voice in real time, even as the pair move around in noisy environments.

Asteroid Detection Update

"Outdoing the dinosaurs: What we can do if we spot a threatening asteroid"

Selling Stocks

"When to sell your stocks: Poker provides investors with helpful guidance"