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  • That is true, but software is a much newer field overall than academia -- journals like Nature are over 100 years old, and the way prestige of journals works in academia and publishing hasn't changed significantly since the 50s. Academic publishing has a lot more momentum to change than tech, and academics have very little power to do so on an institutional level, it kinda has to come from administrators, who don't understand the problem or care.

  • Carbon free steel is on its way - Volts with David Roberts
  • At least according to Wikipedia, small amounts of carbon (< 2.14%) in the final alloy are an important component in controlling the ductility, which agrees with what I thought I remembered from materials classes (although I am not a materials scientist). Obviously not using the Bessemer process drastically reduces the amount of carbon necessary, but trace carbon is important.

  • ✨️ Finish him. ✨️
  • tl;dr: science is in the eye of the beholder, you can only know if it's science if the methods are transparent and you have access to data, as well as critiques from unbiased parties.

    This thread seems to have formed two sides:

    1. unless it's published, peer reviewed and replicated it's not science, and
    2. LeCun is being elitist, science doesn't have to be published. This point of view often is accompanied by something about academic publishing being inaccessible or about corporate/private/closed science still being science.

    I would say that "closed"/unpublished science may be science, but since peer review and replication of results are the only way we can tell if something is legitimate science, the problem is that we simply can't know until a third party (or preferably, many third parties) have reviewed it.

    There are a lot of forms that review can take. The most thorough is to release it to the world and let anyone read and review it, and so it and the opinions of others with expertise in the subject are also public. Anyone can read both the publications and response, do their own criticism, and know whether it is science.

    If "closed" science has been heavily reviewed and critiqued internally, by as unbiased a party as possible, then whoever has access to the work and critique can know it's science, but the scientific community and the general public will never be able to be sure.

    The points folks have made about individuals working in secret making progress actually support this; I'll use Oppenheimer as an example.

    In the 40s, no one outside the Manhattan project knew how nuclear bombs were made. Sure, they exploded, but no one outside that small group knew if the reasoning behind why they exploded was correct.

    Now, through released records, we know what the supporting theory was, and how it was tested. We also know that subsequent work based on that theory (H-bomb development, etc.) and replication (countries other than the US figuring out how to make nukes, in some cases without access to US documents on how it was originally done) was successful and supported the original explanations of why it worked. So now we all know that it was science.

  • Soup
  • Cryoprotectants also do this pretty efficiently -- they prevent crystallization, which leads to "vitreous" ice, which has more or less the same structure as liquid water and so doesn't expand much. I think they do use that when freezing people, but the problem is that even if you fill the blood vessels with pure ethylene glycol, it diffuses very slowly, and it takes hours to get into cells which are far from large blood vessels. They dont diffuse the cryoprotectant in that thoroughly, though, because that'd take so long the body would have started to decay too much.

    Edit: oops, the article talks about vitrifying agents. They make it sound like they're not effective, but as I said above, they're very effective if you can get them in every nook and cranny of every cell, which is a losing battle.

  • What are some good Overleaf (Latex) alternatives?
  • Jabref is so great, but do read the documentation when you start. Its easy to use without reading any of it, but there's so much functionality beyond the basics that I just found out recently, and makes it so much easier to use!

  • Trying to find the title of a book I read once...

    OK, y'all. I'm trying to find a book I read many moons ago. I feel like it was by Diana Wynne Jones, but it's not in her bibliography. Massive spoilers incoming, obviously, but I can't remember what the spoilers are for.

    ---

    The book starts on an island nation in the south of the world, with a rigid code of conduct which one of the main characters is being disciplined for breaking. The main characters leave on a quest to the oppressive and powerful kingdom in the north, and its revealed that one of the other main characters is the crown prince of the evil kingdom in the north, and can use their magic. If I recall correctly, his use of that magic makes dark veins stand out under his skin, and he has to fight against it controlling him. There's some kind of time limit, I think if he uses the magic too much, it'll take him over and he'll become the new ruler.

    To gain some advantage over the evil kingdom, they visit an abandoned city, break into some kind of temple, and have an encounter with some kind of deity, which might then take over one of the characters?

    Later in the story they make it to the evil palace, and there's a plotline about multiple children of the evil king trying to kill this guy, so they can inherit the throne. I think the evil palace is embedded in a mountain somehow.

    Anyone who can set me on the right track, it'd be much appreciated!

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    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)IR
    IrritableOcelot @beehaw.org
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