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LetThereBeNick

27 karma · joined February 1, 2020

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LetThereBeNick··on Coronavirus is most deadly if you are older and male – new data reveal the risks
>I’m so sick of people on either “side” faking data to prove their presuppositions on this.

I don’t think this research is carried out with ulterior motives. Scientists make mistakes, and are prone to biases whenever they have a hypothesis. The progression of repeated studies is the final arbiter of truth. Saying that long-term heart abnormalities would be faked to push an agenda is suggesting the existence of a conspiracy. Beyond the usual “publish or perish” drive, nobody stands to benefit from reporting results either way.

LetThereBeNick··on Japan facing credit card number shortage
My Citi card comes with a desktop app that can generate new numbers for online payments all the time. Beyond one-time use, I can generate a number that will work only with ‘x’ company for ‘x’ number of months. When I saw that, I assumed Citi+MasterCard must have at least 10,000s of times more numbers than customers
LetThereBeNick··on Cluster of 295 Chrome extensions caught hijacking Google and Bing search results
Filtering the noise:

    "ScreenShot & Screen Capture Elite", 
    “Weather forecast for Chrome™", 
    "GTA 5 Grand Theft Auto", 
    "Sports Cars",
    "Suga", 
    "Avengers Endgame", 
    "Bts Suga", 
    “Video Downloader and MP3 converter Pro", 
    "Adblocker for YouTube - YouTube AdBlocker”, 
    "Auto Replay for YouTube", 
    "Ad-block for YouTube - Youtube Ad-blocker Pro", 
    "Cars”, 
    “DBS and Dragon Ball Super"
LetThereBeNick··on Five Buck Fatigue
“contentment content,” i.e. stuff put online just because it makes the creator happy
LetThereBeNick··on One company's plan to build a search engine Google can't beat
A common human fallacy is to pick a single misstep and over-generalize it into a larger pattern of... oh God, I’m doing it now, aren’t I?
LetThereBeNick··on Best Data Science Books According to the Experts
I agree. The only incentive to write neat code is to save yourself the pain and suffering of having to go back through it yourself to fix or add things. I am currently doing data analysis in MATLAB for my PhD, and I know nobody will ever use my code besides me.

I’d like to learn to do my due diligence, but without someone training me, it just takes so much time to learn things like git. I’d rather be recording more data and submitting my paper so I can get the hell out of here

LetThereBeNick··on Insect-worn microcamera streams video to phone 120 meters away
“Euthanize” implies an often tough decision to end a condition of prolonged suffering that has little hope for improvement. “Kill” does not imply any such decision
LetThereBeNick··on DuckDuckGo's privacy abuses – current, historic, and by proxy
Does “uses the Bing API” mean that the search results are all fetched from Bing? As in DDG doesn’t have it’s own search algorithm? I’m surprised
LetThereBeNick··on Night owls have more grey matter in their brains than early birds
> The ASD and ADHD diagnostic criteria are still too broad and imprecise.

One analogy has stuck with me. Defining mental disorders is like drawing up the constellations. The individual behavioral traits are the stars, and the constellation’s boundaries are as much a function of the culture who defined them as they are a function of how clustered these stars/traits really are.

LetThereBeNick··on An understanding of AI’s limitations is starting to sink in
With that attitude I would like to pledge my undying allegiance to you
LetThereBeNick··on An understanding of AI’s limitations is starting to sink in
Neuromorphic chips could lower the computational costs and make continuous retraining feasible
LetThereBeNick··on An understanding of AI’s limitations is starting to sink in
It sounds like you are ready to program an NLP to generate these articles
LetThereBeNick··on Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial
Unlike in the past, it’s impossible to read every paper in one’s field. Since tools like PubMed, ISI, and Scopus all use a proprietary algorithm to rank search results, I appreciate any alternative channels for bringing relevant papers to my attention.

It’s also perfectly justified to search for papers solely based on how influential they’ve been in your field. Papers which trend on Twitter (perhaps long-awaited results) are already having an impact on labs, probably being discussed in journal club and shaping the trajectory of the field.

LetThereBeNick··on Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?
I’ve been happy with the “ReviewMeta” chrome extension, which evaluates the product reviews on any amazon site, and displays a score indicating how likely it is the ratings have been manipulated. It shows examples of flagged reviews which can be pretty funny. Chrome lets you limit extension permissions by domain, so I don’t worry about it snooping on the rest of my browsing.

But you’re right about brands. When it comes to certain products like phone chargers, the manipulation is so rampant I stick with the same supplier.

LetThereBeNick··on Windows 10 to offer Paint and WordPad as optional features
“Ctrl+Alt+P” does it for me. Right click a paint shortcut > Properties > Shortcut > type “P” :)