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edwinksl

941 karma · joined July 19, 2011

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/edwinksl; my proof: https://keybase.io/edwinksl/sigs/OTfZZ1dOsKwkHZuS6-jvTsTu0GwZiTzpMRx_NL27K1U ]
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edwinksl··on Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Discovery, and Product Innovation [pdf]
This paper studies the impact of artificial intelligence on innovation, exploiting the randomized introduction of a new materials discovery technology to 1,018 scientists in the R&D lab of a large U.S. firm. AI-assisted researchers discover 44% more materials, resulting in a 39% increase in patent filings and a 17% rise in downstream product innovation. These compounds possess more novel chemical structures and lead to more radical inventions. However, the technology has strikingly disparate effects across the productivity distribution: while the bottom third of scientists see little benefit, the output of top researchers nearly doubles. Investigating the mechanisms behind these results, I show that AI automates 57% of "idea-generation" tasks, reallocating researchers to the new task of evaluating model-produced candidate materials. Top scientists leverage their domain knowledge to prioritize promising AI suggestions, while others waste significant resources testing false positives. Together, these findings demonstrate the potential of AI-augmented research and highlight the complementarity between algorithms and expertise in the innovative process. Survey evidence reveals that these gains come at a cost, however, as 82% of scientists report reduced satisfaction with their work due to decreased creativity and skill underutilization.
edwinksl··on Delta: A syntax-highlighting pager for Git, diff, grep, and blame output
Been using delta for diffs for a while, highly recommend it!
edwinksl··on [dead]
In the bestselling tradition of Why Nations Fail and The Revenge of Geography, an award-winning journalist uses ten maps of crucial regions to explain the geo-political strategies of the world powers.

All leaders of nations are constrained by geography. Their choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas, and concrete. To understand world events, news organizations and other authorities often focus on people, ideas, and political movements, but without geography, we never have the full picture. Now, in the relevant and timely Prisoners of Geography, seasoned journalist Tim Marshall examines Russia, China, the USA, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Japan and Korea, and Greenland and the Arctic—their weather, seas, mountains, rivers, deserts, and borders—to provide a context often missing from our political reportage: how the physical characteristics of these countries affect their strengths and vulnerabilities and the decisions made by their leaders.

In ten, up-to-date maps of each region, Marshall explains in clear and engaging prose the complex geo-political strategies of these key parts of the globe. What does it mean that Russia must have a navy, but also has frozen ports six months a year? How does this affect Putin’s treatment of Ukraine? How is China’s future constrained by its geography? Why will Europe never be united? Why will America never be invaded? Shining a light on the unavoidable physical realities that shape all of our aspirations and endeavors, Prisoners of Geography is the critical guide to one of the major (and most often overlooked) determining factors in world history.

edwinksl··on OpenWorm – A computational model of C. elegans worm
Creepy stuff with creepy implications, pretty fun show!
edwinksl··on Artificial intelligence nails predictions of earthquake aftershocks
Link to actual paper (paywalled): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0438-y
edwinksl··on YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
I am guessing they are referring to the fbcubaf (ROT13).
edwinksl··on YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
Yeah I was super hyped when I saw that announcement. I am excited to see how they portray some of the things in the second and third books (you will know what I mean when you read them) that will require some truly special effects.
edwinksl··on YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
I basically read the whole trilogy at one go. The first book in particular is a page-turner.
edwinksl··on Sexual harassment is rife in the sciences, finds landmark US study
Thanks for finding a direct link. Maybe you can post it as a top-level comment so others can more easily see it.
edwinksl··on Sexual harassment is rife in the sciences, finds landmark US study
Looks like you can download for free as a "guest" but you need to give them an email address (maybe get a throwaway).
edwinksl··on A Classical Math Problem Gets Pulled into the Modern World
Nice summary, thanks!
edwinksl··on NASA is bringing cryosleep chambers out of fiction
Great trilogy that explores, among many things, hibernation. Highly recommend too.
edwinksl··on The demise of r/science AMAs on Reddit
OP here. I took the title verbatim from the article to avoid editorializing. I am not sure where HN stands regarding changing the post title to something that is significantly different from the article title.
edwinksl··on The demise of r/science AMAs on Reddit
It appears a lot of people are not aware of this important function of moderation unless they see it for themselves, perhaps by doing some moderation. It is not surprising at all to people who have done some moderation that relying on just upvotes and downvotes does not surface good content.
edwinksl··on Windows 1803 Update Turns on SSH
Agree that the title is misleading.
edwinksl··on Why I've lost faith in p values
Minor point, but you are missing p(H_0)*p(data|H_0) in the denominator in bullet point 2.
edwinksl··on Show HN: Makesite – A static site generator in 125 lines of Python
Agree, Pelican is easy to use and configure using Python.
edwinksl··on All HTTP-based services unresponsive
Hmm, I just pushed some commits over SSH. Seems to work fine on my end so far.
edwinksl··on All HTTP-based services unresponsive
Looks like access over SSH is still working. Not the worst.
edwinksl··on ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf
Are you all looking into allowing the use of the editor offline and then syncing the changes when the user gets online?
edwinksl··on Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?
Maybe containers like Docker are useful for your use case?
edwinksl··on Benchmarking TensorFlow on Cloud CPUs: Cheaper Deep Learning Than Cloud GPUs
Would hyperthreading be helpful or harmful?
edwinksl··on Goodbye Mozilla
Hug of death from HN.
edwinksl··on Intel Skylake/Kaby Lake processors: broken hyper-threading
Launchpad bug report for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/intel-microcode/+b...
edwinksl··on Algorithm generates practical paper-folding patterns to produce any 3D structure
Thanks for finding it!
edwinksl··on Show HN: Lax – Write Python to output LaTeX
Related: https://github.com/JelteF/PyLaTeX, which is a "Python library for creating LaTeX files".
edwinksl··on Group fights ‘anti-science’ rhetoric by getting scientists to run for office
Apologies for the slight editing of the title because of character limit. Original title is "This group wants to fight ‘anti-science’ rhetoric by getting scientists to run for office".
edwinksl··on Earth Sets a Temperature Record for the Third Straight Year
Somewhat dated (2015) but useful visualization for factors driving climate change and global warming: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wo...
edwinksl··on Reddit CEO admits to altering user comments that were critical of him
There is no way to defend what he did though, even if r/The_Donald is a cesspool.
edwinksl··on All European scientific publicly funded articles to be freely accessible by 2020
Except it hasn't been like that for decades.
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