June 2017 Media Thread

https://www.gwern.net/newsletter/2017/05

Why is there no way to downvote, report or otherwise punish this comment?

6 things to keep in mind if you read cancer-related news in the next few days

https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2017/06/6-things-keep-mind-read-cancer-related-news-next-days/

"These are mostly unpublished, preliminary results. Abstracts that are released at a major medical conference are snippets of studies that usually have not been peer-reviewed nor published in medical journals. They should be approached with great caution. Without reading through the full details of a study, it’s impossible to know important limitations, such as a high drop-out rate among the treatment group. We also can’t see the list of adverse events. Many studies presented as meeting abstracts may never even get published in a journal."

and tips for analyzing studies

https://www.healthnewsreview.org/toolkit/tips-for-understanding-studies/

This is why infrastructure is so expensive...

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/6/4/this-is-why-infrastructure-is-so-expensive

edit: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-31/the-u-s-has-forgotten-how-to-do-infrastructure

and just in,

Bob Dylan - Nobel Lecture

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2016/dylan-lecture.html

How to Call B.S. on Big Data: A Practical Guide (bias acknowledge)

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-to-call-bullshit-on-big-data-a-practical-guide?intcid=mod-latest

google working on self improving AI

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607894/why-googles-ceo-is-excited-about-automating-artificial-intelligence/

ouch

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/psychoanalyzing-donald-trump

Anathem. Phenomenal little sci-fi book about theoreticians living in seclusion until called out into the world to deal with a large external threat

4D Toys: a box of four-dimensional toys

http://marctenbosch.com/news/2017/06/4d-toys-a-box-of-four-dimensional-toys/

utube : 4dtoys.com.

"It evolved into a 4D physics-based toy box that you can get right now, for iOS (Multitouch & Accelerometer) and Vive (VR).

Basically it turns out the rules of how objects bounce, slide, fall, spin and roll around can be generalized to any number of dimensions, and this toy lets you experience what that would look like. "

My guided read-through of the web serial Worm continues. Up through Arc 11 this week.

Because bragging on Less Wrong is encouraged, I'm going to quote a review of our podcast on iTunes and let that speak for me:

Matt and Scott are a tag team of in depth speculation, writing savvy, and passion that is hard to beat. Hugely interactive with their audience and also just perfectly on point with their examinations of Worm. If you've ever wanted to read Worm, but were put off for whatever reason, or have already read Worm and want to get some more amazing content, listen to these guys. Amazing.

Origami anything

New algorithm generates practical paper-folding patterns to produce any 3-D structure.

http://news.mit.edu/2017/algorithm-origami-patterns-any-3-D-structure-0622

http://origami.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~tachi/software/

Measuring the Progress of AI Research

This pilot project collects problems and metrics/datasets from the AI research literature, and tracks progress on them.

https://www.eff.org/ai/metrics

"What we have thus far is an experiment, and we’d like to know: Is this information useful to the machine learning community? What important problems, datasets, and results are we missing?"

Quantum Mechanics without the maths or philosophy (visualizations)

http://www.articlesbyaphysicist.com/quantummechanics1.html

"I've tried to present most of an undergraduate physics course in quantum mechanics using just animations instead of equations. There will undoubtably be parts that don't make sense, and there is a lot of detail that you can't get without the maths. But hopefully this introduction will give more understanding of what quantum mechanics actually is and says than the hundreds of articles that mainly enumerate "weirdnesses" that quantum mechanics has. I think understanding the Schrödinger equation is much closer to understanding quantum mechanics than understanding that quantum mechanics entails quantum tunneling, things popping into existence, wave-particle duality, or the inevitable (and philosophically important) multiple universes interpretations."

augmented reality QR codes..

https://zap.works/education/

AR quite literally brings lessons and learning to life fostering collaboration, interaction, engagement and understanding of a given topic. And let’s face it if you say, ‘Now please get your tablet or smartphone out and scan page 5’ to a class of kids you’ve got their attention.

By connecting the physical world of textbooks, lessons plans, and presentations with digital devices you and your students can add a new type of visual aid, splash of colour and excitement to any subject. Here are just a few ways ZapWorks can be used by schools

VISUALISING PROBLEMS
IMPROVING SKILLS
MAXIMISING SPACE
IMPROVING COMPUTING

1 VISUALISING PROBLEMS

Bring handouts and presentations to life with video, photos, audio etc. and give students a new way to learn and visualize ideas.

2 IMPROVING SKILLS

Get kids to create their own AR experiences as an immersive and collaborative way to explore a given topic.

3 MAXIMIZING SPACE

Use zapcodes on posters, artwork, newsletters and school magazines to showcase more of the work created by pupils than the wall space or pages will allow!

4 IMPROVING COMPUTING

In computing classes as a fun and creative way for children to learn about designing, file sharing, and use of different media. WHY ZAPCODES FOR EDUCATION?

INTERACTIVE LEARNING

As more and more schools have access to tablets and PCs ZapWorks offers an affordable, robust and easy to use system for teachers and students to explore new interactive learning techniques.

ZAP-ALYTICS

Zapcodes offer a simple way to update content over time and view analytics via our data dashboard.

EASE OF USE

We’ve conducted lessons with primary school children as young as eight and nine and found their appetite for learning, ease of use and output from ZapWorks nothing short of inspirational.