marcelsalathe

I see your point, but something still seems different. Yes we bred plants and animals, but we did not create them. Yes we did build steam engines before understanding thermodynamics but we still understood what they did (heat, pressure, movement, etc.)

Fun fact: we have no clue how most drugs works. Or, more precisely, we know a few aspects, but are only scratching the surface. We're even still discovering news things about Aspirin, one of the oldest drugs: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08626-7

I’ve only skimmed the paper - a long and dense read - but it’s already clear it’ll become a classic. What’s fascinating is that engineering is transforming into a science, trying to understand precisely how its own creations work

This shift is more profound than many realize. Engineering traditionally applied our understanding of the physical world, mathematics, and logic to build predictable things. But now, especially in fields like AI, we’ve built systems so complex we no longer fully understand them. We must now use scientific methods - originally designed to understand nature - to comprehend our own engineered creations. Mindblowing.

A very nice article. But the google search and LLM energy estimates are outdated. More recent work put both at 10x less.

https://engineeringprompts.substack.com/p/does-chatgpt-use-1...

Agreed. But just say that. No need to pretend taking responsibility, which is defined as facing consequences when things go bad.

“As CEO, I’m truly sorry to those impacted. But I strongly believe that this change is what is needed now to make sure Dropbox can thrive in the future.”

I completely agree. LLMs are incredibly useful for improving the flow and structure of an argument, not just for non-native speakers, but even for native English speakers.

Making texts more accessible through clear language and well-structured arguments is a valuable service to the reader, and I applaud anyone who leverages LLMs to achieve that. I do the same myself.

I'm a bit puzzled why one would hold a press conference for a trial that hasn't happened yet - especially as this seems to be a phase 1 trial to test safety in humans.

The development of medical interventions typically goes through a number of stages.

The earliest stage is called the pre-clinical phase, where a candidate intervention is tested outside of humans, either in vitro or in animals. The images of the mouse and ferret teeth suggest this has been done.

Phase 1 is when the intervention is first tested in humans, typically in small groups of usually dozens of participants. The aim here is not to evaluate efficacy - phase 1 studies are often too small for that - but to assess tolerability and safety, and to find the optimal dosing with respect to side effects.

If an intervention appears safe in certain doses, it can then be evaluated for initial efficacy and continued safety in a phase 2 trial, which is larger (usually hundreds of participants). Think of it as a kind of pilot trial to see if the intervention has the desired beneficial effects without serious negative side effects, and to identify the dose with the best benefit/risk ratio. About half of the studies get past this stage.

Those that do can enter phase 3, which is the full efficacy and safety assessment of the intervention. Again, about half of the phase 3 trials eventually make it to market. Of course, the intervention first needs to go to the health authorities for regulatory approval before it can be offered on the market.

For an interesting study on costs during these phases, see e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32125404/

I'm obviously very excited about medical progress but if we had a press conference for every planned phase 1 trial we wouldn't be doing much else ;-)

That's correct. DP3T documents and code here: https://github.com/DP-3T/

Direct link to the challenge: https://www.aicrowd.com/challenges/neurips-2019-minerl-compe...

At EPFL we're trying a model with the Extension School that is somewhere between 2 and 3. We don't quite do flying cars (yet) but we're developing more and more advanced material - and the big plus being that learners in the programs get a diploma (e.g. https://exts.epfl.ch/courses-programs/applied-data-science-m...).

I do think that universities should invest more heavily in this mix, obviously without losing their strong standing in 1.

Direct link to paper (OA): http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour...

Geneva has made its e-voting software public: https://republique-et-canton-de-geneve.github.io/chvote-1-0/...

I'd much prefer electronic to paper. Last year I voted on 24 initiatives, and that is just the federal level. It also does not include elections.

The non-profit platform https://www.crowdAI.org currently hosts a NIPS 2017 challenge as well as a genetic challenge, and constantly adds new challenges. Btw, it's completely open source, and keen on having contributors to help build the open challenge platform the community wants the most.

I see comments like this all the time, and while what you say is correct, I think committees increasingly appreciate this sort of thing - frankly they have to or they will miss out on some of the most innovative people. There is plenty of "standard" already (nothing wrong with that of course).

With new things, what you need is at least one person on the committee to fight and convince the others why this new thing is awesome. As someone who is now on some of these committees, I would put all my weight behind something like this should I encounter it (assuming of course it has the relevant quality).

The platform itself is funded by institutional research funding we get at EPFL. For some of the monetary prizes, these typically come from the corresponding projects.

https://www.crowdAI.org is an open source alternative. Disclaimer, my research group at EPFL started the platform, because we think there should be a community-based open source version that is open to anyone. Always looking for contributors!

Edit (1): Github https://github.com/crowdAI/crowdai Edit (2): We're currently re-designing the whole site to look & feel better.

EPFL Extension School | Geneva & Lausanne, Switzerland | ONSITE | Full Stack Web Developer

The EPFL Extension School in Lausanne, Switzerland, is looking for a Senior Web App developer to build our online learning platform. If building Udacity meets EdX while having a great work-life balance in one of the most beautiful parts of the world appeals to you, please see more at https://jobs.lever.co/epfl.ch/0f3b2c33-14fc-47e1-bdf3-dada6c...

Great points Denny. Btw, have you thought about soliciting gun research on experiment.com?

Appreciate your thoughts. A few comments:

- I have thought about destroying / recycling the car. I am not sure this would be the most meaningful action. At this point, I simply want to go to the seller and return a product that is not as advertised.

- I certainly agree that there are some intermediary steps that need to be taken with the existing pipeline. I simply wanted to express that the future has to be about batteries & software, and radically so given the current scandal.

- Adding a TLDR to the article now.

Sharing: "use, occupy, or enjoy (something) jointly with another or others." Economy: "offering value for money"

There are many very interesting discussions to be had about the Sharing Economy [1]. But the name isn't one of them.

[1] https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/networks-and-the-nature-o...

Thanks for the clarification. This is a discussion worth having. As a consumer, I'm all in favor of Uber et al. But I'm worried about the implications of a society where "sell your services by the minute" becomes increasingly frequent.

I very much enjoyed reading this (longish) piece by Nick Hanauer and David Rolf, "Shared security, shared growth":

http://www.democracyjournal.org/37/shared-security-shared-gr...

I just recently published a book called "Nature, in Code" [https://leanpub.com/natureincode] that is largely about Evolution - explained by implementing key concepts in JavaScript. It is also a beginner's book for people to learn programming.

From a personal perspective, I've always understood a concept much better once I implemented it in code. Because of that, I started teaching population genetics primarily as a computer lab class. This book is an attempt to be more broad (in terms of subject, and reach).

Fantastic, Michael. I can't overstate how much the book has affected my professional career. I'm recommending it to anyone who wants to get started with web dev. Thank you!

Your 80% number is misleading. There is no good data on that. Flu has long been thought to be mainly transmitted through droplets, which fall to the ground quickly, rather than being dispensed in the air, being able to travel large distances (which would be truly airborne). If anything, the latest data suggest that we have actually underestimated the airborne route (relative to the droplet route).

Yes, a pandemic can occur even if the pathogen is not transmitted through there air - see HIV/AIDS.

Airborne and droplet spread make for fast spreading and hard to control epidemics. If something spreads through bodily fluids only, it's easier to do contact tracing and put the right measures in place. I think that's what people want to highlight if they say that Ebola is not airborne.

This is really cool. Have you thought about ways to scale this and make it available to others (not just students, but tutors / TAs as well)?

There was a priceonomics piece recently about Founders with kids: http://priceonomics.com/founders-with-kids/

It's more a question of whether your life fits to everything that comes with being a startup founder, rather than YC itself.

That's not a vector - a vector is another species

It's hard to comment on the specific likelihood, but a few general observations:

1. Ebola transmits via bodily fluids (blood, mucus). Plus, Ebola does not establish a chronic infection in a host. Pathogens with those characteristics usually don't spread that fast / wide.

2. Past observations support 1) - transmission in airplanes has never been observed AFAIK.

3. Infected people can transmit the virus while having a fever, and through later stages of disease. This means you can identify potentially contagious people quickly, which helps control efforts.

4. Having said that, there are lots of things we don't know about Ebola, and it's always best to plan for the worst.

The diseases that keep me up at night are those that spread via airborne or vector transmission & have lots of asymptomatic carriers. Ebola has neither of those. Nevertheless, as far as Ebola outbreaks go, this one is the worst yet and correspondingly worrying.

Founders with kids: http://priceonomics.com/founders-with-kids/

Course and moocdemic lead here. I've designed the course with you in mind (to be frank, with me in mind, but I'm exactly like you ;-). Too many MOOCs out there in my opinion that just transfer offline education to online.