bd

About that John Hawks's evolutionary argument - "if humans with smaller brains could manage, lesser energy requirements would select for this":

I wonder if maybe having larger brains didn't bring extra survival advantages thanks to having available "spare capacity".

From modern day sports we know how bad head injuries can be (boxing, American football, soccer). If in our evolutionary history a chance of brain damage was common, larger brains could be difference between "brain damaged but still functional" and "brain damaged and dead".

Interesting side-effect could then also be availability of this extra capacity for other functionality in individuals which managed to escape brain damage.

When taking baby Aspirin and having anticipated bleeding (e.g. planned surgery or dental work), hematologist's advice was to start preparing about two weeks in advance: take pill every other day for about a week, then stop for another week.

This paper tells The American College of Chest Physicians' recommendation is stopping 7-10 days in advance, in the clinical study they measured 96 hours (4 days) for "normalizetion of platelet reactivity":

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4008770/

But please speak with your own doctor(s), your medical situation may differ.

His brother - Josef Čapek - was also a writer (and a painter):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Čapek

He wrote a wonderful illustrated children's book about cat and dog living together:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19431013-all-about-doggi...

https://web2.mlp.cz/koweb/00/04/37/75/99/povidani_o_pejskovi... (originally published in 1929, so it's public domain, Czech version, but at least you can check the illustrations)

Sometimes both brothers wrote together:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Čapek

Josef was actually the one who came up with the word "robot":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_Čapek#Etymology_of_robot

Here I made one for you, using just the original frames:

Video: http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/rosetta/rosetta.original.mp4 [15MB]

Mirror: https://streamable.com/l9x1o

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Extra: I also attempted to denoise somehow (with Gimp's despeckle filter), though it's kinda weird :)

https://streamable.com/hy6lm

Credit should go to landru79, he keeps finding interesting things in Rosetta's raw data. I basically just tried to correct for Twitter's terrible video handling by re-tracing his steps :)

Go check landru79's Twitter feed, there are many more interesting comet images and videos (e.g. he combines multiple frames into color images):

https://twitter.com/landru79

BTW here are original ESA images:

https://imagearchives.esac.esa.int/index.php?/category/410/s...

Unfortunately Twitter butchers video quality.

I remade both landru79's videos from scratch using original ESA 2048x2048 image sequence (plus I added a bit of motion interpolation):

http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/rosetta/rosetta.webm [50MB]

http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/rosetta/rosetta_stars.mp4 [28MB]

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Edit: in case my server doesn't hold up, here are video mirrors on Streamable:

https://streamable.com/w2wgj

https://streamable.com/dg3r0

(seems better quality than Twitter and YouTube)

It's ... complicated:

"for every 1000 patients treated for a 5-year period, aspirin therapy would be expected to result in 1 excess hemorrhagic stroke compared with a benefit of ≈14 myocardial infarctions prevented in patients at moderate risk for CHD (5% to 10% 5-year risk)"

http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/36/8/1801

"Aspirin has been found to be a safe in patients harboring cerebral aneurysms and clinical studies provide evidence that it may decrease the overall rate of rupture."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25967073

"There was an approximately 40% increased risk of all gastrointestinal bleeding with low-dose aspirin in the observational studies reviewed here, a finding very similar to that reported in randomized trials"

"The overall risk of intracranial hemorrhage was also increased by approximately 40% with long-term low-dose aspirin, which is also similar to the estimates from randomized trials, although an increase in risk was not consistently reported in all studies."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4973997/

"Aspirin reduced the 6 week risk of recurrent ischaemic stroke by about 60% and disabling or fatal ischaemic stroke by about 70%"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5321490/

"aspirin significantly reduced the risk of myocardial infarction among men by 43%"

"significantly increased risk of major extracranial bleeding with aspirin [RR 1.54]. The excess risk of bleeds was mostly non-fatal. Perhaps by chance, fatal gastrointestinal (GI) or other fatal extracranial bleeds were lower in the aspirin group versus control [RR 0.48]"

"In a meta-analysis of eight trials including 25,570 patients, aspirin use significantly reduced the overall incidence of cancer-related death by 21%"

"In the meta-analysis of six trials, an increased risk of extracranial bleeding was observed with low-dose aspirin; however, the analysis of extracranial bleeding stratified by period of follow-up revealed that the risk of extracranial bleeding decreases over time, becoming comparable to that of placebo or no aspirin from 3 years onwards: <3 years"

"In this same analysis, fewer cases of fatal bleeding were associated with aspirin use, compared with controls [OR 0.32]"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4383813/

Digging deeper into tables in the paper, I realized there is actually even less data about non-smokers than I thought.

Out of those 60 non-smokers with lung cancer apparently just 20 were men (out of 14,208 study participants who were men and non-smokers => 0.14%)

http://ascopubs.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/asco/jour...

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Curiously this also means non-smoking women have 1.28x higher chance to get lung cancer than non-smoking men (unrelated to vitamins).

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For never-smokers vs smokers men risk ratios are then (again unrelated to vitamins):

- current smoker: 31.7x higher risk

- recent smoker (stopped < 10 years ago): 21.3x higher risk

- past smoker (stopped > 10 years ago): 8.9x higher risk

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Take home message: stop smoking!

Precautionary principle: if you take B vitamin supplements, you can continue (for slight decrease of cancer risk), just make sure you aren't taking mega-doses (especially if you still smoke), but really - stop smoking - the sooner you do less cumulative harm you get.

Amounts of vitamins per supplement seem to vary wildly.

Just from checking supplements I have at home:

Supplement #1 (all B vitamins):

- B6: 4.2mg

- B9: 600ug

- B12: 7.5ug

Supplement #2 (just B6 + B9 + B12):

- B6: 75mg

- B9: 800ug

- B12: 150ug

------------

Recommended daily doses are:

- B6: 1.7 mg/day (men)

- B9: 400 ug/day in US, 330 ug/day in EU (men + non-pregnant-non-lactating women)

- B12: 2.4 μg/day in US, 4.0 μg/day in EU (men + non-pregnant-non-lactating women)

Tolerable upper intake levels are:

- B6: 100 mg/day in US, 25 mg/day in EU

- B9: 1000 ug/day

- B12: no sufficient evidence for setting upper level

------------

From the study:

Beneficial effects (for men):

- B6: 1.41 - 3mg/day, multivitamins

- B9: 200 - 400 mg/day

- B12: 0.1 - 55 ug/day

Harmful effects (for men):

- B6: > 20mg/day

- B9: 400 - 600 mg/day

- B12: > 55ug/day

------------

Also something to keep in mind: apparently the majority of people in this study who got lung cancer were heavy smokers for many years, even if they stopped smoking.

Lung cancer by years of smoking:

- 0 years: 60 cases

- 1-35 years: 169 cases

- > 35 years: 568 cases

Lung cancer by pack-years of smoking:

- 0 pack-years: 60 cases

- 1-25 pack-years: 178 cases

- > 25 pack-years: 555 cases

Hard to tell much about B vitamin supplement effects on non-smokers from this study.

Researchers themselves excluded never-smokers from more detailed stratified analysis because of their small number.

There were only 60 cases of lung cancer in never-smoker category (out of 36,381 people => 0.16%).

In comparison there were 748 cases of lung cancer in smoker categories (former + recent + current) (out of 40,737 people => 1.84%).

So there is 11.5x higher risk of lung cancer simply by smoking (including people who stopped smoking).

For comparison the highest hazard ratio from this study was 3.71x for a category of current smoker taking >55ug/d B12 vs current smoker who is non-user of B12.

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Also curiously, the worse risks seem to be associated with people who stopped taking vitamins than people who currently use vitamins (B6: 1.97x vs 1.38x, B9: 1.65x vs 1.05x, B12: 2.58x vs 1.19x - individual supplement use status former vs current).

Plus smaller doses of B6/B9/B12 shown in this study to pretty much universally lower lung cancer risk by a bit (hazard ratios of 0.8-0.9x ranges; one noticeable outlier >600ug/d B9 in recent smokers halving risk of cancer).

Here is LIGO live stream:

https://www.youtube.com/user/VideosatNSF/live

This was LIGO (US) + Virgo (EU) + 70 ground- and space-based observatories collaboration:

http://www.ligo.org/

http://www.virgo-gw.eu/

This new method seems to produce nicer results when the input deviates from what would generic model expect (e.g. stronger facial expressions).

-----

Here is the same image used as input for 3d face reconstruction using both methods:

https://imgur.com/a/bZ012

Left side is morphable face model (EOS by Patrik Huber).

Right side is this new CNN voxels method.

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Here is live 3D model on the authors' site:

http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~psxasj/3dme/view.php?name=../59b41...

Had some fun with it yesterday :)

http://alteredqualia.com/xg/examples/facial_expressions.html

http://alteredqualia.com/xg/examples/max_headroom.html

It seems to be working pretty well, results do look nicer than earlier methods which were based on morphable faces [1][2].

See also continuous face reconstruction from video on their project page [3].

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nice6NYb_WA

[2] http://gravis.dmi.unibas.ch/publications/Sigg99/morphmod2.pd...

[3] http://aaronsplace.co.uk/papers/jackson2017recon/

I'm interested in why the author was unsure whether octrees are suitable for GPUs.

See this Twitter thread for discussion exactly about this (with Q-Games developers and original voxel cone tracing author):

https://twitter.com/Icare3D/status/803165198530052096

Reason #1: pointer chasing on cache impaired systems too costly

Reason #2: they simply run out of time for development (instead of giving up on SVO)

Online demo is just 360 photos but real VR application seems to be fully 3D (from the videos).

This would make sense as it's based on Google Earth which is 3D.

Even WebGL web version of Google Maps is already 3D since some time ago. See e.g. Colosseum here:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Colosseum/@41.8950247,12.4...

Because if you link to jwz's site directly from HN, you'll get redirected to this :)

http://imgur.com/32R3qLv

Schiaparelli lander status update from ESA TV live stream (20:35 CEST):

- already two sources confirmed losing signal during landing sequence (GMRT radio telescope in India [1] + Mars Express orbiter [2])

- still more data coming around midnight CEST (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter [3])

- processing new data will take some time (ESA team will work on it through the night)

- press conference with hopefully more news about lander's fate tomorrow at 10:00 CEST

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Metrewave_Radio_Telescop...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Express

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter

It's starting to come (EDM is Schiaparelli lander, TGO is orbiter):

--------------------

Latest status for lander: still unknown (next checkpoint after 20:00 CEST)

Latest status for orbiter: seems good

--------------------

1) The @ESA_EDM landing recording from #MarsExpress has started arriving on Earth, #ESOC teams report seeing packets flowing #ExoMars

2) It will take just over 10 minutes for #MarsExpress to transmit the @ESA_EDM recording #ExoMars

3) Interpretation of the @ESA_EDM recording is quite complex - could take more than 30 minutes

4) @ESA_EDM recording from #MarsExpress is signal only, no telemetry. We can already tell a lot from that though.

5) #MarsExpress team now processing @ESA_EDM landing recording to extract the trace of the lander's signal as it descended to Mars.

6) #MarsExpress recording of @ESA_EDM descent is now processed and is being analysed by experts at #ESOC

7) ACQUISITION OF ORBITER SIGNAL! #ESOC hears @ESA_TGO's signal loud & clear after it emerges from behind #Mars

8) Initial reports from @ESA_TGO telemetry are that it performed exactly as expected during the #BigBurn

9) @ESA_TGO team are now analysing the health of the orbiter, looking good so far

10) Teams monitoring the Schiaparelli lander continue waiting for indication of the lander’s progress. Engineers are waiting for the next signal receipt slot, which will be provided by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will overfly the Schiaparelli landing site between about 18:49 and 19:03 CEST, and downlink any received signals at around 20:00 CEST.

11) @ESA_EDM recording from #MarsExpress is inconclusive - not clear yet what the status of the lander is

--------------------

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770343888556033

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770921788178432

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788771548517785600

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788771906455470080

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788775324389634048

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788779693700968448

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788780512089432064

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788782643697577985

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788783926173130752

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Live...

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788790526422188032

one hell of a license that must be...

Probably something like when Amazon bought CryEngine license from Crytek and then released it for free as Lumberyard (including releasing source code, though not true open source).

The price for such "do whatever you want" license for CryEngine was supposed to be in $50M-70M range and basically rescued Crytek from bankrupcy (SwiftShader would be obviously much cheaper).

----

Ok, managed to find the SwiftShader price (includes TransGaming patents, licensed know-how and licensed intellectual property) - it was $1.25M, announced April 20, 2016:

http://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2016-05-04/transgami...

Really interesting documentary. Thanks for posting this.

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Some highlights:

- these new SynCardia artificial hearts are basically the same as old Jarvik-7 hearts (part that goes inside patient's chest), save for different sizes available today

- just the external part is now more modern (thanks to advances in power sources they can be now portable)

- big problem with Jarvik-7 at those earlier times were infections and blood clotting (leading to strokes), but doctors today know better how to manage this (as far as I understood, this is not due to better mechanical design of the heart but due to better medication / monitoring / protocols compared to ~30 years ago)

- these new SynCardia hearts were used for already ~1,600 patients (as "bridge" while waiting for heart transplant)

- FDA approved trial for use of these artificial hearts as permanent solution (no heart transplant needed), the first patient already got implanted this heart for permanent use

See also this reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) thread from another patient with such device from 2 years ago (2014):

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/24a8ln/hello_reddit_i...

Thanks for the clarification.

Five years is much better but fundamental issue is still there - "there is a deadline after which the utopia ends".

Did you consider maybe using fewer participants but possibly much longer time-frames (e.g. for the same budget 10x less people but 50 years of BI, or even 20x less participants and 100 years of BI to have safe margin)?

I'm aware this would be hard / impossible to personally see to the full fruition (see e.g. Up series [1]), but even just that 5 years window frame for the observation and research (which you already prepared yourself for) but with participants who could have "piece of mind for the rest of their lives" could radically alter the results of the experiment.

------

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Series

I'm afraid with such short duration you'll not be able to observe true effects of basic income on people's behaviors.

It will be more something like "sabbatical" in academia - you can devote a time to some side projects (whether career related or pure leisure), but everything you'll do you'll do with considerations of how your life will proceed once the sabbatical is over and there is no more safety net (assuming rational actors).

So now open sourcing of "crown jewels" AI software makes sense.

Competitive advantage is protected by custom hardware (and huge proprietary datasets).

Everything else can be shared. In fact it is now advantageous to share as much as you can, the bottleneck is a number of people who know how to use new tech.

Well, the fan-made mockup has such look because that's the only thing you can do with the screenshot.

Real mod could do much more, e.g. changing textures or models geometries.

It's the whole new cartoony art direction that's weird and off-putting, unfortunately evoking the feel of cheap mobile games.

Here is a real world photo example of what look modern AAA "Civ-like" game could strive for:

http://i.imgur.com/p4XZDeR.jpg

It's possible to be lush and colorful, yet realistic and more mature looking.

Let's hope some mods will make the look more palatable.

Here is a fan made mockup of how Civilization VI could look with a different art direction:

http://i.imgur.com/ZawuP8E.jpg

Here is the original look for comparison:

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/289070/ss_a79c8...

From Twitter of one of the demo creators:

"I was using GTX 980, which runs it at 1440 in the editor with perf to spare"

https://twitter.com/robertcupisz/status/709789738316726272

Thanks. Seems they must have edited the video since yesterday, cutting out early part of the stream.

Curiously I can still see the proper thumbnails when hovering timeline at the original timestamp.

Here it is running real-time in Unity editor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN3PsU_iA80&t=37m50s

It's a standalone PC project using DX11.

Cloth and cables physics simulation is pre-baked, lighting is dynamic.

That part was clear :)

What still isn't clear to me is how exactly that "workflow" demo (and consequently the "money-shot" final generated images) happened.

There is a progression of generated images with increasing quality. Who did which steps in those iterations?

Blog post uses ambiguous language: "N-th image tries / removes / fixes", etc.

It's not clear though if it was:

1) algorithm steps (keep computing more till generated image looks good), or

2) human being tweaking inputs to fixed algorithm (keep painting new input/output doodles till generated image looks good), or

3) human being tweaking algorithm itself (change code till generated image looks good).