latkins's recent activity

  1. Comment on You can have an organ or feature of any multicellular organism implanted in your body. What is it, why do you want it and how would you use it? in ~talk

    latkins
    Link Parent
    Just curious, how does having a second heart do this?

    helps you survive in low oxygen environments

    Just curious, how does having a second heart do this?

    3 votes

  2. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    latkins
    Link
    I have long found that research management tools are underwhelming, for a variety of reasons, so started building my own. Plan is (initially) to directly integrate with open journals / preprint...

    I have long found that research management tools are underwhelming, for a variety of reasons, so started building my own. Plan is (initially) to directly integrate with open journals / preprint servers. I am mostly concerned with discovering good papers in a timely fashion, so I want to integrate some of the features of things like arxiv-sanity-preserver, as well as looking for papers on social media etc.

    4 votes

  3. Comment on Simple DIY masks could help flatten the curve. We should all wear them in public in ~health

    latkins
    Link Parent
    This comment seems, ironically, rather arrogant to me. Let's focus on real science, shall we? Your first paragraph is directly contradicted by one of the papers he links to:...

    This comment seems, ironically, rather arrogant to me.

    Let's focus on real science, shall we? Your first paragraph is directly contradicted by one of the papers he links to: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440799/. I'll highlight a sentence from the abstract for you "Any type of general mask use is likely to decrease viral exposure and infection risk on a population level, in spite of imperfect fit and imperfect adherence". What do you consider to be real science?

    The key point seems to be wearing masks for the protection of others. There is increasing evidence that the virus spread is driven by those with no symptoms. If you were infected but asymptomatic, wearing a mask would capture some proportion of droplets that you emit in the course of breathing, sneezing, etc. This has been widely adopted in Asia. I don't see how this is a difficult point to understand, and is supported by several of the papers the original article links to.

    4 votes

  4. Comment on Daily coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - March 17 in ~health

    latkins
    Link
    I've been working on a tool with my girlfriend to try and get an idea of how bad things might get for us (we are in the UK). I don't have complete info on the lockdowns / when they happened, but...

    I've been working on a tool with my girlfriend to try and get an idea of how bad things might get for us (we are in the UK). I don't have complete info on the lockdowns / when they happened, but the idea was to look at the lag between them being initiated, and the number of cases dropping. It does not look good. Hubei appears to have a lag of ~3 weeks before the current cases started decreasing, and they initiated their measures much earlier than we have. I can't imagine how bad it is going to get for those working in our hospitals.

    5 votes

  5. Comment on Your thoughts regarding the media coverage? in ~health

    latkins
    Link Parent
    One of the problems with using this data is that you have no control over e.g. testing rates. Clearly, at the very least, you can only increase by as many tests are are performed. I'm going to...

    One of the problems with using this data is that you have no control over e.g. testing rates. Clearly, at the very least, you can only increase by as many tests are are performed. I'm going to expand it later today to look also at deaths / recovered / current cases, and fix a few bugs. If you had any things you'd be interested in looking at, feel free to let me know!

    3 votes

  6. Comment on Your thoughts regarding the media coverage? in ~health

    latkins
    (edited )
    Link
    Is the coverage not more about the people who will soon die, who just haven't done so yet? We can see the trends, and know that at our current best guess, ~1% of the people who get it will die,...

    A few thousand people die

    Is the coverage not more about the people who will soon die, who just haven't done so yet? We can see the trends, and know that at our current best guess, ~1% of the people who get it will die, and that will happen in ~17 days from infection. More people will die if the healthcare system is overwhelmed. If you look at the curves, that quickly leads to a very large number. It makes complete sense to me that this would dominate the news.

    [I made a tool over the weekend to try and put relative geographies into perspective, in case you are interested.]

    13 votes

  7. Comment on Don't know if we've got any MMA fans here but the UFC just uploaded one of the best fights of recent memory: Max Holloway vs Ricardo Lamas in ~sports.combat

    latkins
    Link Parent
    Yeah, its one of those where whatever happens I don't think I'll be surprised. If I were to bet, however, I'd have to give it to Stipe. The whole card is awesome. I'm actually tempted to stay up...

    Yeah, its one of those where whatever happens I don't think I'll be surprised. If I were to bet, however, I'd have to give it to Stipe.

    The whole card is awesome. I'm actually tempted to stay up all night and watch (based in Europe, so the main event could be at like 5am).

    1 vote

  8. Comment on Don't know if we've got any MMA fans here but the UFC just uploaded one of the best fights of recent memory: Max Holloway vs Ricardo Lamas in ~sports.combat

    latkins
    Link
    The card is too good. Something has to happen. Who do you have for DC/Stipe?

    The card is too good. Something has to happen.

    Who do you have for DC/Stipe?

    2 votes

  9. Comment on Most instructive/well made educational computer science/math videos? in ~comp

  10. Comment on Any other gamblers here? in ~sports.american_football

    latkins
    Link Parent
    I've worked on something similar - built a system to predict the distribution over outcomes for any given pair of fighters. It works ok, but is far less effective than a similar system I built to...

    I've worked on something similar - built a system to predict the distribution over outcomes for any given pair of fighters. It works ok, but is far less effective than a similar system I built to look at football matches. There are just not enough fights for my model :(.

    1 vote

  11. Comment on Let's talk podcasts. What are some that you like and why? in ~talk

    latkins
    Link
    I've really been enjoying Danny in the Valley. His interview style is great, and he manages to get interesting people from the tech world on. I also enjoy Kermode and Mayo's Film Review.

    I've really been enjoying Danny in the Valley. His interview style is great, and he manages to get interesting people from the tech world on. I also enjoy Kermode and Mayo's Film Review.

  12. Comment on Are there any scientists on Tildes? in ~science

    latkins
    Link
    Got my PhD in Computational Bio ~18 months ago, though now working in industry doing ML research!

    Got my PhD in Computational Bio ~18 months ago, though now working in industry doing ML research!

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Where are you from? in ~talk

    latkins
    Link
    Also from the UK - currently in London.

    Also from the UK - currently in London.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on AI Winter Is Well On Its Way in ~comp

    latkins
    Link Parent
    There was a period of increased interest in machine learning / AI around the 1980s, and along with it came a lot of funding. When the reality of the research that was being worked on became clear...

    There was a period of increased interest in machine learning / AI around the 1980s, and along with it came a lot of funding. When the reality of the research that was being worked on became clear (e.g. it wasn't as impressive as people had expected), a lot of funding was cut. This was known as the AI winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter.

    4 votes

  15. Comment on AI Winter Is Well On Its Way in ~comp

    latkins
    Link
    I've seen quite a lot of discussion about this post online. My feeling is that the article makes some good points, and some really bad ones. It is certainly true that there is a disconnect with...

    I've seen quite a lot of discussion about this post online. My feeling is that the article makes some good points, and some really bad ones. It is certainly true that there is a disconnect with what the public has been lead to believe is possible in the next ~5 years, and what the reality of the situation is. I don't know any researchers who think deep learning is going to give us AGI, however. It is also clear that deep learning has enabled us to do things that were unthinkable only a few years ago, and we haven't come close to the limit of what it makes possible.

    8 votes