Phys.org often bumbles headlines (and implications) a bit, but I like to use it as a stepping stone to the original paper (which I likely wouldn't have heard of otherwise).
Sadly the authors paper isn't easily found on the public internet for free but the abstract [1] describes coupling an idealized ophiolite obduction model with a carbon box model, giving δ13C predictions that align with known examples of cooling in rock record. As you rightly point out, this doesn't replace well studied phenomena like Milankovich cycles, but it does suggests there's more the the story. I have to say I'm not terribly surprised though, weathering of (ultra)mafic rocks has been examined as a sequestration method for at least 5 years [2] but it's still kind of neat to see models matching the rock record.
QGIS is great, I use it daily and I hugely prefer it (and it's mobile equivalent Qfield) to ArcGIS and FieldMaps.
The educational world is pretty split between ArcGIS and QGIS. Students don't want to pay over $100 for a yearly ArGIS student license, but more advanced geostatistical analysis isn't supported yet on QGIS. Progress is slower in industry, especially in larger companies. Other critical software like Autodesk, Vulcan, DESWICK, MODFLOW, and Leapfrog already work (somewhat) smoothly with ArcGIS.
QGIS is just another thing to go wrong in managers minds, and there is zero opensource progress in developing applications as powerful as QGIS in geomatics adjacent fields.
Can you provide a few examples please for your statement: "but more advanced geostatistical analysis isn't supported yet on QGIS"? I'd like to hear more about this.
Extremely clear and satisfying lectures that covers all of basic physics. Much of it is accessible to anyone with some spare time and first year university!
I'll believe it when they release geochemical data for the soot and plot the locations of the "hearths" on the cave map. Where is the published peer reviewed paper associated with this announcement?
This discovery was made in 2013, in a cave that was believed by the SA caving community to be well understood. Where are the hearths they claim to have found? Why did nobody in the previous 9 years of exploration and decades of caving see this? What makes them certain these are not carbide dumps from humans in the last 50 years? [1] Or organic matter that may have fallen from roof cracks? Also, what has happened to the 1500 bone fragments they have excavated
Baboons in modern times are known to navigate caves without fire [2], the paleoanthropology community should still consider the possibility that H. Naledi had no need for light to place their dead these caves.
Yeah, I'm very skeptical. Just the decision to announce this by press release rather than peer reviewed paper suggests there are a lot of uncomfortable questions, similar to what you raised, that the authors are trying to avoid.
Berger's been taking some heat on Twitter where he announced this [1]. Apparently he considers a public-interest lecture and a publicity tour equivalent to a preprint on something like SSRN. Can't say I agree, but it seems to have been effective in getting people to talk about it.
I mean he's kind of right. A preprint is just a badly formatted blog post published in a pdf. Until its finished and published. At least if one see peer-review journal literature as the gold standard of scientific discourse. Maybe this Berger thing has more to it, but scientists can (and maybe even should) talk about their ongoing research before there is a paper behind it.
It's not the public awareness stuff that I'm concerned about. That's just a necessary fact of life that I've also been involved with on my own digs.
I'm personally simply skeptical that the research conditions necessary to make a Netflix special (premiering in May-June apparently) are also conducive to high quality academic work.
Publishing a preprint goes partway to addressing that by showing everyone where their results will fit into the existing literature and strengthen the published paper by hearing / addressing public criticisms before they actually publish.
> he's kind of right. A preprint is just a badly formatted blog post published in a pdf. Until its finished and published
No, it has empirical data, most importantly, and also methods, analysis, conclusions, citations. It's nothing like a blog post, or another way of looking it it - it is an extraordinary blog post.
Being skeptical makes sense. Abandoning science is less of an obvious step. This consists primarily of some initial observations and speculations being shared. These could potentially lead to a testable hypothesis which could then in time lead to a published peer reviewed paper. Initial observations and speculations never lead directly to published peer reviewed papers in the short term because those require work to prepare and verify. That you are responding to some initial observations and speculations with demands for a published peer review paper indicates that you lack interest and understanding in the actual work of science. If you really are not engaged then maybe it would make more sense to allow others to investigate findings to see if they are truly interesting and perhaps could lead to robust results.
If any skeptic here likes nature documentaries, I'd recommend "Our Great National Parks" on Netflix. I found it unique in that it documented exceptionally intelligent and complex behavior by a number of animals we don't normally consider as being intelligent. For example, tool use by mongooses (cracking a snail shell with a rock) and a monkey riding a deer for fun, as well as frequent cooperation between species.
I don't find it so difficult to believe that a slightly larger encephalization quotient than our nearest competitors (chimps) could lead to an ability to control fire.
I love nature documentaries, I'll have a look at that one!
I agree, lots of animals use tools in one way or another. Starting or even just controlling a chemical reaction does seem like a big step above mechanical methods though. I wouldn't really be that surprised overall if we eventually discover that H. Naledi or other hominids had some control of fire. I will be surprised if the Dinaledi site turns out to be the first evidence of it
I used to have a neighbour with a goat and chickens, and at least one of the chickens would ride around on the goat's back. There are a decent number of YouTube videos of other chickens riding goats, so it seems fairly common.
I'm curious what "we" you refer to, because I've seen years of articles about tool use and play and intelligence across all sorts of mammals and birds.
The systematic teaching of math at some universities doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. Why should linear algebra be taught after calculus? Why is number theory basically ignored by most of engineering and every other science at the undergrad level?
Something important for anyone engaged in technical design work is judgement. Ralph Peck, a famous geotechnical engineer has a good video lecture. It's a bit specific to civil engineering, but the broad strokes of exposure to history of your field, recent developments, a sense of proportion, and commitment to professional development are applicable everywhere.
To me, the thing that jumps out is the "our". That's not the normal way an HN comment would be written. If it's not a bot, it's someone speaking for a group - a publication or a company. (Of course, a GPT3 bot could have lots of that kind of writing in its training corpus.)
Is it banned, or simply not available in typical public libraries because it's in Russian and there is not an English translation? My public library has dozens of books by Solzhenitsyn.
It seems there is not a complete english translation available from a single translator, or one affiliated with any university/previous scholarship at least. I couldnt find any in a quick search of a few major city library catalogues and major universities in NA. I did find a few journal articles about the book though, and it was very easy to find other Solzhenitsyn books in grade school and other libraries.
The pdf translation below has a typo in the very first line of the introduction and the first chapter was translated by someone(s) on 8chan {1}. So I'm not terribly surprised that typical public libraries don't have a copy.
If you’ve read Nietzsche or other philology/mythology he just comes off as a gas station ‘10 tips to EXCEL in your life’ and it’s cringe to see people take him seriously at face value.
Not doubting he is a smart man: he started a self auditing thing on his website, and probably has the psychological profile of his audience written up in bullet points for his marketers.
some of it is hard and will have you wondering if you want to continue. if you do, and I highly recommend that every developer complete this course, you will find yourself thinking in new ways and understanding many problems very differently, which is a very good thing.
and you will see huge performance problems in almost all software from them on, because none of this (I gesture vaguely at everything everywhere) should be as slow as it is. none of it.
Agreed. For me, the course was eerily able to hit my exact sweet spot of difficulty. Almost every project had me in the "I'm about to give up" stage just long enough before I had a breakthrough and kept continuing.
>and you will see huge performance problems in almost all software from them on, because none of this (I gesture vaguely at everything everywhere) should be as slow as it is. none of it.
Hah! Yes! After finishing, the first optimization I made was to add an "inc" command to the high-level (Java-like) language you implement. It annoyed me that any time you have "i = i + 1", it translates into VM code of "push 1 onto stack, push i's value onto stack, add, pop stack to i's location", each of which translates into several machine instructions. Especially given that the CPU has an increment instruction!
So I added the inc keyword that would ensure you bypass all of that, if you just want to increment a variable, and thus use significantly fewer cycles. It was really thrilling (well, as much as a technical project can be) to have the level of insight and control needed to make a change like that.
After reading that some huge percentage of x86 instructions are basically never used I’ve often wondered if there’s much more performance that can be gleaned through knowing what to write and how the compiler will use it.
Sadly the authors paper isn't easily found on the public internet for free but the abstract [1] describes coupling an idealized ophiolite obduction model with a carbon box model, giving δ13C predictions that align with known examples of cooling in rock record. As you rightly point out, this doesn't replace well studied phenomena like Milankovich cycles, but it does suggests there's more the the story. I have to say I'm not terribly surprised though, weathering of (ultra)mafic rocks has been examined as a sequestration method for at least 5 years [2] but it's still kind of neat to see models matching the rock record.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01342-9 [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187661021...