There was actually a lot of pushback against the austere aesthetic by government ministers - they wanted fancy looking photo banners and pretty things. This was pushed back on in the name of making something functional the prioritizes users.
Honestly this sort of climate & environment tokenism frustrates me - spending a lot of energy trying to reduce and elimate things that barely matter (or even actually make things worse by displacement), while ignoring the big ticket items. At best it's innumerate, at worst it's greenwashing.
But nobody was doing that in this thread. Walteweiss was just pointing that Netflix DVD service closing has a significant positive side - less trash generated. Pointing it was called as "innumerate".
There are bigger problems for sure but there is also "there are bigger problems" fallacy (aka fallacy of relative privation).
I replied in the other comment, but I thought I’ll mention you as well. I agree that this is a tiny drop into the ocean, but I thing it’s still a positive change.
How much plastic does this actually produce? The DVDs are reused multiple times, as are the boxes. They are comparatively unlikely to end up in the environment, since they are in a closed and controlled environment - people are unlikely to just throw them out in the garbage. Packaging may be an issue. But there are many better ways to reduce plastic pollution - for example just driving a few miles less per year, or driving a lighter car: Tires are a much bigger source of plastic pollution and they shed microplastic directly into the environment and water runoff: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/tires...
I'd rather have people kick back on their couch and watch a Netflix DVD instead of feeling great that they saved so much plastic, and then smugly drive their SUV to the next shopping mall.
I wonder if the total amount of energy required to stream the same movie from a datacenter across the country might even lead to more CO2-emissions in total. The internet isn't carbon neutral yet.
Harry Nyquist isn't exactly an unknown engineer who doesn't have his own achievements, though - not sure why people are saying he would be fired in a modern company!
"In an effort to avoid naming everything after Euler, some discoveries and theorems are attributed to the first person to have proved them _after_ Euler."
I agree with you 100%. Management does not have an eye for software that is easy to maintain and continue to make money on 5 or 10 years down the line. Most management is thinking short term, how do I get money in MY pocket right NOW. Who cares how the business does in the long term, they'll jump ship and move on. It is the engineering that often makes a difference for long lived companies, it's just that usually the engineers and/or management isn't around long enough to reap the rewards. I try to balance engineering with product cost (I'm lucky enough where I can see the "numbers"). I try to give more to the clients that pay more, or at least create something that I can reuse in the future, while making sure what I deliver is stable and not a big ball of spaghetti to make the next developer/engineer cry at night.
> ... 5 or 10 years down the line. Most management is thinking short term,
Woe is us. Five or ten years is not considered short term
> . I try to give more to the clients that pay more, or at least create something that I can reuse in the future, while making sure what I deliver is stable and not a big ball of spaghetti to make the next developer/engineer cry at night.
I am not sure about the "...who pay more". As I am currently woefully underpaid I am more sympathetic to that view than once I was, but, I still view myself as a professional, and I act with professional ethics.
Partly that means speaking up when I see a project going near the rocks. I do not make too much fuss, but I do say it out loud.
That has cost me plenty. Our industry is full of people who are very good at one thing or another, but do not know their limits.
Part of my "being professional" is knowing my own limits.
I am in 100% agreement and the same thinking as you are. I never take the shortcut route unless it is absolutely warranted, such as a solution I know is meant to last only a few months. I have been very loud, and have effected quite a bit of change over my years, if only in a way that allows my boss to believe that I will no longer be a part of his operation if he restricts my freedom and personal ethics. I am highly underpaid, but I make sure to take that out in personal freedoms where it is worth it to me. I no longer answer phone calls or texts after hours unless they are going to directly damage the business, and my ability to continue having a place of employment. I take regular vacations, and mental health days, sometimes just to spend time with my son (went through a divorce where I still can't tell how badly it affected my son, although luckily went through a moderator rather than the attorneys/courts to settle things).
It is important to know what you can and can't get away with, and my clients don't pay the cost of the business I'm employed by making bad decisions. Where I am able to, I strive to provide a product that is better than the average, in the hopes that I've developed a solution that can possibly benefit the company or myself in the future in regards to software quality or speed (along with stability) of deployment.
What was remarkable is how Facebook's Threads app jumped straight to being full of advertisers and hucksters - they didn't think that maybe the right way to bootstrap a social network would be to make it full of authentic conversations, at least to start with.
> they didn't think that maybe the right way to bootstrap a social network would be to make it full of authentic conversations, at least to start with.
I doubt that any social media platform owner wants authentic conversations - even initially.
Instead of giving arguments, I refer to Paul Graham's essay "What you can't say":
If people were really authentic in their conversations, they would be in real trouble quite soon - and the social media platform on which these really authentic conversations are posted would be, too.
So, what social media companies do is enforce some kind of "editorial policy" (moderation) which makes the conversations that don't become censored still feel "somewhat authentic" to many visitors, so that this bluff only gets busted after some time in which the platform's owners can make sufficient money.
There's a lot of middle ground between the stilted language of a corporate ad-read and people screaming slurs in a COD lobby. If you can't speak authentically without running afoul of the bare standard of human decency that is generally expected, the world's probably better for it if you don't speak at all.
I had forgotten about that essay. Quite appropos in these times (probably in all times, but there are a few current topics that immediately spring to mind).
Because it was seeded from Instagram, a platform which promotes people who look good (like myself, of course) not necessarily people with anything interesting to say. "Authentic conversations" was never a possibility.
Lol, I think their plan is to still federate with Mastodon specifically to pad out their vapid platform with content. They were just too much of a self imposed rush to capitalize on Musk and his stupidity, to do it before launch.
Facebook doesn't care about the tiny amount of content on Mastodon. And it's the wrong type of content anyway. Mastodon is for misfits, nerds, anarchists, Tumblr-style far-left politics, doomers, weirdos and very bad artists.
Instagram and Threads couldn't be more different. It's commerce. Beautiful people. Beautiful places. Shopping. Mainstream pop idols. Grifting influencers. Celebrity gossip. Lifestyle. Fashion. Interior design.
Facebook prefers the latter group as this is where advertisers thrive. The typical Mastodon user would have an anxiety attack when they see an ad.
The guardian likes to ignore this, because it doesn't suit its reporting angle much, but England has 1.8x more population density than Germany and 3.6x(!) more than France. This means by simple maths far less available land per capita. Overall the UK comes in closer (but still ahead) of Germany but this is largely due to Scotland, which is a significant proportion of the UK landmass, but has very few people.
The government ban you mention only applies to England, which already has almost half of the UK's onshore wind despite having by far the least space for it. Making complaints that the rural population of England, already under pressure due to soaring population density, doesn't want their remaining rural spaces covered in wind turbines when plenty of other good options exist requires quite a bit of mental gymnastics to justify.
Population densities in people/km2: England 424, Scotland: 68, UK overall 272, Germany: 232, France: 118.
Landmass in thousands of km2: England 130, Scotland: 77, UK overall 242, Germany: 357, France: 551.
The main reason we don’t get more of it is a handful of rich land owners not wanting an “eyesore” on their estates and using their influence to get that result.
Social media owners wanted all the benefits of superscale communities with none of the responsibilities - it isn't surprising that moderation got worse.
Reddit vaguely has a workable approach with subreddits, but it's still high variance, and they have to discourage long-lived comment threads.
What peer review or regulatory approval process has this been through? Seems pretty irresponsible -- there are many notorious pitfalls encountered with ML for medical imaging. You shouldn't play with people's lives.
I don't understand why this comment is downvoted. Automated screening of radiological images by means of neural net is an extensively researched topic. Ten years ago there had been predictions that such automated screening will displace the radiologists, but that clearly did not happen.
For instance, this article is silent on false positive/false negative rates of the software. There is no comparison with other research. It reads like a corporate press release promoting a product.
The quotations around "amateur" should be moved to "fought". Nonetheless, it's encouraging that this level of research can be executed at home, however the strict burden of proof required should still be maintained.
Well, he was director of R&D for a medical imaging company and worked directly with academia. So I think its appropriate to contextualise the "amateur" because his work looked much more amateur than it really was.
This is an incredibly important point. Medical research must be taken seriously and I see many problems with the processes being applied here.
(for those who care- I'm a published ml biologist who works for a pharma that develops human health products. Having worked in this area for some time, I often see people who have no real idea of how the medical establishment works, or how diagnostics are marketed/sold/regulated. Overconfidence by naive individuals can have massive negative outcomes.
Why does everyone assume this guy has zero business attempting this? If you read his credentials, he should be every bit as qualified as you to attempt this kind of work while understanding the pitfalls.
According to his CV he's been active in the field for quite some time. The default assumption that he's an idiot and going to kill people just seems too cynical here.
Grandparent - you specifically mention having noted methodology problems, would you mind sharing where in the methodology you think he's gone wrong?
I'm not going to detail challenges in medical ML - the literature can do that. But just to mention one that other people haven't that goes beyond just precision-recall: algorithms can be biased based on variance in physiology (e.g. more accurate for men), and understanding how an algorithm is biased is very important for the person interpeting the information, who should be a trained doctor.
And it doesn't matter what his credentials are, that's appeal to authority. If he thinks this should be used and trusted by people for decision making, then he should submit it to independent peer review and regulatory approval.
This is like taking your temperature at home, are you making a diagnostic yourself? Not quite. But you can know some symptoms and take action (going to the doctor) maybe with less anxiety
Thermometers are well understood, simple devices, and there are other complementary checks (e.g. does my forehead feel hot) if they fail.
This project might lead to people thinking they're in the clear and not seek appropriate medical treatment, or be overtreated due to an error. You should always talk to a qualified doctor if you're concerned about your health, and not use projects like these for decision making.
I don't see how a passive scan like this can be harmful . Ofcourse if it does show a positive one should confirm further with a biopsy or other standard confirmation diagnostic.
As for false negatives...
If you feel something is wrong you should get it checked thoroughly anyway .
you literally just said the scan has no value. THe point of a scan like this is to have absurdly low false negative and positive rates so that it's actionable. Unactionable medical diagnostics are worthless and just cost (money, fuel, time).
In an ideal world, that would be the case. However, people aren't 100% rational agents motivated by logic.
My aunt was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis which led her to lose her eyesight from her left eye, because she refused to get a thorough checkup by a professional, and even today whenever I tell her that I visited the doctor for an issue she has... not very good words to say (something something "you are a chicken, you're hypochodriac etc). And I'm saying this without entertaining the probability of her visiting a professional who just happened to be in a bad day, which could potentialy lead to a wrong diagnosis.
I've been hunting down my own diagnosis for symptoms everyone seems to tell me that aren't serious (nail discoloration and a 24/7 headache that feels like my arteries are pulsing, which lasts for YEARS, cold fingertips during the winter, and more).
I get what you're trying to say and I agree with the general message. However, more checkpoints to catch a potential failure are good. For example, if someone were to make a take-at-home device which scans nailfold capillaries (no reason for something like that to exist) I'd get that in a heartbeat. I'm being actively ignored by every medical professional that I have visited, and if I'm not ignored they give the minimum amount of attention, kind of like "well, it's not like you're dying so who cares?"
If you don't feel good yes you should see a doctor regardless.
Let's say you get a scan every year . If the scan is able to detect something earlier than a radiologist is able to identify i think it's worth paying attention to.
I agree with you, but what's most important is the impression that the average person who uses it will have. And I don't think most people would think of this as like "taking your temperature at home". I think most people who might upload their x-ray scans would take this a lot more seriously.
A false positive could create a lot of anxiety and emotional distress, and the patient might need to go to 2, 3, or 4 other doctors to get second opinions before they feel comfortable that they really don't have cancer.
A false negative could be even worse. A patient might think "oh, the official-looking online thing said I don't have cancer, so I don't need to wait for or consider a human radiologist's results", and not believe they need treatment.
I think it's very important that people understand that -- until more research is done -- this is still not a substitute for having a human look at your x-rays. If we could be reasonably sure that everyone (or at least a very large majority) understood this when using this tool, then I think people would have far fewer objections. But I don't think that's the case.
Having said that, I think it's safe to assume that this tool has saved lives, so it's almost certainly been a net positive for people.
A thermometer mostly tells you if you have an infection, and how close you are to your body temperature becoming a medically urgent or life-threatening situation.
In addition, these kinds of things will still miss lobular ("normal" cancers are ductal) breast cancers as they don't form lumps.
15% of the women with breast cancer are waiting for a non-invasize diagnostic imaging system that can see their cancer. The only thing that can see these is an MRI with gadolinium. And that gadolinium contrast causes issues in about 1 in 1000 women, so it can't be used as a general screen.
If your decision making process is a negative result tells you nothing and a positive result warrants immediate follow up, what’s the risk here? I’m assuming doctors recommending that women get checked for breast cancer is the primary breast cancer is tested and diagnosed which presumably wouldn’t change because someone make a website.
In this case I feel better about it because there is a natural limitation in that most people doing this will only have the scan because they are getting tested through a real clinical process. So effectively they are getting "standard of care" treatment implicitly, and all this does is accelerate their response to true positives. The worst case scenario is a false positive gives them a lot of anxiety / costs them money through trying to accelerate their real diagnosis only to find it isn't real.
