I don't think it's quite that simple. There are lots of ways of dealing with trust issues, without using blockchain. For example, land records are something that gets brought up a lot. But if you want to guarantee there's no (retroactive) hanky panky with records, you just sign them and publish them. No blockchain required. If you try and change something, anybody who downloaded that published record has evidence that you did it.
Blockchain is specifically useful for when you *can't* have a central authority to update the books, trustworthy or not, so you have to distribute the functions of that authority to untrustworthy participants. That's a really specific scenario, and aside from currency, where it seems to work quite poorly, I haven't heard even a single realistic example.
Yeah, I'd love to see that list. Because I can't think of anything.
A signed hash tree that's shared publicly or at least by all involved (a la git), sure, that's got lots of uses, but it's not exactly new or startling. An actual bitcoin-style blockchain with proof-of-something, etc? Outside of transactions you want to be resistant to government interference, is there anything that's not better solved without blockchain?
Hi, I'm an actual scientist who does medical AI research, in actual hospitals. The OP is correct. The claim that you can usefully supplement datasets with synthetic data is either journalistic hyperbole, a throwaway "look this is practical and useful" line from a paper or a misunderstanding by some researchers who don't have much experience in the medical field.
It doesn't really. GANs are cool, and having something that can generate fake MRIs is cool, but how do you use it? You can't write a paper anymore saying "look at this cool thing we did", you have to invent some reason why it might be useful.
The "we can supplement datasets for rare conditions using synthetic data" idea pops up quite a bit. It doesn't really make any sense.
I have a very common name, and firstname.lastname@gmail. I get all kinds of things. Once I got on an American elementary school teacher's parent mailing list. I got everything, including a class list with kids and parents' names, addresses and phone numbers. She was rather embarassed when I e-mailed and mentioned the mistake. Took a while for the parents to stop replying to the old list though.
I also got home security system updates for a while. Messages like "Tammy at x street has gone to bed for the night." "Tammy has left the house." The e-mails didn't have any kind of reporting link, the reply-to address was a robot, and all the usual guesses, including webmaster, got no response. I sent a regular mail letter to her house.
One of the more entertaining was when some shady developer shared a folder with me on dropbox. I thought it was a colleague and accepted. He dropped a bunch of financial and planning documents in the folder, realized his mistake a few days later and quickly deleted them all.
Go to the US, go to a carrier's store, and buy a phone. Make sure it's a locked phone, because apparently you can get unlocked ones from some carriers now.
Try swapping your SIM and using it on another network.
It's very possible, and standard practice in many places, to lock a physical-SIM-containing phone to a particular network. Yes, you could do that with an eSIM too. Civilized places have laws to prevent that.
The point of an eSIM is to make it easier to change carriers. It's programmable. You scan a QR code or call a carrier and you're done. You don't have to keep track of little plastic bits, or even visit an actual carrier's store to buy a plastic bit.
The idea behind the eSIM is that you can have as many as you want. Tap the one you want to use. No need for paperclips or keeping track of little chips of plastic and metal.
If you have no need to switch SIMs now, then you won't care about eSIMs. If you do, once they're fully implemented they'll be very nice. I've got about a dozen SIMs to keep track of, although I can probably go down to about four now that the EU has decided to let one SIM work anywhere. Much nicer to have those as options on a menu.
That hasn't been my experience. I swap SIMs when I travel internationally, sometimes multiple times. I don't pay much attention to which carrier it is, usually it's the best deal, the one closest to my hotel, or the one with the first booth I see in the airport. The phone doesn't care, and doesn't need to be reset.
From what I can find about eSIM, it appears you're correct on that front though: the eSIM is just a bit of data you can download. The idea is to let a phone hold as many as you want, and you can just switch between them. It sounds like a great idea... I've got a case of physical SIMs and have lost the PINs for most of them.
If you're going to do math professionally, then you're likely going to have to stand in front of a whiteboard in front of a bunch of people at some point.
On the other hand, I don't ever remember being graded on such things in math class. English and social studies yes.
The NIH spending forty billion dollars a year on it helps.
Careful though, you're conflating "invented" with "patented and sold." Many drugs are discovered or invented not-in-the-USA, and then sold to an American company. Although even then, several of the major pharma companies are NOT American companies.
For example, one project I was involved with was a drug designed and initial human trials done by a Japanese company, then sold to an American pharma corp once it passed phase II trials.
Not really. You don't found a pharma startup unless you've got a promising candidate already. Basic discovery happens mostly in universities. The academic researchers find something interesting, use animal models to work out the mechanism and test efficacy, and occasionally even do some human studies. Startups are then either spun out of the university, started independently in conjunction with one of the university researchers, or in some cases just troll through the published literature looking for good ideas. The startup, or sometimes a bigger pharma company, then runs the basic human trials, and, if successful, sells the drug (or the company) to one of the major pharma corps for marketing and distribution.
Basic discovery is still very much a publicly financed endeavour.
Other companies do sell exactly the same substance. This appears to be an example of a company taking advantage of either (a) consumer gullibility where brand names are concerned or (b) corrupt physicians.
Although from the article it sounds like the competition might be cranking the price up as well, so perhaps it's (c) collusion.
In the rest of the world, apparently actual government regulation successfully keeps the price between $0.10 and $10.
There's fairly strong evidence against your primary assumption. Most drug discovery is done by academic, publicly funded researchers, who get paid fairly poorly considering their education, and the hazards of the field.
The ones who rake in the big profits are business and investor types who mostly buy and sell existing IP.
A lot of US shows are filmed in Canada because certain Canadian cities have made themselves friendly to filming, and certain American cities have made themselves obnoxious.
Apparently a lot of New York scenes are filmed in Toronto or Montreal because the images of many buildings in New York are copyrighted.
Lucky you in the UK. So when you go to submit to a journal do you ask the library which one they'll pay for? Are there lists of approved and excluded ones you check?
Those journals are in those classes, in no small part because of the actions of the libraries. Why are high tier journals high tier? Because people read them and cite the work in them. If a bunch of libraries dump a journal, it's not going to get read, the work won't get cited, and it will drop down to the junk tier.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think it's quite that simple. There are lots of ways of dealing with trust issues, without using blockchain. For example, land records are something that gets brought up a lot. But if you want to guarantee there's no (retroactive) hanky panky with records, you just sign them and publish them. No blockchain required. If you try and change something, anybody who downloaded that published record has evidence that you did it.
Blockchain is specifically useful for when you *can't* have a central authority to update the books, trustworthy or not, so you have to distribute the functions of that authority to untrustworthy participants. That's a really specific scenario, and aside from currency, where it seems to work quite poorly, I haven't heard even a single realistic example.
Because they've built a reputation as a "blockchain entrepreneur".
Yeah, I'd love to see that list. Because I can't think of anything.
A signed hash tree that's shared publicly or at least by all involved (a la git), sure, that's got lots of uses, but it's not exactly new or startling. An actual bitcoin-style blockchain with proof-of-something, etc? Outside of transactions you want to be resistant to government interference, is there anything that's not better solved without blockchain?
Hi, I'm an actual scientist who does medical AI research, in actual hospitals. The OP is correct. The claim that you can usefully supplement datasets with synthetic data is either journalistic hyperbole, a throwaway "look this is practical and useful" line from a paper or a misunderstanding by some researchers who don't have much experience in the medical field.
It doesn't really. GANs are cool, and having something that can generate fake MRIs is cool, but how do you use it? You can't write a paper anymore saying "look at this cool thing we did", you have to invent some reason why it might be useful.
The "we can supplement datasets for rare conditions using synthetic data" idea pops up quite a bit. It doesn't really make any sense.
I have a very common name, and firstname.lastname@gmail. I get all kinds of things. Once I got on an American elementary school teacher's parent mailing list. I got everything, including a class list with kids and parents' names, addresses and phone numbers. She was rather embarassed when I e-mailed and mentioned the mistake. Took a while for the parents to stop replying to the old list though.
I also got home security system updates for a while. Messages like "Tammy at x street has gone to bed for the night." "Tammy has left the house." The e-mails didn't have any kind of reporting link, the reply-to address was a robot, and all the usual guesses, including webmaster, got no response. I sent a regular mail letter to her house.
One of the more entertaining was when some shady developer shared a folder with me on dropbox. I thought it was a colleague and accepted. He dropped a bunch of financial and planning documents in the folder, realized his mistake a few days later and quickly deleted them all.
As I remember, there was some dismay among Republicans after Trump won the nomination as well.
Go to the US, go to a carrier's store, and buy a phone. Make sure it's a locked phone, because apparently you can get unlocked ones from some carriers now.
Try swapping your SIM and using it on another network.
It's very possible, and standard practice in many places, to lock a physical-SIM-containing phone to a particular network. Yes, you could do that with an eSIM too. Civilized places have laws to prevent that.
The point of an eSIM is to make it easier to change carriers. It's programmable. You scan a QR code or call a carrier and you're done. You don't have to keep track of little plastic bits, or even visit an actual carrier's store to buy a plastic bit.
eSIM is how it should have been done originally.
The idea behind the eSIM is that you can have as many as you want. Tap the one you want to use. No need for paperclips or keeping track of little chips of plastic and metal.
If you have no need to switch SIMs now, then you won't care about eSIMs. If you do, once they're fully implemented they'll be very nice. I've got about a dozen SIMs to keep track of, although I can probably go down to about four now that the EU has decided to let one SIM work anywhere. Much nicer to have those as options on a menu.
That hasn't been my experience. I swap SIMs when I travel internationally, sometimes multiple times. I don't pay much attention to which carrier it is, usually it's the best deal, the one closest to my hotel, or the one with the first booth I see in the airport. The phone doesn't care, and doesn't need to be reset.
From what I can find about eSIM, it appears you're correct on that front though: the eSIM is just a bit of data you can download. The idea is to let a phone hold as many as you want, and you can just switch between them. It sounds like a great idea... I've got a case of physical SIMs and have lost the PINs for most of them.
Always kill the children before you terminate the parent.
Sorry man, I don't want to get into a proxy argument about America and capitalism. You're clearly emotionally invested.
I'm sure pets.com burned some real world resources, electricity for some servers if nothing else, but not like bitcoin does.
If you're going to do math professionally, then you're likely going to have to stand in front of a whiteboard in front of a bunch of people at some point.
On the other hand, I don't ever remember being graded on such things in math class. English and social studies yes.
The NIH spending forty billion dollars a year on it helps.
Careful though, you're conflating "invented" with "patented and sold." Many drugs are discovered or invented not-in-the-USA, and then sold to an American company. Although even then, several of the major pharma companies are NOT American companies.
For example, one project I was involved with was a drug designed and initial human trials done by a Japanese company, then sold to an American pharma corp once it passed phase II trials.
Not really. You don't found a pharma startup unless you've got a promising candidate already. Basic discovery happens mostly in universities. The academic researchers find something interesting, use animal models to work out the mechanism and test efficacy, and occasionally even do some human studies. Startups are then either spun out of the university, started independently in conjunction with one of the university researchers, or in some cases just troll through the published literature looking for good ideas. The startup, or sometimes a bigger pharma company, then runs the basic human trials, and, if successful, sells the drug (or the company) to one of the major pharma corps for marketing and distribution.
Basic discovery is still very much a publicly financed endeavour.
Other companies do sell exactly the same substance. This appears to be an example of a company taking advantage of either (a) consumer gullibility where brand names are concerned or (b) corrupt physicians.
Although from the article it sounds like the competition might be cranking the price up as well, so perhaps it's (c) collusion.
In the rest of the world, apparently actual government regulation successfully keeps the price between $0.10 and $10.
There's fairly strong evidence against your primary assumption. Most drug discovery is done by academic, publicly funded researchers, who get paid fairly poorly considering their education, and the hazards of the field.
The ones who rake in the big profits are business and investor types who mostly buy and sell existing IP.
Clearly we are a society with our priorities straight.
It is a list of transactions. One of the transactions is "the owner of this wallet owns 1 x special limited edition digital bobblehead".
Priceless no?
Convert what I could to liquid assets and hop a plane for somewhere without an extradition treaty.
A lot of US shows are filmed in Canada because certain Canadian cities have made themselves friendly to filming, and certain American cities have made themselves obnoxious.
Apparently a lot of New York scenes are filmed in Toronto or Montreal because the images of many buildings in New York are copyrighted.
Lucky you in the UK. So when you go to submit to a journal do you ask the library which one they'll pay for? Are there lists of approved and excluded ones you check?
Those journals are in those classes, in no small part because of the actions of the libraries. Why are high tier journals high tier? Because people read them and cite the work in them. If a bunch of libraries dump a journal, it's not going to get read, the work won't get cited, and it will drop down to the junk tier.