TechTakes

a take from Derek Lowe on AI drugs: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ai-drugs-so-far

They began with a list of AI-focused companies (114!), then matched that up with the clinical projects that are reported for them (39 of them).

If you look at the 2023 figures, the authors have 24 AI-discovered targets, 22 AI-optimized small molecules, 4 antibodies, 6 vaccines, and 10 repurposed compounds. So what do we think about those figures?

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What you will see is that in almost every case, these targets were already known to be implicated in the disease under investigation. In some of these examples, in fact there are several drugs already in the clinic targeting the same proteins, or even therapies that are already on the market working through the same mechanisms

chaser

That colors my entire view of this paper - which was written by a prominent consulting firm, why did you ask.

nsfw, and at a risk of beating a dead horse, but this article, although brief, does a decent job at connecting the dots between "silicon valley pronatalism" and regular ol' nationalism/white supremacy, while debunking some of their EA bullshit too

The Collinses are leading spokespeople for a movement called pronatalism, popular in Silicon Valley. Elon Musk, a father of 11, is one of its leading proponents. “Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming,” Musk tweeted.

Demographers disagree: there is no collapse, and one is not even predicted. Such evidence has not stopped the rise of pronatalism in response to an imagined “population bomb.”

In short, the problem for pronatalism is not declining reproduction, but who is reproducing. Pronatalism is inextricably tied to nationalism alongside race, class and ethnicity.... Here, nationalism tips into ethnonationalism and reproductive debates descend into violent racism.

a near 12,000 word anonymous hit piece on Émile Torres on the EA forum has some gems in the comments.

the top comment basically calls it out as someone airing their personal grievances.

next comment feels the need to call out Torres and Gebru are big bad bullies:

Broadly I think that both Torres and Gebru engage in bullying. They have big accounts and lots of time and will quote tweet anyone who disagrees with them, making the other person seem bad to their huge followings.

and my personal favorite, that Marx's drive was more akin to rationalists than current leftists, because leftists for the "last ten-fifteen years just [haven't] been very rational"

Karl Marx's whole work was based on economics and an attempt to create a sort of scientific theory of history, love it or hate it the man obviously had a drive more akin to those of current rationalists than of current leftists.

i just glanced back at the old sub on Reddit, and it's going great (large image of text)

I’ve been taking a long break from reading anything here. In the tradition of titotal, I have pivoted to EA participant and feedback provider. In this case, my EA is the Hades II Early Access, which is great, by the way.

not a sneer, but holy shit we're midway through 2024. the abyss beckons.

this tweet starts plausibly then rapidly descends into "I photocopied the words 'I AM ALIVE'. What happened next will shock you!"

an exciting new startup promises to be "airbnb for gpus"! rent out your GPU to run untrusted code for pennies an hour: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40260259

bonus: the company is “pivoting” from drone delivery

bonus bonus: boomer in the comments going on a nonsequiter rant about trans furries

Wait a year and see how kids get on blockchain to sell and buy GPU resources for rendering ‘trans furries’, or better analyse classmates’ stolen chats. I can vividly remember we were by no means disclosing private info back in ‘94 only to see a world of influencers in 2024 sharing their very personal guts for profits.

pretty good indication that the eugenics couple are totally disrespected and disregarded even within their supposed sphere of influence: none or almost none of the 2^7 replies to the thread the other day were Just Asking Questions or So Everyone You Don't Like Is A Nazi?ing. except for I guess peter thiel they convince nobody, appeal to nobody, and yet journalists keep uncritically writing about them. the ability of money to shape media is impressive

What’s the word for “the sound of social tides turning”? Because I might have an example at hand

(I may sneer, but I also giggle delightedly. It’s not quite schadenfreude by itself but also a childlike joy of wellduhhhhhhh)

I FOUND A WORKING NITTER INSTANCE that is not nazi owned (that i know of) it's at xcancel.com

So there was a big, vaguely described, public kerfuffle at a beach in my city, so I logged onto Xitter to see what happened. The first (and only relevant post) was from a sinister-ish sounding bluecheck. Low and behold, I found that he writes to the Unz review.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240526210416/https://www.unz.com/article/the-worlds-greatest-boxer-is-a-white-man/ It's all about Usyk, a heavyweight boxer who's considered a pound for pound great. Usyk is a great boxer, undoubtedly. But this article is strangely constructed, borderline pointless, and brazenly racist (shocker). And honestly, reading the comments, I think the author's just trying to cope with the fact that black boxers tend to be popular.

I don't think racist cope on its own is even worth a stubstack, but this one take is especially stupid:

Since it’s assumed that heavyweight boxers are able to beat everyone below their weight class, the heavyweight champ is essentially the real champ. And until last weekend, there hasn’t been an undisputed heavyweight champion since 1999, when Lennox Lewis—a black “British” man—collected all of the belts, only to lose one of them a year later when he failed to promptly fight a mandatory challenger.

To those unfamiliar with combat sports, I can't emphasize enough how weird it is to say that the heavyweight champ is the best boxer, period. Skill - irrespective of raw strength - is super important to boxers and other people who participate in combat sports. To the point that any fan ranking a pro boxer will likely talk about "Pound for pound" (p4p) greats, not the objectively strongest fighters. And right now the unofficial p4p great is a sub 5'6" Japanese boxer Naoya "Monster" Inoue. This man is a beast. I don't need to glaze him any harder, just google him or look up what people think on reddit. Weirdly enough, he's not mentioned once.

Hell, he doesn't mention Gervonta "Tank" Davis at all. He's half an inch shorter than Inoue, but he's also considered a p4p great and is known for his high boxing IQ. As a matter of fact, he doesn't mention Terence Crawford - 5'8" also considered a p4p great - at all either. Hmmm.

I don't know what this qualifies as but

Hey, sounds like that's your problem? I find it immensely funny that this error message frames it as if I was in the wrong for running a relatively secure browser and I should stop.

Sneer: Also I don't understand what "x.com" is, I typed in "twitter.com" into the bar...

ahhh thank you for changing the litter tray

An article about Opera going from a normal browser company to a predatory loan / cryptocurrency / chatbot / edgelord gamer / vtuber company: https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-opera-browser/

Now I'm a healthy woman. I think all browsers having associated vtubers, or at least mascots, is a great idea. But not at the expense of silently ending support for one of their browser branches leaving any users brave enough to use it to face huge security vulnerabilities.