March 2019 Gwern.net newsletter with 3 writeups; links on genetics, ads, poetry; and 1 anime review, 1 opera review, and 1 movie review.
March 2019’s Gwern.net newsletter is now out; previous, February 2019 (archives). This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with my Changelog; brought to you by my donors on Patreon.
Writings
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“Finetuning the GPT-2-117M Transformer for English Poetry Generation”
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“Glue Robbers: Sequencing Nobelists Using Collectible Letters”
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rewrote “The Gift of the Amygdali”
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Gwern.net CSS changes: Tufte-style sidenotes (for displaying footnotes in margins on wide screens) via Obormot’s new JS library,
sidenotes.js
; static compilation of MathJax’s rendering of MathML math viamathjax-node-page
(enables math for JS-disabled users & eliminates the <5s rendering time on math-heavy pages like the embryo selection page); added support for dropcaps (Goudy Initialen, yinit, Deutsche Zierschrift; Cheshire; Kanzlei; other examples) for thematic emphasis; disabled Disqus ads; second ad A/B test ended, so disabled banner ad; prototype automatic inflation-adjustment of dollar amounts via new Hakyll plugin; outdent headers & left shift H1 headers for scannability; more Tufte-style tables with different styling for small/simple tables vs complex width-full tables; better highlighting on ToC;image-focus.js
now runs in slideshow mode; Wikipedia link annotations; resized & optimized images with advpng/mozjpeg
Media
Links
Genetics:
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Everything Is Heritable:
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“Recovery of [full height/BMI] trait heritability from whole genome sequence data”, et al 2019 (WGS heritability approaches full heritability, implying that moving beyond SNP data will increase the ceiling for GWASes greatly for many traits)
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“Genetic analysis identifies molecular systems and biological pathways associated with household income”, et al 2019
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“Natural History Museums Are Teeming With Undiscovered Species” (sequencing preserved museum collection samples for retrospective studies); “A New Method of Trace DNA Testing Could Solve More Shootings” (sequencing extremely tiny amounts from gun shells); “Is DNA Left on Envelopes Fair Game for Testing? The genealogist’s dream of testing old, spit-laced artifacts is coming true—but raising questions about who controls dead people’s DNA” (genotyping & phenotyping the graveyard; why rob von Neumann’s grave if you can just buy a letter?)
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“A multicellular way of life for a multipartite virus”, et al 2019 ( media; “multipartite” viruses get even weirder)
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Engineering:
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“Enabling large-scale genome editing by reducing DNA nicking”, et al 2019 (the Church lab does it again—a shocking increase of 2 orders of magnitude in repetitive edits: from ~60 to ~2.6k CRISPR-style edits in a single cell! Did I too hastily write off genetic editing as a potential game-changer?)
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“The Ride of Their Lives: Children prepare for the world’s most dangerous organized sport” (“2 decades of selective breeding has made rodeo bulls more dangerous and valuable than ever before”)
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Recent Evolution:
AI:
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“The Bitter Lesson” of AI Research: Compute Beats Clever (Rich Sutton)
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“Exploring Neural Networks with Activation Atlases”, et al 2019
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“A Replication Study: Machine Learning Models Are Capable of Predicting Sexual Orientation From Facial Images”, 2019 (the homosexuality ‘face detector’ appears to survive its first replication)
Statistics/Meta-Science:
Politics/religion:
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“Why Fears of Fake News Are Overhyped”, Brendan Nyhan (fake news is relatively rare & consumed by decreasingly many Americans)
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“On the referendum #31: Project Maven, procurement, lollapalooza results, & nuclear/AGI safety”, Dominic Cummings (more on x-risks, senility of politics, and project management)
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From Pan to Fire: Malcolm Muggeridge’s Encounters With Communism & Naziism (SSC review of his autobiography, Chronicles Of Wasted Time)
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The MormonAds Project (deconverting Mormons by using Facebook ad targeting to link them to official LDS apologetics of polygamy, child marriage, etc)
Psychology/biology:
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“The impact of background music on adult listeners: A meta-analysis”, et al 2011 (music appears to be energizing but distracting on net)
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“Invisible Geniuses: Could the Knowledge Frontier Advance Faster?”, 2018 (IMO gold medalists are 50x more likely to win a Fields Medal than PhD graduates of US top-10 math programs; see also SMPY)
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“Status as a Service”, Eugene Wei (social networking)
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“Mastering the Art of War: How Patterns of Gameplay Influence Skill in Halo”, et al 2013 (the spacing effect in game skill acquisition?)
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“Does garlic protect against vampires? An experimental study”, 1994
Technology:
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“Measuring Long-term Impact of Ads on LinkedIn Feed”, et al 2019 (large reductions in newsfeed consumption due to ad load; commentary)
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“The Cosmic Distance Ladder”, Terence Tao 2010 (how to use geometry to successively calculate distances in the solar system, to nearby stars, the Milky Way, & other galaxies)
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“Invent More, Toil Less”, et al 2016 (the need to periodically consider what work is make-work & make systemic changes/improvements to eliminate it)
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“Progression of the Inevitable” (Kevin Kelly, fro What Technology Wants)
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“Network Heuristics” (where the falling outlier meets the rising GAN)
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“Cloak and Dagger: Dynamics of Web Search Cloaking”, et al 2011 (blackhat SEO: why Dresden Codak.com was trying to sell you Viagra starting December 2018)
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“Building a working game of Tetris in Conway’s Game of Life”
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“Accuracy takes power: one man’s 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator”
Economics:
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“Death By 1,000 Clicks: Where Electronic Health Records [EHRs] Went Wrong: The U.S. government claimed that turning American medical charts into electronic records would make health care better, safer, & cheaper. 10 years & $36b later, the system is an unholy mess” (previously: “Why Doctors Hate Their Computers”)
Philosophy:
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“Who is Arguing about the Cat? Moral Action and Enlightenment according to Dōgen”, 1997 (“In expressing full function, there are no fixed methods.”)
Fiction:
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“The First Sally (A), or, Trurl’s Electronic Bard”, Stanisław Lem (The Cyberiad)
Film/TV
Animated:
Live-action:
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Die Walküre opera (review)
Music
Misc:
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“Tomorrow” (Kevin Penkin; MADE IN ABYSS ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK {2017}) [classical]
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“Nanachi in the Light” (Kevin Penkin; MADE IN ABYSS ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK {2017}) [classical]
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“Hanezeve Caradhina” (Kevin Penkin feat. Takeshi Saito; MADE IN ABYSS ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK {2017}) [vocal]
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“Rafters” (Kevin Penkin; MADE IN ABYSS ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK {2017}) [classical]
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“Swings and Roundabouts” (Kevin Penkin; MADE IN ABYSS ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK {2017}) [classical]
MLP:
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“Luck of the Rose” (Double Cleff {2017}) [pop]
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“Find A Way (lo-fi Hip Hop Remix)” (Yanamosuda {2017}) [trance]
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“Weather Patrol” (ForeverFreest; Beats Me 3 [2017})