Penny Lane just made a documentary about donating one of her kidneys to a stranger. It’s called Confessions of a Good Samaritan: https://www.sandboxfilms.org/films/confessions-of-a-good-sam...
Readit Newssharp11 commented on Recovering from a kidney donation sjer.red/blog/2024/kidney... · Posted by u/shepherdjerred
More details here without paywall:
In game-changer, Israeli researchers find Alzheimer's markers 20 years before onset
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-game-changer-israeli-resear...
sharp11 commented on Show HN: Skip – Build native iOS and Android apps from a single Swift codebase skip.tools/... · Posted by u/marcprux
This looks super interesting, congrats on reaching 1.0! If you do a lot of customization on the Android side, do merge conflicts become a headache? Also, does the Skip plugin assume that you're using Xcode's built-in git?
sharp11 commented on General Theory of Neural Networks robleclerc.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/rdlecler1
You’re right. Writing is hard—especially when you’re cutting across disciplines. I wasn’t happy with the writing, but I stand by the claims.
Personally, I find the writing to be just fine. It is clear and cogent. I don’t have enough background to follow all the details, but I certainly hope you are not discouraged from pursuing big ideas by negative comments on style!
sharp11 commented on Show HN: Foosbar – My autonomous foosball-playing robot github.com/misprit7/foosb... · Posted by u/misprit7
sharp11 commented on The Physics of Karate (2021) daily.jstor.org/the-physi... · Posted by u/PaulHoule
I’m disappointed this was all about the stunt of breaking things. I study Okinawan karate and true masters generate tremendous power via the tantien and rooting into the ground. It would be interesting to read a western analysis of that.
I’m surprised that no one has suggested: pick something that you actually care about, which may not be a lucrative job opportunity, but gives you the opportunity to “make a difference“. Most nonprofits desperately need help with their tech.
A while back, I took a leave of absence from the tech industry to work on climate change issues, and was amazed at what it felt like to work on issues that really seemed important.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be climate change, but if you are interested in that, you might have a look at: https://airminers.org/
There is an open source effort to do carbon removal: https://openaircollective.cc/
For example, I'm taking a physics course right now (electricity and magnetism). The concepts are difficult for me and I was hoping that the homework would help. So, I go to do the homework, but the homework is online. With the online homework I get five chances to get the problem correct, but there is zero partial credit, zero feedback, and every time I get the answer wrong, it negatively impacts my grade.
I have no chance to make mistakes and learn. At least with homework that was handed out back in the day, there was at least the possibility of partial credit being handed out. So my options are going to office hours (which I try to do), go to tutoring hours (which conflicts with my job's work schedule), or go to ChatGPT and/or Chegg.
Additionally, since students have been cheating, I think it gives professors a skewed perspective on how much time is actually needed to get work done, so the deadlines get moved up. This means I get even more pressure put on me when I'm just trying to learn and be a good student.
Also know that there's a yin and yang here. You're in a broken system--but the system used to be broken in other ways. Your point about there being too many resources strikes me as fascinating and true--and yet we have efforts like Three Blue One Brown taking teaching to a whole new level. People who figure out how to learn are always in a golden age.