dekhn

37 ms·

841.
by dekhn 1y ago
Cells are already able to edit their own DNA. Examples include the yeast mating switch, in which the "active" gene is replaced by one of two templates, determining the role the yeast plays in mating ( https://en.wikiped
842.
by dekhn 1y ago
If they could get complete delivery to the liver stem cells, then the change could be permanent, although this is making many simplifications. Organs in your body usually keep some very old cells (formed in the embryo) around which act as p
843.
by dekhn 1y ago
yes, but that's totally different from coming up with a generalized treatment for a wide range of "rare" diseases.
844.
by dekhn 1y ago
This system isn't really turing complete, but existing biology provides everything required to make a computer which is Turing complete (assuming non-infinite tape size). True programmatic biology is still very underdeveloped. I have
845.
by dekhn 1y ago
Yes, but the cures here aren't general. They're highly specific, and the rare conditions have a long tail- large numbers of different conditions, each with a very small population of affected individuals, and likely, the treatmen
846.
by dekhn 1y ago
it's unclear the outcome of this will be eugenics wars. Answering the real question- it's unlikely these techniques will see widespread "recreational" usage any time soon, as they come with a wide range of risks. Furthe
847.
by dekhn 1y ago
What the Chinese guy (He) did was completely different. He permanently altered the germline in embryos, which means that every cell in the resulting baby is transformed permanently with the change he made. The work he did violated a wide
848.
by dekhn 1y ago
later, he held onto hello.com for years with a "coming soon! the next network from orkut!" Supposedly you could get an invite but I don't know anybody who ever actually used it.
849.
by dekhn 1y ago
I honestly can't tell if this is truly clever, like in the way a skilled poet can combine vocabulary and meter constraints to generate wonderful phrases (Kubla Khan poem being a nice example), or just a mechanical process. I am also c
850.
by dekhn 1y ago
We are in the middle of a renaissance of image processing across a wide range of fields. Many of the previous limits are being smashed by using new materials and algorithms. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_p
851.
by dekhn 1y ago
Cooling at the south pole is not free- it's actually hard work to keep data centers cool at the pole. My friend helped run the IceCube data center at the station and got to fly down and stay there for a week, basically to insert debia
852.
by dekhn 1y ago
I have a phd in a related field and I can't understand exactly what is being said here. From what I can tell, the author claims a protein was engineered, where the protein sequence maps (through a chosen translation table) to a human
853.
by dekhn 1y ago
their description of deinococcus has several errors. For example, they claim it reproduces without DNA, which is not true.
854.
by dekhn 1y ago
What do you mean universities can't commercialize in the same way (I may have misunderstood what you meant)? Due to Bayh-Dole, Universities can patent and license the tech they develop under contract for the government- often helping
855.
by dekhn 1y ago
Check out the history of BBN, who was deeply involved in the creation of the modern internet. There was an open revolving door between BBN employees and granting agencies, and BBN was even charged with contract fraud by the government . I
856.
by dekhn 1y ago
I dunno, cancer is complicated. I'd have to see the details to make that judgement. It really depends on a lot of factors- what the nature of the sample was, what the lab report did, etc.
857.
by dekhn 1y ago
LLMs don't have a magical ability to arbitrate complex truths. If the "low-fat diet" narrative is prominent in the training literature, I would expect the model to say that more often that it said the opposite. I don't
858.
by dekhn 1y ago
What was the outcome (did the subject of the lab report go on to present cancer)? (sometimes what we think is a false positive ends up being a true positive later, and cancer is a late-arriving signal).
859.
by dekhn 1y ago
We had both an Apple II+ and a Commodore 64 at school when I was about 10 and I just couldn't get into the C64- the slow disk drive (IIRC it's the bus that's the bottleneck) meant minutes of waiting for programs to start. Wh
860.
by dekhn 1y ago
No, it doesn't seem like the funding is going to go elsewhere. It looks like it will go unspent, or possibly clawed back.
861.
by dekhn 1y ago
Regarding your last sentence- they also ensure that the grant proposals don't propose to do anything illegal, or that the university is not resourced to carry out.
862.
by dekhn 1y ago
Waymo's strategy is to be extremely cautious and slowly improve the system and increase its scope over time with the goal of establishing self-driving cars as a long-term viable solution. They know they need to increase the trust of m
863.
by dekhn 1y ago
Wait, which car are you saying gets taken over by a human? Waymo?
864.
by dekhn 1y ago
Note that methylation is normally removed during reproduction - specifically much of the methylation is removed, and then replaced (not necessarily recapitulating the original patterns). So it may be important during deveopment and maturat
865.
by dekhn 1y ago
uh, no, people would get a fail on the question if they didn't correctly identify both the initial selection and sample acceptance criteria.
866.
by dekhn 1y ago
He means Andreesen, obviously.
867.
by dekhn 1y ago
I guess the question in my mind is: would you expect a smart person who did not previously know this problem (or really much random sampling at all) to come up with the algorithm on the fly in an interview? And if the person had seen it be
868.
by dekhn 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem
869.
by dekhn 1y ago
I didn't know about the algorithm until after I got hired there. It's actually really useful in a number of contexts, but my favorite was using it to find optimal split points for sharding lexicographically sorted string keys for
870.
by dekhn 1y ago
I suspect if you really tried to deposit a pile of tardigrades on your finger and squeezed really tight you could probably damage them with the ridges of your fingerprints. I don't know enough about the biophysics of finger pressure a

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