Increased data access would enable researchers to perform studies on a broader scale, allow for improved characterization of misinformation in real-world contexts, and facilitate the testing of interventions to prevent the spread of misinformation. The current paper highlights 15 opinions from researchers detailing these possibilities and describes research that could hypothetically be conducted if social media data were more readily available. As scientists, our findings are only as good as the dataset at our disposal, and with the current misinformation crisis, it is urgent that we have access to real-world data where misinformation is wreaking the most havoc.
Author: Gregor J. Rothfuss
100T transistor chips
The largest chip ever made, the Cerebras Wafer-Scale Engine is 60x larger than the largest CPU and GPU chips. On it there are 400K compute cores that provide petaflops of performance, 18 GB of fast SRAM memory with over 10 petabytes of bandwidth, and a communication network with 50 petabits of bandwidth.
Busy Beaver
The goal of the “busy beaver” game is to find the longest-running computer program. Its pursuit has surprising connections to some of the most profound questions and concepts in mathematics. The rub is that BB(27) is such an incomprehensibly huge number that even writing it down, much less running the Goldbach-falsifying machine for that many steps, isn’t remotely possible in our physical universe. Nevertheless, that incomprehensibly huge number is still an exact figure whose magnitude represents “a statement about our current knowledge” of number theory.
Improving urban GPS
Combine raw GPS measurements with building outlines, plus some linear algebra, to reduce GPS errors in dense urban environments by 75%.
Path to Herd Immunity
We believe COVID-19 herd immunity (>60% of population immune) will be reached in the US during summer 2021 (Jul-Sep 2021). At the time herd immunity is reached, 50% of the immunity will be achieved through natural infection, and the other half will be achieved through vaccination. New infections may become minimal before herd immunity is reached (Jun-Aug 2021). But due to imported cases and localized clusters, it is unlikely that new infections will drop to zero until 2022. Deaths may drop to low levels even earlier (May-Jul 2021), in part due to a vaccine distribution strategy that initially prioritizes high-risk individuals. Once deaths fall to minimal levels, we may begin seeing a relaxation of restrictions. Summarizing the above findings, our best estimate of a complete “return to normal” in the US is mid-summer 2021 (Jun-Aug 2021).
Elsevier Star Trek problem
An undergraduate student in the United Kingdom has taken to task the editors of a purportedly scholarly journal for having published more than 100 papers by a Maltese researcher with a deep affinity for Star Trek.
this is both hilarious as well as clear evidence that peer review / scientific publishing is a complete joke.
Palaeolithic ocean voyages
We show evidence of deliberate crossing of challenging ocean that occurred 35 ka ago in the Ryukyu Islands of southwestern Japan
Most dangerous path
The Broomway is surrounded on both sides by quicksand and deep, sucking mud. It has no markers and no guideposts. And if you mistime your walk, you won’t outrun the tide. Oh, and it’s in the middle of a Ministry of Defence firing range.
Legibility
the idea to change a complex system to make it “easy” to understand, like straightening rivers or removing underbrush from forests, with predictably bad results.
Ancient Egyptian
thanks to coptic, we’re able to re-create egyptian phonetics.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 