Martyn Plummer
@martynplummer.bsky.social
Statistics. Computing. Cancer Epidemiology. Public health.
The No Kings protests in the UK today have been helpfully renamed “No Tyrants”, just to clarify that they don’t want to get rid of the actual king.
October 18, 2025 at 8:13 AM
The No Kings protests in the UK today have been helpfully renamed “No Tyrants”, just to clarify that they don’t want to get rid of the actual king.
I think it’s plausible that, under the right conditions, life is common, but intelligent life is rare (it took billions of years on Earth). Without fossil fuels a sustainable industrial revolution might be next to impossible so industrial civilisations are even more rare.
October 1, 2025 at 9:57 PM
I think it’s plausible that, under the right conditions, life is common, but intelligent life is rare (it took billions of years on Earth). Without fossil fuels a sustainable industrial revolution might be next to impossible so industrial civilisations are even more rare.
People have been predicting the end of the world for some time and they’ve all been wrong so far. When the world failed to end in 1844, the Millerite movement called it “The Great Disappointment“. I don’t suppose that sentiment was widely shared.
September 22, 2025 at 7:37 PM
People have been predicting the end of the world for some time and they’ve all been wrong so far. When the world failed to end in 1844, the Millerite movement called it “The Great Disappointment“. I don’t suppose that sentiment was widely shared.
Yes. Melanoma is not the most common cancer in Australia but the others appear later. So when you restrict the picture to under-50s you get high peaks in Australia but also N Europe. Data from the IARC Global Cancer Observatory gco.iarc.who.int/en
September 15, 2025 at 7:23 AM
Yes. Melanoma is not the most common cancer in Australia but the others appear later. So when you restrict the picture to under-50s you get high peaks in Australia but also N Europe. Data from the IARC Global Cancer Observatory gco.iarc.who.int/en
It can’t give you advice because it doesn’t know anything. It’s a synthetic text generator that responds with a statistically plausible continuation of the context window based on the training data. @infinitescream.bsky.social
August 24, 2025 at 9:34 PM
It can’t give you advice because it doesn’t know anything. It’s a synthetic text generator that responds with a statistically plausible continuation of the context window based on the training data. @infinitescream.bsky.social
This explains why Peter Kyle wants the Turing to focus on defense and security research which a) belongs in the public sector and b) is in the national interest.
It's a narrow view of the national interest but it answers the existential question.
It's a narrow view of the national interest but it answers the existential question.
August 18, 2025 at 7:14 PM
This explains why Peter Kyle wants the Turing to focus on defense and security research which a) belongs in the public sector and b) is in the national interest.
It's a narrow view of the national interest but it answers the existential question.
It's a narrow view of the national interest but it answers the existential question.
If I wanted to do this, I would add NA tags as a separate attribute of the data frame, not try to augment the numeric vector class.
August 1, 2025 at 8:15 AM
If I wanted to do this, I would add NA tags as a separate attribute of the data frame, not try to augment the numeric vector class.
I think that tagged NAs are useful for data management but not necessarily for computation. You could extend the data frame class to allow tagged NAs, preserve them during data manipulation operations, and allow selection and transformation based on the tag.
August 1, 2025 at 8:15 AM
I think that tagged NAs are useful for data management but not necessarily for computation. You could extend the data frame class to allow tagged NAs, preserve them during data manipulation operations, and allow selection and transformation based on the tag.
To some extent, yes. Critics of big tech have identified a pervasive set of cultish beliefs driving the AI industry that they call the #TESCREAL bundle.
www.dair-institute.org/tescreal/
www.dair-institute.org/tescreal/
The TESCREAL Bundle
The Distributed AI Research Institute is a space for independent, community-rooted AI research, free from Big Tech’s pervasive influence.
www.dair-institute.org
August 1, 2025 at 8:08 AM
To some extent, yes. Critics of big tech have identified a pervasive set of cultish beliefs driving the AI industry that they call the #TESCREAL bundle.
www.dair-institute.org/tescreal/
www.dair-institute.org/tescreal/
Even if you have hardware and compiler support for NaN payload propagation, you still have to implement the semantics of NA vs NaN vs finite value propagation in all low-level arithmetic operations. Extending these semantics to include tagged NAs is too much complexity, and not guaranteed to work.
July 31, 2025 at 7:36 AM
Even if you have hardware and compiler support for NaN payload propagation, you still have to implement the semantics of NA vs NaN vs finite value propagation in all low-level arithmetic operations. Extending these semantics to include tagged NAs is too much complexity, and not guaranteed to work.