Maltimore's musings

Quick thought: Human in the loop during data generation masks correlation

What happens if there is a human in the loop of a data generation process? This blog post is an illustration of a thought we had during a collaboration with BASF. It is obvious in hindsight but puzzled us for a while when we analyzed process data. Imagine you have some kind of data generation process involving independent variables x1 and x2, and a dependent variable y = f(x1, x2) = x1 + x2....

Paper summary: Finding and changing fixed points in Machine Learning-based cycle solving

Update: The corresponding paper has been published in "Computers and Chemical Engineering": https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compchemeng.2023.108574 Steamcracker at BASF Ludwigshafen site Recently, I did a project with German chemicals manufacturer BASF (wiki link). BASF is the largest chemicals manufacturer in the world, and the Ludwigshafen site pictured above is the largest chemical production complex in the world (I recommend doing a tour, it's free and very interesting)....

High on meditation

Update 2024-08-04: There now is a larger study demonstrating that many people experience altered states of consciousness during or because of meditation. Image by unsplash user Alexas_Fotos The benefits of meditation are so well researched that they have their own wikipedia page. Therefore, being a notorious optimizer, it has always been tempting to me. Since 2015, I have started to meditate around 6-8 times....

Don't drown your broccoli sprouts!

TLDR: When sprouting broccoli seeds, soak them only 4-8 hours before draining. I'm a big fan of Dr. Rhonda Patrick, a scientist turned science communicator. One of her main topics is Sulforaphane and its health benefits. The easiest and cheapest way to get Sulforaphane into your system is to consume plenty of broccoli sprouts, which is exactly what I do. In this post I report a little science experiment I did to see how long one should soak the seeds before sprouting....

Fedora and Gnome: first impressions as a longtime KDE Plasma user

I've been a Linux user since almost 10 years. Over the years I've used Ubuntu with the Unity environment, Kubuntu and KDE Neon with Plasma, Debian with Gnome and Raspbian with XFCE. Since Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, made a few decisions which I really didn't like (most importantly, forcing the use of snaps), I've decided to jump ship. Debian had problems with GPU drivers, so I was looking for something entirely new....