Yeah, that sounds like the usual mechanism (going back at least to this “survival of the flattest” paper from 25 years ago).

I just got the impression from the abstract that they might have found something significantly different.

similar flatness-seeking implicit biases have been discovered in other stochastic optimization algorithms; here we reveal their different underlying mechanisms despite similar outcome, demonstrating the unique properties of evolutionary dynamics.

The paper’s behind a paywall, but from the abstract it seems like the main claim is that they found another mechanism for an already well-established result (essentially, that drunkards develop an aversion to strolling near cliffs). It doesn’t really suggest how their findings differ from earlier studies of quasispecies models, though.

What I like is to be pleasantly surprised, which requires leaving a degree of freedom to the chef.

“What we are trying to do is turn the machine’s parameters into numbers, and use that to standardize every single bowl.”

So once you’ve tried everything on the menu, there’s no reason to ever come back.

Many overseas self-media vloggers have hailed the technology, calling it “the future of education,” China Central Television (CCTV) reported on Tuesday.

Is “overseas self-media vloggers” the Chinese term for influencers?

Sometimes I wonder if the entire planet was repopulated by the freakish occupants of some isolated Cretaceous cave system who managed to survive the asteroid underground.

Did the bacterium evolve to fight cancer in its host just due to selection pressure to prevent host death?

If that’s the case, I’m surprised it was able to do it better than its host’s immune system—I guess bacteria can evolve faster due to shorter generations?

Chitosan is a real thing and sounds interesting, but the “Visual Nervous Processor System” is no part of the brain I’ve ever heard of.

The platform combines two proprietary technologies. One is a high-resolution multiphase parallelized two-photon microscope, which enables researchers to reconstruct a neuron’s brain-wide projection pattern without cutting brain tissue. The other is a dual-color expansion fluorescence in situ hybridization technique, which precisely maps gene molecules within cells and can detect six genes simultaneously.

Both of these seem a bit wild in their own right.