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Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

theguardian.com

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Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#51

Post by ouid »

hyperbovine wrote: post #48
abefetterman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically nobody was using automated gradient descent / etc because of the proclivity of these algorithms to get stuck on a boundary. The problem is the boundaries are not well defined. One example might be a catastrophic instability. If it gets triggered it has the potential to damage the machine. But the exact parameters in which the instability occurs are not well known. So with this algorithm you mix the best of…

To be clear: there are no gradients here (right?) This is just 0th order hill-climbing with a human assist.

how does one climb a hill with no gradient? [serious question]

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#52

Post by trhway »

suzzer99 wrote: post #36

Am I the only one that never reads these articles but just goes straight to the comments? It seems like reporters always get the facts bungled and go for the simple story - out of necessity of course.

for me it is about page loading - pretty much straightforward successful and predictable on HN and slow and/or heavy, jerking current position/scroll around and full of whatever else surprises the page of the source. I want to know what it is about immediately, i.e. basically it is an issue of instant gratification for me :) If information on the HN comments page isn't enough (which is rare), or the source is really vouched/confirmed to be interesting by itself - then i take the bullet.

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#53

Post by xrange »

wbl wrote: post #49
pm90 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison is not b/w fusion and a hypothetical waste free source of energy. Its b/w fusion and fission. The waste products of fission are much more dangerous, expensive to handle and we still haven't found foolproof, effective ways of disposing them. OTOH, danger from irradiated materials (whatever that is, this is the first time I'm hearing this TBH) doesn't seem very pressing. I highly doubt any of the irradia…

Half life is inversely proportional to radiation intensity. The big issue with fission waste products are the nucleotides radioactive enough to kill and long lived enough to be annoying, not the nasty ones that go away in a few decades or the almost inert ones.

Might as well put a Wikipedia link here about the fission product isotopes and their half lives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission_product#Radioa...

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#54

Post by crusso »

siscia wrote: post #34

I do have a naive question. Suppose a big breakthrough comes out of a private company, and such innovation is necessary to use nuclear fusion. The company will be free to do whatever it pleases with the technology or it will somehow "force" to let other use, maybe behind the payment of some royalties.

If they have a patentable breakthrough, they would be able to restrict use of their discovery for the duration of their patent.

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#55

Post by jccooper »

siscia wrote: post #34

I do have a naive question. Suppose a big breakthrough comes out of a private company, and such innovation is necessary to use nuclear fusion. The company will be free to do whatever it pleases with the technology or it will somehow "force" to let other use, maybe behind the payment of some royalties.

Patent law generally recognizes the option of the state to enforce compulsory licensing, though it's rarely exercised. Eminent domain may also be used to take patents.

The modern approach seems to be to just let people find a way around the patent, or simply ignore and litigate.

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#56

Post by Govindae »

ouid wrote: post #51
hyperbovine wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear: there are no gradients here (right?) This is just 0th order hill-climbing with a human assist.

how does one climb a hill with no gradient? [serious question]

The naive way to do calculus. Use secants to approximate the tangent. I think it's called finite difference.

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#57

Post by [deleted] »

dwaltrip wrote: post #31

There was a talk about the state of nuclear fusion by some MIT folks linked here on HN a few days ago. One of the biggest takeaways was that many fusion efforts are very far away (3 to 6+ orders of magnitude) on the most important metric, Q, which is energy_out / energy_in. Additionally, much press and public discussion completely fail to discuss this and other core factors that actually matter for making fusion viab…

[deleted]

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#58

Post by [deleted] »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #28

Sounds like some promising results, hopefully this approach will continue to be useful. Addressing the wider article, it always surprises me that the focus fusion approach is never mentioned in fusion articles put out by the mainstream media. I don't know what to attribute that to, but it's surprising that one of the most promising fusion approaches is constantly overlooked. To give an idea how drastically overlooked…

[deleted]

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#59

Post by dmurray »

ouid wrote: post #51
hyperbovine wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear: there are no gradients here (right?) This is just 0th order hill-climbing with a human assist.

how does one climb a hill with no gradient? [serious question]

You can climb a hill without knowing the gradient, so long as you can compare two points in terms of height. You randomly move in some direction, then compare the new point to the old point, go to whichever of them is higher, and repeat.

This sounds like what the experimenters are doing. Perhaps the GP was alluding to "first order hill climbing" as evaluating the gradient in every direction and climbing the steepest one, but the "0th order" version is also usually considered hill climbing and is better for some classes of problem.

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#60

Post by amelius »

abefetterman wrote: post #16

This is actually a really exciting development to me. (Note, what is exciting is the "optometrist algorithm" from the paper [1] not necessarily googles involvement as pitched in the guardian). Typically a day of shots would need to be programmed out in advance, typically scanning over one dimension (out of hundreds) at a time. It would then take at least a week to analyze the results and create an updated research pl…

Perhaps a stupid question, but why can't the whole experiment be run as a simulation?
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