Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image • Hacker News Board

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#11

Post by amrrs » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 8:54 AM UTC

I'm not biased anyway but thinking Is it fair to attribute this entire thing to one person leaving out the team of collaborators? Doesn't it sound like what happens with Jobsism?

Edit: While I'm being rapidly downvoted, I'd like to clarify that I didn't mean to demean this because it's a female nor any of the feat this research has achieved. My point was only about why is it reported as if individual feat while many of such things are a strong team work.

For some other questions - will you say the same about Elon musk - of course i've argued this among my peers and that's exactly why I called it similar to `Jobsism`

To Quote: Another recent incident, While AI Godfathers got Turing award, many questioned why this person hasn't got and that person hasn't got.

My idea for this comment was a constructive discussion but it took a different spin that my comment is against this woman which definitely not my intention.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#12

Post by yoz-y » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 8:55 AM UTC

romanovcode wrote: post #2

How come she is everywhere on the internet but not at the presentation panel on live conference that was yesterday? Jeez why the downvotes? It's a legitimate question I had.

hidden figures? eerily similar

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#13

Post by inflatableDodo » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 8:58 AM UTC

mpfundstein wrote: post #9

Is it me or is the article written like for 5 year olds? It feels like I am reading a child book. However, this is such a great achievement. Would be awesome to learn more about the algorithm.

Welcome to 99% of the BBC's science output. Outside of Radio4, it has become a barren wasteland where no numbers can increment.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#14

Post by morrbo » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 8:59 AM UTC

I see a lot of mention on various forums about the storage they used (5pb) but am just wondering if anyone know what kind of backend they used to house this? From what I saw there were too many disks - in the wrong type of enclosure - to be running on a single server, which suggests multiple physical servers. I've seen a prior CERN research paper on gluster and ceph (iirc) and am just wondering if anyone in the know could enlighten me?

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#15

Post by antt » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 9:00 AM UTC

amrrs wrote: post #11

I'm not biased anyway but thinking Is it fair to attribute this entire thing to one person leaving out the team of collaborators? Doesn't it sound like what happens with Jobsism? Edit: While I'm being rapidly downvoted, I'd like to clarify that I didn't mean to demean this because it's a female nor any of the feat this research has achieved. My point was only about why is it reported as if individual feat while many…

I'm annoyed because of the breathless coverage. One would see less hyperbole if a dog had done the work.

The worst thing is how soul crushing academia is. I left my physics PhD when I actually started talking to my colleagues and seeing my career trajectory. I bailed as soon as I realized I will be working until my 40s on the per hour pay of a fast food employee.

I do not see why you want to push women to a field that pays starvation wages, has worse work/life balance than programming and will pretty much require them to put off kids until their late 30s, if ever.

But the dying media get their clicks, which is all that matters to them in the end. Regardless of the long term damage they do.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#16

Post by darkpuma » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 9:00 AM UTC

ilarum wrote: post #6

Relevant repository - https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging

> https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging/graphs/contributors

Huh, I wonder how accurate this is. All the code is beyond me in any case, I'm in no position to judge the relative value of any of it.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#17

Post by melling » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 9:01 AM UTC

Katie gave a TED talk:

https://youtu.be/BIvezCVcsYs

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#18

Post by klohto » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 9:01 AM UTC

amrrs wrote: post #11

I'm not biased anyway but thinking Is it fair to attribute this entire thing to one person leaving out the team of collaborators? Doesn't it sound like what happens with Jobsism? Edit: While I'm being rapidly downvoted, I'd like to clarify that I didn't mean to demean this because it's a female nor any of the feat this research has achieved. My point was only about why is it reported as if individual feat while many…

~I feel bad for the team. I would rather see the whole team praised for the success not just one person that fits the narrative "women in tech".~

People I right, I made an assumption based on the title and not the content.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#19

Post by MultusSalus » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 9:03 AM UTC

mpfundstein wrote: post #9

Is it me or is the article written like for 5 year olds? It feels like I am reading a child book. However, this is such a great achievement. Would be awesome to learn more about the algorithm.

As I understand it that’s how articles look when a major organisation establishes SEO as a primary metric.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#20

Post by govg » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 9:04 AM UTC

amrrs wrote: post #11

I'm not biased anyway but thinking Is it fair to attribute this entire thing to one person leaving out the team of collaborators? Doesn't it sound like what happens with Jobsism? Edit: While I'm being rapidly downvoted, I'd like to clarify that I didn't mean to demean this because it's a female nor any of the feat this research has achieved. My point was only about why is it reported as if individual feat while many…

It's a bit of both - she was the lead behind the algorithm used to process the data, so she rightly deserves credit for that aspect (being the first to do something always gets the credit in the research community). At the same time, it's disingenuous to say it would have been impossible without her, there were multiple competing methods that could have pulled this off, and there were large parts of this achievement that had nothing to do with computational photography research (the astronomy / radio physicists teams).