Recent and related:
News from Scroll 5 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42955356 - Feb 2025 (3 comments)
First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years
11–20 of 95 posts
Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years
#12[flagged]
You may, or may not be asking in jest. In any case, I think you are alluding to the fact that Luke Farritor, winner of the Vesuvius challenge in 2023 and former SpaceX intern, is now employed by Elon Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency, ostensibly to find waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpflT8XuSyg&t=11s
well, that's cursed knowledge
Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years
#13Recent and related: News from Scroll 5 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42955356 - Feb 2025 (3 comments)
Additional backstory:
First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37857417 - Oct 2023 (210 comments)
Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39261861 - Feb 2024 (216 comments)
Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years
#14> The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened. > But now scientists have used a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to virtually unfurl it, revealing rows and columns of text. "scientists" They talked to the head of the vesuvius challenge, which is the actual project that figured…
You’re gonna be shocked to learn how many research papers the “primary author” is the faculty advisor, that the second author is a grad student who wrote the entire paper, and the professor only observed/inspired the project and proofread the paper.
Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years
#15> The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened. > But now scientists have used a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to virtually unfurl it, revealing rows and columns of text. "scientists" They talked to the head of the vesuvius challenge, which is the actual project that figured…
You’re gonna be shocked to learn how many research papers the “primary author” is the faculty advisor, that the second author is a grad student who wrote the entire paper, and the professor only observed/inspired the project and proofread the paper.
Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years
#16> The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened. > But now scientists have used a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to virtually unfurl it, revealing rows and columns of text. "scientists" They talked to the head of the vesuvius challenge, which is the actual project that figured…
I completely agree. They even have a picture of the light source used to do the scans as if that's more important than the people who did the actual work.
I can't understand the editorial bent in this article. I think editors believe scientists to be vaunted and inaccessible creatures that live in the rarefied climbs of "science mountain." Meanwhile it's just some kid down the block who would love to be interviewed by the BBC.
Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years
#17> The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened. > But now scientists have used a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to virtually unfurl it, revealing rows and columns of text. "scientists" They talked to the head of the vesuvius challenge, which is the actual project that figured…
College kids can be scientists. Anyone doing science is a scientist. There are even middle-school kids doing science. Or random adults with non-STEM jobs collecting data as a hobby for Citizen Science. We should be careful not to gatekeep the words science or scientist. The more mad scientists we have throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks, the more things we can discover.
Yup as long as it’s done in a scientific way and published under peer review doesn’t matter who did it - that’s the great thing about blind publication review in a lot of fields
Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years
#18[flagged]
Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years
#19Recent and related: News from Scroll 5 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42955356 - Feb 2025 (3 comments)
Additional backstory: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37857417 - Oct 2023 (210 comments) Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39261861 - Feb 2024 (216 comments)
That CS student was Luke Farritor -- now part of the infamous DOGE team.
Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years
#20[dead]