I promise this story about microwaves is interesting.

This Tom Scott's video from last year about microwave ovens features a nice interview with Lovelock: ▶ this video

in “James Lovelock has died” · View on HN

That's purely a size thing iirc. Lot quicker to get enough heat into a mouse to thaw it, than a human. Edit to add an interesting related video: ▶ this video

in “Faecal transplants reverse hallmarks of ageing” · View on HN

They already studied this. It sometimes worked with small animals like mice, but fails as organisms get larger. There was a really interesting video about how microwaves were first used to test this: ▶ this video

in “Frozen in Siberian Permafrost for 24,000 Years, Microscopic Animal Comes to Life” · View on HN

Someone wrote the following comment then deleted it. I spent 30 minutes on my response and wanted to post it anyway. Apologies if the original comment was deleted by a mod, I hope this is OK to post. ---QUOTE--- My "test" for video generation turning movie making on its head is when a model can add the missing Tom Bombadil chapters to Peter Jackson's LOTR movies. Probably 20 - 30 minutes of HD, aesthetically synced, scripted etc with minimal editing after a detailed prompt and source material. Qualifier - the AI just has to follow the book script, third party tools ok to use for lip syncing and audio :) I said 5 years away last year. Feels like it might be more like 1 - 2 years. What do you think? ---END QUOTE--- My response: I think we're getting into diminishing returns territory with this AI stuff. These video/image generators are impressive but they don't "understand" physical reality and probably never will without a breakthrough. You can see this in the demo videos, the best looking ones are glorified still images and the worst are whenever something physical happens, like the lemon being picked up or the guy eating cereal. These examples may get better, but I really doubt they'll ever look like real unaltered camera footage without adding an understanding of how our physical reality works into the model somehow. For the script generation, Fellowship of the Ring is not a movie script and requires serious interpretation and planning to be converted into one. Especially i

in “FastVideo: a lightweight framework for accelerating large video diffusion models” · View on HN

From [link] "In the mid-1950s, Lovelock experimented with the cryopreservation of rodents, determining that hamsters could be frozen and revived successfully.[14] Hamsters were frozen with 60% of the water in the brain crystallised into ice with no adverse effects recorded. Other organs were shown to be susceptible to damage.[15]" And there's a Tom Scott's interview with James Lovelock: ▶ this video

in “Biological Miracle – Wood Frog” · View on HN

Tom Scott has a video on microwaves where he interviews James Lovelock about the frozen hamsters: * ▶ this video Lovelock passed away a year later (in 2022): * [link]

in “A History of Microwave Ovens” · View on HN

> A history of microwave ovens without mention of reanimating cryogenically frozen hamsters? There is: > 1954: James Lovelock et al. reanimated cryogenically-frozen hamsters using an ad-hoc microwave oven. Mentions the Tom Scott video where he interview Lovelock (who passed a year later, in 2022): * ▶ this video

in “A History of Microwave Ovens” · View on HN

> even revive a mouse Actually, this has been done. Although that size seems to be about the limit. ▶ this video

in “Rich People Are Freezing Themselves to Stay Wealthy Forever” · View on HN

▶ this video "A hamster is an acceptable size." [link] "Studies on golden hamsters during cooling to and rewarming from body temperatures below 0° C. III. Biophysical aspects and general discussion"

in “Discovery of new white blood cell function” · View on HN

Lovelock was quick-freezing and microwave-thawing entire living hamsters in the mid 1900s. If it works on a whole hamster brain, it probably works in a sliver of human brain tissue. ▶ this video

in “Frozen human brain tissue brought back to life in major breakthrough” · View on HN

> " But this would have been the 1950s(?), so I'd assume they empirically determined a balance of functionality + technical feasibility for water, called it a lunch, and went to have five martinis in a practical fashion. " Or maybe they just wanted to revive frozen hamsters more humanely: "I promise this story about microwaves is interesting." by Tom Scott, about scientist James Lovelock - ▶ this video

in “Ask HN: Does your microwave interfere with Bluetooth? Mine does” · View on HN

In the 1950s scientists were freezing small rodents and reanimating them using a primitive microwave. [0] If vitrifying and reviving a single rodent organ is the state-of-the-art 70 years later, I am not exactly impressed by their progress. [0]: ▶ this video

in “What ever happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?” · View on HN

> " I kind of doubt an independent inventor could bring this to market with today's startup climate. " Especially the kind of inventor who created microwaves for experiments with reanimating frozen hamsters, cough James Lovelock. (Tom Scott's video "I promise this story about microwaves is interesting" which includes a brief interview with James Lovelock last year at age 101 - ▶ this video )

in “Test Microwave for Radiation Leakage” · View on HN

Oddly enough, microwaving frozen mice was one of the very first non-radar applications of the microwave magnetron. ▶ this video

in “2450MHz radiation induces stress and anxiety like behavior in rats (2019)” · View on HN