[ses4j]

The topic is fascinating, but the article doesn't talk to how this "reverse design" algorithm works at all, which I think might be very relevant to this audience. Does anyone have a link to more about the design algorithm and how it works?

[anewusername]

An arXiv preprint of the scientific article and copies of our previous work on this topic are available on our research group's website[1]. Just search the page for "design"; the most detailed reference would probably be Jesse Lu's thesis[2].

[1] http://web.stanford.edu/group/nqp/publications.shtml [2] http://web.stanford.edu/group/nqp/jv_files/thesis/Jesse-thes...

[Someone]

The 'real' paper sits behind a paywall at http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v9/n6/full/nphoton.201..., but http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.00095 probably is fairly similar.

Crux seems to be "our algorithm searches the full design space of fabricable devices with arbitrary topologies."

Very useful, but may be not that spectacular, depending on the efficiency of that search.

[amelius]

My first guess would be that it combines a standard "black-box" technique for solving optimization problems (e.g. genetic algorithms, simulated annealing), with an electromagnetic simulation at each iteration. But that is just a wild guess :)

[phkahler]

TFA includes a link, but the paper is behind a paywall at Nature.

[dxbydt]

Stupid nature paywall honestly makes me furious. Why doesn't altman or some other yc partner throw some money at nature & get all their articles up on the web for free ? /endrant

[kanzure]

> Stupid nature paywall honestly makes me furious. Why doesn't altman or some other yc partner throw some money at nature & get all their articles up on the web for free ? /endrant

That's not ycombinator's job, that's Bill's job.

[phkahler]

Bill's too busy fucking up education.