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ancaster

40 karma · joined February 4, 2014

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ancaster··on Show HN: Python Audio Transcription: Convert Speech to Text Locally
whisperx does this all quite well and can be run with `uvx whisperx`

https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX

ancaster··on Framework 13 AMD Setup with FreeBSD
Yup. Framework 13 AMD with Fedora 41, gnome or sway. Works great.
ancaster··on Ask HN: Would you recommend a framework laptop
I daily drive an AMD Framework 13 with Fedora. I do light software dev, writing, some gaming, and run a variety of local LLMs without pain. I'm happy with the machine and Framework's support, and I do like their vision of repairability/upgradability and I've taken advantage of that already. On the downside, it just clearly isn't as good of a machine for the cost compared to what you could get -- several aspects are just middle-of-the-road: the webcam, speakers and the battery life stand out for me as not great. The AMD chip is also new enough that I still run into glitches with kernel updates on occasion, and power efficiency was initially much worse but has been improving.

In the past, my jam has always been to buy used Thinkpads and run them into the ground. If my Framework got stolen today, I don't think buying another Framework would be a slam-dunk decision for me but I'd still consider it.

tl;dr: happy enough with the laptop and Framework support; hopeful that the dream of repairability/upgradeability pays off; but it does feel like a bit of a compromise on quality.

p.s. I'm quite sensitive to noise and really did not want a machine that ran its fan all the time; the AMD Framework 13 is pretty good for this unless gaming or under some other high load and then it's a rushing sound not a whine.

ancaster··on Fixing Hallucination with Knowledge Bases
confabulation
ancaster··on Software Carpentry: Teaching basic lab skills for research computing
I used to volunteer with Software Carpentry to teach and create lessons. Wonderful project, and so, so needed as many researchers (eg grad students) never get to properly learn fundamental data crunching skills and instead bumble along with poorly crafted spreadsheets and lots of cutting and pasting.
ancaster··on The Overfitted Brain: Dreams evolved to assist generalization
I recall this being essentially the inspiration for the naming of the Wake-Sleep algorithm of Boltzmann machines.
ancaster··on Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?
~/tmp - scratch folder for WIP stuff I don't care if I lose

~/dat - downloads and other temporary data

~/vir - virtual machines

~/arc - everything backup worthy

~/arc/dot - dotfiles, in "stow" format to easily set up on a new machine

~/arc/prj - projects, mostly software. Usually symlink to ~/prj

~/arc/doc - documents, organized by life-stage, project, company (e.g. "finances", "$company")

~/arc/img - pictures/videos

~/arc/dat - backup worthy software, keys, and other "data"

~/arc/res - research projects. Could go under prj/ I suppose.

~/arc/eml - IMAP email snapshot

I use Zotero and Mendeley (historical) for PDFs. I have a folder in ~/arc/dat/books for ebooks and the like.

ancaster··on Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go
> Just a few years ago, paramedics in Germany were routinely (and probably not entirely legally) using WhatsApp for communicating with the hospital

Here in Canada, WhatsApp is routinely used in the hospitals for doctors to communicate with each other about patient care. We aren't supposed to send identifiable information but... it happens all the time, of course. And for the same reason: no sanctioned system to replace it.

ancaster··on Pi-hole: A black hole for Internet advertisements
Does anyone have a recipe for using pihole via OpenVPN using docker?

I'm using this[1] but I'm surprised there isn't something more official/baked.

[1] https://github.com/mr-bolle/docker-openvpn-pihole

ancaster··on XXY Oscilloscope
source code: https://github.com/m1el/woscope/
ancaster··on Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning
Ditto. We developed a nice set of high-res hippocampal atlases[1] and multi-atlas segmentation method to use them[2] and compared it with FSL, and freesurfer and found FSL and freesurfer would often over-estimate segmentations. Good for a first pass because they are both dead-easy to run though.

[1] http://cobralab.ca/atlases/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24784800

code here: http://cobralab.ca/software/MAGeTbrain/

ancaster··on When doctors can't afford to feel
Thank you for sharing that; I was able to read "On being busy", and it is lovely.
ancaster··on When doctors can't afford to feel
Thank you for posting this. I'm just starting out on a career in medicine myself, and I often wonder how to make it through this with my sanity intact. The idea that the career demands "the subsuming of my inner life" seems cruel and, I hope, not inevitable. Isn't there room to feel our feelings in this job, and not necessarily be ground down by them?
ancaster··on Google Ratings has a Windows server loading page
http://i.imgur.com/TDZS7NI.png
ancaster··on Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb
There's also https://trashnothing.com, which is friendly UI over freecycle/etc..
ancaster··on The brain functional connectome is robustly altered by lack of sleep
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com.sci-hub.cc/retrieve/pii/S1053...
ancaster··on Scientists identify main component of brain repair after stroke
Link to article: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.41...

Link to pdf: http://www.nature.com.sci-hub.club/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurre...

ancaster··on Whetlab.com: API for Baysian optimization of hyperparameters
I just came across this today. Code for the project is here: https://github.com/JasperSnoek/spearmint

Based on the paper (preprint): http://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.2944.pdf

ancaster··on Execute SQL against structured text like CSV or TSV
awk. :-)