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benrapscallion

730 karma · joined September 8, 2013

https://www.thefiringneuron.com
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benrapscallion··on Claude Code Routines
If this is so, why do I find (for scientific research on biomedicine topics, primarily) that Claude’s results are much better than say Gemini’s? I hear the same opinion from others in biotech and big pharma.
benrapscallion··on The web is bearable with RSS
What is a terminal reader? Runs in the shell? Newsblur has that? I use their web and iOS interfaces.
benrapscallion··on Tinnitus Is Connected to Sleep
Might be related to neck stiffness on very cold nights.
benrapscallion··on Meta’s AI smart glasses and data privacy concerns
It is Facebook. I expected exactly this from smart glasses made by them. You can’t change the DNA of a company.
benrapscallion··on Pinterest is drowning in a sea of AI slop and auto-moderation
Pinterest - the sewer of internet image search
benrapscallion··on Pinterest is drowning in a sea of AI slop and auto-moderation
The ability to (1) block all Pinterest domains in image search and (2) click an image hyperlink and get straight to the file - these two features alone are worth my annual subscription fee to Kagi.
benrapscallion··on What are your favorite news sources, blogs, and RSS feeds?
Techmeme

Ongoing (Tim Bray)

On My Om (Om Malik)

Rest of World

Sherwood.news

Stephen Wolfram’s blog

benrapscallion··on Ask HN: Best Podcasts of 2025?
Acquired

Scamfluencers

Business Wars

The Social Radars

Big Technology Podcast

benrapscallion··on Richard Stallman on ChatGPT
This should be a badge of honor, a rite of passage for companies: when they become big and important enough for humanity, RMS will write a negative <company>.html page on his website.
benrapscallion··on The effect of shingles vaccination at different stages of dementia
The virus lies dormant in spinal and cranial ganglia for decades. If it reactivates, the immune system suppresses it, in the meantime. Past age 50-60, immunity wanes and these reactivations cannot be suppressed which allows the virus to travel back to the corresponding skin region as the spine segment to cause shingles. Presumably, after this the virus can also cross the blood brain barrier to cause neurodegeneration.
benrapscallion··on Coca Cola has an executive dedicated to McDonald's
I came here to note the same.
benrapscallion··on ChatGPT terms disallow its use in providing legal and medical advice to others
This (attribution) is exactly the issue that was mentioned by LexisNexis CEO in a recent The Verge interview.

https://www.theverge.com/podcast/807136/lexisnexis-ceo-sean-...

benrapscallion··on The Rapper 50 Cent, Adjusted for Inflation
Absolutely. This is the correct way do this. It should be adjusted downwards to account for inflation, not up.
benrapscallion··on Reasons to Not Use ChatGPT
Someone should start a StallmanGPT that writes regular blogposts on “Don’t use <popular software or website>”. See if readers can tell those apart from the real website.
benrapscallion··on Kagi News
Link to iOS App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kagi-news/id6748314243
benrapscallion··on Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything
Where is this setting in Perplexity?
benrapscallion··on Coronary artery calcium testing can reveal plaque in arteries, but is underused
Some of these imaging that are overdone in India involve radiation: the most problematic being (not low dose) CT. So there is a rationale for controlling these modalities.
benrapscallion··on Ask HN: What software subscriptions are worth paying for?
Fastmail and HEY email, Kagi, 1Password, Newsblur, Perplexity, Wolfram (Mathematica), Zotero, Dropbox, Backblaze, Microsoft Office, Raindrop.io, Wachete (track changes on webpages)

==

I also pay for Google but that’s just ransom for my data held hostage by them because I have shared that email address with many.

benrapscallion··on Death by AI
It’s called kagi.com
benrapscallion··on Sam Altman says Meta offered OpenAI staffers $100M bonuses
They did “pay” $14B to the CEO of ScaleAI. $100M sounds plausible, relatively.
benrapscallion··on Google shows off Android XR smart glasses with in-lens display
Can’t wait to have 3D “personalized” ad billboards follow me everywhere and “pause” my walking directions until I watch a 30-second unskippable commercial. The VR glasses future is exciting no doubt: too bad however that it is being ushered in by two surveillance, I mean, advertising companies (Google and Facebook).
benrapscallion··on 23andMe Sells Gene-Testing Business to DNA Drug Maker Regeneron
That’s not what has been happening with DiscovEHR and Regeneron Genetics Center data.
benrapscallion··on Try Switching to Kagi
Still doesn’t work for me.
benrapscallion··on Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
According to NYT, “ of the $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives, with $7 billion going to the university’s 11 affiliated hospitals in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., including Massachusetts General, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.”
benrapscallion··on Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
Harvard affiliated hospitals are dependent on NIH funding for survival. Wonder if they are included in the scope of this.
benrapscallion··on FDA Approves drug to treat pain without opioid effects
Given how late in the article it is mentioned that the drug was indistinguishable from placebo, this NYT article may well have been commissioned by Vertex.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pain-comes-territo...

benrapscallion··on Ask HN: Which RSS reader do you use?
The best $36 I pay every year.
benrapscallion··on Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge
Naming opportunity: Shitty Images
benrapscallion··on Deep dive into finding RSS feeds
Does it correctly ignore the “Comments on:” feeds that are sometimes mistakenly chosen over the main feed?
benrapscallion··on Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality than sleep duration (2023)
How is this false research? Most other studies rely on self-reported measures of sleep. This is using objective measures.
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