HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

janeway

417 karma · joined February 22, 2022

submissionscomments
janeway··on Just Let Me Write Digits
On their website, when I enter a digit, the cursor advances to the next input box automatically. Deleting a digit with backspace also jumps back to the previous box. Seems to work perfectly for me. Maybe fixed since yesterday?
janeway··on Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives
I used to love browsing GitHub Explore Trending but in the last two years it is almost exclusively AI apps that are slight improvement on the previous trending page of AI apps.

GitHub explore could be way more interesting with a simple filter algorithm.

janeway··on Office.eu launches as Europe's sovereign office platform
Yes, I searched for the same. No evidence this has anything to do with the European Union. More like a vibe-coded landing page with user signup form.

Edit: I am certain this is one or two people vibe coding then will pitch to VCs when the waitlist has 1000 people.

Listing major company logos in their banner: “The organizations listed here use similar technology (Nextcloud) as part of their operations. Their inclusion is for illustrative purposes only.”

janeway··on Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows
“We have no cure. I don’t want to know.”

If astronomers announced that a large asteroid might strike Earth in twenty years, and that we currently had no way to deflect it, nobody would respond by saying, “Come back when you already have the rocket.” We would immediately build better telescopes to track it precisely, refine its trajectory models, and begin developing propulsion systems capable of interception. You do not wait for the cure before improving the measurement. You improve the measurement so that a cure becomes possible, targeted, and effective.

Medicine is no different. Refusing to improve early, probabilistic diagnosis because today’s treatments are modest confuses sequence with outcome. Breakthroughs do not emerge from vague labels and mixed populations. They emerge from precise, quantitative stratification that allows real effects to be seen. The danger is not that we measure too early. It is that we continue making irreversible clinical and research decisions using imprecise, binary classifications while biological insight and therapeutic tools are advancing rapidly. Building the probabilistic layer now is not premature. It is how we make future intervention feasible.

janeway··on Design Thinking Books (2024)
Wow excellent thank you
janeway··on A minimal standard for evidence availability in black-box systems
A sign says: "Dogs must be carried on the escalator."

At first glance it seems clear. On a second read, it becomes obvious that what matters is not the dogs, but whether they are being carried.

Grandma calls out: "The chicken is ready to eat."

Many system outputs have the same problem. They look definitive, but they silently hide whether the required conditions were ever met.

When systems consume outputs from black-box algorithms, the usual options are to trust the conclusion or ignore it entirely.

In clinical genomics, the latter is traditional. For example, the British Society for Genetic Medicine advises clinicians not to act on results from external genomic services https://bsgm.org.uk/media/12844/direct-to-consumer-genomic-t...

This post describes a third approach, grounded in computer science. Before any interpretation, systems should record whether verifiable evidence is actually available.

The standard adds a small but strict step. Each rule first reports whether it could be checked at all: yes, no, or not evaluable. Then the evidence is used in reverse, not to confirm the result, but to try to rule it out. If removing or negating that evidence would change the outcome, it counts as real evidence. If not, it does not.

Crucially, this forces a simple question: could the same result have appeared even if the evidence were absent or different? Only when the answer is no does the result actually count as evidence.

The idea comes from genomics, where hospitals, companies, and research groups need to share results without exposing proprietary methods, but it applies anywhere systems reason over incomplete or black-box data.

janeway··on Show HN: Virtual SLURM HPC cluster in a Docker Compose
Cool!

I have worked 100% in 3 comparable systems over the past 10 years. Can you access with ssh?

I find it super fluid to work on the HPC directly to develop methods for huge datasets by using vim to code and tmux for sessions. I focus on printing detailed log files constantly with lots of debugs and an automated monitoring script to print those logs in realtime; a mixture of .out .err and log.txt.

janeway··on The 'Toy Story' You Remember
Amazing. Your final point seems to make most sense - not the original team itself having any problems.
janeway··on The 'Toy Story' You Remember
This topic is fascinating to me. The Toy Story film workflow is a perfect illustration of intentional compensation: artists pushed greens in the digital master because 35 mm film would darken and desaturate them. The aim was never neon greens on screen, it was colour calibration for a later step. Only later, when digital masters were reused without the film stage, did those compensating choices start to look like creative ones.

I run into this same failure mode often. We introduce purposeful scaffolding in the workflow that isn’t meant to stand alone, but exists solely to ensure the final output behaves as intended. Months later, someone is pitching how we should “lean into the bold saturated greens,” not realising the topic only exists because we specifically wanted neutral greens in the final output. The scaffold becomes the building.

In our work this kind of nuance isn’t optional, it is the project. If we lose track of which decisions are compensations and which are targets, outcomes drift badly and quietly, and everything built after is optimised for the wrong goal.

I’d genuinely value advice on preventing this. Is there a good name or framework for this pattern? Something concise that distinguishes a process artefact from product intent, and helps teams course-correct early without sounding like a semantics debate?

janeway··on People still use our old-fashioned Unix login servers
Yes, I spend a majority of my professional life on similar systems writing code in vim and running massive jobs via slurm. Required for processing TBs of data on secured environments with seamless command line access. I hate web-based connections or vscode type system. Although open to any improvements, this works best to me. It’s like a world inside one’s head with a text-based interface.

Graphical data exploration and stats with R, python, etc is a beautiful challenge at that scale.

janeway··on The Plot of the Phantom, a text adventure that took 40 years to finish
Wow, already stumbled into some good humour. Well done
janeway··on Touching the back wall of the Apple store
I’ve just finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. His vision was extraordinary, recognising that even the design of the stores was integral to the product itself. Every layer of engineering was deeply intertwined with aesthetic design. I’ve always shared that belief, but I’m now fully committed to pursuing it without compromise in my own products. It’s proving even more challenging than I’d imagined to make highly technical things feel simple and intuitive for users.

I was recently thinking the exact same thing as the author here; as a teen I got my ipod and instantly respected the graceful design and felt shocked how shoddy my previous cheap mp3 player was in comparison.

I am also convinced that he was fully responsible for keeping Apple on this path and that it is almost impossible to stop others from diluting the craftsmanship towards mediocrity as the group size grows. Big CEOs get labelled as greedy exploiters in a single brushstroke by people who don’t seem to care to read up.

janeway··on 'AI is not a miracle cure': Nobel laureate raises questions
Non-AI experts gives their opinion about AI, noting that the data is messy. The goal of the method was to train and work on messy data. The quote is basically pointless.

Ironically, giving the original scientific article to AI for a summary and critique (chatGPT) would have provided more detailed info.

janeway··on Mexican Navy ship crashes into Brooklyn Bridge leaving two people dead
Very sorry to hear about those people.

It reminded me of something from childhood. It’s no comment on this story - just a personal anecdote.

We were on a family road trip, and I was wearing a new pair of cheap sunglasses, feeling way too cool for a kid. As we turned a corner, the setting sun blinded my father. But through my tinted lenses, I saw the wall coming. He didn’t. We crashed hard. My sunglasses flew off, and in that moment, all I cared about was catching them. For a few seconds, I thought that was the only emergency.

That moment left a mark. Now, whenever I start to feel too cool or overconfident, I get a quick flash, like a reflex, to check myself. How stupid will this look if things suddenly go wrong, especially if I could have seen it coming?

It’s made me quietly grateful for all the small, tedious safety rules. Not because they prevent every disaster - but because they sometimes do.

janeway··on Demo Driven Development: Show, Don't Just Tell
Wall of text written by LLM. Great demo
janeway··on US will ban cancer-linked Red Dye No. 3 in cereal and other foods
Doesn’t that make perfect sense? First test in animals. If carcinogenic in animals then don’t move to humans. A lack of studies in human is hardly a basis for ruling it safe.

That was a sensible simplified version of the logic during my training for regulation in drugs and medical devices, at least.

janeway··on Sharing new research, models, and datasets from Meta FAIR
Side track, but does anyone have suggestions about how to better present such content. I am struggling with similar docs/demos.

As a documentation page, each section is laid out uniformly with section heading, content, link to code and link to paper.

However the page itself is a blog post which will be difficult to find again next year.

Are there other examples of companies having well presented technical summaries which remain findable from the hime page?

janeway··on Microsoft fixes the Excel feature that was wrecking scientific data
I just stop working with people who request or send me data as .xlsx
janeway··on I am dying of squamous cell carcinoma, and potential treatments are out of reach
To note, the placebo group is typically getting the best current existing treatment. Rather than nothing. Although in some cases the best treatment is still nothing, which sucks.
janeway··on I am dying of squamous cell carcinoma, and potential treatments are out of reach
I would disagree with this. Regulators that I have worked with in US and EU knew what it meant. Maybe not the most amazing technical people I’ve ever worked with, but they were as competent as any random sample of pharma/tech types. Their jobs is to verify that you have completed all the valid documentation to demonstrate that your drug does what you claim it does. Their opinion on personal emotions are irrelevant. They are supposed to be guideline checkers.
janeway··on Encrypted phone service 'Encrochat' shutdown leads to 6,500 arrests – Europol
Interesting story. I wonder about this “technical tool” put on servers to bypass encryption. Surely encryption and decryption occurs on the user side only. Sounds more like the company owners were asked to either: (1) load software to record data on phones before encrypted or (2) have a universal-type private key to decrypt everything. But maybe I don’t understand?

Perhaps an important note is from a Vice article that I found: “..encrypted messaging programs which route messages through the firm's own servers”. If the messages are encrypted on the device then why would you need to send them via the firm’s servers? Maybe it prevents traffic monitoring or something? Sounds more like copy and decrypt.

Also a phone which is obviously only for criminal use does not seem smart - for the same price one could buy a new phone, sim, and popular encryption apps every month. Although a “care-free” solution for criminals is probably appealing.

janeway··on My father may be gone, but ‘our’ radio is still going
Right, super popular for death metal guitarists, for some reason.
janeway··on Archaeologists find 3000-year-old sword, exceptionally well preserved
That is a great story. Thanks for writing it up.
janeway··on Scientific colour maps
Yes here:

https://github.com/thomasp85/scico

janeway··on Always the same warning signs
In fairness, one good thing about commercialisation is that if they don’t produce the goods in the end, it fails. In pure research it can go unnoticed much longer.
janeway··on A 5.7 Terapixel Mosaic of the Surface of Mars
Wow that 3D viewer is smooth on mobile phone. So amazing to pinch and scroll around the planet.
janeway··on GPT-4 produces investor decks better than humans do
Interesting to see. The article posted is a poor summary with a final link to the original.

The original has more description of the study - as they call it. However, they do not describe what the prompts were or even show examples of the human vs ai pitch. They simply state the number of participants and the final result.

Would have loved to see examples.

janeway··on What are the risks of being an older father?
It’s fair that my comment is not supported. The evidence is sporadic in both directions in fact. The paper linked is a big study but very weak association results. Here is a good review that includes the most plausible interpretation of the genetics.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36833413/

janeway··on Thousands of early-career NIH researchers forming union for first time
All good points but here are three facts that I think are valid:

1. Even if salary comes from individual branches it falls under the institutional tree. Science is not individual.

2. Institution leaders understand that the workers are critical; unionised and enlightened workers will leave to industry for better pay. Both the hot shots and the lower scale.

3. While anecdotal, I had one of the best academic unions worldwide and probably the best academic salary worldwide. I do not think it is a spurious correlation.

janeway··on What are the risks of being an older father?
It is highly likely that very old men like the one the article discusses, are likely to have accumulated potentially damaging somatic variants in DNA that will be passed onto their child.
Page 1 of 3Next →