Hacker News Reader

mcbainon Lego MRI Scanners donated to hospitals to help children cope with anxiety (2022)

A friend's child was given one of these, and I'm envious. Not only is it a cool model but I also have to get regular MRI - I've got another one today in fact.

Having the model has really helped with their anxiety and means we've been able to play with it together and talk about the process and noises, and make it a bit more normal.

mcbainon Cancer expert given experimental treatments for incurable brain tumour

Some context is that Profs Scolyer and Long have recently had a lot of success with immunotherapy for melanoma used as a neo-adjuvant - that is, before surgery. Start the patient on immuno asap and then excise so the immune system is triggered to potentially clean up anything that has spread.

mcbainon Electric vehicle battery causes fire at Sydney Airport, destroys five cars

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/five-cars-destroyed-at-s...

“There had been some problem with the car and the battery had been removed, we believe that the car has suffered some mechanical damage which can contribute to a battery breaking down and catching fire without notice.

“We don’t have a concern about this broadly, it’s not often that electric cars catch fire.”

mcbainon Amazon has more than half of all Arm server CPUs in the world

Three. Two operated by other companies (in Beijing and Ningxia) that are only available in China, and Hong Kong which appears to be just another AWS region available globally.

mcbainon Malignant melanoma deploys elegant molecular mechanism to evade immune responses

There are many papers - development of immunotherapy for melanoma has been a big topic for the last few years, with some fantastic improvements but more to do.

As it happens I can spot that the linked paper is already out of date as I know at least one is the trials has been cancelled, because I was on it.

mcbainon Google abandons work to move Assistant smart speakers to Fuchsia

Google CloudSQL Enterprise vs Google CloudSQL Enterprise Plus.

mcbainon Meta Tells Managers Promotions Will Be Few and Far Between

The painful part is that if you at or near the top of the previous band it often means not a significant bump at promo time.

The top of the new band is much higher of course, but there isn't as much immediate payoff.

mcbainon Chemotherapy drug reaches brain tumors using novel ultrasound technology

Maybe there are some efficiencies to be found, but we are talking about experimental treatments where the efficacy takes weeks to years to measure. You can't run an overnight benchmarking test.

But in saying that, if a trial is showing very positive results then it can be fast tracked, as it is unethical to withhold that kind of treatment. Conversely, plenty of trials that look good in phase I/II fail in phase III and are terminated early.

mcbainon SpaceX Rocket Struggled to Self-Destruct as It Spun Out of Control

The rule of thumb is that it takes 4 weeks for a concrete driveway to fully cure.

I admit I've never built a launchpad for the world's biggest rocket, but I'd wave my hands to say it might take a bit longer for that concrete, and it won't get poured immediately.

mcbainon Keyboard tricks from a macOS app dev

Or shell, or ruby, or markdown, or even just use Slack.

Sure there are generally (sometimes better) alternatives in those but backticks are pretty common for me.

mcbainon Tesla stock marks lowest close in years as investors worry about Musk’s focus

The same is true for some of the more vocal accounts here on HN, as elsewhere.

I don't keep a list of usernames but a few folks talk with authority across a range of topics - both tech and adjacent interests - and when they happen to step into some niche where they obviously don't have the same depth, and yet project the same level of authority while being not entirely correct, it really does recalibrate that "believability index".

mcbainon 'Bin chickens' learned to wash poisonous cane toads

We've even got children's propaganda for these birds!: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/1743830041

mcbainon 'Bin chickens' learned to wash poisonous cane toads

I love magpies. Clever birds, iconic look, and beautiful songs, but they are super aggressive territorial bastards for a month or so a year.

Yes, I've been violently harassed by them while waking and riding bicycles through "their" territory - many people disagree, but I still think they are great.

mcbainon Cancer vaccines: the next immunotherapy frontier

Immunotherapy is also being trialled as a neoadjuvant with promising results.

mcbainon CRISPR cancer trial success paves the way for personalized treatments

There's not one answer but often: yes, split into "arms" receiving SoC or trial.

Details on this is part of the trial listing which is usually on https://clinicaltrials.gov/

mcbainon Former CIA master of disguise helps disfigured people come out of hiding

The field is known as anaplastology and while the article throws shade on the movie industry, there are some talented people that have come across from there.

mcbainon Satoshi Island Project

When cryptocoin folks try to reinvent the Fyre Festival.

mcbainon A Universal Cancer Treatment?

Of course it varies by cancer. Look up "adjuvant immunotherapy".

It is now standard of care for melanoma, for one, but it isn't successful for all cancers, (or even all melanoma mutations).

mcbainon Why we moved from AWS RDS to Postgres in Kubernetes

I don't think it has been a single EBS volume for a while, but in any case, 256k is more than 18k. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_...

mcbainon Unprecedented 100% of First 14 Patients with Cancer Respond to Dostarlimab

Regarding blinding: I was part of a clinical trial (phase III, not the drug or cancer this article relates to). It couldn't be blinded - the side effects of the trial drug were too significant compared to just the standard of care which was the control. Also it would have been obvious during infusion, etc.

There are many different ways to conduct research like this, of course there is no single perfect methodology.

mcbainon Unprecedented 100% of First 14 Patients with Cancer Respond to Dostarlimab

Previous discussion when this result came out at ASCO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31630679

mcbainon Does a compiler use all x86 instructions? (2016)

My vote is that pext and pdep are the highlight from BMI2.

mcbainon Elon has decided not to join our board

And he wasn't really a founder of PayPal, although that's a bit less clear cut.

mcbainon The cancer vaccine roller coaster (2009)

Of these the PD-L1 and MABs are the most advanced, a number with FDA approvals and used as standard of care for a few cancers. Side effects can be nasty but often controlled by backing off the treatment or steroids (most problems are the immune system attacking the wrong thing like thyroid, colon, pancreas, etc). They’ve been game changing with nearing 50% success rates for some cancers - hence the Nobel prizes. But that still leaves 50% or more.

mRNA as a platform is really exciting, but most current trials are personalised and very labour intensive, so intake/trial sites are minimal.

mcbainon I got pwned by my cloud costs

That stackoverflow infra blog post is out of date. They use more than a single webserver now. For example: https://stackexchange.com/performance

mcbainon Lego has designed a set that can't be taken apart

When I was building the James Bond DB5 I was amused that the exhaust manifolds for the engine are actually revolvers: https://brickset.com/sets/containing-part-4211029

mcbainon Amazon Linux 2022

I haven’t tried this yet (our instances need other changes to get to this point) but AL2 can support live kernel patching: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide...

mcbainon IPv6-only subnets and EC2 instances

It is a such tiny thing, but I really like that the metadata service is at fd00:ec2::254

On v4 it is 169.254.169.254 hence the final 254 (and other services like DNS at 253), but using the ULA range of ec2 is a simple, effective touch.