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praton Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?

I am working towards solving the problem of diagnostic labs that will soon have to, or are already coping with excess testing capacity built up for covid testing, and trying to leverage this additional capacity for the post-covid/EUA world. The solution will also address the market decentralization opportunity by spreading the testing demand (from providers and patients), away from a few big-name labs, to a larger number of smaller sized ones.

praton Can someone please stop the infographic madness?

Very generally speaking, any successful idea accumulates adulteration over time as it is overused and over-exploited. The number of high quality instances do not decrease but have to be sifted out from a larger group. If the author hasn't realized this yet, he need not look far for numerous examples in writing, music, movies, startups; appealing to make a u-turn on the "madness" is futile.

praton Crowd Investing: Wefunder

And the investors will cry "fraud" and "scam" not for the wrong reasons alone. Fraud and scam artists will actually infiltrate the hacker community once they find out about the expansion (and dumbing down) of investor base.

praton The book Steve Jobs read every year

For a time I was embarrassed to even admit that I read it. I still am. The book is full of incredible people and events that don't and should not make any sense to a rational person. So I have written off this book as a third class fantasy novel. BUT: what is important to me here more than the book's content is the personality of the people who like it (knowing the fact that the author presents this as true facts). Steve jobs seemed to have a need in supernatural / magic to be able to perform magic. This book (and probably others like it) kept reinforcing his belief and created distorted reality for him like he used to create for his employees.

praton My Heroes

You may be right - although I find myself inadequate to predict 6 months hence not to talk of 50 years. It just seemed the easiest 'odd man out' scenario so I commented.

praton My Heroes

salman khan? along with those names?

praton Siri is the Next Big Thing

I won't judge siri, as I do not know the details of technology or the machine learning algorithms used by it, but I would say this much: your one line pitch might just impress some businessweek readers but I don't think a really cool technology needs punchlines like that (..apple II..) - your article sounds like its coming from a non-technical observer for a non-technical audience - and that would be okay if the product had passed the stage of hype into early stages of common usage.

At this stage though I am more interested in how is it different from 100s of other AI applications that failed to take over the world or become the next big thing.

My need to criticize primarily came from your last paragraph where you are appealing to developers to jump in without realizing that that segment of your audience looks not very respectfully at phrases like 'buckle up' and 'amazing ride'

praton Impressive html5/css3 clock; no Flash.

I am using firefox 5.. they don't appear to move in my browser.

praton Impressive html5/css3 clock; no Flash.

looks great! only if you could make the gears move:)

praton We Live In An "And" World... It's Quantum Not Binary

If you really want to be linguistically accurate, just replace "killing" with "taking market share away from". Other than that in my humble opinion, the central point is trivial.

praton Chase Bank: check out anytime you like but you can never leave

I totally agree. And I wish that this thing hurts them in some way. Having moved 3 times in last 3 years, I absolutely understand your situation of not being able to break up with an organization whether its a fitness center, cable company or a bank.

praton Chase Bank: check out anytime you like but you can never leave

I am going slightly off topic here, but I wanna say I like the prospect of being able to save phone conversation for your record. But I was wondering about the legal implications of doing it without letting the other party know. Then I looked up this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#United...

I would advise the author to check this out and see if he or the person he talked to was in one of the states that prohibit wiretapping without consent.

praton Last chance: let the FDA know why you want direct access to your own genome

I can't even imagine what combination of misconceptions about net neutrality and personal genomics led you to make such a comparison.

Strong words - try just asking and I'll answer :). Here is where the comparison comes from.. The same way that net neutrality aims to prevent carriers from promoting one hosts content over another, this decision aims to potentially prevent advising on drug response from one pharma company vs. another. Not that this is already happening, but policies should be as forward looking as possible.

The proposed regulations would require you to get the permission of a doctor (or other clinician) before you can have your DNA sequenced, and the data would be available only through the doctor.

Did you read my original parent post ? if not read it now - the last paragraph. I am not in favor of the govt having a doctor grant permission, but for FDA to make a universally trusted mutation screen through which all DTC companies operate. FDA makes not money, no monopoly and DTC companies have a way to get new findings added to the mutation screen through proper channels (published papers)

praton Last chance: let the FDA know why you want direct access to your own genome

sure - its the predicting thats causing the alarm, check this out.. http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-847T

praton Last chance: let the FDA know why you want direct access to your own genome

By the way, it helps to atleast read what scientists found out about these reports before we build the whole discussion just on ideology http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-847T

praton Last chance: let the FDA know why you want direct access to your own genome

If they were just sequencing your genome, that wouldn't be a problem, but they are giving you medical advice, they are telling you about diseases that you might get (without solid scientific basis) and they are or might direct you towards one drug vs. another depending on which pharma company they collaborate with

praton Last chance: let the FDA know why you want direct access to your own genome

So I assume you are also against FDA regulation to force pharma companies to list adverse reactions alongside there drug commercials? If you are, then the discussion is mute, if you aren't then your point is.

praton Last chance: let the FDA know why you want direct access to your own genome

Does it matter? Maybe they will contribute something useful, maybe they won't.

If we shut them down now, they definitely won't.

Exactly - that's why I say don't shut them down, regulate them.

To prevent service providers with a government granted monopoly from extorting payments from the rest of the economy?

Is this a serious danger in the personal genomics market? I was under the impression that the FDA wanted to prevent consumers from purchasing genetic tests without receiving permission from another government granted monopoly (doctors).

There is no govt.granted monopoly here. All they want is to be sure that a medical advice is givem by 1) qualifieed entity 2) if 1) is not possible then atleast based on research done by a qualified entity (i.e. published results)

praton Last chance: let the FDA know why you want direct access to your own genome

Here is a nature paper (for those who can access) discussing the state of Direct-to-Consumer companies in personal genomics "An agenda for personalized medicine"

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7265/full/461724a...

praton Last chance: let the FDA know why you want direct access to your own genome

These are my first impressions on reading this and parts of other linked articles in it. My opinions are fallible and often change over time.

First, being in the field and a part of the teams that first published the general human genome and the individual human genome, I know that our current knowledgebase of genomic variant <-> disease correlation is not very vast. We don't even know how much more or less important are the particular type of variants "SNPs" that personal genomics companies mostly mine, in comparison with other types (Insertion/deletions , structural variations, copy number). At more serious genomics research institutes, we are still trying to figure out the genetic pathways that might be affected by this mutation or that - far from actually predicting their effects on actual physical condition. So does that mean personal genomic companies are far ahead of institutes in their research? I am not so sure.

Second, I think we need regulation here for the same reasons that we need net neutrality. I wouldn't be surprised if with time, the reports start advising you on which of the alternative drugs would be most beneficial for your genotype and disease. I would still be okay with it if companies like 23andme published their research or atleast cited publications - but I am not sure they believe in public access when it comes to their findings. (I can be wrong on that - so correct me if you know better)

Finally, I actually like the prospect of public driven science in addition to just organization/scientist driven, as that is likely to fund some actual science in addtion to pseudo science. So one solution I can think of is for FDA to approve a most trusted mutation screen for all these personal genomic companies to abide by. Let them focus on their core competency which is sequencing and customer interface and not research, If however they come across findings that might be beneficial, let them publish it in a peer-reviewed journal and apply to FDA to add it to the universal mutation screen.

praton Harvard Scientists Create Hand-Held Device to Detect Cancer at Bedside

just wanted to share with anyone interested in cancer.. I finished reading this amazing book "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" Great for anyone but specially those outside the field who want to know abt the history of cancer.

http://www.amazon.com/Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography-Cancer/...

praton Harvard Scientists Create Hand-Held Device to Detect Cancer at Bedside

Here is the link to the paper http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/3/71/71ra16.full.pdf

praton Gartner IT predictions for 2011

$495 a report?? Moreover many of them are unavailable for individual purchase - not that I was interested at the price anyway.

praton MIT Entrance exam (1869)

in 1998, we used to aim for 50-60% on all 3 (P,C,M) to get in top 500 out of total ~2500 seats - all india topper that year scored himself at 85% (they just tell you the rank you have to score yourself later).

praton MIT Entrance exam (1869)

link to IIT joint entrance exam (JEE) http://www.wiziq.com/tutorial/98820-IIT-JEE-Mathematics-Pape...

praton How Intellectuals Talk

An indepth intellectual discussion may be rare offline and its even rarer on forums. The very nature of message board conversation tends to make you partisan and cut out the niceties and "I agree but.." and "but what do you think about.." like phrases. What makes forums different from face2face conversation is that it makes us assertive rather than perceptive, but as a side effect, a purpose does get served . that of increasing variety and diversity of thought rather than depth.

praton Swastikas and context

"no educated human on the planet looks at the swastika symbol on a video game service in the year we make contact and says oh, that symbol has nothing at all in any way to do with global genocide of an entire race and, even if it did, one should totally and reasonably ignore that because it’s a symbol that was stolen or coop-ted from religions."

Really? no educated human? Well I guess I am an exception or at least was until I came to the US - because you see, I am educated and likely more highly educated than the author.

The author, most likely never having stepped outside the US, has no idea of the diversity of world sensitivities and cultures.

Does the author, for example, know of the Khmer Rouge symbol? I am educated and I didn't until I googled it.. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/79176.stm

So stop using the word "planet" for the west .

praton Websockets are awesome (you can see everyone's cursor)! Please donate yours

Is this link dead- or is it just me?

praton Microsoft Open Source BioInformatics - Using Software to Advance Healthcare

"Using Software to Enhance Healthcare" This article is about a software - and it does enhance healthcare, albeit for profit.

you mean nothing good ever came from a for-profit non-open source company?

praton Driven entrepreneurs are not good guys

sorry - your dataset is still to small. Every rule is taken seriously until an exception appears..however in this case I won't be surprised if "exception" (decent guys) already outnumbers the "rule" (jerks)