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Feuilles_Mortes

155 karma · joined October 2, 2013

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Feuilles_Mortes··on I turned my unused Kindle into a photo frame with GPT-6 Astra
i'm hesitant to say, since the "data format" was actually just a password-protected zip file. claude was actually able to find the password in the decompiled .exe to extract the data in the zip... but i'm worried if i'm public about it, they'll change the password!
Feuilles_Mortes··on I turned my unused Kindle into a photo frame with GPT-6 Astra
claude code helped me get access to the raw files from a scientific instrument we use in the lab all the time, but which won't give us raw data (only PDF reports). claude asked me for the .exe, which it promptly decompiled and reverse engineered the data format, and then helped me write my own analysis suite for the raw data. super cool.
Feuilles_Mortes··on So where are all the AI apps?
I like using it to make personal apps that are specific to my use-case and solve problems I've had for ages, but I like my job (scientist), and I don't want to run an app company.
Feuilles_Mortes··on Ask HN: Did Claude Code just bump Opus default to 1M context?
Yes, was also just announced on twitter.
Feuilles_Mortes··on AI is going to kill app subscriptions
I do hear what you're saying, and I've wrestled with "not everything should / can be an app". That being said, I'm still trying to solve food (for myself) with computers, haha.

Right now, that looks like trying to create a nutritionally-optimal "dog food for humans", using combinatorial optimization solvers. I think I'm going to write something up as a post when it becomes a bit more feature-complete.

It's living at chow.seanjohnsen.com if you're curious! Would love feedback from someone who has thought along these lines.

Feuilles_Mortes··on Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain
What I would really want is for this to be a hardware button that, without requiring input on the phone itself, starts and stops a recording on my iphone which uses my airpods as a mic.

This would actually be super helpful in the lab, dictating notes on a protocol ("I did something weird in this step") without needing to stop to write things down (sometimes protocol is quite time-sensitive).

Feuilles_Mortes··on Gemini 3 Pro Model Card [pdf]
shouldn't we expect that all of the companies are doing this optimization, though? so, back to level playing field.
Feuilles_Mortes··on Macro Splats 2025
Wow this would be lovely for my Drosophila lab.
Feuilles_Mortes··on Code formatting comes to uv experimentally
But you have to know about ruff. I didn't, but I did know about uv.
Feuilles_Mortes··on I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file
for doing laboratory work in my PhD, I've found no better app than OmniFocus. It's particularly valuable in its ability to create tasks via a templating system. This is crucial, for example, for managing 10+ genetic crosses at a time. Each cross takes weeks to move to the next step, but when that next step occurs, I need to be on top of the cross 2x / day. Juggling different crosses at different stages would be impossible for my brain without a system I can rely on. Other lab work follows similar workflows.
Feuilles_Mortes··on The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
Instead of writing the counting tool he could have used the Multi-Point Tool in ImageJ [1] [2]. I used it just this morning for counting some embryos I collected.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhFNiPsVRoM

[2] https://fiji.sc/

Feuilles_Mortes··on Model Organisms Are Not Static
biology is hard
Feuilles_Mortes··on Model Organisms Are Not Static
C. elegans is nice for this since you can freeze stocks in glycerol. Labs routinely go and thaw out the main wild-type reference stock if the lab stock has been around for too long.

Now I'm in a fly lab and no one's really figured a good way to freeze a fly stock down for long-term storage. So we're left to just accept some degree of background mutation and generally assume that it's not impacting our experiments too much...

Feuilles_Mortes··on Serious errors plague DNA tool that's a workhorse of biology
Before these companies like plasmidsaurus that do whole-plasmid sequencing for relatively cheap with nanopore, people generally only sequenced a region of interest using sanger sequencing. The rest of the plasmid was assumed to be mostly correct, as long as it grows on a bacterial resistance. As noted in the article, the rise of nanopore-based whole-plasmid sequencing has reduced a lot of these types of errors.
Feuilles_Mortes··on Viral DNA in the human genome linked to major psychiatric disorders
Definitely not. Current estimates put viral DNA at about 8% of the human genome.
Feuilles_Mortes··on Stable Diffusion 3
What was difficult about it?
Feuilles_Mortes··on Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_(style)?wprov=sfti1
Feuilles_Mortes··on Why San Francisco Is a Homeless Mecca
you assume the causal arrow necessarily goes from mental illness -> homelessness and not the other way around
Feuilles_Mortes··on Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines
Seconding the request for an Obsidian plugin. I would also gladly pay for a one-off license.
Feuilles_Mortes··on YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
Check out SponsorBlock
Feuilles_Mortes··on Scientists find ‘plastic rocks’ on remote island
Welcome to the world of the plastic beach
Feuilles_Mortes··on HBO Max’s Great Looney Tunes Purge
it's a private company
Feuilles_Mortes··on New York City hiring top rat killer
https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/1103794_81_102208_N_A...
Feuilles_Mortes··on An ‘everything app’ would be bad for liberal democracies and free markets
Because the U.S. certainly doesn't use slave labor...

https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploit...

Feuilles_Mortes··on Ask HN: Falling Asleep to Podcasts
roderick on the line is pretty good for this. meandering conversations with long stories.
Feuilles_Mortes··on Introducing Money in Excel, an easier way to manage your finances
The new YNAB version does do automatic data pulling.
Feuilles_Mortes··on A Python class for scientific visualization of 3D objects with VTK
Check out napari[0]. It's an interactive natively nD image viewer. Really exciting project.

[0] https://github.com/napari/napari

Feuilles_Mortes··on Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
"Antifa" is highly decentralized, with as many autonomous groups as you can count affiliating themselves with the movement. This sort of sentiment sounds a bit like when out-of-touch news anchor refer to "the hacker known as 4chan". Many pacifists identify with "antifa".

In general, provocative and non-defensive violence seems to be a strategy employed by a small minority of people involved in the anti-fascist movement. As is usually the case, the loudest voices are amplified, so the small amount of provocative violence is highlighted by the news media, as well as by the critics of the anti-fascist movement.

Feuilles_Mortes··on US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M
Absolutely. I don't mean to make the issue a partisan one, but to point out that it is distinctly non-partisan (at least between the Democrats and Reuplicans).
Feuilles_Mortes··on US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M
Thousands in the Middle East died from Obama's presidency. At a certain point you start to think that the "lesser of two evils" strategy just shifts the playing field to be ever-increasing in its evil across the board.
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