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mial

64 karma · joined December 21, 2017

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mial··on Analyzing student votes across AI models for college essay help
From my own tests, the best model for writing complex, nuanced prose is Opus 4.6. All the next versions are impossible to coax into good writing. Gemini is OK, GPT ok but requires significant prompt tuning.
mial··on The brain may be about to have its Ozempic moment
FWIW, I was on MP for years and never really liked it. Tried all possible dosages and delivery methods. I switched to lisdexamfetamine a couple of years ago and never looked back. 0 side effects apart from my mouth.
mial··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)
I'm building Prospex (https://prospex.ch), a lead-generation tool for B2B salespeople in Switzerland. This is just a side-project as I have a full-time job.

Basically, I'm collecting public data (official registries, job boards, company websites, linkedin etc) to surface sales opportunity signals, like leadership change, new branch/market entry, funding rounds, etc.

mial··on Precursor
Sometimes it might be your user agent, or your IP, or some browser extension…
mial··on Ten years of ClickHouse in open source
On top of being a really good OLAP database, what has been a game changer for me is the built-in connectors for bringing in data from remote sources. It can manage automatic recurring import of a s3 folder containing parquet/json files and it can also connect directly to Postgres. For our data warehouse at a medium sized newspaper, we switched from Druid+postgres+trino to just one big clickhouse node and I’ve never looked back. Much more performant, practical, and a lot less maintenance.
mial··on Infomaniak transitions to a foundation model to protect user data privacy
I disagree. As an Infomaniak customer I felt that this information was important. It’s not true that it doesn’t have any impact on customers at all: this protects the customers against scenarios like what happened with Gandi [1] that another commenter mentioned.

Maybe not urgent, but important indeed. Saying that this is "highly disrespectful" and "manipulative" is exaggerated.

[1] https://linuxfr.org/users/acatton/journaux/gandi-passe-de-no...

mial··on Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks
Sounds like an actual psychopath.
mial··on Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates
How did you disable it?
mial··on Time Magazine Launches Time AI Agent
I wonder how it can be trusted if a LLM generates it. They say that "Attribution and citation are preserved in every interaction." but I don't know that's possible with an LLM.
mial··on Which cognitive psychology findings are solid that I can use to help students?
The anecdote about taking 50k IU of vitamin D is really dangerous. Above 4000 daily IU is already putting a lot of people in hypervitaminosis (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21646368/)
mial··on Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job
When the state subsidizes healthcare, it is in its interest to lower the costs/improve productivity.
mial··on New work helps to explain how chronic stress can inflame the gut
I’m in the same kind of situation, what functional medicine, diet and lifestyle changes did you try? What worked?
mial··on Study: ChatGPT outperforms physicians in quality, empathetic answers to patients
I also have a chronic yet unknown condition with a similar story as you, would you share privately your prompts?

Contact me at Drgpt@altmails.com

mial··on My ADHD founder toolbox
While I agree that stimulant are overprescribed they can however be at least temporarily helpful to help someone with ADHD get their life in order and make meaningful lifestyle changes in order to get the symptoms under control.
mial··on My ADHD founder toolbox
My experience is really similar. When my physical health is good my ADD symptoms are barely noticeable. Medication can however be useful to get your life in order, to be able to carve out time for physical exercise and set up other healthy habits (meditation, journaling, task management system, time blocking etc).
mial··on Why I left academia
This submission's title is editorialized. The politically charged term "cancel culture" is mentioned nowhere in the article.

Edit: sorry, I confused the original blog post of the professor with the news article.

mial··on Ask HN: How did an adult ADHD diagnosis help you?
Medication helped a lot in the beginning, but what really helped in the long term was talk therapy, and setting up helpful systems and habits such as exercising, diet, journalling. But this would not have been possible without taking Ritalin in the first place. I'm mostly off-meds now.
mial··on Caffeine: A vitamin-like nutrient, or adaptogen
Yes, this is indeed a weird way to frame the effect of coffee on iron absorption. There's a lot of medical litterature about how coffee often play a role in iron deficiency.
mial··on Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?
The book "Music Theory for Computer Musicians" has helped me a lot. It is quite easy to find as a PDF file online.
mial··on Google Fires Four Workers, Including Staffer Tied to Protest
In theory yes, but in practice, most workers can not afford quitting and suing their employers. There is a huge asymmetry of power, and unions exist to reduce this asymmetry.
mial··on Being ‘Indistractable’
Medications can help temporarily, but then tolerance appears and you need to up the dose. I think they are mostly helpful in the range of a few months up to a year, as a crutch to help someone sort their life out (professionally and/or academically), and also in terms of setting up efficient organizational techniques, developing helpful practices for focusing (meditation, exercising, diet). It helped me a lot in this way, I was then able to quit ADHD meds while retaining a much improved focus ability.
mial··on The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness
It can also be linked to the rise of individualism, an essential part of the capitalist ideology.
mial··on Ask HN: How do you stay disciplined in the long run?
From my experience, tolerance can be an issue indeed. But in the short to medium term, stimulant therapy can definitely help a lot. However, while ongoing stimulant therapy it is important to work on more durable solutions such as meditation, exercise, and diet. With this, I was able to slowly decrease my stimulant dose, and I now only use them when I really need them. Without them, I couldn't have gathered the focus I needed to sort my life out academically and professionally while developing long-term healthy habits that helped with my ADHD.
mial··on Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs
Actually, it turns out that even in woman-dominated professions, being a man is advantageous. [1]

[1] The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for Men in the "Female" Professions https://www.jstor.org/stable/3096961

mial··on My dog was killed on a walk with a walker ordered through Wag
Yes. Also this

> Sara and I will welcoming a new puppy from the same breeder in February—Rory

Just go and get one from a shelter instead of encouraging animal breeding which is an unethical practice [0]

[0] https://www.peta.org/issues/animal-companion-issues/pet-trad...

mial··on Ask HN: As a Web Dev working only 60%, how would you use the 40% free time?
As a software engineer working 60% as well, I'm currently using my 40% for studying towards a degree in a non-tech field (social sciences). I'm glad that my country (Switzerland) has such low tuition fees which makes that kind of continuing education possible.
mial··on Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?
I've re-read Siddhartha at various times of my life and it had a profound impact on me each time. Can't recommend it enough.
mial··on Ask HN: What “dumbphones” are available and viable in the US?
The new Nokia 8110 4G can.
mial··on A new $100M fund for women founders of color
If white males were systemically discriminated by their gender and their skin color, a fund like that would be a good idea yes.
mial··on It can all go to zero
If everybody stopped mining I would start mining.
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