Hacker News: Fomite

New comment by Fomite in "Clinical failure rates over the decades: yikes"

Fomite — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 01:56:13 +0000

I've been hearing some form of it since I was an undergrad. I just submitted by packet for full professor. There have been some spectacular strides, but we've been through multiple rounds of "Stand aside, the computers will take it from here."

New comment by Fomite in "Clinical failure rates over the decades: yikes"

Fomite — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 01:55:00 +0000

Doing hard things is hard.

The Faculty Workload Myth

Fomite — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 20:12:19 +0000

Article URL: https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-faculty-workload-myth

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48912381

Points: 7

# Comments: 0

New comment by Fomite in "Doctors die. It's not like the rest of us, but it should be (2016)"

Fomite — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 03:01:49 +0000

Like many conspiracy theories, yours seems to require holding two contradictory pieces of information as true.

New comment by Fomite in "Vagal cholinergic denervation of the gastric mucosa in Long-COVID-19"

Fomite — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 02:58:31 +0000

There has been a shift - an understandable one, and one I by and large support (absent some edge cases) - to move away from causal language for observational studies.

New comment by Fomite in "Vagal cholinergic denervation of the gastric mucosa in Long-COVID-19"

Fomite — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 02:56:52 +0000

They are studies, and frankly, without something like this, doing things like the appropriate power calculations and risk assessments for larger studies would be hard to do.

New comment by Fomite in "An American Privacy Emergency"

Fomite — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 01:41:36 +0000

One of the things I have found so alarming about a lot of recent revelations is just how cheap congress goes for.

New comment by Fomite in "15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test"

Fomite — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 05:21:58 +0000

In many places, you need to add lizards to that list.

New comment by Fomite in "15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test"

Fomite — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 05:20:14 +0000

This is one of the things that is oft repeated by my vector disease colleagues -- your infection may not be caused by the tick you found, but by the tick you didn't.

New comment by Fomite in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

Fomite — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 19:42:55 +0000

When we had to have a frank discussion about whether to fail someone who obviously used an LLM for parts their dissertation.

New comment by Fomite in "Agents can now create Cloudflare accounts, buy domains, and deploy"

Fomite — Wed, 06 May 2026 07:46:37 +0000

While large social media sites have captured lots of traffic, etc. I've had small websites for a local wargaming club, a very modest blog, etc. for decades requiring little or no technical expertise.

The idea that people who want modest websites need active agentic systems to do that is a really odd take.

New comment by Fomite in "Microsoft and OpenAI end their exclusive and revenue-sharing deal"

Fomite — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 16:24:14 +0000

All humanity will benefit, but some humanity will benefit more than others.

New comment by Fomite in "We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git"

Fomite — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 09:55:40 +0000

One reason I don't read HN as much as I used to is because I can't help translating numbers like that into the amount of research that could be accomplished with the same amount, and then I get angry.

New comment by Fomite in "Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?"

Fomite — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 07:02:36 +0000

WSU faculty here. The Cosmic Crisp is under license to Washington state growers for ten years, starting in about 2019, so it will be a few years yet.

New comment by Fomite in "I built an AI receptionist for a mechanic shop"

Fomite — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 01:50:08 +0000

Yeah - this scenario presupposes that if I need my car fixed I'm going to wait for you to give me a call back, rather than continue working down my list.

New comment by Fomite in "I built an AI receptionist for a mechanic shop"

Fomite — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 01:48:54 +0000

Have your estimate be off by enough to annoy me a time or two and you'll also blast through my continuing to be a customer.

New comment by Fomite in "I built an AI receptionist for a mechanic shop"

Fomite — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 01:47:51 +0000

Using AI tells me you don't care about the quality of your service.

New comment by Fomite in "ArXiv declares independence from Cornell"

Fomite — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 23:22:49 +0000

This is very variable based on field. HN is heavily biased toward ArXiv-friendly fields.

New comment by Fomite in "ArXiv declares independence from Cornell"

Fomite — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 23:22:02 +0000

bioRxiv is already housed at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which is an independent non-profit.

New comment by Fomite in "ArXiv declares independence from Cornell"

Fomite — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 23:15:39 +0000

Given the last two years and what has been done to science funding, having a load bearing thing like ArXiv not housed with the U.S. government is, I think, pretty self-evidently a good idea.