Hacker News: flopsamjetsam

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Science Is Open Software"

flopsamjetsam — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 03:56:58 +0000

> Every result is instantly reproducible. When you read a paper claiming that a new drug reduces symptoms by 30%, you click a link and watch the exact analysis run in your browser. The data processing, statistical tests, and visualizations execute in seconds using the same environment the authors used—preserved perfectly through reproducible containers.

At least some journals have this as a stipulation e.g. https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/r...

Particularly the "data availability" and "Availability and peer review of computer code and algorithm".

However, in my limited experience, of trying to reproduce certain scRNA-seq processing pipelines, in practice it's never available as just a Github link. I can understand that some/many researcher's code is not in good shape, so I think it'll be quite a stretch to have this available.

I do think it's laudable though, to try and make it available. It would certainly have been very useful for me in the past.

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982"

flopsamjetsam — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 22:37:32 +0000

My first computer was a Microbee, a Z80-based Australian computer made by Applied Technology. I loved that thing to death, and thank my Mum and Dad for buying it for me, and getting me started in a field that I loved.

My school had a VIC-20, later an Apple II, and an enterprising teacher brought in a Commodore PET.

Later on, my friends had ZX Spectrums, Amstrad CPCs (not sure of the model), and lots and lots of C64s. A few Tandy 1000s and Cocos. I was always envious of the great games that they had.

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "AWS Acquires DuckLabs"

flopsamjetsam — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 20:21:47 +0000

LLM to write it, then all the managers just use LLM to summarise it :)

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, Native X64 Port"

flopsamjetsam — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 19:58:27 +0000

> Dan Bricklin's Demo

There's a name I haven't heard in a while. During our undergrad (90s), we used it to mock up UI designs for one of our early courses.

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Google shuts down Nobel Prize winning AlphaFold"

flopsamjetsam — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 20:56:54 +0000

> I'm guessing Google can't make money on them.

The weights are free for non-commercial use. And Isomorphic are their commercial arm, and they partner with the big drug companies.

Edit: after reading the article, I realise it's about the disbanding of the team, so probably your original comment is correct.

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Building a Tiny 3D Renderer for a Tiny Handheld"

flopsamjetsam — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 05:56:52 +0000

Yes, it reminds me a lot of the ports between 8-bit computers in the 80s, and also console ports pre-Playstation.

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Should you use AI for a task? Here's a simple way to decide"

flopsamjetsam — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 23:47:02 +0000

An article by Bruce Schneier, on how he frames the question when evaluating his students.

Should you use AI for a task? Here's a simple way to decide

flopsamjetsam — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 23:47:02 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/24/should-you-use-ai

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49053023

Points: 4

# Comments: 3

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Count Binface"

flopsamjetsam — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 07:24:10 +0000

That is excellent, and explains much!

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Book: RISC-V System-on-Chip Design"

flopsamjetsam — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 23:15:06 +0000

> CLIC was awful (thankfully it has been abandoned)

Could you expand a little on what made it a bad design? I'm not much up on RISC-V.

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Book: RISC-V System-on-Chip Design"

flopsamjetsam — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 23:12:52 +0000

I re-took Computer Architecture recently, and we used their earlier book "Digital Design and Computer Architecture: ARM edition", and it was also excellent.

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "RISCBoy is an open-source portable games console, designed from scratch"

flopsamjetsam — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 23:06:38 +0000

From the GitHub page:

> It is a Gameboy Advance from a parallel universe where RISC-V existed in 2001. A love letter to the handheld consoles from my childhood, and a 3AM drunk text to the technology that powered them.

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "TOP500 at ISC’26: We have a New Number 1 Supercomputer"

flopsamjetsam — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 21:08:01 +0000

> We think it is highly likely that these LX2 chiplets are etched using SMIC 7 nanometer processes at the N+3 refinement, and we base that on the fact that the chip only runs at 1.55 GHz. That is nowhere near the 3 GHz that SMIC can push with that process, but it is probably lower to get the memory and core speeds more balanced. [1]

Based on the ARMv9.2.

[1] https://www.nextplatform.com/hpc/2026/06/25/a-deep-dive-on-c...

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions"

flopsamjetsam — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 06:35:26 +0000

I was a programmer, and moved over to biology recently. I was very "wtf is R" when I started, but slowly its strengths are coming through. I found the combination of the REPL plus the IDE, and the language syntax, somehow give me the ability to play around a lot more than I expected. Unlike others, I find tidyverse (especially ggplot2 and dplyr, which reminds me a lot of pandas) to be quite intuitive.

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Dirty Little Zine – a tool for making an 8 page printable Zine"

flopsamjetsam — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 06:49:07 +0000

I love this, it's like a grown-up PrintShop.

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Spanish traders set the standard for GnuCash database design"

flopsamjetsam — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 20:37:41 +0000

That's fascinating, I remember my Dad telling me you would pay for something in guineas as a sort of tip, but I never knew it was for horses (this is in Australia).

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "I’m writing again"

flopsamjetsam — Sat, 23 May 2026 22:35:50 +0000

I loved Swaine's Flames from DDJ. Shame I missed his revival.

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Map of Metal"

flopsamjetsam — Thu, 21 May 2026 05:28:55 +0000

Great map!

No Opeth?

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment"

flopsamjetsam — Wed, 20 May 2026 20:53:04 +0000

For those wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_Supplementary_Ser...

New comment by flopsamjetsam in "Hindenburg’s Smoking Room"

flopsamjetsam — Sun, 17 May 2026 19:56:45 +0000

You'd think they'd just ban repeat offenders.