Hacker News: gewa

New comment by gewa in "We must pace the frontier"

gewa — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 15:06:12 +0000

We are still living in a capitalistic society. We have to find a solution which is responsible, safe and returns on the investment. The commercial aspect can be true at the same time.

New comment by gewa in "We Must Pace the Frontier"

gewa — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 15:03:43 +0000

I agree, and even if it’s both marketing and safety, the safety side has a huge potential downside risk which we have to manage.

Also, just out of curiosity, is there any historical precedent for a nascent, fast growing new industry screaming for self regulation?

New comment by gewa in "What makes a champagne vintage great? Ask a deep learning model"

gewa — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 20:56:13 +0000

There's a recent startup which wanted to take taste prediction of luxury drinks to the next level with ML:

https://www.mpg.de/18773206/the-signature-of-taste

New comment by gewa in "A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house"

gewa — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 03:55:48 +0000

It doesn't seem like you are very familiar with German politics or culture, but this is definitely an outlier. Freedom of speech is a central part of our constitution. Defamation is one of the very few ways and enforcement and interpretation is mostly restricted to defamation of policemen. This is the reason why this has resulted in an outcry as the proportionality does not respond to the interpretation how defamation is treated legally.

New comment by gewa in "A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house"

gewa — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 02:09:33 +0000

As a German I have to emphasize that this has no support at all in Germany. The uproar was huge today and its seen as a misuse of power by the politician. Especially as he is not acting as a politician but as representative of the public office of interior. The search warrant needs to be issued by a judge and I'm sure there will be formal investigations how this happened. I would not be surprised if he will be forced to resign. There are also elections happening and misuse of power is seen very badly throughout the people.

New comment by gewa in "A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house"

gewa — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 02:08:49 +0000

This has no support at all in Germany. The uproar was huge today and its seen as a misuse of power by the politician. Especially as he is not acting as a politician but as representative of the public office of interior. The search warrant needs to be issued by a judge and I'm sure there will be formal investigations how this happened. I would not be surprised if he will be forced to resign. There are also elections happening and misuse of power is seen very badly throughout the people.

New comment by gewa in "Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house"

gewa — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 22:39:53 +0000

Isn't this, what a housing cooperative are about? They are very common in Germany and seen as valuable cultural heritage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_cooperative

New comment by gewa in "SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma"

gewa — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 19:00:57 +0000

I agree, the headline is definetly not what the research shows. See my other comment on non-neutralizing antibodies. Please change the title to the original one.

New comment by gewa in "SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma"

gewa — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 18:57:37 +0000

Please note, that neutralization by antibodies is only one of the many possible ways how our immune system can take action. Antibody recognition is still possible with the found mutant:

"To determine whether 501Y.V2 is still recognized by non-neutralizing antibodies, the binding of polyclonal sera (from Fig.2a) to a recombinant 501Y.V2 RBD+SBD1 protein and an RBD+SBD1 from the original lineage was assessed by ELISA (Fig.2b). These data revealed that binding of polyclonal plasma to 501Y.V2 RBD+SBD1 was only substantially affected in a minority of cases (14 of 44 with ≥five-fold reduction, 32%). Most of the convalescent plasma/serum suffered less than four-fold reductions in total binding activity (as measured by area under the curve), suggesting a considerable non-neutralizing antibody component are still able to bind the 501Y.V2 spike antigen"

New comment by gewa in "SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma"

gewa — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 18:53:20 +0000

Please note, that neutralization by antibodies is only one of the many possible ways how our immune system can take action. Antibody recognition is still possible with the found mutant:

Its also worth to note that only 44 plasma samples were used from individuals out of a population where the virus probably originated.

New comment by gewa in "New coronavirus variant: What do we know?"

gewa — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 13:33:32 +0000

This Report from the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium gives a good summary of the prevalent genotypes with UK COVID-19 cases. You can see how the B.1.1.7 mutations N501Y + Δ69-70 and N501Y are very recent and mostly showed up during the last 28 days.

https://www.cogconsortium.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Repo...

New comment by gewa in "New coronavirus variant: What do we know?"

gewa — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 13:32:00 +0000

In this case, the B.1.1.7 variant has shown to be highly abundant in recent COVID-19 cases in the UK. Much higher compared to other mutations which are tracked too. This is pretty clear evidence of an increased infection rate or evolutionary advantage as there has to be some driving force for this process. Take a look at this Report from the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium. The B.1.1.7 mutations N501Y + Δ69-70 and N501Y are very recent and mostly showed up during the last 28 days.

[1] https://www.cogconsortium.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Repo...

New comment by gewa in "Cell Signaling Technologies – Detailed 3D model of human cells"

gewa — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 17:36:30 +0000

Biochemistry by Jeremy M. Berg, John L. Tymoczko and Lubert Stryer is a widespread introduction to Biochemistry.

New comment by gewa in "I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API"

gewa — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 11:21:02 +0000

Nice to see you on the Frontpage, what an amazing project!. I remember you introduced me to HN 7 years or so ago at some MUN meeting hahaha.

New comment by gewa in "Cryo-electron microscopy breaks a key barrier"

gewa — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 15:52:50 +0000

No, the proteins are vitrified very rapidly in liquid ethane at approx. -200°C, so that the structure ist conserved.

New comment by gewa in "There is one, and only one strain of SARS-CoV-2"

gewa — Fri, 08 May 2020 22:43:25 +0000

Yes viruses are not alive and speaking strictly there are no clades or specieses. But I stopped beeing to strict with terminology like this on HN. Most people are not from this field and don't have broad prior knowledge and so it would just complicate and confuse unnecessarily.

New comment by gewa in "There is one, and only one strain of SARS-CoV-2"

gewa — Fri, 08 May 2020 09:02:49 +0000

I don't think the article addresses the point right. Yes, there is only one strain of Sars-CoV-2 as the definition of a strain is a strict scientific term. Nevertheless, there are different clades [1] of Sars-CoV-2, which are characterised as organisms with a common ancestor [2]. This doesn't has to imply a changed property, like infectivity or mortality, but it implies common heritage which is of course of interest. You can see it nicely in the the phylogenetic tree of the sequenced genomes [3].

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jmv.25902

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clade

[3] https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global

New comment by gewa in "Ten-Minute Coronavirus Test for $1"

gewa — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 00:30:22 +0000

I definitely agree about the superiority of RT-PCR and the drawbacks of direct detection. Nevertheless, seroconversion can take between 5-12 days from symptom onset [1]. Therefore it's important to outline the different ELISA strategies (Thank you for doing so!), when discussing diagnostic tests.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.05.20030502

New comment by gewa in "Ten-Minute Coronavirus Test for $1"

gewa — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 00:13:01 +0000

Yes, there are of course drawbacks. But the direct detection is applicable at the same stage of infection as a rt-pcr and therefore usefull for immediate disease diagnosis. Indirect tests after seroconversion are the easier alternative, and will probably be used extensively in the aftermath, to get solid epidemiological numbers.

New comment by gewa in "Ten-Minute Coronavirus Test for $1"

gewa — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 22:28:24 +0000

Maybe one should note, that there are two possible Elisa based strategies. Yes, You can present some viral protein to detect antibodies produced by the body after serum conversion, as you said. This serum conversion takes at least a week to happen and you need a blood sample. On the other hand you can also immobilize antibodies specific to the viral proteins and directly detect the virus. This is possible immediately after infection and fluids like sputum or saliva can be used. Both strategies are under development for quick tests right now.