Hacker News: mutagen

New comment by mutagen in "John C. Dvorak has died"

mutagen — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 21:48:47 +0000

One of my highlights of 90s internet was forwarding some amusing computer anecdote or joke somewhere where it eventually got to John Dvorak with my email at the top of the forward chain and he reached out asking if he could credit me or get help finding the source. Unfortunately I didn't know the original source but I felt connected to the world in a new way.

New comment by mutagen in "Can a MUD evaluate LLMs? A $99 proof of concept"

mutagen — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:25:15 +0000

Withered technology - that's a nice turn of phrase. I think I'll start using that to refer to some of the 2000s era MS tech we're saddled with that gets a coat of paint and some KBs to cover CVEs but ultimately is rather withered...

New comment by mutagen in "PySimpleGUI 6"

mutagen — Thu, 07 May 2026 17:40:11 +0000

Great to see this back as Open Source (LGPL 3.0). However, it points out the continuous need for proper funding for Open Source. Tough in ZIRP times, exponentially more difficult in more difficult economic times.

New comment by mutagen in "Did I photograph the Aurora or was it something else? (2016)"

mutagen — Tue, 05 May 2026 17:18:01 +0000

Noctilucent clouds are another stunning sky phenomenon that I've only got to see a few times. Not sure if they're typically visible from the UK.

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

https://www.space.com/noctilucent-clouds

New comment by mutagen in "Combining spicy foods with mint boosts anti-inflammatory effects 100x or more"

mutagen — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 22:14:14 +0000

It is also missing the "in Mice" part of the headline.

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/18/3/376

Functional Phytochemicals Cooperatively Suppress Inflammation in RAW264.7 Cells

RAW 264.7 cells are a mouse macrophage cell line commonly used in research to study immune responses, inflammation, and cancer.

New comment by mutagen in "The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild"

mutagen — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 17:45:47 +0000

The California Aqueduct delivers water from the western Sierras through the Central Valley and to Los Angeles. This is likely what NorCal refers to when they say SoCal is 'stealing our water'.

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

Would be interesting to see the relative amounts of use by LA and by agriculture in the Central Valley though.

New comment by mutagen in "Hacking Moltbook"

mutagen — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 20:31:55 +0000

"Tell me about the seahorse emoji"

ChatGPT v5.0 spiraling on the existence of the seahorse emoji was glorious to behold. Other LLMs were a little better at sorting things out but often expressed a little bit of confusion.

New comment by mutagen in "From Nevada to Kansas by Glider"

mutagen — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 22:51:14 +0000

A few years ago I met a guy at the Smith Creek hot springs out in the middle of the Nevada desert towing a glider. He told me about glider flights from Truckee CA or Minden, NV to Utah and I was amazed then.

Another impressive journey was Truckee CA to Nephi, UT and then back again against the prevailing winds.

https://youtu.be/4xb-CKa-FPI

https://www.weglide.org/flight/407896

New comment by mutagen in "Passing of Joe Mancuso"

mutagen — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:45:43 +0000

Good find! Profile pics match as well.

New comment by mutagen in "He built underground maze of light-filled earth homes in CA Sierras [video]"

mutagen — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 02:24:13 +0000

Some amazing ideas here, definitely inspiring.

The trees right up against the above-ground structures make me weep for defensible space. While the underground structures may be survivable in the event of a wildfire and the trees are beautiful I'd be happier seeing a property that feels more survivable in the types of fires we've been seeing in California.

New comment by mutagen in "Introduction to reverse-engineering vintage synth firmware"

mutagen — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 05:14:00 +0000

Seems like a good place to mention The Usual Suspects, a group that has built emulation of the Motorola DSP5630 and associated hardware to allow playable virtual instruments.

https://dsp56300.wordpress.com/

New comment by mutagen in "What if we treated Postgres like SQLite?"

mutagen — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 15:27:08 +0000

Some apps do, the most used I know of is Blackmagic's Davinci Resolve, the video editor with a relatively full featured free edition available. I think this has more to do with its roots being in a high end networked environment but still, the local desktop version installs Postgres.

New comment by mutagen in "Radium Music Editor"

mutagen — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 19:03:11 +0000

Cakewalk has been scripted with a LISP (CAL) from the early days, at least through the 90s. I see hints that it still is but not sure with all the changes from Bandlab.

New comment by mutagen in "OpenAI Charges by the Minute, So Make the Minutes Shorter"

mutagen — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 16:36:36 +0000

Not to discount slower speeds for thinking but I wonder if there is also value in dipping into a talk or a subject and then revisiting (re-watching) with the time to ponder on the thoughts a little more deeply.

New comment by mutagen in "Getting Started Strudel"

mutagen — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 20:02:06 +0000

Take a look at the visual feedback section any try some of the examples, they may help. I play guitar a bit and came to realize that my understanding of chords and scales and some of music theory was very pattern based so I’m interested to see if that will translate to trying this intersection of music and programming with those visual aids.

https://strudel.cc/learn/visual-feedback/

New comment by mutagen in "Show HN: TextQuery – Query CSV, JSON, XLSX Files with SQL"

mutagen — Tue, 06 May 2025 17:33:12 +0000

This looks awesome. I'm the target audience. I do quite a bit of development around SQL Server and there's an endless stream of CSV and XLSX files coming and going that need spot checks and quick looks. I use ModernCSV quite a bit and would have purchased that if it built these SQL features in. I've used DuckDB directly a few times to join and query CSV and XLSX files, I'll pay my own $$ for something that quickly streamlines this.

I can import into SQL Server but there's too much ceremony needed (column types, etc) for quick looks at data I'm going to answer a question about and then discard. After a quick look at TextQuery I'm running into the same issues (although TextQuery is just a couple of clicks instead of 5+). I was also seeing an error yesterday from associating XLSX files with TextQuery but that seems to have gone away today.

New comment by mutagen in "Show HN: I built a synthesizer based on 3D physics"

mutagen — Sat, 03 May 2025 05:48:19 +0000

My account shows 3 devices available to install on and I can disable computers on demand. Runs well on my M1 and on my 3060 and even all but the most demanding of assemblies on my little work laptop with onboard Intel graphics.

I assume files are compatible, presets are the same on both MacOS and Windows.

New comment by mutagen in "Show HN: I built a synthesizer based on 3D physics"

mutagen — Fri, 02 May 2025 21:52:24 +0000

I've been able to run it on an Intel laptop with integrated video. I haven't been able to test the most complex models / presets, I might give that a shot this weekend and see where it falls apart.

New comment by mutagen in "There are two types of dishwasher people"

mutagen — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 19:27:18 +0000

An elderly friend of mine who lives alone keeps his most used dishes in the dishwasher. Need a clean dish? Find one in there. Have a dirty dish? Put it in the dishwasher? Can't find a clean dish? Run the dishwasher.

Maybe not quite efficient from a water/energy/soap perspective. But efficient for his time and attention.

New comment by mutagen in "First Known Photographs of Living Specimens"

mutagen — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 00:10:30 +0000

From the About Section of the page:

This project is designed to showcase the first known photographs of living specimens of any species. Note that by 'first known' I'm referring to the first known photographs of a species anywhere, not just the first photographs to be submitted to iNaturalist.

Two types of observation will be included: 1) First photographic records of undescribed species e.g. this Gasteracantha sp. 2) First photographic records of already described (but obviously relatively uncommon or cryptic) species e.g. this wasp fly.

If the male and female of a species are sexually dimorphic, then both are valid to be added to the project. So too if a species has distinct life stages (eg caterpillar/chrysalis/butterfly), they are all valid to be separately added to the project (assuming the other rules apply).

Please only add observations depicting live organisms; this therefore excludes specimens such as pinned insects.

If you see an observation currently in the project that you know is not the first photograph of that species, and you can show the earlier photograph, please do not hesitate to message me and I'll remove it.