Hacker News: okaram

New comment by okaram in "Scientists find a way to regrow cartilage in mice and human tissue samples"

okaram — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 20:28:02 +0000

There's two issues, success rate (about 5%) and time ... even if it is successful in humans, it will be 5 to 10 years before it's available (and 20-30 before it's affordable)

This is not being a contrarian, but a realist.

New comment by okaram in "The Concise TypeScript Book"

okaram — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 18:00:25 +0000

They have a PDF in the downloads, and an epub one if you have an ebook reader like a kindle or kobo

New comment by okaram in "Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring"

okaram — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 15:13:25 +0000

Porque no los dos?

He was a super-rich guy, who had had too many people telling him he was a genius for way too long (reminds you of anybody?), and so was way too sure of himself. A bunch of his ideas were crazy, which doesn't mean others weren't trying to dismiss his views.

New comment by okaram in "HPV vaccination reduces oncogenic HPV16/18 prevalence from 16% to <1% in Denmark"

okaram — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 16:57:26 +0000

This is one research paper reporting on particular results.

It is DEFINITELY not too early to tell. Cervical cancer rates in Australia, which adopted the vaccine widely and early have decreased, and it has been widely reported ( https://www.canceraustralia.gov.au/cancer-types/cervical-can... )

New comment by okaram in "HPV vaccination reduces oncogenic HPV16/18 prevalence from 16% to <1% in Denmark"

okaram — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 16:52:34 +0000

There's nothing particularly bad for adult males.

The benefits may be statistically lower, since you may have been infected by some of the variants already, older males may have fewer sexual partners in the future, and cancer takes a while to develop.

In the USA, it is recommended by default for adults up to 26 and kinda for 27-45.

New comment by okaram in "FDA has approved Yeztugo, a drug that provides protection against HIV infection"

okaram — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 19:55:32 +0000

That would be up to individuals or health departments, who decide what risk is high enough. The risk for non-promiscuous people in 'western' countries is so low, that I don't see any country giving this to everybody.

This is not a vaccine, BTW, and it needs to be given every 6 months.

New comment by okaram in "FDA has approved Yeztugo, a drug that provides protection against HIV infection"

okaram — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 19:24:05 +0000

This heavily heavily depends on the population you choose, given the difference in sexual habits.

As a data point, the paper below shows 1,213 out of 18,401 high-risk people in France got infected in 4 years (and 260 out of 31,992 with the previous gen prep, it seems this one reduces it by ~10x again)

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2...

New comment by okaram in "Intel CEO Letter to Employees"

okaram — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:13:49 +0000

It is some of both. Business conditions have changed, but also the bosses kinda collude to reduce power of the employees.

Eventually some companies will start scooping talent up, and everybody will zig :)

New comment by okaram in "Plain Vanilla Web"

okaram — Tue, 13 May 2025 04:25:34 +0000

There's so many different people, and it's hard to know if that's made you lose customers.

I would immediately discard any website that makes me send an email to order.

New comment by okaram in "Cheap blood test detects pancreatic cancer before it spreads"

okaram — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 19:08:00 +0000

We do, it's not as if we aren't doing any testing. I've been getting a yearly prostatic antigen test for several years now.

The recommendations tend to take these into account, and then you and your doctor adjust.

Sometimes politics gets into it, like with the recent changes to breast cancer recommendations, but, overall, it works well for many people.

New comment by okaram in "Cheap blood test detects pancreatic cancer before it spreads"

okaram — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 19:04:33 +0000

You only get that probability if the test results are completely uncorrelated, chances are, they're not.

I'd assume the chances of getting a second false positive if you already got one are much higher.

New comment by okaram in "Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths"

okaram — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 19:49:30 +0000

The way most countries who have it (including Canada) have solved it is to add waiting periods, and layers of reviews. In Canada, you need two different doctors to sign off on it. If you're not actively dying, you also have a 90-day period of reflection. And you have to be of sound mind.

This seems to me like good enough safeguards, don't you think?

New comment by okaram in "The size of BYD's factory"

okaram — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 21:19:34 +0000

I don't think anyone envisions having no cars; public transportation make it so we don't need cars, and other nudges make it so we have fewer cars than we would otherwise have.

New comment by okaram in "Maslow 4: Large format CNC routing made accessible"

okaram — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 22:14:02 +0000

And, correct me if I'm wrong, they also have a person somewhere around and a big red button, right?

New comment by okaram in "M4 Mac mini's efficiency"

okaram — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 01:57:21 +0000

But a ton of us have a friend/kid/relative in HS or college ...

New comment by okaram in "The Long Road to End Tuberculosis"

okaram — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 05:28:57 +0000

I'm assuming you're mistaken, given it provided herd immunity. It definitely reduces your chances of getting it. Reducing the impact also means you spread it less.

New comment by okaram in "Growing Food Instead of Lawns in California Front Yards"

okaram — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 14:45:48 +0000

Definitely not, but having fresh herbs veggies available is amazing. With herbs, I think it can be cheaper than buying them at the store (we normally waste tons of herbs if we buy at the store). With peppers and tomatoes, they just taste better :)

This year we may do squashes and eggplants ...

New comment by okaram in "Growing food instead of lawns in California front yards"

okaram — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 14:42:06 +0000

But ... keep in mind it will attract insects, birds, and animals, and they may not be cute :). Be prepared for more insects in your house, more bird poop and more possums etc

New comment by okaram in "GLP-1 for Everything"

okaram — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 20:29:35 +0000

Maybe ... maybe not.

Modern medicine does have magic pills for many illnesses; for example, antibiotics are magical for many bacterial infections, many vaccines are almost magical too.

OTOH, many pills will have undesired side-effects, and the body is in a complex dynamic equilibrium, so it may happen that blocking GLP-1 may have side effects.

Eventually, we'll all die, but I'm optimistic that GLP-1 will lead to a better equilibrium. Preliminary evidence says it will. I'm not as confident as the author though :)

New comment by okaram in "Jeffrey Snover and the Making of PowerShell"

okaram — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 14:26:43 +0000

> I primarily write Powershell Core scripts for scenarios ... in an environment where installing runtimes for programming languages is discouraged.

But PS Core is a programming language, right? And only installed by default on Windows?

I'm assuming there's other constraints on your system that make it preferable to installing bash or python on your Windows boxes?