Hacker News: shellfishgene

New comment by shellfishgene in "Statement on US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5"

shellfishgene — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 04:12:51 +0000

If this should actually go on for longer there might be a danger that those employees just start their own companies in Europe or Asia.

New comment by shellfishgene in "Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)"

shellfishgene — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:56:46 +0000

"Over the following decades, Lee built a strong government that was backed by a competent and virtually corruption-free civil service..."

This part of the history, only mentioned in this one sentence, is the most interesting and relevant for other countries, and is really what sets Singapore apart from other countries in the region.

New comment by shellfishgene in "The Genius of the Barn Owl's Feathers"

shellfishgene — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:41:40 +0000

He did use a IR stroboscope and a camera, as owls can apparently not see IR.

New comment by shellfishgene in "Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI"

shellfishgene — Thu, 21 May 2026 05:57:02 +0000

There are multiple similar companies in many European countries, even though the government provides (often somewhat basic) tools to file taxes. A large percentage of citizens in the Germany and Austria use paid software because it's more comfortable, same in the UK and Poland. But yes, it would be better if that was not the case, like in Scandinavia.

New comment by shellfishgene in "Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels"

shellfishgene — Sun, 17 May 2026 07:21:59 +0000

Even just searching in Germany there are at least 4 companies making different designs. I guess they must be selling quite well. Most make non solar tiles of the same size and design for shaded parts of the roof.

New comment by shellfishgene in "The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)"

shellfishgene — Sat, 16 May 2026 20:45:58 +0000

The US is also currently rerunning this experiment with gambling/sports betting. Also does not seem to turn out so well...

New comment by shellfishgene in "Venom and hot peppers offer a key to killing resistant bacteria"

shellfishgene — Mon, 11 May 2026 21:26:07 +0000

But bacteria also become resistant against phages, you would still have to continuously develop new ones.

New comment by shellfishgene in "First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed"

shellfishgene — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:58:39 +0000

It's not really clear, the German part was going slower than the tunnel, but now that the tunnel is also delayed by at least 2 years, who knows maybe they are in sync again ;). The road link seems to be going much faster than the rail link on the German sinde, which won't be done before 2032.

New comment by shellfishgene in "Light without electricity? Glowing algae could make it possible"

shellfishgene — Sat, 09 May 2026 05:45:19 +0000

I think they mean the algae is in sunlight during the day and growing, producing light only at night.

New comment by shellfishgene in "HantaWatch Real time hantavirus outbreak tracker"

shellfishgene — Fri, 08 May 2026 08:01:34 +0000

I just get Error: SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER from Firefox and Edge.

New comment by shellfishgene in "Heat pump sales rise across Europe"

shellfishgene — Tue, 05 May 2026 08:05:34 +0000

Germany just enacted a law that makes landlords pay part of the heating bill to change the incentives for upgrading the equipment.

New comment by shellfishgene in "Heat pump sales rise across Europe"

shellfishgene — Mon, 04 May 2026 20:23:14 +0000

That's the same thing, no?

New comment by shellfishgene in "1.4 GW: battery storage at former Grohnde nuclear power plant"

shellfishgene — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 20:59:54 +0000

NIMBYs are the reason why large parts of the mentioned new 700 km Südlink connection are being built as below ground cables, adding enomous costs.

New comment by shellfishgene in "Humanoid robots to become baggage handlers in Japan airport experiment"

shellfishgene — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:13:58 +0000

I very much doubt that humanoid robots will be cleaning airplane cabins any time soon...

New comment by shellfishgene in "PCR is a surprisingly near-optimal technology"

shellfishgene — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 20:35:55 +0000

Also trust in PCR cyclers ist often low... PCR is often not straight forward, chemicals can go bad, primers don't work reliably, input DNA has inhibitors, etc. So people are quick to blame the thermocycler if things don't work for an unknown reason, or some have their favorite cycler that "always works for me", and don't what to switch to an unknown one. I guess part of the reason is that there is no log where you can check the exact temperature in every well of the block after the run. Failed PCRs cost money and especially time, so I can see why people don't want to try machines some guy built in his garage.

New comment by shellfishgene in "PCR is a surprisingly near-optimal technology"

shellfishgene — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 20:28:02 +0000

Yeah, tell the thousands of PhD students who question their life choices over non-working PCRs every year that it's "optimal". ;)

New comment by shellfishgene in "PCR is a surprisingly near-optimal technology"

shellfishgene — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 20:23:18 +0000

In normal biology labs real-time PCR is used much less than normal PCR, I'd guess 5% of PCRs across labs are run in real-time machines.

New comment by shellfishgene in "Up to 8M Bees Are Living in an Underground Network Beneath This Cemetery"

shellfishgene — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 11:08:01 +0000

Here is a nice video with slow motion footage of the bees in flight, and an interview with the researcher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jje1LPrsHbc

New comment by shellfishgene in "Sumida Aquarium Posts 2026 Penguin Relationship Chart, with Drama and Breakups"

shellfishgene — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 06:29:19 +0000

The aquarium is great, but when I was there I found the penguin exhibit a bit sad: it's completely indoors, the penguins will never see the sun or sky...

New comment by shellfishgene in "iNaturalist"

shellfishgene — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:58:39 +0000

Tphakala recently also published a cli tool to process recordings, it can also use other models such as Google perch.

https://github.com/tphakala/birda