Hacker News: virusduck

New comment by virusduck in "Paul Alexander, ‘the man in the iron lung’, has died"

virusduck — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 17:19:55 +0000

There is no "since 2022"--they have performed at relatively the same level to date. They just are not perfect and are unlikely to prevent the kind of non-symptomatic exposures people have, but in most cases, they are good to quickly differentiate a random sore throat from a COVID-related one.

New comment by virusduck in "Show HN: OfflineLLM – a Vision Pro app running TinyLlama on device"

virusduck — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 14:15:38 +0000

Hello, System 7!

New comment by virusduck in "Microplastics found in 300 year old lake sediment"

virusduck — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 17:09:04 +0000

Reminds me of that age old question... We find all these dinosaur fossils in mines for metals and fuel. It makes you wonder if they were just another bunch of animals, what were they all doing mining for industrial materials?

New comment by virusduck in "Microsoft Teams outage causes connection issues, message delays"

virusduck — Sat, 27 Jan 2024 02:08:26 +0000

I think they’ve improved since 2021, but back then when someone sent me a webex invitation I’d feel secondhand embarrassment for them. It was BY FAR the worst of the videoconferencing platforms despite having a huge head start.

New comment by virusduck in "My secret life as an 11-year-old BBS sysop"

virusduck — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 15:07:24 +0000

Oh man, I totally forgot about the Star Wars plugin. What an awesome game EV was. I regret never paying for it.

New comment by virusduck in "Convert SimCity 2000 cities into Minecraft worlds"

virusduck — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 18:44:11 +0000

You can use Geyser [0] to "bridge the gap" to Bedrock clients. There are bugs here and there, but it works pretty great to get everyone on the same server.

[0] https://geysermc.org/

New comment by virusduck in "What’s wrong with medieval pigs in videogames"

virusduck — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 18:41:30 +0000

Total off topic, but I followed the link to read about the Coconut Effect. Not looking at the URL, I ended up about 10 tabs deep before I realized it was friggin tvtropes!! I haven't been over there in a while, but I'm glad to see that site still has that effect on people.

New comment by virusduck in "EU Passes Law to Switch iPhone to USB-C by End of 2024"

virusduck — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 20:32:25 +0000

What world are you living in?

New comment by virusduck in "Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis"

virusduck — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 15:47:54 +0000

Whether or not this happened in reality, it is still a good learning experience.

New comment by virusduck in "Ask HN: Why is the printer industry so scammy?"

virusduck — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 13:58:28 +0000

I've got a Laserjet from the 90's still kicking. It's wireless too with a RPi Zero W and a USB<->Parallel cable. Generic toner cartridges are cheap and available everywhere. Only issue is that the rubber on the runners need a refresh.

New comment by virusduck in "Fully autonomous restaurant opens in SF"

virusduck — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 17:41:20 +0000

Don't forget to tip, Mulder!

New comment by virusduck in "Open Source PCR Thermocycler"

virusduck — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 14:26:58 +0000

No. qPCR is, well, quantitative, so it gives more information. Additionally, it requires less pipetting, and the data is easier to report. All of these things make it more desirable for diagnostics.

New comment by virusduck in "Finding SARS-CoV-2 carriers by optimizing pooled testing at low prevalence [pdf]"

virusduck — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 17:13:51 +0000

That is correct.

New comment by virusduck in "Finding SARS-CoV-2 carriers by optimizing pooled testing at low prevalence [pdf]"

virusduck — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 17:13:16 +0000

False negative rate maybe?

In general, titers of the virus in NP swabs should be high enough to withstand 10, maybe 20-plex pooling. However, as you allude to, there are plenty of other effects that can influence PCR. If there is one sample, for example, that contains a PCR inhibitor, like heme, it may then inhibit all the samples it is pooled with.

Additionally, swabs are not just swabs of virus, they also pull of highly variant amounts of bacteria and human material. These things may also affect the efficiency of PCR.

New comment by virusduck in "Paycheck Protection Program Recipient Map"

virusduck — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 13:18:31 +0000

Only 9 states data are present...

New comment by virusduck in "You can't tell people anything (2004)"

virusduck — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 13:06:31 +0000

Pingu is also very good. If you haven't seen it, it's a Claymation penguin and his family. He's not a goody goody--on the one hand is just funny, but on the other hand it gets to explore his kid-life and kid-choices. TH other fun thing is, they all speak a language made up by the Italian opera singer that voices them.

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

https://www.amazon.com/Pingu/dp/B01J4L837M

New comment by virusduck in "The Problem with America’s Lab Mice [video]"

virusduck — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 14:36:10 +0000

If you look at it another way, groups that have a handle and understanding of a particular tool may have insight into how that tool can be used to answer a biological question. I don't think there is anything really wrong with that, but grants should be denied if they aren't proposing ways to move the field forward.

There are tons of mouse labs, however some have specialized mice or mouse systems. There are also other labs that specialize in other animal systems. These systems are nontrivial to switch between for many reasons, which I think you acknowledge. It is useful for the field in general to have access to the results of a variety of research tools that every individual wouldn't necessarily have access to.

New comment by virusduck in "Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots"

virusduck — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 18:28:11 +0000

I mean...that's what they tried to do...

New comment by virusduck in "Toto’s “Africa” Played on Tesla Coils"

virusduck — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 18:25:59 +0000

Hey now...

New comment by virusduck in "Show HN: Virus Cafe – Make a friend in 2 minutes"

virusduck — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 18:17:36 +0000

Murders and executions?