chrisamiller (u/chrisamiller)

chrisamiller commented on Blog Feeds blogfeeds.net... · Posted by u/stevedsimkins

stared · 3 months ago

Though, it kind of works that you keep adding blogs and blogs, until it turns out that RSS feed is mess. Maybe no clickbaits or ads, but still density of posts I want to read goes down.

Do you know any good solution, where there is collaborative filtering or RSS (bonus points for open, tweakable algorithm) + some AI with custom prompt to give me top recommendations?

Something where I am in the charge of the algorithm, not the other way around.

chrisamiller · 3 months ago

I don't mean this to sound snarky, but if a blog doesn't have a good ratio of signal to noise, you just unsubscribe from the feed.

The solution is to be okay with missing some things instead of trying to drink from the firehose.

chrisamiller commented on Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more greenwichtime.com/news/ed... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

chrisamiller · a year ago

Our middle school has banned phones during school hours, and it's been great. Even though most kids own phones and have them in their backpacks, they aren't seen. There are less problems during classes and kids have to talk to each other during lunch instead of going head down in their phones. Parental pushback has been really minimal - most parents love it, and it's good for the kids.

Making no phones a blanket policy in all schools should be an absolute no-brainer.

chrisamiller commented on lsix: Like "ls", but for images github.com/hackerb9/lsix... · Posted by u/gaws

emptysongglass · 2 years ago

I'm not sure I understand the use of tmux. Can someone explain why it's essential to their workflow and why it might end up being essential to mine?

chrisamiller · 2 years ago

At any given time, I'm working on like 10 different projects. tmux lets me set up sessions for each of these projects, so that when I leave one and come back in a week, all the context is there (multiple windows, bash history, working directories I was in, etc)

Since I work with big biological data, most of my work takes place on our university cluster, which means my laptop is just a dumb terminal and all of the action takes place on the server. IME, tmux is especially powerful with coupled with mosh, which gives a persistent SSH connection. That means I can be in the middle of a project, close my laptop lid, go home, then later that evening, open my lid and everything is reconnected and just right there. Same if I reboot my laptop - one command to reconnect my terminal with mosh, and I'm back in the middle of my complicated multi-window project.

chrisamiller commented on Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled oceanconservancy.org/news... · Posted by u/haltist

adamweld · 2 years ago

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab...

chrisamiller · 2 years ago

Are you claiming that declining fertility is due to plastic, rather than to increasing wealth, education of women, and access to contraception? If so, then I'm going to have to ask you for a) a source and b) a plausible mechanism.

chrisamiller commented on Moderna Melanoma Vaccine Cuts Death Rate in Half reuters.com/business/heal... · Posted by u/boiler_up800

fnordpiglet · 2 years ago

How much of the end to end process requires artisanal human touch? In some future day, is there a chance of tailored mRNA is industrialized to the point that we go from biopsy to vaccine as a standard course of care?

chrisamiller · 2 years ago

Absolutely. We're not there yet, but it's not inconceivable.

chrisamiller commented on Moderna Melanoma Vaccine Cuts Death Rate in Half reuters.com/business/heal... · Posted by u/boiler_up800

fnordpiglet · 2 years ago

This, coupled with mass sequencing of individual cancers and pathogens, feels like the generalized way forward in medicine.

I wonder how they identify the targets in each genome. Is there an optimizing expert system? Generative AI?

chrisamiller · 2 years ago

The short answer is, we sequence their genomes, identify mutations that change a protein sequence and are highly expressed, then run those all through suites of algorithms that predict how well they'll be presented to the immune system. (mostly neural networks trained on far-too-sparse experimental data). This prediction is the hard part right now - we still don't understand enough about how the immune system identifies and interacts with these altered peptides to do really accurate predictions of which ones will be most effective. Throw in that these tumors are actively suppressing the immune system in various ways, and it's complicated! There is lots of research going on, though, and lots of promising early results, like this one

chrisamiller commented on Microsoft fixes the Excel feature that was wrecking scientific data theverge.com/2023/10/21/2... · Posted by u/rbanffy

janeway · 2 years ago

I just stop working with people who request or send me data as .xlsx

chrisamiller · 2 years ago

Look, I get the impulse, and might have agreed with you 10 years ago. At the end of the day, though, we have to work with non-computationally savvy people who (reasonably) want to look at their data sometimes. Not every lab tech or PI can or should learn Python/R/your favorite scripting language, and frameworks like Galaxy take time to set up and maintain, etc etc. Our job is to meet the users where they are and push the biology forward. Any time that I can push them onto a better path, I'll do that, but sometimes the right move is to tell them: "Yeah, go ahead and play with the data in excel, then tell me what you find", and I'll code something proper up afterwards to verify it, get solid stats and a make a pretty visualization.

chrisamiller commented on Microsoft fixes the Excel feature that was wrecking scientific data theverge.com/2023/10/21/2... · Posted by u/rbanffy

chrisamiller · 2 years ago

It's too late, the genetics community already caved :-(

[Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates](https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam...)

chrisamiller commented on Lung cancer pill cuts risk of death by half theguardian.com/science/2... · Posted by u/bichonnages

giantg2 · 3 years ago

"1.4% of all cancers"

This actually seems large to me.

Although that is suspiciously large. Looking at the numbers I think it should be much lower. A 51% reduction doesn't mean it helps 51% if the people. In this case it looks like about 10% of the people are effected given the 88% vs 78% survival rates, right? Maybe something like .28% of all cancer?

chrisamiller · 3 years ago

These are ballpark numbers to be sure, and yeah, my off the cuff comment didn't get that exactly right. I also simplified things quite a bit to try to get the broader point across - Thanks for following up!