Show HN: Phage Explorer(phage-explorer.org)
66 pointsby eigenvalue5 hours ago8 comments
  • noduermean hour ago
    It's rather nice looking, but it would have been so much nicer if you'd done it yourself.
    • stavros12 minutes ago
      He did do it himself.

      If you meant "without AI", then it would have never been done in the first place, so you can choose your preference there.

  • mentalgear2 hours ago
    Research into phages is paramount, as they represent one of our best hopes for combating the rapidly increasing problem of antibiotic resistance (largely driven by the overuse of antibiotics, even including last-resort antibiotics, in industrial animal agriculture so industrial farms can place more animals per sq/m without them dying from lack of space and cut-off body parts so they take even less space).
  • makerofthings42 minutes ago
    AI really loves that purple-blue style with rounded corners. I asked chatGPT to make a few sites to see how it worked and any time I said "make the site look nicer", it did that. I wonder why.
  • Tiberiuman hour ago
    Sorry, but I really wouldn't trust a website that uses Gemini's image models for generating scientific diagrams. The website itself is also vibe-coded. That's not an issue by itself, but there are lots of layout issues visible, see https://i.imgur.com/SidB6pI.png

    A bit offtopic: If anyone wants to check whether a specific image is generated by Google models without using Gemini, go to https://images.google.com/, upload the image, click the "About this image" section. It'll say "Made with Google AI" if it was generated with their models.

    • noduermean hour ago
      >> what I ended up with has taken a sickening number of tokens to generate

      I was a bit confused by this as to whether it related only to the graphics or to the UI as well.

  • jurgenaut232 hours ago
    What used to be a life time project that would inspire awe and respect and make OP an instant hire for most managers is now a fun 1-week stunt that makes you go “cool, how many tokens?” Of course, the result is cool and maybe even useful (I wouldn’t dare say _correct_, being ignorant of the topic), but I cannot help but think that this would have been tremendously better if done the old (proper?) way.

    Also, I suspect that OP would have learned so much more on the topic.

    • stavros5 minutes ago
      Yeah but the choice isn't "do I spend two weeks on this, or do I spend a lifetime?". It's "I have two weeks, do I spend them making the whole thing with AI, or 5% of it without?".
    • tgvan hour ago
      I'm pretty much on the no-AI side (learning, art, decision making, etc.), but this is the kind of thing I can appreciate. I suppose OP didn't want to learn more about coding this kind of visualization, but rather learn from the visualization. Any tool that can help with that is acceptable, whether it produces code or not. That the tool produced code has the advantage that OP can share this with us. I only hope it doesn't contain fundamental errors, because that would make this project a negative contribution.
      • jurgenaut2323 minutes ago
        Sure, I don’t discard the contribution altogether, but I am dubious that it is possible to properly draw the line between what to vibe code and what to do it “by hand” to make sure you get the benefits of building.
      • noduermean hour ago
        Errors are just nonsense that shows up in the console until you spend more tokens to make them go bye bye, right? I think you're talking more about the idea of true and false information, which is such a human bias. Will it really matter to anyone in 5 years whether this accurately depicts phages? By then AI will have solved everything. /s
  • jadengeller4 hours ago
    some quick feedback on the user interface:

    - i pressed "Amino Acids", and nothing updated below the toolbar. can't figure out what it does

    - the "Tools" buttons looks like a segmented picker, but both seem to actually initiate a modal presentation

    this tool seems interesting, but it would be worth polishing some of these ui quirks because my first impression was that it seems a bit broken (or confused me)!

    but seems like a cool project otherwise, love people building and sharing explainers as they learn stuff!

  • bboydart913 hours ago
    I really resonate with your goal of creating a more intuitive tool than a boring textbook. Being able to visually see how complex genetic code translates into physical geometry (3D structures) would be incredibly helpful for students. Thank you for sharing such a wonderful educational tool!
  • maximgeorge3 hours ago
    [dead]