Why proteins fold and how GPUs help us fold • Hacker News Board

Re: Why proteins fold and how GPUs help us fold

#31

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 1:59 PM UTC

zkmon wrote: post #19

If nature did so well for billions of years, why are we taking over it's job now? Did it ask for your help? Anytime some talks about large numbers - some galaxy is billions of kilometers away, there are trillions of atoms in universe, trillions of possible combinations for a problem etc - it appears to me that you talking about some problem that doesn't fall into your job description.

So, you're anti-vaccine? And anti-antibiotic? And pro-dying of disease and cancer, in general?

I'm sorry that you're also so numerophobic, but real people use numbers of those magnitudes every day. Your own computer, in fact, has billions of storage slots in its disk space - although perhaps that's something that doesn't fall into your job description.

Re: Why proteins fold and how GPUs help us fold

#32

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 1:59 PM UTC

naaqq wrote: post #8

Start reading from the 3/4 mark, that’s the ‘how’ part

Or don't read at all, because so much of it is crap.

Re: Why proteins fold and how GPUs help us fold

#33

Post by tim333 » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 2:13 PM UTC

prof-dr-ir wrote: post #14

penetrarthur wrote: post #10

Great article! On a sidenote, what is this new style of writing using small sentences where each sentence is supposed to be a punchline? "And most of those sequences? They don't fold into anything useful. They're junk. They aggregate into clumps. They get degraded by cellular quality control. Only a TINY fraction of possible sequences fold into stable, functional proteins."

> what is this new style of writing Congratulation, you are now able to recognize an AI-generated text. (As of December 2025 at least, who knows what they will look like next month.)

I don't mind the style but the factual errors are not good. Like "How NVIDIA..." when it was done by DeepMind with TPUs.

Re: Why proteins fold and how GPUs help us fold

#34

Post by tim333 » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

ursAxZA wrote: post #7

One protein fold is cute. How many H100s do you need to simulate one human cell? Probably more than the universe can power.

Depends on how accurate you want the simulation. DeepMind who did the protein folding are working towards a cell simulation.

Re: Why proteins fold and how GPUs help us fold

#35

Post by zkmon » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 2:19 PM UTC

IAmBroom wrote: post #31

zkmon wrote: post #19

If nature did so well for billions of years, why are we taking over it's job now? Did it ask for your help? Anytime some talks about large numbers - some galaxy is billions of kilometers away, there are trillions of atoms in universe, trillions of possible combinations for a problem etc - it appears to me that you talking about some problem that doesn't fall into your job description.

So, you're anti-vaccine? And anti-antibiotic? And pro-dying of disease and cancer, in general? I'm sorry that you're also so numerophobic, but real people use numbers of those magnitudes every day. Your own computer, in fact, has billions of storage slots in its disk space - although perhaps that's something that doesn't fall into your job description.

Yes, counting memory bits in my PC doesn't fall into my job. But my question is a bit more fundamental.

Most of these numbers are hierarchical. I do count the memory modules, but not bits. I count apples, but not molecules in them. I try to count a few bright starts in the night sky, but not all stars in the galaxy. I try to stick to traditional non-GM food, which my ancestors ate, instead of counting protein molecules. I try to have childand grand kids, instead trying living eternally through great advances in science.

Re: Why proteins fold and how GPUs help us fold

#36

Post by seec » Wed, Dec 17, 2025, 10:47 AM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #25

coolness wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't really understand why someone would make a blog and use AI to write the articles. Isn't having a blog more about the joy of writing and the learning you do while writing it?

Because it's what cool people do, so if you want to be cool you do it. They didn't realise the cool part was actually having the knowledge and actually writing the text. There are many similar things where people just take shortcuts because they don't understand the interesting part is the process/skill not the final result. It probably has to do with external validation, reddit is full of "art" subs being polluted b…

Well, the world has become very superficial. People rarely question how they end up with a specific result, which makes cheating/outsourcing quite a good deal and even profitable for many.