Top all-time · #11642
Elana Simon
Personal blog · elanapearl.github.io/blogaiscience
Elana Simon's personal blog at elanapearl.github.io covers ai and science. Since 2024, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 6 times, most often “The Illustrated AlphaFold”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-10-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Elana Simon's blog post "The Illustrated AlphaFold", an explainer of the AlphaFold protein structure model. One commenter points to it as a possible aid for questions about AlphaFold.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
(matrices & molecules) a collection of deep-dives into ML x bio
Most-linked posts?
- The Illustrated AlphaFold4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-07-10
- A bug that taught me more about PyTorch than years of using it2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-10-23
What Hacker News says?
I never disagreed with the utility and importance of understanding backprop. I'm glad the article exists. And it could be easily improved -- and all of us can gain [1] by acknowledging this rather than circling the wagons [2], so to speak, or excusing unforced errors. > ... he could have written "the problem with not learning how back propagation works and just learning how to call a framework is that backpropagatio…
Comment linking /blog/2025/the-bug-that-taught-me-pytorch/
on “Backpropagation is a leaky abstraction (2016)”Submitted A bug that taught me more about PyTorch than years of using it as a story · 465 points
HN discussionI recently saw this about AlphaFold: https://elanapearl.github.io/blog/2024/the-illustrated-alpha... . I don't think it's going to answer all your question but it might still help!
Comment linking /blog/2024/the-illustrated-alphafold/
on “Ex-Meta scientists debut gigantic AI protein design model”Submitted The Illustrated AlphaFold as a story · 308 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Illustrated AlphaFold as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Illustrated AlphaFold as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
