skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
First, some terminology, w/ an attempt to keep it simple:

1) gene - sequence of DNA that can be used to make proteins
2) enzyme - protein that acts as a catalyst (hence, the relation to metabolism)

Without having yet read TFA (in /Science/), the meat of the article to me is this bit:

1) "They armed Adam with a model of yeast metabolism and a database of genes and proteins involved in metabolism in other species..."

Adam knows what DNA makes up the proteins that are enzymes for yeast metabolism (start here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/gquery?term=yeast and you can probably find such information if you know what to look for)

Then, they selected some proteins involved in metabolism in other species (also probably able to find that on NCBI). I don't know how far away in the evolutionary family tree they might have gone with these "other species."

2) "Adam sought out gaps in the metabolism model, specifically orphan enzymes, which scientists think exist, but which haven't been linked to any parent genes. After selecting a desirable orphan, Adam scoured the database for similar enzymes in other organisms, along with the corresponding genes. Using this information, it hypothesized that similar genes in the yeast genome may code for the orphan enzyme."

Here it explained that it's not really a hypothesis. Well, it is in the sense that the hypothesis is 'X gene codes for the orphan enzyme.' Then it could test it having been programmed to do laboratory work (presumably) to do so.

I say "it's not really a hypothesis" because I would have considered the hypothesis of the broader experiment to be something along the lines of 'Proteins/Enzymes for whom we don't know which genes code may be coding for metabolism." Then the experiment is "find all such proteins and test them."

3) "Still chugging along on its own, it designed experiments to test its hypotheses, and performed them using a fully automated array of centrifuges, incubators, pipettes, and growth analyzers."

I don't know anything about the lab work, but before this part happens I gather:
a) Adam knows what genes it's looking at (it found them, after all)
b) It looks at those genes being turned into proteins (following the Central Dogma - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_dogma_of_molecular_biol...)
c) Using thermodynamics or some aspect of chemistry, it can determine if those proteins play a role in metabolism.

Hope that helps. I'm still very much a novice at this myself.
Uh, do the folks running the Asian equivalent of a "Hacker Space" use the word "Hacker Space"?

Is there an equivalent of a "hacker space" in every culture in the world? Could this be like asking "where is the USA's professional Starcraft league?" [1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft_professional_competit...

It's really nice that the hacker concept is as international as it is. (Thank you, giant worldwide Internet!) But I wouldn't be astonished to find that it is not perfectly cross-cultural. Especially since the idea of a "hacker space", by that name, is only a few years old. (Before that it might have been called a "ham radio shack" or a "model railroad club", or perhaps a "Homebrew Computer Club".)

I assume that lots and lots of Asian hackers are busy building lots and lots of Asian-language products to serve lots and lots of Asian-language-speaking customers.

---

[1] Man, I wish we had a pro Starcraft league. But I wish, much more strongly, that we had Korean-quality high-speed internet.
http://amberandchaos.com/?page_id=106
I have just come off of three absolutely exasperating days trying to comply with these idiots' ever changing policy requirements. Each one has an opinion, albeit as or more negative than the previous clown, and if you go left, someone else tells you to go right. They should seriously reconsider putting 19 year olds (or frustrated housewives) who have serious chips on their shoulders in positions of anything resembling authority or power. I can tell you, from an end-user standpoint, I have lost ALL respect for the validity of anything at all on Wikipedia. It all depends what mood the child on the help desk or admin pool was in when they decided to wreak havoc on someone's hard, valid and substantiated-beyond-ANY-reasonable-doubt work. I say, they suck. And I am sure I learned something from this utterly harrowing experience, I just haven't figured out what, yet.
I feel that it would be better to point out the inaccuracy, which could very well be a result of misunderstanding on electromagnetic's part. I believe downvoting should be reserved for more egregious errors (trolling, off-topic, rudeness, and so on). I think you raise a separate point than Darmani did, however. He was focusing on economic ideas and topics that are far more open to discussion as a reason for downvoting.
Not only that, last time I used it, Blackboard was a sad, sad excuse for a web app. Poorly designed, poorly executed, bad usability overall. But Blackboard is the type of app IT managers love. It's what everyone else is using, so it must be Ok. No IT manager ever lost her job for buying something too conservative.

What really makes me disillusioned about the current state of IP law is that you mostly see the poorly performing incumbents go after the innovating start-ups with patent lawsuits. I know I'm biased about this, but I really can't remember the last time some fledgling start-up was trying to protect itself with its patents. With patent portfolios, size matters, as long as you've got plenty of tricks up your sleeve, you can always settle in a reasonable manner.
I've read some Kohn over the years (I especially liked his article about homeschooling in Atlantic in 1987 or so), but there simply isn't an empirical defense to be made of "whole language." All the best readers I know started out with something like what would be called code-intensive, phonics-first reading instruction.
Also, in some cases they need the BB software for academic work.
There is a delicious irony in your post. GS whole reason for being is open and honest discussion about products and services. Throughout their marketing materials they talk about how airing things out in a public way is better than doing it privately.

So it seems like Jason is simply playing by their rules no?
Arriving shortly: Quickoffice, a real office suite for the iPhone
It's a fun read, but it drags a bit towards the end. My gut feeling is that if you enjoyed Dune, then you would probably like Atlas Shrugged.
Students should organize a boycott of them. That would put pressure on them to stop this nonsense.

As a software developer, I completely agree.

As a student I care more about my grades and, dubious patents or not, my school and professors mandate that in order to pass I have to use Blackboard.
Sorry, but the academic paper you linked to is complete garbage. To quote

"Lacking a direct measure of aptitude, we link people to the mean combined SAT scores of their college and then divide them into six groups: those from colleges with SAT scores in the top ﬁve percentiles, the next 10, the next 15, the next 20, the next 25, and the bottom 25 percentiles. The SAT cut-points are constant over time so that aptitude is deﬁned in absolute terms. The aptitude groups are ﬁner at the top of the distribution because previous research suggests that the top quartile accounts disproportionately for the decline in teacher aptitude."

Whoever wrote this should lose their tenure immediately.
A "kill" weapon? What, as opposed to a "happy" weapon?
"All the best readers I know started out with something like what would be called code-intensive, phonics-first reading instruction."

That's exactly his point, that because less than 1% of schools adopted whole language instruction it is numerically impossible for whole language to be responsible for the decline in reading comprehension.
In the next century, I can only hope, people will look back and laugh about how we used to store source code in textual form, and marvel at the idea of a "syntax error."
Center for Talented Youth
IBM On The Verge of Buying Sun for $7 billion
That is a good point. If they wrote out the check or put it in escrow, that would make the case even stronger.

Let's assume they mean $1M cash. This is an awesome move. Our legal system really needs an overhaul. So little value is created in suits like this and so much time and resources are poured into them. Kudos to them.

I speak from not much, but some experience after suing a corporation(very reluctantly) and being sued personally.
That isn't surprising, since their products are pretty terrible. My undergrad school used Blackboard and whenever the prof for a class actually wanted to use it (not often) it was a huge pain in the ass. Maybe they should fire some lawyers and hire some developers...
For your website, security is unimportant, so the user can just use the password "password" that they use for all other sites where the password isn't important. Logging into every site as brian@briansmith.org/<generic password> is noticably more convenient than logging in with OpenID.

Logging in with a username and password is faster than logging in with an OpenID, because the OpenID protocol requires several HTTP requests per authentication, whereas a usernmae/password only requires one.
A Wikipedia citation [1] states that all 44 patent claims were non-finally rejected on March 25th, 2008 upon re-examination. Does anyone know what ever came of this?

[1] http://mfeldstein.com/all-44-blackboard-patent-claims-invali...
Those bullet points aren't all suits. There's one involving domain names which they won (clearly they were in the right there). There's the one this article talks about (which has been going on for a while and was ruled in their favor previously) and another which it doesn't show the result of but wasn't over patents.

I wouldn't say 1 patent suit makes them overly-litigous.
You're right. It's because the laws are designed to protect the big guys.

Pretend you are a patent lawyer. 98% of your business comes from big firms. Are you going to donate money and lobby to create laws that protect 98% of your revenue or are you going to push for laws that help small innovators?
Analyst on RIM: "They are crushing it"
No, sorry, I meant like, having a mall that has apartments in it doesn't make sense in a city. I think the idea makes sense in general, but I'm just saying I don't think building a mall with apartments in it makes sense in a city like Toronto.
I agree that it's a stupid name, but there are nonlethal weapons (e.g. tasers, rubber bullets, etc.).
If I were Blackboard, I'd write an open letter detailing how I was going to win $50 million off of them in court and then donate $1m to charity.
I don't know whether to be excited about this or sad.
I've been doing it for 2.5 years now. Its gone from "Ooh, I can afford to buy myself a Wii" to "Oh, erm, it appears that I made more sleeping than I did while awake three weeks out of four last month".

I've blogged pretty regularly about it. See profile.

My advice: find a job which is OK with you having a side business. I have an arrangement with my company that is mutually beneficial: I firewall my extracurriculars from the day job, I bring them the stuff I learn about engineering and business, they wish me the best of success and officially ignore the existence of my "personal hobby".

Make a business which is designed to have returns which are super-scalar to your time investment. I am religious about automating, outsourcing, or eliminating just about anything that I have to do more than once in a blue moon, even if it only takes me 5 or 10 minutes to do manually. My entire life is a series of 5 minute increments and I don't want to waste any licking stamps. (Somebody does that for me these days.)

Remember that there are more important things in life than working. If you neglect them, the lack will bite you in the hindquarters, both in more important respects and in impacting your work/business.
According to that entry:

"On March 25, 2008, the US patent office issued a non-final action rejecting all 44 claims of Blackboard's patent."

So what is all the fuss about?
Neuroscience and Social Deprivation
I don't know a ton about China, but unless it's just the tone of the article this missile seems very highly targeted at the US Navy (I think we're much more carrier-heavy than other navies; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Does the Chinese government/military have the mindset that they are likely to go to war with the US? Seems kind of unrealistic to me. Maybe they are thinking about how to keep the US out of the picture if they were to invade Taiwan? Not that I think the US would intervene anyway...

I'm sure someone here knows much more about China than I do - what am I missing?
I believe it's military lingo for a device (missile) that can completely take out some hardware (in this case a massive ship) and 'kill' it.

This is a game-changer for the US Navy, and likely other military organisations too.
I feel certain that people w/ AS trend away from professions like, say, sales. I feel certain that a large chunk of people w/ AS are knowledge workers for exactly the reasons given in this thread. But it's worth pointing out that AS encompasses people w/ a broad range of abilities, and narrowness of focus and social anxiety are only two aspects of the syndrome. There are often so-called sensory-integration issues, rigidity, a low tolerance for frustration, compulsiveness, difficulties w/ executive function, and on on -- all part of, or concomitant to, AS.

So, I'm just saying, it is a disability, and I expect adults w/ AS also trend to underachievement. Anybody know a brilliant but difficult person (or two) delivering pizzas or working as a museum guard or the like? I do.

FWIW, my 5 y.o. has AS, so I've thought about this quite a bit.
I have emailed that link to someone who implemented a system that would probably fall under that patent in the 1990s.
New FriendFeed interface to roll out Monday
The US is a perceived military adversary as far as Taiwan, and to a lesser extent, southeast Asia is concerned.

I really do think (hope) that the chance of all-out war is unlikely, but military orgs prepare for all circumstances. There may be a perception gap on the part of Chinese military hawks as to what the US aim is - they feel pent-in/threatened, and they're responding. This is a great country who has had a recent history of being a whipping boy (Europe in the 19th century, Japan in the early 20th) - only in recent years is China starting to regain its 'rightful' place in the world.
Wow, you're not kidding. (Now, the Google dance has hurt us negatively, but wow.)
I've got nothing against her philosophy in the abstract, it's how people interpret it that I have a problem with. The "selfishness" in living for yourself is supposed to be open ended, but often people interpret this as taking as much as they can for themselves, without thought of the consequences to others.

Rand positioned the major protaganists in Atlas Shrugged (eg. Dagny, Rearden, Galt, etc) as real producers, who through their selfishness, were actually acting in the public interest (railroads, steel, etc). The same can't be said for a selfish sub-prime mortgage lender. Rand's ideas are more or less amoral, and probably need to be coupled with some other moral framework for it to be described as "good".
Something like https://rpxnow.com/
Yeah, I was planning to follow the Stanford Class with their notes from last Fall after I got my Mac Book(in Jan), to realize they had removed the content. It was such a relief to find out that instead I can follow the class over a Video Cast and latest content from this semester.
Does anyone have any experience based advice, on whether a side job that paid less but did not involve computers or any relation to the startup (for example, being a night stocker in a grocery store) would be better than a day job programming ?
Exactly! That's the problem with lots of her fans. I tried joining an Objectivist forum once - big mistake. I think the closest to a real Objectivist scene you get is a scene of entrepreneurs, actually.
Assuming that China does have the weapon described in the article, that does not mean that China is getting ready to go to war with the United States. It could simply mean that China is looking for conventional weapons for deterrence purposes.

Nothing would freak the U.S. Navy out more than losing carriers. No carriers equals no airpower, equals a bunch of vulnerable ships and submarines.
Enlightened self interest doesn't work on a scale necessary for a civilization to function.

Every nation that has next to no government and every man is free to do with his life as he wishes is a giant shithole that teeters in and out of revolution. Want to see objectivism at work? Go visit Somalia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In those countries every man is free to pursue "... his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." Countries full of people who are "all noble heros free to pursue their dreams". Too bad their dreams all involve mass murder and slavery to pursue personal wealth and power.

Hobbes was smarter than Rand. We have a Government to protect us from each other.
If it's a work machine, it could be "infected" by your IT group.
I know it isn't going to be popular to say that Blackboard is not a bad company for getting these patents and suing others for infringement. The truth is, the patent system is what mandates Blackboard's behavior. If Blackboard didn't get the overbearing patent when they could, another company would, and Blackboard would be the ones being sued for infringement right now. So blame the patent system and lobby to change it instead of getting mad at Blackboard.

By the way, my school is switching from Blackboard to ANGEL (open source) to save money.
Here is the original article: (PDF)

From Science 324, 85-89.

http://www.pi.edu.pk/donald/automation.of.science.pdf
While I agree that the patent is ridiculous in what it claims is an original idea, let's try to fix the patent system which awarded the patent, instead of blaming Blackboard for bad behavior.

After all, if Blackboard didn't get the patent first, some other company would, and Blackboard would be the one infringing.

All of these problems would go away if patents were awarded properly.
Let's put one in every large home appliance and measure performance statistics over its lifetime.
Get Satisfaction should stop creating support pages for companies that HAVE NOT SIGNED UP .

That is the end of the problem and the ONLY WAY TO GO .

37 Signals isn’t creating Basecamp accounts for companies that have not signed up, is it?

Get Satisfaction business models is very similar to Yelp = Extortion 2.0
I imagine Netbeans will go the way of the Dodo since the Eclipse project is IBM's baby.
Great design of website. But, where is the link to install the language? Or, is this a late April Fool joke?
Thanks for your suggestions.

I understand that 'Google' is 'the answer' for my query; however I posted my query here for some specific reasons. .

I am into embedded system programming and I feel there are some right and wrong approaches to starting learning programming for embedded system. I believe I could have better utilized my time doing right stuff then wasting my time on distractions.

Similarly I consider most of audience of Hackers news is 'doers', and active practitioner of their respective field. I may get book references from Amazon but 'doer' can give a wider perspective on the subject and can greatly accelerate learning curve by sharing his learning curve.

Technological growth is exponential and best practices and process gets obsolete much faster. Cycles are getting shorter and shorter. A new learner has to be more agile and open for ideas to accelerate his learning. My intention is to have an open discussion on state of web development, web research with focus on web mining.

I am working on my 'English skills' will try to keep things clean as much as possible.
Aim to Fail
I'm just talking about the general case of exploding termsheets. If it's known ahead of time that they may get an offer that they have to take or reject BEFORE they apply, that's not an exploding termsheet.
Shorting an IPO is actually stupid regardless of volatility.

Investment banks tend to underprice IPOs by about 10-15% on average, and intentionally so. This makes allocation a favor, because of the obvious expectancy in being in on one. However, the company ends up being undercapitalized for the amount of equity given up. It's utterly sleazy, but it's business as usual on Wall Street.

This also means that if you're not on a bank's favorite clients list, you don't want to be involved with IPOs, because you're only going to be able to get in on the crappy ones.

The concept of shorting Facebook is somewhat of a joke, because of that. I'm no fan of Mark Zuckerberg, but I wouldn't actually claim to know better than the market what the company's worth. That said, if there were a way to have shorted some share of the company at $15B when Microsoft bought in, that would have been awesome.
Search Suggestions Come To Gmail
ibm makes a ton of money from consulting. more products is good for this.
We've worked for Blackboard in the past. They make more from lawsuits and extorted "license fees" than product easy. Its my hunch that the "product" is just there to prop up the patent crap.
I found myself thinking I could see the answer as you were describing the problem. That's good writing!

My guess would be that you'd need to have a new data structure for the text (or pointing into the straight text) that tracked the order of editing, then a corresponding set of new lexemes and reductions "sitting on top" of the existing parse tree, until the new edits + intervening test/parse tree reduces into something acceptable for the node of the parse tree in which the new text lives.

Fun stuff.
That makes sense. From where I stand (US civilian) war with China seems hyperbolically unlikely. But I guess the Chinese military might not see things as I do.
Ask HN: Analyze Trends in your data
I want to analyze the most frequently-used words in a forum. This is similar to the Trends on Twitter.

Can any of you guys point me to resources on how to do this?
He says this on section 14: Until 1965 no one bothered to check Cattell’s famous experiment with the tachistoscope. When they did, it was found Cattell had been dead wrong. People read letters, not words.

I'm not sure why he claims people don't read whole words. We read groups of letters not the letters themselves.

Relatedly, I met a man who claimed to be a speed reader. When pressed he insisted it was true and that he read lines and paragraphs at a time with good retention and understanding. He went on saying he and a group of kids had been taught to speed read by their elementary school principal for his PHD thesis.
A little late for an April Fool's joke, isn't it?

The password-generating code is:

SHA1(new Date().toUTCString().split("/").sort(
function() {return 0.5 - Math.random()}).join(" "))

But toUTCString() doesn't return a string with any '/' characters, at least in FF3, so it's really just:

SHA1(new Date().toUTCString())

And toUTCString() trims milliseconds, so really it's just ths SHA1 of the current time, to the second. Not very strong no matter how 'long' the output.
This is a shame Sun lost it's way. I was looking forward to
playing with one of Sun's coolthreads servers. That's about
the only interesting thing happening in hardware these days.

As far as things go this is really a negative. Sun was doing
all the right moves (slowly). Interesting hardware -
coolthreads, open-sourcing software left and right.
IBM has... Linux on mainframes and consulting.

Both Sun and SGI slowly lost out as Apple become the new Unix desktop of choice.
switching costs are zero

Amazon has my purchase history and preferences (about 10 years worth) as well as my trust and approval. Switching costs are not zero, in my case, at least.