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blakeweb

215 karma · joined July 28, 2008

blake borgeson

- co-founder/cto at recursionpharma.com

- previously, systems biology and bioinformatics at marcottelab.org

- more previously, co-founder of buildasign.com.

austin, salt lake city, berkeley

http://blakeb.org

email: my hn username at gmail

submissionscomments
blakeweb··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2015)
Recursion Pharmaceuticals | Salt Lake City, Utah -- Onsite

Looking for a Senior Data Scientist / Computational Scientist.

Help us bring computational sophistication to curing diseases in a way that's only recently become possible. We’re a small (currently 8 full-timers) and fast-growing biotech startup with an amazing set of advisors including the Broad’s Anne Carpenter, and we're using high throughput biological experiments in human cells, automated image segmentation and feature extraction, and machine learning and statistics to find new treatments for rare genetic diseases faster than anyone has previously thought possible. We’re looking for a computational scientist with an outstanding track record to join our computational team and help lead our analysis efforts.

You'll need a deep foundation of statistics and probabilities, strong coding skills, and real-world machine learning experience. You should be adept at data exploration and visualization, developing and testing models and hypotheses, and rapidly solving lots of big and small problems using lots of numerical data, preferably with python’s scientific stack including pandas, scikit-learn et al.

We'll sponsor current visas, but you must already be able to work onsite--we can't wait for next year's visa cycle.

More details and how to reach us: http://www.recursionpharma.com/senior-python-data-scientist....

blakeweb··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2015)
Corrected link: http://www.recursionpharma.com/senior-python-data-scientist
blakeweb··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2015)
Senior Python Data Scientist Salt Lake City, Utah -- Onsite Recursion Pharmaceuticals

We’re a small (currently 8 full-timers) and fast-growing biotech startup with an amazing set of advisors including the Broad’s Anne Carpenter, and we're using high biological experiments in human cells, automated image segmentation and feature extraction, and machine learning and statistics to find new treatments for rare genetic diseases faster than anyone has previously thought possible. We’re looking for a computational scientist with an outstanding track record to help lead our analysis efforts, with several years of experience in statistics, machine learning, and software development. You should be adept at data exploration and visualization, developing and testing hypotheses,and rapidly solving lots of big and small problems using lots of numerical data, preferably with python’s scientific stack including pandas, scikit-learn et al.

More details and how to reach us: http://www.recursionpharma.com/lead-python-data-scientist.ht...

blakeweb··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2015)
Senior Python Data Scientist or Computational Biologist

Recursion Pharmaceuticals - Salt Lake City, Utah - onsite, full-time

Question to consider: What's the most impactful data science problem you could be working on?

We’re a small and fast-growing biotech startup with an amazing set of advisors including the Broad’s Anne Carpenter, and we're using high throughput genetic perturbation experiments in human cells, automated image segmentation and quantitation of hundreds of features for every cell, and machine learning and statistics to find new treatments for rare genetic diseases faster than anyone has previously thought possible. If that sounds like a lot of biology, don’t worry—you’ll be up to speed in a week or two. Just know this: there are more than 5,000 rare genetic diseases, in total affecting more than 10 million people in the US alone, and only a handful are treatable. We aim to find treatments for 100 of them in the next 10 years. See who we are at http://www.recursionpharma.com/team

We’re looking for exceptional computational scientists to help lead our analysis efforts, with the following criteria:

- Native-level fluency in probability, statistics and modeling; several years of experience in statistics, machine learning, and software development solving problems using lots of data, ideally using python’s scientific stack; thorough understanding of fundamentals of machine learning such as cross-validation and learning curves, plus an ability to explore new types of data independently and get an effective guess as to what sorts of models and assumptions make sense as a starting point.

- A track record of outstanding projects, publications, or presentations that demonstrate successful application of the above talents.

- Motivation to tackle some of the most challenging data problems around, to work with other sharp and highly-motivated individuals with diverse backgrounds, and to make lots of patients’ lives dramatically better.

- Biology background not required; intellectual curiosity and motivation to learn is critical.

- Key tools and skills (not all required): python, machine learning, sklearn, ipython, data science, pandas, interactive analysis, linux fluency, bioinformatics (definitely not required)

More details and how to reach us: http://www.recursionpharma.com/lead-python-data-scientist.ht...

More openings including software engineering roles: http://www.recursionpharma.com/careers.html

Recursion Pharmaceuticals is based in Research Park at the edge of the mountains overlooking Salt Lake City, Utah. Gorgeous hiking/running/biking is literally out our back door, and it's half an hour to 5 top ski resorts.

blakeweb··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2015)
Senior Python Data Scientist and Senior Software Engineer - Recursion Pharmaceuticals

Question for you: What's the most challenging, most impactful set of data problems you could be working on?

We’re a small and fast-growing biotech startup with an amazing set of advisors including the Broad’s Anne Carpenter, and we're using high throughput genetic perturbation experiments in human cells, automated image segmentation and quantitation of hundreds of features for every cell, and machine learning and statistics to find new treatments for rare genetic diseases faster than anyone has previously thought possible. If that sounds like a lot of biology, don’t worry—you’ll be up to speed in a week or two. Just know this: there are more than 5,000 rare genetic diseases, in total affecting more than 10 million people in the US alone, and only a handful are treatable. We aim to find treatments for 100 of them in the next 10 years. See who we are at http://www.recursionpharma.com/team

We’re looking for exceptional computational scientists to help lead our analysis efforts, with the following criteria:

- Native-level fluency in probability, statistics and modeling; several years of experience in statistics, machine learning, and software development solving problems using lots of data, ideally using python’s scientific stack; thorough understanding of fundamentals of machine learning such as cross-validation and learning curves, plus an ability to explore new types of data independently and get an effective guess as to what sorts of models and assumptions make sense as a starting point.

- A track record of outstanding projects, publications, or presentations that demonstrate successful application of the above talents.

- Motivation to tackle some of the most challenging data problems around, to work with other sharp and highly-motivated individuals with diverse backgrounds, and to make lots of patients’ lives dramatically better.

- Biology background not required; intellectual curiosity and motivation to learn is critical.

- Key tools and skills (not all required): python, machine learning, sklearn, ipython, data science, pandas, interactive analysis, linux fluency, bioinformatics (definitely not required)

More details and how to reach us: http://www.recursionpharma.com/lead-python-data-scientist.ht...

More openings including software engineering roles: http://www.recursionpharma.com/careers.html

Recursion Pharmaceuticals is based in Research Park at the edge of the mountains overlooking Salt Lake City, Utah. Gorgeous hiking/running/biking is literally out our back door, and it's half an hour to 5 top ski resorts.

blakeweb··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2015)
Senior Python Data Scientist and Senior Software Engineer - Recursion Pharmaceuticals - Salt Lake City, UT

Question for you: What's the most challenging, most impactful set of data problems you could be working on?

We’re a small and fast-growing biotech startup with an amazing set of advisors including the Broad’s Anne Carpenter, and we're using high throughput genetic perturbation experiments in human cells, automated image segmentation and quantitation of hundreds of features for every cell, and machine learning and statistics to find new treatments for rare genetic diseases faster than anyone has previously thought possible. If that sounds like a lot of biology, don’t worry—you’ll be up to speed in a week or two. Just know this: there are more than 5,000 rare genetic diseases, in total affecting more than 10 million people in the US alone, and only a handful are treatable. We aim to find treatments for 100 of them in the next 10 years. See who we are at http://www.recursionpharma.com/team

We’re looking for exceptional computational scientists to help lead our analysis efforts, with the following criteria:

- Native-level fluency in probability, statistics and modeling; several years of experience in statistics, machine learning, and software development solving problems using lots of data, ideally using python’s scientific stack; thorough understanding of fundamentals of machine learning such as cross-validation and learning curves, plus an ability to explore new types of data independently and get an effective guess as to what sorts of models and assumptions make sense as a starting point.

- A track record of outstanding projects, publications, or presentations that demonstrate successful application of the above talents.

- Motivation to tackle some of the most challenging data problems around, to work with other sharp and highly-motivated individuals with diverse backgrounds, and to make lots of patients’ lives dramatically better.

- Biology background not required; intellectual curiosity and motivation to learn is critical.

- Key tools and skills (not all required): python, machine learning, sklearn, ipython, data science, pandas, interactive analysis, linux fluency, bioinformatics (definitely not required)

More details and how to reach us: http://www.recursionpharma.com/lead-python-data-scientist.ht...

More openings including software engineering roles: http://www.recursionpharma.com/careers.html

Recursion Pharmaceuticals is based in Research Park at the edge of the mountains overlooking Salt Lake City, Utah. Gorgeous hiking/running/biking is literally out our back door, and it's half an hour to 5 top ski resorts. We're chiefly interested in folks who want to physically join us in Salt Lake City.

blakeweb··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2014)
Senior Python Data Scientist and Senior Software Engineer - Recursion Pharmaceuticals

Question for you: What's the most challenging, impactful, rewarding set of computational problems you could be working on, that will really change lives?

We’re a small and fast-growing biotech startup with an amazing set of advisors including the Broad’s Anne Carpenter, and we're using high throughput genetic perturbation experiments in human cells, automated image segmentation and quantitation of hundreds of features for every cell, and machine learning and statistics to find new treatments for rare genetic diseases faster than anyone has previously thought possible. If that sounds like a lot of biology, don’t worry—you’ll be up to speed in a week or two. Just know this: there are more than 5,000 rare genetic diseases, in total affecting more than 10 million people in the US alone, and only a handful are treatable. We aim to find treatments for 100 of them in the next 10 years. See who we are at http://www.recursionpharma.com/team

We’re looking for exceptional computational scientists to help lead our analysis efforts, with the following criteria:

- Native-level fluency in probability, statistics and modeling; several years of experience in statistics, machine learning, and software development solving problems using lots of data, ideally using python’s scientific stack; thorough understanding of fundamentals of machine learning such as cross-validation and learning curves, plus an ability to explore new types of data independently and get an effective guess as to what sorts of models and assumptions make sense as a starting point.

- A track record of outstanding projects, publications, or presentations that demonstrate successful application of the above talents.

- Motivation to tackle some of the most challenging data problems around, to work with other sharp and highly-motivated individuals with diverse backgrounds, and to make lots of patients’ lives dramatically better.

- Biology background not required; intellectual curiosity and motivation to learn is critical.

- Key tools and skills (not all required): python, machine learning, sklearn, ipython, data science, pandas, interactive analysis, linux fluency, bioinformatics (definitely not required)

More details and how to reach us: http://www.recursionpharma.com/lead-python-data-scientist.ht...

More openings including software engineering roles: http://www.recursionpharma.com/careers.html

Recursion Pharmaceuticals is based in Research Park at the edge of the mountains overlooking Salt Lake City, Utah. Gorgeous hiking/running/biking is literally out our back door, and it's half an hour to 5 top ski resorts.

blakeweb··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2014)
Senior Python Data Scientist and Python Engineer - Recursion Pharmaceuticals

Question for you: What's the most challenging, most impactful set of data problems you could be working on?

We’re a small and fast-growing biotech startup with an amazing set of advisors including the Broad’s Anne Carpenter, and we're using high throughput genetic perturbation experiments in human cells, automated image segmentation and quantitation of hundreds of features for every cell, and machine learning and statistics to find new treatments for rare genetic diseases faster than anyone has previously thought possible. There are more than 5,000 rare genetic diseases, in total affecting millions of Americans, and only a handful are treatable. We aim to find treatments for 100 of them in the next 10 years.

We’re looking for exceptional computational scientists to help lead our analysis efforts, with the following criteria:

- Several years of experience in statistics, machine learning, and software development solving problems using lots of data, preferably using python’s scientific stack; seeing the world through the lens of statistics and modeling; thorough understanding of fundamentals of machine learning such as cross-validation and learning curves, plus an ability to explore new types of data independently and get an effective guess as to what sorts of models and assumptions make sense as a starting point.

- A track record of outstanding projects, publications, or presentations that demonstrate successful application of the above talents.

- Motivation to tackle some of the most challenging data problems around, to work with other sharp and highly-motivated individuals with diverse backgrounds, and to make lots of patients’ lives dramatically better.

- Some biology background is helpful; intellectual curiosity and motivation to learn is critical.

- Key tools and skills (not all required): python, machine learning, sklearn, ipython, data science, pandas, interactive analysis, linux fluency, bioinformatics (definitely not required)

More details and how to reach us: http://www.recursionpharma.com/lead-python-data-scientist.ht...

More openings including software engineering roles: http://www.recursionpharma.com/careers.html

Recursion Pharmaceuticals is based in Research Park at the edge of the mountains overlooking Salt Lake City, Utah. Gorgeous hiking/running/biking is just out our back door, and it's half an hour to 5 top ski resorts.

blakeweb··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2014)
Hiring a Lead Data Scientist and Python Software Engineers - Recursion Pharmaceuticals - Salt Lake City, Utah (Also hiring biologists with mammalian cell culture experience!)

We’re a fast-growing 7-person biotech startup with an amazing set of advisors including the Broad’s Anne Carpenter, and we're using high throughput experiments, automated image segmentation and analysis of human cells, and data analysis to find new treatments for rare genetic diseases faster than anyone has previously thought possible. There are more than 5,000 rare genetic diseases, in total affecting millions of Americans, and our serious goal is to find treatments for 100 rare diseases in the next 10 years.

Our approach is to model rare genetic diseases in human cells, then use these disease models to find drugs that revert the cells to a healthy state, and thus are strong candidates for impacting the disease in patients. In a pretty quick experiment, we image millions of human cells. Image segmentation and analysis quickly makes thousands of measurements, resulting in a very deep quantitation of the state of every single cell. The challenge at hand is running the right experiments in the right way and analyzing results to make the discoveries we seek.

I previously co-founded BuildASign.com, a bootstrapped custom printing ecommerce business set to do over $70M in 2014 revenues, and I left daily operations several years back to study biology, bioinformatics, machine learning and drug discovery. My co-founder, Chris, and I started Recursion to turn drug discovery into a computational problem. Our vision is ambitious (zero-to-one scale), and early results are compelling.

>> Lead Data Scientist (Python):

- You have several years of experience in statistics, machine learning, and software development solving problems using lots of data, preferably using python’s scientific stack. You see the world through the lens of statistics and modeling, you thoroughly understand cross-validation and learning curves, and you can explore data on your own and get an effective guess as to what sort of model and assumptions make sense as a starting point.

- You’re motivated both by tackling the most challenging data problems around, and by making lots of patients’ lives dramatically better.

- Maybe you already know some biology, but if you don’t, you’re excited to learn what you need to (we’ll help, of course!) in order to really understand our data and approach.

- You’ll come to understand our experiments and data at a visceral level and help us guide the direction of our experiments and our company towards our goals.

- You’ll work with our biologists to guide our design/experiment/analyze cycle towards getting the most impactful biological information from the most rapid and cost-effective experimental approaches. This includes researching, suggesting and testing different statistical and machine learning approaches, along with changing our experimental setup to provide more useful information with every round of experiments. You’ll set the groundwork for how we’ll design and analyze thousands of experiments in the coming years.

>> Software Engineer (Python):

- You have several years of experience in python software development, preferably using ipython and other scientific python tools. You’re also super-comfortable at the command line and handling the standard a linux server, and great at solving any kind of computational issue via stackoverflow. No sysadmins, DBAs or the like will be around to help for a while.

- You’re motivated by challenging problems, and by the idea of making millions of patients’ lives dramatically better, as fast as we can.

- You’ll work with biologists and data scientists to develop tools to manage and automate our experiments and analyses. To manage the experiments and analyses it will take to treat 100 diseases in 10 years, we’ll need a pretty amazing set of systems in place eventually, but need to get there incrementally so that we can make rapid progress immediately using the resources we have.

>> About Recursion:

We work in a beautiful office and lab space set directly at the base of the mountains, overlooking Salt Lake City, situated directly one floor above the drug discovery core at the University of Utah, giving us direct access to millions of dollars of cutting edge lab automation and imaging equipment. We offer competitive pay, health insurance, relocation assistance (working at the office is part of the deal), equity, a location 30 minutes from amazing mountains and 5 world-class ski resorts, and a group of ambitious, talented, happy, awesome people to work with.

http://www.recursionpharma.com/careers.html

http://www.recursionpharma.com/lead-python-data-scientist.ht...

blakeweb··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2014)
Hiring a Lead Data Scientist and a Software Engineer (Python) - Recursion Pharmaceuticals - Salt Lake City, Utah (Also hiring biologists with mammalian cell culture experience!)

We’re a five-person biotech startup with an amazing set of advisors, and we're using high throughput experiments, automated image segmentation and analysis of human cells, and lots of data analysis to find new treatments for rare genetic diseases faster than anyone has previously thought possible. There are more than 5,000 rare genetic diseases, in total affecting millions of Americans, and our serious goal is to find treatments for 100 rare diseases in the next 10 years. We’ll need the best minds out there to help us make that happen.

Our approach is to model rare genetic diseases in human cells, then use these disease models to find drugs that revert the cells to a healthy state, and thus are strong candidates for impacting the disease in patients. In a pretty quick experiment, we image millions of human cells. Image segmentation and analysis quickly makes thousands of measurements, resulting in a very deep quantitation of the state of every single cell. The challenge at hand is running the right experiments in the right way and analyzing results to make the discoveries we seek as quickly as possible.

My two co-founders developed the basis of our approach at the University of Utah, using it to find two very promising candidates for a serious and fairly common genetic disease. We’re moving those candidates forward, and at the same time adapting the approach to address the thousands of other untreated rare genetic diseases as quickly as we can. I joined them to start this company because this is the best chance I’ve found for a software/stats person to make such a huge impact on the lives of millions of people. I also believe that imaging-based biological experiments are going to be a big part of the wave of advancement coming to treating and curing diseases in the next two decades.

--

Software Engineer (Python):

- You have several years of experience in python software development, preferably using ipython and other scientific python tools. You’re also super-comfortable at the command line and handling the standard a linux server, and great at solving any kind of computational issue via stackoverflow. No sysadmins, DBAs or the like will be around to help for a while.

- You’re motivated by challenging problems, and by the idea of making millions of patients’ lives dramatically better, as fast as we can.

- You’ll work with biologists and data scientists to develop tools to manage and automate our experiments and analyses. To manage the experiments and analyses it will take to treat 100 diseases in 10 years, we’ll need a pretty amazing set of systems in place eventually, but need to get there incrementally so that we can make rapid progress immediately using the resources we have.

--

Lead Data Scientist (Python):

- You have several years of experience in statistics, machine learning, and software development solving problems and answering questions efficiently using lots of data, preferably using ipython and lots of python’s scientific programming tools. We’re not hadoop-scale for now, but every experiment can generate hundreds of gigs of quantitative measurements.

- You’re ready to take on any problem and figure out the best solution you can with available time, having fun in the process.

- Maybe you already know some biology, but if you don’t, you’re excited to learn what you need to (we’ll help, of course!) in order to really understand our data and approach.

- You’re motivated by challenging problems, and by the idea of making millions of patients’ lives dramatically better, as fast as we can.

- You’ll come to understand our experiments and data at a visceral level and help us guide the direction of our experiments and our company towards our goals.

- You’ll work with our biologists to guide our design/experiment/analyze cycle towards getting the most impactful biological information from the most rapid and cost-effective experimental approaches. This includes researching, suggesting and testing different statistical and machine learning approaches, along with changing our experimental setup to provide more useful information with every round of exeriments. You’ll set the groundwork for how we’ll design and analyzse thousands of experiments in the coming years.

--

About Recursion: We work in a beautiful office and lab space set directly at the base of the mountains, overlooking Salt Lake City, situated directly one floor above the drug discovery core at the University of Utah, giving us direct access to millions of dollars of cutting edge lab automation and imaging equipment. We offer competitive pay, health insurance, relocation assistance (working at the office is part of the deal), equity, a location 30 minutes from 5 amazing mountains and ski resorts, and a group of ambitious, talented, happy, awesome people to work with. http://www.recursionpharma.com/careers.html

blakeweb··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2014)
Hiring a Lead Data Scientist and a Software Engineer (Python) - Recursion Pharmaceuticals - Salt Lake City, Utah (Also hiring biologists with mammalian cell culture experience!)

We’re a five-person biotech startup with an amazing set of advisors, and we're using high throughput experiments, automated image segmentation and analysis of human cells, and lots of data analysis to find new treatments for rare genetic diseases faster than anyone has previously thought possible. There are more than 5,000 rare genetic diseases, in total affecting millions of Americans, and our serious goal is to find treatments for 100 rare diseases in the next 10 years. We’ll need the best minds out there to help us make that happen.

Our approach is to model rare genetic diseases in human cells, then use these disease models to find drugs that revert the cells to a healthy state, and thus are strong candidates for impacting the disease in patients. In a pretty quick experiment, we image millions of human cells. Image segmentation and analysis quickly makes thousands of measurements, resulting in a very deep quantitation of the state of every single cell. The challenge at hand is running the right experiments in the right way and analyzing results to make the discoveries we seek as quickly as possible.

My two co-founders developed the basis of our approach at the University of Utah, using it to find two very promising candidates for a serious and fairly common genetic disease. We’re moving those candidates forward, and at the same time adapting the approach to address the thousands of other untreated rare genetic diseases as quickly as we can. I joined them to start this company because this is the best chance I’ve found for a software/stats person to make such a huge impact on the lives of millions of people. I also believe that imaging-based biological experiments are going to be a big part of the wave of advancement coming to treating and curing diseases in the next two decades.

--

Software Engineer (Python):

- You have several years of experience in python software development, preferably using ipython and other scientific python tools. You’re also super-comfortable at the command line and handling the standard a linux server, and great at solving any kind of computational issue via stackoverflow. No sysadmins, DBAs or the like will be around to help for a while.

- You’re motivated by challenging problems, and by the idea of making millions of patients’ lives dramatically better, as fast as we can.

- You’ll work with biologists and data scientists to develop tools to manage and automate our experiments and analyses. To manage the experiments and analyses it will take to treat 100 diseases in 10 years, we’ll need a pretty amazing set of systems in place eventually, but need to get there incrementally so that we can make rapid progress immediately using the resources we have.

--

Lead Data Scientist (Python):

- You have several years of experience in statistics, machine learning, and software development solving problems and answering questions efficiently using lots of data, preferably using ipython and lots of python’s scientific programming tools. We’re not hadoop-scale for now, but every experiment can generate hundreds of gigs of quantitative measurements.

- You’re ready to take on any problem and figure out the best solution you can with available time, having fun in the process.

- Maybe you already know some biology, but if you don’t, you’re excited to learn what you need to (we’ll help, of course!) in order to really understand our data and approach.

- You’re motivated by challenging problems, and by the idea of making millions of patients’ lives dramatically better, as fast as we can.

- You’ll come to understand our experiments and data at a visceral level and help us guide the direction of our experiments and our company towards our goals.

- You’ll work with our biologists to guide our design/experiment/analyze cycle towards getting the most impactful biological information from the most rapid and cost-effective experimental approaches. This includes researching, suggesting and testing different statistical and machine learning approaches, along with changing our experimental setup to provide more useful information with every round of exeriments. You’ll set the groundwork for how we’ll design and analyzse thousands of experiments in the coming years.

--

About Recursion:

We work in a beautiful office and lab space set directly at the base of the mountains, overlooking Salt Lake City, situated directly one floor above the drug discovery core at the University of Utah, giving us direct access to millions of dollars of cutting edge lab automation and imaging equipment. We offer competitive pay, health insurance, relocation assistance (working at the office is part of the deal), equity, a location 30 minutes from 5 amazing mountains and ski resorts, and a group of ambitious, talented, happy, awesome people to work with. http://www.recursionpharma.com/careers.html

blakeweb··on Ask HN: Bitcoin business unexpectedly taking off, help!
I'm guessing the intent is to say that anonymizing the source of money per se doesn't seem to do anyone any harm, much like accepting cash as a form of payment. The problem is when people use such channels to avoid detection of crimes by law enforcement. We have to decide as a society which conveniences or defenses of privacy (anonymizing the source of money being one) are worth sacrificing to enable better law enforcement.
blakeweb··on Wealth does not make you smarter
Agreed, the author paints it mainly as a rich vs not-rich divide, and while he in the end admits that it's broader than that, the core of it seems to be the country/suburbs vs city-dweller divide. Do you want to be in the mix of all the humanity happening, or do you want to stay away from it? For the last several decades, you don't need to be what we'd call rich to live in the suburbs. At least in most of the US.
blakeweb··on Will Scientists Ever Move to Python 3?
I agree reproducibility is an important problem, but the author assumes that dropping backwards compatibility is often necessary at _some_ point in order for a language to improve, and that the improvement is at _some_ point worth it. I think in this context that's the answer to your "Why?". There are all sorts of issues with reproducibility of scientific work beyond py3k vs 2.x (virtualenv is one way to address that one) like all your packages, for instance, and all the libraries they rely on, which are necessarily going to change at some point. That's part of a bigger discussion. Hoping your work from 5 years ago is going to run just because you never upgraded to py3k is probably not going to solve the problem.
blakeweb··on Will Scientists Ever Move to Python 3?
Agreed, although just wanted to mention SciRuby for rubyists jealous of scipy and numpy. It's in development (led by a good friend of mine) and contributions are welcomed. http://sciruby.com
blakeweb··on Startup = Growth
"Growth drives everything in this world."

I think you're choosing one single sentence and taking it out of context, in other words, misunderstanding. By "this world", I took pg to mean the high-tech area of economic activity, with silicon valley serving as a figurative stand-in. I don't think pg means that every single thing in the world is driven by growth. The essay is about what makes a company a startup, and how a startup can be successful. The essay is not about what is most important in the world.

blakeweb··on Congressman demands details of secretive ACTA treaty be made public
For those looking for more information:

Problems with ACTA, from Michael Geist, a Canadian on the EFF advisory board: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6350/125/

From his points, the main substantive change from what I can tell is more oversight and liability for 3rd parties, with one likely target being ISPs: "Within ACTA, Articles 8 and 12 apply in the civil enforcement context, Articles 23 and 24 add “aiding and abetting” to criminal offences, and Article 27 targets third parties in the online environment. "

A defense of ACTA from the European Commission: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/tackling-unfair-trade/acta/index_e...

Defense summarized here: http://venturevillage.eu/acta-myths-explained

All in all it seems like a pretty vague agreement designed to bring all the signers on the same page in terms of oversight and investigation of ip importing and exporting activities. It hardly says that countries must do anything, but that they "may" do many things they agree on. That's not to say that the agreement would be a good thing in its current form. Agreeing to potentially criminalize activities without mandating protections from false charges etc seems like a poor decision to me.

blakeweb··on Sublime Text 2 Beta released with Auto-complete and Improved UI
Using 'vip' to select the current paragraph didn't work for me on osx (instead it went into insert mode with the 'i'), so I gave up on my very brief trial. Did I give up too soon? Or is that oversight typical of other quirks I'll run into?
blakeweb··on Sublime Text 2 Beta released with Auto-complete and Improved UI
Vim keybindings didn't work well for me. In command mode tried vip to select the current function definition and it instead went into insert mode with the i. To me that means it's probably got lots of other quirks. Do you just not use those types of visual mode operations? Or did it rather successfully handle this for you?
blakeweb··on Paul Graham: SOPA Supporting Companies No Longer Allowed At YC Demo Day
Actually, if you read the article and linked letter, you will see that this list does not seem to come from any explicit support of SOPA. Instead, anyone on this list and not on the official judiciary list linked above comes from a letter[1] not stating support for SOPA but rather petitioning Congress to "enact carefully balanced rogue sites legislation this year."

From the linked article: "This list is derived from two sources: the official list (pdf) of SOPA supporters from the Judiciary Committee’s website, and a letter (pdf) addressed to Congress from the Global Intellectual Property Center, which is an affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce."

I thought this deserved clarification.

[1] http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/sites/default/files/pressre...

blakeweb··on $150K and up for Software Devs in Austin
I think that's likely to be the perception any time you have a company that's grown quickly and organically, at least when your whole company depends on your software as much as ours does. Ditching something that's interwoven into every business process is tough, and making new approaches play well with existing ones is tricky. We're all for doing things the best way.

If you have specific ideas, I'd love to hear them, and would gladly buy you lunch. Shoot me an email.

blakeweb··on $150K and up for Software Devs in Austin
Bias: I'm a co-founder of BuildASign.com, an ecommerce company in Austin, and we're hiring. (Extra bias: we're a great company to work for, if Austin interests you.)

I agree that this article blows the issue out of proportion, but then again, any intelligent internet company realizes that its future success and future value is determined, more than anything else, by the quality of its software people. That being the case, any company where the higher-ups don't think finding the best software folks is the #1 problem (or at least one of the critical issues) at the moment is probably not a company you'd want to work for anyway. I think this is the #1 problem we face as a company, and yet I agree this article blows the "problem" out of proportion in the way the article presents the issue.

blakeweb··on Apple's iCloud will automatically store, sync data for free
I use rdio, and it's not the streaming that makes me keep paying them--it's the legal access to a mountainous library of most of the music I ever have a reason to give a listen to.
blakeweb··on 3d Printed Rocket Engine Takes Flight
Looks not to be true, although I can't verify this. A commenter posted the following hours later:

I was there and filmed it.

He did not fly the printed engine. The rocket you saw fly was a solid for testing GPS systems. The printed engine was run for 2 minutes on a stand.

blakeweb··on Regulation, not technology is holding back driverless cars
Could you explain what you mean? My understanding was that Attitude indicators solved this problem using a gyroscope a long time ago. Maybe this falls into what you meant by an "outside reference", but it seems to me autopilots would clearly take these measurements into account.

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

blakeweb··on Poll: Should HN display comment scores?
I'm basically a lurker as well (< a dozen comments in 3 years probably), but despite the increased difficulty in identifying the best contributions to a discussion, I still overall feel I and the site both are better off without the comment scores visible. The quality of discussion has improved so drastically that I'm ok with the fact that it's harder for me to visually dissect the wheat from the chaff.

The site was better with scores 2 years ago than it is now, but given the options at present, I'd stick with pg's decision.

blakeweb··on LNKD IPO opens huge at $83
It's mainly the investors that lose out from a bubble bursting--one way to look at it is that a bubble is just a good time to get a high valuation from a company's perspective. By calling it a bubble, you're saying you think there's more money out there looking for startups to invest in than startups whose prospects can support that valuation. That's a good time to get OPM (other people's money) and spend it on whatever your dream idea is, if you think you've got a shot at making it work.

There are of course counterarguments: - Other startups are getting too much money at the same time you are, and probably spending it in irrational ways that may make it harder for you to be profitable, such as overpaying on advertising and hiring. The same argument can support the idea that the best time to start a startup is during a recession, when the big companies aren't investing enough money in growth. - When the bubble bursts, there will be far more startups looking for money than money looking to be invested, so you're more likely to have to throw in the towel after bursting.

On the balance, I agree with the advice of most experienced entrepreneurs I've heard--err on the side of worrying more about yourself, your idea, and how you'll execute, and less about the economic environment at the time.

blakeweb··on Sugar and Health: Interview with UCSF professor Robert Lustig
I just watched the mentioned video[1] the other day and made some notes, so thought I'd share them since this hit the front page.

- Fructose is metabolized similarly to ethanol. Both can only mostly be metabolized in the liver, whereas glucose can be metabolized throughout the body. Both result in a storage as fat of a significant portion of the calories, possibly in the liver, where the fat causes long-term harm. Most of glucose on the other hand is stored in the liver as glycogen, which is not harmful long-term, and is the main source when you're eating a bunch of white pasta (glucose) storing up for a big race.

- If we just ate fructose from fruits we'd eat 10-20% as much as we do today. Plus fiber is protective against many of the negative effects associated with fructose. So fruit is probably on the balance still good for you or neutral in terms of the negative effects from fructose mentioned here.

- Fructose seems to suppress the post-eating dip in ghrelin levels, where ghrelin is thought to be important in encouraging us to eat--the "hunger hormone".

- Fructose doesn't cause a spike in insulin and reduces leptin, which he views as a negative, as it goes along with not discouraging further eating.

- He gave no evidence that glucose is good or beneficial, or reasons why glucose isn't a threat to increased risk of diabetes, etc. He's just chosen his battle as against fructose, as it's more winnable than against all sugar.

That last bullet is my conclusion/wrapup of his perspective. I think his points are valid, and his recommendations are good for an overweight person (ie, your average American), but he oversimplifies things to make his case simpler and stronger. If you're really trying to stay healthy, eating a ton of glucose is not a good thing--an issue he mainly skirts to keep the focus on fructose.

[1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

blakeweb··on Dress.me: Because Guys Hate to Shop
My advice: forget about making a great landing page--you need a simple page up now, as in today. This is getting buzz. Right now you should go to weebly and set up a splash page for dress.me that just has a simple email capture form for people who want to be notified of your launch. Find a friend or pay someone hundreds of dollars to do this today if you don't know how. If I don't get an email announcing launch, you can bet I won't remember about your service.

Good luck, and it sounds like a great idea if you can make it work!

blakeweb··on Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'
I like that construction. The article also emphasizes teaching kids another contributing equation:

  smart = sum(previous efforts)
Giving a final equation:

  immediate results = immediate effort * sum(previous efforts)
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