wihon

Tbh, I'm not so sure about the accuracy of this study (and of 'experimental' social psychology in general - though that's another issue altogether)...but I guess I always new those tidy, short-haired bastards were uptight.

Other than a short sentence on the homepage, there's no information about the site that you can access before signing up. The fact that you have to register before knowing anything will, I imagine, put off many potential users. They (and I) wanna know what they're agreeing to!

Edit: I think you should add some more info (maybe some screenshots, a lengthier description and some privacy stuff?), basically!

That's a problem with posting on HN in general - I often find (admittedly IMHO) interesting links and post them in the morning, european time, but because most of HN's readers are from north america they often get largely ignored - and thus have slipped down into oblivion by the time the americans log in. Or maybe I just post crap links...

Heh - good work! Hacking away as we speak?

There are countries all over the world populated by great hackers - may I refer you to an earlier reply (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1640665) to explain my (admittedly hasty) reasoning for choosing these in particular. So far though, the US is definitely dominating the list...but that might be because most Europeans (myself included) should probably be tucked up in bed around now.

I just creamed off the top five countries from my google analytics data. Completely arbitrary - but I thought not completely irrelevant, as only people interested in programming would be likely to visit my site. Maybe I should have thought a bit harder...?

I think I meant where you are at the moment, as I get the impression that hackers often move to where the work is. But good point - I should have been clearer. :-)

Also, http://unsuck-it.com/.

Hi - I'm pretty new to hacking'n'stuff. Would I be welcome/understand what the hell was going on? :)

Flying cars have long been a symbol of the possible technological height of human transportation. But we're not exactly surprised by their absence. Similarly, can't Drexler's '90s idealism be regarded as the possible peak of nanotech? Does the fact we don't have tiny toasters in our bloodstream really negate the acheivement of nanotechnology in medicine and materials science? Personally, I don't think so. This article is too deliberately inflammatory, and doesn't properly look into anything beyond what is now an ancient thesis - as far as fast-moving research areas are concerned. This makes his dismissal of nanotech as sweeping as Drexler's predictions.

Hah that sounds pretty cool. You started pretty young then?

I'm just in the process of building a program in ruby inspired by a comment in Learn to Program (Chris Pine). I want to make a interactive 'pet' (or plant, for that matter) with an ascii-art output. It's a big challenge for me, but I'm enjoying doing it!

That is one damn cool application process!

This isn't necessarily the place to bring this up, but I take it I'm not the only one who finds 4sq and pals a bit creepy?

The 'scary' side of social media has long been a favourite topic in the mainstream press - and in this case, I think they might have a mild point. I'm sure that 100% HN users are fully aware of the risks of storing personal info online, and will act accordingly - but so many more web users honestly don't have a clue. I've also heard ad agencies and potential employers talking about tracking 4sq users...and I'm not sure I like that either.

Am I overreacting?

Is there any way we can unite the global community and ditch IE? Or at least make it catch up with everyone else? I've only been involved in the world of web for a short time - but even for me IE is a massive clumsy thorn in my ass.

I agree with the author about the slightly over-the-top usage of CSS to make graphics - but what bothers me more is the fact that IE may either fail to render your creations properly (c.f. http://bit.ly/aqv6jT from the article), or make perhaps better alternatives (like SVG) unecessarily painful.

Well. Yeah, I guess it kinda did. Sorreee muuum. :)

And you guessed right. Someone has to make all those liquid-center scented baby-dolls, right? And it just so happens that doe-eyed deer are particularly capable. Just a bit work-shy, which is where I come in and whip them into shape.

Edit: Hey! Why do I lose karma?! Was it the whipping part...?

Edit: Thanks. :)

Oh jeepers! - definitely not work safe. My boss was pretty much directly behind me when "MOTHERFUCKING LASERS" appears on my 24" screen in massive letters.

This is the one time I'm glad the place I'm working is so backward web-wise, as the lasers didn't work - no CSS3 for me! - and thus my screen wasn't turn into even more of a profanity-emblazoned eye-magnet.

So thankfully, she didn't notice. Phew.

Cheers for the tips, guys. However, I was slightly put off joining Quora by the following in their privacy policy:

"Quora may share your personally identifiable information with third parties for the purpose of providing the Service to you. If we do this, such third parties' use of your information will be bound by this Privacy Policy. We may store personal information in locations outside the direct control of Quora (for instance, on servers or databases co-located with hosting providers).

As we develop our business, we may buy or sell assets or business offerings. Customer, email, and visitor information is generally one of the transferred business assets in these types of transactions. We may also transfer or assign such information in the course of corporate divestitures, mergers, or dissolution."

It was definitely interesting, but it wasn't the breakthrough it was hyped-up to be. Seeing it as a 'hello world' is a cool idea, though. The hardware of the cell was ready and waiting. So Venter and his team rewrote an old program and gave it a spin. Nice.

This is more likely a lack of understanding on my part, but I'm not sure where epigenetics comes into it? The majority of the cell components - i.e. all the organelles, chemicals, etc - were already present and arranged in the 'surrogate' cell. So all the 'epigenetic' stuff was already in place. But please correct me if I'm wrong.

Not so sure about the random splicing part, either. Food manufacturers have been inserting genes into specific places on bacterial plasmids for a long a time, using directors like codon relationships and ionic interactions. Again - if I'm outta line... :)

Thanks again for all the tips! Much appreciated. :)

I know, literally, nothing about ML. Why's it better for a beginner? Can you recommend any implementations in particular?

davidw above mentioned getting involved with open source - have you got any suggestions for how to get stuck in?

Thanks! :)

P.S. Do you think it's necessary to have a presence on the web, i.e. through a blog, in order to make connections with other kindly programmers? I'm also thinking that as I'm starting from scratch, I could record my progress and potentially help other baby hackers.

@tokenadult that's some good shit. :)

This is slightly off-topic, but here goes anyway. I've long had an issue with the huge disparity between what humanities/arts people (including the large majority of the press) know about science, and what scientists know about the arts and humanities. Most scientists I know are more than able to hold their own in a conversation about, say, a good book, but 99% of everyone else I've ever met doesn't know/want to know the second law of thermodynamics.

I'm not pointing fingers here, I just think there's a serious lack of communication between arts and sciences. I think it's partly this lack of general scientific knowledge that makes the humanities/arts dominated world of the press believe pretty much anything a scientist says. And then, to make a good story into a great one, it's blown out of proportion. Ho hum.

I'm all on my lonesome atm, so all these choices are mine. The college IT guy at my university (he's just completed a PhD in quantum computing - and he's been forced to work as the maintenance guy because of the recession, poor guy) works with linux, and I imagine I'll be able to ask him for help and tips. So linux it is! Cost is also a consideration, and while Macs aren't bad value for money (http://bit.ly/3SGXeJ), but they're still expensive. So linux suits me fine. :)

I think I'll go with Ruby too. I had a look around both sites (Ruby's and Python's), and decided superficially that I liked Ruby better, as I've nothing else to go on. Plus, Ruby's online trial thingy (http://tryruby.org/) is pretty cool. :)

As far as programming for science goes, I'm not sure tbh. The main program I use at uni is ChemBioOffice (by Cambridgesoft), but I'm not sure what that's programmed in. Any ideas?

Can you recommend any particularly good ways of learning a language? There seems to be some debate over rote learning, then programming vs. practical learning. Any good tutorials etc that you know of?

Thanks to both of you!

His last comment,

The media will not end their infatuation with this pseudo-scientific dingbat

chimes with the large majority of bold scientific claims that appear in the press. For example, not that long ago the press jumped on Craig Venter's (http://bit.ly/uEC5) 'artificial cell' (http://bit.ly/c27AL5), hailing it as the beginning of man-made organisms and making bold predictions about the future of life itself, riling up environmental groups no end. (I'm not saying that wasn't a great acheivement. But all his team really did was take out one DNA tape and put back an identical, if newer version. Bread and yoghurt manufacturers have been doing a smaller version of that for a long time. Not exactly playing God.)

It would be nice if there was a scientific-bullshit detector that made sure the press didn't go crazy over wild claims. Proposal for a startup, anyone? :)

Thanks!

> * Get involved with open source.

Say, by helping improve the code of open source apps, etc?

And if you had to choose between directing my attention towards Ruby or Python...?

I'm currently in desperate need of a new laptop. Can you recommend any basic requirements for programming? I have a rough idea - something along the lines of lots of RAM and not much else - but getting it from the horses mouth (no offense (: ) would be ideal.

Thanks again!