Adam_O

That reminds me of an interview i saw a few months ago with one of their main guys:

https://charlierose.com/videos/28249

It's been a while since I last listened to the show, but thinking back, some of my favorite guests were:

Bill Murray, Jerry Seinfeld, Jeff Bridges, Martha Stewart, Alec Baldwin, Conan O'Brien, Quentin Tarantino, Brad Garrett, Jesse Ventura, Howie Mandel, Norm MacDonald, Tom Arnold, Steven Adler and Chip Z'nuff.

Here are two I have been using from time to time:

http://sqlzoo.net/wiki/SQL_Tutorial

https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/info

Also, thanks for linking the one in this thread. The interface looks clean (on my laptop at least).

I liked the GITS SAC series a lot because of how well they balanced the action plot points with discussion about technology, security, politics and philosophy. Overall I'd struggle to think of another series which strikes that balance so well.

I saw they ran a small "python for data science" intro course this year on edx, so I figure they're definitely behind using the language in some capacity.

https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-python-data-science-...

HHGTG by Stephen Fry... that sounds like a great combination, will have to check it out.

In terms of narration, my favorite audio book is The Odyssey, read by Ian McKellen.

Your reply reminded me of a lecture from an ocw course I'm watching on and off. He covers a bit about infrastructure design and policy choices in that lecture. I thought it was really interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpcbBk5ckas

Thinking out loud.. the Olympics in 2020 will be a good chance to showcase the country as an attractive destination, not just for tourism. They could loosen their immigration policy to coincide with the timeline.

It would still be tricky because as a society Japan is famously homogeneous, so the idea of diversity would have to be phased in slowly.. but it could be a starting point. In the end it's about adaptation to ensure a future for the country.

Fully agree with 1) in a sense that the sciences and the humanities are all around us, in front of us, and it's not 'geek' impulse to try exploring both, it's part of being a rational, fulfilled human being.

As for 2), that's an interesting point. Perhaps it speaks to a level of maturity and mutual trust that we have not achieved yet. Maybe it manifests naturally as a result of progress with 1). It'd be interesting to read some lengthier discourse on this.. I feel it relates to government, market forces, social perception, culture and more..

I think about this too sometimes.. TNG in particular had scientifically literate characters and that sort of depth was considered normal, there was no fuss about the big ideas and the knowledge, they just applied it. It is easy to get used to a mature baseline of thought like that as a viewer. Most of the newer apocalyptic themed sci-fi just seems silly in comparison.

As a side note, I really like some of the comic books written by Jonathan Hickman, for example his S.H.I.E.L.D. or FF runs. He seems to be a fan of science.

I have been waiting for this session to begin for a few months now (the course ran just once in 2015).

I'm planning to try the exercises in python too after doing them in R, reference material for this exists already: https://github.com/sujitpal/statlearning-notebooks

Reading the replies in this thread got me thinking it would be nice if an online course site allowed searching within all the subtitles of all the videos it hosts, and would provide results to all videos containing the searched keyword so you could get access to many explanations and side-notes about a concept, fast.. I think it goes against their business model though.

Also, many MOOCs do support optional texts, but they are not always free.

Perhaps the right mix is somewhere down the middle.. a course that gives you all the course materials in a jupyter notebook + makes help videos available as well, and the student can pick their desired learning path (like http://cs109.github.io/2015/pages/videos.html)

Finally, I really like those "Manga guide to" books from No Starch Press, but they are more like fun supplementary resources.

thanks, that was enthralling to watch

My all star lineup would be:

The Analytics Edge - https://www.edx.org/course/analytics-edge-mitx-15-071x-0

Design of Computer Programs - https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--...

Justice - https://www.edx.org/course/justice-harvardx-er22-1x-0

If I had more time I would love to go through the bioinformatics specialization on Coursera. They have 2 books and an exercise site (rosalind.info). It looks like great fun.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics?utm_...

From the perspective of a student, most of the good online analytics/data analysis/stats courses use R, so it is hard to get away from it while learning the material. Once you get the base concepts down, switching to python shouldn't be hard. I think most people still prefer ggplot2 for visualization though. Whenever I use R I feel like a statistician, I can feel that 'cold rigor' emanating from the language. But in the end I think it is advantageous to wield both languages.

Also I really see Jupyter as a new standard for communication. Your narrative and supporting code all in one place, ready for sharing.

I was watching a talk from Richard Karlgaard [1] recently where he argues you can run a company in either a rough or nurturing manner, but you should not vacillate between the two. He suggests that constantly sending mixed signals to employees is even worse than just being a full time jerk.

Personally I agree with the opinion that a company can get away with being more pushy toward its employees if it has top5 or even top10 status. I think there will always be people out there willing to accept 2-3 years of this in exchange for the doors it opens later.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjGmf9vgp6I

yes, I was impressed just thinking about how much work and information gathering must have gone into that book.

Maybe you are right, it is not in the same category as The Selfish Gene. However, I thought the parts about the early history of computing were written very well, as someone who did not know much about it before.

I was also thinking that a non-fiction book with no fluff and no injection of personality/flair from the author is a textbook. There are many outstanding textbooks (like Molecular Biology of the Cell) which offer pure information, but I think commercial non-fiction books are aimed at a more general audience. The author needs to fluff a book up a bit to make the material approachable. I also wonder how some non-fiction books would read if untouched by editors.

Here are 3 that I particularly liked in the last few years:

The Information, James Gleick

A Universe from Nothing, Lawrence Krauss

Abundance, Peter Diamandis

A lot of game companies develop their AAAs with PS4/X1 in mind and the PC port is more of an afterthought. Though not the case here, it is usually released up to 6 months after the console version. I believe PC versions of games are often done by an external (or at least different) studio, and they are also assigned less Dev/QA resources. The responsibility for the quality of the PC port does not always fall on the management in charge of the console version, so a lot of faults can slip through the cracks.

Minor side note for the audio-curious.. Neil DeGrasse Tyson's podcast had an episode recently where Bill Nye talked all about the LightSail..

https://soundcloud.com/startalk/cosmic-queries-lightsail-wit...

I also think that oftentimes I filter the positive stories coming out of China with an 'oh, but they still have that or other thing still going on there, so this feat is less impressive', but that's just creating grounds for a huge underestimation in the long run.

Agreed, it was a really motivating read. I enjoyed the optimistic (and not too preachy) outlook he has regarding technology just on the horizon, especially in medicine/biotech.

In my opinion one of the most interesting courses on coursera called Model Thinking had a few segments devoted to this..

https://youtu.be/fna6xW76NYg?list=PLGqc26s6O0E2P2BnK73JWXk4Y...

He also contributed 2 modules to the recent "Tackling the Challenges of Big Data" online course from MITx. Among other things, he did a very lucid roundup of legacy vs modern db systems.