thronemonkey

I've long thought it would be awesome if someone started a business along these lines: a news source driven by data analysis; like fivethirtyeight but for analysis of all sorts of news and current events, not just elections.

Do you know if it supports ipython? I'm on the scientific computing side of the python world, so django is less important to me . . .

I'm currently struggling to find a satisfactory IDE for python for this exact reason. This seemingly obvious feature has to be hacked on to just about every popular coding tool. The best things I've found so far are the ipython web notebook (the only problem being that it stores my code as JSON and has poor/no keybindings) and emacs python-mode (which is buggy as all hell).

NB: The only tool I've ever found that works in the manner I want it to as far as REPL languages go is RStudio. If I had an RStudio that was language agnostic so it could work with python, ruby, lisps, or what have you, I would be a happy, happy man.

edit: if anyone has any suggestions in this regard, please, leave a comment!

That math app sounds amazing. I think this is something that would be great to have in a Surface-type device with a touchscreen and a keyboard — I would love to have that sort of input integrated with Mathematica or sympy or what have you. I would never need to fiddle with LibreOffice Math ever again!

The degree to which this is possible has been hugely exaggerated. Yes, you can have DNA mailed to you, but not DNA as its packaged in the human genome.

When you order from NEB or Sigma-Aldritch, what you get is a short DNA sequence (usually on the order of hundreds to thousands of basepairs) in a buffer solution. When forensic scientists do DNA preps of cellular samples from a crime scene or for a paternity test, they purify genomic DNA. This is millions of basepairs coiled around storage proteins to form a densely packed material called chromatin. The procedures used to purify chromosomal DNA would wash away any of the much smaller, synthesized fragments of the sort that you can order from a company, meaning that faking a paternity test in this manner is impossible.

Biotechnology is exciting, but not so exciting as University press offices might have us believe :(

Putting your genome online in this manner is more of a concern for insurance than anything else, I think— although as others have pointed out, discriminatory insurance practices based on preexisting conditions will soon be illegal in the U.S. . . . still, better not to take any chances.

Can you suggest any resources for learning about profiling in python? I'm just getting into scientific computing with numpy,scipy,etc. and I'd be interested to learn more.

Nostalgia is universal, but Britain is in the somewhat unique position of having once been a hyperpower and today being substantially less relevant on the world stage.

Hmmm I use python for most scientific computing applications, but I do a lot of statistical things in R. I've been interested in trying pandas for a while, might be time to give it a shot . . .

My initial thought was that while I've never done any 3D printing so I'm not how hard the plastic is, it might be possible to print something in the right shape and use it to unscrew these? Its an interesting idea, but the screws are likely in tight enough that only a solid metal screwdriver would be able to remove them.

Alternatively, if you're young and single just live with a bunch of roommates — group cooking/cleaning/etc is really cheap.

I for one love LibreOffice Writer and find it to be much more intuitive and configurable than Word. Draw and Calc leave something to be desired, but the needs they fill are better served by Adobe products and R respectively, imho.

This is exactly what I do. The device doesn't have the password to my wifi so it can't phone home. I have no need to connect it to the internet — I just transfer files from my computer over USB. Couldn't be happier with the setup.

Little Brother anyone? I've always told people that book is hyperbolic but good anyway; seems like that might not be the case :/

The problem isn't just what journals will publish, its how funding is distributed: the modern NIH/NSF grant process gives money for likelihood of producing positive results, which might sounds reasonable on the surface but which leads to perverse incentives like these.

even if you get shutdon you've inspired me to write a script to do it myself. any chance you would publish your code if you were shutdown?

Oh my god I love you

Same here. On Opera, 0 days. weird.

Agree. I just started doing scientific computing in python/scipy/numpy/matplotlib and it is fantastic. I see python going nowhere but up in the scientific community.

wow awesome! I'm getting ready for the RTR prerelease and this will for sure help!

Ahhh I see. I have three finger drag enabled, so not as much of a pain.

To me that's why its so magical. Its actually expensive in time and effort to navigate, so you feel like you're investing something in order to explore. This also means that its difficult to see every part of the image, so you're left with a sense of frontiers yet unexplored when you navigate away from the page. The zooming versions are cool but, to me, actually take away from what Randall is trying to achieve here.

In the words of a good friend of mine: "You wouldn't download a car? Man if I could download a car off the internet for free, you bet your sweet ass I would!"

I'm a GPG noob, is there a way to configre pass + gpg so that my passwords are encrypted with AES rather than an asymmetric algorithm?

As far as not widely audited goes, the encryption is handled by GPG so that part is at least fine.

Ahhh, I see, thanks for the explanation, makes sense.

What exactly do you mean by underground syndrome?

I work in science, and the answer is basically no. In order to be a successful scientist, you have to be fascinated, even obsessed with your topic of study, sometimes to the point of not really caring about the wider world. This means that, in general, those who have the most success in science are also those who have the least desire to run for public office.

holy shit, did not know about this. This was really the one thing from Mathematica that I was still missing in iPython. Thank you!

Its also interesting to think about totally post-scarcity societies, as in Iain M. Banks' Culture novels.

There are also a few scientists!