bionerd's comments

This is exactly why I find the field of epigenetics[1] absolutely fascinating -- we are so much more than just the sum of our genes. Everything in our lives matters: our childhood, the stuff we eat, how much we sleep (or don't), how much physical exercise we have (or don't)... all these things have an influence on the levels of gene expression and that's what decides everything.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

If you’re looking specifically for an alternative to Go or chess then be sure to have a look at a list of the so-called abstract board games (Go and chess belong to this category too) on the BoardGameGeek: http://boardgamegeek.com/abstracts/browse/boardgame (sorted by popularity by default)

There are a few gems there that you might be interested in.

I'll watch this, thanks.

Well, I have to admit that, after spending the last three years as a basically full-time intern in our lab, I have a bit of an idea how science is quite broken. I've witnessed some of its problems first hand.

But I still want to do this, nevertheless. The area that I'd like to focus on during my PhD (genomics/computational biology) is something I really believe I'll have fun doing. On the other hand, it should still allow me to use much of the stuff I'll learn there outside science (if it ever comes to this).

I'll definitely drop you a line later, I'd like to hear your thoughts about this.

My story is very similar. After high school I went to study computer science in college. Then, just before I got my bachelor's degree, I decided to apply to a programme in molecular biology instead of further pursuing master's degree in computer science.

Switching gears was the best decision of my life. I've never had so much fun as I had while attending the introductory lectures in cell or molecular biology. So many mind-blowing things I never would've imagine...

Now I'm hoping to get into a PhD programme in genetics. Can't wait to learn about other amazing stuff waiting out there. :)

> The early pioneers in genetics were all consummate hackers in the truest sense. For much of the work they were doing, the had very little information about the underlying processes to go on.

Exactly! They only had the most basic tools (even primitive by today's standards!) at their disposal and were still able to discover the most profound and fascinating things about life at the molecular level. All that using only a few simple techniques and a pure deductive logic.

It never ceases to amaze me how much hacker spirit these people had.

> It should be for the really "broken" people who are a danger to everyone no matter where they are. Gacy, Dalmer, etc.

Yeah, but it's not. There are plenty of terrifying cases of people who were considered "broken", who were convicted and murdered by the system and later found innocent. Murder has no place in a modern society.

Don't you have prisons where you live? Do you know what a life sentence is? It is possible to have justice without committing the same murderous crimes as the criminals we have to protect the society from.

> China should abolish the death penalty.

Every country should, not only China. A murder is still a murder, no matter where and why it's been committed.

For anyone who hadn't read it yet, there is a relevant very short story by Isaac Asimov called Hell-Fire: http://www.tep-online.info/short/hell.htm

“That these bombs are man’s death sentence. We don’t seem to be able to learn that.”

These must have been incredibly scary times. The first time in our modern history that we came close to our own extinction.

Here’s a link to the original research article: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/41/16384.full

For a very long time I've regarded Racket as a purely educational Scheme dialect not particularly useful for real work. It was only a few months ago that I actually bothered to look at it's (amazing!) documentation [1] and realized how wrong I've been. It's incredible what are the Racket guys doing and what they've already achieved. The Typed Racket [2, 3] is "only" a cherry on top.

[1] http://docs.racket-lang.org/

[2] The Type Racket Guide: http://docs.racket-lang.org/ts-guide/

[3] The Type Racket Reference: http://docs.racket-lang.org/ts-reference/

I know it's probably totally unnecessary but still, here's a link to the free download page of the book [1].

Together with Modern Perl (also free for download [2]) this book completely changed my view of Perl. It helped me see through the misconceptions built (most of the times unintentionally) around this language and made me even switch from Python to Perl.

If you're interested, spend a few minutes browsing through one of these books. I think you'll like what you see.

[1] http://hop.perl.plover.com/book/#PDF

[2] http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/

So many awesome things to try out and so little time...

I'm really excited to see such great ideas of the past being resurrected like that. Things like Lisp machines and Smalltalk environment are still revolutionary and have much to contribute to the technology of the present.

It's a shame really that they almost died out. I could only guess what were the reasons for that but it's great to see efforts trying to bring them back to the future where they belong.

Not as impressive? Come on. Like we were all doing things like this on our backyards in 1995.

Given historical context this is as much as impressive as what SpaceX are doing right now.

This is incredible. Yes, it would be insanely cool to live in 2500s with all that privately affordable faster-than-light travel and everything but still... it's very exciting to see the progress being made by private/commercial space programs. I wish them all luck. It must be an amazing feeling to be a part of all this.

This is actually the only thing that's giving me hope that man could really step a foot on Mars or mine valuable resources on asteroids in a (hopefully) not too distant future.

This is great news but will it really force certain agencies and powerful circles to stop what they've been doing all this time in secret? And if not, what could?

Well, the DNA itself probably wouldn't be enough because it doesn't really encode an algorithm or recipe describing how a (multicellular in this context) living organism is constructed from it's genetic information. Instead, the DNA is more like a huge collection of building blocks. But how and what will be constructed from this pile (meaning what will be included in the final system and what won't) that's a completely different matter.

A few links for the interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_biology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

That said, there has been quite an exciting paper published around a year ago describing the first simulation of one life cycle of an in silico Mycoplasma genitalium (the smallest known bacteria). Here's a link to relevant HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4272039

> Most life we eventually discover might be more exciting to entomologists.

You say it like it wouldn't be fascinating just by itself. About 70% of Earth's surface is covered by water and more than 90% of the ocean still remains unseen by human eyes. We don't even know what incredible creatures could be living deep in the ocean let alone on another planet!

Oh and by the way, even the fact that we can't have a "decent conversation" with other species doesn't mean they are not intelligent (whatever that means). Most people would considered dolphins stupid but it seems that they could be communicating with each other using some kind of sono-visual language and maintain quite complicated social structures.

I don't think it's going to explode. And I don't think it needs to.

Even after decades there are still people who use Lisp-like languages and who find them fascinating and just right tools for their job. I, for example, am a huge fan of Common Lisp and I'm really glad to see new stuff happening around it and new people discovering it because there were times I was a bit afraid about its future.

But will it ever dominate or explode? No, it won't. Same with any other Lisp. And it's okay.

> "But we all know essentially how this will end: Prism isn't going away and Edward Snowden's fate is grim."

> "Stories on HN don't have to be about hacking [...] but they do have to be deeply interesting."

I understand that many people here share your pessimism and this NSA business is surely getting tiresome for them.

It might be I'm just more naive and personally invested in this widescale spying thing because privacy on the internet is something I've always deepely cared about. But that's why, until this thing is sorted out (if at all, I have no idea how), all this wonderful technical stuff that's usually discussed here appears somehow less important in the lights of recent events (to me).

Edit: That doesn't mean that we should flood Hacker News with links to unreliable tabloid articles and force out the technical content entirely, of course. There has to be a middle ground.

I don't know if it's just because I'm a biologist but I find this absolutely disgusting. Every living thing is valuable no matter how it looks or how "lowly" it is, even goddamn cockroaches.

I'm not saying these kinds of experiments don't happen in "real" science, of course they do! But to present it like its fun to enslave a creature like that just for entertainment purposes?

This is the worst possible way to educate people (and especially kids!) about the beauty of life and respect to nature.