gilesc

7 ms·

1.
by gilesc 15y ago
NLTK is great for _learning_ NLP, but Python is much too slow for scalable deep NLP (by which I mean tagging and parsing, as opposed to TF-IDF etc). Also parallelization can become a problem because of the GIL. It's a real shame they chose
2.
by gilesc 15y ago
It's largely been supplanted by Ruby?
3.
by gilesc 15y ago
Like sports, instruments, and any other developed skill, there will be days you feel like it and days you don't. The key IMO is to pace yourself: don't overwork on days you feel like it, and force yourself to work -- even if just a little
4.
by gilesc 15y ago
Maybe referring to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2657135
5.
by gilesc 15y ago
While they were still choosing targets that either "deserved" it for some moderately reasonable ideological reason (Sony) or should have top-notch security (FBI), yes. Now that they're choosing targets at random, no. Especially since this
6.
by gilesc 15y ago
Interesting that the author of the fake in-browser Finder apparently uses Dropbox.
7.
by gilesc 15y ago
Reads like a HOWTO for burnout.
8.
by gilesc 15y ago
Working on this, if anyone wants a corpus (positive examples from twssstories.com, negative from fmylife.com) https://gist.github.com/945614
9.
by gilesc 15y ago
In the US, PhD students in biology are paid tuition plus salary. So assuming his undergraduate student loans were subsidized, a PhD who decided to teach high school would not be in a much different financial position than a recently gradua
10.
by gilesc 15y ago
Well, first of all, a traditional student will be out by age 26-27 not 40. Secondly, PhD students in the sciences are paid. Not much, admittedly -- about $22k, on average -- but enough that you have positive cashflow.
11.
by gilesc 15y ago
Well, bioinformaticians are far from uniform in terms of language usage (my mentor staunchly defends his use of VB6, for instance...), but this link shows people using Python for structural bioinformatics as early as 2001: http://mgl.scrip
12.
by gilesc 15y ago
To be fair, there are also private research foundations and private sector companies -- i.e., drug or medical device companies that also hire biologists. You can also pivot somewhat easily into public health and work for e.g., the Departme
13.
by gilesc 15y ago
Ha! Thankfully, Perl seems to be mostly going out of favor in bioinformatics in favor of a Python / R combo.
14.
by gilesc 15y ago
I think this article is a bit sensationalist. Yes, there are niche techniques in biology, but many -- Western blots, qPCR, cell culture, transfection -- are transferable to almost any other biology lab. The article's core advice -- make su
15.
by gilesc 15y ago
This looks like a slightly better cake. After all, cake provides a persistent VM and you can run scripts with cake with !#/usr/bin/env cake. It's nice that it doesn't require ruby and has a few additional features like search & install
16.
by gilesc 15y ago
Although I also dislike .NET, it seems the primary complaint here about .NET is that it abstracts programmers too much away from the bare metal. But doesn't that apply equally to non-MS languages like Python and Ruby? In fact, isn't abstrac
17.
by gilesc 16y ago
see also: https://github.com/weavejester/clucy
18.
by gilesc 16y ago
It's a great idea technically, but I'm not sure whether you can sell a social networking app. Social networks are valuable in proportion to the number of users, and pay-for-access adds a huge barrier to growth. They might be better off run
19.
by gilesc 16y ago
Independence / self-direction. Searches google / manuals for answers instead of asking you every few seconds.
20.
by gilesc 16y ago
This is absolutely gorgeous. The only thing the standard RGui has on it is basic emacs/bash-ish keybindings (C-e, C-a, etc.) for navigation.
21.
by gilesc 16y ago
The best toolkits are probably in Java: -Stanford's Tagger, Parser, and NLP Core -Apache OpenNLP -Lingpipe Many smaller components are made to be compatible with IBM UIMA (of Watson fame), so they are able to be integrated into a pipeline s
22.
by gilesc 16y ago
Oversimplifying things a bit, these writers are saying that scientific objectivity is impossible. This line of argument tends to reduce the credibility of science in the eyes of the public, with negative consequences for research funding.
23.
by gilesc 16y ago
I like and use it, but it's based on reverse-engineering Pandora's encryption keys, so every once in awhile (when Pandora changes the keys), it breaks the client, which is annoying.
24.
by gilesc 16y ago
If she ends up losing the data permanently, that will severely hamper her ability to apply for future grants (which usually require preliminary data), and lose funding. This offense is definitely self-punishing.
25.
by gilesc 16y ago
I'm a student at OUHSC, and her husband, Dr. Janknecht, is one of my professors. Although failing to make a backup is obviously stupid, he is an extremely competent researcher (I don't know her). Clearly, calling the data "a cure" is a bi
26.
by gilesc 16y ago
Interesting choice of metaphor given the original topic...
27.
by gilesc 16y ago
I'm a biochemistry grad student, and my school is just now considering offering a (bio)statistics course for the first time... But parent poster is right, chi-squared is usually as complex as it gets.
28.
by gilesc 16y ago
There is also a sub-group for HNers who are also students: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_152776264761584&#3...
29.
by gilesc 16y ago
Hence "Yes, Mike, I Have Stopped Beating My Wife".
30.
by gilesc 16y ago
A phone could give FB plenty of new chances to capture data. What if, instead of sending a text message to someone, the FB phone sends a FB message or initiates a FB live chat session with them instead. If the FB phone became ubiquitious e

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