The slugs at some point in their past acquired the genes from algae that are required to maintain/repair the chloroplasts that each one collects from the algae they eat. The horizontal gene transfer is (presumably) not an ongoing process but something that happened in their distant past.
The baby slugs start eating algae and they digest most of them but they save the chloroplasts from the algae cells and integrate them into their own tissue. Once they accumulate enough of them they basically become solar powered and don't need to eat anymore.
Normally the chloroplasts would not survive very long without an algae around them to take care of them, but this is where the genes that the slug has that originally came from the algae come into play. The slug is thus able to provide the things that its adopted chloroplasts need to survive for many months.
No, I'm sorry, it appears to me that this is all photoshopped fakery. Yes, two-photon lithography is a real thing, but in this case we have some artist claiming to have done things which are not currently possible.
This kind of thing happens pretty frequently now and it pisses me off, sorry. Real scientists and engineers (and even artists) dream and strive to accomplish great feats of engineering and discovery. But some people like to pretend their dreams are real and by presenting fake accomplishments to the world they damage society by trivializing the actual accomplishments of real innovators. They present their "art" as if it were real, and it gets sent around the internet and people believe that it's true, and that further blurs the public's view of what's real and what's art or pure fantasy. What's the point of trying to actually do something like this when everyone thinks it has already been done?
So, anyhow, a few minutes googling will expose some of the original pre-photoshop images that these people appropriated to create their "art". For example, the microphotograph of the needle's eye can be found here with no tiny statue in evidence:
In addition, depth-of-field, lighting, and other cues like the fact that there's no actual connection to the substrate make these fakes pretty obvious.
Ergo, I must presume the whole thing, including the video interview is all just "performance art".
Here's a tip: amazing and groundbreaking scientific and technological breakthroughs are generally not announced to the world by artists.
Considering all the other ridiculous acquisition prices from Apple, Facebook, etc. recently, I think $2B for the Minecraft "brand" is awfully cheap.
So I would imagine the "leak" of the news about these negotiations would come from Notch's side, just to make sure everyone knows that there's an opportunity to bid higher.
I can imagine a few large media companies waking up this morning going "Shit, Mojang is actually for sale? I gotta get me some of that".
So just as everyone "knew" Google was buying Twitch a few weeks ago, I wouldn't count my Minecraft Chickens just yet.
Mod parent up please. The Scientific Python stack (numpy, scipy, pandas, etc.) with it's iPython Notebook interface (in the style of Mathematica) is rapidly taking the world by storm, both in the sciences as well as Big Data Analytics and "Data Science".
If you like software toys, or ever use a calculator, go get yourself the free Anaconda scientific python distribution (Win/Mac/Linux) from Continuum and try out the iPython Notebook. Seriously this is an out-of-the-box computing tool that is AMAZING and can do practically anything. Anaconda is built on the Conda package manager which makes installing any and all bits and pieces you need for any of the popular Python packages completely effortless.
The existence of these tools also makes Python absolutely the best "programming" language to learn, even if you only use it for scripting/invoking all the existing libraries that exist. Also Python is available as a scripting language built into many software packages (Blender etc.) which makes it a tool/skill that just keeps on giving.
R is fine, and currently very popular, but it's also a one-trick-pony when compared to the thundering herd of functionality available on top of Python. You can even invoke R from within an iPython Notebook and pass DataFrames back and forth between R and pandas for example.
I used to love calculators (back when calculator was spelled H-P rather than T-I) but apart from the standardized testing requirement, and the fun of hacking on hand-held devices, it's just silly to use one any more.
"So if you were interested in bioinformatics, or computational economics, or quantitative anthropology, you really needed to be part of the computer science world."
These weren't even things in 1984.
Computers were not so pervasive that you were missing out on much if you didn't know anything about them.
G.
Bah, we already said goodbye to CTRL-S years ago..
on
Goodbye, Ctrl-S
·
· Score: 5, Funny
When it stopped meaning "Suspend output to terminal" along with it's partner CTRL-Q.
It probably wears out in a year or two and/or requires $100/month in exotic maintenance supplies, and if you ever put wax on the car it will destroy its self-cleaning properties, etc.
Horgan has been going on about stuff like this for years. He wrote a book in 1997 called "The End of Science" which I read and thought was completely ridiculous. My recollection (possibly faulty as it's been quite a few years) is that he came across as very anti-science and wandered off into religion later in that book. It feels to me as though he WANTS science to fail at some point.
I don't know why he seems hell-bent on convincing everyone that we're going to run out of things to discover, but I just don't buy it.
Even if we manage to get to the "bottom" of Physics some day that's cool and all but it's hardly the end of much. The biology of even simple cells is fantastically complex and there's lifetimes worth of discovery left there. Also even if some day we we know most or all of the "rules", the possible applications of these simple rules are virtually infinite, so no scientists or technologists or explorers are likely to be unemployed any time soon.
Every time humanity thinks it knows everything, someone thinks up a clever new idea for measuring things and boom, a whole new world of complexity opens up. There might be an end to the turtles at some point, but I'm not worried:)
Yes, that could be. But it seems clear that the plane was not being controlled by anyone who wanted the plane or its passengers to be rescued, so "oh, I've just flown the plane as far away from civilization as possible and I've just run out of fuel, yet I think I'll try at the last moment to make a successful water landing so as many people as possible can be saved" just does not seem likely. Either the plane was not under control, or those in control were not trying to save anyone.
And more specifically I strongly suspect the life-rafts were equipped with EPIRB satellite transmitters, none of which were activated. So that sort of suggests there aren't a bunch of people floating in a raft somewhere (which likely would have shown up during the satellite debris search I suspect).
Even having a rough idea of where it went down might still mean that the wreckage is not found for a long time. There's a lotta damn ocean out there, and I don't think the range of the "pingers" on the data recorders is that huge.
One thing I've been curious about is the cockpit voice recorder on the 777, specifically what the recording duration is (is it just a 30m circular buffer) and can the pilots disable it and/or the flight data recorder by pulling circuit breakers?
Google with their insistence on a camera-based social-media augmented-reality creepy-invasive experience is going to set back the cause of direct human-computer interaction by years.
Honestly I don't want a camera in my "glass". I want a link to something like my desktop computing resources. It's an intimate experience between me and the computer, not between my computer and the environment around me. Sure there are some cute apps you can do with the camera, but the creepy factor is going to make people as self-conscious and obvious as a Segway rider (and we know how that turned out).
When I can PAY for a device that has MY interests at heart rather than the latest data power grab by Google then I'll be interested.
Connect me with the Internet then get the fuck out of the way. I don't need you to mediate every interaction I have, not only with information from the net but with the real world around me.
Indeed, I think it's probably a good sign that kids today probably don't know what Astrology is and figure that it's "the one with the telescopes".
Similarly how many people here know the difference between Cryonics and Cryogenics? One is the study of ultra-low temperature, and the other is the movement surrounding freezing your body after you die with the goal of resurrecting you later when technology advances far enough. But do you know which is which without looking it up?
The environment inside a cell is nothing like a lake or ocean that you can go merrily boating through. The cell is packed with molecules jostling each other around and it's random thermal motion that rules that world. Overcoming that with a motor and expecting to maneuver around to specific places just does not seem like it is going to be effective.
Nature is actually quite fond of electric motors (you have lots of them in every cell in the form of ATP Synthase, and they're used by bacteria to drive flagella etc.) but has apparently not found them useful for maneuvering around inside a cell.
The original Spaceship One went something like five or six times higher, so I presume these are just "low altitude" test flights before they try for "space".
It's notable as continued progress in the development and testing of the Spaceship Two vehicle and system, not for its altitude.
Use of the word "record" in the summary is not particularly helpful.
The ability to join in a course based ONLY on the fact that you're interested in it, with no risk of "failure" is, I think, one of the best features of many MOOCs.
Where there's no difference between "auditing" a class and trying for a certificate, it means that people may be much more likely to try something which they might turn out to enjoy and do well in.
Now, I'm sure if you required people to pay something for the class, or commit to trying for a certificate such that there would be a record/cost of failure, then that would greatly increase the *percentage* of people who would pass. The question is whether you would get more people passing overall since it would stop everyone who was not sufficiently "serious" from attempting the course.
Even those who sign up on a whim and don't get far in a course will probably get something from it, and they might well decide that it was something they want to try again more seriously the next time once they have a taste of what it's about and the amount of work involved.
So absolutely I think "no pressure" is the right way to run a MOOC.
I find that reading a good book is like a complete exercise workout for your brain, and I know I feel a lot sharper when I'm reading regularly.
If I'm having trouble working through some problem or other then taking some time to read is always helpful, even if the subject of the book is unrelated to the problem at hand.
It seems as though it needs to be something with a lot of prose but either fiction or non-fiction works.
Moderately technical non-fiction is OK as long as it is interesting and mentally stimulating (makes you stop and think etc.).
But pure technical books don't seem to help at all and may just clutter things up with new knowledge that the brain is trying to assimilate. So for example pretty much anything from O'Reilly will not make me feel generally smarter even though it may be very good at cramming in the domain specific knowledge I need for some project.
So just reading tech books is not very helpful at all, and needs to be supplemented with more general works from my experience.
Well, Mathematica is now free for non-commercial use on the Raspberry Pi of all things.
You could run a Raspberry emulator and run it inside that on other operating systems. But I haven't looked at the license agreement so maybe that's explicitly prohibited.
No idea how it performs, but the screenshots at Wolfram look promising.
Seems to me that the device itself had to be relatively harmless unless you managed to actually crack it open and get directly at the cobalt. Maybe this was a very old device, but after previous deadly incidents of ignorant people getting their hands on such things, I would think they would be manufactured such that it would be REALLY difficult to get at the cobalt inside. Maybe if you stare into the bore of the thing for a while though?
If the cobalt had actually been accessed/exposed then I would expect them to have a nasty hot clean-up exercise on their hands, but the Mexican authorities seem awfully unconcerned.
I suspect they are just trying to scare the shit out of the thieves, perhaps to motivate them to turn themselves in hoping for some sort of treatment.
Slashdot Mirror
We have that now. Google CRISPR/Cas9. Like all our cool tools for recombinant DNA, we stole it from existing life forms (bacteria usually).
G.
The slugs at some point in their past acquired the genes from algae that are required to maintain/repair the chloroplasts that each one collects from the algae they eat. The horizontal gene transfer is (presumably) not an ongoing process but something that happened in their distant past.
The baby slugs start eating algae and they digest most of them but they save the chloroplasts from the algae cells and integrate them into their own tissue. Once they accumulate enough of them they basically become solar powered and don't need to eat anymore.
Normally the chloroplasts would not survive very long without an algae around them to take care of them, but this is where the genes that the slug has that originally came from the algae come into play. The slug is thus able to provide the things that its adopted chloroplasts need to survive for many months.
Definitely very cool.
G.
No, I'm sorry, it appears to me that this is all photoshopped fakery. Yes, two-photon lithography is a real thing, but in this case we have some artist claiming to have done things which are not currently possible.
This kind of thing happens pretty frequently now and it pisses me off, sorry. Real scientists and engineers (and even artists) dream and strive to accomplish great feats of engineering and discovery. But some people like to pretend their dreams are real and by presenting fake accomplishments to the world they damage society by trivializing the actual accomplishments of real innovators. They present their "art" as if it were real, and it gets sent around the internet and people believe that it's true, and that further blurs the public's view of what's real and what's art or pure fantasy. What's the point of trying to actually do something like this when everyone thinks it has already been done?
So, anyhow, a few minutes googling will expose some of the original pre-photoshop images that these people appropriated to create their "art". For example, the microphotograph of the needle's eye can be found here with no tiny statue in evidence:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/bioimage...
In addition, depth-of-field, lighting, and other cues like the fact that there's no actual connection to the substrate make these fakes pretty obvious.
Ergo, I must presume the whole thing, including the video interview is all just "performance art".
Here's a tip: amazing and groundbreaking scientific and technological breakthroughs are generally not announced to the world by artists.
G.
Statistics tell you everything about everyone and yet nothing about anyone.
Considering all the other ridiculous acquisition prices from Apple, Facebook, etc. recently, I think $2B for the Minecraft "brand" is awfully cheap.
So I would imagine the "leak" of the news about these negotiations would come from Notch's side, just to make sure everyone knows that there's an opportunity to bid higher.
I can imagine a few large media companies waking up this morning going "Shit, Mojang is actually for sale? I gotta get me some of that".
So just as everyone "knew" Google was buying Twitch a few weeks ago, I wouldn't count my Minecraft Chickens just yet.
But then...
MIcrosoFT
MInecraFT
G.
Mod parent up please. The Scientific Python stack (numpy, scipy, pandas, etc.) with it's iPython Notebook interface (in the style of Mathematica) is rapidly taking the world by storm, both in the sciences as well as Big Data Analytics and "Data Science".
If you like software toys, or ever use a calculator, go get yourself the free Anaconda scientific python distribution (Win/Mac/Linux) from Continuum and try out the iPython Notebook. Seriously this is an out-of-the-box computing tool that is AMAZING and can do practically anything. Anaconda is built on the Conda package manager which makes installing any and all bits and pieces you need for any of the popular Python packages completely effortless.
The existence of these tools also makes Python absolutely the best "programming" language to learn, even if you only use it for scripting/invoking all the existing libraries that exist. Also Python is available as a scripting language built into many software packages (Blender etc.) which makes it a tool/skill that just keeps on giving.
R is fine, and currently very popular, but it's also a one-trick-pony when compared to the thundering herd of functionality available on top of Python. You can even invoke R from within an iPython Notebook and pass DataFrames back and forth between R and pandas for example.
I used to love calculators (back when calculator was spelled H-P rather than T-I) but apart from the standardized testing requirement, and the fun of hacking on hand-held devices, it's just silly to use one any more.
G.
References:
https://store.continuum.io/csh... (free, open source)
http://nbviewer.ipython.org/ (great way to share Notebooks)
http://computableapp.com/ (the SciPy stack for iPads
http://omz-software.com/python... (Great iOS Python environment)
http://numfocus.org/projects/i... (Foundation supporting the core SciPy stack components)
http://pythontutor.com/ (This is just too cool)
"So if you were interested in bioinformatics, or computational economics, or quantitative anthropology, you really needed to be part of the computer science world."
These weren't even things in 1984.
Computers were not so pervasive that you were missing out on much if you didn't know anything about them.
G.
When it stopped meaning "Suspend output to terminal" along with it's partner CTRL-Q.
In-Band serial flow control ftw!
G.
It probably wears out in a year or two and/or requires $100/month in exotic maintenance supplies, and if you ever put wax on the car it will destroy its self-cleaning properties, etc.
G.
Work hard, save as much as you can, invest wisely. Should be easy to accumulate $1M.
Unfortunately that's not really all that much money these days...
G.
Horgan has been going on about stuff like this for years. He wrote a book in 1997 called "The End of Science" which I read and thought was completely ridiculous. My recollection (possibly faulty as it's been quite a few years) is that he came across as very anti-science and wandered off into religion later in that book. It feels to me as though he WANTS science to fail at some point.
I don't know why he seems hell-bent on convincing everyone that we're going to run out of things to discover, but I just don't buy it.
Even if we manage to get to the "bottom" of Physics some day that's cool and all but it's hardly the end of much. The biology of even simple cells is fantastically complex and there's lifetimes worth of discovery left there. Also even if some day we we know most or all of the "rules", the possible applications of these simple rules are virtually infinite, so no scientists or technologists or explorers are likely to be unemployed any time soon.
Every time humanity thinks it knows everything, someone thinks up a clever new idea for measuring things and boom, a whole new world of complexity opens up. There might be an end to the turtles at some point, but I'm not worried :)
G.
Yes, that could be. But it seems clear that the plane was not being controlled by anyone who wanted the plane or its passengers to be rescued, so "oh, I've just flown the plane as far away from civilization as possible and I've just run out of fuel, yet I think I'll try at the last moment to make a successful water landing so as many people as possible can be saved" just does not seem likely. Either the plane was not under control, or those in control were not trying to save anyone.
And more specifically I strongly suspect the life-rafts were equipped with EPIRB satellite transmitters, none of which were activated. So that sort of suggests there aren't a bunch of people floating in a raft somewhere (which likely would have shown up during the satellite debris search I suspect).
Even having a rough idea of where it went down might still mean that the wreckage is not found for a long time. There's a lotta damn ocean out there, and I don't think the range of the "pingers" on the data recorders is that huge.
One thing I've been curious about is the cockpit voice recorder on the 777, specifically what the recording duration is (is it just a 30m circular buffer) and can the pilots disable it and/or the flight data recorder by pulling circuit breakers?
G.
I first remember hearing you as a recurring guest during the Mike Hodel era of Hour 25 on KPFK in LA.
Any great memories of those days that you'd care to share?
G.
Yeah, but just think of the ad revenue from putting the resulting video up on YouTube for us all to laugh at.
POW! Ha ha, that never gets old.
G.
Pretty soon there will be a $399 version that's 10x better than the first generation.
If you can get $1,500 worth of fun showing it off to people in the first year then sure.
G.
Google with their insistence on a camera-based social-media augmented-reality creepy-invasive experience is going to set back the cause of direct human-computer interaction by years.
Honestly I don't want a camera in my "glass". I want a link to something like my desktop computing resources. It's an intimate experience between me and the computer, not between my computer and the environment around me. Sure there are some cute apps you can do with the camera, but the creepy factor is going to make people as self-conscious and obvious as a Segway rider (and we know how that turned out).
When I can PAY for a device that has MY interests at heart rather than the latest data power grab by Google then I'll be interested.
Connect me with the Internet then get the fuck out of the way. I don't need you to mediate every interaction I have, not only with information from the net but with the real world around me.
G.
Indeed, I think it's probably a good sign that kids today probably don't know what Astrology is and figure that it's "the one with the telescopes".
Similarly how many people here know the difference between Cryonics and Cryogenics? One is the study of ultra-low temperature, and the other is the movement surrounding freezing your body after you die with the goal of resurrecting you later when technology advances far enough. But do you know which is which without looking it up?
G.
A couple things...
The environment inside a cell is nothing like a lake or ocean that you can go merrily boating through. The cell is packed with molecules jostling each other around and it's random thermal motion that rules that world. Overcoming that with a motor and expecting to maneuver around to specific places just does not seem like it is going to be effective.
Nature is actually quite fond of electric motors (you have lots of them in every cell in the form of ATP Synthase, and they're used by bacteria to drive flagella etc.) but has apparently not found them useful for maneuvering around inside a cell.
G.
The original Spaceship One went something like five or six times higher, so I presume these are just "low altitude" test flights before they try for "space".
It's notable as continued progress in the development and testing of the Spaceship Two vehicle and system, not for its altitude.
Use of the word "record" in the summary is not particularly helpful.
G.
I'm going to start demanding a nickle in response to every press release announcing a new miracle battery technology.
I figure that will let me retire in about 18 months.
G.
The ability to join in a course based ONLY on the fact that you're interested in it, with no risk of "failure" is, I think, one of the best features of many MOOCs.
Where there's no difference between "auditing" a class and trying for a certificate, it means that people may be much more likely to try something which they might turn out to enjoy and do well in.
Now, I'm sure if you required people to pay something for the class, or commit to trying for a certificate such that there would be a record/cost of failure, then that would greatly increase the *percentage* of people who would pass. The question is whether you would get more people passing overall since it would stop everyone who was not sufficiently "serious" from attempting the course.
Even those who sign up on a whim and don't get far in a course will probably get something from it, and they might well decide that it was something they want to try again more seriously the next time once they have a taste of what it's about and the amount of work involved.
So absolutely I think "no pressure" is the right way to run a MOOC.
G.
I find that reading a good book is like a complete exercise workout for your brain, and I know I feel a lot sharper when I'm reading regularly.
If I'm having trouble working through some problem or other then taking some time to read is always helpful, even if the subject of the book is unrelated to the problem at hand.
It seems as though it needs to be something with a lot of prose but either fiction or non-fiction works.
Moderately technical non-fiction is OK as long as it is interesting and mentally stimulating (makes you stop and think etc.).
But pure technical books don't seem to help at all and may just clutter things up with new knowledge that the brain is trying to assimilate. So for example pretty much anything from O'Reilly will not make me feel generally smarter even though it may be very good at cramming in the domain specific knowledge I need for some project.
So just reading tech books is not very helpful at all, and needs to be supplemented with more general works from my experience.
G.
Well, Mathematica is now free for non-commercial use on the Raspberry Pi of all things.
You could run a Raspberry emulator and run it inside that on other operating systems. But I haven't looked at the license agreement so maybe that's explicitly prohibited.
No idea how it performs, but the screenshots at Wolfram look promising.
G.
http://xkcd.com/1234/
Probably my favorite XKCD strip so far.
G.
Seems to me that the device itself had to be relatively harmless unless you managed to actually crack it open and get directly at the cobalt. Maybe this was a very old device, but after previous deadly incidents of ignorant people getting their hands on such things, I would think they would be manufactured such that it would be REALLY difficult to get at the cobalt inside. Maybe if you stare into the bore of the thing for a while though?
If the cobalt had actually been accessed/exposed then I would expect them to have a nasty hot clean-up exercise on their hands, but the Mexican authorities seem awfully unconcerned.
I suspect they are just trying to scare the shit out of the thieves, perhaps to motivate them to turn themselves in hoping for some sort of treatment.
G.