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Benjamin Tseng › Comments
Public PhD defense - http://www.slideshare.net/yannick...
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joergkurtwegner, Steve Koch, Deepak Singh and 6 other people liked this
It's almost too nice to be a thesis defense!
- Benjamin Tseng
Laurent Keller: great work and apparently also great lab!
- Björn Brembs
is there supposed to be audio?
- Jean-Claude Bradley
trying out yet another twitter client - choqok, http://choqok.gnufolks.org/, KDE-based, not bad so far
Mike Chelen liked this
choqok seems pretty nice, which others have you tried so far?
- Mike Chelen
Pretty much all of them :-) Having issues with AIR clients on 64-bit ubuntu, otherwise twhirl would be my choice. Gwibber is OK but buggy and seems to have a memory leak. Gnome-based clients are rather ugly and basic.
- Neil Saunders
Just noticed choqok's "show conversation" feature - pops up a window showing a threaded set of replies. Nice.
- Neil Saunders
yeah, gwibber is my favorite, but sometimes requires restart. for something lightweight in gnome, maybe try pino or qwitik?
- Mike Chelen
Does AIR work at all on 64-bit Linux?
- Benjamin Tseng
AIR apps can be installed and work until you try to run something utilizing flash in your browser. At that point, chaos ensues and firefox segfaults. I found this out the hard way. http://ubuntuforums.org/archive...
- Chris Miller
Sarah Palin kicked out of hospital fundraiser in Canada. Palin has said that "Canada needs to dismantle its public health-care system and allow private enterprise to get involved and turn a profit" - http://www.reddit.com/r...
Steven Perez, Micah Wittman, Kevin Z and 6 other people liked this
It's amazing how some US citizens can be so blind to not see where market economy fails... free market requires buyers to be able to decide, "no, perhaps when you lower your price..." But it just does not work like that for health care... or housing... there does not exist something like a free market when basic needs are involved...
- Egon Willighagen
health care, housing: these are 'constrainted' markets... you just can't decide, no, let's not have a new kidney this year and wait until the market is better... no, let's use boxes this year until the house prizes have dropped a bit again...
- Egon Willighagen
Egon, you have put your finger on the worst thing about the US (imo, as a recent immigrant). It's not so much that citizens are so blind as that the kleptocracy in power understands your point completely, and completely does not care. Government of the people, by the rich, for the rich... I just hope for the revolution to be a "velvet" one when it comes.
- Bill Hooker
@Egon, I'm hardly an expert on policy issues, so I don't pretend to necessarily know best, but market failure doesn't necessarily mean a non-market solution is best; if anything it suggests that the focus should be in finding a way to establish a competitive market as to prevent a government from having too much influence over private citizens. Some ideas that I'd like to see evaluated...
more...
- Benjamin Tseng
Problem is that consumers lack the specialized skill to properly evaluate health care choices that means an expert ie The Gov must mediate the choices and provide regulations to preent the consumer from being unwitting victim same as they license doctors and lawters they must regulate teh healthcare indistry
- WarLord
"given that the American system "works" broadly speaking" -- that stretches "broadly" to breaking point imo. Have you ever "been without health insurance" (honest term, "failed to pay the required protection money") in the US?
- Bill Hooker
@Bill, I'm not going to pretend the American system is perfect (b/c it isn't), but almost all employed people in the US have healthcare that they are satisfied enough with such that they're not willing to take their chances on a public option; that doesn't mean I condone the failings of it with regards to access or equity, nor does it mean I wouldn't experience hardship if I lost my job...
more...
- Benjamin Tseng
@Benjamin, fair enough -- I can't pretend to be a policy or market expert either. I am also not exactly an impartial observer, being for the moment without health insurance in the US! (I spent my first 30 years in Australia, so my experience of a public option is that it has its problems too, but nothing like the massive systemic failures of the US system in its current form.)
- Bill Hooker
@Bill, I'm sorry to hear that :(. Does your employer not provide coverage? I thought you were at a biotech firm?
- Benjamin Tseng
"When there's a problem with your car engine, you fix the engine, you don't necessarily replace the whole car" Unless the engine was damaged because another part of the car is malfunctioning due to being poorly laid out. Many people can't switch coverage because of "pre-existing conditions" even though their current insurance is severely lacking in coverage and customer service. The...
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- Heather
Benjamin, I can point to a specific example (and I have always been covered and found the US system substandard). When you go to the ER, you could get billed the full amount for an emergency procedure, just because the doctor you saw wasn't contracted with your insurance company at that particular ER. Last I checked, when you go to the ER for an emergency procedure that's not what you...
more...
- Deepak Singh
@Benjamin -- we're working on it. I should have said "temporarily" or similar. Can't explain in detail -- public company disclosure blah blah blah. Suffice to say I'm not being exploited, and didn't want to give that impression!
- Bill Hooker
“Nerd” and “Geek” Should Be Banned, Professor Says - http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009...
Benjamin Tseng liked this
Methinks the prof doth protest too much... :)
- Benjamin Tseng
what a nerd
- Frank
What Frank said.
- Bill Hooker
Snow is a lot less fun when I'm digging my car out of a snowdrift using an ice scraper. Also when I need to dig out a parking space at home.
You shoulda come out to the West Coast...
- Benjamin Tseng
Hmmm... my Friendfeed-Twitter link has broken down; no matter how many times I attempt to reactivate it, it won't let me...
Hmm... all I did was try 20 times and it resolved itself...?
- Benjamin Tseng
FriendFeed Force Word Wrap | userstyles.org - http://userstyles.org/styles...
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Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic, رضا, Raphael, Raphael and 5 other people liked this
"forces wrap on friendfeed posts and comments"
- Mike Chelen
from Bookmarklet
:D
- Benjamin Tseng
Solved the problem.
- Itachi
A+++, would wrap again.
- Raphael, Raphael
Teaching a Computer to Understand Japanese - http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009...
Something you'll be working on? :)
- Benjamin Tseng
Rat-Shit-Covered Physicians Baffled By Spread Of Black Plague - http://www.theonion.com/content...
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Benjamin Tseng liked this
Science in those days was hard
- Benjamin Tseng
How about trying to use Google Wave to cover a talk? - http://www.doodle.com/8zg76sy...
Mike Chelen, Lucas Brouwers, François Dongier and 6 other people liked this
I'm thinking of trying to simulate covering a talk by simultaneously watching the same video, e.g. this one by Gary Bader: http://www.youtube.com/watch... Follow link above to a Doodle date finding poll
- Michael Kuhn
from Bookmarklet
I've proposed the afternoon in Europe, so that people from the US can join in the morning
- Michael Kuhn
I've put in my availability. Should be interesting - we can compare (subjectively) the experience on that as compared with our known experiences on FF. Btw, if anyone wants a wave account, just let me know. We all have loads of invites now, it seems.
- Allyson Lister
I've also put in my availability.
- Graham Steel
thanks Allyson, Roland and Graham. I agree with Ally that we should compare Wave to FF, so I'd like to give priority to people who have covered ISMB. Also, I'm just curious to see how well Wave handles Ally's writing speed. :)
- Michael Kuhn
I'll be covering the Recomb Satellite via FF for now; given the limited number of people who have access to it so far that seems to be the only venue.
- Oliver Hofmann
I'm giving a talk on Wave in a few weeks - was thinking I might put the slides in as images, then work through them using the slideshow function - if I can stream audio out and people could leave comments on the slides as we go...but collaborative note taking with a relatively small number of people seems to work really well - if you can pull the video/slides in even better.
- Cameron Neylon
The talk is supposed to be 3:30 on Tuesday 15th but is late in the day so would probably be later. Will looking into what networks facilities are available...
- Cameron Neylon
@Michael, nothing can handle Ally's writing speed :D
- Benjamin Tseng
@Cameron, forgive me if this is a dumb question, but how would a talk like that work? would you interrupt it to answer comments/questions as they came in?
- Benjamin Tseng
@Michael, @Benjamin - you're really bigging me up there! :) FF seemed to be able to keep up, so hopefully so will Wave :)
- Allyson Lister
@Benjamin - thinking I would have the slides in a Wave, webcast video, people could comment next to the slides as appropriate (or inappropriate) and then at the end you have an annotated version of the talk as it happened. Could certainly answer questions - people often interrupt inside the room anyway - but there wouldn't be a simple mechanism to get speakers attention. Anyway I don't...
more...
- Cameron Neylon
looks like Wed, Dec 16 at 4 pm UT / 5 pm CET will be it. (Sorry Roland.) Any other nominations than for what to watch instead of Gary Bader: Predicting Protein Interaction from the Genome, http://www.youtube.com/watch... ?
- Michael Kuhn
@Cameron: I also think having slides and comments in the same Wave is a separate experiment, also streaming live can have its own problems. so let's keep this one simple :)
- Michael Kuhn
Yep, that's cool. I should be available on 16th as well anyway
- Cameron Neylon
Just saw this thread and plan to be there on 16th. My suggestions for videos to watch are at http://en.citizendium.org/wiki... . Alternatively, we could also go for 2-3 TED talks where the change of subject may provide for additional testing functionality.
- Daniel Mietchen
A further suggestion would be to go for Michael Nielsen's talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch... .
- Daniel Mietchen
*bump* I've created a Wave with those that entered their times on Doodle. Could you guys please check and vote for a talk?
- Michael Kuhn
Wow, I dreamed that I was a grad student at the Intergalactic Space Academy.
What the heck were you studying? Was it like Starfleet academy?
- Benjamin Tseng
Room likes + comments 2009, "final" version.
Jan Aerts, Berci Mesko, MD, Benjamin Tseng and 10 other people liked this
It's unfortunate that you can't delete an uploaded file when editing. OK, this is the version with correct counts for each date - as opposed to the previous, which used the count for the first occurrence of the (multiple, same) date in the file (oops!)
- Neil Saunders
hmm, the nice correlations dissapeared :(
- Rajarshi Guha
Alas. Beautiful hypotheses slain by ugly facts :-)
- Neil Saunders
minor quibble here. Is it just me, or do others think that three-color heat maps are overused? It makes sense when showing bi-directional patterns (e.g., up- and down-regulation). But here, the middle color doesn't really have any meaning, does it? </quibble>
- Andrew Su
It's a work in progress :-) It's unclear to me which white is "middle" and which white is "no data". But I guess I'd argue that middle = neither high nor low.
- Neil Saunders
Is there any way to also track how many people have been subscribed? On an aggregate level, it doesn't look like the community is dying or growing, but if it were comments or likes per user -- would that be a better metric?
- Benjamin Tseng
Per user stats would be interesting. I'm not sure if the API returns "date user joined" - will look into that.
- Neil Saunders
Anyone get the sense that this scientist wants a mega-cash prize to fund his research on mega-cash prizes? - http://www.ncbirofl.com/2009...
"We argue that the most ambitious science is intrinsically riskier science, more likely to fail. It is almost always a safer career strategy for the best scientists to seek to extend knowledge more modestly and to build incrementally on existing ideas and methods. Therefore, higher rewards for success are a necessary incentive to encourage top scientists to work on the most important scientific problems, ones where the solution has potentially revolutionary implications. We suggest that mega-cash prizes (measured in tens of millions of dollars) are a suitable reward for those individuals (or institutions) whose work has triggered radically new directions in science."
- Benjamin Tseng
from Bookmarklet
How bad *is* "Climategate"? (HT: @anthonyphan) - http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009...
Michael Kuhn, Nils Reinton, Lars Juhl Jensen and Neil Saunders liked this
Hmm. That's actually very interesting - albeit focused on one station. Would be nice to see responses from scientists - perhaps they're buried in the (many) comments?
- Neil Saunders
Yeah I'm hoping RealClimate or someone like that will do a feature on it...
- Benjamin Tseng
Makes me think that the data scientists here should go off in search of public data and see what they can find.
- Neil Saunders
Interesting write up... means nothing of course (wrt global warming or not), as the author himselves notes too... but it does make the point that data this important to mankind must be Open. Period. Maybe the people in Copenhagen can decide on that: make all data used in climate studies lawfully required to be Open.
- Egon Willighagen
SpaceWeather.com -- Strange light over Norway - possible failed Russian ICBM launch - http://spaceweather.com/
Steve Koch and Benjamin Tseng liked this
Not photochopped, according to NASA.
- Mr. Gunn
from Bookmarklet
It is a very cool picture, although I am distinctly worried that it IS a failed ICBM...
- Benjamin Tseng
Hungry Amoebas Spawn Biggest Viruses Ever - http://www.wired.com/wiredsc... (via http://friendfeed.com/benjami...)
Deepak Singh, Ami Iida, Steven Perez and 5 other people liked this
Uhh ? Help, I cannot find their citation "Giant Marseillevirus highlights the role of amoebae as a melting pot in emergence of chimeric microorganisms.” By Mickael Boyer & al. PNAS, Vol. 106 No. 48, December 7, 2009" in http://www.pnas.org/content... ....
- Pierre Lindenbaum
Curious, I can't find it either -- anyone?
- Benjamin Tseng
No sign of it in current issue (which is 106(49) Dec 8, not 106(48) Dec 7) or early edition. Wouldn't be the first time that Wired screwed up a reference.
- Neil Saunders
Ah, thanks Thomas
- Pierre Lindenbaum
Just installed Firefox 3.6 beta; definitely runs faster, although I'm wondering if that's because Google Gears doesn't work on it yet
Forget Gears, they're dropping it. Here comes HTML5!
- Neil Saunders
I keep waiting for it...
- Benjamin Tseng
Grading algebra-heavy problem sets is soul-sucking.
Any awesome algebra mistake stories?
- Benjamin Tseng
Comics - Explosm.net - http://www.explosm.net/comics...
Benjamin Tseng liked this
Time travel -- it should be used to replace all monotonous/mundane things :)
- Benjamin Tseng
The Least I Could Do explains the truth behind the flu vaccine (HT: @billjusino) - http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic...
Darn those budget cuts!
- Benjamin Tseng
from Bookmarklet
Little Red Riding Hood For Engineers - http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2009...
Benjamin Tseng liked this
Hat tip to http://friendfeed.com/mkosloff
- Iddo Friedberg
The music is pretty trippy lol
- Benjamin Tseng
Fascinating interactive map showing how Americans spent every minute of a day in 2008 - http://www.nytimes.com/...
mridul, Jean-Claude Bradley, Neil Saunders and Anna Croft liked this
how can computer use be 1%?
- Jean-Claude Bradley
For an average person, JC. People who don't own one or rarely ever use one averaged in here.
- Mr. Gunn
The downward spikes when the employed take their lunch breaks are interesting to follow in the other categories like age. I also expected to see a much bigger difference in time spent sleeping among the have/don't have kids category.
- Mr. Gunn
Mr. G - I thought I had heard that computer time now surpasses TV in a recent poll, which made sense to me given the perceived popularity of video games, email, Facebook and internet porn.
- Jean-Claude Bradley
"perceived popularity", @Jean-Claude? It's ok, we know what you spend your time on the computer doing :-P; I had heard that too -- but I think those samples are biased towards kids/young adults. If you include more senior folk and if you discount all work time spent on a computer, this makes a little more sense.
- Benjamin Tseng
no comment Benjamin :)
- Jean-Claude Bradley
Exactly, Ben. If you take the lunchtime spikes as an indicator of the proportion of the group working, then look at the age categories, you'll see that among young people, computer time really comprsses TV time, but less so among older or less employed groups.
- Mr. Gunn
Maybe I made my exam question too hard; only one person got all of the parts correct, and even that one I had to forgive some errors.
Benjamin Tseng liked this
Yeah... you could say that :) -- what was your question on?
- Benjamin Tseng
biggest item in my tweetcloud - surprise surprise - "data"
Mind sharing the actual cloud with us? :)
- Benjamin Tseng
Unfortunately, my most frequent word is "Liked". Curse that FF-Twitter integration :-)
- Neil Saunders
Are Bioinformatics Results Too Good To Be True? at So much to do, so little time - http://blog.rguha.net/?p=457
Pedro Beltrao, Benjamin Tseng and Neil Saunders liked this
There are hundreds of papers on normalization techniques and gene selection methods. And each one claims to be better than the others. But in most cases, the improvements seem incremental. Is the difference really significant? It’s not always clear.
- Deepak Singh
Someone else just realised that the whole concept of a bioinformatics journal is a bit silly :-)
- Neil Saunders
But.. the p value said it was ok...
- Benjamin Tseng
lol
- Deepak Singh
What's happend to the rendering of my FF page. I have a scrollbar at the bottom and can scroll into whitespace
Mike Chelen liked this
don't know but I've got the same and its kind of irritating. How many people use FF at full width with 50 inch screens?
- Cameron Neylon
It's alright now or so it seems
- Deepak Singh
Nope, spoke too soon
- Deepak Singh
Interesting. If I go to the permalink for this thread, I don't get it, nor do I see it when I go to my page, but get it on the home view and for My Discussions
- Deepak Singh
I think it's due to this post: https://friendfeed.com/jcbradl... :-)
- Neil Saunders
Ah yes. So the moment that gets off my front page ;)
- Deepak Singh
Lousy amino acid sequence...
- Benjamin Tseng
a userstyle can force word wrap :) http://userstyles.org/styles...
- Mike Chelen
Much as I love FriendFeed, its real-time nature is starting to take up too much of my work day. Same goes for Twitter. Any tips for regular, but less frequent ways to use it? For example, if I wanted to check/contribute once or twice a day, what would be a good strategy? I tend to check GReader in this way - how about the FF atom feed?
JoeCamel, Richard Akerman, Anders Norgaard and 11 other people liked this
I'd recommend checking it out at the end of your day. Things will likely be slower, allowing you to catch up and comment as you will. Turn email updates off if you don't want to be tempted to come back to answer what someone posts outside of your allotted FF visit time.
- Spidra Webster
Try the pause button.
- Raphael, Raphael
Try putting people/groups you want to specifically check on in a special list, that way when you do make your way to FF you can quickly check on the things that interest you most.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
The FF feed is one way to do it, but you'll just end up clicking through to friendfeed, so it'll only save you time if you need to screen through lots of posts. I'm also not sure what order things will come out in. My strategy is just to install the Cleaner Friendfeed Widescreen stylesheets and make liberal use of "Best of Day".
- Mr. Gunn
Sounds like I need a better client. Something that will show only changes since my last visit (like a feed reader), but also allow post, comment and like.
- Neil Saunders
FF needs a good client. Let me know if you find anything.
- Mr. Gunn
We need real-time filtering in my opinion, real-time feeds are becoming just like stocks, they become addictive and eat a lot of your time!
- Alvin
I'm scrolling through everything frontpage in the morning, then "best of day". Same again in the evening. Not too much time.
- Björn Brembs
check fewer times, make groups, and start out with surfing thru "best of day/wek/month" first
- chaz2b
I suggest you write a script that changes your Host file at certain times of the day. The alternative host file will point friendfeed.com to some horrible site that you would never go to while at work.
- Uncle CW™
Neil, I can sympathize as my work has recently picked up in intensity. I wind up checking once or twice and just skimming, but in the evening (when I have more time), I use the "Best of Day" to really focus what I spend my time reading.
- Benjamin Tseng
Ration yourself - check in, check out.
- AJCann
Screen the people you follow mercilessly. Keep only low-volume, high-signal people. Someone may post great stuff, but if they publish 20 tweets a day and 18 of them are useless to me, I'll pass. If the idea is *that* great, you'll hear about it from a dozen different people reposting it.
- Chris Miller
I have the same problem with "real-time" social networks. I've piped FF into my Twitter account and keep a client open all the time, but I've faced up to the fact that there's a lot I miss. @Chris Based on your point, I've revised my FF services to reduce the amount of noise and redundancy. Thanks.
- Walter Jessen
Also, make use of the search operators to filter by service (which you can still do with a userscript or in adv. search)
- Mr. Gunn
Gmail Supports Attachments Even When You Are Not Attached To The Internet - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
This feature has made sending mail in Gmail slow and appear buggy (mail stays as a draft and in outbox for as much as a minute, etc)...
- Anuraag
Yeah, I just noticed that -- BOOOO
- Benjamin Tseng
Introducing the (rigorously peer-reviewed, of course) PLoS store! - http://scienceblogs.com/clock...
Chris Lasher, Bill Anderson, Kubke and 2 other people liked this
I will <3 you forever if you add buttons.
- D0r0th34
they do have buttons. I know 'cause I got a bag with ~100 buttons in it a few months ago.
- Graham Steel
gotta love the permalink on that post...
- Cameron Neylon
LOL
- Graham Steel
Buttons as in "aluminum badges to put on a shirt" or as in "images that one puts on a website sidebar that serve as links"?
- Bora Zivkovic
The former, Bora, thanks. It's honestly sort of goofy that OA Week didn't have its own button store, but it didn't.
- D0r0th34
We have those in the store, here are some examples: http://www.zazzle.com/button-... http://www.zazzle.com/button-... http://www.zazzle.com/button-...
- Bora Zivkovic
Yay! I <3 you forever! (Could you add the straight-up small orange open-access one? I know it doesn't advertise PLoS, but you'd still get a kickback, yeah?)
- D0r0th34
How do I know these were rigorously peer-reviewed... :)
- Benjamin Tseng
Feel free to do your own post-manufacture peer-review. Then post a comment, note or rating. ;-)
- Bora Zivkovic
i picked up a little orange open access button (no PLOS printed on it) at last year's science blogging conf, i think.
- Christina Pikas
yup, it's possible to get 'em, but you have to go through one of the custom button companies. I'm lazy. I want one-click ordering. :)
- D0r0th34
the URL for this post says "rigorously pee." I giggled.
- mjc
Actually, mjc has a point :)
- Micah Wittman
Everything we do should be rigorous!
- Bora Zivkovic
Hmm. I've got about 40 OA buttons left:- http://www.flickr.com/photos... After a quick rummage through, I can scientifically confirm that there are 14 of the straight-up small orange open-access ones:- http://www.flickr.com/photos... D, I'll see if I can teleport these to you directly.
- Graham Steel
So sad to see that "open access" underwear isn't available :(
- Brian Krueger - LabSpaces
Err, steady on there, Brian... http://is.gd/4Xll1
- Graham Steel
+1 Graham Goggles and capes ala XKCD's Doctorow cartoon would be of perhaps niche interest, I suppose.
- Mr. Gunn
Was browsing through the PLoS store last nicht (Scottish for night) and I could not work out what to buy. Looking again today, there are 18 pages to stroll through. I can however exclusively report that Mum & Dad just bought me this PLoS Hamsters hoodie http://www.zazzle.com/hoodie_... for my birthday tomorrow. Nice.
- Graham Steel
"Thank you for your Zazzle order. The following items have been queued for shipment: Hoodie (Dark) - Basic Hooded Sweatshirt, Navy Blue, Adult L"
- Graham Steel
w00t! I also bought a couple of things myself today, to give as presents.
- Bora Zivkovic
For some reason, Ive always wanted a Hamsters Love PLoS thingy. Having considered the options, and whilst I sure ain't "a Hoodie" from the UK perspective:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... I am well lookin' forward to wearing this purchasement. All of my OA garments are t-shirts. A warm winter sweatshirt (hood an option) plus that logo was 'I can haz' :-)
- Graham Steel
Can PLoS make some Hobermann spheres with toy hamster inside? :)
- Shirley Wu
from twhirl
LOL. Perhaps Sugar Gliders...
- Bora Zivkovic
I now haz my brand new Hamsters love PLoS Hoodie. Arrived this morning. Will be wearing it to work tomorrow :)
- Graham Steel
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