Top all-time · #1740
Living in an Ivory Basement
Personal blog · ivory.idyll.org/blogsciencedata
Living in an Ivory Basement is a personal blog at ivory.idyll.org about science and data. Since 2007, 42 different Hacker News readers have linked it 52 times, most often “PyCon 2013 and Codes of Conduct, more generally”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (15) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Titus Brown's blog for its academic programming and bioinformatics writing, including posts on reproducibility, PyCon 2013 and codes of conduct, and Python coding practice.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- Called a good blog for bioinformatics and academic programming, a good summary of PyCon harassment, and among the most interesting PyCon 2013 posts.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 15 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- PyCon 2013 and Codes of Conduct, more generally4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-03-20
- The coming archivability crisis in scientific software2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-01-12
- My 2013 PyCon talk: Awesome Big Data Algorithms2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-03-19
- The Use and Abuse of Keyword Arguments in Python2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-03-13
- /blog/2017-top-ten-reasons-blog-posts.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-04-17
- /blog/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-10-29
- Intermediate and Advanced Software Carpentry in Python2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-04-15
What Hacker News says?
I never said that they were. I'm trying to help Joeboy understand why sexual content can trigger legitimate fears. Note that at this very conference, there was other inappropriate stuff going on: http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/pycon-2013-and-codes-of-conduct.... So although I agree that Adira was in no immediate danger, I think she was right to see jokes like that as being part of an environment that alienates women an…
Comment linking /blog/pycon-2013-and-codes-of-conduct.html
on “The PyCon Incident”Submitted How open is too open? as a story · 113 points
HN discussion> It's not sexist to make jokes about the word "dongle" sounding like "dong". It is sexist to create a sexualized environment at a tech conference, because the consequences of that environment hurt women much more than they hurt men; it's a failure to show consideration to women. mr-hank has admitted that he made a sexual joke about big dongles and apologized for it. Making sexual jokes about big dongles is creating…
Comment linking /blog/pycon-2013-and-codes-of-conduct.html
on “SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas”Submitted Excerpts from Coders at Work: Joe Armstrong Interview (2013) as a story · 72 points
HN discussionThis piece seems to have touched a nerve in the bioinformatics community, though I have no idea why. Much of what is said here is obvious to anyone working in academic research that requires programming expertise. Yes, industry typically pays more than academia. Yes, most molecular biologists cannot code and rely on bioinformatics support. Yes, biological data is often noisy. Yes, code in bionformatics is often rese…
Comment linking /blog/category/science.html
on “A farewell to bioinformatics (2012)”Submitted Trying (and failing?) to build a Scalable CountMin Sketch as a story · 19 points
HN discussionIt depends what you're interested in. I found these two the most interesting: http://pyvideo.org/video/1796/simplecv-computer-vision-using... http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/2013-pycon-awesome-big-data-algo... (No video posted yet?)
Comment linking /blog/2013-pycon-awesome-big-data-algorithms-talk.html
on “PyCon 2013 Videos”Submitted My 2013 PyCon talk: Awesome Big Data Algorithms as a story · 8 points
HN discussionTitus Brown also a blog post on this earlier this year "The top 10 reasons why blog posts are better than scientific papers" http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/2017-top-ten-reasons-blog-posts.... and it generated similar discussion. There are a few elements they emphasize. One is what the blog format enables that traditional publishing doesn't support. Those are things like having real-time feedback and comments, being abl…
Comment linking /blog/2017-top-ten-reasons-blog-posts.html
on “Reasons blog posts can be of higher scientific quality than journal articles”Submitted Why Rust is an increasingly beloved part of my programming toolbox as a story · 7 points
HN discussionOne more related link on the same subject, "The top 10 reasons why blog posts are better than scientific papers": http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/2017-top-ten-reasons-blog-posts.... * there is a "maybe satire" tag added by the author to this post.
Comment linking /blog/2017-top-ten-reasons-blog-posts.html
on “Reasons blog posts can be of higher scientific quality than journal articles”Submitted The (lack of) testing death spiral as a story · 6 points
HN discussionWell, the context here is discussion of the problem of unreplicable research. I do get the impression (including from your post and reply) that computational biologists need to get their act together on that front; see http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/ for one researcher in that field who sometimes blogs on this theme.
Comment linking /blog/
on “Science has lost its way, at a big cost to humanity”Submitted Intermediate and Advanced Software Carpentry in Python as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI would prefer recommending a stable build process: — a Docker image can be just like having a VM image or that one PC in the corner of the lab nobody is sure is unneeded. It's far better than having nothing or just the result file but it still has the possibility of needing to reverse-engineer the internal state and given how fast the Docker world moves I would not want to bet on format compatibility 5 years out. D…
Comment linking /blog/tag/reproducibility.html
on “Data science tips and tricks from the developer community”Submitted The coming archivability crisis in scientific software as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYou shouldn't be using kwargs! That is also well known to be bad practice (or it should be anyway). https://medium.com/codex/stop-using-kwargs-as-method-argumen... http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/on-kwargs.html Give me another one.
Comment linking /blog/on-kwargs.html
on “Dict Unpacking in Python”Submitted Intro to Nose – Python testing framework as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt makes me sad that HN reinforces the fact that women have a hard time participating in s/tech conferences/tech forums/g PyCon was 20% female this year which was a remarkable milestone. Along with this milestone came an amplification of why it was so hard for PyCon to reach that milestone. This was not an isolated issue; Titus' post provides a good summary of the general harassment women faced at PyCon http://ivory…
Comment linking /blog/pycon-2013-and-codes-of-conduct.html
on “Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out”Submitted PyCon 2013 and Codes of Conduct, more generally as a story · 3 points
HN discussionVarious people, e.g. Titus Brown, have been trying to take a different approach. Titus doesn't practice open notebook science, but he does try and practice "replication". More on replication: http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/apr-12/replication-i.html The paper gets it own website: http://ged.msu.edu/papers/2012-diginorm/ ; which includes arXic preprint, data and code repositories and even an AMI with everything loaded. B…
Comment linking /blog/apr-12/replication-i.html
on “Secret Computer Code Threatens Science”Submitted How long does it take to produce scientific software? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSometimes people will distinguish between "replicating a result" and "reproducing an experiment" – with the differences more prominent when you are dealing with straight data. Replicating a result simply means you confirm that the results aren't made up – you start with what they say they started with, you get the result they say. Reproducing an experiment might mean working from their conclusions, not trying to rep…
Comment linking /blog/replication-i.html
on “Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff, and There Are Serious Problems”Submitted Stop worrying and love the coming archivability crisis in scientific software as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttp://ivory.idyll.org/blog/ is a good one if you're into bioinformatics and academic programming in general.
Comment linking /blog/
on “Ask HN: What programming blogs do you recommend to read regularly and why?”Submitted Paper of the future as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAnd some interesting links from my bookmarks: * Intermediate and Advanced Software Carpentry in Python: http://ivory.idyll.org/articles/advanced-swc/ * Beej's Guide to Network Programming: http://beej.us/guide/bgnet/output/html/singlepage/bgnet.html * How To Use Linux epoll with Python: http://scotdoyle.com/python-epoll-howto.html * 6.006: Introduction to Algorithms, using Python: http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.006/…
Comment linking /articles/advanced-swc/
on “Good to Great Python reads”Submitted Coders at Work Interview: Peter Deutsch as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSomebody observed (around here or reddit?) recently that there are no unemployed mathematicians. By that, s/he probably meant statistics/probability, linear algebra and diff EQ's as good things to be good at: http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/3/12/learning-about-m... ===================== FP, there's pretty strong interest in erlang, ocaml, haskell, F#, scala , clojure. Also scheme/CL . http://stackoverflow.com…
Comment linking /blog/jun-10/functional-programming-languages
on “My next step: Mathematics and functional programming?”Submitted The Cost of Open Science as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
