3 ms·

DNA And Computers Are Reading Each Other

48 points by csbartus 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago
It's a pity this won't get many votes because of the timing of the posting (which seems to be a big factor in making the homepage of HN), it's very interesting stuff. Scroll down for the videos.
- yannis 17y ago
  'In this future — whose underpinnings, as Drs. Church and Venter demonstrated, are here already— life as we know it is transformed not by the error catastrophe of radiation damage to our genetic processes, but by the far greater upheaval caused by discovering how to read genetic sequences directly into computers, where the code can be replicated exactly, manipulated freely, and translated back into living organisms by writing the other way. "We can program these cells as if they were an extension of the computer," George Church announced, and proceeded to explain just how much progress has already been made'. Amazing stuff! 40 years from now login to have your genes changed to change the colour of your eyes. Pity I will probably not be around!
  - csbartus 17y ago
    Wait ... the Singularity is over the corner! In 10 years you'll become part of this synthetic life.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      I doubt it. The singularity may be a fluke of observation bias, it is very well possible that because you are always at the forefront of technological development when you are alive (or you'd be living in the past) you perceive this tremendous advance during your lifetime, leading you to conclude that pretty soon we'll 'take off'. The singularity has been nicknamed 'the rapture of the nerds'.
      - csbartus 17y ago
        The Singularity must be the next metasystem transition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition), the Control of Culture. As soon as old media will get napstered and Culture will become impossible to be manipulated, and, as soon as we uploaded ourselves completely to the web --- we will have a new digital universe assuring parallel existences and a gateway to the 'old' biological life. Is that good enough for a Singularity?
        jacquesm 17y ago
        > as soon as we uploaded ourselves completely to the web - I think I see a few technological snags there.
        csbartus 17y ago
        "The world will be changed by the ability to routinely read genetic sequences into computing systems and then store, replicate, alter and insert them back into living cells." Source: http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/synthetic-life/ http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/synthetic-lif... , based on the current article.
    - yannis 17y ago
      I wish! But just looking as to how long it took to partially fix IE, I very much doubt it!
- csbartus 17y ago
  Today I've posted (until now) ~ 4-5 posts to check the best period to put interesting content on HN :D Later I was asking PG with some statistics (nr. of users online / day period) but without too much echo ..
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Looks like it made it. Maybe there should be a 're-run' option on HN :) ? Plenty of good stuff gets lost along the way never to be re-submitted.
    - csbartus 17y ago
      Somehow the front page should become customizable. HN userbase became (too) large and there is much noise. The problem is not with the nature of the content/submissions but with the only one filter presenting the same headlines for many different point of views/groups of interest.
    - yannis 17y ago
      Sure, it looks when we are awake the rest of HN is sleeping :)
    - csbartus 17y ago
      @jacquesm: how did you get 5539 karma points in 253 days? (20+ karma a day). You should have a good recipe hitting so hard ...
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        hm. nothing special, really. I guess I just spend too much time here :) Check my posting and comments history if you don't believe it. It certainly wasn't done by posting techcrunch.com or mashable.com stories, I promise you that.
      - khafra 17y ago
        He's always posting stories from his work and academic history, which works because he seems to have done projects with everyone from Ada Lovelace to Yukihiro Matsumoto; and regards installing Linux on a beowulf cluster of toasters and finding SHA3 collisions in polynomial time as a trivial hack which he can explain to a layman.
yread 17y ago
Wow what forum of people there! If the roof fell down in that building, ... :)

48 points by csbartus 17y ago

It's a pity this won't get many votes because of the timing of the posting (which seems to be a big factor in making the homepage of HN), it's very interesting stuff. Scroll down for the videos.

yannis 17y ago
'In this future — whose underpinnings, as Drs. Church and Venter demonstrated, are here already— life as we know it is transformed not by the error catastrophe of radiation damage to our genetic processes, but by the far greater upheaval caused by discovering how to read genetic sequences directly into computers, where the code can be replicated exactly, manipulated freely, and translated back into living organisms by writing the other way. "We can program these cells as if they were an extension of the computer," George Church announced, and proceeded to explain just how much progress has already been made'. Amazing stuff! 40 years from now login to have your genes changed to change the colour of your eyes. Pity I will probably not be around!
- csbartus 17y ago
  Wait ... the Singularity is over the corner! In 10 years you'll become part of this synthetic life.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    I doubt it. The singularity may be a fluke of observation bias, it is very well possible that because you are always at the forefront of technological development when you are alive (or you'd be living in the past) you perceive this tremendous advance during your lifetime, leading you to conclude that pretty soon we'll 'take off'. The singularity has been nicknamed 'the rapture of the nerds'.
    - csbartus 17y ago
      The Singularity must be the next metasystem transition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition), the Control of Culture. As soon as old media will get napstered and Culture will become impossible to be manipulated, and, as soon as we uploaded ourselves completely to the web --- we will have a new digital universe assuring parallel existences and a gateway to the 'old' biological life. Is that good enough for a Singularity?
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        > as soon as we uploaded ourselves completely to the web - I think I see a few technological snags there.
      - csbartus 17y ago
        "The world will be changed by the ability to routinely read genetic sequences into computing systems and then store, replicate, alter and insert them back into living cells." Source: http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/synthetic-life/ http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/synthetic-lif... , based on the current article.
  - yannis 17y ago
    I wish! But just looking as to how long it took to partially fix IE, I very much doubt it!
csbartus 17y ago
Today I've posted (until now) ~ 4-5 posts to check the best period to put interesting content on HN :D Later I was asking PG with some statistics (nr. of users online / day period) but without too much echo ..
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Looks like it made it. Maybe there should be a 're-run' option on HN :) ? Plenty of good stuff gets lost along the way never to be re-submitted.
  - csbartus 17y ago
    Somehow the front page should become customizable. HN userbase became (too) large and there is much noise. The problem is not with the nature of the content/submissions but with the only one filter presenting the same headlines for many different point of views/groups of interest.
  - yannis 17y ago
    Sure, it looks when we are awake the rest of HN is sleeping :)
  - csbartus 17y ago
    @jacquesm: how did you get 5539 karma points in 253 days? (20+ karma a day). You should have a good recipe hitting so hard ...
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      hm. nothing special, really. I guess I just spend too much time here :) Check my posting and comments history if you don't believe it. It certainly wasn't done by posting techcrunch.com or mashable.com stories, I promise you that.
    - khafra 17y ago
      He's always posting stories from his work and academic history, which works because he seems to have done projects with everyone from Ada Lovelace to Yukihiro Matsumoto; and regards installing Linux on a beowulf cluster of toasters and finding SHA3 collisions in polynomial time as a trivial hack which he can explain to a layman.

yread 17y ago

Wow what forum of people there! If the roof fell down in that building, ... :)