Steve Yegge, "What Would You Do With Your Own Google?" - OSCON Data 2011

I recommend watching Steve Yegge's excellent presentation at O'Reilly's OSCON Data. He points out a number of books in the video, but in general this is an excellent talk about preparing to solve hard problems in bio. ▶ this video

This is getting serious here in southern Mexico, we just had a chikungunya outbreak a year ago and now this. These situations remind me of a talk given at Oscon Data by Steve Yegge about working on the things that matter[0]. Virus are complex and modelling molecular biology requires CS expertise, it's kind of sad that we're normally discussing the new JS frameworks instead of working on the hard(and important)problems. [0] ▶ this video

Like cat picture projects. Interesting how people think the OP story is real and many people mistakeningly think Steve Yegge quit Google (he just quit the project). link ▶ this video

> But instead they feel motivated to work for a big company on long-term useless problems. I remember this opinion also surfacing with the Steve Yegge OSCON 2011 presentation[1]. In which he complained about Google, and all the hard working people there, focusing on social media instead of hard problems. There was a good discussion as to why these problems are not in the forefront. [1] ▶ this video Subsequent discussion: link link link

I closed my fb account two or three years ago, at a point when I was really virulently anti-fb. I still haven't re-opened it, but I've mellowed a bit--not that I approve of it, really--it's a disgusting panopticon at best--but it's at least sufficiently obvious that it's hard for me to feel like anyone hangs out there without understanding what the basic dynamic is. Now, articles like this don't make me feel bad for the kids who 'have to' use facebook (not that they don't; it sucks being ostracized, we all know). Really, they make me remember this talk by Steve Yegge[1] about how stupid it is that so many smart people spend their time working on cat pictures. [1] ▶ this video

That may have been some people's expectation, but as his public G+ page says[0], he still works at Google. Sergey called his piece a 'night-time aid'[1]. Also Steve's take on it [2]. That said, the OP was talking about his OSCON talk (check out from ~minute 13 onward): ▶ this video [0]: link [1]: link [2]: link

I think there is this (from my limited experience rather naive) belief that if a bunch of smart computer people get together, they can solve problems that have flummoxed biologists for long. This is something pervasive which afflicts even the smartest ones (See Steve Yegge's talk ▶ this video on how The Data Mining needs to be used more to solve problems in biology). Having spent some time in grad school foolishly believing that all biology needed was a sprinkle of math and a generous dollop of python skills, I think the problem is that in Computer Science we have problems that are sometimes insanely hard but due to the several layers of abstraction, are inherently rather deterministic and much less noisy than real-world systems. I think the best comprehensible example comes from the physical layer of most electronics where several of the modeling equations are naive approximations designed to work under specific conditions. The complexity becomes even more overwhelming when you look at biological systems: The nonlinearity especially in say genetic hacking becomes apparent when you realize that each tiny modification has so many unintended effects (making modeling in a computer environment especially difficult) which is why biologist go through the grind of running all those "boring" real world experiments in labs. I think there are quite a few research labs that are using data mining and machine learning techniques to try to solve problems but we are at most quality places well b

I've called the kneejerk "bubble" reactions "boring" [1] and I stand by that. That doesn't mean I disagree (or agree for that matter). It just means that banal perjoratives with nothing to back them up are boring . To call this a bubble, one must first describe what one means by a bubble. A bubble in my mind is a period of rapid growth in valuations followed by a massive devaluation on such a scale that it hinders investment and innovation. The subprime collapse was a bubble. Many people were left underwater on their mortgages. Building in many places stopped for years. This has a knock-on effect on jobs, related industries and so on. That's a bubble. The dotcom collapse was also a bubble. But there are several differences this time around: 1. Startup costs now, for most Internet startups, are essentially zero. 10+ years ago you had to spend $5-10M to do anything (once you paid for Sun servers, Oracle licenses and so on); 2. Lax listing requirements, particularly on the NASDAQ, helped perpetuate fraud; 3. There was no experience to draw on (from living memory at least). Now we hopefully know a little better; 4. Sarbanes-Oxley, clusterfuck that it is, has at least kept the number of Internet companies IPOing relatively low. This has some negative consequences too but it means that retail investors and mutual funds have largely been excluded from the startup scene, which honestly is a Good Thing [tm]; and 5. Now, as opposed to then, there are real businesses operating in the te

Congratulations on the investment. The return is nothing short of spectacular. It's a truly excellent example of execution and timing . But the point that keeps resurfacing in my mind is SpaceX. SpaceX, from nothing, created a low-earth orbit delivery system that is revolutionizing satellite launches and (soon) the cost of getting men into space... for less than the price that a bunch of people can send photos to each other with cheesy filters [1]. It would be difficult to overstate the impact Elon Musk has had, is having and will have on humanity (and no this isn't hyperbole) through SpaceX (and maybe even Tesla). And it didn't even require, relate to or is connected with some bullshit social network. I'm also reminded of Steve Yegge's OSCON talk [2] from some months back. The computer power we have available now is stunning. used for the right purposes it could fundamentally change humanity for the good, whether that be in bioinformatics or whatever, is hard to overstate. Yet we're using all this power and the brightest minds on the planet... to send cat pictures. It's actually reached the point that when I get unsolicited recruitment email or read about some new startup on HN that I tune out as soon as I see the word "social". There's something astoundingly depressing about all this. EDIt: I should add that my issue isn't that the founders and investors sought wealth. I don't begrudge them that at all. Not by any means am I anti-capitalist. Bill Gates, as one example, is d

I think these books are not really meant to be a PhD education but more of a tutorial introduction to the field. What O'Reilly is doing right now is really important. As Steve Yegge said, they are "trying to provoke a culture change." Would-be brogrammers will find these books, read them, and graduate from cat-picture projects into more sophisticated applications that can solve real computer science problems. It matters less whether the readers of these books actually get a comprehensive understanding of the theoretical knowledge behind them, then it does that they enrich readers and spread the desire to learn and attain true understanding of the field. Steve Yegge reference: ▶ this video

Is Steve Yegge Google's new secret recruiter agent? :) A few weeks ago he publicly quit his "cat pictures" project ( ▶ this video ) to pursue more noble a quest in data mining. I loved what he said, and at first glance this seemed like a jab at the newly released Google+. But it's actually a bigger knock on Facebook since the "cat pictures" app is Facebook's primary gig, and so far it's only a side gig at Google. I wonder how many FB peeps started to wonder if there really is any meaning in cat pictures. Now it's Amazon -- "Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right", except for 3 things, one being "platforms." But his Amazon jabs are not as subtle as the cat pictures one -- "Their pay and benefits suck, although much less so lately due to local competition from Google and Facebook. But they don't have any of our perks or extras." Maybe Steve is Google's new unofficial recruiting agent. He makes reference to it here, "I actually did a spreadsheet at one point but Legal wouldn't let me show it to anyone, even though recruiting loved it." When you think about it, he's the perfect person to have run a psyop designed to get the Facebookers and Amazonians to lay down their cat pictures and join the Googlers building the next generation platform, while partaking in all of their perks. Google can just play it off as, "oh, that's just crazy uncle Steve on one of his rants again". I don't know what it is, but I think it's great on multiple levels :)

At around 14:10 in the speech - ▶ this video Also I'm not sure if he quit Google, or if he just quit the project he was working on.