Genome Dynamics

well, buffer overflows were a small (but fun) part of this class actually.

mostly (after a short intro from CALPIRG), we finished up with hashes & looked at a couple of increasingly sophisticated code examples: formatting FASTA output, counting n-mer distributions… and one particular application of n-mer distributions: k-mer signatures for species binning in metagenomics (including a quick plug for the EBI).

We then talked about how memory is organized (briefly mentioning buffer overflows) and paused at the slide titled “Reference syntax”, finishing up with this Youtube clip from Matrix Reloaded, where Trinity uses nmap and [[Wikipedia:sshnuke]] (a buffer overflow exploit) to shut down a power grid.

Buffer overflows are k3wl… they always seem so sci-fi or magical to me. Like the [[Wikipedia:Deplorable_Word]], or something.