adw

18 ms·

241.
by adw 6y ago
If you’re interested in the theory of phase transitions, Landau theory ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landau_theory ) is a good on-ramp. We know the glass transition isn’t a true phase transition because we do not obs
242.
by adw 6y ago
The other orientation is much less stable; it’s a stationary point but if nudged will rotate away from droop-up. Similar reason old pre-float-glass windows are mostly found thick side down; easier to fit that way because they’re more stab
243.
by adw 7y ago
If anything I wrote has been original, it would have been a big red flag :-)
244.
by adw 7y ago
Thank you! There are still lessons to be learned from the early data journalism community, which is what got me thinking about this at the time; Craigslist eating classified advertising and Facebook eating display created this kind of apoca
245.
by adw 7y ago
I was working on things adjacent to data journalism at the time, which helped! If anything, this has come much more true than I anticipated. I hadn’t got as far as Cambridge Analytica.
246.
by adw 7y ago
One leg down, the long one to go...
247.
by adw 7y ago
Not really light reading, but any good solid-state physics textbook would cover most of this. I learned from https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Mineral-Sciences-Andre... , which is quite a bit more explicitly mineral-scie
248.
by adw 7y ago
Indeed I did! Thank you. (This is what happens when you write in a hurry.)
249.
by adw 7y ago
I am twenty years removed from it, but I used to be well-informed on this kind of thing; I have a PhD in mineral physics. Let's see how well I can explain this (haven't read the article, yet, sorry! Waiting for a plane...) So you&
250.
by adw 7y ago
You can connect the SV housing bubble fairly directly to pension funds piling money into tech stocks and venture capital after the late-00s global financial crisis (because bond yields were in the gutter and they're more or less oblige
251.
by adw 7y ago
One example of that is Markit Group, which had revenue of $1.5bn/yr when it merged with IHS in 2016 at an implied valuation of roughly $5.5bn. Best London startup of the last 25 years, including DeepMind, not close. https:/&#x2
252.
by adw 7y ago
This is exciting as the first "industrially supported" framework for this stuff. There's research code out there, but it really is research code – it was written to publish, not written to build products around.
253.
by adw 7y ago
It was, in most significant ways, proto-MacOS.
254.
by adw 8y ago
The news industry has been aware of this forever; one of the fundamental problems with news being ad-supported is that advertisers don't want their ads next to bad news. This predates the Internet; it's why glossy Sunday sections
255.
by adw 8y ago
It's all about knowing the best places for modifier keys; Control next to A, Caps Lock encased in concrete at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
256.
by adw 8y ago
B2B SaaS companies are in large part about addressing the enterprise without being Oracle or friends, though!
257.
by adw 8y ago
Also, the South Bay is becoming/has become enterprise-land. As Silicon Valley startups increasingly aim towards the consumer market, it makes sense that they would locate themselves in the biggest media/consumer/tourist hub.
258.
by adw 8y ago
The best document store is probably either a filesystem or S3. Use a relational database. Postgres or MySQL. MySQL used to be heinous 20 years ago, but it's alright now. That's about how long these things take. The primary thing y
259.
by adw 8y ago
In urban settings, when self-driving cars are common, people (generally) won't own cars . Owning a car – an expensive depreciating asset – will be an enthusiast thing, like golf clubs or whatever; eventually, the self-driving truck wi
260.
by adw 8y ago
SIESTA is absolutely Fortran. I wrote Fortran which is part of it. :)
261.
by adw 8y ago
The alarm is that bond yields are more or less `yield = (k / economic confidence)` - if people are confident then they don't buy bonds, so the price of bonds falls, so the yield (which is annualized return) rises. (Thus recessions
262.
by adw 8y ago
Specifically, if we're talking about UK solid-state physics/materials science, some combination of CASTEP, ONETEP, SIESTA, ABINIT and maybe VASP. I'd expect there to be a bunch of GROMACS/CHARMM time for the protein-fold
263.
by adw 8y ago
Also, cross-party backing (prominently Francis Maude and the Lib Dems on the Coalition side, Tom Watson on the Labour one.)
264.
by adw 8y ago
The global financial crisis has a lot to do with it. A ton of the best talent in London were at startups and design agencies which went under; a lot of them went to the Government and did a really rigorous job; even though they've now
265.
by adw 8y ago
Raise a case with the Information Commissioner's Office.
266.
by adw 8y ago
During the auction, the players are screened from each other – no eye contact, and the screens extend to the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_(bridge)#/media/File:Br... Also, verbal communication
267.
by adw 8y ago
Yep. I'm essentially arguing that simplifying here is dangerous, no construct is easy to deal with, and I'd rather more care were taken (broadly across the entire industry, not singling out YC here) in representing that. Also: t
268.
by adw 8y ago
I had a priced round done (at startup rates, admittedly) by Orrick for a few thousand pounds Sterling – I forget the exact amount, but it was well under £5k – back in '09. They knew it was a loss-leader – lawyers want to build long-ter
269.
by adw 8y ago
> $500k safe at a $10 million post-money valuation cap means the founder has sold 5% of the company. This is a common oversimplification, but it's somewhat dangerous and I would be happier if people were more cautious in what they s
270.
by adw 8y ago
I get push notifications on auth on both my debit and credit cards. Weak evidence, but my hunch based on what I see there is that there's some dollar value where they pre-auth (somewhere around $25, I think).

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