btrettel

60 ms·

601.
by btrettel 7y ago
Yes, peer reviewed papers are nails in the analogy. (Non-peer-reviewed work might as well not exist to many academics in my experience, regardless of its quality.) There are good nails and bad nails, just like there are good papers and bad
602.
by btrettel 7y ago
I personally don't mind the grunt work and don't consider that abuse. Grunt work is either outright useful or a learning experience. If blacksmiths were academics they would produce a large number of faulty nails. (One might argue
603.
by btrettel 7y ago
I think ideally a PhD is an apprenticeship. Practice in my experience is unfortunately not like an apprenticeship, instead it's a low paid job that can be quite abusive. Plus many of the things you "learn" aren't good fo
604.
by btrettel 7y ago
Yes, even though I don't use Overleaf, I had a similar problem caused by arXiv using an older version of biblatex than I do. (I think bibtex's file format has been more stable and might work.) Switching to TeX Live 2016 (the distr
605.
by btrettel 7y ago
Years ago I used the old Firefox addon Shelve to automatically archive the vast majority of web pages I visited. http://shelve.sourceforge.net/ The main disadvantage was disk space. This is particularly true when some pages
606.
by btrettel 7y ago
Yes, typical piston pumps have two check valves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_valve#Pumps
607.
by btrettel 7y ago
A while back I tried looking up a particular ezboard forum I used to participate in, only to find it was blocked. This is a real shame. I have some of the posts saved but it's only a fraction of the full forum.
608.
by btrettel 7y ago
> Instead, they’re riddled with anxiety and depression because they’ve been convinced to tie up their entire identity in being one of the lucky 10% that lands a tenure-track research job, then hung out to dry by the gatekeepers they prob
609.
by btrettel 7y ago
I think this is a real phenomena. Many traffic engineers don't seem to appreciate it. Earlier this year I did a small study of how often drivers yield to me, a cylist, at certain crossings. These crossings are rather confusing, but the
610.
by btrettel 7y ago
> In general, drivers act with the knowledge that if they even tap a pedestrian, they're likely to severely injure or kill them. They might be sloppy or distracted, but they almost never willfully do this. In my experience as a cycl
611.
by btrettel 7y ago
I'm not keen on the Bay Area anyway but I'll keep that in mind when moving. Also not surprised about ride share drivers. A few months ago I had one try to attack me with a screwdriver! Helmet cam video here: https://www
612.
by btrettel 7y ago
Yes, I'm somewhat amazed by those cyclists. The "best" (i.e., most dangerous) distracted cyclists have no hands on their handlebars at all. Yet they might still be traveling at an appreciable speed. There are jerks in every t
613.
by btrettel 7y ago
> On the occasions I've felt I needed to glance at my phone while driving, I've held it up and in front of me so I still had peripheral vision of the road. People using their phone and doing so from their lap or console, not to
614.
by btrettel 7y ago
As a cyclist I used to use an air horn (Air Zound brand) for exactly the same purpose. Distracted drivers aren't looking, but fortunately their ears typically work whether they are paying attention or not! Some people consider honking
615.
by btrettel 7y ago
Cyclist here. I've heard multiple other cyclists say things along the lines of "my life is not worth 15 second of your time". Typically in response to drivers making rather bad driving decisions, e.g., passing a cyclist too c
616.
by btrettel 7y ago
As a cyclist I don't find that eye contact is enough. There have been quite a few times where I made eye contact with someone who was turning and was required by law to yield to me, yet they still pulled directly in front of me, almost
617.
by btrettel 7y ago
As a cyclist I'm elevated above most drivers on the road. So I can see many distracted drivers who try to be more subtle about it. Distracted driving is a daily problem, but there's almost no enforcement of it. I can recall one ti
618.
by btrettel 7y ago
You're right to mention context. In my own experience, when stating something that can be interpreted in multiple ways, whether it is interpreted good or bad by someone depends on what they believe the context of the statement is. It&#
619.
by btrettel 7y ago
Thanks, your reply is among the best I've ever received at HN! This is why I post here.
620.
by btrettel 7y ago
> We know that post publication peer review works perfectly well because it was the norm until after WWII with the rise of state funding of big science and the accompanying ass covering and form filling proceduralism that made it popular
621.
by btrettel 7y ago
> There's famous examples of revolutions in science being claimed as mundane results. Topologists said Nash was just applying topology to economics and it was nothing new (to them). Mathematicians saw Einstein's results as unsu
622.
by btrettel 7y ago
I'm really disappointed that PubPeer is used so little outside of bio/medical/social science fields. I'm not sure why this is. There seems to be essentially negligible interest in spotting mistakes in the literature in C
623.
by btrettel 7y ago
In my view many if not most professors are "careerists" in the sense that they put advancement of their career over accuracy. I wouldn't quite say that you need to be really smart to make progress in most fields, though bei
624.
by btrettel 7y ago
As I recall, I politely spoke with multiple support agents for over an hour, carefully explaining my problem, before I tried to wrap up by saying that I was going to talk with a lawyer because this isn't going anywhere and I have l
625.
by btrettel 7y ago
This hasn't been my experience. I can recall one time where, after spending hours on the phone getting nowhere, I mentioned getting a lawyer involved. The company forwarded me to someone with a title like "solutions architect&quot
626.
by btrettel 7y ago
My elementary school had a similar thing in (I believe) a math class I was in. I recall that we were given newspapers with a list of stock prices and were in groups. I can't recall if we were given any lesson on how the stock market wo
627.
by btrettel 7y ago
I'm not rich but $129/year isn't bad. I'd hesitate mostly because I assume such services are scams.
628.
by btrettel 7y ago
I wonder whether asking for verification over the phone would lead to SIM swaps. Though faking someone's voice would be more difficult.
629.
by btrettel 7y ago
I wasn't aware of Zotfile. I'll take a look. Thanks. Hopefully it has some way to automatically associate with ~10,000 files...
630.
by btrettel 7y ago
I use Zotero for references but keep the files in a separate organized directory structure, where the filenames match the citation key in Zotero. Each approach has its own advantages and disadvantages. The largest advantage of the directori

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