thearn4

51 ms·

481.
by thearn4 11y ago
> I don't understand how my colleagues put up with the terrible trifecta of mathematica, matlab, and labview In my experience, it seems to happen because those are the tools taught to science and engineering students, who then take
482.
by thearn4 11y ago
DC is a great storyteller, something missing in many other history themed audiobooks/podcasts/etc. My favorite series of his is either "Wrath Of The Khans" or "Ghosts of the Ostfront". The WWI series was also f
483.
by thearn4 11y ago
In college, I had the chance to take a trip with students in the history department to WW1 battle sites, but unfortunately could not go due to it overlapping with an internship in my major. Seemed like the more responsible choice at the tim
484.
by thearn4 11y ago
I think everyone has a different optimal balance. I prefer being in the office at least 4 days a week, while my head developer seems to excel at one day per week, with others somewhere in between. I tend to get more distracted at home then
485.
by thearn4 11y ago
> All the "micro-savings" you have by using PID controllers to 'ramp up' and 'coast down' did nothing for savings. If I can dig up the report, I'll post a link to it. That would be an interesting read.
486.
by thearn4 11y ago
> Julia for data science I work in scientific computing, and while me and my colleagues have all experimented with Julia at some level (and definitely welcome having more options), I don't yet know of anyone who has built any part o
487.
by thearn4 11y ago
I also left academia after a math PhD. Though in my case, my area was numerical linear algebra, and I entered the aerospace engineering field. A lot of what I was working on was immediately relevant, but I would say only a fraction of what
488.
by thearn4 11y ago
My experience with mathematica is that it becomes unwieldy as soon as you try to build something non-trivial. But I don't have more that a few semesters of use here-and-there during undergraduate studies. I feel the same way about MATL
489.
by thearn4 11y ago
Kind of looks like driving an M113. Driving them was fun, but I definitely don't miss anything else about them.
490.
by thearn4 11y ago
I'm a strong advocate for FOSS where I'm at in NASA. It can be tough to approve, but has actually become much easier in the past few years as the concept becomes more familiar to decision makers.
491.
by thearn4 11y ago
It looks interesting, but I really don't like watching videos for technical information. Do you know if they have a writeup on this anywhere?
492.
by thearn4 11y ago
Pretty much this. Even though I say this as someone who built a home automation system that can do this, it is a bit niche and more of a hobby than anything thats really practical to most people. And then when I see hypothetical discussions
493.
by thearn4 11y ago
I'm happy that we finally updated a lot of our code at work to be Python 3 compatible last year. The conversion was not that bad in the end. However, under Python 3 a number of benchmarks are slower, which we do need to look into some
494.
by thearn4 11y ago
Just gave a brief run through the paper, and I'm curious: is reverse-mode differentiation in this context similar in concept to adjoint-type methods used in computational fluid dynamics (and increasingly, in design optimization in othe
495.
by thearn4 11y ago
> This problem would be much less severe if the military could hire software pros directly at anywhere near fair market value. I think this is a big piece of it, and we see this at NASA too. It's hard to convince experienced softwar
496.
by thearn4 11y ago
> Ended up getting hired at apple Interesting, did not hear about that. I wonder if a system package manager could be coming to OS X in the future.
497.
by thearn4 11y ago
I feel the same way. Which is odd considering how many people suggested it on /r/audiobooks. But I found the nostalgia pandering to be a bit much.
498.
by thearn4 11y ago
I had pretty good luck using Instruments -> Leaks to find a leak in an OS X spritekit app (swift) I was making a few months ago. I just wish I didn't have to hack and guess my way around spritekit to fix it...
499.
by thearn4 11y ago
As an aside, I have wondered how universally true this was. For instance, did the USAF recognize a similar issue during this period?
500.
by thearn4 11y ago
If I remember correctly (and I'm still looking for a better source than this[1]), the Duke Of Wellington had requested a corps of longbowmen be made ready for use against the French in the Napoleonic wars, but was advised that no one w
501.
by thearn4 11y ago
It's also a bit odd to me that it visits Columbus and Detroit but skips Cleveland (though that is more debatable choice than skipping SC and NC altogether).
502.
by thearn4 11y ago
> The worst thing in my experience about windows 8/windows 10 apps is that you cannot install apps from 3rd party sources. I've been away from Windows for awhile so I just want to clarify this - when you say "apps", a
503.
by thearn4 11y ago
I had the same experience, using Matlab in college in the early 2000s was great. But the upside of its decline is that it motivated me to pick up a more general systems programming language for scientific computing work.
504.
by thearn4 11y ago
This is true, for many people playing the lottery is a means to attach a nonzero probability (no matter how small) to a fantasy. For myself, I'm uncertain how much of a fantasy it would really be to suddenly hold ~$1B (though I obvious
505.
by thearn4 11y ago
I agree with your points, in my case it was this hypercompetitiveness at the expense of meaningful contribution that drove me away from an academic career, post-PhD.
506.
by thearn4 11y ago
Had a son. I learned that the whole "they grow up so fast! blink and they're not even babies anymore" thing is not a cliche at all. Time has flown and it is blowing my mind.
507.
by thearn4 11y ago
Reminds me of the "Wingdings Predicted 9/11" bug: http://gizmodo.com/wingdings-predicted-9-11-a-truthers-tale-...
508.
by thearn4 11y ago
> Are schools afraid of really educating their students, as opposed to making them dependents of Apple's consumer culture? I think a key component to the problem here is the very clear gap between computing enthusiasts/applicat
509.
by thearn4 11y ago
That's too application focused. The primary value of arithmetic is that it forces you to exercise parts of your mind in a way which would otherwise be difficult. The same can be said of general mathematics, and literary analysis, etc.
510.
by thearn4 11y ago
Are there any really decent examples of devices like tablets being utilized creatively and effectively in a K-12 classroom? I don't want to sound cynical or like a luddite (I would be posting on the wrong site, for sure), but nearly ev

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