QuantumRoar

Well, they are quite tiny. A billion transistors fit into the area of your thumbnail. A typical wafer used for lithography has a diameter of 300mm. You can fit quite a few processors on such a wafer and you only have to expose once at each lithography step to create all of them.

About two years ago or so, when I bought a 13" MBP, they had an intermediate resolution setting. But the OS started to lag und stutter when I switched between virtual desktops (I think it's called workspace). I believe this is because they render at double the effective resolution and then scale down. Therefore, the intermediate settings are the most taxing for the GPU.

I couldn't find a way to disable the animations and since I use virtual desktops a lot and the usual effective 720p resolution is almost comically large, it all added up to be a dealbreaker for me and I returned it.

I owned one of the 2014 or 2015 Macbook Pro 13" thingies. Its effective resolution was 720p. That information density is so low that I couldn't use it. Using the full resolution, things were too small. Anything in between was unusable since the GPU couldn't render the OS animations smoothly.

Is your eyesight just so good that you can use the non-scaled versions?

You have a point. But as a non-native speaker trying to learn a language, you aim to become so fluent that people will not notice you're foreign. You want to be able to play with the language.

A big part of learning a language is to become familiar with frequent speech patterns and slang. A language is not a sterile set of words with attached grammar but a slippery gelatinous blob that molds itself to the culture and people. Spoken languages are quite lively. If I want to integrate myself and joke around with natives, I need to learn to mold it the same way as natives to. In order to learn how to do that, you first have to start imitating.

You mean something like a camera that detects phones and then emits a laser beam onto their sensor?

I do not expect privacy in a public place. But I do expect that not everything I do is recorded and then associated with my name on the Internet. But this is exactly the direction smartphones have taken us.

I don't know if you have the same feeling but I do notice a chilling effect in how I behave when I see that someone has their phone out and its camera is pointed approximately in my direction (although they might be checking messages).

It really annoys me that I'm probably on more photos by accident than on purpose. Or someone takes a picture, I'm in the background and I just see the flash as if it was right in my face and I must wonder how stupid my face must have looked.

This is especially frustrating when you are out with friends and want to have a good time. A few years ago, you could still dress up as a flamingo and get drunk. Everybody would have a good laugh, enjoy themselves, and the stories would have been hilarious. But nowadays, you'd end up on at least dozens of Facebooks and Instagrams and it might end up being the first picture coming up when someone searches your name.

I would very much like the option to be unphotographable.

The question whether a time average over a long period of a random quantity in one system and an average over multiple systems over a short period are the same is the question for ergodicity [1]. If both are the same, the random process or system is called ergodic.

The answer is: If the measurement period for the average over multiple systems is long enough that each random variable has visited a representative sample of states which make up the majority of contributions to the mean value, then the system is ergodic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodicity

And not just bring attention to this case but to make sure that there is actually some support.

I can't believe how Facebook can have business relations with someone on the order of magnitude of $100k a month and there isn't a single person at Facebook he can contact.

How does that even work?

No, I'm talking about something else which is actually a bit worse...

It's also very easy to "accidentally" put more people into a very large room than it would be allowed by working regulations. There's at least one large Silicon Valley company who likes to do that. The working conditions can be quite miserable.

You can call it an open office that amplifies communication in the team, so noone will notice that they're almost piling up vertically. And the problem is not just noise. Too many people breathing the same air leads to rising carbon dioxide levels which makes concentrating quite hard. Unless the office was literally built for large crowds, the ventilation will usually be insufficient to cool the office in summer and to provide adequate levels of air flow.

I stopped calling those things "open offices" and use the term "laying battery" instead.

I've been using Signal for the past few months and I haven't noticed any issues. But I'm not exactly a heavy user.

Remember that when Facebook promises something next time.

I'm slowly moving communications over to Signal.

Am I getting this right? Apple pays 1% or less on corporate profits in the EU. An EU court decides that this is bullshit and shouldn't be that way. Tim Cook complains that they made everything up and that the below 1% tax rate is reasonable and completely legal.

Meanwhile Apple's $200 billion are sitting in Europe far away from the 35% tax rate in the US. Tim Cook says that 35% is too high to pay and says that something like 25% would be reasonable. If the US doesn't change its corporate tax rate to something lower, they won't get a single dollar from Apple.

Here's the thing I don't get, how is 25% in the US acceptable but more than 1% in Europe is considered wrong? 25% of the $200 billion would be $50 billion which is way higher than the $13 billion fine...

Am I comparing Apples to Oranges here? Or is Apple simply unwilling to pay any corporate taxes outside the US?

Yes. And another problem is that there's such a thing as electron confinement. It's the same effect as in the "particle in a box" solution of the Schrödinger equation where the particle's probability is zero next to an infinitely high potential.

The gate oxide is a very high potential for an electron and therefore the actual current flows close to the center of the wire.

So instead of a diameter of 10 silicon atoms, you now have something like 5 or so where the current flows. Imagine that you place a single atom wrongly in the center of your nanowire. Now you have a scattering target exactly where your first mode (the most populated one) has its maximum. It's effectively like putting a block of concrete on a one-way street. There's no way the electrons could go around the defect. It could completely stop your nanowire from working or at least deteriorate its properties severely.

That's why imec tries to use 3 nanowires per transistor. It'd be quite the show stopper if some of your transistors wouldn't work at all.

Of course you're right but we're talking about two different things. I was telling you about how humans cope with complexity in science. You wouldn't get anywhere in science if you would always start from the most detailed theory. Instead, you try simpler models first and if they accurately describe the phenomenon, there's no need to involve quantum mechanics (which often renders problems almost impossible to solve).

On the other hand, if you tried the classical theories and notice that there are things unaccounted for, then you go and look for more detailed theories to apply to your problem. That's the normal way you do research and that's what happened here.

The same way you assume you can compute how a ball flies through the air without using quantum field theory. Turns out, the ball isn't noticeably influenced by its atomic structure. But then it turns out, some of biology might be.

The best description is the simplest one being able to describe all related phenomena. So unless you have a very good reason, it wouldn't be helpful to start from the standard model of particle physics.

I'm not a web developer but I sometimes put some programs on the web for me and my friends. I use FreeBSD Jails for that.

Can someone explain to me the advantages of Docker compared to Jails?

Many people don't even get to the point where they ask themselves "What makes me happy?" As you said, they see other people (or read lists), think they're happy, want to have the same, work for it, and end up at the same place, but completely unfulfilled.

Being honest to yourself, admitting you are different, admitting you have desires noone else shares, accepting that people may look down on you when you pursue your dreams of happiness, is the hardest thing to do.

I don't talk about running away from anything, I talk about confronting everything that makes you who you are. Inspecting and taking apart everything you ever felt. Bringing it out into the open (not posting on Twitter but bringing it out in front of yourself) and accepting whatever it is that you are. And for that matter, accepting that other people might have it even harder than you and -- I don't get why you wouldn't -- being nice to strangers since their lives might have just fallen apart. The strongest indication that someone is an emotional teenager is when you see that they treat people, who they're not dependent on, badly.

I regularly see people who can't even see when they're figuratively slitting their own wrists. People who project their own unhappiness onto others. People who hurt others without a second thought, who are so incredibly selfish that they can't see that it's like a brick wall standing in between them and their own happiness.

Especially in the tech community and with scientists it is so common that they suppress their own emotions by rationalizing them away. So here's a list of one item that is probably true advice for happiness (except for psychopaths)

1. Make sure you feel and understand your own emotions. Rationality is not the opposite of emotionality (that would be irrationality). So use your emotions as a premise for your own existence and act rationally starting from that premise.

But this list deals with mostly obvious things about how your startup may generate wealth. It has nothing to do with the people involved. Otherwise, the list in this guy's redundant writing style might be

1. Don't die. Many people fail to achieve their dreams because they die too early. Try not to die as it is hard to keep on living in that case.

2. Be happy. One of the most often stated reasons for being unhappy is sadness. Try to be happy and you will achieve happiness with ease.

Take a look at posteo.de

A German privacy focused mail provider where you also get a calendar. I didn't use the calendar yet but their mail servers are faster than anything else I've seen. And you can encrypt your whole account on their server so that noone but you can read your mails.

Edit: their English website is https://posteo.de/en

Preview fails me surprisingly often. Can't even PDF properly. Try something else.

(I'm fun at parties too)

As a somewhat astronomer, this explanation seems reasonable.

Usually you can't discern individual stars in another galaxy, like in the center of the Andromeda galaxy (But doing statistics is still possible). However, the Andromeda galaxy seems close enough that at the outer edge of it, you can isolate them to do astronomy on individual stars (like spectroscopy).

Edit: Also, you can find stars in almost all colors. The average of the colors depends on the age of the stars in the galaxy. If there are only a few new stars born, the galaxy will appear redder. If there are many new stars born, it appears bluer (see Hertzsprung-Russel diagram). The way the stars appear in different colors means that they have different ages and masses.

Noise in a telescope (except for high energy particles hitting your detector) is thermal noise. It will only appear if there's almost no light detected. So if it were noise, it should be the other way round: Noisy where there are little stars and no noise where there are a lot of stars. If you'd ask me, I'd say there's exactly zero visible noise in there.

> For 2.5 million years, those photons were freely zooming through space [...]

Imagine the faces of Penzias and Wilson when they learned that the noise in their horn antenna wasn't bird poop but photons traveling 14 billion years without interacting.

See Cosmic Microwave Background.

The first web app that blows my knees out!

Excellent work!

From what you wrote, I guess that you get into conflicts with other people or they complain about you.

My general attitude has helped me in dealing with all kinds of people. Try to figure out what kind of person it is you are talking to before you say anything drastic. Some people are open and enjoy heated discussions, others (most of the people) are actually insecure about themselves and cannot be confronted head on.

Empathy is key to making yourself appear friendly even if you are disgusted by the other person. Toxicity is inherently subjective and it doesn't matter so much what you say but how you say it.

I might tell you the work you are doing is crap because reasons. Or I might engage in a brief how-are-you-doing and mention it as a sidenote that I've seen something that looked unfortunate and then ask about YOUR opinion on it and guide the conversation with subtle questions in such a way that you see the problem yourself.

Often in bureaucratic environments, when something got stuck, I did not try to tell them what to do or how to do their job. Rather, I would give them the credit of being the "expert" in their field and ask them for advice for my situation. People are way more willing to help you if the idea came from them and they immediately like you if you show them respect for the work they do (that is especially true for hard working but overlooked people, e.g. secretaries, cleaning personnel, etc.).

Also, in order to not appear toxic, understand your colleagues' characters, admit mistakes in communication and tell them you are sorry if there was a problem, address them with respect and DO NOT push them into a corner. NEVER become overly defensive or aggressive, ALWAYS be prepared to let someone make decisions which you wouldn't do while maintaining your friendliness.

I see it as a kind of diplomacy. As long as you are not the boss, it is not your call to decide who does what. If there's a real problem with a person on your team, your boss should already be aware of it and he should be dealing with it without you having to tell them. If your boss doesn't know the people on his team, then you have an entirely different problem.

I'm not sure if this is what you are interested in but here's a short summary of the variability of stars.

Stars in general are variable on a multitude of scales. The most popularly known cycle is the recurrance of sun spots, see e.g. the wikipedia page [1].

However, stars in general have their own 'life' from young to old. If you take a star like our sun, which has -- surprise, surprise -- one sun mass, it burns hydrogen to helium in a fusion process. Over billions of years it will deplete its hydrogen fuel and a core of helium will form. This leads the hydrogen fusion to move to the outer layers of the star which make it blow up. During this stage it will blow up like a balloon and have a cooler but very thin transparent surface. Hence the name of this stage: red giant.

During this stage, the sun's radius will become so large that it swallows the orbit of the earth. However, since its density is very low at this stage, the earth will keep orbiting inside the sun (though it's a bit warm then). Luckily we still have another 4 billion years or so until then.

When the sun depletes all of its fuel, it will collapse, and maybe (don't know about the current stage of research on that) a Helium Flash will occur where Helium fusion will occur for a brief moment.

During the collapse of the red giant the dense core will bounce back the outer layers and all what's left is the white dwarf.

It get's even more interesting once you take a look at massive stars which immediately start burning Helium (or even heavier elements). Their lifetime is much shorter than the sun's and they end up in different kinds of catastrophic events called supernovae, which leave high density cores behind. Those are either neutron stars, i.e. blobs of tens of kilometers diameter consisting ONLY of neutrons, or black holes.

If you want to model these lifetimes of stars in a crude way, I would start looking at Hertzsprung-Russel diagrams to figure out the paths which stars of different masses take [2]. From the main sequence to the terminal age main sequence, all the way to the red giant stage, possibly a helium burning stage, maybe a second red giant stage, and what have you...

Once you have a few paths figured out, you can toss a die for the initial mass of the star and then toss another one to find out its age. Then lookup the color, brightness, opacity and size.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_sequence

Wow... Thanks for pointing that out.

But I hope I can turn that off. That sounds really dangerous.

> that's pretty conspiracy-theory-y

I don't think that it counts as a conspiracy theory at this point. I think their intent is very clear.

Here's Facebooks strategic cookbook according to my experience and opinion:

   1. Advance into new territory
   2. Make it nice and cozy to attract enough people
   3. Fence it off and lock people in
   4. Go to step 1

Examples would be:

- Anonymity

- XMPP support for their chat

- making the time line a clusterfuck (is it actually still a _time_ line or what do the call it now?)

- the reach of public posts on business sites (unless you pay)

- the whole thing how facebook videos are treated unequal to videos from other sources (probably everything originating from facebook sources is treated as more relevant in your timeline, who knows...)

- we also have the facebook articles thing where publishers will likely leave a few kidneys behind when they try to get out of it again

The fun thing is that as soon as people feel comfortable using a certain feature, they don't really notice how they get locked in. Like a prison with walls so far you can't see them. Keep living inside and build your life and house and whatever have you. When the walls close in, you either leave everything behind or rearrange yourself according to your new overlords.

Edit: formatting