kregasaurusrex

I'm usually too scared to work with anything over 120V- especially since parts on the schematic linked require a 1000V power supply to work. Very neat, but too dangerous for the average home-gamer like myself to be inspired enough to go out and build.

This is great news for scientific research- diamonds for experimental purposes are a huge market that's impeded by their artificially high cost. From a material standpoint there's a multitude of uses for them- ranging from use in CERN's particle detectors for their high optical clarity, to creating nanodiamond transport mechanisms for drugs because of their resilience to microcellular activity.

By creating a mass market and demand for these artifically produced diamonds, the cost of production will significantly drop where it could be more affordable for researchers and companies to invest their time and ideas into.

Groklaw's coverage over the course of the initial trials were excellent. http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120726121512...

It was really great for finding new things, both in and outside your interests range! I'd tried it again once or twice in the past few years, and was annoyed at how often and how noticeable the 'sponsored stumbles' became. Felt more like watching a series of hyper-curated ads instead of a natural discovery engine.

It's about how an IP range assigned to a country establishes nexus, and a service that operates within this jurisdiction must abide by said country's laws.

Dude's in his 50s and has been at the helm developing great products that have pushed the limit of what microprocessors can do. I wish these companies would allow more blog-style posts of how they overcome difficult problems; but Intel's notorious about disclosing what goes on behind the curtains as we've seen with Spectre+Meltdown. Makes you wonder how much further along we could be in this space if NDAs allowed people talk more about what they've done after leaving their previous company/companies.

Not to mention the further stigmatization that results from being a whistleblower- having your name in published sources associated with calling out an employer may impact how quickly you can find a new job. Future employers also like seeing $LARGE_CORP experience on a resume, where I've seen colleagues stay at a job they didn't like only for the prestige attached to this line item.

For a worker without this safety net there really isn't reason for them to violate an NDA and have to rely on whistleblower protections for future remidial damages if there isn't a guarantee that their current living situation would be able to be maintained. We saw last week how Apple fired leakers on the spot and have their name blacklisted towards future tech employers as such.

Foxconn's investment in Wisconsin is a perfect example of this- there's simply no US competitor in a lot of consumer product areas for the same price point. What we're faced with is like having the choice between an American 720p TV and a Chinese 1080p TV for the same price at a retailer: there's no incentive to buy the American version when the foreign one's BOM\shipping\import costs beats that of the US-made one.

And the consequence of these groups having lower discretionary income shifts their buying habits to favor items that are cheaper to manufacture and likely don't fall within having an active Chinese patent covering them. Putting a tariff on the foreign good targets people who see equivalent value between the US and non-US good in order to sway their decision to the domestic choice.

From an IP basis, I do agree that China is on a land grab to establish its own patent system because of how new it is. It's also unfair to the Utility Model which the US lacks to be attacked by these higher import costs- markets like Shenzen flourish because of it's ability to sell so many things for so cheap. I for one enjoy the ability to buy cheap electronic parts from Aliexpress and Ebay without minding the high lead time because of the low barrier to entry and creative freedom it grants to buy more parts; and see this tariff as being more of a defensive move than a reciprocal agreement.

Make America protectionist again?

Scheduling at the Columbus Convention Center really seems to be done without any regard for neighboring events. An Ohio Linuxfest a couple years ago was done right alongside a youth cheerleading competition, which had made some parents seem noticeably uncomfortable. And other weekends have mixed conventions like Wizard's World Comic Con and Origins, where I'd guess there's an overlap of people who'd like to go to both but not pay for a split experience. The expansion which has been under construction for a couple years is finally done, and the "As We Are"[0] art installation was added including a decent chunk of event space.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt6dyWT4Cms

My university's amateur radio club had a large collection of QSL cards to go through. Really cool how widespread its use was; but it also shows how far reaching an ubiquitous the internet has become. Most of these were from pre-1970 and came from all over the world.

I got my technician's level license by using the 'Ham Radio Study' android app which does a good job reinforcing the concepts taught in the ARRL manual. The test banks for each level are all publicly posted and have a rotation of about 3 years for each level.

Edit: Meant to type QSL, not QST.

While there isn't an official RFC yet since the protocol is still in the RFP stages[0], the amount of new cars on the road will require roughly about the spectrum allocation as what's needed for cellphones right now. If we tried to cram all of this into existing 5GHz range of lower frequency spectrum, it's simply not enough. 5G has both a larger spectrum allocation and throughput of data available to it.

Edit: The cost of putting in a lidar system for your car won't be too expensive (probably <$1000 when done across a manufacturer's whole fleet); but think about having to pay for another cellular line on your phone bill at current telecom prices. It would be prohibitively expensive to the end users for mass deployment.

[0] https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/readiness-of...

A nationalized 5G network will be essential for high-bandwidth applications like V2V across level 5 autonomous vehicles. As has been done in the past for large scale projects like GPS, LEDs, photovoltaics, and nuclear (just to name a few!) which private companies wouldn't be able to eat the long-term capex against. These technologies are also licensed either for free or very cheaply to companies in order to benefit the public at large since we've already paid for the R&D with tax dollars.

In order to prepare for the future of the digital economy at large, bandwidth shouldn't be an artificial limitation of it. Once all the associated RFCs for 5G are standardized, a rollout of this scale would most definitely pay for itself and more over the network's useful lifetime.

Oddly enough, I was thinking about that on a bus ride today. How it's both normalized to value non-degreeholders less and for compensation to plateau at a lower rate. While I do think there's a skills gap that exists, having at least one degree seems entry-level for a lot of people nowadays.

And Logan's Run looks like a neat movie, in my city we have a monthly mash-up of old films that play at an independent theater, so I'll check it out sometime.

I'm a bit younger on the age range at 23, and taking some time out of school since my grades and finances weren't quite where I wanted them to be. Would you say a person who has a handful of relevant Coursera certificates and does well on an interview would be able to compete against a degree holder who also did above average?

For your case of staying current in newer tech I can see the market reason for taking it. People like Knuth who're well into their 70's still seem to find ways to remain relevant as well. What is the "Caoursel" you're referring to?

What made you decide to take the paid certificate route? I've browsed job boards for the past few months; but have seen that employers are increasingly looking for degrees as a minimum requirement versus having a Coursera certificate. Especially with regards to anything involving the ML space, it seems like employers are more interested in it as a supplement to a degree rather than being useful on its own.

Good catch! I hadn't read this myself but some college friends and I ran a Call of Cthulu campaign inspired by his works.

There could be anything underneath all the permafrost, including new biodiversity which we haven't catalogued yet. NPR ran a story[0] where Russian animals such as reindeer infected with Anthrax had thawed out, and caused outbreaks where people had to get preventative treatments against it. As a future threat model, what if there's new viruses or bacterium contained under previously frozen earth for which modern medicine isn't prepared for?

[0]https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/4884009...

I've wondered why Amazon Prime charges tax in my state for what's essentially a yearly membership club fee. My guess is that since it's bundled with streaming services etc it counts as being entertainment even though I don't use those features.

I'd spoken with Rob Hall of the Watson project during my freshman year of college at a technical talk having seen it Jeopardy! but not knowing much about the technical aspects of what goes into generating an answer based on natural language processing. He took the time to explain to me and a small group of students who stayed for about an hour afterwards about how to go about attacking problems that require both expertise and parallelization on a scale such that confidence levels could be established for each logical answer generated from a tree of possibilities. A great man and team who know the value of educating potential future employees and sharing the knowledge that went into solving a hard problem. I'd typed this up before realizing you were talking about the former CEO rather than the project so I'd thought to post it anyway.

Go-playing robot. I'd gotten some parts about a year ago but fell short on cash so it's been sitting in my brain for a while. Should revisit it around tax return time.

Get some IT/programming certificates, skill up to a job with a wage to get out of debt faster, and start a side project I've been wanting to get off the ground for a while.

I used to view it as good value for a casual game until the announcement of where as new expansion sets are rolled out, previous ones are sunsetted. It essentially gives a 1-2 year expiration date on any new packs purchased rather than making a limited or ban list for certain specific cards. Then again, Activision stock has increased by a decent margin so there's at least one group of people who likes it.

While Equifax is a quasi-governmental company that's privately traded; fully private companies that are regulated in the space are required under the umbrella watch of FINRA/SEC regulations. In the past[1], they have not had any problem with levying 7 figure fines against organizations that are outside of data compliance.

Taxing cryptocurrencies will likely push traders who want a greater margin to foreign countries' exchanges; but I see it as a step in the right direction for institutionalizing the practice. I've seen a posts across multiple subreddits where people want to start trading these purely as investment vehicles rather than use the underlying technology. With an influx of ideologies working both with and against one another, a lot of ordinary people can get harmed from the wild-west environment and volatility associated with it.

[1]https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-112.html

I'm sort of surprised there's going to be a regulated secondary market for this, where the newest version of the GOP Tax plan will place a fee on this form of arbitrage[1]. Then again, I did learn today that a hot wallet I had on a crypto-trading website had folded and didn't send me any notice of shutdown; along with the time period of filing a claim having been long passed. Since there's a lot of theft and lack of accountability with these closures, maybe regulation could incentivize better data protection practices and pro-consumer behavior.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-21/tax-free-...

The problem isn't specifically Apple's batteries; it's with current Lithium-ion battery chemistry in general. As a whole, we've nearly reached the upper bound of where energy density and consumer safety are at for providing us with a good battery that doesn't easily explode and gives the phone a constant current. The documentary series NOVA had a good episode earlier in the year that showed some possible alternatives to these https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gxZrQ5yPsLI

Regarding the slowing down of devices, underclocking the CPU allows for both less power and a lower peak voltage to be drawn from the battery and extends the real usable life of the phone. Others would simply not turn on or pass a hardware test by failing to POST. You are right about new software versions being 'encouraged obsolescence'- a company that pushes features to its older phones knowing they may not be able handle these alongside the older essential ones definitely has an interest in you purchasing a new phone. This could easily be fixed by not having the slimmest phone on the market and instead have a thicker and more easily user-replacable battery.

When I was a kid first learning about electronics by taking them apart and other general tinkering, my dad usually took a hands-off approach but did look over what I was working on. He stepped in a few times; ie when working on power supplies and making sure the capacitors had discharged or when I was helping change oil that it had cooled down. Using practical examples of learning like these had worked really well for me but was disappointed there was almost no direct interaction with tools until 7th grade in my district. Was also rather surprised that a number of my peers never received even semi-formal training on how to drill or hot glue things together.

Scoring conditions for chess tournaments cause forcing a draw to be more favorable than a loss, likely causing the programmers to heavily weigh draws over losses. Contrast this with Go engines where there are no draws, the incentives for finishing chess games in a draw that would otherwise end in a loss is much higher.