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Comment by shubhamjain | Hacker News Reader

Potentially off-topic, but you how do you know so much? It seems that from law to physics to computer science, you have an absurd level of detailed knowledge. It's incredulous that someone can talk at such great depth about an obscure topic from the top of his head.

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I got interested in this back when California was having blackouts because the power industry managed to convince the legislature that a totally free market with an auction every half hour was the way to run the power grid. I wanted to see how other places did it. PJM has a "day ahead" market and a backup spot market, so generating stations mostly know what tomorrow will be like. California now has something similar.

PJM has online training courses. Taking "PJM 101" is worth it to get a sense of how the market system and the actual operation interact. A few hours and you know more about the power grid than 99% of the population, but less than any PJM employee or energy trader.

One of my interests is how market-based systems fail. They're feedback systems with delays. Some of the delays are short; others are measured in years. A point I make regularly is that such systems have no guarantee of stability. In short-term energy markets, the consequences of this are immediate, because there is not much inventory in electricity.

Further to the parents comment, do you use a personal knowledge base? I keep a flat text file, but have been pondering whether it might be worth moving to something a bit more structured.

From practicality perspective, how do you use your personal knowledge base? Do you review it on a regular basis?

I have thoughts of keeping a similar database, but I kept thinking "will I ever use the collected details in the future". When I first started in computers on the Atari 8bit in Australia, I would collect as many of its software as possible, due to its scarcity. Looking back on it, I would ever only used 1% of it. The rest would be sitting it on the floppies gathering dust. I fear that the database that I collect would end up in a similar situation.

Some people just have an incredible memory. Enviable but not necessarily the brain's only killer app.

I don't use anything writen down myself. Most of the time I try to focus on basic principals and the connection of things to remember stuff. Downside is that the concrete data points I know on top of my head a) come without a definitve source (I try to work on that lately) and b) can be interpreted as anecdotal evidence (an issue I see lately with people not from my field and I have to find a solution for sometime).

I've started using Anki for this. It's basically flash cards that are shown to you at increasing intervals in order to keep it fresh in your memory. It's made the HN front page a few times over the last year.

https://apps.ankiweb.net/

I am still thinking of building graph-like knowledge base for myself. Always end up with defining the interface and realising it may be a bit too general.

What amazes me even more is that John spends so much time here on HC chatting with us hoi polloi.

I’m delighted that such a wide variety of people find this community thoroughly enjoyable.

Me too, but the amount of time John spends here is truly incredibly.

I have been watching his rise up the HC karma list and he is now in 11th. Everyone else around him on the list joined in 2007 while John joined in September 2014. He is a rocket roaring past the crowd :)

Definitely off-topic, sorry. Incredulous means

(of a person or their manner) unwilling or unable to believe something.

Think you meant incredible/unbelievable etc.

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