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DanGPhoton

34 karma · joined August 27, 2014

New technology, middlebrow computing
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DanGPhoton··on FBI agents were looking for an extremely valuable cache of Civil War-era gold
Special Agent Arch Stanton is the lead investigator
DanGPhoton··on First release of quantum operating system, Deltaflow
I would like to think that in 10 years I'll be buying a used 64-qubit card on Ebay, like a 2GB video card. What will be the equivalent to gaming which drives this tech to ever-higher performance? DIY protein folding life hacking?
DanGPhoton··on An Abandoned Mansion in NYC Raises Questions
This feels like guerilla marketing for a mystery movi
DanGPhoton··on FreeCAD: A free and open source multiplatform 3D parametric modeler
Anyone here ever try ironCAD? I've thought about buying a personal license of a professional CAD package. Solidworks (my most familiar) is too expensive for personal use. OnShape I'd consider if I could sign up month-by-month and go dormant. But I'd like an old-school software package that I could keep indefinitely but knew it could do all my entry-level work.
DanGPhoton··on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: 40 years of parody and predictions
I first read these books in high school and loved the zany humor. The deeper satire took a bit longer for me to appreciate - especially the "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" where all the rich and famous would gather to watch the Universe implode as a form of entertainment. DA was a secular prophet.
DanGPhoton··on The interstellar space rock that mystified astronomers is actually a comet
I guess I admire the author's restraint but I sure would have spun this as "strange object from outside our solar system has mysterious source of acceleration"
DanGPhoton··on Why We May Soon Be Living in Alexa’s World
I think there was a radiology journal dedicated to stereoscopic X-rays 100 years ago.
DanGPhoton··on An Updated Analysis for the “Giving Up on Julia” Blog Post
I recently passed a happy milestone with my ongoing transition from Matlab to Julia in that now I'm more likely to get an error in Matlab for using Julia syntax than the other way around. I am probably using Julia for about 50% of my work.
DanGPhoton··on Ancient Infant's DNA Reveals New Clues to How the Americas Were Peopled
From Much Ado About Nothing: "The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married."
DanGPhoton··on Italian Clothing Company Wins the Right to Use Steve Jobs' Name
Something similar happened with my alma mater (Franklin & Marshall College) when an Italian designer gave a clothing line the same name. Students started coming home from travel abroad with tales of bootleg college gear. IIRC the college and clothing company worked out some licensing deal.
DanGPhoton··on I hate Matlab: How an IDE, a language, and a mentality harm
Funny, I agree with the structure of what his argument and the limitations of Matlab but disagree with the pedagogical conclusions. I learned to drive on automatic transmission cars, and found it a good stepping-stone to learning how to use a manual transmission. I just had to buy a cheap used car to make it happen. Likewise, I started coding seriously using Matlab (well, IDL even before that.) I'm slowly transitioning to Python and (command line) Julia, I think this would be much more frustrating if it weren't for the experience with Matlab. Even reading the occasional block of C code is easier after the Matlab experience.
DanGPhoton··on Dyson to make electric cars from 2020
Point of fact, "that Dyson" is Freeman Dyson
DanGPhoton··on Ask HN: CAD design for beginners
FreeCAD has some advanced capabilities but is not a great package to start on. I've created some weird shapes in it but would never have been able to do it if it were not for a fair amount of SolidWorks experience. You might try using OnShape, where everything is stored in the cloud. I haven't tried it yet but it seems to be made by the same people who did SolidWorks. They probably have good tutorials. If you get over a learning curve there you might be better prepared to do things on FreeCad offline.
DanGPhoton··on I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
Hi @sama. Are there any technologies that you would not consider funding?
DanGPhoton··on Entangled Photons Make a Picture from a Paradox
About 15 years ago I saw Paul Kwiat at UIUC give a talk on "Interaction Free Measurements" which seems to be effectively the same thing as here. (cf http://physics.illinois.edu/people/kwiat/interaction-free-me... ) I could never figure out why this did not get more attention at the time