204 karma · joined February 7, 2019
Tailor your diet to your needs, are you exercising mentally or physically or both?
Our research group prided ourselves on cutting edge nanotechnology that was also commercially viable.
Just focusing on my project alone, and not the other great ones, if I explained it in the most concise, layperson fashion it was as follows:
You like sugar cookies? Well, guess what, you mix chocolate chips in and BAM 10x better! All you have to do is mix them in when you're mixing the batter the way you already do, no added steps or infrastructure.
My research project was discovering and demonstrating that LED efficiency can be increased by mixing polymer-grafted zirconia nanoparticles in with the LED encapsulant and the encapsulant and phosphor for phosphor concerted white LEDs (just look at the back of your phone, that flash, of yellow, is likely a YAG:Ce phosphor on a blue or royal blue LED, the mixing of the yellow and blue gives you that white).
Despite being humble about mentioning our success, this result is actually pretty important. The US Department of Energy's Solid State Lighting goals include getting even small increases in efficiency through better light extraction (more light out instead of reflecting back in), better thermal conductivity (more heat out than in, heat from the semiconductor and phosphor decrease both of their efficiency), and better lifetime.
We worked with the same companies that manufacture the LEDs, phosphors, and the silicone encapsulant materials so that we were using the same thing companies were using in their manufacturing process for personal and commercial applications. I chose to do a phosphor conformal coating the same way they do in industry (other researchers try crazy versions of phosphor placement to try to get more efficiency but it makes tooling significantly more comprehensive, complex, and you don't get much if any increase in efficiency. You actually get bigger LED structures, so they're more of fun theoretical models of "what you can do").
More briefly: my research set-up was what they do with the materials they use in industry for manufacturing the LEDs we use.
I showed that increase in efficiency by just mixing the nanoparticles into the encapsulant. We did not notice a change in a 1000 hour reliability testing. Other solutions like epoxy encapsulants or Titania nanoparticles have issues like yellowing or other degradation.
Other key things:
It was not insanely expensive to do this, while I never quantified the cost per LED I can assure you it was low (we allocated $10,000 for materials and by the end of the project I was told I needed to burn through the last $6,000 somehow so that funders wouldn't give us less next time. I'm frugal, spending where we need but not frivolously, but our materials weren't super expensive).
The entire production of nanoparticles was scalable (blew my mind, often nanoparticles synthesis and polymer grafting like this can have a drop off in yield as the process scales). Whether you we're making 2.22g yielding 0.7g nanoparticles or 22.2g yielding 7g, (I think that was the conversion, it's been a while) you got the conversion of precursor to nanoparticles to grafted nanoparticles.
All companies have to do is mix it in using the same materials they have been, and we get increased LED efficiency.
Even with it so easy and proven, the road to commercialization is still slow.
One of my peers continued on to a company to help push this technology into application but even such a proven, simple thing is challenging for large industries to pick up.
Unfortunately, our research group was rare in this regard. So many others focus on ivory tower "cool" discoveries, but leave a major gap to commercialization. You can spin your research into a startup company, partner with the corporations that will use it, or try to pitch it, but even a proven enhancement will require luck and a long road.
You used the word "what" where we would normally use the word "that".
I've heard this done during speech numerous times from everyone ranging from fluent native speakers to learning nonnative speakers. Was there a specific reason you did it here?
I’m all for figuring out what’s the most efficient option while also ensuring it’s an effective one as well. If you kept a knife in its sheath to keep it nice, but never take it out to use it, then it’s not servicing its purpose as a tool (ignoring ornamental ones). However, no matter how cool it might seem, you really don’t need a samurai sword to pear apples.
There were a number of other companies that played both sides of the fence in WW2, including Coca Cola.
I agree, if they knowingly do it, then they should be punished as such. Especially in the US, if we are going to allow corporations to be treated as people for tax and legal reasons, then clearly they should be punished as such. When a person knowingly assists a criminal, that person can be punished for any range of crime from being an accessory to directly involved.
2. My hosting provider’s support via the widget is SUPER Amazing. Needed shell access, Tony pulled it of in 7 minutes. Having speed issues for my business site? Migrated to a dedicated IP in under 10 minutes.
3. Numerous other times where I eventually would have a question.
Its made me more willing to invest the time asking a question instead of wasting time digging around for an answer that is usually in the realm of customer service or technical support.
What it has NOT done is make me any more or less likely to buy the product.
I’m mostly ok if it stays collapsed, especially on sites where that doesn’t impact the UI too much. The ones that automatically pop open with roboSteve asking me if I need help...Now those ones are obnoxious.
My mother did well in the Masters program at Stanford and I would have likely gotten in if she donated a couple million dollars but she didn’t and I didn’t (despite getting an invitation a year after accepting enrollment at another university).
It’s not like we ever had that type of money, but if we did I wouldn’t have wanted that.
It seems like they’re targeting this more obvious version of bribery but not digging in and targeting the systemic issue of affluent people buying their children’s spot in college.
I really don’t think it’s much harder to prove that an underperforming student who got in because their parents donated a couple million (or tens of millions of) dollars took the place of a more qualified candidate. Maybe I’m wrong...
From a developer side: Google, Facebook, etc have well developed and much safer password and login authentication and the liability technically falls on them for any screw ups. Although I have a very secure hashing system for my online game login I still plan to make logging in with your Google and, maybe, Facebook account. It also adds convenience.
I’m imagining the dev found some tool to do sms verification that Facebook makes simple (or maybe that’s all they know how to use considering you didn’t mention any google login...).
I won’t lie to you, there were some truly 100 hour weeks, but for the most part I worked precisely 96 hours per week in the PhD program and I loved it.
6 days of 16 hour days. It was fantastic. I had 3 labs and used parts of 4 others across 4 buildings, ran my main research and several skunkworks side projects, and optimized every moment I could. 3 years of that (with a week here or there for a holiday)
I was happy.
When we are pursuing something we are passionate about, when we are completely immersed in that thing, it is the greatest tribute to being alive.
I either was reading research papers or walking between buildings while eating, I automated some reactions and characterization so that I could read research papers while at the gym, and did numerous other things that made a 3 person project no problem for one person.
But to come off that high is hard. Everything seems slower when I’m not in that groove. I get bursts of it, but really being in that flow is such a joyous thing.
I hope those working on the module for those crazy hours were doing so because they were passionate about it. If not, then you are right to ask “what kind of life is that?”
It just blows me away how lazy or thoughtless most people are. It’s the company’s network or machine or both. The business done on there should be for work for them and nothing more. You breach ethical lines when you start doing personal stuff unless stated otherwise in your contract/agreement with them.
If I gave you my laptop to borrow for a day, you bet I’ll be making sure you didn’t do something funky to it. I’ll also be making sure you didn’t do something to get me on a government watch list. If there’s a reason to try to get statistical data from your usage, I might check that out too.
To me, it’s common sense, it’s not yours so respect it for the reason it was given to you to use. Period.
For your personal stuff: don’t trust it on their network or with their software. You exist to make them money regardless of whether you get paid directly for it. Assume 0 privacy on the clock and that your device might be compromised if used on their network, so just don’t do it.
1. I highly dislike material design as a programmer and as a consumer.
2. Google and others using “Material Design”, Polymer, etc is really annoying and can be confusing until the context is clear. It makes searching about EITHER physical material design or coding material design a painful experience.
I was searching for job openings around the SF Bay Area and the fact that they’ve made stuff like this and “product design engineer” very hard to filter through between hardware and software is just nonsense.
There’s a reason we define specific words and terms for specific fields and it’s totally understandable that different fields would accidentally mess this up before we had the internet and global connectivity. However, now we have no excuse to not make things clear and distinct. When I say “Polymer” you should thing “long noodly chain of repeating units, aka many mers” not “a web component library.”
When I search for “materials design/er” I should NOT see something programming related unless it’s computational materials design software (simulation, analysis, etc).
Still, barring the complete confusion created by this stuff, I don’t like Materials Design. It’s ugly and needs to go away. Amp can do that too. We need to keep Amp about current.
I applied numerous time for their Failure Analysis Engineer, Reliability Engineer, and other similar positions but repeatedly got rejected (or simply ignored by their ATS, I don’t play that keyword game very well).
My professional career in Materials Science and Materials Engineering has had a large focus on reliability testing and failure analysis. In parallel with inventing new technologies or pioneering research projects I have had to rigorously test and verify the robustness of the products. To put it plainly: the position descriptions were me. I had a bit more experience and qualifications but not so much that I was “over qualified”.
When I see some of the things that get through their engineers, I scratch my head and wonder what’s going on internally. Is there a lack of empowerment? Are those positions more or less for show and, while filled with legitimate engineers, not really leveraged as they should be?
At any of the places I’ve worked stuff that Apple has let slip through would have never flown.
The iPhone 5S compass/accelerometer issue (those of you who had it know, it was a bummer) and solving that by replacing the phone with another faulty one? The 2010-MacBook Pro discrete and integrated GPU switching failure? Right now I’m sitting in front of a 2017 MBP that has been used as a stationary desktop and babied with a keyboard cover and much TLC that has strange screen artifacts that seem to indicate that it was pinched or there’s adhesive in those regions while the rest of the screen is trying to pull away? Whatever it is has been there since I got it and I didn’t realize it wasn’t suppose to be that way until recently.
I stopped applying to Apple because nothing was coming of it and the thought of working for a company that claims to be detail oriented but let’s that stuff slip through was enough to put me off.
What’s inspiring though is that it gives their competitors and easy way to jump on the market. I’ve seen plenty new students choose Surface Books or Pro’s over Apple computers or tablets.
There’s a point where companies forget to continue earning their success.
I expect the foldable phone technologies have gone through considerable cyclic testing. That doesn’t mean that some manufactured ones won’t be flawed and that also doesn’t mean that people won’t be doing normal consumer things that cause failure sooner, but it’s likely these won’t be too bad.
A single example of the laws not being clear-cut and concrete, but hopefully covering enough ground that people can be reasonably expected to understand, is illustrated in IRS Publication 535 under 2. Employees’ Pay.
Reasonableness is defined as:
Test 1—Reasonableness
You must be able to prove that the pay is reasonable. Whether the pay is reasonable depends on the circumstances that existed when you contracted for the services, not those that exist when reasonableness is questioned. If the pay is excessive, the excess pay is disallowed as a deduction.
Factors to consider. Determine the reasonableness of pay by the facts and circumstances. Generally, reasonable pay is the amount that a similar business would pay for the same or similar services. To determine if pay is reasonable, also consider the following items and any other pertinent facts.
- The duties performed by the employee. - The volume of business handled. - The character and amount of responsibility. - The complexities of your business. - The amount of time required. - The cost of living in the locality. - The ability and achievements of the individual employee performing the service. - The pay compared with the gross and net income of the business, as well as with distributions to shareholders if the business is a corporation. - Your policy regarding pay for all your employees. - The history of pay for each employee.
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p535#idm139767235089984
It is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to cover all of the cases with laws. Arguing “common sense” also isn’t valid, “common sense” isn’t really “commonly shared”.
So, we do our best to create laws that cover bases but also give room for interpretation SO THAT WE CAN catch those people who are deliberately trying to break them.
If we said “you may not go over the speed limit” what happens if a bunch of people decide to go under, making it unsafe for other people?
They would have a basis to argue that they were not breaking the law.
So we create laws that are also guidelines.
At some point I read somewhere that the whole point of upvote and downvote on Reddit was for “contributed to conversation” (upvote) or doesn’t (downvote).
That, to me, makes sense.
Disagreeing is part of what promotes good, challenging discussions. It also buffers us from external influences controlling the crowd of “agree’ers”. By promoting and encouraging differences of opinion or view, we make it harder for someone to come in and sway the crowd.