dandermotj

I'm really impressed you used Julia in production. Despite its immaturity and all the reasons you mentioned, building your product on it is a testament to the language, its potential and the core group working on it. I wonder what the performance differences in your product are going from Julia to python?

I've had my eye on it for the last two years and really look forward to its 1.0 release. There is no doubt there is an audience for it!

I've a similar story! Working through the Nature of Code[1] is exactly the point in my life where differential equations and vector algebra suddenly made sense to me. Once I became the 'creator' I could see how this math described the real world.

[1]: http://natureofcode.com/

I am never comfortable with my understanding of a topic until I can teach it (or at least pass it on). There's just always an annoying, niggling feeling that if I were to be faced with a student who kept asking "why", I'd be a bumbling mess. I was the same as you for linear algebra. Everyone was always so happy to learn the rules, answer the questions like its a script and pass the exam. This frustrated me immensely. Sat down last year and started from the beginning, and I'm glad I did. Sometimes the key is to wipe the slate of existing knowledge clean and start again!

The more advanced mathematics I learn, the more I realise that in many cases I do not have a fundamental understanding of many topics, which leads me back to the beginning. More often than not, Better Explained is at the end of that path. If only this was how mathematics was taught!

Look, I'm not planning on printing the whole thing, binding it and sticking it on my shelf. I want the pdf because then I can use it when I'm offline, across devices and search it easily.

If I want this book in hard copy, then I will purchase it - I've done this regularly with free digital books - but when it is offered free digitally then in my opinion prohibiting to only certain file formats is futile (as evidenced here), and such constraints are ineffective attempts to encourage people to buy the hard copy through inconvenience.

And I must add that this is no slight to the authors, whom have my greatest appreciation for compiling their vast knowledge into a book and offering it for free. These guys are legends.

Somebody please package the html into a pdf!

You're right, that's why we use Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as our primary measure of an economy's performance; which employment is the fundamental driver of. I wasn't arguing against basic income, I was just contending that individual circumstance of employment like unhappiness are not good reasons for disregarding the benefits of increasing employment.

I absolutely want to see basic income tried and tested in all its various forms and iterations. I think it could be the solution to the convoluted social benefit policies which are too complicated to be navigated and too specific to generalise well.

And of course I agree that unproductive employment is worthless to society in the long.

I think we're hitting the .00001% here. Such a bizarre reality.

I suppose from an individual standpoint examples like yours are very relevant - a big fear for myself is working a job we're I am unfulfilled - but from a broad view we must agree increasing employment is a good goal. The more people working, the greater the output and the cheaper it costs, from which everyone benefits whether we are employed ourselves or not. A highly employed nation is a bountiful one.

I agree, this article was disappointing and is attracting the reaction I expected once I finished reading it. Ultimately the author pointed out the minor infrastructure development requirements of EVs, a bizarre point about hauling trailers and the (eventual?) decline in tax incentives for EVs across the globe, which may or may not be the case given the economical and environmental savings governments accrue in the future. Then the author provides the simple solutions which many commentators are providing in the conclusion.

Maybe more interesting angles could have been supplying the gigantic increase in demand for metals required to produce EV batteries, or the regulatory/industrial battle the EV industry faces with the traditional auto and oil industries (notably the Koch brothers).

If they purchased an option then Virgin paid for it. Optioning purchases is a common instrument traded in aviation finance. The option to buy this aircraft at some point in the future at a price specified today is worth a lot. The fact that it's a moonshot only means the price of the option would be reduced. If the plane is as magnificent as promised, Boom's order books will be filled for decades and other airlines will be second in line to Virgin.

The article first states that they've optioned a purchase - so I assume they've purchased some sort of call option and Boom are the issuers which would mean that some money has changed hands.

The article has nothing to do with how the data is gathered, stored and sometimes used. It's about real-time rendering of elevation maps in the browser. It's really impressive work.

Looks like Hadleyverse is spreading! Honestly, I think his contributions have led the way for R to being the leading language in data science.