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unemphysbroon Life is not short

Are you me? I've been slowly getting into alpinism in the Sierras and looking into getting my p2 cert. (I'd love to combine the two...imagine climbing in the palisades then paragliding or base jumping off )

I regrettably spent my 20s in academia and now I'm in tech and actually afford these hobbies. I'd love to have kids but I'm pushing it off because as you mentioned, it seems selfish.

I'm thinking about a SEA climbing holiday during the winter. I'm eyeing Vietnam. Do you have any favorite locale?

unemphysbroon Using foot pedals for modifier keys in Linux (2014)

oh damn...you also need a big red button to kick things into turbo/overdrive for the serious hacking

unemphysbroon 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

what was the merge code process like?

unemphysbroon Amazon completes its $8.5B acquisition of MGM

i agree; universe was a little too bleak, which was trendy at the time. we need something campy and fun.

unemphysbroon Amazon completes its $8.5B acquisition of MGM

indeed

unemphysbroon How does database indexing work? (2008)

Phil, These are great! Thank you!

unemphysbroon Paper suggests there are three Tyrannosaurus species

it's not such a crazy idea.

as a not-so-scientific back-of-the-envelope: assume a poissonian mutation rate and a genome length; how long till a measurable taxonomic difference?

unemphysbroon Have we simply stopped the process of innovating new things that solve problems?

Adding to the authors point; I think there's quite a bit of innovation through maintenance. Reducing the tech debt in existing infrastructure eg. education, transport, etc

I have a gut feeling that societal cohesiveness is somehow lost through 'profit-driven' maintenance.

unemphysbroon Tim O'Reilly on Web3

I agree especially from the authentication side of things.

unemphysbroon The dangers of high status, low wage jobs

Universities take a cut (30 - 50%) of grant money brought in by profs. The incentive structure for good science is broken.

Academia is a racket.

unemphysbroon Amazon Pip Horror Story

zing :)

unemphysbroon Why isn't there a replication crisis in math?

2+2=4

unemphysbroon Simulation of a 2B-atom cell that metabolizes and grows like a living cell

yup, i noticed that when i saw the first commits; in fact i thought it was someone's pet project. however, when i read that first odenet paper, it's clear keeping track of the gradients is extremely useful.

I'm very familiar with the first paper, the second author was on my committee.

so what does a cloud migration at a biotech company mean?

is it sort of a standard orchestrator + warehouse/lakehouse + distributed compute + cicd tools stack?

unemphysbroon Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

hence the recent renaissance in formal methods

eg.

https://www.certik.com/

unemphysbroon Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

https://docs.aave.com/developers/v/2.0/guides/flash-loans

have fun :) play around on the testnets first.

unemphysbroon Simulation of a 2B-atom cell that metabolizes and grows like a living cell

funny enough I'm doing the exact same thing in public sector education. I'm always curious where people in our field end-up.

i saw some of your other comments about being at google. did you touch jax-md at all?

https://github.com/google/jax-md

unemphysbroon Simulation of a 2B-atom cell that metabolizes and grows like a living cell

yup, we used PME for non-bonded calculations in our simulations and to calculate things like electric potentials. I finished a biophysics phd back in 2020 and focused mainly on fluid flow.

Pretty cool, what're you up to now?

unemphysbroon Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

why? i think it's the coolest thing ever.

anyone can write a contract to automate taking out a loan, investing it, and pulling out the money, develop exotic securities, and bespoke arbitration. anyone can do it regardless of credentials or connections; just a month of learning.

pretty darn cool to have unbridled access to a distributed computer.

unemphysbroon Simulation of a 2B-atom cell that metabolizes and grows like a living cell

p3m, well pme, is exactly what we used for our calculations ;)

i never did any qm work beyond basic parameterization

i'm guessing you are/were also computational physics guy :)

unemphysbroon Simulation of a 2B-atom cell that metabolizes and grows like a living cell

verlet list is the standard algo used to reduce the complexity in the number of interatomic calculations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlet_list

unemphysbroon Simulation of a 2B-atom cell that metabolizes and grows like a living cell

vmd is a standard biological system simulation rendering software

unemphysbroon How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)

I'd imagine creating uniform and robust ball-bearings is not an easy feat.

unemphysbroon Lessons for a Young Scientist

i'm running the counterfactual simulation and i agree :)

unemphysbroon WebAssembly: The New Kubernetes?

kubernetes is my personal afghanistan

unemphysbroon Ask HN: Senior FAANG engineer, going back to school for PhD. Is it a bad idea?

I noticed my colleagues that started the PhD with industry experience were often more focused with their goals.

unemphysbroon Ask HN: Senior FAANG engineer, going back to school for PhD. Is it a bad idea?

Do it...you can easily switch back to industry if you're not enjoying the phd. It'll be an opportunity to hang out with a whole set of new people.

unemphysbroon The Zen of Drinking Alone

that's a great way to relax away from screens.

my go-to is tequila ocho's añejo. it's aged in whiskey barrels so perhaps you may enjoy it.

unemphysbroon The Zen of Drinking Alone

i like having a drink and doing mechanical coding or math.

put on a good record, pour some choice tequila, and grind away. :)

unemphysbroon It’s not still the early days of blockchain

this article misses the forest for the trees.

it's the early days for smart contracts and applications like defi

once the barrier of entry drops in contract creation i suspect there will be exponential growth in exotic securities/financial-arbitration