fastneutron

5 ms·

1.
by fastneutron 6mo ago
Very cool! One possible nitpick: were you aware of the naming collision with Versor, the general purpose GA library in templated C++? http://versor.mat.ucsb.edu/
2.
by fastneutron 11mo ago
Ludlum is rare among equipment manufacturers in that they design with user-servicability in mind. They happily took phone calls and emails from my 16-year-old self about how to diagnose and repair various instruments of theirs I had picked
3.
by fastneutron 1y ago
This sounds more like proactive outreach to PIs based on AI-automated market research rather than direct AI-based gatekeeping by the granting agencies. There’s certainly a case to be made about using LLMs to find needles in haystacks, since
4.
by fastneutron 2y ago
> there aren't that many well paying jobs The irony here is that if you look at the job postings of quantum hardware vendors, they ask for a laundry list of skills that only a small handful of people on Earth realistically possess (
5.
by fastneutron 2y ago
You could cut all of it and it wouldn’t solve the problems you listed. It would just create new ones by closing off a major valve to the country’s R&D pipeline. Assuming you believe R&D is a worthwhile investment, what non-governme
6.
by fastneutron 2y ago
Now do it for an applied physicist with a family and a mortgage! In theory, the work I do sits in that valley of death between where the government funds uncertain things at a $1e5-$5e6 level and where private capital funds things with more
7.
by fastneutron 2y ago
While I dream of unshackling my research programs from the bureaucracy of the institutions they’re tied to, I do very much enjoy having an actual budget, paycheck, and health insurance. With all the chaos currently befalling the academic r
8.
by fastneutron 2y ago
I’m no expert in formal methods, but of all the tools I’ve used, Athena [0] has been one of my favorites to work with. The proofs read much more like what you’re used to seeing in math literature. 0. https://athena-lang.org/
9.
by fastneutron 2y ago
No, the non-exception is not absolutely necessary, and there are plenty of people on my staff who fit the description. There are also plenty more who Dunning-Krueger their way into thinking they do, but break down when challenged to do anyt
10.
by fastneutron 2y ago
Celebrity exceptions are exactly that; exceptions. Those people knew an opportunity when they had one, and were able to generalize their early successes into other domains by leveraging the financial, social, and intellectual capital they a
11.
by fastneutron 2y ago
Disregard them. A lot of people fixate on the 1 in a billion celebrity exceptions like Musk, Thiel, Gates, Dyson, et al and go “look look you don’t need a PhD!” Yes, a highly motivated college dropout with a computer, a strong financial saf
12.
by fastneutron 2y ago
Most discussions I see online about whether or not someone should do a PhD tend to assume: - The student becomes hyper focused and pigeonholed into some esoteric and unemployable domain, destined to run on the postdoctoral treadmill for dec
13.
by fastneutron 2y ago
Nobody pays tuition in a PhD program. Your work is funded by grants and fellowships and you get paid a stipend.
14.
by fastneutron 2y ago
This might be a good candidate for the 2025 Ig Nobel prize in physics [1]. More seriously, NV centers are one of the most accessible quantum hardware platforms, and do very sensitive measurements on all kinds of interesting stuff. 1. https
15.
by fastneutron 2y ago
The idea of neurosymbolic systems has been in the air a long time, but every time I look at the commentary of an article like this I’m surprised at number the “OMG why didn’t anyone think of this?” type of comments. For a while I got the im
16.
by fastneutron 2y ago
“All you need” considered harmful.
17.
by fastneutron 2y ago
There must be some kind of inside joke at CERN about this. I’ve sat through more than a few conference talks by CERN researchers (not even LHC affiliated) where Comic Sans was the default font on the presentation slides.
18.
by fastneutron 2y ago
Fortran is alive and well in science and engineering. The more modern standards are much nicer to work with, but largely backwards compatible with stuff written 50 years ago.
19.
Athena: A Programming Language for Proof Engineering and Natural Deduction(athena-lang.org)
2 points by fastneutron 2y ago|0 comments
20.
by fastneutron 2y ago
Now that’s what I’d call nuclear engineering! More seriously, spin polarized D-T fusion is known to have an enhanced reaction cross section, so there are labs out there researching how to implement it more reliably.
21.
by fastneutron 2y ago
Very cool! Is the code open source?
22.
by fastneutron 2y ago
Another problem is the propensity for Congress to want to do "immigration reform" as a giant omnibus action. The discourse inevitably gets bogged down in mudslinging over the southern border, and any useful discussion over topics
23.
by fastneutron 2y ago
We use paper ballots in my jurisdiction (NY) and they’re counted electronically with a scanner. This gives a real time tally, but preserves a paper trail that can be audited.
24.
by fastneutron 2y ago
Assuming good faith, It’s possible to ask for references and citations without being rude and unwelcoming. “Hi, interesting work! Do you have any other recommended reading on $SUBJECT?”
25.
by fastneutron 2y ago
I’ve been building a RAG mini app with txtai these past few weeks and it’s been pretty smooth. I’m between this and llamaindex as the backend for a larger app I want to build for a small-to-midsize customer. With the (potentially) obvious b
26.
by fastneutron 2y ago
With all the hype around AI, deeptech, etc., I’m wondering if there’s a market for R&D consulting as a form of technical due diligence. I see money being thrown at some of the most hare-brained nonsense that could have been avoided with
27.
by fastneutron 2y ago
I can help with the latter. The math can be quite sobering when you look at the potential regulatory burdens.
28.
by fastneutron 2y ago
> This is for making bombs, and only bombs. While most of LANL's CPU cycles are likely being spent on that, the code mentioned in the article (PARTISN) is used pretty routinely in nuclear reactor and medical shielding calculations.
29.
by fastneutron 2y ago
Unlike with covid, we know how to make flu vaccines on a large scale. Is there a reason why we couldn’t also preemptively vaccinate against H5N1 during regular seasonal vaccination campaigns?
30.
by fastneutron 2y ago
Correct, linear algebra and linear programming are two very distinct things. The latter is a widely-used optimization technique, and computationally depends on the former, which is a general mathematical framework for essentially all numeri

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