npk

6 ms·

1.
by npk 2y ago
I have a serious question that might sound not serious. The articles I read about boeing seem to focus on assembly line issues. As someone who flies a lot, assembly problems scare me, but so far assembly qv hasn’t been catastrophic (right?
2.
by npk 3y ago
Carnegie Observatories (in Pasadena CA, not the telescope) is hosting an open house today ( https://carnegiescience.edu/carnegie-observatories-2023-open... ). It’s also almost the 100-year anniversary of one of the most impor
3.
by npk 9y ago
It turns out that this wavelength of infrared is short enough that it sees through windows just fine.
4.
by npk 16y ago
I personally had a bad customer service experience from them and switched. It's not obvious to me if you can generalize from one person's experience -- however -- the crux of my issue is their choice to not allow you to call them on the pho
5.
by npk 16y ago
They answered this question many years ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23938
6.
by npk 17y ago
Being proud, egotistical, or a braggart are all human characteristics. I mention this for two reasons. First, without the benefit of direct contact, you really have no idea what kind of person sivers is, or what his intention was when pos
7.
by npk 17y ago
The standard deviation is simply a measure of the spread of a distribution. There's nothing wrong or right about high standard deviations. In fact, the high standard deviation means that you should expect highly variant performance. Look
8.
by npk 17y ago
> "Long Jumps" is a myth imho. You are 100% on point. The parent's poster's point on conformity is well taken. Still, "independent" researchers are viewed with suspicion because research is hard. As psranga points out, to make a long
9.
by npk 17y ago
Sparkfun just started selling a book called "Electrical Engineering 101". I've never read it, but I imagine it's pretty good. Do you have access to a good electronics lab? A lab + H&H might be sufficient. I learned 80% of my electron
10.
by npk 17y ago
If you want to learn how to implement MCMC I recommend: Bayesian Logical Analysis Physical Sciences by Gregory Gregory's book explains a lot more of the engineering (autocorrelations, step size jumping, etc..). Even better, it discusses ho
11.
by npk 17y ago
Great ideas. I'm particularly impressed with the term "web 3d". The PR will just roll in -- especially in "today's economy" -- press will love to discuss Americans who actually (1) make things and (2) sell those things. I've had a very ne
12.
by npk 17y ago
The statement "only has meaning if the distribution is presumed to be normal" is wrong. The SD is a summary of the spread of a distribution. In fact, for most centrally concentrated distributions (including a uniform one) +/- 1 sigma corr
13.
by npk 17y ago
80 hours a week for two months in the Antarctic "Pig Barn." The heat was turned off for about three weeks. http://stratocat.com.ar/bases/41e.htm
14.
by npk 17y ago
Fortunately for you 2009 happens to be the international year of astronomy. Buy your daughter this: https://www.galileoscope.org/gs/ She'll be able to do a variety of experiments on it, and if it turns out she actually enjoys looking thr
15.
by npk 18y ago
How complicated is it? Can you make it yourself? It's probably best if you do. If you have something you want to make in quantitiy, you'll want to hire someone who is experienced with tooling up a factory efficiently. What you're doing
16.
$3B Rumored for NSF(blogs.sciencemag.org)
17 points by npk 18y ago|4 comments
17.
by npk 18y ago
I've asked this question months ago, but I never received a satisfactory answer: What is the value of stock in a private company? Do you receive dividends on the stock? You can't sell the stock to other people? The only time it's of valu
18.
by npk 18y ago
Excellent, I've been intending to play with CUDA compuation for a while, this seems like a great way to begin. It's especially nice that the documentation seems helpful. I'd be curious to hear peoples experiences with pycuda.
19.
by npk 18y ago
The point is that climate models are not testable. Bernoulli's equation is a "good" approximation because we know when it fails. If we're going to rely on climate models to define policy, we should understand what they're good for. You sa
20.
by npk 18y ago
>that doesn't seem very free-markety at all. You're wrong. The free market comes from the board of directors who approve such the "heads I win, tails I win" package. The board was not forced by any non-free-market laws. Thus, these c
21.
by npk 18y ago
Alex3917 - I don't disagree. But, isn't Godin's approach still masterful self marketing? Being self-referential is tacky. So, justifiably, he avoids it. My point: the fact that you know his style of promotion means he's self promoting. :
22.
by npk 18y ago
First impression: elegant looking site. Put the "launch portal spy" link on every page (maybe). I've never heard of Vignette Portal. I don't understand 95% of the text of your site. For instance: "Portal Spy will change the way you thin
23.
by npk 18y ago
Gosh, I remember providing feedback for this site way back when. It's been much improved. Clearly stormpulse is a labor of love and hard work. Congrats.
24.
by npk 18y ago
I disagree. If I had three great hacker friends, I'd brainstorm to find an awesome problem to work on. It's hard to find talent; especially hard to find talent in people I like to work with. Anyway, I can't think of any good ideas. Good
25.
by npk 18y ago
not for me.
26.
by npk 18y ago
Very interesting. I'm not sure if speedreader improves my reading speed, but I noticed something when applying it to my thesis. It's much harder to speedread poorly written text! So, on a handful of paragraphs, I've concluded that speedr
27.
by npk 18y ago
hugh, you're right. VCs claim to hate pitches where the founders don't know their market. I never understood why -- until i read this post. Not a single link to prior art, no explanation of why his solution will be better than anything el
28.
by npk 18y ago
[I'm sorry for decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio.] Andre is the man.
29.
by npk 18y ago
I don't know for sure. My best guess is they have a calorimeter, a device which measures the irradiance on a surface. The Bodybugg companies then does a series of calibrations to convert the irradiance into the power the body outputs. Th
30.
by npk 18y ago
A favorite startup of mine is bodybugg ( http://www.bodybugg.com/ ). They measure the flux of body heat and determine a person's caloric output. I built some MEMS devices once and was juiced about building a body calorimeter. Too bad I h

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