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matt_j

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matt_j
·anno scorso·discuss
Given that his sister Joan was an accomplished scientist in her own right, and they got along well, I don't think your comment is accurate.

> “During the conference I was staying with my sister in Syracuse. I brought the paper home and said to her, “I can’t understand these things that Lee and Yang are saying. It’s all so complicated.”

> “No,” she said, “what you mean is not that you can’t understand it, but that you didn’t invent it. You didn’t figure it out your own way, from hearing the clue. What you should do is imagine you’re a student again, and take this paper upstairs, read every line of it, and check the equations. Then you’ll understand it very easily.”

> I took her advice, and checked through the whole thing, and found it to be very obvious and simple. I had been afraid to read it, thinking it was too difficult.”

http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2017/04/richard-feynm...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Feynman
matt_j
·2 anni fa·discuss
Carrying The Fire by Michael Collins is an excellent account of Apollo 11 from the perspective of the command module pilot. I've read it three times, it's a wonderful book, he's a very intelligent, capable and humble man.
matt_j
·2 anni fa·discuss
The way I understand it, there is one EM field and photons of various frequencies travel in that field: radio, microwave, infra-red, visible, ultra-violet, x-ray, gamma.

We are awash with EM radiation of almost all frequencies from the universe. A little 5G probably isn't our biggest problem.

Besides, this article is more about electo-static forces, and how, when you're very small, these are much more significant than the gravitational force, which makes sense.
matt_j
·2 anni fa·discuss
Same. My work is very flexible, we can take time throughout the day for an appointment or errand, and in return, we have a strong work ethic that ensures that things get done, which sometimes requires overtime or after hours.

It's nice to be treated as an adult and it goes both ways.
matt_j
·2 anni fa·discuss
I'm not torn at all. Ads are cancer. They're either un-curated and malware, or curated on my private data and disturbingly targeted. I reject both types.
matt_j
·2 anni fa·discuss
Yeah, I'm not sure what the better word is. As a programmer, I use APIs. "interact with", "code to/against". I think "user" is OK. We're all users at different levels of abstraction.
matt_j
·2 anni fa·discuss
API doesn't imply integration. Consider any module or package to have an API exposed to the user of the package. Unit tests should assert that the package behaves as expected.
matt_j
·2 anni fa·discuss
I'm in my 40s and still vibing on a mix of novel and nostalgia. I don't know what my secret is but I've never been in a position where discovering new music was difficult. I don't listen to much radio, but when I do, it's a community station with people that care about music. I don't use any streaming services. I have a large, physical music collection that I still add to, both CD and vinyl, supplemented by a digital collection from places like Bandcamp. I explore a bit on Youtube and Discogs, I read music zines and local whats ons, I take recommendations from friends, I go to gigs: local pubs, concerts, festivals. Music seems to come easily if I put myself in front of it.

I went to a gig last night and saw a great band I found a few months ago with two other new (to me) bands and came home with a head full of tunes, strengthened friendships, and a CD from the merch stand.

It's just part of my life and I give it some time each day. :)
matt_j
·2 anni fa·discuss
This is debunked to some extent. Veritasium made a good video about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA

Personally I find a multi-pronged approach is necessary to really learn anything. Read it. Read it again. Visual guides are helpful. Work some examples. Make some mistakes, debug them, find the corner cases, write tests. Eventually when I've poked around the material for a while it starts to bed in.

Three months later it's forgotten, but when I learn it the next time I move a lot faster!
matt_j
·2 anni fa·discuss
Seems an unpopular opinion but I thought EEAAO was pretty daft and I'm surprised at the reception it received and all the Oscars it won.

Now don't get me wrong, it's a fun flick and I'm genuinely glad for the three actors that won an Oscar (bless 'em), but it seemed like fan service from a waning institution trying to generate goodwill more than cinematic mastery from anyone involved.

The film is slightly better than a super bowl Pepsi commercial. There was nothing in this film that was any better than recent Marvel films, and none of them deserve awards for basic stories, basic dialogue and a lot of flashing lights and "multiverse".

We all love googly eyes, but that's not enough to carry a film.
matt_j
·3 anni fa·discuss
Moral of the story: make friends with PC nerds.

I never had much time for consoles and I don’t feel like I missed out on much. Popular games come and go. The joy of doing whatever I can imagine with my PC is more than enough consolation.
matt_j
·3 anni fa·discuss
The way I understand it, light from far away, very far away, is red-shifted because the universe is expanding at every point and the wavelength of the traveling light is stretched. Stretching the wavelength means light from the blue end of the spectrum moves closer to, or indeed, into the red end of the spectrum.

If you want to look very deep into the past, say, 13 billion years ago, any light from galaxies that old has traveled 13 billion light years PLUS however much the universe has expanded and will be red-shifted out of the visible spectrum, so you need an infra-red telescope to see it. Hence, JWST.

You simply can't see these things without using instruments that can detect the right light.

On top of that, everything in the universe emits light across a broad spectrum, above and below the visible spectrum. We can enhance our knowledge of these things; stars, planets, galaxies, etc by using instruments that can "see" infra-red, radio, x-ray, gamma ray and that is additional information on top of what our eyes can see in the visible spectrum.
matt_j
·3 anni fa·discuss
The right word would be "apathy".
matt_j
·3 anni fa·discuss
Sure, Satan.
matt_j
·3 anni fa·discuss
That’s a good opportunity to run a profiler and it will tell you pretty quick which things are taking the most time/cpu/memory.
matt_j
·3 anni fa·discuss
He just dropped a new album, Eidolon, last week. It's wonderful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljzFWdax0iE&list=PL44Q4mKIiC...
matt_j
·3 anni fa·discuss
Underworld is usually closer to techno/tech-house than trance although I feel trying to fit Underworld into any genre is a disservice. They are masters of their own sound and a class act!
matt_j
·3 anni fa·discuss
Donato Dozzy is an amazing selector. One of the greats.
matt_j
·3 anni fa·discuss
I play psy-trance at a range of tempos, from dub stuff at 70-80bpm, through prog stuff around 110-130bpm, to more high energy stuff up at 140-150bpm.

The main reason for sticking to a tempo is because psy-trance, and (good) trance music in general is about the constant pulse. The goal is to put the listener in 'the zone' (a trance even :P), and then give them a bunch of ear candy in the mids and highs to keep their happy little brains occupied.

So for any given set DJs generally pick a tempo and stick to it and deliver a driving, consistent pulse, and everything else is just colouring in on top.
matt_j
·3 anni fa·discuss
If you like Shpongle, I recently bought a new album, Transient States - Ballade en Forêt, that sounds very derivative (in a good way!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLLzz4vxKb0

Hallucinogen In Dub (remixed by Ott) is another gorgeous album. Ott has a bunch of his own albums too.