Kale

I’m a mech E in the medical field. We’re consistently understaffed. If I validate an Excel worksheet in Excel '08 or a Python program in 3.5 with a specific version of NumPy, we’re probably sticking with those versions for a while. Every time I bring up re-validating with the latest version, keeping one old system running the old software requires fewer resources than me or a colleague re-validating.

My whole department is stuck on one version of Python because that was the most recent version when I had an emergency project and developed a data analysis algorithm. We validated it, then as new members were added to my team, they needed a copy, so we had to keep using it. I’ll probably re-validate it to the next Python release. It’s not only unit tests, or we could automate validation. Unit tests are a tiny part of validating software for making medical decisions. And software that directly runs a medical device (like firmware on an insulin pump) is an order of magnitude more rigorous than what I do.

Side note: there are people who somehow root their insulin pumps and run algorithms on them. There’s a group that can get a PID control loop on an insulin pump that has a more simple control scheme on it (because that’s how the FDA approved it). The company has been trying to get approval to use PID control in the US for years.

The business strategy decisions behind CPU fab is really interesting over the past 15 years.

AMD made a budget clone of Intel two decades ago. Then Intel made a misstep and released Northwood Pentium 4. AMD used less power and was faster. And AMD decided to go with DDR memory, while Intel went RDRAM. Then AMD was king when they went AMDx86-64 for 64 bit and Intel went Itanium.

Then AMD made a huge miscalculation on the future of multicore computing and designed Bulldozer, while Intel got their shit together and went down the hyperthreading route and released CORE/Core2/Core2Duo chips. And Intel was king for a decade.

I don’t know the exact timing, but AMD needed cash and sold their fabs to raise money, which became TSMC GlobalFoundries, sorry. GF learned how to make stuff small since smartphones became a huge market. Then AMD let an engineer run the company and she invested in the Zen architecture, which could be made by GF with their lessons from the mobile world.

This is my take. By AMD turning GF loose, GF could date other people work on mobile projects, which helped them learn.

It’s a side note now, but Intel hung on to their fabs and lagged behind GF. AMD let their fab go and benefitted from it. EDIT: I had some facts wrong. It’s possible Intel fabs are ahead of GF.

As a side note, Intel did try fairly hard to get into mobile like GF. They had the Atom chips and went for tablet, Ultrabook, netbook, and mobile. I had an ASUS Android phone with an Intel SOC. So it’s not like they ignored mobile, but it didn’t benefit them as much as TSMC.

I love MPFC, but some of the sketches are “meh”. For every “Battle of Pearl Harbor”, there’s a “Confuse-a-cat”.

Fawlty Towers is great. Mildly racist against the Spanish and Irish.

It takes 4 episodes to really build into the complexity. Then season 2 turns it on its head.

Red Dwarf is pretty good. Fawlty Towers is great. Someone recommended “Yes Minister” and the first season is awesome. The Hallmark of great comedy writing is if it holds up, and Yes Minister still is hilarious 40 years later.

Dark is a German Netflix show. It unfolds into something akin to “Lost” over the first four episodes. The ending doesn’t suck, and they set up the end to where it’s almost impossible to get it right. It’s not an amazing ending, but it’s impressive that they managed to make it not terrible, since it builds up to a near-impossible ending.

Squid Game is pretty great but gory. Letterkenny and Trailer Park Boys are quirky comedies with some rough language throughout.

There are methodical ways of valuating a private (and public) company. Some are pessimistic and some are wildly optimistic. Your can legally use whichever one you want, only you must only use that valuation method for everything. It’s illegal to value the company low for taxes and high for loan collateral. And if you sell it, you can owe back taxes if your valuation was off (sale price is the new valuation).

This is overly-simplified US accounting rules (from finance class 10 years ago)

He took it private so, although there can be shares, they aren’t traded on the open market. So no positions to short.

Out of curiosity, have you watched the Simpsons recently? I think, after season 31 or 32, it started getting better again. There are some really great episodes from two seasons ago.

The latest season of Futurama had two good episodes, but the rest were kind of weak. About the same level as season 9-10(Hulu season numbering). Those seasons were “meh” mostly but with three really amazing episodes (Free Will Hunting, Game of Tones, Meanwhile).

I watched Futurama trying to stay sane in grad school, as it was released on DVD. It’s straight-up comforting to watch now. Watching it when I’m stressed connects me emotionally to almost 20 years ago. I was stressed then but I made it out ok.

Seriously? I was looking at a Surface product recently, and it appeared to have an access panel for the NVME drive. I read a ton of complaints about the dimensions of the drive being unusual, but access to it was easy. I don’t think I was looking at a Surface pro though.

If a surface pro wants to be a full OS and not a tablet OS, it should be easy to replace the storage device.

Ah ok. That’s probably true. I was under the impression that a polymer that is solid at room temperature is a plastic.

Cellulose, starch, and chitin are all sugar polymers in plants and crustaceans (may be a broader group, I used chitosan from crustaceans though).

In mammals, collagen is a polymer. It’s like 30% of a humans non-water weight. Bones are composites that are tough collagen binding hard and strong fibers of apatite (mostly calcium apatite/ hydroxyapatite). I don’t think the apatite system is considered a polymer, though.

Triglycerides aren’t polymers in adipose tissue. Although plant triglycerides can split and polymerize. Which make beautiful wood stains.

Yeah, only the people who don’t flip their car should get one.

I have zero problems with owning one, and have owned them in the past. We knew this person was a crazy driver and that it was a bad idea.

Yeah. I know people who say stuff like that. I know someone who wanted a convertible car (they were 18). Someone mentioned the greater danger of they flip, and this person said “well I’m not going to flip a car”. We all gave them a hard time about whether they thought everyone who flipped a car did it on purpose. The next year, this same person flipped their car several times (and walked away OK somehow).

Some people can’t comprehend that bad stuff would happen to them.

Plastic is usually scratchy. Glass is much better about resisting scratches. I believe you’re, right, modem phone glass is pretty flexible. It’s also (usually) coated with something that prevents finger oils from building up easily.

His childhood primed him for comedy.

I haven’t dealt with HPC in a while, but Intel C compiler against MKL libraries were fastest CPU, and Nvidia CUDA was slightly easier to develop than OpenCL for other cards. I’m not sure if the situation’s changed.

For my current applications, I use NumPy compiled against Intel MKV installed as a binary. It works great.

Oof. Is that the official plugin language? Siemens NX uses “grip” which is a fork of TCL. And they require purchase of a pricy package to sign and compile code so NX will run it, so we only had one programmer for our custom grip functions.

Reverse Polish notation, right? Operand operand operator?

Relationships take effort and luck. You have to work on yourself to be prepared, put a lot out of effort into social things to meet people and develop relationships, and then most don’t work out and you’re sad for a bit.

The luck part is a huge part of the equation. Two people are perfect on paper but the “spark” doesn’t happen. Maybe they could have a great relationship but the starting conditions weren’t right to form a relationship. Having a close relative die, or having a mental health issue really early in a relationship can force a wedge that can’t be overcome yet. A normal wedge that all relationships deal with regularly once they’re established, but can’t deal with in the first few weeks.

The only advice that worked for me (I was raised with very few other kids my age) when I started dating in college was that the skills to make a romantic relationship were just people skills. That I should intentionally strike up conversations with anyone I don’t know. Most people have something to occupy their time. I try to find that out in the first conversation I have with someone. You can see when someone’s expression changes when the ice breaks and they shift into excitedly talking about a new personal best in a 10k run, or getting a major part in King Lear, or published their first full comic book or novella.

I had to hone my ability to talk about my hobbies. At the time I was finding gargantuan prime numbers. I had to work on how to describe it to people to make it slightly approachable.

I also figured out that a huge part of wanting to be in a relationship was family pressure. I had to be at a place where I wanted it, and not because aunts and uncles poked fun at any young single people in the family.

I don’t think a lot of thinking was part of that equation.