You learned when analogue circuitry was the norm. I learned when digital circuitry was simple enough that you could readily take something apart and understand it.
Now, EE courses often start with cad, simulations, digital electronics, and you end up with people building ziggurats atop an ocean of incomprehension.
It’s exactly the same thing with software.
I don’t scorn people for this, rather I see myself as fortunate for having learned in a time when the more fundamental knowledge was still worth learning - and that’s the rub - for a vast majority, it simply isn’t worth the time or energy to explore the full stack, when there’s so much to learn atop it.
"You learned when analogue circuitry was the norm. I learned when digital circuitry..."
What's not taught properly these days is that ALL electronics is analog at the physical/circuit level.
For you digital types that's OSI Model Layer 1 — Physical layer (look it up on Wiki). Nothing in electronics works unless that's working properly—ICs, tunnel diodes, transistors, inductors, resistors, capacitors, cables and antennas are all analog devices at that level. That includes the heart of the most advanced digital ICs. For example, the upper clock speeds in processors are limited by transit times/electron mobility, inter-electrode and stray capacitances, unwanted inductance, etc.—all of which are analog effects and they must be accounted for.
Like it or not, the physical analog world is alive and well! The Noughts & Ones Brigade unfortunately seems to have forgotten that fact.
> you end up with people building ziggurats atop an ocean of incomprehension.
Everyone does. There's probably a layer below for everyone but the most theoretical physicists. I don't know where the leaks in electronics engineering's abstractions are, but I'm pretty sure they exist.
"…I never was someone who could stop asking “why?”"
When a kid of about four I found a pair of WWII headphones and took them to my father who pulled out the iron diaphragm and showed me magnetism at work—somehow some magical force was pulling the diaphragm back into the headphone with seemingly nothing in between. Absolutely fascinated, I wanted to know what this invisible 'magic' was. Many decades later every time I look at my fridge magnets I still ask the same question and I don't believe I'm much closer to the truth!
Sure, there are the simple answers everyone's taught, then there's QFT but even that doesn't tell me exactly what's going on. And why does alpha have the value it does, and why exactly does c = 1/(μ0ε0)^1/2? Not knowing and not being able to figure these questions out is, at times, infuriating.
For me, solace of sorts can be found in engineering—I can build an electronic circuit and end up with a tangible working device. On the way I'll curse my electrons for making so much noise that they sound like ball bearings rattling around in an empty oil drum but I'll eventually calm down and apply Johnson–Nyquist to shut them up (well, a little bit anyway).
The respiratory complexes - the machines at the core of it all - are absolutely wild bits of natural engineering. Perhaps the most incredible and successful non-trivial natural objects in existence.
You can get efficient DIY units - specifically look for mini splits with quick connectors and you’ll find them. Installed one last year and the efficiency is actually better than it says on the box.
Really depends on where you are in Europe. Out here in the boonies of Portugal, it’s excellent if you’re driving a 4x4 pickup truck, which is the only vehicle of mine I use it with, as it picks very direct routes, which often involve ridiculously steep muddy dirt tracks, very narrow bridges, and generally just very underused farm tracks.
I tried using it in Bosnia, once, and it decided to use an abandoned airfield landing strip as a shortcut. Wild stuff.
This is my exact experience, but with Google Maps. Constantly suggesting gravel (or worse) side roads instead of highways and hallucinating multiple turn lanes etc on a country road about 1 car wide. It's been a few years, but I still remember the time I was in Berlin and buses didn't run due to bad weather, but I had a flight to catch so I had to walk to the Tegel airport and the route Google maps recommended ended up being quite an adventure, having to crawl through a hole in a linked fence on an unlit dead-end road next to the airport.
No, and as far as I know, they don't say. But a lot of their not-direct-from-OSM map data comes from TomTom, which also ingests OSM. There's a lot of OSM in Apple Maps, as there is in most other non-Googly mapping apps.
I was chatting with a biologist friend a while back, and one tidbit he dropped in was that any sample of air from anywhere on earth will likely contain the dna of organisms unknown to science, so abundant the tree of life is.
I firmly believe that there are thousands of times more species of viruses in circulation that influence human health, almost always in minor fashion, than we currently know. Any random, sub-clinical symptom is in my belief highly likely to be caused by one of such viruses.
We call them “spiral staircases” yet rarely do they actually contain a single spiral - but they do have a helix. I guess “helical staircase” was just too much for people to care about as the term embedded in the 1600s. Previously they’d been winding stairs, screw stairs, and earlier yet just a “vice”, so common were they. Weird how language adapts to what’s easy rather than what’s correct.
> Weird how language adapts to what’s easy rather than what’s correct.
It’s not weird at all, it’s quite sensible. The purpose of language between people is not to produce correct sounds, it’s to facilitate some other activity or intent, so people will tend towards whatever manner of language makes achieving their goals the easiest.
It’s the same reason desire paths form: it’s less effort.
Yup. This was my approach. Left my business a decade ago with low six figures cash in my pocket. It would have lasted about 18 months at my existing burn rate.
So I moved to a cabin in the woods in a country with a low cost of living, and stuck pretty much all of it in the markets.
Had I not done that, I would have had to go back to work - instead I lived a modest life (€500/mo, max) off the income from putting my apartment on Airbnb, and regained my sanity after a decade of relentless work while my investments did their thing.
Anyway, it’s a decade on, still haven’t done a jot of “work”, and the assets are now worth several million, and are being redeployed to continue to maximise value growth - and we now treat ourselves to spending months travelling at exorbitant budgets, real estate, expensive toys - and had enough stability to decide to have a kid.
So yeah, it’s possible - although had we grown at 6%/yr rather than an average of 80%/yr, it would be a different picture - but I firmly believe there are plenty of other opportunities for rapid capital growth elsewhere in the markets, and yet to come. I’m just some average dude who buys equities on vibes and then sits on them for a decade. If I of all people managed it, others can.
Way to bury the lede. Being able to average 80%/yr returns takes talent and skill and is a type of work. The type of work, by the way, that is rewarded with millions at finance companies in NYC, or even more if you launch your own trading shop.
I’d sooner eat crow than work for a living again - and this ain’t work. I just think while I’m out for a hike, driving, whatever, and decide to make some investments in X, Y, Z next time there’s a decent looking moment to realise and reallocate some profits.
Plus, the kind of investing I do would never fly in a hedge fund - I’d just make the risk desk piss itself with laughter.
Nope. I just think about the probable shape of the future, and who benefits.
I stick with the fields I know and understand - tech, engineering, sciences - don’t go for long bets so much as “if this relatively predictable set of circumstances arises, who will inevitably benefit”.
For example, in 2017 I was keeping abreast with ML research, and realised that within a decade this stuff was going to be huge - so I bought Nvidia and their supply chain and sat on it. Also Tesla as I figured as if I saw them as an adjacent incumbent beneficiary of an AI boom, then others would, too.
I’ve followed that chain of logic through - caught the nuclear renaissance in its entirety, as well as predictable resource squeezes.
So - that’s just one of my trees of bets - but my whole thesis is “predict a future, model out what that looks like, place bets accordingly”.
You could just dangle the toilet on the end of a filament, and rotate the capsule and the outhouse around the centre of mass. No massive structure needed, just remember to take the farmer’s almanac with you before you head out.
You learned when analogue circuitry was the norm. I learned when digital circuitry was simple enough that you could readily take something apart and understand it.
Now, EE courses often start with cad, simulations, digital electronics, and you end up with people building ziggurats atop an ocean of incomprehension.
It’s exactly the same thing with software.
I don’t scorn people for this, rather I see myself as fortunate for having learned in a time when the more fundamental knowledge was still worth learning - and that’s the rub - for a vast majority, it simply isn’t worth the time or energy to explore the full stack, when there’s so much to learn atop it.
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