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User: grqb

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Comments · 149

  1. Fake News!!!!! Bezos owns the Washington Post, not the NYT.

  2. Ever heard of a metaphor? In this example, buying expensive coffee is a metaphor for frivolous spending.

  3. Re: In other news... on Elon Musk Says Mark Zuckerberg's Understanding of AI Is Limited (ndtv.com) · · Score: 1

    Yes. AI is nothing more than interpolating data. If you can't find a line of best fit in excel that fits your data...use AI.

  4. Re: Don't care, not my card, card issuer's proble on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Keep Your Credit Card Secure? · · Score: 2

    It's not even necessary to have a bank account with the same company that you have a credit card with. So your bank account is not linked to your credit card. You still need a convenient way to pay off your credit card, like electronic payments from your account to your credit card or whatever works for you.

    * at least this is how it works in Canada, but for whatever reason we seem to be ahead of the US in terms of credit card technology based on what I've been reading (no pin? no tap payments? You still need signatures? Wtf?)

  5. Re: Don't care, not my card, card issuer's problem on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Keep Your Credit Card Secure? · · Score: 2

    Exactly! I see all of these concerns about credit cards. WHO CARES! You'll never be responsible for paying a fraudulent charge. The hardest thing you have to do is read over your bill at the end of the month and most times your card company will notify you of sketchy activity.

    IMHO credit cards are more secure than cash. It's easier to keep track of spending, if you lose your card you get a new one, if somebody steals it you get a new one. Same is not true for cash.

  6. Re:Nissan Dealers Hate the LEAF on Why Nissan Is Talking To Tesla Model S Owners · · Score: 1

    Yes but what do you think this will do to their resale value after 6 years? The tesla and the volt will still have perfectly good battery packs but it's a huge question mark for the leaf considering they've already been sued over battery degradation issues.

  7. Re:Nissan Dealers Hate the LEAF on Why Nissan Is Talking To Tesla Model S Owners · · Score: 2

    If I were you I would consider the battery thermal management system in the electric car. It might be a bit technical for most people, but it has a direct impact on how many years the battery will last. The Leaf doesn't have a thermal management system. The Tesla and the Volt both have sophisticated ones.

  8. Re:Amateur science is blocked by journals on Citizen Science: Who Makes the Rules? · · Score: 1

    I agree. The public needs to have access to these journal articles. Now that I've left academia I don't even have free access to the articles that I wrote myself. (of course I kept the PDFs but if I ever lose them I'd have to pay $40 for every article that I wrote). It really does hold back progress.

  9. Re:Who the fuck wants to use GNU trash? on GNU Octave Gets a GUI · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Personally I switched from Matlab to python with spyder as the GUI interface and I'll never look back.

  10. Re:Is it a competitor? on GNU Octave Gets a GUI · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Most of those jobs are for "application engineers" and not developers. An application engineer is a little like tech support and a little like sales. They will work closely with existing customers to make Matlab work for their customers application and they'll also try to upsell new features.

    Octave wouldn't have the same type of support structure but might have similar numbers of man power contributing to the development.

  11. Re:Ugh, not "a software" again. on How I Compiled TrueCrypt For Windows and Matched the Official Binaries · · Score: 1

    Translate to french and then we'll let the OP nitpick your grammar.

  12. Re:How many times do we have to go through this? on Fisker Lays Off Most Workers, Plans To Shop Around Remaining Assets · · Score: 1

    I agree. The impression that I have from Fisker is that their product was not well engineered compared to competitors like Tesla. The Fisker Karma looked nice but they did have quality problems. Using lithium-ion batteries from A123 was one of their mistakes (even before bankruptacy, A123 had problems).

  13. Re:No problem here on iOS 6.1 Leads To Battery Life Drain, Overheating For iPhone Users · · Score: 4, Informative

    Same here

  14. Re:LTE on Woz Says iPhone Features Are 'Behind' · · Score: 1

    To be honest I wouldn't say apple is behind the times when it comes to something like this. They sacrificed this feature to make the user experience better due to battery life limitations. You could argue that they should have anticipated this by coming out with a larger iphone, but IMHO, i dont want a large phone. The impression I get about apple features is that they are conservative with new features because they are paranoid about breaking the user experience, mostly battery life. I don't have first hand knowledge but I'm sure those early android LTE phones didn't have very good battery life.

  15. Re:Choice on Forbes 2013 Career List Flamed By University Professors · · Score: 2

    Here's an easy analogy: being a professor is pretty similar to running a small business. You attract funding, you manage cash flow, you pay your employees and you produce goods (ie. in the case of a professor, the goods are research output). If you don't do these things well, your lab will go bust, just like a business would. Nobody would argue that being a business owner is stress free even though you don't have a boss breathing down your back, so why would being a professor be stress free?

  16. Re:Yay, another amazing new advance for batteries! on Crushed Silicon Triples Life of Li-Ion Batteries In the Lab · · Score: 1

    Battery materials are reported in mAh/g because this way they are independent of the battery size. You could stuff say 50g of this material into a battery meant for a car or 1/2g of this material into a battery meant for testing in a lab and you can roughly estimate the energy storage abitlity of the material. Both of these cells will have a voltage of about 3.7V on average. The units of mAh/g tells you about the amount of lithium that can be stored by this particular material so that it can be compared against other materials on an equal basis.

  17. Re:Field dependent requirement on Ask Slashdot: How Many of You Actually Use Math? · · Score: 0

    Huh? You don't consider numerical methods that approximate integrals to be true calculus?
    This is true calculus. You don't need to know anything about the future voltage curve or current, just the past.

    This is the equation to calculate capacity consumed in a battery (which is a numerical approximation to an integral):

    capacity consumed = capacity at last check + (current + current at last check)/2*(present time - time at last check)

    The equation above is the trapezoidal rule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapezoidal_rule) applied to the integral in my first post.

    I hate to pull this one out, but trust me, I'm a battery scientist that makes mathematical models of batteries for a living.

  18. Re:Field dependent requirement on Ask Slashdot: How Many of You Actually Use Math? · · Score: 1

    To calculate the capacity used in a battery, you apply the following equation:

    capacity = integral(current, dt)

    So yes, this is calculus. To solve this you would use a numerical approximation to the integral, such as the trapezoidal rule.

  19. Re:Last pass on Ask Slashdot: What's Holding Up Single Sign-On? · · Score: 1

    I love lastpass. No need to remember login info at all (except for your master password). The _only_ problem is when using my phone/ipad, it's a bit difficult to dig up passwords.

  20. Re:Too bad it wasn't SciPy on Octave and Gnuplot Coming To Android · · Score: 1

    PS:

    The point of Python being a "real language" doesnt apply...

    Yes it does. It allows you to do something useful with your numerical codes. Maybe not needed for academia, but certainly for other industries.

  21. Re:Too bad it wasn't SciPy on Octave and Gnuplot Coming To Android · · Score: 1

    I jumped from Matlab to Scipy/Numpy, skipped Octave, but I'm so happy with Scipy/Numpy that I wouldn't consider using Octave.

    From a purely numerics point of view, I'm sure Octave has all the features that Scipy/Numpy has. Most of the benefits of Scipy/Numpy come from the Python programming language itself, which I have to assume is much more developed than Octave's language. Being able to write GUIs for your scientific apps using tkinter (or some other library) or reading/writing to excel formats directly or wrapping your code up using pyexe for distribution or interfacing your python code with the web or a database is just the start of the Python advantages (after a quick search I see that Octave can do some of these things, but I'm sure Octave doesn't have all the libraries that Python has).

    IMHO, if scipy/numpy ever get working with PyPy, then this would truly be amazing.

  22. Re:forced? on TSA's mm-Wave Body Scanner Breaks Diabetic Teen's $10K Insulin Pump · · Score: 1

    TFA didn't suggest that she was forced.It said she took the advice of the TSA worker over the advice of her doctor. The doctor's note said to avoid the body scanner, she asked the TSA worker if it was ok, and the TSA worker said yes. IMHO, a doctor has more credibility over a TSA worker in this case, I'm not sure why she didn't think so.

  23. Re:Two Words on Why Desktop Linux Hasn't Taken Off · · Score: 0

    I agree. I don't know anybody who uses a computer and doesn't rely on Microsoft Office. And crossover office is not good enough (it might work well enough, but it's not easy enough for my parents to install themselves).

    It comes down to the fact that distros like Ubuntu are still too difficult to use for normal folks. Give your parents Ubuntu and see how far they get trying to play a DVD or uploading music to an ipod.

  24. Re:Electronics supplier DDoS on Raspberry Pi Now Has Distributors -- and Will Soon Have Boards for All (Video) · · Score: 1

    Seems the world wants a router that's had it's wings clipped and a DVI port nailed to the top.

    Actually this is exactly what I want. I need something like an Asus RTN16, but cheaper. The Raspberry Pi seems to fit this bill quite nicely.

  25. Re:So, they know of no fires on Chevy Volt Passes Safety Investigation · · Score: 1

    "NHTSA in fact drains the gas tanks on gas cars (including the Volt!) BEFORE they wreck them because of the danger of the gasoline."

    Do you have a reference for this? Not that I don't believe you, but if this is true, GM just got a whole load of bad press which may have set back the electric car over something that was NHTSA's fault. It's unbelievable that they wouldn't test gasoline cars and electric cars on the same footing. If they first drain the gas tank then they HAVE to drain the battery before the test for a good comparison.