proginthebox
Re:Ask HN: How to self-study mathematics from the undergrad through gr...
on Sunday January 20, 2019 @11:18AM (#18953686)
Selecting an approachable problem is also a skill that more experienced people have and often the younger people don't. Some problems are just not ready to be tackled because the field hasn't developed for it yet. It is a risk factor between choosing your own problem and floundering through the quagmire or getting help in choosing a problem you have confidence in solving in some years.
While I appreciate your brother's personal choice, to each their own after all. There is quite a lot of merit in your PhD advisor helping you in choosing a problem. That being said, good advisors provide students with an array of good problems out of which the student can choose one they are the most passionate about. This is what happened with me, I was provided with around 7 different choices to make. In the end, I chose 2 of them even though I wanted to chose 3 more but couldn't because of lack of time.
Re:Ask HN: How to self-study mathematics from the undergrad through gr...
on Sunday January 20, 2019 @11:02AM (#18953588)
If you want to understand algorithms, you need a computer science curriculum, not a mathematical curriculum.
Also, unfortunately, its not the recommended order to learn them in.
Re:Ask HN: How to self-study mathematics from the undergrad through gr...
on Sunday January 20, 2019 @12:05AM (#18951257)
I see. Well, you have a point, but the OP did specifically ask for a plan like that Susan Fowler's blog post. And I am an applied mathematician working mostly on computational physics and I can attest to the requirements I mentioned.
But your advice has a point, just going through books mindlessly is not motivation enough/ can lead to wandering. And it is always good to have specific tasks at hand. Like, solving a particular ordinary differential equations numerically.
Re:Ask HN: How to self-study mathematics from the undergrad through gr...
on Saturday January 19, 2019 @01:19AM (#18945626)
This is terrible advice. Apart from the last sentence. A better advice would be to specify which subject to learn.
For example, (since I don't really have much time)
1. Topology (book by Munkres)
2. Real Analysis and Measure Theory (book series by Stein Shakarchi)
3. Algebra (book by Aluffi)
4. Linear Algebra (book by Friedberg Insel)
5. Measure Theoretic Probability (book by Cinlar)
6. Differential Geometry (book Smooth Manifolds by Lee)
7. Numerical Analysis (book by Quarteroni)
8. Set Theory and Propositional Logic (books by Goldrei)
This is what one will mainly learn in a strong undergrad/grad math program. Once this is done, then there are different tracks to follow.
Re:Is C++ fast?
on Friday January 18, 2019 @10:21AM (#18939862)
With proper use of constexpr, templates and types, you can make C++ at least as fast as C code without giving up on readability.
Re:Fluid Simulation (2007) [pdf]
on Sunday December 30, 2018 @08:16AM (#18789035)
In short, the two fields just look similar, but are actually extremely different fields.
Physical simulations need to preserve entropy, maximum principle, energy conservation and other kinds of conservation, preservation of consistent states, convergence in case of finer mesh.
There are multiple equations which model different forms of fluid: 1. Incompressible Euler (For liquid) 2. Compressible Euler (For non-viscous gases) 3. Navier Stokes Equations (For viscous liquids)
There are multiple solver methods: 1. Finite Difference 2. Finite Element 3. Discontiguous Galerkin Finite Element 4. Finite Volume Method
There are multiple equation methods: 1. equation splitting is just one of the many methods possible.
Just because the equation is unique does not mean that the solution is unique. Single equation provably have multiple and even infinite solution for the same initial condition. Computer graphics fluid simulation does not care (with a good reason) about this and hence, often their simulations even though they look kind of nice, are often incorrect since they do not demonstrate various physical characteristics that must be preserved.
In contrast, the qualitative/quantitative constraint in physical simulations are very strict. You need to know a lot of theoretical math to even understand if you are even computing the correct solution.
Ash HN: What does dropbox care what filesystem is it being hosted on?
Recently, I came across the requirements of dropbox where it can not work on certain filesystems. I am curious why. I am curious how does the underlying filesystem matters to dropbox. Shouldn't it just have need to access inodes and directory structure and be happy?
Re:New Study Indicates Silicon Valley’s Elite Are Not as Liberal as Th...
on Saturday November 24, 2018 @05:14PM (#18524242)
Re:New Study Indicates Silicon Valley’s Elite Are Not as Liberal as Th...
on Saturday November 24, 2018 @03:40AM (#18521116)
Liberalism is always against an axis. As such, there are two different factors in liberalism, Social and Economic. The so-called liberals in America Liberals are socially liberal but economically conservative. While American conservatives are economically liberal but socially conservative.
Re:Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire ...
on Friday September 07, 2018 @08:24AM (#17933683)
In Europe, the wired broadbands are cheap and fast. In India, there is no hope for cheap and fast wired broadband due to poor planning. Hence the craze for 4G. Also, the rates are marginal. For a long time, the rates induced loss for companies.
Re:GIMP receives a $100K donation
on Thursday September 06, 2018 @09:53AM (#17926250)
Just because someone can use a software does not mean they can/will pay for it. In other words, you'll can only earn money if your customers are rich.
Re:Linux Kernel Developer Criticizes Intel for Meltdown, Spectre Response
on Thursday August 30, 2018 @05:50PM (#17881112)
Such systems also most likely are not vulnerable to Meltdown/Spectre.
Re:Why Can't European Startups Do Tech?
on Friday August 17, 2018 @03:59PM (#17785281)
What I've observed in Europe is that there are huge amount of small companies instead of one big one. While big and powerful companies might be important on global scale. I suspect that on a more local scale, it is the large number of small companies which are more beneficial.
Re:Why neovim is better than vim (2015)
on Monday August 06, 2018 @03:35AM (#17695786)
how do you integrate neovim clipboard with system one?
I use KDE/X11 although I do not think that should be relevant.
Re:Ask HN: Old CS lecturer looking for advice from current and recent ...
on Sunday July 01, 2018 @12:49AM (#17434152)
I think you have already done a huge amount in the course. You should keep your mind open to the possibility that the students just found the topic of database to be dry inspite of your presentation. It is quite possible that those people would have really hated the subject if the presentation was not as good as it looks.
Re:Are real numbers really real?
on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @03:21PM (#17296985)
This IS his field of research.
Re:JavaScript is Good, Actually
on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @09:49AM (#17082313)
except that the old gui system ran on 650Mhz processors and 256MB RAM.
Re:Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship ci...
on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @07:33PM (#16972736)
Why do you say that the standard liberal belief is in heavy regulation of business? Liberal economics emphasize minimal regulation.
Re:Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype
on Thursday January 11, 2018 @01:34PM (#16126440)
I am using it on Linux and I was very wary in the starting, but then it works so smooth, it is my preferred manner of video call instead of hangouts.
Re:Putting Apple’s iMac Pro Through the Paces
on Monday January 08, 2018 @03:33PM (#16100207)
Point. Somehow, I have seen quotes from HP which were always much cheaper. May be it is because my employer had some sort of deal? Also, proliant servers were somehow cheaper than towers. Again I am not sure how, but yes, point taken.
Re:Putting Apple’s iMac Pro Through the Paces
on Sunday January 07, 2018 @02:11PM (#16092094)
If you buy a workstation from HP/Supermicro, then you get something much more powerful for the same price. So, to say, they are very close is not very correct. The problem here is that the assembled PC is a customer PC assembled for workstation performance. Even then, they were not trying very hard.
Re:Meltdown and Spectre Linux kernel status
on Saturday January 06, 2018 @12:47PM (#16086455)
Yes, hence my question. I have tried to setup a HTTPS service and it seems incredibly complicated if you have your own domain name. Even with lets encrypt, if you are using github pages for hosting but your own custom domain, you are out of luck. The point is not that he is not serious about security, point is, it is too hard to get normal security correct. And I am not talking about "cryptography is hard". I am talking about tools which should be easy and standardized. Those are hard.
Re:Meltdown and Spectre Linux kernel status
on Saturday January 06, 2018 @12:46PM (#16086445)
It's not about that guy's blog. This causes desensitization to non-HTTPS traffic and when people then actually visit non-HTTPS malicious blog, they get infected. If all "trusted" websites were HTTPS, then whenever there was untrusted access, people will notice it and raise alarm.
Re:Meltdown and Spectre Linux kernel status
on Saturday January 06, 2018 @11:02AM (#16085786)
The website serves JS and does not serve it over https, and discusses Spectre bug and how to patch it. I know he is the second most important guy on linux, but the irony.
Re:Ask HN: If I work with applied mathematics should I still study ana...
on Friday January 05, 2018 @02:20PM (#16080878)
It's ridiculously easy to apply a method which is not applicable if you are not at least a little aware of the theory behind it. You will get wrong results and you will never know why. The wrong results might never be found out because the impact is so complicated that you cannot even point out the source. I have sadly seen this happen too often in various places. But because our other systems are robust enough, this issue (even though it affects things) is not really heeded to until something really catastrophic happens (like 2008 crash).
Re:Welcome to Linux Journal 2.0
on Tuesday January 02, 2018 @05:09AM (#16050999)
Its a subscription magazine. So, Patreon will be useful for people who do not really want to read the magazine but donate the money anyway. Not sure how that would work.
Re:Not only is it possible to beat Google, it could happen sooner than...
on Monday January 01, 2018 @07:51AM (#16045877)
I agree with almost all the points apart from transparency. Transparency is not customization. Transparency is basically like, you search something google returns something, and then there is a link which tells you why google returned what it did. This is the transparency which is currently being pursued by the EU. That algorithm providers should be able to explain the results of their algorithm.
Re:Why a ‘paperless world’ still hasn’t happened
on Friday December 29, 2017 @09:18PM (#16033412)
The low technical nature of paper is a huge factor.
Re:Human fossils found in Morocco challenge our understanding of evolu...
on Friday December 29, 2017 @04:16AM (#16028532)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/science/human-fossils-mor...
June 2017 news by NY Times.
They did not even change the photo I think.