skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I earned a masters in physics about 15 years ago and started in industry as a software developer. Over time I started working on more analytic applications, basically because I could understand the math, and for the last six years I've worked full time as a data scientist. My physics background has been a huge help:

* Linear algebra: stuff like the QR decomposition for solving the "normal equation" of least squares regression, eigenvectors for PCA and the singular value decomposition for T-SVD, and so on. Linear algebra shows up everywhere in applied mathematics, statistical modeling, and data science. It's actually relatively simple and can be understood completely in about two semesters, but physicists do get a lot of practical experience and intuition. For example, eigenvalues turn out to be very important in quantum mechanics, so I suspect physics students spent a lot more time thinking about them compared to almost any other major.

* Vector calculus, matrix calculus, and optimization: physicists see this stuff in classical mechanics, E&M, etc. We can easily visualize vector fields and know a ton of relevant theorems and notation. We learn specific techniques such as the method of Lagrange multipliers for solving constrained systems. All of this helps because a huge chunk of statistical modeling and machine learning is formulated as an optimization problem, often a constrained optimization problem. For a statistician studying, say, SVMs for the first time, things like Lagrange multipliers and KKT conditions seem to come out of nowhere, while a physicist would have seen them in several other contexts first.

* Scientific programming: Most physics undergrads will have at least some experience with numerical optimization or simulation. This is a little different than application development or implementing an algorithm. The main trick is to be able to translate equations into performant, vectorized implementations. You also need to understand lots of practical things like rate of convergence, condition number, singular gradients, etc., just to be able to debug when things aren't working correctly.

* Experimentation: machine learning is basically empirical. Cross validation is essentially designing, conducting, and analyzing experiments. We improve our models not by proving theorems, but by forming and testing hypotheses. Basic stuff but extremely helpful in practice.

You have to remember that 10 years ago you couldn't really get a degree in machine learning or data science. (I believe degree programs and specializations with those names now exist and becoming fairly common, although I've had mixed results when interviewing graduates of such programs.) I would say the physics joins statistics and applied mathematics on the short list of degrees that, purely by chance, covered most of the relevant material. Of these, physics is probably the worst choice if you know you're going in that direction, because a physics degree only provides a thorough grounding in the prerequisites and little to none of the details. I had to learn much of that on my own through self-study.
I’m working on reducing the quantum noise of gravitational wave detectors as well as work in quantum metrology. Measurements on the quantum scale using light are still relatively unexplored and there is a lot of work to do.

I just sent my first paper for publish, a new design for a gravitational wave detector with reduced quantum noise
Love your website, when I get home I am going to boot up my PC and play around with some of your code :)
So what would happen if you took a picture at night and digitally changed the light display to be something different? Is that a copy or not?
USA does all those things already too, lol.
Well golly, I guess billionaires will just have to bag their own damn groceries or maybe work on building more housing so the help can have a place to live too
Good question but I'm afraid that you will not always get an honest answer.
Those “morons” are moving there because there are more opportunities to earn money than in their hometown.
You are in fact describing what a lot of Americans are going through. There are a lot of "at will" employment states, that can fire you without any reason given, any day. It also does impact if you can keep the car, the home and other worldly belongings (if your wife leaves you because you lost your job, maybe you dodged a bullet). That causes a lot of stress and is indeed a major issue on the US employment market.
And you find it OK for people to photograph you without your consent? Unless you are a public figure I can't see why it shouldn't be ilegal.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
They have the deepest pockets, that's their only crime. That's why the lawyers are targeting them with an absurd lawsuit in hopes that it will make them settle instead of the bad publicity.
Outside of having top notch universities, the biggest indicator of a city's ability to have a big tech industry is the size of the VC community.

VCs are largely already wealthy, and SF is a pleasant city to live in if you're already wealthy. As such, they have little incentive to move, and so founders will continue to flock there to start their companies.

I completely agree that shopping around for cities should be easier, so that city governments like SF are forced to get their head out of their ass and make their city competitive.

However, until SF becomes unpleasant to live in for rich people, not much is going to change.
I hear you, man. I hope that job is interesting, I would like to make that transition myself. Cheers.
I’ve listened to that episode but I don’t recall vaccinations being part of it, and I don’t see anything in the transcript re:vaccinations, so I’m not sure how it’s directly relevant.

The point of my comment is that Judaism itself is not the reason these orthodox communities are rejecting vaccines, unlike some other communities/religions that have specific cultural or religious objections to medical care.
Interesting relevant quote:

Personally, I like paper and ink better than glowing pixels, but to each his own. Obviously the role of comics is changing very fast. On the one hand, I don't think comics have ever been more widely accepted or taken as seriously as they are now. On the other hand, the mass media is disintegrating, and audiences are atomizing. I suspect comics will have less widespread cultural impact and make a lot less money. I'm old enough to find all this unsettling, but the world moves on. All the new media will inevitably change the look, function, and maybe even the purpose of comics, but comics are vibrant and versatile, so I think they'll continue to find relevance one way or another. But they definitely won't be the same as what I grew up with.
For any team that ever avoided a six or seven figure SQL Server or Oracle license and managed to scale to more than 50 transactions per second with horizontal scaling, yes, MongoDB was absolutely worth it.
I'm about to finish my PhD (condensed matter) and I've reached the conclusion that science is just a phase for many of us. My university hosts a Beyond Academia event where companies come to recruit future phds, there's a student-run club that brings in people outside academia that hold a phd to talk to us about their path and current jobs, and as I've attended these events over the last four years I see example after example of brilliant people simply having to move on from science.

It's staggering to see your Stanford and your Harvard grad students become scientific experts only to then work on improving ad delivery and how to move someone else's money across the world to make the rich richer. It feels wasteful. But there's no room for everybody, there's very little room for a few and it's stressful, competitive and the path is riddled with anxiety and mental illness, which I've had enough of already in grad school.

People move to data science because it's a transition into the software industry that is eating the world. It's a safer bet, pays well, and has the name "science" in it :) It helps people transition.

I've stalked many on linkedin over the years and it does seem that science is just a phase, very few are still doing science. I think all these people liked or loved research, but the combination of the nasty, petty environment surrounding research, and the lack of permanent positions makes it very difficult for someone to have a fruitful, worthwhile career in science in my opinion.

I think we have a problem. We have a lot of smart people but we don't know what to do with them. And I think no one up high is really questioning what is the purpose of a college education and of a post graduate education in order to modify these programs to better address a student's path. Academia changes one funeral at a time, and that might be too slow to tackle some of the problems we are facing.

I've really enjoyed the research aspect, but I have come to hate my interactions with my PI who is sometimes too busy doing administrator stuff and in my opinion sometimes refuses to see reality for what it is: Sometimes to do modern research you have to invest in modern equipment. Sometimes I don't understand why my data looks a certain way, why is anger the default reaction to this?

I haven't had enough time and space to gauge whether or not this phd is worth it, all I know is that I'm really excited to leave an environment that has broken me a few times, and that continues to inflict pain on others I love.
Exactly.

In fact in the UK if you want to lay off more than a certain (fairly small) number of staff then you get audited to ensure that you couldn't have possibly kept them on or found them jobs elsewhere in your company. Once you make someone redundant you're also not allowed to re-hire for that position for 6 months I believe, again to ensure that you're not using layoffs inappropriately.

Note: this is all different to _firing_ someone. I understand in the US these two are often less distinct. Firing someone opens you up to a different kind of legal liability, you essentially have to be able to prove that they weren't good enough at their job, should they take you to court over being fired.
Ah I still ‘see’ the tiny fonts when I think about the book..
"I’m not sure what that movement will look like, and I’ll explore why in another post. To give you a teaser: the problem is in the way that both Free Software and Open Source are formulated. The rot is in the roots, and I’m not yet sure what will replace it."

Looking forward to it.

In the meantime, consider a couple of kernels: Linux and sixth (or seventh edition) Unix. Unix wasn't released under a free or open license, but the effects were similar to an open source license: you could give away your changes if the recepient had an ATT license.

The results were SunOS, Solaris, and other monstrosities like AIX, HP-UX, Irix, and a dozen others, all different enough to prevent compatibility and ensure lockin. This lasted until the Unix environment collapsed under it's own weight.

On the other hand, there's only one Linux, under the GPL. There are forks, but few have real momentum. Major improvements are absorbed into the mainline kernels.

Likewise, in the C and C++ compiler space, gcc (its internal bit rot not withstanding) ate all of the other options.

You don't see the difference in most open source, possibly due to the momentum of Apache and Mozilla. Or possibly because most software has a short half-life. But see Amazon and Google's cloud support offerings.

Licenses express ideology. Choose your roots carefully.
The nature of a PhD is to study one sub-discipline long enough to reach the edge of human knowledge, and then expand it. Often this is so difficult that a set of multiple diverse projects is not practical. But not always; in my PhD I worked on both astrobiology and solar cells. It helps to learn versatile methods that apply to a range of problems.
This is also a related article:

https://zachholman.com/talk/utc-is-enough-for-everyone-right

It is more high level but a very good read on the subject.
I used to have that uncertainty (was in Auger as a PhD student, so a similar field), but assuming it's something you think you might enjoy doing, going from writing analysis software in astrophysics to doing that as a primary profession is not
very hard. It does likely come with a reset of expectations, going back to primarily learning instead of teaching for a little while.

Happy to expand on my experience if that would be helpful.
I actually thought they were linking it to the temperature + the fact that mate is often smoked during processing (which is one reason I think I actually like the flavor unfortunately)
I've been there, it's a pain in the ass to get to. Took an overnight bus from Fitz Roy to Los Antiguos, had to walk a few miles across the border, got a taxi on the Chilean side to Chile Chico, stayed overnight because there were no more buses. Found some random bus from Chile Chico to Puerto Rio Tranquilo, the bus information on the internet was not accurate.

Was it worth it? Yes, absolutely beautiful, not touristy at all, met a couple in there 70s who had driven through Africa, which included the DRC. Mount Fitz Roy, Chaletan, although beautiful are too touristy. Everyone speaks english, they accept euro/usd, doesn't feel like you're actually in Argentina.
> Also I have noticed a growing trend of physicists becoming data scientists post phD.

The number of basic research jobs in physics is a pretty fixed supply, since it's determined largely by public funding, and there are always many more applicants than jobs. Therefore, any trends you've noticed about physicists leaving the field for other jobs is much more reflective of the number of students entering the field (always rising) who eventually must leave, and the extent to which they publicly discuss their experiences. If anything, hearing about more people leaving physics would be a positive indicator for the desirability of the field, since it just means more people tried and failed to obtain a slot. (As it happens, I think fundamental physicists research is a pretty diseased field, but a shortfall in researchers due to PhDs being drawn away to greener pastures is not a symptom.)

Note that applied physics is different, since there is an actual market in researchers for industrial R&D; a shortfall in jobs really could reflect a failing field. My vague impression is rather that applied physics is booming, but know very little about that.

And just to be clear on the numbers: If, over a career, every research professor mentors N grad students, and the number of research professor jobs grows slowly (as it has since the explosive growth in prof jobs that peaked in the '60s has waned), then the chance of any PhD becoming a professor must be about 1/N. If you look at the numbers, that chance is a few percent, which agrees with the typical professor advising ~20 students over a career. That means ~95% of PhD are going to be leaving to do something else.

Anyways, for me personally: I have a PhD in quantum information and am currently searching for a mathematical definition of branches in a many-body wavefunction. This would potentially lead to large computational speed-ups in numerical simulations of out-of-equilibrium systems. I'm in my 7th year of postdoc-ing which...is not ideal.
How exactly does a company plan a layoff date such that nobody who is "close" to a vest date isn't affected? The only way would be to have guaranteed employment up to the vest date - that isn't going to happen.
How ownership has a very similar effect as rent control, especially in California where prop 13 exists.
Should we abolish home ownership and have everyone buy into a single rental market such that prices wouldn't be distorted beyond what median area incomes are.

The issue at hand will always be that there isn't enough housing for newcomers, if we mandated housing construction to grow in a parallel way with office construction and job growth we wouldn't have nearly the sorts of problems we have today.
Easy solution, hold the vote again. Of course that won't happen.
What will be the first task I would be assigned to if I am hired?
Not talking about Benioff but yes I can complain. If you are very wealthy you have to contribute back to society, that's not a thing to admire but to require. And if you donate only a small percent of your wealth, say 1%, I don't think you deserve more credit than anybody having a net worth of $10k donating $100, in fact maybe less, even if the absolute amount is way more.
Building better quantum computers.

I did a PhD in condensed matter, finishing in late 2014. I'm now working as a SWE at a quantum computing startup, focusing on internal manufacturing and test data. My graduate experience is very useful for this position, even though I'm not doing much physics directly.

I absolutely don't regret getting a PhD -- I went to a well-run program, had a great advisor, and met tons of awesome people. I also don't regret leaving academia. I enjoy the "working on hard problems" bit a lot more than the "unlocking secrets of the universe" part.
Introduction to back end development for your mother
Oh...one fun one (not during the job interview, but during a town hall for new hires, QA sesssion).

New employee, thinking they're really clever: What would you do different if you had unlimited resources?

Steve Jobs: I do.
Kuiper Belt dust may be in our atmosphere and Nasa labs
Well done DRDO and well publicized by the PM office.
>If you have been around functional programming for a bit, you might see the word “monoid” and “categories” and wonder “oh, is julia writing about monads, like in Haskell”? I am not!!
I'm pretty sure it's because the 2019 General Election is coming up. This prime minister is a right wing populist. After recent tensions between India and Pakistan, he's come out on the top over the opposition. This will probably appeal to his base even more.

He also has a tendency of claiming the achievements of previous governments and/or independent institutions as his own, while blaming all his government's failures on the previous governments. He even blames some of that shit on fucking Nehru, who's been dead for more than 50 years.
Did you attend Nick Mason's ongoing Saucerful of Secrets tour? Highly recommend!
I remember reading a hard bound introduction to quantum mechanics from Mir publishers on a summer vacation..
TLDR: You can use pluggable transports.

It's super difficult to build a low latency mix-net that covertly works inside an adversarial network.

In addition to the current models over which onion/garlic routing are based upon you would (at least) need to add to the core of your software traffic obfuscation, a series of covert channels, NAT bypass, ...

Tor and other mix networks simplify the problem assuming that there's a portion of the Internet that is free and introducing censorship circumvention mechanisms.

Of course, the assumption is increasingly untrue.
> But even 20 years ago, the guidance was to look for jobs in finance or computers.

Yeah. I keep kicking myself for not taking the Wall Street guys who called me more seriously. That would be one important message I'd like to send backward in time.

I remember some of the Physics departments I knew well commenting that they were getting 250+ applications for each open tenure track position (early/mid 90s). It skyrocketed to 1000+ at one point for a few places.

Based on some back of the envelope math, and a realization that a fresh Ph.D. with ~6 publications (2 PRL, 4 others) would not be a good competitor to a senior FSU physicist with 50+ publications to their name, a solid reputation, and an interest in moving out of the FSU quickly.

I determined that market forces had flooded the supply side of physics with, well, extremely good candidates for the same positions I was applying for. And my ability to compete with them was low based upon the main components that hiring committees cared about.

So I looked elsewhere. 20+ years later, I've made a good career working in computing, but I really do miss physics and research in general.
> France has other unusual photo standards also. Americans traveling to France should be aware that in general you CAN'T photograph an individual in public.

Actually I was surprised to learn that in the US you can not only take a photo of another person without their consent, but also publish it.
Is that also the case for subscriptions? Because (in my experience) that's where the real pains of PayPal were.
Breakdown of Apple Card strategy and 10 predictions for its future
A philosophical approach to routines can illuminate who we are
Do nothing and let the market sort it out. It's time to try some actual laissez fair now that intervention has failed, as was predicted by most economists.

Minimal zoning, minimal taxes, minimal codes. Just boil it down to the raw essentials and give a legal guarantee that every building permit application will be processed in 6 weeks and furthermore legally guarantee that for new buildings all of these new rules are immutable or 10 to 20 years.
> Should we also allow Microsoft to be sued for all the criminals that use windows?

No, but what is hinted at in the complaint is that Salesforce did some kind of custom integration for Backpage:

> The women sued Salesforce Tuesday in San Francisco state court, claiming billionaire Marc Benioff’s company knowingly supported Backpage by providing customized database tools to market and remarket prostitutes to “pimps, johns and traffickers who had been underusing its trafficking services.”

I'm no lawyer but I imagine the crux of this is whether Salesforce actually did meaningfully custom integrations for this. If their team's interaction with Backpage was limited to, "hey I'd like to buy 10 seats" "sure that'll be $#,### per seat per year" I have a hard time understanding where there was true wrongdoing on Salesforce's part, aside from maybe a lack of situational awareness of what Backpage was.

If on the other hand they were actually building features designed to help Backpage keep more pimps on the platform (not sure what that would look like for pimps specifically vs. other Salesforce use cases, but just hypothetically) then yeah that would be really really bad.

It is kind of surprising this is happening....Marc Benioff makes a big show of being woke, and activist-journalists with a big audience such as Nick Kristof at the NYT have been writing about how bad Backpage is (was) since 2012-ish. You would think this one wouldn't get past Compliance.
My last project required fulltext search and I was going to go with Elasticsearch but being dependency-averse (also complicates the deployment story), I ended up using Postgres' built-in fulltext search capabilities and it actually works really nice, especially after I added a little DSL to take advantage of the full power of `to_tsquery` (so I could avoid the oversimplified `plainto_tsquery`)
Alibaba, Tencent and other major names form $1.45B ride-hailing venture
Subverting Chinese Brainwashing Using “Fuck XueXiQiangGuo”
I gave a degree in Physics but I have been doing machine learning since the 1980s (and some distributed systems and NLP).

Physics is a great general purpose education.
Uber Ride Pass released in more US cities
"Even if you can, it’s probably powered by Lucene, Solr, Elasticsearch under the hood."

There's the rub.
Show HN: Anwendo – the simplest way to get UI tests work for you