gpa (u/gpa) - Readit News

gpa commented on Ask HN: What is your best flight booking app/site · Posted by u/totaldude87

gpa · 2 years ago

AZair.com (AZair.eu) allow you to combine flights from multiple airports. Covers Europe, Mediterranean and Asia. Suggested in the previous "Ask HN: How do you find airline tickets?" [2]

[1] https://www.azair.eu/index.php

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36793357

gpa commented on Ask HN: Best ways to brush up JavaScript knowledge · Posted by u/earthnail

gpa · 3 years ago

Perhaps this MDN article, which used to be called "A re-introduction to JavaScript" and is now called "JavaScript language overview": https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Lang...

Also, if you search for "A re-introduction to JavaScript" in HN Search, you will find previous posts of the same article with comments pointing to other similar sources.

The book Eloquent JavaScript is also available online, but is longer: https://eloquentjavascript.net/

gpa commented on Ask HN: General chemistry book recommendations · Posted by u/chadcmulligan

gpa · 3 years ago

I would like to suggest Nikolai Glinka's "Problems in General Chemistry," of which I have the original Russian edition but I see that it's been translated in English (https://www.amazon.com/Problems-General-Chemistry-Nikolai-Gl...). Reasons for my recommendation is that first, it's interesting, and second, every time I have used this book, all chemistry concepts made sense, unlike in the manuals we had to use in school. To rephrase MiB, this would be the final chemistry book I ever read if I decided not to pursue my studies in the subject further.

Also, I did not know much about the Glinka himself, but from what I've found from a quick web search was quite interesting: a representative of an ancient noble family, honored scientist, largest teacher-methodist, whose books for decades, determined the level of chemical education in non-chemical and chemical technical institutes of the USSR...

gpa commented on TreeTalk London – Tree Map treetalk.co.uk/map/... · Posted by u/jamespwilliams

IndigoIncognito · 3 years ago

They have data for a tree in my garden. I got the tree cut down and there was so much bureaucracy to go through just to cut it, I guess it is a protected piece of nature or something of the sort?

gpa · 3 years ago

I like how they protect their trees in the United Kingdom. This approach to environmental preservation should be adopted globally.

gpa commented on LibGen Is Down libgen.is... · Posted by u/warkanlock

gpa · 3 years ago

I see it's been up and down for a week now

gpa commented on Breaking the silence around academic bullying febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.... · Posted by u/larve

Blackstone4 · 4 years ago

One of my friends was a PhD student and the supervisor bullied them. Ended up having a panic attack and eventually quitting their PhD 3 years in…

Had to change supervisor… who do you complain to..would you be believed?!

gpa · 4 years ago

I don't know if the Publisher would believe as if they don't see that the ideas are the same that they have to send the proof to the people I am complaining about. I don't know if the court will believe, as they are not domain specialists and will judge by the letter of the law.

gpa commented on Breaking the silence around academic bullying febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.... · Posted by u/larve

tptacek · 4 years ago

This is an article about bullying and abuse by professors and managers of academic labs. It's a huge problem, because early-career researchers depend heavily on approval and references from PIs, and there's a strong element of path-dependence in many academic career situations: you often can't easily just quit and join a different lab. You're captive to the abuse.

As someone with two kids working in academic STEM research labs, I'm interested if people have any horror stories of their own to share about abusive PIs (just because I worry about my own kids and what they're going to face in their fields).

I asked this on a Slack the other day, and I got stories like "my friend's PI called and demanded he come in to work, but my friend's appendix had just burst; the PI said 'I don't care about your appendix'". Or the lab where the researchers had brought in special furniture to create a private area to cry in after the PI had finished berating them. Or the abusive lab with an anomalously high number of suicides.

gpa · 4 years ago

Not exactly a horror story, but here it one. I decided to send proofs to a well-known academic publisher in order to report colleagues who had used findings from my lesser-known research papers (published in lower-profile journals) and my PhD thesis as their key conclusions. The Publisher started an investigation, but I was told that my colleagues would need to see the evidence first. The Publisher would not disclose my identity, I was certain that my "colleagues" would have figured it out. So, I made the decision to call them first and ask for clarification. They requested me to send them their text and works for which I was claiming authorship while acting as though they had no idea what I was talking about. After I sent the email, they called back, berated me, and threatened me with a lawsuit for defamation for using the words "Below is the text from the paper, which contains ideas taken from my publications.". They explicitly used the words "by all possible means". Then asked for apology. I did apologize and urge the Publisher to halt the investigation, but was this the proper course of action? Back then I was scared, but I am angry now. My sin is that my papers and Ph.D. results are not published in the big academic publishing companies (so they cannot find the plagiarism), except for one in Elsevier.