qxamak (u/qxamak) - Readit News

qxamak commented on How to Get Continuous Integration Right hackernoon.com/how-to-get... · Posted by u/nicolopigna

qxamak · 7 years ago

> More often than not, you end up with a broken release right after you merge back your feature branch.

How does this happen? Are you talking about merge conflicts? Or actual releases that get deployed that don't work?

qxamak commented on 90% of American public schools now hold mass shooting drills for students vox.com/policy-and-politi... · Posted by u/gumby

jotm · 8 years ago

... my response can be summed up with "wat"

Edit: fine, alright. He's questioning the fact so many other countries with strict gun controls have fewer homicide rates. No shit they do.

Acknowledging the correlation between gun control and lower homicide rates, this "scientist" then says to himself "maybe we can have less gun control, which will cause us to exhibit lower homicide rates".

And then he edits it with "But I know that thought doesn't really make sense".

Fucking social media, I swear. I want to quit it like I want to quit nicotine and alcohol.

qxamak · 8 years ago

I was trying to point to the absurdity of the debate, even as someone who (moderately) opposes gun control laws. And I think we actually agree with each other on the "scientific" basis of my comments. I view the logic behind the debate in a similar way that a drunk driver might say, "well, if I was even more intoxicated, then I wouldn't have caused that accident". It doesn't really make sense to think that way. But the narrative of putting more guns into schools as a benefit has been pushed so hard that it actually makes me question the potential positive outcome (as opposed to outright rejecting it based on the preponderance of evidence to the contrary).

qxamak commented on 90% of American public schools now hold mass shooting drills for students vox.com/policy-and-politi... · Posted by u/gumby

clarkmoody · 8 years ago

What percentage of public schools allow teachers to carry firearms?

I know a couple schools in Texas went forward with proper training for a few teachers who wanted to carry in school. Frangible ammo, clearing tactics, proper concealment. I'm sure if there were any incidents at those schools, it would be all over the national news, but I haven't heard anything yet.

It seems like teachers with guns would be a better option than teachers as [temporary] shields for students. Also seems better than "turn the lights off and hide."

I've heard all the arguments about students getting ahold of a teacher's gun, accidental discharge, etc. If you're making those sorts of arguments, do you also carry a gun?

As others have mentioned, the gun culture in America is not going to change any time soon, so the politicians are not going to "take away the guns." We're also continuing to pump psychotropic drugs into our children by the millions. Add to that the environment of public school: raging hormones, toxic bullying, dehumanizing suppression of individuality. Not exactly a recipe for peace.

Perhaps it's time to try something different?

qxamak · 8 years ago

I've always found this debate interesting. I own a few guns and don't want to see my rights restricted. But I also don't feel comfortable with the thought of my kid's teacher carrying a gun. And while I don't dismiss the possibility of armed teachers being a deterrent for school shootings, I do question the fact that so many other countries that have more restrictive gun control laws also have far fewer homicide rates (especially in mass shooting situations).

As a scientist, it feels like I'm looking at a dataset of the rest of the world that shows a strong correlation between strict gun control and lower homicide rates. But then I say to myself, "maybe we (America) can have less gun control, which will cause us to exhibit even lower homicide rates". But I know that thought doesn't really make sense.

qxamak commented on How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works arstechnica.com/cars/2017... · Posted by u/deepnotderp

alex_duf · 8 years ago

Out of complete curiosity, and knowing nothing about these technologies:

How does these system avoid interference with other cars? Say if ten exact same car, with the exact same model of LIDAR are on the same street / crossing. Can I expect some noise being received by the sensor?

qxamak · 8 years ago

Yep. Every sensor will receive the output from the other emitters. This problem is actually pretty similar to the problem of sharing the wireless signal spectrum - how do all the cell phones in one area work at the same time? There's a few standard approaches to solving these problems:

- Frequency Division: each detector uses a different frequency/wavelength. This approach is very simple to implement, but the usable range of wavelengths for LIDAR is fairly narrow. So we'd run out of choices pretty quickly.

- Time Division: each detector is allocated a different operating time slot, so that only one is active at a time. For cell phones, this is relatively easy to implement because they all connect to a central system that can coordinate the timing. But for cars, this would be more difficult since there's no central system that links the detectors on different cars together (although they could still communicate with each other through other means).

- Code Division: each detector's output is pulsed in a unique pattern so that the reflected signals will return that same pattern, then the processor can reject any patterns that it didn't send out. This approach is much more complex, but doesn't suffer from many of the drawbacks of the other solutions.

Code division is by far the most widely used approach here, but frequency and time division also play a small role as well since different manufacturers/detectors use different wavelengths and not all detectors are being operated at exactly the same time (the time needed to send and receive a single signal is extremely short).

qxamak commented on The Myth of Drug Expiration Dates propublica.org/article/th... · Posted by u/danso

mechnesium · 8 years ago

I'm a test engineer. Highly accelerated life testing (HALT) can probably be used to closely approximate the shelf life of medicine. You need to look at the parameters that cause degradation (humidity, temperature, light exposure, etc). HALT the samples at different temperature/humidity/lighting extremes and use mass spectrometry to check purity. Use the data to create an algorithm that approximates the product lifetime and then correlate the results with actual shelf life for verification.

qxamak · 8 years ago

The largest barrier to accelerated life testing right now is that we really don't know all the mechanisms that cause degradation (or understand their impact on stability). There are many lab instruments that already provide HALT metrics on how stable a drug sample is expected to be under different conditions. And the Arrhenius and Eyring equations are useful for empirical modeling. These tools are great for quickly identifying when formulations are unstable. But it's very difficult to say with certainty (at least in the pharma world) that something will be stable for X years unless you actually test it for X years.

For the vast majority of manufactured products, HALT makes sense because any uncertainty that remains after testing is not likely to harm users. But with some of these drugs, any uncertainty, even after HALT, could cause major problems for users. And it seems that the FDA is unwilling to accept that risk. But as far as I know, the FDA is actively seeking methods for performing HALT that produce accurate and repeatable results.

qxamak commented on A Visual History of Which Countries Have Dominated the Summer Olympics nytimes.com/interactive/2... · Posted by u/prawn

flexie · 9 years ago

Medal count in absolute figures says little about which country does well in producing athletes, and a lot about the size of the population. One would think that the US, Russia or China are good at producing great athletes when looking at these figures, but reality is that all three countries do a rather mediocre job when taking into consideration the size of their populations. This is a better measure: http://www.medalspercapita.com/#weighted-per-capita:2012

It reveals that you are more likely to become an olympic medalist if you are from the Caribbean, Scandinavia, certain Eastern European countries, Australia and New Zealand, than if you are Chinese, American or Russian.

And please notice that the figures hold true for several Summer Olympics. The US, China and Russia don't dominate at all.

Also the medal count per GDP is interesting.

qxamak · 9 years ago

> It reveals that you are more likely to become an olympic medalist if you are from the Caribbean, Scandinavia, certain Eastern European countries, Australia and New Zealand, than if you are Chinese, American or Russian.

Sure. But is that the same as "producing great athletes"? Many of the Caribbean nations also have populations that are ~100x smaller than the US, Russia, or China. Russia would need to win 430 medals (nearly half of the total medal count) just to compete with the Bahamas winning 1 medal based on this metric.

Caribbean countries tend to do very well in track and field sports, but they don't send many athletes to compete in other sports. So it might be more informative to see the number of olympic qualifiers for each country (not just medal count) per capita. But I'm not sure that would be much better at determining which country produces the best athletes.

There's so many confounding factors in the data that it's difficult to draw any real conclusions. I still find these kinds of statistics interesting though.

qxamak commented on Polycom’s co-founder on the best investment he ever made backchannel.com/how-i-fou... · Posted by u/steven

kosherbeefcake · 9 years ago

After the Arduino had come out, and amateur projects were coming out from that, I visited a small hobby electronics store, looking to gather some information, buy some starter gear, and get into the hobby.

I chatted with the sales clerk, who was on the younger side, that I should go back to school for electrical engineering, because that's the only way I'd learn the hobby. I bought an Arduino afterwards, but never used it. That encounter effectively killed it for me.

qxamak · 9 years ago

Not only was that sales clerk bad at his job (discouraging you from pursuing something that you're already interested in), but he was also very wrong.

I'm an electrical engineer who develops hardware similar to the Arduino for a living. I'm still constantly amazed by the things my friends, mostly artists and web designers, make using Arduinos and Raspberry Pis. I remember buying one of the first Arduinos and thinking, "Why did I even go to school? They've made everything so much easier." My friends still ask me questions and help them troubleshoot things; but for the most part, there are tutorials and forums that often provide more information that I can. Sparkfun and Adafruit have a lot of great beginner level tutorials, but they also have some really complex and challenging projects too.

qxamak commented on Zillow CEO Overpaid for His Los Angeles Home, According to Zillow la.curbed.com/2016/7/11/1... · Posted by u/prostoalex

janesvilleseo · 9 years ago

I live in the Midwest and our home prices are relatively flat over the last decade for the city I live in. 18 months ago I noticed that my zestimate was inflated and rose to 2x my appraised value of my home (refinanced that year). I looked into it and noticed that Zillow was doubling the sales price of recent homes. This was the main issue. I reported it to Zillow and some in customer service said their engineers would look into it. Only in the last few months have th Zestimates come back to reality.

I bring this up because I was curious as to how this would play out for my city and home prices. Would this increase prices for the area or would realitors ignore the data and go with what they knew would make sense.

I haven't seen a huge increase in prices nor have a done any study of it. But just the idea that a bug could cause such a calamity for a least the size of a city was eye opening.

qxamak · 9 years ago

I have a friend who is a realtor and we talk about this subject occasionally. My understanding is that most realtors will recommend using Zillow to "get a feel" for the market. But Zillow's estimates are only as good as the data that goes into them. Usually, data for an area is publicly available and up-to-date, but sometimes it's very old or just plain wrong.

I think Zillow claims their estimates to be within 10% of actual sale price. To me, that figure seem to be pretty good from a data analysis stand point; but 10% of the value of a house is a lot of money for even a modest home.

Most realtors used closed databases, like MLS, to document sales and compare area housing prices. I believe MLS data is typically manually entered and verified (I'm not 100% sure about this though). I believe there is also a lot of extra metadata added to MLS listings that Zillow can't get from public records. Realtors also tend to look at property tax assessments for their areas in order to gauge market trends (just like Zillow does, except without a hidden algorithm).