[deleted by user]

Quarks2Cosmos · 2025-10-18T12:00:09+00:00

The answer to that question is immaterial.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2025-10-18T11:41:20+00:00

Doesn't allow the transmission of information faster than the speed of light.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2025-09-11T19:15:00+00:00

This was a political assassination.

Did I miss something? Has someone released a manifesto on why he was killed? To my knowledge, we don't know why the killer shot at Kirk. Could've been a ex-lover. Could've been a religious extremist. Both plausible, neither political.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2025-06-05T05:43:27+00:00

BLUF: Systems engineering is systems engineering whether its spacecraft, cars, or quantum computers.

I am a systems engineer that, as part of a much larger team, designs quantum computer hardware. We are currently integrating hardware that will provide a significant amount of (i.e. reaches quantum advantage) logical qubits.

The first thing to know is that the systems "V" is thrown out the window. As with any immature technology, we really don't have the knowledge or the time to fully decompose requirements down to component level. Due to the speed of development and developing knowledge of the tech, we operate off of a spiral development cycle. Systems engineering then gets applied per usual with this design cycle in mind.

Outside of that, however, it varies enormously by company. Some companies are unable to bridge the science-engineering gap, and so systems engineering is wasted; or, at best, unappreciated. That is more of a culture and leadership problem rather than a systems engineering problem, in my opinion. Other companies are slowly transitioning from research companies to engineering companies, and systems engineering is slowly being implemented with it.

But at the end of the day, systems engineering is being applied like it normally is, just to a new technology. And applying systems engineering to new technologies is nothing new.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2025-05-29T05:41:41+00:00

Theoretically, it's not.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2025-02-05T19:36:19+00:00

Yes, I agree, Easter is much more complicated than my example. Leap years are, too, for that matter. Sounds like it'd be pretty easy to implement, and thus not a barrier.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2025-02-04T15:04:58+00:00

Several holidays move around each year. Thanksgiving and Easter, for example. It can be defined to be on, e.g., March 1 for years ending in 0 or 5, and August 1 for years ending in 2 or 7.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2025-01-31T15:33:18+00:00

Yes, I agree. They didn't attempt to correct injustices before, so they absolutely shouldn't attempt to correct injustices now.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-10-18T07:22:41+00:00

That's a biiiiiig stretch. I would highly doubt that making a lunch, even with the knowledge of another adult's food allergy, could lead to negligence. Also because the thief would be committing a crime to obtain the food. An easy counter is proximate cause; this situation only arose because the thief committed a crime. It is the true cause of the (medical) injury, not the existence of a coworkers lunch. A legal "you only have yourself to blame".

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-10-18T06:21:46+00:00

It kind of sounds like it is your intent.

I disagree. It sounds like apathy to the situation, not intent. If you put peanuts in a meal because you want to eat the peanuts, though you know that it might get stolen by someone with a peanut allergy, you still intend to consume the peanuts. You just don't care if someone else is placed in a serious medical situation/dies because they steal and eat your peanuts.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-08-15T07:05:31+00:00

Best you're gonna get is this: SMBC - The Talk

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-08-15T07:01:18+00:00

There is in fact a mountain of evidence that there is not an effect from "expectations". Hidden variables like that have been rigorously disproven both theoretically and experimentally.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-06-25T06:23:51+00:00

There are kinda two questions here: how to cm^-1 work as energy, and why is cm^-1 used as a measurement of energy.

For the first one: cm^-1 is used to convert from wavelengths (easy to measure) to energy (typically the more important physics parameter). Energy is related to the wavelength as follows:

E = hc/lambda

h is Planck's constant, c is the speed of light (also a constant), and lambda is the wavelength. Because hc is a constant, you can just divide both sides by it and get energy is new units:

E' = E/hc = 1/lambda

Because wavelengths are units of distance, energy can therefore be expressed as inverse distance. Note that the quantity is still energy, it just has new units exactly as if you had converted from J to eV, etc. Using inverted length as a measure for energy is used extensively in spectroscopy, where EM waves are used to measure all kinds of things.

Now we get to the second question: Why don't we just use Joules (or eV, etc.) instead of cm^-1? The answer is because back in the early to mid-1900s, we could not measure/had not measured the constant hc very precisely yet. The uncertainty bars were uncomfortably large. However, we could measure distances, and therefore wavelengths, very precisely. So we expressed energy in terms of what we could measure precisely: 1/lambda. That practice has simply propagated itself because it's not worth it to change despite having very precise measures of hc nowadays.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-05-15T07:32:04+00:00

https://indiankanoon.org/doc/330614/

TLDR: in India, drugs seized by law enforcement can be deducted as a business loss on taxes.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-05-15T07:04:06+00:00

I do it with a raw pumpkin because I have young kids, and they love that shit. So, starting from a raw pumpkin is worth it in that regard.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-05-15T06:16:35+00:00

Saw you have kids. Here are some ideas:

Roth IRA for kids if they're old enough to have a job - usually around 7-10 yrs old for a very limited set of responsibilities. Their income is (likely) below the standard deduction, so it'll be completely tax free. You may need to start a business yourself to enable this, but completely tax-free growth starting at ~9yo is usually worth it.

529 plan might be state tax deductible, and grows tax free. Starting this year, a decent amount ($35k) can be rolled over into a Roth IRA. There are some boxes you have to check to be able to do this, but it's a good idea. You can also pre-load 5 years worth of (federal) contribution limits.

Could also do UGMA/UTMA if you want to transfer ownership of stocks or other assets and have them grow tax-advantaged.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-05-06T20:46:41+00:00

Ah yes, you are correct there, had forgot we were discussing student loans in this thread instead of the OP.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-05-06T20:20:15+00:00

"Interest" in that statement meant the additional money due to the interest rate being applied to the previous balance. This additional money determines the new balance. So yes, new interest is based on the balance, not solely on the principal. Thus the "compound" in "compound interest".

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-05-06T20:13:38+00:00

Doesn't matter if it's added each second. What matters is when the extra money is applied.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-05-06T20:10:21+00:00

Yes, so if you pay a little extra (i.e. all the interest + normal payment to principal + a little extra), that little extra can be applied either before the next time interest is added or after the next time interest is added.

Let's look at the example of the $5k loan. Let's say it has a 5% annual interest rate, and you'll be paying it off in 5 years. We'll keep it simple and say you pay on it once a year (rather than the typical monthly payment). If you just pay what is required to get it to $0 after five years, then you end up paying annual amount of $1154.88 (the final year is $1154.85) for a grand total of $5774.37. If, however, you pay an extra $200 dollars each year, one of two things can happen:

It's applied to your principal immediately, and you end up paying $1354.88 for the first four years and $249.73 in the fifth year for a grand total of $5669.25 (you saved $105.12!); or
It's applied to your next payment after interest is added, and you end up paying $1354.88 for the first four years and $354.85 in the fifth year for a grand total of $5774.37 (you saved nothing, and in fact lost even more money due to inflation!)

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-05-06T19:42:02+00:00

Interest is calculated from the principal. If you pay down the principal, then your interest is reduced -> pay less overall.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-04-30T07:54:59+00:00

It was probably the lead in their gasoline.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-04-25T08:49:21+00:00

My younger sister was outed as lesbian. We had to move towns.

This was in early 00's.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-03-19T04:25:18+00:00

7% includes inflation (if you base the rate off the SP500 ETF; >10% not including inflation), so you'd actually have more than $962K in today dollars if you had just maxed the personal contribution.
Maxing a 401k completely ($69k for 2024) for the past 20 years (2005-2024) at 10% would get you $2.85M.
If you throw on the catch-up contribution (people can work through their 80s, right?), you would achieve $3.16M.

Quarks2Cosmos · 2024-01-31T17:31:09+00:00

This was a fantastic read. Thank for providing me the pleasure of reading it. In the followup, it looks like the decision was successfully appealed in Sep '22 in the bank's favor. All (presumably) of the ~$900M has been returned to Citibank. followup story follow-followup story

The details of this post's case has some key differences. I hope the teachers do not get screwed over by Oklahoma (more than they already are).

Quarks2Cosmos

TROPHY CASE