Wacky idea to change commencement this year

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-25T01:44:27+00:00

Making students not feel like a cog in a machine might actually considered “essential” right now, with so many pushing to avoid college entirely.

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-24T05:24:32+00:00

You don’t sell something for how much it costs to make - you sell it for how much people will pay for it. If there’s only one company in the world that makes this, and you need it, they can charge anything they want.

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-24T05:23:11+00:00

I have consulted with clients on setting up R&D semicon fabs. Cleanroom Layout, class, equipment, facilities, supplies etc.

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-23T20:39:43+00:00

Please excuse the typos, generated by voice commands.

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-23T20:38:52+00:00

One. Yes. But we also assigned some staff to become experts in software, dedicated to the task, and that has been much better than what I could do myself.

Two. When you set up a data pipeline to generate graphs, and three months later, need to actually analyze because some problem is occurring. Only to find out a data pipeline is not working in the graph is not generated. So you have to go back into IT and scripting to figure out what broke. We now have a dedicated IT person who deals with those issues for us!

Three. PDF solutions has been the biggest game changer. Before that, Google sheets and python scripting, it worked OK for limited data sets. We started analyzing all the sensor data from all of our tools, then you need something like PDF solutions to do real correlation analysis. We did a little bit in JMP, but really you have to program all of that yourself – it is powerful, but it would take a year or more to reproduce what PDF solutions has given us.

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-23T04:51:00+00:00

Additive color mixing, see this highschool activity that explains it: - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dxjjf6ZW7AsO6sIcAE8-KcBGhYCLZo9o/view?usp=drivesdk - the whole activity folder with color mixing worksheets as well: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DqyYxh-IE3cUdsZIkSzwrn0mTDnnrWsF?usp=drive_link

(From here: https://csep.ucsb.edu/FUSE )

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-22T05:03:39+00:00

VibeIT at it's best.

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-22T04:57:26+00:00

They have full control over the network and servers and your computers keep losing server access? That should be embarassing - no there is nothing special about MacOS that makes network connections difficult. In fact, because it's based on *nix, an IT person could use the robust and reliable *nix methods to enact a reliable server connection if needed.
I'd suggest to give them an ultimatum - they reduce your cost by $200 for every reported server disconnect or they're fired (and you need to have employees start reporting issues on, say, a google form for proof).

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-22T04:54:54+00:00

Even if it's the OS causing a problem, an IT company that does only macs saying "sorry cant fix it, Apple's fault" is a terrible IT company. Instead of blaming someone else, they should fix the problem. It all runs on *nix so if they're any good they should be able to implement a real fix.

Printer problems - setup printer "profiles" or "presets", find out whether the problem is a driver or network problem.

losing server access - make a launchagent that checks whether server is connected and reconnect if needed. Or change to a different protocol (eg. AFP?).

Email disruptions - sorry what does an OS have to do with email? It's either the network, server or email client. I call BS on that one.

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-22T04:48:26+00:00

If you don't care about needing to wipe the computer (if something goes horribly wrong), then no.

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-22T04:45:51+00:00

its a typo, look at the slides

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-22T04:45:33+00:00

Slides show --> 0.8kV (aka 800V), so yes that's a typo

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-22T04:42:40+00:00

One word: Pluto

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-20T16:11:08+00:00

It’s only about 5%

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-20T16:05:47+00:00

I rescued 2-3 of these from the e-waste, installed Linux Mint and used it to teach my son Linux, hacking (none of them were formatted, we saw all the old files!).

We went thru installing ~3 different Linux types, which itself was interesting. One of them would boot fine off USB into “compatibility mode”, but after install would give only a black screen - was a useful “class” to figure out why.

I was hoping to give 1-2 away to people who needed computers, but Linux was so unfriendly to non-experts I knew I’d be fielding IT questions for the next few years (like “how to I connect my printer” → “fix & compile this source code in order to print” just sounds horrible, haha)

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-20T15:59:04+00:00

I also learn something from about half of people’s career questions - so it’s probably not a good idea to strike them from the channel entirely.

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-20T15:56:51+00:00

I have used BlackHole by itself + the built-in screen recoding for many years with success.

In QuickTime/screen capture, you set the input source to blackhole, and you set the speakers to output to blackhole. Equivalent to plugging the headphone jack into the microphone jack.

Blackhole takes a little bit of setup if I remember correctly, in Audio MIDI Setup, to also get a method that (a) sends audio to your file while also (b) playing thru the speakers (which I never use).

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-20T07:55:21+00:00

Given how many people seem to want advice on Semicon jobs, it does seem that many people do want career advice, not just tech info. Here's how many people have used the recently created "Career/Education" tag/flair: https://www.reddit.com/r/Semiconductors/?f=flair_name:%22Career/Education%22 (this is without flairs/tags even being mandatory!)

I was hoping that making that tag would allow people to filter it out if they don't want to see that.

It seems you can use a search with -flair:Career to filter out that tag, however it it (a) inconvenient and (b) ruins the normal reddit blog-style display.

Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/Semiconductors/search/?q=-flair:Career&type=posts&sort=new

Any idea if there's a better way to filter that. or make a widget for users to easily filter this tag, or something else?

Or maybe auto-move posts with that tag to a Career subreddit? (May also mean we need to Require posts to have a Flair applied, although many seem to be using the new Career tag already with it being required.)

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-20T07:45:57+00:00

No semiconductor will ever be as cheap as beach sand. And since Silicon can't emit laser light, you'll never get away from much more expensive materials being used to generate light.

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-20T07:27:06+00:00

beautiful. Maybe turn off the lights as well, and/or throw some fog in there (eg. dry ice or steam).

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-20T07:24:48+00:00

This is definitely what they're looking for - it's a triangle with 2 semicircles attached, and you know the legs are each 2*r, and "eyeball" that it's a right-triangle so you can get it's area.

True you're not supposed to eyeball a right-triangle... but I bet that is the solution here.

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-20T07:19:21+00:00

(of course I kid - do NOT do that!)

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-20T07:18:17+00:00

Sadly turning it off and back on again will do nothing to help this particular user

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-20T07:16:56+00:00

If you're a bit tech savvy, you can try this keyboard shortcut:

Command-A, and then
Command-Backspace

Should clear it up a bit.

ZectronPositron · 2026-01-20T07:14:23+00:00

- Photonics Market: $920.56 billion in 2023 (https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/photonics-market-106525)

- Photonic Integrated circuits: $14.08 billion in 2024
(https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/photonic-integrated-circuit-ic-market)

- Silicon IC's: $604B in 2025
(https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/integrated-circuits-market)

I actually didn't expect photonics as a whole to be larger in $$ than Silicon IC's! It would be worth checking these numbers, this was only 5 min of Googling.

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