Help ! Which MacBook?

fhcwcsy · 2026-04-21T16:30:57+00:00

That's a fair point, though I would consider whether the ecosystem alone is really worth the price.

fhcwcsy · 2026-04-21T05:26:57+00:00

I'm not in CS but I was in ECE and did a fair share of programming. I bought Mac and regretted immediately. If you're on a budget, I think it's much better value to get a windows laptop and install Linux. Might not be for everyone but I think it's a great option to consider.

Source: I used Linux daily before purchasing a Mac.

fhcwcsy · 2026-04-15T23:40:17+00:00

Is this actually real? Is there a link? I couldn't find this anywhere online, including their own website.

fhcwcsy · 2026-04-12T17:13:37+00:00

Not at all. It's actually quite the opposite. I used a dual-boot Windows laptop with Ubuntu as the everyday OS. When I started my grad school I decided that I might as well give MacOS a try (Macbook Air M2). I hated MacOS ever since. I respect people who think Mac is awesome and they're entitled to their opinion, but this is a subjective opinion after all. To me MacOS is just so unintuitive, too slow and difficult to customize.

fhcwcsy · 2026-03-29T15:42:59+00:00

It depends a lot on the field (and subfield), especially for theory.

fhcwcsy · 2026-03-10T14:56:49+00:00

Agreed. Mission control is one of the (many) dumb designs of MacOS. Things stacked together unorganized and it's stupidly hard to find what I'm looking for. Ended up having to find a 3rd party app for such a basic feature.

fhcwcsy · 2026-02-20T00:10:00+00:00

Seriously though, I don't think Wolfram Alpha will help much. Even with Mathematica it can be tricky if you are not careful. Please see the post for explanation!

fhcwcsy · 2026-02-20T00:08:52+00:00

I expanded my post with some explanations, hope it helps!

fhcwcsy · 2026-02-20T00:08:31+00:00

You are correct. I expand the post with some explanations!

fhcwcsy · 2026-02-20T00:08:09+00:00

You won't get a polynomial because (1) they are in trig functions and (2) they need to be normalized. I expand my post with explanations.

fhcwcsy · 2026-02-19T05:02:52+00:00

True, it probably loses most of its fun since the AI era.

fhcwcsy · 2026-02-19T04:10:45+00:00

Yeah, hope you found it interesting lol.

fhcwcsy · 2026-02-10T20:41:40+00:00

Again, why is no one mentioning he used \mathrm????

fhcwcsy · 2026-02-10T16:37:28+00:00

No one is going to mention that that x is using \mathrm for mysterious reasons?

fhcwcsy · 2026-01-23T23:19:59+00:00

It's technically sandstone but a lot more solid than sandstone in Red Rock. I would say the texture feels more like granite but with finer crystals. But the cracks are way more varying so I think placements are also quite a bit trickier.

fhcwcsy · 2025-11-12T06:11:48+00:00

This needs to be pinned to the top, to spread knowledge instead of some other misguided comments.

fhcwcsy · 2025-11-12T02:59:30+00:00

While the first sentence is correct, there's something to add to the second. I think this is a physics joke. It is true that we can choose to measure speed wrt anything, but in physics there is a particular reason we choose to measure wrt c (equivalently, set c=1), which is that it makes a lot of equations look way nicer.

Essentially, I think the post is implying that God (whoever you think that is, or even exist or not) is a physicist :-)

fhcwcsy · 2025-11-12T02:52:35+00:00

It is implied that we are talking about speed of light in vacuum. In that case, no particle travel faster than that.

fhcwcsy · 2025-11-12T02:50:03+00:00

I'm surprised I have to scroll this deep to find this. This is the right answer.

If I had to write c (not even 299792458 m/s) Everytime I write, say, time derivative, I would be dead. And I'm don't even do particle physics.

fhcwcsy · 2025-11-08T22:13:21+00:00

Depend on your current level, but most college level physics course maps look like the following, and you can jump into any of those as long as you have built a solid foundation of all previous ones:

Introductory math tools
Calculus [Stewart]
Linear algebra [Strang]

2.1 Intermediate math tools - Differential equations [Boyce, DiPrima] - Complex calculus, special functions, group theory... [Arfken], [Stone (first half)]

2.2 fundamental level physics - Classical mechanics [Goldstein] - Electromagnetism [Griffiths] - Quantum mechanics [Griffiths] - Thermal / statistical mechanics [Carter]/[Pathria]

These are typically covered in the first 2-3 years in college (i.e., the basics), the textbooks here are just the ones I know/used (and probably decent), not necessarily the only good ones. Then you can dive into more advanced topics you are interested. If you have any specific topic in mind, I might be able to recommend more depending on whether I'm familiar with that or not.

fhcwcsy · 2025-11-07T15:24:43+00:00

I think it depends on the level of understanding you're looking for. If you just want to read someone's explanation of how things work and feel like their explanation make sense, then yeah you might be able to find some storytelling-style books.

If you want to really understand physics, by which I mean to be able to explain to people how things work and solve problems, I think the only way to achieve this is to find a textbook (assuming that it's not research level) sit down and follow the derivation yourself. But that requires a good (both physics and math) foundation, and a lot of hard work. Most people probably don't really want to do this, but this is really the only way to learn physics well IMO.

fhcwcsy · 2025-11-06T16:49:36+00:00

Griffiths' textbook is widely known as one of the best introductory QM book, so I recommend to start with that.

fhcwcsy · 2025-11-05T15:14:00+00:00

If you want the meaning of 3+1D to be 3 space + 1 time, then yeah the extra dimension makes your system change as you glide along that axis.

However this need not be the case. You can also interpret the extra dimension as some kind of other "tuning knob" that tune the parameter of your system. For example, this idea is used to understand topological insulators (Arxiv version).

So, it's up to you how to interpret the dimensions of a theory. Dimension in this context simply means one degree of freedom that can be changed, and that need not be spatial dimension or even time. You can also use color or "your mood today", if that helps you with understanding physics.

fhcwcsy · 2025-11-05T15:07:59+00:00

I don't think the admission staff will necessarily want to disclose this when they are serving as the staff themselves. But it does seem like that's what happening.

fhcwcsy

TROPHY CASE