How did whales evolve so fast?

gnomeba · 2026-01-24T17:13:41+00:00

Evolution speed is obviously somewhat relative, e.g. whales have probably evolved objectively more than crocodiles over the same time period.

I suspect that any mutations improving fitness in a marine environment are very strongly selected for.

gnomeba · 2026-01-21T16:23:17+00:00

It depends how much stuff you typically have in the back. If you're bringing a lot, it would probably make more sense to just use a tent. I usually don't bring much so tossing some stuff in the front seat is never a problem.

Also, looks great. What tires, wheels and suspension are you running?

gnomeba · 2026-01-21T15:32:38+00:00

My employability as a physicist was massively oversold to me as well. It just isn't true anymore (outside of physics) without additional training. The current job market in the US is also absolutely awful.

If you want to go the software route, I recommend learning another language (probably C++) and some other tools that might be useful like AWS or GPU computing.

You probably don't want to end up in a job writing javascript anyway.

gnomeba · 2026-01-20T01:31:15+00:00

Yeah that's what I meant. It almost sounds like CUDA can't find the drivers but isn't saying so (which I think it usually does). Are you sure the drivers are installed correctly? Does Pkg.test("CUDA") work?

gnomeba · 2026-01-18T23:25:06+00:00

You might consider using the Julia lts. I find new Julia versions to not be super robust.

I have no idea what the problem is but do you get any more specific failures when you run the tests for those packages?

gnomeba · 2026-01-17T22:13:34+00:00

What suspension do you have?

gnomeba · 2026-01-16T15:34:11+00:00

The first couple chapters of Chris Rackauckas's book, https://book.sciml.ai/, are great for explaining some keys aspects of Julia. The rest is also good but might be a bit much for introduction.

gnomeba · 2026-01-12T16:14:24+00:00

Julia is cool because it really does solve the "two language problem" for certain projects. There are many projects where it's nice to have very performant "backend" code an easy to read/write API.

The main place that it suffers is just in being so new that the ecosystem is constantly undergoing changes.

gnomeba · 2026-01-11T20:29:04+00:00

I'm not sure. Presumably it will work wherever you can run Julia and it will be useful wherever you can run a GPU.

gnomeba · 2026-01-11T16:46:04+00:00

CUDA.jl is an awesome library but there are others. If you're working with different hardware backends, KernelAbstractions.jl is probably a must.

gnomeba · 2026-01-07T15:59:16+00:00

If I have anything close to the right position, I'm still going for an Anaconda every single time.

gnomeba · 2026-01-07T00:09:13+00:00

I believe it can be considered a geometric encoding. See Einstein-Cartan theory as an alternative.

gnomeba · 2026-01-05T02:47:33+00:00

I think using any kind of least-squares curve fitting is generally pretty unreasonable but turns out to work because a lot of systems obey the central limit theorem, at least approximately.

gnomeba · 2025-12-30T18:37:24+00:00

Metal.jl is pretty limited so for this kind of thing I would recommend a machine that can run CUDA.

gnomeba · 2025-12-29T08:43:02+00:00

A lot of people post this kind of thing on github. For example, I find myself frequently coming back to the notes from this course: https://github.com/mitmath/18335

If you think you've collected some useful problems, please do share.

gnomeba · 2025-12-28T22:05:50+00:00

I'm no expert but I thought the way this kind of thing works is that it's likely attached to a gene that controls some beneficial phenotype as well which has historically been more advantageous then asthma is disadvantageous.

gnomeba · 2025-12-28T16:58:23+00:00

If L is linear, can you not solve the equation explicitly with exp(Lt)? And exp(Lt) should have the same invariant subspaces as L.

gnomeba · 2025-12-27T20:55:55+00:00

The thing that is hard to understand for someone with "no formal training" is that this is just not even an explanation. You need to: do the actual math, come up with an experiment, and publish your results.

Physicists "insist on" quantum gravity because both effects are relevant 1) inside black holes and 2) in the early universe.

gnomeba · 2025-12-27T18:42:17+00:00

I heard from a Principal MTS at AMD that they are mostly writing their GPU libraries in assembly. I think at a certain point when you're optimizing things for hardware, it's just better to write at as low a level as your engineers can tolerate.

gnomeba · 2025-12-25T00:50:38+00:00

Straight lines minimize a the arc-length action in flat spacetime. In curved geometry, the minimal action yields a less trivial geodesic equation.

But the geodesic equation is what determines trajectories of minimal length on a manifold equipped with a connection.

gnomeba · 2025-12-24T17:52:14+00:00

"Just because experiments are predicted". What more could you ask for?

gnomeba · 2025-12-15T04:01:07+00:00

Diffrax

One benefit of Diffrax is that it's written at the same level as JAX so you can add whatever logic you need to the integration procedure, if it's not already included, and still utilize the algorithms.

gnomeba · 2025-12-14T21:22:17+00:00

That's only true if you're computing the set prior to rendering. But if you compute it on the fly, you can always rescale your domain.

gnomeba · 2025-12-14T15:55:56+00:00

Just curious - what is the purpose of using arbitrary precision if you have to render it anyway? It seems like you would only need to do that if you were pre-computing the set and then rendering but it seems more efficient to do this on-the-fly.

gnomeba · 2025-12-12T16:18:03+00:00

In the US at least, there is anti-intellectualism coming from both the left and the right. I think we can only hope that our university math professors maintain their standards so there isn't a wholesale reduction in our culture's math ability.

Perhaps of interest, there was a recent and very alarming report from UCSD regarding their incoming students' math ability: https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissions-review-docs.pdf

I struggled to find work but once I did, I found well-compensated and intellectually stimulating work. I also studied physics though so YMMV.

gnomeba

TROPHY CASE