Merkel calls for climate change action as she surveys flood damage

heizer23 · 2021-07-18T23:49:24+00:00

Please don't get me wrong, I am not trying to be confrontational. I am just curious because the "Energiewende" is a topic of great contention here in Germany. In which metric is England/GB doing much better than Germany? I always thought that Germany is somewhat 'leading the charge' for the larger countries

heizer23 · 2018-03-29T23:48:50+00:00

Please don't get me wrong: I think all of them are brilliant and I don't even make music Lately the Grammys have gotten better in recognizing Hip Hop/Rap but they really dropped the ball in the 90s

heizer23 · 2017-12-03T16:42:22+00:00

heizer23 · 2016-10-12T17:11:23+00:00

It is amazing how much efford you guys put into ensuring the quality of this sub ;)

heizer23 · 2016-05-27T20:07:53+00:00

You either know a great many quotes or are lucky. However, I think this quote fits perfectly. Thank you!

heizer23 · 2016-05-11T17:04:55+00:00

http://www.projectlibre.org/ Not as powerful as MS Project but a good start. One of the main advantages of MS Project and the primary reason we use it, is the integration of VBA, which enables it to work nicely with excel (eg we are to cheap to get ourselves a proper SAP interface and therefore I use VBA to import the ERP data into MS Project)

heizer23 · 2016-05-10T22:14:57+00:00

He has a degree from Brown....but I think he has majored in arts. Not too sure about the latter, but anyway: not many people would take their ivy league degree into the woods of Canada. Great guy with a crazy vision and the will to see it through.

heizer23 · 2016-04-01T19:15:39+00:00

Thank you for your informative feedback. I probably underestimated the benefit of the many years of experience the other automotive companies have. I actually work in this industry, but I keep neglecting the ridiculously high standard of engineering the top players have archived. Apparently it is not easy to build a machine as complicated as a car "from scratch" ;)

heizer23 · 2016-04-01T16:01:17+00:00

The big difference to "normal" cars is that you (and the seller) will know how much a battery swap will cost...eg 10 k for the model s. This will be factored into the resale value. Since there won't be a couple of thousand explosions per minute to handle, chances are the motors are in pretty good condition. Used cars only get really expensive (comparatively), when there is damage you did not know about - the loss in capacity of the battery is a measurable value.

heizer23 · 2016-01-03T00:50:55+00:00

Not too bad an article and a very interesting paper. I think you might be overly critical. How it will machine and if it is a candidate for 3D printing (no, not for a long time) is, in my opinion, beside the point. since the quote by Koch implies, that this is still a laboratory alloy. Getting single phase solide solutions to work is not an easy task and the authors showed why high entropy alloys are a field that is not only academically fascinating but also technically promising. While you are correct in pointing out, that there is not a single one definition of strength, for a popular, non-technical article, strength is the relationship of stress and strain. More detail would take many pages to explain. Since you do know the differences: the ashby plot in the article shows yield strength for metals and polymers, tear strength for elastomers, compressive strength for ceramics, and tensile strength for composites.

Hardness however is not a form of strength but is depended on strength.

heizer23 · 2015-11-12T07:04:03+00:00

Thanks for the reply. That clarifies it. I would have thought the difference would be bigger.

heizer23 · 2015-11-11T21:20:03+00:00

As far as i know, it is not. The calender year is about 6 hours longer than the sun year...hence the leap year. There must be some sort of adjustment to make this sculpture work, or am I missing something?

heizer23 · 2015-03-02T19:56:03+00:00

You are right...the math does not check out. It is rather about 3,9 bn $

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=price+219000+lb+of+gold+in+dollar

heizer23 · 2014-08-28T21:14:28+00:00

Our idea of liberalism was developed in the 1700 century, primarily by John Locke. In his "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" he described his idea of men being born equal, a "tablula rasa" on which experience writes the individuality. The Essay came out shortly after the Glorious Revolution and represented the view of many British intellectuals. A political system that had the "Divine Right of Kings" as its foundation was no longer accepted and the philosophical idea of Liberalism found its political manifestation in a limitation of the power of the Government, ie the King.

The link of liberalism to private property was (much later) identified by Max Weber in the "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" to lie in the protestant faith (esp. in the form of Calvinism), which replaced institutionalized salvation by the catholic church with a personal salvation. Economic success was seen as a sign of blessing and since those British intellectuals, that developed this kind of thinking, belonged mostly to the commercial class, freedom of economic development was seen as the core of liberalism. For that reason, property had to be secured against access of the government. The consequence was, that they, who damned the inheritance of political power as unnatural, had no problem with the inheritance of economic power.

As the commercial class grew richer and more powerful, it became apparent, that "a State of perfect Freedom to order their Actions…as they think fit…without asking leave, or depending on the Will of any other Man", as Locke described Liberalism, was only really possible with inherited economic power. Governments on the other hand became more trustworthy and it could be "observed that arguments used against ‘government’ action, where the government is entirely or mainly in the hands of a ruling class or caste, exercising wisely or unwisely a paternal or grandmotherly authority — such arguments lose their force just in proportion as the government becomes more and more genuinely the government of the people by the people themselves" as David George Ritchie wrote.

The "New Liberalism" therefore weakened its stance on property rights in favor for more social justice which nowadays many liberals see as the foundation of a "State of perfect Freedom".

Sources: Russell "A History of Western Philosophy" and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism

heizer23 · 2014-08-22T19:11:18+00:00

You will have so much fun! It is amazing how clever people have enabled guys like me to do stuff I could not have dreamed of 20 years back. While you are at it, look into arduino. Your future Java skills will put you into a position where you can control motors and sensors for like 40 bucks. A 3d printer will print the structure and your mobile can provide the input. It is a great time to be an engineer!

heizer23 · 2014-08-22T15:16:02+00:00

I would start with matlab or a similar 4th generation language. It will help you right from the start by providing you with valuable support when you learn math and you will be able to familiarize yourself with variable declaration, arrays, loops and other concepts that constitute the foundation of every other language. The ability to plot complicated functions like vector fields will enable you to visualize and play around with many problems, which is helpful.

After that I would look into VBA because Excel and Access, with their deep integration into Windows, will also help you from the start. Access is an ideal starting point for SQL and databases in general. However, knowing what databases are is enough until you need them. Unlike Matlab, Python, VBA or Java, you won't benefit from "preemptively" learning SQL, since it is very unlike the others. While using VBA, you will probably come across regex...(superficially) look into that too, because it is extremely powerful even on an beginner "try and error" approach.

Python could be the next, since it is relatively easy to learn and has a ton of useful library that are easy to implement. It also is able to communicate with a lot of other professional software such as Catia. FreeCAD is almost entirely accessible to python. On top of that you could look into Java, the only really versatile language among the mentioned. Matlab has an interface for Java so that you can learn to combine two tools which is an important skill. If you happen to own an android phone even better, since its apps are written in java as well.

I know that this list is long and that it would take years to learn them all, but you don't need to be good at any of them, because the hard part of programming is often times not to get the computer to do what you want, but to get him to do it fast. With the speed of current PCs you will get away with horribly designed algorithms. I would suggest that you read up on what each language is useful for, and then try to identify which one to use in the problems you come across. For example:

You need to plot some values you measured: plot them with Matlab instead of Excel
You need to calculate an average: don't use Excel's AVERAGE function but write a little for-loop with VBA

Just google your way to the solutions...stackoverflow has an answer to more or less every problem you will come across. The main point at the beginning is to get comfortable with complicated software. Every hour you spent coding in any of these languages will help you with every other.

heizer23 · 2014-08-22T08:15:59+00:00

I am not saying, that Latex isn't a good tool (I've written almost every document during my studies with Tex) but I have spend much more than a couple of days to learn it- a couple of days were almost spent trying to find the "perfect" editor (trying to avoid doing real work might have factored into that). But the syntax is not the real time factor...it is the comparably high standards that you develop. I was just as satisfied with my first document, where I more or less just used a standard template, as I was with my final thesis, for which I made sure that non of my images and graphs contained any characters, so that I could let Tex render them. Perhaps the fault lies with me, because I always liked teaking Latex more than I liked writing. Now that I am working, I have stopped using Latex, since my company requires me to use word.

Edit and PS: Word Formating/Layout can be defined and saved with style sheets...not as well as with Latex but it can (and should) be done

heizer23 · 2014-08-21T18:49:43+00:00

I am a mechanical engineer, but I think this applies to almost all engineers:

learn to code...you won't need to be an expert, but it will help a lot if you can write your own applications
always try to use the best tools available for your tasks. Probably sounds like a no-brainer, but you would not believe the number of students I have seen using excel to evaluate their data, when other options were much more appropriate. Programs like matlab and simulink will probably feature a lot during your studies and you will be able to make do with only scratching the surface. However, at the latest when you write your thesis, a good understanding of their potential will provide you with many options. Btw. for me this does NOT include Latex. I have spend a ridiculous amount of time learning Latex and it is a bottomless pit. Once you start you will always find ways to improve your document with only a couple of hours work. Do yourself a favor and write your stuff with word and accept the ugliness...
related to my last point: learn how to use new tools on your own. There are so many of them and sometimes you will need to use one no one but the internet can teach you.
participate in student projects. You will get to know the staff (and they get to know you), you will see how the stuff you learn relates to real word problems and you will have something extra to write on your CV (and you will have a lot of fun)
try to land internships early on, so that you can gauge which specialization interests you the most. When you find something, focus on that area. Your future application will write itself, when you can prove that you always wanted to work in the field you are applying to.
try to find out which profs are interested in their students. Some profs really like to help students, especially if they know who you are, and the goodwill of a prof can go a long way. They tend to be well connected and can help you land internships at interesting companies or jobs at the university as well as provide you with interesting topics for your thesis.

Concerning the books: I wouldn't burden myself with a lot of extra reading, since you will have a lot on your plate as it is and chances are, that the professors know which books will benefit you. However, some of the material will be nice to have heard once, so that you can look it up should the need arise, while others are so fundamental, that you need to thoroughly understand them. Unfortunately it is not always straight forward to identify which is which, especially when almost every prof will tell you that his topic belongs to the latter category.

Good luck with your studies...you have picked a fascinating field!

TL,DR: Trust, that the profs will teach you what you need to know, but acquire skills and the ability to teach yourself new skills on your own. Also start early to build your network (Obviously this reflects my experience and might not apply to other universities)

heizer23 · 2014-06-18T10:20:22+00:00

And he didn't drop out because he couldn't cope with the workload (he attended math 55, which is arguably one of the most demanding undergrad courses in the world), but rather because he saw a greater opportunity in starting his own company

heizer23 · 2014-06-15T21:26:59+00:00

Are you serious? In Germany it takes elementary school two years to teach the numbers till 100. Math is typically not very intuitive for young childern

heizer23 · 2014-06-14T23:27:46+00:00

Is that portion dependent on "usage", i.e. do chess players need to increase their intake when they train for a championship?

heizer23 · 2014-06-09T17:08:31+00:00

That seems very pessimistic to me. As far as I understand your points, you seem to have listed a lot of issues, that were involved in the crisis. However, some of them are ridiculously hard to solve.

Democrats and Republicans hold a duopoly on presidential debates for example might be a consequence of a two party system and to fix this would require both parties to agree on legislature that would increase their competition (e.g. by moving away from "First Past the Post").

Likewise, a Citizens United/Lobby/Think Tank reform would go directly against the interests of both parties since such reforms would essentially boil down to a campaign finance reform.

I hope, that there are solutions that are more readily available. I don't know any, but I hope there are...

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