cameronperot

During my master's, I took a job in a physics group that works with high pressure time projection chambers for neutrino detection. They have a bunch of simulation and experimental data they wanted to organize and share with colleagues.

I first worked on improving the database (adding indexes, reducing redundancy, etc.). Next, I wrote a Python package to make it easier to interact with the database from the command line and Python, and act as a backend package for a frontend Flask API I wrote to serve the data. Finally, I made a simple website [1] where users can query the data.

It was great because I not only got to help out the people working in the group, but I also contributed to making the data available to other physicists around the world.

[1] https://rwth-aachen.de/gasdb

This is a nifty trick, but I recently had an issue where it would offer my other keys even with IdentitiesOnly yes specified in ~/.ssh/config. I found a solution [1], but it's not the most elegant.

[1] https://superuser.com/a/859719

Happy to contribute what perspective I can :). I didn't mean to put it as a hostile US vs. EU thing, just wanted to state my reasons for going the other way.

I saw in another comment that you said it would only be for a few years. In that case it's a bit different as I was going off of the assumption it was long-term/permanent, so it could be a more worthwhile experience.

I would say that it could even be beneficial for the kids in terms of their English skills and getting a more worldly experience. Most Germans I know speak good English, but some of those who have done study abroad programs in the US have definitely mastered the language and accent, which is especially useful in STEM as almost all research is done in English these days.

I'm an American (Texan) who has been living in Germany for the past 6 years. I would suggest to consider the culture and lifestyle more than the work, as those will play a much larger role in your happiness and satisfaction. It sounds cliché, but money doesn't necessarily buy happiness.

I enjoy living in German/European cities significantly more than I did living in big cities in Texas (I can't speak for the East Coast). I value the culture of being able to walk or bike pretty much anywhere in the city in a reasonable amount of time. I value feeling safe even in the "bad" neighborhoods here in Germany. I've never once come across a situation where I was worried about my safety here, I can't say the same for the US. I value a society that isn't so extreme (wealth inequality, political ideology, etc.).

As for what I miss about the US, it's mostly the food (TexMex, BBQ) and nature (so much more to see and do, but you need a car). There's also the work culture which is a bit different, particularly in terms of startups and innovation; Germany definitely lags behind in this aspect. Some things are more convenient in the US as well, such as stores being open later and on Sundays.

Germany isn't perfect, but I think it's better than the US in a lot of quality of life aspects.

Before moving, I would recommend going to visit the city and see if it's something that might fit you. Try to talk to locals and explain your situation, I'm sure there would be people happy to show you around and give you some good insights from a less touristy perspective.

Of course, all of this is hard to weigh if your wife will be living there for certain, as long-distance relationships can be tough.

The Flying Goose brand is the most common here in Germany. The Huy Fong brand hasn't been available for a few years after the EU implemented some restriction on one of the ingredients.

I haven’t built any large project

I think one of the best ways to fill in your knowledge is to find a project you're passionate about and learn what you need along the way. Passion projects are also great to showcase to potential employers. A good hiring manager will jump at the chance for you to showcase something you've put a lot of time and effort into, as it gives insight into how you work and your thought process.

Good point. I was looking at the "Family" aggregation which doesn't list AMD in the performance share chart, which was a bit misleading.

NVIDIA has a significantly larger market share for HPC [1] (select accelerator for category).

[1] https://top500.org/statistics/list/

  Location: Germany (US Citizen)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Yes
  Technologies: Python, Julia, Linux, machine/deep learning, (stochastic) simulations, SQL, AWS, containerization
  Résumé/CV: https://cameronperot.com/cv_cameron_perot.pdf
  Email: see CV

I have about 15 years Linux experience, 10 years Python experience, and 5 years machine learning experience. I have worked for a Fortune 100 corporation, a FinTech startup, and a supercomputing center. I studied finance and physics in my bachelor's, and am in the final semester of my data science and physics master's.

I'm currently looking for work as a data scientist or ML engineer to apply my quantitative, computational, and analytical skills.

I use caps2esc [1] in Linux to remap capslock to ctrl on hold and esc on tap. It's such a simple yet insanely useful remapping! It really shines in modal editing (e.g. vim). I assume it's possible to use the underlying interception tools [2] to do that for any key without needing a particular programmable keyboard.

[1] https://gitlab.com/interception/linux/plugins/caps2esc

[2] https://gitlab.com/interception/linux/tools

For me it's just an easy way to notice if something is unexpectedly eating up resources, then I know to pull up htop to figure out what it is and kill it if needed.

Magboltz [1] is a single >95k line Fortran file (although, I'm not sure if it's multiple files combined into one before upload).

[1] https://magboltz.web.cern.ch/magboltz/

Kind of an aside, but if you are going to digitize important documents that contain confidential information, I would highly recommend encrypting them to mitigate any damage if your files were to be compromised. It adds an extra hurdle to accessing them, but is worth the peace of mind in my opinion. I can recommend VeraCrypt [1] as an easy to use encryption software for this purpose.

Additionally, I would also recommend backing them up offsite somewhere such as Backblaze B2 [2], making sure to encrypt all files there (even ones that are not encrypted on your local drive) using something like Restic [3].

[1] https://www.veracrypt.fr/code/VeraCrypt/

[2] https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html

[3] https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403944998811-Q...

I lived in Leipzig for three years during my physics studies, and I really enjoyed the city. It's there that I really learned to love long walks. I've walked through and around that city more time than I can count. My favorite time to stroll through the city center is when they have the (Christmas) market set up, it has a very welcoming feel to it. It's a city with a lot of culture and usually always something going on, but much more laid back than Berlin. Summertime there is especially nice, I always enjoyed walking or biking to the lakes in the south on a bright summer day.

if you're caught making a joke about ISIS, the Whatsapp police can unencrypt your messages

Would you please clarify this? I know that messages flagged by the recipient can be read by moderators [1], but I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at here.

I'm not defending WhatsApp (I've advocated for Signal since the days of TextSecure), but AFAIK the messages are encrypted using the Signal protocol, so I'm not sure how the "WhatsApp police" would be able to determine if you said something specific without the recipient reporting it.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-...

Anyone familiar with the term? Haven't heard it before.

Full-stack probably means they deal with all areas of QC, from theoretical research to hardware implementation.

I thought quantum computing was still in the research phase? What's there to scale?

IMO it is still largely in the research phase, but actual quantum computers do exist. The thing to scale would be the number of physical and logical (error-corrected) qubits. Quantum error correction is difficult though, and will take a lot of work to get scalable QCs with error correction. With some of the current schemes being pursued today, the number of physical qubits per logical qubit is quite high (e.g. 17 physical per one logical in Surface-17).

These interviews with Edward Teller [1] offer first hand insight into some of this fascinating history, I quite enjoyed watching them.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRdAp4A5KEA&list=PLVV0r6CmEs...

Great read. For those who enjoyed reading this, you might also enjoy this [1] short video series on dimensions math (direct link to the YouTube playlist [2]). The videos encompass some of the history of the mathematics, along with a number of animations to help the viewer get an idea how one can visualize a higher dimensional object in a lower dimensional space.

The creators also have a series on chaos math [3].

[1] http://www.dimensions-math.org/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cpTEPT5i0A&list=PL3C690048E...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vts0YHACsYY&list=PLw2BeOjATq...

Exactly this. I think I've come across maybe two or three snakes in almost five years here, all were non-venomous harmless looking little fellas, and I spend a lot of time in nature.

Interesting read, I don't believe I've ever encountered a sea snake myself, but I have a general rule to avoid snakes. Growing up in Texas, I was used to looking out for the venomous ones we had out on the ranch, i.e., copperheads, water moccasins (aka cottonmouth), rattle snakes, and coral snakes. Luckily none of us have ever been bitten, but we have had dogs get bitten.

I recently found out that there was actually a lack of antivenom for coral snake bites in the US, but it appears that this has just recently changed [1].

When I first moved to Germany I asked some friends what sort of snakes I should watch out for in the forest; I got some funny looks and laughs from that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_snake#Antivenom_shortage

Related discussion from a few weeks ago about the mentioned licensing issue:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644053

I believe the cause of the incident here was a blackout [1].

[1] https://gcaptain.com/grounded-mega-ship-blocking-suez-canal-...

IBM has 1000 qubits on their roadmap by 2023 [1]. I'm interested to see how that goes, and what we can learn from it about scaling up these systems into the thousands of qubits.

Edit: for anyone interested in learning more about quantum computation, I have a list of resources on my website [2].

[1] https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2020/09/ibm-quantum-roadm...

[2] https://cameronperot.com/resources/#quantum-physics

Quite disappointing. I'm glad I always encrypt my uploads to Backblaze before uploading using Restic [1:2].

[1] https://github.com/restic/restic

[2] https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002880514-Ho...

I would suggest leveraging MIT's OpenCourseWare [1]. You can filter for courses that have lecture videos, notes, etc. These courses are usually very well organized and taught by some of the best professors in the world.

[1] https://ocw.mit.edu/

I might suggest remapping caps lock to control on hold and escape on tap [1].

https://gitlab.com/interception/linux/plugins/caps2esc

You can also look at it in terms of man hours with respect to how much time it takes to implement and how much time it takes for others to read it. Coming from a computational physics background, one of the main reasons I love programming in Julia is because it allows me to write code with syntax very close to the underlying mathematics.

The latest I was able to find was this draft from 04.03.2020 [1].

[1] https://www.math.uni-frankfurt.de/~dmst/teaching/WS2019/SVP9...

I believe their conclusions are a bit flawed. Namely, the amount that people spend on beer per year.

Here in Germany most of the time I see beer prices at 3.00-5.00€ for 500ml in bars. However, I would say a large portion of beer consumption here is what people get from supermarkets, which is significantly cheaper, with most prices in the range of 0.70-1.00€ for a 500ml bottle.

Furthermore, nobody here really drinks well known brands such as Corona or Heineken, rather more regional beers.

Therefore, I don't see their conclusion that Germans spend an average of $1.9k on beer per year being valid.

Discussion from a couple days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26204756