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geomark

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I sure wish they would talk about the hardware. I spent a few years developing a radiation hardened fault tolerant computer back in the day. Adding redundancy at multiple levels was the usual solution. But there is another clever check on transient errors during process execution that we implemented that didn't involve any redundancy. Doesn't seem like they did anything like that. But can't tell since they don't mention the processor(s) they used.

My sister lives in Anaheim Hills. A couple years ago a brush fire burned right up to the property line behind her house. Fortunately her house was undamaged. Last year the insurance company declined to renew her policy. I think you made a wise choice to avoid that area.

Interesting article. I wonder if in part 2 they will cover the work done at TRW as part of the VHSIC Phase 2 program. They succeeded with a WSI chip called the CPUAX that used some of the same redundancy techniques together with a built in self test and configuration system.

Then they're doing it wrong. The idea is that you grind when you're young to set yourself up for more free time to spend with your kids when you're older. You can afford for one parent to stay home, both if you've really nailed it

Most of my friends had kids young. They were busy working and hardly saw them grow up. A few were fortunate that the mothers could and wanted to stay home. The others all had their kids raised by daycare workers. When they found out what was happening in schools all they could do was scream about it. When covid hit and the schools shut those parents were buried and their kids suffered setbacks in their education. That's the standard routine. No thanks.

At a big electronics hardware company a group of us EEs would talk about our dream of owning a bike shop almost every day.

I hear that said but I completely disagree. Being surrounded by mostly game-addicted goal-less classmates is a drag on even a motivated high achiever. It was such a difference to have the flexibility of homeschooling and be able to get him in with some like-minded kids and watch him bloom (my anecdote, n=1).

I judged at some robotics competitions where we interviewed the students. It was usually immediately apparent if the student had not done the work, and as a result they would not receive an award.

I think that's the only way to do it. The student must be able to describe the work they did. A fraudster might still get through with sufficient coaching.

"Compartmentalization of the work appeases the mind a lot."

Definitely. When I worked at a aerospace co some of the young engineers had internal conflicts they rationalized away by saying "we aren't building bombs." No, they were just building the targeting systems. Pointing the gun but someone else pulling the trigger. So it's all good.

In the country I live virtually every house is plumbed with PVC. Works great and only fails if done extremely poorly. Of course, they don't run hot water through it. Most people here think it is bizarre to have a big tank of hot water at one end of the house (often the garage) that is sent throughout the house, rather than having instant hot water heaters at the point of use.

Another benefit of knowing how to do it yourself is that if opt to hire someone to do it you can better assess their work.

Also, if you have kids who learn along with you the value is multiplied.

I've done this in hardware design, presented a design for review with a problem that had already been discovered and had a fix in progress. It was a red herring that gave the customer something to latch onto and feel like they were contributing to the success of the project. Somewhat dishonest, yes, but very effective in getting customers to work with you rather than be adversarial.

Several comments about the budgeting issue in public schools, but what about teacher pay in private schools? Is it higher? Are private school teachers unionized? Because absent institutional constraints teacher pay would be more market based. My anecdotal evidence says the market still doesn't highly value traditional teaching, meaning teaching a class in a traditional school.