mimhoff

The error mentioned is that Feynman (as PhD supervisor) supplied an important thesis topic to Mano. Mano didn't get the experience of how to evaluate a problem and find motivation within it:

"I accepted [someone else] as a student because he came to me with the problem he wanted to solve. With you I made a mistake, I gave you the problem instead of letting you find your own; and left you with a wrong idea of what is interesting or pleasant or important to work on (namely those problems you see you may do something about)."

For undergraduate studies, the federal government also subsidises classes at standardised rates depending on subject.

So no matter which university you go to you'll be paying the same "Commonwealth supported place" rate for your field of study. For engineering it's $9185/yr for what's usually a 4-year degree. [0]

Postgraduate study is strange because some universities charge full-fee, some offer commonwealth supported places for certain degrees, and some offer CSP as scholarships. My masters degree at UNSW for example was commonwealth supported so I only ended up adding $8k onto my loan for it.

[0] https://www.studyassist.gov.au/help-loans-commonwealth-suppo...

Biggest advantage by far: no extra paperwork.

As a student you give your tax number to the university, and then the loan repayments are handled by the tax system when you do your regular annual tax return.

Sadly they don't work like income tax. If you go into the next bracket, you owe the new rate on your entire income.

Is it stepped at all? Do you owe nothing before 50k and then once you cross that threshold you now owe money? That would seem to incentivise staying below that threshold for a percentage of borrowers.

Once you earn over the threshold your HELP repayments apply to your entire income. So, yes, at low incomes you get a pretty significant tax increase when you cross the threshold. I think they should make it marginal like regular income tax is...

https://www.studyassist.gov.au/paying-back-your-loan/loan-re...

For me the interrobang just looks too busy and small, it needs some thought put into its appearance by font designers.

Maybe back in the days of typewriters you could overlay ? and ! but I don't think it looks good today‽

It's an interesting comparison, but people do die because of bad medical interventions.

A spiral scan circuit would just be something like:

x = r cos (theta) y = r sin (theta)

when you vary r so it gives you a spiral instead of a circle. So it shouldn't be too hard to generate the signals required.

Or there could be a different arrangement of the beam deflectors that didn't give you independent control of X and y.