pxhb

https://wci.llnl.gov/

Note that in the US nuclear weapons are controlled by the DOE, and not the DOD.

This is false, almost all of those employees have a Q clearance. You can search the job listings for keywords like ‘Wci’ ‘high energy density’, etc to confirm.

Part of the purpose is definitely personnel related though. Part of the US nuclear deterrence is the projection of having a large, highly skilled nuclear weapon related workforce.

What are your mid-term and long-term goals? Do you want to advance in your company, or find a new job? If new job, are you looking for a local job, to move, or remote?

My generic thoughts without really knowing your situation: I think an associates degree for the purpose of programming job qualifications is nearly worthless. There are some corporate jobs that require bachelors degrees- I think largely as an HR requirement.

I think generally you would be better off with either A) getting a new job that is better aligned with what you are looking for, or B) going for a bachelors and using your networking and resources from the university to get a different job.

Again all of this is incredibly generic, and your specific circumstances will certainly change the picture.

I don't know the school system in Singapore, but in the US, we have community colleges that accept everyone. Most people in your situation take a few classes at a community college to prove that they can succeed in that environment, and then try again with the university. If there are similar option in Singapore, I'd go that route.

I also am not familiar with the Singapore system, but that is my first thought as well. Also sometimes scoring high on a standardized test (if applicable in Singapore) can make up for some bad grades.

I second this and was coming here to post exactly this. I have no doubt that without a latex template that was iteratively updated by students over the years that my thesis would have taken considerably longer to write.

I am very curious as to what prompted these questions. They seem like very crude generalizations/extrapolations/stereotypes.

People of varying dispositions have wide ranging motivations to pursue a PhD.

Here are my thoughts as someone who hires and supervises data scientist and statisticians. I personally find that candidates are lacking in one or more of three areas: 1) Technical knowledge, 2) Problem solving, 3) Communication. I would advise a little introspection or feedback from others to figure out which of these areas you could improve, and let that guide you with how best to prepare.

Other than that it heavily depends on the company you are interviewing for. One one extreme some interviews will feel more like trivia questions, and others might be obscure IQ test style puzzles. Good luck!

I would prefer a paywall flag over an outright ban. News should be free, but we also shouldn’t be ignorant of what’s going on in the world.

Ideally (for me) the system would be something like this:

-Primary source is used with Paywall flag, and submissions under this flag decay off the front page faster unless there is engagement

-HN culture that rewards users with finding alternative free reporting

-HN culture that rewards users with providing a good high-level summary of paywalled material

No web browser on the remarkable (at least stock). Stock it is literally just a note taking device, which I personally find appealing.

NIF, remember, is funded by the DoD. It's not a civilian reactor research program: it's a device for testing fusion reactions in the lab now that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty means that they're not allowed to test H-bombs out in Nevada.

*DOE’. There is a quasi-separation of powers, where DOE ‘owns’ the weapons and the DOD ‘uses’ them.

‘See for example the NNSA.

Does anyone know if they still have to wait for months to open the chamber after experiments to wait for the radioactivity to cool down?

I don’t think this has ever been the case. Note that I have been involved with experiments on the NIF, but only from the academic side. The NIF typically fires 1-3 time per day, and I believe that this is mostly an optics constraint. We weren’t producing neutrons though, so YMMV.

Desk: https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/119694/Realspace-Mage...

Chair: https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/877226/Realspace-Mode...

I bought both at the start of the pandemic when I abruptly started working from home, and I thought it might be temporary (still working from home). I think both were slightly cheaper than what is listed, but I don’t clearly remember. Overall the desk works well. It is a little hard to raise with everything on my desk, but not a big deal. The biggest thing is I wish the lowest setting is an inch or two lower. The chair is pretty horrible for me. While the seat itself is farily comofortable, the seat depth is too large for me. The back has a very aggressive default reclining position, which I hate. I have been thinking about replacing both (especially the chair), however waiting until life settles down a little bit first.

Honestly feel sorry for particle physicists... Their entire gig is spending billions on fancy equipment, and hoping that observe something unexpected.

This isn’t the way I would frame it. No one will fund billions on fancy equipment for unexpected results, and no one is flipping a coin expecting something other than heads/tails. The usual course is that there is some theoretical expectation/justification of a result, however we then need to build the experimental capacity to see if it is true.

Your overall experience will be impacted by where in the US you are. There are broad categories that track the culture (east coast, west coast, midwest, south), however even that is a bit too broad. Like in a lot of other countries, the size of the city/town/university also plays a large role in the experience/culture.

My advice is to look more into the city/state experience and culture.

This sounds pretty close to my setup as well (senior data scientist, managing a small group of data scientists/statisticians). Additional thoughts:

For meetings, my notes are pretty much shorthand and messy/scattered. I try to spend ~5 mins after to rewrite the important bits so that I am not confused after. It is sometimes difficult if the day is mostly meetings though. Occasionally if the meeting is exceptionally eventful/contentious/paradigm shifting, I will try to spend a little more time and explicitly write out what happened.

I also keep just one notebook for work. There are trade offs, but I have found it best to have everything in a known spot.

Exactly this. Science/research is largely incremental.

Agreed! University enabled me to leave the trailer park in the Midwest that I grew up in and now have a comfortable life. It is possible that this could have happened without university, however learning how to think/work through hard problems and the friends/networks I made have paid large dividends.

During undergrad, I was worried about the ~40k in loans I took out to pay for it. However, I was able to pay them off fairly soon after finishing up, and would never have been able to attend without the federal loans that did not require a co-signer.

I second this from my own experience (in physics, undergrad from a state university). I met my grad school advisor at a conference, and would definitely not have been able to get without their support.

A lot - around 6-8 cups/day

I have one large mug of coffee first thing in the morning (~3-4 cups). I then have a mug of half-caff coffee in the late morning, another mug of half-caff in the early afternoon and occasionally an additional mug in the late afternoon.

I have gradually been cutting back on caffeine, mostly by slowly transitioning to more half-caffeine coffee.

Some of my go to podcasts are:

Bloggingheads.tv/meaningoflife.tv, particularly with Robert Wright, Glenn Loury, DMZ

CoinTalk - commentary of events going on in the crypto space

Lawfare, National security law, cyberlaw podcast

Very Bad Wizards

Sport/team specific podcasts

University of Michigan has a ‘c4cs’

https://c4cs.github.io/archive/w18/

Not an expert, and have no idea what I am talking about

My understanding is that it is a variant of 1. Masks probably do help, but the general population would not use them correctly. Anecdotally, I saw this a lot going to the grocery store yesterday. For example, people were constantly fidgeting with their masks and removing the masks to talk to other people.

Generically, I would work through Griffiths first, and then Shankar and/or Sakurai.

You can probably refine it a little bit based on your motivation to learning quantum physics, and what level of mastery you need.

One reason you might not find ‘inertial’ is because the only thing they have in common is a laser.

For ICF, a long-pulse laser is used like a hammer to heat and compress the material to fusion conditions.

This scheme, as far as I can tell, uses the large EM fields of a short-pulse laser to accelerate a ‘beam’ of ions into cold material to induce fusion.

I can’t tell for sure from the article but I think they are accelerating protons with TNSA (target normal sheath acceleration). I worked in a lab in undergrad that was doing something similar, except with lithium instead of boron. The main challenges that I recall from a decade ago with TNSA are (WARNING: there almost certainly has been progress since a decade ago):

-Conversion efficiency of laser energy into ion (proton) kinetic energy

-TNSA accelerates mainly the contaminated layer on the back of targets, which may not be a big deal if you are interested in accelerating protons

-TNSA protons are not beam like. They do not have a uniform kinetic energy, and they have a wide angular divergence.

-Various laser related issues (prepulse, focal spot size/shape).

I also anticipate that it will have the same engineering problem as ICF/NIF, in that it will need to continuously replenish targets.

I think that the article raises some interesting points, with some that I agree with and some that I do not.

I think it would have been helpful for the article to put the 40 years of no progress in perspective. Are we looking for progress on the scale of the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, and so should we be comparing to the timescales between Newton and Einstein/Schrodinger? How should we think about the rate of progression in a ‘mature’ field such as physics? Should it be linear (big discovery every 40 years), faster (new discoveries are faster due to bootstrapping from other discoveries), or slower (diminishing returns)?

You might qualify for need-based financial aid, provided in part from the university scholarship funds. I believe the only way to know for sure is to apply, be accepted to enroll into the university, and then receive the financial aid package.

I would definitely check out the community college for the first two years. I think you have to be careful on which courses will transfer, and the community college may not offer every course equivalent to the first two years of a CS degree. I think you will save (potentially a lot) of money and position yourself to be more competitive for a top university.

I have an idea what it costs me personally, but I am not sure how to price in the plain fact that renters will not care for your house as much as you do.

Somewhat of a tangent, but do you have any advice/resources on how to price in repairs and maintenance?

I am moving soonish, and trying to figure out what to do with my house. A back of the envelope calculation of Expected_Rent - Mortgage - Insurance - Property_management_fees gives an appealing number, but I am not too sure how to price in all of the long and short term repairs/maintenance and any other potential liabilities.

In my opinion no to both question (at least for US universities). It is not too uncommon however to have some alternative arrangement once you are well into your PhD, however. For example, some students will consult part time while doing a PhD, or spend the time writing the thesis in a different country.