goose847

Joined 7 years ago

Karma
80
Submissions
32
Member since
Nov 6
Student of Physics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town. Interested in technology, privacy, and making the world a better place using science.
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Recent submissions

Comment · 3 years ago
Wow there really is an xkcd for everything.
Comment · 4 years ago
I’ve been using this mouse on a daily basis since 2017. Mainly for the gestures that work with MacOS.

I totally understand how bad this design is and love making fun of it. That being said, I don’t have to charge it for months at a time and it charges fully in 45 minutes.

It’s really not a big deal.

Comment · 5 years ago
There’s a book called ‘The Sixth Extinction’ By Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert which talks about this. The sixth chapter is about the rise in ocean acidity.

She also details a critical acidity point (I forget the PH level but I think with current rise in acidity it is modeled to reach that point in 2100) where calcifiers cannot survive due to the acidity essentially breaking down their shells. Think oysters, barnacles, coral. Major parts of the ocean’s ecosystem that could have a ‘cataclysmic’ effect if wiped out.

Comment · 5 years ago
What's more, indoor grown cannabis is being increasingly seen as higher quality product and is sold as high end 'craft' bud. It'll be interesting to see where this goes considering the slow but steady acceptance and legalization in many parts of the world.
Comment · 5 years ago
Came here to promote “The Program” as well! My favorite episodes are “The White Algorithms’ Burden”.
Comment · 5 years ago
I found one of your posts sometime during the hard lockdown and I absolutely loved falling into the world built in the podcast! I've done a second listen recently and loved spotting new links between episodes! I'm really excited to see what's in store for the show next year.
Comment · 6 years ago
I certainly welcome a company with as much experience in the energy sector as BP embracing renewable energy sources. However, I do worry about similar problems of a handful of companies controlling energy policy world wide. Be it in fossil fuels or renewables. While we make this technological transition, we should also be aiming to democratise and distribute power over the energy supply and industry.

Edit: Fixed grammar.

Comment · 6 years ago
Seems like a terrible idea. The argument is not from the stand point of pressuring Google to adopt more privacy friendly practices but rather to bring them to the table to negotiate Google continuing to pay Apple to set Google as the default search engine on iOS. Using a privacy-centric service as a pawn to coerce more money into Apple's pocket would not serve the people DuckDuckGo was made for.
Comment · 6 years ago
Adding to this: I finished high school 3 years ago with a distinction for Mathematics from inevitably one of the ‘top 200’ schools mentioned in the article.

I read an article about a year ago showing the change in the syllabus for Maths over the last two decades and it was quite disturbing to see how the quality of the questions has decreased.

The upshot of this is that unfortunately even getting a distinction in the subject says very little about how you will fair in University. I very nearly had to repeat first year maths at UCT (also mentioned in the article). I really shudder to think how those with even less access to proper resources might have fallen by the wayside as a result of their circumstances.

In SA high schools it is increasingly common to take ‘maths literacy’ instead of the more intensive maths subject. This is once again skewed against students from poorer schools where they don’t have good maths teachers and therefore see higher rates of students taking this ‘maths lit’ course which is limited to real world algebra problems without an introduction to calculus or any tools that students would need to succeed in university.

Comment · 6 years ago
A really interesting take! Makes scientific papers feel more like a tool rather than an article or book. Certainly nice in the case of Computational work. Also allows the potential for long term projects that get incremented on in what would’ve been separate papers. Additionally if new, relevant information comes to light long after a paper has been published, the authors could reference this to give a more complete story.
Comment · 6 years ago
My favorite podcast is No Dumb Questions. It has Destin from Smarter Every Day and his friend Matt Whitman (from the YouTube channel “Ten Minute Bible Hour”)

They do really awesome episodes on History or aspects of history that they’re interested in. The best one of these imo is ‘Siege Warfare’ episode. Other than that they talk about books and friendship. It’s a fun podcast.

Comment · 6 years ago
Not entirely sure what I’m looking at in the pic. Could you give a bit of detail in a comment?

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