Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | mimhoff's commentslogin

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...


Technically you always owe the money, you just don't have to repay it when you have a low income. It is stepped in the rate of repayment -- it might be 2% of income at $50k and 8% at $100k. It certainly seems like your biggest raise ever when you pay it off.


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‽


Iosevka font has an awesome looking Interrobang. See https://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/specimen.html (scroll down to the U+2030 row; ‽ is U+203d).

I think that other fonts should follow that example too.

Until then, as I anyways use subsetted fonts on my blog, I can easily specify the font to use for the ‽ glyph.


Agreed. I can't see myself using it because it looks so out of place and bold in a sentence.

Plus, how often do I really need to chain a question and exclamation mark together?


It seems to me that the right way to start would be to type '!?' If that gets popular, then you can have an !?-ligature.


Agreed. Ligatures seem like a much more elegant solution.


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


Yes. But many more survive where, without interventions, they wouldn't.

Geoengineering, if implemented, will definitely be responsible for some deaths, suffering, and negative environmental changes. But the alternative, doing nothing while on current trajectory, is going to be much worse.


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.


But getting equal time on each pixel as you spiral out would be crucial to trigger the right phosphorescent equal luminance from your light-emitting material. Theta would not be linear with time.


The intensity of the beam could be modulated to counter this.


There are sync pulses on every line of analog video, as well as to color burst in most analog video standards. You couldn't just sweep theta and r continuously for a whole frame.


Why not? The sync pulses are because the scan is discontinuous, you could just have one plus color burst every spiral


I'm guessing that NTSC and PAL have a color burst on every line, vs every frame, because over an entire frame the local oscillator might not be stable enough. At least back in the day.

Same with the timing of the sweep circuits, which only need to hold sync for a single line of video.


Oh cool, didn't realize color burst was used for that, I skimmed over it in the past and misunderstood its purpose. TIL


Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: