Chin-Jung won the best poster award at the HPCC System Summit in October. The presentation can be seen in this video, starting at 9:50. The poster is about the HaaS tool, HPCC as a Service. It simplifies deploying HPCC on AWS. It is available on github. The winning poster is below. Oh, the first-place prize was a GoPro Hero.
Category Archives: Information
Emission-free car myth
Electric cars are engineering feats that fit many drivers use cases. But this image gives lie to the emission-free moniker often applied to electric cars. Unless the electricity can from solar, wind, nuclear, etc. an electric car is carbon-powered.
Emission-free car?
This is why I fear IoT
Perverse Incentives in Science: 21st Century Funding for 20th Century Research
For years colleagues and I have talked about problems with research funding today. (It wasn’t this way–or not this acute–when I started this job.) I recent paper from the intrepid Martin Center explain this quite well. An excerpt (emphasis mine):
Our institutions are dominated by those doing science in the current paradigm. Which is what we should in fact expect. But that means that most funding sources—whether government or private—are going to be conservative and fund the already-established rather than investigations into something that may not work out. And scientists tend to protect their turf against new ideas that could replace them.
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To get more money, universities start rewarding researchers for getting grant funding for the institution, meaning scientists are spending more time grant writing and less time in the lab, doing actual science.
Read the whole thing.
The problem with minimum wage
The true minimum wages is $0. When an employer is compelled to pay more for work than the value received, this “net-negative” job will disappear. McDonald’s response to $15 minimum wage is automation–i.e., eliminate jobs that return less than $15/hr. This result is the obvious and wholly predicable consequence of legislating a minimum wage. The solution to minimum wage is to gain such skill that you are worth more to your employer.