George Georgovassilis writes about information technology architecture
One of the many reasons to oppose the death penalty is its incompatibility with the goals of justice. As a fan of systems thinking I feel that capital punishment deprives justice of its most valuable functions that make a system work. The functions of justice Due process: we want to know that a dispute is … Continue reading Death penalty and justice
Apologies to non-german speaking readers; this post will make no sense to you. A senior colleague from northern Germany mentioned the German idiom "wie ein Stück Zucker im Blumentopf" to me. At the point of writing (3rd May 2021) there are no search results for this phrase, so I'm proud to announce a world wide … Continue reading Das Stück Zucker im Blumentopf
TL;DR: probabilities are so darn counter-intuitive, that one should not rely on "99% accuracies". Imagine you seek out your doctor because of a chronic case of hypochondria. All tests covered by your insurance turn out negative and your doctor tells you to man up and live with it. Being a House M.D. fan you refuse … Continue reading The improbable fallacy
It's been a while since my first (and so far only) reading list (2016) [1], but this decade shall not end without another one. Rules for the 2019 reading list: The content must have been interesting throughout the year; sources with only a few notable publications of an otherwise unremarkable output don't qualifyI overcame my … Continue reading 2019 reading list
Update October 2020: check out this new, improved design. I've wondered for a long time how differential amplifiers are actually realised on the transistor level. Not having received a formal electronics engineering education nor being part of an assorted online community, that question lingered for quite a while unanswered - until yesterday. The ideal differential … Continue reading A differential amplifier built with a current mirror
Last year I wrote about A switching amplifier electronic design which can drive large power loads with high efficiency and tolerable distortion. The operational principle for this is that a pre-stage converts the input signal into a series of pulses which rapidly switch the end-stage on and off - that is a power-efficient mode of … Continue reading A better switching amplifier
There are three conceptual combinations of temporality, significance and impact which require our attention: urgency (I either deal with it now or not at all), importance (I can deal with it later, but I can’t afford to ignore it) and opportunity (I may safely ignore it, but there are significant benefits if I don't). While … Continue reading About focus
ESA says [1] it's 106 times more likely to be hit by a lightning twice in the same year that to be hit by Tiangong 1's debris. There are 2 recorded incidents [2] of space debris that caused harm to people, the earliest recorded in 1979. According to [3], chances of being struck by lighting in … Continue reading Off topic: the odds of being hit by space debris
update January 2018: there's a follow-up. In this off-topic post I'm picking up an old hobby of mine: electronics. I've built in the past quite a few analogue audio amplifiers, mostly based on pull-push [1] designs, but always wanted to build a pulsed/switching amplifier. Thus, for no good reason at all, in this post I'll … Continue reading A switching amplifier
One of the greatest interview questions I have been asked to date was "where do you get your news from"; I'm immensely grateful when authors I enjoy reading divulge their sources of information and inspiration. So without further ado I present to you: George's 2016 feed reader shortlist. Information Technology John D. Cook's blog is … Continue reading 2016 feed reader shortlist
