
“Let’s have some fun I’m offering two grants of $5,000 for whatever you want” - Cherian
https://twitter.com/nayafia/status/848944903509987328
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gravypod
I wish other people could take this into a recurring proceess. I've
experianced that it's very hard to get research funded when you do not have a
hard-science goal in the scientific community. For instance, right now I'm
attempting to get funding to write software to do hard-science with but that
is not fundable from normal sources (NSF) despite being a very good project
that will enable researchers to study things that they were previously unable
to.

Most grants today are "I want you to study X" not "Do something that's really
worth the money" or "Build something that will genuenly help people or improve
life for everyone".

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nikofeyn
disciplined minds by jeff schmidt talks about this "i want you to study x"
phenomenon and how it tricks people into thinking they are truly defining
their academic research direction.

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aryehof
The "Let's have some fun", part comes across as slightly condescending to me.
Perhaps I'm way too cynical, but my first reaction was that this is a fairly
novel way to grow Twitter followers and promote an agenda.

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douche
I'd love to take a month off. I need to get back to my blog and read through
my massive Manning and Amazon backlog...

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mrkgnao
Is the Idris book on your list?

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douche
Not yet... i have too many angualr and F# and .net books queued up already...

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teuobk
Interesting. What are the tax implications, if any, for doing something like
this? If it's an American giving a grant to another American, would it be
treated as a gift (and thus be tax-free), or would it be treated as income?

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firstpost1234
i believe the gift tax applies once you get above $14,000 in value in any
given tax year.

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wavefunction
I can't speak to that but any gift of $11,000 or more is taxed.

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JauntTrooper
No it's not. The US gift tax is widely misunderstood.

In the US, any gifts over _$5.49 million_ over the course of your lifetime is
taxed.

Any gift over $14k in a single year needs to be _disclosed_ to the IRS, but
it's not taxed. They're just keeping track of it in case you hit the $5.49
million lifetime cap, and they reduce the amount of your estate tax exemption
by that amount.

It's all set up to stop people from avoiding the estate tax by gifting a lot
of their wealth while alive.

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protomyth
I'd love to get a couple of welding simulators and a 3D printer for the
crafting folks, but I get the feeling an email from a Tribal community college
isn't the point.

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sthatipamala
You want to get that equipment for a community college serving a Native
American tribe? That sounds like a great cause! (The person states they are
looking to fund things that might go unfunded otherwise)

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protomyth
I got the vibe it was for an individual. I'll ask my boss in the morning then
send a tweet. Worth a try.

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exabrial
I have an idea for building tube guitar amps using solid state power supplies
to save weight. Have a working prototype!

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analognoise
That's called a hybrid amp.

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exabrial
A few blackstars do that, vaccuum preamp and a solid state output stage. Oddly
enough, most of those use a linear psu. The design I made uses switched psus
with a vacuum preamp and vaccuum output. It has thunderous output power in 1/3
of the size/weight of a comparable power linear amp

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analognoise
So you're using a nonisolated power stage to avoid the transformer and diodes?
The transformer also provides isolation from line voltages. Are you sure there
isn't a reason the trade-off went the other way?

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exabrial
Linear power supplies voltage sag as they're overloaded. This famously
exploited by some players to create "brown tone", or audio compression, as the
input signal gets louder. I don't particularly care for this type of
compression and a lot of other players don't either.

As far as safety, the input transformer is -boosting- your 120vac to
400vac-500vac :) So it's not protecting you from anything :D

My topology could be arguably safer... First, 120vac->24vdc via switching PSU.
This actually provides the isolation you refer to. Then the 24vdc is split,
part of it is switched down to 6.3vdc for the tube heaters and the other part
is put through a ZVS boost circuit 24vdc->376vdc. Even with the double
conversion, my efficiency is about 78%! I have complete isolation from AC via
the first power supply. I bond my negatives to earth for safety. The best part
is, this amplifier is dead quiet because the switching noise is very easy to
filter.

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analognoise
There's absolutely nothing in this topology that's new; you're using bog
standard off the shelf components that can be bought anywhere...?

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exabrial
I don't suffer from "not invented here syndrom", of course I did! Not going to
take up glass blowing and make my own tubes lol.

