Hacker News: msaharia

New comment by msaharia in "Show HN: XRain – Explore rainfall statistics around the world"

msaharia — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 06:25:49 +0000

Exactly - I can tell you an example from India. India has the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) precipitation dataset. Even if your estimates are more accurate, no company will use your dataset to design/validate a civil engineering design. This has to do with liability of using a dataset from a "non-official" source. Right now, you are stuck in the middle where it is not viable for non-US companies to use it, while US companies will mostly rely on NOAA Atlas. If this is to become a public-facing product, then the current pricing is too high, and might have to develop an alternative business model. Maybe people are interested in checking the floodplain zonation/xrain before buying a house, for example. But no SAAS in that case.

How flexible is your codebase to incorporate regional datasets? I think you will have to regional merging.

What are your current costs of running the setup? Any possibility/plans of white-labeling the codebase?

New comment by msaharia in "Show HN: XRain – Explore rainfall statistics around the world"

msaharia — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 05:26:33 +0000

The UI is fantastic . I don't think there is anything wrong with the website. The reason you are not making a sale has probably nothing to do with UI. I think you should concentrate on sales and filling an important gap in user requirement. Who needs this data? There are already many websites where you can get extreme precipitation data for free.

P.S. I am a hydroclimate scientist/professor. Happy to discuss further.

Edit - Looks like we have almost the same background in academics. :)

New comment by msaharia in "Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries"

msaharia — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 15:28:22 +0000

They couldn’t come because of any number of reasons: there wasn’t enough time to apply for visa because you issued the letter 1 month before the meeting, didn’t get visa, didn’t get visa on time, visa got approved but passport didn’t arrive on time etc. You also can’t get reimbursed in India without showing actual receipts of conference, hotel etc.

You seem to think that your letter is a guarantee of visa. It’s not.

Source: I’m an academic with both US and Indian experience.

What things did you purchase that enhanced the quality of your life in 2022?

msaharia — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 10:27:26 +0000

Would love to know things that enhanced your work or personal life.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33877774

Points: 61

# Comments: 136

New comment by msaharia in "Hey, GitHub – Waiting list signup"

msaharia — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 09:42:54 +0000

Dragon speech? I used it quite a bit 10 years ago!

New comment by msaharia in "Advanced Scientific Data Format"

msaharia — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 09:00:33 +0000

So, this is like netCDF format?

New comment by msaharia in "One-on-ones with executives"

msaharia — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 20:16:36 +0000

Would you tell us more how that training translates in business/management? Are there good training materials we could look at online?

New comment by msaharia in "Fed expects to launch long-awaited Faster Payments System by 2023"

msaharia — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 04:30:30 +0000

UPI exists in India. And m-Pesa in Kenya. Neither are small countries or lightly regulated. At this point, US digital infrastructure is just objectively behind everyone else.

New comment by msaharia in "Scientists discover how mosquitoes can ‘sniff out’ humans"

msaharia — Sun, 21 Aug 2022 06:44:39 +0000

How about a control function on human population? (For nature as a system, it might as well count as a benefit)

New comment by msaharia in "The Elusive Origin of Zero"

msaharia — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 07:58:37 +0000

I think this article is confusing the discovery of an inscription of zero to the concept of zero. The latter would predate the former.

New comment by msaharia in "In Algeria, ancient cave art may show psychedelic mushroom use"

msaharia — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 07:39:14 +0000

You should definitely read about Ancient Indian drink Soma. Soma had a cognate Haoma in Persian as well. And psychoactive sources have a long association with gods such as Shiva. This continues till modern day among his most ardent followers. You will find wide variation in what ancient humans would consider taboo.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(drink)

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170307-the-intoxicating...

New comment by msaharia in "Back to India"

msaharia — Sat, 09 Apr 2022 08:02:49 +0000

I returned to India after close to a decade in the US, during which I got a PhD. Loved living there and was fully integrated. But felt like I could make a much bigger impact in India. So, joined IIT Delhi. Good to know about your journey. Drop me an email (in my profile) if you want to catch up over coffee. :)

New comment by msaharia in "The Gov.uk Design System is now live"

msaharia — Sat, 02 Apr 2022 09:47:10 +0000

Hi, is there a wordpress theme with this design system that we could drop in an existing website and benefit from it?

New comment by msaharia in "One Year with R"

msaharia — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 15:08:22 +0000

Not a lot of people would realize that Hadley is a minor celebrity in many scientific fields due to Tidyverse! Thanks for all the work.

New comment by msaharia in "Nearly 1k mysterious strands revealed in Milky Way’s center"

msaharia — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 10:14:58 +0000

This is perfect for a Desktop Wallpaper. Thanks for sharing!

New comment by msaharia in "Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell"

msaharia — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 04:23:38 +0000

Looks cool! What kind of models are you using? I would have thought this is a very tight space. Did you develop the models yourself?

New comment by msaharia in "Space Force announces the new design of the Space Force's enlisted rank insignia"

msaharia — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 19:18:12 +0000

Can you link me to that book?

P.S. I used to work in NASA Goddard. Very brand conscious agency.

New comment by msaharia in "RunAsDate – Run a program with the specified date/time (2019)"

msaharia — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 16:46:04 +0000

What a blast from the past! I used runasdate to run a Neural Network software using time-lagged RNNs beyond the trial period. In my defense, I was a poor undergrad and couldn't afford the license fee of the software (Circa 2010).

New comment by msaharia in "TimescaleDB raises $40M"

msaharia — Wed, 05 May 2021 18:22:23 +0000

That is awesome. I work in flood forecasting and previously worked in NCAR/NASA. If you would be so kind, feel free to share any white papers, links etc to the project you are referring to.

msaharia[a]iitd.ac.in

New comment by msaharia in "TimescaleDB raises $40M"

msaharia — Wed, 05 May 2021 15:39:23 +0000

Hi, I am a hydrologist. Would love to hear about what you have done using TimeScaleDB