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Grant Imahara Has Died

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Re: Grant Imahara Has Died

#161

Post by anamexis »

phaus wrote: post #141
Alupis wrote: post #56

Armed with science, engineering, and curiosity, the Mythbusters crew inspired a generation. Embrace the Scientific Method, and you just might solve any problem that comes your way. Still to this day, my friends and I consider the Mythbusters as the final word on so many "myths". Grant's clever use of robotics, sensors and code opened my eyes to a world of possibilities. I still remember the first time I read a temper…

>Embrace the Scientific Method, and you just might solve any problem that comes your way. Mythbusters was a great and inspiring show, but they weren't always great at following the scientific method IMO. It was always more about cool hacks than scientific validity. They decided people being injured by bullets being shot into the sky was a myth mostly because they couldn't locate the bullets they fired into the sky, i…

While I agree, I think XKCD had a great take on this: https://xkcd.com/397/

They weren't rigorous, and the results weren't always correct, but they were showing the core of science.

Re: Grant Imahara Has Died

#162

Post by pradn »

rbanffy wrote: post #139
slau wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is eerie how much that looks like my workbench. I guess EEs are all the same.

It's a neurological condition. We go to college to get a diagnosis.

From someone who gets giddy about exciting algorithms, languages, performance numbers - I suppose we're kindred spirits, though across the pond of the hardware-software divide. Glad the world has all sorts of people in love with all sorts of things.

Re: Grant Imahara Has Died

#163

Post by fullstop »

anakaine wrote: post #134
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #128

https://mobile.twitter.com/grantimahara/status/1243234010215... This was his workbench. In many ways, it doesn't look much different than mine. Grant was an electrical engineer, like me. Gone suddenly before 50 from an aneurysm. I can't help but wonder if it looks like that now, filled with unfinished projects. Projects that only he understood the complexity of, and few would have the hope of picking up where he fini…

I see a nodemcu, some sparkfun and adafruit gear. I see the node sitting on some plug in headers over a breakout board. That looks like things I like to play with. I'm not an electrical engineer, but am an earth scientist , engineer, programmer, and electronics hobbyist. This man was inspiring. What a loss to the world his passing is.

I have the same hakko wire solder cleaner, same mess.. kind of cool to see the similarities. Poor guy.

Re: Grant Imahara Has Died

#164

Post by petercooper »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #147
peignoir wrote: post #79

I wished there was a way to detect aneurysm without the need of an MRI... maybe one day with AI and some blood pressure sensor. My condolences to his family.

The problem, just as in cancer, is not detection. It's what to do once you find it. Many aneurysms/cancers that could be found will turn out to be harmless, and the risk of harming someone physically and/or psychologically from unnecessarily treating them is not negligible. There isn't much we can do for aneurysms unless they are obviously immediately threatening.

This. The risk calculations can be quite scary and people's responses to them can be poor given a powerful human dislike of uncertainty.

Consider a totally fabricated and naive example of finding a minor aneurysm with a 0.1% annual risk of rupture versus a 10% risk of death during surgery.. there are many people who would take the surgery to remove the uncertainty. (And this is a highly contrived example, real life is far more complicated!)

Re: Grant Imahara Has Died

#165

Post by evilduck »

phaus wrote: post #141
Alupis wrote: post #56

Armed with science, engineering, and curiosity, the Mythbusters crew inspired a generation. Embrace the Scientific Method, and you just might solve any problem that comes your way. Still to this day, my friends and I consider the Mythbusters as the final word on so many "myths". Grant's clever use of robotics, sensors and code opened my eyes to a world of possibilities. I still remember the first time I read a temper…

>Embrace the Scientific Method, and you just might solve any problem that comes your way. Mythbusters was a great and inspiring show, but they weren't always great at following the scientific method IMO. It was always more about cool hacks than scientific validity. They decided people being injured by bullets being shot into the sky was a myth mostly because they couldn't locate the bullets they fired into the sky, i…

I just rewatched this out of curiosity and I think you’re seriously misremembering that episode (S4E11), the final conclusions wasn’t “busted”. They asked “busted, plausible or confirmed” and they concluded “all of the above”.

Grant actually was part of the show already at this point, they did actually find 9mm bullets they fired up, but couldn’t find 30-06 rounds. They did conclude that “straight up and down” was safe but said multiple times that bullets on a trajectory are still lethal. They present the medical evidence at the 21 minute mark, and a simulation around the 25 minute mark.

I don’t hold Mythbusters to be a scientific end-all to a discussion but I think they made that episode in good faith and portrayed it ok, even if they bulk of the testing footage was on the very narrow (and filmable) straight up and down terminal velocity aspect.

Re: Grant Imahara Has Died

#167

Post by Cogito »

phaus wrote: post #141
Alupis wrote: post #56

Armed with science, engineering, and curiosity, the Mythbusters crew inspired a generation. Embrace the Scientific Method, and you just might solve any problem that comes your way. Still to this day, my friends and I consider the Mythbusters as the final word on so many "myths". Grant's clever use of robotics, sensors and code opened my eyes to a world of possibilities. I still remember the first time I read a temper…

>Embrace the Scientific Method, and you just might solve any problem that comes your way. Mythbusters was a great and inspiring show, but they weren't always great at following the scientific method IMO. It was always more about cool hacks than scientific validity. They decided people being injured by bullets being shot into the sky was a myth mostly because they couldn't locate the bullets they fired into the sky, i…

I remember them talking about this complaint on one of the episodes, or maybe in an interview.

They explained that the episodes definitely don't always show rigour in their tests, and that there probably wasn't the rigour you would want for a paper in every test they did, but they would still do more than was shown to test different theories and add rigour. A lot of that would be left on the cutting floor.

Re: Grant Imahara Has Died

#168

Post by [deleted] »

ak39 wrote: post #124
maccam94 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen multiple reports of severe blood clotting and strokes in COVID patients, including those who are otherwise asymptomatic, including people under 50.[1] Given that there is a pandemic going around with similar symptoms, I don't think this is a huge leap (but again, I am not saying it's anywhere near certain either). I probably should have used this source in my original comment, I just grabbed the first link…

That COVID wasn't mentioned by reports is itself information. I believe that had Grant tested positive for COVID, the reports would have mentioned that. The fact that it isn't mentioned, makes it unlikely that it is COVID related.

[deleted]

Re: Grant Imahara Has Died

#170

Post by citizenkeen »

stavros wrote: post #104
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to think of him as a celebrity, even. He felt just like a guy you'd hang out with at work or after work.

This is not relevant, but this strikes me as a big cultural difference between wherever you're from and where I'm from. Here, the first thought to complete that sentence would be "he strikes me as someone you'd be friends with". I wonder why "hang out at work" was the first thing that came to mind for you. Here we don't tend to think in terms of "people we hang out with after work", we generally have "friends we firs…

I also wonder how much of it is "nerd" adjacent.

I came to software development late in my career (I was a lawyer and a health care administrator first). I work for a good company and I like a lot of my coworkers. I would never want to be friends with them. That's a barrier I'm not very comfortable crossing. When I worked in a hospital, when I was a lawyer, it was the same. Good coworkers, no desire to keep seeing them after quitting time.

I have a lot of software development friends who play board games or video games or go climbing or whatever with their coworkers. It baffles me. They ask me and my wife for social advice and I have nothing to give - how I'd resolve a given problem with a friend and with a coworker are too totally different things.

I've talked to friends from college who've gone into many different industries, and a lot of them distinguish between "friends" and "friends from work".

Except engineers, developers, and data scientists. I'm not sure what it is.

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