The h Bar

I need to edit my file, nano file.txt there's the line makes edit Cx-y. Oh, you need to make an edit to your file emacs file.txt' 'Cx-Cm-Cq-Cr-Ch there's the line makes edit Cs-Cp-Co-Cq-Cn edited

Sean Allred

@KyleKanos more like emacs file `edit` s-S :P

ACuriousMind

@Danu I won't pretend to understand why Kappa needs to dress up as Meepo

Sean Allred

alrighty. Time to fire up an emacs live stream for you heathens.

ACuriousMind

I guess I'm having one of these get off my lawn moments where you wonder what happened to the internet while you weren't looking :D

Danu

@ACuriousMind LOL, I never knew it came from Meepo. Anyhow, it's just that a proliferation of Kappa caused a need for new types of Kappa to arise

Kyle Kanos

12:06 AM

I only know Kappa

And BibleThump

Danu

you should get BetterTTV

if you can get extensions on whatever nerd-browser you're using Kappa

Sean Allred

@KyleKanos twitch.tv/the_real_vermiculus

Kyle Kanos

BetterTTV requires Chrome or Firefox, if I'm not mistaken

Sean Allred

@KyleKanos Is that what twitch uses?

Oh wait – sorry I didn't read the chat log :)

Kyle Kanos

No, BetterTTV is an addon for those things

Also, I'm on the stream but not logged in (also, no audio)

Sean Allred

12:09 AM

is there supposed to be audio?

Kyle Kanos

IDK

Just letting you know that I can't hear anything due to no audio

Sean Allred

? meh. I'm not talking anyway :)

this is actually a project I've been working on with two other guys

StackExchange in emacs :)

Kyle Kanos

Is Manish working on that with you?

Sean Allred

although I'm going to be honest, I have know idea what I'm doing with physics

at least not enough to answer any questions

Hm? No, actually – is he an emacs guy?

Kyle Kanos

He's made a terminal interface for SE Chat

Wasn't sure if he worked with you on that or something

That's pretty funny that you can do it from terminal

Sean Allred

12:12 AM

Tell him to check out vermiculus/sx.el.git

I know about column80.com, which supports terminal access

This is a different concept though. This is all done from lisp

Kyle Kanos

I'm also reminded of xkcd too:

Real programmers set the universal constants at the start such that the universe evolves to contain the disk with the data they want.

ACuriousMind

Ahh, LISP

I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the MIT computer science program permanently.

Sean Allred

Hehehehe :)

Sweet! I'll try this out tomorrow :) — Sean Allred 22 secs ago

^^^ sent from emacs

Emacs rocks :)

Danu

@KyleKanos Hah, this is great

Sean Allred

The butterfly powers are real :)

I'm about to unleash them on the stream

Kyle Kanos

12:16 AM

I keep getting kicked out of chat...wthm

Sean Allred

It's not as awesome as the comic makes it out to be though :(

Kyle Kanos

Also, you spelled Physics and Phsyics

Sean Allred

and with that, I've gotta run.

Danu

Anyhow, it has been a pleasure guys, but I gotta go sleep

I'm almost guaranteed to sleep through my 8 AM class again

Kyle Kanos

Later @SeanAllred, @Danu

Sean Allred

12:17 AM

@Danu That's the only way you'll learn the material, though :)

@Danu 'night :)

Danu

(btw, I got a 3 for my midterm, which translates to '...okay' in other grading systems)

Luckily, it's for a class I hate so I'll take it

...but I gotta try to actually not sleep through the lectures

(it's 1:18AM here, so yeah)

Kyle Kanos

19:18 pm here

github.com/isanbard/flang

Interesting. A Fortran version of C-lang's non-GNU-iness

Sofia

1:35 AM

@KyleKanos : there is a question of whether passing from KeV to MeV. I suggested to close it, and you said that only 2 people voted for that. Do I have the right to vote too? Or to suggest? I tried to flag the question as having low level, but a second screen appeared in which none of the questions were appropriate for voting for closing.

Kyle Kanos

You should be able to flag any question for closure

But you can't vote to close until you hit 3,000 reputation

physics.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/flag-posts

The above link is to the "Flag posts" privilege

It says you should be able to flag as off-topic > homework-like

Sofia

@KyleKanos: Thank you. I am going to use what you said. There are like that. But, what is the difference between "no effort", and between someone who is really confused because he/she got no appropriate explanation. There are also cases of this type. I mean, in this case what is the policy of this forum?

Kyle Kanos

The best I can tell you is that it's really down to a judgement call based on experience

The more you do it, the more you can tell the difference.

Most of the time, though, the "no effort" questions are copy & paste from the book without anything else

When there's a set up and a "I didn't get <X> about this problem" it can be borderline.

Sofia

1:54 AM

@KyleKanos : Yes, you know, students are put to a great pressure. You probably have your own experience of this type. And many times the lecturers run forward with the material, and many times it is badly explained. O.K. as you say, it's matter of discerning between situations.

John M

3:14 AM

Hello World.

tpg2114

3:28 AM

I am quite... confused about this one:

-2

Q: Can teenage girls survive in outer space with no helmet, and be launched towards the sun?

I have a niece who is 13 and says she could be launched at the sun with no spacesuit and she would collide against it and explode, but she would not die because she's "too badass". I have noticed some teenage girls think they are unstoppable, but science disagrees, I think. Basically, if teenag...

user54412

I... what?

user54412

@tpg2114 It's too bad. If it had been the case of your first comment, there could have been a good answer (if not here than in philosophy). But, yeah. Voting to close.

tpg2114

@ChrisWhite It would have required some rewriting because the point could have been made without some of the examples used

But I was really, really hoping that it was legit

Unfortunately HDE fell for it and kept going

And based on the other question of this user, I'm guessing he/she is either really, really intent on not learning the rules or is just trolling people (or some combination)

Physics Meta

3:59 AM

0

Q: Why do you need 50 reputation to comment on other posts?

It makes no sense to require such high reputation just to add comments. It's possible that trolls can study enough physics to stick around a few days and get good reputation by asking interesting question, give best answer, etc., and then start being "bad" on this site after they get to 50. Highe...

discussion reputation comments

tpg2114

I foresee many rejected NIH grants from that OP.

@dmckee Since you're active, I had sent a flag on the question I cited above -- not sure we really need to wait for the 5 votes to close that one

I also suppose I should refrain from commenting "As opposed to people with no knowledge of physics who are trying to troll?" on that meta question.

dmckee

4:19 AM

@tpg2114 Thanks for the heads-up. Taken care of.

tpg2114

5:09 AM

@dmckee No problem. I sense a conflict on the horizon here... fighting the urges to engage.

dmckee

"fighting the urges to engage" You and me both.

tpg2114

On the plus side, so long as engagement is reasonable, users like that will either get frustrated and quit trying whatever they are trying, or they will continue to do things that will lead to inevitable suspension quicker than letting them alone in the wild.

It's a mixed bag...

I do very much look forward to the flaming that will ensue when this moves to the mother meta though. It could be fun when it's not our problem!

Danu

7:21 AM

ahhh fuck me. Overslept for the 8AM class again :P

@dmckee The whole comment chain that has developed between tpg2114 and the OP on that post there is kinda obsolete (although hilarious)... perhaps some deletions are in order ;)

"I came here for change, not discussion [...] How can I get it to change to what I want?"

This is why we don't want what you want :P

nerdy

8:15 AM

Suppose we have a threespring-2masses system, likie a coupled oscillator. Suppose the masses are m_1 and m_2, and the spring's constants are symmetrical ( the middle one is k_0, and the extreme ones are k ) . Is it true that whenever the mass m_1 is suffering motion dictated by the function f1(t) = ... the m_2 will suffer motion dictated by a function f2(t)=... where f2(t) is some delayed and maybe damped/amplified version of f1(t) = .. ?

being the displacemenet from the equibrlium point related to the mass m_1, the variable f1 with f1(t) = c_1.cos(w_0t + phi1) + c_2.cos(w_1t + phi2) and the one related to the mass m_2 the variable f2(t) = c_1.cos(w_0t + phi1) - c_2.cos(w_1t + phi2 ) , can we say that f2(t) is a damped/amplified and delayed version of f1(t) ?

David Z

@Sofia this should help clarify "effort":

4

Q: What is the meaning of **effort** that Phys.SE wants in homework questions?

Always do I have seen most of the homework tagged questions are hold, with a close reason to show minimal effort. I thought Phys.SE wanted the asker to show his attempt. But recently, I got amazed when my homework-tagged question was put on hold by a moderator (I am not disrespecting him!). For w...

discussion closed-questions homework close-reasons

David Z

9:23 AM

Something of interest:

8

Q: How much experience should a potential moderator have?

How much experience should a potential moderator have, in order to be considered a suitable candidate? This question was inspired by reading some of the responses to the candidates posts. Which read similar to, "you only have $x$ number of flags handled" or "you don't have enough posts on meta"...

discussion moderators election statistics

Physics Meta

9:39 AM

0

Q: Can we make TeX instructions easier to find?

I go to the site banner and click on "help" and then "help center". I see a search box which promises to search the help pages. I type in "TeX" and hit Search. No results. This would seem to be a barrier for n00bs (I'm making this post because someone is asking me for a reference on how TeX work...

discussion

Physics Meta

10:34 AM

0

Q: Why is the new CAPTCHA troubling me from posting quo?

Frustrating! The new CAPTCHA really begger's description. First, they want to type a number for verification, then they ask to copy a big code and to paste it. Then what?? Nothing happens! 2 minuites within had I pasted it. But nothing happens then; the page remains same;-( I have been thus ab...

discussion

ACuriousMind

12:31 PM

@DavidZ That "citizenship score" semms like a good idea to get a vague idea about the contributions of a candidate. Fun fact: Emilio Pisanty is the only physics.SE member with a score of 40.

3

ACuriousMind

1:18 PM

Also, WTF is going on in the comment thread to this meta post?!

And since when are 50 rep users the "elite"?

David Z

2:13 PM

yeah, lol

@ACuriousMind interesting! (though two of the badges in the list are for casting helpful flags, so all the mods' scores could be bumped up by 2)

When I looked at the meta post I did think there were some changes I'd make to that query, but it does say something interesting in its current form

Kyle Kanos

2:40 PM

@ACuriousMind Interesting. I'm at 26. I'm gonna have to try gaming some others now :D

tpg2114

6:59 PM

@ACuriousMind I really did try to be helpful and assume it really was just somebody confused... But then I couldn't fight the urge to troll a troll...

@Danu Only the last bit is out of line, the rest is helpful (from me anyway)

Kyle Kanos

She also asked this quesiton:

-6

Q: Is it theoretically possible to obtain the knowledge of a formally-educated without formal education?

I was debating this with someone and they told me this is a good place to discuss theories. I am asking in regards to obtaining the knowledge within the realm and range of one who took 8 years or more of study, primarily to be a medical doctor (M.D.) or Physician in the United States. The quest...

soft-question

I thought she was confused about the difference between Physics and Physician

Turns out I was wrong

tpg2114

@KyleKanos You missed the awesome one that was posted last night (and then removed for reasons of moderation)

Kyle Kanos

Oh I saw it

tpg2114

It was even more trolling

Kyle Kanos

I, and my officemates, were laughing our asses off about it

(10k users can see deleted posts, so as long as there's a link, I can see it now ;) )

tpg2114

7:03 PM

I thought about screenshotting it before it got removed

There is, if you need it I have it. But I'm not 10k so I can't see it. Probably better that way

Kyle Kanos

I can take a screenshot and send it your way if you want ;)

tpg2114

It was so supremely ridiculous. But I really thought there was actually a kernel of a real question in there

The comments from HDE were good too, until he removed them all.

Kyle Kanos

I think a first look at it would give it that appeal, but her immediate was rather enlightening

Yeah, I can't see those ones :(

It definitely looks like she was talking to someone, but I'm only seeing her side of the story

tpg2114

He just kept playing the straight-man to the whole thing, trying to actually discuss the question

It ended with "I apologize to the mods, clearly I mishandled this one..."

ACuriousMind

7:16 PM

Ahahaha...is that user on the hunt for ways to discover superpowers of teenage girls? Or does she just want to get rid of one that is annoying her?

Kyle Kanos

Probably the latter is my guess

ACuriousMind

:(

The former would have been more...cheery

tpg2114

Random question... u_j \tau_{ij} in tensor notation -- how is that written in vector notation?

Kyle Kanos

I guess I'd do it as $\mathbf u\overline\tau$

Or maybe double overline?

tpg2114

Is it formally an outer product?

Fluids isn't very precise about our math notation or terminology...

Kyle Kanos

7:27 PM

No, outer products usually involve the Levi-Civita symbol

It'd be a dot product

IMO: leave it in tensor notation and presume you know what it means in vector notation :D

tpg2114

Yeah, that's what I'm leaning towards

Which is how I have it now, but mixing notations is kind of annoying

Well, not to me because it makes sense

But in general

And the Levi-Civita shows up for cross products, which is an exterior product. Outer products are different (apparently)

Kyle Kanos

Hmm

Oh right

outer product is $u_iu_j=t_{ij}$

Exterior is similar in meaning to outer, if you are not a mathematician

tpg2114

Yeah... which I am definitely not.

Danu

7:43 PM

Does anyone have a good heuristic argument why the variation of $R_{\mu\nu}$ wrt $g^{\mu\nu}$ should vanish? I understand the computation and there's no problem with it; I just feel that there should be an intuition here.

(could post this as an actual question if I dont immediately get an answer here)

Danu

8:07 PM

@tpg2114 Helpful? Curious...

tpg2114

@Danu Trying to explain that we don't set network wide policies and where to go to make those efforts

That bit is helpful. Offering to sell the Brooklyn Bridge, along with Stack Exchange, probably not so helpful. But entertaining at least.

Danu

@tpg2114 Griffiths attempts to do some notation like this in Intro to ED; it sucks

user54412

8:47 PM

I don't know who chose those terms, but I think of them as: inner applies functions to inputs (supplying fewer inputs than needed returns a function rather than a value), outer concatenates functions into a larger function (taking as many inputs as its constituents combined), and exterior takes a function and turns it into a more complicated one (requiring an additional input)

user54412

where "function" means "linear map on your vector space"

user54412

Mods: do you want to be informed if I find a user that seems to want the account deleted (i.e. has "please delete me" as the only thing in the "about me"), but may have forgotten to make a formal request (or whatever it takes for that to happen)?

Physics Meta

9:19 PM

0

Q: Bug in Physics SE (and Physics Meta)

This is about a simple GUI bug, that has really been bugging me for days now. On Google Chrome my Physics SE (and Meta as well) looks like this - Note that Questions - Tags - Users - Badges - ... line. It's displaced and overlaps with the "newest - featured - ..." line. On Firefox, it looks n...

bug

pentane

9:40 PM

The subject of cheating/academic dishonesty has been brought up before on meta e.g. here meta.physics.stackexchange.com/questions/2832/… but what do you guys think about this question physics.stackexchange.com/questions/152780/…

Kyle Kanos

It does look like it has a mark on the problem number in the top left

user54412

yeah, I think this was asked after the exam

user54412

but it's interesting because of the phone pics -- what's to stop someone from taking pics of the question during the exam?

Kyle Kanos

OP does state,

Wow, I didn't know ideal black body means it has perfect emissivity. That gets the right answer! Thank you! — Jeremy Rowler 4 hours ago

Which seems to imply that they knew what the answer was (i.e., after the test) but couldn't figure it out

ACuriousMind

@KyleKanos What, uh, did they think a black body was, then?

user54412

9:45 PM

given that our response times aren't that great and there are surely apps that will OCR the text and feed it into wolfram alpha or something, we're probably not the best place to help with cheating anyway

user54412

@ACuriousMind It's quite possible they're just blindly plugging into formulas without knowing what they're doing

Kyle Kanos

@ACuriousMind Probably something that just emits everything (without understanding the relation to the emissivity)

user54412

Dec 7 at 15:11, by ACuriousMind

@galmeida Never explain by malice that which can be explained by ignorance

ACuriousMind

I'm really not sure what to make of this question - the "sorry I composed this on my phone" bit seems to imply some kind of hurry on their part, but the reaction to the small hint seems to say they were rather searching for why some answer given is the right answer

user54412

Part of me fears the day is coming when no one owns any computing device beyond a phone/tablet

user54412

9:56 PM

The average person is willing to sacrifice all sensible user input in exchange for mobility, which I guess makes sense since mobile devices are for consuming rather than producing and most people are consumers first

ACuriousMind

I get terribly cranky if I'm forced to go without a laptop/desktop for more than one or two days

Though I lvoe my tablet, it just isn't made for everything

user54412

I agree. Maybe my perception of the world is colored too much by talking to Silicon Valley technophiles, who think it's great when new replaces old even when new things aren't strictly better.

ACuriousMind

Sometimes, new and old should coexist - and I think, ordinary computers will stay with us for some time to come, you just can't replace everything by mobile or other devices in a short timeframe

user54412

Perhaps, but the age of the personal computer may well be past its zenith

user54412

Fun fact: computer processors haven't gotten any faster in the last ~5 years

user54412

10:08 PM

all the manufacturers care about is low power (for mobile devices) and parallel (mostly because it looks cool)

Sofia

@KyleKanos: You decided to put on hold the question about fields generated without charges. You said that question is not clear. But everybody understands, the fellow asked whether the generation of an e.m. field requires with necessity the electric charges. It's a question challenging imagination. Are we sure indeed that without electric charges the e.m. field cannot be produced? Is there an answer on a higher level? Generating fields necessitates charges?

ACuriousMind

10:25 PM

@Sofia (I cast the first close vote on that question) It is unclear what the notion of field in that post is. If, as you say, it is indeed obvious that the question is merely about whether or not an EM field can exist without electric charges, the answer is trivial - EM waves are vacuum solutions to Maxwells equations, and the asker seems aware of that, so I'm puzzled what the question actually is

dmckee

11:37 PM

@ChrisWhite Well, increasing the core count has been paying off in terms of behind the scenes services. Current OSs are doing more on-the-fly precomputation than they were doing 5 years ago which results in better responsiveness. Don't know how much longer that will continue to pay dividends of course.

And the cores have gotten a bit more super-scalar, but that is pretty small-beans.

Danu

@DanielSank believe it or not, but I got the feynmp package to work today

In particular, I managed to use the command prompt successfully ;D

DanielSank

11:56 PM

@Danu: Groovy

Frankly, whatever you think your opinion of computers is, it is very likely to move toward greater use and acceptance.

As I said, I was a pen and paper guy until my early twenties when out of necessity I started to learn. Now I am very happy to use analysis and numerics to more fully understand problems.

Danu

@ACuriousMind take this one physics.stackexchange.com/questions/152825/…

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