The h Bar

did someone flag my gay comment?

Homophobes.

heather

@Phase no, it was just a general comment (I noticed the earlier conversation)

2 hours ago, by ACuriousMind

^seconded, and flag dismissed.

bolbteppa

Got it, stupid conventions strike again

heather

12:51 AM

@dmckee if you're around this one's pretty much worthy of the hammer: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/394683/…

(clearcut homework question)

vzn

1:08 AM

yesterday, by Phase

fr im deleting rn

2:09 AM

Yeah I did

Instead of being a weasel why don't you either double check for yourself or confront me directly about it : P

How did obe get banned again, for 6 days?

@SirCumference im p sure mods aren't keen on saying that sorta stuff

@Phase It's not bannable to ask something like that

im not saying it's bannable just saying idk if they'll say or just say "best to move on"

2:43 AM

@Phase This is correct. We (elected moderators) should not be discussing the details of a suspension short of the user's explicit request to divulge such information, and it's basically never a good idea to do so while the suspension is in play. (Because by definition that person can't represent their own POV in such discussion.) Then since the only people with the verifiable information to speak knowledgeably on the subject can't/won't, it behooves the room not to dwell too long on it.

I have a question about technicalities

(for me?)

If someone is banned, and dictate to a friend who writes their views in chat

will the person being dictated to also be chatbanned

@Phase It depends what they say. If they say things worthy of a suspension, then yes. If not, then you're basically here: xkcd.com/810

(mild profanity at that link ^^ )

nah I meant like

because they're circumventing a chatban

I'm sure if they got on a second account to do so they'd also be chatbanned

but if they're talking through their friend that's fine?

2:51 AM

@Phase If someone were suspended and hopped on a second account and did nothing offensive they'd go undetected. That's actually the system working as intended.

3:14 AM

wait so if someone openly declared who they were

but didn't reoffend

there's no punishment

for circumventing penalties

i cant believe that tbh

3:32 AM

@Phase So you're talking about Alice getting suspended, then Bob says "Alice says: balhblah1" "Alice says: blahblah2" "Alice says: blahblah3"?

i was originally but then you said that Alice getting suspended and going on a second account and being clear that they're Alice is fine

Eh, that's not really fine. What I'm saying is that we know we can't possibly detect someone who's suspended creating another account, gaining 20 rep, and coming in innocuously. And that, if they do so, they've gone ahead and solved the problem we were trying to solve--their bad behavior--anyway. So the system's working fine.
If they come in and say "la dee dah, people, lookatme, it's old Alice-been-banned" then they're not acting innocuously. They should be suspended for the length of (original) Alice's suspension.

Now if Bob starts acting as a mouthpiece for Alice I'm going to pull him aside and warn him that he's enabling Alice in circumventing a suspension, and that isn't cool, and please stop or we'll have to treat you as a sockpuppet for Alice, here's your suspension to match Alice's.

But here's my question: why do we need to know all the esoterica about how to handle people being morons around suspensions? Let's just not get suspended, eh? And if we do, just sit in the penalty box for a while and come back behaving a little better.

vzn

addendum. theres this thing called sockpuppetry that gets serious hardine response on SE for good reason. eg use of multiple accts for voting etc... afaik it is sometimes defined rather broadly.

...

The Difficult Birth of the "Many Worlds" Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics / sciam

> Hugh Everett, creator of this radical idea during a drunken debate more than 60 years ago, died before he could see his theory gain widespread popularity

3:48 AM

Hey all :)

4:02 AM

@nitsua60 Let's just not ban people unless we really need to

More warnings won't hurt

@SirCumference I believe I've never kicked someone before yesterday. I think I've used a lot more words than I have force, but please correct me if I'm misunderstanding things.

(And I believe in each case--except the mistake for which I apologized sincerely--I specifically called out the thing I though was problematic beforehand.)

Anonymous

5:15 AM

@SirCumference I think you don't know this, but obe had been repeatedly trying to verbally attack me, for some reason which I'm un-aware of. It all started since his ban, which took place 3-4 months ago for saying someone "I will find you and..." and ACM banned him. When he came back I just told him that being salty about it and continuously trying to attack the mods isn't really pleasant behavior and just to let it pass. And that's when he started attacking me, too.

Anonymous

It's been a sporadic phenomena since then.

Anonymous

The reason why he got banned for 6 days is when he came back after the ban yesterday he again made some bad-humor jokes against me.

Anonymous

@Phase You too, have a read.

Anonymous

I feel bad for the mods because they're restricted by the site rules from discussing reasons of bans, explicitly, and yet you are keen insisting. @SirCumference And no, this time he/she really didn't deserve anymore warnings. It was really needed as you said.

5:35 AM

My honest feeling is that anything related to dealing with problem users, imposing bans and so on, should be off topic in this room. Let the moderators do their jobs without any kind of judgement or harassment. There's nothing to be gained by analysing it here.

Anonymous

@DawoodibnKareem It's possible that a moderator makes mistakes. So discussing it among users should be okay, although avoided. I've seen instances where people have been suspended by mistake and mods later apologized.

Anonymous

However, continuously insisting mods to do something which they're not allowed to do is bad habit.

I disagree. If you think a moderator has made mistake, raise it with them privately. Or at least in a room that's just for you and that moderator. No point airing the dirty laundry in front of a crowd.

Anonymous

I myself had been banned once for saying something along the lines of "I watch IPL only because of the cheerleaders" or something like that. When I came back after the suspension Rob did indeed say that the ban was a bit too much, and they did that by mistake (without analyzing the context) just because someone had flagged it. And no, there's no way of contacting moderators privately, if you're banned in chat. (Other than commenting on their posts on the main site, which isn't a good idea.)

Banned for how long? The usual ban is 30 minutes. Nobody dies from being unable to chat for 30 minutes.

Anonymous

5:42 AM

@DawoodibnKareem Yeah, but in case of longer bans, like in obe's case

Anonymous

Not all chat bans are 30 mins long

Things seem to have turned pretty serious of late, what exactly happened here?

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval Read my first message above ^

It is possible to contact Stack Exchange administrators during a chat ban. But if it were just 30 minutes, why would anyone bother?

@Blue yeah I read it, but how did all of this start? Getting the room frozen and all

Anonymous

5:44 AM

@DawoodibnKareem The first option is possible, but it would again be a pain if people from all sites of SE started contacting the dev team, for discussing their chat-bans. I don't think you should encourage that idea.

Anonymous

I think the rule, as of now, is okay

There should be some appeal system for longer bans

Anonymous

As long as someone is not being "shamed" while they're chat-banned, it's all fine and good. People can discuss the facts. And mods can point out if someone is just conjecturing rather than stating facts.

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval I agree

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval Ah, that frozen part was due to something else. It's not related to this

5:46 AM

My reading the transcript thought it slowly lead to this

what happened here then?

(Did obe insult you here?)

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval Read this

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval Yes

Yeah, I still disagree. Analysing people's bans is not what this chat room is for. And I'm sure that chat bans of longer than 30 minutes are rare enough that it wouldn't be a huge imposition on the administrators to have to answer the occasional email.

@Blue Yeah that's what I read

among other things

Anonymous

@DawoodibnKareem Well, fair enough

5:48 AM

@Blue sorry, I missed some parts of it

Anonymous

@DawoodibnKareem But, keep in mind that SE is a democracy and people have the right to information. That perhaps what basically my point boils down too. However, your point is also strong and good. Can't deny.

> SE is a democracy

err, no it isn't

Anonymous

@JohnRennie Well...sort of. We hold elections for mods, etc. We decide many rules of the community by discussing among the people. Although it's not an exact democracy, it's close to one.

SE is a private company, whose purpose is to make money.

They outsource some of their labour to willing (and sometimes elected) volunteers.

This saves them a fortune.

@JohnRennie @PrathyushPoduval @Blue Good morning !

5:51 AM

Good mornin'!

Morning :-)

Anonymous

@DawoodibnKareem Yes, and you can't make money without keeping users happy. People don't like being denied the right to information. :P

Anonymous

Anyway, let's stop this and move on

that would be woonderful

6:11 AM

@Blue I genuinely did not know. From where I stood, I solely saw him being banned on potentially the last day he could talk.

Hence why I kept asking about it.

Anonymous

It's okay. I'm happy that things got cleared now.

Yeah. Sorry again.

Well, on a brighter note, how's life been?

Anonymous

Too many tests and report-submissions, lol

Anonymous

I'm waiting for the summer vacations in May

Tell me about it, I'm drowning in midterms :/

Anonymous

6:18 AM

I'm presently writing the report for the lathe/drilling/carpentry workshop. Apparently, if things don't turn out right, I'll at least have the option of becoming a carpenter in future. :P

Anonymous

That's what the professor said XD

A carpentry workshop?

Anonymous

@SirCumference Yeah, we have it every Monday, even though I'm in the Electronics department. No idea why

Anonymous

Even CS students have to take part

Anonymous

We cut wood, shape metal rods, make screws, etc

6:20 AM

Huh. I mean we have labs in the U.S., but nothing so hands on

That at least sounds fun, making projects

Anonymous

It's not fun. Trust me. You wouldn't like to spend your time 3 hours in a 150 year workshop room filled with cobwebs. :P Apparently that place was a place to store bombs during WW2

Rick

6:43 AM

@Blue Do we need to learn things like Thevenin's/Norton's theorem, star-delta transformations, supernodes, superposition theorem for JEE? ..or will normal Kirchhoff's equations/symmetry do? I tried looking them up to learn them, but it gets very vast quickly..

Alex K Chen

What should I learn to do physics simulations in C++ like the ones done here ?

Anonymous

@Rick What I recommend learning thoroughly is nodal analysis. It's well discussed in BM Sharma

Anonymous

Other than that, star-delta could be useful, but not very often

Anonymous

Also maybe check out the Physics Galaxy lectures

Rick

ok

7:00 AM

@AlexKChen is it the physics or the programming you're asking about?

@AlexKChen Mathematics. If you can do mathematics, then the physics is easy. I'm assuming you know enough C++ not to trip over the programming.

Anonymous

@DawoodibnKareem How do you make those applets with C++? Is there any package for that?

Anonymous

Getting hold of a decent graphics.c package was such a pain, as I remember

Anonymous

Uh, maybe it's there in C++. I've only used C

@Blue Did you read the two sentences at the top of the page?

Anonymous

7:12 AM

@DawoodibnKareem It's written Java there

Anonymous

But you mentioned C++

Anonymous

"I'm assuming you know enough C++ not to trip over the programming."

Because Alex asked what to learn to be able to write simulations like that in C++.

"Learn Java" would have been a strange answer to such a question.

Anonymous

Yeah, that's what I'm referring to. Is there any such applet/simulation making package available for C++?

Anonymous

The popular one used to make simulations is Visual Python I guess

7:18 AM

I've never really looked for one. Applets are so 20th century.

And I prefer to write in Java.

Anonymous

I used to like Java. But nowadays I prefer Python. It's like an easy version of Java with much more features

Anonymous

Takes way less time to code

@Blue is sonometer in the syllabus ? I just saw a problem from it in AIEEE 2002

Yeah, I found python a source of endless frustration when I tried to learn it. I am much faster in Java.

Anonymous

@DawoodibnKareem That's strange, considering that it's one of easiest languages to learn. Coming from a Java background I could pick it up pretty quickly, because it has many common features.

Anonymous

7:25 AM

@Tanuj I think so

@Blue what chapter is it in ?

Anonymous

@Tanuj sound

waves ?

Anonymous

Yeah

@Blue Good for small projects. Difficult to do anything major. In my opinion.

Anonymous

7:31 AM

That maybe true. I haven't developed any large-scale "apps" in Python. But I used it in a couple of very large data science projects. One of the projects is for an actual data science company, with which I'll be working with, this year (just for getting some industry experience). The integration with Jupyter notebooks, numpy, matplotlib, etc. is just something amazing imo.

I'm sure you're right. I just have far too little experience in Python, and far too much in Java.

7:48 AM

@Blue Oh nice, which company are you working with?

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval In a start-up made by the CTO's of Tata Cliq and Xelpmoc, named DataSutram Innovation Labs. They haven't yet made a website, but I guess it will be up soon

How did you get the internship?

Anonymous

The good part is, both the CTO's a professional statisticians. So it's fun talking about math with them. :)

Alex K Chen

@moorephysics Now that I have learnt a bit of C++ (lol, after 7 months), which resources you suggest for making simulations in that (wrt this question)? Also, do you recommend learning javascript or sticking to C++ for this?

@Blue Is it in kolkata?

Anonymous

7:53 AM

@PrathyushPoduval It's not really a short-term internship but rather a long-time project with the company. I just attended their 3 day workshop few weeks back. They had given us some problems to solve, and they liked my ideas. So... (Not many students from 1st year attended the workshop, so that's I had a higher chance of getting selected as they were looking for students who would have more time to devote :P)

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval Yup

Lol okay, what'l you be doing there? (is it paid?)

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval They're working on some open problems, like predicting development index of a place, from open-source data. You can't use Google maps (because it allows only around 2000 data requests per day!)

Anonymous

Also, problems like effective geofencing etc

what are your sources for the data?

Anonymous

7:56 AM

@PrathyushPoduval As of now, we just have the census data/electoral rolls/magic bricks. They told us to inform them if anyone can come up with better open source data. Some guys were saying they'll extract data from from Facebook (lol!)

The last part seems very controversial of late lol

What were the problems they gave?

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval Here are some sample problems.

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval If you're good enough to hack Facebook data, I'm pretty sure Facebook USA will immediately give you a job :P It's very very difficult, if not impossible

interesting, can i apply? :P

I'm sure you must've heard of cambridge analytica?

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval Well, you'd then have to travel to Kolkata regularly :P

7:59 AM

lol okay, not required

Anonymous

Don't worry. In Bangalore you'll get many such opportunities, if you look out for them

yeah, actually working on something would be prety interesting

Anonymous

As for now, just keep learning. Statistics is a very useful skill

yeah, but the way our schools thought it was more of mugging up

i had to figure out the logic of stuff by myself

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval That's true. Maybe check if there are any local companies offering internship, etc. I guess it will be a bit difficult to get in unless you're are atleast an undergrad. BTW there are many good open problems on Kaggle

8:01 AM

yeah i do things on kaggle

Anonymous

and kdnuggets

never heard of kdnuggets

I'm trying to understand the usage of notebooks

they look quite helpful

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval Cool! Check out the EdX Python for Data Science course

Anonymous

They have a lecture series on it

yeah my cousin told me about the edex course

not quite gone through it

Anonymous

8:03 AM

It's great :)

Anonymous

Alright, I gotta go now

Anonymous

Cya!

goodbye!

I love the way this chat room discusses real issues (not necessarily just physics) in a useful and informative way. With all the silliness and random flags we've been having recently it's easy to lose track of just how awesome this room can be.

John Duffield

I'm not seeing much discussion of real issues. Or of physics.

8:10 AM

@JohnRennie You'd probably enjoy The Incomprehensible Room, or whatever they're calling it these days. The people there are a little weird though.

(chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/95/english-language-usage)

in English Language & Usage, 23 mins ago, by CowperKettle

> Mongolia has held its second fencing tournament, dedicated to the memory of the victims of the first tournament.

Indeed :-)

Now if that's not a "real issue", I don't know what is.

John Duffield

8:26 AM

@DawoodibnKareem : nerve gas is a real issue. As is the undemocratic EU, along with judicial overreach, data privacy, immigration, overpopulation, pandemic, the death of physics, the threat to a free press, and fake news.

Anybody want to talk about the principle of equivalence? That's the principle that only applies to a region of infinitesimal extent. So it doesn't apply at all. Hence the surface of the Earth is not accelerating upwards at 9.8m/s². Its velocity is not changing. It isn't accelerating at all.

@JohnDuffield Damn those Mongolians!

Obliv

Hi guys! It's been a while

It's currently 4:30AM though and I have to sleep but I will be on tomorrow for a little bit and pester some people with some questions

I wont be back regularly unfortunately

o/

Secret

9:52 AM

So...

h bar have gone through topics:

Food, Physics, CS, memes, maths, politics, life, chemistry, philosophy, pseudoscience, spirituality, religion, current affairs, language, travel

5

2 hours ago, by John Rennie

I love the way this chat room discusses real issues (not necessarily just physics) in a useful and informative way. With all the silliness and random flags we've been having recently it's easy to lose track of just how awesome this room can be.