The h Bar

Dawood ibn Kareem

08:00

4. If you ask someone else to proofread it, they'll be able to make their changes on the actual document, even if they don't know TeX/LaTeX,

DanielSank

Reasons to use TeX:
1. File formal is just text, i.e. the files are human-readable without any special software.
2. You can get nice editors for TeX on Mac, Linux, Windows, i.e. you're not constrained to use Windows and Mac only.
3. You'll learn to use a program that is the absolute world standard in science.
4. Really nice features for composing documents from sub-parts.
5. Easier to version control, if you ever want that.

Dawood ibn Kareem

5.

Absolutely 5.

DanielSank

@DawoodibnKareem Yeah, if they have MS Office.

Dawood ibn Kareem

Microsoft should have built version control into Word at least 25 years ago.

In fact, all the Office products.

Everyone would use it. It would make them worth having.

DanielSank

@DawoodibnKareem First of all, they have "track changes". Second of all, building version control into a file editor an idea that several products have tried and it has always turned out to be a bad idea.

@DawoodibnKareem It absolutely would not.

Dawood ibn Kareem

08:02

Track changes doesn't really count.

DanielSank

Even so, integrated version control is a devil's kiss.

I should say: MS might be able to come up with a good version control system, but even the fact of having to learn another system on top of e.g. Git would be annoying.

Just let the version control systems do their jobs and stop using proprietary file formats!

Dawood ibn Kareem

But everyone who works on a large number of documents needs version control. And because Office doesn't have it, they try to implement it themselves (ImportantDocument.v0.3.Dawoods_changes.2018.04.19.doc.backup).

DanielSank

Of course I'm being a little bit flip: in order for MS Word to work as well as it does, of course it needs a proprietary format. At least, it did when it was invented. I dunno maybe these days it could use JSON or XML internally...

Dawood ibn Kareem

If it were built into the product, people wouldn't mess it up by trying to do it themselves.

DanielSank

@DawoodibnKareem Sure they would. You can't stop people from misusing tools.

Plenty of people who use Git use it in horrible bad ways, for example.

Dawood ibn Kareem

08:06

You'd have to make it easy to use properly.

DanielSank

^ That's a huge hypothetical.

Version control is a fundamentally tricky problem.

Dawood ibn Kareem

Microsoft tend to get their most usable version of any piece of software about 15 years after version 1. Then they start making it worse.

DanielSank

Git is notoriously hard to learn, and I think part of the reason for that is that humans are generally not used to thinking of data the way Git does, even though Git's data model is very good.

@DawoodibnKareem heheheh

Dawood ibn Kareem

And yes, a Word document is zipped-up XML internally. So it's definitely do-able.

That's what the x stands for in foo.docx.

DanielSank

@DawoodibnKareem ohhhhhhh

In that case, unzipping it would make it suitable for version control.

Hmmmm, interesting.

Oh by the way, there are WYSIWYG editors for TeX. Look up LyX.

Dawood ibn Kareem

08:09

I'm sure Microsoft could come up with a version control system where the zipping was transparent.

@DanielSank Right. I first used TeX (actually LaTeX) in the 1980s.

I forgot that technology changes in time.

John Rennie

@DawoodibnKareem probably about the same time I first used it. 1985 I think.

DanielSank

@JohnRennie Hey, that's the year I started!

Dawood ibn Kareem

Oh, John, let's you and me have a "who's older" competition!

DanielSank

Can I play too?

John Rennie

It only became useful when the university computing dept got a printer that could print TeX output properly. Before then there were only daisywheel printers, which made using TeX a bit pointless.

Slereah

08:11

I met Napoleon once

I am v. old

Sir Cumference

@DanielSank I dunno, I think HDE put it best:

Jul 27 '17 at 1:16, by HDE 226868

@SirCumference Been there, tried that. It gets really disappointing really quickly. Great for high school lab reports, less great for everything else.

Same with @0celo7

DanielSank

@SirCumference Why do you say that's "putting it best"?

Sir Cumference

Jul 27 '17 at 1:16, by 0celoñe7

@SirCumference there's a reason why the world runs on Word, not latex

DanielSank

@SirCumference Ok, what's the reason?

Slereah

Please don't tell me about "why the world works on Word"

DanielSank

08:12

Is it the same reason that most people's computers are full of malware?

Dawood ibn Kareem

People are stupid?

Slereah

My current mission is to divine how a big ass Excel VBA worksheet works

and turn it into a website

it's very bad code

Sir Cumference

Well HDE got 6 stars for saying LaTeX was disappointing...

Dawood ibn Kareem

@Slereah That's what the VB in VBA stands for.

DanielSank

@SirCumference That's disappointing.

LaTeX absolutely has problems, don't get me wrong.

Slereah

08:13

Very Bad Application

DanielSank

^ LOL

@SirCumference Look, like I said, there are reasons to use Word and reasons to use LaTeX.

John Rennie

@SirCumference MS Word is perfect for non-nerds who just want to write essays, letters, or whatever else non-nerds write. It is not and never has been targetted at people like us.

Slereah

the elite

Sir Cumference

@Slereah Exactly what I read lol

Dawood ibn Kareem

@DanielSank The best reason to use Word is that it's your employer's corporate standard.

John Rennie

08:15

@Slereah a minority isn't necessarily an elite :-)

DanielSank

Some people care about version control, not having to buy software, not using Windows and/or Mac, and like the power you get from LaTeX's macro system. They also like that because LaTeX is open source, the community has generated a huge repository of packages for custom tasks.

Those people use LaTeX. Those people did not star HDE's post.

Slereah

Also LaTeX doesn't change every 3 years

3

DanielSank

If they could have down-starred it, they would have.

Sir Cumference

$user image$

In general it just feels like LaTeX truly shines in math-heavy documents

John Rennie

@Slereah to be fair MS Word has been pretty much unchanged since 2007

Sir Cumference

08:16

Not as much when Word can accomplish the tasks easier

DanielSank

@SirCumference You're ignoring the list I gave: version control, raw text format, open source, free, no need for Mac/Windows...

Dawood ibn Kareem

Imagine if Microsoft bought out TeX and added the infernal ribbon to it.

Sir Cumference

> open source

Bernardo is that you?

Slereah

@DawoodibnKareem Not a good idea, since it's open source

People can just do their own branch of TeX

DanielSank

@SirCumference ~sigh~ again, SOME PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO BUY LICENSES FOR THEIR DAMNED SOFTWARE

Dawood ibn Kareem

08:17

They'd get away with it though, because they're a marketing company.

Sir Cumference

@DanielSank I'm just messing with you about the open source stuff :P

Dawood ibn Kareem

Then they'd try to sue Donald Knuth for inventing it in the first place.

Slereah

@DawoodibnKareem TeX isn't really a big selling item among non-nerds

And nerds already know what open source is :p

DanielSank

I find it really, really, really nice that when I want to set up a computer, I just download the latest Ubuntu or whatever and install it and I'm done. I don't have to make a MS account. I don't need a license key. I don't need my credit card. I don't get a crappy talking installer. I can partition the drive easily. I don't get mother------g Candy Crush on my system...

Yes, seriously. Windows 10 ships with Candy Crush.

Dawood ibn Kareem

Well, to be fair, Candy Crush is a step up from Minesweeper.

DanielSank

08:19

And so I can't use MS Word.

John Rennie

I'm watching two collared doves fighting over territorial rights. My goodness they are going at it hammer and tongs. Whoever decided doves were a symbol of peace had clearly never observed them closely.

DanielSank

@DawoodibnKareem False. I'd rather play Minesweeper.

Slereah

I still play Solitaire if I want to play a Windows game

DanielSank

@JohnRennie ooof, which one is winning?

@Slereah I liked that Space Pinball game. Remember that?

Dawood ibn Kareem

@JohnRennie I hear you. There are columbidae species that will fight to the death over territory.

DanielSank

08:20

@JohnRennie is space pinball still a thing?

Slereah

@DanielSank I have the actual CD version of that one!

DanielSank

@Slereah o_O

Sir Cumference

Back

Slereah

Well, not the original version, but the Maxis version

There's actually multiple pinball game

John Rennie

@DanielSank to be honest all collared doves look the same to me. I hope that doesn't make me speciesist :-)

Sir Cumference

08:20

Ok I guess the discussion's shifted to which PC games are best

Slereah

The space cadet one, the pirate one, and the dragon one

Dawood ibn Kareem

@JohnRennie And they will kill each other's babies if they have babies of their own.

John Rennie

@DawoodibnKareem Eek! I didn't know that. Isn't nature wonderful? :-)

Dawood ibn Kareem

This actually happened in one of my enclosures recently.

Slereah

$\LaTeX$

Sir Cumference

08:22

Well it's 4:30, ought to head to sleep. 'Night

John Rennie

To sleep, perchance to dream of Microsoft Word

Dawood ibn Kareem

And another breeder that I know had an incident where one pigeon got stuck in a fence and other pigeons pecked its eyes out so that it couldn't find food, and died of hunger.

DanielSank

Best PC games... What about TIE Fighter? That game was sick.

Worms was great too.

Slereah

Planescape Torment is best

@ACuriousMind will back me up

John Rennie

@DanielSank Space Pinball disappeared when Windows XP was replaced by Vista. However there are copies hacked to run on Windows 10 floating around on the web if you want one.

Slereah

08:27

Space Pinball is probably not coming back due to technical reasons

From what I hear they lost the source code

And I don't think Windows is gonna pay to reverse engineer it

John Rennie

You just have to grab the executable from a Windows XP CD and it will run fine on Windows 10.

In fact you can freely download the XP files from MS. Google Windows XP mode.

Dawood ibn Kareem

How can you lose source code?

Slereah

@DawoodibnKareem In the olden days people weren't that careful about backups

People didn't really use Git or whatever else

if the hard drives they saved things on failed, that was it

Dawood ibn Kareem

How olden? Back-ups are hardly a 21st century concept.

Slereah

Well even in the 90's, really

They also lost most of the source code for Grim Fandango

Dawood ibn Kareem

08:38

Or was it a case of ... these tapes would be better put to use for Windows Vista?

Slereah

kotaku.com.au/2014/11/the-crazy-journey-to-save-grim-fandango

Here's an example

"I got another name and another name and eventually walked out of Lucas with a tub of tapes that were in this format I'd never even heard of before"

John Rennie

There you go, Space Pinball running on Windows 10.

What better way to while away a Friday morning when I should be doing some work? :-)

@DawoodibnKareem the original developer was bought by a another developer who then went bankrupt. The source code disappeared somewhere along the line.

Dawood ibn Kareem

And I thought it was ridiculous when a leading relational database developer lost the only programmer who understood their code when he was hired by a rival company.

Slereah

Losing the only programmer who understands the code happens a lot

I had to do a lot of maintenance like that

Dawood ibn Kareem

I know. I'm ashamed to say that I have often been that programmer.

Slereah

08:48

"Does anyone know what this is?"

"No."

Dawood ibn Kareem

I jump up and scream at my employers to have them let me hand over my knowledge to someone else. I write reams and reams of technical documentation. But it still happens.

John Rennie

The reason my ex-employer still pays me a retainer is that no-one else wants to maintain my code. They could do - the code isn't that complex - but they want to do more exciting stuff. Should I fall under a bus they would find themselves in a bit of a bind.

(Not that I would care, being dead :-)

2

Dawood ibn Kareem

You could simply decide that you no longer wish to be thus retained.

Slereah

That's the goldmine

Dawood ibn Kareem

I've done that.

Slereah

08:51

All those COBOL and FORTRAN and APL programmers

I love APL so much tho, rly

John Rennie

@DawoodibnKareem it's a lot of money for a little work :-)

Dawood ibn Kareem

The problem with being a COBOL or FORTRAN or APL programmer is that you have to program in COBOL or FORTRAN or APL.

Slereah

physicsforums.com/attachments/aplfns-jpg.127175

even better if you don't comment it

Dawood ibn Kareem

@JohnRennie Sometimes there are more important things than money.

2

Slereah

@DawoodibnKareem Name 5

John Rennie

08:53

@DawoodibnKareem yes, I've quit well paid (very well paid) jobs because I wasn't enjoying them. That's why I left Unilever. But money is an important consideration.

Dawood ibn Kareem

@Slereah God. Love. Optimism. Friends. Children.

John Rennie

@Slereah Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.

Slereah

God and love aren't real!

And I'd rather have money than children

s. patroller

not everything that can be counted counts

Slereah

@s.patroller Damn uncountable sets

Is $\mathbb R$ more important than money

Dawood ibn Kareem

09:12

@Slereah Yes but if you had children, you wouldn't sell them for any amount of money.

Mar 29 at 19:24, by Slereah

HE IS RISEN

Slereah

God isn't real, but the easter bunny is

Dawood ibn Kareem

Christians celebrate the resurrection of the Easter Bunny?

Slereah

He is risen indeed!

John Rennie

Where on Earth did you find a picture of the risen Jesus carrying a St. George's cross?

Isn't that somewhat anachronistic?

Emilio Pisanty

@JohnRennie well, it is almost St George's, no?

Slereah

09:21

Google image

Emilio Pisanty

By some quirk of fate it's also some form of important holiday here in Barcelona

Slereah

Is it 420 blaze it day

Emilio Pisanty

It's sort of their patron saint except for the other two patron saints?

Anyways, it turns out that the St George's Cross on the Barça logo is in fact the same as in the English flag

John Rennie

I'm ashamed to say¹ I don't know when St. George's day is. I had to Google it.
(¹ I'm not really)

Dawood ibn Kareem

@JohnRennie Seriously? I am neither English nor Christian and I know when St George's day is.

Slereah

09:31

What do people even do on Saint George Day

kill dragons?

John Rennie

@Slereah nothing, basically.

It is a non-event outside of the more rabidly nationalistic organisations.

Slereah

that's because there are no dragons

Dawood ibn Kareem

Thanks to St George.

John Rennie

The English celebrate St. Patrick's day far more enthusiastically than they celebrate St. George's day.

Slereah

I assume by killing snakes

John Rennie

09:33

(mainly because St. Patrick's day celebrations involve excessive drinking :-)

Slereah

Whacking Day

►

Secret

11:48

hbr.org/2015/03/zombie-projects-how-to-find-them-and-kill-them

Zombie projects, and how to kill them

0celo7

12:06

@JohnRennie aka the good people

s. patroller

12:17

only good people die young

...so they say.

Slereah

@0celo7 You're an American @0celo7, you're supposed to hate the British

0celo7

I can respect patriots in other countries

Slereah

the british patriots want to take back the colonies!

0celo7

we'll deal with those crazies if the time comes

though I can respect their gumption

s. patroller

trump has got a lot of gumption

Slereah

12:28

I say let's back Louisiana

The Louisiana purchase was a mistake

s. patroller

trumption

0celo7

@Slereah we're overdue for a good land war in north america

s. patroller

911 was a land war

Balarka Sen

What the flip is this dude playing here

Hail Mary Mallon - Bestiary (Full Album Stream)

►

Slereah

when was the last US war actually on US soil

Spanish American war?

the very few attacks on california during WWII don't count

s. patroller

12:39

what about the war with Canada

Slereah

What, the war of 1812?

Spanish American war was in 1898

s. patroller

doh!

Slereah

although... was any of it on American soil?

Not sure

Emilio Pisanty

Hey @BernardoMeurer have you got any experience with Apache CloudStack?

s. patroller

peril harbour?

Slereah

12:42

"the last battle fought by opposing troops on American soil was the Aleutian Islands Campaign of WWII. "

s. patroller

what about the last war on French soil?

Slereah

Errr, depends what you consider french soil

Algeria was still French when there was Algerian independance

Algerian War

The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian War of Independence or the Algerian Revolution (Arabic: الثورة الجزائرية‎ Al-thawra Al-Jazaa'iriyya;, Berber languages: Tagrawla Tadzayrit;, French: Guerre d'Algérie or Révolution algérienne) was a war between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (French: Front de Libération Nationale – FLN) from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its independence from France. An important decolonization war, it was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare, maquis fighting, and the use of torture by both sides. The conflict also became...

If you mean mainland France probably WWII

not counting terrorist attacks I suppsoe

s. patroller

Wasn't there any French territory in the Vietnam war?

Slereah

The Indochina war, yes

but that was before

s. patroller

Edwin Starr - War (What Is It Good For?)

►

Emilio Pisanty

13:20

@Slereah @JohnRennie In Barcelona it is traditional for men to give women roses, and for women to give men books

because, y'know, why waste a good book on a woman, or something

Slereah

@EmilioPisanty Give me a copy of Bruhat, ladies

Emilio Pisanty

and there's tons of book fairs and stuff

the sexist overtones are slowly getting eroded but they're definitely still there

I dunno if a sexist holiday is better than a xenophobic one tbh

Slereah

Borat - The Running of the Jew HQ

►

Emilio Pisanty

@Slereah I was thinking more in terms of this kinda thing youtube.com/watch?v=DRH7ODFeqJY

Slereah

OI

Emilio Pisanty

13:31

I mean, it isn't all that different

only real difference is that it's real

Slereah

I guess that answers "what do the british do on Saint George Day"

Emilio Pisanty

@Slereah well, some british people

the EDL is pretty fringe and it is almost universally seen as such

other british people might e.g. attend such a parade on the other side of the protest-antiprotest divide youtube.com/watch?v=JB_-JDuYgq0

vzn

13:46

@BalarkaSen srsly!?! donkey kong en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_Kong

0celo7

14:03

@EmilioPisanty I don't get what's happening here

s. patroller

14:31

5 hours ago, by John Rennie

It is a non-event outside of the more rabidly nationalistic organisations.

Slereah

@0celo7 Foreigners out

(plz don't quote this out of context)

0celo7

14:47

flagged

Slereah

Nooooooooo

Balarka Sen

@vzn aha, an old classic

my knawledge of video games is epsilonic

0celo7

@BalarkaSen I am having the hardest time writing this definition

Balarka Sen

I feel bad for you son

I got 99 problems and writing a definition isn't one

0celo7

new J cole album

Slereah

14:50

@BalarkaSen so it's greater than zero

Balarka Sen

I am still waiting for the new Death Grips album

0celo7

you're gonna love this definition when it's done

it will definitely be longer than a page

Slereah

@0celo7 Sorry I won't love it unless it's 100% in set theory notation

Sir Cumference

@Slereah You're French, shouldn't you too?

Slereah

Well yes, but I do already

no need to tell me

Sir Cumference

14:55

ok then

0celo7

@BalarkaSen want to read federer section 4.4 with me

homology groups of currents

Balarka Sen

no

0celo7

please

Slereah

Why is \hat so awful in latex

It never places itself in the right spot

$\hat{\mathscr{H}}$

Look at this bullshit

0celo7

what's the issue

Slereah

15:00

too far to the right

0celo7

"here we study the homology theory of the local lipschitz category"

@BalarkaSen help!!!

Balarka Sen

rip

0celo7

@BalarkaSen oh god there's objects and morphisms

Slereah

only for cool cat(egorie)s

Alex K Chen

So can anybody suggest a good source to learn about angular displacement/momentum/velocity properly ? I was initially learning it from Halliday Resnick Krane, but the hand wavy stuff introduced there left me extremely confused (like the only thing they told about angular vector displacement is that infinitesemal angular displacement are vectors, and $\omega = \frac{d \phi}{dt}$, but I don't have a clue like how an arbitrary rotaion $\phi$ can be broken into $\phi_x, \phi_y, \phi_z$ etc)

John Rennie

15:10

Peckish today.

So I had a light snack :-)

Alex K Chen

Like I also don't understand why $\omega$ should be towards the axis of rotation, and what infinitesemal angular displacement actually is (eg suppose you have the axis of rotation $c(i + j +k)$ where $c \in \mathbb{R}$ and the unit sphere is rotating in a constant angular velocity along that axis. Then what's $d \phi$ and how i t relates with $d \phi_x, d \phi_y, d \phi_z$ )

@JohnRennie ooo

Captain Bohemian

@JohnRennie what is the stuff near breads? Big red beans?

John Rennie

@CaptainBohemian sausages

Captain Bohemian

@JohnRennie hot dogs?

Alex K Chen

So any recommendations ? Some good online resource would be good (well not requiring much mathematical background since I know calculus but idk linear algebra or matrices)

John Rennie

15:14

@CaptainBohemian no, traditional English sausages. A mix of Cumberland and Lincolnshire sausages.

Captain Bohemian

@JohnRennie ok, probably I know what sausages are now. We have that kind of food, too, but I don't eat that usually.

Secret

What I see when I felt sublimed:

shutterstock.com/video/…

John Rennie

@Secret someone evaporated you?

Secret

lol, I am talking about the artistic emotion

Though you now make me curious what it is like to be literally sublimated (assuming we choose phospholipid as the reference phase diagram)

but I am not gonna do that, cause I still have work to do in this life :P

tatan

15:32

Hi... can someone explain to me how Coloumb obtained that electrostatic force is proportional to the product of charges?... I have understood how he got the 1/r^2 term using the similar Cavendish exp... actually I was thinking how exactly one measure charge? I am not asking for the modern techniques like electrometers but how Coloumb may have worked it out... how was the basic charge unit decided upon?

Slereah

@tatan do the experiment with one charged object

Then with two charged object

tatan

How to do with one charged object... you obviously need 2 charges for a charge to have its meaning... otherwise i may assign anything to a single charge and it wouldnt matter

And what kind of experiment do you mean?

Captain Bohemian

does the term "noncommutative" always refer to the background geometry is noncommutative unless else is specified? For example, "noncommutative gauge field theory" means a gauge field theory on a noncommutative spacetime geometry rather than that the gauge fields themselves are noncommutative?

tatan

@JohnRennie sir would you please help a bit with my question?

Slereah

In the days of Coulomb it was probably this

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyden_jar

tatan

15:43

Maybe... but how did he get different amount of measured charges?

John Rennie

@tatan it's a natural assumption that a force on a charge $Q_a$ will be proportional to the magnitude of that charge i.e. $F \propto Q_a$.

But the same would apply to the force on the other charge $Q_b$ i.e. $F \propto Q_b$.

tatan

Sorry but I don't think that it would so naturally come to a person before the law was discovered...

John Rennie

The only way this can be true for both charges is if the force is proportional to their product $F_{ab} \propto Q_a Q_b$

Slereah

@tatan produce a charge via some method, do it several times the same way, this will give you several objects with the same charge

tatan

I actually wanted to know how did one come up with that assumption

Slereah

15:46

You can then consider two such objects as an object with twice the charge

John Rennie

@tatan I have to say it seems obvious to me. For example gravitational force is proportional to mass. Why wouldn't electrostatic force be the same?

tatan

Imagine Coloumbs law has not been discovered..

Would you be able to say it this confidently?

If yes... then on what basis?

John Rennie

@tatan well, wouldn't you expect the force on two electrons to be double the force on one electron?

Slereah

@JohnRennie EM isn't linear in QFT!

John Rennie

@Slereah begone prince of lies ... err ... prince of misleading statements

(doesn't have quite the same ring to it)

Slereah

15:50

@JohnRennie just saying, EM being linear isn't an obvious idea!

And neither is gravity!

You just have to test it experimentally

tatan

Yes... at the present situation I definitely would... but when Coloumb said it electrons were not known... so maybe the concept that electrons cause charges were not known... so this may not be what Coloumb thought... it may seem I'm a bit stiff with my idea... sorry for that... but I was trying to build it from basic

John Rennie

@Slereah trouble me no more, hellspawn, or I shall be forced to post a picture of my dessert.

tatan

@Slereah I agree with how you would build up charge...

Slereah

Back in Coulomb's day people thought charge was a fluid

tatan

I agree again

Transcript for