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12:00 AM
You don't have to import them -- it can be a link to their SE profile if they haven't created it, no? I would argue by linking to an artificial/unclaimed account on your own site, you're breaking the license by not linking to the real creator's account... but it's been awhile since I've looked at it
2
The license plain-text says something under attribution "... but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use." I would think making it look like they have an account on your site when they don't implies an endorsement
 
@tpg2114 Especially if the gravatar and name is also imported like in that example right?
 
That's why the profile makes it clear that it's an artificial account and links back to the SE account. It's not practical technically to have content without an attached account, so this is the best compromise we've found. I have checked that it's legal :)
@NikeDattani Gravatars are never imported.
 
Well -- I'll leave it to y'all to sort out, it is your site after all. But "it's legal to do this" isn't always a way to placate people who are angry you've done it :)
 
@tpg2114 less "it's legal to do this", and more "it's not legal not to do this in some form"
 
You could just as easily link to their SE profile instead -- that would be legal too. But it sounds like that's more technically challenging and you don't want to do it, which is a different thing than "this is the only way."
 
12:05 AM
It seems ArtOfCode has thought those things through, I would not imagine that they would not have checked legalities before embarking on this endeavor.
 
Like I said earlier, I was just giving a heads up cause this happened before and it pissed people off before. If you guys want to go that route and think it's best, then that's okay. I don't have a horse in this race.
 
Aye, I appreciate you taking the time to point it out.
 
It might also be worth it to mention, that they assert that they are only bound to UK laws, and if they are sued it has to be in London, UK (this might not mean much unfortunately, as the Canadian Supreme Court just ruled that Uber can be sued in Canada... doesn't have to be San Francisco, in a class action law suit for Uber drivers to be given "minimum wage" and benefits like dental, etc.
 
It's hard to say you're bound to only one nations' laws when you operate an international site -- many courts will assert jurisdiction over something when it can be demonstrated a large portion of their business happens in that jurisdiction
 
I don't have a horse in the race either but I would hope that whatever information is being shared about fulfilling copyright is at least correct. It pains me to discover otherwise. (in cases where the information turns out to be incorrect, I mean; I'm not saying this is one of them)
 
12:10 AM
The minimum standard is whether what we're doing is legal. Beyond that, we have to strike a balance between what the "best" solution might be, and what's possible technically - sure, it's possible to link directly to an SE account, in the same manner as it's possible to remove a wasp's nest without protective equipment... that doesn't mean it's the best balance.
 
@ArtOfCode "it's not legal not to do this in some form" , it is not legal for you to import the content without the attribution, but you could always just not import the content. So the angry people will not just be angry, but they won't buy the argument that you were compelled by law to import their usernames (since you weren't compelled by law to import their content)
 
We also have to consider that when people click on a username, they're expecting a profile as part of the same site - taking them somewhere else is cognitive dissonance, so you'd have to indicate it somehow, which is also not necessarily trivial. It's a balance between lots of things which often aren't immediately obvious.
 
@ArtOfCode May I ask where the funding for the network is coming from? It's just your personal savings?
 
tl;dr: no, there's very little expenditure at the moment and it's mostly covered by various private contributions
 
@ArtOfCode I gotta imagine there are various ways to work around that. Like, you could always make imported usernames non-clickable, or make it so that clicking on them takes you to a page saying "This account doesn't exist, but it corresponds to content contributed by [account on SE]" or something to that effect. (And I believe it's not even clear at the moment whether SE's attribution requirements are legal within the scope of the CC license... or was that resolved?)
2
 
12:18 AM
@DavidZ There are ways to work around it, sure, but it's not necessarily trivial.
SE's additional requirements aren't technically legal, and we don't technically have to comply - all we have to do is have the username... but we're not in the business of poking bears.
 
I think comparing this to removing a wasp's nest without gloves is a bit too much though!
 
Where was it decided that those requirements aren't legal? All I remember seeing was a discussion about it.
(I mean, I'm not disagreeing, I just want to follow the latest developments)
 
@DavidZ Somewhere in the discussion about the move to BY-SA 4.0? Sorry, I don't have a link handy either.
 
Hm, I'll poke around on meta then.
 
@NikeDattani aye, not a parallel, just the first analogy I could think of.
 
12:23 AM
@ArtOfCode Fair enough.
 
 
5 hours later…
4:59 AM
0
Q: Are we getting more "reputation" driven?

PNSAlert: This is going to be a long set of experiences that I had on the main site, followed by a public opinion question. Recently I answered a question, which I prefer remain unnamed as I do not want to nitpick. I gave a reason for why the apparent confusion of the OP. Then another person comes u...

 
5:31 AM
Can any moderator please clarify why my 2 reputation points got deducted ?There is no -2 indication in the history of my reputation ? I didn't downvote any answer nor did my question or any answer got downvoted but for no reason my reputation went from 666 to 664 .
 
5:52 AM
Last night dream:
Some Newton problem of solving the velocity of a moving body, but the maths used is really weird
Basically:
There is only one equation, which is $$(\nabla_u - \nabla_v)V \int G \delta x$$
where $G$ is some extremely complicated thing that depends on velocity
Solving this equation actually carry out the process shown in the diagram above:
1. There is an optimisation of a functional
2. followed by fixing a tensorial parameter that defines the value of each point of said functional
3. and then fixing some parametrisation of said functional by the step $\delta x$ so it becomes a numerical form
Translating all that dream logic into more legible mainstream concepts, I think what it is trying to do is the following:
1. You have some functional. That get optimised
2. After that, there is still a tensor valued parameter $P$ that defines the tensor function $T (\mathcal{C},P)$ that will be fixed by the equation (I forgot what's on the RHS which is why I have not wrote "=")
3. After both of that is fixed, it then does the parametrisation $T (\mathcal{C}(\delta x),P)$ to finally complete the solving of the equation. Somewhere in there, the velocity is contained in $T$
typo: $\mathcal{C}$ is the functional
 
6:14 AM
Interestingly, this is quite similar to this
an old approach to modelling visoelectricity
Viscoelasticity is the property of materials that exhibit both viscous and elastic characteristics when undergoing deformation. Viscous materials, like water, resist shear flow and strain linearly with time when a stress is applied. Elastic materials strain when stretched and immediately return to their original state once the stress is removed. Viscoelastic materials have elements of both of these properties and, as such, exhibit time-dependent strain. Whereas elasticity is usually the result of bond stretching along crystallographic planes in an ordered solid, viscosity is the result of the...
 
6:35 AM
Anyone have any luck finding Neowise in the sky?
 
 
1 hour later…
user228700
7:45 AM
Hello!
 
8:04 AM
@vzn Also figured out something on simulation hypothesis
At least as far as turing machine concerned as a simulation machine, the biggest difference between reality and simulation is that in a simulation, all things are "discretised"
That is in every frame, there is always something that is clearly A or clearly B
that even holds if you have quantum computers (which still fall within the domain of turing machines) because a pure and mixed state is in a sense, "well defined"
Probability distributions and fuzzy logic thus is a low level way to approximate a "mush" but they are not actually vague things
likewise, infinity in a simulation is also "discritised" as you do not ever have a situation where there are multiple possible interpretation of what infinite object it is
 
8:51 AM
@Bhavay A question that you had edited (and therefore gained +2 for an accepted suggested edit) was deleted, making you lose the 2 points again.
 
Could someone test my understanding of this matter. I am not sure if i understood it Right.

When we put some material in a magnetic field. then it will become magnetized.
this happens because in the magnetic fields the charges seperate and become Dipols.
thus small Electric fields raise up.
At this Point i think of it as a conducting wire.
In a conducting wire results a magnetic field due to the elctric field.
Thats why magnezited Dipols create Electric fields which in their turn create magnetic Fields.
 
9:09 AM
@ACuriousMind Thank you.
 
 
3 hours later…
12:22 PM
@tpg2114 You may want to take a look at meta.stackexchange.com/q/350759/334566
 
12:36 PM
@PM2Ring Remember, flags > chat if you just want to alert one of us to something that requires moderator action.
 
@PM2Ring Thanks -- can't please everybody apparently.
 
@ACuriousMind Sure, but on this occasion I wanted to communicate specifically to tpg2114 about a MSE post that directly concerns an action by tpg2114 on Physics.SE.
@tpg2114 Indeed. And while I'm not comfortable with Y's attitude, I think it'd be a shame to lose him.
 
ugh, seriously?
 
And I just ran out of comment votes on MSE. Oh well.
 
12:53 PM
I didn't know you can run out of comment votes :P
To be fair, most of my interaction with comments these days is deleting them, not upvoting them...
 
I do actually derive a lot of satisfaction deleting comments
It's fun getting rid of the 8 year old "Thanks! +1"
 
Yeah, when it's cleaning up just obviously obsolete stuff it's fun
 
I don't think I've ever run out of comment votes on the main sites, but it's pretty easy to do when things get hectic on MSE. ;)
 
When things get hectic on MSE I just get popcorn
 
@ACuriousMind I bet it's not as satisfying as deleting answers on SO that have code that has SQL injection vulnerabilities. :)
 
1:02 PM
Well, physics.SE doesn't provide that sort of joy (if an answer here contained an SQL vulnerability, that'd be bad because it would mean reality runs on SQL :P)
 
Now that would be seriously scary. :) But I guess it's not quite as bad as Perl...
 
I'm convinced black holes are just because there's a +epsilon missing in a denominator somewhere...
 
(He wrote that comic before he became a Python fan).
How do we know the epsilon's missing? It's not like we can look.
 
Because it's NaN :P
Division by zero!
Well, I guess it's really +/-inf, but division by zero nonetheless
 
Unless it's 0/0, which is indeterminate, assuming limits are involved.
 
1:17 PM
Which also wouldn't happen if it was 0/(0+epsilon)
(in floating point math)
Well regular math too
I've either had not enough coffee, or too much coffee...
 
@tpg2114 True, on both counts.
OTOH, we don't really know that there's any mass inside a BH. But don't tell safesphere I said that. :)
 
Why Does Change of Magnetic Flux Induce an emf?
i am Looking for a physical explination i can visualize. not a mathematical one.
Could someone link me to a good article? i am quite not finding the Right one! .. thanks!
 
 
3 hours later…
4:46 PM
PSE has been frustrating me lately
 
how so?
 
I feel like I see a lot of users who have been on here for a while still allowing bad edits, reopening questions that go against site policy, etc.
Maybe I am just not in a good mood lately though haha
 
it happens (both the questionable actions and the not being in a good mood :P)
 
I feel like there is a push from users that if the question can have good answers then it deserves to be open.
 
there have always been users with that opinion - both in general and in the context of HW policy discussions
 
4:56 PM
Yeah true, it just seems like I have been seeing a lot more lately.
In HW questions and probably in the more recent "Big List" question that was recently asked about on meta
 
And I can certainly see arguments for that - it depends on how general you think about our mission and what you think the rules about on-topicness are for.
If you think we're supposed to be a repository of physics knowledge and the purpose of the rules is just to keep uninteresting or non-physical stuff out, then there's little argument for being a stickler about rules like "too broad" questions
 
Yeah I was just thinking the same exact thing earlier today actually haha
 
But if you think we want to curate high-quality questions and answers with a specific focus and the rules are mainly about disincentivizing future questions of a particular kind, then there's much more motivation to apply it even in cases where you might personally think the answers would still be good and interesting
 
About how some people want PSE to be a site that is "anything physics related goes"
I think I fall into the latter camp only because it seems like that is what the site policies are going for
 
I think many people start out in the first camp and end up in the 2nd
It's also kind of the way communities evolve. When it's a blank sheet, it's nice to have few rules and let things grow organically -- if it's overly-prescriptive, people get discouraged or the rules may be misguided for what is actually needed or good
 
5:03 PM
I believe the latter is much more in line with the "original spirit" of SE principles like "pearls not sand", but of course you're not required to subscribe to any of these to participate here
 
But if sand keeps getting reopened then should we reevaluate things?
 
Alas, stuff like the semi-recent rebalancing of question votes to +10 instead of +5 suggests to me these principles are also no longer at the core of what SE wants for its network
 
We should always be evaluating/reevaluating things, otherwise we grow stale. Isn't there some saying about if you aren't moving forward then you are moving backward?
Of course, reevaluating doesn't mean changing per se.
 
"If you aren't moving forward then there are still an infinite number of other directions you could be moving in"
that one? :P
 
Heh -- and one of the main things I've learned from my colleagues, there's an infinite number of possible directions to go and we will never do them all. Or many of them. Or several of them. So we have to pick the ones that have the best impact on the most people
Which, to paraphrase, is "pearls not sand" -- there are plenty of places to ask random questions and get discussion from random internet people. And there are plenty of places to ask homework questions and be given an answer. So there's not a reason for us to fill that role too :)
 
5:12 PM
What do you do when more experienced users are still not aware of "pearls not sand", or when many users say, "nah, I want sand", and then reopen sand anyway?
 
For the latter -- if you aren't experienced enough to know pearls from sand, then we need to keep explaining what makes them different and why we only want the pearls. I suspect many of the people who say they want homework questions here think either A) homework questions are really good, useful questions or B) want to help people who are stuck on homework.
 
Yeah, and I totally understanding wanting to help people. Which is why I also tutor haha
 
A is just not having enough experience to know what makes good questions good, and B is about thinking our site has to do more than it currently does -- and the answer to both is to have conversations with them about it
Different conversations, sure. But if we can do X + Y, that also means we could do more/better X -- and if give that choice, does it still make sense to pick X + Y?
Not saying there's right or wrong answers, or that our current scope/policies are rock-solid 100% perfect. But it makes sense given where we are that we continue to focus on deeper/better in scope than wider scope
 
@MadSpaces There is no easy answer to that question. The best you can say is because spacetime is tied up by the constancy of the speed of light, hence electric and magnetic fields are related to each other by motion
8
Q: Faraday's Law and Lenz's Law: Is there any theoretical explanations on why changing magnetic field induces an electric field?

SecretThis is a more specific extension to this question I came across today One certain aspect of Faraday's Law always stumped me (other than it is an experimental observation back in the 19th century) The Maxwell-Faraday Equation reads: $$\nabla \times \mathbf{E}=-\frac{\partial \mathbf{B}}{\partial ...

 
@tpg2114 I feel like at this point it is more of "look at thees conversations we have already had" haha
 
5:20 PM
And that's okay too -- "Look at why we decided what we decided, and then explain how the situation has changed to warrant revisiting it. Also make new points that support the change, because if the only change is 'I want it now too', then that's not enough"
If somebody wants to come up with a new homework policy that addresses the current weaknesses while not re-introducing things people objected to or pointed out before, I'd be all about it. I hate our homework policy -- but, it was the best compromise we could come up with that tracked the best course through everybody's wishes
It does get annoying when somebody flips out that we close something and they don't know or care to learn the reasons why... that does wear me down
On the plus side, I get to keep up my "Darn kids, get off my lawn!" routine :)
 
What would you prefer the homework policy to be?
 
I don't have a solution for it actually. I think our current one is too complicated for people who don't know what they don't know -- we tell them to show their work but tell them we won't check their work. We tell them it needs to be conceptual, but for the US physics education, memorized formulas are the concepts
If I could, I'd say no homework at all. But then how we do know if a good conceptual question is homework or not, so that's not really a helpful rule either
I suspect our policy, for all its flaws, is really the only neutrally-stable critical point in the homework state space. But it only stays there if we keep poking it things back in place
It has things we can act on as well as identifiers to know when to act, while making sure the floodgates don't open and it becomes a free for all. I don't know what else we could do that is actionable, identifiable, and has quality controls baked into it
 
5:38 PM
I have never been a fan of just telling users "show your work", since that isn't sufficient to make the question on-topic given the current policies
 
So... madspace's question caused me to become curious and revisiting the moving charge problem in relativity
It's interesting how the extent the electric and magnetic field get squished, is in agreement to the magnetic forces that is felt by any test charges in any points of the electric field as seen from the lab frame
so the extent of squishing of the electric field, is due to the magnetic field hence the magnetic force that is produced
this is also consistent with the interpretation that magnetic fields are really electric fields seen in a moving frame
but it is not as directly related since the magnetic field is always orthogonal to the electric field, it does not directly contributed to the change in the shape of the electric field
rather, it is the resulting magnetic force that is produced, that end up compressing the charges together along the direction of motion, leading to the outcome that the electric field is squished
Of course, the usual interpretation that spacetime get length contracted and time dilated is a better one because it is less messy than to try to reason how the apparent fields change the position of every test charge in the region
but then, magnetic fields from permanent magnets is due to spin, and spin stays the same regardless of the frame of reference, so I am missing something here
where is the electric field that accompanies the magnetic field of a permanent magnet?
like for example, neutrinos have magnetic moment, but no charge
so a moving neutrino will have a transformed magnetic moment in the direction of motion as expected by special relativity, but now there is no electric field associate with that because it has no charge
(I picked neutrinos because to avoid the obvious explanation of orbital angular momentum of electrons in the molecules of a magnet, thus getting rid of any electric sources completely)
 
6:10 PM
@BioPhysicist can I ask why you changed your username and avatar?
 
7:01 PM
@ZeroTheHero I had too much personal information on my account, and another user was looking up other things about me and posting them here in the hbar.
 
:(
Did you flag it or otherwise inform the mods? From what you're saying, that seems like something we'd like to know about.
 
@DavidZ Yes, ACM took care of it. Thanks though :)
 
Cool
Posting personally identifying information about someone in chat against their wishes is a BIG no-no
 
Yeah, so I figured I would just remove all personal information from my profile
I suppose you can still see my name in comment replies to me before the change though
 
Yeah, I guess so, if anyone cares enough to go looking
 
7:15 PM
I mean I am pretty cool, so I am sure a lot of people want to look :P
 
hehe :-p
There would be old data dumps out there with your old profile info too, and that sort of thing. You know, the whole idea of nothing really being forgotten on the internet. But it gets progressively harder to find with time.
 
Yeah I am not too worried about it haha.
Just didn't like that one instance
 
Yeah it happens
 
@BioPhysicist wow... spooky.
 
@ZeroTheHero Yeah haha. I don't think they had bad intentions, but it was still weird.
 
7:18 PM
well I still love you as before.
 
haha thanks
 
Just you're not the only one...there is also a very senior user who changed his name and avatar.
so I thought there was the start of a trend there.
 
Recently?
 
fairly recently I would think.
 
Oh was it ja?
 
7:21 PM
It's not like I "keep track" of such things but as you changed yours I went to the user reputation league and noticed the change at that time.
 
Oh ok yeah haha
 
you still in TN?
 
ja did the opposite thing I did it looks like
 
@ZeroTheHero but that's the reverse direction, no? She seems to be using her real name now instead of the pseudonym.
 
I am!
 
7:23 PM
@ACuriousMind well the "original" wetsavanna was a real person i can tell you that.
and HIS name was not the new name.
you can still search the old name and find info on the person with that original name.
 
@ZeroTheHero Well, whatever the reason for the change the new profile states
> i am a multicellular squidgy female organism working as a researcher for the Deutschen Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt
 
hmmm... ok...
 
But I can say I am unaware of any link between my change and other users' changes
 
well... some change their avatar regularly...
so maybe when you reach 30k rep there's a secret rule or something...
 
Maybe I'll change my picture when I have a cool one from wherever I end up after graduating
Or I'll follow ACM's lead and use images from some of my favorite games
 
7:27 PM
as long as you're doing well...
things are a little scary in your neck of the woods...
 
Haha yeah I suppose it is. I haven't gotten Covid yet
I feel like it is only a matter of time before I do though
 
@ZeroTheHero nah
 
you mean nothing to look forward to?
that's disappointing.
although I did recently change my avatar...
 
well, there is the access to the secret cult ceremonies at 50k but were not supposed to talk about that
oops
 
does it involve human sacrifice?
I mean: locally we burn the most junior research student every other Friday...
keeps the more senior student motivated.
3
 
7:35 PM
@ZeroTheHero "My avatar is a pair of mutually orthogonal Latin squares." Should this be changed then?
 
it's still a pair of mutually orthogonal Latin squares, but with chess figures rather than dice.
 
Ah ok. I don't remember your previous picture haha. oops
 
yeah I switched default search engine and I can't find the old picture now.
 
 
2 hours later…
10:02 PM
1
Q: Edited Mathjax not properly rendered in Review queues

StephenGI posted this question on StackExchange Meta as a bug. I'm posting it here for informational purposes and I'd suggest going to the StackExchange Meta version and upvoting that if you want (or indeed downvoting it of that's your preference :-) ). Obviously vote here on Physics Meta if you want t...

 
10:38 PM
Does AOC stand for @ArtOfCode, or for @AlexandriaOcasioCortez?
 
10:49 PM
hello
 

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