The Whiteboard - 2013-12-12 (page 2 of 3)

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user55340

4:00 PM

(btw, I want to point out that this ongoing career advice in chat is precisely why its such a poor main site question (and a good chat subject) - its been going on for how long, with how many opinions, and tailored very specifically to the person with the question... not that this should come as a surprise to anyone here)

4

@GlenH7 shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

@Ampt blogs.hbr.org/2013/11/…

@MichaelT it may just be because I'm kind of choking with a decision over here. Last time I had to make a decision like this was "where to go to college"

yesterday, by Jimmy Hoffa

Those grinders expose people to a ton early on which is good. Yeah, career development discussions do not work on SE.

middle of the discussion yesterday it became blatantly clear to me the same thing heh

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I know, I know. But lil ol' me finally having attracted enough animosity to pick up revenge down votes?!? I think I'm finally doing something right!

user55340

4:03 PM

@Ampt Your confusion with career paths (or education previously) is very typical. Some of us just go along for the ride with much less thought. The thing is, every question that comes up on the main site about career paths is agonizing similarly and needs to realize how nuanced their position is along with how difficult an "easy answer" is to identify.

@Ampt like I said, I've got an honorary doctorate in Introspection

user55340

Even if we all said "take the Chicago job" with no hesitation, that doesn't make it the right answer for you because we said it.

user55340

People asking career questions are hoping that someone will make the decision for them, but tend to fail to realize that no matter what the answers are, the decision is still theirs.

@enderland I've got a theoretical degree in physics.

user41796

@Ampt - and think of how lucky you are. The most typical response to career questions on SE is "quit your job already" which doesn't quite apply in your case.

4:05 PM

Oh I'm very very very very lucky

don't get me wrong

I don't think either choice is wrong

or that I'll fail at either job

yeah I had a similar dilemma after leaving grad school btw, because I had two GREAT options

@enderland I know how that goes - one of the useful things I got out of my years not spent in school

I just don't know what my career aspirations are yet and that's the problem

I don't know what I want to do in life beyond "Change the world" (How fuckin cheesy is that right?)

@Ampt welcome to adulthood. Very few of us are so blessed as to know completely what we want to do.

user41796

@Ampt Go work for Nest then. That's what they aim to do.

4:06 PM

most of society spends half their time going from one thing to the next because they don't yet know

user41796

You'll have to move to NorCali though

@GlenH7 If that's even an option for him I don't know why he's even asking us what to do..

Nest?

user55340

@Ampt nest.com

@MichaelT ahh yes

user41796

4:08 PM

They're an awesome company on a tear right now. And they're hiring like crazy.

user55340

@GlenH7 Well, the smoke detector is a huge market (compared to the thermostat, which itself is a huge market).

@enderland On the other hand, there's lots of studies out there that show metacognition is actually rather uncommon in society as a whole and those who practice it have all kinds of benefits statistically. I have a fair wager that it's generally common among the high level knowledge worker professions though, engineers, lawyers, doctors etc

user41796

@MichaelT And they're getting tons of free, positive PR from the various shows raving about their products.

Everyone raves about their products

user55340

To an extent, Nest is doing to the smoke detector and thermostat what Apple did to the smart phone. Its shaking the market to its core.

4:10 PM

@JimmyHoffa oh yeah. I'm sure. in my case the offers were so damn close - software had a slightly higher salary but worse benefits - that it was even worse, since there was no financial difference practically (turns out with paid OT the engineering job is a lot higher paying atm though)

@enderland I was lumping software in with engineers, you dang hoity real engineers always trying to exclude us suckers :P

user55340

Its a very disruptive company in those markets. Everyone was accustomed to "smoke detector being those things that go beep at a loud volume and chirp when the battery is low that goes off when you burn the bread in the oven"... well, not any more.

@MichaelT or not ever, I took the battery out of that thing post haste of every place I moved in, and one of the last things moving out was always putting it back in

ok, now that it's my house I'll actually maintain the alarms...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa If you ever do an update, consider the direct line version.

user41796

@MichaelT I have heard rumors that a "very large thermostat" manufacturer tried to sue Nest for patent violation and shut them down. Some of Nest's attorneys used to work for Apple. Nest responded very aggressively to the attack and to my knowledge has successfully defended their product.

4:13 PM

@JimmyHoffa we went over this the other day. software developers are going to ruin the world since they won't ever be engineers amirite

One apt building I lived in had the smart engineering of "fire in one apartment risks all occupants of the building - set off all building alarms.

and they were straightup industrial alarms, couldn't turn them off or anything

user55340

Neat side feature of the smoke detector product - its got a night light built into it that senses when someone walks under it (you can turn that feature on / off).

@MichaelT Yeah, I rented a place with that, definitely preferable to the occasional "chirp my battery's low"

hmmmm...... my cron job isn't running

@Ampt guess you suck at cron. One more thing you're not going to do when you grow up... what will you ever become???

user55340

4:15 PM

I've got two long term battery versions currently, though I may switch it to the wired version for at least the basement later (can access the wires in the basement easily).

@JimmyHoffa :'(

user41796

@Ampt n'er mind him, lad. He's just a bit jealous of engineers at the moment.

2

user41796

unfortunately, cron doesn't log. So you need to look at the logs from whatever you're trying to run.

@GlenH7 I somehow suspect that really big league guys manage to cleanup without revenge voting (art of communication, patience and such). Myself, I am not there yet... and unlikely will ever make it

@JimmyHoffa Did you catch the new episode of southpark last night?

user41796

4:17 PM

and / or ask what's recently changed on the system.

user41796

@gnat Patience is a virtue, but she can't always wait.

@JimmyHoffa cuz I'm gonna send you to jelly school if you keep it up.

@MichaelT Yeah, having a crawl-space makes a lot of that stuff much more easily accessible and workable in my house, and the attic for the top level - likely wouldn't be super hard to run the wires for where my alarms are (one outside crawlspace door to catch any CO or fire from the heater or hot water heater down there, and one atop bedroom level stairs)

user55340

@GlenH7 It does... just need to know where.

user41796

@MichaelT system log then?

4:19 PM

@MichaelT where does it log?

@Ampt I recall watching like the first season or two of southpark ~12 years ago, haven't bothered sense (just catch clips like most of modern culture for things like underpants ??? profit)

user55340

97

Q: Where is the cron / crontab log?

I want to verify if my cron job is executing and what time. I believe there is a log for my sudo crontab -e jobs, but where? I searched google and it I found references to look in /var/log (which I do not see anything with 'cron') and to edit the file /etc/syslog.conf which I also do not ha...

cron log crontab

user55340

I've seen it in /var/log/cron also.

user41796

On a busy system, the syslog can be ugly to wade through. And I had always been too lazy to find the right tools to look at the syslog.

user55340

Depends on the specific flavor of cron and the os as to where it goes.

4:21 PM

... I have to put ./script.sh don't I

> You can see just cron jobs in that logfile by running

grep CRON /var/log/syslog

user55340

@Ampt Full path to script.sh is safest.

that worked well for me

@MichaelT yeah but it needs a ./ in the front to execute it right?

I have the full path

user55340

The ./script.sh means "run the script.sh in the current directory" -- where is the current directory for cron?

@GlenH7 I've heard some of that syslog stuff is really cool and well architected, I've seen that all of that syslog stuff is baffling and every developer's app does something differently with it

no clue. so full path should work.. .do I need to give the script permission to run?

user55340

4:22 PM

If "./script.sh" works, then "/path/to/script.sh" will also work.

that would be it wouldn't it...

user41796

The "./" is necessary if the path that script.sh isn't in your $PATH

user55340

Now, that you're using "./script.sh" may mean there are other things that its accessing that are based off the current working directory... which could be a problem for cron.

user41796

run an ls -l script.sh to verify the permissions

I'm not using the ./ notation. I have the full path. I just forgot to give the script execution permission

user41796

4:23 PM

@Ampt - don't worry. NO ONE else has ever done that before.

2

user55340

You could do: (cd /path/to/dir; ./script.sh;)

@GlenH7 especially not a real engineer

user41796

I generally check execute permissions before I look at the path....

that did it

user55340

The '()' starts a shell, which then does the commands, which includes changing the current working directory so that other things that are accessed relative to cwd will remain relatively accessable.

user41796

4:25 PM

@JimmyHoffa and system configs can vary widely in the level of permissions that you're granted on a system. Some days you're root. Some days you're nobody. That has a big impact on what you can look at.

I'm always root because I CAN BE

@Ampt Better yet - /bin/sh /path/to/script.sh so that it works fine when you forget to chmod +x next time you copy a file over it

user41796

@Ampt Wait until you work for a large shop. You won't be.

@GlenH7 sudo all the things

user55340

@GlenH7 You shouldn't be.

4:26 PM

@Ampt you'll be glad not to be root.

oh but I am. Just think of all the silly little pieces of code I've written, running as root on the only thing keeping all those plows and salt spreaders running

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

When shit falls down, databases disappear or configurations get munged nobody can point the finger at you

(also when configurations need to be changed nobody can be constantly asking you to do it for them because they don't have root)

All I need is a giant egg chair and a hairless cat

user41796

@Ampt They really ought to run under their own user account.

user image

...I don't get it

4:28 PM

@Ampt now everytime I see one of them I'm going to fear for my life

@enderland you didn't already?

(I'm kidding btw, all of my code runs on the tester cores, not the ones that go on the trucks :)

user55340

One guy back on the build team in engineering... years ago. He got hired away as a consultant at Perforce. So IT deactivated his account when he left (change ownership to root and chmod 000 everything)... and everything in the build system broke because there were little scripts that he had that were utilities that builds ran. It took them a week to fix most things... and that was by reactivating his account and fixing the permissions. I wouldn't be surprised if his account is still "active".

user41796

@MichaelT An unfortunately common occurrence in the industry.

user55340

Thus, never run anything in a user account that is part of a process. Create a special account for that process and put everything it needs in the scope that it can access... and then make it so it can't access anything outside of its scope.

yeah there are definitely a lot of user folders still active where I did my grad because all sorts of stuff was running out of those user folders

4:33 PM

@GlenH7 to be honest, I kind of prefer that mode of security sometimes... it's terrible in formality and theory, but sometimes having decent sys admins good enough to know what they know and what they don't and who they can trust which just sit there and remove permissions for everybody, and then through individual trust share things with the few who show they're very well behaved with the permissions.... like I said, it's terrible in theory but I've seen it very good in practice.

user41796

@enderland The best ones are where you encrypt things using your current password. Then they can't change your password after you leave for fear of breaking everything permanently.

...because I can usually win over sys admins having done similar work in the past, and have worked on teams where I would be scared to have some of my team members with permissions

@JimmyHoffa I'm scared for the day I lose administrator rights on my current machine

@enderland Developers not having local admin is just dumb. Developers not having production admin is just right.

user55340

@enderland BYOC prevents that from being an issue... and creates others.

user41796

4:34 PM

@JimmyHoffa My main objection is how tightly the employee (and account) is now coupled to that role.

Ugh. Girlfriend just emailed me saying shes crying at work because they keep piling shit on her. She is hands down the best time manager out of anyone I know. She managed to do the majority of senior design project because her teammates were incompetent, balance a relationship, family and 20 hours a week at her job with no problem but this place can't manage to give her less than 3 peoples worth of work

@GlenH7 Of course. It's terrible for that and many other reasons (what if the admins are crap or replaced by people who are crap and don't know how to make judgement calls only following "by the book" ?)

user41796

@Ampt "quit, find a new gig."

user55340

@Ampt ... (realize I'm 90% joking)... Interview in San Francisco and take her with you?

@GlenH7 honestly, that's my preferred option.

she's just not decisive like that

4:36 PM

@GlenH7 I think this is the best way for some to gain the confidence to start doing the harder thing: Pushing back and showing apathy towards their threats and complaints.

she will let this beat her into the ground before she admits defeat.

user41796

I know someone at Nest if you want to consider them...

user55340

amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficiency/dp/…

user55340

Get that book. Give it to her.

@GlenH7 you should have mentioned this weeks ago :P I have 2 job offers that expire 2 mondays fro now

4:37 PM

many have difficulty pushing back on managers overloading them because of fear, but jumping ship a couple times gives one a bit more confidence that they're not an imposter and their position is not a lucky, irreproducible, fluke

@MichaelT she would have no time to read it. She takes her work home with her every night. She works every lunch period. I'm surprised I see her at all

user41796

@Ampt I can't guarantee you an interview; I can only guarantee they'll look at your resume.

user55340

> Slack could also appear in the way a company treats employees: Instead of loading them up with overwork, a company designed with slack allows its people room to breathe, increase effectiveness, and reinvent themselves.

@GlenH7 I really really really appreciate it but I'm afraid that I simply don't have the time to get them in without letting my other two offers expire which would put me in a really tough spot. plus if I could then I might have 3 offers and would summarily implode in indecision.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa That's very much a part of career maturity.

4:39 PM

@JimmyHoffa yeah that's what I'll argue should corporate come and lock crap down. Otherwise I might seriously consider quitting if losing admin screws up a lot of the stuff I use to make my day not suck (like installing all sorts of stuff locally so it's not "installed" but I can still run it... :-)

user41796

@Ampt No worries. Just a fun illustration of you never know how many connections you actually have until you start asking.

not to mention I'm pretty sure the people in this chan could probably hook you up too lol

hahaha and end up writing Haskell at @JimmyHoffa's beck and call? I don't think so

:P

user41796

My fantasy gig of the moment is working for the Lego Group in Denmark. But I haven't done all of my homework yet in researching their company.

and making legos? Theres a job I could get behind.

4:42 PM

I think @JimmyHoffa does ----C#---- P.SE in his day job

user41796

@enderland Actually, he writes in Haskell and runs it through an interpreter to produce the C#

@enderland it's 3 '-'s

before and ~~after~~

kind of tedious

user55340

@JimmyHoffa "Bleh. Just... yea, just make it go away. – MichaelT 13 hours ago helpful"

~~test~~

user55340

The "Bleh" flag works again!

4:44 PM

@enderland Hey, we're in a slow period :P That's about to change, large rearchitecting my team's about to implement soon and a couple other large projects. Too much in limbo right now until that stuff... Shitty thing is when they stuff get's totally final "Yes, do it" the next sentence will be "Is it done yet?"

user55340

I'm also amused by the comment upvote on the off topic reason.

user55340

user image

anyone know anything about linux environments?

i think my environment for cron is wrong

> Bleh Wars: The Bleh Strikes Back!

user55340

@Ampt I pretended to be a system administrator for them for a long tome...

4:46 PM

I don't think cron is executing with the same path as my user is

user41796

likely not

we'll find out in 4 minutes if it fixed it

@Ampt ps aux | grep cron

I did this:

5

A: Why does apt-get fail when automated with cron?

The messages are telling you that your PATH environment variable is wrong. Try adding PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin to the top of your crontab. Or you could put the same PATH line as the second line of ~/bin/upgrades.sh. That way your test from the command line and your test from cront...

hmm still missing 2 dependencies, down from 4

so that partially worked

I've never found that argument for testing private methods compelling. You refactor code into methods all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with the public API of a class, and it's a very nice thing to be able to test those methods independently, without involving any other code. That is part of the reason you refactored, right? To get a piece of independent functionality. That functionality should be testable independently as well. — Robert Harvey 2 mins ago

4:48 PM

@Ampt replace the bleh.sh file with one that just echos variables and information like pwd to >> some file so when it runs you can see in the file all the details of how it ran, and you'll likely see which piece of the puzzle isn't right for your actual script then.

@JimmyHoffa may have been me putting /user/sbin instead of /usr/sbin so we'll see if that fixes it

@RobertHarvey Are you suggesting people do test privates or am I mistaken in reading that?

user41796

@Ampt The error exists between the user and the keyboard.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand someone just reset my core

@GlenH7 His notepad? That's what's always between me and my keyboard...

4:50 PM

this is what I get for SSHing across the lab

@JimmyHoffa mine is coffee and my phone (for music)

@Ampt My phone sits on my notepad for music sometimes, my coffee always goes a good stretch away so I have to reach for it, too many spills in the past, I think I might be a klutz.

user41796

@Ampt The Grinch has powers far beyond what you would realize.

@GlenH7 no, it was just jake. He needed the core and didn't realize I was doing anything on it

I should start putting notes

user41796

@Ampt That may not work as you would hope if they get a laugh when you scream out loud in anguish.

Chat poll of the day: Steno, large legal, small legal, or side-ringed notepad?

4:53 PM

@GlenH7 well one second I'm happily chugging away in nano and the next its not responding

<-- Steno for sure. for sure.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa graph. :-)

stupid real engineer

@JimmyHoffa fa sha brah?

user41796

seriously, we have company branded graph pads at work. I was giddy when I found that out.

4:54 PM

@GlenH7 you mean Engineering paper?

user41796

@Ampt pads and pads of such

user41796

10:1, 4:1, hex grid, and I think one other.

user41796

I don't think they have logarithmic paper though

user41796

I think anything needing a log display would be done in a software app now.

@JimmyHoffa I am suggesting that if you can't test it, there's no point in creating it.

4:55 PM

@GlenH7 I used to live off small legals and then worked somewhere the only comparable option was the steno, got used to was annoying at first but now I couldn't do legals again...

@Ampt oh that brings back memories

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I have been known to bring in my own pads of paper if need be.

@RobertHarvey That's what I figured, just wasn't super clear in my reading. When I'm doing lots of unit testing I end up with practically no privates; I just use internals instead and set InternalsVisibleTo("My.Project.Name.Tests") and have a Tests project for it...

(dunno why I don't really trust or like using shadow accessors, they just seem weird)

@JimmyHoffa is that because you're more lawyer than programmer? :P

I mean I always knew you were full of s*** but now I'm seeing evidence

2

@Ampt The irony is I was just sitting here thinking about how I'm going to approach a court date I have next week, looked up at my monitor and saw this O_O

user41796

5:02 PM

@JimmyHoffa I hope it's nothing too serious. Not a place I associate with "fun"

@JimmyHoffa I've taken exactly 2 weeks of business law if you need some legal advice.

@GlenH7 Nothing too serious, and yes they're not the most fun of places. The worst part is there's a lot of details about how things do work and how things can work, and the passive citizen knows neither of those. One of those "The court is for the lawyers, not the people" facts of our society.

@Ampt haha I guess in those 2 weeks they never mentioned the unethical and possibly illegal practice you'd be participating in by giving me legal advice? ;P

user41796

it really is a separate world with separate rules.

user55340

(hmm... got 2x upvotes on a not obscure, but certainly not current answer of mine in the past 30 minutes... wonder where they came from)

user55340

Ahh, wait, there it is, it is "current" in that someone updated an answer on it, 25 min ago, and another person posted a new answer to it just a minute or so ago.

5:06 PM

@JimmyHoffa hmmmm you may be onto something. I may have dozed off a few times. the class is from 7pm to 10pm on tuesdays

user41796

@MichaelT define "not current." That could be anything even just a few days ago.

user41796

@MichaelT one of those votes came from me. I liked the background information for context that you provided.

user55340

2

A: Why did Java make package access default?

The likeliest reason is: it has to do with history. Java's ancestor, Oak, only had three access levels: private, protected, public. Except that private in Oak was the equivalent of package private in Java. You can read section 4.10 of Oak's Language Specification (emphasis mine): By default...

@Ampt and if they say no, counter again asking just for a tequila advance!

user55340

That one is deserving also in that it found the specification in Oak.

5:17 PM

@gnat Other SE site's should be happy Yannis only doles out a little bit of evil spirit to the rest of the mods, any more evil spirit would likely destroy lesser sites than ours.

@MichaelT Unfortunately I don't know the content well enough to read all the answers and decide which to vote on, but they look good so I just upvoted the question instead.

@JimmyHoffa Hadn't though of that approach. That's a great idea.

@JimmyHoffa You don't trust them because they are reflection magic. Sure, if reflection works perfectly, then your tests are valid. But why involve all that unnecessary machinery if you don't have to?

More machinery means more complexity. More things that can go wrong. Yet another unnecessary software layer.

@RobertHarvey Yeah, I've heard that argument and all but I've simultaneously never seen shadow accessors cause the slightest problem, and never heard of anyone having a single problem from them. Bit of FUD possibly. Though the one thing I have experienced that stinks with them is maintenance; sometimes they fail accessibility, sometimes they fail to get updated synchronously with the class they're trying to access, that stuff does stink.

FUD or not I subscribe to it, it just doesn't feel write to use them... (and I've an alternative I've used for years which works great)

Well, I really like the internal idea. I plan to use it on my next project.

5:42 PM

0

Q: Can a bottom feeder (placo) clean a fish tank filter?

So I have a 15 gallon fish tank at home with just a couple fish and a placostamus(sp?) bottom feeder which does a good job keeping the glass and things clean in there, but obviously I still need to replace my filter every so often as it get's filled with garbage from all the fish in there. I'm c...

Oh, you.

I suspect not because the filter is full of stuff from the placo as well as the other fish, and I think it would amount to feeding him his own crap.

The feeder would only get the surface flotsam. All of the stuff embedded in the middle of the filter would still be there.

@RobertHarvey you think? the reason I thought about it is I used to have a little shrimp, and he would always climb inside of the filter casing and just sat in their picking stuff out of it.

Oh. I thought you meant the filter itself.

5:45 PM

a sucker fish may not be able to get the stuff inside I suppose

I am talking about taking the filter out and just dropping it into the tank

Not the housing.

the thought occurred to me because a shrimp I used to have would spend all his time inside the housing eating what the filter didn't trap

(or so I suspect, perhaps he was just freaked out and trying to escape)

0

Q: Route to go from non-web programming experience to ASP.NET MVC?

We're onboarding a new and inexperienced starter who has some experience in OO programming, but not web development, and not .NET. What is a sane route for this person to take, with the goal being to eventually be able to develop sites using ASP.NET MVC, given that they don't know HTML, CSS, Jav...

learning learning-curve

user41796

@RobertHarvey I think I went with "too broad" on that one. I have seen some OT -> Career / education votes for questions like that too. But TB seemed like a better choice.

One of the few educational questions that actually has a good answer. ASP.NET/MVC is the "Learn You A Haskell" of the web world.

user41796

5:53 PM

@RobertHarvey But you only put that in there as a comment and not an answer.

user41796

I could see the argument of putting the answer in there; and then leaving the question as a tombstone to indicate to others that good answers like that are rare and the type of question ought to be closed.

user41796

And Karl is starting to creep up on your rep total. He's only got ~11k to catch up. That's a couple of good collider questions is all...

@RobertHarvey that animation in your profile is throwing me for a loop... pythagorean theorem deduced from area? wat?

Of course.

I could lose a lot of time really coming up with the logical rules to make sense of how that works to myself (or if it's just trolling), but I will not be sniped!

6:02 PM

All you need to know is how to make squares. :)

@RobertHarvey I'll make you squares...mumble grumble...

user55340

8

Q: how to programtically build a grid of interlocking but random sized squares

I want to create a two dimensional layout of rectangular shapes, a grid made up of random sized cubes. The cubed should fit together and have equal padding or margin (space between). Kind of like a comic book layout, or more like the image attached. How could I do this procedurally? Practicall...

programming-practices python math

user55340

That's how you make squares.

That's the only logic there.
1. Make squares
2. ?
3. Profit!

user41796

@JimmyHoffa doesn't appear to be trolling to me; looks legit.

6:05 PM

oo I see... because you make a square from the hypotenuse so the area of the square of the hypotenuse squared, and the area of the square is also the summation of the area of two squares one from a and one from b

neat.

I wonder if that's similar to how pythagoras deduced it

user41796

The trick is accounting for the area in the center. Without that, the 4 triangles won't add up to c^2

@GlenH7 Right and the area of it will be |(a-b)|^2 (I think?)

which is why a^2 + b^2 includes it even though it's not technically definable within the scope of the triangle

user41796

@JimmyHoffa yes. I would have said (b-a)^2, but you threw it in an absolute, so it's good.

Geometric proofs are awesome. Much easier and more accessible than mathematical proofs.

user41796

@RobertHarvey I watched it a few times to make sure there wasn't some slight of hand. But that one looked correct.

6:10 PM

@GlenH7 of course I threw it in an absolute, I'm generous with what I accept and strict with what I emit :P

user41796

@JimmyHoffa silly functional programmer

@GlenH7 It's not about the area of the triangles. The pythagorean theorem is about the length of the sides of a rectange, not the area. It's about fashioning squares out of the sides, and then using those squares to prove the theorem. The square in the center just goes along for the ride.

@RobertHarvey not to me. I think for most people though.

@RobertHarvey I wholeheartedly disagree. Though for the vast majority of people you're right... my head's just not on right, I've always found geometry annoying because unlike other maths it does appear useless to me. (Ok not useless if I did anything in the physical world like physics but eff that real world stuff)

It's a very good proof for visual people.

user41796

6:12 PM

@JimmyHoffa cripes. Are we still stuck on you grousing about real engineers? Let it go already... Sheesh.

Geometric proofs are like magic numbers, consts in reality; consts are yawn.

user55340

37

Q: What is the most elegant proof of the Pythagorean theorem?

The Pythagorean Theorem is one of the most popular to prove by mathematicians, and there are many proofs available (including one from James Garfield). What's the most elegant proof? My favorite is this graphical one: According to cut-the-knot: Loomis (pp. 49-50) mentions that the pr...

geometry big-list algebra-precalculus euclidean-geometry

And it's a really interesting thing to put in a profile. :)

user55340

user image

@GlenH7 The fake engineers will rise up; and them with license shall fall! Their perfection will be their end!

I first saw this problem on the Google Labs Aptitude Test. A professor and I filled a blackboard without getting anywhere. Have fun.

user41796

6:16 PM

@JimmyHoffa fortunately, there aren't any trucks nearby. And I bet engineers are only worth 1 point anyway.

Engineers would build a bridge first.

user55340

@GlenH7 My previous employment, we worked off of a road that the Distribution Center ran on... so we had cars, trucks, and trains.

user41796

@MichaelT Not sure which I would prefer to be hit by. Perhaps none of the above would be my answer.

@JimmyHoffa is it an infinitely sized grid?

user41796

At previous gig, they had a beer truck run into the wall protecting the very small parking lot from the road.

user41796

6:20 PM

@Ampt yes

then... 0?

infinite amount of paths from one point to another means there is no resistance

user41796

@Ampt That's where I'm leaning towards too

user41796

with the trick being that people expect "path of least resistance" to be the "shortest" path

because when you simplify, the current through each path is divided for each number of paths, and anything divided by infinity is 0

four over pi minus one half.

mbeckler.org/resistor_grid

32

Q: On this infinite grid of resistors, what's the equivalent resistance?

I searched and couldn't find it on the site, so here it is (quoted to the letter): On this infinite grid of ideal one-ohm resistors, what's the equivalent resistance between the two marked nodes? With a link to the source. I'm not really sure if there is an answer for this question. ...

electric-circuits resistance

Approximately 0.7733 ohms.

user55340

6:24 PM

@GlenH7 Internally, we called it the "truck" number rather than the bus number... because, well... trucks.

You're all wrong, the resistance is NaN because on anything infinite the rules of reality are no longer at play. With an infinitely sized thing, all of time and space would be filled to completeness, at which point time itself would cease to exist and resistance only exists as a measurement of required energy potentiation to bridge a differential, but with infinite-space fill and cessation of time no energy transfer is possible whatsoever as time must pass for energy to move.

user55340

The other fun bit was getting stuck on the wrong side of the train when you had to punch in within the next 5 min to not be late.

user55340

When you were late you had to fill out a form that said why you were late and what you would do to make it so this tardyness didn't happen again.

There would literally not be the space between atoms for the energy to transfer across the gap regardless of if it was technically the right amount of energy to potentiate itself across the gap.

user55340

One guy wrote in that section that he would get the trusses off the semi behind him, build a ramp over the train and go Dukes of Hazzard on it.

user41796

6:27 PM

@MichaelT I hope they didn't term him.

user55340

@GlenH7 He still works there. Long term employee, knows the product management system completely so they would be in SO Much Trouble if they ever did.

user55340

And the profit sharing works out for him nicely (having been there for 10+ years). Their profit sharing system rewards loyalty and doesn't have an insensitive for people who haven't been there for 5+ years to stay.

user55340

But, if you have been there for 10 years, you could easily be getting $10-20k with profit sharing depending on how much you make.

user55340

The general managers at the big stores who have been there for 30+ years often approaching 6 digits for their profit sharing.

I want 6 digits for profit sharing....

actually my company does have profit sharing. you get company stocks every year. 20 years puts your stock value at ~1million

6:35 PM

Infinitely sized objects are impossible within the confines of space-time, such an object would immediately reduce entropy to zero if space is infinite, or if it were not infinite maximize entropy destroying reality, the resistance is NaN. — Jimmy Hoffa 5 secs ago

Oh that's fun, considering I don't know anything about physics, posting that to Physics.SE ought to garner me a solid bit of trolldom

let the smacking-of-the-idiot commense.

(I don't even know what entryopy is! :D)

user55340

Sometimes, I'm really confused about who tosses those reopen votes on those ancient questions that show up in the queue.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - I dunno. Along with having more folk who can review close votes means more folk who can vote to reopen. And not all of them have been actively involved in meta discussions about what's on-topic or constructive.

@GlenH7 It's the ancient part that makes me think it's not the newcomers, none of them would even be poking around in our dusty old archives

user41796

@JimmyHoffa again, I dunno. You never know what someone may be looking for on a particular day. And they may come across something where they say "this shouldn't be closed."

user41796

It's infrequent enough that I think it's random searching bringing those up. It's not a focused campaign by any means.

user55340

6:43 PM

There are times where I'm tempted to go with the reopen vote, hoping to see who it is... but then I'm on the close votes for it and couldn't recast it into the closevotre queue if I did so.

user55340

(compare that crazy close, delete, undelete, reopen by the same group of people that happened a bit ago)

user41796

@MichaelT Seriously! What were those nutters thinking?!

user41796

I bet some of them are crazy enough to run for mod if elections were held. Nutters.

user55340

You know, if they both got diamonds, they could have delete/undelete battles between themselves, instead of having to fight Community.

@GlenH7 You're actually serious about this mod thing aren't you?

user41796

6:47 PM

@MichaelT That would be epically hilarious.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa the concern is more one of "if there was a candidate from the "everything open" 'faction', it would need a more sensible opposition"

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I think we already established I'm pretty well nutters.

user41796

And I like a variety of spirits, so Yannis can have his Tequila. The other mods can have theirs. I'm sure I'll have a preferred one not on their lists.

Urk, my book is randomly switching between Domain and CPO when talking about universal domains..

user55340

Ideally, we'd be able to persuade one of the active SO mods to join in over here, since the additional cleanup/migrations they could do with quickly stealing things to the proper site.

user41796

6:50 PM

@MichaelT And then we would get @enderland his dictator title and really speed up migrations.

@GlenH7 True, but I live in a land of hyperbole, cynicism, and beer, it's oft hard to tell what's going on in the RealWorld outside of the monad I live in. Wasn't sure if you were genuine in such desire.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Without the opportunity, we'll never be able to see for certain. :-)

@GlenH7 Could we not campaign for said opportunity? "Look at our front page- woe is us! We need more moderation!"

Post it as your initiation into trolling MSO

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I'd phrase it in my case of "I'm the lesser of the evils compared to a reopenist mod that (in my mind) would create unnecessary drama for the site and indicate a change in direction of what our current quality thresholds are and continue to be"

@JimmyHoffa You should move to a comonad, they're the most social category theory construction

extract : W A -> A

6:53 PM

@jozefg which is why they get the short end of the stick, category theorists don't want social constructs! They want quiet ones for contemplating entropy.

user55340

That said, I'd really rather not be a mod. I think our current mods are doing a good job in handling the exceptions and maintaining the direction of the site's quality. I like having non-binding close and delete votes.

data Entropy a = All | None
instance Monad Entropy where
  return a = undefined
  (>>=) All f = All
  (>>=) None f = None

Oh noes, return a >>= f === f _|_ =/= f a

@jozefg Of course, reality can't be deterministic. If it was we'd be in quite a pickle

user55340

... and people say perl is cryptic and terse?

6:57 PM

@MichaelT That's more math than Haskell, and no one ever accused math of being readable

@JimmyHoffa

data AllForNothing =

instance Monad AllForNothing where
return = const undefined
_ >>= _ = undefined

@GlenH7 thanks for the tip btw; next Tuesday my kid's got another MRI - I'll make sure to get him running around extra more for the rest of the week

@MichaelT The temptation to write "find a better job" must have been nearly overwhelming.

user55340

@RobertHarvey depends on the type of engineer. Sure, the civil engineer would go for the bridge... the mechanical engineer would build an iornman armor suit instead.

@jozefg I like my version more, it basically speaks to my understanding of reality "Well either it's real, or maybe it's not, is it inbetween? Fuck who knows, let's just pick one of the two and go with it."

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