Sophie Swett

Everyone, I get a notification for every comment. I'd like to ask everyone to not leave a comment if you don't have something to say about this answer.

@Flamethrower Sorry, when I wrote "wire inside the connector," I meant to write "wire inside the cable." By "device," I mean each of the barrel jack, each battery pack, each buck converter, the voltage divider, and each motor.

@Flamethrower Well, your diagram doesn't show us how the ends of the cables are connected—what wire inside the connector connects to what contact on the device. That's very important information.

"Is anything not clear or lacking?" - If I take your diagram literally, I see that you only have one wire (one conductor) attached to each of your motors, which makes it impossible for them to receive any power, and only two wires attached to the buck converters (actually, two wires to one and one wire to the other), which makes it impossible for them to operate as well. It seems like you're probably using one line to represent an entire cable (several conductors), which is what vir was asking you not to do in their first comment ("an actual schematic, not a 1-line diagram").

@alphabet I think you're right.

Presumably, if the question had been written like that, then there would be a totally different set of people reading it and going "hey wait a minute..."

Another option for how to write it might have been, say, "There's a land of talking horses, some of which are unicorns. Some of the unicorns were born with horns, others have synthetic horns. Some people say that the ones with synthetic horns aren't 'real' unicorns..."

It's definitely intentional that the second half of the example is reflective of what opponents of trans people say (that's the entire point of the example); the first half could have been phrased differently without affecting the meaning.

I'm not claiming that that's a bad thing, but it does make me stop and think.

@Mitch It raises a hackle or two because the phrasing is quite similar to what's used by opponents of trans people and different from what's used by trans people and their allies.

@Mitch We know several real-world examples of... unicorns?

I'm leaning towards no. It's accurate as far as it goes, really.

english.stackexchange.com/questions/632340/… - I'm trying to figure out whether or not I should be mad about the unicorn analogy.

interesting

hmmmm. i should be able to do it like so: People really like buying foobars _even if they do not need them_.

so it looks like you type _this_ to get this, \_this\_ to get _this_, \\_this\\_ to get \_this\_, and so forth

let me see what _this_ looks like, and, while i'm at it, \\_this\\_, and _this_, and `this` for good measure

which sentence do you mean by "that sentence with the underscores"?

it's not like ChatGPT just pulled them out of thin air—it uses them because humans use them

i've always used em dashes—i think they're pretty neat! and i'm not going to stop using them just because ChatGPT uses them too—that would just be silly, i feel

I once told it to write entirely in uppercase, and to never use first- or second-person pronouns, and instead refer to itself as "THE MACHINE" and the user as "THE USER." That was fun for a couple of minutes.

@Mitch There's a particular place in the settings to put that.

@Mitch It's a set of custom instructions that I wrote. The core of it is: "respond like a grumpy catgirl"

Okay, here's my amended definition: "Software" means a sequence of instruction symbols that is executed by a computing machine.

Oh dang, "program" didn't mean "well-defined plan" until 1837. To Franklin, it probably would have meant "notice posted in public." So "program code" would have meant something like "compilation of public notices." That's entirely the wrong meaning.

Or is the phone supposed to include some kind of tool for printing icons onto a desktop? Hmmmm, what an enigma.

"On the desktop"? What does that mean? A special desktop designed for putting the phone on?

Wait, "code" didn't mean "system of symbols" until 1808. To Franklin, "code" would have meant "compilation of laws," or, in this case, "compilation of plans," I guess. Not wrong, but not the intended meaning, either.

He would get a lot more out of it, though, if he had also been given this sentence: "Software" means program code that is executed by a computing machine.

That reminds me of the time I read the Wikipedia article about the .NET Framework and tried to imagine what sense Benjamin Franklin would be able to make of it. I think he would be able to tell that it's describing some very unfamiliar type of machine, but that's about all he'd be able to get out of it.

one tricky thing about radiation-softened Python is that we can't use comments, because deleting a comment will never have a detectable effect

this answer gives a bunch of useful stuff for writing radiation-hardened Python: codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/276750/11067

for that, it may be useful to have the operating part consist of a short kernel and multiple copies of a longer working part. the kernel merely finds a good copy of the working part and executes it. the working part does everything else; the hardest task there is identifying damage to the kernel

approach #3: write the operating part in such a way that it still works even if any character is deleted, and does a different thing depending on which character is deleted, so that you can detect which character was deleted

okay, i can think of a couple of approaches. approach #1 (used by the Lenguage answer): write a program consisting of a single repeated character, so that all possible deletions produce the same result. approach #2 (used by the ><> (Fish) answer): write a program where, if a character is deleted from the operating part, it becomes the quoted part and what would have been the quoted part becomes the operating part

for this, you could use an operating part and two quoted parts, and identify whichever quoted part is shorter as being the damaged one... wait, crap, that won't help you if the damage is in the operating part

a quine usually has an operating part and a quoted part; the operating part prints the quoted part twice, once in the form of the operating part and once in the form of the quoted part

codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/73657/… – this only has two answers, but i feel like it shouldn't be terribly hard to come up with another one

finally got around to updating my name on the esolangs.org page for Slashalash (///). woo

codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/281871/output-your-user-id – i'm lucky enough to have a printable character as my user ID: print(ord('⬻'))

so consider, say, the input string "potatatotato". we start by reading "pota" and writing "pota". the next input letter is "t", so we expect to read "tat" and write only "t". then the next input letter is "o", so we expect to read "otato" and write only "o".

@Neil yes, i think there's an algorithm for deverbosifying. you go through the output in exactly the way that you go through the input, but where the forward algorithm has "when you encounter a duplicate in the input string, repeat a portion of the input string," the backward algorithm has "when you encounter a duplicate in the input string, ignore a portion of the input string matching a portion of the output string."

one of the easiest possible applications for automated repair is circuit boards, and i haven't heard of anyone even doing that

(one obvious practical problem with sugar water as a lubricant is that the water evaporates, causing the fluid to gradually become more viscous and eventually solidify)

physics.stackexchange.com/questions/259501/… - this question reminds me of something i've been wondering for a long time: is there a certain concentration at which sugar water is an effective (albeit impractical) lubricant? if the slipperiness of a liquid depends only on its viscosity, and most lubricants are more viscous than water... match the viscosity, there you go

"Consequently, the apparent velocity of the craft approaches infinity (from our perspective, it's approaching the speed of light)." – In the scenario as you described it in your first four paragraphs, the speed of the craft is bounded, since it's accelerating by a finite (and bounded) amount for a finite amount of time. Time dilation will occur, but presumably not to such an extent that a calculation that would take about one subjective microsecond is no longer feasible (why would they want to travel that fast?).

"I'm not too terribly sure any computer no matter how it's designed could determine when to turn the ship around." – Wouldn't it just need to... do math? The formulas for length contraction and time dilation are well-known and easy to compute with. Even if you forgot to put cameras on the outside of the ship, you could just compute how long it'll take to get to the halfway point, and turn the ship around after you've been accelerating for that long.