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Nuclear Hoagie

 Discussion on answer by JBentley: Bus…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Jul 23 21:38
It's not a crime to just hang onto the money, it'd only be a crime if you intend to permanently deprive the business of the money you owe them. It should be pretty easy to argue there is no permanent intent to deprive, and that you're only depriving until such time as the business agrees there is a debt - you're happy to pay whenever they'll accept it. Nor do I see much element of dishonesty if the business directly insists you don't owe them anything. Their sloppy bookkeeping doesn't make you a criminal if you get so fed up trying to make a payment that you give up.
 

 Discussion on answer by D Stanley: In…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Mar 5 05:41
@StefanieGauss A "minimum payment" just means you won't incur late fees, it never implies that you won't pay interest. To expect to pay $65/month and no interest at any time, you'd be getting a totally interest-free loan for nearly 4 years! As for the warranty vs. loan, those are entirely separate contracts - there's no particular reason you should expect the warranty expiration and the loan payoff date to coincide. I agree the closeness of the loan/warranty end dates is a little confusing, but had it been a 2-year warranty, it'd be more clear those dates are basically unrelated.
 

 Discussion on answer by Pete B.: Who …

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Nuclear Hoagie
Feb 26 20:28
But the ticket itself isn't stolen, it's just paid for with stolen money. It's unclear to me that stealing $1 and buying a lotto ticket with it would violate this act and be ineligible for payout, or that anything you buy with the $1 would be considered stolen property.
 

 Discussion on question by Ekulnagrom:…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Dec 13, 2024 15:10
Many ancient cities were built in a circular layout - I don't see anything particularly remarkable or difficult about building a circular structure. Unclear why it needs to dovetail with any natural feature, the whole point of a canal is that you're making an artificial feature where none exists. The real question is why dig a circular canal, not how - you dig a circular canal the same way you dig any other canal, just in a circle.
 

 Discussion on question by Miss Unders…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Dec 5, 2024 21:18
@keshlam I'm not sure what that means. A particular prime number cannot be generated by a periodic processes with a period anything other than the prime number itself. If we assume that some natural processes are aperiodic, and that others are periodic with periods not tied to prime numbers, you would expect to find prime numbers less often, since all of those periodic processes almost never generate prime numbers (at best, exactly once, followed by an arbitrary number of non-primes).
 

 Discussion on question by Just a phys…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Nov 28, 2024 17:48
@Justaphysicsstudent Again, there is simply nothing to suggest in anything you've said that any energy has just "disappeared" and not been conserved in another form.
Nuclear Hoagie
Nov 28, 2024 17:48
As the dragonfly descends, some potential energy is turned into translational kinetic energy of the descending copter, some into rotational KE of the descending copter, some into translational/rotational KE of the surrounding air, and some lost to heat/friction. You have presented no argument whatsoever that any of the energy is "unaccounted for" or not conserved. I have no clue what you're getting at with the rotational vs. translational distinction, it's all kinetic energy.
 

 Discussion on answer by Barmar: Can a…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Nov 18, 2024 20:21
@gerrit A low bus factor suggests to me that a company undervalues the employee by a wide margin - if the company actually recognized how critical a low bus factor individual was, they'd improve the bus factor by cross-training or hiring more people. A bus factor of 1 sort of implies the company is unwilling to hire even a single other person to share the duties - when everything's running fine, the job isn't even worth double the salary, much less many times. Of course, management will find out how much it's actually worth when the bus hits.
 

 Discussion on question by Joshua Fran…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Oct 30, 2024 04:49
It sounds like you already answered your own question - "Historical weather reports suggest that the temperatures should mostly be above freezing, and snow is not likely." You're not going to get much better than recent averages for predicting the weather a month in advance.
 

 Discussion on answer by Barmar: Why d…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Oct 23, 2024 18:32
This makes sense why you'd want to read a contract with major financial consequences more closely than an EULA. But this doesn't actually explain the behavior in the question - Posner chose not to read his own mortgage documents that put him on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are discussing transactions involving thousands of dollars, this doesn't seem to fall into the category of "most cases where it's not worth it".
 

 Discussion on answer by Buffy: Is it …

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Nuclear Hoagie
Oct 11, 2024 22:19
@Timmy I don't necessarily think it's unethical. I just find it interesting that in the "should professors be tipped" question, every answer unanimously agreed it would be a major conflict of interest for a professor to solicit payment from their students. But the unanimous opinion here is that soliciting donations from the general public is fine, even if some (or many) students see the link and do, in fact, pay their professor. I'm not sure if this just needs qualification - that getting paid for your knowledge is OK, but getting paid for it by your students is not.
Nuclear Hoagie
Oct 11, 2024 22:19
Are you saying it's fine to ask for tips, so long as they don't come from students? The problem is that I'd expect the vast majority of the people who wind up on the page for the professor's lecture notes are, in fact, students taking their course - the professor is, by and large, asking their students to buy them a coffee. The lecture notes are also posted to the university's system, so this seems pretty clearly within the remit of the job. Some aspects of this (lecture notes in particular) seem quite close to asking students to tip them for performing their basic job duties.
Nuclear Hoagie
Oct 11, 2024 22:19
It's interesting this answer is a polar opposite to your opinion on professors asking for tips in another question, where it's described as a "moral failing" (academia.stackexchange.com/questions/213926/…). I agree there's some differences in the scenarios, but it seems like a fine line as to when it's appropriate to seek additional compensation for things directly adjacent to your job description. How is something as basic as posting lecture notes with "buy me a coffee" different from asking for a tip?
 

 Discussion on answer by KDP: When a s…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Aug 29, 2024 00:58
This doesn't reconcile with the fact that a neutrally buoyant submarine can jettison arbitrarily little ballast to surface. You claim that when going to twice the depth, you need to spend twice the energy to achieve positive buoyancy. That's just not true, you can simply jettison half as much ballast for the same total energy cost. You can always go from neutral buoyancy to positive buoyancy by applying arbitrarily little work - just expel any infinitesimal volume of ballast water, and the sub will float to the surface. Surfacing does not require more energy the deeper you go.
 

 Discussion on answer by Lawnmower Man…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Aug 28, 2024 14:58
@LawnmowerMan There is no threshold at which imprecise physics isn't physics. You might as well say we weren't doing physics before the electron microscope was invented in 1931, or before the meter was defined by the speed of light in 1983. Your implication that a qualitative experiment is not really physics because the results only "appear to within the limits of your ability to observe" is exactly as true for a quantitative experiment. I agree quantitation adds value, but I wholly disagree that it's a prerequisite for something to be considered physics.
Nuclear Hoagie
Aug 28, 2024 14:58
@LawnmowerMan It's not at all like that. Galileo used the scientific method of experimentation to describe his observations, while people espousing spontaneous generation simply did not - your example isn't even science. You can make a microscope from a droplet of water without any knowledge of optics or refractive indices. I'm confused why you classify the observation that the duration of an object's fall is unrelated to its weight as "folk physics". You seem to presuppose that anything that doesn't require mathematics isn't physics.
Nuclear Hoagie
Aug 28, 2024 14:58
I'm not convinced. What mathematics are required to conduct Galileo's famous experiment of dropping objects of different weights off the tower of Pisa? You don't need any math at all to observe that two objects are of different size/weight, or that they strike the ground at the same time. Heck, you don't even need numbers. Or are you saying that's not physics?
 

 Discussion on answer by Greybeard: Wh…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Aug 25, 2024 12:59
@Mary Right, but you probably wouldn't be understood saying "he is a three star" to refer to a general without more context. I agree "black belt" is essentially a rank/title, but that doesn't mean it's not still an example of metonymy. If you were at a company orientation where they said "suits to the left, lab coats to the right", that would still be metonymy even if the actual job titles were Suit and Lab Coat - it would just mean the titles themselves were metonyms, referring to the role by an article of clothing worn by a person in that role.
 

 Discussion on question by Brad: The M…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Aug 24, 2024 05:04
@Corbin Even if the question isn't about outcome, the Abilene Paradox is. It's simply not a paradox if everyone agrees going to Abilene wasn't a good idea after all, it's just a bad suggestion. The crux of Abilene is that everyone goes along with something no one wants, it's not only about suggesting options you don't really want..
Nuclear Hoagie
Aug 24, 2024 05:04
@Corbin Here, the group arrives at a consensus that most people actually want. In the Abilene Paradox, everyone agrees to something that no one wants. In this story, the final choice of BBQ was actually the preferred choice of most people. There's also no sense that people are agreeing because they think others want to, it seems that the "McDonald's option" is spurring people to state their own opinions which they otherwise would not have. The decision is not predicated on everyone incorrectly perceiving the preferences of others.
Nuclear Hoagie
Aug 24, 2024 05:04
@Corbin This story is like an inverse example of the Abilene Paradox - the Abilene Paradox describes a group of people making a bad decision because someone idly suggested it, and everyone going along because it's what they thought everyone else wanted. This would be the Abilene Paradox if everyone agreed to go to McDonald's under the impression that the OP suggested it because they actually wanted to go to McDonald's. But they instead took the suggestion and made a collectively better decision. It's not the Abilene Paradox if no one goes to Abilene and has a terrible time.
 

 Discussion on answer by ocirocir: Are…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Jul 18, 2024 07:57
This only really tells half the story - now we need a sampling of definitions of "missile" to see where it overlaps with "aircraft". Is it necessary that a missile must "derive support from the atmosphere" and "fly"? A rocket propelled grenade, for example, uses fins for stabilization but not lift - a self-propelled rocket need not derive any support at all from the atmosphere. I'd say the Venn diagram of aircraft and missiles has incomplete overlap - there are non-aircraft missiles and non-missile aircraft.
 

 Discussion on question by PMF: Can on…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Jul 16, 2024 10:24
The legality of the item in question seems irrelevant in this scenario. It sounds like ownership is transferred to Bob - the person freely intended to give the item, delivered it to Bob, and Bob accepted it. I guess it depends on what you really mean by "more or less voluntarily", but in general you can't give a gift (a voluntary and one-sided transfer of property) and later demand it back.
 

 Discussion on question by Max: AUC > …

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Nuclear Hoagie
Jun 29, 2024 17:25
You should be able to calculate a confidence interval for the AUC as well - are the values indeed significantly different from 0.5, or are they within random statistical variation? Finding AUC>0.5 but not significantly different from it could a symptom of auto-flipping the classes, but from the rest of the description of the issue it doesn't seem like that's the problem.
Nuclear Hoagie
Jun 29, 2024 17:25
How are you performing feature selection? A common mistake is to perform feature selection before the train-test split, which results in features that are biased to perform well in the test data. Are the features being selected using only the training data?
 

 Discussion on question by Bakuriu: Ho…

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Nuclear Hoagie
May 11, 2024 15:09
@TooTea There are perfectly legitimate reasons to need to split up a flight receipt, however. I've scheduled interviews with two employers in the same distant city for consecutive days, and had the two companies each reimburse half for the flight, which would have been all but impossible to split 50-50 with separate bookings. It might also have been cheaper to book the round trip instead of two one-way flights. I'd also be a bit annoyed if I booked the flight in the most sensible and cost-effective manner and got the runaround from the bean-counters.
 

 Discussion on answer by Pelinore: A w…

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Nuclear Hoagie
May 6, 2024 16:55
But in that example, you should be perfectly happy to take £450 of de-valuable currency to settle the £300 debt, as you won't be any worse off even if all the color wears off immediately. You should even prefer it, as there's a chance the color doesn't wear off and you walk away with something worth more than £300.
Nuclear Hoagie
May 6, 2024 16:43
If you prefer, it's a bit like a rare collectible in mint condition - the item becomes worth less and less the more it is handled. That again doesn't make it worthless today, even knowing that it could only change hands a limited number of times before it's totally worthless.
Nuclear Hoagie
May 6, 2024 16:41
If the coin's devaluing is indeed instantaneous and unpredictable, then I agree it's no better than a 2p coin. But that's not at all how I interpret the statement that the coin devalues after too much skin contact.
Nuclear Hoagie
May 6, 2024 16:39
I think we have differing views of how the coin devalues. As I understand, the coin gradually wears out through handling. The coin's 3p coin's color slowly wears off, making it look like a 2p coin. I don't see a realistic mechanism that handling instantaneously turns a 3p coin into a 2p coin. I don't see much possibility that the coin "instantly becomes worth a third less right then and there".
Nuclear Hoagie
May 6, 2024 16:35
@Pelinore Say bananas cost $1 apiece, and you know you want to buy 100 bananas 1 year from now. Your argument suggests that you would prefer to have 100 vouchers for 100 bananas, and that there is no amount of dollars I could offer that you would prefer instead, simply because those dollars will at some point become worthless, regardless of the time scale over which dollars lose value. There should be some time-based discounting, but there is no reason an item should immediately take its easily foreseeable future value today.
Nuclear Hoagie
May 6, 2024 16:35
@Pelinore Yes, obviously bananas are a poor choice of currency. Nevertheless, the principal logic here of "if it will only be worth 2p (in the near and expected future) then it is only worth 2p (now)" is simply untrue. If you prefer, use real inflationary currency as a counterexample - that \$10 bill in your wallet may only be worth \$9 next year. That doesn't mean you should be willing to trade a \$10 bill for $9 today. It's the same principal, your cash will buy some quantity of goods today, but not tomorrow - whether it devalues by handling or not.
Nuclear Hoagie
May 6, 2024 16:35
I disagree the 3p coin will simply be worth 2p - how is it different from any other perishable good that predictably and inevitably loses value? A banana, for example, becomes utterly worthless after a few weeks, but a fresh banana does not sell for \$0 simply because everybody knows it will at some point will be worth \$0. If you can sell it or use it before that happens, it has value. It will depend on how fast and predictably the 3p coin loses value.
 

 Discussion on question by Naomi N: De…

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Nuclear Hoagie
May 1, 2024 15:27
@isherwood Isn't the shear force just equal to half the weight of the apparatus, regardless of how you hang it (assuming constant chain length)?
 

 Discussion on question by Nilotpal Si…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Apr 28, 2024 13:08
The inequality is overly restrictive. If you have planets at distances of 0.9, 1, and 2, we get that 2>0.9+1, yet p3 can still be closer to p2 (minimum distance 1) than p1 (maximum distance 1.9).
 

 Discussion on answer by ohwilleke: Do…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Apr 10, 2024 20:02
Is there a duty to delay as much as legally permissible? I've seen several headlines about various deadlines for Trump's lawyers to respond to different motions, and as far as I can tell, the response always comes very close to the deadline. It wouldn't seem to be a bad-faith effort to respond at any point within a court-set deadline (even if purposefully near the deadline), but Trump would not be well-served by an earlier response.
 

 Discussion on question by rhetorician…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Mar 23, 2024 02:07
I'd say it does say more about the person doing the treating. Even the lowliest, undignified person can be treated with dignity. There is no requirement for someone to actually have any dignity in order to be treated as such.
 

 Discussion on answer by gnasher729: D…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Mar 15, 2024 21:07
I wonder if there's an additional wrinkle since other people have been using the software - by letting them do so, the OP may have granted an implied license to use it. If the OP received consideration in some form (although it seems like they haven't) they might not be able to unilaterally revoke the license to use the software, even if they do own the code.
 

 Discussion on answer by Barmar: The i…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Mar 3, 2024 08:16
@Barmar If there is a very tiny probability that life exists anywhere in the universe (as the OP has assumed), then that's all there is to it - we've already conditioned on the whole universe, it is defined to be unlikely to happen anywhere. This answer sidesteps the OP's premise that it's unlikely life forms "even once in the whole universe", and assumes instead that it's unlikely that life forms "on any particular planet". The issue is that the OP's actual premise is a little odd, as it's not something we could ever really know.
Nuclear Hoagie
Mar 3, 2024 08:16
I totally agree with the point that the universe is so large that individually unlikely things happen all the time. But the OP is starting from a slightly different premise, assuming that the family-wise probability of life arising even once anywhere in the universe is nearly impossible (not that life arising on one planet is nearly impossible). Any tiny planet-wise probability of life grows to a family-wise near-certainty as you add more planets, but the family-wise probability of life is already defined by the OP as near-impossible for the whole universe no matter how big it is.
 

 Discussion on answer by Michael Hall:…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Feb 7, 2024 21:05
@RLH There are brand names and number markings that would help you distinguish the ball you're playing from others, but if you have played with many different brands over multiple games, almost any lost ball could be yours. You could rule out brands you've never played, but I imagine the vast majority of balls come from just a few manufacturers.
 

 Discussion on answer by Therac: What'…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Feb 4, 2024 07:34
Musk's pay package was approved by a shareholder vote, it was simply proposed (but not granted) by a closed committee. The problem is that shareholders were misled about the independence of the compensation committee with regard to the negotiation.
 

 Discussion on answer by Nuclear Hoagi…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Feb 4, 2024 07:34
@ZizyArcher That's not a good deal at all when there are dozens of other CEOs who would run the company for $1 and 5%, rather than 50%, of stock growth - the problem is that the compensation was not in line with market rates, the board doesn't have to hire Musk for whatever price he wants. That Musk grew the stock price isn't at issue - it ostensibly would have grown even more if fewer company assets went into the CEO's pocket.
Nuclear Hoagie
Feb 4, 2024 07:34
@Kyralessa I would imagine some level of it occurs fairly widely, but the problem in this particular case is the absent or misleading disclosures, and the fact that the compensation plan was demonstrably out-of-line with market rates, with potential compensation orders of magnitude higher than typical CEOs. I'm sure it happens in other cases, but here it could be proven in a court of law that the board didn't do its job.
Nuclear Hoagie
Feb 4, 2024 07:34
@Kyralessa Basically, if you hire a professional to negotiate on your behalf, you might simply agree to whatever deal they come back with, since that's probably as good as it's going to get. If you later find out that person was not actually acting on your behalf, and was instead colluding with the person you were negotiating against, that's a big problem. The issue isn't the numerical size of the pay package, it's how it was negotiated, with the board failing to adequately represent the party they were obligated to (and not disclosing it).
Nuclear Hoagie
Feb 4, 2024 07:34
@Kyralessa Shareholders voted for the package under the impression that it was a true negotiation with the board representing the shareholders' best interest. It was not; the board was effectively on Musk's side during the negotiation, not the shareholder's. It's a bit like finding out your attorney was dating someone you sued - even if you thought you were happy with your service at the time, it's a clear conflict of interest that calls the whole prior arrangement into question. Shareholders weren't misled about the price of the pay package, but the idea that it was the best possible deal.
 

 Discussion on question by Xophmeister…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Dec 8, 2023 22:52
Every hypothesis X has a built-in alternative: not-X. That not-X is not particularly specific doesn't mean it's not a hypothesis. If you cannot articulate any alternative to your hypothesis, it's a premise taken as fact, not a hypothesis.
 

 Discussion on question by Lecifer: Wh…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Oct 14, 2023 09:54
@Lecifer Everyone would agree that a pure sine wave is pitched, as it represents a single fundamental frequency and nothing else. As you add complex harmonic frequencies at different strengths, the notion of pitch may diminish as you hear a combination of many notes with no clear discernable relationship among them. Unpitched instruments will generally have a weaker tonic and more complex harmonics, but there's no clear point at which adding harmonics to a pitched noise will make it unpitched. The perception may even change depending on the context of notes played by other instruments.
Nuclear Hoagie
Oct 14, 2023 09:54
There is no bright line between a sound that is "pitched" and one that is "unpitched", it's all a matter of context and degrees. The fact that one may be able to determine a weak tonic in the sound of an unpitched instrument does not imply that the sound is perceived as pitched. All sounds are made up of individual frequencies (pitches), but the overall perception of a sound as "pitched" is subjective. See music.stackexchange.com/questions/111342/…
 

 Discussion on answer by user121330: I…

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Nuclear Hoagie
Oct 13, 2023 00:13
@user121330 I would, but the words in an idiom do not take their literal dictionary definitions. "You're barking up the wrong tree" absolutely does not suggest in any way that you are making sounds like a dog at woody plant. "You are a stupid dog", on the other hand, isn't an idiom, and carries exactly the meaning of its individual constituent words.