Peter Mortensen

general recent conversations

The h Bar

General chat for Physics SE (physics.stackexchange.com). For M...

Peter Mortensen

Nov 1, 2023 18:31

This seems like a bogus answer. Does it have any merit?

Discussion on question by TheCuriousO…

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...

Peter Mortensen

Oct 2, 2023 20:52

xkcd 356.

Peter Mortensen

Oct 2, 2023 20:52

Aren't there plenty of these infinite resistor network questions?

Peter Mortensen

Oct 2, 2023 20:52

Samples: On this infinite grid of resistors, what's the equivalent resistance? (score 128. 2010), Resistance of infinite resistor network (score 0. 2017), Resistance between any 2 nodes on an infinite square grid (score 27. 2011), and Infinite Resistive lattice problem (score 1. 2014).

Discussion on answer by Xander Hender…

Imported from a comment discussion on academia.stackexchange.c...

Peter Mortensen

Sep 17, 2023 16:59

They are probably able, but not willing.

Discussion on question by amnesiacRAM…

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....

Peter Mortensen

May 20, 2023 06:03

Can you make it clear in the question what your (formal) role is exactly? Are you a peer? A project manager? A team lead? A consultant? Re "my team" and "I was brought in to help improve coding standards and development practices."

Discussion on answer by Dominique: Ho…

Imported from a comment discussion on matheducators.stackexcha...

Peter Mortensen

Mar 23, 2023 13:35

Re "...as a starting point for an exercise, and let your students fall into the pit, in order to get them disgusted by ChatGPT's stupidity": That is a great idea!

Discussion on question by allo: How t…

Imported from a comment discussion on matheducators.stackexcha...

Peter Mortensen

Mar 23, 2023 13:33

Re "personalized forms of exercises are out of the question": It is suspected that homework generators ((software) scripts) are used in courses involving Pandas (to prevent students from copying from each other), generating different inputs, different structure of the data, and different objectives (desired output). Hence 276,723 Pandas questions on Stack Overflow that the unpaid volunteers can work on (and paid actors (behind-the-scenes payment is also suspected)).

Discussion on question by Schezuk: Di…

Imported from a comment discussion on retrocomputing.stackexch...

Peter Mortensen

Feb 12, 2023 18:03

@davidbak: "Pascal strings were fine for school exercises but not so much in the real world." They were used in the Mac OS APIs (classic).

Discussion on answer by Laurel: Does …

Imported from a comment discussion on skeptics.stackexchange.c...

Peter Mortensen

Feb 5, 2023 01:59

Some languages are more logical wrt. to the time of day...

Discussion on answer by Trunk: Need h…

Imported from a comment discussion on academia.stackexchange.c...

Peter Mortensen

Jan 30, 2023 22:30

What is meant by '"the "Kennedy Boys""'?

Discussion on answer by Philip Klöcki…

Imported from a comment discussion on politics.stackexchange.c...

Peter Mortensen

Dec 16, 2022 23:05

@AnoE: Re "wiping out 50% of overall SU population": It was horrific numbers, but it wasn't 50%. The pre-war population of the Soviet Union was close to 200 million. So it is on the order of 10%. 26.6 million / 196.7 million = 13.5% (though the number of significant digits are not warranted). It could be 50% of the young male population.

Discussion on question by icewar1908:…

Imported from a comment discussion on worldbuilding.stackexcha...

Peter Mortensen

Dec 2, 2022 04:18

Re "affect their region": Do you mean "affect their religion"? (Is it a common autocorrect victim?)

Discussion on answer by anna v: What'…

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...

Peter Mortensen

Oct 27, 2022 19:46

"Some types of microphone, such as the carbon microphone, can sense pressure directly, while others, such as the ribbon microphone, can only sense changes in pressure."

Discussion on question by jaghalli: W…

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...

Peter Mortensen

Oct 19, 2022 21:40

@Carsten S: Indeed. Or some kind of trolling.

Discussion on answer by kisspuska: Ca…

Imported from a comment discussion on law.stackexchange.com/qu...

Peter Mortensen

Oct 12, 2022 06:39

Re "police state" and "a prosecutor must also cease prosecution ... throw the towel in no matter how much it hurts their little ego, and concerns their mom's and pop's dream to see their one and only become a state congressman/congresswoman": That sounds more like political statements than an objective answer. That casts doubt on the rest of the answer.

Discussion on question by alexhroom: …

Imported from a comment discussion on travel.stackexchange.com...

Peter Mortensen

Aug 15, 2022 18:52

Some context: "A Terry stop in the United States allows the police to briefly detain a person based on reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity ... a lower standard than probable cause which is needed for arrest ... search a pedestrian ... a stop and frisk. ... stop an automobile ... a traffic stop. ... the Supreme Court ... define the intersection between policing and the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures."

Discussion on answer by TimRias: Is t…

Imported from a comment discussion on skeptics.stackexchange.c...

Peter Mortensen

Jul 8, 2022 01:43

Black holes get a bad rap, but false vacuum decay is scarier (and will affect the entire universe).

Discussion on question by Asish: Mana…

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....

Peter Mortensen

Mar 17, 2022 18:23

What is "DSA"? None of "Digital Signature Algorithm", "Directory System Agent", "Domain-Specific Architecture", or "Debian Security Advisory" seems to fit the context.

Peter Mortensen

Mar 17, 2022 18:23

Do you need a relieving letter from the company or not? - "In India it is illegal for a person to have more than one job at a time. A relieving letter is issued by a company to an employee who has duly resigned from his said post, to be used as proof for future employers."

Discussion on question by Richard: Di…

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....

Peter Mortensen

Feb 11, 2022 09:23

Obligatory xkcd (303).

Discussion on question by cocomac: Ho…

Imported from a comment discussion on cseducators.stackexchang...

Peter Mortensen

Jan 7, 2022 22:58

In some languages, there is the even more obscure XOR method. XOR swap algorithm.

Discussion on question by BCLC: There…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...

Peter Mortensen

Nov 25, 2021 17:54

What do you mean by "re" in "In re the term"? The law term?

Discussion on question by Red bel: Ca…

Imported from a comment discussion on academia.stackexchange.c...

Peter Mortensen

Oct 28, 2021 03:29

@jamesqf: Some will allow adding new entries to the dictionary on the fly. The false positives can very quickly be reduced this way. It works very well in Firefox, and it doesn't autocorrect. It can also be turned off on the fly (for a lot of text it can become quite CPU intensive). For instance, while I wrote this comment, I added "autocorrect" to the dictionary (and to my list).

Discussion on question by bocorwen: H…

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....

Peter Mortensen

Oct 23, 2021 08:46

It isn't proper etiquette. Meta information like this belongs in comments.

Discussion on question by PyRsquared:…

Imported from a comment discussion on bicycles.stackexchange.c...

Peter Mortensen

Oct 19, 2021 15:35

Re "anywhere other than Amsterdam": Nooooo!

Discussion on question by LCIII: This…

Imported from a comment discussion on outdoors.stackexchange.c...

Peter Mortensen

Sep 17, 2021 19:26

@Martin F: Urtica dioica requires a lot of nutrients. It is definitely not a pioneer species. That could be a factor. Also, they seem to prefer damp (but not waterlogged) and half shade conditions (I am not sure about that - that could be a consequence of competition with other species). Conversely, an area dominated by it is an indication of an overabundance of nutrients. (Some trivia: our national butterfly, Aglais urticae, take part of its name (not in Latin) from Urtica dioica - as its larvae feed on it)

Peter Mortensen

Sep 17, 2021 19:26

@Martin F: Urtica dioica requires a lot of nutrients. They are definitely not a pioneer species. That could be a factor. Also, they seem to prefer damp (but not waterlogged) and half shade conditions (I am not sure about that - that could be a consequence of competition with other species). Conversely, an area dominated by it is an indication of an overabundance of nutrients.

Discussion on answer by Justin Thyme …

Imported from a comment discussion on worldbuilding.stackexcha...

Peter Mortensen

Aug 30, 2021 04:29

Re "you are so far up, the additional delta-v to reach escape velocity is far less than on the surface": Can you quantify some of that (e.g., with an example)? Including how long the space elevator should be. (In your answer, not here in comments. And without "Edit:", "Update:", or similar - the answer should appear as if it was written today.)

Discussion on question by Aadhavan: W…

Imported from a comment discussion on politics.stackexchange.c...

Peter Mortensen

Jul 17, 2021 19:11

@alephzero: That is too cynical. Not all places are corrupt.

Discussion on answer by hasoart: Does…

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...

Peter Mortensen

Jul 8, 2021 15:24

Re "the mirror is 100 meters": 100 meters what? The diameter/side length of the mirror? The distance to the mirror? Please respond by editing your answer, not here in comments (without "Edit:", "Update:", or similar - the answer should appear as if it was written today).

Discussion on answer by Peter: Why is…

Imported from a comment discussion on politics.stackexchange.c...

Peter Mortensen

Jun 5, 2021 20:06

Re "consistently invests significant resources into preventing or disrupting all discussion and investigations": In what way? Are you referring to something in particular? Can you elaborate a little bit (preferably in your answer)?

Discussion on question by CodeAlt: Ho…

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...

Peter Mortensen

Jun 2, 2021 11:09

Stress in what context? Continuum mechanics?

Discussion on question by Universal_l…

Imported from a comment discussion on chess.stackexchange.com/...

Peter Mortensen

May 11, 2021 12:25

What do you mean by "we only rest adults playing" (seems incomprehensible)?

Discussion on question by CodePanda: …

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....

Peter Mortensen

Apr 28, 2021 23:00

Re "I also feel very sleepy": Do you mean tired/fatigued (there is a difference)? In any case, can you add information about this to the question (without "Edit:", "Update:", or similar - the question should appear as if it was written today)? - like when it started (e.g., before this job, from the start in this job, or after some time in this job). It may or may not be due to an undiagnosed illness, independent of the job situation.

Discussion on question by user3295: H…

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....

Peter Mortensen

Apr 13, 2021 10:33

What is the "unorthodox Scrum"? Can you reveal some of it?

Discussion on answer by ALX23z: C++ i…

Imported from a comment discussion on codereview.stackexchange...

Peter Mortensen

Mar 29, 2021 16:10

Re "the site you read it from tends to have lots of bad/amateur articles": The English is not great either. For example, lots of articles (indefinite and definite) are left out, and there is weird (or inconsistent) capitalisation of nouns.

Discussion on answer by Italian Philo…

Imported from a comment discussion on politics.stackexchange.c...

Peter Mortensen

Feb 28, 2021 22:47

Re "USSR to North Korea to China": You forgot Cambodia (while not in absolute numbers, certainly the worst in relative terms)

Discussion on answer by Acccumulation…

Imported from a comment discussion on money.stackexchange.com/...

Peter Mortensen

Jan 30, 2021 12:56

Perhaps address the claim of institutional investors? I thought it was hedge fonds.

Discussion on question by Student0284…

Imported from a comment discussion on academia.stackexchange.c...

Peter Mortensen

Dec 30, 2020 03:10

Wiktionary entry: "1. (mathematics, logic) if and only if; used to show that the truth values of two statements are the same. 2. Obsolete spelling of if."