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 Discussion on question by user2741831…

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leftaroundabout
Feb 22 15:51
@Graham I hope you're wrong about "no company would go to those lengths". It's not implausible for some software project to be targetted for backdoor insertion, possibly as part of a larger campaign. The software in question may be quite innocuous but could still be valuable for the attacker because other systems depend on it in subtle ways. Cf. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor Not saying this directly applies to the OP, but for sure it's not a bad idea to err on the side of paranoia in regards to code repositories.
 

 Discussion on question by Miss Unders…

Imported from a comment discussion on space.stackexchange.com/...
leftaroundabout
Dec 8, 2024 07:57
@SethR yes. Specifically, the unique opportunity was the Grand Tour; the opportunity was unique in the sense that one spacecraft could visit all of the outer planets. It happened to be also a good opportunity to catapult the spacecraft out of the solar system, but not uniquely good in that regard.
 

 Discussion on answer by alphabet: Is …

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...
leftaroundabout
Mar 27, 2024 16:34
I would add that it can readily be explained why many speakers pronounce "stoo" rather like "sdoo": the latter, i.e. /sdʊ/ allows leaving the lips in a rounded shape the whole time, whereas /stʊ/ requires rapidly going back and forth between round and stretched lips to make the t stand out clearly. Absent a real necessity (which there isn't, because of the lack of distinction between "sd" and "st") this kind of movement is routinely optimised away by daily speech laziness. It has nothing to do with aspiration, at any rate.
 

 Discussion on answer by Jörg W Mittag…

Imported from a comment discussion on cseducators.stackexchang...
leftaroundabout
Mar 11, 2024 20:23
@ScottRowe I think I agree with you point, but "Programming is why we have computers" - is it, though? I think in reality is closer to there being a chicken-and-egg situation between computers and their programming. As computation hardware changes over time, programming languages adapt to make use of it, e.g. the current boom of Python in combination with tensor-processing frameworks has much to do with the fact that this is an easy way to exploit the performance of a GPU. (Of course the deep-learning use case factors in too.)
 

 Discussion on question by AbysmalMath…

Imported from a comment discussion on math.stackexchange.com/q...
leftaroundabout
Feb 11, 2024 21:46
@Stef ...which is an even better answer!
leftaroundabout
Feb 11, 2024 21:46
@Stef I'd say this is the best answer given so far, perhaps you should post it as such.
 

 Discussion on answer by Wolfgang Bang…

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leftaroundabout
Dec 1, 2023 22:42
Without references, I'm not convinced it's even true that people with a complete PhD earn statistically more than those with an unfinished one, because many the former proceed with a purely academic career whereas a significant number of the latter don't finish due to being "bought out" of the PhD programme halfway through, by a company paying vastly more than any academic position. Not that this is necessarily relevant for the OP scenario.
 

 Discussion on question by jng224: How…

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leftaroundabout
Nov 22, 2023 05:21
Have you considered/tried running in the morning instead of evening? This can have quite a psychological advantage because it will get lighter and lighter as you run, instead of darker and darker. Of course it does require more discipline to actually get out so early...
 

 Discussion on answer by PiedPiper: Wh…

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leftaroundabout
Oct 14, 2023 09:54
@Lecifer the perfect unpitched ones don't repeat at all. A hand clap is too short, just a single transient; very well-dampened bass drum is so slow that the same argument applies. For others like maracas (and arguably certain cymbals) the sound can be quite long, but the waveform is totally random with no repitition, basically white noise. Snare is a rather odd case because most of the distinctive slam-sound is entirely non-repetitive, but then you get a bunch of longer-ringing partials that are pretty well pitched.
leftaroundabout
Oct 14, 2023 09:54
@Lecifer the fundamental is actually not necessary. By periodicity I mean simply that the signal approximately repeats for at least like ten times or so every 1/f seconds. For phase-lock pitched instruments like winds it repeats almost exactly as long as the player wishes; for percussive pitched instruments it repeats lots of times though each cycle has a bit of a different waveform; for "borderline pitched" instruments it maybe repeats only a few times or only with a generous squint. And for some instruments it just doesn't repeat at all.
leftaroundabout
Oct 14, 2023 09:54
@PiedPiper not really. To talk of pitch you need to have at least some periodicity in the signal, which these instruments don't. Sure, their Fourier transform will still show some kind of frequency distribution, but has little to do with pitch (note that e.g. a flute and a trumpet playing the same note have completely different distributions, though it's the same pitch).
leftaroundabout
Oct 14, 2023 09:54
Examples of essentially perfect unpitched instruments: closed hi-hat, handclap, maracas, Mahler hammer.
 

 Discussion on question by owc979793: …

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leftaroundabout
Sep 26, 2023 20:56
@JakubKonieczny actually math should go between \( \) or \[ \] in LaTeX, the older $ and $$ are plain TeX. But, you illustrate your own point in the sense that even this incorrect knowledge is sufficient for producing acceptable documents...
 

 Discussion on question by Hashim Aziz…

Imported from a comment discussion on langdev.stackexchange.co...
leftaroundabout
Sep 23, 2023 18:41
Who needs a multiplication operator, anyway...
 

 Discussion on answer by Nosajimiki: D…

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leftaroundabout
Sep 10, 2023 17:18
@Nosajimiki "That fact that we only have 1 example is evidence that a lot of different forms don't work" - sure. But it doesn't tell anything about the forms that might have worked but happen to not have been explored by evolution. Evolution isn't a deterministic algorithm that finds global maxima, it's a massively stochastic algorithm that finds local maxima. It took more than 3bn years for it to come up with intelligence in humanoid shape, it could as well have taken 5bn whilst some other design got more lucky. Not to mention that even global maxima could be very different other planets.
leftaroundabout
Sep 10, 2023 17:18
We can't discuss all the points here, but let's pick the premise that humanoids are the ideal general tool users. I disagree: our arms are a compromise between accuracy, speed and force. That just about works, but to really be effective we often need clunky aids like vises and motors. (Although e.g. our legs are way stronger than the arms, but aren't positioned suitably to be used for tool work!) A creature with more appendages, all evolved towards crafts rather than walking through the savanna, could be much more skilled.
leftaroundabout
Sep 10, 2023 17:18
Can't really downvote such a comprehensive and well-written answer, but many of the points are way more anthropo-biased than you make them out to be. Symmetry - turbots? Aquatic/fire - chemistry can be developed in many ways; Fingers: lifeforms with more cooperation might not need them (extreme case: ant colony); Arm count: I don't see the case against many arms "compromising strength"; octopuses are pretty strong; Heads: don't need it if there are enough eyes on the arms; Load-carrying: again remember ants, or water buoyancy; Natural defenses: why not - if the predators are even spikier?
 

 Discussion on answer by Harper - Rein…

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leftaroundabout
Aug 23, 2023 17:09
@rtaft as other comments have remarked, that's generally not what's going on. Bumblebutt isn't paying for part of the airfare, the airline itself is doing it, and only because there are competing flights that the customer would have chosen otherwise. If we're going to use loaded words, I'd suggest this: the airline bribed the customer into not-flying-with-their-competitor. Is it stealing to take a bribe and not follow up on the associated demands? Perhaps. But the unethical bit isn't the stealing, it's the dealing with someone who hands out bribes in the first place.
 

 Discussion on answer by Steve: Does 3…

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leftaroundabout
Jul 28, 2023 15:54
The problem isn't that SQL is complicated, it's that it's implicit and obscure about the complications. The sane thing would be to have a dedicated way of dealing with nullability here, as modern languages generally support with a Maybe / Option type. That would make the expression a bit more verbose, arguably more complicated, but in a way that usefully guides the programmer to where the complicated stuff happens. E.g. case liftA2 (>) a b of { Just True -> a; _ -> b }
 

 Discussion on answer by Alexis King: …

Imported from a comment discussion on langdev.stackexchange.co...
leftaroundabout
Jul 22, 2023 19:15
Yes, you could tone down the headlines a bit. As you write yourself, the classicists' research actually yielded a lot of highly useful stuff, just not AI. (Stuff that IMHO is much better than AI...)
 

 Discussion on answer by Philip Kendal…

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leftaroundabout
Apr 22, 2023 15:12
...That's why IMO a distinction must be made between when a human learns and bases work on it, and when an AI does it. The distinction can't be deduced from existing laws and therefore must be an axiom (i.e. politicians should write new laws that explicitly say there's a difference between humans or AI doing the same task).
leftaroundabout
Apr 22, 2023 15:12
@user3067860 “If a human writer writes genre fiction they probably learned how to write that genre by reading lots of existing books” – yes, and there's no escaping the fact that AI can do something that is equivalent (or will soon be able to) as far as the information is concerned. But it's still different in its impact, because as long as a human does the learning-and-reproducing than there's a significant limit on both how soon the (non-)-derivates can be produced, how much such material can be produced, and how cheaply it can be done.
 

 Discussion on answer by 1muflon1: Why…

Imported from a comment discussion on economics.stackexchange....
leftaroundabout
Dec 5, 2022 20:58
@bracco23 it may be one other factor, but I doubt it has had a large influence. Chips are among those high-USD/kg-density commodities that manufacturers may choose to ship three times around the globe between various stages of the assembly process, if there is but a tiny cost advantage to be had in each stage.
 

 Discussion on question by Avenger: Ti…

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leftaroundabout
Nov 1, 2022 11:44
@Martha if a term is used by a significant number of people with a meaning differing from the received one, then it is (by definition) ambiguous. You could perhaps make a point about “correct” if there was a governing body that defines 12 PM to mean noon, but English has no such governing body. The closest thing in this context would be NIST, which specifically recommends against writing 12 PM.
leftaroundabout
Nov 1, 2022 11:44
This is actually a great question. The prevalence of always-online devices has made it kind of easy to miss that there even was a time change, and wonder why the sun is suddenly setting so early. — Unrelated remark: please don't write 12 PM, it's ambiguous and the most common interpretation (as 12 noon, like you meant) doesn't actually make any sense.
 

 Discussion on answer by Italian Philo…

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leftaroundabout
Sep 20, 2022 08:00
When talking of upsides of state-owned oil companies, I find Petronas or Statoil/Equinor rather more convincing examples than Saudi Aramco.
 

 Discussion on answer by jwh20: Is it …

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....
leftaroundabout
May 23, 2022 19:12
@Fax well, it is mandatory to register when you nominally take your minimum PTO. In my experience nobody cares much if I'm in the office during that time – basically same as when no PTO was registered, like, when there's a few days unexpected good weather in Bergen in autumn and it's completely fine to just take leave spontaneously. So effectively all this is also just an unlimited-PTO situation: it's up to you how much you actually work. (Caveats: I'm in academia, it's probably different in the private sector. And when I'm in the office in July, nobody else is there who would notice...)
 

 Discussion on answer by BradV: Why do…

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leftaroundabout
May 13, 2022 07:35
@Christian not quite, generally speaking. 100 kg saved on the first stage rocket structure would more realistically be only like 10 kg more you can shoot to space. (Basically, 100 kg saved on the first stage means you get 100 kg more fuel into the second stage, which does allow the second stage to carry a heavier payload to the same orbit, but nowhere near 100 kg heavier.
 

 Discussion on question by Taw: Why do…

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leftaroundabout
Nov 8, 2021 05:56
@yarchik of course you can't be 100% sure. Technically speaking, you can't be 100% sure that a great submission wasn't actually produced by monkeys randomly mashing the keyboard. But if a sizeable segment is verbatim the same as an older source, then this is enough as proof of plagiarism, because at some point 99.999...=100 in every meaningful way.
 

 Discussion on question by ProfessorWi…

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leftaroundabout
Nov 1, 2021 14:27
@sunnymoon there's no need to link any party here to fascism. The problem with politics (particularly US) nowadays is precisely that any difference in personal values is turned into a full cultural war, and the failure to distinguish these mere preferences from objective truths. There are things that are scientifically proven (e.g. that the vaccines provide excellent protection against severe Covid), and then there are things were different people simply have legitimately different opinions.
leftaroundabout
Oct 30, 2021 20:48
“Although current vaccines remain effective at preventing severe disease and deaths from COVID-19, our findings suggest that vaccination alone is not sufficient to prevent all transmission of the delta variant in the household setting, where exposure is close and prolonged.”
leftaroundabout
Oct 30, 2021 20:46
Again, smallpox and polio aren't comparable because there the vaccines actually drastically reduced transmission, not just severity of illness. That's unfortunately not the case with COVID vaccines. thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00648-4/…
leftaroundabout
Oct 30, 2021 20:33
@Buffy that argument would only work if the vaccines actually had a chance of eradicating the virus, but that's clearly illusory. COVID will continue to mutate, and it will do so regardless of whether 80% or 98% of the population is vaccinated. (In fact, it strikes me that with the high vaccination coverage we're putting extra evolutionary pressure on the virus to break through the vaccines...)
leftaroundabout
Oct 30, 2021 19:15
I don't find it very prudent to compare COVID to polio, nor to compare COVIDiotic governments to individuals that refuse to vaccinate. A main difference is that COVID vaccinations mostly protect yourself against severe illness, but aren't actually that great at preventing transmissions, and certainly have no hope of eradicating COVID. As such, refusing the vaccine may still be idiotic, but it is mostly a personal decision – definitely unlike a government that sacrificed its citicens.
 

 Discussion on question by Eddy96: Rea…

Imported from a comment discussion on worldbuilding.stackexcha...
leftaroundabout
Oct 28, 2021 16:18
xkcd.com/893
 

 Discussion on answer by sds: Is it tr…

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leftaroundabout
Sep 17, 2021 09:06
Um... a statement like “there was no slavery in an agricultural society X” is definitely not akin to “there exists a flat (as opposed to spherical) planet Y”, which is not just unlikely but, for all we know, physically impossible. Also, that's an existential statement, not one about any particular subject, which makes quite a difference for questions of whose burden the proof is. If anything, the statement is akin to “exoplanet Y which we just discovered – a gas planet – has no significant magnetic field”.
 

 Discussion on answer by Dan Romik: Ha…

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leftaroundabout
Jun 30, 2021 21:23
“actually it is the exact opposite, the burden of convincing people that the proof is correct lies fully with the person claiming to have a proof” – that's a bit of an exaggeration, isn't it? Arguably it should be this way, but how would this work – anyone publishing a paper needs to have a compiling implementation in Coq? In practice, reviewing a maths paper does involve checking whether there are technical errors in any deduction step.
 

 Discussion on question by JonathanRee…

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leftaroundabout
Jun 4, 2021 12:47
@Darren more to the point, in climbing it is easy to go wrong in a way that has a high likelihood of killing you. “If you get it wrong you can die”, as such, also applies to lots of other activities that people typically do without having received any formal instruction. E.g. skateboarding, mountainbiking and backpacking.
 

 Discussion on question by CodeAlt: Ho…

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...
leftaroundabout
Jun 2, 2021 11:09
I was going through the definition of cherry. I came to know that cherries are stone fruit. When I checked the net about stone fruit, I came to know that it is neither an apple nor an orange. So how can a fruit be neither apple nor orange? — That said, as GiorgioP mentioned, tensors are in fact vectors.
 

 Discussion on answer by mins: WHY do …

Imported from a comment discussion on music.stackexchange.com/...
leftaroundabout
Apr 28, 2021 14:36
You could do that, but it's just not at all how the harmonics of a guitar string arise, which was after all the context for which the question was phrased. I suppose it might be more relevant for e.g. sitar, though.
leftaroundabout
Apr 28, 2021 14:30
Yes but it's completely irrelevant what the result on a sinusoidal is. Were would you get a sinusoidal from in the first place?
leftaroundabout
Apr 28, 2021 14:30
This answer contains some awesome work, but user1079505 is right: nonlinearity is far from the only, or even the most important, reason for why harmonics happen. The harmonics of an (acoustic) guitar have almost nothing to do with nonlinearity. In fact quite guitar-like sounds can be generated by a FVM simulation that is by design exactly linear.
 

 Discussion on answer by leftaroundabo…

Imported from a comment discussion on matheducators.stackexcha...
leftaroundabout
Jan 19, 2021 20:16
I did take the question holistically, by explicitly making uncertainty part of the calculation. You didn't. It doesn't help the students the least bit to just tell them “real world results should be rounded” without explaining how and why. The easiest, clearest and most reliable way to do that would be to introduce them to explicit uncertainty propagation, which is both a subject that would fit perfectly well in a maths course and is the way it's really done in science. Not sure about engineering; it should be done there as well.
leftaroundabout
Jan 19, 2021 20:16
[I'm not a particular fan of that analogy because I happen to prefer natural plants to cultivated flowers, and – believe it or not – I also prefer physics to maths and Van Halen to Mozart, but I also recognise the value of having both “pure” and “messy” domains.]
leftaroundabout
Jan 19, 2021 20:16
@PrimeMover I you properly read my answer you would have noticed that this is not at all what I'm saying. If mathematics is a walled garden, then it is one we use to grow up beautiful but fragile plants that we then plant in that messy real world, where they wouldn't have been able to survive initially. Some of the plants will never leave the garden, but may still have descendants that eventually do.
leftaroundabout
Jan 19, 2021 20:16
Ok, so you'd better leave then, no? –Seriously, why do you even ask a question if you don't care to consider answers that contradict your pre-conceived opinion? Maths just isn't science or engineering. It's greatly useful for both, and in many instances that's what makes it so exciting, but fundamentally it stands on its own, a pure art unstained by real-world issues like measurements.
leftaroundabout
Jan 19, 2021 20:16
...Now, you're perfectly entitled to your opinion that maths is thus boring, like you'd be entitled to your opinion that, say, Mozart sucks because his music doesn't feature electric guitars. But that does not entitle you to crash into a chamber concert, storming the stage with a squealing amplifier and insisting that this is the real thing.
leftaroundabout
Jan 19, 2021 20:16
In maths you have the luxury of not having to deal with measurement uncertainty at all, because values are exact by definition. So no, you're simply wrong as far as “doing mathematics” is concerned. Now, applying maths, specifically in non-science contexts where the uncertainties aren't explicit, that's another matter – and certainly that's what such school-maths problems are intended to teach. However, the actual part of judging the uncertainties just is not maths. It fits in an engineering course, yes, not in a maths one. Calculating with specified uncertainties, that would be maths.
leftaroundabout
Jan 19, 2021 20:16
@PrimeMover the point is that the uncertainty should be specified, not left to guesswork from the number of digits that were written out.
leftaroundabout
Jan 19, 2021 20:16
@DavidZ it's not a universal convention, but it does seem to be used by most big-scale experimental physics projects nowadays. It is also the form in which NIST lists physical constants, e.g. the vacuum impedance is $376.730 313 668(57)\: \Omega$.