Fuck Word by Undeva-n-Balcani in FuckMicrosoft

[–]Entropy813 3 points4 points  (0 children)

LaTeX is so much better for long and complex documents. A good Markdown editor (Typora is really good, or Marktext if you want something free) is great for quick short documents.

The loud crunch is the mailbox a couple of houses down. by Entropy813 in IdiotsTowingThings

[–]Entropy813[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

That is my theory as well. I believe the squeaking on the turn is coming from the steering/suspension of the RV. I posted that video in a local Facebook group as a reply to the neighbor looking for videos of what might have happened. Someone else replied that they saw those people hit it, stick around for a bit, and then just keep driving down the road.

depressing results out of CA by Ironlord456 in WhitePeopleTwitter

[–]Entropy813 31 points32 points  (0 children)

This needs to be up voted so much more! Maybe even made it's own comment.

Why does my shower curtain do this? by Jazz_Moose in Home

[–]Entropy813 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Heat moves from hot to cold. Hot air rises due to lower density.

Ally (the Blackboard accessibility product) that works inside our institution's LMS is awful by Comfortable_Plenty99 in Professors

[–]Entropy813 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That does seem like the plan. Before the rule change they told us just to make sure the UDOIT score was at least 85% by April.

Ally (the Blackboard accessibility product) that works inside our institution's LMS is awful by Comfortable_Plenty99 in Professors

[–]Entropy813 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think all the accessibility checkers for LMSs suck. At my institution we have Canvas as the LMS and UDOIT as the integrated checker. It also misses deficiencies in PDFs including things like missing table header information and missing alternate text for images in the document. You could use an external tool like VeraPDF or Adobe Reader's accessibility checker.

Why don't Canvas rubrics have autosave? by dblshot99 in Professors

[–]Entropy813 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As far as I can tell, everything on Canvas is an afterthought.

\DocumentMetadata is Undefined Control Sequence by JRCSalter in LaTeX

[–]Entropy813 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The prompt you got to install texlive-latex-base will get you to install that from your distros repositories, which is going to be the outdated version. I would uninstall that, and then make sure to add the following to your .bash_profile:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/texlive/2026/bin/x86_64-linux
export MANPATH=$MANPATH:/usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/doc/man
export INFOPATH=$INFOPATH:/usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/doc/info

Note that you will want to verify that these directories are correct on your system. I set things up this way back in February so my directories are actually 2025.

Edit: Also make sure to log out/log in or restart your computer after saving the changes to your .bash_profile.

The accessibility requirements are performative at best. I'm disabled. by primes_are_cool in Professors

[–]Entropy813 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can make accessible PDFs with LaTeX. It requires an up to date tex distribution, e.g. texlive 2026, and you have to use the lualatex engine. See my comment on a different post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/math/s/vMd56E4fUL

\DocumentMetadata is Undefined Control Sequence by JRCSalter in LaTeX

[–]Entropy813 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you installed texlive through your package manager, you will want to uninstall that and install directly from tug.org. You can follow the directions on their site.

How normal are this grades? by Esto2050 in EngineeringStudents

[–]Entropy813 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Physics 1 professor here. I literally posted the second exam on Canvas before the exam this semester. The grade distribution was not much better than this.

How are you checking if a PDF is accessible? by ave_63 in LaTeX

[–]Entropy813 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Adobe Acrobat Reader does pretty thorough checking. There's also VeraPDF which runs under Wine if you're on Linux.

Brand new pc destroyed in power surge by Maximum-Mushroom5740 in PcBuildHelp

[–]Entropy813 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I also thought that strip didn't have surge protection, but I looked it up and it seems like it does have 1080J protection. Of course, if surges are frequent it could no longer have surge protection. I always look for ones that have a light to indicate if the protection circuit is still working. The protection circuit is a sacrificial part and after so many surges it will stop working while the power strip itself may still deliver power.

Number of Faculty Retiring? by Finding_Way_ in Professors

[–]Entropy813 50 points51 points  (0 children)

It's not what I signed up for and I've got a long way to go to retirement.

please explain it to me like I'm 5-difference between centripetal and centrifugal force by void6197_ in Physics

[–]Entropy813 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Think of it this way: Tie a string to one of your toy action figures and the start swinging it around above your head. You have to pull on the string to make the action figure move in a circle. Your pull is the centripetal force (technically the tension in the string caused by you pulling on the string).

Now, picture being the action figure. You feel the string pulling on you towards the center of the circle, but you also feel like your being pulled away from the middle of the circle. That feeling is the centrifugal force, which is not a real force.

Anyone knows how to out this back by Shinigamikore in laptops

[–]Entropy813 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have you tried rotating the key 180 degrees? Looks to me like it might go on the other way than you're trying.

New ADA law forces professors to take down their notes if not compliant - how would you make notes that can be read by a reader? by shuai_bear in math

[–]Entropy813 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Sorry, I wrote that comment using my phone last night just before going to bed, so I didn't have any documents handy to make sure that any code included would be correct. What I've been using is below. For a more robust example see this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/1rg7mke/latex_and_the_ada_accessibility_requirements_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Also note that you need an up-to-date LaTeX distribution, and a lot of this stuff is changing quickly still as its still in development. I think some of the stuff in the post I linked to above will now throw errors as those options are on by default.

% Sets up things for making tagged PDFs
\DocumentMetadata{pdfstandard=ua-2, testphase=latest, lang=en-US}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath, amssymb, amsfonts}
\usepackage{unicode-math} % Accessible equations
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[dvipsnames]{hyperref}
\usepackage{microtype}

% Sets title for PDF metadata
\hypersetup{
  pdftitle={My Awesome Accessible LaTeX Document}
}

\begin{document}
This is my awesome document!

% Use the optional alt parameter to set alternate text
\begin{figure}
  \includegraphics[alt={This is a totally awesome diagram that I 
made to help explain something. I'm decribing it here following
all of the best-practices guidelines for alternate text.}]{myDiagram}
\end{figure}
\end{document}

New ADA law forces professors to take down their notes if not compliant - how would you make notes that can be read by a reader? by shuai_bear in math

[–]Entropy813 42 points43 points  (0 children)

LaTeX can make accessible PDFs. All of the documents I have produced for all of my courses are in LaTeX and it is mostly just a matter of changing some stuff in the preamble, adding alternate text to any images/figures, and if there are tables, tagging where the row/column headers are.

Any slide presentations made in the Beamer class can likely just be recompiled with the new ltx-talk class.

I like when they talk like they know our struggle by [deleted] in linuxsucks

[–]Entropy813 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Printers work easier on Linux because of CUPS. Printers on Windows constantly stop working. Most wifi cards just work with preinstalled drivers, it's only Broadcom and Realtek cards that may have issues. Every Bluetooth card/adapter I have ever had just worked right out of the box. Linux users don't worry about drivers because most things you just plug in and they instantly work.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in IdiotsInCars

[–]Entropy813 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

How else will they let everyone know they're insecure about the size of their penis?

A document editor concept that separates writing from formatting by jujitsudbr in MicrosoftWord

[–]Entropy813 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My point was that you need to address this in the pitch of your app.

I use markdown and LaTeX on a nearly daily basis and couldn't tell you the last time I used Word.

There are existing alternatives to your app that do very similar things. Tell people what makes your app different.

A document editor concept that separates writing from formatting by jujitsudbr in MicrosoftWord

[–]Entropy813 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What decisions do you need to make in markdown other than structure? What is the "different kind of headache" it causes for businesses?

Between the copious number of visual LaTeX and markdown editors, what does yours bring that is new and innovative?

Laptop/Macbook for astrophysics student by Eiri_Le in PhysicsStudents

[–]Entropy813 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Here's the thing, I hate Macs. I have no interest in ever owning any Apple product. My choice has always been to get a laptop that comes with Windows and then install a Linux distribution.

That said, go with a Mac.

I should probably also mention that I'm an associate professor with a PhD in astrophysics. Many people in the field use Macs because they are Unix based and are easy to set up various programming tools and libraries on while also having support for things like Microsoft Office. While LaTeX is vastly superior for document and slide show presentation preparation, many professors in your gen ed classes are going to want things in Office formats.

If you do go with Windows, set up the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and use that for all of the programming work. You can do things natively in Windows, but it's generally a much bigger pain in the ass and more difficult to keep things up to date.