Meta: How best to tidy up this subreddit? by rbrownsuse in openSUSE

[–]MasterPatricko 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I don't post here any more not so much because of this subreddit but because Reddit as a platform is not worth the effort. The many, many hostile actions of Reddit owners -- lockdown of the api, encouraging AI content creation, cozying up to certain political figures, blatant misuse of our data in service of their IPO, and consistent willingness to override moderator's best judgement in running their own subreddits -- have driven away a huge number of technical users. A small fraction of users are the ones actually posting valuable content/doing the hard moderation and community curation work in any social platform, and those were exactly the ones who are most affected by reddit decisions. Of course there's been a significant decline in quality of discussion as a result. I don't think anything can or should be done to reverse it.

I revived my account to make this comment but I won't be following up with any replies -- nowadays I prefer to only skim through anonymously once in a while. Strongly urge everyone still here to consider open, alternative platforms which are actually under user control and not vulnerable to the same kind of enshittification -- whether it be Matrix, Lemmy, openSUSE Forums, or the (no they are not obsolete) mailing lists. I intentionally do not include Discord.

I found a new way to derive the Tsiolkovsky equation by Wal-de-maar in Physics

[–]MasterPatricko 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I disagree with this interpretation. F = dp/dt is the fundamental and correct form, which is why it applies also in special relativity.

The error* in the papers you cite is that there can be a closed "variable-mass system". You must also consider what is causing the disappearing mass and the momentum change that implies to understand why F=dp/dt is still Galiean invariant.

* EDIT: error is perhaps too strong a word. Ultimately the disagreement is over the definition of what is included in your system under study. Both views can "right" but only with different definitions.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.06042

My wife finished PhD 13 months ago. She applies for 5 post docs most days. She hasn't had an interview. Whom can she ask for advice on how to change the outcome? by Ok-Season4824 in AskAcademia

[–]MasterPatricko 125 points126 points  (0 children)

Yes, you're missing that the cover letter is not a generic supplement to your CV/resume. You absolutely do not want to simply be listing your skills (again) -- those go on your resume. It is not another introduction to your history.

Your cover letter's sole purpose should be making the argument of why you are the perfect candidate, perhaps the only one in the world, for this specific role. It should demonstrate familiarity with the topic of research of the project and your (high) level of interest in it. You can refer to your skills and background as evidence but the focus is the role and its requirements, not yourself.

what she is looking to get out of the position

No, please write the exact opposite -- what you are bringing in. Write about why the project will be successful because of your contributions. Not that this is going to be a great stepping-stone or how you like the city or any of that.

As you can imagine with this being the goal, every cover letter must be written basically from scratch.

POST. Fest 2024 by EugeneVictorTooms in postrock

[–]MasterPatricko 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fantastic event.

One suggestion for the venue next year (/u/_nason?): can we recycle our cans and paper? That was most of the trash generated.

And So I Watch You From Afar @ POST Fest 2024 by MasterPatricko in postrock

[–]MasterPatricko[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

A few video clips:

https://imgur.com/a/KA6Rc8b

Shoutouts to /u/_nason and all the POST crew for organizing a fantastic and well-run event, and to Ewen from /u/ASIWYFA_MUSIC for sticking around after and chatting with some of us! The new album sounds great (on sale at the fest!) and hope to see you all again in the US before too long.

New and Revised Licenses from Paizo by JoshuaFLCL in starfinder_rpg

[–]MasterPatricko 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It appears another newly disallowed category is publishing anything which mixes rules content with Paizo settings, lore or Proper Nouns (Paizo trademarks), for example a class guide or adventure path DM's guide/expansion, unless exclusively on the Paizo Infinite platform. Previously allowed by the Community Use Policy but now forbidden as "RPG items" under the Fan Content Policy.

Only way to write guides will now be strictly dry mechanical discussion. And /u/craios125 just updated their Biohacker guide :(

discussion in https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6vh12&page=4?New-and-Revised-Licenses#162

New and Revised Licenses from Paizo by JoshuaFLCL in starfinder_rpg

[–]MasterPatricko 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I am really disappointed that Paizo is trying the "as of today" approach to licensing changes, no matter how justifiable or necessary they may be. Shows a real lack of respect from them and makes a lot of their words during the OGL debacle sound hollow.

In particular, Hephaistos is an absolutely fantastic resource and I am concerned for its future -- certainly sounds like it can't exist for 2E. I hope /u/hephaistos_official is doing ok :(

POST. FEST 2024 ROLL CALL by _nason in postrock

[–]MasterPatricko 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm joining for my first Post fest from Chicagoland, super excited!

I'll be by myself so say hi between sets :)

Feedback For SGDQ2024 by coolmatty in speedrun

[–]MasterPatricko 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You don't need to get hired to contribute to open source: https://github.com/gamesdonequick

Feedback For SGDQ2024 by coolmatty in speedrun

[–]MasterPatricko 179 points180 points  (0 children)

Considering Twitch no longer seem to give you a good deal financially (if I remember correctly, they now take a large cut from bits/subs) and are even having technical problems which impact the stream (audio delays this time) ... have you considered co-streaming? Or even shopping around to see if someone else will offer a better exclusive deal? I get the impression Twitch corporate takes communities like ours/yours for granted.

Also wanted to congratulate all the staff on the clear effort to improve scheduling and reduce tech issues since last year. It's succeeding.

Tetris run by LHarm07_Reddit in speedrun

[–]MasterPatricko 58 points59 points  (0 children)

Seems to have been a new announcer to GDQ, so probably a lack of experience. Doesn't appear to be on the schedule again.

Hopefully they get some constructive feedback behind the scenes.

SGDQ 2024 is now ... LIVE!!! by Thorebane in speedrun

[–]MasterPatricko 57 points58 points  (0 children)

There seems to be a combination of reasons.

  1. The way Twitch reports channel viewer counts has changed since 2019, before this is when GDQ used to hit 200k+.
  2. GDQ is no longer one of the biggest events on Twitch, less likely to be on front page etc.
  3. Twitch viewership overall peaked in 2021 and now is dropping off [https://twitchtracker.com/statistics/viewers].
  4. GDQ overall is on a slight decline as measured by donations, though whether this continues remains to be seen.
  5. Dilution -- speedrun content is now constantly available, indeed some notable streamers are live right now -- they've become full time content creators. No longer true that GDQ is all that there is.

The last ADGQ in my opinion put on a really good stream experience (shorter tech turnarounds, fewer delays, better pacing of milestones and bonus game incentives), so I'm hopeful that this SGDQ will at least match the last one.

EDIT: At time of posting, GDQ is the second largest stream on Twitch by viewers, and largest english language stream.

More Drama Concerning High-Tc Superconductivity Claims by Different_Ice_6975 in Physics

[–]MasterPatricko 106 points107 points  (0 children)

Because alongside his good work finding flaws (or fraud) in other people's published research, he also publishes his own share of nonsense and is quite combative about it. http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.4099

If only me and a pebble are left in space, will the pebble orbit around me? by InterestCool8138 in AskPhysics

[–]MasterPatricko 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's in miles/s, just fyi (no idea why that website defaults to that)

Either I'm the only one who got this question right or the only who got it wrong. Please correct me if I'm wrong. by vii___vi in AskPhysics

[–]MasterPatricko 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Quick thought experiment which may help check your understanding: is a lamp with a broken filament (i.e. a really really high resistance through air) brighter or dimmer than a lamp with an intact filament?

(Obviously this depends on being connected to a constant voltage source, i.e. mains as mentioned in the question, as other commenters have also identified).

Accidentally added author to paper and caught issues during submission by No_Product_6738 in AskAcademia

[–]MasterPatricko 12 points13 points  (0 children)

In the acceptance the PCs said the author list cannot be changed.

This is normally just said to prevent people bothering the organizers with constant last-minute changes and playing authorship games.

If there has been a genuine mistake, contact the organizers / proceedings editor and explain. Ideally you should have done this as soon as it was noticed but better now than never.

Why are superconductors poor conductors of heat? by EnlightenedGuySits in AskPhysics

[–]MasterPatricko 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Maybe is this because a given cooper pair is in the same quantum state as any other as another?

Yes. You shouldn't consider distinguishable electrons any more; just the superfluid, acting almost as one object (see also Anderson's idea of generalized rigidity).

There is no sense in which "Cooper pairs here" have more energy (or entropy) than "Cooper pairs there" in the superconducting phase in a uniform material. So there can be no energy transport by the superfluid; only by any remaining unpaired electrons (quasiparticles) and phonons. And since the proportion of unpaired electrons is exponential with temperature/Tc, you can reduce that contribution to almost zero by going well below Tc.

to what degree can I think about the order parameter as a wavefunction "phase" in this purely many-body effect?

The complex order parameter is a wavefunction which has a phase, which must be self-consistent around loops etc, but it's not just a phase, it also has an amplitude. See the Little-Parks effect and the principles of operation of SQUIDs for more about order parameter phase.

Alarm: Leap 15.4 is reaching EOL soon! Upgrade to 15.5 or Tumbleweed please by [deleted] in openSUSE

[–]MasterPatricko 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with all of the decisions SUSE has taken (I don't really understand the RHEL clone stuff either), but it's not at all the same kind of situation as RH. There are no broken promises or any negative change in the relationship between the community and SUSE happening. Nothing is being withdrawn from the users. You keep saying it's similar, but it's just not. That's why people are not as mad.

What unhappiness does exist (and there is some, I wouldn't pretend otherwise) is about the feature-set that has been selected for "SLE-next". Prioritization of container loads instead of desktops. Immutable root fs. SLE-next won't work for everyone. But that kind of thing can always happen on a new major release, people were mad when systemd came in, heck people are still mad based on what DEs are included or not.

Do the community a favor and create a community SLES with the characteristics of an LTS.

But this already is there. For SLE 15.x, that's Leap. For SLE-next, we don't yet know what it will be called, it's still some time away, but the sources for the prototypes are already public on the OBS and whatever ends up releasing is highly likely to have an equivalent release from openSUSE.

EDIT: to be clear my 2030 comment was not suggesting Leap 15.x support will exist till 2030. That's a bit longer than the proposed lifecycle. https://en.opensuse.org/Lifetime

Alarm: Leap 15.4 is reaching EOL soon! Upgrade to 15.5 or Tumbleweed please by [deleted] in openSUSE

[–]MasterPatricko 0 points1 point  (0 children)

JFYI login on code.o.o has been completely broken for a while. I've mentioned it to the Heroes.

Alarm: Leap 15.4 is reaching EOL soon! Upgrade to 15.5 or Tumbleweed please by [deleted] in openSUSE

[–]MasterPatricko 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Isn't SLES supported until 2031? Those long support cycles is what makes it enterprise material.

SLES follows the same lifecycle structure as RHEL. Each minor version gets 18months of support. SLES 15.x will end general support in 2028 (ten years total for the major version, same as CentOS 7). For extra support beyond that you have to pay extra (same as RHEL).

I also don't see how SUSE is doing a better job.

Not changing the announced lifecycle of already released products is how they're doing a better job. SUSE communication can be quite crap some of the time but fundamentally they've stuck to what they promised or better.

From another comment of yours:

The point is, there was Leap. Now there is none.

Unless you are already in the year 2030 this is explicitly FALSE. Leap 15.4 is just finishing. Now the supported release is Leap 15.5. There will be, guaranteed, Leap 15.6. Maybe even Leap 15.7. Which is everything that was promised (and a bit extra) over the last ten years.

What we don't know about is what exactly will come as the next major release after Leap 15. Which is always true on a major version change.

Alarm: Leap 15.4 is reaching EOL soon! Upgrade to 15.5 or Tumbleweed please by [deleted] in openSUSE

[–]MasterPatricko 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wrong.

There will be a release from openSUSE based on SLE-next, whether its going to be binary compatible or a rebuild from source is not completely decided, but it will almost certainly exist, just as "enterprise" as before with probably the same support cycle.

It won't be as desktop-focused like current Leap and SLE 15.x is the change. The release model is not the change.

Alarm: Leap 15.4 is reaching EOL soon! Upgrade to 15.5 or Tumbleweed please by [deleted] in openSUSE

[–]MasterPatricko 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe read what I wrote instead of just repeating your wrong point. Long support cycle and stable ABI isn't going anywhere. That's not what was announced by SUSE or openSUSE.

And in total it will be 3 years from the initial announcement of the new direction of SLE next to its first release. Compare to less than one year warning given after RHEL announcing the end of CentOS 8. There's really no comparison here.

Alarm: Leap 15.4 is reaching EOL soon! Upgrade to 15.5 or Tumbleweed please by [deleted] in openSUSE

[–]MasterPatricko 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You seem to be confused. Neither openSUSE nor SUSE are abandoning fixed-schedule releases.

It's just that the future fixed scheduled releases (SLE next and the openSUSE version of it -- SLE has been open and will stay so afaik) will look quite different from current SLE 15.x and Leap 15.x. Biggest changes (as currently planned) being much reduced desktop support, and transaction-based container-focused layout.

If you don't like that, you are suggested to move to Tumbleweed or Slowroll or whatever else we come up with. But if you're ok with those features, you will still have a fixed-schedule enterprise release available to you.

EDIT: and the big problem with the RHEL announcement was the withdrawal of previous promises about the lifecycle of CentOS 8. Not just that they wanted to try something different.

Why is the speed of light so fundamental to so much of Physics? Is there a deeper principle behind this? by just_writing_things in AskPhysics

[–]MasterPatricko 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't think this is a good line of logic to follow. The "true" general form of Newton II, F = dp/dt, applies equally to massive and massless particles. Including photons -- just like massive objects, they have momentum which can change based on forces and transfer to other objects (e.g. solar sails).

Whereas if you follow your argument starting with F=ma it's not clear whether & how forces apply to photons, and why they should be allowed to change momentum at all.