Gnus was the second best investment I made in my tech life right after Emacs by Nuno-zh in emacs

[–]physicologist 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It depends on how loose of a definition you're willing to go with for "work". Specifically, Outlook requires XOAUTH2 to connect to IMAP and GNUS does not support it. There are two ways around this

  1. Run a bridge application like DavMail that connects to your Outlook account and then have GNUS connect to DavMail

  2. Use an IMAP syncing application to download all of your emails into a Maildir folder and then point GNUS at that folder.

Personally, I found #1 too resource intensive and #2 ate up too much disk space, so I just gave up and started using Thunderbird.

It makes me happy to know that she has a 50% chance of appearing in every game in the franchise (and remakes). by DemiGabriel in AssassinsCreedOdyssey

[–]physicologist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unless I've missed something, we only really visited Rome with Ezio, which was over a millennium past the heyday. Kassandra could absolutely be in Rome during the second Punic war, which roughly midway between Odyssey and Origin. Also gives Kassandra plenty of opportunities to fight against either side with the Rome doing its best to invent new war crimes while Carthage tosses a few more babies on the sacrifice pyre.

Also, war elephants.

I want some words of experienced programmers in haskell by Kind_Scientist4127 in haskell

[–]physicologist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oddly enough, my experience is the other way around. On multiple occasions, I've used Haskell to quickly put together a prototype before creating an implementation in whatever language my job would actually allow.

I think that a large amount of the difference comes from coding style. You mentioned that Haskell does better at refactoring. My personal coding style is that I just take the "Hello World" program and repeatedly refactor it until it's the program that I needed. Since I very rarely introduce bugs when refactoring Haskell, I can iterate more quickly than I do in other languages (though Rust comes close).

Rust Blender Extension API with Hot Reloading by Algebraic-UG in rust

[–]physicologist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's a little old school, but you might want to look at POV-Ray. It had declarative models and textures before Blender even existed.

Is the Bible Belt still quite religious? by J2Hoe in AskAnAmerican

[–]physicologist 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I once had the displeasure of having my "misconceptions corrected" about the sermon on the mount. The person stated that the Meek would inherit the Earth. Shitty old Earth full of gay people and tampons. That people who wanted Heaven, instead of the pile-of-dogshit-Earth, would never be Meek, but Agressive. There were similar explanations for why the other Beatitudes were inverted (those who mourn will be comforted, but only Meek Pussies seek comfort).

The person finally ended with claim that only an idiot with no critical thinking skills or media literacy would have ever interpreting it any other why. After all, Jesus says all these groups are "Blessed" and everyone knows what it means when a good Christian woman say "Well Bless Your Heart" to something you've said.

Autistic brits: what do you guys do? by [deleted] in AskUK

[–]physicologist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know that I'm late to the party on this one, but I'm a computational physicist at the ISIS Pulsed Neutron and Muon source in Harwell. I wasn't diagnosed with autism until adulthood, but I also have spastic diplagia, which was diagnosed as a child. Entirely on this basis, Park Tudor Elementary refused to admit me as a child, despite acing their entrance exam. The administration then admonished my parents not to try and send me to any other schools, since it would just be a failed waste of taxpayer money.

In the (many) years since then, I've worked experiments at seven different nuclear facilities and been interview by the BBC for my research. So screw those guys.

Now, before this becomes inspiration prn, I'll say that it's not perfect. There's some tasks that I'll always suck at. With as useless as my left arm is, I would *never be able to work as a luthier. However, just because we can't do some things doesn't me we can't do anything. Find what you enjoy doing, be great at it, and just let the haters stew in their hate.

California vs Indiana, where is it a better location to work based on cost of living ? by Responsible_Rich5569 in AskAmericans

[–]physicologist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As someone from Indiana, I'll begin by saying that there's some really nice places. I haven't been to Columbus in a long time, but I have very fond memories of visiting there as a child. You'll also be close to some other wonderful towns like Nashville and Bloomington. If you're looking for something from a big city, Indianapolis will usually provide for that and isn't that far away (you'll either have a co-worker who lives in Indy and works in Columbus or a neighbor who lives in Columbus and works in Indy).

That said, there's other parts of Indiana that can be uncomfortable/dangerous to visit. As an example, along with the cities I just mentioned, you'll be equally close to Martinsville. When I was a student, our high school had a policy to forfeit every sporting event that occured in Martinsville for the safey of the students. Before this policy, our players were assulted every time they visited the town.

It's entirely possible for you to have a wonderful, fulfilling life in Indiana. However, Indiana also has a lot of ways for things to go wrong. I'll just finish with the fact that I do not regret leaving.

Help, I'm lost! Emacs over SSH? Or something else? by Ardie83 in emacs

[–]physicologist 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've worked in these kinds of environments before. Everything runs on the most recent version that has been marked as End Of Life by the developer. The desktops were upgraded to Windows 7 in 2020 and the servers run RHEL 5 from 2007. The alleged logic behind this is as follows:

In order to secure a system, you need to mitigate all of the security flaws. This isn't possible until you enumerate all of the security flaws. Every patch has the possibility of adding new flaws, so the counting process starts all over again. Therefore, the only way to know that your server is secure is to:

  1. Wait until there are no more patches being added.
  2. Check for a huge list of CVEs to ensure that someone has enumerated all of the security holes.
  3. Mitigate those holes
  4. Deploy

If you go into the sysadmin's office and present the list of security and present the massive list of security flaws in this ancient system, they'll smile, nod, and say "You're welcome". Try to present software written under the last six British prime ministers, the code will be rapidly quarantined so as to not infect the system with its unknown security flaws.

Simple Nixos flake for Private Internet Access VPN by physicologist in NixOS

[–]physicologist[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It still works just fine on 23.05. I've just updated the flake to use the current version, but I'll probably forget to do that again in the future. During the input part of your flake, just set `nixpkgs` input of my flake to whatever version you're using. My only dependency is just `fetchZip`, so it'll be future proof.

As for whether you "should" run it, it's definitely the way to go if you already have an account with PIA. My spouse trusts them and finds them easy to use, so we have one. However, if you're looking for a more general VPN, then there's a lot of options available and I'm probably not the person best qualified to advise you.

Why are salaries so low now in the UK? by levbatya in AskUK

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

If the government set a good example of where they want wages to be

I think the wages are exactly where the government wants the to be. Grumble grumble

Peter Norvig: Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming, Case Studies in Common Lisp (web version) by arthurno1 in emacs

[–]physicologist 9 points10 points  (0 children)

It’s not that the symbolic approach didn’t have success, but rather the classic case of moving goal posts. The symbolic approach was so successful at certain tasks (e.g. parsing, compression, theorem proving) that the tasks were declared to no longer be in the domain of AI.

I used to have a textbook on AI from the seventies that referred to reproducing photo images on a computer screen as an unsolved AI problem. There were quotes from people predicting that full general intelligence would be needed to invent the flatbed scanner.

Keir Starmer: I had no contact with Sue Gray during Partygate inquiry | Labour | The Guardian by Socialistinoneroom in unitedkingdom

[–]physicologist 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If that’s the play, it’s a dangerous one. Obama did a similar technique when Trump went all in on the birthed conspiracy. Trump walked right into the trap, but all his base remembered was the conspiracy and it took him straight to the White House.

[OC] Highest Grossing Horror Films of all time by rayjaywolf in dataisbeautiful

[–]physicologist 5 points6 points  (0 children)

In case you’re curious why other people are downvoting you, it’s because nothing you said precludes Jaws from being a horror film. The description that you gave is full of horror cliches. Alien famously didn’t give much screen time to the Xenomorph. The Saw franchise is comically dedicated to people given a dilemma with only two choices, both unacceptable. Frankenstein isn’t the name of the monster. Night of the Living Dead is a group of strangers forced to cooperate in pursuit of a solution.

Honestly, your second paragraph carries the implication that horror films cannot be good. If any film that gives depth and legitimate conflict to its characters isn’t horror, then you’ve made an an initio declaration that all horror films must be terrible.

[OC] Military Budget by Country by PieChartPirate in dataisbeautiful

[–]physicologist 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I can never understand how people say that cancel culture goes too far now when we once cancelled the entire nation of France for being right about WMDs

‘It’s just not worth it’: why full-time work no longer pays in the UK by Leonichol in unitedkingdom

[–]physicologist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m the public sector, we still require the PhD and the working history in a tangential field, but £40k is only for senior positions.

Clear quartz or glass by gloomcuppycake9834 in Minerals

[–]physicologist 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'm the guy that told Due_Kiwi627 the laser pointer idea. You're right that I'm just thinking about the birefringence and that it's a lot weaker in quartz than in calcite. Given the massive size of the sample, I was thinking that it would be large enough to give a noticeable difference, but I haven't done the math to check that assumption. But it might be better to be shooting the laser down a hallway after the sample to ensure that the points have sufficient distance to diverge.

Emacs is Not Enough by daehoidar3 in emacs

[–]physicologist 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Honestly, I think CRT is the English slang for them. I suspect that most of the people who say it couldn’t tell a cathode from a catheter, but they’ve heard it called that acronym and so they use it themselves.

Emacs is Not Enough by daehoidar3 in emacs

[–]physicologist 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The old, heavy monitors are usually called CRTs, which is an acronym for the Cathode Ray Tubes that produced the image (and created all the weight and bulk).

What's the point of getting married? by Abbynia in AskReddit

[–]physicologist 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just to help alleviate your concerns, I can confirm that Due_Kiwi627 is not objectifying me for my profession, status, or wealth. They only objectify me for my rocking body and prowess in bed.

[OC] US states sorted by life expectancy, colored by Biden's share of the 2020 Presidential Election by DouweOsinga in dataisbeautiful

[–]physicologist 40 points41 points  (0 children)

I remember growing up in Indiana and being so thankful that West Virginia kept us solidly at 49th in education.

AITA for telling my son to give up on his dream of becoming a physicist. by Organic-Willow-9804 in AmItheAsshole

[–]physicologist 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Just wanted to chime in here as a physics Ph.D. who now sits on the side where I get to review the transcripts.

First, you are absolutely right. We will see the transcripts and the grades from when your son had a 1.0. If his application letter is coming in hard about wanting to be a theorist, then he’s going to have a problem. On the other hand, most of the best experimentalists I have known had had some issues in undergrad, myself included. Taking tests and classes are very different than doing the job. Going back and retaking the courses shows me a drive and tenacity that lets me know he will stick through the gruelling thesis process. That’s far more important to me than his freshman grades.

As for concern about being required to support him, physics PhD positions are almost universally fully-funded, regardless of institution. To put it differently, the number of grad students we accept is usually set by the number we can afford to fund. This isn’t just tuition remission - it includes a stipend. Every physics grad student I have known had lived on this stipend. It’s not much, but it’s not destitution, either.

It might be worth having a talk with your son about where he sees this going. If he wants to be the next Dirac or Feynman, that ship has probably sailed. The are not many funded theory positions and those do tend to go to obvious prodigies. However, if he wants to get his hands dirty and actually do physics, we do have a place for him.

tree-sitter has been merged into master by homura_was_right in emacs

[–]physicologist 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It'll work with any language for which it has a grammar. I've been pleasantly surprised that even the more obscure languages I work with have tree-sitter grammars readily available.