The Official Status Thread
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@kazitor also, now that you got us all curious, what did you do?
My guess would be to take the average of the gravity potentials at both locations, then insert a virtual mass or anti-mass to push both potentials to the same value.
(But I have no idea if that would even make it work out... Damn it, Jim, I'm a computer scientist.)
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@topspin said in The Official Status Thread:
what did you do?
I don’t deal with mass, just (iteratively, no fancy tricks) solve ∇²φ = 0 with boundary conditions the same as for uniform gravity. To handle the portals I set both their potentials to be the average of the two at the start of every iteration, but it doesn’t work very well – I had to expand them each to 3×3 grid points all sharing potential to get better looking results. The enhanced method would instead position a portal between grid points and then just consider points to be adjacent through the portals.
Actually realising it could resolve potentials directly rather than somehow considering the field itself was the aha moment that brought things into motion.
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@kazitor my idea sounds easier.
(Because I don’t understand yours)The enhanced method would instead position a portal between grid points and then just consider points to be adjacent through the portals.
Yeah, that sounds like it would reflect the underlying topology better.
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@kazitor I'm failing to understand your graphic.
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@kazitor said in The Official Status Thread:
Stay tuned for further developments
Looks like there are two unstable equilibrium points in that plot.
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@topspin said in The Official Status Thread:
@kazitor my idea sounds easier.
I had thought about subtracting the uniform field after it was done just to check what it looked like, but that was after I’d closed everything and moved on so left it for ‘later’. Well, might as well try it out now that we’ve already bored everyone…
Yeah, big surprise, it’s like there’s a point ‘charge’ at each one. In fact, it’s almost like the system is entirely linear. Superimposing the uniform and point fields would definitely be the practical way to go, at least if you wanted to treat the portals like points, with the subtle distinction that it’s inserting potentials and not mass which is totally different ;)
I’m still curious how it would work in non-uniform fields, such as, entirely hypothetically, what might happen if one end were on Earth and one were on the Moon. Hypothetically. Not sure a simple average would be the best approach, but then maybe it would – I can sorta see that the ‘additional’ potentials should cancel out so it’s still like there’s zero divergence through the portals. But settling that numerically sounds like it would involve FEM or something and I don’t want to touch that.
(Because I don’t understand yours)
You don’t do vector calculus just for fun??
@Zecc said in The Official Status Thread:
@kazitor I'm failing to understand your graphic.
Up is up, left and right is an arbitrary horizontal direction. Any solid walls or other surfaces are effectively irrelevant so pretend they exist wherever you want. Arrows are the gravitational field and contours represent equal potential – effectively ‘flat ground’; you could walk along a solid surface there without the experience of going up or downhill (note the arrows are orthogonal to the contours). The colour bands are just another visualisation of potential, indicating whether adjacent bands are increasing or decreasing.
Without portals, all the arrows would point down and all the contours would be horizontal. But in order to not provide infinite energy (e.g., ‘infinite falling’), the portals warp local gravity, for example going from one to the other will alternately slow and speed up an object in equal amounts along the journey.
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@kazitor said in The Official Status Thread:
Yeah, big surprise, it’s like there’s a point ‘charge’ at each one. In fact, it’s almost like the system is entirely linear. Superimposing the uniform and point fields would definitely be the practical way to go, at least if you wanted to treat the portals like points, with the subtle distinction that it’s inserting potentials and not mass which is totally different ;)
Yes, I think my virtual mass would just amount to be the source for your inserted potential.
But that leaves the question you mentioned and I hadn't thought about: in the non-trivial case, can you just slap those in there and it works out, or do you still need to iterate until you reach an equilibrium? I think everything's linear enough to work. (Have fun with GR, though.)I assume either is pretty easy to prove from the equations, but ... um ... look, a squirrel.
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@topspin Fg ~ mMr -2 is not linear.
Well, it's linear in adding/removing masses to the system. And the field is locally nearly linear near the earth's surface. But when dealing with earth/moon it isn't, and you'd also have to deal with one portal moving relative to the other.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
I'd like to think I'm average
Whereas we see you as very, very far from average for a lot of criteria.
(Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing is left as an exercise for the reader.)
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@PleegWat said in The Official Status Thread:
you'd also have to deal with one portal moving relative to the other
The first step towards sophistication would probably be putting everything in a rotating frame of reference.
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@kazitor said in The Official Status Thread:
You don’t do vector calculus just for fun??
Do you have your name on your underwear?
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Status: Bing's "free" AI image generator is damned sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow...
It said three minutes but it's been an hour and nothing to show for it.
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@Zenith probably timed out without telling you. I wouldn't expect it to finish at this point.
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@topspin said in The Official Status Thread:
I wouldn't expect it to finish at this point.
Which, if you asked it to generate an image of a kneeling warthog, would be the correct behavior.
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I tried it and it said it would be one minute for a while then popped up
Thank you for your patience
The team is working hard to fix the problem. Please try again later.It's working about as well as I'd expect anything labelled Bing to work.
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@loopback0 my toaster goes “bing” when it is done. This is 100% more successful than any product called Bing in my subjective experience.
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@topspin Probably because I asked for something a little more obscure than Taylor Swift porn like the rest of the internet.
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@Zenith sounds like your fault.
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@loopback0 it generated some images finally.
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Status
Do not wrestle a pig in mud. You'll get dirty, and the pig likes it.
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@topspin The closer your request is to "girl doing something," the better it seems to run. It just couldn't figure out how to put Galvatron into a presidential campaign ad. The ad part wasn't bad, besides being full of misspellings, but none of robots were even purple. Its generic rendition of Misato Katsuragi drinking a Pepsi was alright but you'd never guess Lina Inverse was supposed to be flying that bi-plane.
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@kazitor said in The Official Status Thread:
You don’t do vector calculus just for fun??
No.
Vector calculus wasn't fun when I was studying vector calculus. Vector calculus wasn't fun when I still (sorta) remembered wtf vector calculus is. Vector calculus is definitely not fun after having forgotten what little I actually learned >35 years ago.
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For some reason, my brain wants to combine Perforce and Subversion. The result is, obviously, a
completelycuriously TDWTF-worthy version control system.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Official Status Thread:
For some reason, my brain wants to combine Perforce and Subversion. The result is, obviously, a
completelycuriously TDWTF-worthy version control system.In so many ways.
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Status: Fun with Excel.
I decided to see just how far I could get with cashing out points before closing my account with this dopey store. If it weren't for timing, I could get out with more than a little "free" stuff. But one of the items that I'd use points for is likely to suffer delays and may not make it before they retaliate.
The last package they sent before this current More Fucking Dragons or Mao Is Awesome festival is supposed to be out for delivery today and seems like it's taking forever.
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@accalia said in The Official Status Thread:
Status
Do not wrestle a pig in mud. You'll get dirty, and the pig likes it.
Status: Stupid fuckin' pigs.
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Status: I want peanut butter. My calories app says “No!”, but is life even worth living without peanut butter?
Fuck it, at least it’s got some proteins.
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@topspin said in The Official Status Thread:
Status: I want peanut butter. My calories app says “No!”, but is life even worth living without peanut butter?
Fuck it, at least it’s got some proteins.Status: It's been decades since I've had the butter of peanuts.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Official Status Thread:
@HardwareGeek said in The Official Status Thread:
Status: Worried about the DDF. I'm within a 2-hour drive of the path of the solar eclipse next month. I just ordered a telescope with which to view it. (Yes, a suitable solar filter is part of the kit. I'm neither stupid nor looking forward to blindness.) I also ordered a couple accessories — specifically, a camera/phone adapter. Said adapter is back-ordered until the end of this month. The eclipse will happen on 14 October, and it's a mite difficult to reschedule. I'm more than a little worried that the DDF will push the delivery beyond 13 October. It wouldn't be the end of the world; I could still view the eclipse and maybe even take pictures, just not good pictures.
I have telescope! Unboxed, assembled, and (very crudely) aligned. I need to take it outside to align it better, but I'm working. And I really need to do it at night to do it properly.
So far, I'm inclined to agree with one of the reviews I read for this telescope. The rigidity of the tripod is a bit lacking; there's quite a bit of vibration any time you touch it.
Also very much looking forward to getting the phone/camera mount. Trying to position my phone over the eyepiece is a PITA, and it doesn't help that my phone keeps trying to auto-adjust everything.
Oh, and DDF did show itself, but in a good way. It came in two boxes, one for the telescope itself, and a second small box of accessories (the solar filter, a moon filter I'd forgotten was included, and a simple tool — a piece of plastic with a hole in it — to assist in collimating the optics, if necessary). Tracking info last night showed the main box arriving today, with the second box arriving tomorrow. However, both arrived today.
I have phone/camera mount. It's a mild PITA to set up — primarily getting the phone camera lens (there are 3 of them; which one will it decide to use?) aligned with the telescope eyepiece — but once that's done and I know what phone settings to use to get the right camera into the right mode, it shouldn't be much effort to put stuff together again next time. I also figured out how to make my phone take time-lapse video at (theoretically, but it seems to be a little off) 1 frame/sec, which is something I'm thinking about doing during the eclipse. Maybe. IIRC, the resolution is lower than still photos with the same camera, but I don't remember how much lower.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Official Status Thread:
IIRC, the resolution is lower than still photos with the same camera, but I don't remember how much lower.
Yeah that's odd. Unless it's using your Video Mode settings...
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@Tsaukpaetra The time-lapse settings are within the video menu, so I assume it is.
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Status
Excelsior! Success!
root@code:~/workspace/type-imagereader# npm test # ... buildchain malarky ... 1341 passing (6s) =============================== Coverage summary =============================== Statements : 100% ( 1708/1708 ) Branches : 100% ( 592/592 ) Functions : 100% ( 367/367 ) Lines : 100% ( 1614/1614 ) ================================================================================ root@code:~/workspace/type-imagereader#now.... to pull bits apart and ruin this perfect record.... i know how to do bits better and more efficient now.
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@accalia said in The Official Status Thread:
root@code:~/workspace/type-imagereader#Dont' at me for running as root..... i havent yet figured out podman usermapping so my user outside the container is root inside..... i gotta fix that at somepoint.
or convert back to docker..... podman has..... some rough edges to it i'm not happy about.
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@accalia said in The Official Status Thread:
Status
Excelsior! Success!
root@code:~/workspace/type-imagereader# npm test # ... buildchain malarky ... 1341 passing (6s) =============================== Coverage summary =============================== Statements : 100% ( 1708/1708 ) Branches : 100% ( 592/592 ) Functions : 100% ( 367/367 ) Lines : 100% ( 1614/1614 ) ================================================================================ root@code:~/workspace/type-imagereader#now.... to pull bits apart and ruin this perfect record.... i know how to do bits better and more efficient now.
Smashing bits together more efficiently is usually fun.
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@accalia said in The Official Status Thread:
Dont' at me for running as root....
I didn't at you. I wouldn't even have if you hadn't.
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I have just discovered Sidebery, the Firefox addon for vertical tabs, now has a small difference in behaviour: when clicking the tab for the page which already has focus instead of reaffirming this is the page I want focused it will switch to the previously focused tab. In this way I can quickly toggle between the two last tabs.
I'm conflicted about this.
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Status: Celebrating Mean Girls Day by sleeping until noon, then watching YouTube.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Official Status Thread:
solar eclipse next month
The CodeProject news page showed an interesting idea for watching the eclipse: with a disco
ball!
Want to Safely Watch the Sun With a Large Group? Get a Disco Ball
The upcoming solar eclipses and the current high sunspot activity means it’s a great time to observe the Sun. Eclipses also mean that large groups of people will be together to view these events. However, rule #1 for astronomy is to never look at the Sun with unprotected eyes, especially with a...
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@kazitor said in The Official Status Thread:
mostly a proof of concept that I could actually FDM it in the first place.
If you can 3D print a working portal, that is exciting news indeed
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@Zecc said in The Official Status Thread:
I have just discovered Sidebery, the Firefox addon for vertical tabs, now has a small difference in behaviour: when clicking the tab for the page which already has focus instead of reaffirming this is the page I want focused it will switch to the previously focused tab. In this way I can quickly toggle between the two last tabs.
I'm conflicted about this.
Must be a new update; on mine clicking the active tab does nothing.
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Speaking of Sidebery, I just found something weird that happened earlier. I opened a link in a new tab, and after it finished loading it disappeared. I tried again, and same thing. So I gave up on the new tab and just opened it normally like some caveman. Then, later (now) I went to a different tab group, and there were the two tabs from earlier. Why did it move them into that group? :who_nose:
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status: the WiFi is so stable here...
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@dcon said in The Official Status Thread:
@Zerosquare said in The Official Status Thread:
@dcon said in The Official Status Thread:
Look, some of us still use a Flex - you know, the one with 5 LED dots on it? It has no screen? Yeah, that one.
Don't make too much noise, or they'll just discontinue the support for it to make you buy a new one.
When this one dies, I'm not getting another.
I like my Charge 5 but don't think I'll get another Fitbit. The Charge 6 has been announced and seems to be heavily pushing Google services. Music controls for Youtube Music, NFC payment for Google Pay, etc.
I'll probably be replacing it with an Apple watch because if that's going to push services on me then they're services I'm already using and it's less data that Google gets to harvest.
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@loopback0 said in The Official Status Thread:
Music controls for Youtube Music
You mean generic music controls that work with whatever the current app is, right? :padme:
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@hungrier said in The Official Status Thread:
@loopback0 said in The Official Status Thread:
Music controls for Youtube Music
You mean generic music controls that work with whatever the current app is, right? :padme:
LOL Nope, it actually controls Chromecasts that are playing music....
This is the only logical conclusion I can make, because they specifically deleted the ability to invoke the bluetooth media controls on the connected phone for my Versa 2 for no fucking reason. The functionality is definitely there, they just removed the control panels that cause it to send the bluetooth commands.
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@hungrier said in The Official Status Thread:
@loopback0 said in The Official Status Thread:
Music controls for Youtube Music
You mean generic music controls that work with whatever the current app is, right? :padme:
: I'm sure a feature called Youtube Music Controls on a watch that requires a Google account works perfectly with other apps.
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@loopback0 said in The Official Status Thread:
@hungrier said in The Official Status Thread:
@loopback0 said in The Official Status Thread:
Music controls for Youtube Music
You mean generic music controls that work with whatever the current app is, right? :padme:
: I'm sure a feature called Youtube Music Controls on a watch that requires a Google account works perfectly with other apps.In fairness to Google, they're equal opportunity offenders. They make sure that the YouTube Music app doesn't work with Apple Watch either.
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It's difficult to see to focus, because the ambient light is so much brighter than the phone screen, even with a black cloth over my head and the phone. Still, I think you can make out some sunspots. I can definitely see them looking through the eyepiece, but I don't think they're as clear in the picture.
Edit: they are pretty obvious when I embiggen it. When it's small, it's difficult to tell the difference between the sunspots and the dust on my phone's screen.
