robryk @robryk@qoto.org

@mattblaze Sure. So at a very crude approximation, the circuit we have is a series connection of voltage source, internal resistance of the meter, inductance of the cable, capacitance of the cable. (A less crude approximation would assume that the capacitance is spread across the cable, behind various amounts of inductance.) (I mentioned frequencies, because impedances at frequency f are TTBOMK a very crude approximation of what matters after a transient + 1/f delay.)

One thing is that the total charge (summed with sign) transferred during the transient does not depend on anything other than capacitance. So, the interesting question is how long does it take to charge the capacitor to, say, half of the input voltage, and how that time is affected by inductance. (As long as that time stays smaller than something related to ammeter's needle's inertia, we will be getting an ammeter reading that is roughly proportional to the total charge that moves through it.) I suspect that we'll end up finding that this time is a sum of something internal-resistance-derived and inductance-derived (well, in first order approximation for small inductances it must be something like that).

If we want to look at transients, then

V_res + V_ind + V_cap = V_source
V_ind = I'*L
V_res = I*R
V_cap' = I/C

I' = 1/L*(V_source - V_cap - IR)
I'' = -1/L*(V_cap' + I'R)
I'' = -1/L*(I/C-I'R)

... and I'll write out how that affects the time when the integral of current reaches sth like 1/2*CV_source tomorrow

@rysiek @floppy

You don't need anything to make decisions for "incentives" to work: you only need selection pressure based on that-thing-that-could-be-an-incentive and an error-introducing replication mechanism.

In the context of spam generation we have both (we do also have normal incentives acting on humans operating those systems, but even in their absence we'd IMO get similar hill-climbing behaviour).

(I don't disagree with your conclusion, but I don't think the argument works.)

@rysiek This reminds me about the jokes around bear-proof trashcans: that they have to rely on things that bears physically can't do, because in terms of inventiveness there's an overlap between smartest bears and dumbest tourists (esp. taking into account that bears are much more motivated than tourists).

@mattblaze The only way I can think of comparing the two (comparing impedance) is frequency-dependent. What kinds of frequencies are you talking about (or is the difference so huge that it would hold well into tens or hundreds of MHz?).

@mattblaze This is slightly inaccurate: The line also contains inductance (it can be modelled well as a long sequence of segments with serial resistance and inductance in each wire in each segment and parallel capacitance and resistance in each segment), which will affect the kick: it will slow down the discharge and thus prolong the kick while reducing its amplitude (and will add a smaller counter-kick after the main kick).

Capacitance is affected by the dielectric constant of the material used for insulation of individual wires in the pair (and also by wire thickness), while inductance isn't by either. Do you know if the constants they had to use changed whenever the wire material changed?

@whitequark Is it still helpful if what you want is an environment where people make statements when they believe them to be true? (Or, upstream of that, where talking with someone who professes something you think is false is always useful, because at least one of you two will learn something.)

@sdier Drachenbrunnen?

@delroth My anecdotes come from observing people leaving the train at random mornings in the winter, mostly on weekends; I'd've estimated at least 30ish percent to be going directly to the bus stop.

That said, that doesn't affect the outcome: it's easy to get to/from Einsiedeln. It only implies that the outcome is likely easier to achieve if the bus network is there already.

@delroth To be fair a nontrivial fraction of people arriving there by train come there to transfer to a bus (going somewhere south like Studen or {Unter,Ober}iberg, which are all much smaller than Einsiedeln, probably even in total).

@sgf

I assume some process will flip a fair coin to choose which of {A, B} will go up and which will go down.

In that case it seems to me that holding any combination of A and B is equally good. I don't see how this could be an example for principles intended to be used to choose an investment, given that there is no meaningful choice to be made here.

@feditips

I'm somewhat disheartened every time I see suggestions to Mastodon that implicitly assume that Mastodon is the only renderer for Mastodon posts (by not distinguishing which part of the suggestion should affect the shape of Mastodon-created posts, and which should affect the way Mastodon displays posts--regardless of what software created them).

Sure, this can be untanged during discussion. However, the "fediverse is Mastodon" approach is quite common among its users and so I think that it behooves us to take most opportunities to phrase things in a way that combats that misconception.

@scarfwitch Are these empty shells?

@IvyMike Why? If I'm operating a website that sits behind e.g. cloudflare, I can just drop IPv6 everywhere I can think of, including at boundaries of my internal network and at each host. That's IMO a terrible idea from the POV of future, but it's feasible and should make any worries about IPv6 moot, no?

@Zeb_Larson

> I guess in a way I see the stuff I write as "here's an interesting thing,"

I totally agree with this framing; I poorly described the distinction I wanted to draw. I spent a few more minutes thinking about that distinction and am less sure than previously that it actually exists (i.e. has all the properties I thought it had).

@Zeb_Larson I'm not sure if the "brand" framing is the same. For one, people might not even have a (conscious) concept of branding oneself. At the same time, being the fellow who points out random interesting things is a brand if you squint at it, just like being a fellow who will correctly and happily answer questions around subject X might be considered a brand. In that understanding of brand _everything_ you do publicly furthers your brand.

Re at-most-once framing: I think it's a good heuristic, but I can imagine ways to (a) adhere to that and yet give me a very strong impression of being underhanded (b) make it hard for others to obey that heuristic without breaking it yourself.

I'm not sure how large a fraction of anti-self-promotion crowd current me and past me can claim to represent, but it might be nonobvious and interesting that from ~all of my POVs doing self-promotion _while describing what you are doing and why to the same audience_ would be fine and would not cause me to feel that something underhanded is happening.

@Zeb_Larson

I agree that "Don't post your own work in a non-reply public, federated, listed toot with no mentions" goes further than I can imagine such rules making sense.

I don't model it as someone objecting to seeing that artwork/blogpost/piece of software, but as people starting to be suspicious that others' posts have unspoken ulterior motives (which then makes interaction challenging: do you voice the suspicion, try to behave as if you didn't have it, or what else?). I expect that the rules end up being weird overbroad heuristics, because "if you are tooting so as to achieve an outcome, be explicit about it" is unenforceable. Even taking that into account, I'd expect that rules less broad than "don't ever link to things you've made" would work.

BTW. I'm curious whether spaces that are purely dedicated to "I've noticed this interesting thing" kind of posts can survive (you seem to be saying that it's unlikely, my intuition says opposite, but I have no reasonable evidence -- all my anecdotes in this area are distant enough on at least some axis to make them unconvincing).

@IvyMike If someone's interface to users is a website that's fronted by a cdn, they are in a position where it's feasible to disable ipv6 for all of their infra.

@Zeb_Larson There are people who abhor self promoting. They are often more comfortable in an environment where that is rarer and find it easier to relate to people who don't.

@dc8wan Meine Meinung nach, DIN 5008 fehlt :)

@whitequark Hm~ do you know whether the same's true for razor blades?