robryk @robryk@qoto.org

@freemo @olamundo Even more so, they are good at detecting sibling planets that have some simple (small numerator and denominator) ratio of orbital periods.

@freemo @olamundo A method that was surprising to me is detecting a second planet by noticing orbital period variations of the first one. I think that it should be in principle doable even if their orbits are perpendicular, though the effect then might be smaller (but still nonzero).

@timorl I just remembered about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets_in_America. I think it involved no protests, just lobbying.

I ended up using Bubblewrap to provide omc with a readonly view of the entire filesystem except for the directory where it should write its output....

Production of pliers 50 years ago and today:

https://kinder.wdr.de/tv/die-sendung-mit-der-maus/av/video-frueher-heute-zange-100.html

Weirdest thing I've seen recently: omc, the OpenModelica compiler, tries to open all its input files (including libraries) for writing. It then closes them, reopens for reading, and proceeds as one'd expect.

It turns out that it does that to determine whether they're read-only: https://github.com/OpenModelica/OpenModelica/blob/81537a472c9f54ea14ecf335343005f18f4e83af/OMCompiler/Compiler/runtime/systemimpl.c#L366

Why? Well, it puts that information in some parser data structure: https://github.com/OpenModelica/OpenModelica/blob/cb76b3bfcad9782ea93ef88aa0979e00ad9ca942/OMCompiler/Parser/parse.c#L420

Why? Well, it uses that when printing an error message, so that the error message can say whether the file is writeable: https://github.com/OpenModelica/OpenModelica/blob/187041202b77c6b2c406f27d1e7add6db6016548/OMCompiler/Compiler/runtime/ErrorMessage.cpp#L136

Why? I have no clue.

How do I know? It messes with gittup's determination of what's an output of a compilation command.

Do you know of a succinct description of the mapping between Mastodon concepts (such as "public"/"unlisted"/... sharing modes, or visibility of replies) and ActivityPub activity entries (such as to,cc,bto,bcc,audience fields)? I would like to:
a) understand how various things I could send as a client to a Mastodon server correlate with things that I can do in a typical Mastodon client UI,
b) understand semantics of various Mastodon concepts better.

#lazytoot #activitypub

@freemo @saxnot

I see what you mean (and how the original phrasing hides details[1]), but I disagree about talking about cars not bringing anything in. If someone proposes an argument for X that makes use of properties that are shared between X and Y, then it might be useful to figure out whether they think Y or not-Y. If they think not-Y, then probably the argument got miscommunicated somehow.

[1] which I do understand is very annoying; after all, I'm the guy who often has to tell people that they only know that _this_ zebra has stripes on this side only at work; arguments with hidden detail make it harder for people to notice such subtleties.

@freemo @saxnot I expect that the other person in this conversation is using a shortcut to say "I think that access to guns and access to cars are important in the same way. We are doing this to cars. Do you think we shouldn't be doing it to cars, do you think that there's some important in this context difference between cars and guns, or am I mistaken someplace else?"

Do you think this response also invokes a fallacy, that this is not actually what they mean, or something else?

Why keyswitches for mechanical keyboards are just switches?

Nearly everyone wants to put them in a matrix arrangement, with diodes. I'd expect that including the diode in the keyswitch would cost less than, say, twice the unit cost of a diode, so less than ten cents. The cost of a keyswitch is in the ballpark of 1$, and I expect switches with diodes to be preferred by a lot by many people.

In fact, why not go further? Padauk MCUs cost ~5c each: we could then add one to each keyswitch and have them be addressable. That would make wiring the keyboard up much simpler (you just wire these 3 wires to all the switches in parallel).

Is there a reason why one can't buy such switches? I've only found references to some ancient (and thus rare) switches that had a diode built in, but nothing that can be actually bought for a sane price in quantity of ~100.

#keyboard

@freemo @Science

At that time the house in question was essentially wired as TN-C, with the E-N split happening in outlets. I don't think there was a way to get different PE potentials in different places, unless one was totally disconnected (which I doubt -- I think we actually measured PE-N resistance as part of figuring out how everything is wired up). So, dunno what could have been wrong.

Maybe the adapter was weird, but if someone cheaped out, I'd expect them to do less galvanic insulation and just ground everything that's vaguely ground-shaped.

Also: how was this supposed to work when computers it connected just had different ground potentials? Coax had something like 100m max distance it was supposed to be used for 10Mbps connections over, and that can easily span buildings, which could then be on TT or be on TN but on different power substations.

@freemo @Science What is the shield connected to? I vaguely remember breaking a network card's transceiver by dropping scissors in a way that shorted the shield of the BNC connector to the computer's chassis (the card that broke was, weirdly enough, the one where that happened and not the other one on the network). I expect that the shield cannot be connected to ground via low-impedance anything, because this would create a ground loop. So, is it galvanically isolated from the rest of the computer or is it connected to something?

@timorl @freemo So, should we call people seitan-fisted?

@freemo

> Why does this need the complexity of 20 different owners. We are talking about a train station.

Agreed, in that case it's simple like you said.

> we have 20 owners that each own different walls but own each wall 100%, those walls are close to eachother.

Yup.

> So how would they fund a bathroom, simple, they agree to pool their money together and pay for one and split the costs.

If one of the 20 wall owners claims in a believable way that they'll not enter such an agreement, it's still worthwhile for the 19 others to enter into such an agreement. In that case the refuser doesn't pay and gets the benefit, so each of them is incentivized to be such a refuser.

The same issue from a different angle: in the agreement they wish to commit to, what requirements should they place on a party that wishes to leave the agreement?

> IF there is a strip mall with 20 different stores and there is one bathroom for all the customers in the location typically its because the 20 local businesses decided to pool their resources and share the cost.

I would expect that to be usually provided by the owner of the mall, and being paid for by a (non-optional) part of the rent of the space in the mall by the shop owners. Is my expectation wrong?

@freemo

I don't know how to make money on operating a toilet in case in which the walls are owned by many different entities.

Let's assume we have ~20 different owners of walls in the vicinity and that reduction in cleaning costs of ~15 of them is sufficient to fund the toilets. How would you envision the setup where they share the cost of the publicly accessibly toilet, without each of them being incentivized to cease to do so (because even without them it will be beneficial for everyone else to pay for the toilets, so they will still get the service without paying for it)?

@freemo

If we have a restricted choice between:
- the commune finances cleaning of the train station it owns out of taxes,
- the commune installs a public toilet and finances less cleaning.

Then doing the latter instead of the former:
- provides one additional free thing to random people,
- reduces the amount of money the commune extracts by a threat of force from its inhabitants.

Do you think this restricted choice is a contrived way of looking at the situation, that the reasoning is bad, or something else?

@freemo

> toilet manufacturers or the rich paying for them

Do you mean "rich who pay taxes and so finance the commune"? Otherwise I'm confused. I'm confused anyway by the "toilet manufacturers" part: Public toilets are usually maintained by communal government in my area; the toilet manufacturers are usually far away and don't pay taxes to the commune.

> Now you eliminate taxes in the situation and you get the same benefit but without the moral problem of taking from one to pay for another. For example without taxes now the train company is commercial and pays for those same toilets, and still makes them open to the public, because the expense of the company saves the company money.

Basically yes; I think that you describe the same situation as I do, except that in your case both are owned by the train company and in my case both are owned by the commune.

I didn't mean to say that your statement in the original toot is incorrect, but rather point out that providing something for free can sometimes decrease costs, so it can transform your descriptions into "I will save some many and you'll owe me nothing" and "I will still hold a gun up to Bob's head, but I'll be making Bob pay a bit less than if I wasn't providing this to you for free". I don't have an opinion on whether your dichotomy is correct (yet).

@freemo Providing a free public toilet reduces the incidence of people urinating on a random wall in the vicinity, which makes cleaning of the vicinity cheaper. If the location if e.g. the local train station, then often the cost of toilet maintenance and of additional cleaning would fall onto the same institution.

I know that some communes have decided to keep their public toilets free for that reason, but don't know how they established that this actually saves money.