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forest

7:03 PM

It's probably not polished diamonds. :P

Tinkeringbell

Shhh.

I say they now are.

forest

smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/…

Vote Dukakis

Depends. Are you going to visit each site in turn, carefully pausing at each stop to not listen to anything anyone tells you? — Shog9 ♦ 39 mins ago

I guess so.

Tinkeringbell

@forest That does sound pretty awesome without being polished too ;)

forest

Our outer planets are pretty awesome in general. :P

Just imagining an ocean deeper than the Earth is wide...

woah

Tinkeringbell

7:07 PM

@forest All planets are pretty awesome in their own way, I guess ;) I like this one too, especially now that it's spring and there's a lot of sprouting going on!

forest

This one is pretty and all, but it's not quite as exotic as the others.

Tinkeringbell

@forest Would you say the same if you were living on Mars? :P

Or Jupiter?

forest

Mars is one of the more boring planets.

Too much red. Too dry.

Tinkeringbell

@forest Life on mars

forest

They say Venus could support a human colony in oxygen-filled air balloons, since the upper clouds at around 60,000ft have a nice temperature and livable pressure.

No need for anything more than a wet suit.

hue

Tinkeringbell

7:10 PM

@forest Unless they make those not form-fitting, I'm not going to migrate.

forest

Yeah it might be troublesome. "Hey dear could you close the window? The sulfuric acid clouds are getting in and it's causing a draft."

ocæon

oh the humidity!

Vote Dukakis

@forest did they mention Category 5+ hurricanes?

forest

I don't think those occur at 60,000ft do they? It's just calm clouds... of acid.

Tinkeringbell

@VoteDukakis I guess that's that draft they just mentioned ;)

forest

7:12 PM

The surface is very dry. It's so hot that even the acid rain evaporates long before it hits the ground, and there's a constant gentle 5mph breeze.

It's just a little too hot and heavy to live in.

fbueckert

@forest Er? Isn't the atmosphere entirely toxic? Like, melt your bones toxic?

I suppose we could just bubble ourselves up and live way in the air.

forest

@fbueckert Oxygen floats at the safe altitude of 60,000ft, so balloons could literally allow a platform to float. The temperature and pressure is safe, and all that needs to be worried about is the caustic air. A wet suit can protect from that.

Tinkeringbell

@forest Don't you need a dry suit then? The whole point of a wet suit is... that you get wet.

fbueckert

@forest I thought that would be subject to pressures and air currents.

forest

Assuming the platform you live in isn't more-or-less airtight (wouldn't need to be 100% airtight, since it would not be pressurized and a small amount leaking in would be harmless).

@Tinkeringbell Well a wet suit would only really be needed if you're working outside of whatever airship you're living in. It would allow moisture in the air to not burn.

Magisch

7:19 PM

Would be interesting to see if that works

If we solve the resource scarcity by ways of condensed hydroponics and say, nuclear fusion or whatever fuel can be found on venus, it could be doable

Tinkeringbell

@forest wetsuits allow moisture to pass through though... drysuits don't.

fbueckert

@forest I already live in Canada, where the air hurts my face. I don't need it to be warm, and hurt my face.

Tinkeringbell

So a wetsuit will get soaked, and whatever soaks it will probably also hurt your skin

forest

Well you're not going to bathe in it. :P

Tinkeringbell

@fbueckert What's better about cold and hurting your face?

I think I'd rather be warm..

forest

7:21 PM

You just don't want to constantly expose your skin to caustic air.

@Magisch Yeah gee, I wonder where we'll find fuel. Someone needs to invent a battery that like, runs on sulfuric acid. There's plenty of that around.

:P

Magisch

I think the true expansion of life beyond the stars will come from us making a sentient fully featured AI and the AI will proliferate using whatever to replicate itself

Tinkeringbell

I think I'll stay here.

forest

I don't think we'll ever get beyond the stars.

Tinkeringbell

I'm fine enough here that I don't want to go anywhere else. Family visits would be horrible to arrange.

Magisch

probably not we, but something made by us? possible

forest

7:23 PM

At least not without a multi-generational starship. And even then, the expansion of the universe would prevent us from visiting more than a few of the nearest stars.

Magisch

mind, our concept of limits is outdated, too

forest

@Magisch Oh that's true. We have the technology to get to Proxima Centauri.

Mithrandir

How do you define "beyond the stars"? Intergalactic space? Outside a supercluster? The multiverse bubble?

Magisch

All of our physical understanding of the universe is a large chain of assumptions based on observations made from earth

forest

@Mithrandir Phsyically impossible to leave our supercluster.

ocæon

7:24 PM

so an airship in a sulphur sky could just trail an anode below the cloudline to provide constant energy?

Magisch

so whenever we figure out to invent an AI technology that expands knowledge exponentially, most of what we thought of as limits will probably collaps

Mithrandir

@forest As of now

forest

@ocæon Well I'd think you'd want to collect condensed sulfuric acid.

@Mithrandir No I mean, impossible for anything with mass. The universe expands fast enough that, eventually, other galaxies will be moving away faster than light (relative).

Mithrandir24601

@Margarine Afraid that I'm the one with access to the lasers here :P You picked the wrong wizard to fight ;)

Mithrandir

@forest Why?

Also... that we know of.

fbueckert

7:25 PM

@Tinkeringbell Nothing's better about being cold. At least, then I have a reason why my face hurts.

forest

There's no technology that could get around that limitation.

Mithrandir

I mean, if warp technology ever gets out of development... :P

Magisch

not to be too much of a downer, but 100 years ago we thought getting to the moon was physically impossible

fbueckert

Summer's supposed to be about warmth and wind and green stuff.

Magisch

Human history has been a constant chain of doing things previously believed impossible

believed by studied and intelligent people to be impossible, too

forest

7:26 PM

@Magisch Really? Ancient Romans thought it was possible.

@Mithrandir Our only hope will be if acceleration of the universe slows.

Magisch

yeah, with magic(tm)

forest

Which is possible. We don't know that yet. But assuming it doesn't.

Tinkeringbell

@fbueckert I'm not following...caustic air isn't a reason to make your face hurt? :P

Magisch

even the accelerating universe thing is an assumption

forest

wat

Mithrandir

7:27 PM

@Magisch Or if we find a way to travel faster than light.

Magisch

a well founded assumption, but an assumption nonetheless

fbueckert

@Tinkeringbell Air's not supposed to be caustic!

forest

No it's not. It's well-understood and observed.

Magisch

It hinges on the long chain of measurements and extrapolations made from those measurements working out

Tinkeringbell

@fbueckert Air is also not supposed to be polluted :P

forest

7:27 PM

Whether or not it will slow down eventually, we don't know.

fbueckert

@Tinkeringbell Well, I guess that depends on where you grew up.

forest

@Magisch Try saying that on space.SE and see what happens. :P

Magisch

for all we know, the universe could be heading towards the big crunch instead

forest

The Big Crunch is an idea that it will occur in the far future.

Tinkeringbell

@fbueckert Netherlands, pretty clean air though lately more and more people are burning wood when there's a nice summer evening and it stinks.

forest

7:28 PM

We know for a fact that it's not happening right now.

Magisch

well yeah

forest

It's as established that the universe is expanding as it is that gravity exists.

fbueckert

@Tinkeringbell You don't like woodsmoke?

forest

Or that the Earth is a sphere.

Tinkeringbell

@fbueckert Not when I'm trying to sleep. ;)

fbueckert

7:28 PM

I love that smell; reminds me of good times around a campfire with family.

Magisch

That assumes the laws of physics work in the rest of the universe like they do in this galaxy

Tinkeringbell

I don't mind it that much after spending 5 minutes in it myself around a campfire

Mithrandir

There is actual research being done on warp technology - essentially squeezing space to move faster than light. If that pans out, then I see no reason why we wouldn't be able to reach intergalactic space.

forest

Of course they do.

fbueckert

@Tinkeringbell Well, as long as it's not your house on fire, anyways.

Tinkeringbell

7:29 PM

but occasional gusts blowing into my bedroom or having to sleep with the window shut annoy me.

Magisch

and that assuming they work the same everywhere allows us to interpret observations that are essentially background radiation from outside

nobody's ever been there to check

Mithrandir

@Magisch What about other universes?

forest

@Magisch That's complete nonsense.

fbueckert

@Tinkeringbell See, I live where it dependably hits -40 half the year.

Magisch

even the fact that dark energy exists is extrapolation from inadequacies of previous models

fbueckert

7:29 PM

Open windows only happen in spring and fall.

Tinkeringbell

@fbueckert I woke up on Easter Sunday smelling a lot of smoke... turns out the wind had actually carried woodsmoke from the easter bonfires in Germany all the way across our country too...

forest

Physics is by definition consistent everywhere. If there's some reason that galaxies with an odd number of stars have twice as much gravity, then it's still physics.

And it's still consistent.

Magisch

well yeah, but we dont know that yet

forest

We do.

fbueckert

Because summer is also, "Hey, remember me, the sun? I reeeeeeeally like you right now, so be bright and hot!"

Magisch

7:30 PM

It could be that the universe is not expanding, and that some previously unknown factor just made us misinterpret the data we have

forest

I mean you can say you don't, but scientists consider we do.

Magisch

which we dont know about because it occurs nowhere we can definitively observe

fbueckert

@Tinkeringbell That's some bonfires.

forest

@Magisch Sure and the Earth might also be flat.

Mithrandir

What people thought to be immutable fact has been proven wrong in the past, and will undoubtedly happen again.

Magisch

7:30 PM

The earth not being flat can be observed

Tinkeringbell

@fbueckert Yep :) And I really like spring, summer and a large part of autumn. But once all leaves are gone, this country sucks ;)

forest

So can the expansion of the universe. :P

Magisch

Anything outside of our solar system is extrapolation from viewing images

fbueckert

@Tinkeringbell Heh. You need winter games.

forest

Same with the Earth. :P

Magisch

7:31 PM

I can drive around the world

forest

All we can do is view images and listen to our senses.

Magisch

I can see the curvature of the horizon with my own eyes

fbueckert

That you can play for a few days before a blizzard forces you back inside for the rest of the season.

Mithrandir

@forest Not in the same way that you can see the Earth...

Tinkeringbell

@fbueckert We have! It's called an Elfstedentocht, but it's been cancelled for years now ;)

forest

7:31 PM

There's no intrinsic difference.

fbueckert

The rest of the time consists of freezing your butt off outside, and holing up inside with hot chocolate and calories and enjoying video and board games.

Magisch

The difference is the reliability of the observation

forest

I mean, you can say we don't know, but that goes against the scientific consensus.

Just like flat Earth.

Magisch

it could be that our theory of how gravity works is fundamentally flawed

forest

@Magisch We know it's flawed. :P

Magisch

7:32 PM

but works for our solar system because factors we havent considered do not exist here to appreciable degrees

Tinkeringbell

@fbueckert That second part sounds okayish, though board games aren't that much fun to play here... we're too competitive and a bunch of cheaters ;)

Magisch

Much like general relativity came to be

forest

(You might need to study up more on fundamental forces in physics, since it answers much of that - even if some of the answers are "we don't know")

Tinkeringbell

But we can do that without freezing temperatures too :)

fbueckert

@Tinkeringbell I have a lot of co-operative board games.

Tinkeringbell

7:33 PM

Actually, we usually play boardgames on late summer evenings ;)

fbueckert

The wife also doesn't like competition.

ocæon

eek we somehow warped from diamonds to flat-earth.. can we rename the room to contain a "theory-gone-wild" warning?

Magisch

so

we dont know a lot

Tinkeringbell

@fbueckert No, no... we like competition a bit too much

fbueckert

Might have something to do with me being really good at them. shrug

forest

7:33 PM

@Magisch What we have for gravity is a model. We don't understand how it works fully, and we know that it doesn't work on all scales.

Magisch

and a lot of it is assumed from that

Mithrandir

@fbueckert Pandemic?

forest

But we know it exists.

fbueckert

@Mithrandir Pandemic is one. Also Pandemic Legacy.

Magisch

Being sure that the universe will die a heat death eventually is folly imo

forest

7:33 PM

The same is true with the expanding universe. We know it's expanding, and we have a few theories as to why, but we don't know for sure why it's happening, or whether it will keep happening.

Magisch

we're talking about a metric fuckton of unknown

forest

@Magisch No one is sure that it will die a heat death. That's one of the possibilities that depends on various universal constants related to the curvature of the universe. Where are you getting this info? I think your sources might be distinctly anti-scientific. :P

Magisch

sort of like someone living on a falling ball assuming that air always flows upwards

Tinkeringbell

@fbueckert We usually play a version of Ludo, but with playing cards instead of dice...

fbueckert

Zombicide is another. Left4Dead in board game format, basically.

Mithrandir

7:34 PM

We finally "officially" beat Pandemic for the first time this weekend :P

As in, without recycling the deck

fbueckert

@Mithrandir Pandemic Legacy is like it, add story, and destructible pieces.

Tinkeringbell

@VoteDukakis meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/284271/… < at least the first part of the statement is true ;)

Magisch

@forest didnt you make the argument that we'll never expand beyond our supercluster because the universe is expanding and accelerating?

Mithrandir

Sounds cool, I'll tell the person who runs board game night

Magisch

That itself is a pretty big assumption

forest

7:35 PM

@Magisch I elaborated that that argument only applies if the expansion stays constant. I did say that it's possible for it to reverse, and we don't know if it will.

Magisch

It might stop 10 million years ago and the first data that shows it might reach us tomorrow

fbueckert

@Mithrandir FYI: you need a regular group, and after you finish it, you have to buy it again to play again.

forest

Expansion of the universe happens everywhere at once.

ocæon

i theorise that time will scale relatively to the expansion / contraction of the universe

forest

The pop-sci understanding of the big bang is... quite wrong.

Magisch

7:36 PM

well

forest

There's no "explosion" coming from one point.

I think Physics.SE has a wonderful explanation.

Mithrandir

@fbueckert Ah. If they can't be reconstructed, that seems a bit less useful.

Magisch

superclusters could start accelerating towards each other

fbueckert

@Mithrandir It's....long.

Magisch

and it would be millions of years before we know

fbueckert

7:36 PM

Like...twelve to twenty four hour long sessions long.

Magisch

because light and energy doesnt travel faster then c

(as far as we know)

forest

We know that for a fact. :P

fbueckert

And has a second, "season" that continues the story once you finish.

forest

Actually, that's one of the things we understand more than anything.

The time it takes for acceleration to change is far slower than the speed of light.

Mithrandir

We meet irregularly a few times a month, not sure how well something like that would actually work

Magisch

7:37 PM

I'm unsure thats actually a hard limit

There might be something to it we dont understand

forest

@Magisch Do you know what "dimensionless units" means?

The speed of light is dimensionless, so we know for a fact that it is invariant.

fbueckert

@Mithrandir If you have a regular group of four, it's a good way to get together.

Magisch

@forest How do you prove that?

forest

It's defined as the movement of one planck length over one planck time.

Magisch

When the only surefire frame of reference you have is earth and maybe nearby planets?

forest

7:38 PM

@Magisch It's not an observation to be proven or disproven.

fbueckert

I can't say I'm a fan of the permanence, but I found a, "reset kit" online you print out, and it fixes the less temporary stuff. Mostly with stickers.

Magisch

Or you get into the "because we say it is because we defined it that way in how we measure speed" kind of thing

Mithrandir

We've got... 7 people,about 4 of which usually show up at a time. (No good for running a DnD campaign, apparently.)

forest

@Magisch You may want to look into dimensionless units to understand that.

In particular, if the speed of light "changes", so does the speed of time and distance.

Mithrandir

Not the same 4 every time, though.

fbueckert

7:39 PM

@Mithrandir Can be, if you have a flexible DM.

Magisch

so it is one of those because we defned it this way

forest

Well we defined the names.

ocæon

@forest yup i second that, if i recall well, the "speed of light" is somewhat a misnomer of the definition of wave propogation

forest

Pi, for example, is dimensionless.

Mithrandir

@fbueckert our potential DM is a lawyer, not sure how "flexible" he'll be :P

forest

7:40 PM

@ocæon Exactly!

Magisch

for all we know, there might be a way to go 600.000km in 1s in some way

might not even be strictly continous movement

forest

@Magisch We know for a fact that that's impossible.

fbueckert

@Mithrandir I'm a programmer. I added an off-the-cuff NPC to explain why the market was empty.

Magisch

maybe something involving a wormhole

forest

We might be able to compress 600,000km down, but it would still be 600,000km. That's why spacetime warping is so interesting.

fbueckert

7:40 PM

My players are now convinced the NPC is in danger or has something to do with the big bad.

forest

And why "relativity" is called such!

Magisch

from how I understand it, a wormhole is like folding the dimensions of space akin to a sheet of paper, so that 2 edges that on a straight paper would be 600.000km apart could be 10km apart

forest

"Wormhole" is improperly defined.

Mithrandir

I see enough DnD memes on Imgur to understand that this is a common headache for DMs. Players killing the wrong NPCs and absolutely convinced that other wrong ones are important.

fbueckert

@Mithrandir That's part of the fun, sometimes.

ocæon

7:42 PM

space folding relies on an extra dimension to fold it in, which is why it's proving a bit tricky

fbueckert

It's supposed to be interactive, and if you're just telling a rote story, well, books can do that.

forest

@Magisch In particular, you'd still only be going the speed of light.

Mithrandir

Yep.

forest

You physically cannot exceed one planck length in one planck time.

(Note that I'm not talking about quantum tunneling here, since you can't control that)

Magisch

Well if you can compress space temporarily then you're functionally going faster then light

Mithrandir

7:43 PM

@forest ...yet

forest

@Mithrandir No I mean, it's impossible to control.

(Actually that I can't say for sure, but that's what we think)

Magisch

Unless we find a way to predict it

Mithrandir

...again, that we know of

forest

@Mithrandir The Earth is a sphere but... there might be a way it's flat that we just don't know of, yet.

Mithrandir

*rolls eyes*

fbueckert

7:44 PM

So our conversation exists of experimental physics, and D&D.

forest

@Magisch Pi is a simple way to understand how we know this.

No matter what universe you live in, pi is always constant. Period.

fbueckert

I smell a sidequest coming on, with lasers and warp tech that nobody knows how to use.

forest

Other physical constants (e.g. the speed of light) are like that.

The only difference is that they're not as easy to understand as pi.

So to me, it sounds like you're arguing that in some other galaxy, pi = 4.

Mithrandir

I'd be wary of throwing around absolutes like you're doing.

forest

@Mithrandir Some things are absolutes, some aren't.

The fact that the speed of light is constant (and in fact dimensionless) is something we know very well. Whether or not we can compress spacetime to create shortcuts is something we aren't entirely sure of, but we think we know.

Magisch

7:46 PM

@forest I dont know we can know that

As far as I know, we can't even properly conceptualize other universes

Mithrandir

We're constantly reworking what we thought we knew and revising stuff. Things that were absolutes yesterday aren't today. We can't predict the future or its technology.

forest

@Magisch Then you'd have to argue that, in some other galaxy, 1 = 2.

Magisch

might be

as 1=1 is human definition

and based on the system of basic arithmetic

we had that in uni

forest

Then we can't agree on even the most fundamental axioms and further discussion is impossible. We will not be able to agree on anything if we can't agree on a base.

Magisch

I can define a logical system where 1=2

forest

7:47 PM

@Magisch No, you could define a paralogical system. It would not be consistent. See: deductive explosion.

Magisch

1 and 2 are symbols

Mithrandir

@fbueckert Sounds like a recipe for a NPC getting flashcooked.

ocæon

@user475381 are you practicing the art of joinspam? delete your account once for yes or twice for no.. {joke}

forest

@Magisch So?

fbueckert

@Mithrandir Fun fact: I played a short lived Star Wars campaign. A fellow player died to a Stormtrooper in the first shot.

Mithrandir

7:48 PM

That does indeed sound short-lived...

forest

It's difficult to argue with someone using logic, if we can't agree that logic is consistent.

After all, if logical consistency and empiricism aren't enough for you... what is?

fbueckert

If you like a setting where fantasy and sci-fi are mixed together, Weber's Safehold series is a very good read.

Or his Empire of Man trilogy.

Mithrandir

I do like stuff that blurs the boundary between SF and fantasy. I like stuff that's hard to define.

Tinkeringbell

@Mithrandir Ever read the Darkover book series?

forest

@Magisch I suggest you look into formal logic, set theory, and dimensionless qualities of constants. That might be necessary to assist in your understanding of math. It should explain why we can conclude what we can with such certainty.

Mithrandir

7:51 PM

Nope. *Google*

Tinkeringbell

SciFi as in planets and intergalactic travel, but with the fantasy part of psychic superpowers that are bordering magic :)

Mithrandir

@forest I suggest you look into the Sith :P

forest

:P

Damn I can't find that article explaining how the speed of light is tied to distance...

It was really good though, explaining how changes to any one constant change all others, comparing it to how increasing the diameter of a circle also increases its circumference, with pi always remaining the same.

fbueckert

Or, if you want some more comedic modern day...sci fi, I guess? John Ringo's got a couple very good series.

His Black Tide Rising is a modern day zombie apocalypse, and eventually results in a teenage girl with her Marine squadron running down zombies in a pink tank.

Mithrandir

now that does pique my interest

fbueckert

7:57 PM

His Troy Rising series is great; starts with Earth meeting aliens, getting enslaved, and ends with humanity using battlemoons to defend themselves.

forest

(Stupid correction on my part: it's time/length that's dimensionless and the speed of light is dimensioned. Point still stands though)

(Terminology is always hard for me to remember, doh)

Vote Dukakis

One post flagged R/A, another downvoted and flagged NAA, question closeflagged (underspecified).

Margarine

@Tinkeringbell yep, and so do winds of up to 2000 kmph

Vote Dukakis

8:12 PM

Should the new product be called SOfB or SOB?

It really looks like SOfT + SSO and a different pricing model. Maybe "SOfT+"

Mithrandir

Well, pretty sure that's what it's being marketed as - Stack Overflow for Teams, with extra features!

Vote Dukakis

Chemistry election is way more active than Physics, with 4 candidates already.

> I was sadly not elected Loong time ago

Margarine

8:26 PM

@VoteDukakis Yeah we're cool like that

@VoteDukakis SOft+ Pro Deluxe

forest

9:30 PM

Who is in charge of site themes? Is it not moderators on the site?

Mithrandir

Staff.

forest

oh

Damn

Anime.SE got a horrible theme that looks nothing like the site theme at all. Seems the only acceptable tweaks and suggestions for improvement are trivial.

It's like they completely ignored the feedback thread.

Mithrandir

I like it.

Color scheme is a bit similar to Puzzling's, though.

forest

Well yeah it's pretty but it's not... anime.

It's flat, like it was made using vector graphics.

Is it ever possible to go back to the drawing board, rather than be told "here is your theme made behind the scenes with no active feedback, no big changes allowed"?

Because there were some wonderful suggestions in the original theme ideas thread.

Kevin B

meh

Mithrandir24601

9:43 PM

@forest Physics is consistent, yes. The problem is that we really don't understand fundamental physics. In this specific case, the fundamental maths for why the universe is expanding is so insanely off the results that what's actually going on is totally unknown. As a result, what we know/think of as 'physics' today could be entirely different in another section of the universe because we don't understand the fundamentals enough. Aside from that, I agree with what you've said here

forest

@Mithrandir24601 The fundamentals would be the same everywhere. Whether or not there are other variables (like heat) that affect how things work elsewhere, sure that's possible. By definition, physics is consistent.

And you're right, we don't know why the universe is expanding. It's a mystery so far.

Kevin B

aliens.

forest

ayyyy lmao

Mithrandir24601

@forest Aye, this. I'm trying to say something like 'quantum physics is wrong but we don't know how it's wrong, so some specific thing that we currently think about quantum physics may be wrong somewhere because there's a load of stuff we don't know'

forest

GR/QFT incompatibility, yeah.

Mithrandir24601

9:47 PM

But this is pretty vague and nonspecific :P

forest

It's just the pseudoscientific idea that "maybe physics is like, totally different for our neighbor, and 2+2=fish there!" which irks me.

But the fact that quantum physics is an imperfect model? Sure, that's true.

The lack of a quantum explanation for gravity is particularly concerning.

And as neat as the large extra dimension theory is, it's not well supported.

John Dvorak

I like the holographic theory

Mithrandir

Psshh, what would @Mithrandir24601 know about quantum anything?

:P

forest

Quantum gravity is such a strange and elusive thing.

Mithrandir24601

@forest It's fascinating though. People are currently looking at experiments to see if they can confirm whether or not gravity causes (quantum) decoherence. Exciting times!

forest

9:54 PM

woah

John Dvorak

Tl;dr: it can be shown that the behavior of strings on a 2D surface without gravity describes well the behavior of strings in 3D with gravity, and while the current models describe a hyperbolic 3D space, there's a good chance they can be converted into models for a flat 3D

Mithrandir24601

They have satellites up that they can send and receive single photons to and from, so...

forest

I wish GR was able to explain everything. It's so elegant and easy to understand.

Quantum physics seems more like magic.

Mithrandir24601

@Mithrandir My knowledge of quantum is like a photon in an open system: There's a lot of loss but the problem is that you never know until it's too late as to whether it's been lost or not :P

forest

heh

John Dvorak

9:57 PM

Quantum mechanics are an awesome treasure trove of modern technobabble though

Mithrandir24601

@forest Learning GR was a great experience :) Then they were just like 'yeah, all of these results are wrong and we don't have a clue how'

forest

Well it's like Newtonian orbital mechanics in that it's a good approximation.

If we all lived in the matrix, things would make so much more sense. :P

Complex probabilistic phenomena difficult to analyze at large scales? Z-buffer.

Scale down resolution as you go farther and farther away.

Photons drifting over lightyears? Floating point rounding errors.

Mithrandir24601

Hahahaha!! Yeah, I wish

forest

Best part is we'd be too busy freaking out to ask ourselves how the physics for the matrix computer itself works and realizing we've come full circle. :P

Vote Dukakis

25 minutes left until live ESSO webcast: Webcast con los moderadores: Pikoh y gbianchi

@forest All SE sites (except SO) have essentially the same design now, up to minor tweaks.

I don't see it as horrible, it's just the same as others.

forest

10:09 PM

The others at least match the site theme.

I mean it was clearly made by someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

ocæon

aren't the sites lucky they don't revert to the time-machine design whenever design consensus breaks down.

forest

But not lucky enough for the design to be chosen by the community.

But I guess it's to be expected with the move from community-centric to business-centric decisions in managing Stack Exchange, Inc.

ocæon

10:28 PM

without ranting too much about the business being the mainstay of the community ship, i would liken the unifying design to picking up the little racecars and replacing them on the track together for an even start

forest

heh

It's just another step to removing the uniqueness of each site.

Turning each one into a bland copy of the next.

People keep pointing it out, but it falls on deaf ears.

Vote Dukakis

SE spends more $ on the design of those sites (like Anime) than the revenue they bring.

which is 0

forest

That's... not true.

They're a publicly traded company.

Not to mention, the community has made multiple designs for free.

If SE wants to butcher a nice design because they crave control, that's on them.

It's clear that they weren't paying a premium for graphics designers anyway. :P

Vote Dukakis

Yeah, those who made most of the existing designs left. Jin, Kurtis, Pawel, what's-that-French-guy's-name...

forest

Well the community already made multiple designs for free.

Vote Dukakis

10:33 PM

(BTW the company is not publicly traded, and its revenue does not come from Anime)

forest

It's not?

Vote Dukakis

Joel talked about potential IPO as a thing that the new CEO would deal with.

forest

huh

I remembered wrong then. whoops

ocæon

i'm imagining shareholders invoking an orwellian rebellion on so

forest

So this is all just staff's own ineptitude, not outside pressure from shareholders?

I guess I should consider Hanlon's razor more often before assuming the worst. :P

Mithrandir

10:37 PM

@g3rv4 how old might your kid(s?) be?

It gets fun... after a certain point ;)

user312109

10:53 PM

Can some one help me intepreting a moderator message?

user312109

please

user312109

@RoryAlsop

forest

What is it?

Moderators don't usually give vague or hard to understand messages.

user312109

Hello,

We're writing in reference to your Space Exploration Stack Exchange account:

https://space.stackexchange.com/users/18879/muze

It has been flagged that you have posted the same answer repeatedly.

This is regarded as "noise" on Space Exploration Stack Exchange. If your answer was criticized or did not attract a positive response, then the first thing to do is to improve the answer; some guidance for this is given here. Low-quality, wrong or useless answers will typically be downvoted, but can be resuscitated if improved or clarified (as appropriate).

ocæon

wild guess (considering we cannot see whatever message you're referring to) i'm guessing it means "badges are not pokemon" (typed before the above was posted)

John Dvorak

10:56 PM

Hello. Is it related to your recent ... not very well received, deservedly ... meta question?

forest

@Muze Well, are you posting duplicate answers?

user312109

@forest not that I can remember

John Dvorak

Ah, memory can be a fickle thing :P

user312109

First time suspended for bad answers

forest