[HN Gopher] As I am currently in a war zone, I don't have many o...
___________________________________________________________________
As I am currently in a war zone, I don't have many options for
cabling
Author : sprawl_
Score : 647 points
Date : 2023-04-27 16:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (electronics.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (electronics.stackexchange.com)
| hinkley wrote:
| Man, 15 meters is a long way when you don't have a Home Depot.
| For short distances there are a lot more options. Everything from
| taking the cord off your dryer to scrapping transformers for the
| windings.
|
| I kept thinking he might be better off figuring out how to move
| the transformer instead.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Whenever I get the urge to respond to a question with "You don't
| want to do that, you want to do this instead..." I'm going to
| prefix the question in my head with "As I am currently in a war
| zone" and try answering it.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| The problem with answering these questions is that they're
| always being circled by reflective vest wearing and clipboard
| toting vultures and you'll wind up fighting with them if you
| try and give a real answer.
| brookst wrote:
| That's why you preface your answer with "As an AI language
| model, I am assuming you are in a war zone...", so the
| vultures flock away to tar and feather whoever connected a
| LLM to stackexchange.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Daily reminder that online, someone well-off lying in bed with a
| nice bowl of soup can be talking with someone homeless in a
| third-world country with no chance of improvement whatsoever.
| Hopefully the OP in SE is not the latter and it's just a
| temporary situation, especially if they're in Ukraine and Ukraine
| wins.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| They could also be talking with a voluntary soldier who is
| fighting for an invading military. Lots of ifs and buts to
| consider.
| krsdcbl wrote:
| You're missing a crucial point here imho: the possibility to
| seek assistance from someone in a much better situation to
| research and reflect on the issue may not end the war, but it
| does make a HUGE moral difference and might provide actual help
| and solutions for the problem at hand.
|
| Without the internet, the author of the question might well be
| left to try it out and possibly getting harmed, or with no
| support at all.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Contrary to the defeatest attitude, it sounds like they are
| working on improving their situation by hooking up a solar
| array.
|
| Small improvements are important, especially for people in dire
| straights.
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| >lying in bed with a nice bowl of soup
|
| Tell me you're in NY without telling me you're in NY
| paganel wrote:
| For what it's worth the original poster seems to be from Sudan,
| another current (and more recent) war-zone. It's this part that
| made me think of that general area:
|
| > our concrete homes are not designed to be habitable without
| AC power.
|
| and a little web-searching confirmed it. The reason being that
| concrete-made buildings in Ukraine are definitely habitable
| right now without AC (I live in a concrete-made building myself
| a couple hundred kilometres from the border with Ukraine).
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Also, the OP pretty much says they are not in Ukraine in a
| comment:
|
| > I think Probably the war will end because Russia and
| America are busy in Ukraine
| User23 wrote:
| Yeah I don't think it's common knowledge in the west that
| our governments are doing the color revolution dance in
| Sudan.
| netsharc wrote:
| Depressing world facts in April 2023:
|
| "I'm in a war zone."
|
| "Oh yeah, which one?"
|
| At least in March 2023 it was "slightly better" that people
| would go straight to assuming the answer is "Ukraine". Any
| other active wars going on[1]? Maybe Myanmar..
|
| [1] Result for "active wars in 2023" gives me a page of
| potential conflicts: https://www.cfr.org/report/conflicts-
| watch-2023
| perth wrote:
| Don't forget the not often talked about Colombian
| Conflict!
| beardog wrote:
| The tigray war is kind of paused right now and Eritrea
| has not signed onto the ceasefire, so I would still treat
| it as a war zone if I were to travel there.
|
| The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict could reignite if
| Azerbaijan wants to take advantage of Russia's
| distraction.
|
| The Yemeni and Syrian civil wars are still not resolved
|
| Western Sahara has a sort of no-mans land and a land mine
| problem and had clashes in 2020.
|
| India's borders with Pakistan see skirmishes from time to
| time. A similar situation may arise with India and China
| too as water and geopolitical issues mount.
| beardog wrote:
| Correction, seems the China-India situation has already
| become similar with clashes in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
| andrepd wrote:
| > Depressing world facts in April 2023:
|
| Has there ever been a point in at least the last 2500
| years where there _weren 't_ multiple active warzones in
| the world?
| labster wrote:
| > Depressing human nature facts in any year
|
| FTFY
| bragr wrote:
| >"Oh yeah, which one?"
|
| I mean, when has there ever not been several regional
| wars going?
| lucumo wrote:
| That happened a couple of times, but that was because
| everyone was fighting in one big war.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| It's unclear if he means Alternating Current or Air
| Conditioning with AC. I hope it's the former, because the
| latter needs kilowatts, not the 270 W they have.
|
| "Concrete" can also mean "the cement based building material"
| or "specific", as in "this specific building needs power to
| be habitable, because <unusual detail>" (pumping drinking
| water for example, which is mentioned).
|
| The comment "because Russia and America are busy in Ukraine"
| indicates OP is not in Ukraine.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| What else would they need power for? Heating and cooling
| are the only appliances I can think of that would be
| necessary for habitability.
| jstarfish wrote:
| The device they're asking the question from ;)
| evan_ wrote:
| sump pump or well pump, which would also need quite a bit
| of power but not as much as HVAC
|
| maybe just lighting if there are no windows or they have
| to keep the windows covered
| jccooper wrote:
| Ventilation and/or lighting.
| philwelch wrote:
| Fun rule of thumb is that Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan
| is at the same latitude as Moses Lake in eastern Washington.
| (Blue Origin used to have a rocket test facility in Moses
| Lake; another rocket startup is out there now. It's unlikely
| to be used as an operational launch facility but it could
| reach ISS if it were.) Ukraine is slightly north of
| Kazakhstan on average so think northern US or Canada.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| The OP is from Sudan.
|
| Ukraine has been impressively fast in rebuilding critical
| infrastructure after Russian cruise missile strikes. It also
| helps that many of the Ukrainian men that have gone back to
| Ukraine are construction workers, electricians etc. Many of
| them are even working under the risk of Russian double-tap
| strikes.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Steel is bad as an electrical conductor as its much higher than
| copper internal resistance would waste a lot of power. I don't
| know if the military still use wired field telephones, but in
| case they do, the field phone wire is excellent. It won't sustain
| lots of current, but if you're OK with a few amps, then that
| cable is sturdy, water and oil resistant and it has both copper
| and steel core, the former working as good electrical conductors
| and the latter making it extremely hard to break. It's also
| _very_ good for building low cost emergency long wire antennas,
| dipoles, etc.
| sa46 wrote:
| Around 2014 or so, we (light infantry) had field telephones on
| the books, but we only used them once for a field exercise to
| practice assuming all modern tech was down.
| H8crilA wrote:
| WW2 stories of diversions to enemy communications: put small
| needles through the cable. At first you'd think you just have
| to cut the cable, but that actually makes it very easy to
| find and fix the problem. Small needles that short the wires
| are very difficult to locate. Unless you have a fast device
| that measures return latency on the shorted circuit, but that
| wasn't available in the 1940s.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| You can use binary search to find the pin. Unless two or
| more pins are used.
| tialaramex wrote:
| However "a fast device that measures return latency on the
| shorted circuit" is presumably very cheap today.
|
| 20+ years ago, rewiring buildings for 1000baseT the Cisco
| switches (3650s maybe? 3750s? I know they had IPv6
| multicast acceleration in the switch fabric because that's
| why we had them) would do this for any circuit on command,
| OK, 18 metres from here there's a fault, pace, pace, pace,
| I reckon it'll be up on this cable tray... yup, some fool
| tried to "repair" a broken Cat5 cable, we'll just rip it
| out, meanwhile patch to a different circuit.
| jutrewag wrote:
| Perfect time to use a pin nailer.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Interesting comment by the OP of the EE Post:
|
| "Yes. we already done that but not over do it because we hope the
| power will be restored.I think Probably the war will end because
| Russia and America are busy in Ukraine and hopefully will not
| supply fighting parties with bombs, rockets and ammunition and
| they have to keep fighting with sticks and swords"
| wicharek wrote:
| This remark implies that the warring parties are somehow
| equally responsible. I do not know where the OP is (Sudan?) and
| know nothing about what's going on there. But Ukraine situation
| is crystal clear - there is the victim and the aggressor.
| Representing them as as equally guilty of war is at best
| misleading.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| Vae victis. Whoever wins the war will set the record on
| responsibility, like they always do.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| "Winner writes the history" is largely bullshit. 90% of the
| narrative about the third reich and WW2 right up until
| recently came from the very Nazis responsible.
| manuel_w wrote:
| I don't understand how that counters "Winner writes the
| history".
|
| If the winner wouldn't write history it wouldn't be a
| problem to talk about
|
| - Holodomor in Russia
|
| - the genocide on the Armenians in Turkey.
| [deleted]
| hot_gril wrote:
| I look at history as what the world thinks rather than
| just one country, and still Armenian Genocide history was
| a close call. Took a long time for other countries (over
| 100y for the US) to recognize it due to fear of
| retaliation, and Ottoman Empire was debatably not even a
| "winner."
| aliher1911 wrote:
| Wagner group (russian private military) which is now busy in
| Ukraine and lost quite a bit of personnel was actively
| involved in Sudan. I might be mistaken but they have some
| interests in gold mining operation which is a shared venture
| between Sudan and some Russian business.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Be honest with yourself and try to imagine what would happen
| to, say Mexico, if Russia were to stage a coup, install their
| guy, and deploy weapons. Cuba has been under the boot for how
| many decades now? Are they not victims?
|
| The never ending "civil war" in Sudan is just one of the
| countless proxy conflicts between the US and Russia
|
| The population doesn't want to be under Russia's boot, of
| course. Nobody does. But you're clearly playing the naivety
| card when you should, and do, know better
| elzbardico wrote:
| It is useless man. HN is completely indoctrinated by the
| propaganda. They even still believe that Trump was elected
| by russian interference.
| yks wrote:
| > The population doesn't want to be under Russia's boot
|
| More importantly, the population doesn't enjoy genocide and
| torture that comes with "being under Russia's boot". The
| specific goals and ways with which Russia wages this
| conquest makes them unequivocally "bad guys" and Americans
| who help Ukrainians "good guys", even if this simplicity
| offends your cynical tastes.
| netsharc wrote:
| > if Russia were to stage a coup, install their guy, and
| deploy weapons.
|
| So... is your understanding that Russia's been "forced" to
| invade because the US was arming Ukraine to eventually
| invade Russia?
|
| I guess this is not an original argument to get into, but
| do we want to agree on some basic facts before we start:
|
| 1. Putin is corrupt. E.g.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_tFSWZXKN0 . Sure the
| people making the video are people who want to see him be
| taken down and a Pro-Putin take could be that these guys
| are liars funded by "foreign states" to make propaganda to
| make Putin look bad, but there's tons of other evidence of
| his corruption.
|
| 2. The person ousted in the "coup" (Viktor Yanukovych) was
| also deeply corrupt. E.g.
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/24/rebels-
| toured-...
|
| If we can agree that these 2 things are true, then I think
| there's an argument I can make that the Ukranian people's
| wish to be closer to the west is genuine and is not a
| Western-manufactured thing. Because the alternative is for
| a corrupt Ukranian leader that would've moved to be even
| more in bed with a corrupt Russian leader and for the
| citizenry to be robbed of their prosperity and welfare.
|
| The argument that Putin did it to stop NATO's growing
| sphere of influence is a curious reversal of roles of the
| bad and good guys. Of course it's hard to argue the US/EU
| are the super clean good guys, hey there's corruption in
| these 2 institutions as well... but the way I see it, to
| say that Putin is the better guy against US/EU/NATO
| requires a lot of self-deception. Or am I the one being
| deluded?
| beebeepka wrote:
| Please quote me saying Putin is the good guy. The entire
| point of my post was to challenge the very notion of
| good/bad actors because it's simply not a thing
|
| I think I made it clear that of course the Ukrainians
| prefer the US. Almost anybody would, myself included. But
| not because they are "the good guys". What are we, 12?
| netsharc wrote:
| Hmm, a slippery fish, interesting.
|
| Sure the actors aren't good/bad but are acting out of
| their interest.
|
| But the whole "Imagine if Russia staged a coup in Mexico
| and installed their guy" sounds like you're saying the
| whole situation got started because some actors' interest
| was to expand their sphere of influence and squeeze
| Russia. Let's say that this is the case; sure, I would
| then agree, the only logical move for the actor Putin was
| to sooner or later confront this with a war.
|
| I'm arguing, how do you know there was a Western-
| engineered coup? Got any links? To me it looks more like
| a population that didn't want to live under the corrupt
| Putin/Yanukovich regimes, an actual people's movement.
| Maybe there aren't any bad actors, but it sounds like
| you're absolving Putin from any blame, with the whole
| Mexico-line of thinking, you're saying (I'll assume) "he
| was forced to defend his country because Nato was going
| to crush him".
|
| Why did Putin attack? I can imagine he deluded himself[1]
| into thinking that Nato/"the West" wants to conquer
| Russia, and engineered Ukraine into falling into Nato's
| sphere of influence (so Western propaganda lying to the
| Ukranian public, who then forced Yanukovich out). But I
| imagine for Putin this explanation is easier to believe
| than the thought that people in the Baltics and even
| Russia itself don't like thieving bastards, because to do
| that he'd have to admit his corruption is something
| unsavory.
|
| And you're sort of arguing the installation of weapons
| means Nato was going to attack Russia, but WTF, how about
| Putin look at himself if he's been behaving threateningly
| to justify a neighbor to install weapons? Who's the one
| who was the aggressor who annexed Crimea? (oh no, that's
| another can of worms, "Putin had to do that because the
| West was going to cut off the Black Sea access!", right?)
|
| [1] The legend is that he was isolating so much due to
| Covid, he started to develop these theories.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't think the OP was saying what you think they were
| saying.
|
| They were merely pointing out that the US and Russia are too
| "distracted" with Ukraine to provide arms to the warring
| parties in Sudan, and so hopefully the Sudanese conflict will
| fizzle out sooner than if the Ukraine war was not going on.
|
| I don't believe OP was making any kind of judgment on whether
| or not the West supplying weapons to Ukraine is a good or bad
| thing, or is morally right or wrong. Just observing a
| possible effect on their own situation.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| No, it doesn't. It's a fair comment about external arms
| supply intensifying conflicts, without apportioning blame.
| xdennis wrote:
| It's not fair because external supply is __de-escalating__
| conflict. If Ukrainians were left without any help they
| might have been conquered by now and genocided. See what
| they've done in the past with people the consider
| troublesome:
|
| - Extermination of 80-97% of Circassians,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide
|
| - 1.7 million Poles deported, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Soviet_repressions_of_Polish_c...
|
| - All Crimean Tartars executed or deported to make Crimea
| Russian in 1944, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_
| of_the_Crimean_Tat...
|
| - Up to 10 million Ukrainians executed,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I think you and parent are reading things into the
| comment that isn't there.
|
| On one axis, there's volume and sophistication of arms.
|
| On another axis, there's culpability, righteousness, and
| what comes after.
|
| No requirement to intermingle the two. Examples of
| genocide aren't germane to the observation that heavier
| weapons increase the intensity of civil war conflicts.
| That's why UN arms embargoes have historically always
| been a first step.
| [deleted]
| kelnos wrote:
| I agree with the sibling that you are reading things into
| OP's comment that aren't there.
|
| OP isn't saying anything about the validity or wisdom of
| supplying arms to Ukraine. They're talking about Sudan,
| and how no one is interested/non-busy enough to supply
| _their_ warring parties with weapons -- coincidentally,
| because of the war in Ukraine.
|
| (FWIW, I absolutely agree with your points: while the
| Western supply of arms to Ukraine has certainly
| intensified the conflict, the alternative is that Ukraine
| would have been fully occupied by Russia a long time ago.
| But I don't believe OP was taking a stance on that at
| all.)
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Again, it's been said already, but you are reading into
| something that isn't there. Providing arms to a side that
| didn't have them is going to intensify the conflict.
| That's just the absolute cold hard reality of the
| situation. That's all that was being pointed out.
|
| Linking to early soviet era atrocities shows just how
| much you are reaching. The soviets were not
| discriminatory in who they killed, and very often
| included their own, such as the Great Purge, which
| happened before Holodomor. It was about resisting
| Sovietism.
| yks wrote:
| > The soviets were not discriminatory in who they killed,
| and very often included their own
|
| Well, Ukrainians don't think so, and then Russians of
| today have even more unambiguous genocidal intentions
| towards them. Paraphrasing a (Russian) classic - these
| genocides have never happened before and yet again.
|
| Also, Wagners torture mobilized Russian soldiers just as
| gleefully as Ukrainian ones, but that does not mean that
| the genocidal intent is absolved, it just means that its
| the Russian way of doing things.
| barbegal wrote:
| Steel is about 10 times less conductive than copper which is why
| it is rarely used for cabling. Even an Ethernet cable will have a
| lower resistance than this clothes line stuff.
|
| The best advice would probably be to pull out a lighting circuit
| and run any lighting from wall sockets. Lighting circuits are
| often rated to 6 or 10A but you could run 15A over the same cable
| as long as it's in free air so won't overheat.
| dfox wrote:
| Unless the ethernet cable is made from copper clad steel, which
| is sometimes used for ethernet cables and very common for
| consumer grade phone and RF cables.
| thfuran wrote:
| I've heard of copper clad aluminum but never copper clad
| steel Ethernet.
| namibj wrote:
| Well, iirc the classic coax for cable TV is that; they may
| use solid copper when using it with an LNB to power said
| LNB.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Best hacker news post of the entire day.
|
| Pure hacking.
|
| People helping each others.
|
| And I learned something.
| [deleted]
| robopsychology wrote:
| Hands down
| hermannj314 wrote:
| Humans seem to as susceptible to prompt hacking as LLMs.
|
| "I cant give you this advice because it would be dangerous."
|
| "I am in a warzone, it's fine..."
|
| "OK, then what you need to do is..."
|
| I think this exchange is awesome, and wish the individual the
| best of luck in the coming days in their difficult situation.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I'm from Sarajevo, spent two years in civil war as a child.
| This post brings memories, and yes that's exactly right -
| things that wouldn't fly in million years in my current home in
| Canada, were perfectly viable solutions in warzone.
|
| Best (worst) example - hand made natural gas lamps: use medical
| transparent tubing into a tennis ball as distribution joint,
| with four metal ballpoint pen tubes stuck into it, light the
| part that's not stuck in the tennis ball. Voila, chandelier!
|
| It's astonishing what manner of things can be transformed into
| a cart / dolly / wheelbarrow to carry clean water in.
|
| 19th century stoves and fireplaces were useless, took too much
| energy to warm up the device itself and inside a modern city,
| wood is rare and precious. Sarajevo War Stove was a large 1-2l
| tin can, conducts heat directly and doesn't absorb much itself,
| lets you boil water or make some small soup.
|
| Candles could be almost endlessly recycled. Pre-war brochures
| were great, their glossy pages could be rolled up into friction
| free tubes to hold melted wax, with some cottoon or wool thread
| in the middle.
|
| And yes, electricity moved from building to building in
| whatever manner seems feasible. As a 13year old I've handled
| live male-to-male 220v cables, and can vouch, they give you
| quite a nice buzz if you're not careful :-)
|
| (some experiments did not work out great; chain smokers tried
| to light up all kinds of things, up to and including various
| kinds of tea; apparently it's just not the same).
| jmiskovic wrote:
| This is another great example: https://thefunambulistdotnet.w
| ordpress.com/2012/04/18/bosnia...
| Someone wrote:
| > Sarajevo War Stove was a large 1-2l tin can, conducts heat
| directly and doesn't absorb much itself, lets you boil water
| or make some small soup.
|
| Efficient stoves can indeed be fairly simple, as in
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverage-can_stove,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo_stove or
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_stove.
|
| A hightech variant has a battery-operated fan. I find that a
| weird combination, but apparently, it works well
| (https://www.techxlab.org/solutions/zz-manufacturing-
| sierra-z...)
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| > chain smokers tried to light up all kinds of things, up to
| and including various kinds of tea
|
| I've tried smoke a lot of things, including tea.
|
| Don't recommend it.
| pfffr wrote:
| Mullein, raspberry leaf, lots of other herbs can be a
| decent alternative that don't satiate the physical craving.
| Mullein helps clear out your lungs and can actually help
| you quit nicotine. You can also cut tobacco with these
| kinds of herbs. I'd recommend researching herbal smoke
| blends to anyone interested. Can also be used as a safer
| alternative if you want to cut your spliffs with something
| other than tobacco.
| ftxbro wrote:
| > Mullein helps clear out your lungs
|
| Maybe drinking it as an expectorant tea, but I can't
| imagine smoking it would be helpful overall.
| Sharlin wrote:
| > (some experiments did not work out great; chain smokers
| tried to light up all kinds of things, up to and including
| various kinds of tea; apparently it's just not the same).
|
| Might satisfy the social and psychological aspects of
| addiction, but the physiological part is rather difficult to
| sate without nicotine.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| No, that's just stack* being their usual dickish selves.
|
| "How can I do a thing?"
|
| "You shouldn't want to do that thing."
|
| Danger/risk is a situation that happens sometimes, but it's
| never an excuse to dismiss the asker's question and need.
|
| Explain the warning or concerns ("May catch fire and explode"
| or "Will not be to code, would cause your building to fail
| inspection" or "There's this other framework/language that
| might make it easier"), but also give them a damn answer!
|
| In this case, there's no @$&#ing reason someone sitting in
| their office shouldn't do the calculation that's being
| requested from the parameters supplied. It's a simple emag
| calc.
|
| I'm pretty sure stackX would tell someone asking about the time
| required to boil water for sanitization to never drink boiled
| water and use the tap. :/
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| My favourite get-out phrase is "Now remember, I'm telling you
| *how* to do it, I'm not telling you that you *should* do it."
| dpkirchner wrote:
| "Here's an answer to what I wish you had asked:"
|
| "You shouldn't use that sort of electricity, you should
| switch to three-phase."
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _" You shouldn't use that sort of electricity, you should
| switch to three-phase."_
|
| Ha! That made my day. Stack Overflow in a nutshell, with
| analogy converted to js frameworks.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| All three of the warnings and concerns you provided are
| extremely mild compared to the warning/concern that should
| actually be attached to this post: "if you fuck up while
| working on this you can easily die, and if anyone who doesn't
| know the danger you have created exists and interacts with it
| they can easily die". Emphasis on the easily part. Someone
| trips in the backyard, etc. I understand OP is desperate but
| I think putting this info out in the world is legit more
| likely to cause harm than good.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Who are we to weigh the consequences to the poster of a
| lack of electricity against risk created by jury rigging?
|
| And specifically, to make that choice for them?
|
| Caveat hacker.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| This isn't even a hacker, though! This is a person who
| isn't capable of doing extremely basic electrical
| calculations. It'd be a totally different topic if it was
| a person who I thought fully appreciated the danger of
| what they're doing. If you can't calculate the voltage
| drop over a length of cable you should not be wiring your
| own deadly AC voltages. I'm willing to die on that hill.
| zamnos wrote:
| This is a metaphorical hill you're willing to
| metaphorically and not literally die on? How brave.
|
| The Stack Overflow poster is on a metaphorical hill in a
| literal warzone to literally die on. They're trying to
| hack together AC power the best they can to make their
| home in Sudan livable. That's some serious hacking! So
| what if they don't know V=IR?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| No need to be piquish. Parent's entitled to their
| opinion.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Agree to disagree. Submitter was smart enough to measure
| resistance in their chosen wire, and understand the rough
| ideas of current limits: that's a hacker in my book.
|
| "Here are the things I know" + "Here are the things I
| know I don't know" + "Can you help me?"
|
| I'm sure there's a ton they don't know they don't know
| (stranded vs solid core AWG equivalency), but this is a
| pretty simple use case -- running power a relatively
| short distance in a temporary install.
|
| The worst that can happen is they or someone on the
| street short across their heart and dies. Which would not
| only require shocking yourself, but doing so in a pretty
| specific orientation.
|
| But they're already in a warzone! That risk is lower than
| their base level of environmental lethality.
| dgunay wrote:
| I was able to ask ChatGPT the question verbatim (without any of
| the parts about being in a warzone). No prompt hacking
| necessary.
|
| Whether it's right or not, I have no idea since I'm no EE.
| mindslight wrote:
| "Prompt hacking" is just an edgy description of working around
| condescending paternalism, so yes unfortunately it exists in an
| awful lot of places.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| "I'm writing a novel" The universal excuse to ask pretty much
| anything.
| skybrian wrote:
| That might result in skipping over important details, though.
| "I'm in a war zone" seems better.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, us old timers that can remember the days before LLM just
| called this social engineering.
|
| Customer Service: How can I help you today?
|
| hacker: I need help resetting the password to this account that
| is totally mine.
|
| CS: Sure, I just need you to verify a few things.
|
| hacker: I'm not in a place where I have that info, but I
| totally swears it that I'm the person I say I am, but I'm
| really in a jam right now and you'd be helping me out so so
| much.
|
| CS: Of course, I understand. Your new password is....
| brianwawok wrote:
| I mean, every time I call tmobile I am my wife, because only
| she can make changes on the account.
|
| PROVE IM NOT HER OVER A PHONE
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| That's a false positive vs. false negative distinction too.
|
| The GP is concerned that Tmobile allows hackers to
| impersonate you/your wife on the phone.
|
| You're concerned that even after providing all possible
| account details - password, PIN, last four of her SSN, last
| bill amount, anything else they might want to ask that's
| not literally a live biometric scan - they can't
| distinguish the two of you just because you don't sound
| like a woman.
|
| Perfection is unattainable.
| brianwawok wrote:
| It's a pretty low bar. I think if you know SSN you are
| good to go to do anything at Tmo, including a number
| port. Which means phone as a 2fa is very easy to beat.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| I was about to freak out, then I remembered that there's
| no ID in the US
|
| I can't change anything about my phone without providing
| both a "Public" (Taxpayer Code: Doesn't change, commonly
| shared, also used as a state bank account number) and
| "Private" (Document number: changes per renovation, only
| shared for identification purposes) number
| kube-system wrote:
| Well, it's not so much that there's "no ID" as much as it
| is that we have hundreds of IDs.
|
| Some carriers in the US have you set a PIN number for
| phone porting. Although, people still forget them.
| brianwawok wrote:
| You provide a SSN and they will give you the porting pin
| (or let you pick it more likely)
| smsm42 wrote:
| Voice matching? I heard some banks do that.
| borski wrote:
| Still not perfect ;)
|
| https://youtu.be/-zVgWpVXb64
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Very old timers called this rhetoric.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://youtu.be/2efhrCxI4J0
| russnewcomer wrote:
| I lived in the relatively safe stable part of a war zone as a
| foreign civilian for a few years, and had friends who were
| frequently in the less safe/less stable parts.
|
| So much of our modern world is designed for modern
| infrastructure, and when that infra falls down, you either have
| to do without or accept a level of danger that is probably higher
| than the modern world takes, but lower than what our ancestors
| 100 years ago took.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I wish, if possible, we'd design infrastructure to be much more
| resilient to failure to make it slightly less economical.
| Resilient =/ economical and nobody's economy is strong enough
| to sacrifice almost any of it, but maybe somewhere there's a
| compromise...
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| The risks of using steel cable for power are going to be
| corrosion/rust. The primary way this will cause problems is
| around connections, but long term it is also an issue away from
| connections. At connections, corrosion can cause the wire to
| become loose, something like ox-gard can be used to delay this
| significantly. It isn't designed for steel but some kind of
| protection must be done at connections or arcing will be a major
| risk. Longer term the wire itself will rust, and at some point
| the conductive cross section of the wire will be compromised to
| the point it overheats and melts. This might be a year and it
| might be 100 years depending on factors which are hard to predict
| and control.
|
| TLDR: connections must be protected by some kind of anti
| oxidation coating, if you have nothing else use grease but
| something designed for electrical connections is better. If you
| have nothing else, melt some lead and dip the exposed part of the
| wire in that to coat it. Lead should be readily available in a
| war zone? Long term the wire WILL melt at some random point along
| the wire so it is much better if this wire is kept away from
| anything flammable.
| [deleted]
| MisterTea wrote:
| > It isn't designed for steel but some kind of protection must
| be done at connections or arcing will be a major risk.
|
| Not so much arcing but resistance between the terminal and the
| wire will increase as a coating of oxide builds up between the
| two. Eventually the resistance is high enough that dangerous
| amounts of heat will build up and ignite wire insulation or
| other flammable materials. What usually happens, is the
| conductor was nicked by the electrician during stripping and
| that becomes a mechanical weak point that becomes a fuse link
| and the wire sometimes just melts off at that point rapidly
| without starting a fire and goes open circuit.
|
| > melt some lead and dip the exposed part of the wire in that
| to coat it.
|
| Plain molten lead isn't going to "wet" the steel wire without
| some sort of flux. Rosin flux is made from tree sap of a
| conifer tree so go find a pine tree and harvest some sap.
| hinkley wrote:
| borax?
| genewitch wrote:
| I would think that's a different type of "flux" as it's
| commonly used for cleaning gold and preventing gold from
| sticking to the crucible. then again, flux is just an acid,
| so who knows.
| hinkley wrote:
| I've been watching too much blacksmithing on Youtube. It
| can be used for laminating iron, that much I do know. Not
| sure about brazing.
| jaclaz wrote:
| You don't really need "rosin flux", the idea is to remove
| oxidation, chloridric acid is what was used for tin
| soldering, "saturated" with zinc.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_chloride#As_a_metallurgic.
| ..
|
| Though I have no idea if either can be found locally.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Though I have no idea if either can be found locally.
|
| Which is specifically why I mentioned rosin. Though any
| acid could likely be used so citric acid or something that
| could work as well.
| hinkley wrote:
| > Lead should be readily available in a war zone?
|
| Goddamn, son.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > The risks of using steel cable for power are going to be
| corrosion/rust
|
| Probably fine in Sudan in late spring, tbh. They have to pump
| water up from the ground with electric pumps, hence the need
| for cabling, so I guess they don't have much rain right now.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Sudan gets about 4 inches of rain a year or something like
| that. It's obscenely hot (compared to what I am accustomed
| to) and dry. For a temporary solution, rust _definitely_ is
| not a limiting factor here.
| codethief wrote:
| Maybe you should post this as an answer/comment in the OP?
| cbdumas wrote:
| You should post this as an answer to the question on
| stackexchange
| dheera wrote:
| It takes effort to sign-up though. Maybe that should be a
| lesson to stackexchange to not require login to post
| intelligent content.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Stack Exchange _doesn 't_ require login to post. It just
| requires an email address (and you can provide a fake one,
| if you don't have one for whatever reason).
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| Btw, OP clarified in a comment that by "for how how long" they
| meant distance and not time. They're hoping it's a temporary
| solution.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Great answer. And I love that the TLDR is almost as long as the
| main text
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, does electron flow influence oxidation speed
| at all?
|
| Or is its speed purely a consequence of temperature +
| environmental gases?
| pitched wrote:
| I've found that having a charged, exposed cable laying around
| will start to rust within about 6 months. This is from cheap
| phone cables so it being copper-coated instead of full copper
| is likely.
|
| I've also heard of cathodic protection or electronic rust
| proofing doing the opposite though? Maybe it has to do with
| moving charges vs static charges? Or ground a cable
| preventing rust vs charging it accelerates rust?
| scotty79 wrote:
| Maybe if it warms up the cable it could speed up oxidation?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It would. I think that's what most people were figuring.
|
| And also, assuming it's wrapped but not encased to cabling
| standards (e.g. there's oxygen between the insulator and
| wire, but the insulator itself is contiguous and airtight),
| oxidation would eventually deplete the available oxygen
| "inside" the cable, right?
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| The plastic on cheap farm cable like this is not going to
| be air tight, almost certainly isn't water vapor tight,
| and probably isn't even 'rust tight', in that I've seen
| rust migrate through plastic coated steel fencing and
| accumulate on the outside. I wouldn't count on it for
| anything other than making the rust slightly less
| obvious.
| rsync wrote:
| "Out of curiosity, does electron flow influence oxidation
| speed at all?"
|
| Oxidation (and reduction) are _literally electron flows_.
|
| Oxidation is a loss of electrons and reduction is a gain of
| electrons.
|
| Since the oxidizing material is the anode in this (oxidation
| "circuit") you can connect a "sacrificial anode" to the
| material you want to preserve and the electrons will flow
| from that instead of the (material you want to save).
|
| We have sacrificial anodes connected to our underground
| propane tank:
|
| http://www.pettank.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/cathode-
| pr...
|
| ... which means a bag of magnesium does all the rusting
| instead of the tank they are connected to.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| My understanding was that the speed of the reaction was
| dependent on temperature (and probably pressure/gas mix),
| and the electron flow was a byproduct rather than driver of
| the chemical reaction.
|
| But it seems like you can indeed block the reaction from
| occuring by saturating the surface with enough electrons
| (i.e. by applying an appropriate amount of current) that it
| makes oxidation impossible from an electrochemical
| standpoint.
|
| https://www.corrosionpedia.com/definition/1237/impressed-
| cur...
|
| (In addition to the more common, passive bolt-on-a-
| sacrifical-cathode method)
| jugg1es wrote:
| this is an interesting question. Electrical current creates
| an EM field that could repel water molecules and oxygen ions.
| Temperature could also slow oxidation down... like I'm trying
| to imagine a red hot piece of iron rusting. I wouldn't think
| it would rust as fast as a cold piece of iron.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Anodizing (controlled oxidation) is done via water with a
| current through the piece to anodize.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIwvLuNzliI
|
| I'd think that charge would create a faster rusting.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| High temperature speeds oxidation. Learned as a consequence
| of blacksmithing. ;) So red hot iron absolutely rusts, you
| just beat the (brittle) oxidation off as you work the
| piece.
| jugg1es wrote:
| learned something today - thanks!
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > Temperature could also slow oxidation down
|
| Gonna have to guess that you've never had to replace a car
| exhaust :-)
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Car exhaust is a weird case though. The water vapor in
| the exhaust condenses on the cold metal. If you drive far
| enough, you add enough heat to evaporate the water back
| out. Else, you end up with a bunch of water in the
| exhaust facilitating the rusting.
|
| In general, you have this problem with cold metal when
| there's enough humidity to cause condensation. Bare cast
| iron in an unconditioned space under cover will
| definitely rust from condensation.
| [deleted]
| legitster wrote:
| God bless the people on Stackexchange who actually answer the
| question that is asked instead of scolding you for your idea
| being bad or being pedantic about the way you phrased your
| question.
|
| Yes, I want to use jQuery. No, I may not be in an active war
| zone.
| dghughes wrote:
| I think the majority of what I find useful on Stackexcahnge
| sites end up being a post locked down but someone manged to
| sneak in an answer.
| kelnos wrote:
| I wouldn't say majority, but I too find a lot of useful
| answers on questions that have long-ago been locked down as
| "off topic" or "too vague" or "too opinionated" or whatever.
| Cherian wrote:
| My life was built on people who helped me out like this.
|
| Tangentially, the real MVP is the home depot guy who helps you
| find the one right-sized screw that costs $0.5....
| legitster wrote:
| There's no better reminder that only a thimbleful of useful
| human knowledge is actually found on the internet.
|
| I recently spent 4 hours online trying to solve a carpentry
| problem and not even knowing what words to use. I finally
| called my dad and in less than 2 minutes it was solved.
| te0006 wrote:
| Now _that_ would be a good, hard challenge for ChatGPT and
| its ilk. Could you post question and correct answer here?
| Preferrably also something approximating the original
| version (when you still didn't know the correct technical
| terms).
| contingencies wrote:
| The communication of solutions to untrained audiences
| through the employment of simplified semantics is
| definitely an interesting field of linguistics. Visual
| smacks of Ikea.
| m463 wrote:
| I remember the (reasonably-priced) hardware store back home
| being full of these guys, and home depot with no help,
| selling plastic plumbing supplies.
|
| I guess home depot has won, and the employees have enough faq
| experience to help now.
|
| Now if home depot sold 80/20 supplies...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Interesting story on that, Robert Nardelli (HD CEO 2000-2007)
| fired all the ex-tradespeople that Home Depot employed in
| their stores, because they cost more than younger and less
| experienced labor.
|
| Straight from the GE "How to mortgage a company's future for
| a small boost in the present" book.
|
| There were also some hilarious anecdotes told about him
| refusing to get out of his car in the corporate parking lot
| until security met him and escorted him in, presumably
| because he understood how much employees disliked him.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nardelli#The_Home_Dep.
| ..
| tetha wrote:
| You also see this in system administration circles/SRE quite a
| bit. And I mean, that's one of the important skills you have to
| learn in the operative trade: You should push for clean
| solutions. You shouldn't use clothesline to transfer power. You
| shouldn't use an EOL OS to run systems.
|
| But as much as you push, sometimes you need to put on the
| rubber boots and gloves going up to your shoulders and figure
| out a somewhat safe way to run some Windows XP based machine
| controller in an environment. Or wrangle some Java 1.6 thing
| back into function. Or figure out the least security reduction
| to support some old system not supporting modern crypto.
|
| And yeah, usually the idea is to put trusted isolation layers
| around the dumb idea we have to deal with, as the water hose
| suggested in the article.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Ugh. I asked if you could use consumer-grade SSDs with an HP
| ProLiant equipped with hardware RAID on one of the
| StackExchange sites, forget which. The only response I got
| was, "Oh, too cheap to buy the official ones? This website is
| for professional sysadmins, it tells you that when you sign
| up." Which btw it doesn't say anywhere.
| shagie wrote:
| There's a substantial difference between the amount of time and
| guidance an individual can spend with a single question when
| you're on a site that gets 3.9k questions per day and one that
| gets 21 (stats from
| https://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday )
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Thats a reason to not engage if you dont have time.
|
| It is not a reason to sit down and dismiss away questions or
| type out why you wont tell them.
| shagie wrote:
| Today, most people who are doing curation of Stack Overflow
| are not engaging with a question at all. They down vote and
| move on as any attempt to help is seen as rude... and just
| down voting and moving on is also seen by some as rude...
| and not doing anything and having a question get ignored is
| also seen as rude or frustrating.
|
| As there are many fewer people answering questions compared
| to the rate of questions being asked the overall "is stack
| overflow rude or not" is a "yes." But engagement numbers
| are up as people keep asking them.
| eitland wrote:
| I have said it before I think, that I am sure Stack Overflow
| absolutely can, if they want to, reduce the amount of low
| quality questions they get.
|
| The problems Stack Overflow has seems to me to be very much
| self inflicted, caused by the decision to optimize for
| political games instead of optimizing for solving problems.
| shagie wrote:
| "If they want to" runs into issues that as a company,
| they're measuring their success by engagement.
|
| Adding that barrier to participation would in turn drive
| down engagement and advertisement impressions.
|
| From the corporate standpoint, doing that (or anything like
| it) translates into a loss of revenue.
| eitland wrote:
| Maybe. Personally I think software engineers are a much
| more valuable audience than college kids.
|
| Also I think a lot of what happened was rampant
| deletionism, that I personally can't see any _good_
| reason for with todays storage prices.
| shagie wrote:
| The issue isn't the storage... but rather the difficulty
| of using a search to find a good question that has been
| answered.
|
| Do we need 10,000 questions about how to handle a
| NullPointerException in Java?
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/linked/218384?lq=1
|
| If not, then it is probably appropriate to delete more of
| them and that may be seen as rude by people who have
| asked a question about a null pointer exception which
| gets deleted.
|
| We complain about how Google has gotten worse with search
| because its harder to find the content that we're
| after... and at the same time say that we want to keep
| all that content around on Stack Overflow which in turn
| makes it harder for people to use it as a "this is where
| you look to find an already answered question."
| eitland wrote:
| Back when the answers were still there and Google still
| worked I managed to find them just fine.
|
| Many others clearly did too as many of the questions they
| removed or tried to remove were massively upvoted.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Stack Exchange itself is underrated, it's just that Stack
| Overflow is really bad.
| shagie wrote:
| The moderation tools and expected community involvement in
| using them was built for a much smaller site with a more
| active user base... and it works reasonably.
|
| When you then add on top of it "engagement" metrics, scale
| up the number of questions per day by orders of magnitude
| without the corresponding scaling up of the community
| involvement and (to an extent) try to _remove_ the ability
| for the community to moderate and curate the content then
| the tools that are left to the community are the social
| ones (as they can be used beyond the limited number of
| down, close, and delete votes that one has in a day).
|
| And then you're left with "the way to handle questions
| where the person didn't even put the title into Google to
| search first is to be rude to them." It's not a good thing,
| but without the barriers to entry being implemented in code
| they are erected by reputation and social forces instead.
|
| It isn't a _good_ thing - and it would probably be much
| better if those barriers were put in place through some
| other means... but as long as engagement is the measured
| metric and ad impressions are the income, having company 's
| developers implement it is a non-starter and you're left
| with the community using rudeness as the moderation tool of
| last resort.
|
| From A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27706413 )
|
| > Four Things to Design For
|
| > ...
|
| > 3.) Three, you need some barriers to participation,
| however small. This is one of the things that killed
| Usenet, because there was almost no barrier to posting,
| leading to both generic system failures like spam, and also
| specific failures, like constant misogynist attacks in any
| group related to feminism, or racist attacks in any group
| related to African-Americans. You have to have some cost to
| either join or participate, if not at the lowest level,
| then at higher levels. There needs to be some kind of
| segmentation of capabilities.
|
| > ...
|
| > 4.) Finally, you have to find a way to spare the group
| from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because
| conversations require dense two-way conversations. In
| conversational contexts, Metcalfe's Law-- the number of
| connections grows with the square of the number of nodes--
| is a drag. Since the number of potential two-way
| conversations in a group grows so much faster than the size
| of the group itself, the density of conversation falls off
| very fast as the system scales up even a little bit. You
| have to have some way to let users hang onto the "less is
| more" pattern, in order to keep associated with one
| another.
| interroboink wrote:
| Your phrasing makes it seem like the people answering have
| the job of "keep up with the rate of incoming of questions."
| So, if there are a lot of incoming questions, they must
| reduce quality of feedback, since they are spread thin.
|
| Personally, when I answer a question it's because I want to,
| and feel I can be helpful. I have no skin in the game with
| regard to the site's overall ability to keep up with incoming
| questions. So, I take as long as I need, and do as much hand-
| holding as I feel is appropriate, not governed by external
| pressure.
|
| But I suppose there are professional moderators and such who
| really do have that external pressure, and thus have
| incentive to give curt feedback, or even to drive people away
| -- thus reducing that pressure, making their lives easier.
|
| As a SO user from the early days, I do miss that feeling of
| mostly interacting with people doing it "for the love of it,"
| rather than governed by efficiency.
| shagie wrote:
| The ability for you to find a good question to answer is in
| part based on the work that other people do in down voting
| and closing questions. If you go to the triage queue -
| those are questions that are being prevented from showing
| up.
|
| If you go through "newest questions" there are often
| questions there that can't be reasonably answered without
| more work to figure out what the problem is.
|
| As I write this, there's a question
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76123197/is-it-
| possible-... which is apparently a Java and Kotlin question
|
| > Is it possible to achieve Color gradient overlay like
| Resso app
|
| > It's really going to be interesting (big inline image)
|
| And... is that worth clicking answering in that form? How
| much time should you spend trying to make it a better
| question that someone else can answer? Or just down vote it
| and move on? Would you ask "how does this related to Java?"
| or "could you explain a bit more about what you've done so
| far and what problems you've encountered?" - and is that
| considered rude?
|
| The corresponding part of it is that people who have their
| question down voted without any information may find it
| rude. Or if someone suggests a change to the question...
| they may find that rude too.
|
| And some people find not getting a response at all to their
| question on a site that is billed as the place to get your
| questions answered rather frustrating.
|
| In order to make it easier for people who want to answer
| questions to find questions to answer a lot of questions
| don't show up. Poke at the triage review queue and consider
| the additional difficulty of finding a question to answer
| if those were also present in browsing.
|
| Note also that there are no professional moderators on SO.
| Everyone there is a volunteer... and thus they're burning
| out a bit too. While it may be easy to say "well, then they
| should take a break" - they do... and more questions of
| questionable quality show up in the feed.
|
| The best way to find good questions to answer is to look at
| recently asked the up voted questions (and avoid the down
| voted ones)... but down voting is considered to be rude.
|
| And if you want to help a question by asking a clarifying
| comment in there for this one that might be interesting...
| and that one... and that one... and do it for ten questions
| or so you've spent half an hour... and those comments
| trying to get some information about how you should answer
| are seen as rude. How much time do you want to spend asking
| clarifying questions in comments?
|
| Ultimately, SO is suffering from issues of scale without
| the corresponding tooling to enable people who are trying
| to answer to find interesting questions more easily. That's
| not an issue on smaller sites where you can read all of a
| day's questions over lunch.
| interroboink wrote:
| > Ultimately, SO is suffering from issues of scale
| without the corresponding tooling to enable people who
| are trying to answer to find interesting questions more
| easily.
|
| Yes, that seems like a reasonable take.
|
| I suppose in my imagined ideal reality, people simply
| don't answer questions that are not asked well, or that
| don't interest them for any other reason, rather than
| actively body-slamming those questions.
|
| If this results in a glut of low-effort questions, then
| the site suffers. As a result, the site has an incentive
| to provide better tools.
|
| Right now, volunteers heroically stem the flood of poor
| questions by burning themselves out and sometimes getting
| bitter. The site still suffers, but in a different, more
| pernicious way.
|
| I looked at a triage queue question just now, and it was
| indeed poorly-written. I selected "Needs author edit",
| and clicked "Submit". Then, I got a pop-up asking "Why
| should this question be closed?" and I was confused. I
| don't want to close the question. I don't want to send
| that signal to the question writer. I want them to
| improve their question, that's all. I canceled the
| interaction. So again: agreed about bad tools.
| Personally, I choose not to use them.
| shagie wrote:
| The difficulty that SO has had trouble with is the "then
| the site suffers." How do you measure that? They want to
| run some A/B test that allows the corresponding
| measurement to show that things are better with a change.
|
| However, it feels that the only way that they've really
| accepted measuring it from a sales / marketing view (as
| that's what brings in the revenue) is the "engagement"
| metric. People signing up, asking questions, and
| accessing the site.
|
| Better moderation tools which would result in fewer but
| higher quality questions on the site shows up in that
| measurement of engagement as "worse".
|
| ---
|
| The part that you encountered is that "if the question
| isn't answerable, it should be closed." That in turn
| feeds other parts of the system. Users are more likely to
| update their questions if they are closed rather than if
| they're left open. Other people who answer questions (but
| rarely engage in fixing up questions) are less likely to
| click on questions that are closed. People that routinely
| ask poor questions that get closed start getting
| automated warnings about their question quality before
| they ask a question and end up with a question ban if
| that behavior persists. A closed question without answers
| or edits to improve it get automatically deleted after 30
| days.
|
| Without going in and commenting on a question and then
| spending time with the person ("why don't you just answer
| it if you think you know the answer rather than
| commenting? If you don't like it just don't read it." is
| something I've seen many times) closing the question is a
| way to suggest improvements to the question without
| exposing yourself to users who not infrequently then
| pursue a... negative engagement with the person trying to
| help them ask a better question.
|
| I can see about digging more (it's been a long time since
| I went looking for it) but _somewhere_ on one of the meta
| sites was a post about the different interactions and the
| "engagement" metric for new users asking a first
| question.
|
| The best way to not have them ask a second question is to
| completely ignore their question - no votes, no comments,
| no answers. Closing a question results in more people
| asking a second question that is positively received than
| having no interaction.
|
| (late edit - did the digging -
| https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216683/what-
| happens... )
| interroboink wrote:
| I may be going in circles here, but when you say:
|
| > The best way to not have them ask a second question is
| to completely ignore their question...
|
| Leaving aside the issues of interpreting that data[1],
| and taking your conclusion at face value:
|
| I get the sense that you imply this is a bad thing. But
| is it?
|
| I agree that if the ultimate goal is "boost engagement
| metrics," then it's a bad thing. I suppose I just don't
| agree with that being the ultimate goal. And I sure
| wouldn't mind if other people in the community de-
| prioritized that goal, too. My opinion here applies to
| much about the modern internet landscape, to be fair (:
|
| [1] eg: was their choice to ask a second question _caused
| by_ a particular interaction? Or maybe users that ask
| second questions are more likely to ask a good first
| question, or other explanations and confounding factors?
| By another reading of it, we could say users who got
| their first question closed were 2x as likely to leave
| permanently than those who had no interaction (and this
| applies to over 2x as many users, so is even bigger in
| absolute terms). It 's rather muddy.
| rareitem wrote:
| It's like we're living in a parallel reality in 1st world
| countries
| kranke155 wrote:
| Fly to Brazil, take a cab around Central Sao Paulo.
|
| Your understanding of the world is warped by the safety and
| availability of goods. It's incredible when you get in places
| where the state doesn't function at let's say 50% of what we
| get in the first world. It's one hell of a learning experience.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| > Fly to Brazil, take a cab around Central Sao Paulo.
|
| Better yet, don't.
|
| source: Am Brazilian, would not recommend it.
|
| To be fair, Central Sao Paulo isn't even what I would
| consider third world yet, if you really wanna see how good
| some of us have it go to the northeast of Brazil, or
| Venezuela (if you manage to get in somehow).
| zubiaur wrote:
| In the grand scheme of things, even rural-ish northeast
| Brazil is not thaaat bad. Venezuela though... oh boy.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Getting into Venezuela is easy, getting back out again is
| the hard part.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I was recently in northern Vietnam. You could spend an hour
| having a simple conversation via Google Translate.
|
| Made me realize there are still big chunks of the world where
| you can't take basic literacy for granted in 2023, even of
| people in their 30s.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| 50% of Americans cannot read at a highschool level.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Still a lot, but 22% of Americans are children
| [deleted]
| gota wrote:
| I don't understand this. Sao Paulo is mostly
| indistinguishable from any large city in the US. Big
| concrete-and-glass buildings city centre, lots of traffic-
| related infrastructure, large swaths of residential areas
| including richer suburbs and poorer ghettos ('favelas', in
| Brazil). Are there any large cities that do not conform to
| this formula?
|
| What are you referring to, specifically?
|
| The only thing that comes to mind are the homeless
| population, but then again you could say the same problem
| (and at arguably larger scale) afflicts San Francisco or New
| York.
|
| Sao Paulo is not even particularly violent, too
| elzbardico wrote:
| Downtown Sao Paulo, or the central zone is a decadent part
| of the city (think Bronx in 70s). It is overrun with
| Cracolandia (big gathering of crack addict homeless
| people). Most foreign people or even Brazilians that go to
| Sao Paulo stay only at the nice zones.
| hinkley wrote:
| See also Baudrillard.
| piloto_ciego wrote:
| We are.
|
| I was an exchange student in Ukraine in high school and the
| town I lived in periodically gets shelled now... we live
| immensely privileged and comfortable lives.
|
| This is not a bad thing, it's great, but we should try to make
| everyone else's life as good instead of hoarding our
| privileges.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's not privilege, millions of people have died defending
| the right to not be invaded by an asshole neighbor. Don't
| forget the price people have paid. Some places seem to be
| less interested in that, because they want to invade their
| neighbor, and we should be aggressively hostile to that very
| concept, and anyone who espouses the belief.
| borski wrote:
| Unless _you or your family_ were the ones that fought, it
| is privilege. Privilege isn't a "bad word," either - it's
| okay to have privilege. But acknowledging it's existence
| goes a long way toward building humility and understanding
| the situation of others who don't have it.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Define family. Because most Americans are descendants of
| war veterans.
| kelnos wrote:
| I mean, so what? If one of my ancestors fought in a war
| defending their/my country's freedom, I don't get to
| claim credit for what they did. I am privileged that
| those ancestors made the sacrifice they did and don't
| have to fight in a war myself.
| borski wrote:
| Precisely.
| borski wrote:
| You are intentionally missing the point. The pedantic
| definition of family is a strawman, in this case.
| majou wrote:
| Is it not "be privileged" or to "have privileges"? It's
| not as though it were quantifiable--"privilege checks"
| (the decade old boogeymeme) notwithstanding.
| borski wrote:
| Not sure I understand what you mean. I am saying it is
| good to acknowledge the privileges you have, and/or the
| fact that you are privileged. Not everybody has
| privileges, or is privileged, or however you'd like to
| describe it.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _It 's not privilege, millions of people have died
| defending the right to not be invaded by an asshole
| neighbor._
|
| Yes, and benefiting from that -- without having had to
| fight in those conflicts -- is a privilege.
| [deleted]
| tasuki wrote:
| > It's not privilege
|
| Why is it not privilege? What is privilege?
| robotresearcher wrote:
| > Don't forget the price people have paid.
|
| i.e. recognize that you are privileged, since others paid
| the price on your behalf.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I definitely feel like that sometimes. I'm so grateful my
| "problems" are choosing between polarized and regular
| sunglasses.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-27 23:00 UTC)