thebestaquaman

@thebestaquaman@lemmy.world

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⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ISO 26300⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:
Ahh, now I understand! I’ll try my best to make it less scary :)

To start off

why is there a need for external packages for a text document?

There usually isn’t, as long as you only want a simple document. The most basic thinkable document would be
```
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
This is the text in my document
\end{document}
```
However, you’ll likely want a title and author, so you can start off with
```
\documentclass{article}
\title{Fishes are nice}
\author{Definitely not Jason Mamoa}
\begin{document}

\maketitle

\section{Introduction}
This is a text about why fishes are nice.

\end{document}
```
You have your “Super basic document”, with at title and author. You can make simple formatting changes by modifying the documentclass statement at the top. My recommendation with all the external packages (usepackage) is to look them up one-by-one as you need them. You’ll typically find a small handfull of packages that you need very often, and then you’ll probably end up copy-pasting those declarations over whenever you create a new document. For most basic documents I’m using like 2-5 packages at most (fancy math fonts, hyperlinks, pretty bibliography, etc.)

Tables are straight up scary They take a little getting used to, I agree. For someone working a lot with tables, I would recommend getting used to them, but if you only very rarely need them, there are “graphical editors” that let you build a table in a GUI and then give you the Latex code for it. Overleaf has an integrated “visual editing” mode that makes the barrier to entry lower. However I don’t really recommend it for someone that really wants to learn to use Latex, because I think it prevents people from progressing past the very basics.

plotting - I didn’t even try to comprehend it I’ve used Latex for years, specifically writing documents with a lot of plots. I have yet to attempt to learn to plot directly in Latex. I know some people that will create figures and plots directly in Latex, and I respect them. I use inkscape for figures, and python for plotting, and can get stuff looking pretty awesome that way. Learning to draw/plot directly in Latex is by no means a must.

Please, make it any sort of user-friendly! As with other powerful tools, I think people are often overwhelmed coming in because of the massive number of possibilities, and the fine-grained control that is possible. My recommendation is to start out with something like the above, and progressively add complexity as you need it. Most people don’t require more than basic section (and sub- subsub- etc.) headers, tables, figures, and equations. In that case, you’ll need like 3-5 external packages and 3-5 “commands” (stuff like \begin{equation}). If you start out with the above example, you’ll probably learn the basics on your own in a couple hours :)

I’ve held some latex-courses for beginners, so if you want, I could send you the “basic starting file” that the people taking the course have completed writing (with help) after about two hours :) I’ve been told that most of them feel pretty comfortable learning on their own once they have that.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ISO 26300⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:
Ohhh, I can sign off on this.

The amount of 20 year old university students that do not understand how to save a file to a specific location on their computer and then retrieve that file later has skyrocketed the last five years.

This is very obviously a consequence of them only ever having worked through tablet- or phone-type interfaces, where the file system is completely hidden to the user. I teach these people to program, and their eyes gloss over when I ask them where they put the data file they need to parse for the assignment. Once they understand the question they’ll typically open the file explorer, click on “recent files”, and ask me why their python script won’t open it, when the files are right there next to each other in “recent files”.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ISO 26300⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:
- If it’s meant to be pretty, portable, and only for reading: pdf
- If it’s text with no formatting: txt
- If it’s formatted and editable: md
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ISO 26300⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

Do you actually write all the headers and stuff

I’ve used Latex as my go-to tool for writing anything that needs formatting for years, and I’m not quite sure I understand what you mean?

I start off my document with a documentclass statement, which is one line…? And then I will sometimes usepackage a couple things for further document-wide formatting, but we’re still talking about a small handful of lines (like 5-10 at most).

The preamble can grow quite large for big documents with a lot of specific formatting, but I have some boilerplate preambles with the most common packages lying around that I can copy-paste in. Usually however, the preamble grows as you’re writing the document and you add things dynamically as you need them.

I would love to give you a better answer to your question, since my impression is that pretty much no one that swaps to Latex ever looks back, and I would love to help you learn. Feel free to expand on what you mean by “all the headers and stuff” and I’ll try to give a better answer :)
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google: 'Your $1000 phone needs our permission to install apps now'". Android users are screwed - Louis Rossmann⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:
“Not a marketing company” as in their business model is not centred around shoving ads in your face for money is how I read it.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japan Just Switched on Asia’s First Osmotic Power Plant, Which Runs 24/7 on Nothing But Fresh Water and Seawater⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:
Oh absolutely. As with all other infrastructure, there is a cost to be paid. However, when you look at an average to small river, even routing 10 % of the water via an osmosis plant before passing it to the sea is an absolutely massive volume. There’s also the point that you don’t want to build these things in large, meandering, flat river deltas. You want a large salinity gradient, which means relatively small, fast-running fresh water meeting the ocean more “suddenly” than what you get in a classical river delta is the optimal source here.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japan Just Switched on Asia’s First Osmotic Power Plant, Which Runs 24/7 on Nothing But Fresh Water and Seawater⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:
Because osmotic power has enormous potential in the sense that millions of cubic meters of fresh water is running into oceans all over the world every minute. If we’re able to get even a low-efficiency method of using the salinity gradient to generate power working then every place a river meets the sea is essentially an unlimited (albeit low-yield) power source.

This is tech that doesn’t rely on elevation (like hydropower) or weather conditions (like wind/solar) it’s stable and possible to set up at pretty much any river outlet, which is great!
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hep mak fren⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:
Hep look at Wuff. Hep do the bonking. Wife only good for seeking. Hep think he can bonk Wuff too.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Poland presses ahead with 3 percent digital tax despite Trump threat⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:
Exactly this. The whole premise of the tax system is based around the historically correct idea that you need to physically move goods in order to sell them, or physically be somewhere to sell services.

Companies like google are making buckets of money all over the world, and don’t need to tax a dime most places, because they have no physical presence there. This makes it pretty much impossible to compete with the international behemoths, because they have access to a munch of tax-free revenue, while a startup will typically be centred around wherever they’re based, where they also need to pay taxes.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China's unemployed young adults who are pretending to have jobs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Don’t know how they did the calculations here, but in Norway we have statistics for unemployment that goes down to 16 year olds.

However in those statistics, a person is only considered unemployed if they are not attending school. Our equivalent of high school is not mandatory, so a few people (very few) decide to quit school and begin working at 16. Some further people are high school dropouts that get jobs at 16-19.

So basically: You’re counted as unemployed if you’re not in a job or education.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Like a baby⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
The sound of a baby’s scream is an incredible feat of nature. In a way, it’s almost sad that we lose the ability to make that sound at a certain age.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Looks at litterally half the population: “This is a minority”.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨People who have been in meetings to determine back to in office policy. What was the discussion like?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Exactly: I can understand that an open layout makes life harder for people in an already oppressive environment. This applies regardless of why the environment is oppressive any individual.

Claiming that “open environments are sexist” implies that they’re somehow inherently oppressive towards one gender. That’s absolute bullshit in my opinion: Open environments are just generally crap for productivity.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨People who have been in meetings to determine back to in office policy. What was the discussion like?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Sorry, but what?

I hate open-plan layouts as much as the next guy, but how on earth are they sexist?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it sexist to say "I've never worn a wet dress before"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
In general, I don’t think it’s right to lie down flat whenever someone accuses you of saying something wrong, just because they think it was wrong.

It should be pretty fair to respond with a simple “why is that sexist? I think wet clothes are uncomfortable, so I assumed others did as well.”
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do movie actors or actress keep the skills they learned? Like no one would screw with Keanu after seeing all the John Wick films? And if they did would they just be fucked from the start?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Define “good”. I would say that any professional with dozens of hours of training, that could comfortably overcome any average person is “good”. Those are the people I trained with, and my impression is that Keanu is better than most of them.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do movie actors or actress keep the skills they learned? Like no one would screw with Keanu after seeing all the John Wick films? And if they did would they just be fucked from the start?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
IIRC, Keanu did some extensive firearms training in connection with John Wick. I’ve seen some footage of him on a training set with mobile targets, and would estimate that he’s better at handling a wide variety of firearms than a fair portion of military personnel are before the first time they see combat. This estimate is based on my own military training on similar courses.

I know the movies are choreographed, but I definitely wouldn’t give someone without extensive training good odds against him, based on footage I’ve seen from his training.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It’s the little things⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
If we want to go to extremes, zero surface tension means no nucleation barrier for critical bubbles. In practice, this implies that liquid water is unstable, and will spontaneously vaporise at all conditions.

So yeah, all life ends pretty quickly.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It’s the little things⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
It relies on differences in surface tension. If a liquid has a lower surface tension (energy) towards one surface than another, you get the typical capillary effect. In the case of water, the water-air energy is lower than the water-<whatever your capillary is made of> energy, so you get a capillary effect.

If water had exactly zero surface tension against every interface,
- it would not exhibit any capillary action
- life on earth would cease to exist quite quickly
- your socks would remain dry
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why doesn't the Trump administration simply edit the Epstein files and release them?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

If you make any edits that contradict the physical evidence, you’ve outed yourself.

We’re talking about people that contradict both themselves and physical reality on a daily basis without their supporters batting an eye.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why doesn't the Trump administration simply edit the Epstein files and release them?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Export to jpeg. Compress.

Can decent edits still be reliably detected?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come nobody does anything about North Korea?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Great, it seems like we agree on the major points here! I’m not denying any of the major issues of the Afghan war, nor any of the glaring problems with how the whole “nation building” attempt went about. I’m very well aware of the history of the Afghan war, and have seen several of the documentaries you refer to that point out that it was largely known that the Afghan army would likely desert once the coalition left.

I’m not saying we don’t care.

That is quite literally what you said in your first comment, and is literally the only thing I’ve disagreed with you on so far (“the world simply doesn’t care”).

Many individual people did earnestly care, and tried their best.

This is literally the point I’ve been trying to make, but it seems like you keep misinterpreting me as saying the whole invasion was a misunderstood humanitarian operation. I’m not saying that.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists reportedly hiding AI text prompts in academic papers to receive positive peer reviews⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

It differs per community.

Good point, I’ll moderate myself and just state that I’ve never experienced it being a hard requirement in my field.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists reportedly hiding AI text prompts in academic papers to receive positive peer reviews⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
No it’s not. I have both published in a variety of scientific journals, reviewed for a couple journals, and turned down reviews for a couple journals.

No journal checks your “review history” before allowing you to publish. However, if you consistently turn down reviews from a journal, the editor is likely going to get annoyed and you will probably have a harder time publishing in that journal in the future.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists reportedly hiding AI text prompts in academic papers to receive positive peer reviews⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Yep. At that point, why even bother taking the review? You’re not forced to do reviews. Never taking any is likely to negatively impact your career, but still… just decline the review if you’re going to use a LLM for it anyway. Have some dignity.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come nobody does anything about North Korea?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say here?

My point is that, while flimsy and flawed, there was in fact an education system and a humanitarian system in place that was propped up by coalition forces. This system did fall apart, leaving no system at all when the forces left. And yes, a bunch of Afghanis have every right to feel betrayed. I never said otherwise.

It’s not like Afghanistan is the only place where schools, hospitals and infrastructure has been financed by western countries. By and large, we spend a lot of money on these things because a significant portion of the population sees it as the right thing to do. Because we care, and want to help people.

What became very clear in Afghanistan was that you can’t force a population to be a liberal democracy. They have to be willing to fight for it themselves. The Afghan army (on paper) had several hundred thousand men, loads of heavy equipment, and several years to train and prepare for coalition forces leaving. There was a government structure in place. These things instantly folded when the coalition left because, clearly, enough people preferred Taliban to what the outsiders had forced upon them.

I guess I’m saying it’s a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. If you stay, you’re an oppressive occupier. If you leave, you’re a traitor that permits a humanitarian crisis to occur.

The OP here asked “why doesn’t anybody do anything about NK”, and my answer is that we (seem to) have learned that you can’t force democracy and human rights on a country. Chalking it up to “we don’t care” is reductionist.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As expected every page in the book is blank⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
I’ve always carried my balls in one big unisack that holds them all. However, I do think the idea of splitting my eggs between different baskets sounds interesting.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As expected every page in the book is blank⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

ball sacks

You guys have several?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come nobody does anything about North Korea?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

It didn’t go to shit when we left, it was shit from the beginning.

It seems like you didn’t observe the thousands of people swarming the airport in Kabul trying to get out with the last planes. It also seems like you haven’t picked up on the people crying about how people are being brutally punished for getting an education or listening to music now.

I’m not denying that shit was really bad while coalition forces were there, but acting like it didn’t get worse for a lot of people when the left is just closing your eyes.

Regardless, it’s ludicrous to claim that western countries “aren’t doing anything because they don’t care”. It’s not like we’ve spent truckloads of money and thousands of lives over 20 years of trying to get a functioning system in place while preventing a humanitarian crisis because we “didn’t care”. People saw it as immoral to just turn our backs on Afghanistan and let them solve their own problems. The result was largely that we learned that you can’t force democracy and human rights onto someone else, as proven by the almost complete absence of people willing to fight for just that once the coalition left.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come nobody does anything about North Korea?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
“The west” isn’t really a cohesive unit regarding Israel/Iran. You have some western countries supporting a genocide and committing blatant violations of international law, while others condemn them for it and try to pressure them to stop.

Sadly, one rogue state can cause a lot of damage, and countries typically have a very high bar for using military force against their closest allies in defence of a third party.