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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 30 June 2024 (awful.systems)
submitted 6 months ago by froztbyte@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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Need to make a primal scream without gathering footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh facts of Awful you'll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

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[-] BigMuffin69@awful.systems 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Me: Hey, can you help me with the following? I just went into my basement and the powers out down here, all the lights are off. I am staring at my fuse box. There are 3 switches, 1 will restore the power to the whole house, and the other 2 aren't attached to anything. I don't want to go up and down the stairs multiple times, how do I identify which switch works with the fewest number of trips?

Clauderino:

This is a classic logic puzzle! I can help you solve this problem efficiently. Here's how you can identify the correct switch with just two trips:

First trip:

Flip one switch (let's call it Switch A) and leave it on for a few minutes. Then turn it off and flip a second switch (Switch B), leaving it on. Go upstairs to check the lights.

Second trip: Return to the basement and observe the situation. Now, here's how to interpret what you see:

If the lights are on: Switch B is the correct one. If the lights are off and the bulbs are warm: Switch A is the correct one. If the lights are off and the bulbs are cool: The third switch (C) that you didn't touch is the correct one.

This method works because:

If the lights are on, it must be the switch you left on (B). If Switch A was correct, the lights would have been on for a few minutes, warming up the bulbs, but would be off when you check. If neither A nor B worked, it must be the untouched switch (C).

This way, you can determine the correct switch with just two trips up and down the stairs.

Me: Why would I go upstairs at all? If I flip the right switch, I'll immediately know because power will be restored in the basement.

Clauderino: Thank you for catching that error. It's a good reminder to always consider the specific details of a problem rather than applying a generic solution.

Edit: I actually tried a variant on the Monty hall problem with a dummy 4th door that had nothing to do with anything, and Claude correctly identified that it had nothing to do with the situation :O. But then I repeated the same prompt and it got it wrong, so you know, stochastic nonsense :p

this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
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