Ok. The classic answer is “turn on the first switch for five minutes. Then turn switch 1 back off, turn on the second switch and go in the room immediately. If the light is hot, it’s controlled by switch 1; if it’s on, it’s controlled by switch 2; if it’s off and cold it’s controlled by switch 3.”

Except that a light bulb in 2025 is very likely to be an LED bulb, so it wouldn’t actually get hot. At least not hot enough to feel even a few moments later. And in a corporate setting (this is classically an interview question), the switch has been more likely to control a fluorescent tube, which can get hot, but typically not as quickly as an incandescent one.

My answer, if I were in an interview, would be to ask questions (Chesterton’s Fence).

• First of all, why do we have the one-visit limit? Is this a prod light bulb? We need a dev light bulb environment, with the bulbs and switches in the same room. (While we’re making new environments, let’s get a QA and regression environment, too. Maybe a fallback environment, depending on SLAs.)

• Second, what might the other switches do? What’s the downside to just turning them all on? If that’s not known, why not? What is the risk? For that matter, do we know that only one switch needs to be turned on to turn on the light, or is it possible that the switches represent some sort of 3-bit binary encoding?

• Third, why were the switches designed this way? Can they be redesigned to provide better feedback? Or simplified to a single switch? If not, better documentation (labeling) is a must.

• Fourth, we need to reduce the length of the feedback loop. A five minute test and then physically going to touch the bulb is way too long. Let’s look into moving the switches or the light in our dev environment so that the light can be seen from the switches.

If the sticker is blue, one or the other of you is about to cease being biology and start being physics.

GIMP is an acronym for what’s arguably the most descriptive name possible: GNU Image Manipulation Program.

Relational database. He’s got children, which joins to naughty and nice on childid and both record their status each year so that he can monitor trends.

Well, currently Ball doesn’t make any jars, as I understand it. And I don’t think it’s in Muncie anymore either. So the term is just a holdover.

“tomato” is an open-source router firmware package. You can use it to access settings that the manufacturer intentionally hides away, or to set up features like UPnP more easily. Some versions even enable features like a built-in NAS (just bring your own drives), networked printer support, or running a publicly-facing website on your router.

Along with packages like DD-WRT, it’s a pretty common modification for a lot of tech-savvy users to make.

Though, to be honest, I’m not entirely certain that a 2011 Belkin router would be compatible with Tomato (probably?).

Those do look really nice, for sure. They’d make great snack cups.

Oof. I think I lean more toward her side, to be honest. I don’t like having cold hands.

Ok.

Believe what you like. Including that all mathematics communication and education is flawless and incapable of any ambiguity, apparently.

But for your own growth as a person, I recommend you chew on this: the people who write these “questions” to put on Facebook are exploiting the exact same mindset that made you decide that insulting my intelligence was the best way to have this conversation, and using it to get a massive amount of rage-baity engagement. They’re not teachers trying to educate. They’re scammers trying to build up a following so that they can execute a scam.

Actual math educators, on the other hand, are moving away from using the “PEMDAS” (or “BEDMAS”) acronyms because of the ambiguity inherent in them, and using “GEMS” (or “GEMA”) instead. Partially because, if even smart people who know PEMDAS can get confused, the acronym must not be all that useful.

Anyway. You’re trying to make me mad, and for a minute it worked. But I’m over it. Again–have a good one.

Yeah, for sure. Though if you drink it fast enough, it won’t warm the drink noticeably before it’s gone.

See also: the Apollo Lunar Module (LEM), the humble US Postal Truck (LLV), and the F/A-18 Super Hornet, all made by the Grumman Corporation.

Great at conduction, but with not a lot of thermal mass, meaning that actually your drink will usually just make whatever it’s touching (your hand, often) super cold or hot.

Muncie, Indiana is was the home of the Ball Corporation, which is the company referenced in this meme. Also of Ball State University, founded by his endowment. Like “Mason jar” before it, “Ball jar” has become a genericized trademark for the object itself, especially in the Midwest.

I don’t take homework from insufferably smug jerks on the Internet. Have a good one.

They’re definitely not

Just patently untrue, but I’m no longer interested in this.

It definitely said 181 before. I’m almost positive.

Same. Generally speaking our company is pretty healthy, but we’re still stuck in this really stupid leveling system where advancement is tied to greenfield development and I’ve been doing maintenance and compliance work for the last five years.

Hero, thank you.