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user202362

12:01 AM

I worked in a team of 20-30 software developer/engineers before, I got to sweep the corners

user202362

how to spend 2 years of life contribute next to nothing back to the society ...

@Shog9 I don't really agree at all with that blog post to be honest, it's all based on a random metaphor that does not apply to coding after all

Shog9

@Sklivvz yeah, kinda amusing but the only time I see it referenced is in connection to companies, not projects, which was the original use in Cringely's book anyway

Sklivvz

Holy cow, that adieu blog post did 10k views in 5h, an average blog psot of mine does maybe 300-500 views in a day. I should resign more often.

user202362

12:20 AM

I used to wanting more usage of my apps, then I realised that more usage does not really translate into a lot more $. So nowadays I have turned into building more tiny houses in desirable areas. Because you might end up with only 20 people visiting your open houses, 4-5 people constantly using it, but you can easily getting $500+ a week from renting them near where I live.

user202362

Of course you need to plan ahead, maybe years ahead, because land price here isn't trivial & there are many rules that you have to comply ...

user202362

you should consider a career as a technical recruiter, you are very talented @sho

user202362

once I was trolled by a few, they are as talented as you

user202362

12:35 AM

Once I came across a trolling technical recruiter, who contacted me almost every year to check out how I was doing

Jason C

12:46 AM

@Telkitty I can't tell if you are using houses as some sort of metaphor or if you just suddenly started talking about real estate.

I mean either way is fine, lol.

@Shog9 Yeah I dunno about that blog post, or Cringely's original text. It's something that doesn't need a metaphor to explain. It's just unnecessarily roundabout.

Shog9

@JasonC Well, my original plan was to drop the link in and then not explain it, hoping that it would save me time. Then I kinda explained it anyway, so...

user202362

user202362

soon ...

Jason C

Wow

I was trying to think of a way to use some unnecessary metaphor to explain unnecessary metaphors, because ha ha I'm a funny guy, and apparently I am completely incapable of thinking of unnecessary metaphors about metaphors. I think I ended up having a mild seizure or something instead. I really don't remember the last 3 minutes.

bjb568

1:07 AM

Good job.

Jason C

I learned so many cool new google sheets formulas today.

Spreadsheet level up

Jason C

1:34 AM

@Shog9 I just got randomly rate limited looking at my user profile page on MSO, which I've never actually seen before. Should I send an email to team@ or wait it out?

Shog9

@JasonC wait a bit

Jason C

Super weird.

The rate limit page is very foreboding.

Shog9

...and I get an error page now trying to pull logs for you. So... Joy.

Jason C

"XID: 2612338760-JFK"

Woo hoo.

Shog9

oh, ok, you just made a shitload of requests for some reason

you using some userscript that tries to load your profile on a whole bunch of sites?

Jason C

1:37 AM

Huh

Shog9

and also help

and also the front page because why not

Jason C

No, but, I was just looking through my chrome extensions because I forgot what half the buttons in the toolbar did.

Shog9

weird...

Jason C

Maybe one of them did something.

Shog9

@JasonC so... I got experience with this.

I was once given this little jar, with a lid into which was built a spring-retracting plunger. At the end of the plunger were two perpendicular knives. The purpose of this jar was to allow chopping onions without exposing one's self to the vapors invariably produced by such an activity...

However, the jar was too small and the knives too weak to handle a whole onion, even a small one. Therefore, I had to use an ordinary chef's knife to cut down the onion first anyway, thus exposing myself to the vapors and actually increasing the handling time over what it would've taken to just chop the onion with the knive straightaway.

My attempt to use that blog post metaphor to save myself time earlier was akin to my attempt to use that onion-chopping jar.

Jason C

1:41 AM

@Shog9 Lol! Well played.

When I was trying to think of a metaphor I did spend a significant amount of time imagining some weird scenario where I drove my car somewhere, walked home, rode my bike to my car, drove it home, jumped on my bike, and ... then I snapped back to reality. I think that's where my 3 lost minutes went.

That and a lot of taking dry things and putting water on them just so that I could sit them out to dry.

Clearly I'm bored right now.

Either that or my blood sugar is on the low end.

@ShadowWizard My buddy (the PM) is in the middle of a 6 hour surgery right now. I made the mistake of googling for facial trauma ct scans. Way to freak myself out.

Jason C

2:49 AM

69

Q: Can a machine be taught to flag spam automatically?

TL;DR: We did it, so... yes. What is this? Charcoal is the organization behind the SmokeDetector bot and other nice things. This bot scans new posts across the entire network for spam posts and reports them to various chatrooms where people can act on them. If a post has been created or edite...

5

user315433

5:15 AM

A good while ago, I passed this on to a group that's looking at improving the structure of the "Ask Question" page. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like they're going to be making any changes in the immediate future, so I came back to this again today. The top two answers worth of tags are now warning-ified. I'm curious whether you have any plans on how to measure the impact of the change (a shift in close voting rates, perhaps?). — Pops ♦ 31 mins ago

user315433

5:58 AM

@SmokeDetector In case anyone wonders, this is indeed a spammer.

Jason C

youre a spammer

your face is spam

M.A.R.

7:22 AM

@JasonC NO U

Jason C

7:51 AM

→ 6 messages moved to Chimney

Jason C

8:17 AM

@M.A.R. SHUT UP

MORON

NO UR A MOROOON

9:04 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Pattern-matching website in body: Adding Effects to TITLES by Lisaostos on video.SE

M.A.R.

@SmokeDetector K

Stijn

meta.stackoverflow.com/users/1002260/steven-penny that's a long suspension... I knew the guy was treading on dangerous ground with the rollback wars, but didn't expect that

Bart

9:19 AM

... that seems like a pretty stupid rollback war to have

M.A.R.

@Stijn He had it coming

Bart

There was more than the 1 issue @M.A.R.?

M.A.R.

11:33 AM

@Bart He kept antagonizing SE designers and basically everyone in charge for the top bar contrast

I'm sure you followed meta.SO dramae better than me

feature-request make 'dramae' the plural of 'drama'.

Journeyman Geek

@M.A.R. I seem to remember some history with him in the past

and ugh, there's a 'right' way to apply pressure ;)

Derpy

.....

npmjs.com/package/pinkie-promise

Journeyman Geek

(and cripes, userscripts)

M.A.R.

@JourneymanGeek IKR

Journeyman Geek

(amusingly, the MSE question I asked about keeping the rest of the network in the loop was reopened without me bitching about it at all ;) )

M.A.R.

11:39 AM

@JourneymanGeek Which?

Journeyman Geek

8

Q: Could we get a little more visibility on changes that affect the whole network?

I had a user on chat go O_O SO's topbar is all funky now @JourneymanGeek would've been nice if, y'know, they asked for opinions on SE meta Bob's one of my core users. Unlike me, Bob codes. Bob vaguely got caught by surprise by these changes. Bob even uses SO, and didn't know about it....

discussion

Bart

@M.A.R. okay, I missed all that

I can't even take a sick day without missing all the cool stuff

M.A.R.

@JourneymanGeek Ahh that one. I VTR'd since I felt it was a useful discussion to have

Journeyman Geek

lol

M.A.R.

@Bart ಠ_ಠ

Bart

11:54 AM

Wut?

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer: Convince my supervisor for me to switch my research field to his major area halfway in my PhD by Inspirational Quotes on academia.SE

user202362

12:13 PM

messages ... when after a few hours it's finally starting to kind of showing its meanings ...

user202362

but then again there is:

user202362

“ I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant”

Stijn

@Telkitty that's not confusing at all... :p

M.A.R.

And then again there's code formatting for non-code stuff.

user202362

12:36 PM

I first came across the saying at a comment section of a news article about central bank's minutes for a official interest rate decision. So every second Tuesday of every month (except Jan), Central bank here has a meeting and the meeting will decide whether the overnight cash rate will increase, decrease or stay the same. The decision is based on bank's observation of current economic conditions.

user202362

Because as a central bank, it has way more data available than everyone else, thus the minutes on which bank explains what the decision based on becomes a discussion material because it also sometimes discloses the bank's prediction on how the domestic and global economies will be going.

user202362

Financial markets are a lot fun - it's like a mass multi-player game with money as score

SmokeDetector

12:57 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer: 3D wooden puzzle by Trends Setter on puzzling.SE

Glorfindel

For ~~those of you who like unicorns~~ everyone: youtube.com/watch?v=iktTELabwvA&feature=youtu.be

M.A.R.

1:11 PM

@Glorfindel What if I have a complicated relationship with unicorns?

Bart

1:22 PM

Hah, new podcast but no mention of the taking a stand clusterf*ck? ...

2

M.A.R.

@Bart Time to bake a stand

user202362

bake sand

Bart

snake hand?

Stijn

@Bart I think they'd rather have people forget it ever happened

Bart

@Stijn would be fairly weak though.

And hey, there are apparently new bans in the works, so who knows that will happen next. ;)

user202362

1:27 PM

gang ban - with 3 x 25+ downvotes

Stijn

I still have to listen to it, tried to last night but it couldn't keep my attention during the first couple of minutes. Funnily enough because of what they talk about briefly: too much rambling

Bart

It's decent background noise. They do touch on the top bar redesign and that Joel got tweets about it ... sure, that was the major controversy. :D

Stijn

Well yeah I try to use it as background noise, and suddenly a few minutes have passed and I have no idea what they were talking about :p

user202362

I always listen to podcast ... for about 1-5 minutes. I mean, I don't watch TV or listen to talk shows. So it's kind of weird listening to someone talking for 90 minutes even though it's kind of relevant ... kind of ...

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected: At which point in the series should I watch the The Last: Naruto the Movie and Boruto: Naruto the Movie? by faggot on anime.SE

M.A.R.

1:58 PM

@JoshCaswell: I can confirm that the rollback war is not the whole picture. Suffice it to say there were other circumstances and a history. — Martijn Pieters ♦ Feb 18 at 12:47

Bart

2:26 PM

Ah

Not surprised. A year for a rollback war seemed excessive.

Journeyman Geek

@Bart suspensions tend to be progressive, unless someone has been very bad.

I can't actually think of a (semi) legitimate user off the top of my head who got one year.

Magisch

2:44 PM

Martin James got a year

He was violently not nice in comments all the time though

Bart

@JourneymanGeek I think Lazlo got a year?

Journeyman Geek

I don't remember who Lazlo was

Bart

lpapp, Cambridge, United Kingdom

36.7k 13 52 75

qt c++ qtcore qtgui qt5 qmake qt-signals

Journeyman Geek

and I keep forgetting most folk here are mainly meta/so ;p

Bart

I know he got a 1 year chat ban and a suspension on SO. But I don't recall if that was a year as well

And he was a legitimate user. Had some excellent contributions.

Journeyman Geek

3:05 PM

Yeah

I've mainly been around the smaller sites. I vaguely remember mentions of lazlo, but I don't recall him around say SU

Bart

3:45 PM

dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/02/…

^ @Shog9 follow up from our discussion a while ago.

AVK Naidu

I have a question. If I have to suggest a change in the message for actual api, should that go to stack apps? or meta.stackexchange?

Bart

Sounds like it should go on MSE I think. There is the api tag for it.

AVK Naidu

yeah. i was confused because the question i had was about API so i thought i was supposed to go to StackApps but when i searched for some previous questions, most of them was on MSE.

Stijn

@Bart I hope somewhere during the next 10-20 years, our laws will have changed regarding that. Currently the only politicians speaking out in favour of legalisation are the youth parties, and they're always reprimanded by the main parties. Too many past-generation politicians currently :(

Bart

If the EU could do anything, it would be proper regulation along the future Dutch model. But unfortunately there are too many countries where it's a no go. And in the mean time the neighbouring countries just cross the border ...

Stijn

3:57 PM

I took a trip to Breda last year, unfortunately it's a bit too far (2 hour one-way drive) to do it on a regular base

But I understand locals don't really like it that much

3

Stijn

4:22 PM

Is anyone aware of an existing discussion regarding the improvement/streamlining of tag merge and tag synonym requests, where moderator involvement is desired? If not, I might write something up this week.

ɥʇǝS

@Stijn you mean other than just post on meta?

Stijn

@ɥʇǝS the current process has some issues, mainly tracking and someone actually doing something. Some requests linger for years.

And I'm interested in the opinion of our moderators, to see how we can help them help us, if that makes sense :p

ɥʇǝS

4:38 PM

@Stijn you're certainly not wrong, but I wonder if it's just a communication issue. Moderators want some kind of community consensus before they act (unless it's super straight forward) but by that point it's easy to get buried. Maybe a simple reminder is enough? I dunno. You're certainly right, stuff gets buried and sits forever.

I've thought about this before, but I couldn't come up with any good ideas. Interested to see what you come up with :)

Shog9

@Stijn lots. The sad bit is, there's already a voting system and queues for this, they're just not well-exposed and the reputation requirements don't match reality.

So folks proposing synonyms either don't know about or can't access that system, and moderators straight-up forget the merge queue exists.

ɥʇǝS

@Shog9 wait, there's a merge queue?

Shog9

See what I mean?

@ɥʇǝS askubuntu.com/tags/synonyms?filter=merge&tab=newest

ɥʇǝS

Oh that. Yeah I know about that.

actually no, I didn't realize there was a merge tab. Got confused for a second because it's the same UI as the synonyms.

Shog9

@ɥʇǝS ...and that's why there are 5+ year-old synonyms in that queue awaiting merge...

Like I said, the UI kinda sucks

ɥʇǝS

4:45 PM

@Shog9 well, part of that is also probably because I didn't know the whole point of synonyms was to merge them until animuson told me one time. I don't remember reading that in any literature anywhere, although perhaps I'm just blind.

Shog9

Actually had a couple of people here researching improvements to it at one point. Both left the company soon after. Mumblings of eldritch horrors.

ɥʇǝS

I wouldn't be surprised if there were gremlins in the tag backend.

Shog9

The backend is actually pretty up-to-date - Marc re-wrote it recently. Fixed a lot of long-standing bugs.

Bart

Say @Shog9, do you happen to know if the dupe also explains the Skeptics favorite from the Community user? meta.stackexchange.com/questions/291350/… Or should I reopen the question?

Shog9

@Bart it doesn't - Skeptics was not an import.

Bart

4:57 PM

Hmm, okay.

Stijn

6:10 PM

@Shog9 I didn't know of that entire area. I always thought synonyms got approved by raising awareness on Meta, or someone randomly arriving at a tag's synonym list and voting on synonyms if they had the required tag score.

Shog9

This is why, in case anyone was wondering, having the review link on the top bar is so important.

user315433

6:45 PM

2

user315433

Tonight is going to be really cold here. :(

user315433

I don't remember review link having anything to do with tag synonyms...

M.A.R.

The zaq has arrived

@zaq I don't trust weather forecasts

But burn a forest or something just in case

rene

8:09 PM

@zaq qf.se election is done: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/35584950#35584950

user315433

8:22 PM

> Since this is the same group as current pro tempore moderators, you won't notice much of a change. meta.quant.stackexchange.com/q/1539

user315433

Wonder how often this happened...

user315433

Feb 13 at 4:53, by zaq

The election on Quantitative Finance got the 5th candidate (finally), but this also means that the only reasonable thing to do there is to re-elect all current mods. :/

rene

That was quick Jon ...

Jon Ericson

@rene iOS notifications are great.

rene

I know ;)

user315433

8:31 PM

Looks like we get a break from elections after Travel is done next week.

Stijn

9:33 PM

@JeremyBanks what's going on here :p

Anonymous

@Stijn That's me figuring out how migrated questions behave through trial-and-error, I guess. :P

Anonymous

You can see that Jon Clements previously undeleted it and it was re-deleted by Community. I was trying to stop that from happening again.

Stijn

Community has become self aware

Anonymous

It should behave itself now.

rene

It looks like that take a stand post ...

Shog9

9:41 PM

Damn employees, overriding the wishes of Community♦

7

Anonymous

Ah. I didn't realize that would bump it to the home page.

Anonymous

I guess that would have been the reopen.

rene

Also if it didn't we would have found you ...

Stijn

@rene I think we need to come up with a name for SO's version of Godwin's law

@JeremyBanks did you think I was stalking you then? :p

Anonymous

@Stijn Probably not me, specifically, but I was wondering. :P

Anonymous

9:46 PM

Maybe you were looking at some site activity monitoring script.

Stijn

I'm anxious for an answer to Shog's classified network question

Shog9

9:58 PM

@Stijn when it rains, it pours...

rene

I like this comment

Stijn

@Shog9 oh wow

rene

Back in the days the only computer with internet connection was located in the coffee corner. It wasn't secured at all so we only needed to run an proxy server on it to be able to surf the net from your own computer at your desk ...

Stijn

10:25 PM

this is a nice name for a telescope

TRAPPIST

The TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope–South (TRAPPIST) is a Belgian optic robotic telescope, which came online in 2010. It is named in homage to the Trappist Order in the Belgian region. Situated high in the Chilean mountains at ESO's La Silla Observatory, it is actually controlled from Liege, Belgium, with some autonomous features. It is a reflecting telescope 0.60 m (23.5″) in aperture diameter and is housed in the dome of the retired Swiss T70 telescope. The telescope is a joint venture between the University of Liège, Belgium, and Geneva Observatory, Switzerland, and among...

SmokeDetector

11:04 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer, mostly non-Latin answer: How do electromagnetic waves travel in a vacuum? by P.lo on physics.SE

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