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2:00 AM
@MichaelMrozek yes please I want to start to lern.
 
@Benny you can edit previous messages using the up arrow on your keyboard, FYI
or using the arrow to the left of each message when you hover over it
 
@TheRenamedException sorry I am new to chat
 
@Benny do you mean a program that download from the api?
 
@Benny no problem, I'm just letting you know some of the neat features :-)
 
is So tense having to start the review wait AGAIN
 
2:02 AM
@Benny or how to build something like stackoverflow
?
 
This is my new favorite conversation:
 
I mean how to build something using the api
 
Does the userscript have a /waffles command?
 
@MichaelMrozek AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA
 
2:03 AM
@Moshe Not... yet :)
 
@YiJiang I need to build it then!
When I have time...
 
@MichaelMrozek Is that shooped, or is there a context link?
 
@Benny There's some "getting started" links on the right side of StackApps
 
Shopped, or shooped?
 
@ChrisJesterYoung It's in a non-public room. It's real, although if you could see the message rchern is replying to it would be somewhat less disturbing
 
2:04 AM
hey |:
 
@Moshe Opls.
@MichaelMrozek I figured as much.
 
it was hysterical though
 
Any updates from Egypt?
 
@RebeccaChernoff Less tavern chat, more updating the /about pages
 
@Moshe: aren't you, like, right next door?
 
want to knock and ask?
 
There are probably better places to get world news than in here...
@MichaelMrozek next build.
 
Charlie Sheen is in rehab. All you need to know.
 
2:06 AM
@RebeccaChernoff Indeed. I've been watching Al Jazeera English for the last two days: livestation.com/channels/3-al_jazeera_english
 
@MichaelPetrotta, Since when are all "Moshe"s in Israel?
 
Ok, I'm now positive that the Enthusiast badge is broken. I keep getting it on sites I swear I never go to; I just got it on StackApps
I've been to StackApps like 15 times in my life
 
@Moshe: thought I heard you say you were. Sorry if I was wrong.
 
@MichaelMrozek Maybe API and/or feed accesses touch your last access time too.
 
I'm actually not. No problem.
 
2:10 AM
@Benny you know youve got the same profile picture as:
CrazyJugglerDrummer, The Milky Way, Earth
6.9k 1 13 46
 
@Trufa his name is better though! ;-)
 
@ChrisJesterYoung API access can't, because it doesn't authenticate, so there's no way it can get you any badges
 
@TheRenamedException one would argue
...
 
@YiJiang But what if you're using a browser-based app, and it sends your cookies along anyway?
 
Tis alright.
 
2:11 AM
@ChrisJesterYoung Yeah, I know of widgets like StackApplet that does that
 
@MichaelMrozek lmao
(which may, oddly enough, have been on topic)
 
@TimStone Haha I originally had "ROFLMAO" as a comment, and changed it before sending :-)
 
Hah :P
 
Hey, blame @MichaelMrozek, not us.
 
2:14 AM
@Rebecca Oh we're just messing with you :-) Here, this will make you feel better: blame.josh.gitlin.name
 
Kinect has made me sleepy, hahahah
 
I'm ok with this.
 
LOL
@TimStone everything makes you sleepy :-)
probably has to do with lack of sleep :-)
 
I know, it's rather disheartening.
I refuse to accept that as an explanation.
 
2:18 AM
@Trufa do you know when he got it?
 
@Benny what, the image??
 
@Trufa yes
 
@Benny it is a pretty well known picture
I have seen it in a million places (I like it though)
 
yawns Hmm, sounds like it's raining again.
 
:)
 
2:22 AM
You could always ask people in here to make a gravatar for you... :-)
 
I should contemplate changing my gravatar to make life easier for badp...Hmm
 
@TimStone you should!
You could use
 
That...is a very large T.
 
I made that when I was like 17 for a game I thought I would be developing, LOL
needless to say it never happened :-)
 
Yes, so many things left undone sighs Heh
 
2:31 AM
@TheRenamedException got one for me
(or I could use the big T actually)
 
Evening.
 
{
		'#templateContainer': {
			'width': '400px',
			'position': 'fixed',
			'top': 0,
			'right': 0,
			'z-index': 100000
		},
		'#templateContainer textarea': {
			'width': '300px'
		}
	}
 
@Trufa you don't want me designing for you. Isn't that T horrific enough? :-)
 
Sigh... there's a syntax error here, and I can't for the life of me find it
 
@GeorgeStocker 'Ello
 
2:33 AM
@GeorgeStocker evening, congrats anyway on you ron for mod
!!
 
@GeorgeStocker How are you?
 
@YiJiang Are you sure it's actually there?
 
},
should it be
};
???
 
No, that's right.
 
@YiJiang ?
 
2:34 AM
@Trufa That's the correct notation for declaring JavaScript objects
 
@YiJiang oki doki i'll shut up now :)
 
SyntaxError: invalid label
chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/17/javascript
Line 0
 
@YiJiang SyntaxError: Unexpected token :
 
@TheRenamedException Doing well. Still reeling from the (expected) moderator results. The ego takes a licking, as it probably should.
And I'm coding Conway's game of life, #coderetreat style.
 
@GeorgeStocker I was surprised at the results
 
2:37 AM
@GeorgeStocker sorry my ignorance, what is #coderetreat style.?
 
@YiJiang Erm, are you not assigning it to anything?
 
The jist is to use Conway as sort of 'programmers scales' (a la Musical scales)
Corey Haines gave a coderetreat at my place of work last week, and ever since then I've been using that particular exercise to improve my ability to write code.
 
@GeorgeStocker I had one of those Code Kata problems a while ago! Too bad it got closed/deleted. :-P
 
If you ever get the chance to go to one of his code retreats, I highly recommend it.
 
2:39 AM
@TimStone I'm passing in it as an object literal into anon function
 
@ChrisJesterYoung I guess we need a bestpractices.stackexchange.com
(not serious).
 
@GeorgeStocker Hehehehehe.
codekata.stackexchange.com lol
 
@YiJiang Interesting. Firefox gives me 'SyntaxError: invalid label' if I don't assign it, but it has no problem if I do..
 
Sometimes I don't understand downvotes. meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/77593/…
 
Let's see if I pass it to something.
 
2:40 AM
A technically correct answer, and it offers an alternative.
 
@TimStone Yeah, and I really don't know why
Maybe the error is from somewhere else
 
This is crazy @YiJiang
 
@YiJiang Also works OK if I pass it (function(o) { })({ ... }), or were you doing something different?
 
I think it might have something to do with eval
@TimStone Yeah, the error was from elsewhere, I fixed it
 
Ah
 
2:43 AM
@YiJiang I was going to say, I can't find any issues
 
But still, the console was reporting an error, hrm...
 
The first rule of Firebug is to be skeptical of Firebug
 
ug, I am so far behind
must finish this project.... must go on...
 
@TimStone The sooner browsers widely support let, the better.
Then rather than clunky-looking (function(foo, bar, baz) {...})(fooval, barval, bazval), you could write it a much more idiomatic way. </soapbox>
 
WTF?
 
3:00 AM
@YiJiang O_o
 
@TimStone I am suffering from your syndrome now. I need food but am too lazy to go cook it
but my code is clearly suffering, LOL
 
Uh oh, it's spreading over chat. My bad, everyone.
 
ACK, never use double for money: stackoverflow.com/questions/4882185/…
 
Oh floating points, how you plague so many...
 
LOL:
43
A: Is a double really unsuitable for money?

Marc GravellVery, very unsuitable. Use decimal. double x = 3.65, y = 0.05, z = 3.7; Console.WriteLine((x + y) == z); // false (example from Jon's page here - recommended reading ;-p)

 
3:05 AM
@TheRenamedException That's how you beat Jon Skeet! By using Jon Skeet against himself!
5
 
I fear the world will explode should any mere mortals try that.
Marc is clearly one of the Eternals.
2
 
@TimStone A Recursive Skeet?
@GeorgeStocker I am going to use up all tomorrow's stars again before tomorrow even starts, LOL
 
Hmm, shower time....then back to figuring out what exactly I was doing before the Kinect beckoned to me.
 
later @Tim
 
3:09 AM
Why does that equality test fail in C#?
 
@DanGrossman Because of rounding errors in floating-point. It's not just C#, but all binary-based floating point implementations.
 
:realizes he doesn't have an IDE or compiler for any compiled language installed on this computer:
 
@DanGrossman are you asking technically?
It was explained to me in great detail once and I understood it.. for a moment :-)
 
@DanGrossman use ideone.com?
 
@TheRenamedException 0.1 has a recurring binary representation.
 
3:12 AM
@ChrisJesterYoung deals with the internals of how doubles work right?
 
@TheRenamedException Well, double is a binary floating point type; so therefore, it's impossible to represent 0.1 exactly.
In the same way that you can't represent 1/3 exactly as a decimal number.
 
@ChrisJesterYoung ah, ok, that's right
OK, I am going to make food. back in a few...
 
Have fun!
 
I understand it technically, I don't understand it practically :/
If it prints out 3.7 and 3.7, why are they not equal when compared... is it really preserving two different representations yet displaying them the same?
 
@DanGrossman 0.1 is 1/10, which is also 1/5 * 1/2. 1/2 can be represented in binary exactly (of course). 1/5 cannot.
 
3:14 AM
So?
If two numbers are represented as the same repeating binary, why don't they evaluate to equal?
 
Okay, let's look at it from decimal numbers. 1/3 cannot be represented exactly in decimal. It's 0.333333333.
So say you have 0.33333333 + 0.33333333 + 0.33333333.
That's 0.99999999, not 1.
 
So? We didn't compare it to 1
Why is (1/3) != (1/3)
 
Right, but the example is comparing 3.65 + 0.05 with 3.7.
It's not comparing 1/3 with 1/3.
 
if you add x +y first, and print it, it'll print 3.7
then you compare 3.7 to 3.7, and it says false
why are they not equal if they are represented and displayed as the same number
 
@DanGrossman Consider: 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 != 3/3 when there's an imperfect representation of 1/3
 
3:16 AM
@DanGrossman Because of rounding.
 
@DanGrossman display != representation
 
The fact that they have the same rounded display does not mean they are the same number.
 
Why does it round for display?
 
@DanGrossman Because the alternative is to display about 16 digits, which is tl;dr for most people.
 
I don't like my language tricking me
If I want it rounded to 1 decimal place, I should be forced to say that
 
3:18 AM
@DanGrossman Your lack of understanding of floating point is not the computer's fault. It's not tricking you.
 
It's tricking me by displaying a whole number when that's not what's stored
 
@DanGrossman If you are in Java, you can use BigDecimal to see what the "real" number is.
 
And it's clearly bad for programmers to trick them like that, and hide the real value
 
In Java it'd print the whole number unless otherwise specified
 
So it's only C# that's dishonest
 
3:20 AM
printf("%f %f", 0.3, 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1) should show the difference
 
0.300000 0.300000
hmmm
(not c# or java)
 
@DanGrossman: Try these in Java:
 
that's annoying
 
I'd have to install javac first, no dev tools on this laptop
 
new BigDecimal(3.7);
new BigDecimal(3.65 + 0.05);
 
@DanGrossman 's okay, I'll paste you the actual numbers.
 
I understand floats, I don't understand why some languages round them when you don't use a formatting function to tell it to round them... if I assign 0.5 to a variable and it can't be represented exactly, and I print that variable, I shouldn't see 0.5
 
irb(main):001:0> require 'java'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> import java.math.BigDecimal
=> Java::JavaMath::BigDecimal
irb(main):003:0> BigDecimal.new(3.7).to_s
=> "3.70000000000000017763568394002504646778106689453125"
irb(main):004:0> BigDecimal.new(3.65+0.05).to_s
=> "3.699999999999999733546474089962430298328399658203125"
irb(main):005:0> BigDecimal.new(0.3).to_s
=> "0.299999999999999988897769753748434595763683319091796875"
irb(main):006:0> BigDecimal.new(0.1+0.1+0.1).to_s
=> "0.3000000000000000444089209850062616169452667236328125"
 
^ that's what should happen
Just sayin', if I ever design a language, it's not gonna lie ;)
 
3:24 AM
@DanGrossman Can you see what I mean by tl;dr though?
@DanGrossman Incidentally, 0.5 can be represented in binary exactly.
 
:wonders if there's a way to enforce some currency rounding scheme (as we currently round all prices to 1/100th of a dollar) where all numbers are representable in binary:
 
irb(main):007:0> BigDecimal.new(0.5).to_s
=> "0.5"
 
yeah yeah :/
 
@DanGrossman Yes. Represent your numbers as integral values, in quantities of cents, or 1/100 of cents, etc.
 
I'd like an excuse to eliminate the penny anyway
they cost more than a penny to mint...
 
3:29 AM
@DanGrossman: Sometime I'll write a webapp, where you can paste in arithmetic expressions and it will print you the result, in full precision (like what you saw above).
That way, you know exactly what you're dealing with. ;-)
 
I'm not arguing against rounding in user interfaces
I'm arguing against the most primitive output functions of languages building in automatic rounding
the default should be to show me what's really there, if I want something else, I should have to ask for it
 
@DanGrossman The thing is, few people use the string representation for roundtripping.
 
I'm really unhappy that PHP's debugging functions round floats
var_dump, of anything, should show me what's really in a float, not a prettified representation
 
4:29 AM
I came here to kick ass and assign IPv4 addresses. And I'm all out of IPv4 addresses.
 
4:40 AM
Is @TheRenamedException still here?
 
Does he ever leave?
 
Hey folks, is there a notification anywhere as to why the sites are all down?
I checked the blog.
 
Heads up #stackoverflow users, we'll be offline for a bit tonight around 11PM EST for some back-end work, planned outage for a few items
 
ah, forgot to check the twitter
cheers
 
@MichaelMrozek Hmm, I've been working long enough not to have noticed. Disturbing.
 
4:47 AM
 
@TimStone How dare you
@DanGrossman He better turn down every promotion he gets from now on
 
Wouldn't Admiral still work?
 
Did he become an admiral? I don't actually watch star trek
 
Too much time travel in the series and the movies... which one was the real future?
 
Every time I try to make myself like Star Trek I fail. I don't know what it is
I do love Doctor Who though, so that's good enough
 
4:51 AM
What Star Trek did you try to watch?
It's hard to get into any 1960s TV series unless you have nostalgia for it... but the later series are pretty interesting just from a scifi perspective
 
Whichever ones my friends told me to. DS9 and then I think TNG
 
TNG did The Matrix a decade before The Matrix! Holodecks inside holodecks....
 
As I recall DS9 was a snoozefest.
 
Where else will you see Newton, Einstein and Hawking playing poker with an android?
 
@DanGrossman Heaven?
 
5:00 AM
All Androids go to Hell (Coming Soon From Disney)
 
5:12 AM
@moot maybe, but who plays the devil?
And why do I think of a green R2D2 whenever anyone says Android?
 
@Moshe I see what you did there.
 
I'm thinking google android.
@moot what did I do?
 
Okay, maybe you didn't do that. But it fits.
 
:facepalms:
I can't watch this episode of Law & Order: SVU... about "Another Universe" (Second Life)...
it's just too detached from reality
 
5:27 AM
Oy. Egypt is disintegrating. More violence.
 
We've got better things to worry about than Egypt.
Like Obamastroid. theonion.com/articles/…
 
@DanGrossman Nice.
 
5:49 AM
 
OMG, is that a real headline?
 
Yeah, from this paper, apparently: archive.easternecho.com/content/…
(2009)
 
Wow. Just. Wow.
 
Morning all
in Election Bookie, yesterday, by Benjol
Robert Harvey, Tim Post & Lasse V. Karlsen
2 out of three, quite pleased with myself :)
 
@Benjol Hahaha
 
5:53 AM
@YiJiang, I should have done a copy of your page, didn't realise the data would no longer be available. I wanted to try some other metrics to see if I could improve my correlation :)
Looks like I need to add a smidgin of reputation :)
wasn't there some talk of a downloadable pdf with the results in?
 
@Benjol Eh, no - what you get is a dump of the OpenSTV compatible data
 
oh yeah, way cool :(
 
It's a text file with the complete voting history; what other results do you want?
 
@MichaelMrozek The names of everyone who didn't vote for you so we can make them pay! Mwuahahahah. coughs I mean, err..
 
Anyway, the message templating thingadongdong for chat is done now
 
5:59 AM
Firecane refers to a hypothetical confluence of meteorological and man-made disasters, whereby a hurricane crossing an oil-laden expanse of water generates lightning which ignites the flammable fossil fuel, creating a vortex of fire. A fearful imagining born of recent cataclysms in the Gulf of Mexico, the term has gained currency in New Orleans, the city inundated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and which in 2010 was near the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Lightning strikes from thunderstorms may cause isolated fires, as happened on a drill ship near the spill. Another proposed sc...
 
@YiJiang wassat?
(pretty talented bunch on photo.se):
8
Q: Image of the week "hall of fame"

friolYou may know that http://photo.stackexchange.com/ (this site's parent :) has a "Photo of the week" contest. Here are all the images featured on the homepage from the beginning in cronological order. 4 November 2010 11 November 2010 22 November 2010 29 November 2010 6 December 2010 ...

 
@DanGrossman We may have to go cause a industrial disaster just to make that happen.
 
@Benjol Here's an HTML file from OpenSTV if that helps: so.mrozekma.com/election.html
 
@Benjol Josh wants a better way of doing the election digest thingadongdong - I said that I can create a GM script to pull in data from messages you select and rerender them using your own template
 
@YiJiang, sounds good
@MichaelMrozek, ok, thanks
 
6:02 AM
@YiJiang Oh, maybe I won't finish my script then :P
 
Nifty
 
@YiJiang What you should really do is write a script that analyzes the candidate's complete histories to determine their likely answers to the questions and posts them automatically, so we can skip the THCs completely
It's one small step from that to determining who we'd all vote for, and then we don't need elections
 
@MichaelMrozek, I really was close, Lasse was #4 :)
 
6:08 AM
 
@YiJiang, don't suppose you've got a not-too-old cached version of your page data for SO to hand?
 
@Benjol Lemme check
 
doesnt seem to work, oh well
I grabbed that from google's cache
 
@DanGrossman No, because you'll need the old elections page itself too
Which could work, if you pull it from Google's cache
 
@YiJiang Can't you just point at where the election page got moved to, or you need something that actually isn't available anymore?
 
6:16 AM
@TimStone The original {sitename}/election page, with it's list of candidates, since that's where the script scrapes data from
 
@TimStone It's still there, huh
Okay, lemme see if I can work with that
 
Yeah, it's all archived post-election.
Hah, site's down now.
 
Damn it, that's the third time I've hit the meta maintenance page in the last hour. Either it's been down more often or I've been more active than usual
 
6:22 AM
@MichaelMrozek, it's an automatic safety system, they've detected that @Yi is hacking again :)
No StackExchange sites, no mods. We're orphaned, we're doomed!!!
 
wonders what @NickCraver is doing right now to erhm... cause? the sites to go down like this
 
WOB :)
 
I knew it! They should've just all switched over to jQuery, because it just $.works()
 
6:40 AM
While it's down, you can read interesting discussion on StackOverflow's decision to use Microsoft products -- news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2167776
 
6:57 AM
 
Why Google?
 
@Dan: For humor.
 
You should embed that on your website along with an animated "under construction" icon, it'll be like 1995 again
 
7:22 AM
@GeorgeEdison Tried that on an iPhone? :)
dumb question, possibly too dumb for SO. if I have two ranges a-b and c-d, what's the simplest way to check that they don't overlap and that they are at least 1 [unit] apart?
(I know for the overlapping bit: d > a && b > c)
 
c >= b + 1
you're assuming the first range begins below the second range?
 
@Dan, not necessarily
 
i.e. not "10-20 1-5" as input
they don't overlap but they don't meet your overlap test
 
@Dan, no they can be in either order
@DanGrossman, sorry, that equation is true if they do overlap
 
ok, then (c >= b + 1 || a >= d + 1) for the gap check?
what was i doing...
 
7:32 AM
@Dan, breaking out my FSI to test :)
 
oh yeah, poking @GeorgeEdison's script
Content-Type: image/jpg

5862
JFIF<CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v62), quality = 100
I wonder why that forces a download on my phone
should be image/jpeg?
 
7:51 AM
@DanGrossman Seems good, all my tests say OK :)
 
Yay, I'm not a 'tard.
 
@TheRenamedException I got that twice the first time I tried it :°D
then it errored and gave me @MichaelMrozek instead, so you have a bug right there. Please fix.
 

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