Tavern on the Meta

starball

01:50

@AaronBertrand okay, that's a good point, but which of those cases would actually be using a URL that points to an actual image? I'm struggling to imagine an example of that.

DavidPostill

08:15

@ElementsInSpace Why did you flag as false?

Journeyman Geek

→ 13 messages moved to Chimney

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda possibly not

Seems to be a lot of these and some smell like they're not trolls

Elements In Space

@DavidPostill Oh dear. My mistake.

Thanks for pointing that out. I guess I just hit the wrong key.

(fixed)

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

@ElementsInSpace FYI, you should be thankful that you didn't post that within the self-deletion period. Otherwise, it'd have deleted its message (a special rule for this room)

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda There's not one, but three posts on them on the Charcoal SO Team. If you join it you can find out more about them

@JourneymanGeek See ^

SPArcheon

08:49

Another day, another "in the manual" question, another downvote.

I wouldn't be surprised if the silly script will someday reverse the votes thinking it is serial downvoting.

Which I guess technically is true, mostly because they are a serial "in the manual" questions poster -_-

Elements In Space

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog I can always go to the My Feedback page on Meta Smoke.

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

@ElementsInSpace Others can't call you out on the feedback since they won't know which post you gave feedback on.

Elements In Space

You can see who gave what feedback to which post on Meta Smoke too.

Journeyman Geek

09:09

You have manuals?

VLAZ

@JourneymanGeek Not everyone is rich enough to only use automatic :P

Journeyman Geek

@VLAZ >_>

throws a giant 90s game compilation cd manual @ @VLAZ

VLAZ

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog Go to MS -> posts -> look for mixed feedback -> hover over to see who left what: i.sstatic.net/uuC7a.png

At least it's useful to find mixed feedback posts. You can also check posts with a single feedback to verify. MS does require two reviewers anyway.

@JourneymanGeek I wonder if these days we get the same number of games released each year as there were in the whole of the 90s.

Journeyman Geek

@VLAZ probably per month

VLAZ

Also possible.

Journeyman Geek

09:15

don't forget not all games are massive multi year AAA games that get released 2-3 years before being finished :D

VLAZ

IIRC, when Steam did away with Greenlight, the following year the new games added were as much as the whole Steam library up to then. Or something ridiculous like that.

Journeyman Geek

yup

on the other hand

I think I used to buy like...

3-4 games a year legit, and maybe 2x as much pirated

While I don't pirate any more...

I think I only actually buy that many + whatever random freebie's on epic that looks half interesting :D

SPArcheon

@JourneymanGeek Want to join me for the big FF7 Rebirth catastrophe? I have been making popcorn for a while...

Journeyman Geek

lol

SPArcheon

mind you, not because the game will be bad on a tech level..

It is just that I foresaw a catastrophic failure due to the "have a foot in both camps" issue.

Right now, if some time traveler told me that we will get another "Crazy fan tries to stab Square game director"... I would tragically believe it.

... will be an utter mess...

I obviously hope it won't get personal and/or cause actual death treats but as in for the media disruption... I fear it is kinda deserved.

Took "viral" and "misleading" marketing a little too far to hope not to pay consequences imho.

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

09:33

@JourneymanGeek hmm so maybe even related to @PetəíŕdTheLinuxWizard case, i.e. something nasty going on with accounts all over SE.

Which is pity because so far no response from staff. Not that I'm surprised. lol

Even a small "We're aware and working on that", like in the good old days, would be nice. But no.... not anymore.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda I'm not surprised either, it's Monday and I don't think the US is even awake yet.

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

@Tinkeringbell meh. In the past Nick replied to those in matter of hours no matter when it happened.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda Then Nick set horrible expectations and should've gotten a life outside of SE. :P

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

So you say in 6-8 days maybe some staff will see that, which is fair, SE is business and they're busy. But it's annoying.

PM 2Ring

@SPArcheon A variation on that theme is to post multiple low quality answers to your own question. When people downvote the question & all the self-answers, it gets detected as serial voting and is reversed. Does this ever happen? Maybe... physics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/14613/123208

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

09:36

(I mean it will be weekend again in few days, right?)

Tinkeringbell

I'm not saying it will take 6-8 days. (If it does it would be longer because that falls right in another weekend which means no one should be working!). I'm saying give them at least a few more hours before you start complaining about not being surprised.

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

@Tinkeringbell But it's already ongoing for few days that's my point.

@Pet sent them contact form days ago.

Not hours.

Tinkeringbell

I saw one other meta post yesterday, nothing before that? And yesterday was a weekend day ...

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

But honestly, didn't expect any better so we're fine.

!!/coffee

See? All is mocha in the world.

Tinkeringbell

I hope not. I prefer latte's.

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

09:39

!!/latte for Tink

:(

status-Tink-is-out-of-luck

SPArcheon

Let me check:
- can we flag those as "not an answer"? Nope, they are answers even if they don't answer the actual question.
- can we downvote? Yes we can. The system will revert it but that is correct because you applied serial downvote.
- Does it matter than the serial downvote was justified? Never did, it is better to waste time on memes like "You were reversed because Tom's key"
- Should you contact mods? Nah, "community is fine to come with its rules, we can't regulate everything"

Seems good to me.

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog nah. I just saw it's a troll who has habit of changing names so assumed it's yet another one.

PM 2Ring

On Physics.SE, we can flag as "Not an answer" if it doesn't actually attempt to answer the OP's question. Even if it could be an answer to a different question.

@Tinkeringbell Dutch plural detected.

Tinkeringbell

@PM2Ring Sssssh :P

Nothing wrong with Dutch plural's :D

PM 2Ring

Oops. Clipboard error.

9 ways to sound Dutch - the Dutch accent in English

►

Dave is a polyglot, linguist, and accent expert.

He doesn't claim to be perfect at accents, but he's pretty impressive, and always happy to receive constructive criticism.

Tinkeringbell

09:49

He's pretty right. Most of those are reasons I don't speak English, only write it :P

PM 2Ring

I love the sound of the Dutch accent, but I don't think I can imitate it very well, even though I've had lots of Dutch friends.

This one's pretty funny, but I guess it helps if you're familiar with lots of English accents.

Hilarious English Accent Spoof Pharma Ad

►

Tinkeringbell

It's not so much the accent, the things he does in that short clip are pretty 'tolerable' and (with exception perhaps of the vase :P) he can still make himself understood, I guess. My problem isn't so much an accent as not knowing how to pronounce over half the words I can read/write without problem XD

So I would pronounce them as if they were Dutch without even trying to give them the tiniest bit of 'English' accent XD

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

Dutlish

Tinkeringbell

@PM2Ring I used to do some volunteering under a woman that came from Britain and that could also do a lot of accents... it was amazing to hear how many different ones there are, though in hindsight I realized it shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did, because The Netherlands are a much smaller country and there are many different accents/dialects here too XD

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda It's called Dunglish ;)

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

:D

Dunglish sounds too dangling

Tinkeringbell

09:59

Not my fault, I didn't came up with the 'accepted' term :P

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

I wonder what accent @Bart has?

PM 2Ring

@Tinkeringbell Yeah, English is pretty bad in that respect. It's pretty hard to get it right unless you're immersed in the pronunciations, preferably when you were young.

Partly it's because English has "digested" words from several other languages, mangling their original pronunciations. Also, the Great Vowel Shift.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda I bet something French or German, given the 'Switzerland' in his profile.

PM 2Ring

SHE IS SPEAKING ENGLISH WITH 12 DIFFERENT ACCENTS

►

Unfortunately, there's a bit of background wind noise. But she's amazing.

PM 2Ring

10:23

Dutch recorder player Lucie Horsch is mainly known for her exquisite performances of baroque music. But she enjoys other styles, too. Here's a Latin number.

Lucie Horsch & Fuse play Tico Tico

►

SPArcheon

10:53

@PM2Ring I still like this one better :P

Tinkeringbell

11:18

@Bart Oh! I missed that message, and couldn't figure out the thread XD Well good luck on your new endeavour then!

Journeyman Geek

11:45

@Tinkeringbell I'd also say its partially a matter of staffing levels

Tinkeringbell

@JourneymanGeek Meh. Work hours are work hours, no matter if you have 10 US based people or 20 ;)

So unless by 'staffing levels' you mean hiring people from around the world...

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell Well that's part of it, they have/had people based elsewhere too. But also I'd say to an extent - if human errors were a cause, I'd not blame the people

I mean, hiring people from around the world can be a great idea :D

Tinkeringbell

11:58

@JourneymanGeek You don't say :P

I wouldn't mind a whole big team either... but we gotta work with what we have :P

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell and yet

:D

Tinkeringbell

Well we can turn the whole thing into a 'pity-fest' but I doubt remarks like 'not that I expected anything else' are going to help XD

Maybe it's just my pet-peeve but I really dislike 'self-fullfilling prophecies' like those remarks, when those remarks are made about things that are just working as they're supposed to.

(or aren't working perfectly and everyone knows it but no one can change it)

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell I'm expecting a retrospective, and some poor DBA/Dev needing to detangle a lot of accounts :D

Andreas moved to Codidact

12:14

Did I miss anything?

Tinkeringbell

Hmm. I'm not so sure.

Journeyman Geek

But its also not good optics

Tinkeringbell

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact A few reports from users that had accounts merged complaining.

Journeyman Geek

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact quite a lot

Andreas moved to Codidact

Neh. Nothing interesting, then.

Journeyman Geek

12:14

@Tinkeringbell Or its a particularly clever troll

Tinkeringbell

I'm not so sure if the current one that's still up was really a mess-up though. But I'll leave it to CMs to detangle it.

@JourneymanGeek Not so sure about that either XD It could just be coincidence XD

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell either there's a few incorrect merges all at once or there's a few correct merges someone's raising a stink about :D

Both need addressing eventually

Tinkeringbell

Yeah, like I said I'll leave it up to CMs XD

Mod tools aren't really suited to investigating things in-depth anyways.

Journeyman Geek

lol

all we can do is point them (individually?) at the contact form

Tinkeringbell

Yep.

Journeyman Geek

12:35

→ 7 messages moved to Chimney

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

@Tinkeringbell so, Freman? Or Gerch? ;-)

@PM2Ring hmm? You know her?

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda Fremen? The netherlands is a long way from Arrakis

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

@Tinkeringbell well since I've encouraged him to go this way, I also wish him the best of luck with that. :D

@JourneymanGeek or perhaps it is Arrakis!

Journeyman Geek

If the netherlands was anywhere there, it would be Caladan

→ 9 messages moved to Chimney

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

:9766095 k

oh hey I was giving feedback! :D

@JourneymanGeek too blue

Journeyman Geek

12:39

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda when I checked it was dead

PM 2Ring

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda No. She just came up on my YouTube feed a while ago, after I'd watched several videos from Dave Huxtable.

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda The Dutch made a lot of money on trading various spices, but not melange.

Journeyman Geek

@PM2Ring or that's what they want you to think

Its a bene gesserit conspiracy

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

13:00

@PM2Ring oh

@PM2Ring pity!

SPArcheon

Random though of the day. If the company really likes AI and classification DL then it could actually be useful to train a model to detect identification questions on sites where id question are offtopic...

VLAZ

@SPArcheon Somebody already presented a proof of concept of using ML to identify dupes. Before the big AI boom. IIRC, 2018-ish.

SPArcheon

mine suggestion is actually far simpler and doesn't even require looking at existing posts at runtime.

I just want something to detect a question that contains lines like "Help me find" or "I am trying to find the name of" etc

Opinion...

does this message look.... human?

> That shouldn't happen. There shouldn't be any way to mess up the code so that it doesn't always say 'congratulations,' unless the code for winning the puzzle was weirdly complex when it came to winning. Additionally, it's a relatively recent game (2015), so it shouldn't have glitches like that where the devs weren't able to test everything extensively.
Of course, it's possible the devs didn't notice this (assuming it is possible), or that they did notice, tried to fix it, couldn't, and decided that it doesn't matter ("Let's make it an easter egg!" dev 1 says, all others agree)

especially the "Of course, it's possible the devs didn't notice this (assuming it is possible),"

.... oh well, left a flag.

Journeyman Geek

13:33

@SPArcheon SEDE would let you do that in semi bulk

SPArcheon

@JourneymanGeek you may have missed the part when I said "Like" an "Deep learning". I don't want to search for the words.

Journeyman Geek

If the only tool you have is a hammer...

Do you need deep learning for that?

SPArcheon

@JourneymanGeek ok, removing restrain, attuning sarcasm module. Little issue with your idea, by the time it even reach SEDE it is already closed by the users. So.. I don't need deep learning but a time machine considering the whole purpose was to show users a "you seem to be writing an identification request: those are off-topic. If you think this is a false positive please proceed but your question will be automatically placed in a review queue"

Journeyman Geek

that would either be a creation time filter with some degree of matching, or a comment thinggie

both of which don't need AI

SPArcheon

@JourneymanGeek Amuse me, describe how that would work.

Journeyman Geek

13:42

I mean functionally? We already have some degree of filtering at question time

fundamental problem here is would the company do it considering they put the staging ground in hiatus cause they would rather pour resources into more AI

SPArcheon

@JourneymanGeek I assume "a creation time filter with some degree of matching" means "looking at the occurrence of specified words/patterns in the question". Do you realize this is a case for NLP topic modeling? You may argue it is overkill... but it is sure better than "let's use chatgpt to rewrite the question and hope those meddling users didn't write a jailbreak prompt to make us write fanfiction instead"

Journeyman Geek

@SPArcheon the problem there might be with chatgpt :D

SPArcheon

@JourneymanGeek Remember how it started with "If the company really likes AI and classification DL"? Let me rephrase that. "If the company has to use AI for something, this could be far more useful than rewriting question. And even better: it could even work"

PM 2Ring

LLMs can be used to process language without actually operating in chatbot mode...

Journeyman Geek

ah

Your mistake is thinking the company has to use AI for something...

SPArcheon

13:50

@JourneymanGeek Yours seems to be thinking that ""If the company has to use AI for something" means "it makes sense for the company to use AI for something" while it is a far more pessimistic "if they really have to force AI somewhere"

Journeyman Geek

@SPArcheon well more of "The company is ignoring real problems in order to sledgehammer in uses of ai"

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

@JourneymanGeek here is my suggestion so SE, how to save SO from doom:

This will attract many new users, and boost income.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda ......

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda Quora seems to do this

without the button even

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

lol

SPArcheon

@JourneymanGeek Oh, I totally expect them to announce something like "now you can generate avatars with DALL-E" before doing anything to fix the existing site issues and bugs.

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

13:53

See? Great shadows think alike. :P

Journeyman Geek

Quora also has a stake in openAI?

SPArcheon

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda I say we should just add Tavern.AI to the Tavern.

After all, it has the same name so it must be a sign from the gods.

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

@JourneymanGeek human stake

Adam D'Angelo

Adam D'Angelo (born August 14, 1984) is an American internet entrepreneur. He is best known for his role as the co-founder and CEO of Quora, based in Mountain View, California. == Early life and education == Adam D'Angelo was born on August 14, 1984 in Redding, Connecticut, United States. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy for high school. There, he developed the Synapse Media Player (a music suggestion software) along with Mark Zuckerberg and others.From 2002 to 2006, he attended California Institute of Technology, where he graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science. == Career == In 2004, while...

@SPArcheon agreed!

PM 2Ring

Prosus has a fairly substantial GenAI tool, PlusOne techcentral.co.za/naspers-prosus-generative-ai-plusone/231471

Journeyman Geek

@PM2Ring I suspect that's behind the push really

PM 2Ring

14:05

Me too

SPArcheon

That is a very bad name decision.

Suggestion: do not google it.

Journeyman Geek

PlusOne?

M.A.R.

Haha

@SPArcheon given how sex has usually been the first thing that we learn to do with a new technology in this century maybe it's just an honest name decision.

Maybe Plos one was taken?

terdon

14:29

@M.A.R. it's a scientific journal

journals.plos.org/plosone

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

15:44

@SPArcheon thanks, I'm Googling it now because of that. Googling

Nice! I knew I can count on you for good stuff, @SPA. :-D

(and no, had no idea what it is before Googling. ;))

(question is, how you knew? hmm....)

The blue one is really nice.

SPArcheon

16:35

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda because that is what you get if you stupidly try to check what this product is about?

3 hours ago, by PM 2Ring

Prosus has a fairly substantial GenAI tool, PlusOne https://techcentral.co.za/naspers-prosus-generative-ai-plusone/231471/

M.A.R.

17:30

@terdon I know, I was joking

terdon

@M.A.R. oh, duh. Sorry :)

M.A.R.

@terdon hey, long time no chat. How're you doing?

terdon

I'm OK, still around. How about you?

M.A.R.

I'm OK, still around as well

Doing doctorate thesis stuff

Well, intending to do

terdon

Ah, writing it?

M.A.R.

17:33

Still working out the lab work

terdon

That's a very stressful time, hang in there!

Ah, slightly less stressful then :)

M.A.R.

hangs

I have a feeling I'm way too relaxed about things I should worry about and worry about things I shouldn't

The former is at least what my friends tell me

terdon

Meh, I only got stressed when I was actually writing it and facing a deadline, to be honest.

M.A.R.

Oh, my MO is be stressed out only when it's too close to the deadline to make it on time

Then open MS word

terdon

Yep, same here.

M.A.R.

17:36

Tweak the font size a bit

terdon

Wait, word!? WORD!? Aren't you doing something in chemistry or related STEM?

M.A.R.

@terdon many journals require the initial manuscript to be a .docx file

terdon

Sheesh. What field? I've never had to submit anywhere that didn't accept LaTeX.

M.A.R.

I know some LaTeX but I wonder if it'll ever be necessary

terdon

It made writing my thesis sooo much easier since I could just focus on the content and let LaTeX handle the rest. I tried using Word once for my first paper and it just got too messy too fast, and someone else sicced me onto LaTex and I never looked back. I would never try to write anything of a serious length without it again.

I didn't really know any LaTeX at the beginning, I just used a WYSIWIG editor.

M.A.R.

17:39

@terdon I haven't moved past that line yet, so it's possible the "initial manuscript" refers to something uni wants first.

terdon

Of course, I then found that learning how to tweak LaTeX is an excellent way to procrastinate while still being able to semi legitimately claim to be working.

M.A.R.

@terdon Pharmaceutical sciences. Medicinal chem

@terdon the 98/2 principle? 98 % of the time is spent changing the LaTeX page layout

terdon

Eh, not really. I mean yes, you can if you want to, but if you have a good template (I did), you don't need to tweak unless you're looking for an excuse to get distracted.

M.A.R.

I love LaTeX. Word always looks so boorish in comparison. I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

PM 2Ring

If you submitted a physics paper as a Word doc instead of LaTeX, they'd suspect you were a crackpot. And if it were a mathematics paper, they'd probably just laugh. :)

I must admit my true LaTeX skills are a bit rusty. I've only used MathJax for the last few years.

Pity the chatrooms don't support MathJax. There are userscripts & bookmarklets that enable it, but it would be much nicer if it were built-in...

For small snippets, I guess there's CodeCogs

latex.codecogs.com/…

^ That renders properly in question & answer posts, but not in chat.

Loong

17:58

@M.A.R. What is it about?

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

@SPArcheon but the good stuff isn't there, only if you try to search for it on your own. Or... know about it from before, somehow... ;-)

PM 2Ring

I saw a crazy chem demo on YouTube a few weeks ago. We've all seen what happens when you drop a chunk of sodium in water. This guy decided to reverse it: he dropped a chunk of ice into a beaker of liquid sodium.

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

@M.A.R. so what new chemical are you going to invent?

@PM2Ring did he survive?

urgh it's 8pm

Y'all know what happens in 8pm, right?

Right?!

PM 2Ring

Yes, but he was wearing good protective gear, and threw the block of ice from a fair distance.

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

@PM2Ring smart. ;)

So he won't be accepted to Jackass. :D

I've seen their movie for the first time only recently.

(just never bothered to download it, and it was on our TV, so when landing on it, just watched. ;))

M.A.R.

18:14

@Loong experimental sciences

@PM2Ring brilliant. He should patent it so no one tries it again

Loong

@PM2Ring I once did the ammonium nitrate/ammonium chloride/barium nitrate/zinc dust mixture that can be ignited with an ice cube as a demonstration for our fire brigade.

@M.A.R. This is suspiciously non-specific.

PM 2Ring

I've never seen that one.

I hear that chlorine trifluoride does interesting things to ice cubes.

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

@PM2Ring well there's this vid:

Bart

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda Twents :)

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

Setting Fire to Glass - The "Nope" Chemical That is Chlorine Trifluoride

►

PM 2Ring

18:26

Liquid sodium is used as a heat exchange medium in some nuclear reactors. Of course, they don't let it get wet.

Even better is sodium-potassium alloy, NaK. It has a low melting point, so it's liquid at room temperature. It seems to be more reactive than pure potassium.

Tinkeringbell

@Bart boooring :P

Loong

@PM2Ring Well, the experimental fast breeder in Kalkar had a little accident in 1984.

They burned away maybe 100 kg of sodium "over the roof".

Must have been a nice yellow flame.

PM 2Ring

Yeah. At least it's pretty obvious when you do get a leak. ;)

SPArcheon

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda I don't know what you mean, and I would like if you stopped trying to imply something. Just googling that name alone is enough to get results that are clearly NOT the AI product that was mentioned. I was warning people about that.

Loong

@PM2Ring We had an interesting case of Cs-137 incorporation last week. Three workers from the same construction site all clearly showed Cs-137 in the gamma spectrum of the body counter.

However, this construction site doesn't have any significant open Cs-137 contamination.

PM 2Ring

18:37

Wiki says the halflife of Na-24 is 14.9560 hours. So I guess old reactor sodium would have a bit of residual radioactivity.

Cs-137? Eek!

Loong

but a few other radionuclides, that were not detected in the workers

So I assumed it wasn't our Cs-137, and I guessed the actual source.

We interviewed the workers, and I was right. 😁

They had brought mushrooms from home (in Poland).

PM 2Ring

Chernobyl?

Loong

yes

PM 2Ring

Sheesh.

Loong

less than about 200 Bq, but still enough for us to see it

PM 2Ring

18:47

And at least alkali metals don't bioaccumulate.

Loong

as long as you're not a mushroom

PM 2Ring

:)

M.A.R.

1 hour ago, by M.A.R.

Well, intending to do

Nothing concrete, that's why I don't have much of anything specific to say. WIP.

Loong

okay

M.A.R.

It's nothing nookular that's for sure.

It's just PharmD, it's not exactly pushing the boundaries of science.

Too medicin-y for chemists, too chemical for MDs.

@Loong lemme check

VLAZ

19:05

@starball Smokey is down.

starball

@VLAZ rip. what happened?

VLAZ

Apparently the SE endpoints for logging into chat are down.

Kevin B

fun

M.A.R.

It's an April 1st joke except the joke is it's not on April 1st

PM 2Ring

@M.A.R. Do something with deuterium. Even though it's rare compared to normal hydrogen our bodies have more of it (by number of atoms) than a lot of other common elements. And there's still a lot we don't know about its biological role(s). nature.com/articles/s41573-023-00703-8

But perhaps it's not easy to get heavy water in your country...

M.A.R.

19:23

@PM2Ring there is some recent interest in deuterium as a bioisostere in medchem, yeah. But I need to try very hard to come up with a synthesis whose reagents or whose biological verification tests don't cost an arm and a leg. And sadly with the current financial situation here arms and legs are cheaper than you think.

PM 2Ring

19:36

@M.A.R. Fair point. A decade or so ago, a guy did some research on the metabolism of deuterated ethanol. It wasn't cheap.

As you know, human enzymes quickly convert ethanol to aldehyde, but the next oxidation step to acetic acid is slow, which causes aldehyde concentration to build up. There's a fair range in these rates, depending on genetics. Eg, east asians have a greater tendency to have higher aldehyde levels when they drink.

Aldehyde does more damage than ethanol itself. And it's a major cause of hangovers

Anyway, this guy found that deuterium slowed down the first oxidation step, but had almost no impact on the rate of the 2nd step. So it drastically reduces the acetaldyde build-up, and virtually eliminates hangovers. It probably also reduces the damage to the liver, nervous system, etc.

But he was using analytical grade deuterated ethanol in his experiments. So it cost him >$1000 each time he got drunk.

Tinkeringbell

19:59

@PM2Ring I'll take a hangover for fifteen euros then :P

M.A.R.

20:18

@PM2Ring need another $1000 to wash that down

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

21:03

@VLAZ probably merged with other endpoints.

Or it's all part of one major attack.

(causing random accounts to get merged, shutting down endpoints... etc...)

Aaron Bertrand

I don't know anything about the endpoint but I can tell you the account merges were not caused by any kind of attack.

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

Anyway waiting for tomorrow so I can keep ranting. :D

@AaronBertrand well what triggered my inner alert is that one of those happened with a rather nasty troll. So in case that troll got some help from someone who's good in hacking.... {complete the rest.}

I just don't really believe in "coincidence". It still might be, but not something I'd believe in by default.

Aaron Bertrand

By "coincidence" do you mean that this happened to someone who you happen to know is a troll?

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda

Well Smokey is alive again so guess all is good.

!!/status

Aaron Bertrand

Administrative actions of various types tend to happen to ... that kind of people. Sometimes, though, innocent people get tangled.

Transcript for