~ The Magician Fisherman

~ Blood of the Shaman

@Zoeisonstrike Oh, I saw the new mini model only costs 60$ dollars more for 16 GB RAM instead of 8 GB. This is not Apple prices.

@KennyBOT Please, no.

The SSD upgrade price was an Apple one, though...

Anyway. Used sounds good.

~ Shadow

@Zoeisonstrike "meta is the product advisory council.".... Isn't the very purpose of the council to cherry pick -_- ?

@SPArcheon How's the 'council' supposed to cherry-pick besides looking at 'what's most asked for' vs. maybe 'expected implementation effort'? And the first part very much can already be done on meta, through voting on feature requests XD

The implementation effort thing is more of an SE thing anyways, you're always going to need someone to look into it and say 'this would take 10 minutes/10years', and you can put that in a comment on a meta post as well.

@SPArcheon I dunno. It does say elect, not appoint. ;)

Or pick

I'd more worry about the opposite: Having a group of users with not enough 'new blood'/'new ways of thinking', meaning the LAB would kinda get stuck in the way things are and not what they can/should be. Kinda where I'm at now with that whole election revamp working group :P

@SPArcheon There was some voting on a Team's instance, not really an election but more 'upvote nominations in answers' kinda thing. I can't remember there being any 'picking' there either.

IIRC everyone that nominated also was 'picked' eventually, or at least the top x users were just 'elected'. I don't have access to that SOfT instance anymore though, I voluntarily left it because it wasn't active anymore and just 'clutter'.

So I can't check the validity of my recollections.

Oh, I found the pro-tem mod council voting post. It was a proper election with opavote results and such. No picking happened, just electing ;)

@Tinkeringbell So basically it was the Microsoft "MVP voting for MVP elections" closed system?

@SPArcheon No, read a bit further ;)

I was wrong, there was an actual, competitive election for the pro-tem council :)

@Tinkeringbell as in - public?

Ah, no...

But that was also not necessarily what the council was supposed to be....

It was to be 'another layer' in a hierarchical structure of users-mods-staff.... Something between mods and staff.

Yes, it was sold as also 'representing the community' but that was mostly supposed to be 'moderators already represent their communities' I think.

@Tinkeringbell True. But my point is less about what actually happened and more about what it looked like from the outside, especially when you are already grumpy because you were just reading things like removed CM and so on

Oh sure.

> Back in November when Sara and Juan announced “The Loop”, one of the things mentioned there was that we were building an advisory group of moderators - what’s now called the Moderator Council.

Yeah, I kno I kno

I'm kinda sure they're specifically trying to avoid things like it with the LAB... I'm withholding my opinion until there'll be more details in April ;)

these were Catjia words back there. Mind you, no rancor or anything against her (actually she is one of my favorite - ex sadly - employees") but you can see where it is going.

Sure. I can see how someone might read into that. It's not what eventually really happened though... and if it was, then I think the mod council failing proved we're not that easily fooled :P

(I was there btw and I don't think it failed for that reason, but for the ones already described on main :) )

> they become a group of drones with no clear reason for existing and eventually everyone just forgets they ever existed.

> it got mired in bureaucracy. I had thought it would just be a small group of mods who would make themselves available to provide a community perspective to the company. However, it quickly devolved into discussions of having a President and a Secretary and all sorts of positions (although this was abandoned in favor of a flat structure, in the end), on strict rules, regular elections and just all sorts of bureaucratic overhead.

President Parrot

Not mentioned there is that the original plan for a moderator council specifically mentioned 'not moderating the moderators', but some of the endless bureaucracy discussions were about e.g. involving the council in the reinstatement process (which was very new back then) in addition to it just being a company thing, and that would have been moderating moderators in some form so ....

Those discussions petered out too, but it was one of those 'no clear reason for existing' being found :P

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact I love the sound of that :D

~ Not everything is star-worthy...

Oh, no, Vice President Parrot is power hungry!

Well it is about time for lunch so....

Reminds me I haven't eaten today.

Oh nooooo

Neh, I'll eat tonight.

Me neither, but I had lattes, one with whipped cream and caramel... That's just a drinkable eat-thing :P

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact just because you're not hungry or because you simply don't have food for more meals?

Need to punish my stomach.

It's been taking too much space lately.

Awww

My apartment isn't that big.

Having low calorie food is kinda better than no food? ;)

My stomach is hereby sentenced to no food.

done, took up too much time.

alas, you may now find out what I meant with

XD

Yeah, things like this can take up loads of time... And it only just started! :P

Imagine the kind of time-sink it would be if you actually wanted to be on the PAC or LAB :P

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact Poor little stomach :P

Though I must admit, since slowly changing my eating habits to be healthier, my poor little stomach doesn't complain about extended period of 'no food' as much anymore either ;)

@Tinkeringbell meh, IMO it's just (pretty lame) non-effort on SE side to make it appear they're doing something, and like ALL past cases (mod council, anyone remember? No, good) it will evaporate and be forgotten with time.

So someone did think hard, came with bunch of buzz and cool acronyms, and that's about it, there it ends.

PAC, LAB, BLAH, etc.

I'm also sure some people in the company, like Slate, actually believe in this and want it to happen, but the people upstairs? Nada. They probably laugh at those silly efforts.

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda I am pretty annoyed that the "LAB" is not actually called "MAN"

Now to wash this out...

!!pee

~ Evacuate the room, woman and children first!

feels better :D

we could have had "PAC MAN"

@SPArcheon :-D

I don't even bother to try and recall what LAB is.

~ What a mess ...

Low Abdomen Button?

ah! "Laugh At Blah".

"Luft Air Ballon"

Neat, it can be chained! "LABlaBlaBla".

Like "Hahahaha"

See? They laugh at us. :D

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda Sadly no character in One Piece has that laugh yet

@SPArcheon sad indeed. I'll take the "Kukuku".

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda not the "Zehahaha" ?

@SPArcheon Air air?

@Tinkeringbell Fine, time to eat.

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda Lame And Brittle

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact No snacks, real food?

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda Having them be able to laugh at it requires them to be aware... I'm honestly not sure enough of that XD

I will wait and see. It sure will be a change from how things are done now, and those are apparently not working either so...

Right now, I am mostly curious to see if at least they do something for the abandoned site.

@Tinkeringbell One cracker with butter, smoked salmon, mayonnaise and a tower of fried eggs on top.

Want to place your bets?

No.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact Sounds nice, and relatively healthy :D

smoked salmon is sooooo good (but way too expensive here XD)

I got the cheapest package. Was like 25 NOK, I think.

Well, it was cheaper than the decent ham.

Which is like 250-325 NOK per kg.

That's relatively cheap... price per kg here is usually around 45 euros for the 'cheap stuff'... e.g. plus.nl/product/plus-gerookte-noorse-zalm-stuk-100-gr-721555. (Which is on sale this week but still very expensive IMO XD)

You barely get any cheaper ham than that. Mostly just two or three kinds. The only good one out of those, is turkey ham.

Plenty of kinds of hams here... most are cheaper than salmon, even the 'expensive' stuff like serrano (which is 35 euro's a kg when not on sale)

Although they gave the one for 172 NOK/kg 6, so top score.

Sounds good enough for me, I'm not the kind of person that can usually taste a difference between cheap or expensive when it comes to 'fresh' produce... and when it comes to highly processed foods like cola, I usually prefer cheap over the 'real' brand XD

Oh, overall, they actually found the cheaper ones better than the expensive ones, here. :P

But they just tested one package from each, so it's no proper test.

Hahaha that practically sounds like any food test I've ever seen: Always taste a single bite or only a single package XD

Only two got 6, the cheapest and most expensive ones.

In other news, I'm trying to pretend to work in this office, and now there's three people with guitars being loudly directed onto stairs and playing...

@Tinkeringbell Yep... Kinda makes it useless in the end.

Who the !@#$% thinks that's okay to do during office hours !!!!!

@Tinkeringbell So get a drum set, and join them.

Or get your opera voice out in the air.

I'm tempted to just start to loudly discuss thing with a coworker that also wants to annoy these people back.

Like, pretend we're this close to an actual fist fight kinda argument.

Yay.

I guess I will turn to the less confronting option though, and just look annoyed while wearing noise-cancelling headphones.

Now there's someone singing too, and even I could do better (and I can't sing)

FFS, this is 'public money' we're talking about XD

Noise-cancelling headphones aren't good at filtering out the annoying noise,.

Mine are acceptable. They filter out a lot, including the guitars and singing, luckily :D

Huh

Sony WH1000-XM3 :)

My Sony XM5 don't. ;/

For real?

Hahahaha for real!

XM4 didn't filter it out either.

Are you sure you have the settings right? IIRC those Sonies come with a few settings and some do cancel more than others :P

Nor some older Bose headphones I had (until they literally fell apart).

@Tinkeringbell Yeah. I guess my ears are just too good at picking it up...

I had an XM2 and I could be on a full train and basically not hear anything except a bit of 'static noise' even with the music off...

It was like that the first time I got the Bose headphones. Then a slight bit in the beginning with XM4, but nothing since. Maybe I've used headphones for so long my ears have adapted.

Like, I use them over 12 hours in a day.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact I mean, my ears usually pick up a lot too :P My tv volume is stuck on 6 (out of 100) and that's 'loud' for me, even though the yelling of the neighbor sometimes breaks through that.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact Oof.

@SPArcheon nope, too Z-ish

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact good!

@Tinkeringbell awesome point. ;)

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact Forced joke about 99 Luftbaloon

I am Awesome. Now make me President :P

@SPArcheon Luftballons. It's Luftballons.

@Tinkeringbell Wish granted. You also get a whole planet to rule: B 61

@Tinkeringbell you need catchphrase first, like Trump's MAGA 2024

Remember to water the rose and cover it at night.

Oh, nope. That arrogant rose can die :P

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda Nah. I want to be President, not Populist :P

@Tinkeringbell same thing, these days.

In some countries, sure.

Not every country is busy with invasions.

@SPArcheon Takk så mye for en fin luftballong.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact There is a MLP fan comic that really captures the essence of 99 Luftballons

Luftballonger.

mhm, don't look like UFOs to me.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact There is a similar Italian song they once showed me called "Girotondo". But it is worse in some way.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact it isn't new either. I got a stick of 4 gigs for 80 NOK or so, the remaining 12 came reinstalled IIRC

The most expensive thing in that machine is a 1TB SATA SSD I bought. It's more expensive than the rest of the hardware combined

Gotta love the used market :p

@SPArcheon Down the line, yes

But when the current list of requests starts with a lot of high-priority issues, cherry-picking isn't useful. Starting anywhere right now would be more impactful than spending months to create a group that's going to mention the same list of long-standing issues

Right now, and for the near foreseeable future, the PAC is indeed just meta

@Zoeisonstrike since I wrote that quite badly, in case you mixed out...

Ah, I see

Quick, put blindfolds over @Zoe's eyes

@SPArcheon I never heard either.

@Zoeisonstrike mhm... That's affordable even to me.

To be fair though, it was DDR3

Because that's how old the hardware is :p

(for context, the current "main" type of RAM has been DDR4 for many years, and we're currently shifting to DDR5. It's possible the main shift to DDR5 is complete now as well)

DDR3 isn't bad unless you plan to run something heavy and modern on it.

@Zoeisonstrike My computer has DDR4.

But it's from 2018, so...

When I upgraded my main machine to 32 gigs, I think it cost around 1.6k or so. That was high-ish speed DDR4 though, and bought new

NOK?

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact DDR5 wasn't a thing until 2020, but it took another couple years for CPUs and motherboards to actually support it. I got my current computer in 2022, and it still had DDR4. Granted, year-old or so model, but meh. It's fine

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact yeah

@Zoeisonstrike cop (?)

mhm. A new computer is probably one of the first things I'll spend money at, once I have some money.

but I bought a full 32 gig RAM kit with two sticks, not just another 16 gig kit to build on top of the RAM I already had. Sold the existing RAM sticks for like 800-1k or something (don't remember), so I mean, in net cost, it's closer to 6-800 :p

mhm, just realized it might be a hassle getting certain stuff to run on Linux. Like, EA games. :I

Proton is getting pretty good

So is lutris, allegedly, but I don't really use it much anymore

Only used it briefly back when I tried WoW

And for a few rounds of LoL, before I noticed they were switching to a type of anticheat that would fully break linux

Never tried League of Legends.

Good! Don't

Because it's addictive?

Or because you're annoyed it won't run on Linux?

Btw, I really love this Mistlands cape.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact Because the memes about LoL being toxic are actually correct

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact LoL

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda lo (?)

@FOX9000 l

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda k (?)

@FOX9000 f

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda g (?)

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda u

@Zoeisonstrike m8 (?)

lmao

@Zoeisonstrike Oh. I play Apex Legends, though, and people there... are very... toxic... too.

Anyway, factorio still works :p

So does Valheim.

Still not done with my base...

Stuff takes time in survival mode.

@Zoeisonstrike They just announced Sea of Thieves for PS5. Just imagine the console war idiots finally able to shoot cannonballs at each other in-game

@SPArcheon Never heard of it

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact Just wondering.. do you consider yourself a competitive player that likes challenges?

Cool. Never heard of it either, but that's one more game for me to play on my PS5.

@Zoeisonstrike 2

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda 1 (?)

@FOX9000 0

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda zero (?)

duh

OK time to eat a ear.

@SPArcheon Well, I've been to the rank of Master in AL, but I only started out with ranked because I was sick of my teammates in non-ranked. And now I'm sick of the teammates in ranked, too. Those in Platinum are the most toxic.

And they're not that good either.

Diamond rank players are preferable.

So, no.

I'm not that competitive.

Although I like winning.

As does everyone.

But not too much. Call of Duty Mobile got rather boring after my 1000th game of 50-100 kills and 0 deaths.

But that's mobile. Apex Legends mobile wasn't very hard either. Annoying controls, but other players had no idea how to win at games. :P

I haven't played CSGO since CSGO 2 was released

Broke on Linux

Never tried that either.

It's... fine

At least prior to the release of 2.0

Very varied teams and a fair chunk of hackers, and the AWP is completely unbalanced, but otherwise fine

Sounds horrible.

Anyway, I have stuff to do

You have do to stuff

doing staff

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda Did you ask the staff for consent?

No.

Smh my head

How come I am out of wood, and iron, and laid out my kitchen in the wrong spot?

@Zoeisonstrike But you're not staff.

@Zoeisonstrike forgot

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda affliction (?)

@FOX9000 affection

So you aren't shook.

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda loving (?)

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact Obviously I'm not a staff, I'm a wolf :P

@FOX9000 Yes, that's what he did.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact tenderly

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda brushing (?)

@Zoeisonstrike All the worse. Wolves cannot consent.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact sure they can. One woof for "yes", three for "no".

(never mind it means "no" is "yes yes yes". ;))

That reminds me, watched interesting chapter of Law&Order last night.

I'd like to point out the teeth. No woofing necessary

@Tinkeringbell but that would be scary.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact Sentient wolves can :p

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda That's okay. Makes a statement ;)

:D

Booo

Hit the rep cap

On the bright side, third most upvoted answer on the question :P

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact so.. I could point you to a little challenge that could keep you busy for a while... would you be interested? Don't worry, there is no pony in there...

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda Exactly.

@Zoeisonstrike No such exists.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact Shhhh

No associated word found for Shhhh.

@ShadowWizardLoveZelda Happy you don't let other people hold you back.

@SPArcheon Valheim is enough of a challenge right now.

And I have some stuff I gotta read through before next week.

Luckily, that has no ponies either.

What a pity, I kinda hoped for someone brave enough to take the challenge.

I am not brave at all.

always love to send some "Imma best player evar!" to Seek Mr. Eaten's Name...

I don't hunt for impossible missions.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact it is doable. Technically.

Don't worry, I reserved things like "return after you beat the spectrum port of Great Gurianos" for someone else :P

~ The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact only front.

:(

Speaking of competitive, I was just 175 points away from 4000 damage in a ranked match in Apex Legends, @SPArcheon :( :( :(

~ I'm a little bit lonely...

@KennyBOT Whatever.

How about learning to sing instead of using autotune for an attempt at polluting the noise a little bit less?

There's something seriously wrong with that song.

May I suggest death metal instead?

>>link Everything ends

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact Link added.

>>addlinkexplanation Everything ends youtube.com/watch?v=NEl7BmZnyUE

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact Explanation added.

Or that.