Tavern on the Meta

animuson

1:27 AM

@Shog9: Do you know if Area51 is ever going to get the "show removed posts" option in its reputation history?

Shog9

3:08 AM

@animuson I wouldn't hold your breath

mootinator

goes on a hunger strike.

(This will last a few weeks longer)

Shog9

<-- is full of ousmuggles

Tim Stone

3:23 AM

Google thinks I just meant smuggles, for which its dictionary definition is about cocaine.

That somehow also reminds me of this photo a friend posted on Facebook yesterday:

Shog9

4:08 AM

@TimStone Yes, it's an un-googleable word. Oddly enough, it did briefly have a presence a couple years back, but that seems to have evaporated.

Rebecca Chernoff

is a word that is un-googleable really a word?

mootinator

putinerie?

Is that where Russian presidents come from?

Tim Stone

Oh boy, I actually facepalmed on that one.

@Shog9 or @RebeccaChernoff, uh... this could use an extra-quick burnination. >_>

mootinator

I only punned that because my o key failed.

I was going to go somewhere else with that, but I totally forgot in the process.

Shog9

@TimStone gone

Tim Stone

4:19 AM

Fantastic.

Moshe

6:49 AM

I'm flying back to NY from Israel in about an hour.

Flexo

8:59 AM

@Moshe was the visit good?

what did you do in the end?

woah someone vandalised Evan Carroll's nomination

it's all italicy and bold for no discernible reason

jadarnel27

12:19 PM

@Flexo Weird. According to the revision history, he did that himself.

jokerdino

hm

so, people figured this out? - meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/3122/formatting-sandbox/…

Tim Stone

@jokerdino Yeah, it looks like a bit of a bug, so you should likely open a bug report.

jokerdino

i would but i don't know how to frame as one.

Tim Stone

Hmm

Maybe @jadarnel27 knows how to describe the problem in a way that's more coherent than my rambling :P

jokerdino

that works. I can wait

Tim Stone

12:26 PM

I did find a way to fix the problem, but I'm not sure if it's an acceptable solution.

jokerdino

adding a new line fixes the issue. but is that the way to fix the formatting?

Tim Stone

Well, in this case the best thing to do was to just add a few lines, because it was consistent with what you were trying to make the post look like.

But this would have broken in the general case of someone mixing the inline/reference format of images and links.

jokerdino

I am lost.. :/

And it's not your fault :p

Tim Stone

It might be, I haven't had coffee yet. :P

jadarnel27

@TimStone Hahaha

Basically, the server-side markdown parser ignores new lines (\n) when trying to match the image or hyperlink patterns, but the JavaScript preview does not (I think).

Tim Stone

12:33 PM

Oh, that's a separate issue that allowed this bug to manifest, actually.

jokerdino

o.O

You guys seem to make sense. Just that I am on a different planet.

Tim Stone

I can cause @jokerdino's bug in the preview editor too

jadarnel27

@TimStone Ah, I see. So the issue really does have to do with trying to nest them all on one line like that?

Tim Stone

Yep

Just that the server side parser is more lenient in what it considers to be "one line"

jokerdino

Hm so having all the mess in one line is the culprit?

Tim Stone

12:35 PM

Yeah. Here's a simpler example

(under the "Broken Image" header)

The Markdown is just

![inline image](i.stack.imgur.com/uKpNO.png) [some reference link][1]

  [1]: meta.stackoverflow.com

jokerdino

Hmm

Tim Stone

So the problem will happen any time you have ![]() followed by some later Markdown with [][] that's on the same "line".

jokerdino

that makes sense.

if the later is also [](), no bug aye?

Tim Stone

Yep, exactly.

jokerdino

hah.

great. works just fine.

Sathya

12:43 PM

Tim Stone

Oh, I thought you were trying to get it to repeatedly ping me and I was going to come in here to say "Nice try!", but :p

Sathya

@TimStone aww.

jokerdino

@TimStone thanks for your work on the bug. Please do file it as a bug. I lack technical prowess on this stuff o.O

Tim Stone

Thank you for finding it, it was interesting to investigate! I'm sure one of us will manage to file a bug on it. balpha may have seen us rambling about it in here yesterday too, so it's possible he's aware of the issue.

If worse comes to worst I'll make @Sathya post something ;)

Sathya

;)

I should be heading home

balpha

12:47 PM

I did see some ramblings about markdown links, haven't looked closely

Tim Stone

He's watching us even as we speak! o_o

@Sathya I...should be looking into fixing this JPQL mess quickly I suppose.

jokerdino

@TimStone I think it is good news. Even though it is a little creepy he notices without you pinging him.

Tim Stone

I still don't get why anyone would take a perfectly fine language like SQL and make it pretty much unusable.

Hahah :D

jokerdino

does he have highlight on balpha or something?

Sathya

@TimStone :P

Tim Stone

12:51 PM

I was going to suggest that there was an alarm that goes off every time I'm causing trouble, but admittedly I would have expected Rebecca to show up and break my appliances in that case.

balpha

don't forget that chat.meta also hosts our company-internal rooms, so I tend to look at the chat window a lot

jokerdino

I am now leaving the tavern. Ping me if needed. :-)

Tim Stone

You and your logical explanations, bah!

Oh nifty, a Stack Overflow question I randomly clicked on just taught me something new.

jadarnel27

There's stuff that you don't know already? Nonsense.

Tim Stone

I know things?

I thought I just kept saying random stuff until people stopped listening and walked away with the misconception I knew what was going on.

jadarnel27

1:01 PM

120

Q: Given an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite amount of time, would one of them write Hamlet?

Of course, we've all heard the colloquialism "If a bunch of monkeys pound on a typewriter, eventually one of them will write Hamlet." I have a (not very mathematically intelligent) friend who presented it as if it were a mathematical fact. Which got me thinking... Is this really true? Of cours...

Tim Stone

Hm...I'm beginning to think there's no JPQL solution to this problem. I'll just add that to my pile of Java-based rage.

jadarnel27

remembers this and looks in Tim Stone's direction

Tim Stone

Oh yeah.

jadarnel27

=)

Tim Stone

I still need to finish up that other feature. And be cautious about continuing to increase the mountain of changes that need to be pulled. :P

jadarnel27

1:10 PM

Haha, right. I guess no one had the time to pull the existing updates last week.

Tim Stone

Think I'll finish that feature and verify the API updates are taken care of for the election site today.

Well, it's a bit of a coordination act....the changes all need to be reviewed, but since I have more changes in the pipe that complicates the issue.

I also need to go rereview that helper table feature you suggested because I think I made a classic fail that should be patched first...

Flexo

hooray for DVCS that lets you re-write history

Tim Stone

Anyway, I'll get everything to a point this week where I'll draw a line in the sand, and from there on out it will definitely not be my fault anymore ;)

jadarnel27

That all sounds reasonable. I'm not complaining (much =P).

@TimStone Haha, fair enough =) Then I'll start blaming @Rebecca!

Tim Stone

Gah, I did make a classic fail |:

Exactly!

"herp derp let me use this non-synchronized collection in code that can be accessed on multiple threads, what could go wrong?"

jadarnel27

1:15 PM

@jadarnel27 ok, in the next build it shall relentlessly love them. — Marc Gravell 11 mins ago

Tim Stone

Hahah :P

jadarnel27

@TimStone That reminds me of a joke.

Tim Stone

@TimStone Granted, there's a small window where this would be an issue, but I'm still ashamed |:

@jadarnel27 You have jokes about thread safety?

jadarnel27

@TimStone "I like my threads like I like my punchasynchronouslines."

Of course. I have jokes about everything. I'm hilarious.

Tim Stone

:P

jadarnel27

2:12 PM

Out of close votes on MSO again. This new review interface is kinda addictive.

Tim Stone

Well....I think I've found the most awesome thing I'll see this month.

2

jadarnel27

ZOMG

@TimStone Did you watch the YouTube video that page links to?

Tim Stone

I did!

jadarnel27

If I ever stopped talking, I would be speechless right now.

Rob W

2:41 PM

I've got a question, but it might be too localised (or not) for meta.

Flexo

@RobW what is it?

Rob W

I've found a solution to the questions asked stackoverflow.com/q/6801577, stackoverflow.com/q/1761799, stackoverflow.com/q/10792230 (and probably many more). I was initially developing a method to launch devtool programatically (first question). Now I've found the answer, I notice that it also solves these other questions.

The thing is, the solution might have some security implications. Evil developers could use it to run code in a privileged context.

So, should I post the answer or not?

Oh, and the answer doesn't require any third-party plugins, it's made using existing built-in APIs.

Flexo

I'd say answer it with a discussion of the security issues. Don't duplicate the answer across all the questions though.

Rob W

Well, it's security from a user's perspective. The created extension seems harmless, but under the hood, it's possible to silently install/remove extensions from the Chrome browser.

Flexo

do the chrome team know about that?

Rob W

2:52 PM

I'm pretty sure that I'm the first who found this method. It's a very out-of-the-box method :p

Flexo

might be nice to give them a heads up if it's not intentional and possibly useful in a malicious context

Rob W

Yes, that would be nice. But then my solution won't work any more, which I'd like to avoid. It speeds up extension development, when used correctly.

(if they patched it)

jadarnel27

@RobW Not wanting to be inconvenienced is not a very scrupulous reason to neglect reporting a potential security flaw =)

Flexo

any you could always mention that you found it whilst looking for missing feature $featurename

Rob W

Both of you are correct.

I'm looking in the issues list to see if anyone has ever made the feature request.

Flexo

3:06 PM

my recommendation is definitely "be the good guy"

don't google pay a sizeable bounty for real security bugs too?

jadarnel27

Oh, that would be neat.

Rob W

Well, to become a real security issue, it requires 3 steps from the user: Installing the extension, visiting a chrome:-URL, and then doing one thing more.

The occurrence of 1 and 2 are pretty common. But the last step is usually only done by developers.

I'm not going to report, nor publish it, for now.

jadarnel27

You, sir, are a paragon of morality.

Seriously, though. As end users / outside developers, it's certainly not our responsibility to report security issues (it's the company's responsibility to notice them, in the end). But, it's always nice when we can, as @Flexo put it, "be the good guy" =)

Rob W

@jadarnel27 Hehe :p I think that the risk is minimal if I don't mention it. The impact is limited to what's possible through Chrome's web interface.

For attackers, tricking users into installing an extension containing a NPAPI module is more attractive.

jadarnel27

3:25 PM

@RobW I'm just speaking generally, since I don't really know the security issue. I trust your expertise, you seem to know what you're talking about.

Ack. I got sloppy with my NAA flags and one got declined O.O

Rob W

A declined flag doesn't hurt. It's a wake-up call ;)

jadarnel27

B-B-But my precious, invisible-to-me flag weight!

And, for the record, this is the guy's only answer. It's link only, and links to his blog and his github without disclosing affiliation.

Rob W

@jadarnel27 By the name, it's obvious that the Github account is his. The answer can be improved, but the example might be useful to others. So, deleting can be counter-productive.

jadarnel27

3:44 PM

@RobW I realize it's obvious the GitHub is his from the URL -_-

And the question is already answered (very thoroughly) in the other answers. I don't see the point in having a marginally-spammy, link-only answer on a two month old question.

Rob W

@jadarnel27 After clicking on the blog link, my mind has changed: It looks like an attempt to attract readers to the blog (the blog contains some lines of code, plus a link to GitHub). Have you explained the situation in the flag?

jadarnel27

Heh, that's what I meant when I said I got sloppy. I only submitted a normal NAA flag, because I expected that people would notice the weirdness like I did. I should have, indeed, submitted a custom flag.

I did leave the OP a comment after my flag was declined explaining the guidelines about self promotion.

Tim Stone

4:18 PM

Hmm, what to work on...

Rebecca Chernoff

@TimStone shenanigans.

Tim Stone

You're encouraging me to create shenanigans?

Rebecca Chernoff

just don't create any I have to clean up q:

Tim Stone

Of course. :P

jadarnel27

I wonder how many of the 57k close votes in the SO review queue are new (<4 days old).

Tim Stone

4:46 PM

Users at Limit Site Name
-------------- ---------
0              ProgrammersMeta
0              EnglishMeta
1              TeXMeta
1              TheoreticalComputerScienceMeta
0              MathematicsMeta
0              Unix and LinuxMeta
0              CookingMeta
0              AppleMeta
0              GISMeta
0              Electronics Meta
1              WordPress Meta
0              Android EnthusiastsMeta
0              PhysicsMeta
1              IT SecurityMeta
1              Drupal AnswersMeta

Hmm

I was hoping they'd all be zeros so I could claim to be the only one and say the five edit limit for per-site metas was silly on that basis :P

jadarnel27

Did you make sure to exclude yourself from those numbers?

Tim Stone

This is the first time it's been an issue, so the data is too old to include me.

jadarnel27

Oh, gotcha. I'm pretty surprised it's that common for someone to hit that limit on a meta.

Tim Stone

Ah, my query might be wrong...

jadarnel27

shakes head I should've known. =P

Tim Stone

4:52 PM

Users at Limit Site Name
-------------- ---------
0              ProgrammersMeta
0              EnglishMeta
0              TeXMeta
1              TheoreticalComputerScienceMeta
0              MathematicsMeta
0              Unix and LinuxMeta
0              CookingMeta
0              AppleMeta
0              GISMeta
0              Electronics Meta
0              WordPress Meta
0              Android EnthusiastsMeta
0              PhysicsMeta
1              IT SecurityMeta
1              Drupal AnswersMeta

jadarnel27

@TimStone That looks better! I wonder how many of those 1's are SE employees and moderators.

Tim Stone

Originally I was mistakenly getting the count of edits on own posts, instead of the count of separate own-posts edited.

jadarnel27

I think if they are all Community Team members, then that still kind of proves your point.

Tim Stone

That query would be a pain, heh.

Rebecca Chernoff

...what are you querying?

Tim Stone

4:55 PM

After my fierce battle with the rate limiter I found out that I have beef with the edit limiter too |:

jadarnel27

@TimStone I was thinking you could just check the 6 or 7 specific cases manually by removing your group by and seeing the details of that query's results.

Of course, without knowing the specifics of your query, I could be making no sense at all.

Tim Stone

The edit limiter makes great sense to reduce vandalism, but I was curious if it was ever even close to an issue on per-site metas.

And unfortunately the edit limiter isn't something that I can reps-away

Rebecca Chernoff

query link?

Tim Stone

@RebeccaChernoff data.stackexchange.com/programmersmeta/query/76297

Related, isn't it kind of annoying internally not to be able to share links to these kinds of queries, or has that not been an issue?

Err...coherency...share links to a view that would show the correct results without you having to select the right options and re-run.

jadarnel27

Did you have to run that query a bunch of times, or do you have some magical way to run cross-site queries, @TimStone?

Tim Stone

5:04 PM

There may be some magic involved.

jadarnel27

Hmmm. Magic, eh? I'm intrigued.

Tim Stone

Magic which should arguably be validated server-side, but at the time waffles wasn't concerned about that. >_>

Rebecca Chernoff

o:

!

Tim Stone

Hey, you said shenanigans.

Rebecca Chernoff

naughty @TimStone!

hahahaha

jadarnel27

5:08 PM

Oh. This thing? How have I never seen that before?!

Rebecca Chernoff

guess it pays to know the code, eh?

Tim Stone

Indeed it does. ;)

@jadarnel27 Nah, that involves a lot of effort.

Although Mark Hurd made a query-producing-query for doing some form of cross-site querying.

Rebecca Chernoff

@TimStone assuming we're still on the same page, yeah...there's some grumbling every once in a while. it's on the "yeah...could change that, but not a priority" list...somewhere...

Tim Stone

@RebeccaChernoff Ah, gotcha. I will make a mental note...

Hmm, I also noticed there was a JavaScript error when I ran that query. |:

jadarnel27

@TimStone I'm not a fan of effort. That seems suspiciously like work.

Rebecca Chernoff

5:14 PM

@TimStone cool. you could also mentally note that the addition of 2 items there is also on the "could be handy" list...but I'll let you ponder what that means lol.

Tim Stone

scratches head Yeah, I may need some time to decipher that one. :P

Rebecca Chernoff

@TimStone that non validated thingadongdong? adding a thingadongdong to it that actually excluded a thingadongdong so that maybe using the thingadongdong wouldn't use the really big thingadongdong that would just cause queries to time out. and then if you add that thingadongdong, why not add another thingadongdong to make it a pair to go with the other pair in the thingadongdong.

>_<

Tim Stone

Ah.

Rebecca Chernoff

rofl, that actually helped?

Tim Stone

Yeah, I follow you now.

...I think.

But I thought that it would succeed anyway in that case?

(just would take extra time unnecessarily)

Rebecca Chernoff

5:25 PM

err, uhh, huh? lol

I might be all thingadongdonged out.

it'd do the really big thingadongdong first just because of the order, so if that takes forever*...

* for some value of forever that is not actually forever

Tim Stone

Ah, so the issue is just that it takes extra time, not that it actually fails (except for the really big thingadongdong)

jadarnel27

o_O What is going on here?

Rebecca Chernoff

@TimStone well, it hits the timeout

Tim Stone

Because if a thingadongdong fails while running the thingadongdong against all thingadongdongs it's supposed to move on to the next thingadongdong uninterrupted. But obviously you waste time waiting for the one thingadongdong to fail in that case which would be better to avoid if you knew it would indeed fail.

Rebecca Chernoff

hmm

supposed to move on?

Tim Stone

5:28 PM

That's what Sam's comment says.

Rebecca Chernoff

interesting.

jadarnel27

Maybe Sam's comment is thingadongwrong.

3

Rebecca Chernoff

hahahaha

Tim Stone

Ohhhhhhhhhhh.

Ah, yes.

If the really big thingadongdong is first then it will fail the entire string of thingadongdongs.

The exception is only swallowed for everything after that.

Rebecca Chernoff

ah

the really big thingadongdong is just a whole level of thingadongdongs beyond everything else, that sometimes not including that thingadongdong is ok because it just doesn't hold with the other thingadongdongs.

Tim Stone

5:31 PM

Yeah, makes perfect sense.

I'll make a note about what you're describing and also to look at whether the way that works internally makes the most sense.

Rebecca Chernoff

cool.

so glad we had this thingadongdong about the thingadongdongs.

Tim Stone

I'm glad we could get something thingadongdone as well.

Rebecca Chernoff

I still declare @jadarnel27 the winner of the conversation though. (: That was the wrong moment for me to be taking a drink of water. >_<

Tim Stone

claps and awards star

I think that earns him some bonus points.

jadarnel27

takes a bow =P

@RebeccaChernoff Hopefully there was no damage =)

Rebecca Chernoff

5:43 PM

the world lives on.

Tim Stone

It would be an awfully funny coincidence if that water accidentally and inexplicably caused a computer error that resulted in the edit limit disappearing from per-site metas, wouldn't it?

Rebecca Chernoff

...

Tim Stone

Oh wow, how did it end up being 1:45 already? I should find some lunch...

jadarnel27

@TimStone I don't like your odds on that one.

Tim Stone

@jadarnel27 This is why I don't gamble.

Hmm.

Sometimes when I look at the Hot Questions list I see some interesting things.

Other times it just makes me sad-face. :/

jadarnel27

6:41 PM

@TimStone Which question is currently making you sad-face?

jadarnel27

7:03 PM

gasp Data Explorer is down!

It should totally have it's own custom offline page. And not the beta site one.

Rebecca Chernoff

7:18 PM

@jadarnel27 tis back, just a bit of maintenance.

jadarnel27

Ah, thank you. I can stop panicking now.

Haha, I don't remember what I was going there to check. I'm crazy as hell.

Mysterious maintenance that was not of the feature-implementing or data-updating variety. Curious.

Tim Stone

Seekret maintenance.

jadarnel27

7:34 PM

That's the stuff, yeah.

sad-face =(

Kyle Trauberman

hey, are mods able to see who is flagging stuff as spam/offensive unnecessarily?

we have someone in C# chat that is flag happy - annoying every 10k+ user.

jadarnel27

@KyleTrauberman According to this answer, people's flags will get muted if they repeatedly flag incorrectly.

Kyle Trauberman

interesting, didn't know that. Thanks for the link.

jadarnel27

@KyleTrauberman Actually, I may have misread that. I think he was just saying that's a good idea.

jadarnel27

8:33 PM

> The best data type you can use is called "Blob" since it will store whatever you want. It can be boolean, it can be an array, or it can your own custom data type.

Tim Stone

...

jadarnel27

Yeah. It's hard to argue with that logic.

Feature-request, eh? EH?

Tim Stone

8:51 PM

I'm surprised that no one's reported the bug in your screenshot.

jadarnel27

There's a bug in my screenshot? Gross.

Tim Stone

Though I suppose that wouldn't have gotten broken had I not made such a mess of things at the time... sighs

jadarnel27

I don't see anything out of the ordinary. What is it that I'm missing?

Tim Stone

That default revisions text is horribly unstyled.

It's missing padding and a background colour.

jadarnel27

Hmmm. I rarely (if ever) notice stuff like that. It doesn't look that bad to me.

Tim Stone

9:02 PM

I pay extreme attention to detail, heh.

jcolebrand

@TimStone bug? :p

Tim Stone

It was styled at one point. :P

Aww, I broke my exactly 22k reps.

Tim Stone

9:37 PM

Oh sure SQL Server, eat up all of my RAM. Not like I need that or anything.

Apparently 2,147,483,647 MB is the default maximum memory setting...good to know. Oddly enough, after checking, I found out I don't have quite that much RAM in my computer...

Rebecca Chernoff

lol, you don't? lame.

jcolebrand

A friend of mine just recently had her (rather obtuse, granted) husband ask "how do we teach [daughter] not to get raped"

:o

Tim Stone

>_>

Shog9

@jcolebrand I would assume you responded, "Stay away from Daniel Tosh shows"?

jadarnel27

I love Daniel Tosh's comedy.

mootinator