Tavern on the Meta

Shadow Wizard

8:01 AM

@PatrickHofman someone found a bug with accepting answers. nicael took it much further and abused it in a way that caused two users in MSE to lose thousands of reputation points.

Patrick Hofman

Okay. That isn't fun. Nicael loves to break stuff, but sometimes it is too much. Like now. Unfortunately.

Jan Dvorak

Link to the bug?

Shadow Wizard

196

Q: How did this question get two accepted answers?

This question appears to have two accepted answers! How does this happen? Here's a screenshot in case it changes:

Jan Dvorak

Thanks. Was looking for it on MSE

Shadow Wizard

@JanDvorak yeah for some reason it didn't reach MSE though it affects all sites

nicael decided to test on MSE, and "only" with two guinea pigs but still.... suspension was well deserved

Jan Dvorak

8:06 AM

Totally

Who were the victims?

Patrick Hofman

Unihedron it seems meta.stackexchange.com/users/266094/unihedron?tab=reputation

Shadow Wizard

@JanDvorak Inf and yours truly

@PatrickHofman oh, missed that!

so make it 3 victims

Inf was dropped to 1 rep, and I lost ~20k or so

Patrick Hofman

Sorry, but I don't get how it worked. Wasn't there a check on the user accepting or so?

Or unaccepting in this case?

Jan Dvorak

ok, this isn't cool

Shadow Wizard

@PatrickHofman exactly. No rate limiting in the server side.

Patrick Hofman

8:09 AM

That is bad!

gtg for a few minutes... see you in 15

Shadow Wizard

yup

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in body, blacklisted website: How to make skin only few days? by askin juriya on drupal.stackexchange.com

Unihedron

Area51 is still down for me :,(

rene

@Unihedron no repro

Unihedron

why only me?

rene

8:13 AM

Tracing route to area51.stackexchange.com [104.16.12.13]
 4    17 ms    17 ms    17 ms  0.ge-0-2-0.xr1.sara.xs4all.net [194.109.5.2]
 5    17 ms    17 ms    17 ms  80.249.211.140
 6    18 ms    18 ms    17 ms  104.16.12.13

This is not much of use because it terminates at CF for me in Amsterdam

Shadow Wizard

@Unihedron try incognito

Unihedron

@rene what's the command for trace?

Jan Dvorak

@Unihedron tracert

rene

on win tracert

Shadow Wizard

hmm....

downforeveryoneorjustme.com/area51.stackexchange.com

Unihedron

8:15 AM

Shadow Wizard

> It's not just you! area51.stackexchange.com looks down from here.

rene

get a decent OS

James

Looks up to me

Unihedron

@rene name one

rene

Windows XP seems to be cheap today

Unihedron

8:17 AM

I want an OS that works, not one that's "decent" or "cheap"

Dark Ashelin

@Unihedron You get to keep all that rep from the accept bug?

Shadow Wizard

@Unihedron BESYS

Unihedron

@DarkAshelin "keep"? you kidding?

rene

@Unihedron what are you using?

Unihedron

@ShadowWizard I'm not living in 1957

@rene Ubuntu 14.04

Shadow Wizard

8:18 AM

haha

Dark Ashelin

@Unihedron I dunno?

rene

@Unihedron try this

Unihedron

@DarkAshelin I actually lost rep until it got reverted

Shadow Wizard

@DarkAshelin it's just a display bug, the rep isn't changed at all.

Dark Ashelin

oh

Unihedron

8:20 AM

unihedron@awesomecomputer:~$ traceroute6 area51.stackexchange.com
traceroute: unknown host area51.stackexchange.com
unihedron@awesomecomputer:~$ traceroute6 area51.stackexchange.com
traceroute: unknown host area51.stackexchange.com

@ShadowWizard It did change, I lost 15 rep in the end

It only looked like -5 because this got upvoted, which was irrelevant

Dark Ashelin

this is confusing, I'll just crawl back into my hole for now

Unihedron

unihedron@awesomecomputer:~$ tracepath area51.stackexchange.com
gethostbyname2: Unknown host

rene

@Unihedron looks like the dns server you are using is borked

James

Switch to 4.4.4.4

or 8.8.8.8

Unihedron

8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4?

James

8:22 AM

seems to be the only thing that google is good for these days

I kid obviously

!xkcdbot find dns

!xkcd find dns

Unihedron

Can someone hack into my router and change that? It doesn't come with a setting for DNS, only WAN and PPTP. I might need to flash it.

Jan Dvorak

Perhaps config it in your OS?

James

!/alive

WHY U NO XKCD???

rene

@Unihedron nmcli dev list iface eth0 | grep IP4

Jan Dvorak

@James You don't even know her name!

rene

8:25 AM

based on this

James

@JanDvorak but but but i did !xkcd find dns and nothing happened

Unihedron

@rene nothing happened

rene

get a decent OS

Unihedron

...

name one?

rene

VMS

James

8:27 AM

I feel a strange sense of Deja Vu

Have you tried flushing your DNS cache?

resetting your router?

Unihedron

ugh could be router acting up indeed

it's been doing that pretty frequently; might have to do with how old it is

brb

Shadow Wizard

7 hours ago, by Shog9

2. The rules for bots are the same as for people: if they make a nuisance of themselves, they lose privileges. And the rules for socks then apply to their owners...

rene

Can we know the REAL area51.stackexchange.com IP address? Not the CF edge one?

James

ohhh does Nicael own xkcdBot?

Jan Dvorak

\o/

Shadow Wizard

8:30 AM

104.16.12.13 and 104.16.13.13

@Unihedron really?? that's weird, thought recalc "fix" it all

Infinite Recursion

@JanDvorak The victims included @Roombatron5000, @Unihedron, ShadowWizard and me. We lost thousands of points. I was reduced to 1 rep. I got most of my rep back now.

Thanks

Shadow Wizard

@James no, but following a chain of events, the bot ended up posting messages by nicael, which people here found annoying

SPArchaeologist

@James so did I Saturday. Twily, my friend... You really believed Celestia didn't that on purpose - again?

James

Damn it Celestia, get outta my head

@ShadowWizard I see, but it was posting earlier?

or has the find been disabled

Unihedron

@InfiniteRecursion I was reduced to 1 rep too

Shadow Wizard

8:34 AM

site24x7.com/public/t/results-1431937986696.html

Unihedron

Yay I can connect to area51 again!

Shadow Wizard

@James yes, I think it was fine before

Unihedron

Thanks, Google DNS!

Infinite Recursion

@Unihedron Yes, sorry I missed that.

SPArchaeologist

@James did you had time to watch the episode ? Otherwise, probably is better if I don't say anything else about that :P

Unihedron

8:35 AM

and all the people who helped :p or didn't, who contrasted the people who helped to be helpful to be even more helpful

@InfiniteRecursion just for the record :p no worries

James

@SPArchaeologist I haven't watch MLP for ages! I'm going to let the new season air in it's entirety before I binge it

rene

@ShadowWizard but I mean the upstream IP address, those are the CF edges

SPArchaeologist

@James wouldn't resist so long.

Shadow Wizard

@rene oh, dunno then. guess only SE team can tell.

@BretCopeland looks like area51 is not stable, is this a leftover from changing IP addresses the other day?

Infinite Recursion

@nicael was very sporting as always (even after being suspended), he even tried to help me by suggesting ways via which I could trigger a recalc and get the lost rep back. He didn't rant or write a blog like other suspended users. But this suspension workaround bot and reports thing isn't so graceful IMHO. Thanks nicael for honoring my request and stopping.

SmokeDetector

8:42 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in body: Must Be Utilized In Any Skin Restoration? by jiefaqebop mead on askubuntu.com

James

@SmokeDetector tpu

SmokeDetector

@James Blacklisted user and registered question as true positive: added title to the Bayesian doctype 'bad'.

[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklisted website: y it good idea to create way in a way to di by dilbr jnuz on drupal.stackexchange.com

James

@SmokeDetector tpu

SmokeDetector

@James Blacklisted user and registered question as true positive: added title to the Bayesian doctype 'bad'.

SPArchaeologist

@InfiniteRecursion When you have time (and want to) you really should tell me what this "I got 1 rep" thing is all about... Tests gone wrong? Errors in suspending procedures?

James

8:43 AM

oh look, random strings as usernames

Dark Ashelin

@James that's what I usually do as well. hate having to wait

Unihedron

2 days ago, by Unihedron

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title: Slimming Pills Can Give An Edge To Weight Loss by Meie Alida on meta.stackexchange.com

Dark Ashelin

the current airing season is S5?

James

@SmokeDetector tpu

SmokeDetector

8:44 AM

@James Blacklisted user and registered question as true positive: added title to the Bayesian doctype 'bad'.

Unihedron

see how it says Reputation (1)

Infinite Recursion

@SPArchaeologist He wrote JS commands to trigger accept and unaccept of answers multiple times. Every accept gave us +15 and every unaccept gave us -15. The number of unaccepts were more than the number of accepts, hence draining uni and my rep to 1.

Finally the voting has been completely reversed. It took 2 days and the rep came back in chunks. See my reputation meta.stackexchange.com/users/245167/…

Unihedron

in Maid Café (メイド喫茶) on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, 2 days ago, by Unihedron

but if you accept answer A, and then accept answer B, you'd unaccept A without actually doing it, and that's where the bug is

^ the bug in a nutshell

add race conditions and an insane amount of requests like nicael used and you have a rep nuking engine

SPArchaeologist

.........

Unihedron

in Maid Café (メイド喫茶) on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, 2 days ago, by Unihedron

for some weird reason when that happens, the asker loses -2 at a time for unaccepting, and the answerer loses -15 at a time

rene

8:49 AM

@InfiniteRecursion am I the only one thinking about a dev running sql-commands to get that fixed, while cursing nicael %$#@(

SPArchaeologist

A VERY good opportunity to make the Hacker badge finally true, throw away to have "fun"

Dark Ashelin

race condition = sending multiple requests in a very short amount of time so it ends up doing 2 actions at once which are normally not compatible?

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Url in title: What is the difference between google.com and encrypted.google.com? by BlueBerry - vignesh4303 on security.stackexchange.com

Unihedron

@DarkAshelin race condition: something asynchronous wasn't implemented perfectly, so it was penetrated

Infinite Recursion

@rene The dev ran the SQL command atleast thrice for my account. I got the rep back in 3 chunks over a span of 3 days.

Dark Ashelin

8:50 AM

@Unihedron in human speak pls

Unihedron

@DarkAshelin eh

Infinite Recursion

We knew he would stop after some time because it was nicael and we trust him. If someone else uses this exploit, it can lead to bigger problems. This is perhaps the best exploit @nicael exposed in the recent past.

Unihedron

There are two kinds of thoughts towards multithreading: It's trivial, and it's hard

and they both are wrong

James

@DarkAshelin Do something (we'll call it A), so another thing straight away (call it B), B interfere's with the action of A in mysterious ways

bummi

blacklist candidate educba.com

Jan Dvorak

8:51 AM

Multithreading is easy in Haskell

Unihedron

@JanDvorak that's because haskell does the multithreading, not the programmer who uses haskell

rene

Multi-threading? Don't!

Unihedron

@InfiniteRecursion Allow me to define ethical hacking: Performing penetration test when authorized. Nicael's use of spam requests weren't authorized or well-reasoned, so SE suspended him for that reason.

Dark Ashelin

@James ah yes, mystery and black magic

that usually explains a lot of code

Jan Dvorak

@Unihedron even MVar is awesome

James

8:52 AM

Therac-25

The Therac-25 was a radiation therapy machine produced by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) after the Therac-6 and Therac-20 units (the earlier units had been produced in partnership with CGR of France). It was involved in at least six accidents between 1985 and 1987, in which patients were given massive overdoses of radiation. Because of concurrent programming errors, it sometimes gave its patients radiation doses that were thousands of times greater than normal, resulting in death or serious injury. These accidents highlighted the dangers of software control of safety-critical systems, and...

Jan Dvorak

Haven't even played with STM yet

Dark Ashelin

> Because of concurrent programming errors, it sometimes gave its patients radiation doses that were thousands of times greater than normal, resulting in death or serious injury.

yikes

Andrew T.

let nicael have access to dev.stackoverflow.com

3

Bart

@rene one thread to rule them all

rene

@InfiniteRecursion and because of that there is technical debt in the chat software (among other unresolved bugs)

Infinite Recursion

8:55 AM

@Unihedron I know, it wasn't ethical at all. I don't support it. It was so annoying.

But we did keep calm because it was nicael, didn't we?

Unihedron

yes

it's what nicael does

Infinite Recursion

:)

rene

It is 3 days past and we are still talking about it... keep calm

Unihedron

2 days ago, by Unihedron

hyl hld u d dis

Infinite Recursion

@rene The discussion was retriggered because users are now helping nicael avert suspension and justifying their actions. Victims speak up in such cases.

I hope SE reduces the rep of the helpers to 1, or suspends them for a week for helping users avert suspension.

rene

9:01 AM

We should really leave that to mods and CM's

2

Infinite Recursion

Yes, I agree.

bummi

blacklist candidate wecareskincare.com

Unihedron

@InfiniteRecursion I honestly think that goes too far, mostly because the helpers acknowledge the situation and stopped. After all, the penalty box is used over harsh punishments like account deletion so users gets a chance to recognize what they did wrong and stop doing it during their account vacation, same with what reducing their rep would otherwise do - toss the red light signal, which isn't even effective now that the helpers stopped.

In most cases a formal warning is enough over software restrictions.

Then again, nicael is one who would only be stopped by software restrictions, so I'm not justifying their particular behaviour against the suspension.

Bart

It seems I've missed a lot of drama. Can't say I feel bad about that.

Unihedron

ssshhh bart is here

rene

9:07 AM

Nicael is a grey hat hacker: A white hat hacker that occasionally put on his black hat

Unihedron

White/gray/black hat terminology is so 1900 :P

Bart

@Unihedron I'm always here. You won't always see me though.

rene

@Unihedron I'm from that era...

Unihedron

...

Dark Ashelin

@rene I'm sure he's watching this chat anonymously and cackling over all his recent fame

Unihedron

9:08 AM

generation gap

@DarkAshelin 15 minutes of fame...

Dark Ashelin

more like 2-3 days of fame eh?

Unihedron

No, 15 minutes of those 2-3 days are fame, the rest are pure infamy.

Bart

@rene your teenage years.

Infinite Recursion

@Unihedron That's your opinion, this is mine. I believe nicael has stopped after my request to do so, as for the helpers, they are still busy justifying their actions. I guess I will not discuss this any furthur for now. Really not worth the discussion. :)

Unihedron

@InfiniteRecursion we can agree to disagree then :P but I get what you mean

rene

9:10 AM

@ShadowWizard ice cream for @Unihedron

Infinite Recursion

@Unihedron I get what you mean. You are a good crab-hatted guy uni.

Unihedron

:D

Infinite Recursion

:D

rene

:D

Andrew T.

:D

Unihedron

9:12 AM

BFF! \o/

Jan Dvorak

D:

Infinite Recursion

BFF! \o/

Andrew T.

D:

bjb568

:D

Jan Dvorak

BFF! \o/

Unihedron

9:14 AM

Aug 28 '14 at 16:28, by Infinite Recursion

It's friendship day in the tavern today :)

rene

Oh?

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in title, url in title: http://www.kaltura.org/ripped-muscle-x by Wasel Khan on drupal.stackexchange.com

Unihedron

feature-request proposal tag Aug 28 and May 18 as events for the Tavern

rene

@SmokeDetector tpu gone

SmokeDetector

@rene Blacklisted user and registered question as true positive: added title to the Bayesian doctype 'bad'.

Bart

9:15 AM

All this cheer and friendliness makes me sick.

Unihedron

Bart is getting weaker as less stars falls on their messages

Bart

Meh, pretty much retired already. The interest I get over my stars is enough to keep me going.

SPArchaeologist

@Bart Repeat after me: Friendship is Magic

Bart

Unihedron

@SPArchaeologist Magic is, by definition, what you don't understand. Magic is bad for the soul and is bad in general.

Bart

9:17 AM

inb4 Jan says "It's"

3

SPArchaeologist

@Bart Everything should also encompass your stars too

Unihedron

Consider Spring (the Java framework), for example. It works by magic. It sucks.

Jan Dvorak

@Bart you already have

Dark Ashelin

@SPArchaeologist would your cutie-mark be 3 chatstars on your butt?

Bart

@SPArchaeologist absolutely. But they keep me alive. Which I hate as well.

Infinite Recursion

9:18 AM

!bjb tell @Bart its simple. I hate everyone, and everything.

bjb568

tell bart itz simple. me hate everyone, n everything. [translated]

Bart

:D

bjb568

BFF! \o/

Unihedron

bjb is bf with bart :P

2

Bart

At least the cat has glasses.

Unihedron

9:19 AM

and soon a DevDoodle Legal Team thinking hat

6 hours ago, by Alexis King

Andrew T.

!bjb no love, hate all

Shadow Wizard

@ᔕᖺᘎᕊ that is @Inf responsibility ;)

bjb568

no love, hate all [translated]

Andrew T.

ugh.. I thought xkcdBot reacted to !bjb again

Unihedron

!jan

when is xkcdbot out of timeout?

Jan Dvorak

9:21 AM

He better stay there

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Email in body: create new sharepoint user with rest api by jothi on sharepoint.stackexchange.com

Infinite Recursion

cough /me stopped the discussion about the responsibility cough

Dark Ashelin

how can you prevent race condition bugs in your application?

Unihedron

@JanDvorak but I want to see my drawing of you with a fish in your head

@DarkAshelin you can't

multithreading is not easy

Dark Ashelin

@Unihedron gasp

Jan Dvorak

9:22 AM

@DarkAshelin write single-threaded code

SPArchaeologist

“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

Unihedron

when encountering a multithreading problem, the only way out is to not write parallel code

Andrew T.

e.g. semaphore, transaction

Jan Dvorak

Better: write single-threaded code in Haskell, then sprinkle par where appropriate. Worst case you'll only reduce the performance as the runtime tries to realise it shouldn't paralelise despite your suggestions.

Unihedron

haskell isn't always the right tool for business code

Dark Ashelin

9:24 AM

Haskell all the things!

Unihedron

sometimes you just gotta use java or C#, or if you're lucky, backend JS

Jan Dvorak

But the synchronisation tools there are powerful

Andrew T.

BJB "vanilla JS!"

Jan Dvorak

Java is... verbose.

Unihedron

@JanDvorak just the syntax, not its implementation

SmokeDetector

9:26 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklisted website: Touch that walked around it by john on drupal.stackexchange.com

Jan Dvorak

How about Ruby?

Unihedron

ruby is really only used for how shiny it is

if you're not creating a dependency, you must have a really ruby-fond client to use that for the code they buy

Jan Dvorak

I thought of learning python, but I'm afraid it will bite me in the end

SPArchaeologist

Here I am, throwing a party
I love to see you smile and it keeps me alive

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklisted website: Contacts with the aliens is concerned by john on drupal.stackexchange.com

[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklisted website: Improves the formation of testosterone level by Glenn Macrath on drupal.stackexchange.com

Andrew T.

9:38 AM

@SmokeDetector yes, it also concerned me.

bummi

the SEO tag would need some cleanup stackoverflow.com/q/30294607/1699210 at least for the most current posts stackoverflow.com/q/30287576/1699210

rene

@bummi there is a close vote event tonight, if you want I can put seo on the starboard so we can close the ones with close votes?

bummi

@rene sounds great, thank you

rene

That does require that you spend your close votes now on those

bummi

np

rene

9:52 AM

in SO Close Vote Reviewers on Stack Overflow Chat, 1 min ago, by rene

Please take on seo on request of @bummi

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] All-caps title: T-SQL - READING XML by jimmy on dba.stackexchange.com

[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklisted website: Cannot find wireless driver for HP laptop by Ginner on superuser.com

rene

@SmokeDetector ignore :(

SmokeDetector

@rene Post ignored; alerts about it will no longer be posted.

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in body, blacklisted website: This weight decreasing formula contains natural? by zellajuriya on drupal.stackexchange.com

rene

@SmokeDetector tpu

SmokeDetector

@rene Blacklisted user.

rene

10:03 AM

@SmokeDetector tpu

SmokeDetector

@rene Blacklisted user and registered question as true positive: added title to the Bayesian doctype 'bad'.

Infinite Recursion

SPAM stackoverflow.com/a/30299424/2982225

SPAM stackoverflow.com/a/30299733/2982225

SPAM stackoverflow.com/a/30299616/2982225

bummi

and here superuser.com/a/916134/172747 , question needs to be closed too

Infinite Recursion

TROLL stackoverflow.com/a/30299943/2982225

rene

10:19 AM

@InfiniteRecursion processing error: TROLL flag not found

Infinite Recursion

@rene 12321312312313213213213213213213213213213123

rene

stop trolling me ;)

Infinite Recursion

:D

bjb568

BFF! \o/

Unihedron

... did ":D" became a trigger for the botling?

Infinite Recursion

10:22 AM

:D

bjb568

BFF! \o/

Infinite Recursion

(facepalm)

AstroCB

Ugh

So much kicking

Infinite Recursion

learn programming or stop programming @bjb...decide!

rene

@Unihedron based on empirical evidence I would say so, yes

AstroCB

10:23 AM

I'd like to think it's bjb's fault.

Bart

@InfiniteRecursion I would be out of a job if I followed that advice.

Unihedron

:D

bjb568

BFF! \o/

AstroCB

^ Speaking of bot spam...

Unihedron

inb4 all bjb's best friends falls out of touch with bjb

AstroCB

10:24 AM

:D

I'm not sure I'd call that a "proper invocation sequence"

Infinite Recursion

you have been kicked for bot spam @bjb

reason is :D

2

AstroCB

I wonder if the "Morning!" command is still there.

Unihedron

@AstroCB maybe ":" was the trigger and "D" was the command

Infinite Recursion

> "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones" ~ Geoffrey Chaucer

AstroCB

@Unihedron EmoticonBot

Unihedron

10:31 AM

at least it doesn't run on emoji

AstroCB

@Inf chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/89?m=3456312#3456312

Infinite Recursion

SPAM stackoverflow.com/a/30299968/2982225

SPAM stackoverflow.com/a/30300111/2982225

AstroCB

And I don't plan on turning it back on.

Infinite Recursion

@Bart but you sell glasses, how does this advice affect you? :P

Bret Copeland

@ShadowWizard there shouldn't be any residual issues from yesterday. If you're seeing problems, probably best to report them on meta.

SmokeDetector

10:50 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklisted website: You only now we fly by dold kamoka on meta.stackexchange.com

AstroCB

@AndrewT. I thought that would be a problem, but I thought I accounted for it.

I even tested it before I left, or so I thought.

Unihedron

Code Understanding was closed

they really should give a notification for proposal state changes; I didn't even know until now

AstroCB

!bjb

@xkcdBot delete

Also, you all realize that there is a delete command, right?

!bjb something else

Unihedron

@AstroCB TIL

AstroCB

@InfiniteRecursion Fixed.

remove also works.

@Inf Let me know if anything else goes wrong.

Transcript for