Tavern on the Meta

Journeyman Geek

1:12 AM

@Rob eh. It's worth remembering until recently the folks who did that were staff.

Realtime-questions feels like an odd tag

So does realtime

They both feel metataggy

EKons

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ @Mithrandir y'all are amateurs in snatching comment flags compared to me...

Rob

1:57 AM

@JourneymanGeek Maybe it's 'overtagging' (metataggy?) but my point is that the synonymization is incorrect and leads to the wrong tag. If everyone is happy the way it is it's less work to not make a request that isn't going to be popular. I'm happy with Tinkerbell's answer that one would have to sort through the history, I won't be doing that on my cellphone. I'm satisfied with the response and have a tag I can use, good enough. Thanks for your input.

forest

2:48 AM

I was just appointed owner of some room.

What does that mean? The FAQ isn't very helpful.

Alex

3:16 AM

85

A: A guide to moderating chat

What tools are available to room owners? Room owners are users that have some elevated permissions in a chatroom. Typically, they will be the first line of defense when it comes to inappropriate content or behavior in a room. Users will look to the room owners to guide the room. The room owners...

forest

Ah thanks.

So I have become a god.

And just randomly too.

Rob

3:49 AM

@forest Here's your room: Forest and Ciro, any others you create will be listed there too.

forest

@Rob Nah not that one, I was just appointed owner of a site room.

in The Side Channel on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, 4 hours ago, by Feeds

forest has been automatically appointed as owner of this room. (What does this mean?)

Rob

Hmmm, don't know why it doesn't show up there; and I didn't spot anything in that guide listed above explaining that.

forest

Maybe because it's on chat.stackexchange.com and not chat.meta.stackexchange.com

Rob

I suspect it means this:

"Automatic appointment of room owners

If a reasonably active room has no owner, or none of the owners have been in the room for a certain time, a new owner may be automatically appointed, to ensure that there's somebody who can administrate.

forest

But there are moderators there already. O_o

I mean I'm not complaining, but still.

Rob

3:56 AM

If the Moderators have been participating it's odd that they weren't chosen first, but like you say: "lucky you".

Catija

Mods aren't owners.

Well... they can be, but they don't need to be.

forest

ah

Rob

As for your 'calculator discussion' I can see how if the light was on (and all was well for the calculator) and then the light was turned off (draining it's power) and just before it was to fail the light was flicked back on - the calculator might go astray. Computers can do that when there's a brief interruption.

forest

Yeah. If you could control the input power with enough precision, you could do some very interesting glitching (up to arbitrary code execution).

But that assumes you can cut power at very precise timing, e.g. in the middle of an individual clock cycle (which aren't very fast in calculators, but still).

Rob

The calculator would boot wrong if it's booting was interrupted.

forest

4:06 AM

I think most low-power photovoltaic calculators don't even boot.

(I mean, the processor naturally needs to synchronize individual subsystems and bring them into a stable and defined state, but that takes on the order of nanoseconds).

Rob

Not "boot" like a computer, but they have a brain that needs to start - to process keys, store whole numbers when an operator is pressed (+,-,÷,*), and generate the segments to represent each number on the display.

forest

Oh you mean at runtime.

I remember a long time ago I had an old calculator, and when the battery ran down, it would occasionally return downright incorrect answers...

Rob

It's a one trick pony. Far simpler than a Cellphone's brain, like the 'LTE brain' (microcode).

forest

Yep, though I wouldn't be surprised if modern calculators just used common mass-produced ICs like an 8051 or something.

Rob

It's a bunch of logic blocks on a tiny chip that does the calculator function. Previously (decades ago) calculators were huge, only did a few things (no √ or π) and cost over $200. Now they are reasonably fully featured and sometimes available at the dollar store (for $2).

Check out Vintage Calculators!

forest

4:19 AM

nice

Rob

ttyl

forest

o/