Tavern on the Meta

8:03 AM

So apparently you can get a lot of rep by commenting "Is there anything more you'd like me to add to my answer?" for questions which only you've answered but which hasn't been accepted for a year. It's surprising how many people forgot that their question was answered until that.

Bart

Years ago there was a user who said something along the lines of "I know the answer to your question, accept this answer and I will tell you". It was surprisingly effective as well. Not long lived, but still ...

forest

loool

Aibobot

Commenting is actually a very legit approach

forest

I imagine that'd only work on sites like SO where people desperately need the answer for their homework the next day, rather than sites where people expect professionalism.

Aibobot

@forest it works until people catch on..

you can totally unselect an answer

forest

8:12 AM

I had one answer from Aug'18. Within 5 minutes of writing a comment, it was accepted.

Aibobot

asking if they need more details though, is entirely legit, even if a bit odd when its a few years later

forest

Well if they do need more details I'm happy to revisit the question.

Otherwise I'm happy if they can bring my accept rate up. :P

On an unrelated note, I find it particularly amusing when spammers get their HTML wrong and end up doing nothing more than thanking us for our "blog post" with no links showing.

-3

A: Why did the Papal conclave use a Faraday cage in 2013 when selecting the new pope?

Great story. I have learned new knowledge through your article. Thank you very much for sharing cell phone jammer

<?a> lol

I wonder, is that a mistake or are they relying on some site behavior that SE lacks?

Aibobot

eh. Spammers are simple creatures. They see a text box, They spam

forest

Yeah but... it's not even correct HTML!

Aibobot

I wouldn't consider spammers to be folks who make particularly good life choices

forest

8:19 AM

I dunno, they range in quality from low to quite high.

They're like bloggers. Either they nobodies or they're really, really good at what they do.

ShaWiz

@Aibobot sure, most of them are bots

Bart

<b href=@something>whatcha gonna do? Buy Pekka's awesome handbags<?a>

Aibobot

@Bart Pekka sells the greatest genunie imitation handbags at the best prices! (you know where to leave the payoff)

forest

A spammer^W"SEO professional" I once knew made over 100k USD a year.

But most of them work for pennies at a time and do everything manually.

Aibobot

@forest if you think about it, its a perfect industry for extreme automation or sweatshops

forest

8:21 AM

Indeed. Same with captcha bypass companies.

Aibobot

On the other hand...

Bart

@Aibobot you've seen the click farm sweatshops, right? With hundreds of mobile phones and people clicking on them

forest

Although those often use a hybrid approach. They send the captcha first to a machine which tries to solve it, but if the machine isn't confident about its answer, it sends it to a person.

Aibobot

some companies use the same models and practices for... content moderation and community management...

forest

That's why captcha solving services are usually so extremely fast.

Aibobot

8:22 AM

@Bart I was thinking more about those IT scam places I read about

or that facebook content moderation 'farm' that cognizent is getting so much guff over

forest

To be fair, they're usually not "sweatshops". They just pay very little.

But they're nearly always fully voluntary and safe to work in.

Aibobot

eh, voluntary dosen't mean right

and there's different levels of safety

forest

Well the alternative is begging on the street in many cases.

I mean yeah, it'd be better if they had good pay.

But then DeathByCaptcha would be really expensive. :(

Most of the time, the computers manage to solve them though.

So only the really confusing ones (for computers) get passed along to humans.

Aibobot

I mean, in that US content moderation farm - one would hardly consider the conditions healthy.

forest

What are the conditions there?

I mean they aren't working with heavy machinery or dangerous chemicals, are they?

Aibobot

8:27 AM

theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/…

naw, just psycological trauma

forest

oh

Aibobot

Depression will kill you just as dead as fire sometimes

forest

The site won't load for me, but I imagine it's just really tough bosses?

Aibobot

....

forest

s/tough/tough and abusive/

Aibobot

8:29 AM

there's a lot there.

forest

Content moderation is a shitty job anyway. 99% of the time, they do a bad job at it.

Hell, most of the time it's merely algorithms that decided whether you violate some ToS.

Aibobot

Critically, its hard

forest

Hard as in laborious or complicated?

Aibobot

It requires nuance, and sometimes, you just gotta be able to step away

forest

Given how poorly most major sites handle that kind of thing, I always imagined the people in charge of content moderation went through it faster than someone on SO draining their flag queue.

Aibobot

8:31 AM

so for those folks, basically they get put in frong of a firehose of content, and have to choose correctly

they don't have enough breaks.

@forest precisely, and that takes a toll on people

forest

Ah

YouTube just uses algorithms to do that, but it's really, really bad at it.

And it makes mistakes that can be literally life-threatening.

Aibobot

The ability to take a step away and take a break is critical

forest

In captcha farms, you can usually take a break. You just won't get paid.

Aibobot

And having a compassionate support network

forest

I'd have thought they would have done that kind of thing from home though.

A lot of those jobs aren't done in a literal shop.

Aibobot

8:34 AM

> Miguel is also allotted nine minutes per day of “wellness time,” which he is supposed to use if he feels traumatized and needs to step away from his desk. Several moderators told me that they routinely used their wellness time to go to the restroom when lines were shorter.

forest

ouch

Aibobot

and that's cause...

forest

What kind of horrible place would make you "feel traumatized" regularly?

Aibobot

> Miguel is allowed two 15-minute breaks, and one 30-minute lunch. During breaks, he often finds long lines for the restrooms. Hundreds of employees share just one urinal and two stalls in the men’s room, and three stalls in the women’s.

forest

damn

Aibobot

8:35 AM

That is an excellent question

forest

I mean that really sucks, but it doesn't seem like it should traumatize someone.

I have a feeling the managers might just be really abusive.

Aibobot

Places where you see the worst of people all the time

ah snap

can you access wired?

forest

Dunno. Lemme check.

Looks like it.

Aibobot

uhm

some parts of the article are stuff I wouldn't really want to link of quote here ._.

forest

Fine. I'll search for it.

Aibobot

8:39 AM

facebook content moderation cognizant

is the search I used

on bing for some obscure reason

mostly laziness)

forest

"Facebook's New Content Moderation Tools Put Posts in Context Wired [...]"?

Aibobot

naw

forest

Well I can't find it with a quick search. Oh well.

Is it really so bad that the link itself is inappropriate?

Aibobot

uhm

yes

forest

I mean it's not like you'd be linking kiddie porn or gore.

Yup can't find anything on Wired.

Aibobot

8:42 AM

naw

forest

OK I got the cached page for The Verge article.

Aibobot

good enough

forest

Oh so they're traumatized by seeing gore/murder vids?

I guess that makes sense.

But I fail to see how the link itself is NSFW.

Aibobot

naw

another article

forest

oh

Aibobot

8:43 AM

referring to the even less reputable, off shored places

forest

Why not link it then delete the link.

For some reason all I'm getting is this one article.

Aibobot

Even in 'happier' places and better situations, dealing with people is hard

forest

Is it worse than TheVerge article you linked? :P

Aibobot

@forest oh, its one of the articles in the further reading list

so... eh

yup

I'm confortable with sharing the verge link

forest

"The laborers who keep dick pics and beheadings out of your Facebook feed"?

Aibobot

8:45 AM

its not my fault if you can't open it ;p

yup

forest

The URL just contains the words "content moderation" lol

Aibobot

anyway critically

the 'danger' in those jobs isn't physical

Its psycological

forest

(skimming article now)

I mean I'll be honest... A company is trying to censor material and it finds out that censorship is never easy. I'd be more sympathetic if it wasn't the censors going home feeling shitty.

Aibobot

Well, some of the stuff dosen't belong

forest

Eh, IMO the only thing that doesn't belong is spam.

Anything else... well at least someone wants to see it.

Aibobot

8:48 AM

On SE - where its default open, we deal with the stuff by hitting it hard and fast ourselves

forest

As long as it's tagged appropriately, I couldn't care less.

Aibobot

@forest eh, someone posted a pretty terrible shock picture - one

it ruined my day

forest

Which one?

I hope not the one I posted by mistake. :(

Aibobot

I was upset, I wanted it gone. I even forgot to suspend the guy

naw, I missed that

forest

Was it one of the gross ones or the violent ones?

Aibobot

8:49 AM

Yes

forest

Both? :P

Aibobot

Fundamentally though

computers suck at that

But if you're going to have people looking at things like that for the common (or even corporate) good, its worth considering they are people

forest

Yeah but... really why does it matter? If a picture is posted with misleading tags, that's one thing, but if it's in a private group/message/whatever term they use, what's the harm?

Just stop making people censor them and everything's good.

Aibobot

or if its public

Right, cause that works great.

forest

Yeah if it's public then that makes sense. There should always be tags to blacklist.

Aibobot

8:51 AM

That assumes people are always able to make good life choices

forest

Sure it does. Google search does it just fine.

With a bad choice being what, searching for gore and not wanting to see gore? :P

Aibobot

and no one will automatically just flag everything

cause lots of companies do that

forest

That's why content indexing > censorship.

But then again, I'm a free speech absolutist, so my views are obvious. :P

Aibobot

Fundamentally though

Its about treating people as well... people

forest

Right. So don't force people to watch things they don't want to watch.

Aibobot

8:55 AM

In this case you have a major IT oursourcing firm, working for a major tech firm...

well running a sweatshop

forest

If someone wants to share porn, let them. Don't watch it if you don't want to.

Problem solved. No content moderation sweatshops.

Tinkeringbell

@forest The problem is being watched while you don't want to.

forest

?

This is about content moderation sweatshops. They watch flagged videos.

Aibobot

@forest or sweatshops of any other sort

forest

If they have cameras in the sweatshops, well that's secondary.

Aibobot

8:56 AM

fundamentally though - its how you treat your employees

actually that's the main point

ShaWiz

key word detected

forest

Agreed. Employees should be treated with respect.

Aibobot

that people ought to be treated with basic human dignity

forest

Especially if the job is likely to attract people with few skills.

Tinkeringbell

There's plenty of examples around of people sharing 'vengeance porn' (private home vids made secretly or not but shared after an argument/breakup) or that youtube thing where pedophiles used timestamps on home video's of kids to link each other to those kids in suggestive purposes.

The point isn't 'don't watch if you don't want to', it's that people are watched while they don't want to be watched.

forest

8:57 AM

Because those are the people who are likely to be pressured into a shitty job.

ShaWiz

@forest ohhh... well, if it's their own, then sure, by all means. But if it's someone else who never gave permission to share the vid, it's bad and should be against the law.

forest

<- free speech absolutist.

Aibobot

@forest and employers and recruiters always tell the truth

or anything at all

Tinkeringbell

@forest You say that quite a lot when you don't seem to have a counterargument ;)

forest

If someone wants to share such a video, let them.

@Tinkeringbell A counter-argument would get much deeper into philosophy. :P

I mean, I don't see the problem with leaking a video that's already made. If someone violates your privacy, then sue them. It shouldn't be up to the company to censor content.

You can't retroactively take back consent to being video taped just because you break up.

You should assume that, once someone has a video, they can do whatever they want with it.

So don't let them record it in the first place if you don't want it out there.

Aibobot

8:59 AM

@forest eh, but that means revenge porn is ok

forest

No, it means it shouldn't be censored.

Aibobot

and that people are fundamentally nice and truthful

forest

I think scat (fetishized poop) is gross and not "ok" , but it shouldn't be censored.

Aibobot

and anything should be ok, because free speech.

Meta Andrew T.

Is this... Tavern?

forest

9:00 AM

Any information should be OK to transmit.

That doesn't mean any action is OK.

Aibobot

but the action could exist for the information

forest

I should be able to share a video of the 9/11 attack, but obviously I should not be allowed to fly a plane into a tower.

Meta Andrew T.

Nope, this is not the Tavern. Looks like I got lost...

ShaWiz

@MetaAndrewT. Two forests, one Tavern

(she started it! ;))

Aibobot

actually

I kinda started it

Tinkeringbell

9:02 AM

Yeah... let's drop things here for a while, we're going nowhere.

Aibobot

but on a totally different topic

forest

@Tinkeringbell You seem to say that a lot if you don't have any counter-argument. ;)

(kidding)

Tinkeringbell

@Aibobot I need to restart my pc. Be right back!

ShaWiz

...6-8 weeks later

Tinkeringbell

No. I have a phone ;)

Aibobot

9:04 AM

lol

I am tempted to pull out my tablet and keyboard

ShaWiz

showoff!

Aibobot

@ShaWiz hah

its a cheap windows tablet that needs a lot of babying

its a nice BT keyboard though, with odd buttons.

honestly it feels super wierd not to use my main account, and there's a bunch of resoucrs I can't access through here

forest

>not using a high-availability cluster of failover servers for your internet

If you don't have five nines reliability for chatting on Stack Exchange, you're doing it wrong!

Aibobot

>_>

@forest technically

I'm accidentally spread out over 4 different ISPs

forest

But are they failover?

Aibobot

9:09 AM

@forest .... I'm embarassed to say, not yet

forest

Get a fast VPS and use a failover tunnel!

Aibobot

but I might want to experiment with that once I get around to getting a 3g or 4g dongle

@forest I have redundant, nearly unlimited internet connections though ;p

forest

>not using five neighbors' internet connections for added redundancy

Aibobot

2 of my mobile ISPs are "unlimited" - in the "we give you a load of data and throttle you after that"

I turned off the unlimited plan on a third cause one of the unliited ones is on a trial and as such free

the 4th is my land line

Fibre of course

I do want to play with failover.though

forest

Failover is wonderful. It's saved me a lot of headaches (for servers at least, but I imagine it would work just as well for residential internet connections).

Aibobot

9:19 AM

@forest DIY/linux router

forest

OpenBSD has good failover support with IPSec.

Aibobot

so tons if flexibility if you can be bothered to learn

*of

Tinkeringbell

@forest Sounds like too much hassle for the few hours of outage we might have each year. I'll just go use that time for something not on the internet ;)

forest

It can be useful if you're using a crappy Russian ISP. :P

Aibobot

@Tinkeringbell unless you do these things for fun ;p

Tinkeringbell

9:27 AM

@Aibobot Perhaps. I crochet and read for fun though ;)

Which can both be done without internet, yay!

forest

Well, and crochet and reading doesn't come with the risk that you'll make a typo and end up killing 5,000 people's connections. Up next on "why forest should never sysadmin drunk..."

Tinkeringbell

Thankfully not! That would make them a lot less relaxing ;)

reading does carry the risk you find a typo that annoyed 5000 people though :P

Aibobot

@forest but that's why you have failover!

forest

No good if you type "iptables -F" by mistake on prod!

Aibobot

also why are you running a crappy russian ISP?

forest

9:30 AM

Using a crappy Russian ISP, not running it. And it's because they're cheap.

So cheap they can even be free! They don't always configure PPTP correctly. :P

Aibobot

Why're you using a Russian ISP? 0_0

forest

Internet in Russia can actually be really fast.

Journeyman Geek

I mean if you're in Russia sure.

forest

Even if you aren't in Russia. Only thing to deal with is low reliability and RKN.

But if you use failover, it works very well.

I mean, how much would it cost you to buy a regular 200/200 connection that lets you host almost anything you could ever want (modulo a few topics), even if you saturate the entire uplink?

Journeyman Geek

Uhm

50 dollars a month. And a one off Payment for a static ip

forest

9:38 AM

And in Russia, with a little know-how, you can get it for 0 dollars/month. :P

Which really isn't possible anywhere else. At least, nowhere else that has good speeds.

Also if you speak Russian and know a bit about social engineering and how the ISPs operate there, you can upgrade a cheap 10/10 to an unmetered 200/200 without paying any extra.

Marshmallow

@forest Thank you botanical garden. I was talking about bacteria.

forest

@Marshmallow You were referring to a post about fungi though!

Marshmallow

14 hours ago, by Marshmallow

I dunno. Thank God we don't have ubiquitous skin transplant companies. I would not want to know how many thousand species of bacteria are living peacefully on my skin.

forest

14 hours ago, by Marshmallow

8

Q: Does the average two-year-old pillow contain 17 different species of fungus?

In the New York City subway, I noticed a series of advertisements from a bedding company called Brooklinen. One advertisement had a surprising claim, which I found again on their website: The average 2-year-old pillow contains 17 species of fungus. I was a bit skeptical of this, so I did so...

biology

That's what mislead me. Whoops.

Anyway, g2g

Marshmallow

yesterday, by Shree

I know that :P

@forest ttyl

Meta Andrew T.

9:45 AM

My fungi is living in my bacteria?

That doesn't sound good...

Marshmallow

To kill fungi you need to step on it. SCIENCE

@MetaAndrewT. Poor bacteria.

Aibobot

"...Bacteria and Fungi living together. Mass Listeria!

(I couldn't think of anything suitably funny riffing on human sacrifise...)

@Marshmallow the fungi you see are fruiting bodies...

Marshmallow

10:08 AM

As a matter of fact, the current "rude or abusive" flag was called "inappropriate" for a small while, before being renamed to its current name. — Sonic the Anonymous WizHog 32 mins ago

resettles historian goggles meaningfully

Meta Andrew T.

I'm flagging this comment because this flag is inappropriate.

Magisch

10:43 AM

@Aibobot He's a fungi and doesn't take up mushroom

real talk though of course there is bacteria and fungi in pillows, there's bacteria and fungi on every surface humans touch that does not get regularly disinfected.

Marshmallow

Yeah exactly.

And they don't wake up in the middle of the night and stab you with . . . whatever fungi stab people with.

Magisch

Did you know there are thousands of undiscovered species of bacteria in every one of us?

We're basically germ factories. In fact, we play host to more bacteria and other microorganisms then we have individual cells

Marshmallow

Yeah, I knew that.

Mind still intact.

57 percent of the human body is estimated to be flora.

Which amount to about 1.25 kilograms.

Or 2.75577812 pounds in alien units.

They also probably directly affect our nervous system, so you be a good host.

Aibobot

Well, they don't take up mushroom...

but not all that flora is fungal I suspect

Marshmallow

@Aibobot Punnitis is a contagious

@Aibobot What, no. What do we keep confusing the two? Most of it is bacteria.

I SAID it's bacteria.

Oh, I didn't.

Nevermind.

Magisch

10:56 AM

fun fact: a lot of the bacteria we host is necessary for our survival

in fact, if someone removed all bacteria from you, you'd die quickly

Marshmallow

Aye

Not sure about that second part.

Magisch

How would you properly extract nutrients and digest without stomach and digestive bacteria?

iirc we rely on bacteria doing quite a lot of work on that

Marshmallow

Lots of things are already good enough to be absorbed by the time they get there

Wait. I read your "quickly" as a matter of minutes.

Couple of days, sure.

@Bart Bart, hey, how are you doing

Bart

Hey @Marshmallow

Doing fine. Almost holidays

Journeyman Geek

11:14 AM

I think that's a pretty loud message

Marshmallow

@JourneymanGeek I'm not shouting at Smokey, but metasmoke. That makes it okay.

Back to the main reason I was typing things during lunch.

@Mith I'm kinda proud of you. And admittedly jealous that I didn't write such a post.

Your post does exactly what it promises to do. Be a nice compilation of what happened when and what feelings it caused.

edits in faq-proposed

It could let some people down (not referring to anyone in particular) that it didn't contain a lot of new. And if I wrote, I'd have probably tried to make it more philosophical.

Aibobot

@Marshmallow There's been requests to feature it

Marshmallow

@Aibobot If a post garnered that many upvotes without being featured, why not.

Aibobot

We're a bit mixed on that. Its a great post but that's one of those tags we're uncertain on

Marshmallow

As much I hate to give Mith free rep.

Tinkeringbell

11:19 AM

→ 68 messages moved to Trashcan

Aibobot

eh

Its hardly free

they put a lot of effort into it

Magisch

@Aibobot why not? It's the most respectful and useful framing we'll ever get out of the conversation

Marshmallow

Thanks Tink! Look at how gloriously persistent my messages look now!

Meta Andrew T.

I think I had a dream just now... something about... ugh, can't remember it...

Marshmallow

@Magisch Don't forget comprehensive.

It's not a random upvoted comment in a meta.SO post.

Aibobot

11:21 AM

@Magisch Honestly? Its good enough that it floats up on its own

Marshmallow

@MetaAndrewT. Was it one of those zoning out moments? Happens a lot to anime watchers I bet

Aibobot

and I'd like some good eyes before the masses

Marshmallow

No, sorry. I wear glasses.

Not that thick though.

Meta Andrew T.

@Marshmallow ugh, yeah, something like that........... zone out

Marshmallow

Mostly doctor-style literate glasses.

With these frames though, I look like a historian.

Magisch

12:18 PM

it's g3rv4!

Marshmallow

@Magisch What happened to the earlier versions of g3rv?

. . . oh man.

Magisch

punnitis is in fact contagious

Marshmallow

Hey, I admit that I'm not patient zero, but I'm probably single or double digit.

0

Q: How does Godzilla receive this energy in Godzilla: King of the Monsters?

In Godzilla: King of the Monsters we see that: How does this happen? How does Godzilla receive this energy? Is it possible that any other Titan can transfer energy to others?

monsterverse godzilla-king-of-the-monsters

It's called eating.

It was PG-13, so they abstained.

Marshmallow

12:41 PM

Two years later in KCU (Kaiju Cinematic Universe), Mothra steak is a luxurious delicacy

Meta Andrew T.

12:54 PM

Morning...

Marshmallow

@MetaAndrewT. erm, did you sleep?

Are you a sleepchatter?

Mithrandir24601

@Marshmallow awww, thanks :) remind me what I did again?

Marshmallow

@Mithrandir24601 Ow, you . . . Um . . . I mean . . . Yeah, I definitely meant you. Any reference to other people is unintentional.

Magisch

This is the chatroom of infinite mithrandirs

as evidences by the fact that we're on mithrandir #24601

Marshmallow

1:09 PM

I wonder which ones tried to stop Thanos.

"YOU SHALL NOT SNAP!"

Meta Andrew T.

don't forget the 568th bjb...

Mithrandir24601

@Magisch yeah, have you started asking yourself what we're planning yet? I mean, ~~world domination~~ nothing, obviously, but an infimith sounds fun

Magisch

@Mithrandir24601 infimith or infinimith?

Marshmallow

I think the self-proclaimed original @Mith was too busy writing that meta.SE post while Thanos was snapping.

Infiminimith.

Whoops.

Ugh, why does SE do that sometimes.

It's in the middle of loading the javascript and suddenly the page scrolls down or up.

I almost accidentally posted an answer on parenting that consisted of "**bold text**".

Meta Andrew T.

@Marshmallow I'd say... ads....

Marshmallow

1:16 PM

I don't get any, but could be

Magisch

Maybe it's trying to serve ads but none are up for serving in your region

If they're still using google it might have to do with the sanctions against iran

Meta Andrew T.

7

Q: Reserve Space for Topbar Ads as the page loads

Currently, if you have ads enabled on any Stack site that offers ads, the topbar ads are loaded in after the site itself is loaded. Instead of reserving sufficient space for that when the site is loaded, everything on the site just moves downwards as the ad loads in. It would be significantly le...

feature-request advertising

Marshmallow

Yeah, Iranians are not that interested in lingerie ads

@Magisch That too.

Magisch

@Marshmallow considering how hard some tech companies are overreacting to the sanctions, as when slack permanently banned any account that ever logged in from an iranian IP, for instance.

Journeyman Geek

@Marshmallow use your indoor voice

Marshmallow

1:19 PM

FWIW, for most Iranians, there is the law of conservation of sanctions: Sanctions aren't ever destroyed or reinstated, they only transform or transfer from one form to another.

Both national and international media go the extra mile to show how the deal benefited . . . some imaginary people.

Sure, some corrupt high-up money machines raked some money more easily for a brief period of time. But the prices have retained their artistic trend of going up and never down.

I like their positivity. Exactly what we lack.

@JourneymanGeek I once kept the shouting to myself. It echoes really badly.

Now if you had a conveniently useless thing to smash nearby.

@Magisch sometimes I make one of those Joker laughs at how anticlimatic and ordinary it is.

Meta Andrew T.

Hey, no spoiler...

Marshmallow

@MetaAndrewT. Is that you Steve Rogers. Because it's been out for checks watch 11 years.

My watch is that cool.

@Aibobot hey, I do have some ideas!

Occasionally.