@MetaAndrewT. huh, was sure you have 20k already. :D

@rene thanks!

@Mithical oh wow forgot about that, didn't expect it to stay for such a long time even on Sunday.

→ 23 messages moved to Chimney

@JNat Cross-site... Abuse poster: stackexchange.com/users/18803879/… Not sure if y'all summarily delete in these cases or just network suspend

oof

Ah they've got an acceptable post on Arqade. Might want to handle that one with more care than I previously described, my bad.

Yeah, I remember that one

@Spevacus they have an MSE account, and I'm in the middle of "OH MY GOD I MESSED UP AND I NEED TO MOVE THINGS". I recall they have a few metasmoke entries but I don't know SD well enough so... I'll go poke around the chimney later and raise a CM escalation unless someone flags, with a few links then I'll raise a CM escalation anyway :D

@JourneymanGeek This metasmoke search metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/… should have a lot of them (doesn't require a metasmoke account). Might help ya point the right people in the right direction. Not all of those are the same account, but it kinda gives an overview of the behavior.

Also, likely that Smokey didn't get em all.

@Spevacus just wanted a starting point for the CM team. I think there's enough there for investigation

I've escalated, and we'll see

@JNat stackexchange.com/users/25988961/alex-jones?tab=accounts spammer

@Spevacus nothing in the profile, one legit old question, really can't see anything wrong. Better link to abuse post for JNat to save them the time of going through each account and looking for it.

@JNat hmm tomorrow from which day? ;)

Backlog keeps growing.... hopefully it won't explode...

lol

@ShadowWizardChasingStars you just responded to a 5 year old comment

to a question that I THINK refers to an old design

How can I, as a mortal, tell if 2 profiles in different communities are the same account?

I noticed Cody Gray in law.se and thought is that the same one from stack overflow and clicked the profile and saw that account was only a member of one community (being law) but then the rep shows an association bonus which I thought was weird, so I checked the real Cody Gray's all communities page and law.se isn't mentioned at all, so I am wondering if this could be an imposter or a bug?

@JourneymanGeek yeah sometimes they respond, but I comment mainly for the others, without the reply it won't have context.

@WhatsThePoint no bug, it's something called Hidden Communities.

If Cody hides his Law account, that's exactly what ordinary users will see.

When the same name and profile details are used, it's easy to know it's the same person, but if they use different details, it's pretty much impossible to know it's the same person.

I've never seen "Hidden Communities" before is that something that only moderators can do?

@ShadowWizardChasingStars unless its someone pretending to him

@WhatsThePoint no

@WhatsThePoint no, anyone, for quite a while.

@JourneymanGeek yeah well, what's the point to do that? ;-)

How can you make a community hidden? its not an option when you join one

found it

Like many things in SE, it's not trivial or obvious to find, but it's there.

@WhatsThePoint i.stack.imgur.com/vizzb.png

I somehow forgot this channel existed.

@forestdistrustsStackExchange that's a major sin, you should make the Walk of Shame twice to repent for it.

:D

:D

@forestdistrustsStackExchange Do that again? :P

lmao

I just hid one of my communities and in an incognito window experienced the same thing. Thank you @ShadowWizardChasingStars and @JourneymanGeek

@forestdistrustsStackExchange Gimme a moment to work out if my evil plan is to keep you from remembering this place existed, or lure you in.

I guess being high 50% of the time that I was in here didn't help my memory.

Depends on what you needed help with

@WhatsThePoint yw

In other news

after 17 years our TV needs replacing. Ironically the panel's fine, I just cannot get any input to work

@forestdistrustsStackExchange and low in the other 50% of the time?

@ShadowWizardChasingStars Sometimes the Highs are the lows .

@JourneymanGeek shame. Now you'll have to buy a smart one that will last three years, max. ;)

@ShadowWizardChasingStars basically

We do actually use the TV very little

(unlike my monitors) which should help

@JourneymanGeek rock band?

@ShadowWizardChasingStars If it ain't it should be

though

This means I finally have HDMI :D

@JourneymanGeek well, maybe just not use TV at all, use one of your monitors instead? :P

@ShadowWizardChasingStars its bigger

and sometimes bigger is better

@ShadowWizardChasingStars Pretty much.

@JourneymanGeek so? These days most people use only their phones, which are much smaller.

@ShadowWizardChasingStars ewww

I expect TV usage to drop in at least 80% in the upcoming years. People like me and you will still use it, but vast majority of young people won't touch TV, or PC, only their phone.

@ShadowWizardChasingStars Maybe but sometimes its nice to not squint at a little screen

@JourneymanGeek I agree! But the younger generations are just used to the little screen since they are babies, so for them it's just enough.

"younger generation"

._.

Just cause I remember CRTs and the origins of the save symbol does... wait... I guess I am old :D

I also predict there will be new device, some TV/phone hybrid, which will be bigger than any phone or tablet, but smaller than any TV.

@JourneymanGeek we're the same generation, I think. I'm talking about people born after 2000. ;)

@ShadowWizardChasingStars yes, you're old too :D

but we're also the generation which went from floppies/casettes to optical to 'everything is networked'

@JourneymanGeek I love seeing people misunderstand that symbol.

I started programming on paper, then a teletype. Have also used punched cards, tape cassettes, proper tape drives, bootstrapping with front panel switches etc ...

Back in the days where programmers were Real Men(tm).

smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/…

:D

Also don't forget RADM Grace Hopper :D

I feel so naked without my diamond in this room. ;_;

@JourneymanGeek well yes, but those born into it are more used to it.

@forestdistrustsStackExchange and only men, yeah. :/

Not that it's much better these days...

@ShadowWizardChasingStars That was a reference to The Story of Mel (that's what the story was about).

@forestdistrustsStackExchange no idea what it is.

(No worry! You're in good company. ;))

hmm 15 minutes and no report, let's see...

Smokey bugs are annoying.

Also, only one other spam flag, so this spam might last few days. :(

(nobody seem to notice it.)

Ohoho, you'll like this story then (cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html).

.....

(Is that link not working? Alternative pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html)

Is it a bad thing I knew it was the blackjack story?

@JourneymanGeek No. That means you're enlightened. :^)

It's a very famous story.

@ShadowWizardChasingStars Taken care of

@ShadowWizardChasingStars yes

@forestdistrustsStackExchange yup. Thanks!

@forestdistrustsStackExchange why wouldn't it work?

@JourneymanGeek thanks!

It didn't load for me. I just got it off a Wikipedia citation.

@JNat naa-

@forestdistrustsStackExchange oh, because it's not secure. I'm 1000% sure your browser would block and show red alerts if you try to enter a non secure site.

Universities using ancient web servers, little wonder they're still behind with https and security. :D

@ShadowWizardChasingStars maybe no one even remembers its running

or it got walled up

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESOR!

@JourneymanGeek I love finding web servers like that. Long-forgotten but still connected to the network.

@JourneymanGeek oh they have active site, but with odd bugs, e.g. they use some fancy space character, maybe from the 80's

So modern browsers simply doesn't recognize it.

might be another server.

I can't imagine running a dynamic site in this day and age without https

@JourneymanGeek well, they exist. The one @forest found is static though, not dynamic.

yup

@JNat when "tomorrow" will arrive (if?), another spammer for your gentle care. Thanks! :)

@ShadowWizardChasingStars Smokey does not post here if there are too few reasons, or if all the reasons are experimental (those which begin with "potentially")

if you would like all Smokey reports to be copied here, that's a simple configuration change, but that change requires room owner approval and probably some sort of room consensus

Also meta being meta, spam ought to be taken care of fairly easily. And if it fails... well we're generally happy to deal with it

@tripleee well it looked like such obvious spam, and Smokey post here even "luncheon meat", something I never figured what it is, but sounds experimental.

umm did Smokey just leave the room???

@tripleee can you please ping someone to bring Smokey back? I need coffee. ;)

I think it lost its chat connection, it's running fine in Charcoal

or ...... was

@tripleee well Den bots also died, so SE broke something here in MSE chat, yeah.

(one bot is immortal so working again though.)

@ShadowWizardChasingStars it was an experimental name for something which deemed worth keeping; it has made its way into several FAQs

e.g. socvr.org/faq#luncheonmeat

@tripleee admitting many false positives, but still keeping it anyway. lol

it should be demoted to experimental reasons along with a few others, but the database side doesn't like when a reason is renamed, so I'm afraid we are stuck with it

@tripleee I don't care about the name, just about the fact it's meant for some ancient and long gone spam wave, so these days mostly false positives.

not entirely true metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/reason/143

It's not like the spammer from years ago will make a comeback.

@tripleee mostly red, so think how much time people waste on it having to mark it as fp every time.

the ones with (40) did not get caught by any other reason, so it is still providing some value; but yes, it is much noisier than we'd like

Anyway looks like SE chat, at least here, is blocking bots now. Hopefully not on purpose.

The immortal bot keeps spawning back every few minutes, just to be dead again instantly.

But.... I won't be surprised a bit if SE made a decision to disallow and block any chat bots.

Its not twitter

and quite a few bots have value

and no offense, most bots are a pile of hacks and its entirely possible the bots having a bad day

@JourneymanGeek nah, it's too global. Wild guess, someone used chat bots to DDoS SE, so they decided to just block them all.

Hopefully temporary.

@ShadowWizardChasingStars there's no real difference between a 'real' user and a chatbot

also is every bot you know of doing it?

@JourneymanGeek not yet

looking at api.stackexchange.com/docs/me-suggested-edits I see that it requires an access token which I vaguely don't think I have seen before

but it's not like I'm a heavy user of the API

@tripleee all /me endpoints needs auth, by design

Use api.stackexchange.com/docs/… if you need edits from other users.

oh welcome back!

hmm

@tripleee do you have access to Smokey logs somehow, with error message that can help shed some light over what's going on? I posted bug report, can be useful to add such info there.

hm

Though SE devs should know what they broke.

I'm going to bed now. If multiple bots are down, its worth bringing it up on meta

@JourneymanGeek I did. ;)

then either I or one of the other mods can status review it

@JourneymanGeek that might be useful too, thanks.

@Mithical hmm not sure if/how to integrate it with the bug report.

it might be worth adding that it was said as a comment

or wait for makyen to

In the meanwhile, with bots dying all around, we can enjoy some very odd sight...

Yes that's a model wearing a lion.

No worry it's vegan lion, no lions were hurt while making it.

Restart fest in Den, if anyone's interested.

didn't work... :/

So Smokey is in write-only mode...

@ShadowWizardChasingStars Catija's mentioned that they're rolling back the changes that just went out about an hour ago, so we should see things restored to normal functionality soon. /o/

@Spevacus that's a pleasant surprise.

But they'll make those changes again without telling anyone, so we should enjoy whatever time they give us until then.

Yeah bots are back.

Finally... :D

@ShadowWizardChasingStars when chat is working, we can query for error logs; but when it doesn't, no - only the owner of the bot instance has access to its console (normally Thomas Ward these days, occasionally Makyen)