Tavern on the Meta

Andreas detests censorship

2:09 AM

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack Ladysir

Or you can just combine them, and say "lasyr".

And when you're too tired to use that many letters, you just use "lazy"-

Journeyman Geek

2:34 AM

@Andreasdetestscensorship some days I resemble that remark

Andreas detests censorship

@JourneymanGeek Not all days? mhm, I beat you!

Journeyman Geek

3:18 AM

@Andreasdetestscensorship beating me requires effort

Big Joe

3:31 AM

I want to ask this as a question and couldn't find it on any searches but whats the life of a question? ask, gets traction, then like 3 days later nothing. is this normal?

Journeyman Geek

3:50 AM

It depends

But sounds about right

Buuuutt now isn't normal times

Meta Andrew T.

4:06 AM

@BigJoe depends on the site, number of active users, number of new questions, and how many users are really interested in the question

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

6:48 AM

@Andreasdetestscensorship sounds more like an upgraded version of "ladyboy" which better not be used formally... ;(

Not sure if it's considered offensive to anyone, but pretty sure it's vulgar slang.

throwing slang on @M.A.R

@Andreasdetestscensorship lazyboy is missile name I think... let me see...

Tinkeringbell

Isn't that a couch thing, lazyboy?

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

oh I was close.

Lazy Dog (bomb)

The Lazy Dog (sometimes called a Red Dot Bomb or Yellow Dog Bomb) was a type of small, unguided kinetic projectile used by the U.S. Air Force. It measured about 1.75 inches (44 mm) in length, 0.5 inches (13 mm) in diameter, and weighed about 0.7 ounces (20 g).The weapons were designed to be dropped from an aircraft. They contained no explosive charge but as they fell they would develop significant kinetic energy making them lethal and able to easily penetrate soft cover such as jungle canopy, several inches of sand, or light armor. Lazy Dog munitions were simple and relatively cheap; they could...

:P

Tinkeringbell

La-Z-Boy

La-Z-Boy Inc. (pronounced "lazy boy") is an American furniture manufacturer based in Monroe, Michigan, United States, that makes home furniture, including upholstered recliners, sofas, stationary chairs, lift chairs and sleeper sofas. The company employs more than 11,000 people. La-Z-Boy furniture is sold in retail residential outlets in the United States and Canada and is manufactured and distributed under license in other countries including the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Turkey and South Africa. La-Z-Boy holds US and international patents...

Elements in Space

Don't get those mixed up; your enemy would be able relax, and you'd be very uncomfortable.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@Tinkeringbell lol!

@ElementsinSpace but... but... it's so happy.... :D

@GcL heh didn't hear about this one. Might check one day! ;)

@ElementsinSpace more than 1000 now! 1033, still not matching my unread inbox items. ;) (1173)

@ElementsinSpace it does!

Elements in Space

7:09 AM

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack DON'T remind me of that thing.

Big Joe

@MetaAndrewT. Thanks for that info

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@ElementsinSpace which part? The food or the dancing? ;)

Elements in Space

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack The aggressive dancing, and the accompanying music I'll never get out of my head.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@ElementsinSpace huh? Gif has no music. I think... o.O

Well, there is a long time and very popular request to make gifs animate only on demand, which does make sense. ;(

31

Q: Disable GIF Auto Play in chat

I think that having the user to click the GIF to play it in chat when oneboxed, would make the experience more user-friendly and bandwidth-friendly. Can this be implemented here? I saw it on a few websites (well... 9gag). This would also make all the chat users more tolerant on GIF's and not dis...

Bribe a developer, maybe @balpha and it might be done. :P

Elements in Space

7:25 AM

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack <https://youtu.be/sbJoaVhjpkk> Warning, do not click this link.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

Would have started a bounty on it but on a strike lol

@ElementsinSpace that's exactly the way to make me click anything you want. :D :D

(well, copy and go to link in this case lol)

ohh so that's where it came from. Thanks!

Also... might it be that Harry Styles was inspired by it?

Elements in Space

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack You can't trick me into looking that up; I'm disciplined.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

7:48 AM

:D

Well I mean only the song name... "Watermelon Sugar" vs. "Peanut Butter Jelly". ;)

@starball do you like dancing bananas?

starball

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack I'm neutral.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack to the tune of do you like Pina colada?

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@starball aka on the fence, so careful not to fall! :D

@JourneymanGeek in general, tune can vary. ;)

starball

my head is hot from thinking about the recent posts on MSE from SE.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

8:11 AM

@starball hot? Try some ice then... ;)

I stopped getting excited/annoyed from any blip of SE though.

Be it bugs, or meaningless posts.

If SE has their way to detect AI generated posts, just give it to mods as well. Problem solved. We don't need all those numbers and shiny marketing presentations they show to stock holders to justify their actions, along with "It's the end of SE" alarms to justify instant one sided action.

starball

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack that's a good idea. actually, I've just realized that the actual temperature is a little high where I am right now. that probably hasn't been helping

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@starball little high.... 40 degrees? (Celsius ;))

starball

8:33 AM

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack nah. way lower I think. but pretty low temperatures are too hot for myself.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

8:43 AM

@starball pity! ;)

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

8:53 AM

@Tinkeringbell Their store near us is shutting down

GcL

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack I suspect their heuristics for AI generated posts are data driven and not nearly as good as they report. I would take their numbers as a lower bound given how many syntactically correct wrong answers I've seen on bountied questions.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

9:07 AM

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog why?

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

No idea.

It's retail apocalypse v4

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

Well they appear to have enough other locations...

Eleeza the Other World Wizard

11:18 AM

Hello meta friends!

How’s it going?

Robert Columbia

Metatastic

2

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@EleezatheOtherWorldWizard slowly but surely off the cliff. ;(

Elements in Space

Metaokay

@EleezatheOtherWorldWizard Have you ever knitted dogs before?

^ that's probably my best one.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@ElementsinSpace nice! What about puppies? ;)

Elements in Space

11:34 AM

Eleeza the Other World Wizard

11:50 AM

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack Oh dear ;-;

@ElementsinSpace This is so cool :0 and adorable!

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

12:10 PM

@ElementsinSpace huh! Awesomeness. :D

@EleezatheOtherWorldWizard yeah, but we have fun here until then. ;)

Like EOWP, End Of (the) World Party. :P

Andreas detests censorship

12:25 PM

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack Aaaaw, cute ladyboys.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@Andreasdetestscensorship I'm sure they are!

Feeds

1:04 PM

How to keep your new tool from gathering dust

Eira May on June 08, 2023

If you’re thinking about rolling out a new tool to your team, you should also be thinking about how to get colleagues and management on board, how to embed that tool in your everyday workflows, and how to assess whether it’s working as it should. Tech that solves human problems needs humans to participate in those solutions.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

1:16 PM

@Feeds onebox isn't on a strike?

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack I mean that could be arranged

SPArcheon

ohy.

just a question, maybe I am blind

Do anyone know what The Company refers to when mentioning the "HuggingFace GTP Detector"?

Because... well... HuggingFace is a community and not every sample posted there is the same sample. And I could not find any official one by the HuggingFace user (huggingface.co/huggingface).

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

1:32 PM

@JourneymanGeek ban Feeds? ;)

@SPArcheon if you mean Philippe latest question, then he refers to Stack Overflow Inc. or whatever the company is called. Can't see any reason or way he'll refer to any other company.

HuggingFace isn't a company, and he tried to prove how wrong their detector is, that's all.

SPArcheon

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack You didn't got what I meant.

> HuggingFace’s GPT detector assigns a “threshold” score from 0 to 1 of the post being authored by GPT.

Andreas detests censorship

@SPArcheon huggingface.co/openai-detector

SPArcheon

To my knowledge there is no official HuggingFace made detector, just detectors that happen to be hosted on HuggingFace.

@Andreasdetestscensorship yep, and that is no HuggingFace. That is OpenAI.

I am not trying to nitpick, but it is kinda important to be precise about WHAT detector was tested.

Andreas detests censorship

That's what everyone refers to when they say "HF".

SPArcheon

@Andreasdetestscensorship possible. But that is pretty wrong.

HuggingFace: a community for AI related technologies that also provides hosting.
OpenAi: the ones who made ChatGTP

that is why I was wondering.

Andreas detests censorship

1:45 PM

We have links to many OpenAI detectors. HF is just a shorthand for the one hosted by HF.

Not sure if I should share a lot in an open chat.

SPArcheon

Possible, that is why I was asking for clarifications.

Andreas detests censorship

We've been relying on security through obscurity.

SPArcheon

They mentioned them as if there was ONE detector MADE by Hugging Face

Andreas detests censorship

As far as I'm concerned, we've only been using a single detector hosted at HF.

Zoe stands with Ukraine

@SPArcheon Sure, but we've never mentioned HF in a context where it mattered

SPArcheon

1:48 PM

Oh well, to be hones I have used multiple samples on HF, but all of them where Stable Diffusion demo

Zoe stands with Ukraine

Most detectors realistically run OpenAI's code in one way or another

SPArcheon

@ZoestandswithUkraine not sure. It is like everyone thinking that ChatGTP is the only one demo.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@SPArcheon isn't it?!

:D

Andreas detests censorship

@SPArcheon At least the more active AI hunters are well aware there's more than just ChatGPT.

I haven't been particularly active at hunting it, but I've been keeping up, taking note of the important things. Did flag a few posts.

SPArcheon

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack Since I'm not that sure that I want to post the name here...

Copied a question from SO

this is not ChatGPT

Peter Kolosov

1:55 PM

gpt

SPArcheon

@PeterKolosov yep, you are right

Andreas detests censorship

It doesn't matter which model was used to generate the text; what matters is that it was not generated by a human, and that we can recognize it. It's not long-term sustainable; once we get to a point where the AI models still generate garbage, but we can no longer reasonably recognize it, we can no longer enforce a ban on AI content; we will need to have developed other means of protecting us by then.

Not that SE helps us do so. They just ruined everything instead.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@SPArcheon how can you tell?

SPArcheon

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack because I used a tool that is not ChatGPT.

@Andreasdetestscensorship I think you lack some context. If you see above I was asking this because the company mentioned a (single) "HuggingFace GPT Detector" and I was wondering if they had a specific one in mind or if that should be reworded to be more generic

Andreas detests censorship

@SPArcheon I'll just assume that they mean the one we've been using, as the company did use to cooperate with the company at one point, and they've been a part of the private chat room we used for the purpose of handling AI content. There's a bunch of links there to detectors, one of which is "HF".

There's also a bunch of messages there, saying not to rely on the detectors, because they're inaccurate.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

2:09 PM

@SPArcheon pretty sure they use it just as example. The post does use "detectors", plural, including "human detector" aka the moderator own common sense, which they don't trust of course. Only senior staff of SE can detect AI content with no false positives.

Andreas detests censorship

So the company is clearly and blatantly lying when they tell the media, and post on MSE, claiming that we've been relying on the detectors. If you flag AI content with the sole reason that the post gave a high score in a detector, you're likely to have the flag declined.

SPArcheon

@Andreasdetestscensorship yep, that does indeed clarify how the wide blanket term came to be

Andreas detests censorship

Or well, speaking of what used to be the case before this strike.

@SPArcheon But we've repeatedly pointed out that we cannot rely on the detectors, and these messages are starred and pinned.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@Andreasdetestscensorship were, bet the room is long nuked to oblivion by the staff.

Andreas detests censorship

Or, well, the messages aren't pinned now, because we replaced the pinned messages with stuff more related to the strike.

Anyway. I think that's enough talk about a private room in the public.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

2:13 PM

Can't see any harm talking about private room, mods talk a lot about TL for example. Just can't share contents from a private room.

But yeah, the whole subject can be very simply concluded, SE management does not trust any detector, and insist on banning them all, including mods own judgement.

SPArcheon

Just Irminsul it.

Andreas detests censorship

That's a lot of Nicks.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

2:35 PM

Sign of strike #158: off topic lost soul questions stay for hours. :D

SPArcheon

> So I googled “how to post on stackoverflow with gpt”, and looked for relevant results dating from after the initial rush in December 2022. The first relevant result starting from February 2023, on page 2 of the results, is a Chrome extension, released on 28 February 2023. Going by the demo video, this extension posts the answer a few characters at a time, at the rate a human would type. Someone using this extension would generate a similar number of drafts as a human.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

Random thought... @mousetail do you have any checks for suspended users? e.g. a user with network wide suspension wants to sign the open letter, can they? Guess it won't do any harm to let it, but it's quite pointless. No?

@SPArcheon you formatted this as a quote, where is it from? Context?

SPArcheon

108

A: GPT on the platform: Data, actions, and outcomes

Thank you for posting the methodology! That's a step forward. Unfortunately, there's a critical flaw in your methodology: you assume that In principle, if people are copying and pasting answers out of services like GPT, then they won’t save as many drafts as people who write answers within Stack...

Gilles actually providing solid proof of what I had guessed - the expected weapon race with generated content mean that the users trying to bypass check would try to remove the blatant tell-by, with the usual "too fast for an human" posting speed being the most obvious one.

as for why this is relevant, see the post itself.

Right now I am mostly baffled that a browser extension exists

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

2:52 PM

@SPArcheon also, many use external editors to formulate their answers, then just copy and paste from there. And SE now counts them as AI generated answers. lol

SE editor isn't ideal, to say the least.

And.... they revealed their method so super easy to bypass it for anyone who want to get easy rep, even without extension.

SPArcheon

Wait, just noticed this. It gets even better:

2

Q: Chrome Extension with Chat GPT-3.5 - "you must provide a model parameter"

I am making a chrome extension that uses Chat GPT 3.5 and have coded a simple prompt to send to the API using openai api and returns a value in the console. I have my code below and keep getting this error... error: code: null message: "you must provide a model parameter" param: null...

javascript google-chrome-extension openai-api gpt-3

Someone asked for help to make a Chrome extension to post generated content to Stack ON STACK

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@SPArcheon and?

SPArcheon

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack and... nothing, it is just funny. In a weird way it seem like going to ask how to crack a game to the devs of said game.

Not the same actually, but funny enough.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

Not so different from calling for a strike on the platform you're striking against, just from the opposite side, in a way. ;)

SPArcheon

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack Correct, but in that case the featured tag was removed.

Alas, that not the point, I just find it quite ironic.

and a tad hypocrite.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

3:01 PM

@SPArcheon and the SO question isn't featured either...

SPArcheon

If you think that the content you are going to post using that extension is worth posting, just ask GPT for you answer instead of asking the inferior humans at SO :P

But on second though, maybe they did want to use that as a base for starting writing an actual answer.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

3:30 PM

TTGH

@Journeyman your task is to decipher this ^

:D

Out of unicoins to give as prize but can give something else. ;) (gave all my 100 unicoins to @Eleeza for her drawings ;-))

Journeyman Geek

Thank THANATOS GOOD HUMMUS

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

nope

Journeyman Geek

Time to grow horseradish?

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@JourneymanGeek half way there!

Journeyman Geek

Time to go home?

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

3:33 PM

yes!!! dang you're good. :P

I'm really bad at those things lol

SPArcheon

@JourneymanGeek Hey! What does my switching from a pony avatar to a radish one have to do with this?

Journeyman Geek

I was gonna say "Table Top Goat Herding" But I'm not a collie

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

Baffled every time you're using something I'm not familiar with, lol.

Journeyman Geek

@SPArcheon Many many things. Some of them Wasabe, some willsabe

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

wannabe

GcL

3:55 PM

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack It's not vim, but it is easier to exit.

Zoe stands with Ukraine

At least all of Vim's shortcuts work :p

SPArcheon

4:14 PM

asked for fun to starchat if "It is safe to parse HTML using RegEX?". It said that yes, RegEX is a good tool to parse HTML.

something something hE C0m€s

mousetail

@SPArcheon You can actually do it in recursive PCRE

SPArcheon

4408

A: RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

You can't parse [X]HTML with regex. Because HTML can't be parsed by regex. Regex is not a tool that can be used to correctly parse HTML. As I have answered in HTML-and-regex questions here so many times before, the use of regex will not allow you to consume HTML. Regular expressions are a tool th...

mousetail

It's actually possible though

SPArcheon

@mousetail I was trying to make it output some part of this, which would have proved that the training set included SO content :P

Nord The Star Wizard

@SPArcheon You can do it as mousetail mentioned. It just depends on your actual goal. Do you want a full parser or just get a few links?: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/388991/…

and I'm aware what you were trying to do, basically making the model output part of that one popular question: stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/… ?

there also a good reverse version of that post that I liked: stackoverflow.com/questions/4231382/…

@mousetail there a few libraries/tools that use regex to parse html, eg: html2text (the original py2 version) did

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack wait, so you're telling me I can't ever use my favorite editor to craft an answer and then copy paste it as answer on SO/SE?

I always did that for some answers :/

GcL

4:32 PM

@SPArcheon I used to work with a front end dev who pointed out the regex for valid html is .* because browsers do their darndest to render something and keep on chugging. It was a tongue in cheek remark, but also a funny way of remembering that browsers will happily consume garbage.

SPArcheon

@GcL See: Chuck Norris is a valid color.

GcL

@NordTheStarWizard It's how I roll. Vim to hack together some markdown then paste into a question or answer. I still usually end up with some edits for longer answers. Not so much for shorter ones.

Nord The Star Wizard

yep, same here

mousetail

Bit misleading, any string is a valid color

GcL

@SPArcheon Ha! The explanation was an entertaining and brief read.

Nord The Star Wizard

4:35 PM

although I tend to hop between editors these days (now stuck between Geany/Pycharm)

@mousetail any string made of 3 byte or so, so ffffff?

mousetail

1 byte is also valid I think

Nord The Star Wizard

really

I guess it could work if you count ff0000 as a color hmm

SPArcheon

JUSTIN BAILEY
------ ------

If you know you know.

Nord The Star Wizard

@SPArcheon metroid :o

SPArcheon

@NordTheStarWizard more specifically, something that is a funny coincidence despite not being deliberate nor the only words that produce that result (only NARPASSWORD bypasses the password normal logic, everything else is a coincidence)

Big Joe

4:54 PM

IF i submitted a bug and it had status-review attached to it but has been fixed now and there is no status-complete on it is there something i should do ? Question - meta.stackexchange.com/questions/389879/…

Peter Kolosov

@Sonic What happened to your "Den"? Why it is inactive now?

Sonic's Den

If you have time to worry, then run!

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

@PeterKolosov I stopped posting things there?

Peter Kolosov

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog Yes

SPArcheon

@PeterKolosov Wasn't safe anymore after Amy found out about it.

Peter Kolosov

Err... I do not know much... I registered here only about a month ago so I know so few things

Don't know about Amy, or are this a joke

@Sonic Or you just don't have time to chat as ShadowWizard have

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

5:03 PM

@PeterKolosov Yeah, my personal circumstances changed

Peter Kolosov

@Sonic Huh. Okay, I'm not disappointed. ;)

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

@PeterKolosov sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Amy_Rose

Example person

Hey, did you ever wonder how 'git' handles symlinks?

Peter Kolosov

@Son Hmmmmmmmm.... Confused...

Rocket Nikita

@Exampleperson not really

Example person

5:08 PM

Symlinks cannot be opened like normal files, but then how does it store the symlink?

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@GcL sure, I'm using it fine, but still, many are probably used to better editors, so using what they know and copy paste when it's ready.

Example person

see here, this is how they explain it. But I am still in doubt, because I have tried to use even very low-level functions to open them and view their contents, but they seem like a special file whose contents cannot, and absolutely cannot be viewed. The answer in that link isn't good enough (but the number of upvotes though!)

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@NordTheStarWizard sure you can, but it will be marked as AI generated by SE internal tracking system. No worry since SE praise AI, you might get a badge for that at some point. :D

Nord The Star Wizard

that's lose-lose for me since I would hate that badge (given my stance on "AI")

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog yeah, the fate of most rooms. /cc @Pet

My Den is the oldest user made room, there was room by Pekka and someone else I forgot about, which lasted longer, think they abandoned it 2-3 years ago.

GcL

5:14 PM

@Exampleperson No. We avoid them because of the associated problems that come with committing symlinks.

Big Joe

@Tinkeringbell can you mark meta.stackexchange.com/questions/389879/… as status-completed everything is working now

Example person

Hmm... what do you think happens when you commit a symlink?

@GcL any explanation about the issues? (I am curious)

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@NordTheStarWizard pity! ;)

@BigJoe but might be temporary fix, maybe wait a while to see if it sticks?

Maybe like electricity, when there's blackout, it sometimes return fast, just to fall down again for longer time.

GcL

@Exampleperson Doesn't play nice with collaborators developing on windows machines. Doesn't play well if the path to thing doesn't exist on the machine pulling the commits. Doesn't work well if some collaborators have the save links as text files and some do not. Requires extra care when restructuring a project.

A topic of conversation I'd expect you'd get more out of in an SO room. Or at least a more comprehensive conversation.

Example person

@GcL I understand that it would be better on SO, but, here goes: if you do know, can you tell me, does git treat symlinks as normal files? (I am not gonna ask anymore here, just this one pls)

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

5:20 PM

@Exampleperson tried asking GPT? ;)

Example person

Should I? lol. It would waste my time, for such a simple Q.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@Exampleperson if simple, why you ask? :D

GcL

@Exampleperson Depends on your settings. I don't know the internals of git very well to say how it is handling the data. If you're a solo developer with the default settings and you commit a symlink, you'll get the symlink back when you clone or pull. Symlinks aren't regular files to begin with though.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

Well dunno, Google gives back 12 years old question from SO. lol

Example person

14 yrs old infact that question is

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

5:22 PM

@Exampleperson nope

40

Q: git commit symlink as a regular file

Suppose I have a file fname which is a symlink to a file from some other repository/project, say ../../proj2/fname. Is there a way to add/commit fname as a regular file? It seems that, by default, git gives the file mode 120000 and sets the path to the linked file as the blob content. I know t...

git symlink

That was first result, didn't bother to check others. ;)

Example person

I was talking about this

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@Exampleperson well that wasn't first Google result for me, probably somewhere down. Google show different results to each user, based on trillion things probably.

Maybe you viewed it before, or something Google marked as related, so they gave it bigger weight.

Example person

The answers have thousand votes and stuff, would google actually consider those things?

Kevin B

no, not usually

Example person

That question I mentioned seems to have answers that imply that git treats them as regular files

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

5:25 PM

(Google knows exactly what questions each user without adblock ever visited)

@Exampleperson nah they don't care about it, or quality of the posts.

Example person

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack You mean, through the ads on SO?

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@Exampleperson no, via trackers put in place by SE in the core of the sites.

to get "stats", ya know. lol

Example person

Trackers? How do those get sent to google?

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@Exampleperson JS, sometimes hidden deep sometimes plainly on the surface.

Example person

How do adblockers block them if they are not ads (or from ad related sites?)

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

5:27 PM

Or tracking beacon used as image.

(empty image, not displayed of course just loaded to send the data)

@Exampleperson it blocks any request to the blacklisted domains, or to all domains except those in whilelist.

It can't really know if something is ad or legit content of a site.

Example person

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack, I never realized there is a comment archive in meta and SO meta, what purpose does it serve? How on earth does it fetch new comments? (pls tell me)

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@Exampleperson yeah well it's pretty new, couple of weeks perhaps. How it works @Zoe can tell, probably using the API.

Example person

Ohh... That's why I never saw it before. Nice.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

As for purpose, many comments are deleted, sometimes people claim they posted something they didn't, or just forget. This way, we can know for sure what was going on.

Example person

What if personal info is posted (by accident ofcourse)? then what?

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

5:31 PM

The comments in chat stay forever, unless of course mod removes them.

@Exampleperson should be flagged, and mod will delete.

Probably same for NSFW stuff etc.

Example person

What if they don't know about that chat? It is very common for new users to make such mistakes

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@Exampleperson it's not for new users, it's for "us", e.g. when user claim comment was deleted, we can look it up and help them.

So it's a tool for curators, in a way.

Example person

I mean, when a user posts sensitive info, and doesn't know about that chat, what will happen to the sensitive info in the chat?

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@Exampleperson well those who view it should flag, the user indeed can't know about it.

Example person

Is there one for SO? or only for metas?

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

5:35 PM

But you raise a good point, that's probably a downside of this tool. (leak of stuff that shouldn't leak)

@Exampleperson dunno, probably on-demand, not on all sites.

Example person

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack, I wonder how much data can SE servers hold

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@Exampleperson a lot. ;)

Example person

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack Thanks for understanding. What happened to the strike now? Still going on?

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

And it's easy to just bring another HD, or server, when they need.

Example person

And google on the other hand has infinite storage

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

5:39 PM

@Exampleperson yeah, there's Discord group you can join to get real time updates.

Should be mentioned in the open letter.

@Exampleperson no such thing infinite, but yeah they surely make it look this way.

Example person

:P 1/0

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

I read once that they have hundreds of employees whose single job is to replace failing drives and install new drives.

In huge data centers.

Every bit of data has two backups, etc.

Example person

They give about 20 GB of free space for every user's google drive. How can they handle 20 * 1 billion users, atleast

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

Might look for it again, was interesting to read. ;)

Peter Kolosov

@Exampleperson compression ;)

Example person

5:42 PM

Maybe they have internal techniques for using 'symlinks' to the same file if two users upload the same file?

Rocket Nikita

@Exampleperson I don't think so

They probably use RAIDs

Example person

Of course that could, in theory, be a privacy risk, but they can significantly minimize storage for files containing the same data

GcL

@Exampleperson If you're looking for strategies that deduplicate data even between different files, check out IPFS.

Example person

I am not running any servers lol

@PeterKolosov, compression? To such great extent?

Wow.

I can't even imagine how they do these things

Peter Kolosov

@Exampleperson lossy compression ;)

Zoe stands with Ukraine

5:47 PM

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack It's using the API, yeah

Example person

Hmm...? How, wouldn't that cause data loss?

Rocket Nikita

@PeterKolosov github.com/DvorakDwarf/Infinite-Storage-Glitch

Zoe stands with Ukraine

For the more technically inclined, the core code for it is fairly straight-forward: github.com/LunarWatcher/boson-light.cpp/blob/…

Example person

@ZoestandswithUkraine, what do you think about the privacy issue from the chat that archives comments?

Zoe stands with Ukraine

Considering the license of all content on the platform, I don't really see the problem. It also doesn't leave the platform, but there are definitely scrapers that do precisely that

Example person

5:50 PM

@ZoestandswithUkraine hmm...

"but there are definitely scrapers that do precisely that" - think about it.

Zoe stands with Ukraine

In general, don't post stuff to the internet that you wouldn't want to be picked up elsewhere

Because on any sufficiently popular platform, it can and will be picked up

Example person

@ZoestandswithUkraine Don't accidents happen? (especially to new users)

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@ZoestandswithUkraine figures, you won't go and scrape all posts to read comments. ;)

Example person

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack wow. Nice logic.

Kevin B

@Exampleperson sure, good thing we have exception handlers.

Zoe stands with Ukraine

5:51 PM

^

If it happens on the platform, a mod can just remove it

Example person

Well, what if the user deletes the comment thinking it is gone? It is extremely common from my experience.

Zoe stands with Ukraine

But I guarantee you there are currently AI projects scraping the API for comments to dump into their dataset

Kevin B

then it'll stay in the archive until someone flags it.

Example person

@ZoestandswithUkraine, there should be some kind of barrier to avoid privacy issues, don't you think?

Zoe stands with Ukraine

No

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

5:53 PM

@Exampleperson haha, reminds me of "accidents" happening to my kids when they were younger. :D

Example person

@ZoestandswithUkraine I respect your opinion

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@ZoestandswithUkraine sadly so.

Rocket Nikita

@Exampleperson like pasting the whole shrek script into the comment textfield?

Example person

lol

Zoe stands with Ukraine

like I said, when it's posted on the internet, it's going to stay on the internet

Stuff almost always finds a way to anyway

Any deletions or redactions following that are damage control at best

Example person

5:55 PM

That's a sad truth many don't learn right away.

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

@Exampleperson or ever.

Rocket Nikita

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack or just don't care

Zoe stands with Ukraine

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack yeah...

Example person

There is no way we can teach them though. That's not our responsibility either. Google can teach if they want to. (but I can't tell that for sure, you know)

Zoe stands with Ukraine

You can still teach peopleif it's done in the right context

But indeed, not our problem

it's ultimately up to education systems and, at least for kids, parents to at least reduce the rate

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back

5:58 PM

@RocketNikita depends, I don't care to share some private info, but got a limit.

My real name is easy to find, think I even posted address once, somewhere.

Still waiting for someone to arrive saying "it's you from Stack Overflow!". :D

Rocket Nikita

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack Still remember my fake hand?

Shadow Wizard Strikes Back