Tavern on the Meta

bwDraco

1:12 AM

Eh, did the main chat.stackexchange.com server go read-only? I can't submit messages on Root Access.

Journeyman Geek

1:24 AM

@bwDraco seems fine to me

bwDraco

Looks okay now.

Journeyman Geek

Random glitches?

user202362

1:54 AM

diamond is coal's identical twin

user315433

2:28 AM

in 2017 RPG Stack Exchange Moderator Election on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, 4 hours ago, by Shog9

The folks running in this election who think their time on the site wearing their new hat will be filled with lofty discussions of rules and policy are similarly poised to fail: the small soapbox will provide a modest amplification to their voices, while simultaneously providing a vantage point from which to view a thousand little tasks that they'll neither be recognized for nor ever see fully completed.

user202362

coal is carbon miner's best friend

Journeyman Geek

lol

Sounds almost like he's trying to scare people off from being a mod

user315433

The elections.se site was useful to me not so much because of candidate stats, but because it gave the rough network-wide timeline of past elections, showing which sites had them earlier than others.

user315433

Now I don't even know what are the sites that went longest between elections... presumably TeX, Apple, GameDev,...

user315433

@JourneymanGeek Not just "sounds like"

user315433

2:31 AM

in 2017 RPG Stack Exchange Moderator Election on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, 4 hours ago, by Shog9

I'll go further though: if anyone in this election is running for the soapbox and has no intention of picking up a broom... Please drop out. There are enough people standing on soapboxes, and not enough brooms.

Journeyman Geek

@Gerry Which is funny since I swear it feels more like most mods already have brooms. We just get vacuum cleaners now ;p

user202362

with power it comes responsibility, except people usually get into power for power not for responsibility - it's that simple

Journeyman Geek

and blame. Lots of blame

and making the hard choices.

user315433

RPG seems to be more about breaking up arguments in comments, for which non-diamond brooms don't really work.

Journeyman Geek

Donno. You have have users with that sorta weight without a badge

SU has a few I can think of

some of whom will likely never step up as a mod

user202362

4:14 AM

Without war or plague, human population is going to grow exponentially, in an environment with limited resources accessible by current technology. Overall, later stages of capitalism did not enhance overall human efficiency much, neither did bring much ground breaking useful innovations in the past 50 years (other than computer, internet & genetics, none of which will work well out of earth like environment).

user202362

So what if the increasing human population deplete earth resources and yet leave not much to fend humankind when any grand scale nature disaster hits earth?

user315433

4:39 AM

4

Q: So long, and thanks for all the fish!

I'm resigning as a moderator of Puzzling. I've got a few words and a whole lot of feelings, but I'll try to keep it short. It's been a long and wonderful journey. I started moderating Puzzling when I was 17, in the midst of high school. I'm 20 now - a year from graduating college. Puzzling has b...

Journeyman Geek

aw

rene

7:12 AM

@πάνταῥεῖ Create a new similar question with your sock and then answer that?

Journeyman Geek

With the words downvotes not welcome in it? ;p

Also, I'm vaguely surprised to see Ramhound on meta

He's got his heart in the right place, but comes across as a wee bit grumpy.

rene

7:32 AM

@JourneymanGeek meh, grumpy is fine ...

@Bart Happy Kings Day!

Bart

Woohoo

I get to have a day ... of work!

rene

How is the sale going of the garbage from the attic?

Bart

Pretty good. Although there are some people screaming at me that I "don't have an attic. Stop selling stuff from our apartment"

rene

Just ignore that, they are in denial ...

Stijn

@Gerry what's the story there? Astronomy, Economics and Literature still exist.

Journeyman Geek

7:47 AM

@Stijn Its a different Literature site

I donno about astronomy or economics

economics is ~3 years old... so yeah, not the same sites. Someone rerolled them? ;p

Stijn

ah, I hadn't noticed

Journeyman Geek

I know about literature cause they're really new

Stijn

Astronomy is also recreated it seems

I hadn't done the math yet for number of days -> years

Journeyman Geek

I just looked at the number of years in A51 and saw it was less than 5

Derpy

9:19 AM

ye good ol' maps.googleapis.com dependency strikes again

Journeyman Geek

9:38 AM

@Derpy as well as somewhat extreme paranoia

user202362

10:24 AM

how likely is that you have found a 'abandoned puppy' and it grows out to be a coyote?

user202362

M.A.R.

10:43 AM

@hichris123 I got here first ಠ_ಠ

Journeyman Geek

11:13 AM

@Telkitty in australia? Unlikely. prolly a dingo, or a baby ground drop bear.

Derpy

@JourneymanGeek there is nothing like "too much paranoia" when talking about web-related issues. Internet/Web based technologies have been built on the assumption mankind was composed 99% from ponies (read: basically honest creatures that do not seem to know the concept of "theft").

Journeyman Geek

@Derpy or ... these people probably know everything anyway, and this is basically sticking a bandaid over a hole in your stomach the size of your fist.

Derpy

@JourneymanGeek I have no real problem if some weird secret agency company wants to listen to my online rpg sessions (unless they then send me some fighter copter because they assumed that all this talking about "taking the orcs army by surprise" was some sort of secret code for coordinating a terrorist attack)

Journeyman Geek

yup

google probably machine reads my email anyway

Derpy

... but I do have some problem if my credit card number is up for the grabs whenever I shop on amazon...

Especially considering that thanks to the evil plague that is GameStop is now impossible to find a decent gamestore in a 300km radius from where I live.

Journeyman Geek

11:23 AM

ah, that's true

but that's more of a security issue than a privacy issue

heh. I mostly buy off steam these days

Derpy

@JourneymanGeek granted. I tend to block what is not strictly needed to reduce attack surface, not for "privacy". At least not google.

Facebook, on the other hand....

user202362

I only ran into a dingo once, at a resting area. The dog was freaking cute.

Journeyman Geek

I don't do facebook

Derpy

Neither do I, and I don't also feel the urge to load its api / resources on the pages I browse :P

user202362

although strictly speaking dingo is not dog

Derpy

11:34 AM

strictly speaking Tel is a chemical compound, not a cat

user202362

Shadow Wizard

@JourneymanGeek nobody can do Facebook

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in answer, pattern-matching website in answer, username similar to website in answer: Azure SQL Database in different locations by Skybridge Infotech on dba.SE

Stijn

@SmokeDetector why is Smokey so slow? I went to view the answer a few seconds after it posted here and the answer is gone already :\

SmokeDetector

Body - Position 283-304: skybridgeinfotech.com, Position 358-379: skybridgeinfotech.com
Body - Position 292-304: infotech.com
Post - Username similar to website

Stijn

11:38 AM

...thank you Smokey

M.A.R.

@Stijn Use Charcoal then

Shadow Wizard

12:31 PM

lol

!!/coffee quick

SmokeDetector

@ShadowWizard brews coffee for @ShadowWizard

Shadow Wizard

quick enough for me

Mar 17 '16 at 21:38, by hichris123

Alright, now Smokey should auto-delete answer reports if the answer is deleted within the 2-minute window.

@hichris123 @ArtOfCode this is broken again ^ /cc @Stijn (it's not slow, it's broken.)

So.. expecting tons of Smokey noise soon...

Andy

It's not broken. It's working as designed.

Smokey posts here after 5 minutes.

This was deleted at five minutes 11 seconds.

Stijn

@ShadowWizard yeah apparently @rene made a bug report already (Charcoal room pointed me to it): github.com/Charcoal-SE/SmokeDetector/issues/651

Andy

In this case, though, it should have been posted here. At the 5 minute mark it still existed. 11 seconds later it was removed from the site.

Stijn

12:39 PM

Ah, it's an edge case then

Andy

Someone was just a little slow in getting that last flag in

M.A.R.

That certain someone can certainly come to Charcoal to flag

rene

@Stijn yeah, I expect a fix in 6 to 8 weeks ...

Pandya

Is SE Android app an open source software?

Stijn

@Pandya nope

Pandya

12:51 PM

Ok

user202362

close source is good for productivity, trust me

Pandya

How?

user202362

quick hax

Pandya

Btw, do you know Open Source is marketing campaign for Free Software?

Shadow Wizard

@Andy no, I mean it's not deleted here even though it's deleted on the site. It used to work.

@Andy see this ^

answer already gone.

Pandya

12:57 PM

@Telkitty Do you mean open source can be easily hacked?

Elephant

@SmokeDetector yup, (deleted 3 minutes after being reported), but still got reposted here (5 minutes threshold)

Stijn

@Pandya no, she means you can write really bad code that you don't want anyone to see, when writing closed source software.

Because nobody will be able to ridicule you for it :)

user202362

Actually, I really mean both ~_~

Elephant

Quick question: requesting multiple comments clean-up -> use post's Moderator flag or comment's Other flag?

user315433

> If there are only one or two problematic comments on a post, just flag them individually; if most or all of an entire comment thread needs to go, just flag the post itself and suggest that it be purged. -- A guide to moderating comments

Elephant

1:12 PM

@Gerry thanks!

user315433

This is yet another of counterintuitive things about comment moderation. In reality, I flag the first comment in the thread instead.

M.A.R.

@Gerry it's kinda irking me that your extension reminds me twice for a post when it's posted to the Tavern

user315433

There is also George Stocker's answer on the subject, meta.stackexchange.com/a/182688

Elephant

@SmokeDetector gone, but MetaSmoke didn't have the deletion time

user202362

I didn't know American rocky and Canadian rocky mountains is the same rocky mountain range

user315433

1:14 PM

@M.A.R. Turn it off in the Tavern, then.

Elephant

:5970388 now it has, and the deletion time is... 6 minutes after reported? Surely Smokey/MS/SE API is slow :/

Shadow Wizard

@Elephant not slow... some feature they added that auto deletes messages here is borked.

Elephant

Is it about auto-delete, or post checking in general? The last post was already deleted before it got reposted here (5 minutes), but MS noted that it's deleted after 6 minutes.

Shadow Wizard

@Elephant oh, not sure then. Anyhow, something is broken, code-wise, most likely.

user315433

Could also be on SE side for all we know.

user315433

1:20 PM

(Might have changed something regarding websocket connections that track post status)

Shadow Wizard

Might be.. but then code should be changed as well.

user315433

Tried it both ways now; custom-flagging first comment in a thread, and in another case, custom-flagging the post because of the comments.

user315433

I think the former makes more sense because the flag goes into a queue of comment flags, which are expected to be about comments. Less context switching for mods.

user315433

2

A: What are Plotly's default colour scales?

The problem was that I'm British and spell colour correctly. The colour scales can be found at https://plot.ly/ipython-notebooks/color-scales/ and in this source file for JavaScript.

Magisch

1:37 PM

@Shog9 I don't know what the law in the US is regarding that, but y'all might want to purge even the view for 10k users only for this post: parenting.stackexchange.com/a/29901 and get rid of it completly off your servers

Also I'm not sure if you're mandated to report that to the relevant authorities or not

Shadow Wizard

@Magisch heh, I see it's removed from Meta Smoke.

Magisch

@ShadowWizard It's written CP smut / an extremely graphic depicition of sexual abuse of children

Not something MS wants to be rehosting indexed or not

Not something SE wants to be hosting either, deleted or not.

Jason C

2:35 PM

-6

Q: Finding a closed question

I saw a question on a site. I wrote an answer but before I could submit my answer the question was closed, then I moved on and closed the tab. There was no comment indicating the question was a duplicate, so I don't think that was the reason. I forget the details of the explanation, but I wanted ...

discussion closed-questions vote-to-reopen

I tried to salvage that.

So, consider this my request for review and reopen votes. The end.

M.A.R.

I love how it's always "I tried to salvage that" not "I salvaged that"

Journeyman Geek

@JasonC it still feels insanely broad

Jason C

→ 8 messages moved to Chimney

Journeyman Geek

"I'm looking for a thing, that's used for something, that may be in a sock drawer..."

Jason C

@Stijn There's a delay before smokey posts stuff in the tavern. By the time it gets here its already a few minutes old. So the chances of it being deleted by the time you view it are a bit higher than in charcoal hq. But if you click the "MS" link in the report you can view the post.

@JourneymanGeek Yeah I dunno. I tried. I was admittedly biased to make the question match my answer.

Mostly I just felt pity for all the downvotes it got.

Journeyman Geek

2:39 PM

hah, I didn't throw it one

Jason C

@M.A.R. There should be an edit badge named Turd Polisher for significant edits to closed questions that end up being reopened.

Jason C

3:34 PM

is it possible to make an api query for users sorted by last_access_date?

rene

3:55 PM

@JasonC nope

@JourneymanGeek what did I do wrong here?

Journeyman Geek

@rene user over reacted to downvotes. And comments and...

feels like it was more them than us

rene

OK

Journeyman Geek

My link actually backed his question up ;p

M.A.R.

@rene sometimes engaging with some people is the mistake

Journeyman Geek

@M.A.R. but you never know till you try

M.A.R.

4:04 PM

Like ice cream

rene

@M.A.R. Yes ... next time tell me upfront, OK?

M.A.R.

@rene You're making a mistake! Stop!

I just told you before your next drama.

Journeyman Geek

sometimes its butterscotch, Sometimes its earwax.

M.A.R.

You owe me a hundred bucks

Shog9

@Magisch yeah, that's a troll, and sadly not unusual for the site. Bastards.

M.A.R.

4:08 PM

Bastards.SE?

Bart

Nah, that's the Tavern.

M.A.R.

@Bart Hey, I'm a genuine gentleman.

I only cook meth as a hobby

Using non-stereoselective methods

47

Q: How does Walter White make pure crystal meth using a non-stereospecific reaction?

In the fantastic TV series Breaking Bad, Walter White, the dying chemistry teacher, takes to making crystal meth (d-methamphetamine) by several routes. Initially, he uses the common small-scale route starting with pseudo-ephedrine which uses a stereospecific starring material to make a stereospe...

reaction-mechanism stereochemistry chemistry-in-fiction

Magisch

4:35 PM

@Shog9 That goes far beyond normal trolling though imo

Trolling is one thing posting CP smut is a whole nother league of messed up

Shog9

@Magisch "normal" is relative. And yeah, it's messed-up. What's even worse is the ones that post barely-plausible stories of abuse as questions and rope folks into responding.

Magisch

@Shog9 Damn I wouldn't have the nerve or strenght of will to moderate parenting SE

considering they'd have to deal with this stuff on the regular I just saw it in a spam post and my stomach already turned and I broke into cold sweats

Shog9

Yeah, the mod team there has to deal with a lot.

Anyway, thanks for looking out

user315433

5:34 PM

-1

A: Why is it possible to convert a file just by renaming its extension?

Yes, its possible... Take a picture of your cat, cat.jpg rename it to dog.jpg and now you should see a dong instead of a cat when you open the picture! But wait... Now rename the ext to mpg (movie) now you shoud end up woth a video of your dog, after this you can rename the title to a popular ...

user315433

An unfortunate typo in "now you should see a dog"...

user315433

6:07 PM

> Just because it's got 7 points on stack overflow doesn't mean it's going to prod -- Matt Anderson at 9:31 AM - 27 Apr 2017

user315433

Good call, should be at least +10.

user315433

Interesting stats at We're a year old! by wizzwizz4 on retrocomputing.meta.stackexchange.com

user315433

> over 20% of our traffic came from search engines and just over a quarter of our traffic was direct. Over half of our traffic was from referring sites. Most of this was from Stack Overflow (Hot Network Questions?), closely followed by Reddit

user315433

That's quite far from the original "90% traffic should be from search" SE model.

user315433

Looks more like a source of entertainment for SO users than a site with its own audience.

Shadow Wizard

6:23 PM

@Magisch assumed as much, it's not the first time as well.

user315433

6:33 PM

Yay Android 7 finally arrived to my trusty S6.

user315433

Surely the last OS update it's ever getting.

user315433

6:50 PM

@SmokeDetector The world's okayest spammer.

M.A.R.

@Gerry I'm pretty okay with this I'm fine I'm pretty okay with this

user315433

7:04 PM

RPG decided to get two new mods

user315433

Presumably, doppelgreener and nitsau60

M.A.R.

@Gerry Nice, so they can do that

Magisch

@ShadowWizard For some reason I have difficulty comprehending what makes a person do this

It's like trolling but you're actually traumatizing people who have to read it

Not okay at all

I guess I'm used to people just being shits in general but somehow that crosses a line I didn't even think most internet trolls would dare thread.

Travis J

7:22 PM

@Shog9 - Do you know what kind of hardware the public beta from 2008 ran on?

user315433

Server Hosting — Rent vs. Buy?

Jeff Atwood on December 10, 2008

As Stack Overflow continues to grow, it’s time to revisit our server hosting situation.

We currently rent two identical dedicated servers from CrystalTech, which has been an excellent and responsive host for not only SO but Coding Horror as well. If you’re in the market for Windows hosting, I can recommend them without reservation.

Although the monthly rates are extremely reasonable, we’re starting to see pressure on our database server for more than 4 GB of memory. SQL Server has an insatiable appetite for memory, and given the ridiculously low cost of memory these days, it se …

user315433

> I’m hoping we won’t run into scaling problems anytime soon with this dedicated server.

Travis J

Thanks @Gerry

Mysticial

7:38 PM

Just curious, is this guy review banned? :P

stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/15964820

Travis J

wow

There is no way aside from robo reviewing that would get approved.

rene

@Mysticial just flag for a mod. If they aren't review banned yet, they deserve it.

Travis J

@rene - Flag on the post they reviewed? Is that what you mean by flagging the review? I don't see a flag link in the review interface.

rene

@TravisJ a post of that user will do, with a link to the review and explain the robo reviewing in the custom message.

Or otherwise a post of your own.

Travis J

Okay, just wasn't sure. I see people suggesting to flag reviews often, and was just wondering if there was a link in there I was missing or something.

Shog9

7:45 PM

@Mysticial is now

Mysticial

I think it's more fun to just post here - especially for the hilariously egregious cases like this.

@Shog9 :D

rene

@TravisJ no, you're fine :)

M.A.R.

@Mysticial approved 633 edit suggestions and rejected 28 edit suggestions and improved 2 edit suggestions

How bad does it have to be to be rejected by that guy . . .

Or maybe they just rejected some valid edits for fun

user315433

They could be suggestions to their own posts removing "tanks in advance"...

user315433

Which I'm a little worried about now that OPs can override approved edits.

M.A.R.

7:56 PM

@Gerry *advantage

user315433

One of the very few rejected suggestions that I have on Math is OP objecting "that's my signature".

rene

You are no fun ;)

user315433

Neither are Daniel and Jyrki, apparently (two mods got involved, the post eventually getting locked).

user315433

Speaking of mods, it's been long since Math had elections. Those are usually fun.

user315433

0

A: Good question templates

Anti-template (almost everything you need to avoid): Hi all and good evening. Sorry for my English, my dog ate my spellchecker. I'm a beginner in programming and I'm learning from tutorials found on internet. Today is my first time asking a question on Stack Overflow. It's probably a silly...

user315433

8:04 PM

Sounds familiar...

user315433

Another antipattern to add:

user315433

> @kyle_eventjoy You just answered a question of mine on stackoverflow, any chance I could get a bit more info? Thanks. -- John Jackson at 12:16 PM - 27 Apr 2017

M.A.R.

8:33 PM

1

Q: Brief outage planned for Wed, May 3, 2017 at 8pm US/Eastern (like a fire drill for computers)

MicroVersion: Planned service degradation: All Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange sites read-only for 20 minutes on Wed, May 3, 2017 shortly after 8pm US/Eastern. If you blink, you'll miss it. Short version: There will be a service degradation for up to 20 minutes shortly after 8PM (US/Eastern) on W...