Tavern on the Meta

4:47 AM

FWIW the deluge of spam here is apparently because Metasmoke is down

JamesENL

Damn

in Charcoal HQ on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, 1 hour ago, by tripleee

Metasmoke issue #253: Metasmoke is out of disk

JamesENL

I'll step into Charcoal HQ then

6:05 AM

maybe somebody would like to star the message about the Metasmoke problem above so that it's visible on the right when people enter the room?

6:21 AM

→ 31 messages moved to Chimney

Metasmoke issue #253: Metasmoke is out of disk

@Bart is having fun with @Cody:

@Bart comes out of hibernation to post on Meta, only to have me stomp on his glasses. Sorry. — Cody Gray ♦ 38 mins ago

@tripleee ooh, a chance for organic spam-chomping

@rene thanks

np

6:37 AM

it lives again?

@JourneymanGeek I assume SD can run without MS?

there is only reduced functionality

ah

I donno XD

this job ad is so faux cool I am almost tempted ... Pity it's Java. stackoverflow.com/jobs/122694/master-of-messaging-idt-messaging

@rene SD is running fine but the Metasmoke analysis obviously is not happening

which means e.g. no autoflags on spam which would otherwise get three flags from Metasmoke as soon as it's detected

Makes sense

Autoflagging is done from MS, IIRC.

Sentinel is having issues as well.

6:45 AM

I guess Undo switched logging mode to INSANE and now fills up the disks ...

(insane is just above verbose)

@rene it's probably just regular logging, it happened before ... it just keeps a lot of logs

or maybe Undo forgot to set up log rotation

anyway, anything on erwaysoftware.com is likely broken until Undo wakes up

these logs go up to 11?

@JourneymanGeek pretty much

7:17 AM

You would expect that an .icalendar/.ics file with the same Uid would update the same event instead of creating new ones, looking at you Outlook.

@rene I wonder if denouncing Outlook as the spawn of evil could be accepted into Pastafarian doctrine. Then you could refuse on religious grounds

related?

oh it doesn't look like it's about Microsoft

XD

user202362

8:27 AM

using roaming, continue to be on the internet ...

user202362

although was dumb, chargers were in the check in luggage ...

and your luggage is lost or just on the plane right now?

user202362

I am waiting for the transfer but luggage directly goes to the destination ...

no cable or powerbank?

user202362

I got powerbanks but cables in checked in

8:35 AM

buy a spare cable, you can't have too many

user202362

there are also power plugs at airport

user202362

50 more minutes until my flight, 43% battery and already forked out extra for the roaming

user202362

I don't need more stuff until after I pick up the car

lol

that's what I do, especially since I do USB C

and I stash em everywhere

If you run out of power you can always read a book. That is like an e-book but uses dead wood instead of liquid crystals.

8:40 AM

Hey, if anyone's interested I made a query correlating active eligible users to completed reviews: data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/715853/…

user310756

10:20 AM

@Telkitty have a good flight - we already miss you!! (by we I mean chicken - Cleo -Penny - Elsa and me :))

Derpy

was reading some review about the Death Note netflix movie. Seems that it went as bad as I predicted (maybe even worse).

Good to know I can spare myself the 90' to watch it.

90' more Zelda/Mario.

And the better part is how some of the reviewer noticed that Netflix seems to have pulled off the original anime series from the available shows list

will have to check if they actually did that.

11:21 AM

@Michelle Can we have a recount now? I'm sure there'd be a couple more

@Telkitty safe flight and journey... the hurricane is so bad, so don't go there...

11:53 AM

@AdamLear About the ticket I have open - is there any update to it? I have some ideas how to make the test case I presented much more accurate (and potentially more damaging) but I'm reluctant to test them on SEDE since it's all public there.

If you want I can write up a local copy of something I'd consider doing with the stuff I found and send it to you before using it on SEDE

12:12 PM

@Magisch email me? I'm swamped at the moment, but I'll try to try it out on our internal SEDE (should be able to just ignore the time stamps and such) later this week or next.

my email's in my site profile

ok

thanks!

12:28 PM

→ 21 messages moved to Chimney

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer: Dot Net Framework 3.5 installation Error by Inwizards Incorporation on superuser.com

user315433

@BhargavRao Eh, Bush won anyway... Sometime when I'm not as busy.

hey @rene I rewrote my spoiler query to strip html tags but now it runs into the timeout, can you take a look at what might be causing this? pastebin.com/97QJUhT4

@Michelle Sure, whenever you're free.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in answer: What are the biggest mistakes that new project managers make? by kelly on pm.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer: Unique is Cheap by phanteo on codegolf.SE

12:46 PM

@Magisch it looks like you have a couple of queries that don't seem to be needed. Learn about cursors. Keep in mind that constructs like OVER are expensive, both in I/O as storage. A cursor would help you to eliminate at least that construct.

@Magisch stripping html probably will improve the result,

but just in case, the Python script I wrote is doing: extract content (separate between normal and spoiler, still in HTML markup), strip HTML tags, trim whitespaces.

and I can't expect SQL to do all that within time limit

gist for python code: gist.github.com/andrew-tc/479d892efd4b3fd217e4e959a2ccc816

(and i bet my python writing sux, not my main language >_<)

@AdamLear I emailed you a proof of concept writeup about what someone malicious could do with the trick I discovered.

Note that nobody was damaged in the making of that PoC

1:18 PM

nvm I'm an idiot

pastebin.com/KJBV1ZSy

I forgot my BEGIN statement when modifying the processing IF clause

@Magisch accepted ;)

Hey, don't be too harsh on yourself

Lets see if this cursor business works better

user315433

-1

A: Why do we even exist?

Once upon a time the Extraterrestrial Explorers of the Universe found this Planet with such creatures that was no authority responsible to maintain such beautiful living planet so they decided to clone the Mankind criss genes with Apes and sperms of their own kind that they come up with the Think...

user315433

I thought this was a good answer, but the site wasn't Worldbuilding.

Although I can't use cursors for work code

1:21 PM

@Michelle lol

@rene still execution timeout

hmmmm

pastebin.com/Tw3sZkCk

is what it looks like now

using cursor

7 hours ago, by rene

Metasmoke issue #253: Metasmoke is out of disk

@rene this is no longer topical, can you unstar? thanks

user315433

Spam Overflow

1:24 PM

Any idea what else might be causing the bad performance?

@Magisch can you do in your first query a top 10 to just see if it works in that case

It's only a couple thousand posts IIRC

@rene trying now

doesn't seem to

not sure where I messed up

@rene doesn't work even with 10 results

I may have botched the cursor

Derpy

Dear Adam.
I think I have discovered a possible exploit that could compromise the security of the whole network. Read on and I will explain.
The exploit is very simple. Basically, one could use some social engineering tactic to trick one of the developers into running a malicious program on the network servers that could potentially lead to data loss or worse. To test my claim I have included a simple executable with this mail: just run it and provide your administrative credentials when required. The program will just display an animated picture of some kittens but obviously an evil attack…

@Magisch well, charindex and like require a full table scan. Those are killing for performance and the filter on posttypeid helps a bit but it still needs to go over lost of rows

@Magisch which db are you on?

@rene Does a LIKE use a full table scan also?

@rene SEDE

1:32 PM

@Magisch depends but on SEDE yes, because posts.body is not indexed

Strange that it would not even work for 10 posts

Makes me think that there is an infinite loop in my cursor

@Magisch yes ... I mean are you running it on stack overflow or SciFi

especially because it worked before I added the stripping HTML

@rene anime.SE

@Magisch ok, hold on

@Derpy Heh, not like that

Derpy

1:35 PM

@Magisch yes, yes, all of you always claim that. :p

@rene curious, even commenting out the HTML stripping logic makes it run forever

am I misusing the cursor

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in body: Automatic lonely person needs help by Harold Tracey on electronics.SE

@Magisch your code works for me: data.stackexchange.com/anime/query/716077

I only needed to change the tmp in the update statement

1:51 PM

huh

ffs

Lemme clean this stuff up

@SmokeDetector wut

user315433

2:07 PM

!!/wut

@Michelle Whaddya mean, 'wut'? Humans...

user315433

Yes, that's the thing. Humans...

@rene I swear I managed to break it again

@Magisch I'm sure you do ... ;)

@rene pastebin.com/uyhgmHTV

I tried to also make the spoiler part undergo HTML stripping

And in the process broke my query again (I think)

2:11 PM

Can somone help me out a bit here so the OP gets the point they are on the wrong track. I would love to have a better dupe then the ones already there. Some other wise words. I'm a bit out of options.

@Magisch can you link me to the SEDE version so I can fork?

@rene How do I save it as a version if it won't execute?

@Magisch mark everything as a comment

/* all your text here */

@rene data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/714557/…

ok

@Magisch did you intended to have this SET @stripped_spoiler = @sp_bdy; be initialized with a null value? That is causing an error now in my run

2:27 PM

@rene sp bdy is supposed to get all the text inside the spoiler tags

@rene Here:

WHILE @qt_st != 0 AND @qt_st IS NOT NULL
  BEGIN
     print 'qt_st = ' + cast(@qt_st as nvarchar)
        -- CHARINDEX returns the starting position of the
        -- search string and the search string is 27 chars long
        SET @qt_st = CHARINDEX('<blockquote class="spoiler">', @qt_bdy, @to_search);
        SET @to_search = @to_search + @qt_st;
    IF @to_search >= LEN(@qt_bdy)
        SET @qt_st = 0;
    IF @qt_st != 0 AND @qt_st IS NOT NULL
      SET @qt_cnt = @qt_cnt + ( CHARINDEX('</blockquote>', @qt_bdy, @qt_st) - @qt_st );

@Magisch fixed for you data.stackexchange.com/anime/query/716092/… remember that (null + 'some string') is null

2:56 PM

Is this comment considered rude..?

ugh, it seems I'm being too sensitive... nvm...

@rene nice.

Yeah I'm still a noob in tsql

3:16 PM

@Elias borderline. Given it is on meta you might have to adjust your sensitivity a bit, yeah ...

I have had comments flags declined because of meta.

@Derpy Seems legit!

@AdamLear Hey my email was nothing like that :/

I haven't read it yet :)

I wonder though

Do y'all have a security analyst or do all reports go to whatever dev is free at the moment?

3:32 PM

The reports go to a dev with access to Zendesk... which at the moment is me and Jeremy Banks. Most reports land with me and I either fix them or find someone else with time (or redirect to another team). In this case, my assessment was "well, if there's an issue, it's been around for a long time and exploiting it sounds non-trivial so another few days won't hurt much, a fix would also likely be non-trivial, and I'll try to look at it next week..."

I was worried that I was making a mountain out of a molehill

But I was also worried that using this might earn me the wrath of SE for publicizing how it can be used

It's pretty clear to me that you're going out of your way not to exploit it the way you're envisioning. I'll do my best to look into it this week.

I've been fixing reputation accounting bugs for the last few days and my brain is melting out my ears.

sounds unpleasant

@Magisch Alright, I read through your email. I'm not sure some of your assumption entirely hold, especially on a site the size of SO. But, I'm curious to actually try it out with real data (internally, of course :)) and see what happens. I'll let you know what I turn up.

Alright

canon

3:50 PM

@AdamLear Just set everyone to 2147483647 and call it a day.

perfect

A Tale of Two Industries: How Programming Languages Differ Between Wealthy and Developing Countries

\o/

Feeds

4:08 PM

David Robinson on August 29, 2017

Here at Stack Overflow, we’re interested in using our data to share insights about the worldwide software development community. This recent post on the distribution of mobile developers is a good example: it explored traffic to Android questions from around the world, and found that Android tended to be visited more from lower-income countries than from higher-income ones.

This leads us to wonder how else programming technologies may differ between rich and poor countries, and how that affects our picture of the global software development industry. In this post, we’ll explore thes …

I just today learned about cursors in tsql

I have to rewrite a couple of awful procedures it seems

4:59 PM

oh, the same drama on MSO

@Elias need moar popcorn

@Magisch avoid cursors.

Shame you ever learned about them.

Hey, you give us functions then on SEDE ...

and blame me. I told him so ...

@Oded If you're me, you have to write ALL the business logic in the SPs and functions

Sure, but avoid cursors.

5:02 PM

There literally isn't another backend outside of "fetch table / SP result" and "display table / SP result" and "update / delete from table / SP result"

@Oded Beats counting through a while loop using rownums

@Magisch you have a while loop in your SQL? That's just cursors by another name. Avoid cursors.

@Oded The latency on the frontend where the display code is means every time I call something from the database I have ~400ms latency, regarldess of how big it is.

Meaning I have to do ALL of my ERP programming in SQL

The frontend is just for fetching tables and displaying them

I agree with @Oded if you're not restrained on TSQL as we are on SEDE.

@Oded I have javascript and SQL to fully implement an ERP system. How do you suggest I do iteration that I need?

urg. And yet - when it comes to RDBMSs - you should be doing things with set operations, not explicit loops/cursors.

5:05 PM

I can't make multiple DB calls, every one of those means another half second of latency

Joins and sub queries are your friends, as well as temporary tables.

That's what I'm using where possible

but possible it is not always

:shrug:

especially since I have to work with the ~~batshit insane and utterly broken~~ organically grown database backend

Windowing functions are also a great friend.

5:06 PM

Thing is right

I'm restricted to select output and simple deletes / updates and SP calls

Since the entire backend is behind a database layer and they don't want to implement a full query passthrough

So anything that isn't in a SP doesn't go beyond an update/select/delete/insert without joins and with very limited conditional clauses

As a result I have made over 200 views and 40 SPs so far

@Oded I take it you don't like openrecordset in VB6/VBA then?

Because the codebase I'm re-implementing is ~85% recordset manipulation and unindented nested VBA IF statements :D

Better you than me ;)

You're working at SO making more then 24 times what I make

:D

slight calc error there

Possibly. But I doubt it would be that much.

Actually the math was off by a bit

hold on

(24 times is assuming you're around 100k/yr)

That's appalling. I should be making 80 times ;)

5:15 PM

The joy of being an apprentice and thus paid less then minimum wage

Shouldn't be legal.

is, though

When I'm done with my apprenticeship, I can look forward to 9 eur/hr for a full time position

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ could be minimum wage

woooo

Beats being on unemployment, though

Is my comment here okay? Or is this too much Dutch bluntness?

I guess it is ...

6:42 PM

@Magisch let me know when you updated your answer with your new html procedure so I can award the bounty.

Q: Hands-on Moderation is essential for this community to continue

2

Two weeks ago, we cancelled the Moderator election for this site on the grounds that there were insufficient candidates. I posted this meta post to investigate the source of the problem and determine when, if at all, should the election be rebooted. The responses mostly came in three forms. The...

Data Science still struggling with it...

@rene done

@Magisch enjoy the rep ...

@rene :o

@Magisch just a note, the site is currently set to SO

other than that, enjoy the green check mark ...

6:51 PM

@Elias fixed

Sha Wiz Dow Ard

8:08 PM

plz-delete rant answer meta.stackexchange.com/a/300317/152859 @Bart @rene

user315433

The original plan was to use the election to handle the moderator situation. Given that... not so working, we'll be reaching out to you privately to discuss things further. — Grace Note ♦ 1 hour ago

user315433

Yet the site is graduated, and apparently that dial is not turning back.

Considering how weak the pool of candidates is (except you) I'd rather see this election terminated than having to choose 3 from there. — Michelle Aug 14 at 13:48

@ShaWizDowArd needs @Bart or @TravisJ for the final vote

That was one perfect comment there, @mich

user315433

8:14 PM

Yeah, I totally killed the election right there with that comment.

user315433

It's not grammatically perfect, now that I read it again.

TBH, it was quite surprising that none of the pro-tems nominated. Had that ever happened before?

@Michelle I'll ~~rant~~ complain on meta about you ...

→ 5 messages moved to Chimney

user315433

@BhargavRao Yes, for example first election on Math.SE. Pro tem mods were appointed by Jeff, and were for the most part software people with math background. They took a bit of abuse on meta because of culture clash with academic users. None ran in the election.

Sha Wiz Dow Ard

Worst case CM's will be mods.

No?

user315433

8:26 PM

No, they'd rather shut down the site. As Grace writes, "...is essential for this community to continue"