Tavern on the Meta

user315433

00:57

Reducing the number of low quality posts without excluding potential newcomers to our community is a good discussion to have. Shouldn't have been downvoted into disappearance. It's a discussion.

user315433

Joe Friend's first post on MetaSE... and my upvote is first.

user315433

01:36

Spam still needs flags, 2 days later: chinese.stackexchange.com/a/26213

user315433

I already have two aged-away spam flags on that site, hope to avoid the third.

user315433

@Michelle avoided \o/

user315433

250K helpful flags network-wide \o/ though will have to subtract 3249 from them soon.

Rob

02:28

Subtract why?

Shog9

02:56

> I dont really know much about hacking after so many tries i met Cyberhacking lord who later help me find out my husband has been cheating on me and stealing from my bank account, he had this scheme going for 6 months

The ambiguity in that sentence lends itself to interpreting the target of the latter part as the hopeful beneficiary of the spam...

JamesENL

04:03

sd 3k-

tripleee

04:47

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

JamesENL

Damn

tripleee

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

tripleee

06:05

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?

rene

06:21

→ 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

Journeyman Geek

@tripleee ooh, a chance for organic spam-chomping

tripleee

@rene thanks

rene

np

Journeyman Geek

06:37

it lives again?

rene

@JourneymanGeek I assume SD can run without MS?

there is only reduced functionality

Journeyman Geek

ah

I donno XD

tripleee

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

rene

Makes sense

Bhargav Rao

Autoflagging is done from MS, IIRC.

Sentinel is having issues as well.

rene

06:45

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

(insane is just above verbose)

tripleee

@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

Journeyman Geek

these logs go up to 11?

rene

@JourneymanGeek pretty much

rene

07:17

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.

tripleee

@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

rene

XD

user202362

08:27

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

user202362

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

rene

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 ...

Journeyman Geek

no cable or powerbank?

user202362

I got powerbanks but cables in checked in

tripleee

08:35

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

Journeyman Geek

lol

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

and I stash em everywhere

rene

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.

Magisch

08:40

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

@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.

Bhargav Rao

11:21

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

Elias

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

Magisch

11:53

@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

Adam Lear

12:12

@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

Magisch

ok

Adam Lear

thanks!

rene

12:28

→ 21 messages moved to Chimney

SmokeDetector

[ 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.

Magisch

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

Bhargav Rao

@Michelle Sure, whenever you're free.

SmokeDetector

[ 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

rene

12:46

@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.

Elias

@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 >_<)

Magisch

@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

Magisch

13:18

nvm I'm an idiot

pastebin.com/KJBV1ZSy

I forgot my BEGIN statement when modifying the processing IF clause

rene

@Magisch accepted ;)

Hey, don't be too harsh on yourself

Magisch

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.

Magisch

Although I can't use cursors for work code

rene

13:21

@Michelle lol

Magisch

@rene still execution timeout

rene

hmmmm

Magisch

pastebin.com/Tw3sZkCk

is what it looks like now

using cursor

tripleee

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

Magisch

13:24

Any idea what else might be causing the bad performance?

rene

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

Magisch

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…

rene

@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?

Magisch

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

@rene SEDE

rene

13:32

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

Magisch

Strange that it would not even work for 10 posts

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

rene

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

Magisch

especially because it worked before I added the stripping HTML

@rene anime.SE

rene

@Magisch ok, hold on

Magisch

@Derpy Heh, not like that

Derpy

13:35

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

Magisch

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

am I misusing the cursor

SmokeDetector

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

rene

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

I only needed to change the tmp in the update statement

Magisch

13:51

huh

ffs

Lemme clean this stuff up

Elias

@SmokeDetector wut

user315433

14:07

!!/wut

SmokeDetector

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

user315433

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

Magisch

@rene I swear I managed to break it again

rene

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

Magisch

@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)

rene

14:11

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?

Magisch

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

rene

@Magisch mark everything as a comment

/* all your text here */

Magisch

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

rene

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

Magisch

14:27

@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 );

rene

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

Elias

14:56

Is this comment considered rude..?

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

Magisch

@rene nice.

Yeah I'm still a noob in tsql

rene

15:16

@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.

Adam Lear

@Derpy Seems legit!

Magisch

@AdamLear Hey my email was nothing like that :/

Adam Lear

I haven't read it yet :)

Magisch

I wonder though

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

Adam Lear

15:32

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..."

Magisch

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

Adam Lear

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.

Magisch

sounds unpleasant

Adam Lear

@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.

Magisch

Alright

canon

15:50

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

Adam Lear

perfect

rene

\o/

Feeds

16:08

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

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 …

Magisch

I just today learned about cursors in tsql

I have to rewrite a couple of awful procedures it seems

Elias

16:59

oh, the same drama on MSO

rene

@Elias need moar popcorn

Oded

@Magisch avoid cursors.

Shame you ever learned about them.

rene

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

and blame me. I told him so ...

Magisch

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

Oded

Sure, but avoid cursors.

Magisch

17:02

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

Oded

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

Magisch

@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

rene

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

Magisch

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

Oded

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

Magisch

17:05

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

Oded

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

Magisch

That's what I'm using where possible

but possible it is not always

Oded

:shrug:

Magisch

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

Oded

Windowing functions are also a great friend.

Magisch

17:06

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

Oded

Better you than me ;)

Magisch

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

:D

slight calc error there

Oded

Possibly. But I doubt it would be that much.

Magisch

Actually the math was off by a bit

hold on

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

Oded

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

Magisch

17:15

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

Oded

Shouldn't be legal.

Magisch

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

Oded

woooo

Magisch

Beats being on unemployment, though

rene

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

I guess it is ...

rene

18:42

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

Elias

2

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

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...

Magisch

@rene done

rene

@Magisch enjoy the rep ...

Magisch

@rene :o

Elias

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

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

Magisch

18:51

@Elias fixed

Sha Wiz Dow Ard

20:08

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.

Bhargav Rao

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

rene

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

Bhargav Rao

That was one perfect comment there, @mich

user315433

20:14

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

user315433

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

Bhargav Rao

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

rene

@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

20:26

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

Bhargav Rao

@Michelle thanks for digging that up.

Sha Wiz Dow Ard

@Michelle graduated site, 3+ years... this will be a first.

No site was ever closed at such a stage.

If anything, rename it. :)

user202362

Can you use 'community' on apex predators? Or only on herbivores & omnivorous?

user315433

0

A: How much should I charge for my music being used in a film

I PRODUCED A SONG FOR A TOWN CALLED I LOVE NYACK AND IT HAD A HUGE INPACT ON THE THE TOWN… ALSO DID A VIDEO FOR IT WITH GOT ABOUT 50K HITS ON YOUTUBE. A LOCAL CONTACTED ME AND WILL LIKE TO USE THE SONG IN A DOCUMENTRY THAT HE PUT TOGETHER FOR A NEW SKATE PARK THAT WAS BUILT. THE ARTIST IS NOT B...

user315433

Joyous shout

Travis J

21:16

@rene Hah! Got it :P

Magisch

21:30

lel

friend of mine got mad because I told him to go to the hospital

he took 6 paracetamol 500 in one go

Sha Wiz Dow Ard

22:47

@Magisch omg... is he still alive? :/

This week a toddler (think 3 y/o) almost died in Israel after eating 10 painkillers in one go, which were shaped like candies. :<

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