Tavern on the Meta

12:46 AM

@JNat Cross-site spammer: meta.stackexchange.com/users/573515/viet-van

1:15 AM

The 2017 and 2018 "Show off your hats!" Q&As were not closed, what's up wiith closing the 2019 version as: "Off-topic because ... The problem described here can no longer be reproduced."?

Journeyman Geek

1:34 AM

People are grouchy. crochety. Out of sorts. Tired, maybe emotional.

Rob

1:45 AM

and act inconsistently.

Journeyman Geek

Speaking of which

theregister.co.uk/2020/01/02/stack_overflow_settles

5

Rob

It's ironic that one of the early protesters came in 2nd place (after an employee, so 1st place) for the most hats on main Meta.

Journeyman Geek

Not really :D

Rob

I guess that's The Register's clairification that people asked for/about.

Journeyman Geek

Yup

Popped it into the post where folks asked if SO was going to ask for a retraction - though its unclear who initiated it.

Rob

1:59 AM

That clears things up:

Stormblessed

3:51 AM

Just curious, anyone here edit Wikipedia much?

user168476

4:54 AM

@JourneymanGeek I am irrational irritated at their use of "biz" for business in that article.

Journeyman Geek

5:14 AM

@Ash the Reg is hardly a paragon of quality journalism. I mostly read it to see what trainwreck my employer got into next :D

I'd rather not see a familiar name there again tho :/

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

5:27 AM

@Stormblessed I used to

I still pay attention to wide-ranging meta-discussions there, though

Stormblessed

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog oh why'd you stop?

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

Personal reasons

Stormblessed

I'm super active there—lots and lots of minor edits, and ones fixing refs and stuff

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

Let's just say...it's similar to the reasons why I deleted my previous MSE account

Stormblessed

Also I had a bot for a week but someone pointed out a problem with it so it needs to be re-approved

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

5:35 AM

Today, however, I'm not as interested in it.

Stormblessed

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog ah

Journeyman Geek

That battery is dead. It has ceased to be. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. It has kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the Choir Invisible! This...is an EX-battery!!! :-) Take it out, take it to your friendly local auto parts store (saves having to make two trips), buy a good battery (NAPA batteries are pretty decent, IMO - better than Walmart at any rate), put it in, and things should be better. Whether you also have a funky starter isn't something you can diagnose until you've got a good battery in there. — Bob Jarvis - Reinstate Monica 2 days ago

@BobJarvis-ReinstateMonica - NO! It's just pining for a Ford. — Don Branson 2 days ago

Rob

6:50 AM

Updated! (check the end of the original post) The car started, but now what do you guys think I should do? — Christian 2 hours ago

Magisch

8:13 AM

morning

Journeyman Geek

Woof

2

Magisch

subwoof?

Journeyman Geek

8:29 AM

Not in chat it seems 🐶

Magisch

maybe superwoof works in chat

Journeyman Geek

lol

those are html extensions. :D

djsmiley2k in darkness

hmmm

So my work for the planned change on tuesday is done, until then

wtf am I meant to do with myself now :/

Gimby

8:52 AM

Don't know if that is a serious question, but whatever I can suggest will result in people throwing rotten eggs and tomatoes at me ;)

djsmiley2k in darkness

:D

For some reason I read that as toasters.

Gimby

Ouch, I don't know if I prefer people throwing rotten eggs or toasters at me. Or even rotten toasters.

djsmiley2k in darkness

9:10 AM

lol

or toasted eggs?

Gimby

I feel more sorry for the toaster than for me in that scenario.

V2Blast

9:59 AM

@JourneymanGeek Tweet tweet

Tinkeringbell

10:14 AM

CRACKER!

djsmiley2k in darkness

10:30 AM

aurgh today is the day of stupid tickets

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell I'm in favor of getting some crackers

since I am now also a parrot

Tinkeringbell

I just had one for breakfast :)

djsmiley2k in darkness

10:49 AM

@Tinkeringbell you cannible!

Tinkeringbell

Hahaha

djsmiley2k in darkness

Arugh

need to do some work after not doing anything for 3 weeks

How do I do work again?

Magisch

tink would never eat another parrot

Tinkeringbell

step 1: Turn off MSE chat ;)

Magisch

or would she

slowly backs away

Tinkeringbell

10:50 AM

@Magisch Tasted like chicken ;)

Gimby

note to self: do not configure a parrot avatar

Tinkeringbell

@Gimby No, do... JOIN US!

Gimby

11:47 AM

@Tinkeringbell That's exactly what a cannibalistic parrot would say

Tinkeringbell

How do you know? :P You're acting live you met those in real life :P

Magisch

I hear tink is perfectly nice...

ducks

Tinkeringbell

It's all in the name ;)

JAD

@Magisch quack

Journeyman Geek

@Gimby there's a really old joke that people voted for me cause my ava was adorable :D

Magisch

11:53 AM

is it really a joke? I'm sure it helped

some people vote for questions that way, it's not unreasonable to believe a small amount would also do that for mod elections

Gimby

I also vote for adorable questions. I am not specifying if the vote goes up or down though.

M.A.R.

Adorable question

-1

Q: Effect of tear gas and laughing gas together

What will happen if someone uses tear gas, such as CS $(\ce{C10H5ClN2})$ and laughing gas, $\ce{N2O}$, in auditorium? Means will people start laughing and crying together? Or there will be other effect?

toxicity

It's +10/-11

@Magisch The mask behind the evil puppy overlord unveiled

Magisch

@JourneymanGeek It probably also helped in actually carrying out mod duties

first impression is very important and a cute and disarming avatar certainly has positive effects on how people percieve you, which has an effect on how they react to what you write

Gimby

@M.A.R. ... that question is so interesting and so loaded at the same time.

Not really the question itself, I'm more concerned with what is going through the head of the asker :) Much like most of the downvoters, I'll bet.

Journeyman Geek

@M.A.R. Probably death.

painful painful death.

or it'll knock you out, and you choke on your own vomit.

Rob

12:07 PM

The moderator answered in a comment:

I think you should do some research on both classes of chemicals because their colloquial names don't tell the full story. Reformulating this in terms of their pharmacology would be interesting, but right now it's based on a false premise. — jonsca ♦ Feb 28 '15 at 8:09

Journeyman Geek

Laughing gas is an anesthetic

tear gas is an irritant, and even the mild varients are pretty nasty

I got tear gassed for training once.

Rob

Depends upon the dosage.

Journeyman Geek

There's one guy whose job is to basically keep you from clawing your eyes out :D

Magisch

I've admittedly never been tear-gassed or peppersprayed but I know someone who's had both and he said between the two pepper spray to the eyes was less painful

Journeyman Geek

So, teargas kinda feels like you can't breathe

and your entire face is on fire.

Rob

12:14 PM

You'd be no better off if you got hit with Guard Alaska or Frontiersman bear spray.

Journeyman Geek

I'm not a bear :D

Magisch

@JourneymanGeek so you're unbearable?

Journeyman Geek

I've been told that. I think that's a bit ursine.

Magisch

@JourneymanGeek certainly pawsible that it is

M.A.R.

@Rob 👏

djsmiley2k in darkness

12:21 PM

dear lord

Dad joke convention?

Rob

No need for CS or capsicum, just tell those jokes.

djsmiley2k in darkness

I too want to claw my eyes out.

Magisch

@djsmiley2kindarkness puns is 95% of all of my humor

djsmiley2k in darkness

your powers are weak old man

Magisch

when yvette was still around we would get 15-20 long horse pun chains going

old man? I'm 25

djsmiley2k in darkness

12:24 PM

i started feeling old, around 25.

Rob

That's why the long face.

All that horseplay.

neigh

hay now.

are you going to grass on us?

I'd say, get off the high horse (of puns) :D

Magisch

12:39 PM

@JourneymanGeek don't saddle us with that many puns at once

Gimby

@JourneymanGeek who are you? The alfafa dog?

Adrian Mole

Talking about Bear Spray - anyone seen this already: outdooroddities.com/2008/07/23/grizzly-bear-warning-sign

Journeyman Geek

@Gimby Sometimes, when you're feeling a little green...

rene

12:56 PM

@AdrianMole read beer spray ... disappointed ...

JAD

@AdrianMole look at that, food bringing its seasoning along

Gimby

@rene Isn't that just a can that has been shaken?

rene

good point. Yes.

Journeyman Geek

But not stirred

Gimby

now I want to go to a bar and order a beer that is shaken, not stirred and see what happens.

Magisch

1:05 PM

@Gimby they look at you like a dunce and give it to you, presumably

Gimby

It'll be the quest to find the bar where something magisch happens instead.

Feeds

After changing it back and forth several times and consulting with internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch, I settled on "ok" in my book How To, but I'm still on the fence. Maybe I should just switch to "oK."

Gimby

Ack - like a computer geek.

Rob

@Feeds Cat spray! 🐅

terdon

1:28 PM

@Feeds Wow. I don't think I've ever disagreed with an xkcd quite so strongly before! I can live with okay, but ok is just wrong. And spelling can't make you sound anything!

The horror!

Cereal

O.K

Journeyman Geek

@terdon O....k.....

terdon

Sure. Just as long as it isn't (gasp) lower case "ok".

Magisch

I sometimes just write k

Journeyman Geek

o....K.....

Magisch

1:31 PM

when writing very informally

terdon

@JourneymanGeek That just makes you appear like an orangutan with a stutter.

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch I do that a lot

@terdon ook?

terdon

:)

Magisch

o.k.

I acknowledge and validate the statement which I am referring to and explicitly spell this out.

Gimby

@Magisch ack.

M.A.R.

1:33 PM

@terdon Isn't it meant to be tongue-in-cheek?

@Cereal (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Adrian Mole

@terdon AS someone who has recently sponsored a speech-therapy centre for higher primates, I find your remark … ch..chim..challenging.

M.A.R.

chat.stackexchange.com/search?q=owwk&user=&room=

Journeyman Geek

I also go "Aight"

Adrian Mole

BTW, Are we allowed to talk here about stuff happening on a meta site? It seems appropriate, as they're discussing gibberish.

... it's an MSO Q about use of VLQ flags.

Gimby

technically MSO has it's own chat room, but that room is pretty dead.

JAD

1:41 PM

Doesn't look like gibberish to me

it's kinda tricky. VLQ policy is very much site-specific

terdon

Yeah, but this is SO: hundreds of flags a day. And the answer was fine, the only problem was that another answer had already said the same thing.

So a mod probably looked at it, went "huh, looks fine to me, not VLQ at all" and dismissed the flag.

The mod would have no way of knowing the problem was content repetition.

2

A: Same answer to the same question

SO gets several hundred flags a day. SO mods presumably need to go through dozens daily, if not hundreds. So there is very little time to devote to each flag. As a result, when the mod saw your VLQ flag, they must have looked at the answer, saw nothing wrong with it and declined your flag. When ...

Mithical

@M.A.R. How're things

From what I hear, everything is deteriorating fast

..."deteriorating fast" as in "people are freaked out that WW3 just started"

Rather hoping that's an overreaction

Adrian Mole

@JAD I agree, the answer in dispute is not gibberish but, as discussed in the comments over there, I'm not entirely sure how to best flag such an answer. NAN is wrong; VLQ is (seemingly) wrong for SO (gibberish only). So, what...?

JAD

downvote

if anything

Adrian Mole

I'd like to flag it now (it should get gone, for sure) but I'm hesitating ...

JAD

1:49 PM

I think the reality is that SO isn't interested in seeing this flagged in any way, since on its own it's fine (although it could use an edit)

Adrian Mole

Downvote? And lose a whole reputation point! OK for the high-flyers. 😉

terdon

@AdrianMole Flag with a custom flag and explain that it is adding nothing new because this other answer here already covers it.

rene

that ^

@AdrianMole if done correctly you get your rep back once the answer is deleted.

Journeyman Geek

@AdrianMole Its a point.

After a while you care more about the good of the collective over your own rep :D

JAD

exactly, and for each downvote you get a warm and fuzzy feeling inside （￣︶￣）↗

Adrian Mole

2:02 PM

@JourneymanGeek I'm getting there, slowly! I post comments now, more than "rep-farming" answers.

Journeyman Geek

@AdrianMole I don't "rep farm"

I look for stuff I know and just try to share that ;)

terdon

@AdrianMole You have 7k rep! What do you mean "getting there"? o_O

Journeyman Geek

So you find sometimes I'm most answering stuff I'm currently geeking out on

terdon

I thought you had 50 or something if you're thinking about the -1 of a downvote :)

Adrian Mole

But I want 10K rep. And, when (if) I get that, I'll want 20K. 😉

terdon

2:05 PM

Understandable. But downvotes don't really affect your rate of rep acquisition.

Journeyman Geek

@AdrianMole It gets easier when you get 10k. But its not just about the reputation.

Just... use the site

terdon

I mean, at +10 for upvotes, you would need 10 downvotes to match a single upvote on a single answer.

Journeyman Geek

the rest of it handles itself ;)

@terdon +10 for questions :D

terdon

Oh, yeah. Even better!

I'd forgotten about that!

Adrian Mole

Of course not! That's what I meant by "getting there." I'm starting to properly appreciate the value and beauty of SO. Rep's nice, but nice is better.

Journeyman Geek

2:06 PM

Also, past 10k, grinding has less use. Past 30k... er... no point :D

terdon

@JourneymanGeek Eh, it's fun to see triple digits though. I was quite excited when I hit my first 100k on U&L :)

Adrian Mole

... but I've come across folks in my (high-traffic) tags on > 250K who still appear to be rep-farming.

Journeyman Geek

@terdon I guess :D

I mainly wanted the mug ._.

terdon

That too.

Journeyman Geek

alas no more 100k swag :/

Adrian Mole

2:08 PM

... still, that's there life (or, perhaps, it's their entire life?)

Journeyman Geek

I also have a SO mug

Gimby

Surely at 7k+ rep you already have "steady earners", as in questions/answers that keep on getting upvoted over time? Consider those as noise cancellation for your answer downvotes :)

Journeyman Geek

But if Future Hypothetical Mrs Geek is a dev, she gets it :D

If not, she might still :D

Adrian Mole

@Gimby Yeah, I've noticed a few of those, lately. Google hits?

Mithical

@Gimby Eh. Not always.

Sure, you get occasional upvotes now and then, but... rarely, at least for me.

Might be different based on what sites you're active on, though.

JAD

2:16 PM

hmm, quite a bit of my rep on some sites comes from GoT/asoiaf answers. Those don't really farm anymore

Journeyman Geek

@JAD lemme put it this way. I quote B5 :D

(and people ask me what that is. heathens. )

terdon

@JAD Speaking of, could you change troups to troops in your answer here? I don't have the rep to do it and it's too small a fix for a suggested edit.

JAD

@JourneymanGeek uhhhm ㄟ( ▔, ▔ )ㄏ

@terdon done

Journeyman Geek

@JAD Babylon 5

JAD

ah

I recently found the windows + ; key combination, and I'm loving it

Journeyman Geek

2:24 PM

Ah yes,

win period does it too

Magisch

@JourneymanGeek I think I'll never get my last years stuff-a-way swag that never arrived

Journeyman Geek

:/

terdon

@JAD thanks :)

Magisch

understandable but disappointing nonetheless

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch yeah. No more random swag it seems

likewise.

terdon

2:27 PM

@JAD what does it do?

Journeyman Geek

@terdon brings up an emoji and such menu in windows

terdon

oh, ugh

JAD

^

along with ascii-art $￣︶￣*$)

terdon

At least all I see is an inoffensive text-based thing:

JAD

that's the and such part :P

Journeyman Geek

2:29 PM

Also a handy way to type in symbols

M.A.R.

@Mithical Hey

@Mithical Yeah, as they do in every similar situation.

I'm very used to such overreactions

terdon

@JourneymanGeek that's why y'all have been spamming the chat with emojis and their ilk? Bloody Windows!

M.A.R.

As much reverence I have for the national hero and as much grief as I feel in his death.

Journeyman Geek

@terdon phones do that too, actually as part of the autocorrect

terdon

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, but they're phones. You don't expect them to be serious.

M.A.R.

2:32 PM

@terdon You, sir, seem to type M'kay as OK

Journeyman Geek

@terdon so many phonisms crept into PCs :/

126

Q: My PC is not a phone - how do I remove the swipey pre-log in screen from Gnome 3?

I'm currently running centos 7 (the server with gui config) on a VM. I'd like to keep the log in screen, but the 'phone' style pre-login lock screen that requires a swipe to access the main login screen is annoying. Is there any simple way to disable it and go directly to the log in screen?

gnome-shell

M.A.R.

@M.A.R. I dropped an as

terdon

@JourneymanGeek it's because of the horrible and stupid "convergence" idea.

"Ooh, I know, let's make PCs more like phones so they'll have the worse of both worlds! They still don't fit in a pocket, but now they're designed as though they did!"

M.A.R.

Isn't it more like giving in to the whims of the new hippies of this century?

Journeyman Geek

@terdon also gnome

though gnome shell isn't too bad, I actually run it on my download box

terdon

2:38 PM

@JourneymanGeek I stopped using Gnome as soon as they started trying to make it feel like a phone :)

Journeyman Geek

@terdon IIRC work at the time used gnome/centos

terdon

Each platform has its own strengths and weaknesses, so we need UIs that cater to their respective strengths and weaknesses, dammit!

Journeyman Geek

I preferred KDE and ubuntu then

Rubiksmoose

@JourneymanGeek Lol!

Journeyman Geek

@Rubiksmoose a good chunk of our folks went into IT

So statistically - its very possible.

Rubiksmoose

2:40 PM

@JourneymanGeek More laughing because I thought SO was a pun on significant other.

Journeyman Geek

.....

I didn't see that one :D

Rubiksmoose

So it would be your SO's SO mug XD

Journeyman Geek

It would be

M.A.R.

@Rubiksmoose You're mistaking him for Magisch. The pun doesn't immediately induce facepalmitis syndrome

terdon

@Rubiksmoose Although anyone who'd make that pun about your SO's SO would be SO a dirty SO and SO.

2

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Journeyman Geek

2:44 PM

That's slow going :/

M.A.R.

What is is what is not is not is that it it is.

Oh, the "that" version is better

Rubiksmoose

@terdon hahaha

JAD

@terdon does ascii art count as emoji? (✿◠‿◠)

terdon

@JAD no, only as incomprehensible :P

JAD

I'll take it

terdon

2:49 PM

By the way, @JourneymanGeek, I've been trying to get the OP to move this question over to SU but they keep insisting that it's better on AU. shrug. It's about to be closed so you'll be having it soon enough.

But why do people resist help so much?

Journeyman Geek

\o/

Though...

Ubuntu dosen't support exfat out of the box

terdon

@JourneymanGeek No idea. But the OP has presumably done the legwork since they've apparently managed to create something akin to exfat. But when thy finally come to your end, people familiar with both systems should be able to help.

Journeyman Geek

My most recent drive wouldn't get detected

I had to install a fuse driver for it

terdon

Where does one see exfat? Is it the default for some class of external drive?

JAD

@JourneymanGeek but what if it still re-fuses to work?

Journeyman Geek

2:53 PM

Newer bigger external HDDs use that as a default

terdon

Ah, large SD cards. I see.

Journeyman Geek

@JAD I will bite you

@terdon and HDDs, instead of NTFS

since its now an open standard

terdon

@JourneymanGeek Ah, those I tend to immediately format to some Linux thing when I buy them. Although I haven't done so in a while.

JAD

/(ㄒoㄒ)/~~

terdon

Which reminds me. I probably want to upgrade my backup disks... They're getting a bit long in the tooth.

Journeyman Geek

2:55 PM

I got a 5tb disk so I could reorganise my other disks :D

(2.5 inch, though thicker z height, portable 0_0)

terdon

Yeah, I just checked. It's ridiculous how quickly storage prices fall. And regularly.

Journeyman Geek

My linux boxen are strange though

terdon

I've been buying local equivalents of ~100$ disks for the past 10 years, but each time I get something like 4x the storage I got last time :)

Journeyman Geek

I don't actually bother to back em up as much as windows. I can rebuilt everything but my web server trivially

terdon

Yeah, but I have everything on Linux, so...

I don't think I even have a machine with a non-Linux OS installed anymore.

Journeyman Geek

2:57 PM

@terdon I have 1 windows box, and 2 linux boxen active :D

and its easier to stand up a linux box from scratch. IMO

terdon

I have my Liux laptop and a raspberry Pi that serves as a backup and media server with a couple of HDDs attached to it.

@JourneymanGeek Sure, but you still want your files. And also, it kinda depends on how much you've tweaked it.

Journeyman Geek

Actually my last 'build' was just a restore of package lists, and rsyncing stuff over

terdon

I really don't want to go and re-install my Arch system from scratch. I've been tweaking it manually for a few years now.

Journeyman Geek

@terdon I'm a bit of a stickler for roughly standard builds.

And everything is documented.

Lets say my router SSD dies, I order a new one and its all here journeymangeek.com/?p=196

terdon

I don't have anything non-standard. Just various bits and pieces set up. Most of which is documented, but still painful to have to redo.

Journeyman Geek

2:59 PM

(and I test for a total failure :D)

I need to redo that guide next year if ubuntu un-messes up netplan

Feeds

This Week #StackOverflowKnows Parties With Introverts, Perfect Cookie Ratio, and Harmless !-Habits

Medi Madelen Gwosdz on January 03, 2020

Even over the holidays Stack Overflow and the Exchange sites are buzzing with some great questions and answers. In this edition, you can stick to your new year’s resolutions but still think about the perfect cookie, learn how to seat introverts at parties, and explain your last defeat at chess mathematically.

unix.stackexchange.com

Already back on the bad habit, you were aiming to kick for the new year? Well, at least your !-dependence isn’t one you need to worry about.

physics.stackexchange.com …

Journeyman Geek

@terdon oh, At some point I think I can do a oneliner windows software install ._.

that's the plan anyway

(well 2 lines. one line to install chocolatey)

but windows boxen are backed up daily

Linux has has no proper backups. Just the occational rsync

(I need to fix that ._.)

djsmiley2k in darkness

4:38 PM

i have my funky scripts in github

i have my actual backups of documents and all my photos in gdrive, as well as on my server and google photos

my configs from each of my systems go back to my main server, and then upto gdrive too

Mark Amery

@Tinkeringbell FYI, per chat, as far as vaxquis is aware the content you removed from his profile was simply what's visible at web.archive.org/web/20191024153632/https://…. Or vaxquis is lying. Or you're lying.

(Which I think backs up a point I think I made yesterday: if you're going to delete content and mod message over it, you should say in the mod message what the objectionable content was and why it was considered offensive. What's the point of even sending the message if the recipient never gets a chance to know what they've supposedly done wrong?)

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