Tavern on the Meta

M.A.R.

12:59 AM

Opens meta, sees answer starting with 'it's a little complicated' or the variations thereof

What are the chances that the answer is either written by @Mith or @Journey?

- 87.5%

- Yes

Journeyman Geek

@M.A.R. many things are.

Feeds

2:58 AM

The ten-year cancerversary is traditionally the Cursed Artifact Granting Immortality anniversary.

Ryan M

4:07 AM

Oh, I guess I'm not getting a response to why my answer is "S***ty"...for 7 days, at least. you mods are too fast, well done :-)

Catija

4:58 AM

:P

Feeds

5:50 AM

stackoverflow.blog/2020/11/17/…

Shadow 10 Years Wizard

7:14 AM

@Ollie the long lost Golden Monkey! Thanks!

@Ollie let me guess, they howl when there's a full moon? ;)

@Ollie well by the time you got it, it was already ice cold...

Tinkeringbell

Morning...

Anyone here use iPhones? My little bunch of overpriced scrap metal has decided to stop charging... Doesn't seem to be the cable, I've tried several and they all work on other devices yet not the scrap metal.... Right now it's working again, but I wonder if there's something I can do to repair it.

Ryan M

@Tinkeringbell I don't use iPhones myself, but have you checked the port for lint? That's been the most common cause of phones being finicky about charging for me.

Tinkeringbell

Yeah, checked, nothing :/

Ryan M

I assume you've also tried swapping chargers, rebooting the phone, that sort of thing?

Tinkeringbell

Yep...

Like I said, tried several cables.

Ryan M

7:29 AM

Figured if you'd tried the cables thing you'd probably also tried swapping the thing on the other end of the cable, but wanted to be sure

Tinkeringbell

Would've been weird too if it now gets a problem with lint: It used to be somewhere in the bottom of a backpack, but since March I've been working from home and it's basically been lying in a much cleaner spot..

Ryan M

I once resolved a charging issue by, ironically, putting some water in the charging port to clean it out...make sure you have one of the waterproof-rated ones if you do go that route...I also did it with the phone off, with purified water, and made sure it was dry before turning it back on.

Tinkeringbell

@RyanM Yeah, doesn't matter if the cable is plugged into the laptop, apple thingy or a random other one

@RyanM Could always try that and hope it drowns XD.

(I don't like this iPhone. It's for work and has given me nothing but trouble so far)

Ryan M

Heh :-) I'm a (very, very biased) Android user myself

rene

I don't have an iPhone but my Nokia N900 has a buggy webbrowser that takes basically 100% cpu when it goes haywire. That drains the battery rather quickly to an extent that it won't charge either. Maybe your iPhone picked up something similar?

Shadow 10 Years Wizard

7:39 AM

@Tinkeringbell sounds like the internal part in the phone that's responsible to get the electricity is borked, I'm afraid you'll need a lab.

Tinkeringbell

It's... blegh. I don't think I'm biased? Just that I've never had Android phones refusing to charge, or having to manually synchronize their date/time after being turned off for a month, or not sending me a notification if I have a voicemail, or having annoying pop-ups you can't disable permanently...

Shadow 10 Years Wizard

Happened to me couple of times (not with iPhone though), fix was quick and quite cheap.

Tinkeringbell

@Shadow10YearsWizard It's a work phone so I'm not going to pay even 'cheap' for it. If that's the case, work can do and pay for the repairs...

@rene Could be, would be weird. All I use it for is being reachable (phone calls) and 2FA.

Shadow 10 Years Wizard

One of those was futile though, as shortly after that, the chip responsible for WiFi borked big time, causing the whole phone to become useless as it also caused any other method of connection to break, since the OS kept looking for WiFi, and got stuck due to the borked chip. New chip cost almost as much as a new phone, so I didn't fix it.

Ryan M

Yeah, it's possible the port is borked. Genius Bar would be able to check it. Of course, that's not quite as easy as it used to be these days...

Shadow 10 Years Wizard

7:43 AM

@Tinkeringbell from experience, doing it via work can take long days (where you won't have the phone), while doing it yourself can take couple of hours. So you can do it yourself, and ask for a refund from your workplace.

Ryan M

The Lightning port design seems like it should be able to be sturdy (no "tongue" sticking out like a USB-C port has) but I'm not a hardware person at all.

rene

It has been a while I debugged an iPhone/iPad but I believe the tooling you have installed on your PC/laptop does have an option to get the log files, maybe that reveals an issue.

Tinkeringbell

@Shadow10YearsWizard That is assuming I can not live without the scrap metal ;)

@rene Hmm. I shall consider. I'm not fond of allowing the phone access to my PC/laptop, that's one of those annoying notifications I keep having to dismiss because there seems to be no way to just put up a standard action (just charge) when connecting it to a PC.

The way it keeps pushing for that access makes me suspect something about it must be fishy.

rene

Yeah, it would be nice if you could run it from a virtual but I'm not sure if that will fly.

Sonic the K-Day Hedgehog

@Tinkeringbell Did you try a wireless charger?

Tinkeringbell

7:57 AM

@SonictheK-DayHedgehog No. I don't have one.

Sonic the K-Day Hedgehog

That would tell you whether it was simply a problem with the port or with the whole battery/power supply (or also coincidentally the wireless charging coil).

Just a couple weeks ago I had an HP laptop refuse to charge when connected. The problem was that a solder joint had broken off the internal charging port.

Tinkeringbell

Well I don't think my work is going to get me a wireless charger so the point is rather moot.

Sonic the K-Day Hedgehog

Speaking of the laptop, I had actually checked its service manual and determined the cause to be the internal charging cord (the wire that connects the charging port to the system board). I ordered that part myself with the intention of changing it myself, but a bad screw forced me to hand it to a repair technician.

They initially told me that it was a system board fault and that it would need to be changed, but a few hours later called me again and said that they made a mistake when testing and it was in fact a problem with the charging cord, and replaced it.

Several years ago, I resolved a charging problem with an Android phone that used the micro-USB connector by bending its pins upward.

Luuklag

@SonictheK-DayHedgehog I regularly solve a charging problem by removing dust from the charging port ;)

Sonic the K-Day Hedgehog

8:13 AM

@Shadow10YearsWizard That's risky and can result in damaging the device

Luuklag

Well as long as it is your workphone, and you have a personal one as well, missing it for a couple of days would be rather relaxed ;)

Tinkeringbell

@Luuklag I mean, I get called about once a month with that phone... It's not like I gave out the number to everyone XD

I usually tell people to just send me an e-mail. I prefer doing those in bulk at the beginning and end of a day instead of being interrupted halfway through with calls.

Luuklag

@Tinkeringbell I get called all the time, part of the job as a consultant I guess.

Also quite usefull calls for acquiring new contracts etc, so I don't mind that much

I can quickly change between tasks

And if I don't want to be disturbed I just turn my phone off and let my voicemails go to email.

Tinkeringbell

Yeah, sadly I'm a consultant too... not one in charge of new contracts though, so I can just work ;) Switching isn't too hard for me, but I still prefer not to have to :)

Shadow 10 Years Wizard

9:57 AM

@SonictheK-DayHedgehog it won't work for devices not supporting it explicitly.

@SonictheK-DayHedgehog I mean take the phone to lab, pay for the fix, then ask for a refund.

Of course not try to fix hardware ourselves.

random unclear trolling(?)

Tinkeringbell

I'm keeping an eye on it :)

I wish I could say that I'm not used to being up by 3PM though.

Shadow 10 Years Wizard

What for? It's... nonsense.

Can't see any reason to keep it on the site...

My best guess: OP drank too much, or took a wrong pill. :/

Tinkeringbell

@Shadow10YearsWizard If the edits are rolled back, I can r/a delete it :)

Shadow 10 Years Wizard

10:12 AM

@Tinkeringbell you're too kind.... ;)

Sonic the K-Day Hedgehog

10:28 AM

Question closed notifications experiment results and graduation

4

New featured post to pin

tl;dr users now receive inbox notifications when their questions are closed

2

@Tinkeringbell Can you please pin that link?

Shadow 10 Years Wizard

@SonictheK-DayHedgehog do we pin all featured questions?

Guess in such case, userscript can be used... :)

Sonic the K-Day Hedgehog

That's what we've been doing generally for a while

Luuklag

Well it has my star now, so its in the list ;)

The homepage is in the process of being yaakoved again

Shadow 10 Years Wizard

Yup, major feature implemented, with tons of past requests.

Next: notification when a post is deleted?

Luuklag

10:48 AM

0

A: The Many Memes of Meta

Meme: The homepages is beeing Yaakoved Originator: Shadow 10 Years Wizard (here) Cultural height: just now Background: When launching a new feature that has been discussed for years Yaakov Ellis♦ will mark these old questions with the appropriate Status tag. Result is a homepage with loads of red...

Yaakov is really doing his thing today, even marking duplicates with a status tag

this might be the wildest I've ever seen

Tinkeringbell

11:37 AM

Fun update: Just asked the manager where to report malfunctioning phones so someone can take a look and see if they can be repaired... and he's sending me the link to order a new one :/

Nice and wasteful, full of corporate social responsibility I see.

John Dvorak

We live in interesting times. Servicing a phone comes out more expensive than buying a new one. And that's before you factor in the productivity loss from not having a phone.

Theoretically you could juggle two phones, but before the backup phone breaks the main one becomes obsolete, so you might as well stick to the backup phone and save the money fixing a phone you probably won't use anyways.

Tinkeringbell

All it might need is a new battery... I don't know why a big tech company doesn't have a single geek that can just measure things to see if that's the case, switch batteries and be done with it :/ We have plenty of managers?

John Dvorak

If it's one of those newfangled fancy expensive phones, they have specifically been designed so that users couldn't change the battery. Earns them money.

rene

If it is not core business it is expensive yo have someone on the payroll to repair stuff. They do have two mangers to protect any non-core business staff to get hired.

Tinkeringbell

@JohnDvorak It's not exactly new... it's an iPhone though XD

John Dvorak

11:50 AM

well then...

Tinkeringbell

It has screws. I bet I can open it up myself once my brother returns my iFixit kit.

Sonic the K-Day Hedgehog

I replaced the battery in my Nexus 6P. It was a moderately difficult process, not only unscrewing and prying but also heating it up to make the glue easier to come off.

John Dvorak

Here's an idea: honeypot screws. Some screws hold the back cover in place, others void the warranty and brick the device. Which is which differs by device.

Tinkeringbell

@SonictheK-DayHedgehog This one seems easy... youtube.com/watch?v=oB4iG-jFUt4

Sonic the K-Day Hedgehog

I didn't have one of those fancy, overpriced heat guns, and I lived in a college dorm at the time, so I had to borrow a hair dryer from a girl who lived in the same building.

Yaakov Ellis

11:55 AM

@Luuklag I'm honored. I think.

Sonic the K-Day Hedgehog

Aug 28 at 22:15, by Sonic the Masked Werehog

I've saved the battery endurance scores from that time. The old battery scored 1,069, and the new one almost doubled the score to 1,926. (I later upgraded to a Pixel 3a XL and it scores a 5,090)

Aug 28 at 22:14, by Sonic the Masked Werehog

I did end up breaking the glass visor on the back, but it was already broken and I intended to replace it anyway

Tinkeringbell

@JohnDvorak I somehow don't think that'll pass EU regulations :P

John Dvorak

How about magnetic screws that are hidden behind plastic and need a keyed magnetic screwdriver to operate?

Tinkeringbell

Why are you trying to make things difficult like that?

Would be fun though, would give me an excuse to buy another screwdriver

Sonic the K-Day Hedgehog

An overpriced proprietary one

@JohnDvorak Let's not give them ideas...

John Dvorak

12:01 PM

but it makes the phone nicer!

(and three times as expensive, but let's not mention that)

Tinkeringbell

yeah, prices are kinda ridiculous these days... though when I bought my first phone, sometimes you could get more prepaid credit than you'd pay for the entire phone... :|

Sonic the K-Day Hedgehog

Here, it used to be that wireless carriers would advertise an artificially low price for a phone, but it would come with a contract to be locked to that carrier for two years and pay inflated rates, and be subject to a large fee to terminate the contract. Those fell out of favor a few years ago.

Luuklag

@SonictheK-DayHedgehog used to be the same here. They were however legally obligated to remove that lock after 2 years or so.

Sonic the K-Day Hedgehog

@Luuklag Yeah, that's when the contract expired.

Luuklag

12:17 PM

Yeah, but you would have to go into a physical shop, or send your phone to your carrier to have that sorted

Tinkeringbell

Meh, I never used my prepaid phones so much that them being simlocked became a problem. When I got my current one, I got a simlock free one :)

Luuklag

@YaakovEllis Your welcome. I think. ;)

Shadow 10 Years Wizard

12:34 PM

@Luuklag yeah, well, think he always did it, just now with a feature that has dozens of linked questions, it's more visible. ;)

@Luuklag lol, nice! :P

@Tinkeringbell told you... doing it on your own will save lots of time, and you'll keep the same phone. :)

@SonictheK-DayHedgehog used to be like that here for years, until a new Minister of Telecommunication forced them to stop and to take sane prices.

Luuklag

Repost of previously deleted question: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/356746/…

Tinkeringbell

12:49 PM

handled

Luuklag

thx Tink

Tinkeringbell

np

Ollie

2:20 PM

A question:

Why was the Garden of Eden chatroom frozen?

Or is that not...

available?

John Dvorak

That, I don't know. Inactivity?

The hypothesis postulated by user 6232128 , however, is pretty much definitely false though.

It wasn't an autofreeze, but the room was really close to getting autofrozen.

Ollie

2:45 PM

@JohnDvorak Yeah... each message seemed to be posted 3 hrs - 10 days apart.

@JohnDvorak Where?

John Dvorak

@Ollie `meta.stackexchange.com/questions/356755/…

Ollie

3:11 PM

@JNat Cross-site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/19995552/wesley-atwood

again

Spevacus

More of a network troll than a spammer.

Ollie

Two R/A flags in one day. Sheesh.

Tinkeringbell

3:22 PM

Eh, that's rookie numbers.

Ollie

@Tinkeringbell Ehhhh

What's "normal" for you?

Woow.

Spevacus

@Tinkeringbell Think you could ah... apply some more justice?

Thanks :D

Tinkeringbell

@Spevacus Sure! Keep em coming my way for the next 30 minutes ... after that I'm probably having dinner :)

Ollie

That was me! ;)

Spevacus

@Ollie When did you get the power to nuke accounts? ;)

@Tinkeringbell Sure! Smokey's hyperaware now, so the posts themselves should get nuked pretty quickly.

Tinkeringbell

3:26 PM

Cool. I can probably get a list somewhere of accounts that need nuking later then ;)

Spevacus

@Tinkeringbell This one's got an automated suspension, it looks like.

John Dvorak

You can get two RA flags per day just by handing them to Smokey and waiting a bit.

Ollie

@Spevacus It was my spam flag that deleted the post.

I think.

I've got almost 200 now.

John Dvorak

Even quicker if you actually sit in Charcoal a while.

Tinkeringbell

@Spevacus Yep: Remainder of unserved suspension applied to new profile by Community

Spevacus

3:29 PM

@Tinkeringbell Nice.

Ollie

Why not just delete their network profile?

They've shown themselves to be a troll.

Spevacus

Mods cannot do that, only employees can.

Ollie

Oh yeah

That's why I alerted JNat...

Oh well.

Spevacus

3:46 PM

@Tinkeringbell One more, before you shove off for dinner: meta.stackexchange.com/a/356764/622284

\o/

Tinkeringbell

@Spevacus Apparently dinner is postponed...

Spevacus

:(

What's on the menu this evening?

Tinkeringbell

Potatoes, meat, vegetables.. I believe they're called string beans?

Spevacus

Noiceee

@Tink I'm just gonna keep tossing these at you as soon as they appear if that's alright: meta.stackexchange.com/q/356765/622284

Tinkeringbell

yep!

I'll let you know when I gotta go

Spevacus

3:53 PM

Sure thang

user400654

🚽

Spevacus

That one went really quickly...

Tinkeringbell

I'm watching now ;) Done with work

And I still don't have to cook, so.

Okay, ping Geek when you need more ;)

Spevacus

Alrighty, enjoy your food!

CollinB

5:22 PM

E

Tinkeringbell

@Spevacus Too late, I burned my tongue.

Spevacus

I hate how that ruins the next 3 days of dinner as well.

Tinkeringbell

Yeah. Oh well...

I don't think we're having anything good tomorrow so...

Ollie

6:31 PM

Here's something interesting:

I flagged this post by 90 99 after it had been deleted.

A mod-attention flag. The red veil came over the post well before I clicked "Flag", but it still went through, according to my history.

Tinkeringbell

Yep, it's still there. I'm not sure why, but 10k users can mod flag deleted posts IIRC. Maybe because you hadn't refreshed the page yet, you could still raise that flag?

Ollie

I don't know about that. Whenever I (accidentally) try something like that, I get the red error saying, "Post has been deleted, refresh page" blah blah.

Not this time.

I'll see if I can reproduce it if they decide to grace us with their presence again.

Yep, when I hover over the "2 hours ago" in my flag history, there's a one-minute difference in post deletion and the raising of the mod flag.

Ryan M

6:51 PM

Non-10k users can mod-flag deleted posts via various trickery. I've done it by using browser forward/back functionality before. The only checks preventing it are client-side.

Ollie

Oh hello, I've found a possible problem and cracked 8K.

In the review queue help, it says that the First posts review privilege is awarded at 2K.

If so, why don't I have it yet?

And Late Answers. Is this a bug?

Mithical

First Posts and Late Answers are available at 500 rep, no? Just those queues don't exist on Meta.SE.

Ryan M

> Note: The First posts and Late answers queues do not exist on Meta sites.

- meta.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/access-review-queues

Ollie

meta.stackexchange.com/help/review-late-answers

Why would the help page be here on Meta if it didn't exist?

Ryan M

@Ollie Yeah, that line I quoted should probably be copied to that page...

@Ollie same reason this page exists: the help centers are all almost exactly the same

Might be worth bringing up at meta.stackexchange.com/q/356122/165261

Technically past the official feedback period, but seems like the best place to raise it...

Ollie

7:08 PM

I was thinking at the Late Answers post, but yeah...

Or a new post altogether?

Ryan M

Up to you, really, I think. It does apply to both and is past the date they said they were accepting feedback, so a new post might make sense...on the other hand, it'd be in the same place with the other feedback if posted as an answer.

Ollie

Never mind, it's already in here.

Well, I'll be going now

Ta!

Tinkeringbell

o/

Feeds

8:08 PM

The complexities—and rewards—of open sourcing corporate software products

Ryan Donovan on November 17, 2020

Two engineers at Salesforce talk about how they decoupled a complex library from old spaghetti logic, then open sourced that library before Salesforce had a formal process for it.

user400654

🚽

4

rene

11:24 PM

→ 69 messages moved to Chimney

Transcript for