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6:17 AM
27 messages moved to Chimney
 
1 hour later…
7:17 AM
@SmokeDetector f
 
1 hour later…
8:22 AM
@SmokeDetector f
@SmokeDetector f
@SmokeDetector f
Can people please stop using Smokey to report low quality posts? It should be used to report spam or offensive posts. That's it.
@SmokeDetector why
...
Rob
Rob
8:37 AM
A few people seem OK at first, but consistently do things counter to FAQs / usage instructions; it's after a consistent pattern of unexplained (unexplainable) behavior that your first impressions and benefit of the doubt change - worse that they have socks (or supporters) that defend them out of hand, like you once did. It's only after that ends that they become an outcast.
@Rob so Smokey handles posts of three groups: 1) Spam, 2) Offensive, and 3) Trolls. That can make sense, but not sure if we should use it for 3) as the trolls can see this and it might fuel them.
Rob
Rob
#2 is subject to: charcoal-se.org/smokey/…
#3 needs a record of previous behavior; spam seeds, editing in grace period, etc. The troll potential is watched / BL'd users who later post innocent sounding posts (legit Q&As); there's DB you can query names to see a user names past record,but two similar names aren't necessarily the same person.
@Rob talking in general, especially about Smokey auto detection which is its greatest advantage.
Since it can't auto detect trolls (yet?), using the manual report to report them is fine, in a way, but also not feeling 100% comfortable with it.
Rob
Rob
The person reporting needs to be correct.
Back in 10
8:55 AM
@Rob seconds? Minutes? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Years? Decades? Centuries?
@Rob of course, and I trust they are, or if not out of honest mistake. Still, since it can only fuel the troll, I'd avoid it.
@SmokeDetector k
Finally some actual raw spam. :D
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard Post and user nuked :)
@DavidPostill thanks!
Rob
Rob
9:13 AM
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard You make it sound of lesser quality than this:
Jun 13 at 8:21, by Shadow The Vaccinated Wizard
And that's pure, raw, spam.
It was not pure.
πŸ˜€
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard Seconds and minutes are a measure of degrees, it's meters:
May 1 '19 at 13:56, by Shadow Wizard
@Rob 10 meters?! :D
9:36 AM
@Rob "actual" and "pure" are similar enough. ;)
@Rob whoa that's long. taking a distance of 10 meters away
:D
!!/coffee Cole
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard brews a cup of Ristretto for @Cole
Is pure trash... pure?
morning!
Ola!
10:04 AM
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard Thanks -- just what I need this morning.
10:18 AM
@ColeValleyGirl my pleasure. So, how are you? :)
@MetaAndrewT. no, it's raw. :D
Raw-R
You know I'm having a bad day when I start lurking in various chat rooms...
@ColeValleyGirl lol yeah
Don't we all xD
My day is not bad but it's 35 degrees
10:29 AM
@M.A.R. I'd consider that bad
@SmokeDetector why
@SmokeDetector f
10:48 AM
only one more
So.. should I ask on SuperUser or on Pets about how to stop my cat from shutting my PC down with one paw? Or maybe even DIY...
11:07 AM
@ColeValleyGirl get rid of the paw?
@Luuklag Would still leave 7 others. (Two cats).
Do we have a DIY amputation site?
@ColeValleyGirl Lifehacks might also fit, with answer like "Attach a sponge to the cat's legs". :D
@SmokeDetector f
@SmokeDetector k
@Luuklag k
@Luuklag f
:P
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard f
11:09 AM
@ColeValleyGirl Sounds like a Pets thing to me: How to keep the cat away from stuff they're not supposed to touch?
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard k
@Tinkeringbell I say electric fence
@Luuklag yeah, that's my first thought too... I might need one once my apartment finishes. There already are neighborhood cats using the building site as their toilet at this point :|
Or a SU question. How to prevent my computer from shutting off when the power button is pressed?
@Tinkeringbell That's a lost battle -- when the weather is cold, the top of the PC is a battleground between them both vying for the warmest spot in the study, and I'm not keen to start spraying water around near expensive electronics. And I can't shut them out because they've mastered 0pening every door in the house (except ones that have locks/bolts).
@Luuklag Yeah, there's two different questions there. But the cats are only on-topic on Pets, and the power button function only on SU ;)
11:11 AM
@Tinkeringbell you could put in such an annoying sound machine. But chances are people like me pull them from the ground if they go off when I walk bye
@Luuklag That's where I think I'm heading. Once I've crafted something that won't get shot down in flames. Which (as usual on sites I don't use often) will take me some time and angst.
Another great question would be: How do I stop my roomba frim eating my shoes? -_-
@Luuklag Why would you do that?
@Tinkeringbell cause the sound hurts my ears
Ah yeah.
11:13 AM
And it shouldnt bother me when I walk on the sideqalk
How do I stop roomba from gulping my question ;_;
@ColeValleyGirl You need a molly guard :D
@ColeValleyGirl tou could also put spikes on top of your PC. Like city's do to deter homeless people from dry and warm places
So I do -- that's a new one to me.
@ColeValleyGirl In your shoes? Unplug the power button and replace it with a remote controlled switch
But I'm a crazy person who enjoys working on computers
11:16 AM
@Luuklag Debatable :P
easier solution? Tape a card over your power button so you need to lift it to press a button
Or put it in a place the cats won't sit on it. On the side or something.
@Luuklag I abhor those -- they're a cheap way of moving a problem elsewhere instead of solving it by, you know, actually helping the people.
But I know the feeling, my neighbors used to have one (motion triggered) at a time and I would go crazy when sitting outside, and my parents couldn't hear it :|
@JourneymanGeek Me too -- might look into that.
11:17 AM
That would be my prefered solution as well, but that isn't cheap and instant ofcourse. So it doesnt fly in politics.
@JourneymanGeek I have a tape-eating cat. No seriously -- any package that comes into the house, I have to lock away or remove all the sticky tape. One visit to the vet to extract tape from his throat is enough for me.
And your wallet probably ;)
@ColeValleyGirl Yes and no. If there's no actual help out there, they are abhorrent. I have seen documentaries/short stories on TV where people actually refused to use the help out there? In that case I think it's not too bad to try and make refusing help a little bit more unattractive :|
@ColeValleyGirl Cats are so weird... I'm definitely not a cat person, and if I could do anything to get cats to stay out of what will be my future yard now, I would.
But I guess it's just digging up poop before I can go and have an actual garden :(
11:20 AM
I kinda miss one of my local kitties
Friendly little thing
I mean, to be fair: I like cats inside other people's houses. I'll take a visit to a friend and a fat lap cat to pet while talking at any time. Just not anything else :P
It's like liking kids, but only when they're not your own, and only for an hour or so at a time XD
@Tinkeringbell lol she had a territory OUTSIDE my nehbourhood
would occationally ask to be lifted up onto a ledge or just get petted :D
Out local 'RC (think political party office)'s head's wife hates cats
So we got rid of most of the cats except the 2 useless ones...
and we have rats instead
O.o That sounds like a bad decision...
@Tinkeringbell During the first wave of Covid way back in history :) there was a concentrated effort here in the UK to get people off the streets and into hotels or something better. It worked, and acted as a gateway to longer term solutions for an awful lot of the homeless. Some couldn't cope with e.g. no smoking/drinking/dogs restrictions, and so fell back to the streets, but it demonstrated what is possible with some political will. Now, of course, 'the necessity is passed'. Hah.
I'd favour a 'housing first' approach -- get people off the streets even in they have addictions -- easier to address the addictions once they're warm and safe and fed; and if they never manage to break the habit, it's still best all around.
@ColeValleyGirl Yeah, I think the Netherlands had something similar, with more sleeping accommodations for homeless people than usual. I heard mostly migrant workers benefited from that immensely, since most of their contracts still include work + housing and if work stops, the housing stops too.
11:26 AM
@Tinkeringbell I know what you mean. My catrs are indoor cats, but there are plenty hereabouts that use my garden as their toilet. Although the foxes are an even bigger problem in that regard.
and if they can't break their habit, force them to stay in the hotel by any means necessary?
@Tinkeringbell I'm a big cheerleader for indoor cats. They can be very happy with a little bit of effort (even if they were used to going outside); they live longer and healthier lives; and the local wildlife -- birds chiefly -- benefit as well. Downside? Litter tray -- but I once wrote an essay on Pets on chooseing cat litter :)
Oh wow, I wen't to check on this answer by Yaakov, and now spot the OP being temporary banned: meta.stackexchange.com/a/366594/361484
@ColeValleyGirl Same here, but don't have them on your balcony, ours fell down 3 stories
That was an expensive surgery to put that leg back together
Cat poop is dangerous stuff, due to toxoplasmosis.
11:33 AM
@PM2Ring Same goes for dog's who poop in pastures
@PM2Ring umm isn't any poop dangerous?
I don't think human poop is healthy to consume.
2
@Luuklag Correlation doesn't mean causation ;)
That said, Israel might be on the verge of new COVID outbreak, due to some variant that infect vaccinated people. :(
@Tinkeringbell True, but I had a gut fealing already, as the tone of their comments wasnt very friendly
@Luuklag My mother (the original cat lady, who couldn't refuse a cat sanctuary if it turned up on her doorstep) had a story about that. Merlin (one of her cats) went out one day and brough home another male kitten (even her cats knew she was a soft touch).
11:34 AM
@ColeValleyGirl Yeah. I'm basically a big fan of keeping any kind of pet indoors. And if can't be kept indoors it shouldn't really be a pet, at least not in an urban environment (don't care about people owning farms and having a pet sheep)...
Condi grew up to be a nutcase. They were all indoor-outdoor cats but on one occasion she had to shut them all in the house because of some commotion outside. He decided to jump out of a first floor window. And broke both front legs. Cue expensive surgery and two plaster casts and a long time of enforced lock-in. So he deciced to jump out of them same window again. And broke the same (plastered) legs. As I said, a nutcase.
@ColeValleyGirl That was the end of that cat?
Ours only broke one leg, and has some metal pins in it still.
He had to be in a small crate for several weeks
@Luuklag Nope. More surgery (my Mum was also a nutcase and I ended up paying for it) and Condi died of old age 15 years later.
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard Sure, all poop can contain bad micro-organisms, but toxoplasmosis is "special". From the linked article: "The parasite is known to reproduce sexually only in the cat family. However, it can infect most types of warm-blooded animals, including humans."
@PM2Ring Yeah. People who have heart transplants are not allowed to change litter trays. I anticipate a lively discussion in a month or so with the transplant team about whether keeping indoor cats and living on my own is a blocker to going on the transplant list. I will probably lie and say somebody else changes their tray. To be honest, living alone is also a red flag for them...
11:40 AM
wait, why?
@PM2Ring And it can also modify the behaviour of mice to make them more fearless. Which is a pretty useful thing for cats.
Right.
@ColeValleyGirl Wow, sounds like your in for a ride
@JohnDvorak Immunosuppressants for life, in the case of taxoplasmosis. Living alone? Statistical evidence suggests solitatry transplant recipients don't live that long. The centre I'm dealing with do 20-25 transplants a year and choose to target them at the statistically most likely to survive and thrive.
Yay for boosting your numbers :/
11:44 AM
@Luuklag also hearts are kinda an uncommon resource
@Luuklag I might get told No for other reasons -- there's a Goldilocks zone (healthy enough to survive versus too health to need it yet), and an age limit (also statistically determined). If I pass 65, I'm off the list, so I've only a 2 year window, and I'm coping right now.
@JourneymanGeek yeah true.
@ColeValleyGirl wow, I get why there are these rules, but they sounds awfully harsh when you get to deal with them
With my emotional head on I'm all me-me-me, but then I think thst somebody else might benefit more and start wavering.
But it won't be my decision, which is definetly a good thing.
hi
I feel dirty. I wrote VBScript program, about 6-8 years (literally!!) after touching VBScript previously. :D
11:59 AM
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard VBscript has some resemblance with VBA right?
Was amazed I remembered by heart stuff like Option Explicit and Redim Preserve. ;)
But forgot about FileSystemObject, had to Google.
Goal was to iterate files in a folder, and extract part of their names into a text file.
Yeah these all sounds familiar
(for SQL query, actually.)
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard That is something really off the shelve
I have dozens of such loops in existing code
Usually to aggregate gazillions of xlsx files
@Luuklag only the VB part, yeah. (i.e. the syntax ;))
@Luuklag hehe, nice.
I had whole folder with dozens of .vbs files for all kinds of stuff.
Think the top was .vbs that writes other .vbs that actually do something. :D
12:02 PM
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard yeah you just skip the application, and output a file directly right?
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard Yeah that is great stuff. I have some VBA to write BAT files that can then get executed
@Luuklag not sure what you mean but yeah, I don't use any IDE or compilation, so it's the fastest way to write and execute something. :)
@Luuklag lol
epic
awesome
so nice
epic
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard is there a post about burninating ?
ah there is
It wasn't tagged with burn-request, so didn't find it
12:12 PM
@Luuklag yeah linked to it in the reply.
@Luuklag added now too. :)
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard post already nuked
Braiam is too eager on tag removal.
He removes tags that nobody asked to burninate on his own.
@Braiam please stop removing tags that are not supposed to be removed. Thanks.
3
I agree about , it should be removed, but you keep removing useful tags. So please, don't.
Well that request does seem to have community support for the moment. The speed at which it's being removed is mildly concerning, though, but it's not like it's a great tag in the first place.
The collateral tags being removed from posts isn't ideal, though, I agree with that.
@Spevacus again, I'm supporting removing the text tag, but not tags like .
12:26 PM
So deciding on your own to just remove useful tags is bad.
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard We've had a couple of instances where trolls accessed Charcoal HQ, at which point the public discussion of them/reporting of their posts with any additional commentary was halted. To be fair, though, those users posted much more abusive content than the one Ryan M just reported in the case that brought this up. So to address this concern, I'd say that the CHQ folks do try to keep anything that could egg the troll on to a minimum when reporting their content,
but this particular case needed some degree of explanation to reach the "Yeah this is a troll" conclusion as it wasn't immediately apparent (at least to me).
12:44 PM
@Spevacus yeah, fair enough.
@Tink can you please unfreeze our room again? Thanks!
If I can find it XD
1580
(and this time I checked it's the correct one ;))
Ooh, fancy private room.
Hahaha. But it has a point: Maybe next time a mod-only flag might work on this chat server. ;-)
Since that wouldn't be annoying a whole network worth of mods ;)
12:50 PM
The benefits of Meta being on its own chat server. :)
@Tinkeringbell or just a code, e.g. "@Tink 1580" and you'll know what it's about, without making too much noise for others? ;)
Nah, flags work best :)
Makes less people suspicious or curious ;)
You can flag messages in frozen rooms, right? Though I suppose even if you can't, you can just point to the room in the message.
Dunno, for me flags feels like last resort.
Oh, you can't flag messages in frozen rooms.
12:58 PM
Huh? I regularly see flags on chat.se asking to unfreeze rooms...
@Spevacus well can flag my own messages, no?
@Tinkeringbell not from me, but if you say that's the proper channel... might do it. ;)
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard For this room, it is :)
On chat.se things might be a bit different because everyone sees the flag and might wonder why you want it unfrozen and stuff... but again, asking a mod to unfreeze a room in a chat flag isn't necessarily 'not done'.
40
A: How do I unfreeze a frozen chat room?

Michael MrozekRoom owners can't unfreeze a room; you need a moderator to do it. You could mod flag something and ask that way, or drop a request into the The Assembly room. Said moderator would then do so from the "access" tab of the room's overview page (accessed via the "info" link).

Not sure what The Assembly room is, but I'm never there :P
Oh nvm you CAN
I just didn't join the room >_>
1:30 PM
whoa!!!
MSE Yaakoved again.
Big time. :P
Just to keep in the Shelves of History.
@SmokeDetector k
2:01 PM
Ryan Donovan on June 21, 2021
Open source won. Now, the OSS way of working is making inroads into new territories: the corporate engineering department.
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard I feel that its more housekeeping then really fixing stuff ;)
2:21 PM
do they mean... bringing version control to corps? or actual OSS
@Luuklag meh, final result is what matters: many bumps with . ;)
@SmokeDetector k
yeah, just vc. boring
2:55 PM
Is the beta «Stack editor» only a test and see, or planned to be implemented? Tested it for a few seconds, but ouch. Nope :D
3:44 PM
@user3342816 it is live on Stack Overflow for Teams, so yes, coming to you on a site near you in 6 to 8 weeks.
3:57 PM
25 messages moved to Chimney
Rob
Rob
4:13 PM
@rene But the one on Teams has far fewer bugs, if any; while the 4 months old Alpha test Editor has 116 Feedbacks on it, though many have been fixed. Still, I feel it could have been introduced with far fewer problems; so it would be better received, rather than disabled by many users.
4:37 PM
@Rob yeah, that is probably right.
I'm... really confused about why microcomputing matches with retrocomputing at all.
I'm under the impression that retrocomputing is using really old systems that are past end of life... whereas microcomputing is just ... current but not-widely-used systems?
They seem opposite of each other.
that would be my take on it as well, unless they meant a mini computer vs a mainframe?
5:22 PM
modern microcomputers have about the same performance as beefy machines of the past, so you'd use much the same type of techniques when programming each
That is, assembly in an oddball architecture, or if you're really lucky, c
modern microcomputers might be better behaved in some senses (flat memory model, 8-bit bytes, not-too-experimental ISA, a display API that isn't the accumulation of four generations with wildly different capabilities while maintaining full backward compatibility), so no-std rust might be able to compile for them. Standard library though? Too big. Java? Maybe a limited edition if it's a credit card or an old cellphone. Java SE? Nah.
If you're less lucky, you'll - even today - be asked to send data over a four-bit bus and relying on software loops to generate the correct baud rate on a uarch that doesn't have a hardware multiplier or bigger than 8-bit registers.
user728672
5:52 PM
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard It didn't think a bunch of emoji that were cut and pasted during a troubleshoot was deserving of a star. But I see they are both gone now.
user728672
@rene I actually got a chance to see what an 'outsider' sees when a discussion is sent into chat so it seems I had no real reason to be concerned about room titles.
6:18 PM
🚽
6:53 PM
Why does this chat like 🚽 so much?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
it started out as a quick summary of the blog articles that Feeds feeds us
it started in js chat
Rob
Rob
7:39 PM
@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard That's why he's not made an appearance here for 70 days. :βˆ†
🐸
8:06 PM
lol
[sleep]
[status]
status-lol
8:29 PM
There really needs to be a way to edit posts without bumping them.
I had an edit suggestion which fixed a nasty grammatical error rejected because it would have bumped an old post. We need something akin to sage on the chans.
@forestdistrustsStackExchange Delete > edit > undelete doesn't bump (but it does appear in the timeline and the OP gets notified)
@DavidPostill Not like as a 1.4k user I can delete a 10 year old question with highly-voted answers. :P
some things just don't need to be fixed
I think this does, since many improvements for posts are unable to be made due to it.
I often see minor mistakes in old posts (sometimes even my own old posts) that I wish to change, but which can't be changed all at once because it would flood the homepage.
(Obviously it'd need to be a 1k privilege or something to prevent spammers from editing spam into old posts without bumping them)
8:48 PM
right, but
what does fixing a mistake, on an old post, noone views anymore... do
Old posts aren't dead posts. Many of them are regularly viewed and linked to.
Often they're canonical posts that are used as a common dupe target.
such posts rarely go 10 years without an edit or new answer
True.
But if I have a trivial edit for a post that was last modified 5 years ago (even if posted 11 years ago), it's irritating to be unable to edit it without bumping it.
you could just not
fix it the next time it gets bumped
Which results in fewer fixed posts.
8:52 PM
if it's clearly a problem, someone will fix it when it needs to be
if they don't... then i guess it wasn't a problem, πŸ˜‰
You say on the JS chat that everyone considers half-broken that all the devs are too scared to fix. :D
i'd rather them not fix it, as them fixing things more often than not leads to the extensions i rely on (that aren't getting updated) breaking
Honestly in the case of SE chat, I agree with you.
8:57 PM
At least on the main site the extensions i use do get updated, but for chat... not so much
the maintainer left SO after the room was battered by the welcome wagon
eh, ancient history
Trivial example:
11
A: What are tacts in the context of ZX Spectrum systems?

lvdThe word "Ρ‚Π°ΠΊΡ‚" is routinely used in russian to denote exactly "clock cycle" in digital electronics. It always was and still is heavily used in the russian ZX scene in the same meaning (e.g. counting clock cycles of Z80 CPU, etc.) and sometimes was (and is) leaking to the english texts written b...

"russian" should be "Russian". But I don't want to bump a post for something that trivial. :P
Rob
Rob
9:13 PM
No rushing to fix that.
No rushin' to fix it? ;)
just put in the to do later box
My box is stack based and I set my mental RLIMIT_STACK too low. :(
(if you follow such posts, you'll get a notification later when something happens to it)
Rob
Rob
9:17 PM
Staring it will show in your bookmarks next time it's updated.
Jinx
@SmokeDetector n
9:33 PM
I'm sure we've all thought about what happens when a candidate nominates themselves for an SE election at the last minute, meaning that any comments/questions on their nomination may not be answered (or even seen by anyone!) if the election starts only 1 hour later (since all comments get deleted). Shog said here: "I wouldn't mind seeing a day set aside between the end of the nomination period and the start of voting for this purpose"
but simply that the current code wasn't configured to allow this (that surely can be changed by developers). I found that answer while looking for a duplicate, because I was considering to ask what people think about allowing some time between the last nomination and the deletion of the comments (i.e. start of voting). I only found 4 results in this search. Does anyone know of any other related questions?
i.e. questions not covered in that search?
9:47 PM
Okay after more searching I learned that we can "switch" between voting and nomination phases (which I've confirmed still works now) but I think it's extremely unlikely that the average user will know how to do this, and also by then it's too late since people have already started voting. I'm more interested in questions about the lack of time between the nomination and voting phases.
Rob
Rob
I've resolved all those considerations, if they don't appoint me I won't work for free; saves me 12*X thousand dollars worth of my time every year.
@Feeds Randall needs to change his website to covidcomics.com.

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