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Journeyman Geek

12:32 AM

@forestdistrustsStackExchange complaining about the blog is welcome on MSE

Initially started cause of spite, but it works well enough :D

@forestdistrustsStackExchange isn't a cubit an old measurement of length?

forest distrusts StackExchange

@JourneymanGeek Dunno, but they meant "qubit".

@JourneymanGeek I complained on MSO. Would that count as cross-posting?

Journeyman Geek

If it was the transcript it might be bad machine transcription

yes it would

If needed, shrug the MSO mods or TPTB can kick it over

forest distrusts StackExchange

@JourneymanGeek Oh, duh that would explain it. Actually I think it's translated by a human, but it still makes sense if the translator wasn't aware of what a qubit is.

Journeyman Geek

yup

I recall they have manually fixed errors in the past

forest distrusts StackExchange

Well a simple misspelling is the least of its problems.

forest distrusts StackExchange

2:44 AM

This is great.

tripleee

5:57 AM

@forestdistrustsStackExchange they did invite feedback and corrections at the end of the episode IIRC; why not go on the podcast?

flag-pls spam returning spammer (Sevenmentor jump page) robotics.stackexchange.com/a/23558

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

6:41 AM

@forestdistrustsStackExchange SO blogs are usually incorrect, nothing new.

They bring external writers, and don't check before they publish.

tripleee

7:07 AM

that's a transcript of the podcast, though, not a third-party blogger

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

hmm I'm not good with accessibility but wonder, if there is background image, will text readers detect and say the image name, or anything at all? @Journeyman @forest I have a feeling one of you, or both, will know? :)

tripleee

(well, the podcast crew is mostly not first-party either; even most of the ones who are affiliated with Stack Overflow don't participate much on the site)

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@tripleee oh oops. Well podcasts are more focused on humor anyway, no? Less on technical details.

@forestdistrustsStackExchange wonder what makes it better than the other memes? Always wonder what makes some memes stick above others and gain eternal reputation. :D

tripleee

I would not consider the Stack Overflow podcast to be a humor podcast, no; but I guess the discussion episodes are more about "look and feel" of the tech landscape than about actual technical accuracy

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@tripleee yeah, that's correct.

So think it should be fine if it's not totally accurate.

IMHO, this whole quantum computing is some black magic that might never really work in the way people expect it to work (e.g. maybe computers will be faster, but not in scales they say they will), but that's something to discuss in other time.

tripleee

7:13 AM

I'm guessing they aired the episode as bait to get someone who actually understands that stuff to get in touch

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@tripleee get in touch for what purpose?

Write actual blog post?

tripleee

yeah, or participate in a future episode to set the record straight

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

hmm that would be smart, actually.

tripleee

but that tactic could easily backfire, as it will likely also attract cranks who claim they understand it, and if you don't, how can you tell the difference?

Ryan M

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar anyone who says quantum computers will make computers faster is either talking about specific algorithms or very confused :-p

Luuklag

7:18 AM

@forestdistrustsStackExchange ah one and a two, someone really knows how binary data works....

Tinkeringbell

@forestdistrustsStackExchange It's also about as old as the ROFL copter :P

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@tripleee same as with COVID, I honestly don't think there's anyone who really understands how it works.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar COVID is simple? It's a virus, it spreads, it makes people sick and dead! :D

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@RyanM well that's the aspect of it hackers waiting for, no? ;)

tripleee

7:48 AM

flag-pls spam returning spammer money.stackexchange.com/q/151257

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

7:58 AM

@JNat when you'll come back from your vacation (hopefully that's what keeping you away ;)) please take care of this cross site spammer. Thanks!

@Luuklag huh, weird. Patient spammer.

@Tinkeringbell lol

tripleee

flag-pls spam returning spammer (previous spam still up, slightly above) parenting.stackexchange.com/a/42659

Luuklag

@tripleee poof

tripleee

the site they link to seems to have a lot of Amazon promotions, presumably where the advertiser gets a cut

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

8:15 AM

$$$

Luuklag

€€€

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

R.I.P stackstatus.net

Operation failed, patient died?

Luuklag

8:32 AM

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar stackstatus.net/history?start=1000-07-01&end=1010-09-30

this is fun, they don't limit the history page in any way

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@Luuklag no that's the new URL, with "www" or whatever voodoo they use, the real URL is dead. And yeah, seen that already when testing the new page this week.

Sad part is the total silence about it, sad and annoying.

Something goes wrong? OK, but say something.

@Luuk anyway that's not under SE control, just how this component works, this is the company behind it. Maybe they have meta? ;)

Hehe, two adjacent advertisement emails, same price, for totally different products:

Top is for kid shoes, bottom is for wine. :P

Luuklag

8:48 AM

expensive wine

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

And yes, I'm weird by subscribing to get ads from companies where I bought in the past, though when they start flooding, I unsubscribe. And magically, don't get flooded with spam. Or maybe Google just got really good anti spam filters.

@Luuklag that's $30 how much bottle of red wine cost in your place?

Huh? Why chat reloaded? Someone changed profile?

Luuklag

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar here one liter of supermarket brand is about 3-4€

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@Luuklag oh but it's not supermarket brand, it's Premium :D

Luuklag

more expensive bottles in supermarket go for 9-15

and anything reasonably prised is usually 6-7

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

That's the actual bottle, admit that it does look like it's worth the money. ;)

Tinkeringbell

8:52 AM

Ehhh... Not really XD

It looks like someone dumped it in between some weeds, the plants/flowers don't look fancy enough!

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

lol

Tinkeringbell

I mean just look at it... this looks like dead Petunia to me:

3

Luuklag

@SmokeDetector f

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar they pick up on the alt text.

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@Tinkeringbell yeah looks like they actually put the bottle on some flowers, instead of using photoshop. :D

@JourneymanGeek there's no alt text as there's no <img> tag, it's a <div> with background image.

The image is the big sprites, they cut to the desired part with CSS.

Journeyman Geek

9:08 AM

ah then no idea

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

So actually showing the image name will be useless as well. hmm...

huh!

57

Q: Is there an equivalent to the "alt" attribute for div elements?

Screenreaders will read whatever string is set to the "alt" attribute. The use of this attribute is specifically for image tags. If I have a div like so: <div id=myCoolDiv tabindex="0"> 2 <div> Is there a way to have a screen reader pickup an attribute to read a string the same way an alt ta...

Journeyman Geek

Also I think @Mithical's done more work on accessibility pokage

Luuklag

hey @JNat is alive and pingable again

Mithical

9:37 AM

@JourneymanGeek Hmmm?

Journeyman Geek

9:49 AM

@Mithical oh you probably know more about stuff like that then me :D

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

10:39 AM

@Luuklag yay!!!!1!!!!!

@JourneymanGeek oh, didn't remember that.

@Mithical SE using background image to show images e.g. in case of deleted user, so wonder if it's against accessibility or something like that.

(as text reader won't show anything at all.)

Anyway, how is this as a pet?

:D

Luuklag

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar thats a pest

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@Luuklag useful pest, they help find people trapped inside fallen buildings.

Like dogs, but smaller so can reach places dogs can't reach.

Project name isn't very original, "Hero Rats". ;)

Huh, and they have Wiki page, of course.

APOPO

APOPO (an acronym for Anti-Persoonsmijnen Ontmijnende Product Ontwikkeling: "Anti-Personnel Landmines Removal Product Development" in English) is a registered Belgian non-governmental organisation and US non-profit which trains southern giant pouched rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis. They call their trained rats 'HeroRATs'. == History == APOPO started as an R&D organization in Belgium in the 1990s, working with the support of research and government grants to develop the concept of Detection Rats Technology. As a pet owner, Bart Weetjens, one of the co-founders, came across an article...

Even @Bart is there ^

Luuklag

so for landmines and TB detection

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

:D

@Luuklag Well I bumped into it while reading article about rescuing from building, so maybe they expand their roles from time to time. ;)

hmm that's weird.... maybe different organization? ndtv.com/world-news/…

I read translation of the above ^

(in our local media)

Luuklag

> Before the rats can be used, the land must first be prepared with special heavy machinery to cut the brush to ground level. Paths must also be cleared by conventional metal detectors at every 2m intervals for the handlers to safely walk on.

so you are trying not to trip mines by using something lightweight to detect them (rats) but first must use a bulldozer to clear the brush?

sounds very efficient indeed

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

10:50 AM

@Luuklag LOL, yeah

Something is off in the logic.

Journeyman Geek

11:01 AM

@Luuklag its special :D

I'd guess they'd clear smaller paths first?

Luuklag

@JourneymanGeek If you want to clear all brush and grass you need to clear a lot

@SmokeDetector k

Mithical

11:32 AM

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar If the background image is purely decorational and does not convey information that's not covered elsewhere on the page, then it's okay to not have alt text. I don't think a screen reader will mention background images, but I'm not certain.

Journeyman Geek

and practically it makes no sense to describe avatars no?

Its not going to be useful to say "User Journeyman Geek Avatar, Dog wearing a hat, dog is grinning"

Luuklag

No, avatars are solely for decorational purposes, unless there is something special about it that is not described in the question itself

Ryan M

@JourneymanGeek Arguably, it might be useful on your profile page. But yeah, not in a usercard.

@Mithical Nitpick: decorational images should have empty alt text, which is distinct from no alt text. The difference being that screen readers (at least in Android apps) will say "Image" if they don't have alt text, because there's no affirmative indication that it should be skipped. That affirmative indication is what setting it to an empty string does.

Mithical

11:50 AM

Correct, I should have specified.

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@Luuklag well, it's a deleted user, how would the viewer know it?

@JourneymanGeek just "User Journeyman Geek Avatar" ;)

Ryan M

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar No, that's useless and annoying. It's purely decorational and the text is already there. Don't flood the user with unnecessary text.

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@RyanM well, our avatars all have alt text already with the display name, what's the difference?

Unless you mean that's noise as well and better be removed?

Ryan M

Yeah, it is noise and should be removed...actually, from a quick test using the TalkBack Android screen reader, it's reading "user avatar" twice.

I'm actually not sure why that's happening.

Mithical

12:07 PM

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar It probably should, actually, although caveat that I'm not an expert on accessibility.

Ryan M

I suspect it has something to do with the fact that both the graphic and the link are ending up with that title: i.stack.imgur.com/2QPDx.png

But I'm not a web accessibility expert, so I'm not 100% sure why that is. The text is just on the image, so my guess is that because the link is interactable, it grabs its child for its text.

Yeah, the first time it reads it off as "user avatar, link, double-tap to activate", then "user avatar, graphic"

anyway, moot point since it should be an empty string.

Mithical

Feel like tossing up a meta post about it?

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@RyanM so go ahead, Meta is awaiting the feature request! :D

However, I think we should suggest alternative, e.g. let the users have short summary about themselves and show this as alt text of the avatar, as the avatar is used to visually identify users, sometimes. Or not? hmm

Mithical

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar No, that belongs in the profile.

If the avatar is the only identifying feature, then the alt text should be the username.

(The only such case that I'm aware of is the /review page.)

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@Mithical but we have the user card for example, that give the basic into.

Ryan M

12:19 PM

the user already has a field for text that appears every time a screen-reader user is going through the page: their display name

Mithical

Hmmm.

Ryan M

@Mithical User avatars are noisy in screen readers

Mithical

thanks

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@RyanM well yes, but for those who can see images, the avatar is adding extra info.

Well, kind of.

Ryan M

I'd contend that it's not actually information :-p

it makes the user more recognizable, but that's about it.

If one wants to be more recognizable to screen reader users, one should pick a more unique display name.

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

12:35 PM

> Shadow Wizard Eating Icecream

Now with COVID pretty much behind us, and soon Russia will end the war (hopefully), can be my next name. :P

And the avatar:

:D

Ryan M

Maybe one day I should write a "You're doing it wrong: how to write useful content descriptions for images" post.

glares at the blog

Mithical

I wrote a short guide meant for posts, but that's not very useful for stuff like avatars.

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@RyanM blog glares back at you

@Mithical heh, still nice.

Ryan M

One of my favorite bad alt texts, paraphrased (and from a vague memory) to protect the guilty party (who were very appreciative about it when contacted privately to tell them why it was wrong): "A picture of $product next to white text on a blue background"

It managed to describe everything about the image except the content.

curious

→ 32 messages moved to Chimney

@RyanM oof.

Mithical

12:50 PM

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar Now I just need SE to implement something similar...

curious

Is there an online repertory of bad alt text somewhere? Seems like something that should be a thing

Ryan M

@curious stackoverflow.blog

I kid. Mostly.

curious

@RyanM '^^

I think "repertory" implied that it gathered from multiple, varied sources :D

Mithical

That page I wrote is linked to whenever someone tries to post an image without alt text. It'll still allow you to post, it just tells you "please consider adding this, see this page for why it's important". My request for something similar on SE has been status-deferred for a while.

Ryan M

Another bad one from the same nameless source as the first one: "A text-based image listing the different ways people can be safe while [using our product]."

Mithical

12:52 PM

@RyanM Ouch.

curious

@RyanM It's not a fictitious example? I can't imagine people would think that's right

Ryan M

@curious That is verbatim from their Twitter account.

(other than the bit in brackets, obviously)

curious

@Mithical Oh my, if this gets implemented to GD.SE, we're going to lose folks ^^ (but I agree with it overall)

Sorry wrong ping

Ryan M

np, I was briefly confused before figuring out what you had meant to do :D

Mithical

@curious Even if it doesn't block posting (which it shouldn't)?

curious

12:58 PM

@Mithical Oh if it doesn't block it would be fine probably.

Ryan M

I was going to pick on the Stack Overflow Twitter account instead, but obviously none of the images there have alt text, so I can't.

curious

Actually, come to think of it, it could even be helpful to make questions better because we get a lot of "How do I recreate this style" type of Qs with a sample image... but if you're forced to break down parts that make up the style in text, you're sort of on your way to finding your solution

Mithical

I occasionally run a data.SE query to find images without descriptions. I failed at keeping Scifi.SE under 10,000 posts, though.

curious

Do you have a link? I'm curious...

Mithical

(Descriptions are time-consuming to write and my time is limited.)

@curious Top 15k posts containing images with no alt text

Ryan M

1:03 PM

...so instead, I'll pick on the blog. This image has the alt text "How have the top ten U.S. metros grown since COVID?" This one is inexplicably "Filter results by Tag ".

And this one, consisting entirely of text, has it set to an empty string.

...I'm not even cherry-picking particularly bad ones, those were the first three I found, selecting somewhat randomly from blog articles.

Mithical

I don't read the blog if it's not relevant to the community, so I don't notice those, but I do report the ones I see to Meta. They eventually fix them (and once in a while they even include proper alt text from the beginning, although it's rare).

curious

@Mithical I removed the 15K (I think)...not sure if it eventually caps but I've got 23K images on GD.SE without descriptions.

Mithical

Yeah. I think I submitted a few descriptions on GD.SE, but gave up because it's too complicated.

Ryan M

IIRC SEDE caps out at 50k results returned, but you could also have it do a count if there were more.

Mithical

(Upon looking, I don't think I wound up actually adding any descriptions on Graphic Design, I looked and decided it was too much of a hassle. :p)

curious

1:09 PM

We get quite a bit of animated gifs as tutorials too...Sometimes they're accompanied with text but possibly not in the alt tag

Ryan M

It's fine if the text is outside the alt text.

It just needs to be somewhere that's not just the image pixels.

curious

but then I guess it would make sense to remove the "enter image description" placeholder? or does that remove on its own? I can imagine someone using a screen reader would get fed up very quickly

Ryan M

Yeah, that should never ever be left there.

Mithical

On the other hand, removing it without adding proper alt text makes it harder to identify posts that need to be edited.

Ryan M

Checking a random Stack Overflow post, it does in fact not remove it on its own.

curious

1:12 PM

Unless you can search for alt=""?

Ryan M

That can be correct, though.

Unlike "enter image description here", which is never correct.

Mithical

@curious There are scenarios where that's proper practice (see above about decorational images).

curious

You're faster than me, I was just writing about decoration :) But Q&A doesn't really lend itself to decoration right

Ryan M

for instance, if your animated GIF is entirely described in text below and there's nothing more to add, you might set the alt text to an empty string.

curious

I mean the surrounding site design would probably have some images that shouldn't have description but whatever is in Q&A... Seems to me like not needing alt text would be pretty rare

Mithical

1:14 PM

I'll sometimes add something like "transcription below" or "description below", but I don't know if that's best practice. I have to look into that.

Ryan M

"purely decorative" includes "entirely described elsewhere"

Mithical

(Is this stuff on topic for User Experience?)

curious

@Mithical I'm sure it should be

They've got accessibility and screen-reader tags

Journeyman Geek

1:36 PM

@RyanM I suspect you still should in some way make it clear what describes the image

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

1:47 PM

@Mithical implement? They can add it in the help center. No?

@RyanM boy or girl?

:D

Anyway glad to see my rant sparked something useful, for a change. :P

Dang my mind has its own autocorrect. lol

I'm writing chance instead of change way too often, and more things like that. :(

Poll: can you access stackstatus.net or not?

I can't it loads for a while then showing error

According to SE staff it should redirect to stackstatus.net but it simply doesn't.

Luuklag

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar this one works for me

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@Luuklag hmm

kicking computer

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar works for me

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

kicking computer again

Mithical

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar Well, yes, that's what I'm referring to, apart from the automated warning.

Journeyman Geek

1:57 PM

speaking of accessibility....

I'm a fan of ASCII art flow chart in answers. Someone pointed out it plays merry hell on screen readers

._.

I probably need to change my workflow there

Luuklag

@JourneymanGeek period, underscore, period

Journeyman Geek

That too

Meta Andrew T.

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar took too long to respond (6 seconds only!)

Journeyman Geek

that's even harder lol, I do a lot of colon small p and claret claret

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@Luuklag lol

Journeyman Geek

2:00 PM

but in chat, I know who I am talking to now

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@JourneymanGeek small p is big problem.

:P

Journeyman Geek

posts are more meant for ever

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

I'm using big p.

Wonder about emojis, do screen readers "translate" them as well?

Journeyman Geek

also I have no idea how to usefully describe a small flow chart let alone a large one

tbh, if there's a free or cheap screeenreader I feel like running an instance and letting people test is a nice thing

something like those websites that do browser compat testing

Meta Andrew T.

now 21 seconds. better... or, actually, worse...

Journeyman Geek

2:03 PM

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar in theory the emojis have standard names

Meta Andrew T.

@MetaAndrewT. read: I also can't open stackstatus.net

Journeyman Geek

@MetaAndrewT. might be worth a bug report on meta if its giving issues

Meta Andrew T.

Wait, I thought I couldn't open Stack Status (www.stackstatus.net), but apparently I could. The issue is on the redirection from stackstatus.net to www.stackstatus.net ...

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@JourneymanGeek names? So text reader has some mapping?

Journeyman Geek

no idea

Luuklag

2:09 PM

@MetaAndrewT. works fine for me

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@MetaAndrewT. yay! taking one kick back

Journeyman Geek

but emoji have names and could be identifable from those

Luuklag

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar probably unicode names for the emojis

Meta Andrew T.

> We will be updating the DNS record for https://stackstatus.net

Journeyman Geek

twitter does this neat thing where it alt-texts emoji

Meta Andrew T.

2:09 PM

It was added yesterday, but I know DNS propagation may take long time...

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@JourneymanGeek think it's using images for them, let me check...

Yup. SVG. e.g. abs-0.twimg.com/emoji/v2/svg/1f61c.svg

So that does not count, same way that imgur does not use gif anymore.

It's converting it to something else, their own format or something.

Meta Andrew T.

looks like not yet propagated worldwide, so, not a real issue: whatsmydns.net/#A/stackstatus.net

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

ohh wait

It's cache.

If I open stackstatus.net in Incognito mode it works just fine.

So it's some browser cache.

@Meta can you try as well to confirm?

Meta Andrew T.

@ShadowWizardSaysNoMoreWar repro'd

Shadow Wizard Says No More War

@MetaAndrewT. so anything SE can do?

Meta Andrew T.

2:18 PM

1033

Q: How to clear/flush the DNS cache in Google Chrome?

As you probably know Google Chrome has its own internal DNS cache. Is there a way to clear it without having to wait for the time out or close the browser?