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Feeds

03:13

A hydroelectric dam is also known as a heavy water reactor.

V2Blast

03:42

61

Q: Introducing the Staging Ground, an attempt at improving the first-time asker experience - What was asking your first question like?

Stack Exchange sites are some of the best knowledge resources available. The Stack Exchange network is built on the premise that good questions (asked with a good process behind them) can get good answers. However, it can be pretty daunting for newcomers to get that process right, and current new...

Also, the MSE post about how such a thing might work on the rest of the network:

59

Q: How might the Staging Ground & the new Ask Wizard work on the Stack Exchange network?

We have been working for some time now researching ways to improve the new user onboarding process while also addressing issues with question quality from new question askers. Based on our user research, planning, and testing, we have recently concluded an experiment on Stack Overflow testing a n...

discussion product-discovery asking-questions staging-ground ask-wizard

Feeds

05:43

stackoverflow.blog/2022/12/13/…

Meta Andrew T.

07:17

@Feeds Taking blog tech stacks with Onebox’s balpha

(the grammar is weird...?)

oh, the title has a typo... it should be "Talking" instead of "Taking"

Shadow The Kid Wizard

07:35

@V2Blast oh no. It's bigger than I thought.

Yaakov clearly said they're now working only on that, so stopping work on everything else, that's bad.

Annoying, but well, that's how SE works these days.

Everything is on our radar. We add status-review when we have done our internal triage and have added it to our list of stuff to evaluate. We have a slight delay on that for these items here, as we are concentrating on the Staging Ground release at the moment. So triage (and status labels) will be coming soon. — Yaakov Ellis ♦ Dec 6 at 8:23

See: "we are concentrating on the Staging Ground release at the moment"

That's going to be a very long moment since it's a very big project.

So we can forget about working on the new inbox bugs/requests.

@Feeds no Ryan, no Onebox

@MetaAndrewT. at least it's not "Taking drugs". Autocorrect can make you say weird stuff.

(based on your own most used words. ;))

So Ben using the word "taking" more than "talking", that's legit.

And at least they stopped adding that weird unicode character to the blog titles.

Meta Andrew T.

yeah, the podcast title is correct, the blog title is wrong

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@MetaAndrewT. as usual, yep.

Also, missing link to transcript.

And they now feature the Necromancer badge, next they'll feature Good Question badge, lol.

SPArcheon

10:30

@V2Blast want to bet that at least one hat will required doing something there, making it unobtainable for most established users?

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@SPArcheon hat for something that does not yet exist sounds like something SE might actually do, yes.

They'll call it "Hat from the Future".

SPArcheon

58

Q: Help needed: a call for volunteer reviewers for the Staging Ground beta test

Update The Staging Ground Beta is now live. Thanks to everyone who volunteered to help review. We are no longer accepting reviewers at this time. If you don't have access to the Staging Ground and you can see it, please let us know. The request We will soon open up the Staging Ground, our new as...

discussion product-discovery staging-ground

Shadow The Kid Wizard

February 2023 isn't that far, two months delay for hat is acceptable.

SPArcheon

@ShadowTheKidWizard only for the 50 beta testers obviously.

> "Thee w're not deem'd w'rthy and anon we shall rubbeth salt on t"

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@SPArcheon you took what @Dial is taking?

ou los som etters.

Can still read, but require more effort. Bad for lazy people like me. :P

SPArcheon

10:45

@ShadowTheKidWizard let me try something...

Shadow The Kid Wizard

I know what that will be, zalgo

SPArcheon

> "𝔗𝔥𝔢𝔢 𝔴'𝔯𝔢 𝔫𝔬𝔱 𝔡𝔢𝔢𝔪'𝔡 𝔴'𝔯𝔱𝔥𝔶 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔞𝔫𝔬𝔫 𝔴𝔢 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔩𝔩 𝔯𝔲𝔟𝔟𝔢𝔱𝔥 𝔰𝔞𝔩𝔱 𝔬𝔫 𝔱"

Shadow The Kid Wizard

And yes, that's much worse.

If dropping letters, at least do it with sensible font. I'm not even trying to read that fancy font/unicode.

SPArcheon

@ShadowTheKidWizard Legends hast it, @JourneymanGeek really loves this font

Shadow The Kid Wizard

envisioning @SPA's toes being munched slowly and painfully

...and another ChatGPT evangelist on MSE not giving up, which is impressive.

SPArcheon

10:51

@ShadowTheKidWizard could be worse....

Shadow The Kid Wizard

Even after -50, still trying to persuade us how awesome ChatGPT is, and that we should allow people to use it to post answers anywhere.

It's amazing how people miss the word "CHAT" in ChatGPT.

It's meant only for casual chat. That is it.

SPArcheon

Oct 19 at 14:34, by SPArcheon

Given the mess they had with the image posting bots in the past (and those were user-choosen pictures) I bet they will be enthusiast at the idea of a bot that generates pictures based on an user description.... right, @JNat?

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowTheKidWizard Ah. So only for IPS then.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@SPArcheon there has been worse cases, mainly people posting ChatGPT generated answers on the ban ChatGPT posts, luckily all deleted, most also suspended.

Tinkeringbell

(and no, that's not a recommendation XD)

Shadow The Kid Wizard

10:54

@Tinkeringbell lol

SPArcheon

@ShadowTheKidWizard No, I meant that ChatGPT isn't the worse thing that could happen.

tripleee

flag-pls spam physics.stackexchange.com/questions/410307/…

SPArcheon

First, they could try using some novel generation tool like AIDungeon or NovelAI.

Journeyman Geek

@SPArcheon .-.

SPArcheon

Second... at least you have AI generated answers.

Just imagine if they had a way to have AI generated avatars.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

10:57

@SPArcheon it is, for few more days. Until people forget about it.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheKidWizard likely it will either slow to a trickle or be integrated into spambots

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@tripleee already flagged :/

@SPArcheon dunno about AI but many avatars are generated online with services.

SPArcheon

@ShadowTheKidWizard I know, but... I was more thinking about the mess with the anime room "maid" chat bots.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@JourneymanGeek yup x 2

Journeyman Geek

Though there's one good argument there, the use of such tools to fix posts

Shadow The Kid Wizard

10:59

@SPArcheon how is it related to user avatars?

Journeyman Geek

That's to say fix language and semantics, as opposed to content and context

But that would be a more specialized tool

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@JourneymanGeek will still need human review so useless. Will make people waste more time.

SPArcheon

Ask JNat. They had their fair share of issues back when they were running because people would have them post not-so-safe pictures. Now, figure what would happen if a bot would just post the result of a stable diffusion prompt here. And now, imagine if users avatar on the network were generated from a prompt too.

I didn't mean "generate an avatar, upload here", I was talking about a "what-if" scenario where Stack had the horrible idea of generating avatars on the fly based on the user prompt.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

I really can't see any problem there, and like any improper avatar, mods can trivially reset it when seeing it or someone flagging a post of such a user. It doesn't matter if it was copied from shady website, or generated by super complex AI on the fly.

Unlike answers, there's no problem of having to check and review.

Journeyman Geek

@SPArcheon that means dev time and effort on non core things

Shadow The Kid Wizard

11:05

@SPArcheon what prompt? I really can't follow on this one.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheKidWizard stable diffusion is like chatgpt but draws pictures

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@JourneymanGeek I know.

Some must be NSFW, but like I said, can be reset by mods.

Journeyman Geek

Yup

Shadow The Kid Wizard

So can't see any problem.

Journeyman Geek

But SE won't cause avatar generation does nothing for public q&a or teams

Shadow The Kid Wizard

11:08

There is already avatar generator, it's called Gravatar, and still used by SE.

SPArcheon

@ShadowTheKidWizard works if there are a few cases. But what I suggested was that instead of uploading a picture users would write a prompt. So every single one would have the possibility to end up unsafe

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@SPArcheon lol, as much as I dislike some of the things in SE and how they work, I'm 100000% sure they won't go that way.

Even if only due to not wanting to spend dev time on such a silly thing. :D

And... such a feature request is a sure candidate for the most downvoted question ever.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheKidWizard I think they dumped it and have something similar internally

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@JourneymanGeek no? Let me see the URL...

@starball's avatar ^

URL: gravatar.com/avatar/…

Pure gravatar.

Automagically generated based on his email hash.

SE will never dump Gravatar, not even in 100 years.

lol blonde moment. Anyway, it's still very widely used.

Journeyman Geek

91

Q: Profile image changes (Gravatar images won’t be recoverable after email change)

TL/DR: You won't be able to switch back to your old Gravatar image if you change your email (or have changed your email in the past). Please save and re-upload your Gravatar image if you want to keep it going forward. Hi, everyone! I’m Felippe Rangel, a software engineer at Stack Overflow, and I...

discussion gravatar announcements email-addresses

SPArcheon

11:17

@ShadowTheKidWizard I am tempted to reply with the Oxford dictionary page for either "joke" or "sarcasm" :P

@ShadowTheKidWizard lame

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@JourneymanGeek I don't understand what it really means, but as you see above, dry fact is people still using Gravatar. Dunno if old or new email, doesn't really matter.

Sounds like some very minor change they did.

status-not-gravatar

hmm something just popped into my mind

@SPA does balpha using AI in his unicornify service?

If so, it's going to get banned. ;(

SPArcheon

@ShadowTheKidWizard Balpha unicorns are more of a procedural generation.

two different things.

Stable diffusion starts from random noise and then tries to recognize patterns similar to pictures that have similar tag to the one in the prompt basically.

Unicornify instead uses a set of rules to build a unicorn picture

@ShadowTheKidWizard I am more surprised that THAT is generated that a random fractal style picture....

This one too...

especially since it was made by img-to-img of an actual action figure

@curious ^

curious

12:36

@ShadowTheKidWizard I'm seeing a lot of colleagues freaking out because the ChatGPT passes their exams... It's not common that it would work in a different language so that's breaking things a bit!

@SPArcheon that's very close! I'm going to have a bit more time for this next week and I managed to get access to a better machine at work on which I got invokeAI installed... Can't wait!

SPArcheon

@curious you hope to get similar result with the Stable Diffusion model? desist.

The base stable diffusion model isn't able to produce decent anime style pictures.

It can only do styles closer to Artgerm / Mucha

Shadow The Kid Wizard

yay!

@SPArcheon the key is the way they merge parts of existing images in a clean way. Someone there just knows exactly how images are built.

@curious yeah, that's very sad. Soon enough people will stop even pretending to learn or work, and use AI to learn instead of them and do whatever they have to do in their work. While they only play all day and night long.

If Google reduced the human brain, ChatGPT and the likes will make it some tiny forgotten body part, without any use.

Typical short story about the way too near future:

> Kid: mommy, mommy, I got 100 in exam!
> Mommy: awesome, I'm really proud of you.
> Kid: I used ChatGPT of course.
> Mommy: I know, yesterday the final rebels were finally arrested.
> Kid: Sure, that was what the exam was about. I had no idea.

unclear how spammer has 51 rep, probably another hacked account.

Tinkeringbell

13:05

Eh. I saw a thought somewhere this week... about how there's now AI to make art/images and stories. But how a whole bunch of menial and dangerous tasks aren't automated yet, because no one is interested in spending money on developing that when labor to do it is cheap.

I doubt there will be AI to do our jobs. Instead, there will be AI overlords doing the fun stuff, like art and literature, while humans slave away.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@Tinkeringbell interesting thought, but I meant more in the programming world. ;)

Tinkeringbell

There's more to the future than just programming.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

You mean stuff like building, which take thousands of victims every day around the world, most never heard of.

Only in events like world cup someone finally notice, and even then, nobody cares.

Tinkeringbell

construction, demolition, but also things like making clothes.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

I think China has some automated building processes, read something about that during covid.

Built a huge hospital in two weeks, with only few actual workers.

Then again, it's China. Anything coming from there is 60%-80% fake.

@Tinkeringbell yeah making clothes is dangerous, one might get it on their head and choke. :D

Tinkeringbell

13:11

I mean, I understand you need workers for some things, but I do think an AI/robot could be used to put some prefab stuff together, or to do bricklaying/paving.

SPArcheon

@ShadowTheKidWizard you only need a bigger 3d printer.

First Permitted 3D Printed House in Florida | Printed Farms Strikes Again

►

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@Tinkeringbell and here is where money beats technology.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowTheKidWizard I mean, it's not necessarily dangerous but it's one of those jobs that could be automated instead of being whisked away to low-wage countries where workers are exploited and working in dangerous factory buildings that do fall on their heads.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

Nobody will spend thousands on a robot when they can spend one single dollar on human slave.

Tinkeringbell

That was the point, yeah.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

13:13

I know. :)

@Tinkeringbell that's true also.

@SPArcheon well, printed or not, someone still needs to actually put it in place. ;)

Tinkeringbell

You print it where you want to have it, of course.

tripleee

@ShadowTheKidWizard that looks legitimate to me, through Google translate

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@Tinkeringbell well, still needs to bring the gigantic printer to place. High risk of squashing some people while doing that. ;)

@tripleee cook pad? Haten blog? So weird. But I trust you, so should I change the feedback?

Anyway, daily riddle time!

What's special about those chicks?

tripleee

@ShadowTheKidWizard Hatena is sort of like Wix, they host all kinds of content, some of which is definitely suspicious

@ShadowTheKidWizard that would probably be a good idea, including retracing the flag on the site (if you flagged it)

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@tripleee and terrible name, sounds like some hate group blog.

tripleee

13:24

I don't speak Japanese, but I would assume it has no such connotations in that language

Shadow The Kid Wizard

People sometimes miss the most obvious things when creating websites.

@tripleee I mean the domain.

"haten blog"

tripleee

apparently something like surprise or question wordsense.eu/hatena

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@tripleee flag gone, looks like mod already handled it.

tripleee

good good, thanks for following up

SPArcheon

@ShadowTheKidWizard If brain was always involved when thinking about names then the pokemon mobile game wouldn't have got that tittle add-on.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

13:30

@SPArcheon sometimes brain is busy elsewhere. :P

curious

@SPArcheon I'm not really interested in generating manga, more about exploring the implications for my field and other visual fields... If it can support ideation for various tasks and such

tripleee

13:45

flag-pls spam returning spammer mathoverflow.net/questions/436490

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@tripleee kaboom

tripleee

+1

SPArcheon

@ShadowTheKidWizard already told you. The correct formula is "boom boom bakudan!"

Shadow The Kid Wizard

14:43

@SPArcheon baku?

Spam links edited out by a local clueless user but all are pure spam ^

@JNat cross site spammer, like some recent cases, account was legit until this point but today it posted obvious spam on several sites. Maybe worth checking if SE has some new breach.

Machavity

@ShadowTheKidWizard Bleh. Someone edited the spam out. Might want to revert next time

Shadow The Kid Wizard

(Not you, but you might be able to poke security department, if SE has any. @JNat)

@Machavity I can't revert, not enough rep.

Left a comment, as useless as it is. (Such users won't listen to anyone.)

Rob

15:06

@Sha, I looked at his profile; he's been a user for over 5 years, so he might not be deleted for promoting a protest against SE. --- There are three things going on here: It's in the VLQ review queue, where I first saw it. There's a pending edit. And, it's flagged for deletion, which has already happened.

Machavity

@ShadowTheKidWizard FWIW they have one non-spam deleted Q on SO. 5 years old too.

Rob

My comment is in reference to this link: meta.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/84600 (10K only) and not the spam on money.SE.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@Rob MSE isn't obvious spam, I agree, but the "smoking gun" in his three spam posts on money.SE see above for links.

Account can be hacked, or sold, looks like it's happening more frequently recently.

@Machavity well, I don't doubt they were legit user once. But not anymore.

@Rob also, I did the mistake of flagging as VLQ initially (on MSE) instead of spam.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

15:37

Good, all three nuked.

V2Blast

15:54

@ShadowTheKidWizard They're just focusing heavily on the Staging Ground stuff right now since it's in active testing. The inbox stuff will get addressed too, but probably not until January (devs are busy both with Staging Ground stuff and Winter Bash, and there'll be a code freeze for the holidays as usual). I should know, as I'm the CM liaison working on the inbox improvements project :)

Kevin B

why release it if there's no bandwidth to fix it

Nord The Lofty Wizard

16:10

@SPArcheon I read that as "bakukan" for some reason

@SPArcheon I vaguely recall there was some similar project but for anime style. I don't remember the name, but if I ever find it, remind me to post it here

SPArcheon

@NordTheLoftyWizard waifudiffusion, anything v3 etc....

Nord The Lofty Wizard

yeah, I heard of that one

don't recall if this was this one though hmm

remembering is hard

@SPArcheon I bet you there an original image posted before stablediffusion/dall-e was a thing that look close to 60-80% similar to this one

SPArcheon

@NordTheLoftyWizard I think you have the same base misunderstanding of SD that @ShadowTheKidWizard has. It is something more than "similar images".

Nord The Lofty Wizard

I assure you, I have a very biased understanding of SD

I don't know how it fully work, but my ~~spidey~~ hunch is telling me it's possible

SPArcheon

Furthermore, since this is img-to-img it is kinda evident that there is a "60-80% similar" image.

The one I started from.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

16:26

@SPArcheon so enlighten us. ;)

@V2Blast so it would have been better to just delay the Saves and Inbox projects until a time they can actually listen to the given feedback. Rushing to publish changes, then not being able to fix the bugs, is just bad.

Not your fault, neither any dev, it's purely bad management decision.

SPArcheon

@ShadowTheKidWizard jalammar.github.io/illustrated-stable-diffusion

Shadow The Kid Wizard

We could live with Bookmarks few more months, same for the previous inbox.

@SPArcheon too long to read now

I'm bit sad that I'm among very few who don't have their minds blown by the "AI drawing art" stuff. It's nice, sure, but it's just a game. Code that create images. Nothing mind blowing in that.

Nord The Lofty Wizard

@SPArcheon didn't finish reading, but the graph seems to make sense yeah

It does give me some ideas for some stuff I want to do, so thanks for sharing this

SPArcheon

@NordTheLoftyWizard replicate.com/pixray/text2image this should clear things up.

write a simple prompt, for example "a cat", then press run.

Nord The Lofty Wizard

@ShadowTheKidWizard what make me sad is that people are glorifying those algorithms and call them "intelligent"...like I agree it can be useful, but please, don't glorify it!

SPArcheon

16:34

It is not very high quality, but it shows you the various steps.

Look how it starts with noise and than makes changes to enforce a pattern

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@NordTheLoftyWizard this too, yes. Not sure what's the main motivation though. Either just glory and being part of history, or money.

Nord The Lofty Wizard

as I said once here, and on meta.SO, it's just statistics, but useful still. If you don't want to be mean, I guess Statistical Learning is better, or if you really have to, calling it Neural Network works. If you want to be a mix of "mean" and "truthful", I guess "Bruteforcing with Statistics" is a better term for those things

@ShadowTheKidWizard I feel like it's both. The hype trinity is Crypto, Quantum, and AI for a reason

then again, it's not right to put it in the same bag as crypto, since there more scam there than the other two...and I guess AI has demonstrated it is more useful and ready to use compared to Quantum

but that's beside the point

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@NordTheLoftyWizard eww all the heavy stuff in one line

:P

@NordTheLoftyWizard yeah, agree AI isn't really used for scam, it's just a balloon inflated way over its capacity.

Unless you consider all those automated stock market scam programs as AI.

Now that blew my mind: the most brilliant programmers in the world hired to write code that predicts what stock will be sold in the next nano-seconds, then acting upon it, and making billions upon billions of easy money.

Nord The Lofty Wizard

@ShadowTheKidWizard my bad, I did notice that it looked weird after rereading a second time

@ShadowTheKidWizard yeah, it is :/

go on github or any blogs, and see how many times they mention the term "statistics" in a sentence? less than they should, because they're too busy using the word "intelligence" instead

the only places I saw it being used quite a bit more was on scientific papers, but that's it

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@NordTheLoftyWizard these days Github project without AI is considered boring, lame, and out of date. ;)

Nord The Lofty Wizard

16:46

@ShadowTheKidWizard that's also what I guessed too. You see more stars on "AI" projects than others ones

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@NordTheLoftyWizard here, I know you just wanted a star. :D

> Nord The Star Wizard

> Shadow Wizard Chasing Stars

You rename, I rename? @Nor ;)

Nord The Lofty Wizard

@ShadowTheKidWizard thanks :)

@ShadowTheKidWizard Sure

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@NordTheLoftyWizard after you, good sir! I might take bit longer because I also switch avatar, so need to find something proper.

But a promise is a promise. :P

Nord The Lofty Wizard

done?

yeah I think this works

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@NordTheLoftyWizard you're fast!

now find me proper avatar! :D

Maybe I'll use AI to generate it!

"Wizard chasing stars"

Nord The Lofty Wizard

16:52

I can already picture a blue hat or something

@SPArcheon that's actually nice too. Didn't notice this was a python project :o

@ShadowTheKidWizard generated one: images.nightcafe.studio/jobs/TbMMSStRWM3LeRlc6RVH/…

might work but I think it's too big to fit right?

Rob

@ShadowTheKidWizard someone sold their laptop, without erasing the drive.

@ShadowTheKidWizard It was VLQ, also good for the flag.

Nord The Lofty Wizard

some camera brand don't even correctly erase the sd card/memory inside, so that doesn't surprise me

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@Rob heh, this actually may happen.

@NordTheLoftyWizard size isn't the issue, the wizard is a cat with long hair. ;)

I had long hair for a while, but not cat face. :P

Nord The Star Wizard

17:12

I didn't even notice this was a cat :O

Shadow The Kid Wizard

All good, it's still nice. patting the cat

:D

Nord The Star Wizard

@ShadowTheKidWizard what about this one?: images.nightcafe.studio/jobs/LFAQMwRqhuLwH53TaBy8/…

looking a bit too google-image-y to me hmm

Shadow Wizard Chasing Stars

Done!

@NordTheStarWizard eyes look weird ;)

Nord The Star Wizard

@ShadowWizardChasingStars that one looks way better :D

Shadow Wizard Chasing Stars

Good old Google still works, found something decent using it. :D

Might take a while before AI can generate decent wizards.

Nord The Star Wizard

17:26

yeah, indeed

tripleee

flag-pls spam pt.stackoverflow.com/questions/73794/…

Shadow Wizard Chasing Stars

@tripleee flagged

"spam" isn't translated lol

Unless it's same in both languages?

Rob

18:07

@ShadowWizardChasingStars Cat face guy: youtu.be/fbYYHttSnfY?t=10 - doesn't look like me!

Shadow Wizard Chasing Stars

18:31

@Rob well, "Rob" isn't a name fitting for a cat either. :D

Nord The Star Wizard

if you can call one Garfield, I think most names can fit

Shadow Wizard Chasing Stars

Yeah, maybe just Rob sounds too human.

Rob

19:13

@ShadowWizardChasingStars I know someone with a grey cat named Shadow.

starball

21:07

everybody's online when I sleep :(

Kevin B

that's true no matter whenyou sleep

statistically speaking

starball

hi kevin!

starting today's song-exchange:

Lonely Rolling Star - Big Band Jazz Version (The 8-Bit Big Band)

►

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