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12:35 AM
@AskQuestionWizard ironically that's exactly the sort of people who need their questions closed
1:17 AM
@Feeds s/party/meta discussion/
1 hour later…
2:39 AM
> Engagement is a toxic metric. Products which optimize for it become worse. People who optimize for it become less happy. It also seems to generate runaway feedback loops where most engagable people have a) worst individual experiences and then b) end up driving the product bus. -- Patrick McKenzie at 6:46 PM - 8 Apr 2019
If you wanna really experience the effects of engagement optimization, go to a casino.
One of those places built like a pole barn, with penny slot machines stretching off into the distance as far as you can see
Where old folks sit with their oxygen tanks and chain-smoke to a cacophony of bells, and looking down one can never be sure if the garish pattern on the carpet is real, or a hallucination brought on by the inevitable nicotine poisoning that drawing a breath must bring.
This is Engagement Incarnate, stripped of pretense and laid bare as the onion of artifice that it is. There is no substance, no noble end-goal, just empty stimulation upon empty stimulation until death.
3:05 AM
Even the ones not designed like an ikea
(I worked in one a bit)
3:49 AM
Gotta love those carpets, as long as there's no matching wallpaper, it keeps you oriented upright.
4:07 AM
Carpet morning...
(Ugh, recently I only slept for 2 hours...)
4:52 AM
i've always found casions to be my natural anathema. Between the overwhelming smell, the music, the lights, and the pure intensity of the place, I can be there maybe 5 minutes before migraines start.
Try digital casion
5:18 AM
:7652412 -15 before deleted... 6 from flags, and the rest... 9 downvotes???
5:33 AM
@GetAnswerWizard That phone number has been spammed 11 times
5:57 AM
40 messages moved to Chimney
@Magisch heh.
Local casinos are the only place where smoking is allowed indoors
They have a great ventilation system so it only smells mildly of cigarettes and desperation
Hm, that was fun
One of the higher level support folks asks for logs daily. Previous shift forgot. I went 'Oh, might be the last shift - I'll take a look". Another location asks me to help, and while I'm doing it, my manager is huffing at us for saying "oh, it might be the last shift"
Apparently that's not being a team player...
Here it's illegal to smoke inside in any public place. Of course, though, our casino somehow obtained a permit (the only one such establishment I know of) to allow smoking. Not suss at all
While he's doing that, the guy who asks me is running interference with my manager while I'm doing it. Then we write up a process for others to do it.
@Rob likewise.
For a slightly dysfunctional workplace, we do ok ;p
Bribes donations sure are effective, huh
@Rob oh just the massive investment and halo effect
Its not about the casinos though, its also about the additional non gaming stuff
One of our casinos brought in universal studios
the other has vegas style shows
sounds like everything I hate
6:14 AM
@JourneymanGeek I like your casino. And also Genting.
not that I play though, only laughing at my friends losing money...
@GetAnswerWizard oh the one I didn't work for is run by Genting
I worked at the sands for 3 months
6:28 AM
I actually know someone who was at one point trying to become a shaolin monk
6:41 AM
@Magisch Aside from @Mithrandir24601? ;)
@AskQuestionWizard Ugh. :( Wish there were other questions there :(
@Magisch You're not the only one. I don't find casinos very engaging either :/
A casino just sounds like the thrill of paying money to play what is essentially a worse video game
in an environment I hate
Worse, it's a pay-to-win
6:57 AM
Actually, pay-to-lose
@Magisch Only one? Honestly, people these days - they meet one person thinking of becoming a Shaolin monk and they consider that a big deal. (◔_◔) :P
@Mithrandir24601 I mean, it's an intriguing lifestyle
7:32 AM
@Magisch Yeah, it's a very different way of doing things
Good Noon Peeps..I am geekdroid…Nice to meet you all
!!/welcome BatCat
@GetAnswerWizard Welcome to Tavern on the Meta @BatCat! I'm SmokeDetector, a bot that detects spam and offensive posts on the network, and posts alerts to chat. You can find more about me on the Charcoal website.
7:48 AM
@BatCat so you are the Geek version of @DroidDev?! ;)
@Rob here it's illegal but nobody is enforcing the law.
@GetAnswerWizard no coffee?!
@GetAnswerWizard brews a cup of jasmine tea for @GetAnswerWizard
(guess who needs coffee...)
@GetAnswerWizard Pick me! Pick me!
!!/green @Tinkeringbell
ran away
8:04 AM
Rate limited.
@ShadowWizard LOL... maybe
A recent configuration change prevents it from responding with "invalid command", to avoid hitting rate limits.
@Tinkeringbell Heh, there's a toy button being sold in stores here that simply says different forms of "no" when you push it.
@ShadowWizard Although I hear there were lawsuits starting about it.
@Mithrandir We have similar rules here, and I wished people enforced them better :/
8:20 AM
@Mithrandir nah, best anyone can do is call פקחים who arrive hours later and do nothing.
Too lazy to look, wonder if "supervisors" is proper translation?
@ShadowWizard No such command 'foobar'.
@SonictheWizardWerehog wrong ^
Thought that happened...it didn't work in CHQ for a while, so I assumed it was a configuration change
!!/foo bar
@ShadowWizard No such command 'foo'.
8:23 AM
Over here, at least in So. California and Austin, Texas, smoking in public places laws are heavily enforced, with major fines. However, in Vegas casinos, it's legal.
Maybe per room setting
@SonictheWizardWerehog yeah, makes total sense about Vegas
@ShadowWizard Smokey posts significantly more often in CHQ, so it makes sense there
@Aibobot Noticed you're lurking in here with your alt account
8:36 AM
@SonictheWizardWerehog the alt account of @Aibo is @Journeyman ;)
@ShadowWizard @SonictheWizardWerehog busyish day
so I keep chat on a sidebar
@Aibobot nice busy, or stressful busy, or both? :P
Busy Busy
Barkfully Busy
8:51 AM
How do I put it....
None of the work is actually my problem, but we help
I'm implementing recursive email forward checking logic
@Aibobot Ah, so you'll be moderating the whole day? :P
points at mod stats ;p
@Magisch GAH, recursion. I just killed that yesterday :P
@Aibobot I know, I'm the slowest ;) I just like chatting better than moderating! :P
8:53 AM
I had a recursiophob at college. Really.
@Tinkeringbell well chatting is moderating ;p
He was panicked whenever we had to use recursion.
@Tinkeringbell to avoid long forward chains
@Magisch Does it have to be recursive though?
It's not just recursion, it's branching recursion that sprawls out
8:55 AM
@Magisch cries
Well I want to avoid scenarios like a@b.com -> b@b.com -> a@b.com
and of course, also a@b.com -> b@b.com -> c@b.com, f@b.com -> a@b.com
I kinda really dislike recursion. It makes for bugs that are stupidly hard to track (at least over here).
depends on how you implement it but yeah
@Magisch Inside a run_something() method, with a load of booleans to check whether run_something() should be called again... While the easy thing to do was to have the run() loop over something.children, calling run_something() for each child :/
The fix for bad carpeting: Ibiza Foam Dance Club
9:06 AM
How to fix recursive carpet?
More foam
9:21 AM
@GetAnswerWizard bring a cat
9:49 AM
@Tinkeringbell butwhy.avi
The only way I see recursive functions as necessary is when you programatically traverse a path or tree in doing something
e.g calcing 40! or something with the same logical train
@Magisch Because they could :/
That wasn't "the easy thing though" that was more "it that pleases the dread god nyalathothep"
Someone coded something in such a way that there's a main 'check', that should always have :child as a return, in order to run all the other checks that are in some kind of xml config.

There are a few cases where 1 check has a child too, so that if the check goes wrong, the child determines how wrong (how low the score will be). That's the only place where the recursion is valid.

For the first, just get rid of a 'useless' main check and get all checks from the config xml :)
what is your use case and product and why is it a tribute to the eldritch horrors
@Magisch because what is code, if not a tribute to eldritch horrors? :P
9:58 AM
most of my code is clean
and I try really hard to keep it readable and maintainable, because I have to
@Magisch Yeah, but sometimes co-workers get to it too... and in that sense it's a bit like moderating: You can only do your best to keep your site's quality up, but if others don't do the same :/
2 hours later…
12:11 PM
I wish they'd sort out the metasmoke api problems
spam lives significantly longer now
12:25 PM
@ShadowWizard I'll be waiting for that name change
1 hour later…
1:38 PM
Julia Silge on April 09, 2019

Python, the fastest-growing major programming language, has risen in the ranks of programming languages in our survey yet again, edging out Java this year and standing as the second most loved language (behind Rust).

Over half of respondents had written their first line of code by the time they were sixteen, although this experience varies by country and by gender.

We asked respondents to think about the last time they solved coding problems with and without our site. The data indicates that Stack Overflow saves a developer 30 to 90 minutes of time per week! …

1:55 PM
29 messages moved to Chimney
2:07 PM
As usual, classification by race/ethnicity goes like... White, Black, Hispanic, American Indian, Alaska Native, Asian, Native American, Other Pacific Islander, Does Not Have a Green Card or U.S. Passport.
(This is from today's student newspaper, but SO classification is similar.)
@AskQuestionWizard well - one would assume similar cultural backgrounds for the two.
Let me Guess. Mr. T personally visits those who pick the last option?
Here it would be "Chinese, Malay, Indian, Eurasian (sometimes), Others"
here, eurasian is usually split in categories of the various cultures on europe
e.g. differentiating italian from spanish from german from english from french
@Magisch oh, eurasian is something specific
Its a subcommunity of well, mixed asian and european decent from waaaayyyy back
2:11 PM
is it? I've known it as a term for "european or asian"
so there's a few partially portugese families, and there's a few folks who have very dutch names...
Eurasians in Singapore are persons of mixed European and Asian descent. They form one of the identifiable communities in Singapore. Eurasians have been viewed with mixed fascination and disdain by the European and Asian communities. Their European ancestry traces to emigrants of countries that span the length and breadth of Europe, although Eurasian migrants to Singapore in the 19th century came largely from other European colonies in Asia, such as British Malaya in particular Malacca and Penang, India including Goa, the former Portuguese colony in India, and Chittagong (today in Bangladesh), the...
@Magisch precisely how your background affects how you see things ;)
Interesting weighting method:
> Survey weighting is an approach used to analyze survey data when the survey sample doesn't match the underlying population well. For example, in our survey this year, 11% of US respondents identify as women, but data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that women's participation in the software developer workforce is about twice that, more like 20%.
Means they're going for a full sample representative mode of the developer community, rather then the SO community.
A self-selected sample of SO users. 2x to the female part of it does not make it representative of anything.
> A few participants perceive the community or site mechanics as too strict or toxic for them to feel safe interacting here. insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/…
But not enough to even appear on the chart in that section.
The most common reason: questions already asked/answered.
22% of developers hold master's degrees o_O
@Magisch Yeah, in Archaeology XD
2:20 PM
doesn't even have a bachelor's
@Magisch I dropped out twice ._.
@Magisch When it comes to programming, neither have I ;)
This year 11% of US survey respondents are women, up from 9% on last year's survey. but it shows 91.7% men, 7.9% women and 1.2% other
@Magisch ._.
are these charts from this year?
@JourneymanGeek I'm trying to find out the math used here.
Even adding 7.9% and 1.2% I don't get to 11%. That's still only 9.1%
2:25 PM
@Magisch 91.7% refers to all respondents. 11% to US respondents.
Then it's more like 12% then 11%
I know why I'm not a data science guy :p
2:50 PM
The survey emphasis on loved/dreaded/wanted reminds of that Meatloaf classic
3:25 PM
3:55 PM
4:14 PM
The sites which show the survey banner appear to be hand-picked, they are not all sites, and not even all "technology" category sites.
Still it's a bit inconsistent in how the banner is on a bunch of non-SO sites while the blog directs readers to discuss the survey on MSO.
The graphic tells me there is a job available because the previous employee jumped out of that window.
That's a door.
I'm pretty sure that's a door.
most windows don't have doorknobs
It could be a window mounted upside down, though
It's pretty high on that wall, then.
4:18 PM
what wall?
@KevinB they have window knobs, but they look the same
I just got a drive-by downvote. Which is the most accessible meta?
Anyway, I wanted to link Catija's traffic analysis on Math which is more interesting than that ad.
@M.A.R.TheChemicalWizard for a pat on the back? We don't do that here. Sorry.
> there was already something causing a downward trend in posts here on Math that doesn't seem to be reflected to this degree on the other sites I looked at (Super User, Ask Ubuntu, Server Fault, Unix & Linux, Cross Validated, and Physics).
Some other homework sites gaining popularity?
4:22 PM
Stack Overflow
My comparison of March 2018 to 2019 shows almost 12% drop in the total number of posts on Math.
SF is a homework site?
MathSE vs other math-hw sites, I mean
Maybe people grew up and realized throwing their combinatorics 101 at someone else on the internet is obnoxious?
Internet people, as a collective, do not grow up.
4:28 PM
It might just be me but I'm getting the impression the general crowd is getting into an the apathy mode again, both on the internet and in real life. Emotionally exhausted after all the drama on- and off-SE (Me-too, Black lives matter etc etc.) over the past two years. And trends are usually more sensible and stabilizing in the apathy mode
Every other day Trump puts on a show again but this time, everyone is all like "mmmmmeh"
Q: Evolution versus Creationism

Jamie003If nature, or any aspects of it, are intelligently designed, how could we tell? How would we be able to test that hypothesis?

Isn't this a philosophical question?
Well, if even Smokey got tired of flagging spam...
It asks for a potential test for the two hypotheses, not which one is true (it's intelligent design, BTW)
4:46 PM
@M.A.R.TheChemicalWizard Theology
(so, close enough I suppose)
@JohnDvorak Possibly controversial viewpoint: Why can't they both be true again?
Guided evolution is an intriguing idea, but it does pose the issue of significance / identification of Adam and Eve.
@Mithrandir24601 I don't think there is a non-controversial statement to be made on these matters
Abiogenesis is yet another can of worms still
Except maybe "don't take food from strangers"
@M.A.R.TheChemicalWizard counterpoint: that's literally what supermarkets are for.
4:50 PM
Well, we trust the fridge and shelves
Now I want a fridge with a poisonous cooling gas in G.I.Joe 3
But do you trust whichever source (I'm looking at you, Poland) produces the beef your supermarket purchased?
or "beef" for that matter
Ugh, that Chinese guy has real potential for ruining any movie
Red 2 was really lame and I blame him before the plot
@JohnDvorak Well I'm advised not to consume red meat, so A-HA
I'd rather consume raw beef than some of the fruits found in my local supermarket.
Heck, it's got a french name, so it must be good
4:54 PM
When I think foreign fruit, I only remember avocado avocado avocado
And coconuts
Coconuts make for excellent hoof sound
@JohnDvorak I only trust the French for baguettes
And even then there's a good potential for destroying your stomach
No escargot? Really, do you not like expensive snot in a natural packaging?
We don’t do spam here — Eric Shain 3 hours ago
That is one badass remark
> Pretty sure stackoverflow is public domain, otherwise I'd be -- Riot interjecT at 6:10 AM - 9 Apr 2019
A convincing argument.
5:15 PM
Just watched Joker's trailer. My fingers are crossed
. . . ouuuuch. It's painful
@JohnDvorak Assuming evolution, there has a be a point at which one generation is not 'mankind' and the other is 'mankind', right?
How do you define that point though?
SE is CC BY SA 2.0 though so if someone copies without attribution and the author wants to push it they are indeed a bit screwed
In practice it's more like NC license: there is a license but nobody cares.
@JohnDvorak It's not about how it's defined (the definition is presumably somewhat arbitrary?), just that it has to be so - it's impossible to simultaneously be both 'mankind' and 'not mankind'
5:25 PM
It's far from guaranteed that a particular definition of mankind has only two members that have a non-member father.
The sorites paradox (; sometimes known as the paradox of the heap) is a paradox that arises from vague predicates. A typical formulation involves a heap of sand, from which grains are individually removed. Under the assumption that removing a single grain does not turn a heap into a non-heap, the paradox is to consider what happens when the process is repeated enough times: is a single remaining grain still a heap? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap? == The original formulation and variations == === Paradox of the heap === The word "sorites" derives from the Greek word for heap...
Ah yes, this paradox does pose further questions with respect to theology...
A Q&A site with 1000000 active users is an active Q&A site.
When one user leaves an active Q&A site, it is still an active Q&A site.
Unrelated: in ~2.5 hours, elections end on Data Science, Stack Overflow en español and Tridion.
Another side note - this is the reason why analog to digital converters are so darn hard to build.
Q: Unicorn Meta Zoo #1: Why another podcast?

Jon EricsonWelcome to the Unicorn Meta Zoo, a brand new podcast by members of the Stack Exchange community team. If you want to avoid spoilers, jump straight to the audio. Participants We're talking about why we're doing a podcast. (I believe this is the traditional podcast pilot topic.) It's not inte...

> If you are reading this post, you are one of the super-engaged users we want to talk with.
5:34 PM
@JohnDvorak Sure, there are lots of other possibilities
spring is definitely in swing, there's a hornet in my bathroom
sheltering from the rain, presumably
Already a potential topic: the usage of "guys", gendered or not.
Just use y'all
Does not fit in every context.
y'some then
5:40 PM
E.g., a bunch of people are talking in class and you want them to shut up.
y'all works for that.
proposal: yous
I don't remembering hearing Jon's voice before. Not exactly as I imagined.
@AskQuestionWizard guys is better than a guys < awkward silence > and gal. :P
Here in SoCal we learned that "guys" is genderless.
> How many guys have you slept with?
@AskQuestionWizard other kind of guys ;)
@AskQuestionWizard I am ace
@JohnDvorak Yeah, like that :P
Let's agree that the vocative case of "guys" is genderless, unlike others.
@AskQuestionWizard See, you're learning fast ;)
The intro tune is absolutely horrible.
5:53 PM
> Juan M wrote and performed our music.
I'll be gone for a while, getting new glasses.
> This episode was sponsored by the Ask Question Wizard
Should the podcast RSS be added to this room's feed?
go for it
6:11 PM
Well, listen to a podcast can now be checked on the bucket list
6:30 PM
I like the length, about the same as Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I–V).
If I had to choose between them... well I don't have to.
@AskQuestionWizard I dunno, I found it quite hard to keep a focus on listening...
I guess podcasts just aren't my thing
Next time, 10 minutes of instrumental intro by Juan M followed by 5 minutes of talking.
@AskQuestionWizard I'm not sure if that's going to help ;)
rene has made a change to the feeds posted into this room
posted on March 27, 2019

Welcome to the Unicorn Meta Zoo, a brand new podcast by members of the Stack Exchange community team. If you want to avoid spoilers, jump straight to the audio. Participants We’re talking about why we’re doing a podcast. (I believe this is the traditional podcast pilot topic.) It’s not intended to replace Stack Overflow podcast, which is on hiatus. For one thing, our audience is much s

surprising ...
@Tinkeringbell the trick with podcasts is, you gotta be doing something boring while you're listening to 'em.
Washing dishes
digging a ditch
handing flags
Does lying in bed count?
unless, I donno, you're in the hospital or something and can't get up
Can't think of much more boring stuff to do though
6:44 PM
paint your house
Easy, I don't have a house yet
paint someone else's house
When grading homework, I can listed to anything, including Youtube audio "10 hours of Juan M"
@Shog9 as long as I get paid
make sure you discuss that before you start
otherwise it's gonna be one of those "I'll stop painting if you don't pay me" things
or, depending on your skill, "I'll stop painting if you pay me"
@Shog9 probably that one, yes
the problem I have with listening to podcasts is if I'm not doing some mindless task then I end up just reading and not listening to the podcast
If I'm doing any kind of mindless tasks I zone out, and don't register music or TV
Guess the same goes for podcasts
7:15 PM
@Tinkeringbell Hm. I enter a limbo state when I'm neither doing the mindless task nor listening to the music/voice
Or maybe I'm doing both but not paying attention to either. Can't tell
@M.A.R.TheChemicalWizard Yeah, that describes it, I guess
Q: Unicorn Meta Zoo #1: Why another podcast?


UMZ. Sounds like some sort of bomb
While I get the feeling a podcast is more like a recorded lecture, I've never been good at listening to those either...
Sometimes podcasts feel like a lonely guy in the bathroom
Or a lonely guy with a phone in the bathroom
@Tinkeringbell I always wanna push the FFW button on the lecturer sometimes
I've never really had that urge... Can't remember a lecture so boring it needed fastforwarding
8:05 PM
hello all, I'm not sure if I'm in the right place; no one seams to be the-assembly. I'm having trouble learning the ropes navigating chat rooms. I DID NOTICE the link to chat seams to be missing on Stackoverflow.com ...is this a bug?
isn't it supposed to be at the bottom of each page?
no, it's up here
Hi! There are three chat servers, meta.here, SO and SE
I personally never navigate to chat using the main site links, wherever they are if any
oh I guess that helps, thanks
having trouble finding a meta chat for stackoverflow. is this all there is chat.stackexchange.com/… ?
whoops, i'm actually on superuser sorry
8:23 PM
@kipbits I forgot the case about meta sites but it was something like they were never really supposed to host chats originally or something like that. It's supposed to be just SO, or a main SE
SO meta doesn't have it's own chat
To put it another way, "chatting on meta" isn't something people go to chat.SO.com to do. SOCVR is probably the main "meta chat" of SO in the sense that its purpose relates to SO policies
And those chats seem to be on SO as well, not meta.SO
its actually superuser sorry. I'm sort of figuring it out, one chat-site per topic&meta.... perhaps I will write a meta.superuser. Thanks again
@kipbits Same diff. Only SU gets chats, not meta.SU
yes i realized that. The first thing i edited actually got accepted and i did gain 2 rep for that but that was the first and only time i did it. ill try to do more of that. — Thomas Tallman 3 hours ago
Oh boy I sure hope they're mindful of their eyes
8:38 PM
Why would someone be shown as having been registered for 6 years, but have no posts, be shown as temporarily suspended network-wide? And why are they also able to join chats? Is it a bot who should be kicked, or what?
@forest Hmm, maybe new account with login credentials of a network-wide suspended guy?
I think everyone can join chats but they won't be able to talk.
Quick. Make me say something jerk-ish so we can test it
8:59 PM
@kipbits SuperUser's chat is here: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/118/root-access
3 hours later…
11:36 PM
@kipbits on SU - depends on who you want to talk to. Ask a super user moderator is a good place to find mods chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/114/ask-a-super-user-moderator . Practically root access - our main room has a solid core of regulars
