The Whiteboard

enderland

3:00 PM

@JimmyHoffa I wonder sometimes if managers just work more because they are "expected" to but no one actually expects it

bravenewlife.com/06/the-man-is-you

I read that article several years ago and found it fascinating

user55340

@enderland brave ne wife? Oh, there's an 'l' in there.

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland makes people feel more important. Honestly I really don't think managers actually "work" more, I think they just spend more time in the office often, and usually it's due to being booked into too many meetings, which is definitely not work..

I'm not going to be one who stands up and says meetings are complete wastes of time, they are and can be very important, but the number of meetings lots of managers participate in, I'm certain multiple hours of that time is absolutely wasted.

user55340

You forgot writing reports.

Jimmy Hoffa

Not all meetings are created equal.

user55340

Which is one of those "hmm" things and you should read Slack.

enderland

3:03 PM

@JimmyHoffa heh. I told a previous manager, when our team was on paid OT, that I was more than willing to work the hours (because $) but that after a certain while he shouldn't expect to really get more productivity out of me

he... didn't like that

user55340

Microsoft Office was the worst thing ever for manager productivity.

Ixrec

I'm pretty sure a chunk of my team lead's time is also wasted in meetings, no idea which ones though

there's just so many of them there's no way they're all useful

oh boy, a chat flag in Russian

I am totally qualified to validate that

user55340

2

Q: How do I respond to chatroom flags for Stack Overflow на русском?

I was faced today with a bunch of flags from Stack Overflow на русском. I don't speak or read Russian. So... am I supposed to dig up Google Translate to evaluate the flag? Or wait for some users who understand the langauge to deal with the flags?

enderland

I thought that everyone just randomly clicked buttons for chat flags... is that not what we're supposed to do? :( — enderland 5 secs ago

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT SO has an official russian variant?

news to me

I saw the flag but as per usual, validated it with but a slight glance (saw russian, presumed spam)

Ixrec

3:15 PM

it has Japanese, Portuguese and Russian last I checked

user55340

Ixrec

and about five more languages stuck in Area51 until they can internationalize the software better

user55340

3:16 PM

@Ixrec Spanish too apparently.

Duga

The Help Center states that "software tools commonly used by programmers" are on topic and this question surely is "a practical, answerable problem that is unique to software development". That said I don't see how this is off-topic. — Hubert Grzeskowiak 35 secs ago

user55340

I wonder how long you get Stack Overflow στα ελληνικά and we can get @Yannis as a mod there.

Ixrec

I wonder how long until SE has no idea what's going on on half their network because it's all non-English SO clones

(yes I know they're looking for more multilingual CMs)

user55340

@Ixrec each lang.so site has a full time community manager for that language who speaks it (apparently) fluently.

Thomas Owens

I want SO-enUK.

user55340

3:19 PM

@ThomasOwens en-CA.SO 'eh?

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT Yes. That, too.

user55340

@ThomasOwens you spelled that wrong. Its "yea, that too 'eh."

Thomas Owens

Sorry aboot that. I was eating my maple syrup covered poutine.

user55340

user55340

Wait... wrong one. Though thats good.

Thomas Owens

3:22 PM

I don't like beets.

user55340

It works in that salad.

user55340

There we go.

user55340

Tandoori chicken == Indian spiced BBQ chicken.

Thomas Owens

I'm allergic to shellfish.

Oh. The chicken.

I like Tandoori chicken.

user55340

3:24 PM

Indian BBQ chicken!

Ampt

Happy My-Balls-Are-Frozen-To-My-Legs Day everyone!

@JimmyHoffa You're thinking of Vodka.StackExchange. Common misconception, really.

Thomas Owens

I just want to scream at these people. They are trying to centralize processes. At the same time, they are trying to be lean. Those two things are exactly the opposite of each other - in a lean process, you want to push as many decisions to the lowest possible level as possible. Some things may need to be fixed at a higher level because of business rules.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt pants optional doesn't mean pantless is reasonable..

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa Is there any option on there where you get the page you're actually looking for?

@JimmyHoffa -8 before windchill waiting for the train this morning, and apparently wearing coveralls to the workplace is frowned upon, so here I am with a blowdryer in the bathroom.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens follow the effects back to causes back to motives. Nine times out of ten: Credit/Control are what people are looking for in all this stuff. "Lean" is just a tool they're trying to use towards their ends. Often times they just want to make a change because they think they'll end up higher in the deck if they can cause a shuffle and vye for better roles. Sometimes they think the process they're aiming at genuinely puts them in a better org position.

Often times the motive will just be they think they'll have less required of them so it'll be easier on them and they'll get to push more of their work off on others

Think it through objectively if you want to have any chance of playing the game with / against them. Otherwise you're not playing with all the cards.

Thomas Owens

3:30 PM

Well, my boss and my boss's boss have already decided that we're not playing their game.

Ampt

TL;DR: #MAKEITRAIN #MONEY

enderland

@ThomasOwens lean from which perspective, though? it might be slightly worse for your team but better for the org overall (without knowing the context it's impossible to know which, though)

Thomas Owens

@enderland If we were to implement this, our schedule would increase by about...20%, I'd say. Of any given project.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens see; this is subjective- it's perspective. What they do or don't want isn't the point. If you want to play, you'll have zero chance without really assessing the situation and coming up with a plan of attack (not saying your assessment will give indications of any chance at changing things, but without it you have no chance)

gnat

3

A: Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative Phase II

contests - as of now only one question left in the tag. It is a collaborative-effort locked question that needs moderator to edit. It probably can be retagged to learning: Where can I find programming puzzles and challenges? Note that other two tags in above question are troublesome. puzzl...

^^^ Looking for help. I'd want to retag the question referred in there, but can't figure anything better than 'learning', which seems to be part of STCI (granted, all three of current tags look even worse)

Thomas Owens

3:33 PM

Can I just delete it?

I know it's high view...but it's not that useful.

Jimmy Hoffa

And subjective analysis won't lead you to any real understanding of what they're actually trying at, it'll just bolster your beliefs of what is happening and cement your perspective.

Ampt

speaking of high view, I got my first gold badge today!

programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/37/famous-question

enderland

@Ampt wait you've never had a gold badge before?

Jimmy Hoffa

just validated another russian flag... this one said "Bald and hero had disappeared." according to google translate.

Ampt

@enderland not on progs

enderland

3:35 PM

@Ampt programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/28/…

vote moar

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa Please don't validate flags that shouldn't be validated.

Ampt

@enderland Have enough votes for that..

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland @Ampt has been harribly remiss in actual effective SE participation. His rep is still quite sad.

Ixrec

@enderland that link had me really confused for a minute, it looked like you were the only one to ever earn that badge and I was pretty sure I had it too (and it looks like I do)

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa Truth

enderland

3:37 PM

@JimmyHoffa yeah no kidding I have over 5k rep here and I don't even know what is getting me that rep

> 43 answers

I guess you get sympathy upvotes every once in a while and/or write good answers

Ampt

rep is just the mans way of making you work, man.

enderland

and/or learn

Ampt

need to go vote on a bunch of questions I guess

gnat

@ThomasOwens it seems to be actively maintained. Last edited half year ago, 34 revisions total. Combined with over 100K views, that makes me feel uncomfortable about deletion

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens to be sure I didn't know what the translation said beforehand but alright; I'll stop validating flags then. Honestly one of the reasons I always validate them is they lack any amount of context which makes most of them totally unknowable and by the time I go join the room to look and see what's going on, the flag is gone as it has enough respondents.

Ixrec

3:38 PM

for some reason I have >2k rep on SFF.SE and I barely do anything over there

Jimmy Hoffa

(that and as I mentioned before, I err on the belief that people need to keep their rooms flag-free or suffer)

Ixrec

I would agree that with the flag system the way it is, it almost doesn't matter what you click on unless it's a flag for the chatroom you're currently in and thus you actually know whether it's valid or not

Jimmy Hoffa

but I'll stop

Ixrec

but I always default to "not sure" if I don't know

enderland

I never get a chance to actually evaluate most flags before they are validated :P

user55340

3:40 PM

@gnat that question is one of the few that we've seemed to be able to maintain and use as a wiki-lock.

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland exactly- the timout effect makes participating in the validation really a snap judgement to begin with

Ampt

oh it's 600 votes on questions

user55340

The other thing is "look at all the linked questions"

user55340

programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/756?lq=1

Ampt

Questions -> Sort Oldest to Newest -> Downvote (repeat x600)

2

gnat

3:42 PM

@MichaelT yeah. We only fail to find a... less inappropriate tag for it. Any ideas? I thought about 'skills' but it hardly feels right. Learning probably fits, but it's STCI. I feel stuck

user55340

@gnat its one of those awful questions for tagging. Whatever we have it will be either not quite right or subject to trying to clean up.

Ixrec

off-topic

user55340

@Ixrec I would loath to have that be a valid tag for the main site.

user55340

We'd either end up pulling a SF or having half the new users posting to that tag.

gnat

problem-solving?

Ampt

3:45 PM

what's the daily limit on votes?

user55340

(IIRC, the SF incident involved creating an off topic tag and then merging all of the off topic tags into it and then closing / deleting everything that was tagged thus)

gnat

@Ampt 40 if you vote only questions. 30 if you vote only answers

user55340

@Ampt up down? - its fuzzy.

enderland

does it even need the contests tag? why not just get rid of that

gnat

@enderland it doesn't need contests. And resources is wrong per tag wiki. And puzzles are close to be burninated

user55340

3:46 PM

@gnat 80 if you vote only on questions that will get deleted by the roomba before the vote reset on the first 40.

Ampt

@gnat Interesting - thanks!

user55340

> Josh Crozier's technique for earning Vote Early, Vote Often was especially noteworthy, so here is a note. Most users didn't earn that hat until the seventh day of the event at the earliest, because it required casting 250 votes, and there's a 40-vote-per-day limit. He got it on Dec. 17—the fourth day after the hats were unveiled—by casting several votes on posts that were later deleted and still counted towards the hat but not the daily limit.

gnat

in fact it's the last remaining question in contests

Ixrec

I would be surprised if we could come up with a tag for that question that does not encourage off-topic questions without being blatantly inaccurate

gnat

@MichaelT yeah riding over roomba, how could I forget

Ixrec

3:48 PM

because that question is 100% off-topic

gnat

6 mins ago, by MichaelT

@gnat its one of those awful questions for tagging. Whatever we have it will be either not quite right or subject to trying to clean up.

user55340

@Ixrec move it to documentation.programmers.se... oh, wait...

user55340

46,000 without any rep juggling with down votes on answers today!

user55340

Robert Harvey

4:03 PM

179

A: Build a Compiler Bomb

C, 31 byte source, 4,294,975,901 byte executable Thanks to @viraptor for 6 bytes off. This defines the main function as a large array and initialises its first element. This causes GCC to store the entire array in the resulting executable. Because this array is bigger than 2GB, we need to pro...

user55340

@RobertHarvey those crazy code golfers...

Robert Harvey

If you like that one...

126

A: Build a Compiler Bomb

C#, about 1 min to compile, 28MB output binary: class X<A,B,C,D,E>{class Y:X<Y,Y,Y,Y,Y>{Y.Y.Y.Y.Y.Y.Y.Y.Y y;}} Adding more Y's will increase the size exponentially. An explanation by Pharap as per @Odomontois' request: This answer is abusing inheritance and type parameters to create recursio...

user55340

70

A: Build a Compiler Bomb

If an output of more than 4GB is achieved (perhaps if somebody finds a turing complete preprocessor), the competition will be for the smallest source which produces a file of at least that size (it's just not practical to test submissions which get too big). "Template Haskell" allows Haskell...

user55340

See? There's the problem... Haskell.

user55340

I was expecting something absurd to come out of C++ templates. I wasn't expecting the Ackermann function. — Mark Jan 13 at 9:42

user55340

4:06 PM

And then the C++ scary people.

MichaelT does graphs so you don't have to

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