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6:00 PM
No... last I knew he was working for DoDefense. He was a very unlikely person to move to another country, I think.
 
Haha well the links in his profile show his face, so I guess that'll be the final nail
 
Oddly enough, he does bear a passing resemblance, but only that. Definitely not him.
 
this took quite a while to write...
0
A: "Hello, World!"

Martin BüttnerMornington Crescent, 3614 bytes Take Northern Line to Hendon Central Take Northern Line to Bank Take Northern Line to Bank Take District Line to Gunnersbury Take District Line to Victoria Take Victoria Line to Seven Sisters Take Victoria Line to Victoria Take Victoria Line to Victoria Take Distr...

 
Hm I wonder how often people meet people they know in real life on SE
Apart from you @ChrisJester-Young ;)
 
I know @xnor, that's it.
 
6:03 PM
@MartinBüttner That's because it's a ridiculous language :D
 
@BetaDecay What, do you know me IRL?
 
I know @MartinBüttner . That's it!
 
I know my dog.
 
@ChrisJester-Young No, I guess SE devs meet each other all of the time
 
@Geobits What is your dog's name anyway?
 
6:04 PM
@BetaDecay Not if you're remote. We do have an annual (employee-only) meetup, though.
 
Ohh. I take it you're remote then
 
@flawr Cookie
 
@flawr @Geobits
 
@Geobits while it was quite a pain to write, the language actually some really fun concepts
 
@isaacg Oh you do? That's really neat. Did you know him prior to SE?
 
6:06 PM
@MartinBüttner It sounds like a terrible day on the train, to be honest :P
 
@Geobits @Optimizer ?
@Geobits So sweet!
 
his dog's name is also Geobits
 
So what brand of dog is it?
 
Beagle
 
6:08 PM
@AlexA. I've known him for almost two years, about 6 months longer than I've been on SE.
 
That's him very young
 
@BetaDecay Yep, remote. I do live in the same city as Jin, and we've met up a few times (even before I started working for SE).
 
@isaacg Awesome! How'd you meet?
 
We go to the same school.
 
I have met a number of people from #stackoverflow (IRC) in real life, too, again way before I started working here.
 
6:09 PM
@isaacg MIT?
 
Yeah
 
@ChrisJester-Young I need to get back on that sweet remote train :(
 
@Geobits Apply to SE
 
@Geobits Did we have a conversation about applying to Stack Exchange?
Jinx!
 
@isaacg u did graduation from there?
 
6:09 PM
Ninja'd
 
No, I'm just about to start my junior year
 
I usually do the ninjaing because I type in Dvorak.
I really need to practise more to get my Dvorak speed even higher, just for the lulz. (Seriously though, I type fast enough for my needs.)
 
@Geobits I really can't handle how friggin' cute this dog is.
 
@ChrisJester-Young Nope, but I've glanced at the openings from time to time. Never applied, though.
 
6:12 PM
@Geobits How come?
 
@AlexA. He's slightly less cute now, but still... He's about 10 months old now.
@ChrisJester-Young Partly because I haven't seen anything (yet) that sounds like a great fit. Most I see are for full-stack (ugh), designers, etc. I'm not holding off because it's SE, believe me. It sounds like a great company to work for.
 
He became slightly less cute as soon as he started chatting here posing as you ?
 
@Geobits What is it you'd be most interested in doing?
 
@AlexA. To be perfectly honest, I'd rather be self-employed/freelance. There's a fairly high barrier to enter that, though, so I'm just looking around until something catches my eye.
It's hard as a single dad. I have to be very sure of something before ditching a stable job.
 
6:16 PM
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Tell your lazy kid to get a job. He's what, 8? Once upon a time he'd be in a factory by now.
 
Hmm, not a bad idea. He could sew clothes or make iPhones or something.
 
Perfect.
Better yet, teach him jQuery.
 
I'd buy that iPhone! Most likely to be better than the current ones
 
@AlexA. Why? He wants to be a programmer :P
 
@Geobits If you are not a fan of full-stack, what technologies are you into?
 
6:18 PM
Well, he loves Java, that much we know. :)
 
and Android
 
@Optimizer I'll be happy to let him know of any mobile openings that come up. :-P
(There aren't any currently, to my knowledge.)
 
Are there any openings?
 
@ChrisJester-Young There aren't, at least on the jobs page.
Which I check everyday.
 
6:22 PM
@AlexA. I know what's on the job page, of course. I also keep an eye on internal openings too.
 
@ChrisJester-Young I think that to leave my current (stable,near family, etc) job, it would have to be something exciting. That's purposely vague, because I'm not sure what form it would be. I don't like the idea of switching into another boring hibernate/spring/crap business software job. For that I can stay here.
 
@ChrisJester-Young are you related to the perf team there?
 
@Optimizer What perf team? The core team is all about performance.
We don't have a dedicated performance team. That's the responsibility of all core engineers.
 
so are you part of that?
 
Yes, I'm in the core dev team.
 
6:23 PM
I have a few doubts from the performance page.
 
!
 
first and foremost: Does the page cover all of the SE sites while listing the stats?
 
@Geobits Does Stack Exchange sound like that kind of company to you? Seriously.
@Optimizer I think so?
 
ok. Next would be the about the kind of computation involved with each of the hardware components listed there. Some are clear, but some are open ended.
 
6:26 PM
No, but neither do the listings sound that much different than other companies'.
 
What all does the Web Servers cover?
What are there CPU counts ?
Is that something which is purposely not displayed on the page?
 
@Geobits Don't think about the listings per se. Think about what kind of company you're seeing, based on your interactions on the sites here.
 
Last that I can think of right now is about the web sockets. Do these 9 web servers serve the web sockets sessions?
 
@Optimizer Our 9 web servers serve all the sites, including SO.
@Optimizer Yes.
 
so the Tag engine server is also a HOP behind these web servers?
 
6:31 PM
I'm not 100% certain of remembering our physical topology correctly (I'm not in the SRE team), but yes, the tag engine servers are accessible from the web servers.
 
Any idea about the # of CPU ? I am assuming them to be 16 as per the normal convention
 
Lemme ask the SRE team, I don't know this info myself.
 
@ChrisJester-Young Sure. Like I said, it sounds like a great place to work. Just not full stack. Not only does that sound uninteresting to me, but there are bound to be other applicants vastly more qualified than I am in that area. I know all the basics, but I don't have much actual work experience in it.
I'd be tempted to apply for a mobile position :)
 
@Geobits I'll let you know when we have a mobile opening.
 
I have an opening in my mobile device. It's where I speak into it. Words come out of another opening.
 
6:40 PM
> Employees will never be poked with a sharp stick
Such a relief!
 
Unlike most other companies, where sharp sticks are the norm.
 
@AlexA. Its called a hole. Time to get a new one.
@AlexA. ohh... does this mean blunt sticks are used here?
 
Idk, ask Chris. :P
 
like he'll tell. Its a company secret.
 
> Before we disclose the measure of sharpness of our sticks, we need you to sign this NDA.
 
6:43 PM
I heard that instead of sticks, since they have many remote employees, they use brain-implanted electrodes.
 
^ Sounds legit
 
Do the electrodes do positive reinforcement, negative, or both?
 
They are not neutral for sure
 
> Ok, he finished refactoring the foo module. Time to release the dopamine.
 
^ Geobits' true nightmares revealed
 
6:47 PM
No, my deepest fear would be waking up as a llama. The horror...
 
So I've been thinking of a graph-searching algorithm, and I'm curious if it has a name.
Basically, you do a BFS, but you have a max queue size
when you hit that queue size, you add the current node to the back of the queue, and move to the next
you would need to store a number with each node that indicates how many edges it has already traversed (so you don't traverse them again)
 
@Geobits Don't say that out loud. I do that every single day! :(
 
If the queue limit was "soft" you could do away with storing the number I think. Just traverse until adding all from the current node would put it over, or similar.
I don't know a name for it, though. What advantages would it have over, say, an IDDFS?
 
@Geobits ^
 
That's just weird.
 
6:55 PM
You woke up as a llama.
 
Also, you should feather your cropping tool :P
 
@Geobits You don't have to re-search down the tree
 
Looks like he's freehanded it
 
@Geobits I use the equivalent of MS Paint. Very little effort was put into this.
 
What's the equivalent?
 
6:56 PM
Paintbrush
 
@NathanMerrill Hmm. Yea, I suppose. Benchmarks!
@AlexA. I don't see how this detracts from the validity of my advice ;)
Well that's not at all creepy...
 
Don't worry about it.
 
People generally only say that about things we probably should worry about.
 
I may or may not have replaced my body with that of a bird.
 
7:11 PM
@Geobits So your kid does want to be a programmer just like his daddy? :3
 
Whose his daddy?
Downvote buttons don't really seem to be able to form children
 
@AlexA. Eh, for now. He's eight, so it's definitely not set in stone or anything :)
He's learning to make small minecraft mods for now.
 
At 8 years old?!
That's nuts!
 
He's working through a book right now, and getting help from me. He still likes to play in Scratch from time to time also.
 
Smart kid. :)
 
7:24 PM
Bloody hell, that's awesome
 
When I was 8 I think I pretty much just wanted to draw all the time.
 
I can't remember when I was eight
 
you were not
you skipped 8
 
I didn't have a computer at eight, so I spent significantly more time outside getting lost in the woods :)
 
Haha I've always lived out in a load of fields so I spent my time in the garden
And indoors
 
7:27 PM
I spent most of my childhood inside drawing.
 
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

ablighMutant pangolin This is a code-golf challenge whereby you need to devise a program that acts like a quine or a quine that modifies itself to illustrate machine learning. Background There is a basic artificial intelligence program called 'the pangolin game' which is described here. The basic id...

 
these profile pics are horribly awesome
 
That's the idea I think :D
 
I guess it was either PhiNotPi ?
 
@AlexA. Do you have any of those drawings?
 
7:28 PM
or flawr..
 
@BetaDecay My mom does I think.
 
or Alex
 
I drew them.
 
@Optimizer Phi made the new avatars
Ninja'd :O
 
@AlexA. Aww haha. I'd love to see the art of a fledgling
 
7:29 PM
i used to sketch a lot
 
And also damn it
 
Mine aren't worth looking at. ;)
 
4
Q: What's the worst that could happen to CERN?

Beta DecayIt's been said many times that CERN is going to destroy the Universe and everybody in it, but most educated people know that this is absolute hocum. It seems being the biggest supercollider therefore increases the chances that it's going to break by a near infinite margin. However, if something ...

 
would be siting in the classroom, staring at the dustbin and the art its making, then drawing what I see as I see.
 
:)
 
7:30 PM
:D
 
so I'd also draw my hand drawing the drawing in the drawing
 
o.O
Are you M.C. Escher?
 
Too much meta in this place
 
no
ah, I've seen his work floating around on net a lot
 
:P
 
7:33 PM
Hue Saturation Intensity
 
My sister got me an Escher pop-up book for my birthday a few years ago. It's really cool!
 
I can see some of his stuff not working at all in pop-up form.
 
Yes, I think those cases are excluded.
 
@BetaDecay It could be shut down for lack of funding?
2
 
A lot of it is really neat though.
@PeterTaylor It could get three downvotes then delete itself. But it would still get the Peer Pressure badge.
Consolation prize
 
7:37 PM
I think the only way CERN is going to create a black hole is by hitting it with a sonic screwdriver.
 
sonic doesn't have a screwdriver
 
I think the only way CERN is going to create a black hole is to drill a hole and color it with Sharpies.
 
@Optimizer Sure he does. Why wouldn't he? Just because he doesn't carry it around with him doesn't mean he doesn't own one.
 
@Geobits coz hesa hedgehog?
 
Insufficient data to make a conclusion on whether Sonic the Hedgehog owns a screwdriver.
 
7:40 PM
@Optimizer Umm. You're a llama with access to modern tech. Are you speciesist or something?
 
No one ever said that Optimizer owns a screwdriver.
 
@Geobits I just have this computer. Do you want to take this away from me too :(
 
T^T
@Geobits photoshopped!
 
@Geobits He's holding something but it doesn't really look like a screwdriver.
At least not any I've ever owned.
 
7:42 PM
@AlexA. It's a sonic screwdriver...
 
photoshopped, I say!
 
^
 
Two too awesome
So Sonic's the new Doctor? Great :D
 
Well, the Doctor runs a lot, so it made sense.
 
Haha I hope he ditches that annoying Clara
She's basically the Doctor
 
7:44 PM
I think her time is coming soon. It feels like new-companion time.
Maybe it'll be Tails or Knuckles.
 
I like Tails
 
I know next to nothing about Doctor Who and Sonic the Hedgehog so I don't really know what's going on.
 
Maybe Tails will be my new avatar :)
 
At least he has two distinct eyes
 
Yes, nothing says Beta Decay like an anthropomorphic mutant fox.
 
7:46 PM
She
 
Tails is female?
 
She? In the cartoons at least (I know, they're terrible), Tails is definitely male.
 
Oh never mind
I misread the article
 
Interesting that the Japanese last name doesn't translate 1-1 to the English last name.
Prower in English, Power in Japanese.
 
Why do I even bother posting answers more than five minutes after the question is posted on SO :-/
 
7:49 PM
I've basically stopped participating on SO. u_u
 
I got beat by a "u can haz code" answer stackoverflow.com/q/32401866/3224483
 
@AlexA. Making it more like Prower in Japanese would mean adding another syllable. There's no real 'pr' sound.
 
@Geobits Right, I know. But it could have been something more along the lines of pu-RA-waa
 
The deed is done
 
プラーワー
Something like that ^
 
7:53 PM
@AlexA. You just need to know that the sonic screwdriver in Dr Who was advanced phlebotinium, and the producers banned the writers from using it for several series as a result.
 
@AlexA. I guess. I stopped trying to fit exact transliterations long ago ;)
 
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Phlebotinium?
 
Yea, that stuff can do crazy things.
 
7:55 PM
Not you tvtropes
xkcd told me to hate that site
 
Do you do everything xkcd says?
If it told you to play chess on a roller coaster would you do it?
3
 
Probably
 
Well, some people would for sure, seeing as he's been sent pictures of fans doing just that.
Not to mention wetriffs :)
 
Not gonna link to wetriffs ;)
 
What is a wetriff :?
 
7:57 PM
Naked people playing electric guitar in the shower
 
NSFW is what it is. Google at your own discretion.
 
No thanks
 
8:54 PM
I have some free time this weekend, I think I'll start on my new programming language. I've been trying to think of some pros/cons for Element, so that I may improve upon it.
 
So it'll be something entirely new rather than the next version of Element?
 
It might be the next version, it depends on how much I change it.
Any changes, however, will not be compatible with the previous version.
 
Ah, okay. Though I assume it'll still compile to Perl and be written in Notepad.
 
It will be a Compound
 
@AlexA. Yes, of course.
 
8:56 PM
:)
@Optimizer ?
 
Element -> Compound
 
Ohhh, the missing o confused me
Didn't know if "compund" was something I shouldn't Google
 
One major thing I would like to add would be support for lists/arrays.
 
That would be really useful.
Is Element stack-based? I forget.
 
Yes, its stack-based.
The main data structures are two stacks (main and control) and a hash.
 
9:00 PM
Haha, I like "Rad Roman" as an anagram of @randomra. :D
 
It's probably unique in terms of the hash.
Although it is mainly used to allow named variables.
 
In Perl you can only push a reference to an array into an array, right?
@Doorknob :D Martin and Geobits came up with those.
 
@AlexA. I thinking pushing two arrays together simply appends them to each other.
 
huh, it seems that firefox's fragment decoding bug is fixed in version 41: bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1093611
 
@PhiNotPi There's a way to push an array into an array so that one contains another. I think it's like \@ as a reference to the array to be contained.
I did it at work once and I forget why I thought it was a good idea at the time.
 
9:04 PM
@Optimizer Version 5 has to be Quintessential
 
Zip It More
 
Impossible. Maximum zip capacity reached. Any further and we'll break the zipper.
 
Yeah, the `\` returns the reference to the array.
 
Its my anagram
 
Oh it is? Hahaha
@Doorknob ^
 
9:06 PM
(How do I get that formatted correctly in chat?) So, pushing a reference to an array does make it so one is contained in the other.
 
What are you trying to format?
A backslash?
 
Yes.
 
\
 
Has anyone in here had this problem with ubuntu: askubuntu.com/questions/667513/…
 
9:07 PM
\
 
I got it with double backticks \
 
I already did it guys \
 
\
 
I saw, but I didn't know how you did it.
 
Besides the lack of arrays, Element has very limited (next to no) support for strings.
 
Which is kind of funny since it compiles to Perl, which has pretty good string facilities.
 
As in, the only string operations are chopping off the first or last character, or converting between num and char.
 
@TheNumberOne My wireless had a lot of trouble while I was using Gnome on Ubuntu, but mysteriously started working much better around when I switched to xmonad. That's probably not helpful, and I doubt it's the same problem you're having.
\\\
 
@AlexA. Oooh, that's a good one. :P
 
9:13 PM
Isn't it? XD
I think that's my favorite of all of the anagrams discovered thus far.
Nice job, @Optimizer :)
 
My main design idea behind Element was "one character = one operation." Which means that string literals and loops are the only syntax elements (pun?) that are more than a single character.
 
Sin den
 
ew
 
@Dennis Oh goodness. Sounds like something you'd find in Las Vegas.
 
I want to roar in your sin den
 
9:15 PM
Haha
Another anagram of "Dennis" is "sinned."
Oh actually that's just Dennis backwards.
 
Also a Japanese hair salon, but I prefer the LV idea.
 
Alexa
@AlexA. ^ your anagram
 
Technically true I guess
 
the first and the last A are interchanged
 
A Axle
Ohh Ale Ax
 
9:17 PM
Not an anagram, but I like google's autocorrect suggestion for PhiNotPi, which is PheNotyPe.
 
Ex Ala
 
Looking for feedback on this updated: cc @MartinBüttner
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

durron597Splitting up ASCII Given the 95 printable characters in ASCII plus newline, break it apart into two equal, 48 character groups (hereafter called group A and group B). Create a bijective mapping between the two groups, which may be anything you want. In other words, A might map to a, and vice ver...

 
"use each group to write two programs" sounds like I'm writing 4 programs
 
@MartinBüttner How's that
 
If you use each group to write a program, you already have two.
 
9:27 PM
"How's (removed)"?
 
It would be a lot more challenging if you could use only one language.
 
I assume @TheNumberZero is a bot of @TheNumberOne.
 
Maybe.
ಠ_ಠ
 
ip?
 
@Dennis I'm trying to hit a sweet spot of "interesting but not too hard"
 
9:31 PM
<( ಠ.ಠ)>
 
@AlexA. You could read his profile.
 
@Dennis Of course, all feedback is welcome, it's still sandboxed.
 
@durron597 Looks good to me, but the spec could probably use some restructuring to improve its clarity.
 
@MartinBüttner Sure. Specifically?
 
especially the third paragraph seems to have a lot information. I don't have a specific idea for how to improve it right now... just thinking that currently some parts might be a bit more confusing than they need to be.
also, maybe define the term "bijective" somewhere
 
9:37 PM
@MartinBüttner in the post, or a link to dictionary.com?
 
in the post
 
@MartinBüttner I mostly meant "where needs work" not "what should I do"
 
even just adding ", i.e. a one-to-one mapping, " would probably help
 
I wrote it so it's harder for me to see what's not clear.
I'll just remove bijective entirely. And then go read a copy of Randall Munroe's "thing explainer" ;)
 
9:44 PM
Wow I just had a blonde moment. We were asked to shut down all of our equipment that isn't being used for longevity tests in preparation for a three day weekend, and I was frantically trying to find someone who could remote into this one machine to shut it down
Turns out I can just plug it into a nearby monitor. Problem solved
 
1
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

durron597Splitting up ASCII Given the 95 printable characters in ASCII plus newline, break it apart into two equal, 48 character groups (hereafter called group A and group B). Create a one-to-one mapping between the two groups, which may be anything you want. In other words, A might map to a, and vice ve...

@Rainbolt you might need an input device too
 
Yea, we have a keyboard
We have a rack with 8 regular towers, one monitor, and one keyboard
no mouse
 
@Rainbolt No KVM?
 
Nope
5 of the machines host VMs and never need to be plugged into to a monitor or keyboard, 2 of them are always off, and 1 we use for our daily scrum
I say VMs... they aren't really VMs. They are just regular desktops
I guess we treat them like we treat our testing VMs
Ooooh... that explains why I don't have remote access
Two blonde moments
 
9:52 PM
We had KVM switches at my last job
We had to put the same windows image on like 500 computers
 
How much time would a KVM switch have saved you today?
 
Counting the time I spent talking about it in here?
If not, maybe ten minutes
 
How much time do you think it would save your entire team over the course of one year?
 
Do we have a challenge about rearrange the letters inside words - lkie tihs
 
@durron597 Hardly any. We don't power down most weekends
This is an unusual weekend due to Labor Day + whatever whacky idea our CEO got in his head
He probably wants to test how much electricity he saves if the entire pit shuts down. I don't blame him
 
9:59 PM
@Rainbolt it could be more common then if it saves a lot
 

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