SE Podcast

6:32 PM

room topic changed to SE Podcast Live Chat: livestream.com/stackexchange / Next Episode: Tuesday 8/9 @ 4:00pm EDT w/ Michael Natkin (no tags)

Jon Galloway

7:58 PM

This music is making me hate music. I think I'd prefer Friday (Rebecca Black) on repeat.

Jin

@JonGalloway why do you hate Freedom?

Billy ONeal

Interesting that the camera is pointed in a different direction this week

Joel Spolsky

Today's Guest:

UncleZeiv

cool!

Joel Spolsky

vegfoodie.typepad.com/.a/…

Jon Skeet

8:00 PM

So how easy is it to distract Joel remotely, I wonder...

Simon Sheehan

Oh cool, looks like I arrived in time!

Billy ONeal

!Joel's image

Jin

oh cool. the cooking guy!

UncleZeiv

There's no split screen showing Jeff??

z-boss

Where should I click to see Atwood?

Jon Skeet

8:02 PM

Podcast by PowerPoint. Interesting concept...

Billy ONeal

![](vegfoodie.typepad.com/.a/…)

Damnit

Michael Mrozek

It's just !URL (! optional if the URL ends in a picture extension)

Jon Galloway

@Jin I don't know. I've just always hated freedom.

Billy ONeal

@Michael: Except, it's not working

e.g. !vegfoodie.typepad.com/.a/…

Michael Mrozek

Billy ONeal

8:03 PM

How?

Michael Mrozek

!http://vegfoodie.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008d618bb883401156fbb0d4a970c-800wi

Billy ONeal

Erm, that's what I did

/me confused

Jon Galloway

hartoandco.com/my-drunk-kitchen

Question for Michael: Did you make the non-sweet marshmallows you'd asked about in this question: cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/6401/…

Michael Mrozek

9

Q: How to combine chocolate and garlic in the same dish?

I hosted a potluck dinner some years ago, and I set the theme as "chocolate or garlic" -- guests were to bring one or the other. One person was a wiseacre and bought chocolate covered garlic. (It was hideously unpalatable.) I've since wondered if there's any way to combine chocolate and garlic ...

Jon Galloway

Cool blog w/ a great series on food pairings: Khymos.org - blog.khymos.org/molecular-gastronomy/flavor-pairing

z-boss

8:09 PM

Question to guest: what brand is his chef's knife?

Jin

Question: isn't bacon like.. the best thing there is? agree or strongly agree?

Brant

Bacon

Yes, yes they did.

Brian Driscoll

Is there really a minimum level of expected competency on any SE site?

Jon Skeet

Re: duplicates and answering - I'm absolutely with Jeff on that.

I keep answering questions that are then closed as duplicates, and often the duplicate question was also one I'd answered.

James Gifford

Re: duplicates and answering - I prefer to close it as a duplicate on AU.

Brian Driscoll

8:13 PM

@JonSkeet Sounds like an Inception moment...

Dave

I missed who the guest was - but I really like this point on reinforcing the correct/desired behavior.

Jon Galloway

@JonSkeet That was some of my first feedback during the alpha - need a way to merge dupes. For a long time there was no dupe association.

Jin

Michael at Herbivoracious, Seattle, WA

17k 1 11 63

baking equipment substitutions pasta culinary-uses flavor vegetables

Brian Driscoll

Again I ask: what is really the minimum expected level of competency on SO or any other SE site? So what if someone is asking about how to write a loop?

2

Jon Skeet

I wonder whether it's easier for folks who answer fewer questions to recognise duplicates - I see enough questions that unless it's a particularly memorable topic, the chances of me remembering another specific question from more than a couple of days ago are pretty slim.

Dave

8:15 PM

What's a loop? (sorry, tongue in cheek)

z-boss

Sometimes duplicate is named differently and not in the best and obvious way, so Google doesn't find it.

Jon Galloway

@Jin I am disappoint: cooking.stackexchange.com/tags/bacon/info

Michael Mrozek

@JonSkeet Probably. On SO I usually find a duplicate because I see a question and think "this has to have been asked". On meta it's because I think "I've seen this exact question before"

Mike

@JonSkeet nope I don't answer a lot and read tons and I find it difficult to see duplicates

Jon Skeet

Additionally, one good thing comes out of answering the same thing multiple times: we get better at explaining the same concept. I've now explained async C# 5 a bunch of times, and every time I do it, I hope I get a bit better at it.

2

Brian Driscoll

8:16 PM

@Dave in order to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion

Brant

@JonSkeet The same thing happens to me. I repeat explanations in my head over and over trying to refine them.

Jeff Atwood

6

A: Why are we so strict with closing questions, can't we just keep them open?

I think in some cases we are a bit too quick to close questions, but not in that case. The question was a nonsensical pile of gibberish. We are here to help people with electronics, not english or the self-evident logic of how to ask a question. Even if some are so inclined, this isn't the pla...

UncleZeiv

well for instance isn't this why we have TWO math sites? one for the pros and one for the general public?

Jeff Atwood

> Fixing peoples bad questions is like letting them re-do throw ins. They're not going to take it seriously until the bad questions is closed.

Brian Driscoll

I think there will always be some noise, it's likely unavoidable.

Jon Galloway

8:18 PM

@JeffAtwood How about a dunce cap avatar as a penalty for dumb questions?

Aarthi Devanathan Ψ

@JonGalloway That's a little LiveJournal, isn't it?

yeah foodie + vegetarian is nigh impossible, if all of my Food Network-watching is any indication.

slash watching Chopped and Top Chef for like 4 seasons

Jon Galloway

@AarthiDevanathanΨ 37signals had a Troll cap at one time, too: 37signals.com/svn/archives2/introducing_the_troll_cap.php

Aarthi Devanathan Ψ

@JonGalloway laughs that needs to happen more often on the internet

Brian Driscoll

@JoelSpolsky say that 10 times fast

Brant

Now that's a policy I can support.

Jon Galloway

8:21 PM

2

Brian Driscoll

Anthony Bourdain is a HUGE vegetarian hater, since we're talking about vegetarian haters

Jeff Atwood

@JonGalloway the ol' "reward failure" strategy.. we already do that.. because bad questions get AMAZING answers

Aarthi Devanathan Ψ

@BrianDriscoll He's also kind of an insensitive ass when it comes to ~exploring other cultures~

iirc, the last time he was in india, he pretty much shunned all the vegetarian main courses

which, imho, is basically completely missing the point

z-boss

vegetarianism is a form of masochism imho

Brian Driscoll

@AarthiDevanathan Perhaps, honestly I wouldn't really know.

Aarthi Devanathan Ψ

8:24 PM

@BrianDriscoll I haven't watched his show in a long time; we didn't get FN at uni

Jeff Atwood

cooking.stackexchange.com/?tab=month

Brian Driscoll

@AarthiDevanathan Right; I stopped watching several years ago.

Andrew Moore

@JeffAtwood At that point through, it gains value and isn't necessarily bad anymore.

Jeff Atwood

amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science-Cooking/dp/0982761007/…

@AndrewMoore still teaches exactly the wrong thing. Go type no effort, get amazing results.

but, it's a hard problem

z-boss

Molecular cooking never worked on Top Chef or Chopped

Andrew Moore

8:27 PM

@JeffAtwood Oh, I agree, just look at my answer history on SO.

Aarthi Devanathan Ψ

@zboss yeah but top chef and chopped don't really reward limits beyond "you cook what we give you fool!"

Brian Driscoll

I recall one SO post that was, quite literally, "asdfasdfasdf..." ad infinitum

Andrew Moore

Both actually. Do it for them and explain them why in comments.

Mehrdad Afshari

Do it for them and add a comment making sure they know it's edited.

James Gifford

I edit for them, and then leave a comment.

Jon Galloway

8:31 PM

Since recipes are off limits on cooking.stackexchange.com, is there a possibility of recipies.stackexchange.com at some point? Seems like that would get a lot of traffic and could be useful as another thing.

random

Give them a fighting chance to do ninja edits inside the grace period themselves at least

Brant

I've often wished there was a button on questions labeled something like "Ugh, this is just...I mean, I could spend a few minutes editing it into shape, but...Ugh."

random

That's why people flag "low quality" because they're too lazy to do anything else about it

Brian Driscoll

I've been seeing a lot of posts lately that are extremely long; it'd be nice if there was some kind of TL;DR "suggestion" popup once a post reaches a certain length

Jon Skeet

But we are rule-obsessed jerks!

2

Have I been misunderstanding the point of SO all this time?

Brian Driscoll

8:33 PM

@JonSkeet +1

z-boss

Recipes are not allowed on a cooking site is so not obvious - should be in bold and 42 points on front page for each new user.

Kevin Montrose

@JonSkeet - it's a little different when you make the rules.

Michael Mrozek

waxy.org/2011/07/meat_cheese_bread

Jon Galloway

Like the cook in the movie Big Night (by the guy who plays Monk)

Brian Driscoll

The tourist trap cheesesteak places in my home city of Philadelphia have the same approach

random

8:35 PM

44

Q: Is "Don't do it" a valid answer?

If someone asks how to do XYZ, and you think doing XYZ at all is a Bad Idea, is it valid to post an answer saying so? You aren't answering the question, but instead, arguing the question's validity. You could do this in a comment, but I don't think comments carry enough weight on occasion. For ...

discussion questions answers opinion

Michael Mrozek

answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091215130040AAZU8e1

Brian Driscoll

oh, and you have to order in English apparently...

Joel Spolsky

answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110613151513AARhZ6r

Michael Mrozek

There's more than one Yahoo Answers question about eating dirt...

4

Brian Driscoll

How does he know that I keep my frequent flier miles in my phone's address book???

Jon Galloway

8:38 PM

15

Q: Is it possible to make a marshmallow that isn't sweet?

I've got in mind to make a savory play on s'mores, using morel mushroom paste where you would expect chocolate. The graham cracker replacement should be no problem. But I'm stuck on the marshmallow. If you google savory marshmallow, you basically find a bunch of standard sweet marshmallow recipes...

molecular-gastronomy

Interested to hear if this worked

Alex Miller

@Joel just tried to tell me the video was frozen

z-boss

it's not

Alex Miller

I figured he was wrong because I didn't have 15 people in here yelling at me about it

:-)

Brian Driscoll

it's not

Andrew Moore

@AlexMiller It's not, we all saw that ;)

Nip

8:40 PM

Video's fine.

random

Does a stroke on air count?

z-boss

it's cause Joel uses Mac

Brian Driscoll

I think that's an interesting point

Michael Mrozek

Oh the points...the delicious points

Dave

where's that troll hot? :-)

Brian Driscoll

8:42 PM

@JoelSpolsky That would be nice.

Jon Skeet

As a counterpoint to this, Stack Overflow has very obviously been great for me. I'm sure it's helped in book sales, conference speaking invitations etc. Would be interesting to know how many people have a similar experience though.

random

Spammers will only hear "blah blah blah blah make your answer consist entirely of a link your blog blah blah blah"

Brian Driscoll

@random yes, that's likely

@JonSkeet Unfortunately, we're not all Jon Skeet.

Jon Skeet

@Brian

Gah, sorry :(

Jin

@JonSkeet do you like bacon?

Jon Skeet

8:44 PM

@BrianDriscoll That's my point - I hope others see the same effect, maybe to a diminished extent.

@Jin I love bacon, although I'm currently on a diet so not having it much at the moment.

z-boss

@JeffAtwood Good to know.

Brant

At 1000 rep your signature box gets an infobox on mouseover (like tags). At 3000 rep it has a drop shadow. At 4000, it's animated.

Mike

@JonSkeet how many kilos are you down now? I saw that google doc you posted awhile back tracking your progress

Brian Driscoll

@JonSkeet TBH I think you would have received those same benefits regardless of your involvement on SO

@JonSkeet See also: Tony the Pony

Jon Skeet

@Mike: Lost 2 stone in the last 3 months, so that's about 12-13kg.

Mehrdad Afshari

8:46 PM

@JonSkeet Seconded. I used to get a lot of job offers/becoming a cofounder when I was more active on SO; all of which I declined, by the way.

Mike

@JonSkeet awesome progress

Jon Skeet

@BrianDriscoll Before SO I wasn't exactly unknown, but it was a radically different environment.

I should really go and do some ironing...

Michael Mrozek

blogoverflow.com

Brant

Timeline of all StackExchange twitter accounts together

Andrew Moore

stackexchange.com/sites

random

8:47 PM

7

A: Would allowing moderators to update their Stack Exchange sites' Twitter accounts improve visibility and offer more value?

So just to clarify, the SE 2.0 twitter accounts currently tweet: per-site blog posts (if present) chat events, if started by a moderator interesting questions on the site Every three hours (on average). Based on your suggestions, it's clear that we could do better here and tweet a more inter...

Jon Galloway

Great quote: "I tend to assume everything's going to suck"

Michael Mrozek

There were some tweaks around the search field, to make it terrible. REPENT

Stack Overflow Blog: Blog Overflow

Posted by Rebecca Chernoff on June 23rd, 2011

Every Stack Exchange site starts with a Q&A site, made up of three pieces that help bring the whole community together:

bicycles.stackexchange.com, the main Q&A site

meta.bicycles.stackexchange.com, questions about community and administrative matters

chat.bicycles.stackexchange.com, the third place for real-time collaborations

But wait, there’s more?

A couple months ago, the Super User community took it upon themselves to create a blog run by the community. This effort has been so successful that a couple other communities floated the idea amongst themselves. Internally, we recognize …

Nick Craver

You can also get an updated list of twitter bots by seeing who @StackExchange follows: twitter.com/#!/StackExchange/following

Cengiz Can

Hello guys. Who are the speakers we see in stream?

Michael Mrozek

@CengizCan @AlexMiller is on the left, @JoelSpolsky is on the right

Cengiz Can

8:50 PM

Thanks @MichaelMrozek

Aarthi Devanathan Ψ

tumblr! we chatted about this in-office today :D

Michael Mrozek

I didn't even know SE had one until today

Jon Galloway

I think it's time for some cross promotion with Friendster

Jin

i love tumblr so i can reblog lolcat pix

z-boss

A lot of users also used Myspace and it sucked big time.

Cengiz Can

8:51 PM

I think thumblr mostly preferred by people who mostly share glamour photos..

Dave

In regards to UI/UX, I usually have a difficult time understanding what people will and will not like; they'll complain that site XYZ is slow, but yet they like site ABC which is slower.

Aarthi Devanathan Ψ

@CengizCan and animated gifs. waves at fandom

and macros

Brant

I thought all tumblr blogs were required to be in the "f***yeah_____" format

Jin

@JoelSpolsky you still have to be tumblr-famous to have that type of pull though.

Michael Mrozek

stackexchange.com/newsletters

random

8:55 PM

> It's better than nothing

z-boss

Newsletter looks cool

Jon Galloway

Has there been a guest from writers.stackexchange.com yet?

Jin

@JonGalloway not yet

Jeff Atwood

@JonGalloway no, suggest one!

BrMcMullin

Nice visor, DaftProducer...

Alex Miller

8:58 PM

@BrMcMullin thank you

i feel like it greatly increases my productivity

Marco Ceppi

BrMcMullin

^this

Alex Miller

thats what i was going for

BrMcMullin

brilliant

z-boss

@AlexMiller nailed it

Jon Galloway

9:00 PM

@JeffAtwood Don't know the top users there. We had Mark Russinovich on Herding Code, might be interesting to hear from him as a new bestselling fiction author. There are probably much better ideas but they are not in my head.

z-boss

I thought Joel had his private jet already.

Brant

Lamest excuse ever.

Marco Ceppi

"Oh it's a fire...thing. See ya"

BrMcMullin

False alarm, I bet Alex hit a sound board :P

Cengiz Can

That's was so lame.. Fake alarm..

Nip

9:05 PM

@JoelSpolsky what about the hack-a-thon

Dave

I think there was a mobile-phone TV commercial like that "Oh, the restaurant is on fire..gotta go"

Marco Ceppi

10 minutes later "oh look a real fire"

3 weeks?! :'(

Woot!!!!

is that @Jeff

9:06 PM

@JonGalloway Good call; Mark Russinovich is a god

Jon Galloway

Cool - we had him on Herding Code podcast, but of course much smaller listenership ;-) herdingcode.com/?p=320 Also, we talked about computer security and didn't really touch on writing; I wish we had.

Jeff Atwood