The Whiteboard

user20683

12:06 AM

@JimmyHoffa It's matlab for statisticians

user55340

12:42 AM

user55340

You need to think like an engineer when drinking your coffee.

user55340

@rolfl while our help/on-topic is short, we've also got meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/… which is a bit longer... and links to a number of other things. An understanding of what we consider "too broad" is in there along with some other references. It could be a useful reference when checking to see how P.SE would typically understand the question and if it would be a rejected migration.

rolfl

Reading it now... ;-)

Holy carp.... that's a lot to digest.

Ampt

1:05 AM

@MichaelT is pretty dedicated.

@WorldEngineer I thought matlab was matlab for statisticians

user55340

@rolfl Don't forget to follow the links to the other articles...

user55340

There are things like...

user55340

13

Q: Discuss this ${blog}

Occasionally there are questions asked that seek to explain some soundbite of thing someone said or wrote. These questions take a few sentences from a larger piece and ask what it means, or disprove it, or take two of them and ask which is right. It is practically impossible to teach go...

user55340

17

Q: How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?

One of the not infrequently asked questions that shows up on Programmers.SE is along the lines of: I am trying to explain the differences between a NoSQL database and a relational database to a manager. How do I do this? These questions generally take the form of "How do I explain ${someth...

discussion close-reasons

user55340

10

Q: What is the problem with "Pros and Cons"?

<Some question about design or product> What are the pros and cons? Sometimes, these questions get closed as 'too broad' or 'primarily opinion'. Why is that?

discussion close-reasons

user55340

1:06 AM

For some reason... I detect a pattern in those icons though

user55340

Btw, if I get 29 more up votes to the answers to my questions, I'll be on my way to a bronze tag badge in faq-proposed.

user55340

There's also my one FAQ, but I wrote it as a question rather than an answer..

user55340

277

Q: Open letter to students with homework problems

It is September once again (today is the 7316th day of September), and once again students are asking their homework problems on Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE. We start seeing questions like: A car dealer has 10 salespersons. Each salesperson keeps track of the number of cars sold each m...

discussion faq questions

user55340

So it doesn't count for tag badges. sad-face

Ampt

0 questions tagged sad-face

better fix that

rolfl

1:17 AM

If you were wondering, your answers there are good, but it says a lot about Programmers that the scope needs so much to define it ....

user55340

@rolfl It has a lot of history to it. People still keep thinking that its the historical part of the site that is still here... the Not Programming Related days.

user55340

Many people on SO throw the "It doesn't have code, repost this on P.SE" in comments of new users.

user55340

And, well, a lot of people just ask whatever pops into their mind.

user55340

A lot of it is in the "too localized" of old... things like "What job should I take?" or "How to I persuade my boss?"

user55340

others are in the too broad everywhere across the network, but people think they can ask it here for some reason... "What are the pros and cons for using Java?"

user55340

1:30 AM

-1

Q: got a promotion but I am not happy!

I am a java web developer with 2 years experience in the web development. I got promoted last month to associate engineer but not really happy. currently I'm working on a new and important project with 2 talented engineers and a great architect BUT I had the feeling that I'm not good enough for t...

career-development productivity job-title

user55340

We get stuff like that.

rolfl

Should we go on a comparison - my site gets worse questions than yours .... ? ;-)

user55340

@rolfl Do you want me to pull out the archive?

rolfl

Please, no ;-)

user55340

There's a "what should I name my cat" question floating around...

user55340

1:32 AM

rolfl

Well, Schroedinger, obviously!

user55340

There's also a patron saint of programmers question too.

user55340

We also get a fair bit of the "Some blog said this ..., are they right or wrong?" - which is the discuss this blog post.

rolfl

It's the questions like this we have been getting a lot of lately that irritate me:

-2

Q: Suppress automatic outputs in r

When i run auto.arima it shows the whole process in the console, which when trying to create a report ends up showing this: http://i.stack.imgur.com/GP58B.png Is there a way to stop this appearing? I have tried suppressMessages(), suppressWarnings(), sink(), invisible() but none of them seem to...

r

user55340

My code does work though, i just want to hide the things outputted in the console — Summer Gleek 15 hours ago

rolfl

1:37 AM

We get some priceless ones when it comes to 'working code'.....

My code works except I get segmentation faults.....

user20683

my code works but it melts any GPU it runs on

user55340

@WorldEngineer Hey, Eve Online is a great game.

user20683

@MichaelT EVE Online is actually really easy on the GPU

user20683

particularly the classic version which you can totally still run

rolfl

@WorldEngineer Drat, you reminded me of a work problem.....

user55340

1:39 AM

When I first played it on the mac... many years ago... it would overheat my laptop quote promptly (only intel processor I had) unless I played it at night, in the winter (in California).

user20683

@MichaelT WoW burned out my Laptop's screen

user55340

btw, @WorldEngineer how about sending this one over to SO?

user55340

0

Q: Arrays in MASM Assembly (very confused beginner)

I have a pretty basic question: How do you populate arrays in assembly? In high level programming languages you can use a for-loop to set a value to each index, but I'm not sure of how to accomplish the same thing assembly. I know this is wrong, but this is what I have: ExitProcess PROTO .data w...

programming-languages visual-studio array assembly loops

user55340

Though it wouldn't be completely wrong here either.

Jimmy Hoffa

2:20 AM

@MichaelT I don't know how I never thought about this before.... I am so getting some food grade aluminum tubing to coil through ice water for this exact reason, stupid ice cubes always waters down the coffee...

@rolfl the reality is a lot of the content we have around meta is there because we saw a pattern of one thing or another, and each piece of meta content is just a sign post for one thing or another, I certainly don't expect anyone to read all of it, but it's handy when you see homework problems to be able to link to the letter to students post etc instead of having to repeat ourselves each time

and same goes for all the rest of it, they're just handy posts for us to have on hand to give well worded guidance for those repeated occurences

rolfl

We are collecting a set of meta answers/questions like that too, you have sorted yours out nicely, and indexed them, etc. for the most part.

Jimmy Hoffa

@rolfl sorting and indexing, yep we're engineers :)

rolfl

I have linked in the other CR mods and we are looking through your system. It's helpful, but exhaustive.

Jimmy Hoffa

exhaustive...yep, we're engineers :)

ok, well, @MichaelT is an engineer and really dedicated to be sure

I'm just a bum who makes snarky comments

one in every crowd right

user55340

@JimmyHoffa thinkgeek.com/product/e59c

rolfl

2:25 AM

I actually thought you were a rotten corpse somewhere..... I should notify the bureau or something?

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT worst idea ever, can anyone say "chipped teeth" ?

rolfl

(bet you never heard that one...... sorry).

Jimmy Hoffa

@rolfl surprisingly less than you might think

user55340

@JimmyHoffa you were after food grade metal tubing...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT ah yes, but that's not enough to coil - think fresh cup of coffee through a glass of ice water into a cup - surface area - I'll want something considerably longer

user55340

2:27 AM

@rolfl be sure to also ask for a link to FAQs on the sidebar for meta.

Jimmy Hoffa

reqs: resulting temp ~40f-50f

rolfl

Hmmm, those straws would be awesome for these super-thick milkshakes I make .....

so thick that when you try to suck it up a straw the straw collapses....

user55340

Jimmy Hoffa

just get a hard plastic one

anything harder than plastic is a recipe for dental disaster (no, not the movie)

user55340

►

user55340

2:29 AM

So what you need then is a plastic or rubber tubing on the top... possibly an extension.

user55340

5:05 AM

How to make engineers with kids despair at the state of education:

user55340

user41796

11:31 AM

@rolfl I edited [that question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/257694/custom-sync-process-and-how-to-prevent-sql-injection) to make it marginally more constructive and on-topic for the site. A big problem was the 2 questions at once, which I've fixed. But a focused question on sanitizing inputs to avoid an injection attack would be on-topic IMO.

And while I'm not the strictest on the site for what I think is constructive, I still hold my "top close vote reviewer" title. :-)

user41796

@enderland - I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. Keep us updated on how it goes.

user41796

Speaking of things and updates to life. @AshleyNunn - how did yesterday's scheduled day off of work go?

user41796

@MichaelT Ignore whatever that non-engineer says. That is epically awesome!

user41796

I could see making that out of stainless steel too. Either way, it makes me wonder how they polished the inside of the straw.

rolfl

abrasive sand.... in a tumbler (no, not a glass tumbler.... a polishing tumbler).

throw a lot of straws, and a lot of 'grit' in a rotating drum, leave it for a few hours ....

user41796

11:36 AM

Yeah, I guess that ought to do the trick

user41796

fine enough medium + enough time and you should be good to go.

user41796

I could also see putting some polishing compound on a small ball of some sort and spinning that while pushing it through the straw

user41796

That would go faster but possibly require more effort per straw

rolfl

I wonder if the manufacturing process consists of having a continuous inch-wide strip of titanium that they 'roll' up, and weld the edges together.... then, they may be able to have a long 'ribbon' of material that gets rolled up in to the straw too, and they could feed polishing compound as it goes through..... and the ribon will polish the inside as the straw is produced... all in one steady stream.

user41796

Yeah, that could definitely work too. I guess it would depend on if they are purchasing the Ti as flat stock or rolled stock. Someone has to roll it, but they may not care about polishing.

Ampt

12:06 PM

Ice stuck at the end of your straw? SMASH IT

enderland

1:46 PM

@GlenH7 when it rains, it pours...

user41796

Sometimes the extra rain can be a very good thing

user41796

"Oh, what?! No, no, no, we need you over doing this! Let me make that happen."

Ampt

Wow, the community reversed it's opinion of my answer this morning

user41796

The unit testing one?

Ampt

Yeah

Was at +2/-1 now I'm up to +8/-2

user41796

1:54 PM

European developers tend to have a stronger focus on unit testing, so it makes sense that they would have looked at it today and upvoted accordingly.

Ampt

I probably wouldn't have gone that route with my answer if OP had given a solid reasoning behind his need for private unit testing, but on the other hand, OP doesn't have any responsibility to do so

user41796

Dunno that I'd call it a great question... :-)

Ampt

@GlenH7 Me either, but I just went with what I had :)

user41796

@enderland good problem to have. :-)

user41796

@Ampt Sometimes that's the art of the answer. And now you're +70 / -4 repz. Net gain of 66 isn't bad.

Ampt

2:00 PM

@GlenH7 for the <100 words I wrote? I'd file that under pretty darn great. Not that I keep track of such a statistic. I'm just here to help.

enderland

LOL

:D

Ampt

Are you kidding me

CPUID sent me an email containing my username and password IN PLAIN TEXT

enderland

ha I thought "are you kidding me" was in response to my lol

stop with the online dating sites, CPUID really

;)

Ampt

No. This is like cryptology 101. Hash your user passwords. Always.

Lol, CPUID, for identifying the motherboard compatible with your socket ;)

enderland

especially when sending them to users plaintext? :)

Ampt

2:04 PM

Oh, it's ok though, they assure me that they hash the user passwords before storing them, so they can't ever send the password back to me

FFS, what is this, 1999?

my unencrypted password hit your servers

enderland

idk I always change my password immediately anyways

user41796

@Ampt One of the soccer sites I have to use does that. Makes me very glad I use per-site passwords

Ampt

@GlenH7 I... did not.

user41796

and my userid there doesn't follow the pattern of my other accounts

Ampt

Granted I have a few different ones, but still

user41796

2:06 PM

Go update that branch of pwds then...

user41796

Random thought of the day: Patience is a Virtue, but she won't always wait.

Ampt

working on it. I also use 2 step authentication pretty much everywhere, so it's not a huge deal, more of a minor inconvenience

enderland

1 min ago, by Ampt

FFS, what is this, 1999?

Ampt

@enderland ..... shutup :(

user41796

Always assume that the operators of whatever site you're registering at are going to eff up at some point.

Ampt

2:07 PM

I use a lot of different computers, so I'm not sure that those password stores would work for me

enderland

1password is great

I have the app synced with dropbox on my phone

Ampt

so your passwords are on the cloud then?

enderland

sure

I guess? I'm not sure

user41796

I could see doing that with B and C tier passwords. Not A tier passwords

Ampt

This is one of my B tier passwords

@GlenH7 do you use some sort of password manager?

user41796

2:11 PM

Sounds like it should have been C tier

user41796

I use KeePass at work. pencil & paper at home.

Ampt

Yes, it really should have been. Didn't think about it enough

user41796

I think Bill Joy was the most noticeable proponent of the approach I use

user41796

But you need 3 things in order to breach an account.
1) Access to the service provider
2) account ID
3) account password

user41796

Writing down passwords and storing them securely provides an effective airgap and blocks compromising an account

user41796

2:13 PM

likewise, even if you know the ID and password but don't know where that belongs, you can't compromise the account.

Ampt

I also use 2 step auth, which is an added layer. Gotta have my phone in your pocket to log into google/work/many others

user41796

I do that too. And if I were really paranoid, I wouldn't let text messages display on the lock screen

enderland

I should have a lock screen for my phone huh

Ampt

eh, if they've got your phone, it's probably already too late

user41796

lockscreens deter casual pranksters

user41796

2:15 PM

which is a far greater threat, IMO

enderland

lol

Ampt

the bane of good citizens abroad

user41796

No kidding

user41796

Or even otherwise well intentioned but mischievous coworkers.

enderland

my phone is either in my pocket at work or I'm at home, though

course I don't have kids either...

user41796

2:18 PM

yes, kids are yet another reason why I use a lock screen

Ampt

is it bad that I'm running graphics benchmarks on my desktop to warm my room up?

My feet are rather cold

enderland

@Ampt I've brought a space heater into work before, which seems more efficient

user41796

They don't need to play with (and break) a multi-hundred dollar device I rely on for phone calls

user41796

space heaters can be had for $20

enderland

Republic wireless cheap phones ftw!

I think mine was $150 though

user41796

2:20 PM

@Ampt I have one of these

user41796

@enderland When I last bought my phone, I needed a family sharing plan and I already had Verizon service so I stuck with them. This time around... Dunno. but I have about a year before my contract is up.

enderland

I like my phone costing me $10/mont

I don't have data since I basically only use it when I shouldn't

user41796

I use very little data on mine, but am stuck with a bundled plan.

user41796

I wouldn't mind knocking that bill down significantly when I get the chance

Jimmy Hoffa

2:48 PM

ooo new chrome has it's dev tools configurable into a straight IDE allowing file editing/saving/etc: gregrickaby.com/turn-chrome-developer-tools-into-an-ide

Will have to give that a try as much as chrome's dev tools are my preferred debugger...

Jimmy Hoffa

3:01 PM

whoa... @Telastyn is finishing his degree after decades in industry.... the mind boggles at how he must feel.

Going back after decades of knowing better...ugh...I can only imagine your pain as I've pondered doing the same m'self. In my ponderances, I always figure it'll be a lot of swallowing what I know and just doing what I'm told regardless, doing it quickly and moving on - the quicker you do it the less time you get to ponder how horrible it is. I would surmise you're in such a place - just do the exercise and move on. As for why's, don't ask those of undergrad course exercises, asking those is what makes uni so hard for those who know better... — Jimmy Hoffa 38 secs ago

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa I was perusing several posts about "best compiler books," and one teacher recommended Andrew Appel's "Modern Compiler Implementation in ML," stating that ML is like "A DSL for writing compilers."

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey that's the thing of it - FPLs and MLs especially feel so correct when you try to use them for any type of data parsing and manipulation

they really do feel like that's what they were made specifically for

I can't speak to LISPs in that regard but I suspect someone with a strong grasp on advanced macro techniques - which I haven't touched on - would find it similarly capable

sans macros though I would say ML likely has a much nicer sense of data taxonomy just because of the combination of it's type system + it's features for working with it's types (matching, infix functions, destructuring, type constructors as functions, minimalism)

Robert Harvey

3:17 PM

amazon.com/Compiling-Continuations-Andrew-W-Appel/dp/052103311X

Looks interesting.

Gah. Stack Overflow is overrun by people who want to be taught how to program.

whatsisname

What did you expect

The amount of available new questions is substantially reduced

Robert Harvey

3:38 PM

Someone on Stack Overflow wants to assert stdout. [facepalm]

user41796

@RobertHarvey assert your powers as a mod and make it disappear.

Robert Harvey

I did already, but some folks apparently find that question interesting. They're going to try and rig up some Rube Goldberg contraption that solves the problem for someone who doesn't even understand the concept of assertion.

user41796

Too many SO regulars with too much time on their hands

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey sounds like the perfect thing to assert /dev/null with

Robert Harvey

Describe the problem you're trying to solve in more detail. Otherwise, your question amounts to "I need an example of someone putting a skateboard into a car. They're both transportation patterns." — Robert Harvey ♦ 12 secs ago

user55340

3:57 PM

@Oded a reminder just kicked off for me to remind you to take photos of the Stack Exchange office door... though IIRC that may be later in the month and I just didn't update the time for that.

user41796

4:08 PM

Review queue asked if this should be closed as primarily opinion based. I could possibly see Too Broad, but not POB.

user55340

@GlenH7 I'd let that one simmer a bit to see how it goes... the answers so far seem to properly address it. It might be a 'too broad' if one wants to get deep into it, but at the level that P.SE tends to adopt (the pragmatic industrialists) its ok.

Robert Harvey

2

Q: How to assert stdout in CUnit?

Even though I searched a long time, I could not find any way to test what a function printed to stdout in CUnit: void print() { printf("Hello world"); } void test_print() { // how to assert??? } How should I go about it?

c cunit

Reopened.

2

Q: How to assert a bad question

This is Exhibit One in the fight against bad questions: How to assert stdout in CUnit? I closed it as "Unclear What you are Asking." It was reopened by five community members. OK... Seriously? What is it about this question that is so morbidly fascinating that five community members would vo...

discussion reopen-closed

user41796

@MichaelT I voted to Leave Open to kick it out of the queue. It's potentially a big question, but the premise behind questioning it is backed by experience.

user41796

That's one where I'd happily heavily downvote poor answers in order to give the main question a better chance of landing a solid answer.

user41796

It would be fun to ping Gilles and Lippert to see them weigh in

user55340

4:19 PM

@GlenH7 Its times like those you'd wish you could put a $ bounty on a question to make it worthwhile for certain professionals to weigh in ("I'll pay $5 for Eric to answer this..." type things... not that it would even come close to their per hour rates...)

user41796

@RobertHarvey And it didn't have a crap answer, which is odd for FGITW SO with crap questions.

Ampt

For the security team who leaves no stone unturned, no bit unencrypted, and no data safe from random destruction

Robert Harvey

@GlenH7 That's because there is no answer. Not to the question "How do I assert stdout?"

user41796

@Ampt That's awesome

user41796

better?

user41796

4:22 PM

If the 5 that voted to reopen thought it was answerable, why isn't there an answer already?

Ampt

Until you get stuck in a tunnel and here a quiet thump as your hard drive destroys itself

user55340

@RobertHarvey having fun with that "why is meta so negative of late" meta SO post?

user41796

Never mind me:

user41796

@JanHudec: Since you seem to clearly understand the OP's problem, why don't you edit the question so that it clearly states what he wants to accomplish? You had at least 6 minutes to write an answer; why didn't you write one? — Robert Harvey ♦ 51 mins ago

user41796

@Ampt Set a longer delay; make sure your data is backed up

user41796

4:24 PM

It's an awesome answer to the modern day question of "how do I get everything cleaned up after I die?"

Ampt

read: How do I destroy all the evidence after I'm dead.

psr

@RobertHarvey Just caught this discussion. Most of their marketing sucks, but they do seem to have a fast rendering engine and a library built around it. Haven't dug into it to see if it's BS, but look at disrupt.famo.us/periodic402

(doesn't seem to work in Firefox, but does in chrome)

Ampt

I dare you to try it in IE

user41796

@Ampt rolled over and died for me in IE

psr

4:42 PM

@Ampt Wow, it 404'd. Not joking. IE refuses to admit the site even exists.

user41796

@psr MS doesn't want you to know about those sorts of fun things.

Ampt

Actually it looks like famo.us is trying to redirect you to a compatibility page to tell you it won't work in IE, but that link is dead