Root Access

allquixotic

3:00 PM

"voluntarily"? under duress, you mean

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: who also happens to be the dev who's iirc responsible for chat

allquixotic

it was either that, or Cavil would still be indefinitely suspended right now

terdon

Well, actually, I don't understand what Shog's answer means, It doesn't say anything other than "don't be annoying"

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: I wonder if activating the bot manually to greet people would be a workaround

Bob

@terdon What's annoying?

Journeyman Geek

3:01 PM

iirc the ##windows bot had a "ask, don't ask to ask" trigger

Bob

@JourneymanGeek That's allowed. Which is even more ridiculous.

terdon

What I mean is that babwhateverhisname is came down like a ton of bricks out of the blue. Your reaction was very understandable

After that, the SE reaction was a bit more toned down.

Bob

They'd be perfectly fine if someone sat in the chatroom and sent a greeting to anyone who joined.

terdon

@Bob That's exactly my point. That's why I don't think that an answer has been given.

Guys I'm not defending the SE team here, I am just pointing out that I don't think we've had an "official" response as such. Devs are devs.

Bob

At the moment, it's more or less "it's automated" === "it's bad"

terdon

3:02 PM

Honestly I don't feel strongly one way or the other about the greetings but I do dislike authoritarian attitudes. So, I am with you on the principle.

Bob

@terdon What would be official?

terdon

An actual meta post stating one way or the other that greetings are bad/OK

All we have is a vague post stating that annoying==bad without defining annoying.

Bob

@terdon Part of it is the ambiguity. Part of it is the refusal to consider the counter-arguments to the reasoning that was finally obtained after a lot of questioning.

terdon

I also feel that there was some knee-jerk reaction going on from both sides.

Bob

@terdon The answer on MSU is saying that the greetings are bad.

terdon

3:04 PM

@bob where?

18

A: What should be the limits for chat bots interacting with regular users?

Call me naive, but... Why do we need special rules for bots? The rules for humans are pretty straightforward - in particular, the rules of etiquette boil down to, "don't annoy other people". If a chat-bot is annoying people (by posting lots of noisy messages or - just as an example - graphic vi...

Bob

Also, yea, both sides are arguing a lot about how annoying or beneficial it is.

Journeyman Geek

also there's the whole 'official channel business'

Bob

17

A: Some issues with a recent action that was taken regarding the Root Access chat bot

I suspended the bot because of the greeting, and only because of that, which is also what I told you in my chat message. Root Access is the general chat room for users of Super User, and any new user coming in being curious about the chat will have that bot greeting them. That is a functionality...

Journeyman Geek

if we all moved to a channel called 'branch access', would an auto-greeting bot be fine?

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Theoretically.

Hennes

3:05 PM

I am tempted to say: leaf it be.

Bob

Unless, apparently, we grow past a certain undefined size.

terdon

@Bob ah, OK. Point.

Bob

I really, really don't see it. They claim that we're driving new users away (with a single greeting, performed once). And they're perfectly happy to, well, annoy the channel regulars.

terdon

Anyway, my main issue was with balpha barging in aggressively the way he did.

Journeyman Geek

yup

terdon

3:07 PM

@Bob well, honestly Cavil did annoy me a bit when I first started coming here.

Journeyman Geek

but as channel regulars, we can politely bitch at @allquixotic

2

terdon

That was before the greeting was changed to make it clear that he's a bot though.

Bob

Some people who frequent this room have said they don't particularly like the greeting. But none really hate it AFAIK.

terdon

I don't really care one way or the other.

Bob

@terdon Yea, that was the whole point of the earlier MSU question.

terdon

3:08 PM

The point about "don't ask, just ask" is a good one.

Bob

As @allquixotic said - the lack of the greeting isn't really the issue.

terdon

@Bob I know, I was here for some of that.

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek and honestly, if I got a significant amount of complaint about the auto greeting from you guys, you're damn right I'd have removed it, and even been happy about it

terdon

@Bob agreed. The heavy-handedness is and that is a problem.

Journeyman Geek

@terdon: there are workarounds for that

Bob

3:08 PM

The issue is the SE team has effectively unilaterally decided that no greeting will be accepted.

allquixotic

I agree with the JS people, whose main argument about this whole thing is that the channel regulars should be the ones who decide what's acceptable in their channel, not the SE administrators

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: I hardly noticed the bot, even when people were poking at it ;p

terdon

@allquixotic absolutely

Journeyman Geek

hm

Bob

The only one who has expressed outright hate at the greeting is probably Gilles.

terdon

3:10 PM

On the other hand (playing devil's advocate) regulars will not be affected one way or the other. If their point is that new users are 'scared off' that is.

allquixotic

thing is, I'd even be willing (and eager) to cooperate with any requests made by the SU community diamond moderators regarding modifying the behavior of the chatbot

terdon

@Bob and the people who upvoted him.

Bob

I don't think I've seen him come into this room over five times in a year, and maybe only once or twice since the inception of the bot.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: who is on neither of the rooms with the bots

terdon

@Bob yes, but he is one of the most active SE users so he hangs out in other rooms.

Anyway, I think we all agree that the issue here is the stance of the SE team and not the specifics.

Bob

3:11 PM

@terdon True enough. Though I doubt many actually hate it that much, or we would have heard of it long before. Maybe.

@terdon But the way it was handled could very well drive the regulars away.

And that is most definitely bad.

terdon

Yes indeed

allquixotic

@Bob funnily enough, Gilles ended up backing down from his position and outright supporting the auto greeter if we implement his "click to participate" button, which I think is a fantastic idea

@terdon etc. if you haven't read Gilles' MSO post about that, please do

terdon

I have

And that is more characteristic of Gilles general demeanor, he tends to be a voice of calm and reason which is why I was surprised to see him so caustic.

Bob

@allquixotic True - he seems to be more against talking to people who, ahem, might not wish to participate.

terdon

Which is a fair point.

allquixotic

3:14 PM

@terdon true -- also, considering the fact that the votes by the community on the MSU and MSO topics were so mixed in favor and against the auto greeter, that feedback alone might've been enough to convince me to voluntarily remove the auto-greeter, no pressure or suspensions needed

Bob

But the general stance of SE seems to be "if it's a human doing it, it's fine"

terdon

I can imagine someone going "AAaaaaah! I've been spotted! Shit, shit shit shit! I'm out'a here"

allquixotic

I thought initially that maybe one in 100 people would object to it, but finding out that maybe 30-40% object to it was huge, and I definitely would consider removing it, so what SE could've done (should've done, probably) is start a discussion on MSU or MSO about it, and let the community indicate their like or dislike of the feature

Bob

So, again... the reasoning is rather odd.

terdon

@allquixotic I know. I've had enough contact with you here and through your posts to know you tend to be a reasonable guy.

allquixotic

3:15 PM

and having observed such a significant portion of dislike, I most likely would have removed it on my own, even without SE saying "remove it or else"

Bob

@allquixotic A somewhat related problem, though, is that every chatroom is different.

jokerdino

@bob @JourneymanGeek still need help with unfreezing?

Journeyman Geek

naw, taken care of, thanks

Bob

JS seems to be very in favour of the greeting. As a room that encourages questions, the greeting helps us too.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: oh, we could always superpin the eqivilent

terdon

3:16 PM

But they also agree with Gilles' idea.

Bob

A room like The Comms Room would see less benefit.

@JourneymanGeek Apparently JS tried that, and it didn't work.

allquixotic

@Bob that's one area where I kind of fall off the JS wardrum bandwagon: after all this discussion, I am struggling to find the fire within me to even argue in favor of the auto-greeter at all, and I just can't care enough about their room's desire to have it to want to argue for that

Bob

Pinned messages are rather unobtrusive.

allquixotic

at first I was absolutely on board with it, but now, my main gripe is just with SE's handling of the matter

and that latter topic is not going away anytime soon

terdon

That really should have been the only issue under discussion from the beginning. I think that we got side-tracked by the specifics which are pretty much irrelevant.

Bob

3:18 PM

@allquixotic Yea, but the point (that I'm trying to make, anyway) is that it's room-specific, and the opinion of the MSO community as a whole may not be relevant to a specific room's community.

So even the approach of "ask MSO" has problems.

allquixotic

@Bob that's a good point, and that dovetails well with the concept that, had SE handled this better, they might have been able to first reach a community consensus that each room gets to decide whether or not to have the auto greeter

Bob

But it's still much better than the decision without asking at all.

terdon

@Bob exactly. Remember that guy who posted on meta calling Oliver a Nazi for removing the "configure" tag?

Journeyman Geek

lol

allquixotic

even if you posted on MSO saying "should each chat room's regulars, room owners, diamond mods, etc. get to decide as a community whether this feature is to be permitted or not?" I think you'd have received an overwhelming majority of approval

terdon

3:19 PM

Had about 12 rep on SU and wanted an opinion...

allquixotic

even possibly from some people who personally are against the auto-greeting

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: I think that would be nice ;p

Bob

Every site, and even every chatroom in a site, works differently enough that it's difficult if not impossible to apply all policy rules equally.

Which is why site-specific metas exist.

Ash

what is disputed in flag review ?

allquixotic

@Ash the Q or A was edited before the flag was decided on

just s/disputed/moot/ and it should make sense

Bob

3:21 PM

Once again going into the specific case of a bot - a general discussion room like RA (and I rather resent anyone considering us as existing for the sole purpose of answering questions) would be very different from the blog room, or the ask-a-mod room.

Journeyman Geek

disputed = someone disagreed with your flag. Its fine.

allquixotic

disputed doesn't equal declined though

terdon

You can have a flag disputed even if it is you disputing it (>10k), when you review a flag and deem it invalid, you raise your own flag which is marked as 'disputed'.

Journeyman Geek

yup

allquixotic

@Bob I think we've sort of developed our own identity as a room for socializing as well as answering questions about the site, live support, etc... and to be honest, I don't think the SE people who originally created chat and allowed it to exist ever intended for chat to become what it has become

Darth Android

3:23 PM

I love how this bot discussion is going in circles. The people talking specifics aren't responding to arguments leveled against them, and the people responding to arguments are speaking in generalities that aren't being argued over.

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: chat's kind of a red headed stepchild ;p

allquixotic

as indicated by Shog9's fairly serious (as I read it) comment on Gilles' MSO Q saying, basically, oh, this will reduce chat users by 80%? I'm in favor of it now

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: I think its a management by pekelele response.

and as such, I can't be sure

allquixotic

!!define pekelele

ChatBot John Cavil

@allquixotic My pocket dictionary just isn't good enough for you.

Bob

3:24 PM

!!urban pekelele

ChatBot John Cavil

@Bob No definition found for pekelele

allquixotic

at least we have him here to be a useless dictionary

Bob

Congrats, @JourneymanGeek, you've invented a word.

Journeyman Geek

Management by perkele

Management by perkele is originally a Swedish expression for a Finnish leadership approach that, according to its proponents, takes required actions in a quick and swift way, instead of a prolonged pondering of all possible alternative approaches and points of view before actually getting anything done. This is specifically contrasted to the Swedish consensus decision-making, where the manager makes sure that everyone involved has been heard before decisions are taken. The name is derived from the well-known Finnish swear word perkele, and it is a reference to the repeated times this word ...

I may have mispelled it

actually, its entirely appropriate here

and I'm.... kinda regretting NEVER getting to use that in my management classes

allquixotic

also, who in the hell ever made the ridiculous decision to give programmers any measure of authority on the site? for chrissake, Joel/Jeff, that's the stupidest thing they've done... you don't give programmers power... our ego and pride is large enough as it is, and it's a very dangerous and damaging thing when you give us power over social communities

you put pragmatic, sensitive, touchy-feely people in community authority positions. people like Tim Post and Aarthi. not your lead chat developer, ugh

Journeyman Geek

3:27 PM

lol

@allquixotic: because its a programmer centric company

and aarthi did leave :/

allquixotic

I know :(

Journeyman Geek

(that said, there's very few non-coders who seem to be happy in both worlds)

allquixotic

but still, programmers are often very poor with understanding the social impact of their decisions

the programmers at SE should be exactly that and nothing more: they should write code to implement feature specifications that are dictated to them by people with community management experience

they can of course debate those specs with those people, but ultimately they wouldn't be able to just reach into the actual community and pull any strings they wish

Bob

@allquixotic Of course, many programmers hate that :P

allquixotic

@Bob of course, but it's the best way to keep us under control.. and I say "us" because I know that, if I were in ba's position, I'd have done some pretty antisocial things as well and caused a similar shitstorm at least once

Journeyman Geek

3:30 PM

@allquixotic: I vaguely disagree there

terdon

@allquixotic That's what I meant by not official, dev==not official, comm. mod==official

allquixotic

I know my limitations and what I'm poor at and what positions would put me or my company at high risk

Journeyman Geek

I do believe community management is a very different skillset from codage

(well, I think of ITM/ISM, Hardware and coding as seperate, interlinked skills)

terdon

@JourneymanGeek yes, it involves a basic ability to socialize for example ;)

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek and it is not impossible for one individual to possess both skills in abundance, but at the same time, it is hardly a foregone conclusion that, just because someone is a good programmer or project lead, they automatically can essentially gain root over a community

Journeyman Geek

3:31 PM

@allquixotic: I'm not saying they're exclusive ;p

allquixotic

and it seems that SE automatically grants a wide degree of authority to people who code their site

hence the problem

Journeyman Geek

(course, I'm the odd, non codery geek, who occationally has good social skills)

AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Comes with being a small dog, I suppose.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: yeah.

AGirlSaidMySmileIsCute

3:32 PM

lol

Journeyman Geek

also from dealing with non geeks a lot

allquixotic

@terdon except that I have no reason to believe SE actually works like that internally -- I don't pretend to know all of SE's internal policies, but I seriously doubt that the developer who interacted with me would have been blatantly going against internal procedure by creating a de facto policy by his decision, especially since he's employee #7 of the company

I don't think they have a rule that says, in effect, that the community managers are the only ones that get to dictate policy

terdon

@allquixotic I don't either, I'm just saying that coders are not famous for their social subtlety so maybe we should not read too much into this.

allquixotic

@terdon except that, unless this far-reaching power is removed from this employee, or unless the decision is effectively overridden by the community managers, nothing is stopping this type of thing from cropping up again with no notice, and with unknown scope or consequences

it effectively breaks the entire community process down to a sham

kinda like how the US President can write executive orders that do almost anything, to the extent that they can function as laws, without a single word to/from Congress regarding their approval or disapproval

terdon

@allquixotic yes and no. I'll reserve judgement for the moment. I agree with your "slippery slope" arguments but will wait to see if they do indeed start sliding down it.

allquixotic

3:37 PM

except that in this case, the dev's executive orders are much more far-reaching than what the US President could plausibly do without causing a revolt

terdon

At least they did create meta content explaining this. Had they done so from the beginning, we would not have been pissed off right?

Journeyman Geek

presumably not

allquixotic

@terdon right. and the gesture is appreciated, except that they didn't create the content; they merely responded (very vaguely, and inadequately, I might add) to questions asked by the community

terdon

I was referring to their answers which they did create.

allquixotic

had no one in the community raised any meta posts, I'm essentially certain that not a peep would have been heard anywhere around the stackernetz regarding this issue

they are simply reacting to what the community is asking them, and responding in the most defensive, standoffish way possible, rather than being proactive and attempting to gain consensus first by initiating discussion and forming consensus

this is exactly the wrong way to run a community, I'm afraid, and it has to change or my time here is limited

not that a 14ker would even be a fart in the wind compared to what other people are doing on the network, but, /shrug

terdon

3:42 PM

@allquixotic yes, I agree with that completely. I'll add my 44k to your 15.8 and make a bigger fart :)

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: I'm going to post an answer there ;p

Hennes

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20056502-1/why-all-hdmi-cables-are-the-same‌/

We all knew that, but still worth reading.

Journeyman Geek

blarg

its not an answer :/

let me post that as a comment

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek what? :P what's not an answer?

Journeyman Geek

lol

what I was trying to post

it just covers the same ground ;p

Bob

3:52 PM

@Hennes I'm pretty sure the comments made me lose at least a few IQ points.

Hennes

Lol over at [SF]:
http://serverfault.com/questions/554727/

I'm trying to have the best performance possible to my virtual machines. This is why I don't want to make any RAID volume. I want each VM to have it's own drive.

Bob

o.O

Has anyone here played Planetary Annihilation? Is it any good?

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: posted on the SU thread

Hennes

unplayed.

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek linky?

@Bob I bought into the alpha. the alpha sucked. the beta is fun

it's basically Total Annihilation (the original) with much nicer graphics, and multiple planets/asteroids, and the ability to ram an asteroid into an enemy base

Journeyman Geek

4:04 PM

0

A: Some issues with a recent action that was taken regarding the Root Access chat bot

This isn't actually an answer proper, but there's a few points where I suspect the process of well, all this could have run better. Hindsight is 20/20 , and this is not really a reflection on SE's moderation and administration processes. I'm posting this as a root access regular, and someone inti...

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Heh, telegram by SWAT - love that analogy :D

Journeyman Geek

;)

Bob

@allquixotic Considering buying the beta. It's $40 on the humble store right now :P

I used to spend a lot of time on RTSes... not so much anymore

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek upvoted for quoting Babylon 5

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: I write/speak for my audience ;p

Bob

4:05 PM

I think at one point all of them just... kinda felt the same

allquixotic

@Bob I wish it had more aspects from the original Supreme Commander, like big shield domes to protect you from artillery fire, and hero/experimental units

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: supp comm 1 was nice

allquixotic

they reduced the gameplay to the basic elements of Total Annihilation... oh and asteroids and the map is split across multiple planets

Journeyman Geek

the sequel lacked epicness

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek Now get the hell out of our chatroom! </angrySheridan>

Journeyman Geek

4:07 PM

XD

Bob

@allquixotic I suppose it's still only beta now, so they might still add things?

Journeyman Geek

when I'm done with school, I'm probably going to take a week and watch all of it.

And the movies ;p

Bob

the last RTS I played was RA3

allquixotic

@Bob yeah, but.... it was much more likely that they'd add things in alpha than in beta

Bob

it was... I dunno, kinda liked RA2 more

allquixotic

4:08 PM

@Bob konstrooktyon komplete.

bwuilding.... (ticka ticka ticka ticka)

Journeyman Geek

I was playing the RA3 semi-squelly thing whose name I forget

Bob

lol

Journeyman Geek

but dumped it for batman arkham asylum ;p

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek Yuri?

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Uprising/expansion pack?

Journeyman Geek

4:09 PM

no

er...

Bob

@allquixotic That was an RA2 expansion

Journeyman Geek

uprising

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Uprising

Commander's Challenge |version=1.00 |genre=Real-time strategy |modes=Single-player |ratings= |platforms=UprisingMicrosoft WindowsCommander's ChallengePlayStation 3, Xbox 360 |requirements= |media=Digital distribution |input=UprisingKeyboard, MouseCommander's ChallengeGamepad }} Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Uprising is a real-time strategy video game developed by EA Los Angeles and published by Electronic Arts. It is a stand-alone expansion to Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 released only for Microsoft Windows and offered via digital distribution. It does not require Red Alert 3 to pla...

Bob

Heh. The Yuriko campaign was an interesting change.

@JourneymanGeek Did you ever play the original RA3?

Hennes

One of these days I need to play theoriginal (RA 1)

Journeyman Geek

@Bob: fraid not

Bob

4:15 PM

@Hennes Little bit too old for me :P

Journeyman Geek

I didn't game very much until the past year cause we were sharing a computer, and I kept getting kicked off it ;p

Bob

had enough trouble getting 2 to work on Win7

allquixotic

I liked seeing Sulu as the leader of the Rising Sun

pretty creepy

Jimmy Hoffa

:12153405 ....huh?

allquixotic

just realized I was posting something that could be misinterpreted out of context

Bob

4:16 PM

my biggest gripe with 3 was probably the limited resources

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa imagine J.K. Simmons as the fictional US President in an anachronistic modern-ish war strategy game, in a situation where Simmons' character is a cyborg spy implanted by the Asian alliance called the Rising Sun

he gets found out and self-destructs

J. K. Simmons

Jonathan Kimble "J. K." Simmons (born January 9, 1955) is an American actor. He is best known for his roles on television as Dr. Emil Skoda in NBC's Law & Order (and other shows in the Law & Order franchise), neo-Nazi Vernon Schillinger in the HBO prison drama Oz, and as Assistant Police Chief Will Pope on TNT's The Closer; on film as J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, and for voice-over work in animation and video games. Early life Simmons was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Patricia (née Kimble), an administrator, and Donald William Simmons, a college professor. H...

Bob

@allquixotic not so much found out

Jimmy Hoffa

@allquixotic This helps. That dude is awesome.

Bob

his controller ripped some cables out :P

I love how it ties things together

allquixotic

@Bob oh yeah

Bob

4:18 PM

gives us a reason for his rather crazy decisions

allquixotic

@JimmyHoffa in the game he ends up acting very oddly and basically putting the US at risk of losing the war. and of course his arch-nemesis and the faction leader of the Rising Sun is none other than George "Oh My..." Takei from Star Trek TOS

Bob

<tinfoil>what if the current real-life pres is an enemy spy??</tinfoil>

Jebediah Kerman

I can't wait for my next rep milestone

 200 reduce ads Some ads are now automatically disabled

Bob

@JebediahKerman eh, they were hardly that obtrusive in the first place :P

Jebediah Kerman

especially if you have adblock ;)

Jimmy Hoffa

4:20 PM

@Bob There's plenty of that said by folks not wearing tinfoil these days, feel free to wander politics.SE and enjoy the modern pantheon of believe-whatever-you-want theories

Bob

...good etiquette is not to adblock unobtrusive ads

Jebediah Kerman

@Bob you're wrong

If I am not gonna click on the ads anyway, why should I have to look at them

allquixotic

@JebediahKerman at least spell "you're" correctly if you're going to make such a pathetically juvenile statement without even justifying it

Jimmy Hoffa

@Bob Bad etiquette is to unblock them, and have an infinite loop puller distributed across a 35k node botnet grabbing the ad until it's host server has been knocked over

O_o

allquixotic

pet peeve of mine :D

@JimmyHoffa nice

Jebediah Kerman

4:23 PM

@allquixotic bashing me for my english is not really a valid argument, also its not my first lanaguage

jokerdino

Browsing through Digg Reader crashes Firefox. Doesn't happen all the time but whenever Firefox crashes, it's Digg Reader that I am browsing.

Tweeted by jokerdino on November 13, 2013 at 3:34 PM

Bloody. Two of the people working on it replied. Almost freaked me out.

Bob

@JebediahKerman oh, I dunno, maybe because you're supporting the site?

allquixotic

@JebediahKerman oh, I have no opinion on the adblock thing ;p I just get enough of "YOUR WRONG" type statements on slashdot et al that I would rather it not be repeated here... although you did make some effort to justify why you wrote that, so, okay.

I always think, "my wrong what?" when I read that :P

Bob

I personally do use Adblock, but I generally unblock sites that I like/frequent and don't throw annoying flashy ads in your face.

Jebediah Kerman

its all good

jokerdino

4:28 PM

I mostly don't use AdBlock when I am not on my computer.

allquixotic

@Bob Phoronix. I double dare you to disable adblock there (do it in incognito / private browsing!)

Journeyman Geek

I tend to use adblock ;p

allquixotic

@Hennes ...except that I've owned cheap HDMI cables that would very easily fail if not carefully positioned and tweaked like the rabbit ears of an analog TV -- move it an inch to the left and static; move it back, works fine

Journeyman Geek

I tend to use adblock ;p

allquixotic

would rather pay $30 and just get a good thing that bloody works

Journeyman Geek

4:32 PM

lol

@allquixotic: those probably arn't properly to spec cables.

Darth Android

I've only ever had issues with cheap cables when driving them over spec

Hennes

I used two (approx) $% DVI to HDMI cables.

All my devices to DVI. Only the 'amplifier' is an exception.

Darth Android

Went to monoprice and bought their heavily-shielded HDMI cables for also ridiculously cheap, now I can happily drive them over spec without issue :D

Also, I learned that HDMI doesn't do 1440p60 video (at least within spec)

allquixotic

@DarthAndroid I'm terrified of monoprice after reading reviews of their USB chargers

Bob

@allquixotic Eww.

Journeyman Geek

4:37 PM

@allquixotic: what about them?

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html

the noise in the monoprice adapter

Boris_yo

Should I put plastic bubble bag under laptop I am working on? Does it make it safer against static discharge? Should I put components on it?

allquixotic

I'm tempted to buy ~10 HP TouchPad chargers for my various usb devices lol

oh I was confusing Monoprice and KMS when I was saying I'm afraid of Monoprice

Bob

@allquixotic Presumably they're good?

allquixotic

I'm afraid of KMS moreso

Bob

4:42 PM

How much do they cost, anyway?

allquixotic

> The KMS charger shows a lot of voltage sag as the load increases. In addition, the output is all over the place, showing very poor regulation, more like what I'd expect from a counterfeit charger. Note the scale change due to the high current output.

Journeyman Geek

lol

Bob

Oh yea, the problem with chargers is I'd expect a $10-$20 store-brand one to perform about the same as a $2 eBay one...

Journeyman Geek

lol

allquixotic

i love the counterfeit iphone charger quote

Bob

4:43 PM

A good charger can easily become rather expensive.

allquixotic

> This counterfeit charger shows extremely poor regulation, as shown by the very wide yellow line. It's hard to fit a voltage-current curve to this picture. The amount of power supplied by this charger seems almost random.

Journeyman Geek

I think I have one of those ;p

allquixotic

The amount of power supplied by this charger seems almost random.

Bob

@allquixotic Sounds exactly like how a friend of mine would review electronics :P

allquixotic

I love that

btw @Journ I changed the accepted answer on my MSU Q :D

I don't, in fact, "accept" balpha's answer

Journeyman Geek

4:45 PM

I noticed ;p

allquixotic

it was the most correct reflection of the actual state of affairs at the time

that's the only reason I accepted it

Journeyman Geek

3

allquixotic

also, the note by Ken regarding these counterfeits causing "touchscreen malfunction" is SPOT ON; I bought a charger by Verizon (probably a re-branded $2 eBay charger, to be perfectly honest; Verizon are such ... ugh) that caused my Motorola Droid Razr Maxx (back in 2011) to have a flaky touchscreen

that unit, having been used with that Verizon charger recommended to me by the Verizon employee, is the only Android device I've ever owned that had a touchscreen malfunction

nowadays I exclusively use the Motorola chargers and they seem very high quality

@JourneymanGeek looooool

at the time I didn't know you could buy additional Motorola OEM chargers from the Motorola website

once I learned of that I snapped a few right up and threw away my other chargers

except my Nexus 7 charger by Google/Asus which is also decent

speaking of charging, I found out what the most important battery-eater on my Droid Maxx is: turning on background sync.... I should have known

with background sync: 90% battery by the time I get to work; without background sync: 93% after having been at work for ~3 hours

Bob

@allquixotic What exactly is a "touchscreen malfunction", and is it permanent?

allquixotic

@Bob in my specific case, by using a charger with a very bad noise/ripple/spikes profile, it went something like this: while the device was charging from the bad charger, the touchscreen would emit "ghost touches" on parts of the screen I wasn't even close to touching, nor was any dust on the screen, so app behavior would be effectively random

when the device was unplugged from the bad charger, the accuracy of the touchscreen was noticeably worse (as tested by a touch screen test app) than my mom's device, of the exact same make and model, but which had never been charged by the bad charger

the touchscreen forever after had a certain "jitter" to it -- when dragging the finger across the screen in a slow, smooth curve, on a properly functioning device, the touchscreen test app shows a correspondingly smooth curve

Bob

4:56 PM

:(

(though, my S2 seems fine so far - thankfully)

allquixotic

on the defective / damaged touchscreen, the line appeared jagged, like my finger was being very severely vibrated to and fro by a huge diesel engine right next to my head

Bob

I only rarely charged it on a cheap charger, which I carried around. Pretty much switched to charging from my laptop now.

allquixotic

this would lead to typing inaccuracies mainly, because other things like tapping on a button would work fine when not plugged into the bad charger

Bob

USB3 + sleep charging = yay

actually, it supplies power while powered off too

hm. I need to get/make a charging cable.

allquixotic

@Bob the quality of USB power coming out of computers is generally pretty good, because the motherboard and USB controller are getting "conditioned" power benefiting from the regulation of the computer's PSU, which is usually pretty well built unless you also have a non-OEM charger on the laptop/PC

Bob

4:58 PM

@allquixotic so you would have to replace the phone/screen?

@allquixotic heh, it's actually an OEM one :)

allquixotic

@Bob the touchscreen, yes, but Motorola's warranty repairs are very limited in extent, and they're more likely to send the device back to you unrepaired (as I learned from experience)

Bob

though it's a 19V one, while my original was 19.5V

both are rated for 90W, and 0.5V difference seems to be acceptable

allquixotic

the end of my "multitude of Motorola smartphones" saga went as follows:

one weekend we went to the Verizon store with all of our Droid Razr Maxx units (2011 model) and exchanged them for about $60 USD each

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