@allquixotic THANKS CONGRESS!

hello

@flyingfisch hello

is this an IRC channel, or some other protocol?

@flyingfisch Something else. :)

No, it's not IRC. It's Stack Exchange chat.

do you know if I can connect to it with pidgin?

@flyingfisch chat.stackexchange.com/faq#irc

@flyingfisch I know that you can't (without writing a hell of a lot of code)

@flyingfisch chat.stackexchange.com/faq

@BretCopeland Haha, nice link. :)

allquixotic: oh ok

we have sort of reverse engineered the de facto chat/web API to write chat bots for it, but we haven't transformed that into a gateway to other protocols

There is a way though: github.com/ghewgill/soirc

@BretCopeland That FAQ answer is a lie.

The truth is Jeff hates IRC. Jeff's a hater :)

hmm

@voretaq7 he's not alone.

@BretCopeland I don't hate IRC.

I hate IRC people.

my AIM client is irssi & bitlbee to make AIM look like IRC

(it's also permanently idle in a screen on a server somewhere, I think it's been about a year since I last looked in on it)

so then stack overflow does not use a standard protocol?

@flyingfisch not at all

ew.

then how are you guys able to have a bot in here?

@flyingfisch DOM scraping

it's the Spolsky/Atwood mentality: screw standards; we can do things better than everyone else

do you think you could have the bot listen for messages here, spout them in an IRC chan, then listen on IRC and spout them here?

@flyingfisch could? yes. will? probably not any time soon

I have done that for my own PHP browser chat widget linked with an IRC chan

oh ok

most people who use/maintain the bot, like the web interface for chat, because it does neat things like oneboxing

ah ok

!!no

you can't do that in IRC

@flyingfisch we have non-standard features for chat rooms. Chat was built for our internal needs, and the needs of our sites. It integrates with Stack Exchange... not the outside world.

the reply feature is really nice, too -- one thing I truly like over&above XMPP/IRC -- click the little reply arrow on someone's message and it replies to a specific message

'course, stars, transcript search, oneboxing are pretty important too

oh ok

well the only thing i was thinking is that a lot of the time i would rather not have my browser up

SE chat has enough generally-useful features that one would almost wish they'd make some kind of de facto standard around it, open source a reference implementation, and release clients for desktop and mobile... could probably pick up a lot of traction and eventually replace IRC

but oh well

@allquixotic the reply feature is kinda nice

@flyingfisch It's 2014. How can you use a computer without having a web browser open constantly? The last time I would regularly close my browser to interface with desktop applications primarily must have been... I don't know, 2003? earlier?

a little cumbersome because of the having to use my mouse bit

a web browser isn't a program you start occasionally to look something up then close it; more and more, it is your operating system

@allquixotic sometimes it's hard to explain grumpycat to your boss

you would be surprised how often I don't want an extra tab ;)

@flyingfisch Clearly you don't have enough RAM.

i have 4GB

:-)

@allquixotic I don't use firefox (or chrome) - they leak memory like the Titanic

Safari I can leave open all week and when I leave the office it's using the same 2G it was using when I started it :)

(it crashes when I try to view our long-form ECG plots though. Stupid Javascript engine...)

@voretaq7 that sounds like a graphics driver bug on your system; I don't know about Chrome, but FF doesn't leak any memory to speak of on my system

@voretaq7 I don't know, IRC was always used IRC and XMPP as my standard protocols with pidgin, and my web browser is my web browser. That is just how I roll. I can live with this though, I guess.

@allquixotic what are you trying to say there?

@allquixotic firefox is a fine browser if you exit it at the end of every shift. If I leave it open (and actually use it) there's a noticeable release of RAM when I quit

my work PC (which really, really sucks; i3-2100, 4 GB of RAM; no, our management does not understand or value developers) has an uptime of about 2 months, and my browser has an uptime of basically the same, and Firefox is using 388 MB of RAM with 12 tabs open and I've made and closed at least 150 tabs today googling a problem I had earlier

@allquixotic I agree it would probably be useful, but unlikely to happen. No one in the company really works on chat anymore except to add internal bots.

it's not all wired and the system will swap most of it out over time, but then my disk starts thrashing (spinning rust, not SSD) :-/

@voretaq7 closed; reason: WFM (WorksForMe / Unable to Reproduce)

lol

ok going afk

is there a status on this like IRC?

@allquixotic Closed; reason: Safari is not the company's desktop browser. :-)

how do I say I am away?

On the other hand, since we're going to be working on adding chat to the mobile apps, it's possible a real API might come out of that... [pure speculation on the latter part]

@flyingfisch no, your avatar will dim over time

@flyingfisch Remove Element solves the problem of not wanting the boss to see image macros

oh ok

@BretCopeland Not another Arbitrary Punishment Interface :(

@allquixotic oh ok

@BretCopeland you are adding chat to the mobile apps? awesome; the Root Access denizens will love to hear that. I am TOTALLY quoting you on that.

@allquixotic yes, we're adding it in 6-8 weeks.

@BretCopeland So it's going to be powered by Mr. Fusion then. Understood.

@BretCopeland Please do!

(I just tell people things will be ready "Thursday")

@BretCopeland :D:D:D:D

would it help if I baked the dev team cupcakes?

oh god, Bret is going to run away in terror now; the entire SO-ChatBot community is invading to beg him for an API

sweeten the deal

@rlemon shaped like unicorns.

Haha, I don't work on the core API, mobile, or chat... so you're getting nothing from me.

I would make a freehand circle using frosting on the cupcakes

All Stack Exchange bribes must be unicorn shaped. Cash should be piled in the shape of a unicorn.

I'm willing to sacrifice 4 melons, a dozen pears, a pizza, and...and...this pen! Here, take it!

@BretCopeland as punishment for inciting this riot you'll be placed in the stocks chat code repository :-)

I could convince my company to put up job ads on careers... I'm sure I could schmooze someone to kick $100k on that... Quid Pro Quo: chat API

@voretaq7 I've gone through the chat code before, it's actually fairly pleasant.

It might be because the client is minified to monstrosity, but...the client-side of it is pretty horrid

TheThingThatGetsDataFromTheServer ? Really?

Oh hey, chat had 4 commits 10 hours ago. The next most recent commits were a month or more ago.

@BretCopeland <translates> Chat will be breaking in the next push.

Don't get me wrong, chat is superb. Love what you guys did. Pen is on its way.

ChatCore.aspx: First hack at a SOAP API for chat.

@voretaq7 should already be live (and breaking).

mmh, might explain why Cavil keeps dying

@allquixotic SOAP API in 2014 = complete failure.

@BretCopeland but compatible :) WebSockets are fun and all, but the websockets support in zombie.js is very incomplete :(

@BretCopeland I'll respond to that as soon as the "Send" button stops running from my damn mouse pointer!

oh well, another reason to put off our NodeJS port of the bot for ${ETERNITY}

@BretCopeland WSDL WSDL!

@allquixotic long live REST. Die miserable death SOAP.

@allquixotic We're getting there!

scraping the DOM frontend does have some advantages: if you guys did a major breaking backend change, we'd have to rewrite probably less code than if we did everything at the HTTP layer

at least that's my justification for the existence of so-chatbot-driver ;-)

If it'll make you all happy, I will have a conversation with our main API guy about whether there's any rationale for why we would or would not implement a chat API.

node.js and I are no longer friends. it was a short lived relationship that ended in NPM and build errors

But I'll do it in 6-8 weeks.

@BretCopeland On Thursday? :)

@BretCopeland be sure to make an issue on meta then ignore it :)

@BretCopeland Right on schedule, then

hrm, if we already have someone with connections to SE...how about we dump a bunch of meta links at you?

Actually, I have to go. There's Manuary judging right now (female coworkers judging the male coworkers who grew beards out for January). I did not participate, but I'll go watch the competition.

@BretCopeland really, the "API" we have now is fine; can already run the bot headless in PhantomJS on my dedi with the bot code in clientside JS

@Zirak feel free. I am just as capable at ignoring links as the community team is.

@BretCopeland thought it was Movember?

@BretCopeland Man, they teach you some wildass tricks there.

@BretCopeland proof! meta is a gigantic apathy pit!

@BretCopeland NO YOU AREN'T.

It takes a lot of practice to be that good at staring directly at a link and ignoring it

@Lnafziger PHP, python, SQL, django I'm the sysadmin for a tool and die company but I also wrote the website and the job management software nothing fancy just keeps track of stuff and creates pdfs to print or email and tracking how much time we are investing into jobs. It's a small company, 6 guys, I basically am the entire IT department

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