The Factory Floor

1:09 AM

@HDE226868 I created the tag so we can identify questions that discuss reasons that might compel humanity to go to space. I may have been a little too eager to apply it in some cases. I won't take offense if you remove it.

bilbo_pingouin

5:20 AM

@KarmaBot alive ?

user153821

@bilbo_pingouin Yes, I'm alive.

bilbo_pingouin

good to read

@KarmaBot sup ?

user153821

@bilbo_pingouin Beautiful day to you... Jeez, checking whether the player has formed a particular molecule is a lot more challenging than forming the actual molecule :P :o)

Worldbuilding Meta

5:54 AM

1

Q: McGuffinite ? Tag definition and description

Someone added a tag for mcguffinite that states it to be "the reason". The linked page invented the term to refer to the substance being sought after, with the reason implied as coveting or requiring that stuff somehow. So Interstellar is not an example, as other kinds of reasons are not covered...

Worldbuilding Meta

7:34 AM

0

Q: one of my badge vanished

Yesterday I asked my fifth question. Today when checking my profile I was told I got the badge "curious". I clicked ok and to track the next one, but the badge is not showing among the ones I got nor among the ones to track. What do I do?

bug badges

Michael Kjörling

11:24 AM

I'd like to upvote this question, but there isn't really anything to answer and as phrased it's very broad. "Yes", pretty much sums it up. The cold would cause a mass extinction. Survivors of that event would then colonize the equivalent niches either by temperate plants moving south or tropical plants that did survive adapting (or more likely a mixture of both those things). That's basically what always happens. — Tim B ♦ 5 mins ago

@TimB So, just out of curiosity, if you feel the question doesn't have anything to be answered and is phrased very broadly, why would you upvote it?

bilbo_pingouin

11:36 AM

research done?

Pavel Janicek

My guess too

bilbo_pingouin

I barely start reading those questions in the review queue when I know who is the author... I find it a pity that they don't learn from the many previous questions... still asking mostly too broad questions.

Michael Kjörling

11:51 AM

And yet such questions are getting upvotes.

Tim B

@MichaelKjörling Because I thought the core of the question was interesting. The fact that he'd thought about the different species, etc was good. In other words I'd like to be able to upvote it but the question would need some work before it was ready for that.

Michael Kjörling

@TimB Fair enough, I suppose; at least that's a reason. It's not a reason I personally agree with, but that's another matter. (If I'm going to vote up a question, it needs to be reasonably well executed as well.)

Tim B

The first 3 paragraphs were good. Then it just went nowhere

I said "I''d like to upvote it but I can't without improvement" not "yay great question"

bilbo_pingouin

yeah, the background was good... it's just that the question(s) weren't

Tim B

@bilbo_pingouin yep :)

Michael Kjörling

11:57 AM

And then there's the truly exemplary title that accurately and succintly summarizes what the OP wants to know, so that when someone reads the question, they know exactly what to focus on. Er, wait...

Tim B

I'd say about 50% of his questions get closed. Not much we can do about it though, he's been given all the information he needs to improve them

Michael Kjörling

That, and numerous IMO helpful edits that always get rolled back. I've made several of those myself and they have been rolled back every time.

I'm almost surprised that Hohmannfan's edit hasn't yet been rolled back.

Tim B

12:24 PM

if he had no positive contributions it would be tempting to just block him. But he does ask some half-decent questions just mixed in with rubbish

DaaaahWhoosh

1:32 PM

wow, that guy has almost one question per 10 rep... I can't tell if that's impressive or bad

AndyD273

How many answers?

Asking (good) questions is harder, so an average of 2 votes per question isn't terrible.

Well, it's harder for me anyway.

OMG, I just found a super useful WB tool...

hermann.is/gravity

2

Mike L.

1:48 PM

@AndyD273 You mean "procrastination tool"?:)

not sure how this would be useful in worldbuilding, though

DaaaahWhoosh

@MikeL. worldbuilding is all about procrastinating, isn't it?

Mike L.

@DaaaahWhoosh I'll have you know I should be writing a paper right now.

Pavel Janicek

All the worlds built by myyself were done when I should be doing something else :)

DaaaahWhoosh

@MikeL. I just recently had to explain why I hadn't gotten a bug fixed in two days... and while I was explaining, I was catching up on the chat transcript

but to my credit, it is a really tough bug

DaaaahWhoosh

2:52 PM

☃☃☃☃ also, snowman character

AndyD273

3:13 PM

@MikeL. I've seen quite a few questions about orbits, gravity, etc. and this is something that could be put in a comment along the lines of "So you want a moon that's twice as big and twice as close? here's a way to help simulate some of those things...

I dunno. It's something that I've looked for in the past, and this is one of the friendlier versions that I've seen.

DaaaahWhoosh

@AndyD273 it might be a bit too friendly, I'd like to have some sort of numeric input system

that said, it is fun

AndyD273

@DaaaahWhoosh maybe they take suggestions

bilbo_pingouin

6:36 PM

@AndyD273 I'd have to check, but I believe that he did not answer a single one

ok, 2 answers (scores 0 and -1)

for 111 questions

the impressive and frustrating part of his questions is the fact that he has a really good knowledge of the first moments of the Earth

but then most of his questions like: I remove a big feature of that time, how does all the rest change

DaaaahWhoosh

maybe the 'remove one thing and what happens' questions are related to idea generation

bilbo_pingouin

nah, they are too broad, and usually close as such

DaaaahWhoosh

yeah, I guess too broad fits there

AndyD273

So yeah, averaging 2 votes per question isn't that bad IMHO, especially at that kind of volume. My average for questions is higher, but I try to put a lot of thought into my questions, and don't ask if I can come up with a good enough answer. Except for during the Topic of the fortnight era.

DaaaahWhoosh

6:54 PM

@AndyD273 what I was saying was that at that volume, it's worrying that the quality is so low. If you're going to ask so many questions, they should be good questions

bilbo_pingouin

for me the problem is that he does not seem to learn from the previous questions

one of you good with SQL?

AndyD273

@DaaaahWhoosh Agreed, but I don't know how you can have quality questions at all with that kind of volume.

@bilbo_pingouin I do a lot of stuff with it

what you got?

bilbo_pingouin

@AndyD273 probably enough

I wanted to make a query to know how many questions were closed from all his questions

AndyD273

ah. Where is the page you put the query in?

bilbo_pingouin

so I'd somehow like to make a first query to see all the questions and print 1) count(closed) 2) count(all) and 3) ratio

data.stackexchange.com/worldbuilding/revision/484866/614201

DaaaahWhoosh

7:13 PM

looks like that query does that

AndyD273

Hmm, I checked with mine, but cant get the ratio because of the divide by zero error...

bilbo_pingouin

yeah I managed to get the two values separately... not I have to see if I can get the ratio

10274 is the ID of that user

DaaaahWhoosh

count(ClosedDate) * 100.0 / count(*) * 1.0 as percent

bilbo_pingouin

data.stackexchange.com/worldbuilding/query/484866/…

DaaaahWhoosh

oh, maybe percent is reserved

bilbo_pingouin

7:17 PM

ok, I used 'cast'

DaaaahWhoosh

yeah, I guess cast is the 'right' way to do it

AndyD273

How do I save it when I'm done?

bilbo_pingouin

each time you run it, it is saved

I'm a baby user on SQL

but slowly I'm learning... :)

AndyD273

data.stackexchange.com/worldbuilding/query/484883/…

DaaaahWhoosh

@AndyD273 I don't think you're filtering to just questions

bilbo_pingouin

7:20 PM

@AndyD273 thanks :)

AndyD273

Ah, that could be

bilbo_pingouin

I wanted to find a way to avoid running the query several times

DaaaahWhoosh

@AndyD273 I don't think you've asked nearly 300 questions :D

bilbo_pingouin

PostTypeId = 1 for questions

the problem is that you run 3 queries on Post... that sounds like unoptimized, doesn't it?

AndyD273

Is that the post type id = 1 part?

bilbo_pingouin

7:24 PM

yeah, posts include questions and answers

and a few other things, which I now forgot

DaaaahWhoosh

@bilbo_pingouin you can click the 'i' on 'PostTypes' on the right to see them

not that you don't know, but just in case

AndyD273

OK, fixed it

bilbo_pingouin

182

Q: Database schema documentation for the public data dump and SEDE

Stack Exchange releases "data dumps" of all its publicly available content roughly every three months via archive.org, and also makes that information queryable over the Internet at the Stack Exchange Data Explorer (SEDE). Over time, as new features and other bits of data are introduced to Stack ...

support faq data-explorer data-dump

@DaaaahWhoosh here is the whole list... ^^^

DaaaahWhoosh

@bilbo_pingouin it should be available to you in the edit screen, right?

bilbo_pingouin

a good question to keep in favs, if you play with queries a bit :)

@DaaaahWhoosh yeah, thanks. Still the question about 3 times running queries...? If the DB is large, that might be quite bad, wouldn't it?

I mean I have really no idea :)

DaaaahWhoosh

7:29 PM

@bilbo_pingouin well, yeah, but I don't think your version is running 3 queries

also, sometimes query optimizers do great things

and WB database is relatively small

bilbo_pingouin

mine doesn't... or at least not obviously... but Andy's?

yeah on WB that's easy..

but try it on SO...

DaaaahWhoosh

@bilbo_pingouin yeah, a WITH might be useful

AndyD273

It also depends on what the query is returning. Since a sub query can only return a single value, it isn't doing a lot of work

DaaaahWhoosh

and also calculating the ratio after calculating both counts could save some time, I'm not sure if it would though

AndyD273

Plus this one is doing it on a single users results, which is a small dataset

bilbo_pingouin

7:32 PM

yeah, that would be my question somehow... would it be possible to run a query, save the list in a variable, or some container, and run another query on that list?

AndyD273

It can be done

DaaaahWhoosh

select count1, count2, (count1/count2) as ratio from (select count1, count2 from table)

@bilbo_pingouin WITH variable AS (query) another_query_using_variable

don't know if it actually helps though, I think it depends on the database

AndyD273

The sub queries would have to be done as joined tables, since you can't name a subquery and then reference that name in the same select statement.

Like I can't do a (select count(*) from table) as Count, Count - 1 as Minus Count

The alias doesn't actually exist, and so you cant use it in the same select statement

you get an invalid field name error

bilbo_pingouin

I know that some people spend their whole days making some queries... and I see I have much to learn :)

DaaaahWhoosh

@bilbo_pingouin updates can be fun, I learned about MERGE this week

a normal update was never ending, I found out about MERGE, tried it, it took about a second

AndyD273

7:40 PM

FYI, I tried my query on SO and it didn't take any more time than on WB. Even with the subqueries the query is simple enough and limited to a single user id that it doesn't matter

DaaaahWhoosh

@AndyD273 that's probably the most important rule of optimization: sometimes the best optimization is to not spend time optimizing

AndyD273

I asked a question on SO chat a while back, and in the context stated that my query took less than a second. Someone commented that a second was a pretty long time. I'm ok with that

DaaaahWhoosh

in the project I'm working on at work, we make an API call that currently takes about 2 seconds. But since we're making thousands of them per hour, it becomes a problem. Context is key for how long things take

AndyD273

right

DaaaahWhoosh

but I'd say for a SEDE query, anything under 5 seconds is probably nothing to worry about

unless you like worrying

AndyD273

7:51 PM

I think I'm a little numb to it, since I have a handful of end of day queries that crunch a ton of data on a linked server over a VPN that take 10-20 minutes to run, but since they are automated and don't impact business at all I really don't care.

It would help if the remote server was normalized in any way, but apparently that wasn't a thing back in the 70's when the DB was designed.

DaaaahWhoosh

@AndyD273 a lot of things weren't a thing in the 70s

DaaaahWhoosh

8:12 PM

my old CS professor used to work as a database consultant around that time, people would fly him out to their company so he could look at their database and fix it for them.

apparently it paid really well, but he wanted summers off so he became a teacher

AndyD273

@DaaaahWhoosh Gotta have priorities

DaaaahWhoosh

@AndyD273 lol yeah, I guess you do

this is the first time I'm not going to have any summer vacation, so I guess I'll see how important it is to me

bilbo_pingouin

oo... little Woosh is becoming a big Woosh :D

for me, my summer breaks were often busy with internships, or summer jobs... so the last fully free summer that I had... was... probably when I was 17

and for the SQL optimisation, I understand that for this case, it's perfectly fine, but I like to take on good practices from the start :)

DaaaahWhoosh

@bilbo_pingouin I haven't really had a free summer in a while either, but at least when I was an intern here they had to sort of fire and rehire me every six months, so I made sure to take a few weeks off in between

bilbo_pingouin

for the birth of my son, I took 5 weeks off. I believe that was the longest holidays in more than 10 years

DaaaahWhoosh

8:25 PM

@bilbo_pingouin how many weeks off do you get each year?

excluding maternity(/paternity?) leave

bilbo_pingouin

well in Europe we tend to have quite some time... but back then I had been accumulating over more than a year

right now I have 30 days

which is kind of standard in Germany

DaaaahWhoosh

wow, I get 15 and people are impressed

Mike L.

@bilbo_pingouin 30 days is about 50% more than is common outside France

bilbo_pingouin

@MikeL. see edit :)

in France, you have a minimum of 5 weeks, so 25 days. But it's a common perk to have a tad more.

Mike L.

Czech labour law specifies a minimum of 4 weeks (20 days) of vacation time

DaaaahWhoosh

8:28 PM

I think I can get 30 days off if I work here for 15 years...

Mike L.

5 weeks for govt employees, 8 weeks for teachers (including university teachers; those also get a sabbatical every now and then)

bilbo_pingouin

during my PhD, we had 35 days... plus 7 days due to extra hours expected every weeks...

I never managed to take all those holidays back then

Mike L.

@bilbo_pingouin PhDs don't get any vacation time:)

bilbo_pingouin

we sure did :D

on the other hand, we were seldom working 40 hours a week ;)

Mike L.

Well, over here PhDs are technically students rather than employees. That means that I don't get a salary, or a vacation, or health/social insurance.

On the other hand, technically I don't even have work hours.

And instead of a wage I get a stipend, which is not subject to taxation.

bilbo_pingouin

8:33 PM

yep, they changed that as well back where I was

we tried to organise some movement against it

but most were just seeing the 100€ they had more on their bank account, and so did not care

Mike L.

In practice, most of my fellow PhDs are hired on as part-time researchers and assigned to grant projects, but a few of us are purely student.

bilbo_pingouin

at the end, I did not care as well, since I was not affected

technically, I was employed half-time

so health insurance, unemployment, retirement, etc.

Mike L.

Yeah, I don't get any of that:(

But then again, I don't have to do grant projects either. Win some, lose some.

bilbo_pingouin

yeah, I was very glad not to have that :)

1 year contracts (a pain to get a flat), not unemployment (a pain when your contracts could be stopped before you are done with the PhD), no retirement (for 4+ years of PhD... and then post-docs started to have that as well, so 10 years working on stipends!)

and actually less money when you were paying the health insurance on your own

in principle you won some freedom... to be able to say no to your supervisor... in practice, I would not recommend it either way...

Mike L.

It really just highlight how it's all about having a reasonable supervisor.

bilbo_pingouin

8:43 PM

yeah... a few friends of mine didn't... and that was a disaster

HDE 226868

10:18 PM

@Jim2B Looks like it's been removed, which I think I agree with (I saw the meta discussion). It's an interesting idea in principle; I just feel that it was misapplied here.

On a total side note, I'm really looking forward to seeing an answer from you on the starbuilding question.

Kys

10:55 PM

hey all, I'm looking to make my recent question less opinion based, but I'm not really sure how to proceed. Is this an alright place to discuss that?

Shalvenay

@Kys thisi s the place to discuss it

Kys

alright, so my question (worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/41525/…) has to do with the history of my world. Trying to build a foundation where a medieval-esce empire is completely destroyed for future plot devices

But I'm struggling to come up with an explanation why they were destroyed. All the historical examples I've looked at point to tributary states and puppet kings

I understand why it's got a close vote. As it is, a random explanation would fit the question, but I guess I'm looking for a more academic answer, if that makes any sense

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