The Whiteboard

Matt D

12:09 AM

@Brant unless someone copy-pasted lorem ipsum

user55340

1:54 AM

@gnat enjoy - closed resource requests data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/142942/…

gnat

10:08 AM

@MichaelT I took a look at some of the query results and I can't figure, what to do about these? Of those I checked, about half didn't look like worthy of deletion

user55340

2:02 PM

@gnat Thats what the query is about - recommendation questions that have been closed with few (if any) answers.

gnat

2:25 PM

@MichaelT I see. So, for example low values in "Answers length" and "Answers scores" are like warning signs, right?

user55340

@gnat Yep... hmm... I could make those 'mean' instead of 'sum'.

gnat

@MichaelT mean would probably make better sense. Also, what about "ph.comment = 102" - what's the point having it there?

user55340

@gnat The post history comment is the current implementation of the close reason... though that has changed over time (early on it was a different reason).

gnat

@MichaelT understood

user55340

2:55 PM

@gnat data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/142942/… - I've updated the len and score to be mean.

gnat

3:14 PM

@MichaelT that looks better! While messing with it, I got a feeling that it would be interesting to add a column like (mean len * mean score) and order by this value, ascending. The idea is to highlight questions where both score and answers length look suspisious

...it was hard to resist an urge to hit delete button while viewing some of these

user55340

3:38 PM

@gnat If you want some more temptation - List of top 100 questions having delete votes which are not yet deleted by votes remaining

gnat

@MichaelT wow. That's really tempting...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Save @gnat the dv's, send that to @YannisRizos and @WorldEngineer

that's easy cleanup for them

user55340

@JimmyHoffa A 3rd dv is a 3rd dv no matter who casts them... And old questions are old questions... The more we can clean up for the mods the old stuff, the more they have time for cleaning up the new stuff.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Oh it matters who casts them alright. A dv from Yannis or World are quite different indeed

user55340

(Personally, I'd rather the mods run the review queue to 0 or poke at programmers.stackexchange.com/… and look at all those ones that may expire).

Jimmy Hoffa

3:52 PM

eh fair point

user55340

@JimmyHoffa mod DV are also special in that they can only be undeleted by a mod (rather than other 10k users)... and dv's don't expire... so one can do them in the connivence of time (compared to cv which do expire).

user55340

4:06 PM

Wondering about a glitch / inconsistency in my query for the close reason...

user55340

2

Q: How to determine why a question was closed from the data dump/data explorer

Database schema documentation for the public data dump and Data Explorer for PostHistory says: Comment: This field will contain the comment made by the user who edited a post. If PostHistoryTypeId = 10, this field contains the CloseReasonId of the close reason: 1: Exact Duplicate 2: O...

gnat

I saw bold big words driver's license in the title and clicked close... well, almost clicked :)

0

Q: TotalPhase Aardvark driver's GPL license

I'm using an SPI host adapter for a project. The Aardvark from TotalPhase. And I did something crazy, I read that EULA license that everyone just clicks through. The driver installation license includes these bits: This driver installer package also includes a WIN32 driver that is entirely...

gpl licenseing drivers

three letters, whole world of the difference. "GPL"

user55340

Forget the croissants... how do you get matching socks?

user55340

1577

Q: How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?

Yesterday I was pairing the socks from the clean laundry, and figured out the way I was doing it is not very efficient. I was doing a naive search — picking one sock and "iterating" the pile in order to find its pair. This requires iterating over n/2 * n/4 = n2/8 socks on average. As a computer ...

algorithm sorting language-agnostic

Jimmy Hoffa

1. Douse pile in lighter fluid
2. Light lighter fluid with fire
3. Wait 10 minutes
4. All possible sock pairs have been made, you are done.

Thomas Owens

4:47 PM

For the 10k users, can anyone explain this?

14

A: Effectiveness of "what is your greatest strength/weakness" interview questions

Found it.

user55340

user55340

(for the non-10k users)

Thomas Owens

Is there supposed to be something there?

Oh. It's getting proxy blocked.

I see.

user55340

The biggest fault is one of those annoying questions in the interview... so people try to answer them as a positive for themselves. Dilbert claims that working too hard makes him forget to eat...

user55340

Ahh, thought you wanted me to explain the joke...

Thomas Owens

4:51 PM

I didn't see the joke to get it. Deletion stands. Next.

user55340

Oh, deletion is still very appropriate.

user55340

The words "Found it." and a link to a dilbert cartoon? Yea... thats a quality answer.

user55340

A bit ago, I ran a query to find every answer that had a link to an xkcd cartoon... that was a flaggy day.

Thomas Owens

Rerun that query with Dilbert? Although that was a stack imgur link.

gnat

@MichaelT well, right there, near foundit crap, there's yet another... "gem"

-1

A: Effectiveness of "what is your greatest strength/weakness" interview questions

I don't think it is a very useful question for any engineering profession - perhaps for a different line of work with less structure. I think we have more concreate questions that can be asked that devulge better information.

zero explanation, pure opinion. How useful

Jimmy Hoffa

5:06 PM

I wonder how many chatrooms on SE I could get all talking amongst themselves nostalgically about old-school hardware at the same time just with a few key statements... Like getting a bunch of dishes to spin on dowels all at the same time

"Boy, PLIP was the shit."

jozefg

5:16 PM

My .emacs file has mysteriously vanished... I may have to go cry now

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg whoami

alternatively, you are screwed and that really sucks... github to the rescue: Next time anyway...

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa unfortunately I'm still me, urk. I think my latest copy of .emacs on bitbucket is reasonably up to date

It's mostly some of the configurations i had in there to work with Coq that I'm annoyed about

user55340

@jozefg Gist it.

user55340

(I just got a fairly basic but acceptable .bashrc file)

user55340

I wonder if they ever fixed the gist in chat bug...

user55340

5:42 PM

gist.github.com/shagie/7029143

user55340

Guess not.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:55 PM

Bash has to be my single least favorite language of any nature whatsoever

As soon as you need to do anything more than "execute a couple commands in a row", you should grab for perl or technically anything else

Not because it can't, but because it is possibly the worst damn bit of script to maintain ever...

or write, or read, or just generally be in the vicinity of

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Its a shell, not a language. (Perl was written in part as a response to people trying to program in sh back in the day)

user55340

At times, I've wished for a perl shell / repl.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I know that, but the proliferation of scripts out there doing all fashion of complexity in bash is what I'm griping about. I just hate anytime I open some script that's not working right only to find 6k+ lines of bash

@MichaelT ...there isn't one? Nobody has created one?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Not one with consistent enough enviroment / support for it.

user55340

search.cpan.org/~adamk/Perl-Shell-0.04/lib/Perl/Shell.pm

user55340

6:08 PM

THIS MODULE IS HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

This module provides a lookalike implementation of a "command line interpreter" for Perl, in the style of the Python equivalent.

user55340

There's also gnp.github.io/psh

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT ...you could always create one

It's interpretted to begin with, how hard can it be?

user55340

Well, it is, but it isn't...

user55340

It does get compiled to an internal bytecode representation.

user55340

And then that is interpreted. Thats the thing with the BEGIN {} blocks.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:10 PM

@MichaelT I know, I just mean shell/repl activities are simplified when a language is interpreted

shells don't need blocks, a proper shell only need allow expression evaluation

blocks != expressions

user55340

(while compiling, if it reads a BEGIN {} block, it runs that block after compiling, but before compiling anything after it - this is funky powerful)

user55340

10

A: What is the role of the BEGIN block in Perl?

Have you tried swapping out the BEGIN{} block for an INIT{} block? That's the standard approach for things like modperl which use the "compile-once, run-many" model, as you need to initialize things anew on each separate run, not just once during the compile. But I have to ask why it's all in sp...

user55340

psh is a shell in the style of perl, but under the covers, its still a shell. It is interesting.. and I may try it out.

user55340

My favorite comment of the day...

user55340

Questions of speculation on the future of markets is the domain of mystics. While programming is mystical to some, professional programmers rarely have the professional qualities to make such statements about the future (Fortran will be dead any day now!). — MichaelT 2 hours ago

2

user55340

6:20 PM

(from)

user55340

-1

Q: Future Talend ESB in India?

This is my first post, Currently I'm working on Talend ESB. When developing ESB app , I have gone through ESB concept,JMS, Camel and apache CXF. its a lot of learning ahead. Could you please tell me How is the future of Talend in India ?. Regards, Abhi

java career-development coding-standards

user55340

(yes, I know its my comment... I sitll like it)

user55340

Ohh! Happy Haskell people!

gnat

I think it was the first time I took a special care to build my answer to make it fit the cartoon. Felt a bit... unusual to write

7

A: How to save the world... One question title at a time

Step 1. Filter the questions having more than 100 (1K... 5K...) views. Step 2. For filtered questions, measure relevance of the title to text. Step 3. Pick 1% (5%, 10%...) questions that are worst relevance wise. Step 4. Put troublesome questions into a new review queue. Step 5. Let community...

user55340

Of note, it does look like the anonymous feedback is something you can hit in Data.SE.

user55340

6:31 PM

One might want to have feedback thresholds kick in something into the review queue.

user55340

Since anon/low rep feedback doesn't cost them anything (no rep loss), they're much more likely to be helpful in marking something unhelpful.

user55340

7:21 PM

Is the octocat (of github) a cat wearing an octopus suit? or an octopus wearing a cat suit?

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I thought it was an ancient species that ruled the planet before the lizardmen came (who still rule the planet, albeit from miles underground unbeknownst to mankind)

user41796

7:42 PM

@MichaelT - I need more delete votes too

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Keep it up, we might come up with an open mod req just for you, then we'll see how much you like that..

user41796

but at least I can do something about getting more of those

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I actually had asked a while back about that.

user41796

The background to the recent election was that site volume justified adding another mod. But then one of our mods stepped down shortly after the election.

user55340

@GlenH7 Did you see that query I found?

user55340

7:45 PM

4 hours ago, by MichaelT

@gnat If you want some more temptation - List of top 100 questions having delete votes which are not yet deleted by votes remaining

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Wow. You keep down that path and you'll end up like @gnat...

Gnat goes full-blown crazy

Aug 23 at 22:36, 10 minutes total – 14 messages, 4 users, 2 stars

Bookmarked Aug 23 at 22:48 by Jimmy Hoffa

user41796

While I'm sure the mod who stepped down had been in communication with SE proper, I never got a clear understanding if the line about "site volume justifying another mod" was true or if it was cover to hold an election and then allow the other to resign

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 (Really? Who? ChrisF?)

user41796

either way is all good by me. Nothing wrong with a little face saving.

user41796

but if we truly did have the volume, then that means we need another mod

Jimmy Hoffa

7:47 PM

@GlenH7 I don't think anybody inside of P.SE thought we had the volume..

user41796

@MichaelT - yes, that's how I blew through 11 votes today

user55340

@GlenH7 And thats why I like my rep...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa meh, I dunno. Wasn't clearcut to me.

user55340

I'd be so frustrated with only 10k rep and so few dv's.

user41796

Living in Milwaukee really changed my point of view for root beer

user55340

7:50 PM

Whats your favorite soda?

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I like root beer

user41796

Sprecher root beer is da bomb

user55340

IBC cherry.

user41796

stupid chat messages aging out of the edit window....

user41796

Oh hey, @WorldEngineer. What's up?

Jimmy Hoffa

7:53 PM

@MichaelT I thought ...IBC cherry... was genuinely never around (I know I never saw it basically at all for quite a long time), so it's removal from shelves seemed like something that didn't need a ...press release...

user20683

@GlenH7 Finishing off my resume and sending it out. Doing QA on my Linkedin and Careers profiles to make sure everything matches. Still puzzling over how to articulate skill levels but I think I'm just gonna leave as is.

user41796

@WorldEngineer Don't stress over expressing skill levels

user55340

And yea... still need more delete votes. I'm kind of itching for 20k so that they can be cast even quicker.

user20683

@GlenH7 Way I see it, the fact that I have SQL but no specific vendor should tell them something

user41796

Had an interview for a programmer. His background was lightweight web dev type stuff. He listed himself as a master in C, C++, and Java.

user20683

7:54 PM

yeah...

user55340

Though we'd kind of need a third active 20k dver to have much effect.

user41796

Anyway, said programmer was not a master in any of the technologies he claimed to be a master. Including his web dev stuff.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Weird though, he spent most of the interview breaking blocks..

user41796

putting a skill level in there is just setting yourself up for failure. Good interviewers will look over your work experience and be able to size things up.

gnat

@WorldEngineer the most natural way to sync Careers and LinkedIn profiles would probably be to set LinkedIn one as "master" and then import it into Careers

user20683

7:56 PM

@gnat I hadn't considered that

user20683

good idea

user41796

@JimmyHoffa totally didn't even bring that up during the interview. Figured the poor guy had taken enough abuse about his name.

gnat

@WorldEngineer worked great for me, was quite a relief to find out that I don't need to scrupulously re-fill stuff

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 At least it wasn't Michael Bolton, that no-talent assclown will steal from your company...

user55340

(btw, its scary to see how many rounding bugs exist in POS software that isn't properly coded)

Jimmy Hoffa

7:58 PM

2 days ago, by Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I've worked in financial sector at 4 different companies. That's why I laugh that people are worried about their privacy being invaded by the NSA. The inverse of Hanlon's Razor is also true and reads: Malice is much less scary than stupidity

user55340

One of my later projects was going through and changing Double to a fixed floating format.

user41796

Back in 2004 when the Scott Peterson trial was going on, I had a coworker by the same name who was trying to get a visa so he could go work in Western Europe.

user41796

Amusingly enough, the trial and news held up his visa application a little bit.

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer for grins you could always just list the SQL open standard...what's it called again..

gnat

"helpful flags 2626" -- I violate DRY by repeating "26" in there!

user20683

8:00 PM

@JimmyHoffa ISO 8000 something

Jimmy Hoffa

SQL:2008

SQL:2008 is the sixth revision of the ISO and ANSI standard for the SQL database query language. It was formally adopted in July 2008. Summary The SQL:2008 standard is split into several parts, covering the Framework, the Foundation, the Call-Level Interface, Persistent Stored Modules, Management of External Data, Object Language Bindings, Information and Definition Schemas, Routines and Types Using Java, and various "Related Specifications." Additions to the Foundation include *enhanced MERGE and DIAGNOSTIC statements, *the TRUNCATE TABLE statement, *comma-separated WHEN clauses i...

user41796

@MichaelT Isn't there a classic bank account robbing scheme you could have exploited instead? Redirect the roundings to a special account...

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer 9075

user55340

@GlenH7 Given the quality of the software... I'd worry about it coming out negative.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa As I recall there's a 2011 standard too

user41796

8:01 PM

@gnat I'm at 866. I'm such a slacker.

user55340

The rounding scheme we were using is half-up.

user41796

Random question - what happens to open flags on comments when the question is deleted?

user55340

(only 591)

user20683

I spent my shift at work opening boxes and hauling books while I figured out how to reverse a string of any known length in-place as well as reversing strings of unknown length. I'm still puzzling as to how to combine the two

user41796

@WorldEngineer You had a lot of time to ponder core algorithms

Jimmy Hoffa

8:06 PM

@WorldEngineer What algorithm did you come up with?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa for known length, you take two pointers and then do the whole switching shifting thing. If the length is odd, the halting condition is when the pointers' addresses are equal. If even, then stop them at (n/2) +1 and n/2 respectively. A linked list implementation would be related to unknown length as you'd have to traverse the entire list anyway to get to the end, put a pointer there then take the old head

Jimmy Hoffa

"switching shifting thing" ?

You mean an xor parity swap?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa take pointer a and pointer b, place pointer a at [0], place pointer b at [n-1]

user20683

then exchange the characters at pointer a and b

user20683

then shift pointer a + 1 and pointer b -1

Jimmy Hoffa

8:13 PM

@WorldEngineer how do you do that in-place?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa temp variable

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer ...is that in-place? :P

user55340

@Sparticus well, your ride on that collider question is over - it got auto CW'ed through number of answers.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa compared to generating an entire new array it is

user20683

in any case

Jimmy Hoffa

8:15 PM

@WorldEngineer alternatively (I can never remember the exact sequence without re-thinking it up each time) you can swap two values using xor without a temp variable

that's in-place swapping heh

user20683

@JimmyHoffa even if the string is unicode?

user20683

I suppose that would work

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer It's a byte trick

doesn't matter what data is in the bites

user20683

as I recall reversing a linked list can be done by recursively redirecting the pointers linking the list to the previous node

user41796

XOR swap algorithm

In computer programming, the XOR swap is an algorithm that uses the XOR bitwise operation to swap values of distinct variables having the same data type without using a temporary variable. "Distinct" means that the variables are stored at different memory addresses; the actual values of the variables do not have to be different. The algorithm Conventional swapping requires the use of a temporary storage variable. Using the XOR swap algorithm, however, no temporary storage is needed. The algorithm is as follows: X := X XOR Y Y := X XOR Y X := X XOR Y The algorithm typically corresponds...

Jimmy Hoffa

8:18 PM

@GlenH7 There we go.. I know it can be done, but everytime I think of it I have to manually write it out again to remember the correct sequence

user41796

> On modern CPU architectures, the XOR technique is considerably slower than using a temporary variable to do swapping. One reason is that modern CPUs strive to execute instructions in parallel via instruction pipelines. In the XOR technique, the inputs to each operation depend on the results of the previous operation, so they must be executed in strictly sequential order.

user20683

it's the same as if you'd used a temp

user41796

Wikipedia claims it's worse now

user20683

in terms of order

Jimmy Hoffa

allows you to do literal in-place array manipulations

@WorldEngineer Yeah temp variable is still constant memory but it's just one of those old tricks for if you're for example in a fixed-size struct and want to allocate zero more memory etc to do your work

user41796

8:20 PM

"Pipeling killed the XOR swap" doesn't sound anywhere near as catchy as "video killed the radio star"

Jimmy Hoffa

I can't imagine a time I would actually do an xor swap

just when dealing with systems shit and fixed resources I suppose...

user41796

I have heard of it coming up during interview questions before. Now I'm glad I have a great answer for why I would use a temp variable. Beyond maintenance concerns, I'll point out that it would reduce the speedup gained from pipelining

user20683

as far as an unknown length string, if it's a linked list I can just do it the same way as normal. For an array, I can effectively do the same thing by reading the contents of the string into a stack then just popping them back starting at the beginning of the string

user20683

stack implementation should be a linked list to adapt to any length of string

user41796

Warning: don't click through on this link if you love gadgets. Your wallet will be easily emptied. leevalley.com/en/home/OnlineCatalog.aspx?id=b5cfd17c&;

user20683

8:24 PM

doesn't load for me

user20683

so I guess I'm safe

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer combining the two doesn't really serve purpose, you could recurse the known-length array to swap on certain indice conditions, but then you're just turning your loop into a recursion which is harmless but pointless too. Alternatively you can't use the repointing part of the linked-list approach because arrays aren't pointer based like that. Alternatively you could turn the linked-list portion into working similar to the array approach, but the trick would be simply recurse to

find the length of the linked list, and then you have the known-length approach. Which is no value beyond doing it the way you mentioned the first time other than to be obtuse

So your initial approaches are basically right, and combining them doesn't yield any value

user20683

yeah, that's what I figured.

Jimmy Hoffa

When you're already in a linear time algo you already know you're basically not going to get much further because think about near-neighbor classes to array reversal: Sorting? NLogN accept radixes which are linear and based on the same techniques as your approach. Queues, Stacks, et al? All behave in linear time.. Searching algos? Linear at best.

You're only improvement is lazy evaluation so that you don't commit any of the reversals unless a node is actually accessed

but that's just a heuristic

thedailywtf.com/Articles/Free-Optical-Moose-Inside.aspx#Pic-4

user55340

8:48 PM

Hmm... to get or not...

user55340

amazon.com/V8-Tools-Heated-Computer-Keyboard/dp/B000O3K93G

user41796

@MichaelT Every now and then I'm tempted to get one of the high-end keyboards that sounds like gatling guns when they're used.

user41796

haptic feedback for the win (or whatever)

user55340

@GlenH7 Oh, the old IBM Clicky style?

user41796

@MichaelT yeah

user55340

8:54 PM

Model M keyboard

The Model M keyboard, colloquially called a clicky keyboard, is a class of computer keyboard manufactured by IBM, Lexmark and Unicomp, starting in 1984. The many different variations of the keyboard have their own distinct characteristics, with the vast majority having a buckling spring key design and many having fully swappable keycaps. Model M keyboards have been praised by computer enthusiasts and heavy typists because of the tactile and auditory feedback resulting from a keystroke. The Model M is also regarded as a timeless and durable piece of hardware. Many units manufactured si...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT IBM Model M, not "clicky" style!

Such disrespect...

user41796

The feedback from those was awesome

user41796

You knew if you had hit the key or not

user55340

Refurbished ones... clickykeyboards.com

Jimmy Hoffa

I had the last one I owned for so long. Well into the early thousands before it finally gave out, long long after the takeover of the silent grommet crapboards

user55340

8:55 PM

New ones - pckeyboard.com

user55340

The ultra classic...

user55340

Jimmy Hoffa

user55340

18 isn't impossible for a cat...

user55340

though 1997 is missing.

Jimmy Hoffa

8:59 PM

@MichaelT yeah.. cat's birth day (!?!) for security question, and it can't be '97..

Who knows their cat's birth DAY?

user55340

Some people know those...

user41796

but what about using your favorite cat fluffy from when you were a kid?

Jimmy Hoffa

I've never known a cat's birth year that I ever owned

@GlenH7 That's easy: Nobody remembers the birthday for their first cat because they were too young to remember anyway

user55340

@GlenH7 I don't think they mean that given that this seems like an 'active' cat.

user55340

Otherwise the "Before 1996" would be nearly all the cat birthdays

Jimmy Hoffa

9:06 PM

@MichaelT The problem with that as a security question is as Schroedinger proved, the activity or inactivity of a given cat is an undecidable problem, therefore we can't possibly put a correct expectation in there.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa There's a language where one always has to say as part of the "knowing" how one knows the information.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Liarese?

user55340

> For instance, some languages, like Matses in Peru, oblige their speakers, like the finickiest of lawyers, to specify exactly how they came to know about the facts they are reporting. You cannot simply say, as in English, “An animal passed here.” You have to specify, using a different verbal form, whether this was directly experienced (you saw the animal passing), inferred (you saw footprints), conjectured (animals generally pass there that time of day), hearsay or such.

user55340

(from nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/…; )

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT That's awesome

user55340

9:11 PM

> If a statement is reported with the incorrect “evidentiality,” it is considered a lie. So if, for instance, you ask a Matses man how many wives he has, unless he can actually see his wives at that very moment, he would have to answer in the past tense and would say something like “There were two last time I checked.”

user55340

> After all, given that the wives are not present, he cannot be absolutely certain that one of them hasn’t died or run off with another man since he last saw them, even if this was only five minutes ago. So he cannot report it as a certain fact in the present tense.

Jimmy Hoffa

Reminds me of a language I heard about at one point where there was something odd about location that required you to always know which direction regarding N/E/W/S but more accurately than just 90 degrees just to say normal things

user55340

Same article...

user55340

> One Guugu Yimithirr speaker was filmed telling his friends the story of how in his youth, he capsized in shark-infested waters. He and an older person were caught in a storm, and their boat tipped over. They both jumped into the water and managed to swim nearly three miles to the shore, only to discover that the missionary for whom they worked was far more concerned at the loss of the boat than relieved at their miraculous escape.

user55340

> Apart from the dramatic content, the remarkable thing about the story was that it was remembered throughout in cardinal directions: the speaker jumped into the water on the western side of the boat, his companion to the east of the boat, they saw a giant shark swimming north and so on.

user55340

9:13 PM

There are questions of if we experience the same reality as they do...

gnat

consider editing your post to replace or complement boring "10 full seconds" with much more colorful "about three nanocenturies" — gnat 4 mins ago

user55340

> One way of understanding this is to imagine that you are traveling with a speaker of such a language and staying in a large chain-style hotel, with corridor upon corridor of identical-looking doors. Your friend is staying in the room opposite yours, and when you go into his room, you’ll see an exact replica of yours:

user55340

> the same bathroom door on the left, the same mirrored wardrobe on the right, the same main room with the same bed on the left, the same curtains drawn behind it, the same desk next to the wall on the right, the same television set on the left corner of the desk and the same telephone on the right. In short, you have seen the same room twice. But when your friend comes into your room, he will see something quite different from this, because everything is reversed north-side-south.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Yes this is what I was remembering! Heard about this years ago. I was thinking I didn't remember it being in Peru but somewhere further... These cardinal-direction people are in Australia

user55340

The evidentry are in Peru, debatably non-recrusive in the Amazon, and cardnial direction in Australia.

user55340

9:18 PM

It shows up in other places... I can say "I am going to dinner with my friend" and "leak" the information about what meal time.

user55340

In france, when one says "my friend" the gender of the friend also 'leaks'.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT that sounds terribly messy.

user55340

> In recent years, various experiments have shown that grammatical genders can shape the feelings and associations of speakers toward objects around them. In the 1990s, for example, psychologists compared associations between speakers of German and Spanish. There are many inanimate nouns whose genders in the two languages are reversed.

user55340

> A German bridge is feminine (die Brücke), for instance, but el puente is masculine in Spanish; and the same goes for clocks, apartments, forks, newspapers, pockets, shoulders, stamps, tickets, violins, the sun, the world and love.

user55340

> On the other hand, an apple is masculine for Germans but feminine in Spanish, and so are chairs, brooms, butterflies, keys, mountains, stars, tables, wars, rain and garbage.

user55340

9:22 PM

> When speakers were asked to grade various objects on a range of characteristics, Spanish speakers deemed bridges, clocks and violins to have more “manly properties” like strength, but Germans tended to think of them as more slender or elegant. With objects like mountains or chairs, which are “he” in German but “she” in Spanish, the effect was reversed.

user55340

So through all of this... yea, language does change the way you think.

user55340

> In a different experiment, French and Spanish speakers were asked to assign human voices to various objects in a cartoon. When French speakers saw a picture of a fork (la fourchette), most of them wanted it to speak in a woman’s voice, but Spanish speakers, for whom el tenedor is masculine, preferred a gravelly male voice for it.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT This explains the french cheese phenomenon

user55340

(Whee! ChrisF mod power - user posted a question, modified and self dup'ed it on P.SE and crossposted it to SO... ChrisF was able to do all the janitorial work of duping, migrating, and merging the questions).

user55340

This clearly means we need to get @WorldEngineer and Yannis to run for SO mod.

Jimmy Hoffa

9:30 PM

@MichaelT I have a feeling @Yannis is going to be running for BAR.SE mod soon, thinking he's gotten bored of our well-organized community-maintained site with too little to do

user55340

(if nothing else, to give @YannisRizos a diamond on MSO)

Jimmy Hoffa

Or perhaps Politics.SE broke his spirit and he just can't be bothered anymore\

user20683

Remember that I have all of 250 rep on SO

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer Which would make you being a mod there hilarious

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Bay Area Recovery? Booze And Recovery?

user20683

9:32 PM

Byte Array Recursion?

gnat

@MichaelT if this happens, they will remove all link-only answers there. All 24,000 of these

6

A: Can we get some consensus on what flag to use for link only answers?

For this to happen, moderators and SE team need to first find out about size of the issue and come to consensus about what to do about it. Size of the issue can be estimated using SEDE query Marginal short answers with links. For example, when run with parameters: AnswerScoreMax=99, AnswerSco...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Booze and Reconnaissance, because yo should have something to do when you get drunk

Speaking of beer, @WorldEngineer how'd you like the Sam Smith stout compared to others?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa it was decent, Rasputin is better

user20683

I like my stouts very thick and Sam Smith isn't quite there

user20683

yes, I am picky, leave me be :P

Jimmy Hoffa

9:34 PM

Ah, rasputin's a little sweet for me but fair enough

So you love the stuff like yeti oak-aged more

user20683

see I like my stouts with a slight molasses tinge

Jimmy Hoffa

Have you tried the Yeti oak-aged stouts before? Those are the epitome of thick and sweet to me. They're like drinking a spicy sweet syrup

They're also strong as hell

I'm not a fan but my wife loves 'em

I can only handle sweetness to a point in my beer

user55340

9:50 PM

@JimmyHoffa ever tried a savory beer?

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I'd be surprised of a beer I haven't tried, but I don't find that term familiar off-hand.

user55340

newschoolbeer.com/2010/11/…

Jimmy Hoffa

I've habitted for years to grab something different at least 50% of the time I go to the store

user55340

Related - bakonvodka.com

Jimmy Hoffa

O..uhh.. the closest I can recall having had (which is quite good) is... let me see if i can find it...

Some australian beer that had something I can't recall in it...

@MichaelT This sounds crazy to me either way. Not sure what you'd be aiming for here to make it believable other than saltiness

user55340

10:11 PM

@JimmyHoffa check out the 'Bullshot' mixed drink... there's actually a fairly long tradition of savory drinks.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Yeah but not in beer

Beer has a variety of flavors, but most of all to get savory you kind of need a bit of saltiness which is a stretch from any beer flavors I'm familiar with. You can get a hearty bready flavor with some of them like Guinness Extra Stout is a great one that's like a thick loaf of bread or Buffalo Gold, but the bitterness in both cases would make it hard to communicate savory

You can get heartiness out of a thicker maltier beer like a barley wine as well, but even still, I don't know how you'd translate savory to that

I'm very interested, I'd definitely give it a try

actually I had something curious recently what was that... at a brewpub downtown...

Oh right they had a chile ale

it was actually terrible

In fact I really can't recommend the Denver Brewery based on having had their beer... which is depressing that they have the towns namesake and we have so many good brewpubs, but their beer was just bad and all geared for one thing only: IPA lovers. Usually places like that have something I can tolerate, but all of their stuff was just pure hops and bitter funk, even their stout was terribly hoppy

Matt D

11:35 PM

IPA's ftw

Gnat goes full-blown crazy

Transcript for