The Whiteboard

Shog9

4:04 PM

walk away from an argument while you still can?

BarryTheHatchet

we don't want people to try to improve the site any more?

what do you think about the subject?

Aaron Hall

Quit trying to put shog on the spot.

BarryTheHatchet

???

ffs.

Aaron Hall

:)

Ixrec

being put on the spot is kind of his job

BarryTheHatchet

4:10 PM

I'm asking a simple question

Ixrec

you have to admit that question contains a bit of straw

BarryTheHatchet

"what do you think about the subject?" contains straw?

Ixrec

crap, I started yet another tangent argument

Aaron Hall

He's not going to comment if he doesn't want to. You have all types, some types are going to put half-decent (if short) answers in the comments, and there's nothing you can do about it, except remind them that answers go in the Answers.

BarryTheHatchet

that's nonsense

people do all sorts of things wrong

and when those things have been officially decided to be wrong

we have processes to try to stop those people doing the wrong things

Aaron Hall

4:12 PM

There's just some things you can't control. I'm thinking this is one of them.

BarryTheHatchet

are those processes perfect? no. is that within the scope of deciding whether a thing is wrong? also no

then the site is doomed

it's Q&A not Q&C

literally the purpose of SE's creation

Aaron Hall

You're being hysterical. Snap out of it.

Ixrec

technically it's now Q&A&M&C&J&D

BarryTheHatchet

I'm blocking you for a while, Aaron. You're not being helpful in the slightest. You're just being kinda rude.

Aaron Hall

:)

Ixrec

4:13 PM

(if it's not obvious: questions, answers, meta, chat, jobs, documentation)

BarryTheHatchet

@Ixrec don't forget TV?

Ixrec

SE has a TV channel???

BarryTheHatchet

not sure what happened to it but it was proposed

614

Q: An experiment: Stack Overflow TV

Stack Overflow is beginning an experiment called Stack Overflow TV, or SOTV for short. It will be a series of fast, smart videos for experienced programmers who want to learn a new thing. The videos will serve as a complement to Stack’s Q&A, and are intended for that community. Of course, they w...

Aaron Hall

Yeah, they were going to fly people to NYC.

or something

BarryTheHatchet

enjoy the comments!

Ixrec

4:14 PM

TIL

BarryTheHatchet

incidentally, one of the answers contains this from a CM:

> In 2008, Stack Overflow was a new idea, and a great idea - there was nothing that existed where:
>
> - I could actually edit things to improve them
> - I didn't have to scroll through 40 pages of 'me too' just to find a broken link that everyone was raving about
> - Questions I asked didn't get side tracked (or outright hijacked) with tangentially related bike shed painting
> - The best stuff actually rose to the top! - and that was magic. Why hadn't anyone thought of that before?

RIP to that.

DeliriousSyntax

-2

A: Answers in comments, revisited

I agree with you, sometimes the direct answer pops out in a comment, but there's nothing to be done about it except to write up the answer and flesh it out. (When I comment "Answers go in the answers" the response is usually agreement, but they didn't have the time to risk putting out content tha...

Aaron Hall

Thanks DS, you have a thought about that?

whatsisname

I like that most of the answers are hating on the tv thing

Aaron Hall

One day I'll master the meta answer. Today isn't that day.

But it was nice to kick off the answers.

DeliriousSyntax

4:17 PM

Just lurking doing my last upvote/downvotes until my support reads my little message thing

Hey, guys, answers go in the Answers. — Aaron Hall 23 hours ago

+1

Aaron Hall

I was quite pleased with that one.

enjoys the rare opportunity to be smug and self-satisfied

I'm reading up on DDOS attacks and defending against them.

Kit Z. Fox

I am reminded of -- have I ever told the story of Commentgate?

DeliriousSyntax

Get a VPN

-17

Q: Introduce flags for comments that half-answer a question

Comments are just for requesting clarification and arguing with people, right? ;) Yet lately I'm seeing this more and more often (no data available; sorry to pick you specifically, Barry): What happens is that someone FGITWs a mini-answer as a comment on the question, diluting the value of th...

feature-request comments

Looks like your first question failed... Good luck on this one (even thought I just watched another downvote)

Ixrec

@KitZ.Fox I haven't heard this story, do tell

Kit Z. Fox

There is at least on CM who is very against deleting comments that answer the question. This CM is not one that is usually involved with our site.

About two years ago, he was reading a HNQ for EL&U and deleted at least one comment that he felt was an answer and therefore warranted deletion.

BarryTheHatchet

4:27 PM

That's a total contradiction..

Kit Z. Fox

Well, it happened to be written by a high rep user who then posted on Meta, accusing the mods and me in particular of deleting his incredibly valuable content.

Aaron Hall

everyone knows that comments are subject to deletion at any time.

Kit Z. Fox

And he threw a huge tantrum and there was a stand off and everything.

whatsisname

I'm guilty of often answering via comments

Aaron Hall

Stand off? tut-tut

Kit Z. Fox

4:29 PM

Keep in mind that this was probably commentgate #7 or something. He certainly wasn't the first user to get miffed about having a comment removed.

It also wasn't the first time he had a tantrum about it.

Aaron Hall

I'm guilty of writing up a comment answer or two as a regular answer.

Only can think of one time where it was something I didn't already know.

Ixrec

"Why was my comment removed?" is one of the few questions that's a FAQ on every meta

nobody seems to understand comments

Kit Z. Fox

So then Grace had a talk with me and I went walkabout for a while.

BarryTheHatchet

I don't like having comments removed if they're a discussion that's still ongoing, or when only one side was removed, but okay fair enough it should have been in a chatroom

OR AN ANSWER lol...

Aaron Hall

I think I understand comments.

BarryTheHatchet

4:30 PM

I don't get why this is hard

Kit Z. Fox

He refused to believe that I had nothing to do with it.

BarryTheHatchet

Was he Kitbashing?

Kit Z. Fox

He also refused to believe that I didn't care about his comment.

Aaron Hall

I think SO's position is going to be: "Flags are for really bad urgent things - and this, while important, is less of a priority."

Kit Z. Fox

@BarryTheHatchet Ah, drama. He was another one of the many who doesn't seem to understand the definition of "passive-aggressive" and bandies it about in an ironic fashion.

Ixrec

4:33 PM

@AaronHall most of the existing comment flag reasons are very non-urgent

BarryTheHatchet

@KitZ.Fox lol, now that's passive aggressive

Aaron Hall

chatty is urgent because of the volume.

BarryTheHatchet

if they say "we won't give you a flag reason because it's not important enough" then fine I have to live with that

but I'd at least like them to say "yes you're right this trend is daft and we don't want people to do it"

so I can then link to that declaration in the future

Kit Z. Fox

@BarryTheHatchet You can judge for yourself.

BarryTheHatchet

OR if they say "no this trend is fine we encourage it" then I can shake my head and move on ... with protest

Aaron Hall

4:34 PM

there is an "other" with a text box - so you already have what you want.

Kit Z. Fox

You could try a custom flag and say that the comment offends your sensibilities.

BarryTheHatchet

hah, ELU. should've known

Ixrec

@AaronHall custom flags are not really "blank check" flags, the mod has to agree that whatever you're flagging is a bad thing

BarryTheHatchet

I notice that guy's used >> to create a double-bordered box for a section heading

Ixrec

so without a clear community consensus for the mods to enforce "you can use a custom flag" is not a solution

BarryTheHatchet

4:36 PM

i.e. formatting abuse

@Ixrec exactly

I'm not going to risk obliterating my flag weight by flagging before there's an agreement that I'm right

(which I am :P)

although I do occasionally use "Obsolete" for this when I'm really frustrated :)

and in totally clearcut cases (real answers literally dupe of comments)

> After reviewing some of the answers to this question, especially those which attempt to draw distinctions between what is and is not a "useful" comment (some related at great length and with a form of special pleading one normally might associate with legal briefs from the tobacco lobby), I have to say I still am unable to fathom the difference.

Wow, you weren't kidding @Kit

Kit Z. Fox

Well. The one he posted when he rage-quit after I returned was more interesting, but you need 10K rep to read it.

Aaron Hall

Well, so what we need is a clear statement of policy - redundant answers in the comments should be flagged for removal by mods. Otherwise, write it up, then flag it for removal.

I do like that idea

Kit Z. Fox

@AaronHall I like that plan.

Ixrec

redundant comment answers should be very easy to agree on

Kit Z. Fox

We had someone doing that on EL&U, but some users got pissed because he was cribbing other users' "answers".

Ixrec

4:40 PM

it's the regular comment answers that people have bizarrely strong and illogical feelings about

BarryTheHatchet

@KitZ.Fox aww

wow, 20GB of unused Docker images

Aaron Hall

updated my answer to suggest it

BarryTheHatchet

andddd they're on the wrong partition so I ran out of disk space on our shiny new server. whoops

Kit Z. Fox

Docker like the pants?

BarryTheHatchet

nah

Kit Z. Fox

4:42 PM

20GB of unused pants images. considers UK context that's even funnier.

BarryTheHatchet

ugh who set this up

2TB on /home 50GB for everything else

but I don't want Docker images stored under /home

Aaron Hall

Where do you want them?

Kit Z. Fox

Oh, also, it's more fun if you read the edit history @Barry.

BarryTheHatchet

oooh

heh

a 111k user, too. :smh:

I'm hungry.

-6

Q: Is a loop containing over 250,000 iterations considered slow?

Question: In any programming language, are loops with more than 250,000 iterations considered slow. Yes. No. A specific class of programming language has this problem.

programming-languages

Shog9

@BarryTheHatchet what we want and what we can force people to do are entirely separate.

2

BarryTheHatchet

4:53 PM

@Shog9 I agree.

I'm asking what you want.

Shog9

There's a lot of low-hanging fruit here, questions that can be answered by folks who have some reasonable knowledge of the topic and can vet and post an answer provided as a hint or skeleton in the comments.

Aaron Hall

That's what I said! :)

Shog9

But... If no one cares, we can't make it happen.

BarryTheHatchet

I think the hypothesis that "no one cares" has been well disproven by now.

We don't want spam, so spam is banned, and that is enforced. Clearly you can force a lot of things!

I don't know where this idea has come from all of a sudden that SE is necessarily an anarchy.

Shog9

In an individual case, where an answer is provided in a comment and the question is ignored henceforth... It's arguable that no one cares. Heck, the system will happily delete some of these questions.

Aaron Hall

4:55 PM

priorities...

Shog9

I would love to encourage more answering in some way; aging out or archiving comments, providing something of a wiki that folks could expand on as they had time, perhaps even auto-bountying these based on heuristics...

But, first I'd want to do some research to see how many cases exist where an answer clearly exists, is clearly of interest to others, and yet hasn't made it into a bonafide answer as of yet.

BarryTheHatchet

So you fundamentally agree that having answers as answers is a worthy goal?

Shog9

'cause... My suspicion is that a decent number of these are the sort of ultra-specific questions where the answer isn't particularly useful to anyone other than the asker at one moment in time. IOW, the stuff Too Localized was originally aimed at, back when that existed and no one knew what it meant or used it that way.

yes, having answers is sorta the entire point of running these sites

I like fruit.

I like waffles

4:58 PM

Waffles are good too.

Thomas Owens

I like turtles.

Kit Z. Fox

Bacon waffles are surprisingly disappointing.

BarryTheHatchet

@Shog9 At this point, the mere confirmation of this idea means a lot to me. It seems like that's not the general consensus any more.

MetaFight

Shog9

4:59 PM

Bacon is usually best cooked separate from what it is combined with, then combined

BarryTheHatchet

Baking salmon on top of bacon is great

user15026

@Shog9 this.

Shog9

The drippings can then be used to flavor in interesting ways, while the bacon itself is allowed to get crispy

BarryTheHatchet

ew crispy bacon

Kit Z. Fox

@Shog9 Yes, I agree.

MetaFight

5:00 PM

I'm helping

Shog9

The exception I'll make there is burgers, where I grind the bacon in with the beef and cook them together

user15026

Yeah, if you go with adding raw bacon to a food you usually get sad limp bacon.

BarryTheHatchet

this is what bacon should look like!

Kit Z. Fox

wtf? You're Canadian?

Shog9

Still, the usual technique of attempting to cook bacon on top of patties is lame; it produces stringy bacon and greasy burgers

BarryTheHatchet

5:00 PM

this is terrible bacon:

80% fat and burnt to a crisp. Shame!

Shog9

@BarryTheHatchet that looks suspiciously like chicken

@BarryTheHatchet not burnt, fried

BarryTheHatchet

burnt in a fryer

user15026

Nah, peameal bacon and bacon bacon are different. I like them for difference reasons.

Shog9

and that 80% fat means you can render off plenty of drippings to flavor other things

Kit Z. Fox

Hi Shog. I'm almost done with your hat, now that the season is over. Your head will be the same size next year probably, right?

BarryTheHatchet

5:02 PM

just terrible! all that fat! ew!

Kit Z. Fox

Uncured bacon is really tasty.

user15026

@Shog9 like making sawmill gravy with the bacon fat and then putting that on things. I find that quite delicious

Shog9

see, again, trying to cook them together

BarryTheHatchet

Aaron Hall

nautil.us/blog/…

BarryTheHatchet

5:02 PM

yeahhhh now we're talking

dangit, need bacon now

bbiab :D

Shog9

eggs cook in like 40 seconds in a big pool of bacon grease. So, cook the bacon first, slow and careful to render off plenty of fat, and then use that grease to cook the eggs & serve while everything's still hot

user15026

@Shog9 yes. That sounds about perfect.

BarryTheHatchet

lol now I'm getting downvoted for putting my answer in the answer section

things are getting out of control up in this gaff

let's delete all users other than me and start again

Shog9

ok, I have an appointment I need to get to; I'll catch up on all this later

Kit Z. Fox

And then make your pancakes on them.

Shog9

5:05 PM

waffles

Kit Z. Fox

No, waffles go in an iron.

Bacon and pancakes on a griddle.

BarryTheHatchet

Will they lend to the unemployed? — verve yesterday

Shog9

you can totally cook bacon on a waffle iron

BarryTheHatchet

^ OP after asking how to persuade a bank to lend him money because he ran out because he maxed out his credit cards

@KitZ.Fox No, waffles go in the answer section!!!

Shog9

@KitZ.Fox unless someone makes the mistake of complimenting me on something, yes

Ixrec

5:07 PM

that guy doesn't understand how money works

Kit Z. Fox

GOD DAMN IT! flips over desk, storms out

BarryTheHatchet

wait, you guys get desks here?!

that's not fair...

> Worker dies in haunted house at Disneyland Paris resort

internal sources are calling it a "transfer"

Kit Z. Fox

creepy

BarryTheHatchet

5:22 PM

> Speaking outside court after their previous hearing, Robinson said: "I don't care that [I'm] guilty. I'm not bothered mate. I love it mate."

These guys belong on meta :D

Kit Z. Fox

Fruit machines?

BarryTheHatchet

5:37 PM

yep

user41796

6:11 PM

room topic changed to The Whiteboard: General Discussion for programmers.stackexchange.com Pants optional when telecommuting. [coffee-day] [horror-stories] [my-code-is-compiling] [scotch] [the-other-monitor]

Kit Z. Fox

Happy April Square Day.

gnat

6:46 PM

8

Q: Is the significance of data structures or algorithms exaggerated in a modern world?

Throughout college and spending many hours on Quora or Stack Exchange, it's quite common to hear from professors and some experienced professionals alike that data structures or algorithms are key to being a successful developer. Yet, despite my desire to be mindful of them when I code in my fre...

algorithms unit-testing data-structures engineering

^^^ would appreciate help in deletion of this bikeshedding

user41796

It's already got my VTD on it

Ixrec

my delete votes regen in 5 hours, so if I'm still awake I'll do it

Steven Burnap

Oh, I guess I can vote delete now. :-P

user41796

10k VTD on questions, 20k VTD on answers.

user41796

7:01 PM

And you get an extra VTD for every 1k past 10k up to 35k in rep

Aaron Hall

1

A: How do I make a fried egg with completely cooked white but completely runny yolk?

I make myself a breakfast of bacon and eggs every Saturday morning. I feel I have perfected my egg cooking, and I will attempt to tell you how to replicate it. Preparation Materials: One Cast Iron Skillet, 12 inches diameter A wooden spatula with a rounded corner on one side A wide pancake f...

I keep reloading StackOverflow, but no new points... :(

(unrelated to the link above, which I wrote probably 2 years ago...)

I suppose I could write new answers, but I'm trying to finish a bit of code...

BarryTheHatchet

@GlenH7 what changed?

user41796

I dropped the xkcd and mourning references

BarryTheHatchet

7:19 PM

now I'm mourning for the xkcd and mourning references

user41796

mourn away

BarryTheHatchet

I xkcd what you did there

is there a default licence for Gists?

hum no

BarryTheHatchet

8:04 PM

Batman v Superman OST | Martha / Opening Credits Music | Hans Zimmer & Junkie XL | HD

►

Code to this.

ooh I'm in the "Featured On Meta" panel

how exciting, and what could possibly go wrong?

Ixrec

You could get tempted to go read the new answers/comments there.

BarryTheHatchet

yeah :(

Ixrec

I've said more than enough on that thread so I'm going to try and resist the urge to read any more of it lest I feel the need to correct more people.

BarryTheHatchet

same

I'll read new answers as I'm notified about them but that's it

Ixrec

at least for a while, obviously we need to see what the "outcome" is at some point

BarryTheHatchet

8:35 PM

pfft FB group admin tried to share something that had insufficient rights - i.e. comes up as "attachment unavailable" to most of us because we're not in the original rights group

pointed it out

admin screenshots the thing and reposts as image

pretty sure you just completely violated the entire purpose of the original privacy setting

but I'm not going to say anything. had quite enough battles today.

Aaron Hall

@BarryTheHatchet Speaking of privacy, I asked my friend about that email thank you, he says he'll tweet it tonight so I can retweet. :P

BarryTheHatchet

@AaronHall hah awesome :)

well done

see, Barry knows best

Aaron Hall

♪ "Barry in charge, of our days, and our nights. (Barry in charge) Barry in charge, of our wrongs, and our rights..." ♪

Ixrec

I didn't know you could get the Mortarboard badge on a meta site

BarryTheHatchet

Maybe you can't

Aaron Hall

8:46 PM

meta.stackoverflow.com/help/badges/41/mortarboard?userid=541136

^^^ Proof you can. :)

Ixrec

I got it just now for my MSO post on the comment answers thing

Aaron Hall

meta.stackoverflow.com/help/badges/41/mortarboard

BarryTheHatchet

@Ixrec you said you didn't know

LIARZ

Ixrec

I didn't know until I got it just now

BarryTheHatchet

my docker images have finished rebuilding

six hours later

I need to get that on a faster storage engine

Aaron Hall

9:09 PM

I was sure the Barry in Charge song would be at the top of the charts. Platinum even. But no love. No stars. :(

is a sensitive soul

though he seems thick skinned

BarryTheHatchet

aw

Aaron Hall

♪"Hakuna Matata..."♪♪

Duga

Questions that ask "where do I start" are typically too broad and are not a good fit for this site. People have their own method for approaching the problem and because of this there cannot be a correct answer. Give a good read over Where to Start, then address your post. — Kyll 31 secs ago

BarryTheHatchet

10:46 PM

"Up until now I have done all operations within my main function. Well, apparently my main function is now too large (390,000 lines currently)" I stopped here. — BarryTheHatchet just now

Steven Burnap

Many years ago, I had the misfortune of working on software with that attitude. The original developers ran into that exact error, though at the time the limits were much lower. They had a "fun" solution:

`process();`
`}`

`void process() {`

BarryTheHatchet

;lp

Steven Burnap

And yes, to make this work, they had to make variables with names like i global

Ixrec

all the database accessing functions in the 4GB Fortran god executable at work involve global variables, typically hundreds of them

BarryTheHatchet

delicious

yay, my Jenkins job invokes my "devenv" script that instantiates a Docker container that builds my project's RPM and ISO outputs

finally

when did I come in here starting to look into this?

Oct 19 '15 at 19:06, by Lightness Races in Orbit

Docker looks like what I was hoping for, too. c.f. VMs

^_^

guess that means I can leave now

Johan Larsson

10:57 PM

rewrite it in rust

BarryTheHatchet

hmmm maybe later

Duga

11:38 PM

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it would be a better fit at Programmers — jmoerdyk 31 secs ago

BarryTheHatchet

11:49 PM

@jmoerdyk: I just reposted it over there, but as there's no Capacity Planning tag available it would seem that even there it's considered off-topic. I've also noticed contention in the past between the two groups: "This doesn't fit here at SO, so we'll just dump it over on P." "Hey, quit shuffling your junk off on us!" That sort of thing. — InteXX 2 mins ago

heh, OP schools the commenter

whatsisname

but cross-posted it anyway

BarryTheHatchet

;p

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