The Whiteboard

Ampt

4:48 AM

Well, I've figured out a solution to my fan problem: I'll just use the stock coolers that came with the graphics card

that way my computer can sound like a vacuum 24/7

and I won't hear those 120mm fans anymore!

Stack Exchange

8:45 AM

Lambda the Ultimate - Programming Languages Weblog: LtU's new server

posted on September 23, 2014

Lambda the Ultimate is now running on a new, faster, more reliable server. The old one is now, uh... pining for the fjords. This should resolve the increasingly frequent outages we've seen recently. Because the old server had started failing, we didn't have time to do as much quality control on the migration as we would have liked. If anyone notices any issues with the site, please comment …

user15026

1:36 PM

@Ampt That would make me crazy

user41796

@Ampt It's all about perspective.

Ampt

@AshleyNunn Me too! Luckily the waterblock will be here tomorrow so that I can finally get rid of this stupid stock cooler.

user15026

1:51 PM

@Ampt yaaaaay

Ampt

It's just really odd that no amount of playing with the fan settings will let me change the fan speed. I think that it somehow knows that theres another card butted up against it and thus decides to do 100% fan no matter what I say.

enderland

2:05 PM

That's one reason I like my macbook pro, the fan is silent unless I'm doing something intense

my roommates dell laptop fan I can hear across the room (same with my work laptop)...

Ampt

@enderland Yeah my laptop is mostly silent, but if you start gaming, it turns up to 11 in a hurry

small price to pay for having such a small form factor though!

user41796

That was cool. I go to a standup meeting and less than 10 minutes later I've got 40 rep for pointing out that cat is short for concatenate.

enderland

#freerep

user41796

No complaints here.

Ampt

2:19 PM

Ugh, he clearly didn't spend the time to research the question on his own. you should have just given him a hint and left a link to the dictionary.

Malachi

I just flagged an answer on a closed question....

I need to refresh more often

sorry Moderators!

user41796

2:38 PM

And it's definitely still September around here. Blech.

user15026

:(

Stack Exchange

The Codeless Code: Case 163: Vacation

posted on September 23, 2014

On first cool day of autumn, a messenger had come to the Temple bearing urgent news. To her puzzlement she found every courtyard vacant, every hallway and common-room empty. Not a soul was to be found. Passing an open doorway, she heard the clattering of keys from within. Inside she found an old scribe staring hard at a monitor. “Where—” began the messenger. “Vacation,” said …

user41796

Maybe we should just protect both SO and Progs during September. No questions allowed unless you've earned 10 rep on the site...

user15026

@GlenH7 That isn't the worst plan I have ever heard

user41796

2:57 PM

Seems easier than turning a blind eye to the crap rolling through...

user15026

Agreed. Wish I could help you guys :(

user41796

cupcakes?

user15026

That would ease the pain some, I suppose :)

user41796

I'm looking forward to December when I get to try my hand at making a batch of those

user15026

I imagine. :)

user15026

3:02 PM

I want to make them myself but I am scared then I will just eat the whole pan

user41796

I'm not positive that's a bad thing. :-)

user41796

I think that after I make a batch, I'm going to become suddenly a bit more popular with my friends. And so long as I'm not consuming an Epic Meal Time's worth of calories, I think being more popular is A-OK.

user15026

@GlenH7 I wish we were friends ;)

Ampt

3:18 PM

why do all of the ISPs think that it's cool to throttle netflix? Very much not cool

user41796

3:47 PM

@AshleyNunn We are. We just live a little too far apart for me to hand deliver a cupcake.

user41796

@Ampt huge consumer of bandwidth. But that doesn't justify what they're doing.

Ampt

Don't I pay to consume the bandwidth though?

user41796

You only think that you do.

user41796

especially when you get into the technologies that are used to deliver bandwidth to neighborhoods

user15026

@GlenH7 Very true.

user41796

3:51 PM

ISP do not provision for everyone in the neighborhood to be using the full bandwidth that they sold at the same time.

user41796

They assume only a (small) fraction will use that much bandwidth and provision for that mythical average that they guessed at.

Ampt

well that seems like it's the ISPs fault, not netflix

user41796

Yes, pretty much is

user41796

Netflix tends to be a high consumer of bandwidth (we love our movies and TV shows) and so they throttle netflix (and other high bandwidth sites) in order to make service tolerable for everyone else in the neighborhood

user55340

@Ampt One bit there is that (IIRC) netflix will offer them a cache for them to install locally with netflix content so they don't need to go out to their peers and across the internet to fetch the content.

Ampt

3:59 PM

They do do that, yes

It does sort of set a precedent though

where the ISPs have to host the internet as well as route it though

so I'm not sure it's the end all be all solution

I mean, first netflix, then youtube, then every mom and pop website

user55340

It would offer the ISPs a competitive advantage given the prevalence of netflix.

Ampt

I can't blame the ISPs for saying no

user55340

And netflix has large amounts of unchanging content.

Ampt

but I can blame them for not delivering the service I pay for

user41796

@Ampt That's been going on for quite a while even before netflix. ISPs were caching as a way to limit how much they had to spend on connections to the backbone.

user55340

4:00 PM

The other bit there is that the big ISPs want to disadvantage netflix to serve their own content.

Ampt

@GlenH7 yeah but this is netflix giving them server racks and saying "Use these" as opposed to the ISP doing what they want

Thomas Owens

Every time I build with Visual Studio, my work PC BSODs. :\

Ampt

get a new work PC?

enderland

oh noes I think I found a help vampire who realizes I know stuff :(

Thomas Owens

That'll take like 3 months.

user55340

4:01 PM

Comcast has Xfinity that competes with netflix (note: I'm not comcast nor netflix... so I'm just getting this nth hand).

user55340

So comcast has no desire to make netflix fast when you can get their content.

user41796

@Ampt I dunno... That's a bit like looking a gift horse in the mouth

user15026

@enderland Quick! Hide!

user41796

I think the ISPs ought to provision what they promised they would provision. And they need to maintain their connections to the backbone at rates that support what they've sold. A lot of ISPs aren't doing that though.

enderland

@AshleyNunn I pushed him off until Friday, hopefully he solves his own problem by then..

user15026

4:05 PM

@enderland Fingers crossed!

user15026

Meanwhile I think I have been repeating the same thing over and over in support at work all morning

user41796

Can you map those answers to hotkeys? So you can just punch up the hotkey response instead of typing it all out?

Ampt

ooooh

get a macro keyboard

and become the most productive worker in the office

user15026

Ooooh that might be fun

enderland

@Ampt autohotkey.com

Jimmy Hoffa

4:22 PM

@Ampt alternatively make your screen look like the most productive worker's in the office

Robert Harvey

@ThomasOwens Memory problems?

Thomas Owens

@RobertHarvey It looks like it's related to the network drive.

ClearCase is stupid. My views are in M:\<view name>. When I build locally, it's all good. If I'm in a view and build, everything goes boom.

I can't wait to get away from ClearCase. Hopefully soon.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens ClearCase is source control for insane people. It can do everything any source control ever should possibly be able to do and has the most advanced merging I've ever seen. It's second to impossible to use, only behind devices made for reading minds.

Thomas Owens

If by advanced merging, you mean crap merging, then yeah.

I end up using ClearCase like I use git. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to.

Every feature/defect gets a branch. And a view.

I have like 8 views right now, including integration branch views.

Jimmy Hoffa

4:38 PM

@ThomasOwens haha yeah, it's insane. The merging I recall was pretty killer though in how you could pick chery pick versions that were way off eachother and it would find a good base to do a proper 3-way where most source controls won't traverse history nearly as much. Git probably does just as well I suspect, though it was pretty impressive that ClearCase did it way back when. Still yeah, the 'views' thing and branches and everything else makes it pure madness.

Jimmy Hoffa

4:56 PM

@WorldEngineer hahaha I'm just now getting to the middle of that crockford talk, and he says "You know, I've stopped using this, and objects altogether now..." which is what I've been saying I've done for a while now with javaScript

vindication! I've had numerous JavaScripter's give me guff about that as a "Why? Just learn to use it correctly!"

user41796

@JimmyHoffa But Crockford acknowledges he no longer advocates mainstream usage

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 ?

(still listening to it)

user41796

And admits that while he's famous for writing the "good parts" he doesn't recommend all of the things in there anymore

user41796

And accepts that he likely won't sway the community with his current thoughts like he was able to with the good parts

user41796

Not sure if it's in the video or not. I caught a few sessions of his a few months back.

Jimmy Hoffa

4:59 PM

@GlenH7 yes, he definitely won't be able to, but I'd take vindication from him over a community of UI artists any day.

@GlenH7 I don't understand this statement ? No longer advocates what?

JavaScript?

user41796

3 mins ago, by Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer hahaha I'm just now getting to the middle of that crockford talk, and he says "You know, I've stopped using this, and objects altogether now..." which is what I've been saying I've done for a while now with javaScript

user41796

this, objects, ... probably everything he's spouting off about in the video that I mean to watch but haven't been able to yet.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 the statement sounds like you're agreeing with me, though you started the sentence with 'but' ?

user41796

Oh - I see the confusion

user41796

So Crockford is often held up as "this is how you should write javascript" since he wrote jslint and the good parts

user41796

5:02 PM

So you could say that because he's saying XYZ now that XYZ is "how you should write."

user41796

but he acknowledges that you can hold him up that way anymore because the XYZ that he advocates is too far out of mainstream.

Jimmy Hoffa

haha yeah he's basically explaining exactly what I've been trying to say for a while about JavaScript - he just uses a subset of JavaScript without 'this' which turns it into an ultra simplistic FPL, and he doesn't use loops anymore

user41796

hopefully that makes more sense

user41796

@JimmyHoffa right

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 of course you can hold him up as that - he's a bloody great engineer. Yes he is outside of the mainstream, but this is me giving a shit - he's still a hell of a smart developer and that's proven. Vindication from him feels like a bit of proof that I might be a good engineer since I came to the same conclusions.

All the best engineers out there are outside of the mainstream, if they weren't they wouldn't be standing out amongst the crowd.

s/engineers/<T>/g

user41796

5:04 PM

@JimmyHoffa sounds like you're using a tautology to make yourself feel better. :-P

psr

@GlenH7 Those who use tautologies to make themselves feel better use tautologies to make themselves feel better.

2

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 it may be tautological, but it still stands to represent what you said as well - that he's outside of the main stream is obvious, and I don't think that's any reason to wave him off is all I'm saying. That said, sure, makes me feel better knowing someone whose advice and opinion I respect came to the same conclusions as I.

user41796

I'm just teasing because I saw a good opportunity to get a shot in. :-) Crockford does have some really good insights, and it's well worth pondering what he's trying to say.

Jimmy Hoffa

Brendan Eich has said the same thing as well - that he has no relevant voice in the community anymore because his approach is too far away from the median. That's just kinda the way it goes...

Learn an FPL! You too can be marginalized, today!

3

Jimmy Hoffa

5:20 PM

Crockford gave that speech the day before my birthday! Coincidence? I think not! Clearly he was speaking directly to me! :D haha arbitrary reasons for self-importance are the shit! Astrology and Numerology got nothing on me!

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I think you left tautologies out of that list by accident.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I left tautologies out of the list because I left tautologies out of the list.

heh he also says "You know people say prototypal inheritance is great, and it is better than subtypal, but even at that there's just no reason for it" which is again - I use none of the inheritance in JavaScript because hey it's neat but...you just have no benefit worth while from it...

he says 'class-free' -> which is what I keep calling 'typeless'

Jimmy Hoffa

5:52 PM

ok now he's complaining about imprecise number types which is just affectively says "I want it like I used to have it decades ago in my Scheme! Get off my lawn!" the arbitrary precision number types vs. floating point binary numerics is a tradeoff and I find it hard pressed to demand one or the other is the perfect choice...

Jimmy Hoffa

6:06 PM

@GlenH7 as a real engineer you might actually appreciate the argument he lays out here - I don't care about low level stuff enough to know or give a crap but it does sound compelling. dec64.com - you as well @whatsisname, real engineers, pfah...bugs are what this industry lives for, you guys are doing it all wrong...

whatsisname

the what now

Jimmy Hoffa

@whatsisname just a proposal for a more performant high precision numeric type to be used as the one and only

whatsisname

pfffff

Jimmy Hoffa

@whatsisname give it a read, it's not like the guy's an idiot

whatsisname

yeah cuz it's not like we don't have enough already

Jimmy Hoffa

6:08 PM

@whatsisname that's his point - get rid of them, have one numeric type the end.

whatsisname

apparently he hasn't learned that "the one and only" is destined for failure

one size fits all = one size fits none

Jimmy Hoffa

basically he's challenging the IEEE floating point spec (he was around and dealing with low level shit when it was put in place so he's not speaking out of his domain of expertise...)

@whatsisname what is failure? Is it a failure when you come up with something that nobody adopts but reduces your codes bugs and improves your productivity regardless of what others think? I'm not saying that does, but yeah, I don't expect adoption, it's still a fun thought exercise..

I think the bigger failure is coming up with something that causes masses of bugs and makes people less productive while gaining wide spread adoption (I'm looking at you Stroustroup!)

whatsisname

well if it works for him great, but it won't work for everyone, and if it was the 'one and only' it would likely increase bugs and reduce productivity for others

user41796

IIRC, Eric Lippert said the #1 feature he would like to see in any programming language is a data type with arbitrary precision. So it's not like it's a foreign concept in the design world.

Jimmy Hoffa

I don't have to spell his name right, he doesn't deserve the space in my head to remember the spelling

@GlenH7 it is in languages - Crockford's a Schemer at heart and Scheme (or LISP? I don't remember) has always had arbitrary precision types

as have others

just as he details on that blog - not since the IEEE spec really have languages picked it up

@whatsisname perhaps so... but I suppose the question is, would it increase productivity for the majority? How big a majority? Or only a minority? Everything's tradeoffs... arbitrary precision types vs binary floating point types is like i mentioned earlier, an imperfect tradeoff...

psr

6:17 PM

@JimmyHoffa Don't meet his gaze! Look away before it's too late!

user41796

@psr His experiences with Haskell have left him impervious to such things. He merely glances that way and softly scoffs to himself.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I keep trying to turn him to stone but it hasn't worked yet

Malachi

Hey, was just looking at some stats that you and the moderators might want to be interested in. data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/194591/…

I should phrase that differently, maybe there is something that can be done about the need for all the downvoting on the site?

user41796

6:33 PM

@Malachi Programmers is .... different.

user41796

And to be honest, I'm a bit disappointed I didn't make that list you created...

Malachi

@GlenH7 agreed

user41796

We're pretty diligent about down-voting and weeding out crap.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Malachi fun, I forked and found MichaelT's sock puppet to be the winner: data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/227163/…

Malachi

@GlenH7 this is the Top Creators not the top destroyers

Jimmy Hoffa

6:36 PM

@Malachi oh we keep a close eye on @gnat, he's praised properly for all the maintenance efforts he puts in here. His destruction is pretty great but look at his creation too! Look at his edit counts!

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I like your query better since I show up there

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Is it really possible to keep a close eye on gnat though? :-)

Malachi

@JimmyHoffa he is ranked #4 for creation of Reputation, that is how he made it onto that list

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 just filtered to highly active users by saying rep > 8k, and ordered by the ratio which is the interesting aggregate anyway

me and @MichaelT tend to have similar habits - though he's far more active than me we keep a close ratio of Answers/Rep and I'm 0.82 to his 0.83 in that query. My answers/rep ratio is been pissed away though since I hit 10k and started tossing bounties everywhere

I have 349 rep to give away right now, thanks Malachi let's see if you have any quality content around P.SE...

user41796

Oh, and that query can't take into account the number of questions deleted by the community. That's a good source of reputation destruction as well.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:40 PM

@GlenH7 haha yeah, @gnat would probably just overflow the numerical type...dec64 ftw! ;P

user41796

@JimmyHoffa More accurately, gnat, MichaelT, and myself

user41796

$1 bet says that we're the top 3 when it comes to delete voting. But I would curious to see statistics backing that up.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Malachi this is just a positive rep to personal rep ratio no? The more interesting would be to do positive rep + abs(destroyed rep) / owned rep as a metric of participatory actions over reward

user41796

And it's also worth pointing out that neither JB King nor FWFD are all that active on the site with regards to questions, answers, or community moderation.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I've done queries of the nature on CV's before I recall, Walter turned up right next to @gnat if I recall correctly which blew me away

user55340

6:43 PM

One bit to consider... of my down votes, only 2,693 of them 'remain'. About 6k of them have been deleted with the questions and answers they were on.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Malachi P.SE is big on curating content to the highest quality, insofar as we can.

user41796

@MichaelT I need to vote more often then. You've got more deleted votes than the total I've cast....

user55340

@JimmyHoffa This is quite evident when you look at low quality reviews... we delete a lot of things that may be answers, but aren't the quality we desire.

user55340

I've got 3026 up votes on the site - less than 100 have been on deleted material.

user55340

programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/77435

user55340

6:46 PM

user41796

I wonder if I was out of delete votes by that point

user55340

We delete things... I'm certain that would not have gone as far as it did on SO for the LQR, and certainly not been finished off my a mod.

user55340

@GlenH7 yep - thats what happens when you're out of delete votes.

user55340

I've had a few of them myself.

user41796

That may have been a perfectly OK answer on SO

user55340

6:48 PM

Thats where the 'review for the quality you expect and desire' comes in.

user41796

Just doesn't fly for Programmers because it doesn't explain "why" (as I said in the comment)

user55340

> This brings us to the third part of the Low Quality Post answer review - "Delete". If its not a good answer, if it doesn't reflect the type of material you would expect to see on Stack Overflow (or for a higher threshold - that you would want to see on Stack Overflow), delete it (or recommend doing so if you have less than 20k rep).

user55340

I'm good at ranting on MSO.

user55340

5

A: Low quality queue - action for answers hard to understand

disclaimer: I believe you should review in a way that reflects what you want on the site. This does not always match other guidance given elsewhere. I'm also not a 20k (much less a 2k) member on SO, so this is heavily influenced by how I act on Programmers.SE. The review queue for Low Quality P...

psr

@JimmyHoffa Using your Haskel powers of immutability. Haskel - the Weeping Angel of programming languages.

user55340

6:54 PM

user55340

►

user55340

Most popular female name by state and year.

user55340

And then the 70s... and the song that won't make sense in a few more years.

user55340

7:21 PM

0

Q: Sitewide protection privilege

I'm coming to you today from Programmers.SE, where our front page looks like a battlefield. Listing all of the questions shown from 'newest': -1 (on hold), -1, 0, -5 (on hold), -1, -4 (on hold), -3 (on hold), -5 (on hold), 1, -2 (on hold), 0 (migrated), -4 (on hold), 0, -4 (on hold), -1, 2, -5 ...

user55340

I'm curious if I'm going to have a net positive or negative score on that one.

enderland

@MichaelT your point would be way better made if you had a bulleted list than a comma list...

user41796

-1 for no bullets? Clearly you need more bullets?

user55340

@enderland too much vertical space...

user55340

I did think about it, but that would have been 50 lines.

user41796

7:23 PM

Of course, I'd like some (more) bullets to shoot those questions...

user41796

I like the ha-ha-only-serious

enderland

@MichaelT its impossible to see your point right now though

user55340

@enderland the code format does break it up a bit (doesn't show in the summary) so that there are white bits between they grey to show the scale.

user55340

I haven't looked at the stats recently, but if a significant number of people with the close privilege are running out of votes then it may be time to increase the number of votes per day. — Shog9 ♦ 59 secs ago

user41796

he always hedges his comments with silly qualifiers like "significant." Sheesh.

user55340

7:27 PM

@GlenH7 I linked your meta 10k more votes request to him.

user41796

Good idea

user55340

Oh yeah... We may have a couple of things in the pipeline that would help here. — Shog9 ♦ 31 secs ago

user41796

Did the BFG9000 request finally get approved then? — GlenH7 57 secs ago

user55340

I'm going to pat myself on the back for that tag 'ha-ha-only-serious'

user55340

I'll point out that I posted that on Meta.SE because I'm not sure if it would get noticed by SE on M.P.SE, and those who would notice it would likely take significant umbrage with it.

user55340

7:33 PM

And also its not meant to be completely serious (again, M.P.SE doesn't have the "fun" culture MSE does)

user41796

fairly well tied on the vote spread so far

enderland

Here's a more parseable version of question scores - pastebin.com/eeUKhWX7 — enderland 1 min ago

user55340

+2/-3

user41796

@enderland needs more bullets

user55340

Got this and another one like it for niece and nephew... my brother when looking at it was "oh, thats neat" when working with it:

user55340

7:41 PM

amazon.com/Manhattan-Toy-800700-Bulldozer-Vehicle/dp/B005L99W6I

user55340

(note the amazon reviews are rather negative, though they seem to miss the point of it)

user55340

> My mother-in-law bought this for my 2 year old son. It is a huge disappointment. Magnets are not strong, design is poor, falls apart so easily, and is practically impossible to play with beyond constantly putting it together.

user55340

That is the point of it, and my nephew loved doing that.

user55340

Cross-site tracking of low-quality questions, rolling rate limits. — Shog9 ♦ 5 mins ago

Shog9

@GlenH7 you missed the bigger hedge: "I haven't looked"

In truth, I haven't looked since May

user41796

7:50 PM

@Shog9 I'm not one to heap too much abuse. :-)

user41796

And apparently I can't spell very well to begin with. Poor spelling + heaping on abuse are a bad mix.

Shog9

Y'all are getting around 44 questions per day, with 54% closed and 40% deleted.

user41796

To a layman, that seems like we're getting a lot of crap questions

Shog9

So normally, I wouldn't even consider this for a site getting that few questions/day

Thomas Owens

Want to start an argument? Say that build tools {should|should not} be kept in version control.

user41796

7:51 PM

But we whinge so much...

user41796

@ThomasOwens Shhh! with your religious arguments. Shog's about to unveil some new toys for us to use to keep the crap questions under control!

psr

@ThomasOwens build tools {should|should not} be kept in version control!

Shog9

And I gotta be honest - I don't think that's the solution here. 108 people have voted to close during the past 30 days, but the average # of votes is only 44. Most folks aren't using a lot of votes.

user41796

@Shog9 Part of the challenge is balancing between getting the questions into the queue as well as reviewing the queue. And it's an admitted core group that does the majority of both.

Matt S.

If the problem is with people coming from Stack Overflow because they're question banned, why not move the association with them when they go to other sites?

Kind of like the +100 bonus for being trusted on other sites, but not being limited for not being trusted instead.

enderland

7:57 PM

I just downvoted 40 questions, too, hopefully that pushes them further towards "off" the home page

Shog9

-4 and they should disappear

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