how do we determine precisely which body of text we typed that resulted in a chat ban?

It's an interesting subject for me. What is allowed to be ridiculed and what isn't. I've found it is acceptable for me to be the subject of ridicule but there are certain things I am forbidden to ridicule. As far as online interaction is concerned I mean.

I was ridiculed on facebook for attempting to initiate discussion about overpopulation for example

As far as I know you still can't over and above seeing flagged messages be deleted or manual notification

likewise, an even more anti-social subject of discussion, imminent underpopulation

ok it's just that it happens so quickly and being a person like me, it's really tough to figure out which text was inappropriate, hell, I still cant believe I am allowed to chat if social media is any empirical measure

Indeed it sounds like there is still nothing

@Adam Staying on topic and being in actual dialogue with the other users of the chat is a good preventive measure against being banned, I've found.

The rule in this particular chat is that topics related to Unix and to the U&L site in general are on topic. Any other topic is also welcomed (as long as the discussion remains within the expectations of the code of conduct), but if someone wants to discuss Unix-related things, then that has precedence.

interesting so how did human overpopulation come about as a subject of discussion related to Unix?

But ideally not questions which are material for the main site itself.

@Adam That discussion originated in a discussion about lawns. Because nobody had anything else that was more interesting to talk about. As I said, it is allowed to discuss matters not relating to Unix.

even more interesting, how did a discussion related to lawns come about as a subject of discussion related to unix?

oh it is allowed to discuss subjects NOT related to unix

once again I am perplexed

@Adam the rules here aren't really different to the rules in any normal human interaction. I realize that doesn't help much if you are a person who has trouble with this sort of thing in general, but don't try and find rules specific to chat: the rules are pretty global.

Try to follow the existing conversation and see if people seem to be reacting to what you're saying. If they aren't and you seem to be talking alone, that's a good sign that you should stop.

I was accused of being a Jeffery in 2016, and detained for 3 weeks as a result

ok thanks @terdon I will attempt this

@terdon I may query, what extent you have had experience as far as human interaction is concerned, mine is quite broad and extensive, how did you acquire the level of experience necessary to know what is appropriate to say, and what isn't?

@Adam I don't have any special experience. Nor do I claim to be particularly good at human interaction. I'm just a regular human, no better and no worse at such interactions than average.

well clearly I am less than said average an in need of you elaborating

Sorry, it's not something I can elaborate on. Most of us sort of just know. I don't have any magic solution to offer. :(

@Adam When a human mod bans you, he will tell you exactly why you were banned. (happened to me a few times)

When an automated system bans you, you have no clue (yet)

interesting, I have never been given a reason

@Adam Than you rant into an automated ban which I have very little experience with, but using certain keywords sequentially will make that happen.

but yet a very small amount of text as the total set of possible reasons

@Adam What is your native language?

english

@Adam Then you know the 7 words never to be uttered on television...

If you type all of them in a row you'll very probably get banned automatically.

television doesn't exist anymore

(I dunno: I've never tried)

and no I highly doubt the words I uttered are the seven you speak of

@Adam Nor does John Carlin

@Adam Well, those are automated...

Then there is the "offensive language"...

Whenever someone finds something offensive, they will flag it as such.

well ok I watched the clip all I saw was a guy high on meth that presumably needs to be put in jail

Then all >10K rep users on the site will be notified and if a quorum agrees that what you said was offensive, you'll run into the second type of automated banning.

quorum what

what does this word mean

@Adam I've been banned for 30 minutes for not saying a single word, but instead posting the Feyenoord Kid Finger picture.

In the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany it's a funny and cheeky way of telling someone off.

In all other countries, it's apparently considered "Extremely Rude".

i am familiar with automated banning this is what is implied with my mother's most frequent facial expression when looking at me, which can be most likened to someone having a stroke

@Adam lmgtfy.com/?q=Define+quorum

@Adam English is only my third or fourth language, depending on how you count, so I have no clue what you're talking about.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

no fabby of course i don't count zero, clearly this number has properties that the natural numbers do not, that's why its excluded

also your link didn't provide the definition, just increased my grumpiness

Not this again

R"Hello, chat!";

@Jesse_b !!

(if I was using bash, that is)

nice

I'm going to use that

You could even try it in person, if someone says hello just make a really surprised face twice back at them

:p

:-)

It's difficult to mime punctuation.

@Kusalananda: Did you ever get a response from the BSD community about your issue

@Jesse_b I did get a response. "That's probably a bug", which echoes the answers here. I have yet to pick an accepted answer. I sent my query to the OpenBSD "misc" list, but I haven't had time to write a proper bug report for the OpenBSD "bugs" list yet.

It's been a bit of a busy week...

Understandable. Hope all is well

We had a huge thunderstorm last night, starting at about 2 AM and carrying on until 6 or 7 AM. Didn't get much sleep...

And that's in a week where most nights have been short, due to having too many things to do late at night.

hi @Jesse_b

is that

is that the appropriate entry to be socially accepted> ?

@Adam Yes. Well done! :-)

@Adam wat it do player

not as difficult as the etiquette for getting laid but still difficult

anyway I should be sleeping I need to be getting up soon to wash some mechanical part to earn $100 for some $%$^% reason probably to be censored

wait only 9.30 pm plenty of time

relatively

@Kusalananda I've heard a neurosurgeon speaking about sleep recently and he said if it were a drug it would be the most powerful performance enhancing drug by far. It is way more important than people give it credit for. You should try to ensure you get at least 8 hours a night (obviously I know you aren't staying up on purpose :p)

@Jesse_b I'm aware.

As soon as I've given the girl something to eat, I'm taking a nap.

100 percent agree Jesse, but I also recommend the episode of American Dad where Roger escapes from a prison bus as a good explanation for the worlds problems

WSM 2019 starting today :D

WSM?

Worlds strongest man

Dude acronyms are the most subjective thing you can broadcast over net without context but ok thanks that's better than my inner brain demons suggested

This line looks like it might be a bit scewy: bitbucket.org/octobus/evolve-devel/src/…

well anything related to Debian is scewy based on my current understanding of why I was last banned from chat but ok

# Use "! -z" instead of "-n", because "-n" without arguments is true
test ! -z $(HGSRC) && test -d $(HGSRC) || (echo "$(HGSRC) is not a directory"; false)

@FaheemMitha Which bit of it?

If HGSRC doesn't exist, it throws the last bit, namely "not a directory."

Which clearly is wrong.

And is this portable? The test stuff, I mean.

Well, at least it executes the false which makes the Makefile fail.

@FaheemMitha sorry I didn't click on the link, I will once this unrelenting anxiety of being choked with the cord of a vacuum cleaner goes away

I can't remember if Debian makes assumptions about what shell debian/rules is using.

@FaheemMitha same as any Makefile, /bin/sh or whatever SHELL is set to in the Makefile

@FaheemMitha I don't really se how that is clearly wrong.

-z tests for empty, -d tests for exists and is a directory.

and coroners saying there was no signs of struggle despite my body being covered in bruises

@Kusalananda Well, perhaps not clearly wrong. But it could say it doesn't exist if it doesn't exist.

I guess if it doesn't exist, then it is also not a directory...

@FaheemMitha It could exist, but as a non-directory.

sigh well I guess I had this moment coming

@StephenKitt It's not usually stated, though.

@Kusalananda Right. So you think it's ok, then?

@FaheemMitha yes, /bin/sh or whatever SHELL is set to in the Makefile

as in, /bin/sh by default

@StephenKitt Ok, /bin/sh by default. Check.

which in Debian of course is typically dash

@StephenKitt Yes.

@FaheemMitha It's a philosophical question really. Can you say "it's not a directory" about something that does not exist at all?

I just think that telling someone that an unset variable is not a directory is perhaps not the most helpful thing.

@Kusalananda Yes, you could. But it's not optimal. See above.

Of course, it might be hard to do better without a lot more wacky shell stuff.

one part ian, one part debby should do the trick

@FaheemMitha so the build fails if HGSRC isn’t set?

and nothing sets HGSRC in debian/rules...

@StephenKitt Correct. There is currently no default value.

@StephenKitt Also correct.

That’s rather unfortunate.

@StephenKitt Not a big deal. I actually just proposed to Pierre-Yves and Julian Cristau that run-tests.py could be added to the Debian package, so then one could add a default to debian/rules.

yes can we please change from discussing the perturbing subject of ian and debra, or their collaborative development, debian

@StephenKitt In case you are wondering, the Debian Evolve people decided to use the test-runner from the main Debian package. Personally, I think that they would have been better copying it over and syncing it with Mercurial occasionally.

you win this round, team ignore adam at all costs

Evolve is a Mercurial extension. Which has its own third-party Debian package.

Anyway, nobody seems to care much, one way or the other, but I'll go ahead and send a wishlist bug about it against the Mercurial package.

@FaheemMitha the best solution would be for the Mercurial package to ship it somewhere ;-)

@StephenKitt Yes, that's what I'm posting a wishlist bug about. And Evolve already has a runtime dependency on Mercurial, so run-tests.py should be installed/available.

BTW, I'm not sure why not -e instead of -z. -z checks for non-empty.

Is the stuff in man test part of POSIX then?

@FaheemMitha you need to check that the string is non-empty before using it as an argument for file checks

Of course, the run-tests.py might be out of date.

@StephenKitt Oh. So is that a reasonable combo?

@FaheemMitha yes

@FaheemMitha yes

Ok.

See, the beauty with a question like this one, I don't know whether it will be a "mathematician" or "programmer" that will end up answering

@FaheemMitha why would it be?

@StephenKitt Because it would be part of a Debian Mercurial package. And so, by definition, older than what is in the sources.

Though hopefully, not very much older.

But the current approach, downloading the sources, and pointing the Debian Evolve build to it, is rather manual.

Generally, automating things is better.

one would hope

@FaheemMitha but that’s the only allowable way to go about a build in Debian

when there are constraints on the build dependencies, you add a version requirement

@StephenKitt I see.

Packages in Debian can’t download anything from the network (during the build).

Well, this is a third-party Debian package, so it does what it likes, I suppose.

@StephenKitt Yes, I'm aware.

@FaheemMitha yup, it can indeed!

@Adam SFLR. FWIW IEEE, IETF, and ANSI seem to support extensive acronym use. IMO not using them can sometimes be TMI and AFAIK they are really common in IT fields. DGMW, I understand they may be subjective from your POV but it WFM and IDK of a better alternative. AAMOF many words/phrases FKA their full names are probably less common than their more commonly used acronym. IOW things like AFK are AKA "away from keyboard". EOM

trollface.png

@Jesse_b arson is my fav drinking game too bro

@StephenKitt bugs.debian.org/930488

Salutations @FaheemMitha

Hey @Jesse_b

Wat up gangster?

Huh?

How are you?

@Jesse_b Ok, I guess. How are you doing?

@FaheemMitha I am blessed. Why just ok?

@Jesse_b Ok is pretty good, I think.

Hmm, the UK Home Secretary is the son of Pakistani immigrants. It's a strange world.

Well I have well and truly killed my Linux laptop

all that appears on the screen now is a "\"

If someone's twitter account is taken down, surely there is a process for which one can obtain a transcript of it if it pertains to an unsolved criminal investigation, right?

@Adam Twitter, along with all tech companies, are likely to be very cooperative with law enforcement. If served with a valid warrant they will be required to provide said transcripts, however most of the large companies do not require warrants they will simply provide the police with anything they want, within reason.

how would one verify it to be the original content posted by the individual though? And how do they verify the request is being made from a legitimate law enforcement agency?

@Adam I'm sure twitter can very easily verify that it was posted at least by the persons account. And the law enforcement requests will likely come through email via a .gov email account. There are literally countless ways to verify someone is a police officer and I'm sure twitter will use none of them unless it seems overly phishy

so if want to investigate an unsolved crime with any hope of success, you have to be a member of government approved law enforcement agency? I mean from what I can tell cops seems to be really big on policing victimless crimes more than solving specific unsolved cases that relate to events less than 48 hours ago

so it would be a big ask to commit your entire career to a particular agency, especially when they are just going to have you on the side of the road manning a speed camera

less=more

"To serve and protect" is the funniest motto I have ever seen tbh.

because all they do is serve fines for victimless infringements and protect themselves with firearms from any potential danger the unarmed public may represent in their policing of victimless crime laws

@FaheemMitha Why is that strange?

@StephenKitt I removed ] from test -s ]; in your answer. I think I was correct in doing so. Sorry if not.

@Jesse_b I read his name in the context of him signing Assange's extradition order.

What is the portable method for redirecting standard error to the same place as standard output?

I'm a bit sleepy, so I hope that makes sense.

Possibly 2>&1 redirects std error to std out.

If so, is it portable?

Or maybe just &1.

@FaheemMitha Yeah I believe 2>&1 is the portable way. I always get redirections wrong but I believe the 2>&1 part has to be after the actual redirection though so like cat file >output.txt 2>&1

@Jesse_b I don't want to redirect to file. I just want the standard error stream sent to the same place as the standard output stream.

I realise that's non-standard, and bad practice, but in this case my hands are tied thanks to the inadequacies of the Lua standard libraries.

Yeah that should work

$ grep pattern fakefile 2>/dev/null 2>&1
grep: fakefile: No such file or directory

@Jesse_b I'm confused. What is that doing exactly? Wha is the 2> for?

@FaheemMitha I redirected 2> (stderr) to /dev/null just to confirm that stderr was in fact being redirected to stdin

Otherwise you wouldn't see the error I got about the file being non existent

I just got a Reversal badge on meta. I didn't know that was a thing.

This thread was helpful unix.stackexchange.com/questions/37660/order-of-redirections

@Jesse_b Oh, I see. So if standard error wasn't being redirected, it would disappear.

@MichaelHomer What is that for?

@FaheemMitha Yeah

@FaheemMitha "Provide an answer of +20 score to a question of -5 score"

@MichaelHomer Oh. Never heard of it. But I suppose that doesn't happen very often.

I didn't expect that it would exist on meta, but I guess they all do

@Kusalananda you were indeed correct, thanks!

it’s [ expression ] or test expression

if I am at the grub command line, can I enter any of the commands list when I press TAB that will enable me to store information or logs pertaining to the system's failure on the USB? I installed Ubuntu Desktop 18.04 on what was previously a windows 8 laptop, but for some reason I'm having trouble getting it to boot from the iso on a usb, I put the usb as first preference in the BIOS boot menu settings, I just want to reinstall it

it calls them "command completions" actually which I have no idea what is meant by such. It behaves like a Linux terminal, some familiar commands, when I enter "ls" it outputs these funny vectors

oh well I guess I cant mess up any worse than I already have

give these a crack ? superuser.com/questions/349633/boot-from-usb-using-grub

LOL, funny thing on setting up this server: /dev/shm is bigger than rootfs :-/

df -h / /dev/shm
Filesystem              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/Ryoko-root  9.2G  1.4G  7.3G  17% /
tmpfs                    48G     0   48G   0% /dev/shm

@derobert now imagine if you followed the old rule of swap = 2×RAM ;-)

LOL, yeah. 192GiB of swap might be a bit much.

Hmmm... zsh glob qualifiers are truly "write only" :-)

@Kusalananda indeed, unless you’re Stéphane ;-)

@StephenKitt I suppose so, yes.

@StephenKitt Does Stephane's zsh follow different rules?

@FaheemMitha When Stephane uses shell, Stephane makes the rules

Apparently Stephane is Chuck Norris.

In the bible Jesus turned water into wine. Stephane then turned that wine into a unix kernel

Stephane can win a game of connect four in only three moves.

Stéphane can divide by zero.

@Jesse_b Well, there is a qualifier there. You've got to add "(when permitted by POSIX)" to those...

@derobert hah

POSIX is Stéphane compliant

Stéphane complies to no one.

@Jesse_b That's almost literally true, as he provides input to the standards committee (I don't know if he's on it though, probably not).

(8TB of RAM is the biggest server I've ever had to deploy and 6TB the biggest I've ever handled myself)

Running Suse EL...

That's a lot of RAM.

Large in-memory DB.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Disk space used by that DB is about 1.5*RAM

Swap is ROUND(SQRT(RAM)) as it never hibernates...

There must have been some interesting performance requirements to spend that much money on an in-memory DB.

@derobert This was for a crazy Sales Proof Of Concept Project, and I got it for free on loan from Atos.

Well: the 6TB one I got for free. The 8TB one is still in PRD.

What you get if you quote a French General to the French: 6TB server, delivered in 3 weeks.

>:-) ;-)

Yeah, I can't imagine the 6TiB being under $100k normally...

More than that and the entire project budget was just $144,000

If I would have followed due process the project budget would have sunk immediately...

I didn't even get a thank you from the Sales VP.

Just FLAK when we ran into trouble installing Suse.

(We ran into a firmware bug)

...and the reason why I'm moving on: installing BFMs has lost its shine after 3 years.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

BFMs?

big f... machines, presumably

Big Effing Machines

Like the BFG from Doom.

@FaheemMitha BFG 9000

@Fabby Oh, video games.

Sometimes people like to spend money on hardware.

Once when I was at Duke, this group had a Sun machine or something that they had paid a million dollars for. Literally, apparently.

And it turned out they didn't have any use for it.

So they were going around shopping it to people.

I remember maxing out the entire UK-BE COLT ATM network after office hours due to playing doom.

But it wasn't very useful, because the OS wasn't something that was generally used, I think.

Shopping it, as in, asking if people wanted to use it, I think.

@FaheemMitha :D :D :D

Not trying to resell it. But it's been a while.

I think it was a Sun, but I'm not sure.

I also remember maxing out all of the RAM on the Uni's CDC Supercomputer

Got into a bit of trouble for that, especially as I just wanted a big A1 Mandelbrot poster to hang up on the wall.

Hardware is only as useful as the software that can run on it.

@Fabby Infinite loop?

@FaheemMitha Nope, I was running a C Program in debugging mode and the debugger ran as SU (SuperUser)

Under normal circumstances, the CDC asked the terminal for a time limit extension after your program was running for > 1 minute.

The time limit extension was granted after pressing "T" on its keyboard.

I jammed the key with 2 matches.

And went for lunch...

When I came back, everyone was complaining that everything was running so slow and when I went to the console, I noticed that my program was the only one running in RAM and all the others were swapped out to disk.

so I quietly went back to my terminal and stopped the program, but then I saw:

CalculateFractal was called from CalculateFractal was called from CalculateFractal was called from CalculateFractal was called from CalculateFractal was called from CalculateFractal was called from CalculateFractal was called from CalculateFractal was called from CalculateFractal was called from

running endlessly on my screen.

So I went to see to SysAdmin who, after a quick calculation saw that this would run for a couple of days, decided to reboot the supercomputer and the Professor made me stand next to him and watch him do all the work he had to do to reboot a supercomputer.

took nearly half a day of work.

>3h <4 hours...

And that was all the punishment I got.

They changed the timeout algorihtm after that to ensure that a keypress had to be followed by a key release as well for the time limit to be extended.

Apparently no one ever thought of using 2 matches to extend the time limit as much as you wanted

Are cat file1 file2 2>&1 > file.txt and cat file1 file2 2>&1 1> file.txt the same thing?