If a company interviews 10 people for a job and accepts one, then fine.. But if they interview 1000 and accept 1, is that immoral for them to waste so many peoples' time (if people don't know they are interviewing that many and so the odds are so low) ?

@barlop I don't see it as immoral. If you are one of 10 or you are one of 1000, you are "wasting" exactly the same amount of time. Job interviews aren't lotteries, so I don't see any need for hiring companies to talk about "odds". You can always ask how many others will be interviewing before accepting an interview.

well, suppose they 'interview' 5 people at a time

assessing rather than interviewing

I've been looking at downvote trends which I haven't really bothered with before and found something amusing. Someone downvotes one of my answers just seconds before the clock ticks over into a new day just about every day. I was wondering why earlier and it looks like they want to delay me getting the Legendary badge? ... funniest thing is I got that badge 2 years ago and didn't even really know what it was for until now, I can't get it again anyway. Just thought I'd share the amusement.

@Raykh We don't delete questions that have a good amount of votes and answers. If you want to become disassociated from your question (so the question looks like it's from an anonymous user), then please use the Contact Us form use "Other" as the reason and request a disassociation for your question (and state why). The site's administrators should then be able to help.

@JoeStrazzere ^

@Kilisi interesting, does the system not autocorrect /retract the drive by downvote when it's a few seconds before the end of the day?

@barlop no idea, not really something that worries me, just a passing amusement.

@Kilisi okay okay I'll stop doing it.

ahaha

No but really, that seems very petty... Someone is jelly of you.

lots of things seem petty when you start looking closely at downvotes

@Kilisi Thanks for the flag on the "tenant won't pay me" question. I was waiting for the OP to read the advice before deleting. He's now posted on the personal finance site, so it's now deleted.

@Kilisi while clearly it's ineffective in your case (as you already have the badge and aren't that fussed about hitting 'caps anyway) it's also clearly intentional (dare I say it) abuse of voting priviledges

Yeah, as before - if anyone feels they've been unfairly voted against, it needs to to be taken to the community moderation team (a level above us other mods). We don't have visibility of people's exact voting patterns (only trends). If you use the "Contact Us" form and tell them that you feel that you've been unfairly voted against, they'll look into it and take the appropriate action.

But obviously, if no one raises a ticket like this, nothing will happen.

I'm mostly just baffled some people apparently have so little going on for themselves that they feel the need to do such things. I almost feel sorry for these people.

People have different motivations for downvoting. Sometimes it's a personal thing, sometimes people have a harder definition of "quality" than others.

@Snow this being the same community team that has explicitly said not to bother reporting anything because it won't be actioned?

this isn't aimed at you @Snow because I know you're just doing your best in a tough position.

but hiding behind "quality" as a defense of a clearly abusive voting pattern is just bullshit

or are "harder" definitions of quality time-dependent?

Are you referring here to monoandale's complaints about his questions being pounded by downvotes, or something else?

@Snow I'm referring to the pattern Kilisi was discussing.. I thought that was what you were responding to. Apologies if I've gotten the wrong end of the stick!

@motosubatsu As far as I know, and have seen, they take voting abuse pretty seriously, unlike bugs and feature requests.

The only time I've seen people saying to not report suspicious voting is when it's before 24 hours, because in that case there's still a good chance of it automatically getting reverted.

@Dukeling to be honest my experience is more the opposite - reporting suspicious behavior whether in explicit violation of stated norms or implicit violation of the "spirit" of the system is met with either an ostrich maneuver or the behavior is explicitly condoned

ultimately it's SO's trainset and they are more than entitled to play with it however they like though

@motosubatsu it's not a big enough deal to me to go trying to find out how to fix it... downvotes aren't something I haven't faced before once or twice :-)

just surfing through all these badges and stuff, haven't really looked much before

I got a gold badge just for poking my head in the door 100 days in a row!!

@Snow just experimenting, wasn't sure it was the right way to do it

Yes, entirely right, thanks. Obviously mods can't read all the comments on all the questions.

@barlop I don't see how that makes anything immoral.

@motosubatsu I do think SO is way too hesitant to actually punish people for stuff (apart from asking bad questions or going way overboard in terms of breaking rules). Voting abuse (of the non-overboard variety) is different because they can silently revert that for the affected person without punishing the person abusing votes, to end with little harm being done (which is not to say I think this should be the default response, just that that's probably why voting abuse is handled more effectively)

Or should I say "handled" more effectively.

I think the general mindset when it comes to mild infractions is that the user's contributions usually outweighs the infraction, thus they don't want to punish those users.

I found RDR2 in a games bundle on ebay, but the &^%&^#$ won't ship to my country :(

@Kilisi if they ship to the UK I'd be happy to forward on?

@Dukeling I think you're right in that being the mindset - and while I applaud the optimism of such a view all too often it seems that the worst "offenders" are those who actually contribute the least to the community

@Dukeling I have little faith in the moderation of SE these days to do anything constructive.

@motosubatsu agree with your assessment.

@motosubatsu I just bought a documentary Walking With Beasts from the UK, for some reason UK sellers have no issue sending halfway around the World, but Aussie seller have a problem sending next door

I'm on a doco buying spree at the moment, I don't allow the kids to watch movies on school days but they're allowed to watch a doco every night

Netflix has a pretty nice and growing batch of docu's, that might be something to look into as well :)

How old are they? I liked 'Explained' but that might be too complicated for them still.

And you might want to skip the ones about female orgasm and weed lol.

Oh and 'the toys that made us'

ahahaha

whats netflix?

worth me looking up? or one of those things I'd need to download stuff

My kids range from 6 to 11 years old

history, science and nature are what I usually look for

and I just thought that the UK one I bought is probably the wrong region

@Kilisi yeah.. I could send a DVD/game to your corner of the world, with tracking etc for < £20

@Kilisi yeah, it'll most likely be the wrong region

@Kilisi subscription streaming service - you don't download, but you do need reasonable bandwidth to have it be useable

@motosubatsu unsuitable streaming, we watch these things over and over

downloading might be worth the expense, if it's a solid download, not going to mess up partway through

damn good idea, I'll look around for where I can buy and download

amazon video might be a worth a look for buy and downloads - you aren't tied in to an ongoing subscription and the library is pretty decent

Amazn prime gves some too

arrrg keyboard is dying

@enderland yep you can download the stuff that's on Prime Video as well - although your license for those only lasts as long as you remain a Prime subscriber

@Kilisi Walking with Beasts for example is on Prime Video and is £11.34 for all of Season One

@motosubatsu was a good idea but they don't accept paypal. Now I have an Amazon account I have no idea what to do with..

@Kilisi get a pre-paid VISA (or similar) and use that for the Amazon purchases?

no such thing over here

For me to use paypal, I have to put money into my brothers account in Australia and use his paypal

You can open a paypal account here but you can't receive or send money from it... waste of time, banks are crap

@Kilisi erm.. (looks around desperately).. get your brother to buy a prepaid VISA card?

they really are trying to make life hard for you in some ways aren't they?

paypal that you can't send or receive money from is about as useful as a chocolate teapot

ahaha... you get used to it

I actually flew to NZ last year to open a bank account just so I could link to a NZ Paypal, but at the moment I'm flush with Aussie $$ and broke with NZD

@Kilisi are all the supermarkets full of food you aren't allowed to eat?

not quite that bad, but all the supermarkets are full of food you can't read the labels of unless you read chinese

hehe

I live off the land quite a bit

ahh mystery food.. I suppose if you don't have things like Netflix you have to get your entertainment somewhere

yep.... there is a couple of expensive supermarkets that import from New Zealand, I tend to go to those

Isn't England flooded with cheap goods as well?

@Kilisi relatively speaking yes - stuff's not as cheap here as for example America but

it's not as bad as some places

we get a huge quantity of chinese import stuff - but it'll generally all at least be labelled in English

instruction manuals for cheap chinese electronics are a crapshoot though

I can't stomach a lot of USA stuff, no idea what they do with their cheese

some entertaining Engrish can usually be found

yeah we get chinese manuals for a lot of stuff with a few random English words thrown in

yeah.. I'm fairly sure American "cheese" has never even been within a mile of a cow

not a healthy cow anyway

I'm a bit spoilt though, spent time in NZ, and they have the best dairy products in the World

@Kilisi maybe a McCow - y'know where they get the McBeef from for Big Macs

I thought it was ground up noses and butt holes made into patties... but thats just a guess

@Kilisi nice.. it's not too difficult to get decent British dairy stuff as the gov't protects the home dairy industry a fair amount

@Kilisi good guess.. I'm fairly sure a McCow has 6 of each

no idea, never tried it..

@motosubatsu I seen a doco with some pretty sick animals they were farming over there

pigs rotting to death amongst other pigs, they just jam them all in together

@Kilisi ugh.. that's just unnessecary

I don't care about cows, I don't have any, but I got a few pigs that roam around

I have no problem with farming animals for meat.. but the fact that you're planning on eating them later is no excuse to treat them like crap. Plus the better you treat them the better they taste

We did have a bit of an issue with radioactive sheep here for a while.. thanks to Chernobyl

@Kilisi that's no way to talk about your kids :P

radioactive, two headed, isn't it you chaps cloning sheep?

US has good cheese but it depends on the area its from. Wisconsin has the best cheese in the world

why would their cheese be any good?

Because they are a great dairy producing area

and they care about their products

I'll take your word for it... obviously none of their cheese has made it here yet

I have been uniformly unimpressed with USA cheese, milk and chocolates

but I'll start scanning labels for Wisconsin and give it another try

@Kilisi yeah, Wisconsin's economy relies on their cheese, they're very proud of it and VERY protective of their reputation. Wisconsin treats cheese with all the seriousness that Germany treats beer

Sounds good

Sooo.... how come the rest don't care about their cheese?

or are they in fact keeping the best stuff for themselves and selling us the seconds?

@Kilisi well, it's not that the rest don't care, it's that the industry grew in Wisconsin and attracted the best producers. Actually, the best is exported, the locals get the seconds.

Well the best is rubbish... ahaha, had better homemade cheese on NZ farms than the stuff that makes it here

Got my docos, ANCIENT GREECE - Gods & Battles 5 x DVD, WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE - Brian Cox 2 x DVD, LOST CIVILIZATIONS - 10 Part Series 4 x DVD, DESTINY IN SPACE Leonard Nimoy Narration

@Kilisi I don't doubt it. Mass production is concerned with consistency of product, not in producing the best.

Only bought the last one because Spock is narrating... I actually thought he had passed on

@Kilisi he did pass on, he must have recorded that previously (obviously)

should arrive in about 4 weeks with a bit of luck

@RichardU yeah, I thought he had... was always my favourite Trekker

@Kilisi you can watch netflix over and over? As many times as you want basically.

always wanted to be able to do the Vulcan death grip

@Kilisi a bit of a jackass IRL though. The nicest ones were Dee Kelly (bones) and James Doohan (Scotty).

Yep, they were cool, but they weren't aliens

Scotty was something cool in the war as I recall

@Summer I need to be able to download and watch offline... internet is expensive

@Kilisi his voice was great for that sort of work

@Kilisi you can do that with netflix too, although not with the full selection so that might be an issue.

@Kilisi Netflix.. some stuff you can download but it depends heavily on region and client

do they take paypal though, because I just got a useless amazon account... hehe

for offline viewing Prime video is currently far superior,

netflix would suffer from the paypal problem as well

Differs per region, they do for mine

too late anyway, I just bought the DVD's

both could be worked around via gift cards if you can find a reliable source

now I'm wondering if it's possible to convert region wherever UK is to region 4 for the one I got from the UK

@RichardU They are also pretty serious with their beer in Wisconsin too

Walking With Beasts is the only one they asked for because they have the rest of the set... must be a way to convert regions

@IDrinkandIKnowThings Sorry, it's still American beer :P

Whats a good SE site to ask that question?

@RichardU I didnt say it was good i said they were serious about it

LOL!

I got a month or so before it arrives I'm guessing

isn't the point of region lock that you're not supposed to be able to convert? :p

yeah, but the software guru's always have a solution

I got lots of faith in them, usually takes them 2 minutes to solve any question I ask

thats how I look at SE

SO

My brain is dead today

Yep, SO is what I meant

ask a question... wham bam... you got 2 or 3 answers

@Kilisi there's often a way to change the region on the player - do you know what they'll be watching it on?

If it's on a Windows (7-10) computer (laptop or whatever) then you can change the current region on the DVD drive in device manger. You go to the "Properties" dialog for the DVD drive and the 2nd (?) tab should be "Region" and you can change it there

unfortunately the catch is that you can only do this 5 times

after the fifth change it will become locked to the last region selected

Also if using a laptop or whatever then it's worth trying to use VLC first before mucking about with regions as older drives (manufactured pre 2000/2001 or so) use the RPC-1 method for region coding and VLC can just ignore them so no mucking about with regions required

alternatively you just use something like WinX DVD Ripper or Handbrake to rip the DVD to a video file and boom.. problem solved.

@motosubatsu yes, I'll use the hardware solution, I got lots of DVD units for computers. Usually they use the PS$ but they have a computer hooked up to the TV as well

PS4 I mean

Don't really care if the DVD unit gets locked, I got plenty more in the workshop

@Kilisi sounds like a winner then :)

if you've got spares then it's not really a problem - you may as well have one drive set to region 2 and one to whatever it is where you are

you'll probably want to avoid using the PS4 for playing it - the same region change limits and lockouts apply to the PS4 and it will also affect BluRay movies as well

and a spare PS4 is a bit more expensive than a spare DVD drive for a PC

:D

EXCELLENT ARTICLE

HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND, HERE'S WHY

Anyone care take an edit to prevent users from VTCin this

it is answerable, but perhaps the phrasing is too much VTC bait

@motosubatsu they cost nothing, one thing about being an engineer is you amass a lot of written off machines which you keep for parts.

Yeah! Reggae concert right next to my office window!