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1:07 AM
@Stormblessed Your alt text here is more detailed than the image itself.
Granted it's really Catija's alt text...
 
 
2 hours later…
3:36 AM
0
Q: I am looking for an older science fiction story

kristinj2468about a man in the desert who sees an animal out of the corner of his eye. He can't really see it, but it's really hot outside so he takes shelter in an old adobe hut but then he does see the animal and it is a skeleton thing. Bites him and he ends up cutting off his own hand to get rid of its sk...

 
3:56 AM
0
Q: When did the Borg start becoming dumbed down?

AdamNYFor me, the introduction of Borg Queen kinda ruined it. "Temptation" - I mean the Borg as a whole are not about petty revenge and whatnot. That's stupid. I disagree though that with time the Borg got less scary. "Scorpion" part 1 was pretty creepy.

 
 
2 hours later…
5:50 AM
0
Q: Do Uncle Ben exist in the MCU?

VishwaUncle Ben, the man who raised Peter from birth with his wife May, and who taught Peter the lesson that inspires him to be a hero, who is the base for iconic "with great power, comes great responsibility" hasn't been seen in the MCU. Tom Holland's Spider Man has been in five movies so far, We see ...

 
6:37 AM
-1
Q: Is Luthor a Terrorist?

Marvel illuminatiIn Justice league unlimited is lex Luthor a terrorist if he used the justice leagues mega lazer to destroy a whole city

 
6:50 AM
0
Q: How did Aquaman get his tattoos?

KyloRenSimple question, how (physically) did Aquaman get his tattoss? Considering that, He is bullet proof Hardened steel can't penetrate his skin That he had his powers at an early age and his tattoos seem to come after he gets them Even though Atlantean steel can cut him, he had not yet been to Atl...

 
 
2 hours later…
8:36 AM
2
Q: Have any Chaos Forces ever turned?

Richard CThere are plenty of stories of the forces of the imperium turning to chaos, being corrupted or just becoming evil. Is there any indication anywhere that the same can happen the other way. Forces of Chaos renouncing the dark powers and fighting against those they previously fought for?

 
8:49 AM
0
Q: "Awful things happen to wizards who meddle with time.." Are there any actual examples of these incidences in the book?

CCCCIn 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban', Hermione mentions - "Awful things happen to wizards who meddle with time." Now, I can imagine what could go wrong logically, for example, their past self could harm their future self perceiving some danger owing to the confusion and chaos, et cetera...

 
0
Q: Why are these Doctor Who regenerations the same in (classic) Who?

user119631Why are some Doctor Who regenerations the same in classic Who? I know in "new" Who regenerations are supposed to be the same but why are the regenerations in classic Who not all different? For example: The Second Doctor's regeneration, 2 regenerates to 3, is the same as the Fifth Doctor's reg...

0
Q: Are there any stories that show the Imperial Reaction to the return of Abbadon?

Richard CI have just finished reading Black Legion which tells the story of Abaddon's first black crusade. In it he meets the Black Templars and learns that centuries have passed outside the eye of terror. I know that throughout the majority of the imperium by the time of this appearance the heresy is a...

 
9:09 AM
ahoy
 
Yo ho ho
 
I have a new hobby
upvoting all but the correct answer on puzzling.stackexchange
 
Well that's a puzzling behaviour
I thought you was going to say pillaging ships
 
@TheLethalCarrot I'm out of my viking phase
@TheLethalCarrot it's because they're still valid answers if the OP is ambiguous
 
Still in your pirate phase though by the looks of things
@AncientSwordRage Aye I know, whenever I look there, there is either only one highly upvoted answer that came in quickly, several partial answers or lots of what look like equally correct ones
 
9:24 AM
@AncientSwordRage oi
I only check Puzzling to see if there are new questions. Yes, I'm an ID addict ahah
 
@AncientSwordRage grrr :-P
 
@Randal'Thor Mwahaha
@Randal'Thor if the question is ambiguous, then I don't see an issue with it
 
If the question is that ambiguous, we should be closing it.
There's even a special close reason for "takes multiple subjectively correct answers".
 
@Randal'Thor probably true
 
@AncientSwordRage Done. Just one more vote needed to close it.
 
9:37 AM
@Randal'Thor and it was in the HNQ too
 
You might be able to drum up some close-votes in Puzzling chat. Tell 'em I sent you :-P
I ping people there every so often for delete votes on old crap.
 
@Randal'Thor done
 
:-D
@AncientSwordRage Unfortunately, ambiguous puzzles often do if they're not closed quickly. Lots of equally valid answers is a perfect HNQ formula.
 
@Randal'Thor code golf bans ALL potentially ambiguous posts, and has a sandpit for refining before posting
YMMV however
 
The way it's done on PPCg is quite good
 
9:57 AM
@TheLethalCarrot it's excellent
 
It was my "SE home" for a while, I really enjoyed it there
 
Why did you leave?
Or slowed down participating
 
10:20 AM
Just slowly lost interest and I stopped lurking here and jumped in properly
 
Ok
 
10:55 AM
0
Q: Are there any actual examples of "awful things happening to wizards who meddle with time" in the book?

CCCCIn Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hermione mentions: Awful things happen to wizards who meddle with time. Now, I can imagine what could go wrong logically, for example, their past self could harm their future self perceiving some danger owing to the confusion and chaos, et cetera...

 
11:11 AM
@Marvin duplicate?
 
@AncientSwordRage Seems to be
 
 
3 hours later…
1:59 PM
0
Q: How long does it take for a tag synonym to be approved?

Voldemort's WrathA while-ish ago, I suggested a tag synonym here. After this while-ish, it's still stayed at 0 votes. While this could mean that its upvotes and downvotes canceled out, I really doubt that because it seems unlikely, given what the actual synonym is. First of all, I want to know how long it takes b...

 
@Slartibartfast Heh, at first I thought the synonym was the suggestion in question and was already writing an answer on how that's useless too. But apparently that synonym already exists. ;-)
 
Unless novels somehow slipped under the radar all these years, which lets be honest isn't unreasonable, it couldn't have been created "recently"
 
@TheLethalCarrot It says Aug 10, 2011.
I'm not sure what you're considering "recent," especially with the scare-quotes. :)
 
I couldn't be bothered to check when it was created so just used "recently" :)
Just me being lazy haha
 
2:20 PM
@WebHead Yeah, apparently there'll be a tv series made from Wheel of Time too.
 
2:43 PM
\o/
I once considered delving into that, but then I realized there's about 5 million audiobooks for it and I also heard from various other sources that it's probably written like an immense drag to crawl through anyway. So a TV-series would be very welcome to get into that story.
 
3:02 PM
Greetings, Earthlings.
 
@Donald.McLean bleep bloop
 
2
Q: 1980s movie or TV show where a woman is turned into a Raggedy ann-like doll at the end

Russ RainfordI must have been about 6 when I saw this show; it was late at night, and seemed more for adults, so the details are vague. From what I remember: There was a woman with some type of supernatural power, and she was stalking/in a relationship/haunting a man. The man reminded me of William Katts fr...

 
3:48 PM
What’s with the removed Marvin?
 
It was to this I believe so manually removed IIRC
 
3
Q: Who was Lord Commander of the Night's Watch at the end of the show?

Chris HEdd appears to be leading the Watch early in S8 (though seemingly appointed by Jon rather than elected). We know the Watch still exists at the end, but who's in charge? We can't rule out Jon from what I've seen -

 
user132126
@b_jonas Yeah, that's what the casting is for. It's a Amazon show, though, not TV.
 
user132126
4:04 PM
@NapoleonWilson I'm considering getting Audible just to listen to the audiobook versions, but then again I've read the books a half dozen times each already.
 
4:52 PM
0
Q: What exactly happened to the 18 crew members who were reported as "missing" in "Q Who"?

AdamNYI always thought they were dead in battle. The Borg didn't believe assimilating lifeforms until "Best of Both Worlds." Yet others argue they were assimilated, and hence they were into assimilation.

 
5:10 PM
@WebHead There's a difference? Ok.
 
user132126
5:25 PM
@b_jonas Only in accessibility, really. It's going to be paywalled behind Prime instead of available on a network people might have already.
 
6:07 PM
@WebHead This is going to turn into a huge morass IMO. You want WoT? You need Prime. GoT? HBOMax. Star Wars? Disney+. Star Trek? CBS All Access. etc.
 
user132126
Well it is already. It's all super fragmented and adding up in total to cost more than what cable does.
 
user132126
I recently cancelled Netflix AND Amazon Prime.
 
user132126
I get Hulu for free with Spotify. I will buy Disney+ though.
 
I've avoided Prime, and I'm considering dropping Netflix too.
Want to finish catching a couple of series before I do it, though.
I'm going to try to avoid Disney+ just on general principles. :-P I can afford to pay to see the occasional Pixar movie, and I can pretty much live without the rest.
 
Hi
@WebHead Hulu’s nice
Lots of NBC stuff
 
user132126
6:15 PM
Not with the crappy ads, lol
 
I pay the $2 to not have them :O
Yeah it’s a ripoff compared to Netflix that it has ads
Prime is a lie
 
user132126
I won't give them more money just because their plan is to annoy me enough with ads that I fork over more cash, eff that.
 
Nothing good on it is free
Free shipping, though
 
user132126
I just use ads to take breaks, look at Instagram, etc. I don't pay attention.
 
user132126
The best thing about all these streaming services is they don't tie you in to a contract. My advice is to set reminders to cancel the services, and just get them for a month or two at a time.
 
6:17 PM
Oh BTW @WebHead why’d you leave SFF?
 
user132126
Just in a different place in life
 
6:37 PM
@DavidW Don't they spread farther if you can wait like five years though?
I meant, I watch very few movies or TV series, but for books I think waiting five years (at least for the first book of a series) helps a lot to know which books are actually good, and which ones only have ephemeral fame.
 
user132126
So stuff that aired originally on broadcast or network TV has traditionally been more likely to show up on additional services, but that's not really the way things to come.
 
@Stormblessed Half of the stuff that I buy on ebay supposedly has free shipping.
 
user132126
More and more networks are building their own services, such as HBO Go or Disney+, or getting bought up with others (like Fox did, so now going on Disney+), or if it's a really popular program, signing a 3-5 year exclusivity agreement with a certain streaming platform.
 
For some items, that means they just fold the shipping cost into the cost of the item; but for small electronics from east asia the shipping is genuinely free, because even together with the price of the item it's cheaper than shipping is supposed to cost.
 
Hey I’m getting privileges for Smokey
So I can forcefully say “La ferme, Smokey”
 
6:41 PM
@Stormblessed Um, what does that mean?
What's Smokey ?
Oh I know.
 
user132126
@DavidW I have a 4 and 6 year old, and the Disney movie library will be great. Will be especially happy if it includes Lucasfilms movies, too. Plus the new Marvel shows, since I'm an MCU geek.
 
@b_jonas SmokeDetector
 
The spam guessing bot, yes.
 
@b_jonas shut up, I think
Jun 30 at 21:35, by Stormblessed
Jun 11 at 0:19, by Stormblessed
Jun 3 at 18:41, by Stormblessed
May 30 at 2:58, by Stormblessed
May 26 at 21:16, by Stormblessed
May 12 at 17:22, by Stormblessed
2 days ago, by DavidW
2 hours ago, by Alex
Apr 8 at 4:02, by Stormblessed
Mar 22 at 2:32, by Alex
Feb 12 at 1:21, by Jenayah
La ferme, Smokey.
 
user132126
Yikes
2
 
6:43 PM
Oops
 
@WebHead Have your 4 and 6 year old children seen all the best old films?
And TV series too.
 
@b_jonas For something I know in advance will be a trilogy or series of closely-linked books (as opposed to something episodic) I'll often wait until it's all out before starting it.
 
I have the impression that some adults use references to more films and TV series than is possible to watch in one lifetime, but I think that happens only in a slightly older age.
 
user132126
@b_jonas What do you mean?
 
user132126
Kids rewatch animated stuff all the time, and I think I'll prefer having the more limited but "safe" library instead of them watching whatever the heck they find on Netflix Kids.
 
6:45 PM
@b_jonas {{too broad}}
 
@Stormblessed Have they seen Pixar's Up yet?
 
@WebHead I recommend avoiding YouTube Kids
@b_jonas basically the same question :P
 
user132126
Some Disney Channel stuff is suss, but generally I don't have to worry about anything Disney in terms of quality.
 
@Stormblessed I'm breaking it down to smaller questions.
 
user132126
@Stormblessed Oh, no, they only get to watch YouTube stuff that we pick. Children's programming on YouTube is predatory.
 
6:47 PM
@WebHead The only Disney properties (Disney, Lucasfilm, Marvel, Pixar) I might get bothered to miss are Pixar. No idea how it will play out with Fox, though. No kids, and I don't have much nostalgia for old Disney stuff, so that's not a factor.
 
user132126
And there's nothing stopping you from just getting the Blu-ray for those, too!
 
user132126
There's quite a few pre-CGI movies I don't think my kids have seen, and some I haven't seen in forever because they're "vaulted". But the "vault" is all supposed to be on Disney+
 
I figure that is how I'll fill in the gaps of anything genuinely interesting from now on...
 
user132126
I haven't seen the Simpsons in like... 15 years, though. I do look forward to binging 30 seasons of it, lol.
 
user132126
I really hope they offer 4k
 
6:51 PM
@WebHead lol
 
user132126
What?
 
You mean like 16 simultanous episodes arranged in a 4x4 grid on a 4k monitor, to see a whole season in an hour?
 
user132126
Oh, no, separate thought. I hope they have a sizeable collection of 4K/UHD content.
 
@WebHead Sure, but Simpsons?
 
user132126
Separate thought. Not related to Simpsons.
 
6:53 PM
@WebHead 'Cause you're not already in enough danger of blowing your data cap?
 
user132126
I started paying for faster Internet with a higher data cap about a year ago!
 
It took me a lot of time to figure out that the horn of unicorns in MLP have a spiral pattern, because I was watching most episodes in low quality 240 pixel tall glory, and it's not so apparent then.
I got pretty surprised, but in retrospect it has been there, and visible in closeups.
 
user132126
My current datacap is a full TB and it looks like I typically use half of it in a month, which is nice.
 
Apart from the spiral pattern on the horn, which is never plot relevant, I don't think I lost anything from viewing in low quality.
 
user132126
Lots of cushion if I need to download a bunch of updates or games.
 
6:56 PM
I did look up a few specific scenes in higher quality (but almost never in full quality), sometimes for putting images in questions I asked here.
 
@WebHead That'd be pointless here. The neighbours' kids get home in the evening, and Netflix starts getting pixelated. We're paying for high speed, it's just that so is everyone else.
 
user132126
Yeah, that sucks if the local ISP network can't handle the load. They shouldn't technically be over-selling capacity like that.
 
I don't need higher speed internet, speed is already fine. I'd like reliable internet that doesn't cut off, neither for hours in some days, nor for a few minutes occasionally, nor cut off a quarter of the internet from messed up routing.
 
You're free to use any other high-speed internet provider in town...
 
user132126
Most ISPs will have a minimum speed listed in the contract, though, so if you're dropping below that you might be able to get a discount or something.
 
6:58 PM
And yes, I do know enough about computer technology to understand why that's not trivial, but still.
@DavidW The two other providers are not really much better though.
 
@b_jonas I'm talking about my situation here.
Theoretically I have a "choice" but it's between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
The options on the phone tree to keep you from reaching a real person change, but not much else does.
 
user132126
When I had DSL they guaranteed 60% of your contracted rate, so 6Mbps if you paid for 10Mbps, and if it were lower you could use that to get a partial refund or in my case void the contract and switch providers.
 
user132126
I've had my share of ISP problems, I'm just lucky to live in a fairly stable area now, close enough to a metro that I can get high speeds. I actually get higher than I pay for.
 
@DavidW That was a large part why I switched mobile phone provider a year ago, the customer support phone line of T-mobil was terrible. The prices are the same on all three major networks.
 
@WebHead Hah. I've gotten speeds lower than 2Mbps from the Internet speed test. I wish we could get partial refunds...
 
user132126
7:02 PM
:(
 
user132126
I don't miss those days.
 
user132126
DSL or Cable?
 
Our main git repo at work is (because people are stupid) >5GB these days. Last time I tried cloning it from home, I just stopped waiting and went to bed.
 
user132126
But, anyway, I definitely notice the difference between 4K and even 1080P, let alone standard def stuff like when we watch DVDs or I've glanced at some public TV.
 
Cable, but things weren't any better before when we were on DSL. Just a different crop of unhelpful people.
 
user132126
7:05 PM
I hate DSL.
 
@DavidW And that is why I recommend using subversion for repositories that may get big, because you can do partial checkouts to get just the files you need, rather than all the junk that clueless co-workers commit.
I met this problem at work already.
 
user132126
Cable can be better if someone down the line from you is paying for faster speeds, because the in many cases the whole line technically has to support those speeds and you can get them without paying.
 
It's theoretically supposed to be possible for git too, but in practice we don't have software that implements it.
 
Sorry, my bad. It's 12Gb now. :-P
 
And note that subversion is improved a lot with every minor version, so if you only looked at it before the 1.7 version, do try it again.
 
user132126
7:07 PM
Yuck, that's huge.
 
DON'T CHECK DEPENDENCIES INTO THE REPOSITORY!
 
user132126
o.o
 
user132126
Like instead of a readme saying "install these:" they just commit the assemblies/libraries?
 
Well, I used to use svn in a previous job, but this repo existed before I started here...
 
@DavidW Yeah, it can be hard to push good technical decisions through other people.
I know. I have some successes, but also some failures.
 
7:09 PM
@WebHead Not in all cases, and less so more recently, but stuff that's always been checked in is still having versions updated by checking them in.
 
user132126
update that .gitignore
 
@WebHead That... actually had never occurred to me, I'm ashamed to admit.
 
user132126
:|
 
It didn't occur to me that it might be possible to have that set up prior to the initial clone of the repository.
 
@DavidW It's not possible. The git software currently doesn't let you download just part of the objects in the repo, regardless of what's in the working copy.
 
user132126
7:13 PM
It depends on your total situation.
 
It helps that I can be somewhat convincing when I argue about technical decisions, so sometimes I can convince managers to do the Right Thing, in small ways.
 
user132126
At work we use Microsoft's team stuff now labeled as Azure DevOps and I can directly modify a file on the origin in the web browser without pulling anything down.
 
In the last job, they used to have huge shared drives that too many users had full access to and no fine grained permission control for any individual directory. That did eventually get better. I once found employee contracts or something close to that up there, by accident. They took those down after I pointed it out.
 
user132126
Eek
 
In both that job and this job, they have executables and installers on shared drives that the computers of tens of users can write malware to. That's a disaster even if none of the users are deliberately malicious. Thanks to how transparent and easy to access mounted shared drives are on windows, the computer of any of those users could write viruses onto them without noticing. So can anyone who can guess the password of at least one user, which is probalby easy if someone wants to try.
 
user132126
7:25 PM
Yeah, that's pretty easy.
 
user132126
Most places I've been have shared drives mapped to AD groups
 
In both jobs they are slowly improving the setup as the company is growing though.
 
user132126
My last few jobs have been pretty good about security due to their nature.
 
@WebHead Can you be a bit more specific? What kind of jobs?
 
user132126
I worked for both my schools during college(s) and they had pretty tight controls on stuff. Before that I worked for a bank/bank holding company (a bank that buys banks) and they had to meet tough SOX audit requirements.
 
user132126
7:28 PM
Now I work for a fortune 500, and so we also have audit controls, confidential data, etc where our permissions need to be on point.
 
I also like to push the subversion repository in both cases because that one is at least usually set up such that even though everyone can write it (just like the shared drives), all the writes are logged and so noticable (unlike the shared drives).
@WebHead I did work with some confidental data too, though not bank level stuff.
 
user132126
The size of the places makes a difference, for sure. Some stuff just works while small but doesn't scale.
 
Also sometimes they want to use the crappy third party services that provide some sort of fancy looking but unusable interface through the internet hosted centrally, and had a user agreement that involves signing your first born away.
At one point in my previous job, a supervisor wanted to make us use some github-like thing, but more evil than github, to host the source code of the software we're working on. They did give up before they used it for anything serious though when I pointed out what the user agreement says about what rights they're trying to give to the provider about all the hosted content.
That one was funny. I think they wouldn't have stopped if the agreement was only signing away the first born of the employees, but since it involved giving away the stuff that actually earns money to the company, they had to back off.
There was also a case when they accidentally put up confidental stuff on some online service where, by design, anyone on the internet can view it.
This job too insists on using one of these crazy third party serivces from which it is impossible to download the data to back it up in case we have to migrate away from the serivce or the data gets corrupted.
I actually tried. There's an export functionality that sort of works, but omits some of the data. Like the github stuff where you can download the code, but not the tickets in the bug tracker.
 
user132126
Yuck.
 
user132126
And is it just someone in IT evaluating these things, and no legal counsel?
 
7:40 PM
@WebHead This current company doesn't have much IT. It's a company that mostly works with hardware, with not many competent software people.
Which is part of why I feel odd, because most of the people are engineers that always talk about hardware in jargon of which I don't understand half of the words.
 
user132126
Like computer component hardware?
 
At least these days they managed to get a few more software guys, so there are at least a few people who understand what I'm saying, but still.
@WebHead No. Industrial automation electronics hardware. Connected to valves and temperature and pressure sensors.
 
user132126
Ah, okay.
 
And embedded hardware with software on it that controls it with guaranteed latency, written by people who understand the industrial stuff that the controlled plant is doing, but sometimes not enough about how to design large programs.
And with all sorts of horrible huge industrial framework software bought partly for the brand recognition. I hate all frameworks.
 
user132126
All of them?
 
7:44 PM
The embedded controller hardware has no security built in.
@WebHead Yes.
Any software that comes with a religion and tries to do a hundred different tasks where it's hard to mix and match to replace the parts that don't work the way you want with different software that you write yourself.
2
Most of my work in this job is working around the deficiencies of the big software that we have to work with. It's software that tries to make building stuff easy for non-programmers, but in exchange when you want it to do something that wasn't designed into it, it's very difficult.
 
user132126
Oh, yeah, that makes sense, too.
 
user132126
Lots of stuff out there like that, where customizing is difficult because companies that can do that aren't their primary demographic
 
Right. It doesn't scale well.
 
1
Q: When was the first time Batman disappeared in front of someone he was talking to?

ThunderforgeBatman has a habit of talking to someone like Commissioner Gordon, then disappearing when their back is turned. When was the very first time that he ever did this, either in the comics or some other medium?

 
user132126
8:02 PM
@Marvin If their back was turned, it was not "in front of"
 
user132126
Day 2 of eating ramen because I'm craving it. I'm sorely tempted to find a local place serving authentic ramen to see if that helps (or makes it worse)
 
But yes, I saw better examples too. There was some confidential data that deliberately wasn't on the shared drives, that I had to get directly from somewhere else because I needed it for my research.
 
8:19 PM
@TheLethalCarrot "Kinda autistic (not looking to offend anyone, sorry.)" Did you intentionally re-insert this in the question?
 
No, just something to do with conflicting edits, re-remove it if you want I wasn’t sure to keep it or not but probs best to err on the side of caution and remove it
 
Done.
 
Oh hey looks like I hit 100k network rep :)
 
@TheLethalCarrot oh wow
10x mine :P
 
-1
Q: Harry Potter Fanfic where Harry is sent to an alternate dimension

Jaybird216I know this fic is either on AO3 or Fanfic. It’s a Harry Potter story, I can’t remember if it had a set ship or not. The background is; Harry is somehow transported to an alternate dimension. In this dimension Tom Riddle never becomes Voldemort and he marries Myrtle. - I’m pretty sure he’s som...

-1
Q: Who is the wealthiest wizard in the world

janiszEconomics in Harry Potter world is weird. Single bank is controlling all the money. But who has the biggest chamber at Gringotts? Who is the richest wizard?

 
user132126
8:31 PM
 
11:23 PM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, potentially bad keyword in answer, toxic answer detected (161): Why did Grindelwald have Antonio in his cell? by Michael Gagliardi on scifi.SE
 
1
Q: Short comic about alien explorers visiting an abandoned world with giant statues that turn out to be alive but move very slowly

MrVaultA sci-fi short story, probably part of a comic sci-fi/horror anthology. I remember seeing it when I was 13, but still remember the twist ending clearly. Judging from the artwork, something around 60's-80's (David Gibbons'ish in style) in full color. It was a short story, around 10 pages, depict...

 

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