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12:12 AM
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Q: Battletech novel focusing on Comstar faction

Nu'DaqThe writing on the back of this novel speaks of the faction called Comstar, that it believes itself will one day unite the Inner Sphere under its own banner. There is an implication that Comstar claims to support the other Inner Sphere nations but is keeping many secrets from them and pursuing it...

 
 
4 hours later…
4:41 AM
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Q: What book should i read next

MakotoI have started reading again lately but all the books in my house I've read multiple times, can someone recommend Me a good book series i can dive into.

 
 
1 hour later…
5:47 AM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive body detected, potentially bad keyword in body (44): Help me find this Drarry Fic please by RedRiot on scifi.SE
 
1
Q: Help me find this Drarry Fic please

RedRiotI have searched up and down for this fic,I’m gonna cry.It is during ‘8th’ year I believe?Draco is on the line and Harry try’s to help him but around the time they start dating crabbe calls Harry a f*g,Draco TACKLES the motherfucker,the next few days Draco gets arrested,Harry outs them by kissing ...

 
6:42 AM
1
Q: Why didn't the Witch-King of Angmar conquer The Shire?

TheMadHatterThe Shire was formerly a part of Arnor (it later became a part of Arthedain after Arnor fragmented). The Witch King's sole objective was to destroy the North Kingdom (Arnor). Eventually the Witch King conquered Arthedain, but didn't conquer/attack The Shire (which was part of Arthedain). Why?

 
 
2 hours later…
9:08 AM
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Q: Cartoon with a duck and pig travelling around in a spaceship

TheMadHatterI remember a cartoon which I watched when I was young. The main character is a duck who is the captain of a spaceship & a pig who is his assistant. The duo travel around in the spaceship but I can't remember much else. Additional details include: The duck is black and his beak is yellow The pig...

 
Popup blindness 101... I had the choice to write an extended documentation on how to find a malformed constant with a debugger (for end users who aren't devs, so that would have been quite verbose), or have the end users go through several filters to preemptively catch the malformed constants.
Both being long and boring, I added a popup saying exactly where the damn thing is broken.
Ten minutes after I send a sketch to an end user to have some feedback, they come to our office being all "but the problem with the popup is that when I dismiss it, I don't have the info anymore :/ "
I hope my "mate, I expect you to read the stuff I put in there at some point" wasn't taken offensively xD
(end user is a colleague and the tool at stake is an "internal" plugin, not something we sell)
 
One of the most annoying things is users closing error windows then reporting they've had an error but can't tell you what because they couldn't be arsed to read it
> We had an error
> What was it?
> Dunno, didn't read it
> Touch luck then, if it happens again read it and let me know
 
"okay I'll take a pen and paper and do the modification, then relaunch the tool and see if it works" _ "yes, that is the expected workflow"
 
@Jenayah yuck
 
9:27 AM
My other favourite, but more because it makes me laugh, is when the user reads the error out and proceeds to read through all the loaded assemblies, call stack everything when I only needed the first 2 sentences of the error to work out the problem. You try and interrupt them but because they think they're being helpful they just keep going
 
@TheLethalCarrot I was diagnosing someones issue, and because they were on a different network they couldn't send me the error electronically
someone suggested they print it out for me to see, so I agreed and they did so.
they printed out 500 pages of error message
 
O_O
 
We have a lot of customers where we can't dial in and they can't email out so the best we get is speaking over the phone
I've never had anyone print an error out though nevermind 500 pages haha
That's amazing
 
0
Q: In Heinlein's Future History, When Does the Soviet Union Fall?

Mike StoneIn The Man Who Sold the Moon, Harriman attracts support from an anti-communist by suggesting that the SU may "paint" a hammer-and-sickle across the face of the Moon, if America doesn't get there first. So clearly it still exists in 1978. But I don't recall hearing of it later than that, not even in

 
@TheLethalCarrot I think they just did a ctrl+a, paste into word, print without checking
I ended up shredding it
 
9:35 AM
I at least hope that's what it was, if it was on purpose then... wow
@AncientSwordRage My colleague would have liked that, he makes paper bricks to burn
 
@TheLethalCarrot lol, paper bricks?
 
He's a bit tight, for heat
 
I mean how would you make one?
 
Mulch it down and then do some other things...
I don't know really, never really asked him in detail
 
@TheLethalCarrot I've looked into make coffee bricks previously
 
9:40 AM
I haven't heard of them before
 
moe effort than they're worth
it's somethign like coffee, mollases and some other chemical
 
Yeah most of the things just end up being more effort really
 
10:21 AM
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Q: Fantasy Novel/Series: Purple/Violet Eyes, Reincarnation, Battle?

user130945I may have gotten a few things mixed up, but the parts I remember for sure: the book starts with a female character "plucking" a male human (a knight/soldier) from his time into her world, because she needs him (to lead a battle? save her world?) they need to have sex three times (before the sun...

 
0
Q: Is it ok for me to keep a humorous but non-essential part of a question?

einpoklumA while back, I asked this question: How long is the Long Bridge of Volantis? and since the question is very short and clear, and in what I perceive to be a somewhat fun/jovial spirit of scifi.SX, I added an illustrating image of a long bridge. Now, obviously there's no need for the image of that...

 
11:07 AM
@Jenayah It depends on the degree to which this tool is a task in its own right vs. an element of a larger workflow.
 
1
Q: Does Fred Flintstone give birth to three babies? If yes how?

TheMadHatterIn a certain episode, Fred becomes a school bus driver. At the end of a tiring day, he picks up a woman. The chapter ends with Fred in the hospital, appearing to have (bizarrely and absurdly) given birth to 3 babies. This is followed by his wife praising him and Fred naming the three babies after...

 
11:28 AM
How's the bridge from the image even "short"? It's quite effin' long. If you need to explain your joke to every passerby wondering dafuq's that image got to do with the post, it kinda fails to be "relevant".
Maybe replacing it with a second sentence'd done da question a favour.
 
11:43 AM
@TheLethalCarrot Sometimes the normal flow trains people to do that. Like it always pops up an "operation successful!" message they have to dismiss. Congrats, you've now trained all your users to automatically dismiss whatever pops up. I've seen a lot of stupid UX like that.
 
Oh yeah I know, I know I've done it as well before on certain things
 
This is why 'toasts' are quite good
 
With peanut butter on? Yum
 
78
Q: What is a "toast notification"?

Dave AndersenMicrosoft mentions the toast as a visual element in the package manifest for Metro-style apps with the attribute ToastCapable="true". What does this mean?

 
I find them annoying but mostly because applications end up over using them
> Oh well it disappears after 5 seconds, why not spam the poor soul with them?
 
11:52 AM
@TheLethalCarrot Mmm spam on toast
 
I do like spam
My uni days consisted of eating mostly pasta with chunks of spam in and cheese grated on top
Interspersed with beefy beans on toast
 
1
Q: Why did Hermione pretend to be a different muggle born while caught by the snatchers?

MBEllisin DH chapter 23, the snatchers catch Harry, Ron and Hermione. The snatchers are looking for muggle-borns. Hermione says her name is Penelope Clearwater, Percy's girlfriend. Who are you, girly?" "Penelope Clearwater" said Hermione. She sounded terrified, but convincing. "What's your blood status?"

 
@DavidW basically the tool is a plugin which converts a set of data into another format, to generate some code skeleton (obviously I'm oversimplifying it...). The end user's task is to right click on the dataset, select "Transform", and ensure the next window says "transformation done without errors".
If the dataset has errors, the plugin will throw some popups (not my choice, that's how the first version was done; I think it would have been better to log stuff).
"my" popup roughly tells them that before clicking Transform again, they'll have to change the format of constant XYZ.
It would be better to have a continuous build tool checking for mistakes such as these, but that's outside the scope of the plugin...
"Changing the format of constant XYZ" is basically turning a String into an int, or something that can be Integer.parseInt()ed
 
 
1 hour later…
1:12 PM
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Q: Transformed for Jupiter life

Vaughn OhlmanThis is a short story; written before 90s; where a man is in charge of a program to settle Jupiter; where they had developed some way of transforming human into Jupiter adapted life. Seems to work; but no one comes back. Man transforms self and dog in desperate attempt to figure out: turns out li...

 
1:36 PM
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Q: Why did Holly say, "Prisoner for processing"?

Jorge SIn Artemis Fowl (2020), deep underground in Haven City, arrested for tunneling and entering, Mulch meets Holly: Mulch: Think of my children, Holly. Holly: You don't have children. Mulch: Not yet. Holly (says to back): Prisoner for processing. Why did Holly say, "Prisoner for processing"?

 
2:25 PM
4
Q: Story where hospital staff succumb to aliens and wear them close to their bodies

insignificantsearcherI recently took some tries on Google but I was unable to identify the movie by its plot keywords alone, so here is a challenge for you: The movie or episode is from the 90's or around 2000 maybe earlier. It could be an episode of something similar to The Outer Limits. Its story is about a doctor ...

 
 
2 hours later…
4:03 PM
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Q: In Phonogram: The Singles Club, is the barmaid Marc's ex-girlfriend?

Daniel R. CollinsI've read Kieron Gillen's Phonogram: The Singles Club several times, and I simply can't interpret whether the barmaid is supposed to be Marc's ex-girlfriend or not. While the ex appears prominently throughout issue #2 (Marc's story) in ghost/flashback form, the current-day barmaid only appears fu...

 
 
2 hours later…
6:05 PM
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Q: Does Wonder woman celebrate...or even HAVE...a Birthday?

RusshiroThat's just about it. Considering she was literally made out of clay, she wasn't "technically" born, so... there's that. However, the amazons may celebrate the day she came to them. Since the current continuity Diana is seen as the daughter of Zeus,she must have been born in some way. Outside of ...

 
 
2 hours later…
8:07 PM
3
Q: Story about a tree that releases spores that destroy a species' appetite

carlMillions of years ago, a ship crashed on earth. It was carrying a tree. Another ship comes to the crash area and looks for the tree with no success. The tree survives and grows. It has silvery leaves and branches. A T-Rex fights with another dinosaur in the vicinity of the tree and it responds by...

 
SQB
8:33 PM
@Marvin I mean, like, really?
 
I am not familiar with the work, but I assume the person is about to become a prisoner.
 
And then the old question about processing Queen Amidala popped up...
Someone should capture a dervish; then we can precess them instead.
 
9:21 PM
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Q: Does Alagaesia have a moon?

4.12.22.4.18.0.I remember that their sun is called Aiedail, but I can't remember if they have (visually) a moon. They must have some kind of moon because when Roran and Clovis talk about getting the villagers, near Narda, they talk about the tides. However it might be an error, because I've recently realised th...

 
10:09 PM
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Q: What would a "star" powered by nuclear fission look like?

Alias_The_JNormal stars use fusion, but both radioactive decay and fission can produce heat; however, the conditions needed to do so are very different and a long-lived/stable object using them might need to be carefully constructed. Could a planet- or star-sized mass comprised entirely of a long-lived radi...

 
10:58 PM
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Q: How did Picard break free from the Collective exactly?

Rob JacksonThis is a repetitive question, but I haven't gotten answers for the previous post of this same question. I'm talking about when Locutus is detained in the science room, and Data hooks himself up to him, and Locutus tries to fight Data and everyone in that room as a result (he fights because Data ...

 

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