Let me see. Post an image.

Sigh.

I did this last night.

Gee, sorry I was sleeping.

I will if you insist.

If you're done with the issue, why bring it up again to a fresh audience?

I did not bring it up so that I could snapshot your IP, but because I wanted to know whether this was something people should even be able to do.

Sounds like that ship has sailed anyway.

Do you really want me to do this? You have erased your personal info before.

Not if you don't want to. I'm just curious. I could wait till someone else does.

Ok, sure.

I got @Mahnax down to GPS long/lat with 4 digits right of the decimal place, or so it claimed.

@tchrist Wow.

I did not realize this. Definitely it is a security breach.

See what I mean now?

Kee-rist.

You use Comcast, by the way.

No shit.

And you live at between 300 and 322 Main Street in a certain well-known city.

Or near that address.

That's not correct. Which well-known city do you mean? (Mine is not known well outside of this area.)

I am assuming that is you. I have not done a couple of the IPs yet.

I believe you. It gets less than comfortably close. I don't think it can get much closer, though.

I was quite surprised that it could get that close, personally.

Same here.

Makes me want to use a proxy server.

In Iceland.

Me it puts at 19th street, not up around 5th street, but still, you know?

I will avoid going to that 19th-street address, I think, lest all my stalkers hang out there waiting for me.

I've mentioned before in chat that I live a couple miles from "The rude bridge that arched the flood" ... and I still don't think someone being able to get with a few miles of my location is a clear and present danger. But I don't like it that any Joe Schmoe can get what I do not choose to reveal.

No, not a danger, per se. But a surprise.

Yes, the point is that you do not get to choose whether to reveal it or not. You do not even click on anything. It is plucked from your mind.

I also disabled Flash because it allows 7 digits of unique identification.

It is how I knew when Jasper was scanning the logs. So I said “Hello Jasper”, and lo he appeared and asked me how the hell I knew he was there.

Ahem.

Looks like more scanning.

Then you are in the hamper in the closet, not upon my body.

There is only one solution to this, and it will piss people off: only imgur links allowed.

I thought images were done through imgur anyway.

No, they are not. Or else I would not have that Google Maps link for you.

They can be.

But if you paste a link instead of use upload, then it goes right there.

Figured this all out when Cerb posted a bunch of giant images last night and my computer got funky.

If yo got to our Scary Image Room, it will autoload a 22.7 meg image into your brower. Isn’t that nice?

@JasonBourne That is really insane.

I think I gotta remove somebody from the list of great thinkers. BRB

Jasper, you know how obsessed I am with gravatars.

@tchrist Yeah, so obsessed that it's just an identicon.

It’s raining frogs!

@JasonBourne There's a cool trick I know.

Usually, it takes some time for your Gravatar to get updated. But you can go to the Gravatar site, upload and then hover over your picture... then click on Gravatar. That'd do it.

@tchrist For me it puts you in a field about a mile from the airport.

It depends on your locator service. I have tried two, and one is better.

It explains why you wake up in the middle of the night, if nothing else.

You mean Boulder airport, or Denver?

BMA

Ok.

That's a load off.

Apparently not good and effective enough.

What the hell does a light box have to do with anything?

It's a word. Sentences use words. It matters more to some people than to others whether the words are cogent or not.

@tchrist But the whole Web is troublesome from a privacy point of view. I hate the assumptions Google itself makes about me, for example. After the Newtown shooting, I surfed a few gun forums, curious as to what possible objection they might raise to gun control now. Suddenly when I visited YouTube the right rail was offering me videos about how to build AR-15s and the like, intermingled with videos that were actually related to whatever topic I was currently interested in.

Ewww!

And we thought it was bad when Amazon thought our cats were gay.

Tru dat. Actually, the gay cat thing was accurate. But only just!

I want to know when I google up a town, they think I would like to know where to meet hot lesbians in that town.

Hi.

You know, my cat walks on my keyboard sometimes. I begin to wonder whether there is a conspiracy between Amazon and Google.

See if you can get some hot lesbians to walk on your keyboard. That might prove enlightening.

He got this right for me.

@MattЭллен Clever ≠ Dapper

quite

Of all the places, he named my town. =|

Sure, he did.

I still think it is worse in chat.

Because now you know which users go with which IPs.

@DumbCow There's more than one Concord in the U.S.

Um um um.

@Robusto There's only one Gurgaon in India.

of all the places he named somewhere no where near me

that's reassuring

@MattЭллен Compare lookup results between here and here.

@MattЭллен I would like to point out that the smartest thing a man can wear when going to a formal event is an attractive model on one's arm. No one will even look at the man, except to think (a) "He must be rich" or (b) "I wish that was me." Either way: win!

@Robusto haha! Yes, good idea. I'll have to get one for my brother's wedding.

They can be rented. In fact, that's how they make their money.

@tchrist two new places! neither any closer than that image.

Just make sure they’ve been to the carwash first.

@Robusto we'll I'd hardly want to keep it, that would be quite expensive

@MattЭллен By the way—and I hope this doesn't need saying—if you do rent a model for an event, make sure to leave the missus at home.

@MattЭллен It thinks either you or Jez are on the Isle of Man. :)

@tchrist That's a gay bar in Oxford, so ...

Only one? With all those students?

@tchrist how do you know what it told me?

Only one called The Isle of Man.

@MattЭллен Because you just told me so. :)

@tchrist so before it was a guess?

No, before I did not know whether it was you or Jez. And now I do tyvm.

ah :D

but you get to see who hits that site?

Sure. Hm, maybe you missed the discussion.

I get to see who hits this room.

yeah, I've not read the transcript

If someone posts an image link it a chat room, suddenly they can track IPs.

Of people in that chat room.

oh I see

Or people scanning logs, like Jasper and She Who Must Be Obeyed.

And others.

Jasper was the funny one, as always.

Paddington Bear?

oh, no, someone else

@tchrist: I agree with MacGuffin. Post it as an answer and win a prize.

@JasonBourne Doesn’t matter. I always obey She.

@JasonBourne sure, what's that?

@Robusto Please feel free to post it yourself; I have to go do something that will take me some time.

Can’t believe how cold 0F suddenly feels. Do not go out to garage in slippers and no coat.

Hi

@JasonBourne Yes, I agree. One can also study is the sense of inspection, too.

An argument? With Kris? I guess there's a first time for everything.

I wouldn't worry about Kris. I don't understand their motivations at all.

@Robusto Yeah, he missed it.

@MattЭллен Then you are in fine company. I think Reg said just about the same thing.

Well, the situation is reaching Krisis proportions.

yay!

@Robusto Didn’t you already use that joke this morn?

@tchrist Nah. Must have been someone else.

@JasonBourne No. I detect no signs of manic frenzy.

@JasonBourne For that answer? We need more than a pointer to an OED citation. Some accompanying rationale would help.

This amuses.

@JasonBourne So what’s it like dating an hermaphrodite, Jasper? Best of both worlds, right?

It is just too hard to say that h in that position.

@JasonBourne Don’t you think that this is getting a little . . . repetitive?

@JasonBourne No, that’s what an echo chamber is for.

@JasonBourne ‪No, that’s what an echo chamber is for.

What the heck does “thursagen” mean? Every time I stem it, it bifurcates into unrelated language origins.

I was wondering how this actually worked, and now I know. Maybe:

@JasonBourne Do you use a computer or a phone?

Good man.

It annoys the people you’re talking to if you’re always surfing the Internet instead of talking to them.

@JasonBourne Wreally?

He probably incurs passive rep shrink instead of passive rep gain then. I do not understand why people do that.

On SO, there are super negative answers that of course keep getting negativer.

And people don’t delete them.

No, he cannot.

Only if they are freshies.

If the post is more than six months old, no rep changes are effected by its deletion, be those positive or negative.

But you want to delete them because they are downvote attractors.

Hm.

I am not convinced.

I have not tested the theory.

Exactly.

Go find a post or two that are more than six months old and negative. Or negativatable.

And have a delete vote on them already.

Downvote, then finish it off. Then test. Tell me if you need help with another delete vote to seal the deal.

@tchrist Jesus, 550 flag weight? I haven't even flagged a tenth of that number of questions.

Well, maybe a tenth. In that ball park.

Um, flag weight does not work that way.

One more deficit in my spotty education.

I am trying to remember, but the real flag weight, which you can no longer see, is like +10 or +20 for each helpful, with a stronger negative on the declined flags than the positive on the helpful. And it is non-linear, asymptotically approaching a particular ceiling. The ceiling used to be unreachable, but they may have changed that.

So if you have Deputy for 50 helpfuls, and you aren’t full of declineds, then it is perfectly possible that you are over 500.

The problem is that they still talk in terms of invisible flag weight.

invisible flags are used when you want to stealthily conquer a country.

Too late!

In fact, it turns out that if you have a bad enough flag weight, your flags won’t even show up in the queue any longer. (quoth @Shog9)

no. I really like the Orc :D

I believe chat flags are always attributable to the flagger, whether they are custom ones or not. On the main site, only custom ones are attributable.

@tchrist I have 56 helpful flags, yet I am no Deputy.

@Robusto Really? How can that be?!

I have no idea. I never bothered myself with it much.

Flag weight does not matter much on ELU with so few flags thrown.

Deputy is 80 helpful flags.

Must have changed since last time you looked.

Oh, that is right.

It used to be 50.

Sorry.

So invisible flag weight is the dark matter that binds SE sites together, and without which they would hurtle apart even faster than they're doing now?

and the dark energy is inexplicable downvotes

One flag to rule them all!

Uh-oh, I just got flagged by Sauron.

I guess that means the nazgul are about to pile on

@MattЭллен Once you've been flagged by Sauron, it doesn't matter what the nazgul do.

Funny, I've lived in CO for almost a decade now but I've never visited Boulder.

OMG don't tell Tchrist...

@Shog9 Awww!

@Cerberus He'd just suss it out with an image bug if I didn't

I turned that off so you could visit.

If you didn't gather from my answer, I don't really care ;-)

The other mods just tail -f our logs, but they left image loading on. Oops. :)

Yeah, it’s ok.

I use my real name, so it isn’t like I care myself.

It just was surprising to people in here that I could do that. And not in a good way.

Someone really freaked out about that a while ago... Tried to find the question today, turned out it'd been deleted.

Just as well, I suppose.

I have never had anyone show up at my doorstep. Once or twice I have gotten out-of-the-blue phonecalls from strangers.

Deleted because it was not constructive or something?

i've left an invisible flag on your doorstep

checks flag queue

@tchrist Deleted automatically because it was closed as a duplicate and down-voted to -13

I think some people freak out more than others that their IPs are trackable.

Ah that.

So much for many roads leading to Rome.

I think I posted about that on MSO.

He eventually deleted his account, after freaking out on Sec.SE as well

Well, huh then.

> It is possible for non-moderator users to use the image posting facility to log everyones IP address instantly. This leaks information that the privacy policy says will not be given out to non-moderators, so I recommend everyone avoid entering the chat until it is fixed. It is extremely easy to exploit so poses a high risk.

That seems like an inappropriately strong response, but I may not have his sensitivity.

one way to solve the bug is to not care

The only real cure we thought of was adjudged to be worse than the problem itself: forcing everyone to upload through imgur, or use the boxed links.

I mean the expanded ones like Wikipedia or Amazon.

It seems like a lot of trouble.

Yeah, the upload thing's been suggested and sounds really nice until you consider that folks link to all sorts of images on different sites for perfectly valid reasons.

Ah I'm on Radio 1!

That said, I try to always use imgur for fear of link rot. Cerb thinks I’m a whacko, and says he would never post pickies again.

It is just too much bother.

@Cerberus WTF? Right now?

Dutch Radio 1.

Yes.

oh :(

oh well, that's good too. I just can't hear you

Recording, or live? And apropos what?

Recording.

Latin.

Oh. Thought BBC Radio.

Nope.

are you listening to yourself? Is it freaking you out?

@Shog9 Would it be reasonable if this issue were somehow more generally known? I think it is the surprise that bothers some people.

The programme is trilingual: Dutch/English/Latin.

@MattЭллен Yes, obviously.

Not that anyone would read it, but perhaps there is some How-To-Use-SE-Chat user guide somewhere that could mention it?

Hehe.

@tchrist I think... Uh, I think if you're concerned about folks finding out about your IP or where you live, you should probably know that it's pretty trivial if you don't use a proxy.

@Cerberus :D I thought maybe you'd be used to recordings of your voice because... um... of your extensive career as a radio DJ?

I'm actually more concerned that there are folks using chat who don't realize the logs are public.

I wonder why they do not realize that.

And that is mentioned in the /faq

@MattЭллен Uhh yes. That.

Must be stale expectations from other sites. Like places where “PM” exists.

Seems they haven’t assimilated the SE meme that bad things happen in the dark.

@Cerberus Linky please?

@tchrist I guess. Still, seems like the first thing I'd want to find out if I was gonna be having personal conversations in a chat room.

@tchrist radioplayer.omroep.nl/radio1-default

My friend is saying "let's introduce fietsa to mean "bicycle" in Latin.

Had some guy freaking out that Google was caching some embarrassing thing he'd said in SO chat a while back... What can you say? Sorry dude, we don't control Google, if you didn't want it known you shouldn't have said it in public.

I know some people delete things in chat, and I have done so, too, but I also understand that those are still readable by mods — and why.

So I never post something I do not want you reading. :)

Oh, I think our item is over now.

@Cerberus Oh. Drat. Replay, or only live?

@tchrist because that's how you mark stuff as "extra-important for mod viewing", of course

@Shog9 There will always be some people freaking out over anything. I know you know this.

@Shog9 Exactly.

oh, yeah

You will be able to replay it at some point, but I know not when (the programme is still going on). Probably tonight?

There is only so much you can do.

I was kinda surprised you can flag things without being in the room. I am not complaining, just didn’t quite expect it.

I asked, among other things, why they say /pre:sidens/ in the Nuntii Latini.

One of the professores behind it answered that this pronunciation existed in the late Republic alongside */praisidens/.

@JasonBourne Of course he is. In some senses. If you ping Them, They shall come.

So just ask.

Or at least, read their inbox from the vasty deep.

@JasonBourne yeah

well, I'm making breakfast, but yeah

@JasonBourne post 'em up on meta then!

@JasonBourne uh, no

Sounds like something you should post to MSO. Cave canes.

@JasonBourne Chat always lags behind the main site a bit - but if you upload a pic and, say, an hour later it hasn't shown up in chat (and your accounts are associated correctly and whatever), then yeah - report that on meta.

@JasonBourne I do not understand all the flippertytiggetry, me. Accounts creating and destroying themselves like particles in the vacuum.