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 Discussion on answer by Luc: Why use …

Imported from a comment discussion on security.stackexchange.c...
Scott
Sep 21, 2020 11:54
+1 for “Always assume the method is, or will become, known.”  I see people saying that “Tr0ub4dor&3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” is a 32-character password, and is therefore very strong.  They’re in for a rude awakening in 15 minutes, when the password-crackers learn about that trick (and I’m sure that that happened months ago).  Once the method is known, adding many repetitions of the same character to a password adds only about 10 bits of entropy.
 

 Discussion on question by GabrielaGar…

Imported from a comment discussion on meta.superuser.com/quest...
Scott
Dec 23, 2019 21:16
I don’t understand your last paragraph. You say (in the first draft of your post) that the moderator message was signed — so whom are you asking to “show yourself (or yourselves)”?
 

 Discussion on question by Turbo: What…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...
Scott
Jul 5, 2019 01:11
Some of these words are beautiful.
 

 Discussion on question by SemperAmbro…

Imported from a comment discussion on superuser.com/questions/...
Scott
Jul 1, 2018 06:28
(Cont’d) …  The meta-answer is trivially obvious, and Moab gave it two hours ago — the OP has to use a clean machine to access the information and the tools.  Happily, the OP has figured that out now — but tainting this page so the OP can’t read it from their infected machine is counter-productive.  … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …  I’m not sure I get the point(s) of your comment; so, if I missed any, feel free to clarify.
Scott
Jul 1, 2018 06:28
(Cont’d) …  “At what point will this infection prevent someone from interacting with this thread?”  Again, the OP has said that the <bad>ware closes their browser whenever they open a tab with the term XXXware on it.  … … … … … … … … … … … … … …  I never said that the canonical answer won’t work for this user; I’m saying that it can’t work if the OP can’t read it.  … (Cont’d)
Scott
Jul 1, 2018 06:28
@JakeGould: Did you read the question?  The OP clearly says that the infection closes their browser whenever they open a tab with the term XXXXXXX on it.  So, no; it’s not specifically blocking access to a thread; it’s blocking access to any page that might be used to combat it.  No, that doesn’t sound just too perfect, nor is it magical; to the contrary, it’s a common <bad>ware technique.  “Perhaps the issue is the system is infected and it needs to be cleaned.”  Umm, duh?  That’s exactly what the OP is saying, and is asking for help about. … (Cont’d)
Scott
Jul 1, 2018 06:28
@Moab: Aren’t question-askers allowed to protest that their question shouldn’t have been closed as a duplicate?   SemperAmbroscus is doing just that, explaining (in a comment) that the infection is preventing them from even visiting the canonical question.   OK, I admit, they should have edited that observation into the question itself.   But, they edited the question to say “Not a duplicate”, and you summarily deleted that notice (without restating it in a more appropriate form).   Why do you believe that your edit was correct?
Scott
Jul 1, 2018 06:28
@SemperAmbroscus: You say ‘‘the <thing> on my computer … closes my browser whenever I open a tab with the term XXXXXXX on it.’’  So how were you able to get in and edit this question after DavidPostill closed it, since the duplicate question has the word XXXXXXX in its title?
 

 Discussion on question by Jacob de Ne…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...
Scott
Jun 22, 2018 12:05
@JohnLawler: Is another “future tense” squabble about to break out? I’m really puzzled by your comment, “All of the headings refer to potential benefits that are already achieved, and all are in the present tense. (1) fits that pattern, while …” — when (1) is clearly in the “future tense”. Nothing else in the article is “future tense” except for the very last sentence. (I do, however, agree that, based on word selection and ignoring tense, (1) is the better fit — although I’m not convinced that (2) is wrong.)
 

 Discussion on question by Heather Hil…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...
Scott
Apr 21, 2018 16:43
I believed that I had struck a deal with John, but the malicious _______ Xavier was actually (controlling / inhabiting) John’s body at the time.
 

 Discussion of Stewards Club

Stewards Club and Review Queues
Scott
Apr 12, 2018 05:34
Don’t forget to update the table to reflect your 8000 Suggested Edit reviews!
Scott
Apr 10, 2018 18:26
Oh, and you mentioned David’s cessation of review activity.  You know, of course, that some of the ♦moderators prefer to avoid the queues because their votes are “binding” (omnipotent hammers).  Also, he told me a few months ago that he’s too busy handling flags and doing other moderator things to do much else.
Scott
Apr 10, 2018 18:26
Interesting that Tog was lurking in the weeds; he’s #10 overall even though he’s in the top 20 on only two queues. And Pierre.Vriens is #12 overall even though he’s active in only two queues, because he doesn’t have 2000 rep and can’t access the other four. (I wonder whether he is letting his dog do his reviews for him — on the Internet, nobody knows if you’re a dog.)
Scott
Apr 10, 2018 18:25
@fixer1234: Thanks for the update.  (Gimme teh dataz!)
Scott
Apr 9, 2018 16:56
By the way, you can use URLs like this to get review (and badge) statistics.  The first number in the URL is 1 for Suggested Edits, 2 for Close Votes, 3 for Low Quality Posts, 4 for First Posts, 5 for Late Answers, and 6 for Reopen Votes; the second number is the user’s ID number.  The string under the user’s name is rep and badge counts, all run together.  The next two lines are review statistics. So KP has 1033 First Posts reviews.
Scott
Apr 9, 2018 16:54
@fixer1234: That is impressive but not astonishing.  Here on Super User, I, singlehandedly, have done 10.3% of the Reopen Vote reviews; you have done 9.975% of the Close Vote reviews and over 7% of the Low Quality Post reviews; and DavidPostill has done almost 6.6% of the First Post Reviews.  On U&L, Anthon has done 9.1% of Reopen Votes, 8.94% of Late Answers, 8.75% of Close Votes, and 8.45% of LQP.
Scott
Apr 8, 2018 07:45
Interesting discovery.  It looks like the count in the profile (“all actions” → “reviews”) is a true count of the list  of reviews shown in the profile – but that doesn’t include posts that have been deleted (even for us >10K guys).
 

 Discussion on answer by tchrist: Why …

Imported from a comment discussion on ell.stackexchange.com/qu...
Scott
Jan 12, 2018 20:58
@tchrist: Perhaps you skimmed over it, but Phil Sweet said, “…our clocks have also suffered through the turmoil of transitioning from noon as the start of a new day, to midnight as the start of a new day.”  This is what Rosie F is asking about.  She never suggested that times after noon were before midday; she is asking about Phil’s statement which suggests that 11 AM Friday would be followed (two hours later) by 1 PM Saturday, and that 11 PM Saturday would be followed (two hours later) by 1 AM Saturday.
 

 Discussion on answer by Arminius: Why…

Imported from a comment discussion on security.stackexchange.c...
Scott
Jan 6, 2018 23:40
To add a historical note: somebody mentioned “40 years ago”.  Well, 40 years ago the UID and GID fields were only eight bits wide, so the values could range only from 0 to 255.  At a school where scores of new users needed accounts every semester, the ability to reuse UIDs was essential.  Removing users’ files when their accounts are deleted wasn’t perceived to be an issue because there weren’t a lot of places where non-privileged users could put files other than their home directory and /tmp.
 

 Discussion on answer by Cookie Monste…

Imported from a comment discussion on ell.stackexchange.com/qu...
Scott
Dec 30, 2017 20:15
Well then, perhaps we need a follow-up question on the definition of ‘‘rational skeptic’’, because it seems irrational to believe in a statement (‘‘there are no gods’’) without proof / evidence —  and, especially, it seems irrational to call yourself a skeptic if you believe statements that you can’t support with evidence.
Scott
Dec 30, 2017 20:15
@TomMercer: You’re twisting the words. An atheist is somebody who affirmatively believes that there is no God (there are no gods). A rationale skeptic would not fall into that camp unless there was a rational proof (or conclusive evidence) for the non- existence of a deity. (Is there such a proof / evidence?) … … … … … … … Also, “atheistic faith in a god” is an oxymoron.  If you believe in a god, you’re not an atheist — at least not in the sense that the word is currently used.
 

 Discussion on question by dsollen: Te…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...
Scott
Jul 19, 2017 13:30
You refer to “Someone who is straight ... but not heterosexual”, but you also say, “straight is the same as heterosexual” — so how is it possible for someone to be “straight … but not heterosexual”?
 

 Discussion on question by Tobi: Cant …

Imported from a comment discussion on superuser.com/questions/...
Scott
Jun 5, 2017 10:21
(Cont’d) …  (And if you are filtering out [SYN] packets from your computer to the remote one, stop hiding relevant data!) (99) I probably won’t be able to help you much. (a) This is at the outside edge of my area of expertise. By the time I had read 1/3 of the way through your question, I was thinking “this looks like a hairpin NAT problem”; now that you know that, I’m pretty much out of ideas. (b) I have real-world commitments pulling me away from Stack Exchange for at least a few hours. (0) Good luck!
Scott
Jun 5, 2017 10:20
(Cont’d) …  making requests to seemingly random ports.” So which is it: are they making requests or are you? You should probably look at these further. For example, doesn’t Wireshark let you drill down and look at packet data? (4b) What’s in the packets you aren’t showing up? (You are showing packets 67, 69, 72, 75, 77, 80, and 83.) You don’t have to show us all the packets (see above), but tell us what you’re filtering out. … (Cont’d)
Scott
Jun 5, 2017 10:20
(Cont’d) …  show remote hosts sending you a [SYN, ACK] packet. This means that they are responding to connection requests from your computer. You even say in a comment, “I’ve opened TCP connections with multiple peers, and sent a handshake. They also have TCP clients and servers running. They respond to my handshake as shown in the Wireshark print screen.” But you also say in the question, “I also logged inbound TCP connections using Wireshark, and noticed the same IP addresses … (Cont’d)
Scott
Jun 5, 2017 10:19
(Cont’d) …  key pieces of information.) (4b) Please don’t hide narrative information in data blocks like that. If you have important information to say, say it in the text portion of your post. (4c) What does it mean? Do you mean that, for a while, you used a port other than 8661? Describe! (5) That Wireshark output at the bottom of your question is a little weird. You say in the question, “You can see some of the IP's I connected to responding, via TCP.” Three of the lines … (Cont’d)
Scott
Jun 5, 2017 10:19
(Cont’d) …  doesn’t that mean that you also have a UDP client on your system? (3) You say multiple times that you are using port 8661 (which is associated- with streaming services). … (4) But you have a // comment in your application log that says, “I changed my port a few times...”. (4a) Please don’t tamper with relevant data like that. (It is OK to truncate or excerpt data for brevity, or to redact sensitive information; in some cases it may be useful to clearly annotate … (Cont’d)
Scott
Jun 5, 2017 10:18
(Cont’d) …  You say you’ve connected to yourself using the loopback address (127.0.0.1), but then you ask, “Why am I only able to receive LAN messages?” Are you able to receive LAN messages? Have you tested communicating between your machine and another one on your LAN? (2) You say in a comment (now in chat), “my system is running a UDP server, a TCP server, and a TCP client.” But you say in the question, “I send a message to a UDP server, ….” At the risk of splitting hairs, … (Cont’d)
Scott
Jun 5, 2017 10:15
(Cont’d) …  (i.e., without going through the ISP). Finally, a computer that is connected to the Internet will generally have a publicly routable, external IP address that is (typically) assigned by the ISP. (For example, yours apparently begins with 87.) Computers outside your LAN can communicate with you using this address. … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … I’m boring you with all this information that you probably already know because I don’t see it reflected in your question. … (Cont’d)
Scott
Jun 5, 2017 10:15
(Cont’d) …  With this interface, two processes on your computer can communicate through TCP/IP without actually using the network. The others are assigned to physical interfaces (or perhaps virtual or cloned interfaces); in most cases, these are non-routable private IP addresses that begin with 10, 172, or 192. With these addresses, computers on your LAN can communicate through TCP/IP without using the Internet … (Cont’d)
Scott
Jun 5, 2017 10:13
@Tobi: I sympathize with EEAA — I’d like to help you, but I feel like I’m reading a moth-eaten book: there are holes in the information. (1) I’m sure that you’re aware that a computer has many IP addresses. There are the ones listed in the output of ip addr or ipconfig, which are the ones your computer associates with its network interfaces. One of these is always 127.0.0.1 (or rarely 127.⁠ something_else), associated with the lo (loopback) interface. … (Cont’d)
 

 Discussion on question by Fiksdal: Is…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...
Scott
Nov 7, 2016 15:37
In addition to "for real", there is "for sure".
 

 Discussion on answer by Andrew Grimm:…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...
Scott
Oct 16, 2016 15:01
@AndrewGrimm: I’m struggling to understand your comments.  You say, “There are plenty of native speakers who are blissfully unaware of how the word "hack" is being used nowadays, especially older people who do not work in technology.”  Do you mean in the sense of unauthorized computer access, or do you mean in the sense of the Life Hacks book?  If the former — you’d have to be living in a cave to have not heard of the Ashley Madison and e-mail hacks.  If the latter — what does working in technology have to do with it?  … … … … … … … … … …  And what is ESR?
 

 Discussion on question by RockPaperLi…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...
Scott
May 18, 2016 17:16
I am bugged to hear of this usage. (As another comment says, “bug” means “annoy” and “bugged” means “annoyed”.) It drives me buggy. (“buggy” also means “crazy”.) I’ve been in the software industry for a long time, and (like many of the other commenters) I can’t recall ever hearing or seeing this usage — but I’ll take your word for it. I wonder whether it’s a neologism from the same people who brought us “hacker” as a synonym for “malicious hacker”.
 

 Discussion on question by pypi: bash …

Imported from a comment discussion on unix.stackexchange.com/q...
Scott
Jan 3, 2016 10:06
Well, the "obvious" answer is that one of the systems has a bug.  (Of course "obvious" answers are often wrong.)  I believe that the Linux system is working correctly and the VM is malfunctioning.  It might help if you posted the output of od -cb <(cat test.txt) and od -cb < <(cat test.txt) from the VM.  Please do not respond in comments; edit your question to make it clearer and more complete.
 

 Discussion on question by Mari-Lou A:…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...
Scott
Nov 14, 2015 05:47
@deadrat: I'm intrigued by the law of conservation of mass nouns, but I question it.  If you apply energy to pieces of cookie dough, you get cookies, and if you apply energy to coal, you get embers.
Scott
Nov 14, 2015 05:47
I believe I've never seen such a long string of comments that didn't get shoved into a chat room.  I mention that because I got exhausted from reading them, and so, if the following point was already made, I missed it.  … … … … … … … … … … … … …  @Mari-LouA: You can manage to count most forms of matter: pieces of wood, grains of sand, buckets of dirt, even pounds (or kilograms) of oxygen.  That doesn't change the fact that the words themselves — wood, sand, dirt, air, and elements such as oxygen, hydrogen, iodine, iron, mercury, nitrogen, etc. — are uncountable.
 

 Discussion on answer by ArtOfWarfare:…

Imported from a comment discussion on ux.stackexchange.com/que...
Scott
Apr 8, 2015 03:42
@DavidRicherby: I was thinking the same thing (turn clockwise to increase) as I read the other comments.  But it occurs to me to wonder: does this hold true in places where the primary natural language is written right-to-left (given that people seem to perceive rotational motion by the direction of the top surface; e.g., clockwise = "to the right")?  Progress bars (e.g., for downloads or other long-running procedures) go right to left on Windows computers that are localized for RTL languages.
 

 Ask a Super User Moderator

For moderation, spam, troublesome users and related issues you...
3
Scott
Nov 25, 2013 19:55
@slhck Yes, as originally posted, it was about “Is there a service?” By the time you had closed it, I had already reworded it to “Is there a method?”, and I posted my suggestion regarding a local, software solution less than a minute later.
Scott
Nov 25, 2013 19:02
@slhck Now I’m really confused. I reworded Cloud storage service allowing symlinks as they are, without dereference?, as per your recommendation, and then you closed it (pre-empting the voting process), which is what you scolded me for doing last week.
Scott
Nov 13, 2013 23:15
(In MoonSire’s defense, he was replacing internet-explorer + developer-tools with internet-explorer-dev – which reopens the question of whether the more general tag should be left in place, to facilitate searching.)
Scott
Nov 13, 2013 23:15
… And I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen suggested edits that said that they were “tag cleanups”, and that did delete tags (and maybe add replacements) – but that were deleting tags that weren’t deprecated. And I did catch MoonSire deleting an internet-explorer tag a couple of days ago, and that certainly isn’t deprecated. So that’s why I always check whether the tags are really deprecated before I Approve tag cleanup edits.
Scott
Nov 13, 2013 22:47
... (continued) ... If that process has changed, I missed the memo. :-)
Scott
Nov 13, 2013 22:45
Regarding developer-tools: OK, I may have been a bit of a bull in a china shop on that one. But I’m accustomed to seeing deprecated tags listed in the Tag cleanup for month & year question. [developer-tools] wasn’t listed in the question, it was listed in an answer to the question. I thought the answers were just for suggestions, and that you or one of the other moderators would migrate accepted suggestions into the body of the question.
Scott
Nov 13, 2013 22:32
MoonSire and I seem to have different understandings of the use of tags. He seems to think that the tags on a question should be reduced to a minimum. I believe that they used for searching. If I’m looking for OS X questions, I want a search on osx to find as many of them as possible. I shouldn’t have to think to search for xcode also. … Oh, I just saw that you already told MoonSire that; never mind.
Scott
Nov 13, 2013 22:15
@slhck As far as process is concerned, I don’t see how Shehbaz’s question doesn’t qualify. Unless you’re saying that nothing should be tagged process because it’s a meta tag, in which case you should say that and deprecate it through the tag cleanup.
Scott
Nov 13, 2013 22:15
@slhck I borderline agree with you on scheduling, but only, as I mentioned in my rejection reason, because the Wiki seems to be wrong. We have task-scheduler, scheduling, and windows-task-scheduler, which seem so similar that consideration should be given to merging them. And/or redefining scheduling to be closer to the subject of Shehbaz Jaffer’s question.