User talk:Scs/Archive/2015

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Ref desk -- removing unused date headers

Hey Scs! Thanks for all the work you do keeping the Reference Desk archives running.

The math reference desk will occasionally go a few days without a new question. Is it OK for me to removed unused date headers, like this, or will that break your bot or make more work for you? -- ToE 15:58, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. That's no problem; it's the right thing to do. (Changes in archiving policies have meant that those orphan headings are somewhat more likely to occur now; the bot and I don't do as good a job of removing them as we used to.) —Steve Summit (talk) 19:38, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Yikes!

[This discussion refers to this RD/C thread.]

The day that Steve Summit learns something from me is the day I have to spend some time meditating on how far I've come... I'll surely bike into my day-job, stare blankly at the open terminals and the flashing cursors that avail themselves to every esoteric bit of hackery inside of today's popular computer-toys; and I will have to wonder... how have I gotten here? I still remember struggling to install Borland Turbo C++ off of a floppy and onto my PS/2,... trying to figure out what magic those "programmers" did to create the funny characters in the .exe files... If I could only learn what keys to press, I could make my own games ....

Thank you, sir.

Nimur (talk) 16:36, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

When you can snatch the pebble from my hand... now where did it go?

When you can snatch the pebble from my hand... you give me that back.

When you can snatch the pebble from my hand...

—Steve Summit (talk) 05:28, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

You have a very clear way of putting things. EEng (talk) 16:33, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I try, sometimes I succeed. (And, I'm pretty sure you got this, but it wasn't at all personal when I said "I have not reviewed EEng's actions; he may be a real jerk". You just might also be a perfectly fine individual. :-) ) —Steve Summit (talk) 21:25, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

I understood perfectly. Perhaps you'd like to join my glittering salon of talk-page stalkers at The Most Fun Place in the Saddest Place on Earth. EEng (talk) 01:23, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, now, that there user page is a bit of a two-edged sword, because skimming it I find you have some affiliation with or affinity for what my freshman handbook called the "red-brick liberal arts school both up Mass Ave and up Chuck river", and how do you know I'm not still simmering over the misnaming of That Bridge? (Lucky for you I'm not; I subscribe to the theory that after taking a look at the plans and the shaky design, the Engineers didn't want their name on it anyway.)

But on the other hand, I find that some of the allegedly "clear words" of mine you were presumably talking about are sitting there on your page now, and how can I object to the flattery of citation? :-)

The funny thing is that, when I wrote that, I was utterly unaware of the earlier imbroglio that Softlavender's neighboring citation looks to be a decent summary of. And you even got a block out of it! I'm somewhat envious.

It is indeed a very old story. I was reminded of a rather overwrought parable I once wrote as part of an old RfC, musing among other things at the sometimes glaring asymmetry of skinnedness expectations between inferior and superior editors: when a new or non-admin editor complains about what he perceives as personal attacks by another user, he's often told to get a thicker skin, but when that same editor gets testy about the way he's treated by senior editors or admins, suddenly it is a WP:PA on his part, and he's liable to get blocked for it. (In fairness, I don't get the impression this problem is as bad as it once was.)

But it's scary easy to fall into this sort of trap, a fact that was brought home to me when I realized that I had at first assumed that you were a new, inexperienced user (one who "may well not be here to build an encyclopedia"), based solely on the fact that that was how the superior-seeming admin/editors were treating you. But in fact you've been around about as long as I have.

Anyway, happy editing, and don't let your "edgy and humorous style" get you in too much trouble... —Steve Summit (talk) 23:49, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

In case you're wondering how all this began, it was here that I first ran afoul of a certain breed of editor that runs in packs for mutual defense. This pack dropped in to visit me two or three more times until I got blocked for asking "Why does everything have to look like what some self-satisfied roving enforcers are used to?" BGwhite was one of the editors to which I referred, and he himself made the block, if you can believe it -- he said it was "namecalling". It's this same group of four or five that comes out of the woodwork whenever they smell blood. EEng (talk) 04:48, 9 February 2015 (UTC) P.S. Two of the best courses I ever took were just down the street at the trade school -- #1 Dudley bus and all that.

Coincidentally just today we have a new and excellent example of this behavior -- see this diff [1], and contrast the drop-in editing leading to it with the careful discussion linked from its edit summary. EEng (talk) 21:05, 9 February 2015 (UTC)</> That interaction, amazingly, was resolved amicably -- I judged too harshly. When you get browbeaten over and over by drop-in knowitalls that's what happens to you.

nil desperandum

Re: We just have to continue leading by example. Flood out the noise with the signal (but not throw out the baby with the bathwater). I just can't bother commenting anymore. Ugh. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:25, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Date headers 2

Hi Steve; it looks like the bot had a bit too much green beer and has been slipping on creating date headers at the RefDesk. I've caught us up. Oddly, some were missing one day and some were missing two. I was going to leave a message on the talk page like normal, but threw up in my mouth a bit after seeing that mess. :-P Matt Deres (talk) 14:49, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Matt Deres: It looks as if both Steve and his bot have been offline since the 16th. We'll just have to stick the headers in by hand for now. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:26, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. I've been traveling for the last 36 hours or so, but have resurfaced, and will kick off a normal pass tonight. --Steve Summit (talk) 16:05, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Interesting date header glitch on WP:RDMA

Hey Steve, here is an interesting Scsbot edit. I assume it was brought about by cmglee apparently adding their own date header a bit early followed by me removing a couple of unused ones. I doubt this needs to be addressed, but thought you would enjoy seeing it.

Thanks again for the work you and Scsbot do. -- ToE 08:28, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, there's a neverending series of never-before-seen weird situations that come up from time to time. I'm pleased that the bot tends to get most of them mostly right, at least... —Steve Summit (talk) 13:22, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Village pump proposal: Placement of support and opposition may be misleading

Thanks for participating in the MoS proposal. Regarding your contribution, it might be clearer if you listed your support for action #1 in the "support" section and your opposition to the other actions in the "oppose" section. Otherwise, it looks like you oppose the entire proposal.

As for the content of your opposition, I'd add that we're talking about questions from Wikieditors who are actively seeking information about Wikipedia's rules and minutiae, not style experts reaching out into the article space to tell others what to do. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:56, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Scsbot

Any idea why your bot today added date headers for tomorrow to the ref desks, help desk, etc., during the 11th hour of the day rather than waiting until tomorrow's arrival? Deor (talk) 20:25, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm traveling and running the bot in an unusual way, and it's having some... issues.

I hadn't noticed that it added dates for tomorrow already -- thanks for pointing that out.

(It ends up being consistent with some of the other mistakes it's making.)

--Steve Summit (talk) 20:42, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Bot not working?

Hey Scs,

The archiving bot has not archived the help desk for a few days now. I was going to do it manually but I wanted to make sure I wouldn't be stepping on any robot toes before I did it. Thanks! --Stabila711 (talk) 03:09, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

If you haven't started, no need -- the bot's running now! —Steve Summit (talk) 03:46, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! I didn't start. I didn't know if there were just triggers that weren't being flipped or if the bot was actually offline. I didn't want to just start moving things in case that would have caused further errors. I know how finicky certain scripts can get and I didn't want to cause more harm than good. --Stabila711 (talk) 03:50, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

No worries. The bot is only semiautomated, and I was away last night so didn't kick it off. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:00, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

RD archiving

Hey Steve! Is this just the result of running the bot to archive one date (14 October) when there is still an earlier date section (October 12) in place? Cheers! -- ToE 03:34, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

I think (but I have not yet positively confirmed) that it means that:

1. there was some October 12 content somehow added after October 12 was first archived, and/or some October 12 content that was not contiguous with the "main" group of October 12 content that was initially archived; and
2. there was no October 13 content at all; such that:
3. when the bot archived October 14, it noticed the two "orphaned" October 12 questions and scooped them up, too.

—Steve Summit (talk) 22:37, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Please respond to my comment

Can you please reply to my comment at this place. Thank you! --74.130.133.1 (talk) 22:54, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

by the way

I complemented you there. please reply. --74.130.133.1 (talk) 00:19, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Mathematics reference desk archiving delay request

Hey Steve! Since WP:RDMA#October 23 contains a section -- WP:RDMA#5 millionth article -- on the predicted time of the 5 millionth English Wikipedia article, could you please hold off archiving that date of the Math desk until after this coming weekend when the event should occur. Archiving WP:RDMA#October 21 on schedule would be fine, and there is little enough activity on RDMA currently that holding off on Oct 23 shouldn't cause any problems. Cheers! -- ToE 14:05, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Good idea! But -- mind like a steel sieve -- I'm unlikely to remember. So I've temporarily taken Mathematics out of the script. But I'm equally unlikely to remember to put it back in after the 5e6th article arrives, so you'll probably have to remind me then. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:12, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Will do. -- ToE 15:22, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

So I guess the Saturday Sunday prediction was correct. And lookit that! Commemorated in red in the icon in the upper-left corner of the page and everything.

(Okay to archive the thread tonight?) —Steve Summit (talk) 14:08, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the indulgence. -- ToE 13:00, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Me 'n' Jorge, we're such nice guys. :-) Steve Summit (talk) 14:58, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Ref desk Computing leap seconds

In response to the systems that handle leap seconds query let me offer this web page http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/right+gps.html and its accompanying paper http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/AAS_11-681_AllenPRE.pdf and its accompanying slides http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/AAS_11-681_AllenPPT.pdf

All of that is from a pair of symposiums aimed at considering and exploring the problems, see http://futureofutc.org/ as the gateway to both of those.

Yes, it violates POSIX, but POSIX is self-inconsistent if it uses a time scale that has leap seconds. A big point of that paper is that computers do not want to use mean solar days, they want to use "atomic days" and to let the mean solar aspect be part of timezone/localization outside the kernel. Doing this is not standard and requires effort, but I know that manufacturers of GPS-based NTP servers have provided the ability to emit GPS or TAI rather than UTC specifically because customers are using a scheme like this. There are many caveats, and anyone doing this is violating at least one standard, and they tend not to publish white papers talking about how they are violating standards.

Note that this week's news from ITU-R WRC-15 says leap seconds will continue at least through 2023, see https://pairlist6.pair.net/pipermail/leapsecs/2015-November/006105.html so it remains important to be prepared for them to keep happening. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Steven L Allen (talk • contribs) 20:02, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Feel free to move this to refdesk and improve along the journey to there.Steven L Allen (talk) 20:25, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Typo?

Hi Steve! I suspect it should be "...different ways of using..." here. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:11, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

No, I meant that! See, many people use POP/IMAP on even-numbered days, and webmail on odd days...

(Thanks.) —Steve Summit (talk) 15:12, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, I agree in principle, but "completely different days" is not possible on a planet with different time zones ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:07, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Heh. And don't try to figure out the elapsed time of the encryption step, if leap seconds might/might not be involved... —Steve Summit (talk) 20:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Representation of numbers in binary

Could you tell what's the value of 10₂^11₂?I'm confused on whether should we convert it to decimal or should we do it in binary itself to calculate the value.

JUSTIN JOHNS (talk) 06:35, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

@JUSTIN JOHNS: If you can calculate in binary you don't have to transform the notation to decimal. By the definition a natural power is a repeated multiplication, so:
    ${10_{2}}^{11_{2}}=\underbrace {{10_{2}}\times {10_{2}}\times ...\times {10_{2}}} _{11_{2}{\text{ times}}}={10_{2}}\times {10_{2}}\times {10_{2}}=1000_{2}$
CiaPan (talk) 08:06, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

CiaPan is exactly right. Note well that in CiaPan's explanation, we never converted anything from binary to decimal; everything is worked out in binary.

For comparison, if we wanted to convert everything to decimal and work it out that way, we would have

${10_{2}}={2_{10}}$

${11_{2}}={3_{10}}$

${2_{10}}^{3_{10}}=\underbrace {{2_{10}}\times {2_{10}}\times ...\times {2_{10}}} _{3_{10}{\text{ times}}}={2_{10}}\times {2_{10}}\times {2_{10}}=8_{10}$

(And, hey, CiaPan, thanks for the handy primer on <math>!) —Steve Summit (talk) 16:07, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

It's my pleasure. :) More examples of LaTeX expressions structure available in Help:Displaying a formula, esp. in §Larger expressions. --CiaPan (talk) 06:01, 29 December 2015 (UTC)