Cap'n Refsmmat

Hmm, strange. The admin panel does say the software is currently "Rebuilding forums counts", so it may need to recalculate a bunch of statistics. We can check again when it's done and see if things are working then.

As you can see, we've re-emerged from our downtime on a new hosting service and on the latest version of our Invision forum software. There will undoubtedly be some kinks to work out from the upgrade. One notable change: you must now log in with your email address, not your username. We'll be checking out the settings and adjusting to the new version, but let us know if you spot any problems.

SFN will be read-only starting tonight (April 6), late in the evening US time, for migration early Monday morning. Once the migration is complete we will need to update our DNS records, so it may take your computer an hour or two to switch to the new host. I expect the site will be available and open by Monday evening US time, and probably sooner if all goes well. The migration will also upgrade us to version 5 of the forum software, so expect things to look a little different. We'll try to iron out any kinks over the following weeks.

We're getting ready to make the move, and the migration may be as soon as next week (the week of April 6). This will involve several hours of downtime, probably during the morning hours US/UK time. I'll update as soon as I know the exact time. iNow, regarding ads, part of the switch also involves moving ad accounts. You may notice there are no ads at all right now because we have to get re-approved for Google ads. If that doesn't work, we'll switch to another revenue source... incidentally, if anyone would be willing to pay, say, $5/mo to help fund our hosting, we may be able to set that up after we migrate.

Some of the key provisions only take effect in the coming weeks, which is why it becomes important now. We're looking into a hosting service provided by Invision, who make the forum software we use. They have a specialized service for forums, and if it proves suitable, we'll use that for the ease of transition.

I asked our benevolent overlord Dave about the ad settings, and apparently Google AdSense enabled "vignette" ads without asking us. He's turned them off now. Hopefully that's the end of the issue and they don't find another more irritating thing to turn on.

I just had some fun writing a SQL query of the forum database, and it appears you have a PM conversation from February 2021 titled "C-19", and the system thinks it has unread posts. Why it's notifying you about them now I have no idea, but it's a real conversation. This link should take you to it: https://www.scienceforums.net/messenger/70769/ For my future reference, here's the query: SELECT msg_author_id, msg_topic_id, from_unixtime(msg_date), map_has_unread, msg_post, mt_title FROM `core_message_posts` LEFT JOIN `core_message_topics` ON msg_topic_id = mt_id LEFT JOIN `core_message_topic_user_map` ON mt_id = map_topic_id WHERE map_user_id = 74263 ORDER BY msg_date DESC;

Yes, we use Let's Encrypt and automatically renew the certificate periodically. I'm not sure why you got an error -- if it happens again, can you record the exact error it shows you, and any details it might hide behind an Advanced or Show More button? I wouldn't disable certificate errors globally, as that's a serious security issue. We try to keep SFN's certificate updated (since it's free), so if there's a problem, we should fix it.

I suspect neither of these is done by the forum software, but by your web browser's form autofill features. Browsers keep track of the form fields they have filled out in the past and "helpfully" show a drop-down with the previous values you've used when you see a similar form again. For example, here's Firefox's documentation on it: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/control-whether-firefox-automatically-fills-forms

Unfortunately the forum software doesn't have a way to set up keyword filters, though possibly someone has written a plugin that can do that. What's frustrating is that the software does have a built-in anti-spam service, which sends spam reports to the makers. If someone has spammed on a different site using the same software, they'd be blocked on registration here. But apparently that system is not keeping up with the flood either.

I've reviewed the access logs for some spambot registrations, and they make requests that were initiated by JavaScript. (For example, the registration form uses JavaScript to ask the server if your username is available.) I suspect these are human-assisted spambots, where someone is paid a few cents per registration to complete the CAPTCHA and sign up. What browser are you using on Windows XP? Microsoft discontinued support and updates nine years ago, Firefox stopped providing updates for XP in 2017, and Chrome did so in 2016 or earlier. Are you just using IE, or something else?

We have one (using Google's reCAPTCHA) already. Evidently a number of spammers really do work manually (perhaps by paying people a few cents to click the button) or have a way of defeating the CAPTCHA. We also limit new members to 5 posts in the first day, but of course a few people making 5 spam posts is already a lot of spam in a day. I've previously tried adding custom questions to the registration forum, like asking about a well-known science fact, and spammers get right through those too. I think spam people are willing to put in quite a bit of work, like keeping a database of all the questions they're asked on registration forms and the right answers to them.

I guess the perverse case would be if two threads are merged, and then you get numbers appearing repeatedly. But posts are assigned a unique number that could be shown; your post is #1230665, for instance. It'd be possible to list those, but since they're sequential across the entire forum, they're a little less convenient in a thread. At least they're in increasing order and don't change. I think someone in the thread I linked suggested showing those numbers, which I think is possible.

It appears the official answer is no: Invision does not support numbering posts within threads. Any numbering wouldn't be stable, because if a post is deleted or a thread is split, the posts change number. (Also, moderators can see deleted posts and normal members can't; would you show them a different numbering?) The official recommendation is to use the "share" button (under the three dots at the top right of a post), or to copy the post permalink at the top of each post (the link for the text "Posted Thursday at ...")

Yes, I'm sure it's possible to misconfigure Let's Encrypt, but we set it up several years ago and sorted out the issues then, so I'm not too worried about a failure every time it comes up for renewal.

We've always done (1); we're trying to do (2). It's renewed automatically through Let's Encrypt, so at least we don't have to worry about that.

Yes, that's it. It's something of a tradition here at SFN: Every few years, we forget to renew the domain name on time, and the site goes down for a day or two while we try to reach the person with the login. I'm trying to transfer the domain so that's not a problem in the future, and hopefully this time we actually achieve it, unlike all the other past times where we said we'd do it and then didn't get around to it.

If you see this again, could you share a screenshot of the ad? I don't think we changed any ad settings, so we should check that nothing suspicious is happening.

What kinds of photos would you like to use it for?

You want the Code button in the toolbar, represented as a pair of angle brackets <>. It looks like this: foobar baz bin sheep You can select whether to have it syntax highlighted for a particular programming language, or just displayed plain.

Wow, seven years since I started this thread and it's still alive. Agreed, this book is excellent, along with its sequel Dark Sun about the hydrogen bomb. Brilliantly written. Admittedly my own reading has started to lean towards history instead of science. Some interesting science books I've read in the past few years: Primates and Philosophers, by Frans de Waal and others, in the form of an extended essay by de Waal and responses to his points. de Waal is a primatologist, and the book is about the origins of moral behavior in humans, with de Waal pointing out basic elements of sympathy and empathy visible in the great apes, and the respondents entering extended argument about to what extent this suggests human morality is entirely evolved instead of invented. The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker. Pinker is probably the best scientist I've read at writing an extended and well-researched argument. Again on the theme of morality, and why violence has declined over the centuries. The SFN crowd may also enjoy these less sciency books: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hoftsadter. Written in 1964, giving a long history of anti-intellectual ideas (including anti-science ideas) in the United States since its colonization. Broken up into discussions of religion (including more history of American religion than I had ever encountered before), politics, culture, and education, and remarkably even-handed for a book on this subject. (It doesn't consist simply of a bunch of snark about what uncultured morons Americans are.) Double Star, by Robert Heinlein. A fun sci-fi story about an actor hired to double for the solar system's most prominent politician, unexpectedly finding himself in deeper than he expected. Amusing to see the 1950s vision of the future: spacecraft easily fly to Mars, but government records have to be kept on microfilm on the Moon -- no Internet or advanced computers.

I'm attempting to read Darrell Huff's unpublished manuscript How to Lie with Smoking Statistics, commissioned by the tobacco industry in the 60s to respond to the claim that smoking causes cancer. (Huff more famously wrote How to Lie with Statistics, probably the most popular statistics book ever written.) I managed to dig up most of the unpublished chapters but I'm trying to figure out why it wasn't published; as far as I can tell, he was ready to sign a contract and then nothing happened.

Since the disappearance, various commercial satellite imagery providers have started searching sections of the ocean. But it's pretty damn big. There's a website where you can view the images and tag anything interesting you spot: http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/mh370_indian_ocean Many people have already looked, but there's plenty of ocean to scan.

Yeah; when a guy hijacked a FedEx flight to commit suicide, he tried to disable the cockpit voice recorder before takeoff by flipping the circuit breaker. The pilots noticed and turned it back on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705

I do have an option to switch the up-down reputation system to a simple "Like" button.