8

Just now, whenever someone stars any message in the C++ room, the list of starred and pinned messages disappears.

This seems to happen across all browsers for all currently active participants in the C++ room.

None of us is in any other room, so we don't know whether this is all across chat.stackoverflow.com.

1 Answer 1

7

For some reason (yet to be determined) the clock on the database server was ~20 minutes off. Since the sorting of the starred messages is based on the hacker news hotness algorithm, which as a factor includes the message age raised to a fractional power, to be precise:

(age in minutes + 2) ^ 1.5

the database threw a floating point error when the message had a "negative age" due to the clock being wrong (raising to a non-integer power only works for non-negative bases).

1
  • 2
    Hey! Keep your math nonsense off my meta. Unicorns here, numbers there May 10, 2011 at 3:37

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .