Oh god, the comments I put in the code, explaining what I was doing and why, and how to test that the product had been fixed before changing my code, because I just knew some junior codebro was going to come in and think, “I should clean this code up!” and they’d have no idea why it wasn’t working anymore …
It rhymed with Smoracle. Which is really ironic because you’d think that’s the ONE company that would (a) understand how to write a SQL statement, and (b) get really effing concerned when a simple database query broke their product.
I can understand if the reporter is new, or unknown, maybe submitting a lot of videos at once. The guy from the article is a vulnerability expert that’s been working in that role at Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute’s CERT Coordination Center since 2004. I think he gets a pass on the “submitting fake reports for internet clout” front.
Years ago, I was de facto tech lead on a project. Every time a weird issue came up with the closed-system third-party development environment we were using, it fell to me to figure out what was causing it and file a bug report. It took time to figure out what was going on, narrow down the possibilities, get it to reliably reproduce, then word the bug report so that it was clear what the issue was - and this was on top of my regular duties.
I remember figuring out that if your SQL statement was 683 characters long, you were fine, but if it was any longer than that, the program would crash. I filed a bug report saying exactly that and giving the error message that got generated.
They came back and said they didn’t understand the bug report or how to reproduce it. I said, “Write a 683-character SQL statement. The program will run. Add one random space-character anywhere; the program will crash.” As far as I was concerned, this wasn’t my problem, and I was fully tired of finding and reporting bugs on their shitty platform (our customer had locked us into it).
They came whining back, "Oh, but that’s soooo haaarddd … " I’m like, “It’s not. Just write SELECT X, X, X [etc] until you have 683 characters,” (especially true because I had no idea what their database structure looked like) but they kept whining. Eventually they just came straight-out and said, “We need you to send us the entire failing module [because we can’t be arsed to do our own job, tyvm].”
My manager talked me down from the email I wanted to send back and told me to just strip everything else out. Which I did, but it took me like a day and a half to strip it back to something that had enough to reproduce the error without giving things away. I sent them the 683-character version and said, “Run this. Then add a random space anywhere in the SQL statement and it’ll die. This is your job and you’re not even my company, you figure it out from here.”
Then they had the nerve to come whining back, “Oh, we don’t understand what to add to the SQL statement or whe-ere. Pweas pweas pweas send us a non-working copy as well!” I’m like, ADD. A. SPACE. ANYWHERE." We went through a couple rounds of that, then my manager told me to add the space and send it to them so they (the people who developed this entire platform we were working on) could figure out the issue.
Steaming, I sent the second file. Since I had now done their entire diagnose-and-reproduce job for them, they graciously consented to open up a bug report.
We found multiple bugs like this. If you press the Save button it works fine but if you use Ctl-S it sometimes crashed [why are you using two separate Save routines?!?!]. They didn’t left-pad the time call to the operating system (which they said they did), so any program run before 10am had a chance of randomly crashing - that kind of thing. Probably half my overtime was figuring out their bugs so my developers could actually write code.
ISTG, after all the repeated time, stress and effort their shitty product cost me, if they’d insisted “Oh, we can’t do anything without a video showing us how to do our effing job” - well, they’d have been lucky to get a 15-minute troll video because I’d’ve vented two years of anger and frustration with their product and their customer “support” into that video.
Additional question, if I may? I joined kbin and was told to use boost instead of upvote (though both buttons were there). I’m now on mbin [fedia and melroy, RIP kbin] and have the same boost and upvote buttons available. Am I supposed to boost or upvote on mbin?
It’s also spring, so if the ground thaws and drains quickly, he can launch another offensive and only “get serious” about a ceasefire next fall.
I’d suggest that, if there’s a topic over on reddit that has topics you’re interested in, try starting a thread over here on that topic, even if the community here is “dead”. Because “dead” communities can be resurrected, they just need activity. Asking a question on a topic is activity; posting an answer to the question (even if it’s your own question and you had to go to reddit for the answer) is activity and provides a resource here for other people to use. And if it’s something you found out on your own but it’s not new, try posting a YSK or TIL in the appropriate local community. You may not get replies, but we’re not going to become a fully viable alternative unless people contribute little bits where they can.
Why would you expect an aggregator-and-comment site bought and rebranded by reddit-cofounder O’Hanian to end up significantly different than his other aggregator-and-comment site?
I checked the version on my Brother printer, and it’s something like 1.4; the reported issues start around 1.6 or something. I’ve made sure it doesn’t have access to the internet and that auto-updates are also disabled; hopefully the printer will continue working on it’s own. I’ve also downloaded the drivers and software for every o/s the printer works with, so that I’ll hopefully have a non-nerfed version of the computer software for whenever I end up having to upgrade my computer.
They have options to add in like birdsong and wind chimes to your personalized mix. The idea isn’t necessarily to drown out the noise you’re hearing, it’s too make the noise more acceptable.
Like loud diesel trucks drive me nuts. But I toss on a thunderstorm, maybe a bit of purring cat, and I can ignore them.
Have you tried a white noise generator for your sleeping issues? There are several early available, I happen to use TMSoft’s White Noise. It has a lot of options for sound. I use a mix of pink noise for overall masking, heavy rain to make the pink noise more palatable than a plain hum, and an extreme thunderstorm - adding the extra thunder helps me sleep through bass sounds like vacuum cleaners and garbage trucks.
Or, y’know, he could hire 50% more programmers / contractors, instead of overworking his current staff
For the lathe-end stubs, are they big enough to glue together for either bottle stoppers or maybe even small egg kaleidoscopes (with layers going up instead side-to-side)?
For the long ones, can any of them be used as pen blanks? Either top and bottom as separate pieces, or a mini-pen like this or this?
I’ve also seen where they trimmed down the outside of a pen blank like it was a pen (it had a top and bottom piece joined by metal), but didn’t drill out the center. Instead, they drilled a small hole into the top and placed a soft alligator clip into the hole. It’s to hold the end of a bracelet while you clasp the ends together.
I do recognize that each of these requires sourcing the metal, glass, etc, bits needed to complete the project, but these are the things that I thought of.