TheCapn

My wife had issues with her Pixel 6 Pro almost immediately after delivery. It was stuttering randomly doing anything. My rough diagnosis after watching it/replicating it was hardware issue there was no doubt in my mind.

Google's help though? Basically wanted us to engage them in some sort of circus over a device 3 days old. We just straight up returned it and ordered a new one which has worked great. Google wouldn't even issue a straight replacement through their tech support and we did a Return + Purchase to get around their hoops they were trying to get us to jump through.

As all things with Google: they need to actually fix their user support. Even as paying customers of theirs they passed our concerns off and treated us like idiots. I've been using Google's phones since their Nexus line but that experience has made it so I'll be looking elsewhere when replacing my 6 in a year or two.

Can I ask what you drive?

There's a 3rd cost that you're sorta glossing over. The work you're doing (and the speed you're capable of doing it in) means you've had a non-negligible amount of experience. Depending on how fickle we're going to get, there's 4th costs of the tools you own allowing you to do that work. Perhaps other costs for your living situation allowing you to have a place to do such tasks.

I do my own maintenance work too. But I think it's foolish to gloss over those aspects of the work. They don't come for free.

There's something else odd going on. I think the easiest answer is the company is just poorly run but considering everything we've seen from both sides of the issue:

- Reddit believes costs to maintain their API are on the level of charging 3rd party apps upwards of $20MM each. A small handful of 3rd party apps between iOS/Android would be netting them $100MM annually? Does it really cost them that much to run the API? There's a lot of questions regarding those figures by themselves

- Reluctance to come up with alternative offerings. If this is about 3rd party apps not serving ads, why is the most obvious solution not just "3rd party app usage must be through premium accounts"?

- An absolute refusal to recognize how their site operates and the value of the free labour given to them through moderation and content generation. This one is where I'm most in the dark. They must've run the metrics to see that even if losing a sizable portion of the 3rd party users they won't be in a bad place. I'm assuming they're prepared to rework their moderation structure in its entirety? But at the same time, they seem unable to devlop/publish meaningful features that have been requested by those who know the site best

My gut reaction is the IPO is coming. They want short term numbers bump to justify these actions and damn the long term. A mindset of solve the immediate problem, ignore the rest and figure it out later. Most people see this as a bad strategy, they seem to believe in it...but have they had a good track record to date showing they're capable of making these measured decisions? I think not.

It's interesting to watch & experience at least.

I think one looking for alternatives needs to understand what they're hoping to gain from other resources.

If you want low effort jokes, or memes, the most likely outcome is you're going to migrate to where the most people are. Similar to how some subreddits overtook others in popularity, there'll be a federated instance that "wins". We're sort of in a new frontiers phase where people are scrambling to find new homes and there'll be a lot of duplication until winners and losers are settled.

But in the end, if good memes come out of the most populous place. Reddit will probably just simply be the best you have. Anything else will be second rate. Perhaps 'the best' will make its rounds through all sites as reposts just as 9Gag stuff and Imgur stuff finds its way to Reddit or Twitter, or TikTok.

But back to the main point. Lemmy/kbin/etc likely will never be reddit. I'm okay with that because I found most value in smaller niche communities (similar to how HackerNews scratches an itch that Reddit never could). I think there'll be plenty of opportunity to drop my reddit habits as I find moderately active NetSec/Programming/Networking/etc. communities on Lemmy. I'll keep Imgur for lazy image humor, and probably nod to reddit for catching the beat on my local community/provincial subs.

I still see it perhaps as a positive for myself. Loosening my Reddit addiction will be healthy long term. I'll be forced to make decisions on what topics matter to me and how I'll consume them instead of blindly marching through reddit on another doomscroll because it was convenient.

Blogs are parallel to research papers in a sense. They're useless without peer review unless you're already intimately familiar with the source material and able to critically evaluate the contents.

So Blogs are more useful when they're aggregated through a site like Reddit, where users have already done the vetting on whether the linked page is valuable. Reddit comments are invaluable to pages by adding additional context. Noting when the content has become dated or inaccurate due to external changes, etc. Sites like Brian Kreb's blog are the exception as the author is well known and respected. But the general blogs? It takes time to earn that community respect.

Then beyond that, how often have you gone on the hunt for something obscure only to run across 3 or more blog pages which look entirely unique, but have the exact same article pasted to them? It isn't that the contents are bad/wrong/inaccurate, but rather who do you trust? How much effort are you going to put in to finding which blog was the original, written by the expert and which ones are bots copying the info?

I don't think many people have much of an issue with it at the base level. Creating threads to drive engagement on hypothetical issues, made up humor/ragebait stories, etc. are pretty harmless in itself.

But when the actions are done in an attempt to trick individuals weighing financial incentives? That becomes much more murky. Had they bootstrapped these communities prior to the IPO filing? Fine. After the spotlight is on them to prove organic growth for the IPO? Murky.

That goes for practically any low-barrier-to-entry common interest topic.

Reddit lives and dies by the moderation. Communities with very strict moderation often get a lot of flack for not allowing the low effort drivel. Communities that "let the votes decide" are overrun with low effort memes, waves of "DAE <super common opinion>?" and repost after repost. Often times to have a truly unique and useful experience with the site you need to manage your own content moderation with blocks/filters/etc. This is why there's a lot of inertia to the 3rd party apps and plugins we use, because seeing those as on the chopping block means we're going back to a wild forest of low effort dredge.

If Reddit Is Fun, RES, or old. gets killed off I'm going to leave the site. It will absolutely be difficult, but it will be for the best. I avoid certain subs that are massively popular because they mostly play on the ragebait engagement or outright ignore core issues solved by the moderation. Having that put back to the forefront of my experience will feel like re-opening Facebook or signing up for Twitter. No thanks.

I have a friend who basically kickstarted his entire career by boosting posts on Reddit with bots he ran. I won't knock his talent, he's a brilliant engineer, but I 100% believe he's gotten where his is in life because he knows how to play the game properly. Heck, getting his indie business off the ground is only one of several examples he's admitted to me of using Tor networks and bots to boost his ranking in competitions or sites like reddit/twitter/etc.

3:13! I had some good chuckles at finding "Unselect All" or "Select all Bows". Birthdates not matching on the one form got me too

>Wouldn’t it be easier to regulate the quality of software used in critical products?

Sure, but who is responsible/accountable?

Often times I bring this topic up to have a bunch of people looking for gotchas in my overly broad wishful thinking. I don't want Engineers to be a requirement to work in software as a whole. I don't even think being an "Engineer" makes you better in any functional way than your peers. But I do believe in ideas of accountability, responsibility, ownership, and all the legalese involved with taking that seriously.

If the software is holding people's personal info, say to the point where a leak would constitute real risk, I want a Software Engineer stamping the security design to show they follow best practices and the company isn't taking shortcuts. If the software is controlling a robot that could maim someone, I want to know that some intern wasn't the one signing off to say its safe.

We aren't there yet. And there's lots of work that needs to be done to get us there. I recognize that. But I want to keep putting the bug in people's ears to have that thought for the years that come as we watch more software glitches cause harm to people, to the environment.

I agree, to an extent.

I find that if I need to be "attentive" then having something going on helps. For me it is podcasts while driving. Having nothing noise my mind tends to wander which isn't always ideal because my focus should still be on the road despite engaging my brain with passive knowledge.

But for the rest of your comments? I agree wholeheartedly. I used to have the headphones in walking dogs, listening to podcasts, but I've stopped doing that and find the time outside far more relaxing, because that is time I should let my mind wander and venture. At work? Music to fill the voids, but I mute it if I'm trying to roll over some sort of problem in my head. Other strategies such as leaving the desk or using physical mediums (writing / sketching problems in notebooks) help too, but that's not really where we're at in this discussion.

Ultimately I think people need to just be aware that how they troubleshoot and relax won't be the same as another's. But it takes discomfort and experimentation to find what works for you too. Try podcasts where you would use music. Try the opposite. Try nothing where you would try something. Find what helps, and always be willing to re-test with new/old atmospheres.

So I don't work in automotive domain, but I work in Controls Engineering. Basically everything you just said relates to my work as well, and based on tidbits of anecdotal info I've picked up through various technical forums it sounds like automotive & controls are quite similar in that regard.

The dirty truth is often times these domains were designed and chiefly operated by non-software people. Not to say a mechanical engineer or electrical engineer can't program, it's just that their focus is on their work, and the software is but a tool to accomplish those means. So the world of software has leapfrogged over PLC and automotive design and gone to run laps around it several times since the 90s. It's only in say the last 5 years or so that I've seen a cultural shift in controls towards embracing the modern realities of software, networking, security, version control, databases, etc.etc.etc.

I'm not going to go too much further into this, but this is why Software Engineering as a regulated profession is going to be a necessity as much as civil engineering or electrical engineering has been. The digital world is just too vast and complex now with so many pitfalls for those who only ride the edges can handle. And people's lives are starting to matter. It is no longer safe to treat security as secondary with an "oopsy" anymore. We don't tolerate bridge collapse or electrical design that can destroy livelihoods, why do we still tolerate hacks governing data and safety of public?

I've only ever had to hire one person to work beneath me, but that sounds like how I ran the interview.

We were hiring students for a temp position. We're a Controls Engineering company, but my department is dealing with more traditional languages for supporting applications and needed extra help for a bigger project. I know the tech we use isn't standard in the university so the interview was asking students about how they approached their major projects and their methodology for learning new tools/languages.

The first guy who straight up said "I already know enough of C++ and Java, I suppose I'd just google how to do x in c# and branch from there" got the job. Because...yeah, that's about it. We talked about a 4th year project and what his responsibilities in the team where, problems faced, solutions found, etc.

My friend who got me my current job once told me about how he got into the Games industry. Back in the university days of applying to Coop positions he had a day with 2 interviews back to back. While he bombed the first interview, he had some excellent interviewers who were happy to show him where he did poorly and guide him through the problems to the correct answers. On the second interview, they used the same questions and he got the job.

Now? He runs his own studio. After spending ~10 years in various positions at AAA and Indie studios he's out doing it on his own, and best as I can tell he's doing a damn good job of it. I won't doxx him, but he's got his name under several highly regarded releases.

Am I conflicted with the idea of cheating interviews? Perhaps a bit. But knowing a brilliant mind like him just needed the guidance to get through a terrible practice to show his true talent? I'm happy he was fortunate to be able to ""cheat"" in the way he did. I wish him all the best.

My company still maintains a VB6 program that we just keep that IDE alive in an XP VM. I can attest that the VB6 applications will work on Win10 & Win11 with only minimal effort to get the required libraries so I would not be shocked to learn the IDE works too

The seals I refer to are wires.

The screws securing the sensitive parts of the terminal have holes through them where you thread the seal through several of them. Basically it is impossible to loosen the screws without breaking the seal. The entire device is a metal enclosure so the only way in is through the screws.

Tamper proof seals?

In my line of work we use Scale Indicators that are calibrated by Weights & Measures Canada. Once the audit is completed the unit is sealed with a destructible seal and record of inspection is recorded. If that seal is ever tampered with by someone not authorized to do so there are big fines.

So yeah, it would be easy for us to snap those seals and drop custom programs into the indicators all day every day. There's also stupid-obvious methods to prevent tampering.

I've always found the complaints about audio weird. It almost seems like something that plagues consoles or low end hardware? I only say this because I'm a day 1 player of Apex and can maybe think of a half dozen that audio has failed me, but for known things like the super quiet Octane pad landings having no audio or prior to Ashe's ultimate being made louder. But if you go to the Apex subreddit, especially daily threads there are dozens of users complaining about it as though it is a pervasive issue that everyone should care about. Is it random, but I've been lucky? Is it poor hardware? Is it only on consoles?

Depending on how the hospital operates and whether there is a reason to be concerned some pediatric units will allow you to do the introduction on-unit. I'm sure things can change day to day, but that's the case for the hospital my wife works at, and is what we were advised to do when we're going to attempt some food re-introductions in a few months for our child.

Both things you say are correct. And as far as I've seen on most recent studies it is indeed related to some sort of deficiency in the signaling from the brain to "wake up" when oxygen is low, with suggestion that there's a genetic component to it (sorry no link to the study I saw).

Basically the SIDS risk as understood currently is like you said: obstruction getting in the way, baby not waking...bad outcomes. Co-sleeping with the parents increase risk by bringing pillows, blankets, themselves into the bed to add obstacles or opportunities for the infant to suffocate.

It's a highly nuanced topic. In my parent's day it was common for babies to be put to sleep on their stomach whereas now the advise is to back sleep even though there's increased risk for flat head, but lower risk for SIDS. Once the kid is able to turn themselves it becomes much more simple as they'll move around throughout the night so back/stomach becomes a non-issue once they reach that age.

Humoring your ridiculous theory.

1) Buttons themselves have on the order of hundreds of thousands to millions of presses expected before any form of failure could begin to be expected. OPs story of a new lift failing would not even come close with a person standing there 24/7 mashing the button

2) A button failing would be just that: a failed button. Not an entirely failed control system. One would assume the button to be a Normally-Open activation, such that continuity in the circuit is achieved when the button press occurs so a failed button would look to be like a button that hasn't been presssed anyway. I'd be happy to be corrected on this, but a Normally Closed button is often only really used for safety sake where a break in the line, loss of voltage, or a button press are all treated equally by the control system.

As far as I can recall, the last time I read a study on the subject the conclusion was that artificial sweeteners do have an affect on gut bacteria, but the study purposely did not state whether the change is of any actual harm/benefit.

The discussion on the study was here on HackerNews and as I recall most people agreed with the methodology and outcomes. What is problematic is people reading conclusions into the study that were never there: that the change was harmful.

First time? Basically any not-directly-IT domain gets talked about this way. Hell, even times where topics like Health and Nutrition come up you find a lot of wildly inaccurate statements being made here.

I think the problem is too many people see themselves as the type of generalist Intellectual when they shouldn't.

Ovens with a probe: is my roast at temperature yet?

Of all appliances in my kitchen the oven makes the most sense to have network features. Fridge perhaps a distant second, and that's only because I really wish I knew my compressor had failed and could've rescued the $350+ of groceries that spoiled if something had alerted me to the temp rising while the compressor was still attempting to run.

Well, to make the analogy work you'd be running circles around flashlight guy while they throw at him. Maybe you're in the crossfire, maybe not.

But the other part that I think the original OP is sort of amazed at is that we're unable to detect these through some sort of automated system more accurately. It isn't fair to compare our space/vision capabilities to the eyesight of a person alone. Do we not have satellites or installations doing ""short range"" scanning with radio/laser/something-else-I-am-not-an-astronomer-don't-hate-me ? How come it was an amateur picking this up so close to the specific date?

Industrial Controls / Instrumentation Tech

Biggest downside is the field environments you can find yourself in. Depending on your industry you can be in some horribly smelly/disgusting facilities or dangling off catwalk way above ground trying to adjust calibration on some silly sensor. There's good ones though too.

I'm a Software Eng in the industry so I don't ever really have much for field duty, but I work with several coworkers who are able to get their hands dirty when we're doing a site install: wiring panels, tracing faults, installing/adjusting sensors.

But talking about pay scale is a bit iffy based on where you're at now. I don't make FAANG wages doing what I do, but I do make somewhere in the 80th+ percentile for my geographical location (Saskatchewan) so its all relative

Also 10/10 recommendation. I am assuming we have the same machine. It's been a stellar coffee machine for about 8 years now. My sister took our father's when he passed (same model) and it has been strong for 10+ years.

Yep. I had an issue with Apex Legends and after the support channel failed me I attempted to engage with Respawn users on Reddit/Twitter when my post got 5 upvotes. Ignored on all accounts.

It feels criminal to have some automated system remove your access to a paid application with no recourse, but that's modern Customer Service it seems.

>Once you know the current code words for the gender, type of slave, and job, you can even use Google to search and find open sites.

Well, don't hold back. Open a window for us into that realm. If it was that "open" would it not be on the radar of agencies combating the human trafficing?

For me the first time we dabbled with SQL was in a 3rd year Software Engineering course where the focus of the class was a single group project that we managed among ourselves by splitting tasks, conducting code reviews and handling the build and release in teams.

I recall one group doing the project login which went much along the lines of what the OP's article touched on. Their code was esseentially

    var success = false
    var query = SELECT * FROM users
    while query.read
    {
      if query(user) == input_user && query(password) == input_pass
      {
        success = true
      }
    }

Yes. They selected the entire user table.

Yes. They iterated over the entire result (even if first returned result was valid)

Yes. That was "shipped" for the project

No. My complaints notion they should be leveraging the database for all the things they're doing wrong were ignored. It was performant! Look! It logs in instantly! YEah, because there's 8 users on the database for this project, what about when it ""ships"" and there's 100,000? More?

---

My first real job dealing with a database wasn't much better. We were using a MS Access database with no normalized data. Our client's primary transaction data was across a table with 70 some columns, many of which were often duplicated values in some form or utilizing very bad practices. Since joining this company I've sped up queries in almost immeasurable ways and done things my older coworkers initially derided because they couldn't understand the syntax.

TL;DR SQL, for some stupid reason, is still treated as second class to core langauges and it is a god damn shame