bgro

I remember when hate speech was just discovered as a reason to ban people, and mods of major subreddits would find ways to use that either out of protest or complete incompetence to ban people. For example, banning users for disagreeing with a controversial decision because “I hate your take, thus it is hate speech.”

Or the constant other entitled drama like when a soccer subreddit started mass banning people discussing a major game because his team lost.

There’s also just constant nuking of entire threads and locking them with no reason other than a blanket accusatory pinned comment about how “everybody” can’t behave. Nothing better than opening a thread about a picture they took of their dog only to find thousands of deleted comments and a temper tantrum post from some mod. Or multiple pinned spam posts from mods advertising junk in like a 5000 character copy paste spam in every post that just adds to the useless scrolling you have to do to see legitimate content.

- If the answers are so basic and guessable that one can both find and then deal with a printer to commit it to slow-RAM physical legacy memory, then the problem is not with the candidate

- People with such little self awareness that fail to perceive this problem have demonstrated why you don't want to work with them. The problem is not the fact that they were hotfixing answers straight to prod

- This was just a reverse racial discrimination security test. By identifying the non-authenticated user, you both demonstrated exemplary awareness of identity phishing attacks as well as a base standard that 2 people aren't the same based on their protected identity criteria

Actually, I'm pretty sure DVDs and music CDs and games only exist because that was their only option. If you look at what the law is and what they're trying to do, you don't own the rights to the game you buy.

If they could forcefully take it back from you and disable the in game radio because their license expired, they would. And they do, when they can. Same with movies you "buy" instead of renting for money. They can and do just change their licensing and remove it from your account.

Game launchers also do this. If you get banned in 1 game, they can just delete your entire account and all linked services because you're not really buying the game.

You're barely even buying a license to use it. You basically have zero rights other than where technology has limited them.

Anyway, that aside, software shouldn't be your only concern. It has all of the visibility right now, but tech hardware should also be up there. Physical life of tech is currently terrible. An unopened, factory sealed electronic left in a store will still die after like 5 to 10 years. Nobody wants to or can feasibly repair it so it's just e-waste. Analog equipment exists for some things with higher tech solutions adding functionality and reducing power in some cases, but I'm curious to see more data about how these truly compare.

I came across this while looking at how to backup data for a long time. I was also curious about the case of analog devices in space. It's been hard to find a lot of info about it.

It's also not a lot of extra work to cook for 5 people compared to 3 or even 1, generally speaking. The initial investment of time is the big burden, and then it might be a little extra effort to add additional people. The food is also a lot less expensive in bulk when cooking at home.

Doing 0 planning or pre-effort and buying takeout during the event is like you specifically planned to share the cost because you didn't want to do any preplanning. You didn't even call ahead to have the things delivered at a specific time. The cost in money directly scales to the amount of order. More people is always directly scaled more money, and it's pretty expensive to boot. If you're eating, you're not consuming food that was otherwise wasted or leftovers. You're a new premium scaled cost.

The awkwardness here isn't the medium people are reaching the end goal of feeding their friends. It's really the planning and effort put in up front.

Think about it from the reverse situation. If it WOULD have really hurt you financially to order food, but you technically could have struggled through the cost, how would you have silently asked for help other than waiting until last minute to order during the event in hopes people may pitch in? There may be a social obligation to order food where asking for people to pitch in may cause tension. For example, hosting a party at a nice new house but you were just laid off after scheduling the party and don't want to derail the rare gathering's vibes.

If you find yourself in this situation and you are going to order food, I recommend pizza by the way. Just order a few different ones (including a vegetarian / vegan option or whatever if you have to guess people's preferences) but generally asking for preferences on pizza is not awkward. Pizza is an ambiguous delivery option where it's implied to be shared. It's similar to many general home cooked meals where the amount anybody has or doesn't have is ambiguous.

Compared to takeout style delivery where every has a dedicated packaged meal and you either ordered 3xMeal or 4xMeal where the multiplier is absolute and the amount per person is without ambiguity.

Google asked me to verify I'm a not a robot, so I did. Then it said I "couldn't be verified" anyway so I did it again, but it gave me like 20 questions in a row.

It said I once again "couldn't be verified" at the end of it (I clearly didn't fail) and I would need to verify my phone number and email. So ha! Got you there.

...But I did that, I verified both which was clicking links or entering authentication codes from multiple devices and multiple linked accounts. After running out of excuses it just eventually said something like "You cannot log in at this time," despite having completed every security challenge.

I absolutely didn't fail any, and if I had, it would have immediately kicked me out and stated so which has happened before on other computers in previous years for different accounts. I wasn't on any VPN and didn't have any abnormal operating system or other settings. This was either main stream, up to date Firefox or Chrome or both. It was on my main regular computer in the USA in a popular tech professional city.

I never got the password wrong while it asked me to log in or anything, which it did about 10 times. I got everything and all security questions correct on the first try without any level of failure in regular human time.

Absolutely nothing should be setting off major red flags... If they're not going to approve my login, they shouldn't have me dancing through hoops for hours. I passed every test and verified registered devices associated with my account and verified security emails sent to other accounts that it was indeed me. If I pass every security check, why do they get to still decide no after wasting hours of my time? Why not just reject me straight away?

It's like winning the lottery and jumping through every hoop to verify that I legitimately bought the ticket in a legitimate circumstance with absolutely my money and they keep going through a checklist of loopholes to not pay out. When I don't meet any of the loophole conditions that they're trying to stretch to meet, they just give up and say "No, you didn't win." Actually, that sounds like a recurring real major problem that actually happens in the US now that I think about it.

DevOps guy here is just running a Plex server and probably pirating porn on his work laptop because why not at that point. Can’t even bother updating this which Plex makes literally about as easy as they possibly could. It’s a one click fully automated process with zero interruption. Was he using internet explorer too?

Or was it his work laptop or did they just let him log in to work on any random computer?

Did he actually get any work done? I want to hear an interview from this guy. How did he get hired as DevOps while avoiding all the basics of fundamental basic work practices?

It seems weird to me that Twitter is the only one people seem to be up in arms about, and not the times the US president did things like suggest to the public, on live national tv, that consuming bleach could cure Covid.

Given that extreme level of ridiculous harmful misinformation being presented, it seems obvious to me that any reasonably ethical link in the communication chain should attempt to speak up.

Twitter didn’t even really block most things, they just added a small banner alongside some statements that amount to being a reminder to check your sources.

IMO they’ve been harder than the others because the process is so automated that you either pass or fail on the code test. There’s no tech interviewer to give you a hint unless they changed that recently.

You don’t get to show off your leadership or any other skills this way. You either memorized the solution to the random leetcode problem you get or you fail as far as I understand it.

I think the later versions got worse. Eventually I switched PCs and it had an error syncing my notebooks. There was a mix of local and cloud copies, randomly, and it worked like 3 separate accounts on the same ID that could never combine files.

I did a sync anyway and it just deleted a bunch of notebooks randomly, and one of them became corrupted so I lost a ton of data.

I just use text files in a folder now after apple notes had an update once a few years ago that snuck in a “you consent to irreversibly delete all old notes to use the new version” in small text on the “what’s new” pop up, as if that’s not a critical thing to double confirm.

The account (email) that created the PayPal account is requesting it to be deleted, that should be sufficient. If both accounts have been insecurely breached, that's really the user's fault. PayPal could even mark the account as pending deletion after 30 days if we're really worried about this.

You shouldn't be able to stand around and blackmail the user for even more personal information to sell or "accidentally leak" to advertisers under the guise of "security."

There were questions from shows that ended in the 80's. Random political questions about nonsense. None of the questions seemed fair or reasonable. It's like going to a meetup but everyone except you have been best friends for 40 years and just keeps talking over you.

I immediately gave up and never even attempted to try again. I absolutely know I made the right call.

Also I keep asking this and keep getting 0 or bad answers. When people say web browsers, and specifically JavaScript, are to blame for almost all security issues -- What specifically are you referring to?

In almost every case I've looked into, what happens is somebody downloads some sort of file that is actually an .exe. Like TaylorSwiftGreatestHits.mp3.exe for example. It's almost always on a very old Windows version that has literally never done any updates.

Sometimes some JavaScript initiates the download of this file. When this then makes the news and is finally reported, the entire fault is explained as "JavaScript" or "Internet Browser" fully automated bug that requires 0 user input.

In reality, the user downloads the .exe and is prompted by Windows security to not run this file. They say run it anyway. Windows says the file was still not run for some security reasons. So the user disables the entire security system. Then the file says it must be run with administrator rights. They then run it once again with admin rights. Finally, X bug happens or is initiated.

This is constantly the ONLY actual event I come across where there is some crazy vulnerability. I have literally never seen something that's not this situation.

Back to my original question, if this is NOT actually the case, and there is verifiable information from any reasonably competent computer person, let me know so I can finally learn more.

I hear it's a hard job that's deserving all of that money. True, I don't want to talk and lie to customers all day. I just want to build things. Does the CEO want to build things? It's probably a different skill set they're not interested in. I could do it though, just like any job.

With some practice and a guiding team I can do literally anything. Even better if I don't have to worry about production bugs over the weekend. Even better if I know if I get fired tomorrow, I could retire and be set the rest of my life. Or use my golden privileged network + stamp of success to start back up whenever I want.

Not that they "do" even customer relations type of work. That's what their staff is for. They just have to be the face that reads the prompts.

I constantly see a lot of humble bragging, of course, immediately followed by pictures from ultra luxury places or a second vacation home in an extremely expensive place.

From what I see, it's just someone who has a few zoom meetings every day where they're essentially host at a party. Their team does all the actual work going into any of it. They pick the drinks and the scenery, note all the guests' allergies and even call in the catering. Host just shoes up for a little bit.

Then they take a long lunch, and come back an hour before everybody leaves for work. "Taking off already? Ha ha, I miss those days where I could do nothing all day too and then head out early. Have a good one."

Write a blog entry and then it's time to hurry off and talk to meet the interior decorator for lunch and vacation planning committee. Of course this all counts as work because the host NEEDS somewhere to entertain the guests.

When they have a bad day and have to do layoffs, for example, they can't even truly take accountability then. It's just wrapped up as an learning experience, or "the rest of the company needs this to not lose even more jobs."

Maybe they even describe how they failed, but you can just tell it's just words. They don't truly believe that in the heart. Like a child lying about being sorry.

It's probably better than the worst of them who say, "Actually, you deserve this. If only you'd worked harder." Or is that the best of them because they're finally honest? I truly believe that's the real feeling behind any humility-appearing outward-facing apology.

(Wouldn't you cut your salary before layoffs, for example, if you truly felt real sorrow? Even if it you could cut it just enough to save 1 more person. Let alone taking a humble standard salary and saving a few. The opposite of this action would be receiving a large bonus that year. Something we see and hear happening in actuality almost every time.)

I don't know what happened, but when I tried to find something earlier this year, it looked like there was nothing that was a simple RSS without extra bloat that wasn't abandonware and that actually literally worked.

Every time I ask this, 90% of the answers just say use X Android app. Or I have to compile it myself from scratch with broken directions (and then find out it has been broken for years). Or it's like a docker image (thus requiring docker) or otherwise requires installing multiple gigabytes of random new languages.

The story I had until I finally got to this article was:

Elon rounded up everybody in the company and personally, possibly and likely with a megaphone, demanded that “whomever is in charge” and/or everybody in general to immediately drop all their work and print off the entire code base so he, Elon, can personally perform a code review with like a highlighter in a meeting room while his 50 Spartan Tesla engineers watching like gremlins so they can cackle at the code quality.

Twitter engineers would then also need to stay at the office so they can be personally called in to be laughed at and fired on the spot. All the other twitter engineers would be lining the halls and be forced to laugh at the fired engineers as they’re escorted out in handcuffs. Failing to laugh and point adequately, or falling asleep, means they would be next.

Especially seniors and beyond. They force leetcode interviews they somehow pass or are grandfathered through and gatekeep "trash devs" by slamming gotchas about how the whiteboarded code discussion doesn't technically compile and how "returnAverage()" isn't a method ("did you know you have to write methods before they work? What does returnAverage() supposedly even do? Return a random character in the alphabet?")

I get excited about working in different tech areas. I'm exceptional at fixing other's bugs and maintaining code. Absolutely nobody seems to be hiring for this though. It's all about college exam trivia and leetcode.

When I do get into these companies, I have to work with people throwing around casual racism with HR joining in and f-slurs like it's corporate 4chan. I ask if anyone can help look at a critical bug I discovered, and nobody speaks up. Even when it turns out it was their last code change that caused it and they are the sole master expert in this area, and they were just working on organizing their desktop instead.

"I can try to look at the SQL problem, since nobody else spoke up." Then I'm explaining the basics of SQL to some guy sitting around blank faced and it turns out he was hired because of his 10+ years of expertise in SQL. His whole job is to tackle problems like that.

Meanwhile I'm out here looking for jobs when panic cuts happen and it takes forever because I'm drained from all the gotchas and gatekeeping in these interviews.

There's no way I could live with myself if I put this experience onto others. I lose sleep when I fail to call out someone talking over a quiet person on my team. I've never seen anybody else stand up for anybody, however.

I also like to have a casual dev text chat going throughout the day so you can post things like "Why isn't customer history appearing on this page?" "That page uses a one-off modified version of that query that doesn't grab history because we don't need to display it there. It used to increase load time by 30%."

Sometimes the flow of this is just easier in person, and a dedicated short meeting where everyone speaks up about their own work doesn't feel as much like backseat accusations.

It does require people actually feel comfortable asking for help, and it requires people to volunteer their guidance.

As I see more and more devs and different work places, I can't believe how common it is to just sit in your corner and struggle while refusing to ask for help and refusing to speak up when someone on your team is actually asking for help.

Is this communication failure the norm at your places of work? What's the deal?

When setting up thunderbird, I've had multiple Google accounts lie about suspicious activity and demand I go through about 10 captcha checks and enter my old password and answer my security questions and verify my phone number. After passing all of that without error, they STILL won't let me log in with a blanket statement about security.

Why oh why would they ask users to jump through extreme hoops just looking for any possible questionable failure to point to as an excuse, but still reject you after passing everything? If you're not going to let people use their account, farming free AI detection and personal information out of them doesn't seem like a legitimate tactic one should be doing.

They discriminate against some phone numbers too. They have to be in whatever they think the correct country is, they often can't be VOIP or VOIP related, and there's unknown blacklists of some famous numbers sometimes.

What happens when we run out of phone numbers? I won't be surprised when accounts start getting banned for "sharing" or "ban evading" phone numbers (aka getting a new phone number for any reason) because it screws up their ad tracking of you... Or they'll force you to first log into an account in order to delete it even though it belongs to somebody else. Or your new phone number you bought specifically for authenticating a separate account is banned (just like voip number) because a previous user was banned using it.

In my experience, rather than leaving for another company though, they're often a C-suite favorite and get to start some new project (often it's whatever they want to do as long as it's remotely justifiable). They get it up to 80% complete so they can hand it off to another team to do the last 20%.

Since the project is whatever they want to do, they use very unusual languages or design choices that the new team has to pick up and fix. A lot of times it's whatever the big new thing is. (For example, expect statements like this: "Everything is obsolete legacy code now that Electron exists!" "No need to keep this standalone offline test database, setup shell scripts, or maintain the environment setup guide because Docker will automatically solve all of these cases!")

They continue getting new projects because these 1 or 2 people "did the project 80% complete in 1 month, and the last 20% is taking the handoff team of five at least 3 months to do."

Bonus points when it is expanded from some sort of hackathon, or some fake story about how some person completed the 80% portion over the weekend. In the former, all the connections and APIs are hard-coded and faked for their demo. In the latter, they had actually been working on this for the past couple months instead of doing their assigned work which made their official team look even less productive.

I was on the teams always picking up the last 20%, but I got moved onto the 80% team once. I was amazed at how much code I could blow through with time to spare when I didn't have to worry about all the edge cases and minute details.

Unfortunately, I got temporarily moved onto a company-wide prod support team which then got cut due to covid. Hooray.

For both, it seems like I read messages in random order and then have to guess at the general gist. There's seems like no easy way to get an accurate timeline of things.

I think the problem is made worse when people forward (or retweet) as part of a conversation. There's often forwards of other email chains included as a reply with or without unique new messages being added.

Sometimes people are left off part of the CC chain for some messages, so there are gaps in the flow.

The problem is compounded when there are multiple email threads about the same thing, often because someone replied to an old version that turned into a new conversation. Or they read just the first sentence in the original email and replied about that in the newest follow-up in a 100 email chain.

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As an off topic side note, text chat programs are the ultimate form of communication. It has the fewest flaws of all mediums. It's linear in a single timeline that everybody has (and has the history to). It's pretty hard to mess up the history of what happened or who said what.

I enjoy it when people get frustrated about text chat. It's almost always because they can't dominate the conversation by talking over people or "win by talking loudest" which makes them frustrated and uncomfortable.

I do somewhat unusual things, like search for parts of a joke or a string of semi-randomly generated words for part of an AI type thing I'm working on creating to see if these are either unique or original and how they may appear in the context of the internet. Often times, if anything, there's something like a banned twitter (bot?) account only available through a cached backup that said it once in some bizarre context.

I've noticed it significantly can change search results depending on if you're logged in, or the country you're searching from (via a VPN). Different countries have different levels of success for different types of searches, but I don't have any sort of solid guide to map this out in any shareable way.

Boot up a virtual machine on a VPN if you're curious to take a look yourself. You may need to manipulate it so you don't bring in any suspicious cookies or other identifying information to show your actual country. Some VPN IPs are well known, and your results may be manipulated anyway.

Some results literally will never show up if you're searching from the USA. If you switch to Hungary for example, suddenly things could start appearing. Even if the matching result is a Chinese site that should have relatively equal relevance to both countries.

Sometimes I use Bing. It's not exactly better, but it's also not really worse. It's just different. In my non-scientific opinion after seeing so many of these differences, it's because it feels like they just forgot to enable (or haven't yet gotten to enabling) the kind of filtering Google has.

If something is no longer showing up in Google search, using Bing feels like going back 1 relative year in time before Google nerfed your active search. Sometimes I suspect Google is breaking down searches to parsable keywords and then sometimes adding those to a blacklist.

DuckDuckGo seems to sometimes filter things too, and some of the other commonly recommended alternative search engines. I don't know if they're actively doing this, or if it's a byproduct of forking off some other engine. I don't have much information here because I've largely given up bothering with these.

There's some other large engines not widely discussed in the US I am currently looking at as well. I don't have enough experience to form a solid opinion yet, and I have suspicion of their privacy so I don't want to be loosely associated with recommending it until I know more.

Miscellaneous other thoughts around this topic:

- Google has been heavily pushing some results more than others obviously. Pinterest and Quora are always at the top of searches now. I think this is pretty common knowledge.

- Chrome has a right click -> Search with Google Lens button now. Are they working on AI object detection of images more so than a visual match now? Could this factor into image matches?

- TinEye - When looking into this question myself, a lot of people recommend TinEye. I've literally never had TinEye actually match a picture by the way. Am I using it wrong?

To me it sounds like the CEO just started panicking and sent you an email so he wouldn't have to do anything relating to fixing or explaining the problem in sales for all his customers or paying you for your work / to fix it. He probably didn't even want to pay for a lawyer, rather than how he played off being nice.

It sounds like he just got away without having to do anything because he threatened you and sold you a cop-out story "But what about the kids?"

Is there a job title where I can put this to use? I'm alright in general feature work, generally exceptional in bug fixes or finding exploits, and exceptional in code reviews. I always get stuck in leetcode tests of technical interviews though despite having like 8 years of experience.