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Someones keyboard just stopped working in my job.
They called the helpdesk and i told them to unplug the keyboard from the back of the PC and try a different usb port before i send them down a new keyboard.
Their reply?
‘How am i meant to do that? I mean... *laughs* I didn’t go to college for this kind of stuff. I know you did but you need to explain it in English for me instead of using technical terms.’
....
So i had to describe what a USB looks like, and tell her how to follow the (only) skinny black cable she has on her desk, down the back of the desk and into the PC. She got overwhelmed by this cable being the same colour as the thicker VGA cable, so ended up unplugging everything!
Its fine though, as when she plugged them all back in, everything was back working.
She finished the call by saying:
“Like, i know how to use a computer but I just don’t understand all this technical mumbo jumbo, like USB’s and stuff? How should i know about that?”
...
I sincerely think interviews need to have just 5 minutes dedicated to the person showing that they know what a bloody USB is!!, can turn on/off a PC, open outlook, and follow basic instructions.
Ugh I work with idiots 😢18 -
this.title = "gg Microsoft"
this.metadata = {
rant: true,
long: true,
super_long: true,
has_summary: true
}
// Also:
let microsoft = "dead" // please?
tl;dr: Windows' MAX_PATH is the devil, and it basically does not allow you to copy files with paths that exceed this length. No matter what. Even with official fixes and workarounds.
Long story:
So, I haven't had actual gainful employ in quite awhile. I've been earning just enough to get behind on bills and go without all but basic groceries. Because of this, our electronics have been ... in need of upgrading for quite awhile. In particular, we've needed new drives. (We've been down a server for two years now because its drive died!)
Anyway, I originally bought my external drive just for backup, but due to the above, I eventually began using it for everyday things. including Steam. over USB. Terrible, right? So, I decided to mount it as an internal drive to lower the read/write times. Finding SATA cables was difficult, the motherboard's SATA plugs are in a terrible spot, and my tiny case (and 2yo) made everything soo much worse. It was a miserable experience, but I finally got it installed.
However! It turns out the Seagate external drives use some custom drive header, or custom driver to access the drive, so Windows couldn't read the bare drive. ffs. So, I took it out again (joy) and put it back in the enclosure, and began copying the files off.
The drive I'm copying it to is smaller, so I enabled compression to allow storing a bit more of the data, and excluded a couple of directories so I could copy those elsewhere. I (barely) managed to fit everything with some pretty tight shuffling.
but. that external drive is connected via USB, remember? and for some reason, even over USB3, I was only getting ~20mb/s transfer rate, so the process took 20some hours! In the interim, I worked on some projects, watched netflix, etc., then locked my computer, and went to bed. (I also made sure to turn my monitors and keyboard light off so it wouldn't be enticing to my 2yo.) Cue dramatic music ~
Come morning, I go to check on the progress... and find that the computer is off! What the hell! I turn it on and check the logs... and found that it lost power around 9:16am. aslkjdfhaslkjashdasfjhasd. My 2yo had apparently been playing with the power strip and its enticing glowing red on/off switch. So. It didn't finish copying.
aslkjdfhaslkjashdasfjhasd x2
Anyway, finding the missing files was easy, but what about any that didn't finish? Filesizes don't match, so writing a script to check doesn't work. and using a visual utility like windirstat won't work either because of the excluded folders. Friggin' hell.
Also -- and rather the point of this rant:
It turns out that some of the files (70 in total, as I eventually found out) have paths exceeding Windows' MAX_PATH length (260 chars). So I couldn't copy those.
After some research, I learned that there's a Microsoft hotfix that patches this specific issue! for my specific version! woo! It's like. totally perfect. So, I installed that, restarted as per its wishes... tried again (via both drag and `copy`)... and Lo! It did not work.
After installing the hotfix. to fix this specific issue. on my specific os. the issue remained. gg Microsoft?
Further research.
I then learned (well, learned more about) the unicode path prefix `\\?\`, which bypasses Windows kernel's path parsing, and passes the path directly to ntfslib, thereby indirectly allowing ~32k path lengths. I tried this with the native `copy` command; no luck. I tried this with `robocopy` and cygwin's `cp`; they likewise failed. I tried it with cygwin's `rsync`, but it sees `\\?\` as denoting a remote path, and therefore fails.
However, `dir \\?\C:\` works just fine?
So, apparently, Microsoft's own workaround for long pathnames doesn't work with its own utilities. unless the paths are shorter than MAX_PATH? gg Microsoft.
At this point, I was sorely tempted to write my own copy utility that calls the internal Windows APIs that support unicode paths. but as I lack a C compiler, and haven't coded in C in like 15 years, I figured I'd try a few last desperate ideas first.
For the hell of it, I tried making an archive of the offending files with winRAR. Unsurprisingly, it failed to access the files.
... and for completeness's sake -- mostly to say I tried it -- I did the same with 7zip. I took one of the offending files and made a 7z archive of it in the destination folder -- and, much to my surprise, it worked perfectly! I could even extract the file! Hell, I could even work with paths >340 characters!
So... I'm going through all of the 70 missing files and copying them. with 7zip. because it's the only bloody thing that works. ffs
Third-party utilities work better than Microsoft's official fixes. gg.
...
On a related note, I totally feel like that person from http://xkcd.com/763 right now ;;21 -
The Orange Juice Saga ....
I've just come off one of the stupidest calls ever.
Firstly, I am not in tech support, I'm a software developer - read the below with this in mind.
My client called up to say the system I created as been compromised. When he attempts to login, he is logged off his Windows machine.
He'd also apparently taken his PC to ***insert large UK computer superstore here***, who took £100 plus to look at the machine and conclude his needs to buy a new PC.
I remoted into his computer to see WTF was going on.
As he described, visiting my login form did log you out. In fact, whenever you pressed the "L" key you were logged out. Press the "M" key, all windows were minimized. Basically, all Windows hotkeys appeared to be active, without the need to press the Windows key.
Whilst connected to his PC I spent a good 30 minutes checking keyboard settings and came up short.
After asking all the normal questions (has anything changed on your PC, have you installed stuff lately etc.) without any useful answers I got nothing.
I then came across an article stating several presses of the Windows in quick succession will solve the issue.
I got the client to try this, pressed the "L" key (which would have logged me off previously) and the issue was resolved.
Basically, the Windows key was "stuck", which oddly makes your PC kind of useless.
I asked the client if they'd split anything on the keyword whilst working. His exact word were simply lol:
"Oh yer, yesterday, I was trying to drink a glass of orange quickly and split some in the corner of keyboard. I did clean it up quickly though".
Yep, the issue was due to the client spilling orange juice on their keyboard , which in turn made the Windows key stick.
Disaster averted.
A call that started with the client stating I made a system that was easily compromised (i.e. my fault), morphed into a sorry saga of cold drinks.
The client did ask why the ***superstore name*** charged him money for that and recommended a new machine. That is a good question and demonstrated some the questionable tech support practices we see nowadays, even at very large stores.
To be fair to the client, he told me to bill him for half a days work as it was his own fault.
When I'm able to stop myself involuntarily face palming, I'm off for a swim to unwind :)
7 -
Dells XPS are made of magic. [long story, major fuckup, 10k+ damages]
It all started in December. One morning I was late to work, drove there as fast as possible. (I live like 3 minutes away so me being late really meant *late*) Parked my car in a secluded car park, grabbed my backpack and ran to work. The car park is like 100 meters away from work so I took my feet into my hands and ran. Next thing I know my heels loose all grip while I go down a small slope and I drop on my back full force. On a sharp edged stone. With only my 1700$ XPS in it. Fuck.
I paniced, but got up and ran to work. I checked on the notebook, praying it would boot. It booted! Holy shit. I flipped the notebook and saw two small dents in the aluminum shell. I was thorougly impressed. I later discovered that it left a small shadow on the display, but given what a hit that was (I am not exactly a lightweight), impressive would be a massive understatement.
Fast forward to February, I am weighing my options to get the screen replaced maybe, as damage on my hardware (even if neglectable) triggers some sort of OCD and makes me feel bad 24/7. Also my laptop tends to shut off from time to time, looked into the Event Viewer and saw kernel panic. I figured that the battery probably still took a hit and that it drops voltage from time to time and the kernel assumes a critical situation, thus shutting off.
It stayed quite snowy in Austria up until March, so occasional snowing wasn't rare. Got out of work one day, saw it snowed a bit. Whatever. I had my moms car at the time, so I tried if it would slide a bit if I donut on the now (5pm) empty parking space. Nothing. Drove done a small hill, ABS triangle lit up red (board computer can't outbalance the snow). I drove out to the main street where everything was salted and drove along towards my house. Took a turn into my street, accelerated for a bit and then went off the gas so the car would smoothly drive along with the speed slowly degrading. So I went off the gas and noticed I was a bit to the right, no wonder, centrifugal forces.
*steers left*
"Huh seems like I need a bit more"
*car still doesnt move much*
"What the- go to the left!"
*steers left hard*
"Fuck that wall is coming closer"
*Breaks*
*car doesnt break*
"FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!"
Everything got quiet in seconds, me waking up to an open airbag, ripped pants, a hurting wrist, the radio somewhere on the ground and fumes that smellt like burning wires. I grabbed my backpack that was now somewhere on the floor instead of on the seat and ran outside, tears in my eyes and the phone on my ear calling my mom. I walked inside as she walked outside, hearing a weeping scream that I haven't heard from her since I am alive. While walking inside I noticed my backpack was wet on the bottom, my 2 litre water jug shattered when my backpack hit the dashboard. I tried to stay calm and act rational, knowing that every second counts when It comes to water damage. I hastely searched for some rice and a bag to put my laptop into, stuffed the bag with both and went outside. The car was totaled, my mom pissed and crying. And I was in shock, sad, angry and hurting.
I kept the laptop on my heater for a few days, bagged in rice. I dared to try a boot after a while and you wont believe me, it fucking booted. Even the keyboard backlight worked, just the screen was obviously broken in the back (no color distortion or bad pixel rows though!!) and the aluminum shell had a dent on the front. I talked with Dell Support a few days later, asking if it would be ok to open the XPS up so I could drain all of the water. She said yes thats fine, as long as I dont touch anything or screw around with it.
She said I can send it in and get it checked, but the pickup and analysis will cost 150$ and I can go from there.
I sent it in and estimated that, because battery, screen and other things probably needed changing, it will be around 900$.
Got a call a few weeks later:
"Hello beggarboy, the repair team reported back to us and said that they will have to replace everything, which will be 1700$."
"Fuck... Buying a new one is cheaper.."
"Yeah I know I am sorry about that, I can offer you a voucher so you can buy a new one for 250$ off if you would prefer that"
"Sorry but I will need some time to consider"
"I understand."
The agent clearly noticed I was bummed about it.
After going back and forth what to do I got another call a few days later.
"Hello beggarboy, we talked a few days ago. I have good news"
"Hello, yes, speak up?"
"I was able to get a special offer for you after putting in a few words..."
The next thing she said seemed unreal to me.
She was able to cut 600$ (!!!), making the new offer 1100$, instead of 1700$ or a new one for 1500$. I figured the reason she probably did that was because I am always very polite with support members. Always.
My XPS is back and healty again.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Dells XPS are made of magic.13 -
I have a bunch of contesters fort the worst interview.
#1 The Dishonest Ignorant
Me: *asks question*
#1: *stumbles*
Me: It's okay to say that you don't know.
#1: *continues to ramble on without making sense*
Me: Well, okay. That is all. I don't think that this will be a fit.
#2 The fraud
Me: How would you rate your knowledge in object orientated programming?
#2: Very advanced! I am an expert!
Me: Can you state the difference of an interface and an abstract class?
#2: *surprised pikachu-face* Well not that advanced!
#3 The trickster
During a skype call (without video):
Me: *asks question*
#3: *keyboard sounds aclacking*
Me: Are you googling?
#3: No *click clack click a clack* ... and to answer your question: *starts reading from the first search results*
The real bummer is, that in all of these cases, just saying "I don't know" would have been fine. (The "expert" OOP-guy would still have some explaining to do.)
It's not like that our interview process resolves around trick questions or that you'd get kicked out for getting one answer wrong. Though how can I trust somebody not to lie to me on a daily basis if they fake their interview?
We keep the interview relatively basic and rely on real-word coding exercise anyway and it helps us to get an idea on where we would gain support from them and where we need to support them.
As a developer you spend a lot of time learning new stuff anyways.
It blows my mind.39 -
OK morning rant from yesterday.
Get into the venue, connect my surface to the dock, keyboard won't work.
Try more USB ports, try another machine, keyboard (corsair k70) is totally broken.
Ugh.
Fine.
Disassemble keyboard, someone asks me a question, turn around and knock full coffee cup over my surface book.
Fuck sake.
Now I need a new laptop.4 -
What I did wrong during my home office cleaning session this morning:
- put soap on my mouse mat
- snapped my enter key
- vacuumed up my F8 key
- absent-mindedly cut my ethernet cable
- lost my zero key
- dropped my backup hard drive (data was recoverable, but I need a new drive)
- lost one of the nose pads on my glasses
- got a cocktail stick stuck in a USB port
- exploded my mouse by using the wrong type of battery
Things I did good:
- nothing11 -
Every programming language I know of does trigonometry in radians.
Yet I have been puzzled for 4 hours whether JS was broken because it kept saying Math.sin(30) != Math.sin(150), trying all kinds of values, looking up basic trigonometry stuff again and again.
After that, 10 minutes of wondering why my json was invalid... right, you can't comment things out.
Then 15 minutes being baffled by a simple script tag not working, because I wrote script href instead of script src.
Finally, I threw a liter of chocolate milk over a $400 keyboard.
I really need to stop setting up new projects at 3am.7 -
Whoever is responsible for the responsible for the refund process on airbnb can eat a bunch of dicks, watch me spill all of the fluids over his keyboard and then watch me break every single one of his/her fingers.
How the fuck do you dare to keep all of my money in some kind of internal wallet while I clearly need it to get a hotel after your starrated host left me hanging, autoaccepting but then telling me via phone that he using vacation till Friday... Half a goddamned fucking hour after I tried to call him. I want to report the shit out of this asshole, but no I can't because I cancelled my stay.
For the love of God and his creation is it this hard to punish assholes for ruining my new year and making me freeze my hand and ears of?2 -
So here I am... thinking to myself how does this kid not know about the shift key?
Me: "Ok we're going to test see if you have sudo access. Please enter your password, now"
Student: ~stares at the black terminal box and begins pressing the caps lock key. The light doesn't display~
Student: "Um... what? Do I need to enter a new password?"
Me: "No"
Continues to click the caps-lock button and waiting for a light to appear on the keyboard. It doesn't. He continues clicking.
Me: "You need to press the shift button"
Him: "What???"
Me: "You need to press the shift button"
Him: "Um.. I don't understand"
Him: Presses shift button, nothing happens. Goes back to pressing caps lock button.
Me: "Your password has a capital letter in it right?"
Him: "Um... yeah."
Me: "Press the shift button to capitalize your letters."
Him: "I don't understand... Do I need to enter a new password?"
Me: "No... you need to press and hold the shift key to get a capital letter"
Him: "................................ ............................................ . . . . . .. .. .. .. .. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . ...................... . . . . . . . Oh..."
Him: "Presses and holds the shift button with his thumb and then presses the Z key."
Me: ~What in the hell are you doing?~ 🤦
Me: "Perfect it looks like you are a part of the sudoers list."
Me: "You can take you computer back."
Me: ~Do you fucking use the caps lock key to capitalize all the first letters in your sentences? Please tell me you don't!~13 -
Just thought I'd share my current project: Taking an old ISA sound card I got off eBay and wiring it up to an Arduino to control its OPL3 synth from a MIDI keyboard. I have it mostly working now.
No intention to play audio samples, so I've not bothered with any of the DMA stuff - just MIDI (MPU-401 UART) and OPL3.
It has involved learning the pinout of the ISA bus connectors, figuring out which ones are actually used for this card, ignoring the standards a little (hello, amplifier chip that is wired up to the +12V line but which still happily works at +5V...)
Most of the wires going to it are for each bit of the 16-bit address and 8-bit data. Using a couple of shift registers for the address, and a universal shift register for the data. Wrote some fairly primitive ISA bus read/write code, but it was really slow. Eventually found out about SPI and re-wrote the code to use that and it became very fast. Had trouble with some timings, fixed those.
The card is an ISA Plug and Play card, meaning before I could use it I had to tell it what resources to use. Linux driver code and some reverse-engineering of the official Windows/DOS drivers got me past this stage.
Wired up IRQ 5 to an Arduino interrupt to deal with incoming MIDI data, with a routine that buffers it. Ran into trouble with the interrupt happening during I/O and needing to do some I/O inside the handler and had to set a flag to decide whether to disable/re-enable interrupts during I/O.
It looks like total chaos, but the various wires going across the breadboard are mainly to make it easier to deal with the 16-bit address and 8-bit data lines. The LEDs were initially used to check what addresses/data were being sent, but now only one of them is connected and indicates when the interrupt handler is executing.
There's still a lot to do after that though - MIDI and OPL3 are two completely different things so I had to write some code to manage the different "channels" of the OPL3 chip. I have it playing multiple notes at the same time but need to make it able to control the various settings over MIDI. Eventually I might add some physical controls to it and get a PCB made.
The fun part is, I only vaguely know what I'm doing with the electronics side of this. I didn't know what a "shift register" was before this project, nor anything about the workings of the ISA bus. I knew a bit about MIDI (both the protocol and generally how the MPU-401 UART works) along with the operation of a sound card from a driver/software perspective, but everything else is pretty new to me.
As a useful little extra, I made some "fake" components that I can build the software against on a PC, to run some tests before uploading it to the Arduino (mostly just prints out the addresses it is going to try and write to).
46 -
The new guy:
- I'm a big fan of effectiveness and efficiency. The faster can you do the task - the better.
- naah, typing in the terminal is soo inefficient. Typing, remembering commands, parameters, paths... That's such a drag! Such a lag! Having a button I could click to do the job is far better!
- OSS is the root of all the evil!
- I'd like to try linux once again. I like it, hopefully I won't need to spend another couple of weeks setting up dual-gpu power management and searches for an Intel wifi's dual-antennae driver.
- I need a bluetooth mouse for my laptop. Using trackpoint or a touchpad is a nonsense [I agree abt the trackpoint]. Using a keyboard/typing for navigation?!? That's utter nonsense!
- I'd like to try i3wm, it looks effective and efficient
it's happened within the last month and I'm still trying to compile all this input into his preferences. So far I'm getting too many conflicting errors13 -
ALRIGHT sorry SwiftKey I love you but not if you do this to me... I need a new keyboard any recommendations? (android)
(also the accuracy is quite bad as of late...)
21 -
This freaking laptop.
The WiFi randomly stops working -- and by that, I mean the hardware is no longer detectable, let alone functional. It simply disappears on boot, even from dmesg.
The same happens with audio and bluetooth: on some boots they simply do not exist.
The power usage is also ridiculous: the battery dies in about two hours, and it gets soo hot. Toasty wrists unless I use my tiny bluetooth keyboard ☹ So I need to fiddle with powertop a bit more.
nVidia drivers are also a bloody pain, and having two graphics cards this is even more difficult to set up. I still haven't managed. (nvidia-driver, bumblebee, optimus, official driver messes, manual xorg configs, ...). So I have a beautiful 4k built-in display running at 4-18 fps, and a non-functional 4k external. That's fine for now, but >.>; frustrating.
In better news! I just managed to get the sound to work by backporting the new 4.19 kernel (yay!) -- I have never been so happy to hear an ad. but fixing the sound killed my bluetooth. (The `bluetooth` utility reports the adapter is present, but nothing else can seem to see it 🙄) So now I'm going to have burning hot wrists all day and want to cry because terrible sweaty awfulness.
Just. It's frustrating.
It's fast, though.
and ever so pretty.28 -
Who are the people who are pushing for phones, laptops and desktops to be even thinner? Do they actually exist?! Or are that mythical creatures invented by Apple engineers so they can get paid to invent new stuff?
"Yeah, we need to invent a new keyboard design as customers are complaining how fat our pro laptops are."
I don't think I've looked at a laptop built in the last decade and wondered how I'll carry it with my tiny frame.
Just give me a Mac Pro that is a solid chunk of aluminum with a removable drive and access to the RAM. It'll look fine and it's going to sit quietly on my desk. I promise not to move it without hiring at least two men with appropriate safety equipment.
I want someone to stand up at an Apple keynote and say, "We made this thicker---you're welcome."13 -
It is time... to rant about macs!
No, seriously - I had such a different experience about which not many talk in real life or pretend that it never happens....
Model: 2015 mid MBP 15" with second to highest specs (don't have dedicated gpu).
Rattling fucking toy.... Yea, it rattles! If you shake/move ir sit in trait/bus - it non-stop rattles as a fucking toy. Worst part? It's confirmed issue by apple and it manifacturing issue that they are not keen on fixing!!!! WTF? We have 4 macs in our office - all of them fucking rattles... God help me how annoying that is. (Lose LCD control panel that unsticks from glue. Replacing it solves the issue for 1 month if you carry it anywhere).
Constant fucking crashing/updates.... Every morning I wake up and don't have an app that requires confirmation for restart - it's restarted. YAY, turning on all apps once again.... Why you may ask? Well, because if you tinker with software in any way - it fails to update it and hell breaks lose. It's been a long time since High-Sierra came around and the issue is still there (not running Mojave as it conflicts with soft I have... Woo!). Tried few times - updates fail. Resolution? Reinstall OS!
OS conflicts with applications - damn... People told me it works out of the box.... Yeah, as long as you don't upgrade the OS - then it breaks. Why? Well, because.
Piece of shit power supply. With 4 of our office power supplies - 2 of them failed twice withing warranty and once afterwards... Really? Not to mention that all 4 are starting to shear the sleeve or already did (mine is just wrapped with white electrical tape to give it a support... lol).
Bluetooth - who the hell needs that in mac, right? Well, people do. To start with - it conflicts with 2.4GHz wireless network - you might have one of those and not both at the same time. Next thing is using a device that needs constant connection (mouse, headphones, keyboard - non apple branded) - shit... They can't stay connected for more than an hour without any issues... Constant battle to re-connect it, to re-pair the device and all due to smart apple bluetooth settings. Hell, my mouse (logitech MX master) was even printing random symbols in some applications if moved. All of the issues went away after using a bluetooth dongle... WOO!!!!
Xcode... Ahh, you may never prepare your mac if you don't download 17GB of fucking xCode libraries that enables some tools to be installed/runned as you can NOT get them in any other way and you have to install full xCode software in order to get them... YAY! 17GB wasted on my 256GB SSD that I can't upgrade. GREAT!
OsX applications - ah, don't get offended but if you are using them and you are fine with them - you are probably a monkey that loves being told what to do. You can't customise any actions, you can't configure it the way you like - either you accept their default workflow or go kill yourself. Yep... Had issues with calendar, mail, iMessages, safari... None of them fit my needs :)
Resolution scaling... Fucking hell, the display is 2880 x 1800 but all you let me to use is 1440x900 without scaling? Am I blind to you? Scaling the resolution means that you are fucked if some applications don't support scaling very well. Looking at you Jetbrains - your IDES suck at scaling and slows down the pc to a potato....
Now the pros - keyboard is way better than the new ones, trackpad is GREAT - no need for mouse (using it on external 4k displays only), the battery life is great - getting around 6h of continues development time, 8 if using sublime instead of phpStorm and well, that's about it...
To clarify:
I've bought this device due to the fact that at that time mac and windows pc's with similiar specs costed the same while windows pc sucked with their quality of the device and trackpad... Now the situation is better and when time comes for a next upgrade - it's going to be one of these:
Razer Blade 15, Dell XPS 15, Lenovo Carbon X1 series.
And of course - LINUX. I've had enough issues with windows, and had enough of retardness of apple ecosystem, so switching it is a must for me.
Disclaimer: I might be an unhappy customer, a bit picky but I'd like my device to be setted up as I like and continue to have that until I don't like, not until the company decides to break it. Not to mention that paying almost a yearly salary in my country for one device - I'd expect it to be at least reliable and work without issues....
Rant over.
ps. You can disagree with me, this is my personal experience with MBP over the last 3 years :)8 -
I am currently looking for a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), because my music projects are starting to get a little too complex for Audacity.
So I started looking for a good, easy-to-learn, ideally free program, and quickly learned that Avid now has a free version of Pro Tools called First.
So I go to their site and fill out the registration form to get the download. In addition to creating an account with Avid, you also need to create one with iLok, which apparently has something to do with how they manage their licenses. Kinda overkill for a free program, but okay...
I download the program (about 3gigs...), install it and try to start it. It gives me an error message about missing some service. Okay? I'm confused because I notice that an 'Application Manager' service has appeared in my tray, and when I open that I can log into my new account just fine. But it still doesn't work.
There's a link in the error message to the iLok website, and it looks like ai need to dowload and install another component. Why didn't that get installed with the program if it's required?
Hmm...
So I go to the iLok site, download it and install it. Pro Tools First still won't start. I realize that the PTF installer asked me to reboot, which I didn't do because: a) I always have a lot of windows open, and b) How often is a reboot ACTUALLY required? Why would you need to reboot?
So I (begrudgingly) reboot, and now the program seems to start initializing... but then it throws an error message about some plugin that it can't load because it doesn't work for the 64 bit version. Then... why are you even looking for it?
And then it says something like: 'I can't handle that, I'm just gonna shut down'.
What?
I try starting it again. Same error appears, but then it gets past it this time... Only to throw another error message about something else it can't load, and therefore it must shut down.
Deep breath.
Third time is the charm, the program actually made it to the project create/load screen! Huzzah!
So I look around a bit, but don't do much. It doesn't seem too intuitive to me, so I start watching some tutorials on YouTube from Avid themselves. It's a little late by now, so I don't get my hands dirty that day.
Next time I want to try out the program I start it up, still get error messages, but it does seem to initialize okay. But then the 'Create project' button doesn't react when I press it.
It turns out that the program takes a looong time to log in to the avid account, even though the manager service is running and logged in...
When it finally logs on I create a new blank project, but it doesn't ask me where to save it to. I see there is a counter saying 1/3 and looking around I find some info about 'cloud based projects'.
It would seem that this program only supports saving projects to the cloud, and you get only 3 projects total. Three. THREE?
Ahem...
I add an instrument track to my new project and select the one and only plugin, which is a synth. I don't see the plugin window, like in the tutorials I watched. I fiddle around with the windows, but I only manage to get the layout fucked up. There's a handy 'Window' menu, but none of the options resets the view. The main window is now sporting a WINDOWS FUCKING 7 BORDER! And partially blocking the view of the top menu.
Blaaargh!
Frustrated, I shut the program down and restart it. I now select one of the project templates (after waiting for it to LOG IN AGAIN!) in the hope that I might have a bit more luck with that starting point.
But when the template has loaded, out of nowhere, the program goes from maximized to windowed mode! And the fucking Win7 border is back again, still messing with the main menu!
FFS!
I get the sucker maximized again and select one of the synth tracks, and Lo and Behold! The synth plugin window actually shows up! But of course there is no sound produced when I play, neither with the keyboard or my midi keyboard.
Oh no, that would have been too easy.
I see some the meters moving when I play, but no sound is produced. I check the options menu, but find out nothing useful except for the fact that the program only support 48kHz sample rate. That's pretty disappointing when you have a 192kHz/24bit soundcard.
I'm done. This piece of shit software is NOT for me. It's bloated, complicated to sign up for and install, extremely limited and buggy as hell!
The final insult is that it takes 5 minutes to uninstall because there is no uninstall option in the so-called 'Application Manager' (of course fucking not!), and doing it through Programs & Features there are 5 (FIVE!!) different apps and services to uninstall, one by one.
0/10, would not recommend.11 -
In a meeting yesterday working through our WebAPI coding standards, starting from File -> New project..etc..etc.. and ironing out some of the left-or-right decisions so we can have a consistent coding style, working in a meeting room with an overhead projector and sharing keyboard around with one another.
Then we hit the routing 'rules' in the WebApiConfig, "api/{controller}/{id}"…
DevMgr: "Do we need the 'api' prefix? It seems redundant."
Ralph: "Yes it's needed. Prefixing the controllers with 'api' is industry best practice. Otherwise, how is anyone to know it's a web api"
Prancer: "Yea, it's part of the REST standard."
Me: "I don't think so. That is only part of the Asp.Net routing rule. We can put anything we want or take anything out."
DevMgr: "Yea, it looks silly. All the new services are going to be business process specific."
Ralph: "That's how everyone does it. It's kind of the point of why REST services are called WebApi"
Prancer: "What's the point of doing any of this work if we're not going to follow industry standards."
Me: "I understand if the service is part of larger web site, but we're developing standalone services. Prefixing routes with 'api' is redundant. I mean who are these 'everyone' you're talking about?"
<ralph rolls his eyes>
Ralph: "Lets see …uhhh… Netflix?. They're kinda a big deal."
Me: "Like I said, it's an integral part of their site and the services they provide. That's fine. I'm talking about the 12 other 3rd party services we integrate with. None of them have 'api' on any of their routes."
Prancer: "We're talking about serious web services."
Me: "Last time I checked, UPS is a big and serious service."
Ralph: "Their services are a fracking joke" – he didn't say fracking.
Me: "Our payroll system, our billing system, billion dollar companies, didn't have '/api' prefix anywhere. Heck, even that free faxing service we used for a while was a dead-simple routing path."
<I take the keyboard away from Ralph, remove the 'api' from the route.>
Me: "There. Done. Now, lets talk about error handling.."
Rest of the meeting Ralph and Prancer don't say much of anything, arms crossed…I swear Ralph looked like he was going to cry.
This morning I catch my boss…
Me: "What did you think of the meeting? I thought Ralph was going to take a swing at me when I took the keyboard away from him."
DevMgr: "Oh yes…I almost laughed out loud….blows my freaking mind how worked up people get about crap that doesn't matter. Api..or not…who the frack cares. Just make it consistent"
Me: "Exactly…I didn't care either way, but I enjoyed calling out that nonsense."
DevMgr: "Yes..waaay too much."
If I didn't call them on their BS and the 'standard' allowed to continue, I can bet my paycheck when the subject comes up in a few months (another mgr asks 'isn't this api prefix redundant?') Ralph and Prancer will be the first to say "Yea, its stupid. We fought really hard to remove it from the standard...its not our fault...its <insert scapegoat> fault." -
Working with the Android SDK after about a decade of mostly avoiding ever having to do so directly...and fucking hell, nothing has changed.
It's still obtuse as fuck, you constantly have to provide contexts to operations which can't need them (there's only one fucking keyboard to close), and whilst they have added some new stuff which helps like Material, the APIs are just as mental, the setup just as elaborate and manual - and they don't seem to have deprecated anything along the way, so fifteen years of random software design decisions cohabit awkwardly together like the Bucket family.
I don't really mind Java, it's just long-winded C - but boy has it found its niche here. Your code is more boilerplate than not until you've written more than you'll mostly ever need to for an app.
At this point I'm just laughing when I come across another Stack Overflow solution for a trivial operation that involves writing an entire class. I would try Kotlin but this isn't a new project, and I'm not pissing another ingredient into this hot mess.
Alright, Android Studio is an improvement on Eclipse, but that's not really saying much.3 -
My mouses right button kept double clicking. This makes it really hard to play minecraft. It was a cheap logitech mouse from a wireless keyboard/mouse combo. So I went to the store to find a new one. Almost all the wireless mice were gone. Apparently WFH people hit walmart. I didn't want another single wireless mouse. This would mean I need the adapter for the keyboard (for keyboard mouse combo) and the new mouse plugged in. My computer is a laptop so there are not a lot of those slots. So I looked for a bluetooth mouse. Only one there and it was a sucky Razer. I have not liked Razer since they required people to register their software with an account before using their drivers. This really made me avoid this brand like the plague. So I finally settled on a wired gaming mouse. It has a nice long 6ft cord so it works with my setup. It is a G502 Hero. It works really nicely without drivers. I will be testing with drivers tonight. I usually buy el cheapo mice so this is new to me. So far so good.
18 -
I decided to upgrade my intellij ultimate from 2019.3 to 2020.2 and I saw there is update button.
I clicked on it.
As I expected it didn’t work and it was 30 minutes waiting looking at progress bar going back and forth couple of times before I decided just to download latest version and drag and drop it to applications folder ( took me 5 minutes) - I use mac so it replaces all crap ( I think ).
I cleared the old cache that growed to 2 gigabytes leaving some configuration files.
Next as always crash on startup cause of incompatible plugins with long java stacktrace - at least I could click the close button or popup closed itself I can’t remember ( one version I remember this button couldn’t be clicked cause it was off the screen and you need to do some cheating to launch ide )
The font has changed and I see that it at least work a little faster - that is nice. Indexing is finally fixed after all those years - probably thanks to visual studio code intellisense pushing those lazy bastards to deal with this.
But the preloader on first logo disappears so I think they decided to remove it cause it’s so fast - no it loads the same time or maybe little longer when I launch it on my old macbook.
After that as always I looked at plugins to see if there’s something interesting, so to find ability to scroll over whole plugins I needed to click couple of times. I think they assume I remember all the nice plugins in their marketplace and I only type search.
Maybe I should be type of user who reads best 2020 plugins for your best ide crap articles filled with advertising or even waste more time to watch all of this great videos about ide ( are there any kind of this stuff ? )
After a few operations I unfortunately clicked apply instead of restart ide and it hanged up on uninstalling some plugin I’m no longer interested in for 5 minutes so I decided to use always working ‘kill -9’ from command line.
Launched again and this time success.
Fortunately indexing finished for this workspace and I can work.
I’m intellij ultimate subscriber for 7+ years and I see those craps are not changing from like forever.
What’s the point of automate something that you can’t regression test ?
I started thinking that now when most people are facebook wall scrolling zombies companies assume that when new software comes out everyone is installing it right away and if not they’re probably not our customers cause they’re dead.
What a surprise they have when I pay for another year I can only imagine ( to be fair probably they even don’t know who I am ).
Yeah for sure I am subscribed to newsletters and I have jetbrains as a start page cause I shit myself with money and have nothing better to do then be grupie ( is there corporate grupies already a big community? )
Well I am a guy who likes to spend some time when installing anything and especially software that is responsible for my main source of income and productivity speed up.
Anyway I decided to upgrade cause editing es7 and typescript got to be pain in the ass and I see it’s working fine now. I don’t know if I like the font but at least the editor it’s working the same or maybe faster then the original that is huge improvement as developers lose most of their time between keyboard and screen communication protocol.
I don’t write it to discourage intellij as it’s great independent ide that I love and support for such a long time but they should focus on code editor and developers efficiency not on things that doesn’t make sense.
Congratulations if you reached this point of this meaningless post.
Now I started thinking that maybe it’s working faster cause I removed 2 gigs of crap from it.
Well we’ll see.1 -
I like how software is smart so I have to do things twice instead of once.
Automatically putting quotes works only if you put quotes and then paste inside it, the problem is I usually paste then put first quote and then need to remove second quote and put it on back and remove second quote from back.
Video start from where you left automatically fires and shows closing credits because you obviously want to see them.
Evaluate variable removes old evaluation because why you want old one when you have new.
Collapsing imports or functions in ide so you need to expand them all the time because who needs to look at functions when we have ai
AI models suggesting and adding meaningless annotations and code suggestions to distract me.
Randomly running some console command because I entered keyboard shortcut I don’t know even exists.
Literally every web browser address bar becomes advertising network instead of showing me history results.
Shadowing browsing history when you click back and forward button.
Search results are now buy results.
Suggesting me useless crap to watch because I watched one video in that topic.
Showing me 10 minutes videos as a solution to my problem where I want to find exact line of text to copy paste it. If I’m lucky I need to write text from video into my computer.
Stack overflow infinite loop of answered in #some-different-question
I think it’s about time for me to slowly retire from programming and software as a whole or switch to notepad because I don’t want to use this crap anymore.
Looks like software is now meant for entertainment and distraction instead of doing actual work where you need precise data and information.
Luckily if everything goes good I can retire soon and throw everything away for a while.3 -
Here, a full retrospective of my Apple products ownership.
iPhone SE – after Android, I was absolutely amazed by how fast it worked. No UI lags, camera works absolutely instantly no matter the light conditions, all the GPU-heavy games work butter smooth.
After camera and charging port failures on Xperia flagship and CPU literally melting through screen rendering it unusable on Meizu, it was enough to make me interested in Apple products.
When I was using Meizu, I actually got a twitching eye which was triggered by UI lags. After two months of using iPhone, I noticed that something was missing – my eye wasn't twitching anymore.
iPhone actually cured me.
MacBook 12 – a 900 grams laptop with passive-cooled mobile CPU running many Chrome tabs, heavy Webpack HMR build, VSCode and Slack just fine. Yes, you can't play games, but I don't even require it from a laptop this tiny.
Butterfly keyboard that internet hates so much actually increased my typing speed and comfort compared to MX Red mechanical keyboard, and ForceTouch trackpad made me forget about mouse. I learned how to disassemble the Butterfly keyboard if I ever need this but the keyboard never failed.
I use this laptop to this day and it still even smells like the day one, a beautiful smell of a new Apple product.
iPhone X – got it because of the camera, stayed for great battery life and amazing OLED display. I use telephoto lens exclusively and it made me lay off my Canon DSLR with Helios lens which stays on my bookshelf covered in dust to this day.
True black of OLED display which is undistinguishable from the screen bezel is stunning. To this day, battery surely works for one and a half days and I watch youtube really often.
I sometimes struggled to unlock iPhone SE with wet fingers, but with FaceID, as soon as I look at the screen the phone is unlocked. Works perfect every time, never had an issue with this.
Stainless steel body feels premium compared to aluminum. Stereo sound is a major selling point if you're like watching videos and playing games on your phone. Overall amazing product and a huge improvement over SE.
Apple Watch series 4 – really comfortable fit. Nice battery life, once I forgot about it for like ten days during lockdown and it was still working, even though on power reserve mode. Really reliable in terms of battery life and liquid protection. Very satisfying Taptic Engine crown clicks. I run every day and Apple watch always measure my heart rate correctly, and the running app is well designed and a pleasure to use. Overall a nice accessory to have if you use iPhone.
Powerbeats Pro – great sound and battery life. I switched from Shure SE215 which was great, but it had wires. I listen to a lot of music so the sound quality is important for me. When I was choosing earphones I visited a store where you can listen to them all. I listened through earphones like Noble Audio Kaiser Encore and JH Audio Layla, and of course $4000 Laylas sound better than $249 bluetooth earphones, but the difference in sound doesn't justify the difference in price to me.
Powerbeats pro is the Apple H1 chip true wireless earphones with largest driver of them all which makes them sound better than AirPods Pro – it's just physics. Bass in Powerbeats is amazing, which is also true for my Shures, but Powerbeats also win in clarity.
It connects seamlessly to both my MacBook and my iPhone, and everyone in voice chats can hear me really good.
Huge case is a major throwback compared to AirPods, but the battery life of earphones themselves is so great that I just leave the case at home and only carry earphones and it works for me.
Apple Link bracelet in space black – really better than I expected. Intricate detailing, literally the steel that Rolex uses, top-notch finishing and polishing – all that for just 450 dollars. I only used it for several days now, but it already feels like a really satisfying product.
Before all that I was using Linux. It took a year for elementaryos devs to fix wifi for my laptop. Ubuntu looks and feels ugly. Pop OS felt like garbage. Manjaro was also just that – garbage. KDE Plasma – I don't even want to talk about that. A monstrocity where you accidentally click a wrong switch in the settings and your system won't boot up again. Also, PulseAudio. Struggles with proprietary drivers and software updates.
Windows? I serviced a lot of Windows PCs through my career and it never, never worked as intended. I'm no dumbass, I always managed the rights correctly and never installed sketchy apps. My latest ryzen gaming build with a lot of ram also lags somehow even in Windows 10 UI.
Before I switched, I defended Linux.
My life was a lie.
I'm sorry to everyone who I offended based on their opinion on Linux.33 -
Former android fan, I’ve been using iPhone SE for a while, and now I’m ready to give feedback. We are talking about brand new, iOS 11.2.2 device, never jailbraked (jailbroken?) or made anything fucked up to.
The main problem is battery life. It’s poor. I mean, my cheap ass Meizu m3s stands for about three times longer. Now I always need to carry power bank or charger around, keeping it up from one outlet to another.
iOS 11 is unstable and flawed. Music widget on lock screen freezes randomly, ui falls apart sometimes, apps sometimes start in landscape mode. I never found android ui falling apart, just like webpage marked up by interns.
Transferring files to Linux PC is huge pain in the ass. Nuff said.
Aaaand... that’s all. There is literally only three problems present.
On the other hand, there is huge advantages over android:
Speed. It’s unbeatable. It’s absolutely stunning. Need camera? Here it is, quarter second away. Android camera needed straight 15 seconds to start up. Taking picture? Here it is, flawless as always. Zero motion blur, gamma is ideal, focus is so sharp so you may hurt your eyes. Need 100 pictures? Here you go, just press the button and hold it. Maybe s9 or another shiny ass android takes pictures as fast as iPhone, but I bet my iPhone will be taking pictures same flawlessly after 5 years, while your android will probably become sluggish ass piece of crap.
Not. A. Single. Fucking. Lag.
Asphalt 8? 60 FPS all the way down. 2GIS? Fraction of a second away. That’s it, that’s how it have to be.
Sound quality. Just as neat as my Sansa Clip. EarPods are crap, so I’m using my SE215. Not going to ever come back to Sansa. Xperia TX had much less quality audio btw.
Apps. As long as the whole enterprise world sucking Apple’s dick, apps are running silky smooth and the things are not going to change. Come on. Apple is the king nowadays, admit it or not.
Keyboard is amazing. Screen is amazing. It’s just that pleasing. The sounds iPhone makes are great, while android sounds piss me off and making me hold myself from throwing the phone straight to the wall.
iPhone makes me feel cared about. Everything is on it’s place, everything fits perfectly. You are watching YouTube, you need to adjust volume and volume bar appears as tiny strip on the very top, just to not distract you. Make screenshot, draw something on it, share and hit delete. Every action you need is one tap away. Look up word? One tap away. Position the cursor between words? Polished as fuck, here you go, have your handy magnifying glass. Adblock in safari? Install it from the App Store and it will be literally two taps away, right at the settings. No VPN needed. Safari doesn’t become slow with Adblock, it’s just the same amazingly fast browser, but without ads. And Apple Music is just one dollar a month for students, filled with high quality songs.
Even google apps working better on iOS.
The advantages are clear for me, while downsides aren’t significant. @irene, you wanted to know what I’ll tell after a while, so I’m saying it proudly:
I’m never ever coming back to android.12 -
This shit is long story of my computer experience over my lifetime.
When I was young I got my first PC with windows it was not so bad. It required safe shut down of it’s fat32 partition. From time to time I needed to reinstall it cause of slow down but I got used to it I was only a gamer.
Time passes and I got more curious about computers and about this linux. Everything worked there but installation of anything was complete madness and none of windows programs worked well, and I wanted to play games and be productive so I sticked with windows.
I bought hp laptop once with nvidia card, it was overheating and got broken. So I bought toshiba and all I told to the seller was I want ATI card. Took me 5 minutes to do it and I was faster then my friend buying pack of cigarettes because I was earning money using computer.
Then I grown up running my small one person programming businesses and I wanted to run and compile every fucking program on this world. I wanted linux shell commands. I wanted package manager, and I wanted my os to be simple because I wasn’t earning money by using my os but by programming. So after getting my paycheck I bought mac. I can run windows and linux on vm if I need it. I try not to steal someones work so I didn’t want to run hackintosh. I am using this mac for some time.
Also I use playstation for gaming. Because I only want to run and play game I am not excited about graphics but gameplay. I think I am pragmatic person.
I can tell you something about my mac.
When I close lid it go sleep when I open it wakes up instantly. I never need to wonder if I want to hibernate or shut down or sleep and drain battery. It is fucking simple.
When I want to run or open something it doesn’t want me to wait but it gives me my intellij or terminal or another browser or whatever I search for. Yeah search is something that works.
Despite it got 8 gigs of ram I can run whatever number of programs I want at the same speed. The speed is not very fast sometimes but it’s constant fast.
I have a keychain so my passwords are in one place I can slow down shared internet speed, I can put my wifi in monitor mode and I don’t need to install some 3rd party software.
And now I updated my mac to high sierra, cause it’s free and I want to play with ios compilation. Before I did it I didn’t even backup whole work. I just used time machine and regular backups. And guess what, it still works at the same speed and all I did was click to run update and cook something to eat.
When I got bored I close the lid, when got idea open lid and code shit, not waiting for fucking wakeup or fucking updates.
I wanted to rant apple products I use but they work, they got fucking updates all along at the same time. And all of updates are optional.
I cannot tell that about all apple products but about products I use.
I think I just got old and started to praise my limited time on this world. Not being excited about new crap. When I buy something I choose wisely. I bought iPhone. I can buy latest iPhone x but I bought iPhone 7 cause it’s from fucking metal. And I know that metal is harder then glass, why the fucking apple forgot about it? I don’t know.
I know that I am clumsy and drop stuff. Dropped my phone at least 100 times and nothing.
I am not a apple fan boy I won’t buy mac with this glowing shit above keyboard that would got me blind at night.
I buy something when I know that it can save my time on this world. I try to buy things that make me productive and don’t break after a year.
So now piece of advise, stop wasting your time, buy and update wisely, wait a week or a month or a year when more people buy shit and buy what’s not broken. And if something’s broken rant this shit so next customer can be smarter.
Cheers1 -
changed my name!
from awruh to aysentur now... can be spelled out better. I hope so at least, lmao.
my old name was created due to lack of creativity but the need of a username, so I smashed my keyboard... and that was what came up. aysentur has some more thought in it though not something meaningful.
new name old me11 -
#need_help
Dear all,
I'm trying to make a choice, a choice that won't make me regret it for the few years advanced, I'm in a dilemma, I don't know which MacBook should I get for my everyday life, I currently work as an iOS developer (Learned iOS using all kinds hackintoshes, yeah I never bought a single apple computer, yet), and always have motivation to learn new stuff (from machine learning, to web development, to making games with unity (or whatever engine), hell I even like to design stuff from time to time using Photoshop, sketch, I sometimes do video editing using premiere and after effects), and I yet have to choose which laptop to get, I got only one week to make the choice so...
Here are the options:
The new MacBook Pro 2016 (Touch Bar edition):
Pros: 'Latest' and 'greatest', have thunderbolt ports which makes it (sort of) future proof, TouchId for unlocking the laptop using a fingerprint.
Cons: You need a damn dongle everywhere, no escape key (Which I use for the autocomplete feature in Xcode), and this touch bar (Which I really have no idea if i will ever use it other than the nyan cat app for 5 minutes), plus I heard about battery issues with it (don't know if they resolved it or not), fucking huge trackpad, and no fucking MagSafe!
The previous model MacBook Pro 2015:
Pros: Ports, lots of them, small trackpad (Which you don't have to worry about your palm screwing up your work), and MagSafe! (Which I honestly don't know if it'll make any difference for my usage)
Cons: has old CPU from Haswell generation (I know that it won't feel different, it's just that I like to have parts that are the 'latest')
Now some questions, for people who have the old MacBooks and new MacBooks:
For the ones with old MacBook:
If you were given the choice to replace the old MacBook for the new one for free, would you go for it?
After all this time, how's the battery performance? is it still great from the time you bought it?
Foe the ones with new MacBook:
Does the huge-ass trackpad interfere your work day?
Do you miss magsafe to a point where you really want to throw out the new laptop and go back to previous model?
Did you get used to carry out dongles everywhere?
Did you like the TouchBar? Does it help you in your everyday work? from designing to coding to whatever, do you think that now you can't live without it?
How's the battery performance?
Is programming on it joyable? or the new keyboard and touchpad are just a meh?
Strawpoll to make it easier to vote:
http://www.strawpoll.me/12856510
In addition to that I would love that you guys detail me your experience and answer some questions that I posted above, I would be very, very grateful.2 -
I remember that when I was about 8 years old, my dad brought a desktop computer home one day.
I don’t remember any specs, but it had a huge ass CRT monitor, a very loud clicky keyboard, a mouse with a real ball inside, and a CPU that uses floppy discs and CDs. Nope, CDs, not DVDs. And on that computer, it ran Windows 95. There’s was no internet most of the time (it was still quite expensive and unnecessary and dial up was troublesome to set up back then).
I remembered playing bootlegged games sold in CDs that my dad bought during his trips to China back then. Duke nukem, Command and Conquer Red Alert 2, Microsoft solitaire and GTA 3. Those were the games I played.
As a kid, it was glorious, looking through a box on a table, seeing and interacting with so many different worlds, stories, characters and games. I really miss those simpler times.
These days, every time I open my laptop, and I see that new mail that need to be dealt with, that homework that’s about to be due and a reminder of my next class in 15 min. Well shit.1 -
so my poor old hp bro is starting to give up on me after 3 years . there are both battery and performance issues. I knew its death was near when i got its keyboard replaced i saw its battery's state 6 months ago. it was fat as me . Now it can't live without the wire for more than 30 mins.
apart from that am getting frustrated with everyday performance of my system. all i open is 50 tabs of chrome and android studio where bitch gradle generates a billion byte sized files at million places and cache folders . (and sometimes a terminal and/or files and/or vscode).
I have decent specs tho i5 7th generation/8gb ddr4 ram/ 2gb nvidea graphics/ 1tb hdd. but still my ubuntu gets stuck everytime i switch between chrome and AS . (maybe i have not made correct swap partitions or maybe there is an issue due to ubuntu/windows dualboot)
what should i do ? I guess i have to spend some shit on a new battery. But apart from that, iwanted to know about performance. how to get a beter performance?
I have heard of solutions like getting an sdd or increasing ram, but am broke af and might not afford a 1tb ssd (yes i do need that much amount of memory, my system is currently at 650 something gb) and about ram i have heard it doesn't offer much improvements. is that true?What should i do?6 -
Anybody any suggestions on a good backlit mac layout keyboard?
New monitor for macbook pro arrives Tuesday and I need to be ready 👍👍5 -
Is a used ThinkPad T440/440s (or T430) worth it right now? Assume that it's powerful enough to run whatever I need, and weight isn't really a concern because it's going to spend most of the time sitting on a desk or in the library where the extended battery will come in handy.
I'm eyeing it because build quality and keyboard, and because I can get one for a pretty good price (if I buy a new laptop at the same price I'll get a shitty celeron or low end i3 based thing)3 -
YAYYY! I MADE IT!!
After several nights of playing with my new and very first custom mechanical keyboard, at last I could successfully get my long-time-dreaming keyboard!
I read the guilds, tutorials, even youtube videos to get walked through the process:
- I started with building my own layout on different websites, since they said that it would be easier to use online tools than to write codes by yourself in order to build your own keymappings, but the UI/UX of the first one I tried was so bad that it took me a great deal of time to understand how to use it and working on it is even more time consuming. Later I found another webpage which was less recommended, but could help me to do that a lot easier.
- Then, the result was compiled to a firmware file, which would be flashed into the kb's controller. Loading the file into the board was also tiring and got me exhausted totally! I tried all the "lazy" recommended ways (using Windows softwares) but received the same error all the time. When I almost lost all the hopes, I'd come to the least recommended way: typing a few command lines on Linux. And it worked! The keyboard just do what I want it to do miraculously.
What I learnt: never do complicated things on Windows, because they are suuuuuper simple on Linux!
P/S: Sorry for the bad lighting in my room and the tiny spacebar (the spacebar size is 7u which I don't have one right now). I just need a beautiful keycap set to make it perfect.5 -
Most developers are morons.
Because the field of software development has a relatively low barrier of entry, we naturally have a large and steady supply of under-trained and clueless keyboard monkeys, hereby referred to as zombies.
The reason the industry is set up this way is because companies need a steady supply of new talent. Big Tech is so greedy, they snatch most good talent and bench them, leaving the scraps for everyone else. Other companies lower their standards and hire anybody that can copy and paste. Most entry-level software work at smaller companies is usually low risk and high churn and that's where the low barrier of entry comes in.
I have nothing against zombie developers, so long as they know their place.
I've seen too many zombies think they're CTO material after 2 years of fixing javascript bugs, or think that if they watch just enough egghead.io videos, they'll be promoted to senior.
Typically a zombie developer will go down one of two paths: 1) they either burn out and realize that software isn't what they're meant for (most common scenario) or 2) they actually get good and decide to stick around.
The ones who stick around though usually do so because it hits a sweet spot for them. To them, software is:
- Interesting enough to do it for a full-time job
- Good enough at it to secure a steady job at a two-bit company
- Pays enough to pay the bills
These people don't have a deep passion for software. It's basically just a full-time hobby for them.
And I have nothing against that. The market is satisfied, they're satisfied and I'm satisfied so long as they don't start thinking that they and I are on the same level.
Know your place, zombie devs.
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