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So I got the job. Here's a story, never let anyone stop you from accomplishing your dreams!
It all started in 2010. Windows just crashed unrecoverably for the 3rd time in two years. Back then I wasn't good with computers yet so we got our tech guy to look at it and he said: "either pay for a windows license again (we nearly spend 1K on licenses already) or try another operating system which is free: Ubuntu. If you don't like it anyways, we can always switch back to Windows!"
Oh well, fair enough, not much to lose, right! So we went with Ubuntu. Within about 2 hours I could find everything. From the software installer to OpenOffice, browsers, email things and so on. Also I already got the basics of the Linux terminal (bash in this case) like ls, cd, mkdir and a few more.
My parents found it very easy to work with as well so we decided to stick with it.
I already started to experiment with some html/css code because the thought of being able to write my own websites was awesome! Within about a week or so I figured out a simple html site.
Then I started to experiment more and more.
After about a year of trial and error (repeat about 1000+ times) I finally got my first Apache server setup on a VirtualBox running Ubuntu server. Damn, it felt awesome to see my own shit working!
From that moment on I continued to try everything I could with Linux because I found the principle that I basically could do everything I wanted (possible with software solutions) without any limitations (like with Windows/Mac) very fucking awesome. I owned the fucking system.
Then, after some years, I got my first shared hosting plan! It was awesome to see my own (with subdomain) website online, functioning very well!
I started to learn stuff like FTP, SSH and so on.
Went on with trial and error for a while and then the thought occured to me: what if I'd have a little server ONLINE which I could use myself to experiment around?
First rented VPS was there! Couldn't get enough of it and kept experimenting with server thingies, linux in general aaand so on.
Started learning about rsa key based login, firewalls (iptables), brute force prevention (fail2ban), vhosts (apache2 still), SSL (damn this was an interesting one, how the fuck do you do this yourself?!), PHP and many other things.
Then, after a while, the thought came to mind: what if I'd have a dedicated server!?!?!?!
I ordered my first fucking dedicated server. Damn, this was awesome! Already knew some stuff about defending myself from brute force bots and so on so it went pretty well.
Finally made the jump to NginX and CentOS!
Made multiple VPS's for shitloads of purposes and just to learn. Started working with reverse proxies (nginx), proxy servers, SSL for everything (because fuck basic http WITHOUT SSL), vhosts and so on.
Started with simple, one screen linux setup with ubuntu 10.04.
Running a five monitor setup now with many distro's, running about 20 servers with proxies/nginx/apache2/multiple db engines, as much security as I can integrate and this fucking passion just got me my first Linux job!
It's not just an operating system for me, it's a way of life. And with that I don't just mean the operating system, but also the idea behind it :).20 -
IPod didn't sync well on my Linux machines so decided to give windows - in a highly isolated environment disconnected from the Internet behind a firewall and sandbox - a shot with itunes.
- during the installation it wouldn't detect the fucking harddrive multiple times (genuine unlicensed copy) and after the 4-5th time it's random-fuckingly recognized out of fucking nowhere; I didn't change shit.
- crashes (blue screen and freezes) multiple times during the installation, multiple retries and suddenly it works(?!)
- it took about 10 minutes (!!!!!!!) to install 10+ drivers for an iPod and an external hdd:
Installing Apple iPod drivers... Done
Installing seagate drivers... Done
Installing apple iPod drivers... Done
Installing seagate drivers... Done
Installing Apple iPod drivers... Done
Installing seagate drivers... Done
Installing Apple iPod drivers... Done
Installing seagate drivers... Done
Installing Apple iPod drivers... Done
WHY INSTALL THOSE FUCKERS 5 FUCKING TIMES?!
- iTunes installation fails multiple times without error code (unknown error occured, restoring to original state...),just said fuck it and clicked the shortcut after the ***th fail and it works just like this, THANKS FOR NOTIFYING ME (NOT)!
- iTunes has to restore the entire ipod, this was done with iTunes in the store I bought it already, thanks for nothing.
-restore takes 30+ minutes?!
-syncs the iPod 3 times afterwards.
*clicks close button*
*are you sure you want to quit? Sync in progress*
*oh shit, cancels*
*itunes quits*
*?!?!?*
*tries to import media library*
*seagate hdd suddenly not detected*
I'm fucking tired of this bullshit, windows and iTunes can go die in a fucking corner after getting ass raped while their genitals are being scraped off layer by fucking layer and dipped into fucking acid.15 -
I really hate these "an error occurred" messages, guessing I'll talk with IT later today.
Meanwhile, the dialog should show
1 -
Fucking Square Enix Website is just a huge pile of shit. NOTHING WORKS!
Wanna change your password? Nah sorry an error occured.
Wanna change your username? Nah sorry I'll just show you a loading symbol forever.
Wanna add a game to your collection? Nah sorry the "add" button is on fucking holiday and doesn't do anything.
Wanna change your avatar? Nah sorry I'll just redirect you and don't do anything.
Most amazing part is where you log in, then get redirected to the home page but it still shows the "Log in" button. Then you click on that "Log In" button and wosh! Home page reloads and tada! You're logged in!
Seriously who let this code into production? Also I know that you're using GraphQL now, due to an error message. Thank you!
Fucking bullshit...6 -
A time I (almost) screamed at co-worker?
Too many times to keep up with.
Majority of time its code like ..
try
{
using (var connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString))
{
// data access code that does stuff
}
catch (Exception e)
{
// Various ways of dealing with the error such as ..
Console.WriteLine("Here");
ShowMessage("An error occured.");
return false;
// or do nothing.
}
}
Range of excuses
- Users can't do anything about the error, so why do or show them anything?
- I'll fix the errors later
- Handling the errors were not in the end-user specification. If you want it, you'll have to perform a cost/benefit analysis, get the changes approved by the board in writing, placed in the project priority queue ...etc..etc
- I don't know.
- Users were tired of seeing database timeout errors, deadlocks, primary key violations, etc, so I fixed the problem.
On my tip of my tongue are rages of ..
"I'm going to trade you for a donkey, and shoot the donkey!"
or
"You are about as useful as a sack full of possum heads."
I haven't cast those stones (yet). I'll eventually run across my code that looks exactly like that.1 -
I had the idea that part of the problem of NN and ML research is we all use the same standard loss and nonlinear functions. In theory most NN architectures are universal aproximators. But theres a big gap between symbolic and numeric computation.
But some of our bigger leaps in improvement weren't just from new architectures, but entire new approaches to how data is transformed, and how we calculate loss, for example KL divergence.
And it occured to me all we really need is training/test/validation data and with the right approach we can let the system discover the architecture (been done before), but also the nonlinear and loss functions itself, and see what pops out the other side as a result.
If a network can instrument its own code as it were, maybe it'd find new and useful nonlinear functions and losses. Networks wouldn't just specificy a conv layer here, or a maxpool there, but derive implementations of these all on their own.
More importantly with a little pruning, we could even use successful examples for bootstrapping smaller more efficient algorithms, all within the graph itself, and use genetic algorithms to mix and match nodes at training time to discover what works or doesn't, or do training, testing, and validation in batches, to anneal a network in the correct direction.
By generating variations of successful nodes and graphs, and using substitution, we can use comparison to minimize error (for some measure of error over accuracy and precision), and select the best graph variations, without strictly having to do much point mutation within any given node, minimizing deleterious effects, sort of like how gene expression leads to unexpected but fitness-improving results for an entire organism, while point-mutations typically cause disease.
It might seem like this wouldn't work out the gate, just on the basis of intuition, but I think the benefit of working through node substitutions or entire subgraph substitution, is that we can check test/validation loss before training is even complete.
If we train a network to specify a known loss, we can even have that evaluate the networks themselves, and run variations on our network loss node to find better losses during training time, and at some point let nodes refer to these same loss calculation graphs, within themselves, switching between them dynamically..via variation and substitution.
I could even invision probabilistic lists of jump addresses, or mappings of value ranges to jump addresses, or having await() style opcodes on some nodes that upon being encountered, queue-up ticks from upstream nodes whose calculations the await()ed node relies on, to do things like emergent convolution.
I've written all the classes and started on the interpreter itself, just a few things that need fleshed out now.
Heres my shitty little partial sketch of the opcodes and ideas.
https://pastebin.com/5yDTaApS
I think I'll teach it to do convolution, color recognition, maybe try mnist, or teach it step by step how to do sequence masking and prediction, dunno yet.6 -
I have to go through roughly 700 data entries and adjust the system's data accordingly ... by hand.😑
We don't have the tools to automate this reliably, the only available tool, tells you that an error occured and what happened but not where. That would've been kinda helpful...
The problem is that the respective data object of the data entry often contains a phone number, which has to be in a standardized format ... which it is not. Every number is formatted in like 10 variations!? A dozen different separators like spaces, commas, slashes and hyphens. And it must be edited manually 😖
My solution: built a goddamn chrome extension to format the string on click. Done. Saves a few seconds each time and a lot of headache in future. Of course given the correctness of the extension.4 -
What the hell is the point of this small projects team spending 2-3 months on developing extensive logging system for an internal application for inside and outside customers to use if your application isn’t going to log any of the fucking errors. Sure you write the failure status to the database, but it just says failure with an even more vague explanation than microsoft’s errors. “An error occurred”. No shit, that’s why I’m looking in the logs and database to debug the application to get these files on their merry way so our company can stay in compliance with the state, feds, and not pay out the wazzoo in fines. All our other applications state where the error occured such as “failed to connect to the email server”, why can’t this one.
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I don't want too often about window but this....
I'm just trying to set the language from German to Dutch. I have changed everything from Germans to Dutch in the idiotic Settings and in the proper Control Panel. Still German...
Okay. Let's delete German all together and reboot... Still fucking nothing. Wth?
Eventually downloaded the package manually. Running LPKSETUP gives me the option to install it and remove German.
WHY THE FUCK WAS GERMAN THE ONLY LANGUAGE THERE AND WHY WAS IT STILL THERE?!
I FUCKING REMOVED THE LANGUAGE IN ALL SETTINGS AND CONTROL PANEL.
MICROSOFT CAN GET FUCKED IN THE ASS WITH A CACTUS FOR MAKING IT NEAR IMPOSSIBLE TO CHANGE LANGUAGES.
I still think it's weird because I could change my own Windows from Dutch to English just by changing it in the stupid Settings app
(while typing this rant an error occured. Just error. Nothing more. So Dutch still isn't installed. Fucking fuck)4 -
The magic Apple Support:
A few days ago, I suddenly couldn't login to iCloud on my mac. I thought it was something that would be gone if I would try turning it back off and on again. Didn't work. Used the mac without bothering about it. I was too lazy to call the Apple Support and it didn't annoy me that much.
A day later, suddenly Spark (my email client) didnt work either, it asked me all the time to re-login into one of the accounts but "an authentication error occured". At that point I thought it was a problem with the keychain. Because i don't use email that often and the last time I should pay 30€ if I wanted to call Support (out of warranty), I just started using email on my phone.
Yesterday, MS Office (yes I use it and I like this Microsoft Product and I'm an Apple fanboy) wouldn't login either. I didn't call them.
Today, I had finally time to call them. They didn't want to charge me since I selected an Apple-Id Problem (and I think the Support Hotlines are free to call idk). The call from Ireland came 2 times and the connection didn't work (thanks iPhone). The third time, the moment the Support guy said Hello iCloud worked. A few second later Office and Spark worked again too. I don't know how these coincidences happen. Anyway, I am just happy my stuff works again and I don't have to use Google Docs and write my mails on my phone. -
Yanno, a popup that states "failure. No specific error was returned with this API call" is about as useful as "Error code: NOPE. Good luck fuckers!"
This occured after hitting the delete button for an MX record on a host that I'm migrating away from.
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