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Good Morning!, its time for practiseSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker!
Todays contestant is a very special one.
*sitcom audience: WHY?*
Glad you asked, you see if you were to look at his linkedin profile, you would see a job title unlike any you've seen before.
*sitcom audience oooooooohhhhhh*
were not talking software developer, engineer, tech lead, designer, CTO, CEO or anything like that, No No our new entrant "G" surpasses all of those with the title ..... "Software extraordinaire".
*sitcom audience laughs hysterically*
I KNOW!, wtf does that even mean! as a previous dev-ranter pointed out does this mean he IS quality code? I'd say he's more like a trash can ... where his code belongs
*ba dum tsssss*
Ok ok, lets get on with the show, heres some reasons why "G" is on the show:
One of G's tasks was to build an analytics gathering library for iOS, similar to google analytics where you track pages and events (we couldn't use google's). G was SO good at this job he implemented 2 features we didn't even ask for:
- If the library was unable to load its config file (for any reason) it would throw an uncatchable system integrity error, crashing the app.
- If anything was passed into any of the functions that wasn't expected (null, empty array etc.) it would crash the app as it was "more efficient" to not do any sanity checks inside the library.
This caused a lot of issues as some of the data needed to come from the clients server. The day we launched the app, within the first 3 hours we had over 40k crash logs and a VERY angry client.
Now, what makes this story important is not the bugs themselves, come on how many times have we all done something stupid? No the issue here was G defended all of this as the right thing to do!
.. and no he wasn't stoned or drunk!
G claimed if he couldn't get the right settings / params he wouldn't be able to track the event and then our CEO wouldn't have our usage data. To which I replied:
"So your solution was to not give the client an app instead? ... which also doesn't give the CEO his data".
He got very angry and asked me "what would you do then?". I offered a solution something like why not have a default tag for "error" or "unknown" where if theres an issue, we send up whatever we have, plus the file name and store it somewhere else. I was told I was being ridiculous as it wasn't built to track anything like that and that would never work ... his solution? ... pull the library out of the app and forget it.
... once again giving everyone no data.
G later moved onto another cross-platform style project. Backend team were particularly unhappy as they got no spec of what needed to be done. All they knew was it was a single endpoint dealing with very complex model. There was no Java classes, super classes, abstract classes or even interfaces, just this huge chunk of mocked data. So myself and the lead sat down with him, and asked where the interfaces for the backend where, or designs / architecture for them etc.
His response, to this day frightens me ... not makes me angry, not bewilders me ... scares the living shit out of me that people like this exist in the world and have successful careers.
G: "hhhmmm, I know how to build an interface, but i've never understood them ... Like lets say I have an interface, what now? how does that help me in any way? I can't physically use it, does it not just use up time building it for no reason?"
us: "... ... how are the backend team suppose to understand the model, its types, integrate it into the other systems?"
G: "Can I not just tell them and they can write it down?"
**
I'll just pause here for a moment, as you'll likely need to read that again out of sheer disbelief
**
I've never seen someone die inside the way the lead did. He started a syllable and his face just dropped, eyes glazed over and he instantly lost all the will to live. He replied:
" wel ............... it doesn't matter ... its not important ... I have to go, good luck with the project"
*killed the screen share and left the room*
now I know you are all dying in suspense to know what happened to that project, I can drop the shocking bombshell that it was in fact cancelled. Thankfully only ~350 man hours were spent on it
... yep, not a typo.
G's crowning achievement however will go down in history. VERY long story short, backend got deployed to the server and EVERYTHING broke. Lead investigated, found mistakes and config issues on every second line, load balancer wasn't even starting up. When asked had this been tested before it was deployed:
G: "Yeah I tested it on my machine, it worked fine"
lead: "... and on the server?"
G: "no, my machine will do the same thing"
lead: "do you have a load balancer and multiple VM's?"
G: "no, but Java is Java"
... and with that its time to end todays episode. Will G be our most incompetent? ... maybe.
Tune in later for more practiceSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker!!!31 -
!Story
The day I became the 400 pound Chinese hacker 4chan.
I built this front-end solution for a client (but behind a back end login), and we get on the line with some fancy European team who will handle penetration testing for the client as we are nearing dev completion.
They seem... pretty confident in themselves, and pretty disrespectful to the LAMP environment, and make the client worry even though it's behind a login the project is still vulnerable. No idea why the client hired an uppity .NET house to test a LAMP app. I don't even bother asking these questions anymore...
And worse, they insist we allow them to scrape for vulnerabilities BEHIND the server side login. As though a user was already compromised.
So, I know I want to fuck with them. and I sit around and smoke some weed and just let this issue marinate around in my crazy ass brain for a bit. Trying to think of a way I can obfuscate all this localStorage and what it's doing... And then, inspiration strikes.
I know this library for compressing JSON. I only use it when localStorage space gets tight, and this project was only storing a few k to localStorage... so compression was unnecessary, but what the hell. Problem: it would be obvious from exposed source that it was being called.
After a little more thought, I decide to override the addslashes and stripslashes functions and to do the compression/decompression from within those overrides.
I then minify the whole thing and stash it in the minified jquery file.
So, what LOOKS from exposed client side code to be a simple addslashes ends up compressing the JSON before putting it in localStorage. And what LOOKS like a stripslashes decompresses.
Now, the compression does some bit math that frankly is over my head, but the practical result is if you output the data compressed, it looks like mandarin and random characters. As a result, everything that can be seen in dev tools looks like the image.
So we GIVE the penetration team login credentials... they log in and start trying to crack it.
I sit and wait. Grinning as fuck.
Not even an hour goes by and they call an emergency meeting. I can barely contain laughter.
We get my PM and me and then several guys from their team on the line. They share screen and show the dev tools.
"We think you may have been compromised by a Chinese hacker!"
I mute and then die my ass off. Holy shit this is maybe the best thing I've ever done.
My PM, who has seen me use the JSON compression technique before and knows exactly whats up starts telling them about it so they don't freak out. And finally I unmute and manage a, "Guys... I'm standing right here." between gasped laughter.
If only it was more common to use video in these calls because I WISH I could have seen their faces.
Anyway, they calmed their attitude down, we told them how to decompress the localStorage, and then they still didn't find jack shit because i'm a fucking badass and even after we gave them keys to the login and gave them keys to my secret localStorage it only led to AWS Cognito protected async calls.
Anyway, that's the story of how I became a "Chinese hacker" and made a room full of penetration testers look like morons with a (reasonably) simple JS trick.
9 -
A big FUCK YOU to chrome, and a big FUCK YOU to google in generally. First the hell that is code.org, then the chrome. I genuinely want to open a dictionary in google to see if the word "privacy" is in there. Sure, first it was tracking users with by making them agree to a long ass TOS no one wants to read except lawyers, then barely even giving any info and asking for consent with YOUR data, but this is too far. For all you that dont know, LanSchool is an application that allows teachers to see students screens, internet history and more. Its the reason kids can't play games in English class. But most importantly, its a chrome extension. We have to do assignments from home right? So when we logon to the school account from home, LANSCHOOL GETS DOWNLOADED ANYRACKS EVERYTHING I DO. It pains me how teachers can view so much information unfairly because of some unknowing students, my friends privacy was unfairly in the hands of google and the school system. Right when I found out about tit (~2 mins after i first logged on) i made an Ubuntu VM just for goddamn google docs. Back to my friend, he went on some websites not to be considered appropriate, and got in huge trouble. He was completely unaware of the fact that they could see his screen, and I resent google for allowing a third party to manipulate my PERSONAL COMPUTER without my consent. Die google, you ruined android, which had so much potential, and now the web and virtual privacy. You should be <strike>ashamed</strike> dead, and I hope in the future you realize that one day people will have common sense.26
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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 -
This is why I hate Windows:
For about a month now, I've been learning/working on salesforce, so my Macbook was enough for me.
Today there was a bug in something I built in iur Python backend, and since it has a dependency on windows, I booted the old guy up.
And this is what I see. For about 1.5 hours this went on.
Then it started, but system consuming 100% disk and 80+% CPU. Can't do a thing.
And when zoom finally opened (for a quick meet), the camera turned on halfway down the meeting, and then the system restarted on it's own.
Old man showing that same screen again for more than 30 minutes.
Since I have dual boot on this one, I hard-shutdown it using power button, and now boot into ubuntu 20. This works so beautifully (although it froze for about 5 seconds before popping up the updates panel, something I CHOSE to keep enabled). I try going back to Windows, and it's hell again.
Here I am now trying to set up a ec2 instance and setup the app source there so that I can debug with RDP.
And yeah, Component Object Model is a motherfucking bitch. Person who invented it should die. People who build apps leveraging this should die. Business leaders who say "Hey this app (built with COM) can solve the problem easily, so use this" should die choking on their own phallus. And developers like me who keep using this because "the last guy did this" should die too.
Microsoft and it's products are the death of sane people.
Fucking Gates. Its the same damn hardware.
13 -
Fun stuff from the few most recent pages in Dwarf Fortress bug tracker:
Human civilization's soldier is an Alligator Recruit.
Dead suspects confess to crimes
Crash due to zero-size weasel
Pets and other animals from retired fortresses appear as selectable 'workers' in request screen, die of old age on arrival
Some animal people have extra fingers
People dying twice?
Most confusingly, one necromancer shows as having died from old age twice, despite this not being possible.
My Nature Hating Adventurer Who Lacks Altruism And Is Very Cruel Isn't Happy After Butchering Animals
bat man males don't have geldables
Reanimated severed werebeast necromancer hand has a full body
Dwarf likes "cacao wood wood"
Dwarves turn hostile againt the player and defend their prison from raid sent to free them
Visitors giving birth during visit leave their baby behind
a water buffalo got stuck inside a rough tetrahedrite wall
Animals which retract into body parts forget to come out
Herbalist stuck on stepladder, starving to death.
Artifact has an image of nothing
Cave Dragons are sometimes intelligent, and sometimes join human civilizations
A goblin knocked over a workshop and now my dwarves are killing each other
Ambusher elves are being spotted, but the giant monsters they're riding on aren't.
runs with food from table to table. Can't eat
Intelligent Undead Sent on Mission Return as Ghosts
Horrified merchants immediately destroy their wagons, pack their goods and leave the depot
Dwarf king abdictates to become commoner necromancer apprentice
Internal body parts with certain tags can still wear clothing & armor, without being otherwise accessible
Necromancer marries zombie
Single dad dwarf with buggy dead wife leaves kid behind when he takes over holding
Large quantities of adamantine coins causes trade depot to burst into flame3 -
I knew this might be an issue, but really Linux just sucks balls. It may not be Linux's fault, but the user experience could be a fuck ton better.
Spent 1.5 hours trying to get mint installed on second drive. It works fine if you don't want to do anything with it.
As you can probably surmise I died on getting the gpu driver installed. Just starts to a black screen. No amount of juggling is helping. It just refuses to show the screen with an nvidia driver installed. What is worse is that settings that might help are not set. Like nomodeset in grub. If you know some drivers fuck up the grub interface then add nomodeset and not leave it up to the user to "figure this shit out". Because users are tired of figuring this shit out.
Really really fucking disappointed. I thought to myself: lets install steam and see how it does. The reality: fucking stuck for 1.5 hours on trying to boot into x with graphics acceleration and failing.
Many of you hate on windows, but one thing it has going for it. It doesn't do fucked up shit like this. It has failsafes that try and account for this.
Fuck you linux. You need to fucking grow up and stop relying on users to fix every damn thing in the command line. Go back to server where you belong.
I know I will get the "I told you so" messages, but guess what? The computer I got doesn't come preinstalled with windows. You have to pay to get it. At this point windows is the only fucking viable solution to make my shit work.
Nvidia, go die in a fire bitch. Fix your fucking Linux support you worthless shit heads.
This has been a rant brought to you by "the pain of others". I hope you enjoyed the experience.
PS, I love you all. Even the "I told you so" bitches.12 -
OMFG, Dell, why can't you be normal and make your batteries die like any other batteries - by simply switching the laptop off immediately when the charger is unplugged???
Guess what it looks like when a JD25G (XPS13 9530) battery is dying (still 88% health)!
Constant screen flickering (yes, even in BIOS). Good thing I'm not an epileptic - my screen is fucking strobing!!!
I know it's a battery, because I had the same issue some years ago when I replaced the died original one with a cheapo made by GreenCell. Boi that was fun - I saw my laptop do miraculous things I never would've thought of! Screen flickering was one of them. As soon as I replaced that turd with an original one all these magic powers went away.14 -
I once found a bug that I couldn't figure out from the code, so I started putting log statements that would print out the variables on screen (yes I have xDebug, but old habits die hard). Then the entire website didn't load anymore and eventually the entire container crashed.
It took me an hour to realize I was trying to var_dump an object from the ORM, resulting in a memory overload since there were like 20 related objects that recursively tried to load all the data in the database.
In my defense, it was friday afternoon... -
It seems like very version of Ubuntu I use at work has jank. Ubuntu 18.04 would have file managers that just die. After locking/unlocking the screen it would move windows between monitors. One window would seemingly cause other windows to have discoloration and I would see phantom objects text overlaid with what looks like transparency. This was all Gnome. Lots of little quirks that I just got used to.
Now I am running 22.04 and while a lot of jank went away I am getting new jank. Every once in a while if I move a window or bring a window up after hiding the window. The window will oversize across the screen like I zoomed in. Noticing this with Firefox. It goes back to normal size real quick. But it is kind of wild. Jank that stayed is my external monitor I have attached through hdmi takes its sweet time to reactivate after being asleep. This might actually be a weird hardware issue. This is also Gnome.
I just find it wild that this jank is there and we are like: "Oh well. At least it ain't MS Windows jank..."6 -
iPhone alarm clock suddenly stopped playing sounds this week (again), fortunately my wake up time is not critical.
After every major osx upgrade I feel that I need to restart macbook more and more often cause system suddenly hangs.
Yesterday I spotted that after each restart there is information that if system hangs on login screen for a while I should restart computer again ( well thanks for advice that I don’t have to wait till I die ).
Cursor randomly disappears after I connected microsoft usb mouse ( microsoft mouse eating cursor from apple windows ).
Why I use microsoft mouse you ask ? That’s the best thing microsoft made, it’s literally indestructible. I dropped and kicked that mouse hundred times, still works perfectly fine.
I think also somehow osx forced minor bug fix upgrade once without my permission so they’re slowly going the forgotten microsoft path that is always forcing updates you don’t want to install in this particular moment.
Because their engineers know better when and why I want to update.
Looks like Apple engineering is slowly degrading or QA care less about older hardware users.
I am not used to buy new shit when old works just fine, those shiny little things are my work tools not something I show around to impress people how cool I am.
That’s all disappointing but still better then windows experience cause didn’t reinstalled osx from scratch since almost 5 years and it’s working at the same speed like it was new ( not impressed linux users here but from my previous experience with windows “registry” that means something and this hardware already paid for itself).6 -
a lion in captivity forgets to hunt. a man loosing everyday forget about winning.
I am feeling so sad and worthless right now. Like, so worthless that if I am walking down the street tomorrow and if some car hits me and i die, i wouldn't mind.
I find it questionable about what I am living for? why am i selling myself in front of keyboard till 12 am every day to earn some bucks when all this money is being / will be used to give happiness to a bunch of people that don't give 2 shits about me.
why can't i get some love? why can't i get some respect? i feel like a disabled 5 year old boy trapped in an abled 25 year old body. I can feel my legs, but I don't have the permission to use them. its like i am tied by ropes. and this rope has been on me for so long, that i can feel my legs, but i can also feel that those are having cuts so deep that i won't be able to use them even once the rope is taken out.
being a single child, loneliness has always been my shadow at home. and The middle class poor income, fighting parents, sickness and lack of culture ensured that loneliness remained my friend in school, college and other areas too.
the only goal of becoming an ideal son has shadowed every other thing in life. I can't drink, i can't go outside after 10pm, I can't take a jobbin different city. I can't fucking have female friends or think about relatiion-shits with people. i can't drive the car that was bought by my salary money. the list goes on and on.. i think every Indian (girls more than boys ig) have gone through at least 1 such restrictions at some point of their life. but me? a GUY in his fucking 25 , is going through ALL OF THEM, from day 1.
Plus i haven't started to discuss the weird eccentricities that i have to deal with, which are not so common. we follow a special religion where they have lots of philosophy and additional rules ( like no onion garlic mushroom in foods, mediation + pray for 1 hour twice a day ,... etc)
But i didn't complain, until now. I got sadder and sadder with time, but I cooperated. Whome else to live for , if not for the folks who made you in their womb amd sack? yeah I will fucking stay celibate until you find some willing "cultured" girl from your "religion" and arrange a lifelong existence. yes, i will fucking keep paying the car emis and see it in the parking lot everyday , while traveling via a metro. yes i will stay in your house in front of you all the times and never learn to exist independently coz fuck maturity. yes i will be a static atm machine waiting to die as you please.
but i am still not your ideal son? I say one little thing, and you start shouting at me for being selfish? why is religious superstition and those crime storemies so much deep into your head that you folks are micro managing and criticising every single thing in my life?
why is there a need for repetitive arguments, fights and shouting before evry action? why can't we just be happy for once!
I am shattered looking for happiness. I can't live like this anymore. There are no more than 2 people in my life that i care about and if those 2 are always having an upside down , angered face the what is the point of waking up every day?
wish i could just leave them. But can they live without me? or even can i live without them? and no , not talking about emotionally. I am very strong at the emotional side and i can throw word daggers to even 10+ years of companionships and ruin them. this will be just another long term relationship that i will sour.
BUT I CAN'T LITERALLY LIVE WITHOUT THEM. i am a useless guy who don't have any social intelligence outside his computer screen. i don't know how to live alone, and exist, or what my goals will be. I never saw a future without thinking about securing their future first, and them being in my future at all times.
aagh fuck. another painful night to survive and exist until i rise again to live like a corpse coz i can't do anything about it6
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