Hi everyone,

We're currently experiencing major issues with the devrant.io domain due to another outage/problem with .io domains themselves. More info here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item/...

The issue is also being reported on twitter.

If you receive a host not found, connection error, etc. connecting to devRant, this is why. We'll keep you updated and in the future we will probably be switching away from .io at least for our API.

Thanks for the patience.

Episode 3 of this rant: https://devrant.io/rants/871827/...

Me: So I'm going an API call to Mastercard but they don't give us back CreditCard token to save.
Provider: Ya man you need to curl a request in your code to get the token...blahblahblah.... man you need to know these things they are not an easy things to be done, just paste curl code on MasterCard website into your code and it will work

Me: *ignores his shit talk and proceed to test*
*5 minutes later*
MasterCard Server: error.cause=INVALID_REQUEST&error.explanation=Invalid+credentials.&result=ERROR
Me: *calls provider and tell him*
Provider: Oh sorry, we need to enable this feature for your account.

devRant people please, give me one reason why I should not leave this field, and maybe also leave this life knowing there are this type of people alive.

Thank you :)

!rant 😇

Question time for the automators out there. Has anyone stumbled upon n8n?

https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n

It looks surprisingly simple to get up and running for a no-code automation tool, just wondering if there's any communal reviews on them before I jump deep inside.

Making a Snake game. Let me explain.. I had just "finished"(We all know there is no finishing side projects) my first big, at least for me, project. An io game called torpedoed.fun [http://torpedoed.fun]. And yes, it is a desktop only, and also yes, it is not that fun of a game. Torpedoed.fun taught me a lot about developing such as how to debug effectively, backend communication, how to host a website, planning, and much more. After learning all this from torpedoed.fun, I decided to start a new project, a simple clone of the classic Snake game. I, to my surprise, was able to immediately think of several ways of implementing various parts of the game. I developed the entire game in the span of a few hours with hardly any problems! This experience of developing without constantly debugging every line of code felt amazing. If I wasn't addicted to programming before that Snake game, I was afterwards!

I recently saw someone complain because the name registrar would not name their daughter “is” because of their system (https://devrant.com/rants/1154582/...).

I have something to add.

Where I am from (India), local registrars intentionally misspell your name on the papers because than they can charge to a fee to fix it.

That’s why I hate India, too much bargaining for everything. This has happened twice in my family and both times we have refused to pay them.

The ridiculous and shameful story of how simply "installing Windows" saved my hard drive from the garbage.
(Also update on https://devrant.com/rants/3105365/)

It started with my root partition turning read-only all of a sudden. Some quick search suggested that I should check the sanity of my hard drive, by running a SMART test, which failed of course. I backed up my data using ddrescue and ran a badblocks over the whole thing, which found around 800 unreadable blocks in a row. I was ready to bid farewell to my drive, but as a last resort, instead of the trash, I brought it to this place where they claimed they can repair the damaged hard drives by "surgery".

To my surprise, they returned my drive the next week, saying it is all well now, and charged me 1/8 the price of a new drive, with a refund guarantee if there was a problem in two days. There was a problem right there: I ran another SMART test which failed again, and also the faulty blocks were still unreadable! So I stormed the place and called for my refund, showing the failed SMART report. The only answer I would get from the staff was "Have you tried installing Windows?".

I usually try to be patient in such situations; I really don't like to declare publicly that "not everyone uses that stinky piece of rotten software you call an OS", but their suggestion seemed totally irrelevant! I got all types of IO errors all over the damn thing and they told me to install Windows. Why? Because this was the only test they would rely on. At last I managed to meet the "technician" there and showed him the IO errors: tried to read the bad sectors with dd and failed. He first mumbled somethings like "Have you checked the connector?" or "Are these the same blocks?", but after he ran out of bullshit, he said "Why don't you just install Windows first and see if that helps?" and I was ready to explode in his face!

"You test drives by installing Windows, just because it will make a nasty NTFS partition and probably does an fsck? If you shut your mouth for a sec and open your eyes you'll see this is a shit load of IO errors we got here: You can't install Windows, you can't even make an NTFS here, because it will try to zero-the-fuck-out the damn partition and it will face the same fucking IO error that I'm showing you right now in almost one single fucking system call!"

"I don't know this kind of test you are using. We have our own tests and they've passed successfully. So all I can do is to give you a Windows CD if you want."

"I don't need a Windows CD. I will just try to make an NTFS partition on the error spot and I will fail."

"Ok. Then call me when your done."

I was angry, not only because I felt they're just trying to avoid a refund, but also because I knew I've lost my drive. But just with hope that I could get my money back, I made a small partition over the error spot and ran `mkfs.ntfs` on it. I was ready to show the failure to the guy, but I looked more precisely and saw that "the filesystem was created successfully!" I was sure something is nor write. I then successfully mounted the new partition, write over it and read it again. I even dd'ed the blocks again, and this time there was no IO error. All of a sudden everything was fine.

I didn't know what happened. Maybe it just needed a write, while I'd just tried to read from those blocks. But anyway, I didn't called the technician guy again. I just thanked one of the staff there and said that my problem was solved. I then ran a successful SMART test and then restored my backup. Ridiculous like that.

I'm still not sure if my drive will continue to live with no more problems. I also have no explanation for what happened. (I appreciate any help on this https://superuser.com/questions/...) But I really like to see the look on the poor guy's face when he finds out that trying to install Windows just saved my ass!

Built my first App - the BOFH returns

So I started to learn programming about 7 weeks ago, learned some Java, immersed myself in git and then via a friend got introduced to android studio. To get some practice I decided to code my own app, and what better way than to create a quote generator for the funny and creative error messages as seen in The Bastard Operator from Hell. Now I wrote the thing, started adding a feature and before I know it, it works and I'm contacting the original author, if I may publish it to the playstore.
Io and behold: Merely 32 hours after the idea had sparked, in an act of spontaneous madness I've pubished my first app.
This was an absolutely electrifying experience and a huge feeling of success to me, to see my own creation on my homescreen.
Sorry for annoying you with this antirant, but I just had to get this out!

Btw here's the link if anyone is interested:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...

Constructive critisism is appreciated!