Picked this up the other day. Hope it's as good as people have been telling me.

If so, then here begins a new journey for me to better code.

My office has blocked access to all external websites. Only internal, self-hosted sites under our domain work.

P E A K. S E C U R I T Y.

This next one is dedicated to a couple of special people at my workplace:

- The person who uploaded internal-use-only code to a personal repository on GitHub

- The network team that has blocked any and all access to GitHub

- The obscured mass of management bureaucracy that makes it pretty much impossible for anyone at my level to make any sort of appeal

This one's for you:

*ahem*

WHY?!

So this exists.

Me: Hey boss, if you ever need someone to get into doing DevOps related tasks for the team, I'd be more than happy to take that on.

Boss: We don't really need any dedicated person to work on that, but if we do in the future, I'll let you know.

Fast forward a few days: I am now unable to deploy bug fixes to our testing environment, now in the cloud, because all access has been blocked for everyone except the two numbskulls who thought it'd be a great idea to move EVERYTHING over (apps, configuration manager, proxies, etc) first.

Oh, and this bug is affecting production.

Found on r/starterpacks

Game Streaming is an absolute waste.

I'm glad to see that quite a lot of people are rightfully skeptical or downright opposed to it. But that didn't stop the major AAA game publishers announcing their own game streaming platforms at E3 this weekend, did it?

I fail to see any unique benefit that can't be solved with traditional hardware (either console or PC)

- Portability? The Nintendo Switch proved that dedicated consoles now have enough power to run great games both at home and on the go.

- Storage? You can get sizable microSD cards for pretty cheap nowadays. So much so that the Switch went back to use flash-based cartridges!

- Library size/price? The problem is even though you're paying a low price for hundreds of games, you don't own them. If any of these companies shut down the platform, all that money you spent is wasted. Plus, this can be solved with backwards compatibility and one-time digital downloads.

- Performance on commodity hardware? This is about the only thing these streaming services have going for it. But unfortunately this only works when you have an Internet connection, so if you have crap Internet or drop off the network, you're screwed. And has it ever occurred to people that maybe playing Doom on your phone is a terrible UX experience and shouldn't be done because it wasn't designed for it?

I just don't get it. Hopefully this whole fad passes soon.

WHY THE FUCK ARE WE ONLY KEEPING THE LAST 10 BUILD ARTIFACTS IN ARTIFACTORY?!

THAT IS LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE OF HOW YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO USE IT

NOW I CAN'T ROLL BACK PROD CHANGES TO A WORKING VERSION BECAUSE IT LITERALLY DOESN'T EXIST ANYMORE

FUCK YOU, IT'S YOUR FIRE NOW

Choosing the lesser of two evils this year

Oh hello there, caffeine deprivation headache

Fuuuuuuu̵u̢u̶u̢ųu͡u̡̨u̢̨̢u̷̸u̵U͊̆ͯ̈́̌̂ͥͫ̓̄ͮ̏ͤ̀̑̔̈́̍́͏̛̹̗̬̥̯̱̜͎̼̲̤͔͍̪̰͙͈̮Ų̷̻͙̥͇̘̘͎̝̤̭ͭ̄ͧͭ̀͜ͅͅU͂̔ͭ͆ͤ̓ͥͨ̅̾ͪ͏̜̤̤͔̳̠͖͈̠̜̤̹̟͚̰̯̬͜ͅƯ̸̢̪͕̼̞̒͆ͮ͗͌̒̚͢Ų̨̐̑ͥ̚͘͟͏̰̱͈̯͍̩̝Ů̴̴̸̺̥̮͓̺̖̟̐͐̔̃̐ͯ̓ͪ͗͒̍̑̀͠ͅU̡͆ͩ̾̇̉̐̉͌͝҉̞̠̗̙̱͎͈͇U̅͌ͤ̿͑̐̚҉҉̩̟̫̻Ư̜̻͈̰̘̦̩̮͔̣̝̝̤̐̍̇̽̑̆ͤ̌ͭͨ̓̋̐́ͨ̒̾̾͘͢Ų̨̙̟̤̬͎̣̠̖͐̆̑͋̔̑̈́̐̆̿̔ͦ̀ͪͮ̇̐̕͜Ŭ̡̗͖̹͚̯̙͕͌͑̂͛͜͝Ṷ̷̦͍̹̹̙͋͗ͩ͂͜U̧̩͚̻͈̰̱̺̩̤͐ͪ̊͋̎̓̌͛̽ͥ̓̏̎̾̑͛̀͜ͅ

When you mad with your manager so make all object names in your code the names of the seven dwarves.

!dev
"Heeeey, VSauce! Michael here.
Dogs are some of our most loyal pets...or are they?"

!story

As is the case with many of you, I am also the de facto technology fixer for my family, and usually the first one they call when something goes wrong.

Usually it's a 'something wants to update, should I do it?' simple issue. Other times I have to remote connect to see why Word isn't uploading templates correctly or whatever.

Yesterday was different though.

Me: So whatcha need?
Mom: Well, my office has recently wanted me to be remote-capable in case they need me for something and they don't have the right people to fix it (she's been working at the same office for 20+ years and knows basically everything)
Me: Okay. So I guess they're setting up a VPN for this?
Mom: Yes. And I was calling because they might try and install it on my personal laptop and I wanted to know whether or not I should be concerned about our IT guys being able to look at or steal all my personal data.

I then proceeded to explain how a VPN works and that convincing her company to provide her with a separate computer would be the safest option and whatnot. But I was honestly really surprised that she was concerned to begin with.

For a while now, it seems there's been one story after another of companies being irresponsible with their customer's data, with little to no reprocussion or action that could really make a difference.

But as a direct result, we're now getting to the point where even the tech illiterate are becoming more aware of how this is effecting them.

It gave me hope for the future in an industry where many times there is very little. And I hope it does for you as well.

Thanks, mom. I'm proud of you.

The most obnoxious company process I've encountered so far is the nonexistent one.

This is what happened at my first professional job. PM and CTO quit after about a year, yet the top honchos were insistent of salvaging what was left of their "enterprise" software suite and putting us through a death march to try and continue development.

No plan, despite having a JIRA board filled with month-old backlog stories. No direction, because the CEO was now head of the project and wasn't in the office about 50% of the time, and our lead dev wasn't willing to take the reigns.

I wouldn't have minded trying a bunch of different things and having them fail. At least then we'd be doing something, you know? But instead we sat around, trying to squeeze any kind of goal from the higher ups, until I finally had enough and found a much better job.

It wasn't enough to convince me to give up software development. But boy, did it sure come close.

So I decided to start using NoScript in Firefox recently, and it's been the most wonderful and annoying experience.

Wonderful - Easy to use whitelist on a domain basis makes it easy to un-break websites I trust while keeping potential malicious JS from other domains out.'

Annoying - Now I get why all the graybeards on Hacker News hate what the modern web has become

Let's see what's on the menu today:

* Web Application Catastrophe Special *

Includes, but not limited to:
- Orphaned server processes in the configuration management cluster
- Microservice back-end architecture with no API documentation
- Poorly implemented cache microservice with no documentation
- Stale data causing everything to be shown as down in production, despite everything running fine

Cost: 1 developer's sanity

MRW I spend hours merging/deleting needlessly scattered configuration options and logic, and the application runs successfully

Project Lead: The DevOps department just got a GitLab instance installed on our internal network. We're gradually going to move all our projects onto it and move away from BitBucket and Jenkins really soon.

Me: Awesome!

Project Lead: We're still using JIRA and Confluence for issue tracking and documentation though because the higher ups said so.

Me:

age++;

Normally, I'd leave it there like most other people. But this is devRant, not Facebook [citation needed], so let me take the opportunity to talk about a dev-related project I'm mulling over.

A number of years ago, I dropped my music hobby in exchange for focusing on my computer science/programming skills. I'm now at a point where I'm working professionally as a developer, and I've wanted to get back into music for quite some time. Specifically, I want to make music, not just perform it.

Thing is, I've had difficulty trying to find a good platform for uploading WIPs to get feedback from. I'm hesitant to post them on social media platforms for a variety of reasons (though I'm open to budge), so I've been considering alternatives.

So here's my idea: A personal blog made from the ground up that details my journey rediscovering music, including tracking the resources I've used for others to refer to, music samples, etc. I think it would be a great opportunity to not only get feedback on music I've made, but to also incorporate my programming skills with my music hobby.

I'd appreciate any feedback on the idea, as well as any advice/recommended tools for taking on a project like this.

Lessons While Installing Linux #37: Trying to install GRUB on a GPT drive while in non-UEFI mode doesn't work.

Today is one of those "Fuck you, just let me do it myself" kind of days.

Coworker: "Hey, so I discovered this library that automatically brings up and tears down local containers to perform unit tests on data sources"

Me: "Sounds neat"

Coworker: "Yeah, I've been messing with it locally, and it means we don't need to have the data sources installed on our machines or rely on the ones in the testing environment."

Me: "That's good"

Coworker: "Just a shame I had to roll back our testing framework to a previous version and refactor the code in all our other tests as a result."

Me: "Wait what? *looks at documentation* It says they support the newer framework"

Coworker: "Yeah, but I couldn't get it to work. So I'm just gonna make a PR for it, okay?" *Proceeds to make a PR, approve and merge the code before I can comment further on the changes*

Welp, there goes all my motivation to get anything done for the rest of the day.

1) I like to break through complex systems to understand them on a fundamental level
2) I live by the mantra of "If you're going to do something, do it right"
3) I'm a stickler for detail and strive for simplicity and organization

These three descriptions of my personality describe why I love to code: there's nothing more satisfying than taking a jumbled, wrong ugly mess of software and turn it into something beautiful and simple that anyone can effectively use. Makes all the hardship worth it IMO

For all the gamers here, whether hardcore or casual, what do you think of the mobile gaming market? Why is it so successful despite apparent rejection from a lot of gamers? Is it fine the way it is, or can it be improved (and how)?

Recently, my hardy MacBook Pro 2012 gave up the ghost. So I'm in the market for getting a new laptop. Which one(s) would you guys recommend given the following use cases I have planned? Listed in order of importance:

- Getting used to Linux. Eventually I plan on replacing my desktop PC's Windows install with Linux and would like to try some flavors on the laptop.
- Software development w/ Java (Spring), Android, Rust, Go, Node
- Music making
- General web browsing, heavy YouTube use
- A little bit of story writing

In a quiet, closed space unhindered by distractions.

For me (and I'd imagine, many others here), constant conversations in the background, people walking by, etc absolutely kill my focus and keep me from getting work done. Working from home helps a bit, but my neighbors provide plenty of their own distractions.

Honestly, I'll take a broom closet with a laptop, headphones and an Ethernet jack over any other open office design.