I think I've shown in my past rants and comments that I'm pretty experienced. Looking back though, I was really fucking stupid. Since I haven't posted a rant yet on the weekly topics, I figure I would share this humbling little gem.

Way back in the ancient era known as 2009, I was working my first desk job as a "web designer". Apparently the owner of this company didn't know the difference between "designer", which I'm not, and "developer", which I am, nor the responsibilities of each role.

It was a shitty job paying $12/hour. It was such a nightmare to work at. I guess the silver lining is that this company now no longer exists as it was because of my mistake, but it was definitely a learning experience I hold in high regard even today. Okay, enough filler...

I was told to wipe the Dev server in order to start fresh and set up an entirely new distro of Linux. I was to swap out the drives with whatever was available from the non-production machines, set up the RAID 5 array and route it through the router and firewall, as we needed to bring this Dev server online to allow clients to monitor the work. I had no idea what any of this meant, but I was expected to learn it that day because the next day I would be commencing with the task.

Astonishingly, I managed to set up the server and everything worked great! I got a pat on the back and the boss offered me a 4 day weekend with pay to get some R&R. I decided to take the time to go camping. I let him know I would be out of town and possibly unreachable because of cell service, to which he said no problem.

Tuesday afternoon I walked into work and noticed two of the field techs messing with the Dev server I built. One was holding a drive while the other was holding a clipboard. I was immediately called into the boss's office.

He told me the drives on the production server failed during the weekend, resulting in the loss of the data. He then asked me where I got the drives from for the Dev server upgrade. I told him that they came from one of the inactive systems on the shelf. What he told me next through the deafening screams rendered me speechless.

I had gutted the drives from our backup server that was just set up the week prior. Every Friday at midnight, it would turn on through a remote power switch on a schedule, then the system would boot and proceed to copy over the production server's files into an archive for that night and shutdown when it completed. Well, that last Friday night/Saturday morning, the machine kicked on, but guess what didn't happen? The files weren't copied. Not only were they not copied, but the existing files that got backed up previously we're gone. Why? Because I wiped those drives when I put them into the Dev server.

I would up quitting because the conversation was very hostile and I couldn't deal with it. The next week, I was served with a suit for damages to this company. Long story short, the employer was found in the wrong from emails I saved of him giving me the task and not once stating that machine was excluded in the inactive machines I could salvage drives from. The company sued me because they were being sued by a client, whose entire company presence was hosted by us and we lost the data. In total just shy of 1TB of data was lost, all because of my mistake. The company filed for bankruptcy as a result of the lawsuit against them and someone bought the company name and location, putting my boss and its employees out of a job.

If there's one lesson I have learned that I take with the utmost respect to even this day, it's this: Know your infrastructure front to back before you change it, especially when it comes to data.

My previous employer still (contractually) owes me $5k. I still have push access to the repo and prod servers. Should I add a reminder to the admin dashboard? (After yet another email reminder, ofc.)

I could also mail him an invoice, since I have his addresses. Then again, it has been about a year since I was supposed to receive it, so maybe I'll just file a lawsuit. 🙄

Should @Root sue her ex-boss?

Oh don't mind me .... I'm just fighting a lawsuit.

Someome's grandma sued me over GPL violations.

Two people I know just got fired from their jobs because they were working on a project on their free time. One of them got a 10000$ fine aswell.

Apparently there was a small hidden clause in their contract that stated that any side projects, even on your free time, was strictly forbidden. Because it could be seen as competition.
Now that was, imo, a bit fucked up.

The 9 lines of code which triggered Oracle's 9 Billion $ lawsuit

Woahh..

The company I work for is requiring customers to submit credit card info in an online form which then gets stored into our "secure database". Which employees then pull and charge the card later on. They're also telling customers that the form is "encrypted". This is all because they're too fucking lazy and not patient enough to wait for someone to integrate a payment gateway. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

I used to do audits for private companies with a team. Most of them where black box audits and we were allowed to physically manipulate certain machines in and around the building, as long as we could get to them unnoticed.

Usually when doing such jobs, you get a contract signed by the CEO or the head of security stating that if you're caught, and your actions were within the scope of the audit, no legal action will be taken against you.

There was this one time a company hired us to test their badge system, and our main objective was to scrape the data on the smartcards with a skimmer on the scanner at the front of the building.

It's easy to get to as it's outside and almost everyone has to scan their card there in order to enter the building. They used ISO 7816 cards so we didn't even really need specified tools or hardware.

Now, we get assigned this task. Seems easy enough. We receive the "Stay-out-of-jail"-contract signed by the CEO for Company xyz. We head to the address stated on the contract, place the skimmer etc etc all good.

One of our team gets caught fetching the data from the skimmer a week later (it had to be physically removed). Turns out: wrong Building, wrong company. This was a kind of "building park" (don't really know how to say it in English) where all the buildings looked very similar. The only difference between them was the streetnumber, painted on them in big. They gave us the wrong address.

I still have nightmares about this from time to time. In the end, because the collected data was never used and we could somewhat justify our actions because we had that contract and we had the calls and mails with the CEO of xyz. It never came to a lawsuit. We were, and still are pretty sure though that the CEO of xyz himself was very interesed in the data of that other company and sent us out to the wrong building on purpose.
I don't really know what his plan after that would have been though. We don't just give the data to anyone. We show them how they can protect it better and then we erase everything. They don't actually get to see the data.

I quit doing audits some time ago. It's very stressful and I felt like I either had no spare time at all (when having an active assignment) or had nothing but spare time (when not on an assignment). The pay also wasn't that great.

But some people just really are polished turds.

Story Time.

TL;DR - Because of Corporate PTSD, I replace the word "everyone/folks/guys" with "Team" when I'm addressing my colleagues, whether it be an e-mail or verbally (F2F/Zoom/GMeet).

In 2019, An office job I worked at, a new Vice President joined the company (the same one who told me he saw me in his dream).

We were required, on a daily basis, to form a circle and one-by-one everyone would out-loud say their yesterday's and current day's tasks updates.

So before the VP joined, everyone was free to initiate their turn however they wanted. Phrases like "Hey Everyone", "Good morning all" or "Hi All" was all around acceptable.

But the moment he started joining the stand-ups, he felt the need to change this phrase to a standard "Good morning Team". No other variations of this. Only and ONLY these three words.

Why you ask? Because saying Good morning is good manners and using the word "Team" strengthens the bond between co-workers and increases collaboration and creativity.

Some colleagues were bound to forget this and they did, which resulted in the VP blasting at everyone for doing so. He would show genuine rage over this, almost as if the company would go out of business because of us, not complying to do so.

Now imagine, you get up at 8 AM, get ready, commute, and get ready to speak for the standup and you get yelled at in front of everyone, FIRST THING before you start working.

Needless to say, it would kill everyone's spirit for getting their day started but nobody could speak up against him because obviously, he was the VP of the company then.

And oh yes, our CEO fired him 5 months after that because he (the VP) got slammed with a pedophilia-related lawsuit, by the parents of a 5-year old.

"Jury finds Google's implementation of Java in Android was fair use."

Phew!

As some of you may remember about 5 months ago I bought a Lenovo laptop, it had some hardware faults so I got a new one and it had the same faults the store didn't want to offer me a new Lenovo laptop.

I was told to pick a laptop from a selection and today the store is trying to push the product away saying they can't do a thing.

Tonight I'm meeting with a lawyer because the fight has begun.

PayPal = GayPal

PHASE 1

1. I create my personal gaypal account
2. I use my real data
3. Try to link my debit card, denied
4. Call gaypal support via international phone number
5. Guy asks me for my full name email phone number debit card street address, all confirmed and verified
6. Finally i can add my card

PAHSE 2

7. Now the account is temporarily limited and in review, for absolutely no fucking reason, need 3 days for it to be done

8. Five (5) days later still limited i cant deposit or withdraw money

9. Call gaypal support again via phone number, burn my phone bill

10. Guy tells me to wait for 3 days and he'll resolve it

PHASE 3

11. One (1) day later (and not 3), i wake up from a yellow account to a red account where my account is now permanently limited WITHOUT ANY FUCKING REASON WHY

12. They blocked my card and forever blocked my name from using gaypal

13. I contact them on twitter to tell me what their fucking problem is and they tell me this:

"Hi there, thank you for being so patient while your conversation was being escalated to me. I understand from your messages that your PayPal account has been permanently limited, I appreciate this can be concerning. Sometimes PayPal makes the decision to end a relationship with a customer if we believe there has been a violation of our terms of service or if a customer's business or business practices pose a high risk to PayPal or the PayPal community. This type of decision isn’t something we do lightly, and I can assure you that we fully review all factors of an account before making this type of decision. While I appreciate that you don’t agree with the outcome, this is something that would have been fully reviewed and we would be unable to change it. If there are funds on your balance, they can be held for up to 180 days from when you received your most recent payment. This is to reduce the impact of any disputes or chargebacks being filed against you. After this point, you will then receive an email with more information on accessing your balance.

As you can appreciate, I would not be able to share the exact reason why the account was permanently limited as I cannot provide any account-specific information on Twitter for security reasons. Also, we may not be able to share additional information with you as our reviews are based on confidential criteria, and we have no obligation to disclose the details of our risk management or security procedures or our confidential information to you. As you can no longer use our services, I recommend researching payment processors you can use going forward. I aplogise for any inconvenience caused."

PHASE 4

14. I see they basically replied in context of "fuck you and suck my fucking dick". So I reply aggressively:

"That seems like you're a fraudulent company robbing people. The fact that you can't tell me what exactly have i broken for your terms of service, means you're hiding something, because i haven't broken anything. I have NOT violated your terms of service. Prove to me that i have. Your words and confidentially means nothing. CALL MY NUMBER and talk to me privately and explain to me what the problem is. Go 1 on 1 with the account owner and lets talk

You have no right to block my financial statements for 180 days WITHOUT A REASON. I am NOT going to wait 6 months to get my money out

Had i done something wrong or violated your terms of service, I would admit it and not bother trying to get my account back. But knowing i did nothing wrong AND STILL GOT BLOCKED, i will not back down without getting my money out or a reason what the problem is.

Do you understand?"

15. They reply:

"I regret that we're unable to provide you with the answer you're looking for with this. As no additional information can be provided on this topic, any additional questions pertaining to this issue would yield no further responses. Thank you for your time, and I wish you the best of luck in utilizing another payment processor."

16. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? I AM BLOCKED FOR NO FUCKING REASON, THEY TOOK MY MONEY AND DONT GIVE A FUCK TO ANSWER WHY THEY DID THAT?

HOW CAN I FILE A LAWSUIT AGAINST THIS FRAUDULENT CORPORATION?

Guinea pigs are not from Guinea and they aren’t pigs
JavaScript has nothing to do with Java
Computer science is not an actual science
Lawsuit is not an actual suit that the judge wears
Siouxsie Suioux is not Native American
Sugar gliders aren’t made of sugar
People don’t drive on driveways and don’t park on parkways
Carpets have nothing to do with either cars or pets
Gunpowder actually looks like noodles and not like powder
Coca-Cola has no coconut and no cocaine in it. It also contains no cola nuts
Peanuts aren’t actually nuts
Watermelon doesn’t taste like a melon
Laptops are usually used while standing on desks, not laps
GPU, as in graphics processing unit, can process things that aren’t graphical
Silverback gorillas’ backs ain’t made of silver
Rod Steward is not a rod and not a steward
Guy Standing can sit
People who say they can’t stand something usually can actually stand up
People who call themselves woke do sleep sometimes
Hibernation mode in Windows doesn’t actually hibernate anything
Kool Aid can be served hot
Wall sockets can be used while not being attached to a wall
WC is not a closet
MrBeast is in fact human
Dodge cars aren’t better at dodging things than other cars
Some AC units can be operated using DC
Most men don’t menstruate
Pop bottles don’t always go pop
Backpack can be used while not being worn on your back
Watches don’t watch anything
Some keyboards aren’t actually a single board
Cigarettes have cigars, but cassettes don’t have cass, and Gillette doesn’t have gills
Dyson doesn’t make Dyson spheres
Hairdryers can dry things that aren’t hair
Beds aren’t usually made of bedrock
ThinkPads can’t think
MacBooks aren’t books
Ceilings don’t ceil
Platinum records aren’t made of platinum
Training doesn’t always involve trains
Great Britain ain’t that great
HDMI can carry signal that isn’t HD
Fingers do fing but autists don’t aut
American Football band doesn’t play american football
Taylor Swift is neither a taylor nor a swift
Hard disk drive doesn’t drive
Tank tops has nothing to do with the top part of a tank
Tea bags do sometimes contain herbs that aren’t tea
Tea isn’t usually teal
Jack Black isn’t black
Fingernails aren’t nails

That moment when you get blamed by product/business for a slow feature...
A feature which the same product person demanded you implement two days before the deadline that the feature was supposed to be released at but you never got told about. You end up doing a miracle and the company avoids a lawsuit but you still get blamed for it being slow. Shouldn't have agreed on the ridiculous deadline and left them suffer from their own bad decisions and communication

So with the advent of Docker Desktop going premium we thought we'd buy a couple licenses... What did the HR team say?

"No, you're fine - we can just keep using it - how will they know?"

WHAT??!!! I will NOT be the one who gets brought into a multi-million dollar lawsuit because HR are a bunch of nitwits. I will fight this with everything I have so that when ouch time comes, i can say i didnt participate in the shady bullshit these people are recommending.

There was an atmosphere of elation and joy here at Google, when we got together to author our reply to the latest lawsuit from Oracle.

Just today I lost a lawsuit because my contract was written and signed in Nigeria and I sued them in the USA and I couldn't convince the judge it was fraud. I transformed the company implenting SAP and office365 and a WAN and many other projects. Worked nearly every single day 3 years in a row even during vacations, public holidays and holidays. Lost over 400k USD in lost benefits and wages that were in the contract but never paid. I feel absolutely devastated.
Unless you work for a US or European based company never ever work in Nigeria.

Blizzard lawsuit incoming :D

I'm opening a case against Lenovo due to their bad warranty support. It's been over a month and a half since I reported an issue with my ThinkPad and they still haven't fixed it. The laptop was bought in September, the case opened in October and in December I still have a faulty screen with which I can't no longer work because it was frying my eyes. Note that this machine has a Warranty Extension for 3 years Onsite next business day repair.

TL;DR if you own a ThinkPad, pray that it doesn't have any hardware issues. If you're thinking about buying one, DON'T!

How do you get your employer to make logging a priority? Wait for a lawsuit to happen.

Does anyone really have an idea of what is going to happen to the Java platform after the eventual release of Java 9?

It seems that most of the public road maps from Oracle have been largely vaporware, or at least significantly delayed. It feels like the major platform innovations like JigSaw, G1GC, etc. have all been released _years_ after they were proposed. Now with the JEE 8 delays - is Oracle making different plans now that the Google lawsuit didn't go their way?

Human Resources Ministry: Releasing hospital infection numbers would cause panic
The good old negligence in the Hungarian healthcare system (infections occur because of human negligence).
It is only an article title, but inside it says that the Human Resources Ministry is delaying releasing the statistics for infections in Hospitals.
They had a lawsuit against them, but appealed it with "the statistics could be identified as personal data" which is bullshit, because these are summed statistics.
TLDR: Hungarian government is hiding hospital infection statistics from citizens with bullshit arguments

My client just asked me to copy (his words were I want it to look exactly like) the Apple and Weather Channel apps for iPhone. Ummm... nope. Not getting that lawsuit

I would like to hear why a bug cannot irreversibly tear a company out of existence.

Would you, theabbie (either a troll or the boldest man in the universe), mind explaining how on earth an EULA or ToS saying "We can't be held liable for X, Y and Z" can save your ass from a lawsuit? There are countries that have laws on consequential damages/losses. These laws can lead to you having to repay the entire contract and pay damages.

Oracle roasts the s**t out of Google with the android lawsuit therefore showing C and Java aren't the future of tech lol