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Search - "messaging"
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Hey everyone,
First off, a Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates, happy holidays to everyone, and happy almost-new-year!
Tim and I are very happy with the year devRant has had, and thinking back, there are a lot of 2017 highlights to recap. Here are just a few of the ones that come to mind (this list is not exhaustive and I'm definitley forgetting stuff!):
- We introduced the devRant supporter program (devRant++)! (https://devrant.com/rants/638594/...). Thank you so much to everyone who has embraced devRant++! This program has helped us significantly and it's made it possible for us to mantain our current infrustructure and not have to cut down on servers/sacrifice app performance and stability.
- We added avatar pets (https://devrant.com/rants/455860/...)
- We finally got the domain devrant.com thanks to @wiardvanrij (https://devrant.com/rants/938509/...)
- The first international devRant meetup (Dutch) with organized by @linuxxx and was a huge success (https://devrant.com/rants/937319/... + https://devrant.com/rants/935713/...)
- We reached 50,000 downloads on Android (https://devrant.com/rants/728421/...)
- We introduced notif tabs (https://devrant.com/rants/1037456/...), which make it easy to filter your in-app notifications by type
- @AlexDeLarge became the first devRant user to hit 50,000++ (https://devrant.com/rants/885432/...), and @linuxxx became the first to hit 75,000++
- We made an April Fools joke that got a lot of people mad at us and hopefully got some laughs too (https://devrant.com/rants/506740/...)
- We launched devDucks!! (https://devducks.com)
- We got rid of the drawer menu in our mobile apps and switched to a tab layout
- We added the ability to subscribe to any user's rants (https://devrant.com/rants/538170/...)
- Introduced the post type selector (https://devrant.com/rants/850978/...) (which will be used for filtering - more details below)
- Started a bug/feature tracker GitHub repo (https://github.com/devRant/devRant)
- We did our first ever live stream (https://youtube.com/watch/...)
- Added an awesome all-black theme (devRant++) (https://devrant.com/rants/850978/...)
- We created an "active discussions" screen within the app so you can easily find rants with booming discussions!
- Thanks to the suggestion of many community members, we added "scroll to bottom" functionality to rants with long comment threads to make those rants more usable
- We improved our app stability and set our personal record for uptime, and we also cut request times in half with some database cluster upgrades
- Awesome new community projects: https://devrant.com/projects (more will be added to the list soon, sorry for the delay!)
- A new landing page for web (https://devrant.com), that was the first phase of our web overhaul coming soon (see below)
Even after all of this stuff, Tim and I both know there is a ton of work to do going forward and we want to continue to make devRant as good as it can be. We rely on your feedback to make that happen and we encourage everyone to keep submitting and discussing ideas in the bug/feature tracker (https://github.com/devRant/devRant).
We only have a little bit of the roadmap right now, but here's some things 2018 will bring:
- A brand new devRant web app: we've heard the feedback loud and clear. This is our top priority right now, and we're happy to say the completely redesigned/overhauled devRant web experience is almost done and will be released in early 2018. We think everyone will really like it.
- Functionality to filter rants by type: this feature was always planned since we introduced notif types, and it will soon be implemented. The notif type filter will allow you to select the types of rants you want to see for any of the sorting methods.
- App stability and usability: we want to dedicate a little time to making sure we don't forget to fix some long-standing bugs with our iOS/Android apps. This includes UI issues, push notification problems on Android, any many other small but annoying problems. We know the stability and usability of devRant is very important to the community, so it's important for us to give it the attention it deserves.
- Improved profiles/avatars: we can't reveal a ton here yet, but we've got some pretty cool ideas that we think everyone will enjoy.
- Private messaging: we think a PM system can add a lot to the app and make it much more intuitive to reach out to people privately. However, Tim and I believe in only launching carefully developed features, so rest assured that a lot of thought will be going into the system to maximize privacy, provide settings that make it easy to turn off, and provide security features that make it very difficult for abuse to take place. We're also open to any ideas here, so just let us know what you might be thinking.
There will be many more additions, but those are just a few we have in mind right now.
We've had a great year, and we really can't thank every member of the devRant community enough. We've always gotten amazingly positive feedback from the community, and we really do appreciate it. One of the most awesome things is when some compliments the kindness of the devRant community itself, which we hear a lot. It really is such a welcoming community and we love seeing devs of all kind and geographic locations welcomed with open arms.
2018 will be an important year for devRant as we continue to grow and we will need to continue the momentum. We think the ideas we have right now and the ones that will come from community feedback going forward will allow us to make this a big year and continue to improve the devRant community.
Thanks everyone, and thanks for your amazing contributions to the devRant community!
Looking forward to 2018,
- David and Tim45 -
Fucking awesome. The 'encryption backdoor law' in Australia went through!
Now, whenever served with such warrants, companies which are active in Australia will have to pay hefty fines if they don't give encrypted messages to law enforcement in readable form. No matter whether this means just decrypting it with the keys they have or pushing backdoors/inject code into the messaging apps/services in order to extract the contents.
Now let's see how much the big companies really care about their users! (I'd expect them to pull out of Australia but the chance that this'll happen is as tiny as about nothing)34 -
This rant has been written from the Signal messaging app and uses a custom Signal 'gateway' (a registered user which is a server in this case) with a PHP api behind it. If this rant appears on devRant, it fucking works!45
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So, you start with a PHP website.
Nah, no hating on PHP here, this is not about language design or performance or strict type systems...
This is about architecture.
No backend web framework, just "plain PHP".
Well, I can deal with that. As long as there is some consistency, I wouldn't even mind maintaining a PHP4 site with Y2K-era HTML4 and zero Javascript.
That sounds like fucking paradise to me right now. 😍
But no, of course it was updated to PHP7, using Laravel, and a main.js file was created. GREAT.... right? Yes. Sure. Totally cool. Gotta stay with the times. But there's still remnants of that ancient framework-less website underneath. So we enter an era of Laravel + Blade templates, with a little sprinkle of raw imported PHP files here and there.
Fine. Ancient PHP + Laravel + Blade + main.js + bootstrap.css. Whatever. I can still handle this. 🤨
But then the Frontend hipsters swoosh back their shawls, sip from their caramel lattes, and start whining: "We want React! We want SPA! No more BootstrapCSS, we're going to launch our own suite of SASS styles! IT'S BETTER".
OK, so we create REST endpoints, and the little monkeys who spend their time animating spinners to cover up all the XHR fuckups are satisfied. But they only care about the top most visited pages, so we ALSO need to keep our Blade templated HTML. We now have about 200 SPA/REST routes, and about 350 classic PHP/Blade pages.
So we enter the Era of Ancient PHP + Laravel + Blade + main.js + bootstrap.css + hipster.sass + REST + React + SPA 😑
Now the Backend grizzlies wake from their hibernation, growling: We have nearly 25 million lines of PHP! Monoliths are evil! Did you know Netflix uses microservices? If we break everything into tiny chunks of code, all our problems will be solved! Let's use DDD! Let's use messaging pipelines! Let's use caching! Let's use big data! Let's use search indexes!... Good right? Sure. Whatever.
OK, so we enter the Era of Ancient PHP + Laravel + Blade + main.js + bootstrap.css + hipster.sass + REST + React + SPA + Redis + RabbitMQ + Cassandra + Elastic 😫
Our monolith starts pooping out little microservices. Some polished pieces turn into pretty little gems... but the obese monolith keeps swelling as well, while simultaneously pooping out more and more little ugly turds at an ever faster rate.
Management rushes in: "Forget about frontend and microservices! We need a desktop app! We need mobile apps! I read in a magazine that the era of the web is over!"
OK, so we enter the Era of Ancient PHP + Laravel + Blade + main.js + bootstrap.css + hipster.sass + REST + GraphQL + React + SPA + Redis + RabbitMQ + Google pub/sub + Neo4J + Cassandra + Elastic + UWP + Android + iOS 😠
"Do you have a monolith or microservices" -- "Yes"
"Which database do you use" -- "Yes"
"Which API standard do you follow" -- "Yes"
"Do you use a CI/building service?" -- "Yes, 3"
"Which Laravel version do you use?" -- "Nine" -- "What, Laravel 9, that isn't even out yet?" -- "No, nine different versions, depends on the services"
"Besides PHP, do you use any Python, Ruby, NodeJS, C#, Golang, or Java?" -- "Not OR, AND. So that's a yes. And bash. Oh and Perl. Oh... and a bit of LUA I think?"
2% of pages are still served by raw, framework-less PHP.31 -
Last week:
Client: Hey sometimes when I sent about 20 messages to your app they need a long time to arrive. Why is your app so slow?
Me: We are using Google Cloud Messaging to deliver messages. There is no guarantee when messages arrive.
Client: So such a big company is the fault? And not you? Pls make it faster. Make it always act the same.
Working as a programmer is pain in the ass because the people with the money don't know a shit about anything.
I changed just a fucking useless string.. I deployed the "new version" and I told him I boosted everything.
Today he spoked with my buddy about another thing and he told him by the way the app is now much faster.
..placebo update2 -
When someone explains to me that they really care about their privacy and use WhatsApp or signal or other encrypted messaging services and then you see then typing stuff through the GOOGLE KEYBOARD.
Yeah i think they're not understanding something 😆52 -
So, as everyone knows on here by now (or, a lot of ranters), I am a fervid privacy person.
Appearantly a new surveillance law in my country is about to extend mass surveillance/hacking a lot. So here a rundown of what they are about to be allowed to do (stuff that is not okay imo and this is the reason I am so pro-privacy):
- Mass Data Gathering: The intelligence agency over here (lets call it IA from now) can pretty much record everything send through the country.
- Extra Protection: If they want to conduct surveillance on journalists/lawyers, they have to go through extra channels first at least.
- Data/survaillance sharing: The IA is allowed to share their raw/filtered data with foreign intelligence agencies without limits. Also, they're allowed to conduct surveillance based on foreign requests.
- Secret DNA database: A secret DNA database will be created which can store the DNA profiles of any person who has commited any kind of crime. These profiles are allowed to be stored for a maximum of 30 years. This database is allowed to be shared with any foreign intelligence agency.
- Hacking: Unlimited power to hack any device deemed neccesary to hack in relation to crime. From computers to smartphones and so on. Also, it's allowed to use zero-days without reporting them to the vendor (we have seen what can go wrong with that through the ShadowBrokers scandal).
- Automatic Database Collection: They are allowed to directly tap into any database they see required (banks, healthcare, messaging services and so on). Practically this can lead to backdoors being build in because if you don't cooperate, you can go to prison. (mother of god I am not using anything closed source anymore if possible).
So yeah, this is pretty much the reason why I am so privacy consious. This country is fucked.57 -
WhatsApp, freaking WhatsApp.
How did this thing become such a standard. How? Why does everyone EXPECT you to have it. They assume that you have it installed on your phone.
'Why don't you respond to my messages? '
'Which messages? '
'The ones I sent you'
'I didn't get any messages. Wait, how did you send them to me? '
'WhatsApp'
'Ah, yeah I don't use that. Wait, where did you even get my phone number from? '
'What? You don't have WhatsApp? Freaking weirdo. '
'bye'
How did an app(lication) become such a standard and why does everyone automatically assume that you have it? And whenever I explain them why I don't use it (Facebook = bad), they just react with 'install it again' (most ridiculous answer) or 'what is wrong with you' or they just give me a confused look and walk away.
A lot of them also act like there were no alternatives (some even better than whatsapp). One of them and probably also the best one is signal. It has all the necessary features a messaging app needs and is also very secure.
Luckily a few of my friends have installed signal and I am currently trying my best at my parents. They have threatened to 'take my phone away if I don't install WhatsApp again' or 'if you don't use WhatsApp then you also don't need a phone'.
Okay finale:
Fuck whatsapp, fuck facebook, fuck ignorance24 -
I never understood Snapchat.
- Its a text messaging app with all the useful features removed
- Its a camera app that deletes all the photos you take with it
- Its a news app that only shows you clickbait7 -
"could you please just use the standard messaging/social networking thingies? That way it'll be way easier to communicate!!"
Oh I don't mind using standard tools/services which everyone uses at all.
Just a few requirement: they don't save information that doesn't need to be saved, leave the users in control of their data (through end to end encryption for example) and aren't integrated in mass surveillance networks.
Aaaaaand all the standard options which everyone uses are gone 😩30 -
Former Boss: "We need a messaging framework!"
Me: "What do we need a messaging framework for?"
Former Boss: "To send out messages to the App and by Email!"
Me: "We already have everything in place for that."
Former Boss: "But it must be _one_ generic solution, not _two_ solutions."
Me: "Both content and form are totally different for those messages. They have nothing in common besides being 'messages'."
Former Boss: "But it's better to have a messaging framework!"
We had that discussion in every fucking weekly team meeting. So I decided to put a concept together that was so overdesigned, generic and complicated, so my boss wasn't able to understand it at all, and of course didn't read it entirely.
He never mentioned the term "messaging framework" again.3 -
Private chat pops up. (- separator for new message)
Hello
- (1 min)
Can you help me?
- (2-3 mins)
Please it's urgeeeent!!!!!
- (1 min)
Come on you're online, I see the green dot.
- (5 mins)
Ok then I won't be able to work. Will write this down in the ticket.
- (15 mins) - new private chat pops up
Hi, we need to talk.
- (3 mins)
Regarding ticket XY, why aren't you responding? It's really urgent.
- (5 mins)
Please notify me as soon as you're available, it's really important!!!
- (20 mins, new private chat opens)
Hi mate, I think the devs are up to mischief. Said you're not reachable, I'll try to poke them with the stun gun.
- (60 mins, message in the official and only endorsed support room)
@all We broke staging, <Me> never responds and <Team mate who tried to use the stun gun> wasn't helpful either.
We really need this now!!!!!!!
- 30 mins later... la me:
@all I was in a meeting with the stakeholders as we had an priority meeting... What was so important that you not only ignored the rule of not messaging privately and even ignored <team mate>s instructions?
- 5 mins later, answer
no need to be so unfriendly.... We broke staging as we had to test stuff out for next week's sprint review [something which is still 3 days away or sth like that]. We really need to take a look in the team at it and for that we must have staging working now!!!!
- (La me)
If you need it urgent now, you didn't plan ahead. And if you didn't plan ahead, you have to wait for others. The sprint review and all other important days are planned ahead for a reason.
- (Silence)
- (20 mins later, private chat, team lead)
Will you finally fix staging now?
- La me
If it could wait 3 hours now and you / your team ignored all netiquette, it can wait till next day, too. We had this discussion more than once, I don't think I need to explain this further.
(Silence)
All in all, the joys of communication...
Now the fun stuff is when this not only happens with 1 team, but many teams....
Having 35 - 40 private chats and chat window looking like a christmas tree thx to the immeasurable amount of notifications and colors... Yay...
Did I mention that I hate the ego some programmers have -.10 -
It's maddening how few people working with the internet don't know anything about the protocols that make it work. Web work, especially, I spend far too much time explaining how status codes, methods, content-types etc work, how they're used and basic fundamental shit about how to do the job of someone building internet applications and consumable services.
The following has played out at more than one company:
App: "Hey api, I need some data"
API: "200 (plain text response message, content-type application/json, 'internal server error')"
App: *blows the fuck up
*msg service team*
Me: "Getting a 200 with a plaintext response containing an internal server exception"
Team: "Yeah, what's the problem?"
Me: "...200 means success, the message suggests 500. Either way, it should be one of the error codes. We use the status code to determine how the application processes the request. What do the logs say?"
Team: "Log says that the user wasn't signed in. Can you not read the response message and make a decision?"
Me: "That status for that is 401. And no, that would require us to know every message you have verbatim, in this case, it doesn't even deserialize and causes an exception because it's not actually json."
Team: "Why 401?"
Me: "It's the code for unauthorized. It tells us to redirect the user to the sign in experience"
Team: "We can't authorize until the user signs in"
Me: *angermatopoeia* "Just, trust me. If a user isn't logged in, return 401, if they don't have permissions you send 403"
Team: *googles SO* "Internet says we can use 500"
Me: "That's server error, it says something blew up with an unhandled exception on your end. You've already established it was an auth issue in the logs."
Team: "But there's an error, why doesn't that work?"
Me: "It's generic. It's like me messaging you and saying, "your service is broken". It doesn't give us any insight into what went wrong or *how* we should attempt to troubleshoot the error or where it occurred. You already know what's wrong, so just tell me with the status code."
Team: "But it's ok, right, 500? It's an error?"
Me: "It puts all the troubleshooting responsibility on your consumer to investigate the error at every level. A precise error code could potentially prevent us from bothering you at all."
Team: "How so?"
Me: "Send 401, we know that it's a login issue, 403, something is wrong with the request, 404 we're hitting an endpoint that doesn't exist, 503 we know that the service can't be reached for some reason, 504 means the service exists, but timed out at the gateway or service. In the worst case we're able to triage who needs to be involved to solve the issue, make sense?"
Team: "Oh, sounds cool, so how do we do that?"
Me: "That's down to your technology, your team will need to implement it. Most frameworks handle it out of the box for many cases."
Team: "Ah, ok. We'll send a 500, that sound easiest"
Me: *..l.. -__- ..l..* "Ok, let's get into the other 5 problems with this situation..."
Moral of the story: If this is you: learn the protocol you're utilizing, provide metadata, and stop treating your customers like shit.22 -
I am fucking dying of laughter right now. 😁
Today I got a push message of the invoicing app I use from time to time and the message literally just said "lol" (without even the usual pre-fix of the app name or anything).
So after not figuring out where that could have come from and obviously theres no private messaging etc. in that app, I contacted support and they reacted surprisingly good and at same time hilariously good; they pushed now a team towards investigating that, as apparently I wasn't the only one.
https://support.waveapps.com/hc/...
I wonder who fucked up and literally pushed "lol" to thousands of people. 😂8 -
"secure" messaging apps which aren't open source.
Isn't it common sense that, when you can't check an app for anything because it's closed source (backdoors, vulnerabilities etc), you technically can't be sure whether it's actually secure or not?
And no, I'm not going to trust an app dev on his/her blue fucking eyes on this one.28 -
So, as some people here probably know, I don't use any of the mainstream, mass surveillance integrated social media and messaging services. Since I'm located in the Netherlands especially whatsapp is nearly a life requirement but Facebook and such come close as well and I don't use anything related to Facebook, Google, Apple and any of the other companies related to mass surveillance programs which often puts me in awkward positions.
Every time someone wants to stay in touch and the fact that I don't use whatsapp comes up again, it usually turns into an explaining session with much disbelief from the other party but more and more often, I'm getting rather tired of that.
Recently, I had one of those moments and instead of saying 'sorry, I don't use whatsapp', i went for 'sorry, I'm old school, i only do texting and calling!'.
No discussion, just got a "ah, fair enough!"
😮
I started doing this more and more and I get the same response every time!
I find it quite astonishing how bringing something another way can get one a completely different response, especially in this context.29 -
Dear Telegram, the fact that you're using a service which provides app usage/metrics/analytics kind of is not nice.
"But they've got the right to!"
Of course they do. But, when you advertise yourself as a messaging app focused on privacy, I expect you to behave that way.
And yes, we know your crypto is broken as fuck but that's not the point right now.
Oh and yeah, the next blog item will probably be about Telegram and how not-privacy friendly it is.22 -
Experience that made me feel like a dev badass?
Users requested the ability to 'send' information from one application to another. Couple of our senior devs started out saying it would be impossible (there is no way to pass objects across a machine's memory boundary), then entertained the idea of utilizing the various messaging frameworks such as Microsoft's ServiceBus and RabbitMQ, but came up with a plan to use 2 WebAPI services (one messenger, one receiver) along with a homegrown messaging API (the clients would 'poll' the services looking for message) because ServiceBus, RabbitMQ, etc might not be able to scale to our needs. Their initial estimates were about 6 months development for the two services, hardware requirement for two servers, MSSQL server licenses, and padded an additional 6 months for client modifications. Very...very proud of their detailed planning.
I thought ...hmmm...I've done memory maps and created simple TCP/IP hosts that could send messages back and forth between other apps (non-UI), WPF couldn't be that much different.
In an afternoon, I came up with this (see attached), and showed the boss. Guess which solution we're going with.
The two devs are still kinda pissed at me. One still likes say as I walk in the room "our hero returns"....frack him.11 -
We had a short power outage this morning. 30 min later I got an "urgent" call that someone's "computer" was not working in another branch of our company.
Not one person in that branch could figure this out so after them repeatedly messaging and calling me for around an hour I decided to come over.
I found out that the power wall plug to the monitor has a switch on it which this person accidentally kicked...
I fixed his problem in around 20 seconds. This same employee was one that somehow had his email account previously "hacked" and 8000 phishing emails were sent from his account in 1 hour.
I honestly think it is amazing people like this can even use a computer at all...5 -
When will Google understand what an ecosystem means ?
Love it or hate it. What makes Apple devices homely is the ability to build a banded and consolidated associative user space that feels the same anytime on any platform. Crafting an ecosystem might be a daunting task , and requires adaptive and perfective rework through a long period. But it pays of , just like apples utility app suite does today. It was a journey to get it right.
Now we have Google , a company that is confused most of the time , releasing new apps everytime they have new feature in mind. According to me , Google did a phenomenal job in building hangouts and Allo , hangouts was a huge step forward from gChat , and Allo was way ahead of its time for a fun and innovative IM app. But what's the need for 2 different apps ? One has video calling , text messaging , group sharing , everything the Allo had.
Then all of a sudden you get Google Duo " The best ever video calling app " Why wasn't this integrated with hangouts and marketed the same way ?
Trial and error is one thing , this seems a lot like the lack of effort in architecting coaction and a well designed internetworking application framework. A lot of unnecessary choices have led to the shutting down of majority of their apps. Allo and hangouts included , but all this would have been unnecessary if the goal was to always build upon iteratively.
While I believe Allo was marketed as a cross platform chat application unlike hangouts , an integration plan could have always circumvented this issue.
I have to talk about another one of Google's failed efforts in recognition of potential , the hello app , but this rant has gone a bit too far already. So I'll post 6 hours later 😅
Well I'll always have the hope to see Google integrate the best of their ideas in a more relaxed and realised structure than what exists today. :)13 -
Just wanted to say a 'thank you' to all people who bear with my privacy stuffs! I know quite some people who installed messaging apps, signed up to privacy services and so on, solely because --> I <-- want to communicate in private and I realise (I've always realized that though) that that can be tough sometimes.
Also a thank you to those people for not requiring me to get data fed into the big companies :).
Thanks!24 -
Services/apps and their automatic general sayings. I fucking hate that.
'apping' is an abbreviation for either whatsapping someone or messaging them in general (in the Netherlands at least).
Sorry but I fucking hate WhatsApp and I'm not going to say that fucking app/apping word. But then in general it's confusing imo.
IF YOU'RE GOING TO TEXT ME, DON'T SAY YOU'RE GOING TO APP ME.
IF YOU'RE GOING TO SIGNAL ME, DON'T SAY YOU'RE GOING TO APP ME.
"but I meant that" - THEN FUCKING SAY IT.
I DON'T 'GOOGLE SOMETHING'. I FUCKING DUCKDUCKGO IT. NO, THAT'S NOT THE FUCKING SAME.
FUCKING HELL.18 -
Short version:
Dear devRantdairy,
today I was stupid.
The End.
Full version:
I am working on some messaging system, trying to use less as possible overhead sending data. Therefore there of course are asynchronous calls and some templating. But that's just the setting of the rant: I designed an architecture to save conversations in a database. Working with transactions in pdo I wrote a query wich in my eyes should have worked well. But the result just didn't appear in the table. So I started debugging data. Recreated the table. Rewrote the query. Went to bed. Woke up. Further tryed to make this work. And in the end I realized I just forgot to commit the transaction.
How dumb can you be? There's way too much time gone for that mistake. Is there a hole? I want do dig myself.7 -
Start a development job.
Boss: "let's start you off with something very easy. There's this third party we need data from. They have an api, just get the data and place it on our messaging bus."
Me: "sure, sounds easy enough"
Third party api turns out to have the most retarded conversation protocol. With us needing a service to receive data on while also having a client to register for the service. With a lot of timed actions like, 'send this message every five minutes' and 'check whether our last message was sent more than 11 minutes ago'.
Due to us needing a service, we also need special permissions through the company firewall. So I have to go around the company to get these permissions, FOR EVERY DATA STREAM WE NEED!
But the worst of it all is... This whole api is SOAP based!!
Also, Hey DevRant!5 -
God damn it, i said so many times that this functionality is proof of concept and needs more investigation into technical/legal details...why the flugzeug mr account manager have you gone and emailed all your client accounts telling them we are now offering it?... why are you messaging me starting your sentence with "now that we provide..." god...damn...it4
-
Messaging me at 4:30pm on a Friday about a high priority issue currently in production.
My reply: a link to the code review from 2 months ago that literally explained the problem and what to do to fix it. That got implemented. Then removed. For some reason...
Feels good.2 -
Ok, do you sometimes feel like you get treated as search engine? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
My coworker from my previous workplace is messaging me to suggest about good tutorial about a framework that I'm not familiar about.
"Dude, have you heard about Google?"5 -
We've been trying to hire a greenhorn, fresh-faced intern from India for like a month now.
Plenty of applicants, most with very nice curriculums, a few even can think on their feet while grilled by my questions.
I've sent to talk to HR three almost college-graduating candidates, who convinced me they know the subject of data engineering enough to be working with me and that they are actually gonna do the tasks assigned.
The fucking tweep at HR, an old fart who I had to convince that HVAC maintenance is not the job of the IT department nor the data team, calls my approved candidates "too junior".
WTF, I ask. - "Not professional enough", says the human toad.
Yes, they are to be interns! - "But they do not show professionalism", answered the hag.
Yes they do! They were very professional on the interviews! - "That is for me to say!" barked the reptile.
A week pass by while I try to find more just as good candidates who are also "more professional" when the hag has the audacity to say "here, I found someone. He knows everything about computer things and is very professional".
I took like 20 seconds to find out that the kid she'd given my number to, and was now messaging me IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING NIGHT, was her niece's fiancee and wasn't even in uni! He was just a high school graduate!
Seriously, nepotism kids, delete your Instagrams, tiktoks and every single piece of social media.
I scaled the issue to my VP, who contacted the HR VP for India, who gave the worst possible excuse for her behaviour: "She knows nothing about computer things!" for what my own boss said "so why was she assigned to oversee the data team's new hires?!". The HR slug mumbled something and then doubled down with "well, the kids you sent her were all girls! she had never hired a girl to a technical position, she wouldn't know what to look for in an interview!"
What. The. Fuck.
My boss, my VP of a very strategic technical area, happens to be a woman who lives in a place where women's rights are for real. I had *never* heard she swear on a non-football-related context. She did. Loudly. On camera. As if the HR boss was a referee who just disallowed a goal for her team due to an very ambiguous forward pass.
Shit is still flowing, but it seems that the hiring process of the entire company is being restructured because of that.
I guess I've just sped up this process in about one hundred years?9 -
Morning: Boss decided he was changing all the table names, used a different ORM than we are used to, and implemented it in such a way that the connections stay open and live forever, and had ultimately destroyed half our existing codebase.
Midday: clients keep messaging saying that everything is broken, and rather than accepting that we are fixing it, they want an entire breakdown of exactly what is wrong.
Afternoon: clients still say things are broken even though they have been fixed - they keep sending month old screenshots, which is obvious because the entire interface has changed since then.
Conclusion: shouldn't have gone to work today.4 -
So I created this really cool messaging program for my CS class in high school. Though when I say for - I mean for the students which were bored when the teacher told us how to "resize images in Word".
I used python and tkinter to create it all, and didn't even need to touch sockets. (Mostly because I didn't know how to use them back then, but also because I kept the messages in a file on the school nas.)
Anyway, the program worked and we used it every week, with me listening to suggestions and improving it each week. I even managed to create a sort of notification system.
But sadly, my teacher found out about it and shut it down.
Have you ever had a similar experience?9 -
Launched my product yesterday. Been working hard on it for a year.
Got a bunch of day 0 signups from all over the world. I’m super delighted. Then I see a bunch of them “broken” in my database.
I dig in and... long story short:
Twilio are cunts. I thought they were a world beater. THEEE messaging api on the market.
Well it turns out you can’t sms North American numbers without setting up special provisions.
I can sms fucking Botswana and Ghana and Iceland and fucking KUWAIT (I actually got a member from Kuwait), but Twilio can’t fucking sms A-CUNTING-MERI-FUCKING-CA6 -
So one year ago I was working at this company from the US, me being in Europe, which automatically implies there is several hours of timezone difference.
The eng. manager decided we would have a release tomorrow (decision was made one month earlier), and stuff was being prepped up to make that happen.
In the US the workday was about lunch time and in EU it was one hour before finishing. The manager gets us in a meeting and asks me and another dude to do some testing that would take several hours to do. This testing could have been done several days or weeks earlier.
40 minutes after that meeting I get a private message from the PM asking for the status of the test...
Me: aaa.. well I started it and will continue tomorrow
Manager: wait what? we have launch tomorrow, this testing has to be done by tomorrow
Me: it's the end of the workday here, I got personal errands that I have to attend to
Manager: uhm ok ... I see...
I was just messaging something in the public chat right before calling it a day and the manager writes "thanks for the input, your day is over now", completely out of context to the conversation I was having with whomever.
There was no question of "can you stay extra hours and do this?", there was no "hey, I know your day is over we will pay you premium hours with this amount as according to our contract, could you do this now as we have release tomorrow?" ..no ..just .. "do it!". I automatically assumed that ..hey, maybe he wants to do this during and after the live launch (and yes I do admit my mistake of not asking just to be clear, but I assumed the manager knows that there is a timezone difference ..like it's a no brainer).
I can not tell you the heat sensation I had after that last reply from the manager ... it was completely uncalled for, and unreasonable.
I mean why not make a pre-launch phase where you put stuff on the staging server, and perform all the necessary tests and then when you get all the green lights from testing you then proceed with the actual deploy? ...no ... mention this like right at the end of the day before the launch....
And another thing that scratched my neuronal cortex is, how does he know exactly how long the tests would take?12 -
Finally finished the blog post and (nearly) the last bugs (few remaining, still gotta think about how to solve them) are fixed.
The new blog post is online! I've taken a look at the Telegram messaging app and basically burned it into the ground. (Provided sources as well)
Next to that, a new domain name! As this blog is about online security AND privacy, I decided to change the domain name. The new one:
https://much-security-such-privacy.info/...
Dark theme can be enabled but will only work on one domain, you have to enable it on the other one as well to get a dark theme there. It stores the value in a cookie so it will remain when you reload the page and don't remove the cookies.
The RSS feed generator has a bug right now which makes that the page doesn't get updated, will work on that one tomorrow.
Thanks!
Last but not least, you can email me suggestions and so on at linuxxx@much-security.nl :)34 -
Paranoid Developers - It's a long one
Backstory: I was a freelance web developer when I managed to land a place on a cyber security program with who I consider to be the world leaders in the field (details deliberately withheld; who's paranoid now?). Other than the basic security practices of web dev, my experience with Cyber was limited to the OU introduction course, so I was wholly unprepared for the level of, occasionally hysterical, paranoia that my fellow cohort seemed to perpetually live in. The following is a collection of stories from several of these people, because if I only wrote about one they would accuse me of providing too much data allowing an attacker to aggregate and steal their identity. They do use devrant so if you're reading this, know that I love you and that something is wrong with you.
That time when...
He wrote a social media network with end-to-end encryption before it was cool.
He wrote custom 64kb encryption for his academic HDD.
He removed the 3 HDD from his desktop and stored them in a safe, whenever he left the house.
He set up a pfsense virtualbox with a firewall policy to block the port the student monitoring software used (effectively rendering it useless and definitely in breach of the IT policy).
He used only hashes of passwords as passwords (which isn't actually good).
He kept a drill on the desk ready to destroy his HDD at a moments notice.
He started developing a device to drill through his HDD when he pushed a button. May or may not have finished it.
He set up a new email account for each individual online service.
He hosted a website from his own home server so he didn't have to host the files elsewhere (which is just awful for home network security).
He unplugged the home router and began scanning his devices and manually searching through the process list when his music stopped playing on the laptop several times (turns out he had a wobbly spacebar and the shaking washing machine provided enough jittering for a button press).
He brought his own privacy screen to work (remember, this is a security place, with like background checks and all sorts).
He gave his C programming coursework (a simple messaging program) 2048 bit encryption, which was not required.
He wrote a custom encryption for his other C programming coursework as well as writing out the enigma encryption because there was no library, again not required.
He bought a burner phone to visit the capital city.
He bought a burner phone whenever he left his hometown come to think of it.
He bought a smartphone online, wiped it and installed new firmware (it was Chinese; I'm not saying anything about the Chinese, you're the one thinking it).
He bought a smartphone and installed Kali Linux NetHunter so he could test WiFi networks he connected to before using them on his personal device.
(You might be noticing it's all he's. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't).
He ate a sim card.
He brought a balaclava to pentesting training (it was pretty meme).
He printed out his source code as a manual read-only method.
He made a rule on his academic email to block incoming mail from the academic body (to be fair this is a good spam policy).
He withdraws money from a different cashpoint everytime to avoid patterns in his behaviour (the irony).
He reported someone for hacking the centre's network when they built their own website for practice using XAMMP.
I'm going to stop there. I could tell you so many more stories about these guys, some about them being paranoid and some about the stupid antics Cyber Security and Information Assurance students get up to. Well done for making it this far. Hope you enjoyed it.26 -
Why are modern apps so god damn huge? A fucking messaging app doesn't require 500000000000000 MB!!! I wonder what shit load of fuck they're packing in those apps.13
-
I don't know what Google's design team has taken for drugs lately, but I want some!!
First, replacement of the blobs into this trash that they call emoji nowadays. 10-20 years ago we called it the crap stickers from MSN.
Next, Android Pie would look like iOS, but in the most grotesque way possible.
And now it's creeping into the apps.. Google Play, YouTube, Messaging, …
It all looks so.. white, and round, and childish. What happened to sharp corners, using all the screen real estate, and.. those colors?! God I can't stand how white the Google apps are starting to look. But I know the solution. I'll accuse Google of being RACIST!! Because black people would be so offended by the lack of dark themes. GOOGLE, YOU PATRIARCHIC, NON-INCLUSIVE, RACISTIC A-HOLES!!! CHANGE YOUR COLORS NOW!!!
I can see how that could actually work nowadays 🙃9 -
I love how the Keybase Linux client installs itself straight into /keybase. Unix directory structure guidelines? Oh no, those don't apply to us. And after uninstalling the application they don't even remove the directory. Leaving dirt and not even having the courtesy to clean it up. Their engineers sure are one of a kind.
Also, remember that EFAIL case? I received an email from them at the time, stating some stuff that was about as consistent as their respect for Unix directory structure guidelines. Overtyping straight from said email here:
[…] and our filesystem all do not use PGP.
> whatever that means.
The only time you'll ever use PGP encryption in Keybase is when you're sitting there thinking "Oh, I really want to use legacy PGP encryption."
> Legacy encryption.. yeah right. Just as legacy as Vim is, isn't it?
You have PGP as part of your cryptographic identity.
> OH REALLY?! NO SHIT!!! I ACTIVELY USED 3 OS'S AND FAILED ON 2 BECAUSE OF YOUR SHITTY CLIENT, JUST TO UPLOAD MY FUCKING PUBLIC KEY!!!
You'll want to remove your PGP key from your Keybase identity.
> Hmm, yeah you might want to do so. Not because EFAIL or anything, just because Keybase clearly is a total failure on all levels.
Written quickly,
the Keybase team
> Well that's fucking clear. Could've taken some time to think before hitting "Send" though.
Don't get me wrong, I love the initiatives like this with all my heart, and greatly encourage secure messaging that leverages PGP. But when the implementation sucks this much, I start to ask myself questions about whether I should really trust this thing with my private conversations. Luckily I refrained from uploading my private key to their servers, otherwise I would've been really fucked. -
When it's Monday morning, before 10 am, and customers start instant messaging you with angry looking emojis...*sigh*
😠 👽 🔫 🔥4 -
LinkedIn feels like:
- be bombarded with recruiters messaging you
- people you don't know bragging about joining a company
- more people you don't know sharing useless advice for tons of corporate crap
Is just me or anyone feels the same?13 -
My department is focused solely on web development. Of course we are part of the major portion of I.T
The entire I.T department got acknowledged for a very important piece of software. That I wrote.
The ceremony in which we were being recognized did not listed MY department, no, they listed the ENTIRETY of I.T.
Thing is, if this product was not delivered, then I was told that the blame would be MINE (I am speaking as the head of my department) but apparently if it succeeded (which it did) it is to be attributed to people that were not even involved in the project.
My employees tried calming me down when I got upset, one of them stated that it was not even our department's effort, but mine alone. And yes, I was the one that developed the solution. By myself, with complete testing, staging, the whole works. Everything, developed by me. BUT my employees held the entire department down while I was behind close doors developing this solution.
I was fucking upset, more so because my director sent an email thanking the entire I.T department for this "win"
I asked him through or messaging service if he could point out to me who else was involved, since I did not know of anyone else that did absolutely anything in this process other than myself and my guys.
Maybe the output of my program was parsed by another I.T department and something happened from it, maybe the money generated by the application (obscene amounts of it btw) were used to add more to the infrastructure etc, who knows, but as far as I know, you cannot say "if this fails it is on you" just for them to later on thank people that were not involved in the project.
This is why I would gladly move on to a different field. I don't want to be patted on the back constantly, I know how fucking good I am at what I do. But if I do something amazing I do not want to see those efforts being given to someone else.
The dev world is usually a thankless industry, but if thanks are given, then I want the sole credit.
If I am winning or loosing I want the whole fucking credit and you can be any more gangstah than that.10 -
Sometimes I wish devRant had private messaging feature.
Then I see spammers and 12 year old script kiddies around here and I realize why we don't have it.1 -
"A Single Line of Computer Code Put Thousands of Innocent Turks in Jail"
I'll leave the title as it was, but people were hunted down just for having been once logged by a tracking pixel inside a messaging app.
Simply terrifying, I hold that off for a while, since it sounded like the usual fakes, but it seems its not, as more and more keep confirming it.
"The government eventually exonerated 11,480 of the wrongly accused, but some had already spent months in prison, and reportedly some even committed suicide."
"Elif finished dressing her youngest and watched police search her family's home before they took her into custody — for using a messaging app the government deems seditious.
She knew the arrest was coming. She'd already lost her job, because traces of the app known as Bylock were found on her phone"
"The regime relies on logs from the country's ISPs to identify users of Bylock, fingerprinting them on the basis of their communications with Bylock's servers. These communications can be triggered without using Bylock, though: Bylock's tracking pixel was used for analytics for pop-up ads and in at least eight apps."
https://m.slashdot.org/story/336657
http://cbc.ca/beta/news/...
https://boingboing.net/2018/01/...7 -
Had the first DDOS battle in my life lads, fuck me that was hard. I somehow managed to block these assholes, and some piece of shit was extorting money out of our business by messaging us in telegram. What a piece of shit.9
-
!Rant
Designer decide to have a meeting with stakeholders about UX/UI workflow for control panel of our new embedded system (no framework, no library, gui is bit per bit rendered on frame buffer).
A week later, still nothing on my table, not a mail, not a call. Meanwhile I wrote a framework, the control system, renderer, and messaging queues between tasks.
Wrote some widgets, a layout system and a view swtching mechanism, and a separate stack control to use a "back" button.
Now I am stuck for I do not know what should happen when clicking on various (non obvious) items on the touchscreen.
Fine, I'll ask the designer.
"Oh, I will write the workflow next week" (ETA time, 2 weeks. Seriously? You take a week to draw on Adobe Illustrator 20 screenshot with text and I have another week to write it from scratch in C?)
Ok, while you write it, just tell me what should happen when I click an active item.
"Well, we didn't talk about that. We just decided the colour of the icons on the screen..."
For fuck sake...8 -
!dev
So, I've been talking to this girl for a couple weeks now, and she fucking makes me happy guys. I kinda mentioned her once or twice on here, but I didn't really want to say much cause I wasn't sure how stuff was gonna go with her.
But basically now, we're just "talking" if that makes any sense to any of the younger, more social audiences here. For those who may not get what I mean, it's like we're not really looking for anyone else, but we're not really official or anything. Just somewhere in between like friends and dating (she confirmed this for me cause I've made assumptions before and got hurt so I wanted everything to be crystal clear)
I actually met her because she has a class with one of my friends. I mentioned their class in my contribution to the weekly rant this week, where the graphic design class was doing some basic webdev. I skipped my anatomy class to go there one day, started talking to her (actually the day of my rant where I said I'd been up for like ~30 hours or however many it was. LIKE EVERYTHING I POST ENDS UP REFERENCED IN ANOTHER POST), and just kept skipping mainly to see her. Then my friend gave me her Discord and we started actually talking to each other.
Within like 2 hours of us first messaging we had one of those like cute couple arguments. It was over who had prettier eyes, cause I have blue eyes (that people usually say are beautiful, I posted a couple pictures here once), and she has really pretty green eyes. I said that hers looked better, but she said that mine do....She won the argument.
Since then, it's just been fun and cute and I fucking love it. SHE EVEN SAID A PICKUP LINE TO ME A FEW NIGHTS AGO THAT I JUST LOVED. It was "your eyes are more gorgeous than any source code I have ever seen". She found it online, but like at the time, that really touched me.
I'm just so excited about all this guys. She's adorable and I love talking to her. The one thing that's KINDA weird is that she has the same name as my younger sister, but we call my sister a shortened version of the name, so it's not THAT weird.
And I'm just rambling at this point, like I generally do with my rants. She actually knows my profile name and everything (but she isn't on here, she does art, not computers), so she could possibly see this, but I'll likely end up sending it to her at some point anyways.7 -
Instant messaging apps are a burden if your client is a b*tch.
Client: hey, I want you to put some more images on this page.
Me: Oh, okay, send them all and I will do. *provides email*
Client: Cool, will do that in an hour.
*closes facebook*
[two hours later, waiting for the email and wondering why I didn't receive it yet]
*opens facebook*
*is greeted by 45 new messages from client*
*opens to see 45 images sent one by one for me to use it on the webpage*
fml3 -
I see many developers ranting about recruiters messaging, texting or even calling them. While in my case, the recruiter doesn't even accept my invitation on LinkedIn!2
-
So Patanjali(aka Ramdev Baba trying to sell you even a fucking underwear as ayurvedic and locally made) released their chat application "Kimbho" and was taken down within 24 hours because of major security flaws.
Some obvious ironies I would like to point out here.
1. Coming up with a chat application with gaping security flaws at this stage when privacy related discussions are happening at every nook and corner, worst move ever.
2. There are elections in 2019 and 1 year would be the right amount of time to gather data on public and start targetting and influencing people. It shouldn't be so obvious and everyone knows which political party Patanjali leans towards.
3. You are promoting an app citing Make In India initiative. You are the biggest Indian based FMCG operating in India, courtesy exploiting nationalist sentiments. Whatever you aim of doing, at least invest a decent amount of money in hiring good developers and designers. If not anything get a content writer who will write you an original description of your app for as low as ₹1000.
4. Promoting a competitor of whatsapp on whatsapp is a brilliant move. Give that marketting fellow a big raise.
5. Replacing the phone icon with a shankh is not innovation. Also, everyone knows about spam farms in Bangladesh and many places in India. So boasting about 1.5 lakh downloads in less than an hour only speaks more about your ignorance and lack of technical knowledge.
6. If you really are promoting "swadeshi app", why are you offering logging in through facebook? I mean even a blind person can clearly see your agenda here.
7. Hike is a messaging app made in India and they are here since long and still it are nowhere near the usage of whatsapp. Selling shit in the name of Make in India is not cool and its high time Patanjali realises this. But then again, it is their only marketting strategy because how else can you sell something as gross as cow urine and that too people buying it voluntarily.
8. If this stunt was carried out to be in the news, well played. You are getting a good amount of publicity, but this time a bad publicity will do more harm than good. People are calling out your bluff and you will get to see the results.
Mr. Baba Ramdev, fraud karo, itna blatant mat karo. India ki public sentimental hai chutiya nahi.7 -
I made an Android app that on random interval shows android notification with sound like Facebook notification.
Few girls in the office asking me whose messaging me this much on Facebook Messenger. They think the girls are responding to my messages and you know in no time the gossip made me famous.
It's kinda cool being a programmer 😎14 -
So this JUST happened.
I do what I've been doing since its release, that is go through devRant in my spare time.
My girlfriend is right here working on her project and notices me looking intently into my phone, unaware of what I'm up to and literally snatches my phone asking me which girl i was messaging and checks it to see devRant open! The look on her face after that was priceless :D
EVEN NOW as I type this Rant she looked at me and asked "Who is that you're messaging? Your 'girlfriend'?" xD
God bless devRant xD2 -
I've founded a startup and we're making the world a better place through inter process messaging and signaling frameworks utilizing politically correct race and sexual orientation emoji for more efficient SaaS and PaaS data center communications. We're MoLoSo.2
-
I left my previous company because my tech leadership was insensitive and agressive.
However, I am in a start-up right now and CTO is a nut job.
He creates random Slack threads and keeps messaging me like crazy. The co-founders have shut him down multiple times and yet his only success metric is "number of deliveries".
The other day something broke in production and teams were discussing about resolving the bug in one of the Slack channels.
CTO literally wrote this and I wish I was making this up, "let us not look at the logs and trust our code to work fine."
I was baffled and confused. I realised me leaving my previous organisation because of such tech leadership was a stupid decision.
Crows are black everywhere.5 -
TL;DR: My devices all hate me and I needed to fix them all.
My Devices really love me.
I rooted my smartphone (LG G5) just yesterday. Everything went fine. Installed TWRP, SuperSU and some nice Apps that utilize root.
Today I was on the go (at CeBIT) and already had the Xposed Installer App on my phone, but didn't attempt installing it yet because I needed my phone for Maps and Messaging and the app had given clear warning about the bricking-potential.
So to the end of the day I get bored, send my last important Messages, installed the Xposed Framework...
... aaaand got stuck in a boot loop.
So I got on my way back home (thanks God I remembered all the trains I needed to take). On the way I had a lot of fun in the Recovery-Terminal and figured that I should be able to fix my phone with no problem at home because the installer made backups (unlike myself).
Coming back home and my pc was still running (should've shut down after installing updates).
The pc behaved odd and I couldn't shut it down properly, which led to cutting the power.
And upon booting my pc I got a ... give it a guess ...
...a bootloop (technically the animation just never ended).
So after I fixed my phone with my spare laptop (just transferred and executed the uninstaller for xposed) I fixed my PC too, which had an old broken dkms-driver.
The odd thing about this is, that this isn't technically a rant. I guess you can confirm that you can't find any swear words.
Because I ENJOYED fixing the devices. I already fixed my pc a couple of times was well as unbricking my rooted phones, so there was fairly little research involved.
I guess I'm now offically twisted.
Now, after my smartphone backups are transferred, I'Ll take my device apart and replace the camera glass which arrived today (and hope, no pray, that my sim card does still work after that)...
... after I blatendly copied a meme to get more attention. 😉2 -
If you can be locked out of it remotely, you don't own it.
On May 3rd, 2019, the Microsoft-resembling extension signature system of Mozilla malfunctioned, which locked out all Firefox users out of their browsing extensions for that day, without an override option. Obviously, it is claimed to be "for our own protection". Pretext-o-meter over 9000!
BMW has locked heated seats, a physical interior feature of their vehicles, behind a subscription wall. This both means one has to routinely spend time and effort renewing it, and it can be terminated remotely. Even if BMW promises never to do it, it is a technical possibility. You are in effect a tenant in a car you paid for. Now imagine your BMW refused to drive unless you install a software update. You are one rage-quitting employee at BMW headquarters away from getting stuck on a side of a road. Then you're stuck in an expensive BMW while watching others in their decade-old VW Golf's driving past you. Or perhaps not, since other stuck BMWs would cause traffic jams.
Perhaps this horror scenario needs to happen once so people finally realize what it means if they can be locked out of their product whenever the vendor feels like it.
Some software becomes inaccessible and forces the user to update, even though they could work perfectly well. An example is the pre-installed Samsung QuickConnect app. It's a system app like the Wi-Fi (WLAN) and Bluetooth settings. There is a pop-up that reads "Update Quick connect", "A new version is available. Update now?"; when declining, the app closes. Updating requires having a Samsung account to access the Galaxy app store, and creating such requires providing personally identifiable details.
Imagine the Bluetooth and WiFi configuration locking out the user because an update is available, then ask for personal details. Ugh.
The WhatsApp messenger also routinely locks out users until they update. Perhaps messaging would cease to work due to API changes made by the service provider (Meta, inc.), however, that still does not excuse locking users out of their existing offline messages. Telegram does it the right way: it still lets the user access the messages.
"A retailer cannot decide that you were licensing your clothes and come knocking at your door to collect them. So, why is it that when a product is digital there is such a double standard? The money you spend on these products is no less real than the money you spend on clothes." – Android Authority ( https://androidauthority.com/digita... ).
A really bad scenario would be if your "smart" home refused to heat up in winter due to "a firmware update is available!" or "unable to verify your subscription". Then all you can do is hope that any "dumb" device like an oven heats up without asking itself whether it should or not. And if that is not available, one might have to fall back on a portable space heater, a hair dryer or a toaster. Sounds fun, huh? Not.
Cloud services (Google, Adobe Creative Cloud, etc.) can, by design, lock out the user, since they run on the computers of the service provider. However, remotely taking away things one paid for or has installed on ones own computer/smartphone violates a sacred consumer right.
This is yet another benefit of open-source software: someone with programming and compiling experience can free the code from locks.
I don't care for which "good purpose" these kill switches exist. The fact that something you paid for or installed locally on your device can be remotely disabled is dystopian and inexcuseable.15 -
!dev
What kind of idiot sends a random stranger “hello” on Instagram! What the fuck am I supposed to do with “hello”? Can’t you lead the message with your reason for messaging me? What the fuck are expecting me to reply with exactly? Are you fucking crazy?15 -
FUCK FIREBASE, FUCK CLOUD MESSAGING, FUCK GOOGLE, FUCK APPLE, FUCK PUSH NOTIFICATIONS, FUCK PROGRAMMING AND FUCK MY LIFE. JUST TELL ME MOTHERFUCKERS WHY NOTIFICATIONS IS NOT WORKING ANYMORE, I SWEAR I DIDN'T CHANGE A SINGLE LINE OF THE FUCKING CODE. AND IT'S BEEN ONLY ONE WEEK SINCE THE LAST TIME I TESTED IT.5
-
Well, everytime I build a pc for a friend I'll always end up telling myself "this is the last time". Not bc I have a problem with building pc's, I love it, but its the "free of charge" 24/7 IT-support my non techy (techii?) friends expects from me after the build is done I hate.
So here's the deal.
A week ago I built a brand new pc for a friend, as usual (bc he's a good friend) I told him that my "fee" would be a couple of beers and the train ticket up. So I got there, built the pc and we hooked it up to his monitor. About 5sec in to windows the screen went black. My friend started to panic, and I started to check if all the components and cables were hooked up right (tho I've done this a couple of times, shit can happen) but found nothing was wrong.
I had to take the train home, cause it got late AF and I live in another city, but I told him to try another cable. Felt bad AF for not being able to help him.
Flash forward 2 days, my friend started messaging me late in the evening, complaining about how he had tried everything and ultimately had to leave the pc at an (as he called it) "proffesional" who charged him 100$.
I felt even guiltier about that one, asked him if he tried to change the hdmi, but he said that's in The hands of this guy now.
Two days later this PC God gave him an answer.
Guess What he told him?
CHANGE THE ***** HDMI CABLE.
Well, shit..
Afterwards he wanted help installing drivers over fb-messenger.
I love my friends, but man why do I do this to myself.3 -
Creating username / password first time - checked
Storing password in plaintext - checked
Messaging password in plain text after a password change - whaaattt????7 -
I love and hate at the same time how the dependencies of some projects can turn into projects themselves.
Working on a quite big project right now and need notifications in the form of smartphone notifications/signal messages/emails right now for that which is nearly all working but now I'm realizing that it'd be ten times more useful to write a general messaging gateway/API wich can be called through a url which handles any type of messaging/notifications I need to send out.
Love it because those kinda projects are useful and awesome imo but that'd be YET ANOTHER project 😅😥2 -
A messaging/social media platform that requires people to share a random code with each other before following/mesaaging each other15
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!rant
Bit of a shameless plug but...
I've been making Crypton.sh as my side project for the past couple of months and it's now ready for public consumption. Crypton.sh is a secure and encrypted SMS messaging solution in the cloud, with its original purpose to be a 2FA mobile number that cannot be stolen like a SIM card can be, the idea came about when someone I knew has their SIM card stolen via a SIM card swap scam (https://bbc.co.uk/news/...).
Originally it came about as that idea but grew into something bigger, now everything is encrypted and you can also have conversations with other people, but I'm testing things from time to time and more can follow. Crypton.sh makes sure that you can no longer worry about your SIM card being stolen by malicious hackers, or having a second account on Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, Google and others.4 -
I have this pact with my neighbor - if someone delivers a package to them, I knock on their door when I notice it to let them know and if they don’t answer, I take it into my apartment and leave a note. Same goes if she or her kids see a package delivered for us and we don’t answer.
So last month, we have a flooding incident in our complex and her flat’s damaged so they have to leave to stay at a hotel for a bit. It’s only supposed to be until the 20th (of last month).
So when she gets a package a few weeks ago, I knock and when there’s no answer, take it into my apartment and leave a note.
Note stays on the door for days.
And then it disappears, so I assume she’s home.
But she never answers the door.
And then I see workers in her place.
So now I don’t know if it’s the workers who picked up the note or if she was back and I missed her.
But it’s been a couple of weeks and I’m starting to worry about her. Like, the day of the flood she almost died and I ended up coming over to help (getting her oldest to do CPR, talking to 911, trying to keep people calm), so I know she’s not feeling great lately.
And I’m the kind of idiot that never thought to exchange numbers.
So I’ve resorted to internet stalking and messaging her on Facebook.
And knocking on the downstairs neighbor’s door since I know they’re related. They didn’t answer. I’ll try again later.
I have no idea what else to do. I mean, I don’t think I can contact the office and be like “Can you please provide me contact information for my neighbor? I have their stuff. Thanks.”
#awkward4 -
I knew I had found the right group of friends when one of them suggested we try SQL Injection on the instant messaging feature of the bowling alley console.
Unrelated, do people not think, "hmm, that seems like an unnecessary feature?"2 -
Guy I work with messaging me: Hey could you check my SQL syntax to get the date part for the month and year.
Me thinking: Ughhh this is going to be something stupid I know it. Why doesn't he just check it himself?
I check it... 2 queries that are very, very, very... simple... and similar except one returns last year (2017) and the other returns the current year (2018)
Me: Not sure what your issue is... I'm not getting any syntax errors. They are executing
Him: Well it shouldn't show 2017, it should show 2018
Me thinking: learn to debug you lazy fuck
Me: Well you're adding a -1 to your year...(Not sure why your even adding to it if your just getting the current month and year)
Him: Oh you're correct! That makes sense
Waste of my time2 -
Why is whatsapp just AIDS?!
The privacy thing is big but let's take a look at the app.
It's the only messenger app I've ever used that forces you to save incoming images to your gallery if you want to see them, like wtf?
The UI looks like shit and it's kinda hard to understand from a UX perspective, for example read receipts which Messenger does beautifully. Facebook owns WhatsApp so A it's not really a better choice than fb messenger and B it basically has a shit quality application compared to Messenger. The messaging experience in sketchy Chinese dating apps is better.
Also it basically hacks your phone. It turns on notifications and permissions by itself even when I explicitly turned them off, and sends me notifications for muted conversations.
Speaking of notificatikns. Every time I get 1 notification, notifications from every single chat even an unread messages from 3 years ago gets sent to my phone.
It guzzles battery like a monster.
And they have basically formed a cult in the indian community, so now everyone thinks its the best and no one uses anything else because "it's so convenient" which it's NOT. It has a terrible interface, and the only thing I like about it is the fact that it being so shit gives me an excuse to uninstall it and ignore all the fucking spam on there.
Honestly, the app needs to die ASAP because it is frankly the shittiest of shittiest messaging applications.5 -
I really don't understand how developers from Facebook, WhatsApp and other messaging platforms still didn't figure out that ever since they introduced message previews on push notifications that those "seen" check-marks became utterly useless in most of cases..
This COVID-19 quarantine just confirms it, since nobody is doing anything else except being on phones and computers whole day but somehow it still takes them several hours to "read" the message..9 -
Can we talk about Google Allo for a second?
What the everloving f*ck, Google? I don't get it. You built a perfectly solid, pretty chat app with lots of neat features and interesting ideas. And then you ruin it by completely neutering SMS support.
Here's (roughly) what your recipient gets when you message someone who isn't on Allo:
(Allo)(Name): <message> Send STOP to stop Allo messages. Download Allo here: <shortlink>
iMessage figured out SMS integration three f*cking years ago, how could you guys have messed this up so bad?
</rant>8 -
"I have a great idea for a messaging app.
But I can't tell you what it is until you agree to make it for me, I can't pay you right now but I'll pay you back when we make tonnes of money!"
My startup idea: you create apps for people with bad ideas and the fees on a 1 year 'loan' with high penalties for failing to pay. Fair right?3 -
If you want recruiters to stop messaging you on linkedin. Change your job title to "Professional Cleaner".
Follow me for more tips on how to get rid of the blood sucking leaches6 -
Every night I slept on the laptop, waiting for some Trinity messaging on my screen, telling me to follow the white rabbit.1
-
WHY THE FUCK DOES MY MESSAGING APP NEED LOCATION PERMISSION? I HAD REVOKED IT AND NOW IT WONT WORK UNLESS I DO SO! FFS!13
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Once I was pairing with a colleague on his box. His setup is three screens; two large monitors and his MacBook. On the Mac, he has a messaging service that syncs his texts. Unbeknownst to him, his wife sends some dirty pictures to him. I don't know how long they were there, but once I saw them I politely tried to ignore them with no avail. I lost my train of thought and just laughed. He figured out the issue and quickly closed the chat. He was cool about it, saying our build times wouldn't feel nearly as long if he left it open.
Pair programming gone wrong? More like "gone right".1 -
Just spent 6-8 hours or so trying to get image uploading to work with sending messages with firebase. Finally completed it.
Disclaimer: this might not make the most sense as I am completely drained mentally.
The issue was that I wasn't calling the send message method inside the upload image method. Meaning the images would upload but before I would be able to get the Uri back from firebase to put in the hashmap for the messages, the message hashmap would already be sent.
It was a pain in the ass to do. But 5 windows and 40 tabs later, then some doc reading. Then a quick break to eat. And some more stressing about my code. I finally realized that I should have just called the send message inside the incomplete listener in the image upload.
TLDR;
"uploadImage(), sendMessage()"= no Uri; :(
"UploadImage() { sendMessage() } = Uri" :)
PS: Yes, this is me talking to myself on my other account10 -
Notification pops up at the bottom of the screen... it is an email from a Project Manager.
2 seconds later...
Project Manager via messaging app: "Hey, I've sent you an email"
fuck off bitch... I know that already, it is 20fucking19... notifications are reliable and they work. I don't need a human toast notification to tell me about the other notification that i just received.5 -
I don't like that my team and my company uses Skype as the messaging tool for teams. There are no code highlighting when I need to share code snippet to devs!13
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Recently thanks to Whatsapp I've discovered a new pet peeve:
People pressing "send" after finishing a sentence (at best) instead of making new lines, resulting in around 5 new messages received at lightning speed.
Not to mention, they keep on going while I am trying to reply, losing my concentration in the process! 😡5 -
I envision a website where you can review individual HR personel on the basis of;
1. Knows technical aspects enough for hiring
2. Respects the candidate
3. Respecting the messaging time limits, ghosting vs
4. Skill to bring best verdion of the candidate etc
What else would be the criteria?7 -
I fucking hate those apps/websites where you can create an account but there's no fucking way of deleting it by yourself, nor even by messaging a moderator...fuck, and it's even worse when they put you on their newsletter list and the unsubscribe doesn't do anything...Fuck
Please fellow devs, if you ever work on apps that require creating an account, provide a way to delete it too.
Ugh fuuuuuuck.10 -
WTF IS WITH ALL THESE MESSAGING SERVICES... ALL NEED TO LOGIN OR VERIFY USING MY PHONE. WHAT IS IT'S LOST OR BROKEN....
DUMBASS IDIOTS....14 -
Do not touch Salesforce.
Especially Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
It is a fucking joke this product even exists. Buy Hubspot instead. Marketing Cloud is the single worst piece of software I have had to implement out of 4 years working in software and a lifetime working in tech.
Literally nothing works. You click a button and bam, nothing. The UI actively lies to the user. Nothing is guaranteed to work and support is some guy in India who shrugs his shoulders and walks away. Things will randomly break and warning messages are tiny, indecipherable babble that mean nothing.
If you are dev, walk away. If you are a potential customer, walk away. This company DESERVES a bad reputation for the absolute heap of dogshit that is Marketing Cloud.
The worst part is that it's likely going to affect my job and my career because of how fucking dogshit it is.
Fuck Salesforce in case the messaging isn't clear.5 -
So, finally I can rant after a while.
After I stopped helping people coding online few months ago, because I was getting literally spammed 24/7 by everyones shitty multi-million dollar ideas, I introduced few of my classmates in to coding. Now, after ~6 months, I am spammed by my classmates by their awesome programming ideas which are too hard for them but they are sure its gonna be awesome. The difference is, that I cant say "FUCK OFF AND STOP SPAMMING MY INBOX WITH YOUR FUCKING IDEAS" to my friends and block them. Please fucking kill me. Once more someone will start messaging me their fucking idea
-like this
-in
-separate
-messages instead
-of writing one
-long and propper
-message
I am gonna swim with a toaster. 😡3 -
Those of you who run Linux *exclusively*... What are you doing in the OS that makes it a big deal for you?
Personally, I spend the bulk of my time in *apps*---editor, IDE, browser, messaging, calendar, etc. OK, a little time in command line, but minutes a day, if I add it up. And I can get Bash anywhere.
Now, you could argue that, if I spend most of my time in apps, then I should have a minimalist OS. Fair comment. Is that all it is?
But, I feel OS is quite an unimportant part of my day. App launcher for much of it.14 -
My friend who constantly keeps messaging me to switch to windows:
WINDOWS GRAPHICS IS BETTER THAN UR LOONIX HEHEHE FUCC UR OPINION LMAO
le me: can ssh to my linux machine from anywhere and it can handle over 1000 users simultaneously and if one Xorg client on the main machine dies, we can just close it and open another. while their windows' whole graphics crashes if there's too much load on their graphics. We even played minecraft on the main machine lol, while other devs were connected to it.9 -
This is a guide for technology noobies who wants to buy a laptop but have no idea what the SPECS are meaning.
1. Brand
If you like Apple, and love their !sleek design, go to the nearest Apple store and tell them "I want to buy one. Recommendations?"
If you don't like Apple, well, buy anything that fits you. Read more below.
2. Size
There are 11~15 inches, weight is 850g ~ 2+kg. Very many options. Buy whatever you like.
//Fun part coming
3. CPU
This is the power of the brain.
For example,
Pentium is Elementary Schoolers
i3 is Middle Schoolers
i5 is High Schoolers
i7 is University People
Dual-core is 2 people
Quad-core is 4 people
Quiz! What is i5 Dual-core?
A) 2 High Schoolers.
Easy peasy, right?
Now if you have a smartphone and ONLY use Messaging, Phone, and Whatsapp (lol), you can buy Pentium laptops.
If not, I recommend at least i3
Also, there are numbers behind those CPU, like i3-6100
6 means 6th generaton.
If the numbers are bigger, it is the most recent generation.
Think of 6xxx as Stone age people
7xxx as Bronze age people
8xxx as Iron age people
and so one.
4. RAM
This is the size of the desk.
There are 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, and so one.
Think of 4GB as small desk to only put one book on it.
8GB as a desk to put a laptop with a keyboard and a mouse.
16GB as a normal sized desk to put some books, laptop, and food.
32GB as a boss sized desk.
And so one.
When you do multitasking, and the desk is too small...
You don't feel comfortable right?
It is good when there are spacious space.
Same with RAM.
But when the desk becomes larger, it gets expensive, so buy the one with the affordable price.
If you watch some YouTube videos in Chrome and do some document words with Office, buy at least 8GB. 16GB is recommended.
5. HDD/SSD
You take out the stuffs such as books and laptop from the basket (HDD/SSD), and put in your desk (RAM).
There are two kinds of baskets.
The super big ones, but because it is so big, it is bulky and hard to get stuffs out of the basket. But it is cheap. (HDD)
There are a bit smaller ones but expensive compared to the HDD, it is called SSD. This basket is right next to you, and it is super easy to get stuffs out of this basket. The opening time is faster as well.
SSDs were expensive, but as times go, it gets bigger as well, and cheaper. So most laptops are SSD these days.
There are 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1024GB(=1TB), and so one. You can buy what you want. Recommend 256GB for normal use.
Game guy? At least 512GB.
6. Graphics
It is the eyesight.
Most computers doesn't have dedicated graphics card, it comes with the CPU. Intel CPUs has CPU + graphics, but the graphics powered by Intel isn't that good.
But NVIDIA graphics cards are great. Recommended for gamers. But it is a bit more expensive.
So TL;DR
Buying a laptop is
- Pick the person and the person's clothes (brand and design)
- Pick the space for the person to stay (RAM, SSD/HDD)
- Pick how smart they are (CPU)
- Pick how many (Core)
- Pick the generation (6xxx, 7xxx ....)
- Pick their eyesight (graphics)
And that's pretty much it.
Super easy to buy a laptop right?
If you have suggestions or questions, make sure to leave a comment, upvote this rant, and share to your friends!2 -
Work story.
We have this system that's being used nation-wide and basically there's a control panel for management (it's a website)) and an app for the regular users.
I just migrated and replaced the guy before me, I'm basically the only one on the project.
The code for the website is a mess, the servers are sometimes slow, and few security problems here and there.
Project Lead comes up to me and says that few of our clients that use the website are saying it works really slowly.
I start by analyzing the networking, and found shocking things.
First of all, let's say there's a messaging option, and the management teams that are our clients can have each a lot of groups, which all have messaging.
Upon first load, ALL OF THE IMAGES, FROM ALL GROUPS, ARE PRE LOADED. It can get up to few hundred photos being preloaded upon first load, which can explain the slow loading.
After discovering that, I discovered that the Administration control panel, which only my project lead can access, with sends heavy requests to the server and loads heavy assets, is loaded every time to every single client, generating heavy stress on our server and slowing everything down.
I tell that to my project lead and say that that's what causing the slow downs, I coded a fix that currently sits and is not being merged to the master branch to be deployed, and somehow I need to find a way to fix the slowness which all comes down to the heavy requests and slow connection with servers... And they won't merge my fix that fixes the loading of the administration panel so the stress on the servers could go down, and everything will be sped up....
Ah damnit.. sometimes I don't understand it..4 -
Fucking Huawei have stopped giving out codes for unlocking the bootloader of their devices. You can't even get one by messaging their support.
Now you can't even root Huawei phones anymore unless you pay for some very sketchy looking software.
Fuck this5 -
So our country has fallen into a state of emergency. Access to most popular social networks and messaging apps have been blocked or restricted.9
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I love my job. Minus that 1 stupid guy who I don't understand how he was hired. And minus one of the managers messaging me after hours to do work. Everyone else is alright, need to find a way to hide from that manager and work on projects exclusively with other managers D:
Anyone else ever felt like hiding from management? Lol1 -
I just saw a news article (nope, not sharing it...don't want them to get the clicks) where they said it's now considered passive-aggressive to use the following emojis (the percentage is a non-specific n-value and N-value...probably 3...of how many younger folks think it makes you look "old" to use these):
1 - Thumbs up - 24%
2 - Red love heart - 22%
3 - OK hand - 20%
4 - Tick - 17%
5 - Poo - 17%
6 - Loudly crying face - 16%
7 - Monkey eye cover - 15%
8 - Clapping hands - 10%
9 - Lipstick kiss mark - 10%
10 - Grimacing face - 9%
I previously only ever used thumbs-up and checkmarks to signal that I understood the message sent to me. My new goal is to use as many of these as possible when messaging anyone under 30. If you are so butthurt by ANY emoji, then you certainly deserve what's coming to you.17 -
ok, so i remake music and make sprites sheets for smaller developers, in an attempt to make them more recognizable. the devs normally give me a place in the "special thanks" section of the credits, and then i got people spam messaging me asking me to make them a game or something, so i explain to them i dont make games, just assets. however no matter how many times i tell certain people, they still keep on asking me to make a game when all i do is remake music and do a bit of pixel art, so the conversation usually goes a bit like this -
Them: Hi! I was wondering if you could make me a game?
Me: I don't actually MAKE games, just things you can use in your game.
Them: So can you make me a game?
Me: I don't know a single bit of programming, i just like to remake stuff.
Them: YOUR A FAKER???
Me: No-
Them: YOU SAID YOU CAN MAKE ME A GAME!
Me: i never said that, and i DON'T make GAMES,
JUST ASSETS.
Them: i'm blocking you
Me: why tho
Them: blocked :)
Me: [content hidden]
___________________________________________________
so yeah. this is why i stopped making assets for games and just remixed tunes for personal use.4