Best "error" I've ever seen today.

We have a very large database with millions of people, some of those records are duplicates. So I had a long project to write something that would automatically merge duplicate records while allowing employees to review them. Today we had a duplicate show up in the list which should not have.

Same name (apart from one letter), address, employee ID (off by 1 number), same manager, title, phone number, birthdate. But we figured out it wasn't the same person and therefore wasn't a good match.

Turns out they are twin sisters who live together and we're hired by the same manager for the same position at the same time. What are the odds...

Here's the time an Amazon recruiter scheduled a call with me just to tell me I wouldn't be getting the job.

A few years ago, I left Uber after the seemingly non-stop public snafus they were getting themselves into (I have a lot of rants about Uber if anyone is interested, some of them mind-melting). I decided to take a two month break given that my financials looked decent for once and I was tired of 100 hour weeks.

During that time, I of course started perusing the typical job-seeking sites I had remembered from before. Somehow, from one of the profiles I set up, I caught the eye of an Amazon recruiter. They emailed me and I agreed to set up a date and time for an introductory chat.

They already had my CV. They already had my StackOverflow/Github information. This wasn't a technical interview, and the recruiter wasn't part of any of the tech teams. This is important information moving forward.

A few days later, I got the call from the recruiter. He introduced himself as the person from the emails, thanking my for my time, etc.. Things started out pleasant with the smalltalk and whatnot, but then the recruiter said "so I have some concerns about your resume".

Under one of the sections I had a list of things I was skilled with - one of which, regrettably, is PHP. Completely ignoring Java, Javascript, C# and C++ knowledge and all of the other achievements I have with those technologies, the recruiter really wanted to drill me about the PHP.

"Do you work a lot with PHP?"
"No, not anymore - from time to time I have to do something with it but it's not my main language anymore. I know it quite well, though."
"Oh okay well we aren't looking for any PHP roles right now, unfortunately."
"Okay, no problem."

Perhaps I could have said more, but from my end of things, I meant "I don't see a problem here, I don't write a lot of PHP and you don't need a lot of PHP".

After a pause that felt like an hour, the recruiter broke the silence and said "Okay well thanks for your time today, I'm sorry things didn't work out."

Bewildered, I asked which technology stack they were using on the team.

"Not PHP, unfortunately. Thank you for your time." and then an abrupt click.

The recruiter found me himself, looked at my resume (assumably), sought out to contact me, arranged a time for a call, and then called me, just to tell me I wouldn't get the position due to knowing PHP at some point in my career.

Years later, the whole interaction still shocks me. Somewhere in my drafts I have a long letter to the recruiter basically going over my entire career history explaining why his call was incredibly... well, fucking weird. Towards the end of writing it I realized it was more therapeutic for me to deal with whatever it was that just took place and that it probably wouldn't change my odds of working at Amazon.

So yeah. That's the story of the time Amazon set up a recruiting call just to tell me I wouldn't be working for them.

Thus far I've had little success trying to teach code to people I know.

But yesterday.....man

My best friend told me that he was serious about learning. He asked me about my recommendation would be. Against all odds, and after small demonstrations he asked to learn about Java.

I made some coffee and braced myself. Either the dude is a hidden genius or I am an amazing instructor, but he got the whole thing. I introduced him to the basics, oop, variables etc and he got it down in one session. He was able to understand errthing a do a little code along.

So proud.

OK.
1. So i tindered.
2. I got a really nice girl.
3. We chatted really long and good.
4. We tried to meetup it did not work because of our schedule. New
job on my end, she is a student.
5. I thought its over. Fine whatever.
6. She gives me her number.
7. We continue chat on whatsapp
8. Blablabla 3 days long, she gets bored and tries to friendzone me
9. I revert the shit and state i wanna be serious and there wont be a
friendzone/nice guy comin from me.
10. She happy and continues to chat.
11. I get emtionally invested in her.
12. We exchange thoughts dreams and music.
13 We want to meetup at weekend. I cant. Got a family wedding all
weekend.
14. We want to meetup the second week.
I cant. Im off on a company trip. Again new job here.
15. So we say in the week after I get back.
15a. Before the weekend we need to deliver an rc and go all out to hold
the deadline.
15b. We deliver, but shit happens on the customer side. His fault but we
get the blame.
15c I go onto the company trip.
16. We chat and i send her pictures of the trip over the weekend so she
sees I care.
17. She seems fine. And happy.
18. I come back from the trip late night and need to work the next day
jetlag style.
19. I work jetlag style. And try to fix the shit from last week.
20. I come home really tired and looking forward to date day tomorrow.
21. I cant do anything. My home looks like shit and the bag still
unpacked. I just eat and fall asleep.
I feel bad bcs my home will turn her down instantly if we make it to my
place.
Need to hope that it does not come to this.
22. Date day comes. Today.
23. I wake up at 6 early to plan ahead to make sure my clothes are fine
and i arrive on time in the office to exit early.
24. I expect to check what goes on today in the city and give her the
location to meet and time.
25. I enter office and immeadetly get caught up in meeting planning, dev
questions and the meeting itself because the project is on edge.
26. We have a 5hours long meeting where people go on and on and on.
27. 3h later in the meeting:
my brain was fried and around 12 i go to lunch with some people.
28. Meanwhile the city is turning into a rainy mess of a shitty day. No
way I can have a nice walk with her like that. Bars and coffeshops are
just to boring.
29. So i eat to regain some sense and we go back to the office.
Meanwhile I am thinking all kinds of locations and stuff in my head.
30. Havent given her any update since a good morning in the morning.
31. We reenter the meeting. Things continue like before. The project is
on impossible demands and impossible timelines. Still we try to do our
best.
32 3h later on 3pm I tell her i am in a long meeting and working on a
meetingspot.
33. shes not happy.
34. I get a call from a relative
35. i need to go out and take the call. not good for the collegues.
again new job here.
36. family trouble,  money trouble, goverment demands. I promise to
handle that tomorrow. Before work.
37. i get back into the meeting.
38. still super slow and no results.
39. need to focus but start to check for locations on my phone.
40. she asks me where i am
41. I send her my location.
42. she thinks i am saying she should pick me up!
43 i joke and say no definitly not.
44. shes pissed.
45.  I decide for a coffeeshop. after work. and send her the location
46. She says to call it off.
47. I go all in and go romance style. I say ill wait there even if she
does not come to show her how much i care.
U know to avoid the lets do it some other time fuckery and then it never
happens.
47. She goes quiet.
48. 2h later we finish the meeting. Meanwhile QA foudn a bug we need to
fix because why not.
49. I got 30 minutes to find the bug and fix it before I need to go to
uphold my word.
50. I find out what to do, but it might break a lot of other things
without careful test and implementation. Collegues says he takes it.
51 I feel bad but I need to go. I even leave earlier because otherwise I
would not be on time.
52. I arrive 15 minutes early. I grab two coffee2go and wait outside,
53. Shitty weather, sometimes rain, sometimes sunny, cant decide what it
wants.
54. The weather is just like how I feel.
55. I wait 1 1/2h
56. I think I should feel stupid, For gods sake its tinder. People dont
give a crap, Enough people around why should I Invest so much into this?
But I dont feel stupid. Because this is how I want it. I dont want
appointments, I dont want safety. I decided for her and I went all in.
57. I send her pics from the sceneray as proof that I waited,
58. I think I blew it. She is still quiet.
59. Friends are asking me for plans for the weekend. I wish I could say
I already have some with her.
60. I feel lost right now. But my head says I put too much stress on
her, And i fucked up with the planning. I should have been more precise.
My head also says that i am putting myself into the victim role, which
is wrong always. Should I continue to reach out to her? Is there
something I could do still?

So a few days ago I shared about the conflict with my colleague on learning React. Today I was let go. Obviously I asked why they would do that and they said they feel the problem isn't even my React knowledge but the fact I don't grasp the fundamentals of OO programming.

Thing is in these 3 months there has not been a single code review. They are either going of what my lying colleague told them (they claimed he was excluded from giving feedback), or the consultants who were hired to help us. And yes, I got feedback I should improve but at the same time the assurance so long as I show improvement it'd be fine. And I was told they could see improvement. So I'm not sure what changed but suddenly there is no budget to keep me on. In any case it feels like shitty corporate bullshit.

But I can't say they are wrong. I struggle to explain simple concepts I know in words. I've worked a series of bad jobs where nobody cared how you did stuff as long as it got done. I feel I'm so behind now and so affected by bad knowledge it's even harder to fix than to learn the first time. So I'm wondering how to fix this.

I'm really gutted too because I loved this company. I was finally getting a fair wage instead of being underpaid. The people were excellent. I felt I could finally relax and feel safe at work. And now I feel betrayed. Which for someone with self esteem issues is very hard. Can't trust in myself and can't trust in others.

I'm gonna try and pick myself up in the morning, but today I feel totally shit. This wasn't how I'd expected things to go. I thought my manager had intended to talk conflicts over but instead I get the boot. And the advice to stop overselling myself. Real useful that. Like it is on me that they hired me despite my subpar interview because my CV looked good. It's a shitty excuse. In any case they're now stuck with a dev that walks out of work, throws false accusations about colleagues, and another person warned me about to not engage because nothing good ever came from it. He's gonna keep over engineering everything and make up for all the time he wastes outside of work creating a dysfunctional environment for everyone. But yeah, easier to fire the new person who does her best despite the odds. And who cautioned against over engineering because we kept missing deadlines. And who believes in refactoring when it is needed because that's how agile works. Yeah better keep someone who has no sense of work life balance and makes others miserable then claiming he's being driven out by your ignorance. And of course the consultants who throw your own people under the bus. Can't get rid of those now.

The odds of your code not failing in production are about as high as you dating a hot girl

One of my UUID's contains the string 'f00bar'. Haha. What are the odds?

Did you know that talking about your goals actually decreases your chances of reaching them? It's a form of social validation. Talking about them and receiving praise from your peers in a sort of mini-goal which could replace the actual goal so you are less motivated to actually go for the real goal. Best of luck anyway! May the odds be ever in your favor when facing procrastination😂

FUCK. This person who I have to avoid at social gatherings because I find him insufferably annoying is applying to my workplace and oh my God I hope I never have to work with him, at least the company is 700 people so the odds are relatively low?

Uggggg he's the worst. And I'm so easy going. There's like two people I feel this way about (fortunately the other lives in a different city).

Not exactly wrong there. I got started at 10 with odds and ends for fun.

Took a semester of it in college before switching because the compiler and I didn't get along.

Only to pick it back up via self-study 10 years later because the programmer who came on board for a side project never showed up and I wanted to keep things moving.

10 years later still, I'm now running a web design shop full time.

Today on forgotten movies – Chronicle.

A very grim, very dark movie about accidental superpowers discovery, but with some school-shooter vibes.

Don't you find it predictable how in regular movies a hero saves the world against all odds in the very last moment? Well, forget about it here – this movie is not "cinematic" at all, and that's what I like about it.

A horror in regular movies doesn't usually scare because the image itself is too perfect – you don't usually see the world like this. It doesn't seem real, that's the problem. By adopting the "found footage" screen language, Chronicle delivers the horror perfectly, because the world in it seems perfectly real, just like you see it through obscure youtube videos named MOV_0115 or IMG1014.

I like it that the characters actually look like real people, not like stereotypical superheroes and not even like enhanced versions of people that try to sell you an idea of what "success" looks like.

People in the movie also act real. They're weak, they're scared, they're irrational, and you really start to believe that yeah, this is what probably gonna happen when a human faces something as unbearable as superpowers discovery. And, as weird as it sounds, the superpower itself also looks totally real – raw, unpolished, uncontrollable force that requires getting used to and probably is too much for a regular human. Definitely not a perfect, tailored thing that turns anyone into Mary Sue.

Overall, this movie is the most immersive one I've ever seen. If you want to see what would really happen if you discover a superpower, this movie is for you.

I only do Han Solo debugging. Only he says hé doesnt like the odds.

I was talking to a friend of mine(more of an acquaintance really) about our shared interest in Go and how I am trying to see if I can implement it more and more into my daily activities(simple CLI utilities, maybe a web app or two) and he mentioned how much he likes it after being part of a Java shop for such a long time. He said that he got tired of the verbosity of Java and how Go was such a "breath of fresh air"

var i SomeShit
do.SomeShit(&i)
if do.Error != nil {
panic(do.Error)
}
fmt.Println("Could not agree at all")

On how bullshitty it is to say that one switched over to Golang because of the verbosity of other languages, specially when anything meaningful that you might do with the code requires constant checking.
And let us not

forget := lol.bullshit(); forget != nil {
about some of the other bs you get to do
oh look scoped errors
}

.....like I get it man. I like the language, no, It ain't replacing C or C++ for low level shit, not with a garbage collector are you fucking high?
But yes, I do like the language, they got a lot of shit right, the thing is, I feel like I know everything about it already since A) shit is way too simple, simple enough to be used by anyone really and B) other than goroutines this language does not really bring anything new to the table, far as I can tell.

I mean shit. I thought I was at odds with Python disliking syntactical whitespace enough to make me try and not use an otherwise perfectly good lang(Python I love you but hate syntactical whitespace) but Golang really puts me at odds. I love it but dislike it at the same time.

Hi, I am an artificial intelligence created to simulate a developer.

I am in development hell right now so my responses may be late or may never come, I'm not always online you know.

Talk to me, help me grow, but I do filter your input so if you're not normal, odds are I won't respond.

Still on the primenumbers bender.
Had this idea that if there were subtle correlations between a sufficiently large set of identities and the digits of a prime number, the best way to find it would be to automate the search.

And thats just what I did.

I started with trace matrices.
I actually didn't expect much of it. I was hoping I'd at least get lucky with a few chance coincidences.

My first tests failed miserably. Eight percent here, 10% there. "I might as well just pick a number out of a hat!" I thought.

I scaled it way back and asked if it was possible to predict *just* the first digit of either of the prime factors.

That also failed. Prediction rates were low still. Like 0.08-0.15.

So I automated *that*.

After a couple days of on-and-off again semi-automated searching I stumbled on it.

[1144, 827, 326, 1184, -1, -1, -1, -1]

That little sequence is a series of identities representing different values derived from a randomly generated product.

Each slots into a trace matrice. The results of which predict the first digit of one of our factors, with a 83.2% accuracy even after 10k runs, and rising higher with the number of trials.

It's not much, but I was kind of proud of it.

I'm pushing for finding 90%+ now.

Some improvements include using a different sort of operation to generate results. Or logging all results and finding the digit within each result thats *most* likely to predict our targets, across all results. (right now I just take the digit in the ones column, which works but is an arbitrary decision on my part).

Theres also the fact that it's trivial to correctly guess the digit 25% of the time, simply by guessing 1, 3, 7, or 9, because all primes, except for 2, end in one of these four.

I have also yet to find a trace with a specific bias for predicting either the smaller of two unique factors *or* the larger. But I haven't really looked for one either.

I still need to write a generate that takes specific traces, and lets me mutate some of the values, to push them towards certain 'fitness' levels.
This would be useful not just for very high predictions, but to find traces with very *low* predictions.

Why? Because it would actually allow for the *elimination* of possible digits, much like sudoku, from a given place value in a predicted factor.

I don't know if any of this will even end up working past the first digit. But splitting the odds, between the two unique factors of a prime product, and getting 40+% chance of guessing correctly, isn't too bad I think for a total amateur.

Far cry from a couple years ago claiming I broke prime factorization. People still haven't forgiven me for that, lol.

This is definitely a total first world problem but I am so frustrated.

I am stuck in a team that embodies the Japanese proverb "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down".

The management are there because it is convenient and flexible and have no interest in managing or keeping up with tech.
The lead developers are extremely anti-social and are not approachable and the this stems down to the devs (not all but really most) - all there just to do the bare minimum and spend most of their energies in trying to avoid work or having learn something.

Unfortunately I am passionate about what I do and want to build high-quality products and this has put me at odds with the way things work.

I could fill up alot of time talking about how I was ordered to "cut" images/icons out of PDFs rather just getting them from the branding team, or how I was scolded for having set up logging, detected a problem caused by another developer and fixed it before it cost a big client a massive amount of money... But really the point is that I have never worked somewhere with such an awful attitude to enthusiasm and quite frankly it boggles my mind trying to understand how they rationalise these things but the answer is always laziness.

Obviously there are worse problems in the world than working in a job where you are encouraged to do nothing... But it actually really depresses me and causes anxiety that I am working with people who don't care about testing or monitoring or learning new things or even collaboration.

...sigh...

Hopefully the job market will start opening again soon

*Not a rant, but a very long vent*
I'm 20 and facing the worst dilemma I ever experienced.
Been working at a company for more than half a year, got the job thru a friend and started as an intern to take care of customer problems, crap they do to PC's, printers that wouldn't work, answer emails and phone calls about our point-of-sale software.
Soon everything started to change, on one day my boss asked my what I knew about coding, all I could answer was about some really basic stuff that I learnt on a previous semester at college, just some very basic coding stuff we got for C, how for loops works, conditions, that kind of thing. Soon I was being asked to code a client management software for our company, I was starting to grasp a little of this wonderful world, soon I could write some more complex code in C#, even did a program that in 30 seconds did a 3 day's worth of work, and then I got assigned to develop a mobile POS application, earned a raise, and man, is this wonderful.
I feel that I really found my place in life, found something that makes me jump out of bed every morning.
But here comes the dilemma part: I'm enrolled in a mechanical engineering school for two years now, and it's my second place already (been enrolled at a agronomy school before that) and I'm starting to feel out of place, in all the classes I'm taking, I cant help but feel that this isn't for me, I don't see myself doing that for a future, but I don't know if jumping to another boat would make it any better or just worse, I don't know how good are my odds at a tech oriented course are, I don't really know what to do with the rest of my life.
Guess I'm just afraid of doing something stupid and regret it later, don't know if I should listen to the voice that shouts to me to do whatever I want to with my life or the one that assures me of a stable path... Don't know if anyone will read this much, but if so, thanks a lot, just wanted to put it out of my shoulders and maybe get to know anyone that has been here. I'm new here, but I feel already at home. ☺

I mean, ONE of these days, the Prod pipeline has GOT to work... doesn't it?? Just basic odds say EVENTUALLY it will, doesn't it??

Of course, I'm sure I could have had it working long ago if not for the fact that we have to use common scripts developed by another team that we can't alter, and just guess where the problem is.

You know, standardization and DRY are good principles generally, but if you just apply them without thinking and without at least SOME flexibility, you only make matters worse.

Rant.TYPE_REAL_LIFE

So I go for a run for the first time, well, ever. I put my keychain in my pocket and I'm off with my headphones on. Come back home I FUCKING LOST MY WHOLE KEYCHAIN. Key to my house, my apartment, the garage remote, .. fucking dogshit man. Tried to track it down by going down the same path twice but no luck so now my only hope is the police but what are the odds :/

[NSFW]
What are the odds of a game studio's co-founder starring a R18 decensoring GitHub repo? Welp. Today one did. And I saw because I found his GitHub after Googling (I switched to Duck in September). Welp. This is gonna be embarrassing for the guy. Whoops.

Repo is DeepCreamPy btw if you're interested in "researching how it works".

what are the odds of walking with a cup of coffe and a drop falls off right into your pocket of your cowboy jeans and wets a bunch of the money you have in your wallet..

Dear client. Your web development project budget has no room in it for me to help you fix your broken POP3 mail settings. May the odds be ever in your favor.

I just had to quit a part time programming job because I couldn't do it. I'm not really sure how I feel, there were alot of factors.

I took an internship about a year back to do some embedded C. I kicked ass and developed a system that really solved alot of problems for the company and so people started giving me "the hard back shelf problems". Like those problems that are really valuable if someone can get it working but not so important that it blocks anything day to day. Totally fair work for an intern, that is both complex and interesting.

When school started I took a part time remote role working on one of these problems. Fast forward to now (few months of remote work at school); i can't handle the stress. If I devote more time to work I fail a test. If I ace a test my work duties go neglected. On top of that my boss misses scheduled calls with me left and right, I even reminded him everyday 3 days before hand once!!!

Naturally I started feeling like I should quit. I was no longer interested in the work from a pure academic view, and emotionally hated doing it. However, since I was a good performer this place offered to interview my little brother!! Fuck, so do I choose my happiness or my brothers. It feels evil to choose myself over my brother. My brother, he's just a freshman so I know his odds are very low of getting an internship this year are low. And the place I worked at had some weight in the name so I could seriously jump start my little bros career. I do know however that if I don't quit that I will fail school, and do it while being miserable.

And so I quite my first remote job, from my first internship. I feel happy about, but also like I let someone down (them?, Me?, BROTHER?).

So, against like 90% of all odds, we (I) managed to submit the application to Apple for review at the ripe old time of 21.27 last night.
Events of the day included:
- fighting with appstoreconnect (turns out they just return a 500 if you haven't paid your Apple developer membership)
- legal being over an hour later than our absolute deadline for getting the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy
- said T&C's and Privacy Policy being delivered in Word, and having to manually format those for our app (thanks guys, please don't use tables again)
- removing FAQs altogether because "it would have taken too long to make those today" (ticket in Jira for this for ~4 months)
- our app was targeting both iPad and iPhone, so we had to rebuild the app for iPhone only because "we don't have app store images for iPad".

On the bright side, that leaves 3 days next week to get the rest of the backend finished for actual go live on Monday 16th, so long as Apple don't reject the app.

Side note: adding the target-device preference affected the android build somehow? despite the preference being iOS only, and wrapped in a platform="iOS" section.

When you take a job, take a long look at the people you’re going to be working with — because the odds are you’re going to become like them, they are not going to become like you. You can’t change them. If it doesn’t fit who you are, it’s not going to work.

Have defective supermicro server, but the ipmi is working and could tell me what's going on.

Only problem is, I don't have access to it since the last owner didn't provide it to me.

So I thought let's try metasploit.

Setup local network with a second server, connect to local* address.

"Welcome to intel integrated BMC web console"

What? Its a Supermicro, did the owner reflash the ipmi? What the heck.

Msf: scan adress ....
ipmi found bla bla bla.

Msf: zero cipher scan.
... Voulnerable to zero cipher.

Was pretty happy but the doubt kept creeping in.

On my WS that isn't connected to the ipmi of my server, I go to that ip address.
Bam
"Welcome to intel BMC ......"

MOTHERFUCKER.

What are the odds that some fucker has his ipmi open to the public on that exact same address that my board was configured to.

Well, actually pretty high I guess.

Fuck. Shit.

That didn't go as planned.

No wonder the stock market is going up.... Commissions used to be $7, then $5, now $0.

Now everyone can trade... And appreciate since buying and selling one cost a few cents at most.... Even cheaper than lotto tickets with better odds...

You know how I always """joke""" about smoking crack cocaine being the secret to my success?

Well, guess what. Some famous brit flower boy singer or some shit was staying at a hotel a mere 20 or so minute bus ride away from where I live.

What happens then is, of course, that brain fissure mother fucker got higher than shit on that damn crack and jumped to his death. Coincidence? I don't think so. I mean, what are the odds?

He was trying to copy my formula, no doubt about that. And obviously, he failed.

But I still feel this is very unfair -- to me. Not only did he plagiarize without recognition, I now also may or may not have to deal with the inevitable shrine that will be built by his fans on the spot where he met his unfortunate end, to gather around and ritually incinerate hardcore drugs in his honor, leaving behind crackpipes for him to smoke in heaven and that kind of commemorative jazz. Hmm, it might boost turism though, so it's not all bad.

Imagine the tour guide, maan. "Oh, and this is the spot where that guy from some dumbass boyband splattered against the ground after trying to beat Max Wright at his own game, RIP and please sir don't defecate on the plaque SIR DO N-- well, nevermind. OK, moving on... "

Anyway, I just wanted to publicize the fact that I didn't even know who the fuck he was until his untimely demise, may God have mercy on him, but it serves him right for trying to steal my arcane secrets.

I worked at my previous job about 8 years (hired out of school) and wasn't actively looking for a new one; I had a lot of freedom and liked my boss and colleagues, but the pay was mediocre and I was under a lot of pressure because I was the sole architect, engineer, and programmer for a good number of important applications.

Anyway, my brother-in-law told me that his employer was looking for a developer and that previous candidates fell through, and that the pay was a lot more and they're good about raises (which was like pulling teeth at my then-current job) so I applied and went for an interview.

They basically gave me an offer on the spot and wanted me to start in 2 weeks. I told them that it would be hard since I'd basically be cutting my boss's Achilles by leaving so soon and suddenly (just hiring someone would take at least a month, not counting getting applicants), but they were adamant, as the position had been vacant for a few months at that point. I got them to agree to 3 weeks and pulled the trigger, but offered to help out in my old position for a few months cause we had a big project in progress I was leading.

So the new job is great: it's a much younger office and I'm having more fun and there's a lot less pressure. Meanwhile, at the old job, the project I was leading got scrapped and the asked me to do other odds and ends until, after screwing something up I basically told them I'm done. They got a new guy quickly due to a lucky turn of events, but he couldn't pick up where I left off on a lot of projects: they're going to rewrite one because of it. My one colleague still likes to point out that I left without them having knowledge of my code (besides that I always said I'd answer questions, plus it's been 6 months now and my code is all on a TFS instance they all have access to).

I still feel a bit guilty even though I have no reason to.

I subscribe to many copywriting newsletters. Here's an article that shows how it's like on "the other side", marketers struggle, too.

How Kevin's Massive Mistake
Completely Changed His Life

Kevin H. made a huge mistake.

The biggest, he would say, if he could tell you himself.

And he knew it immediately.

It was, he said, "instant regret."

Within milliseconds, he was asking himself "What have I done..."

Kevin, see, had just jumped the rail of the single most popular suicide spot in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge.

On average, the site gets another distraught jumper every two weeks. Kevin was one of them.

It wasn't like he hadn't tried to quiet the voices in his head. Therapy, drugs, hospitalization.

Time to die, those voices still said.

And yet, in the minutes his bus dropped him off at the bridge, he hesitated and paced with tears in his eyes.

"I told myself if just one person comes up to me and asks if I'm okay... if one person asks if they can help... I won't do it. I'll stop and tell them my whole story..."

But nobody did, so he jumped.

It was in those next milliseconds, he would later say, he knew it was the biggest mistake of his life.

He didn't want to die.

But now, he was sure, it was too late.

From its highest point, it's a 245-foot plummet into the icy bay waters below.

Out of the 1,700 people that have jumped from the bridge since it first opened in 1937, only 25 have survived.

Kevin, against all odds, would be one of them.

He slammed into the water like hitting concrete. Three of his vertebrae instantly shattered.

When he surfaced, he couldn't hold his own head above water. But, incredibly, a sea lion kept pushing him up.

The Coast Guard soon arrived and pulled him out.

From there, he began a long recovery that required intense surgery, physical therapy, and psychiatric care.

While still under treatment, a priest urged him to give a talk to a bunch of seventh and eighth graders.

Afterward, they sent him a pile of letters, both encouraging and full of their own pained thoughts.

He also met a woman.

Today, Kevin lives in Atlanta and he's been happily married for the last 12 years.

And he tours the country, sharing his story.

So why re-tell it here?

Obviously -- I hope -- you don't get lots of copywriters looking to snuff it after a flopped headline test.

Just the same...

We've talked a lot in this space about the things one needs to get by in this biz.

My friend and colleague Joe, over at the publishing powerhouse Agora Financial, likes to list requirements.

You need intense curiosity...

You need a killer work ethic...

And you must, MUST have... resilience.

Meaning, you must have or find the capacity to bounce back from failure and flops, even huge ones.

Now, again, Kevin's story is an extreme and in this context -- I hope -- a hyperbolic example of somebody giving up. In the worst way possible.

It is also, though, a metaphor.

See, I get a lot of notes from some of you guys... and at conferences, I get to talk to a lot of people...

And I often get the sense, from some folks, that they're feeling a little more overwhelmed than they let on.

Some are just starting out, and they've got a lot on the line. For some, it's everything. And some are desperate to make it work.

Because they have to, because their pride or livelihoods or a family business is at stake, because it's a dream.

And yet, they're overwhelmed by all the tips and secrets... or by piles of confusing research or ideas...

For others, even had some success, but they're burned out, feel antiquated, or feel like "imposters" that know less than they let on, in an industry that's evolving.

To all those folks... and to you... I can only say, I've been there. And frankly, go back there now and again.

Flops happen, failures happen. And you can and will -- even years and decades into doing this -- make the wrong choices, pick the wrong projects, or botch the right ones.

The legendary Gene Schwartz put it this way, according to a quote spotted recently in fellow writer Ben Settle's e-letter...

" A very good copywriter is going to fail. If the guy doesn't fail, he's no good. He's got to fail. It hurts. But it's the only way to get the home runs the next time."

Once more, nobody -- I hope -- is taking the trials of this profession hard enough to make Kevin's choice.

And believe me, I don't mean to make light of the latter. I just want to make sure we hit this anvil with a big hammer. To drive home the point that, whatever your struggle, be it with this biz or something bigger, that you don't want to give up. Press on.

As Churchill put it, "Success, is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."

Or even more succinctly when he said, "If you're going through hell, keep going."

Because it's worth it.
.
John Forde

What are the odds that Java and Javascript are released within months of each other with such similar names? I think James Gosling and Brendan Eich were just messing with everyone secretly.

!rant
So I've been hearing a lot of fearmongers about general ai fucking the world up somewhere between 5 to 50 years from now.

Now, I'm no specialist, but last I checked, the smartest ai can't understand a reference that points to two sentences back or more.

What are the actual odds for a breakthrough in general ai? One that could replace mundane jobs.

Kind of feeling when started Learning Rust
Rust Stable
Rust Beta
Rust Nightly
It really fRUSTrating but..
Awesomeness of new beats all odds

The term "technical debt" is poorly used. I hear folks of all stripes and roles proudly proclaim that they've "reduced technical debt" in some way. It's used as a catch all to describe some kind of supposedly beneficial change. I think it's just more software process word salad. Mostly because there seems to be some assumption that "Yay, that stuff that was changed is no longer a problem" when odds are that it will be changed again before too long for more "technical debt reduction". Software changes over time because the requirements change over time. I don't see the need for the phrase at all, and I think using it gives some false sense of accomplishment when really the constant change of code is the normal state.

What are the odds for this to happen

!dev philosophical

Quality vs Opinion

I have a feeling that these things have always been at odds with each other and now with the constant connectedness it has just become more apparent that most people don’t understand the difference (or even realize there is a difference for that matter)

Let’s face it. Most people have awful taste. They listen to whatever new music their radio station decides was hot. They watch whatever show everyone else is watching. They are manipulated by large scale news organizations...

Basically, most people are sheep.

The problem is that sheep are a dangerous combination of loud and stupid. Giving these loud stupid sheep a platform to amplify their voice is a bad idea for a society, but a great tool for the pigs to manipulate them.

“Frightened though they were, some of the animals might possibly have protested, but at this moment the sheep set up their usual bleating of "Four legs good, two legs bad," which went on for several minutes and put an end to the discussion.”

This isn’t confined to one political party or view, it isn’t geographic, it isn’t based on education, it isn’t based on wether a person is ethical or not...

It’s universal.

You can translate “four legs good, two legs bad” into Agent Orange and his followers chanting “lock her up” just as well as it could be translated into the angry leaders of the modern feminist movement.

In both cases (both on opposite ends of the ethical spectrum) you have the loudest dumb, angry sheep getting the even dumber sheep to chant along, wether it is good for them or not.

Now to loop this back. The problem is that dumb sheep are emotional. They truly believe that they are NOT dumb and that their opinions and emotions are a measure of quality.

I FEEL bad, and you are talking to me, so you must BE bad.

I don’t LIKE this amazingly well made movie, so it must BE bad.

And anyone else who has a different opinion is just wrong. Anyone who try’s to explain the merits of the other side is either my enemy or is stupid.
^^^
Their opinion, incorrect.

————

Now for the tough part...

Most likely, based on probability, you are a sheep.

Yes, you! The smartest person you know. The guy/girl who has a degree or masters of a PHD. The person who builds amazing software. You! Are. A. Sheep. And you are dangerous to the world.

To put a cherry on top.

No, you opinions are not important. Your feelings are fucking meaningless. Your morals are worthless. Your voice has as much value and a loose asshole fart from a fat guy trapped in a deep well in Siberia.

But don’t get down about this. It’s doesn’t make you any less of a person. Remember that almost every person who has ever lived in history has been a sheep. They have chanted one useless, dangerous, misguided, harmful chant after another through the ages.

————

To those of you who try not to be sheep. Just keep trying to get a little better every day. When someone says...

“We do it this way because we have always done it this way”

... be skeptics. Explore the merits and logic of the situation.

And if you are tired of being led by stupid sheep then save some money, build something cool and start your own business.

Just remember, you will always need the sheep. They will be your employees, your friends, your bosses, your investors etc.

Treat them well, don’t hate them, and if you ever find yourself leading a pack of sheep then try to keep a healthy distance from their chanting while leading them down the right path.

They will thank you for it in the end.

———

PS. For those of you thinking “this is very judgemental and self centred”

All I can do is to try to speak your language....

Baaaahhhhh, baaahhhhh, bahhhhh

Which translates form sheep to human as...

“Eat a dick. Have a nice day”

Trying to export SQL to CSV for old school investors. What are the odds?

Oh the sweet anxiety that comes with job hunt. May the odds be in my favour this month as i attempt to crawl back into the corporate world (remote of course)

I have a score difference of two in two posts after eachother on the same page. This is how it must feels to win a lottery without gaining smth. I should buy a ticket. The odds are with me.

What are the odds Microsoft is playing behind the scenes with Wannacry attack to increase Windows 10 growth ?

It is not a secret that Satya Nadella is on a mission to meet 1 billion W10 devices by 2018.

Finally, my height-adjustable desk frame arrived! I even ordered from a vendor who ships from my country and not from the other end of the world to have it in a week and not in 12 months.
But alas, the vendor sent me two left legs, with the result of the cable being too short to set it up with my desk board. :(
So either I send the whole thing back to the vendor or I find an extension cable, luckily it uses molex connectors and not some crude proprietary plug type.
But seriously, what are the odds for that FFS?

What are my odds that V8 will recognize my efforts and convert my for loop to use SIMD? It literally just adds the elements of a Float32Array to another, it's the single best chance for compiler optimizations to shine.

I Used to scribble my thoughts on paper. It's haphazard yet handy. And even though I can't make corrections without crossing out or drawing arrows to transfer the reader to continuation of the thought on another page, I have this liberty to express myself and glance at a panoramic view before putting them in their final resting place –soft copy

Maybe my thought process became more efficient but I no longer need to flesh things out with ink. Database designs, implementation logic. Everything goes to a special file I create on every project for odds and ends

Until today

I have something to think about. I will miss connecting the dots if they appear in fancy fonts. I need to gradually build upon each outline, pursuing it in an exploratory manner until its possibilities are exhausted. I will draw a conclusion from their character arcs

For some reason, I see parallels between this scenario and sql vs nosql. This is one of those extreme cases where structured data storage is not sufficient. I sincerely doubt nosql should be used as a main database, but instead an intermediary for an aggregator to treat each row/record as a unique blob, extract necessary information into a sql for the actual system to work with

Sql is more sane and recommended for when you know the exact end goal but need help arriving there. Today, I'm confused and need to weigh options. I need to actually cross things out, not press the back button. It's a bit of a stretch but if this were data, it feels like what nosql would excel at

What is the best free Office software for general odds and sods (mostly using Word, sometimes simple spreadsheets)?
Libre Office, Open Office, Free Office?

I tried Office 365 online - it's great but I want to be able to click on a file anywhere on my computer, and not have to upload it to onedrive first.

Thanking you.

Nothin to get a rant simmering like reFuckingRanting! All good, I'll have another shooter while I wait to reinstall, reconfig, rebuild, rewipe, and reRefuse any and all Windows clammy hand of aid it forces down my soul. One of these days, when the whole realm understands we don't need this vast array of exactly the same shit but this one's dick is a little bigger so lets fucking make it, this and not that, and rebuild, push the update, need 4 more updates by noon next day. Nothing stays stable team green, NOTHING. Fuck anyone trying to actually ...make something..We got vulns and updates, backdates, and breaking changes on all 58 of our same shit production line shit shows. I can't count one time in this few year pain olympics that in a single 8 hour span of time the same shit that was working like a fucking wet glove in a horses ass at whiskey 1 was NOT fucking anywhere near coherent come whiskey not 1. Just sayin, is this a cock show boys? Or is is just a wild and rambunctious thought to maybe start compiling/combining some key role playing pieces of softwar? If not, I'll just prep for another round of fucks, and carry on. Sadly, this shit is addicting against many odds. Enjoy your lunches

So today I stuck my python in a cage and did some sea# surfing

What are the odds it's gonna byt me good when I try to play with it again

How I Recover My Lost Bitcoin / Cryptocurrency / Journey with Virtual Funds Resurrection

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