Boss: "I don't want to comply with the GDPR"

Me, DPO: "I've told you the house rules. You must comply, stop arguing"

Boss: "But I don't want it. Bobby doesn't have to, and Eve doesn't have to, their moms are cool"

Me: "I don't give a crap about the other kids, you're going to be GDPR compliant. Bob and Eve will end up being raped in prison. It's that what you want?"

Boss: "What if I just pretend to do it."

Me: "I'll take away all your marketing toys. No more mailchimp for you young man."

Boss, crying: "You wouldn't touch my Facebook pixel!"

Me: "Especially your Facebook pixel. I'm so sick of that thing...."

Me: "...Look, you can still play with your toys, all I'm saying is you need to be honest and ask your buddies for consent before you put your pixels up their various holes"

Boss: "But they will never agree!"

Me: "Maybe that is good thing"

Boss: "But how will we get people to like us if I can't feed them pills and insert probes into their holes to measure their responses?"

Me: "Maybe you should focus on being a nice kid, someone people like to play with. Your buddies will tell other kids that you're a nice guy. Now, I'm not going to lie to you, it will be hard work. Much more effort than what you're doing now. But you know, those friends will stick with you for decades, instead of just until the marketing-drugs wear off"

Boss: "I think I want a new mom"

Me: "You signed a contract. You're stuck with me for the next 2 years. And as long as you're living under my roof, you will follow my rules."

Dells XPS are made of magic. [long story, major fuckup, 10k+ damages]

It all started in December. One morning I was late to work, drove there as fast as possible. (I live like 3 minutes away so me being late really meant *late*) Parked my car in a secluded car park, grabbed my backpack and ran to work. The car park is like 100 meters away from work so I took my feet into my hands and ran. Next thing I know my heels loose all grip while I go down a small slope and I drop on my back full force. On a sharp edged stone. With only my 1700$ XPS in it. Fuck.

I paniced, but got up and ran to work. I checked on the notebook, praying it would boot. It booted! Holy shit. I flipped the notebook and saw two small dents in the aluminum shell. I was thorougly impressed. I later discovered that it left a small shadow on the display, but given what a hit that was (I am not exactly a lightweight), impressive would be a massive understatement.

Fast forward to February, I am weighing my options to get the screen replaced maybe, as damage on my hardware (even if neglectable) triggers some sort of OCD and makes me feel bad 24/7. Also my laptop tends to shut off from time to time, looked into the Event Viewer and saw kernel panic. I figured that the battery probably still took a hit and that it drops voltage from time to time and the kernel assumes a critical situation, thus shutting off.

It stayed quite snowy in Austria up until March, so occasional snowing wasn't rare. Got out of work one day, saw it snowed a bit. Whatever. I had my moms car at the time, so I tried if it would slide a bit if I donut on the now (5pm) empty parking space. Nothing. Drove done a small hill, ABS triangle lit up red (board computer can't outbalance the snow). I drove out to the main street where everything was salted and drove along towards my house. Took a turn into my street, accelerated for a bit and then went off the gas so the car would smoothly drive along with the speed slowly degrading. So I went off the gas and noticed I was a bit to the right, no wonder, centrifugal forces.

*steers left*
"Huh seems like I need a bit more"
*car still doesnt move much*
"What the- go to the left!"
*steers left hard*
"Fuck that wall is coming closer"
*Breaks*
*car doesnt break*
"FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!"

Everything got quiet in seconds, me waking up to an open airbag, ripped pants, a hurting wrist, the radio somewhere on the ground and fumes that smellt like burning wires. I grabbed my backpack that was now somewhere on the floor instead of on the seat and ran outside, tears in my eyes and the phone on my ear calling my mom. I walked inside as she walked outside, hearing a weeping scream that I haven't heard from her since I am alive. While walking inside I noticed my backpack was wet on the bottom, my 2 litre water jug shattered when my backpack hit the dashboard. I tried to stay calm and act rational, knowing that every second counts when It comes to water damage. I hastely searched for some rice and a bag to put my laptop into, stuffed the bag with both and went outside. The car was totaled, my mom pissed and crying. And I was in shock, sad, angry and hurting.

I kept the laptop on my heater for a few days, bagged in rice. I dared to try a boot after a while and you wont believe me, it fucking booted. Even the keyboard backlight worked, just the screen was obviously broken in the back (no color distortion or bad pixel rows though!!) and the aluminum shell had a dent on the front. I talked with Dell Support a few days later, asking if it would be ok to open the XPS up so I could drain all of the water. She said yes thats fine, as long as I dont touch anything or screw around with it.

She said I can send it in and get it checked, but the pickup and analysis will cost 150$ and I can go from there.

I sent it in and estimated that, because battery, screen and other things probably needed changing, it will be around 900$.

Got a call a few weeks later:

"Hello beggarboy, the repair team reported back to us and said that they will have to replace everything, which will be 1700$."

"Fuck... Buying a new one is cheaper.."

"Yeah I know I am sorry about that, I can offer you a voucher so you can buy a new one for 250$ off if you would prefer that"

"Sorry but I will need some time to consider"

"I understand."

The agent clearly noticed I was bummed about it.

After going back and forth what to do I got another call a few days later.

"Hello beggarboy, we talked a few days ago. I have good news"

"Hello, yes, speak up?"

"I was able to get a special offer for you after putting in a few words..."

The next thing she said seemed unreal to me.

She was able to cut 600$ (!!!), making the new offer 1100$, instead of 1700$ or a new one for 1500$. I figured the reason she probably did that was because I am always very polite with support members. Always.

My XPS is back and healty again.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Dells XPS are made of magic.

My phone is absolutely fucked

Just before you, my fellow system programmer, scroll past this, let me say this:

🍬 The web is actiually simple. 🍬

Both HTML and CSS is declarative. It's all easy when you understand the concepts, learn how to be idiomatic and quit trying to do that imperative bullshit in languages that aren't imperative.

HTML is simple. You know the boilerplate: doctype, head, body, that's all. Just mark it up and do NOT look at it before you end, mark it up as it were article or something. The appearance is up to css.

CSS is simple. You may even forget bem or rscss, you're already a skilled software developer. Use common sense and your code-splitting and naming skills you gained reading The Code Complete or doing software development for years.

Forget mockups. Forget absolute positioning, forget setting width and height in pixels. Go to awwwards, find some inspiration. Draw some buttons and fields on paper with your good old pencil. Then go and write some css. Feel free to steal some shadows and transitions from codepen.

Read about 8-pixel grid system. Let every element push away from others by setting something like margin: 16px; and whoops! You've just got fully responsive and got great vertical rhythm without even using media queries!

Oh my god, do NEVER set width and height explicitly! Type something like button { width: 120px; } and bang! The entire web page is broken. Quit that shit. Let it resize as it should. It will resize itself to fit its contents.

HTML is by default ready for your template engine. That's how you receive data from server — as server-side rendered, plain old HTML page. On the other hand, the form element is the most axiomatic and simple way to send the data to server. That's how you send it — as plain old GET or POST that every webserver can handle.

All of there are true:
1. It's easy to get great 100% responsiveness without media queries.
2. It's easy to align items in row, it's just one line of css. Maybe two, if you still want elements to wrap, but want to use flexbox:
.parent {
display: flex;
flex-wrap: wrap;
}
3. HTML and CSS are fast by default.
4. You don't need mockups to achieve great visual experience. Mockups is imperative, web is declarative.
5. You may not even need JavaScript to make great website.

Go on, ask me a question about web! I'll ready to answer everything.

November 2015 - Android users: "How stupid are Apple fan boys paying $100 for a stylus?"

October 2017 - Google releases $100 Pixelpen.

September 2016 - Android users: "OMG! Apple removed the headphone jack! You will have to use a DONGLE! That is ridiculous!"

October 2017 - Google announces Pixel 2 width USB-C for charging and audio playback. Includes a USB-C to 3.5mm audio dongle.

It has officially been piss on my chips day.
1 bus pass refused to work today.
2 my pixel decided it would die. Will not boot or charge.
3 go on lunch and get battered by hailstone.
4 work pc decided it wants to blue screen whilst updating.

Sales: We NEED to view the minutely data but showing 10 years of data at a time
Me: you do realise that would be like 2 days of data per pixel even on one of largest monitor resolutions
Sales: your a clever guy I'm sure you can work something out
Me: well I can consolidate the data so you ...
Sales: No we need to see the temperature for every minute

Craziest bug, not so much in the sense of what it was (although it was itself wacky too), but in what I went through to fix it.

The year was 1986. I was finishing up coding on a C64 demo that I had promised would be out on a specific weekend. I had invented a new demo effect for it, which was pretty much the thing we all tried to do back then because it would guarantee a modicum of "fame", and we were all hyper-ego driven back then :) So, I knew I wanted to have it perfect when people saw it, to maximize impressiveness!

The problem was that I had this ONE little pixel in the corner of the screen that would cycle through colors as the effect proceeded. A pixel totally apart from the effect itself. A pixel that should have been totally inactive the entire time as part of a black background.

A pixel that REALLY pissed me off because it ruined the utter perfection otherwise on display, and I just couldn't have that!

Now, back then, all demos were coded in straight Assembly. If you've ever done anything of even mild complexity in Assembly, then you know how much of a PITA it can be to find bugs sometimes.

This one was no exception.

This happened on a Friday, and like I said, I promised it for the weekend. Thus began my 53 hours of hell, which to this day is still the single longest stretch of time straight that I've stayed awake.

Yes, I spent literally over 2+ days, sitting in front of my computer, really only ever taking bio breaks and getting snacks (pretty sure I didn't even shower)... all to get one damn pixel to obey me. I would conquer that f'ing pixel even if it killed me in the process!

And, eventually, I did fix it. The problem?

An 'i' instead of an 'l'. I shit you not!

After all these years I really don't remember the details, except for the big one that sticks in my mind, that I had an 'i' character in some line of code where an 'l' should have been. I just kept missing it, over and over and over again. I mean, I kinda understand after many hours, your brain turns to mush. and you make more mistakes, so I get missing it after a while... but missing it early on when I was still fresh just blows my mind.

As I recall, I finally uploaded the demo to the distro sight at around 11:30pm, so at least I made my deadline before practically dropping dead in bed (and then having to get up for school the next morning- D'oh!). And it WAS a pretty impressive demo... though I never did get the fame I expected from it (most likely because it didn't get distributed far and wide enough).

And that's the story of what I'd say was my craziest bug ever, the one that probably came closest to killing me :)

Well that was a waste of my fucking time trying to port to the pixel 2 .-.

(Not a fucking hope would I ever be able to port something like that on my own tbh)

Holy shit why can't you just work. Stop talking about your kids from 9 am to 5pm with the orther person sitting next to you who clearly wants to get some work done.

Also, good on you for baking a cake and your kid saying this is the best cake. Every kid says that to your parent.

FFS, shut up and work, and let people around you work.

P.S. I need good headphones, preferably in ear wireless buds. I'm waiting for Pixel Buda 2.

Remember when a phone was marketed as a phone and not a camera or some personal secretary?

Pepperidge farm remembers...

But seriously can we just get a phone marketed to people as a phone?
Like people in ads for the pixel 2 ask "so it's a phone?" and the s9's whole marketing thing was camera, camera, camera!

Really shits me up the wall when companies do shit like that for tech -,-

YouTube. Hate and love for it just like I would for an abusive partner.

Ads!
Wanna build a website with Wix? Fuck no!
Wanna manage WordPress over SSH? Fuck no!
.. well I kind of do but a turd remains a turd regardless of how it's maintained. WordPress can go die from a torture as long as the time everyone has wasted on it loading already. So no, I don't give a flying fuck about WordPress' new interface.
Wanna buy a new Samsung phone despite just having bought a OnePlus already? YOUTUBE, HOW ABOUT YOU GO FUCK YOURSELF AND YOUR SHITTY ALGO?!!

Quality videos though, so many engineering videos and all for free. How amazing is that? I quite like them.

But if I try to like a video and particularly the fucking comments on it, don't you fucking dare putting your fat fingers 1 pixel next to the like button, because then obviously you want to reply to the comment and have a pop-up with the whole comment and all its replies, and an automatically popped up text input field, just so you have to tap back 2 times just to try liking the bloody comment again. Rinse and repeat that 2 times at best, 5 times at worst. What's not to like, right?!

God fucking dammit. At least now I know why those random mentions without any meaningful other text are there in most comment sections. Usability over 9000!!!

>>> Stadia thread <<<
Stadia is a new Cloud Gaming platform that runs on GCP and details were announced some minutes ago.

For maximum performance you would need at least 35mb/s, while about 10mb/s are enough for 720p l, Stereo gameplay.

Maximum performance provides 4k, HDR and 5.1 Surround Sound and comes in at 9,99$ / month for Stadia Pro. As far as announcements go, there are no lower performance tiers available.

Stadia Pro will get you unlimited access to your Games (I believe this is Bring-Your-Own-License, but I might be wrong), while Stadia Basic allows unlimited access to one specific game. For that you probably buy the game directly of Stadia, which then includes any fees in it's price.

Stadia will be usable on all devices that run Chrome and on the Chromecast Ultra. Android will get it's own app, first available on the Google Pixel 3, to be expanded later on, iOS was not mentioned.

Google developed a custom Stadia controller that works out of the box, including an Google Assistant and a DVR button. However, all other controllers should supported too, but I don't believe that's the case for playing on the Chromecast Ultra.

Starting now, you can get the Stadia Founders Edition, that allows you to be one of the firsts on the platform, includes a Controller, a Chromecast Ultra, 3 months of Stadia Pro, 3 additional months of Pro you can gift to your buddy and some Destiny Bundle with the first and second game, including all add-ons, plus the Destiny 2 Season pass.
The founders edition can be pre-ordered right now for about 129$.

Stadia launches 'later' this year, founders edition buyers will be the first to get public access on launch.

So i just read an article by The Verge on some good and bad things about the pixel 2.

Listed as a con: "Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL... have the same camera"

HOW THE FUCK IS THAT A BAD THING!?

So it's bad that they don't cut down the camera on the cheaper phone to make the XL more appealing?

I really don't get wtf they're on about...

Top 3 times:
1) When I amazed myself by solving a problem using recursion.

2) When I taught myself how to make my a restful api and consumed it using Ajax.

3) When I converted a psd in to a responsive pixel perfect webpage.

Writing code makes me feel I am worth something in this world.

Can't wait to get my phone screen repaired so I can finnaly get that inverted panda! :-D

Oh wait I'll never be able to afford to fix the screen because Australia hates hiring IT technicians :-)

Everyone and their dog is making a game, so why can't I?
1. open world (check)

2. taking inspiration from metro and fallout (check)

3. on a map roughly the size of the u.s. (check)

So I thought what I'd do is pretend to be one of those deaf mutes. While also pretending to be a programmer. Sometimes you make believe
so hard that it comes true apparently.

For the main map I thought I'd automate laying down the base map before hand tweaking it. It's been a bit of a slog. Roughly 1 pixel per mile. (okay, 1973 by 1067). The u.s. is 3.1 million miles, this would work out to 2.1 million miles instead. Eh.

Wrote the script to filter out all the ocean pixels, based on the elevation map, and output the difference. Still had to edit around the shoreline but it sped things up a lot. Just attached the elevation map, because the actual one is an ugly cluster of death magenta to represent the ocean.

Consequence of filtering is, the shoreline is messy and not entirely representative of the u.s.

The preprocessing step also added a lot of in-land 'lakes' that don't exist in some areas, like death valley. Already expected that.

But the plus side is I now have map layers for both elevation and ecology biomes. Aligning them close enough so that the heightmap wasn't displaced, and didn't cut off the shoreline in the ecology layer (at export), was a royal pain, and as super finicky. But thankfully thats done.

Next step is to go through the ecology map, copy each key color, and write down the biome id, courtesy of the 2017 ecoregions project.

From there, I write down the primary landscape features (water, plants, trees, terrain roughness, etc), anything easy to convey.
Main thing I'm interested in is tree types, because those, as tiles, convey a lot more information about the hex terrain than anything else.

Once the biomes are marked, and the tree types are written, the next step is to assign a tile to each tree type, and each density level of mountains (flat, hills, mountains, snowcapped peaks, etc).
The reference ids, colors, and numbers on the map will simplify the process.

After that, I'll write an exporter with python, and dump to csv or another format.

Next steps are laying out the instances in the level editor, that'll act as the tiles in question.
Theres a few naive approaches:

Spawn all the relevant instances at startup, and load the corresponding tiles.

Or setup chunks of instances, enough to cover the camera, and a buffer surrounding the camera. As the camera moves, reconfigure the instances to match the streamed in tile data.

Instances here make sense, because if theres any simulation going on (and I'd like there to be), they can detect in event code, when they are in the invisible buffer around the camera but not yet visible, and be activated by the camera, or deactive themselves after leaving the camera and buffer's area.

The alternative is to let a global controller stream the data in, as a series of tile IDs, corresponding to the various tile sprites, and code global interaction like tile picking into a single event, which seems unwieldy and not at all manageable. I can see it turning into a giant switch case already.

So instances it is.

Actually, if I do 16^2 pixel chunks, it only works out to 124x68 chunks in all. A few thousand, mostly inactive chunks is pretty trivial, and simplifies spawning and serializing/deserializing.

All of this doesn't account for
* putting lakes back in that aren't present

* lots of islands and parts of shores that would typically have bays and parts that jut out, need reworked.

* great lakes need refinement and corrections

* elevation key map too blocky. Need a higher resolution one while reducing color count
This can be solved by introducing some noise into the elevations, varying say, within one standard div.

* mountains will still require refinement to individual state geography. Thats for later on

* shoreline is too smooth, and needs to be less straight-line and less blocky. less corners.

* rivers need added, not just large ones but smaller ones too

* available tree assets need to be matched, as best and fully as possible, to types of trees represented in biome data, so that even if I don't have an exact match, I can still place *something* thats native or looks close enough to what you would expect in a given biome.
Ponderosa pines vs white pines for example.

This also doesn't account for 1. major and minor roads, 2. artificial and natural attractions, 3. other major features people in any given state are familiar with. 4. named places, 5. infrastructure, 6. cities and buildings and towns.

Also I'm pretty sure I cut off part of florida.
Woops, sorry everglades.

Guess I'll just make it a death-zone from nuclear fallout.

Take that gators!

I have an Android phone. Pixel 2 to be exact, and I love it. Many family members and friends of mine have iPhones. To each their own.

Having said that, I absolutely HAAAATE the stupid iPhone feature that lets users react to text messages. Today all those iPhone users added me to literally 5 different SMS groups (which by themselves are their own sin), chatting up a storm all evening. I already hate group texts, please, leave me alone. But it gets so much worse when my phone blows up with twice as many messages because so-and-so "liked" this message, and so-and-so "laughed" at that message. It sends you their chosen verb alongside the ENTIRE original text AGAIN.

Such a stupid feature, leave Facebook on Facebook, why the hell do text messages need reactions? I don't give a shit that you liked or laughed or loved that so and so said they will be there at 9 o clock.

At least i have the ability to mute notifications for each group otherwise I'd be replying to every group text I get with a trolling big trigger item or something super inappropriate until they stop. Don't want this to continue? Stop group texting me, stop reacting to texts, and don't do it again.

So I've had a fan game idea in the back of my head and have no artistic friends or money to hire an artist so I'm attempting the pixel art myself (again) and in the past 2 hours I have drawn a sort of shit looking barstool... Ugh why can't I have ideas that can survive with developer art -.-

Tonights goal, boot fuchsia on my old Pixel 2 XL... Wish me luck!

(Please prepare yourself for some very drunken posts about a bricked phone)

Me at BestBuy today: Oh man, you got the got the Pixel 2 XL? This is looks good and feels good in hand. Last time I stopped by, the other guy had just the Pixel 2. Blah blah blah.. so is this running the 8.1 or 8.0?

Verizon associate at BestBuy: The 8.1

Me: oohh, you got that preview huh? *goes into system to check.. dude it's running 8.0

Verizon associate: oh really? Dang, I forgot. I'll side-load the APK.

Me: 😕😒😂 I hear you.
*At that point I lost hope in humanity*

for your next edition of "TI's constantly been smoking crack since the 80s and has no intention of ever stopping":

the TI-8x calculators have a hardware buffer and an OS-provided buffer for screen data, effectively being an "immediate" buffer in hardware, to be displayed next VBlank, and a "slower" buffer, being what's copied to the "immediate" buffer when the OS decides it's time to update the screen. All well and good, maybe a little weirdly done but all in all makes sense. (You can even define a third buffer in RAM if you need to triple-buffer your shit.)

The problem arises when you use TI-BASIC and try to draw to the screen:
If you do something like, say, draw a circle, you'll notice that it's visibly drawn to the screen one pixel at a time. However, looking through what bits of the SDK I can find, the OS' "draw circle" assembly routine *doesn't update the immediate buffer!*

This means that, in TI-BASIC, the "draw circle" routine doesn't use the ACTUAL circle-drawing routine the OS provides, but instead individually calculates and plots a pixel, then updates the hardware buffer (an ENTIRE 768 bytes are copied EVERY TIME) and waits for VBlank to pass before repeating for the next one. In other words, it's deliberately slow as fuck.

Why? All the drawing commands, outside of like 2 or 3, do this. Why would you deliberately slow down the process of drawing to the screen on a system that you KNEW would be popular for people to code on???

just spent 2-3 hours trying to make a slideshow responsive for mobiles.

position().left returned an incorrect value breaking the whole thing. then jquery animations slowly produced a one pixel discrepancy when everything is animating based on the container width. breaking the whole thing.

Only solution has been to pretend all is fine.

things that make you want to smash something.

When graphic design agency hands over inconsistent, partly done "desktop" A4-layout made in 2 days in InDesign. "Okey developer guy, make it responsive, magically. Oh, and pixel perfect!!" Design agency takes 40% of the budget. Never again.

Tried flutter for the first time in life, for 2 days, java based Android dev here.
I have some.... thoughts...

Flutter does not feel extremely new to me. It is very much relatable if you have ever tried basic the spring/ other java based gui framework. It is trying to achieve the goods from multiple worlds,its so far good, but mann its playing on thin ice.

Flutter : Yo boy embrace me. I am the beauty. checkout my hot reload.
Me :❤️❤️😍 (But wait. your first execution is wayy longer than a simple android studio build. And AS would generally take smaller time after every rebuild. And you are going to take the same long time as first build, if app gets closed or my usb gets accidentally removed. So I see what you did there ;))

Flutter: Ha. Checkout my function passing as parameter. ever thought your puny java going to give you that?
Me :you got me ,❤️. (Although this style is not so uncommon with web devs)

Flutter: everything is a widget, everything is stateful or stateless, Single Streams FTW!
me: ❤️

Flutter:You kotlin devs are gonna love me, i got Small, concise code
Me: Now wait, This is a thin ice for me, okay? I hated when kotlin replaced everything with symbols & lamdas for a confusing but small code, So be careful,even though your code is still good.

Flutter : Control every pixel , dear! No more xmls!
Me : Yes, what is with that? are we accidentally going in the past?
Java desktop apps, spring framework used to build whole layouts with programming language. The day i stepped into Android, it was xml for ui and java/kotlin for code. was that a bad decision or is this one?
Anyways i liked my stuff seperated, but that's just me.

Flutter : Ugh so much whining. Are you going to work with me or not?
Me : Yes mam! ❤️

DevRant poll time!

Do you prefer dark phones or white phones?

Backstory:

Getting the Google Pixel 2 XL and can't choice between Panada and the black version. Also idc about the screen not being vibrant.

The "click" moment always feels fucking amazing. TI made some retarded ASM routines (as usual) for drawing various things to the screen, most of the time whatever you try to draw takes upwards of 3 frames at 15MHz to draw. A LINE KNOWN TO BE 100% STRAIGHT SHOULD NOT TAKE 1/3 OF A FRAME TO PLOT EACH PIXEL OF. I managed to get it down to 300-some cycles per pixel on the 2 i've messed with, which still isn't great, but it's a massive increase in efficiency, so fuck it, i'm happy. The "click" was when I managed to get a serious optimization working that took over 3 hours to debug.

Can anyone recommend some android alternatives?

I'm not looking to move away from android permanently but I'm just curious, I enjoyed my time with UBports (fuck QT) and seeing projects like the PinePhone and Librem 3 just get me curious what is actually out there.

Currently rocking a pixel 2 XL but not shy on buying new hardware to test stuff out as long as it's within reason.

Currently had a look at PureOS (not available) and Sailfish, any others to give a whirl?

Love how people are getting excited about the new Samsung devices and I'm here excited for the Nokia 8.1 and considering selling my pixel 2 XL and downgrading to it...

(Fuck Samsung)

So at our company, we use Google Sheets to for to coordinate everything, from designs to bug reporting to localization decisions, etc... Except for roadmaps, we use Trello for that. I found this very unintuitive and disorganized. Google Sheets GUI, as you all know, was not tailored for development project coordination. It is a spreadsheet creation tool. Pages of document are loosely connected to each other and you often have to keep a link to each of them because each Google Sheets document is isolated from each other by design. Not to mention the constant requests for permission for each document, wasting everybody's time.

I brought up the suggestion to the CEO that we should migrate everything to GitHub because everybody already needed a Github account to pull the latest version of our codebase even if they're not developers themselves. Gihub interface is easier to navigate, there's an Issues tab for bug report, a Wiki tab for designs and a Projects tab for roadmaps, eliminating the need for a separate Trello account. All tabs are organized within each project. This is how I've seen people coordinated with each other on open-source projects, it's a proven, battle-tested model of coordination between different roles in a software project.

The CEO shot down the proposal immediately, reason cited: The design team is not familiar with using the Github website because they've never thought of Github as a website for any role other than developers.

Fast-forward to a recent meeting where the person operating the computer connected to the big TV is struggling to scroll down a 600+ row long spreadsheet trying to find one of the open bugs. At that point, the CEO asked if there's anyway to hide resolved bugs. I immediately brought up Github and received support from our tester (vocal support anyway, other devs might have felt the same but were afraid to speak up). As you all know, Github by default only shows open issues by default, reducing the clutter that would be generated by past closed issues. This is the most obvious solution to the CEO's problem. But this CEO still stubbornly rejected the proposal.

2 lessons to take away from this story:

- Developer seems to be the only role in a development team that is willing to learn new tools for their work. Everybody else just tries to stretch the limit of the tools they already knew even if it meant fitting a square peg into a round hole. Well, I can't speak for testers, out of 2 testers I interacted with, one I never asked her opinion about Github, and the other one was the guy mentioned above. But I do know a pixel artist in the same company having a similar condition. She tries to make pixel arts using Photoshop. Didn't get to talk to her about this because we're not on the same project, but if we were, I'd suggest her use Aseprite, or (at least Pixelorama if the company doesn't want to spend for Aseprite's price tag) for the purpose of drawing pixel arts. Not sure how willing she would be at learning new tools, though.

- Github and other git hosts have a bit of a branding problem. Their names - Github, BitBucket, GitLab, etc... - are evocative of a tool exclusively used by developers, yet their websites have these features that are supposed to be used by different roles other than developers. Issues tabs are used by testers as well as developers. Wiki tabs are used by designers alongside developers. Projects and Insights tabs are used by project managers/product owners. Discussion tabs are used by every roles. Artists can even submit new assets through Pull Requests tabs if the Art Directors know how to use the site interface (Art Directors' job is literally just code review, but for artistic assets). These websites are more than just git hosts. They are straight-up Jira replacement with git hosting as a bonus feature. How can we get that through the head of non-developers so that we don't have to keep 4+ accounts for different websites for the same project?

everytime i buy a new phone ,i feel this sense of extreme regret :(

i bought a moto g 5g phone last year in feb, it was so good . it didn't had any out of the world cameras or some funky stuff, but it gave a decent performance and i couldn't want any other phone.

In October my mom's phone started giving issues so i bought a realme phone for her that was half my phone's price. i couldn't spent any mor e because otherwise she wouldn't take it. she accepted the cheaper phone and within 4 days sue was cursing it. the phone had decent specs but would lag in certain apps like zoom, and won't run some call recorder apps. at the end i swapped my phone with mom's since i didn't cared about zoom or the recorder.

now this shit realme phone's memory has gone around 60% full of my stuff, and its showing its limitations. this shit auto relaunches insta after a few minutes of usage, probably because its runtime memory gets short( 4gb 128gb device gets memory shortages. nice). its video quality is shit and camera also takes rarely good pics.

the worst thing i like about smartphones today is how they over optimise the ui. this insta issue and auto call recorders not working is simply because of the realme skin running over the stock android. i had similar issues with a xiaomi device i bought for my dad sometime ago. (fortunately my dad is more medieval so that crap has not came back to me :'/ )

so overall i am buying a 3rd phone in 17 months.
This time it's Samsung f23 and am worried that it's also going to suck. i was this 🤏close to buying a pixel 6 or even an iphone coz i can afford them.

but the regret of buying such an expensive phone that will need replacement in 2 years made me rethink.

the only android os that have suited me the best is stock and as of now only 2 companies are making it : google and moto(* it's 100% aosp with 3 extra apps but they can't say that, so they also state that they are not stock os) . one plus is also a brand that i have heard makes a good os . but recently i also heard that they have completely scrapped their os and using oppo's softwares . plus the amount of tickets we get for notifications not working in oneplus, am sure their optimization is extremely aggressive.

so everything between a moderate price phone ( that will need a replacement in 2 years ) to a flagship felt unnecessary to me, so i went ahead with a Samsung's shit phone. f23 has almost same specs as moto but it's again a heavily customised os. i wanna waste my money on trying a custom os and declare it shitty.

most of my friends that use Samsung are fan of it but they are also not very techy so i guess it suits them well. i am the guy who first installs nova launcher in his device, so let's see what it brings on the table. from the 3rd person p.o.v, i felt its screen and camera images to he nice whenever i used their mobiles, so let's see what this brings to the table :(

Science says it can't be done! You can't have an iPhone AND preserve your privacy!

Yet here I am, doing just that. Just analyze apps you use and just quit using fucking leeches like instagram and whatever facebook puts out. Also, do this:
1. Disable iMessage, iCloud and FaceTime
2. Opt out of sending analytics to apple
3. Use VPN with DNS that blocks trackers
4. Disable background app refresh and location access

Most importantly, quit using whatever uses personalization to spoon-feed you content that exploits your confirmation bias. Quit watching youtube. Switch to DuckDuckGo or whatever search engine without personalization.

If you don't like apple and don't care about cameras, just buy a Pixel smartphone and install Calyx OS. Fairfone with /e/os is also a good alternative.

Pixel perfect layout bugfixing doesn't even feel like development, it only proves that some people got their priorities terribly wrong if they worry about a 2 pixel margin anywhere. And I do say this as a front end dev who does respect a respect a good design. But still, pixel pushing sucks!

PM: we have plenty of time to develop this app. The client is so slow in providing designs and specifications that it took them 2 months just to give me this lousy mockup where they copy/pasted UI element directly from Photoshop. Btw, i have a meeting this afternoon with them :)
ME: ok. since it's Friday, monday you will update me :)
[Fast forward the weekend]
PM: where the hell is the App ? the client told me we have less than one month to deliver it. why didn't you provide a fully functional pixel perfect prototype yet ? Why don't you communicate with me ?
ME: :|

I feel sad to say this but...

I'm hyped for the pixel 4, currently rocking my 6th pixel 2 XL (fuck these screens and camera units) and the pixel 3 was just all levels of no from the notch, incremental upgrade status and just a phone following the trends.

Looking at the leaks and official confirmations of the pixel 4 actually have me keen for photography (I do prefer a DLSR or straight up film unit but a good in the moment camera is amazing), performance and lack of notch just have me keen...

Forgive me father for I have sinned

Alright dev's, I have pretty much given up on ChromeOS and Chromebooks, my Samsung Chromebook Plus is far from the rock solid stable and battery sipping champion it used to be, constantly crashing, sluggish, 4 hours of battery at most, terrible android performance and the list goes on (Plus fucking bullshit Pixel device exclusive features can fuck off)

I use my Macbook Pro more than ever but the lack of being able to install Linux is a massive blow, so I'm looking for some laptop recommendations and here are the criteria.

1. Don't want a tablet
2. Prefer a clamshell but will deal with a convertibal
3. Max price of $1000 AUD (~$4.25 USD)
4. If it has dedicated graphics, prefer AMD
5. Prefer windows to not be pre-installed but can deal with it if it is

Was previously looking at the XPS line but um... Base model 13 inch is ~$1600 AUD so nope .-.

Fire away people!

Dear @dfox and @trogus

I'm writing this here because reporting such issue to GitHub doesn't seem to do it's justice.

It's been happening for like HALF A YEAR.

AND IT'S YET TO BE PATCHED.

WHY. WHEN I CLICK THE BACK BUTTON ON MY PIXEL 2 XL (ANDROID 9). ALWAYS CLOSES THE APP?!?!?

Yes, this is a rant about DevRant, I have no complaints other than this exact one.

It's been happening for way way WAY too long, and never been patched.

Please don't reply to me "why don't you report it on GitHub?" ITS BEEN REPORTED OK?!

I've always loved DevRant since I first joined, but this issue is preventing me from browsing it every time. It's jus irritating.

Please, @dfox and @trogus, try and for once take the time to try and fix it.

Thank you.

Well I have moved all of my iPhobe stuff to my new Google Pixel 2. Time to see what happens now...

When I was creating pixel art creator program and each pixel was an separated object, performance was horrible, and after 2 days of intensive thinking I figured it out. I made working canvas. Ram usage dropped by 1800% and speed increased by 40000%. My satisfaction was unimaginable.

So Alex, how excited are you for Google's hardware showcase today?

Well myself, I am waking up at 3 AM (Because got to love living in Australia wanting to watch over seas live streams!) to watch it, then I am going to work at 7 in the morning, I think that should answer your question!

Book a ticket people because the hype train is about to leave the station!

Me and my coworker @tekmeister just spent 2 man-hours trying to find what was causing a random gap at the bottom of our page.

Turns out Google's conversion.js was embedding a 13 pixel height iframe at the bottom of our page.

Fuck you Google.

god remind me to never work with an education software company again

first, they didn't even know my course has been done for months, like, does anyone look at what your company produces?

then, they completely change the intro page and wording, have to reado that, its anyway a wall of text which they probably smugly think is good for SEO, *WRONG*, if every page is formatted nearly the same with some words swapped out you for sure are PENALIZED, not rewarded... clueless clowns

and NOW, I need exactly to-the-pixel dimensional images????? wtffffffffff

all for a course that *MIGHT* bring in something like $500... *MIGHT*

I mean for these courses it's more important about giving back and helping the community, but asking this much paper pushing busy work bullshit that you know won't even amount to an hourly wage north of something like $2... it's just not worth it anymore

never again

Alright so y'all have probably heard of the problems that the pixel 2xl is having. ITS JUST A SMALL NON PERMENANT SCREEN ISSUE THIS IS NO REASON TO HATE GOOGLE AND USE A DAMN IPHONE!

Should've traded in my pixel 2 for the 5g during Black Friday..... Main phone is a rooted OnePlus 6... Which specs wise and without the bloat ware still beats Pixel aside from the camera...

Apparently it's now impossible to hide root.... Which means for day to day use, have to use an unrooted phone....

This what apple gives me for my pixel 2 :(

Anyone else going to get one of the new pixel phones as well?

If so, why?

Please no negativity just want other peoples opinions on the pixel 2 :-)

So had to send my pixel 2 xl back to google under warranty (4th fucking pixel I've had, now on my 5th) and just got it back after 3 weeks Alan's after using a Nokia 6.1... Holy fuck this phone is fucking huge!!

It's really weird now looking at it thinking on how I was able to put up with such a large device... I feel shaken to my core...

(Side note, as I'm typing this; I just realised I had some repo changes in termux I didn't commit and some debug logs for something I I was working on left on the Nokia but I just did a factory reset... fuck!)

Once I had to style comboboxes with only css so that they would look equal on all browsers... Equal meant they would look like the IE comboboxes with 2 pixel fugly borders, a gray focus state that felt more like a disabled state to me ... And it was horrible!

Was watching the Google live event. Must confess that I'm highly disappointed with the looks of the Pixel 2 . I guess 2017 is just not the year for Google! I mean I love the software improvements but let's admit it that inspite of us being software devs , we ourselves love good design! The pixel 2 just does not make the cut according to me. It looks like a brick. Google does need some hardware devs!

Ideas I've had over the years that could pan out and be useful:

SMS-DB: Stands for SMS-Data Burst. Used to allow those with low cell signal or no data plan to transfer data between a phone and some client via the standard SMS text space. Would be slow, but would act kinda like dial-up over SMS (as mobile lines are compressed on all service levels, even LTE, so traditional dial-up wouldn't work!) I have a general idea on how packets would be laid out, but that's about it so far...

everything2PNG: Allows one to transpose any file's data into a PNG with a 3 byte per pixel (full color RGB), which allows for a "compression" of sorts (about 91, 93% on preliminary tests) AND allowing further, more efficient compression of the resulting file. (Plus... it's just kinda cool to see files transposed as PNGs.) I actually have a simple transposer to go to PNG, but can't yet go back. Large files (around 600MB) use upwards of 4GB with efficient paging and other optimizations via NumPy so far, so it's not *viable* yet, but it's coming along nicely.

RPi-GPIO Interconnection Bus: A master/slave or round robin method to allow for Raspberry Pis to communicate using GPIO, which can help free up network bandwidth in RPi cloud computing clusters. At most, this'd allow for 4 bits used for pushing to the GPIO "bus", and 4 bits used for pulling from the "bus". 8 pins total are usually unused minimum, so either 3 or 4 pins for upload, 3 or 4 for download, and potentially 1 or 2 for commands, general non-data communication, etc. I made a version of this concept using Round Robin for a client, but it was horribly slow. (I also don't have distribution rights for the code, so i'm working from scratch.) Definitely doable.

Anything made by asus is a fucking garbage.

My first asus laptop was eee pc 701. It had only 2 gigabytes “ssd” which was just a flash drive using usb 2.0 inside. Doing this instead of using a proper sata ssd is like using bunch of rats glued to a frisbee instead of roomba vacuum. It displayed “intel 800mhz processor” in settings but this was only the processor’s name string, in fact it was only 640mhz single core. I still managed to install totally stripped version of windows xp to it and play some old games but overall it was horrible. It also heated up as hell.

My second asus laptop was infamous z99h. It had windows vista and was slow as hell right out of the box. Also BOTH hinges broke in just like six months. It was horrible as well. The screen itself broke in a year.

I also used asus rt-series router and it required a restart every day just to deliver some wifi. Don’t you dare tell me to “uPdATe fIrMwArE”, I pay money for the product and I expect it to work right outside the box.

Asus smartphones was also garbage.

So why have asus laptop if you can have a real laptop like MacBook or thinkpad? Why have asus phone if you can have a real smartphone like iPhone or pixel? Why have asus router if you can have ubiquiti?

Asus drivers suck, and all of asus software is just bloatware.

So I have an important decision... Do I stay up late to watch the Google Hardware Conference Stream... I love sleep... But I want to know some of that sweet juicy hardware...

And when I can buy my pixel 2 XL boiiiiiiiiiiiiii

How many of you watched Google's live event? What are your opinions on the new Google pixel 2? Honestly I was kinda disappointed.

Thoughts on the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL

So got my pixel 2 XL screen replaced after months of waiting on the part, took it to my usual repair guy and it was fixed within the hour, everything was all fine.

Went home, went to take a photo aaaaaaaaand cameras aren't working.... For fuck sake!

Why can't I have nice things...

So I love my pixel 2 xl, best phone I've had (not saying that just because it's the newest btw)

But fuck me do I hate how it dictates what wallpaper needs a light and dark theme, plus when you have a dark theme on, why does the navbar stay white in applications but the notification pane change... I love google but come on -,-

And yes it's a minor thing but it's the small things that are the worst imo

Why does every Monitor with a high resolution have such a wide format, like 16:9 or worse? As a developer i need more vertical than horizontal space. 9:16 is ok for coding but too small for anything else. I want a Monitor which is 2:3, 3:4 (rotated 3:2 or 4:3) or 1:1 and has at least 1920x2560. The better the resolution the more lines can i see at once. I can't make the text smaller than 10 pixel per line.

Do you guys have the same problem?

I now understand why my Pixel 2 can't take photos...

The problem isn't the camera but the battery... Somehow the battery can't supply extra load (voltage/current?) that the camera needs...

Woo time for a Chromebook rant against Samsung!

So they just 'revised' the Chromebook plus (Currently using v1 to write this) and I was intrigued because they ditched the Samsung made ARM chips for an intel CPU.... Buuuuuuuuuut... It's a fucking celeron... Of all fucking things to put in a half thousand dollar laptop, at least an m3 would be useful. Then I find out they are ditching the full metal body, it's heavier, thicker, same 3GB of RAM, ditching the 3:2 aspect ratio (Fucking why?!) and the 'upgraded' keyboard doesn't even have back lighting...

Ugh, makes me want a pixel book more, double the price and a million times the performance and quality -.-

I used to be an iPhone user since iPhone 3, every year switching to the new model, always complaining about limitations and jailbreaking it with the concerns this brings up to the table, anyway, I also tried other cellphones like Samsung Galaxy XXX, worse shit ever, and those annoying Samsung apps you cannot uninstall, pfff, worst of the worst.

I started with pure Android phones some years ago, first with pixel 2, holly shit, software is amazing, I was amazed an happy with my phone, "infinite cloud storage for free" yes please!!!

The problem comes after 5 months of use, battery drains in less than 3 hours, even with the cellphone screen off and not using it, it was under warranty and got a new battery for free, well, no that bad. Suddenly the apps start blocking each other and takes a lot to open or switch between apps. I bought also the famous PIXEL BUDS, worst purchase ever, you never know if they are charging or still connected, no matter how hard do you try, it randomly connects, I tried all the possible solutions, didn't work, one random day, the buds went off, got new ones thanks to the warranty, now they are starting to fail again.

Bought the pixel 3, same exact shit as before, same errors, same shitty hardware, battery drains in hours, and I am a regular user, I do not have games or use it in an intensive way.

Conclusion:

- Google: Shitty hardware, great software, no limitations(I can send you one of my songs through Whatsapp and copy anything form my computer as a file), but god, why your hardware is so bad?
Also, a lot of free apps, but very bad designed, just look for any app to listen podcasts, you have to waste 10secs every fucking time to listen your shit, freedom comes with a price no doubt.

- Samsung: I have no idea who want that shit and why, , not satisfaction at all

- Apple: Fucking expensive, have to pay for everything, but quality is much better, hardware is flawless, I have to admit it, my GF has a freaking iPhone 7 and her phone is fine the whole day, on the downside, well, costs and limitations relative to sharing and use

So, I will switch again to fucking Apple, best of the 3 bad evils

!rant

Opend up my first website project, commits goes back to jan 24 2013 but i think i started coding this project around late 2011 (version 2).

Made with php and i found some interesting TODO's and other stuff, over 1k of handwritten css and right above 10k lines of PHP.

Index.php everywhere (no mod rewrite)
Everything in the www root.
By pixel css.

Thank god this is my own website and not for someone else, think i would be tourtured to death if someone had to maintain this heap of shit. To think of i probobly spent around 1000 hours on all iteration.

Is it worth it to upgrade to Android P beta? Using a Pixel 2. Is it stable enough to warrant testing, or should I wait until more updates/releases come along?

Has anyone else found that not all USB C inputs are the same? You can't just buy an cable and expect it to plug into any socket.

1. I replaced the cable for a power pack, but the new one didn't fit my OP6 socket well, no clicking and have to push it in very hard to get it to charge, and still eat to fall out
2. The pixel 2 cable fits it nicely and all cables are ready to plugin and work
3. I tried charging my new Pixel 4a with ur though but very hard to plug in. Had to install the charger and cable that came with.
4. Amazon Fire takes all of them nicely and send all the others can use the cable that came with it too

I just bought a Pixel 2 so I can have live captions...

Apparently it has Android 10 support as well...

Why didn't I think of this earlier.... Though apparently support was only added in December. But just $100... And well I had a 60$ gift card balance left so that can't out to $40. (And it's only a 3yr old phone... Amazing how fast prices drop)

Actually I ordered a 3a first but then found out pixel 2 can do it as well... but now I'll have 3 phones...

OP1 (sitting in drawer unused for a few years), OP6, Pixel 2.

Guess I'll finally have an unrooted phone though I can use for all those apps I can't hide root from...

So I'm soon to become someone that carries 2 phones... I think. Sorta like work vs personal except I own both so more like rooted/primary vs unrooted/backup/specific use cases.

I can't imagine putting both phones in my pocket or on my desk... Or maybe even remember to charge the backup daily. Not sure atm how often I'll use it either. (It's a pixel 2 which I bought for live captions).

So how do you manage multiple devices?

I recently un-boxed a pixel 2, though great on the specs side, I wouldn't buy it because of the looks and weight,
It just doesn't feel great in the hand, I mean if am spending that much, I should feel am holding a premium device at hand, but It feels like a dummy,
Camera might be great, but the bezel was too big

Pixel 2 design looks like shit.

Am I stupid ?

So this seems like such a simple problem.

You have a block pixels.

If the pixels around a pixel are within tolerance (t), then they are included as part of shape. if a connected pixel to the original pixel has other pixels within tolerance (t) from it, they are also included in the shape.

the block of pixels has been reduced to a simple on/off state, no color considerations necessary.

Creating a bounding box around the beginning and end of data can lead to strange exceptions, so the method suggested seems the best way.

But its sooooooooooooo slow when you get large noisy images.

I've tried doing this a few different ways.

The last I tried is dividing everything line segments, classifying them by orientation (diagonal, horiz, vert, point) and then dividing the canvas into panels of so many pixels to prevent #oflines^2 comparisons, placing them lines in and then testing for intersection of the lines in one panel at a time.

Is there another way ?

So I went thru all this trouble today just so I could get Live Captions on my OP6...

First impression.... It works better than on the Pixel 2 I bought a few months ago just so I could have it...

Second impression... Fuck Google...

Just bought a pixel XL 2 yesterday, upgrade from Nexus 6p. Love this new phone. The internet hype over the screen was so inaccurate!