@julianlam said in YouTube's new logo:
I, for one, look forward to the resurgence of the web-safe colour palette.
216 colours ought to be enough for anyone. Hell if YouTube is using FF0000 then they are using one of them!
@julianlam said in YouTube's new logo:
I, for one, look forward to the resurgence of the web-safe colour palette.
216 colours ought to be enough for anyone. Hell if YouTube is using FF0000 then they are using one of them!
@douglasac said in Woolworths Rewards:
You'll find that that barcode is the same barcode as the product but with some numbers on the end that include the price, a reason code for the markdown and other assorted stuff.
Indeed. I would also suspect each of those are unique so that they couldn't sell the product after a certain date/time for really perishable food. But still, this is not a standard EAN barcode and their readers can read it.
I've done quite a bit of work with barcodes, having to deal with many shipping companies and their requirements for labels, manifests, etc. One had a very specific requirement in the coding of a certain label: every scanner could read it but it wasn't encoded the most efficient for the data presented. (Code 128 sets)
@arantor said in Where’s all my CPU and memory gone? The answer: Slack:
This is why I stick to the website which doesn't have this bullshit nearly so badly.
There is (was?) a weird bug with Chrome and Firefox on Linux where Slackbot would not offer to invite someone you @mention in a channel who wasn't already present, but it works fine in other systems and in the Linux client. That's the only reason why I installed it!
My company actually pays for Slack: it's made itself a major part of many workflows in all departments. So it's kind of mandatory.
When my mother sold a house she initially used her friend as the real estate agent. I wish I'd saved some of the pictures she posted on the ad, they were the worst photos I'd seen! Picture of crap on the table, but out of focus with motion blur. Taking a photo of a brick wall with no context. General bad angles and lighting.
(Not) surprisingly it didn't end well. She ended up getting a real professional.
Though I wish she didn't sell that place: it was the house I grew up in and it has almost doubled in value since — but the place she bought instead has gone down. This is her being emotional and spiteful.
@weng said in Woolworths Rewards:
Retail barcode scanners tend to be locked down to only recognize EAN/UPC.
But when a product is marked down "For Quick Sale" (eg that individual item is nearing use-by date) they use a much longer barcode, from memory over 30 digits long. They could have done similar for the rewards system. (This is like IPv6—ok I shouldn't continue IP address analogies)
@pjh said in Woolworths Rewards:
Not according to RFC 6598
I did say SHOULD. Not MUST.
(We can discuss semantics of that is more interesting to Ser Blakey)
ISPs that use NAT should use RFC 6598 addresses (100.64/10) and not RFC 1918 addresses.
@douglasac said in Woolworths Rewards:
It appears that the card numbers on the barcode on the card are simply generated in sequence, with the last digit as a check number as per virtually other barcode, meaning that it would not be overly difficult for a determined person to find a card with a good number of points on it.
I always thought it was weird that Woolies used EAN barcodes (starting with 93444) instead of some other system. Flybuys starts with a 2, which is like ISPs issuing IP addresses 10.x.x.x.
@wharrgarbl said in Big list of software that cannot handle spaces or accents in paths:
IMO It would be better if non-alphanumeric characters weren't allowed in filenames. It made everything more annoying to code for pretty much no benefit.
IMO just banning control characters would be sufficient, and then you could use ASCII properly and use some of those for record separators, leaving space for display.
I found a filename with a tab in it the other day, would have been done through FileZilla or similar.
And a separate directory was "duplicated" in an ls
. Highlighting revealed that each duplicate had a space appended. I don't even...
@zecc said in Big list of software that cannot handle spaces or accents in paths:
The pound sign?
Do you mean #
or £
? Because the latter is outside ASCII and is as useful as $
for normal people in some countries.
@deadfast so no cheque in the last fortnight? Obviously their system sees two refunds so now it's a big pain to sort it out. Again.
@Grunnen said in Big list of software that cannot handle spaces or accents in paths:
@ben_lubar That's also find-specific.
Now try to make this work in a whitespace-proof way:
$ rm `tar -tf archive.tar`
Without testing I would expect this to work
tar --null -tf archive.tar | xargs -0 rm
@Scarlet_Manuka said in Telstra: The Inescapable Whirlpool of Crushing Despair:
in fact I didn't even know that the Telstra and Optus networks used different frequency bands for 3G
Am I a massive nerd because I did know this? Also, for a while (post Vodafail: 2010-2015ish) Vodafone used both bands for 3G but have now refarmed the 850 (the "Telstra" band) to 4G leaving only 900 for 3G. They all have 2100 but Telstra's 2100 is very limited.
My eldest is 7 and I have a SIM for him with his name in phone words, that I use for data, but still not sure when he should get his own phone! I got my first mobile when I was 19 but the world has changed since then.
@Dreikin said in What? HOW?:
Some commercial brands are labeled vegan (which seems to be against the point);
I guess it's the watered down stuff you buy in the supermarket is vegetarian. Either way my local fish and chip shop doesn't put too much on; I found another one that drowns your chips and potato scallops in chicken salt and it was awesome.
@kt_ said in Linux user-facing software usability:
Meanwhile the Windows User would be like "what drivers? My printer doesn't need drivers. It just prints."
Meanwhile with my old Samsung laser printer it's the opposite problem. Plug it into a Linux box and it will work no problems but had the manually install drivers into Windows. Annoyingly the Mac needed manual drivers too, despite using CUPS like how most Linux distributions use. It comes down to what is included.
Also my old work had a laptop who's motherboard was replaced. Reinstalling Windows was virtually impossible since everything needed drivers, even had to sneaker-net the network card drivers so the rest of it could be downloaded and installed. But we could never get sound to work, even spending hours on various websites trying drivers. For the lulz I did try booting off a Linux live USB which did actually work without troubles so it wasn't a hardware problem, just a mismatch of model numbers for the Windows drivers. Since this was a boss's laptop he wanted Windows so we got a USB sound connector for headphone use.
@asdf said in Linux user-facing software usability:
BluRays won't work OOTB.
Yeah, because Windows didn't (doesn't?) need extra software to play DVDs or Blu-ray!
@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
Ubuntu maintainers refused to ship MP3 codecs for ideological reasons. Dunno if they still do it.
They still don't ship with rar support, even getting XBMC Kodi from the Ubuntu repository lacked the ability to play straight out of rars.
@Polygeekery said in Linux user-facing software usability:
When was this? I have never had a single issue hooking up an external display to either of my MacBooks.
We have a few TVs on wheels in the office. A few of them do not work with Macs for some reason, but they work fine with Windows or Ubuntu. Maybe I should try a Mac with a Live-USB and see if it's hardware or software!
@Dragnslcr said in What? HOW?:
since the flavor in these things comes from the seasonings that are typically used on bacon and crab, not from the meat itself.
I really love "chicken salt" on my hot chips (French fries) which is common here but I've read chicken salt is making inroads into other markets. It is vegetarian as well.
@boomzilla said in DreamSpark, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love ThePirateBay:
Consider identity theft. Someone may have used my social security number to get a job. I didn't lose anything but it's still identity theft.
But identity theft is not theft. It's fraud.
/Pendant
@Douglasac said in Telstra: The Inescapable Whirlpool of Crushing Despair:
Also, Australia Post are involved so they'll find new and interesting ways to screw up the simple task of delivering mail.
Don't get me started on Australia Post! We constantly get wrong mail, including once to something completely wrong. Name, address, suburb, postcode, state (!) were all wrong. The only common thing was the street number. Even putting it into the postbox, scribbling out the routing barcode and writing "misdelivery" on it got it back. Luckily there was a phone number in the return address so we called them to tell them that they couldn't rely on Australia Post to do their One Job.
Was there still a discrepancy of 7c or was that a typo that carried through?
Go them for it! On principle!
@Deadfast said in Telstra: The Inescapable Whirlpool of Crushing Despair:
I can't take much credit for this however, given that Whirlpool came up with this first .
I've been a member of that Australian Broadband Users Group since 2001.
@asdf said in Telstra: The Inescapable Whirlpool of Crushing Despair:
A legal system which would allow one party to completely change the most important parts of a contract without consent from the other party would be pretty fucked up.
Apparently it was a clause that Telstra could change anything at any time. Of course that was deemed invalid by the consumer watchdog. But we couldn't keep the unlimited downloads for the contract term. It became "accept the 3GB cap or leave". I don't remember exactly what other changes to the contract happened soon after, definitely nothing as drastic as cutting the amount of data you could use by two orders of magnitude (this was 512kbps ADSL and we were doing about 100GB/month, which became 2.9 GB/month for a few months).
@cartman82 said in Telstra: The Inescapable Whirlpool of Crushing Despair:
scream at tech support to go fuck themselves and then destroy their equipment in retaliation
That happened in 2001 when "unlimited" cable and ADSL plans were changed to a 3GB/month cap mid-contact. And overage fees of 20c/MB from memory. With a history of metering problems this could be disastrous.
Telstra told everyone they had to suck it, until they were advised that they'd have to let anyone who wanted to leave leave without break-contract fees. But you had to return the modem. Lots of stories of people returning ash remains of the Alcatel Speed Touch Home or packing the modem with fish or banana skins. MMM lovely after a week in the post.
Eventually Telstra saw the light (flickery candle light) and allowed breaking contract while keeping modem. There were actually three get-out-of-jail-free events that year and my group of friends actually had to move so that was convenient. We used that modem with another provider until it died in a thunderstorm, but that is a story for another day.
BTW
Whirlpool
I see what you did there.
When I cancelled a business service they told me over the phone I'd have a small credit, under $3, so I didn't worry too much about it. Six months later and I got a call on my mobile from a debt collection agency demanding why I didn't pay my ~$60 bill and there was going to be all kinds of repercussions to my credit history and possible legal problems. What?
Luckily for me when I called Telstra back I actually got a competent person, eventually, and she saw a charge on the account that was in error so I indeed had a credit of $2.something. I guess since it was a business account they actually care. I did have have a phone line at home (HomeLine Budget FTW, just for ADSL) so that credit could be transferred. Looking back, I should have accepted the cheque so I could have framed it.
Why would they send such a small debt to a collection agency? How much in water time and effort did that small billing error cost everyone? Why didn't Telstra actually send me the bill in the first place?
I can't wait for NBN at my place for similar reasons to OP. But I'll be on Uncle Rupert's network so time will tell how much the current government has screwed it all up.
Well apparently this is too hard and they are replacing the whole thing. Noone has even suggested defrosting!
@lucas1 said in Nintendo does it again:
better to keep convention.
That's why I still use Perl every day :)
@lucas1 but the position of the symbols seem to be arbitrarily placed. And I personally call the X button "cross". My kids call it "eks" but they are just learning to read.
@hungrier said in Nintendo does it again:
Japanese like O.
My sensei (Japanese language teacher) told us a story when he first came to teach in Australia he saw a lot of ✓ and initially thought that all the kids were dumb. Since that is the symbol they use for "incorrect" — an O shape is correct (like👌).
Still doesn't explain why western ok is X on PlayStation.
@masonwheeler said in Because emoji are professional now:
@Zemm But it's missing the most important feature: never once have I seen a netsplit occur on a Slack channel!
That would be hilarious. But then I guess they have designed their infrastructure to withstand those sorts of problems, rather than the ad hoc nature of many IRC networks.
@loopback0 said in Because emoji are professional now:
Slack is basically a more modern IRC.
You can literally use IRC if you want. One guy at work used ircII to connect to Slack.
@flabdablet said in Samsung fridge standard feature: you can't open it!:
There's probably a breather between the fridge and freezer compartments that's got itself iced up from the humidity let in during the heatwave.
I'd bet a small amount of money that if you were to eat everything perishable that's currently inside your fridge, then turn it off and leave the doors open for a whole day, this problem would fix itself.
I was thinking about that but thought it would have fixed itself by now. Might wait until the end of the week just before grocery shopping and try it properly if Samsung won't come to the party.
LOL my local public library has DVDs. I just checked and they have Die Hard 2 on DVD and available. And it costs an infinity-ith of the video rental store. Not idea if the disc is scratched beyond reading ability. (My DVD player is actually also a VHS - and hasn't been attached to the TV in years, so I probably won't bother)
@asdf said in Samsung fridge standard feature: you can't open it!:
So yeah, this is a "feature" of many freezers
I've noticed there was a slight extra resistance immediately after opening, ever since I was a kid. But this freezer only started doing it after a few months and I literally can't open it for a good 15 minutes after it's been opened. You can see the seal compress and the freezer door is noticeably "in" compared to the fridge door.
So you open it to get your frozen vegies then you can't put it back before they melt?
@Maciejasjmj said in Video rental stores:
@sloosecannon said in Video rental stores:
I actually haven't seen a TV without HDMI for... like 5 years.
Not in stores, but plenty of households are nursing their CRTs until they keel over (and sometimes beyond that).
Indeed. If we weren't gifted the money for the new TV we'd probably still be rocking the 63cm CRT I bought in 2004! My sister still uses hers of a similar vintage.
About six months ago we had to replace our refrigerator due to it being 12 years old and not being cold. So we got a nice new Samsung model from a suggestion of a friend and getting a good deal from some good guys. We even paid for it to be delivered and installed. It's been working well.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago where there was a 40+°C heatwave. Open the freezer compartment to get some ice-blocks for the kids, go to put the packet back and can't open it. What!? The suction is so great it's impossible to open. Even trying to wedge a plastic knife in the seals is difficult. I'm not a weight-lifter or anything but I can carry both my 5-year-old twins at the same time so I have some strength! After a while the suction reduced and it was able to be opened again. The fridge section was not affected during this time.
Putting it down to the really hot day we let it go. Putting the knife in as it closes lets the pressure equalise so is a good temporary workaround. But because it's still happening we decide to call Samsung to get it fixed under warranty.
My wife called and after wrangling the IVR got some scripted low-level drone in Elbonia. I'm not sure if there was a language barrier but she was twice told that the seal and suction was a standard feature to keep the cold in, even after explaining that it was so great I couldn't open it.
In the end they said to turn it down a little bit and see what happens. Still happening now though. If they can't fix it I'll have to take it back under Australian Law because it was advertised as being able to open!
@sloosecannon said in Video rental stores:
Chromecast
Depends how old "old TV" is. My old TV is a CRT so no chance of HDMI input! Or my current TV is now over five years old which some people would consider old :(
@LaoC said in Haskell Isn't for Everyone:
@DescentJS said in Haskell Isn't for Everyone:
Now that @boomzilla has exhumed the thread: The Erlang VM.
inb4 XKCD#224
He said useful.
s/^/S/;
Erlang isn't for everyone.
SHe?
s/^./S\l$&/
@boomzilla said in Because there's so much wrong with iTunes:
Nescafe
There's a tin of Blend 43 at work that proudly claims it was roasted in Gympie. I don't want anything from that place!
@TimeBandit said in Because there's so much wrong with iTunes:
@Zemm said in Because there's so much wrong with iTunes:
TRWTF is still iTunes
on WindowsFTFY
I was waiting for that!
TRWTF is still iTunes on Windows
The was an article in The Australian newspaper about a month ago about experts trying to get these things properly tested. I guess this was public beta testing?
Also, the article mentioned it was "around $69" but their site only has Sharkbandz 2 for $149 AUD so very expensive for snake shark oil.
@Karla said in BAs are harder than BScs ():
I have a BA in Biology. My college only awarded BAs, including Math, Chemistry, and Physics.
I actually have a "Bachelor of Information Technology" or BIT. This is common in Australia to have lots of different degree names. Mine was through the science department but there was a similar one offered through the business department: same name but quite different.
It still isn't clear to me what the real difference (and sameness) is, and is BA always "Bachelor of the Arts" or something different? The art of science?
@RaceProUK said in BAs are harder than BScs ():
@Tsaukpaetra said in BAs are harder than BScs ():
@RaceProUK said in BAs are harder than BScs ():
@Tsaukpaetra said in BAs are harder than BScs ():
mounting a swapfile over nfs
Three words: 32mb of RAM.
When that video was taken that reaction would have been "wow that's a lot of memory" not "OMG how do you do anything with 32MB RAM?" Especially since it was later revealed this was early 1990s hardware.
Better place for your swapfile instead of nfs: on a RAMdisk. Much faster... Oh wait.
@Lorne-Kates said in BREAKING NEWS: Online streaming still sucks in every way you can imagine:
I still have a set of rabbit ears. They're digital (since analog TV is literally dead in Canada), but they pick up the local channels well enough.
There really isn't such a thing as a "digital antenna". I'm using my 30 year old rooftop antenna with no problems on digital TV for many years (analogue TV is also dead here in Australia). An antenna marketed as digital would still have worked on most analogue channels, but they should be designed for the frequencies used in the area, excluding others, making it cheaper and lighter.
When digital TV was rolled out they consolidated the frequencies used, so most metropolitan areas would be receiving TV through the spectrum formerly occupied by channels 6-12. So you don't need low VHF nor any UHF. So the common analogue channels 2 and 28 would not have worked with one of those antennas. Other areas use a similar 6-channel block of UHF for their digital TV.
@Lorne-Kates said in BREAKING NEWS: Online streaming still sucks in every way you can imagine:
People will use US-based cheapboxes or proxies to get access. Netflix announced at some point that they'd cut off those accounts. No idea how they'd identify, or if they actually followed through
Apparently they can tell the difference between a "commercial" IP address and a "residential" IP address so blocking commercial ones would block the VPNs and methods of getting around region blocks.
Getting blocked trying to pay for content would just force people to find easier methods that aren't blocked!
@Jaloopa said in Information security:
this one woman who was sat next to me on the train. [...], location info
Good thing her location must be kept a secret, not like she is sitting next to you on a train.