WTF Bites
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@Zerosquare I just checked and it doesn't have any of my purchases on there. (I guess it's because they don't get to see any of my email at all. Contrary to popular belief, it's entirely possible to have a Google account and yet not use Gmail.)
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@Zerosquare I did get a little creeped out when my flight reservations got automatically added to my Google calendar.
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
Google uses Gmail to track a history of things you buy — and it's hard to delete
IME, it appears to be very bad at tracking my purchases - it's missing at least 10 things over the past couple of months I'd've expected to have appeared, and the companies bought from aren't exactly unknown.
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@PJH It's really good at listing only the first item in any Amazon order.
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@PJH It's really good at listing only the first item in any Amazon order.
It's apparently have to tell what "and six others" item is.
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@PJH It's really good at listing only the first item in any Amazon order.
My Amazon account (and my eBay/Paypal account) is linked to my Live email, but Gmail seems to have tracked some of my monthly iCloud Storage Plans, most of my Dominos Pizza purchases, and most game purchases.
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Most of my purchases are things that appeared on email receipts from Home Depot. Some of them just tell me the total. Other times it recognized individual items. Of course, our Amazon account is under my wife, so there's a shitton of stuff there.
Plus Pizza Hut orders.
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@boomzilla LOL:
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WTF of my day: I know that some of you guys are laughing at our data privacy / protections laws. Today I could fully understand that attitude.
So, you may know that Germany is a Federal Republic which means that each state can do its own thing in a number of legal areas. Data protection laws would be one of those. Hamburg is known for having the strictest variant of those, to the point of insanity.
For example, we have an Office365 subscription for our school. Well, from June 2020 onwards we won't have. Why? Well, some now might think that it's because of Microsoft, Cloud and everything. Well, that's partially true as Microsoft has thought of our privacy laws and made a deal with T-Online who are now running Office365 servers for all of Germany.
So, where's the problem?
Well, the servers are in Frankfurt am Main which is in the state of Hessen. Which obviously is not Hamburg and thus a foreign country or somesuch nonsense.
And before you ask: Yes, that rule also goes for pretty much every other server-based offering. If it's not located in Hamburg it's out.
Someone needs to clue in this absolute fucking moron with a two-by-four.
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@Zerosquare
To be fair, they don't sell the ads to you.
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@Rhywden Oh, and before I forget: You know how we have this Hamburg-wide administrative net run by a private company fully possessed by the state of Hamburg?
Well, strictly speaking even those guys are not actually allowed to offer us their services as even they cannot guarantee that all their servers are residing in Hamburg.
But they got an exemption. Because fuck the rules when it's inconvenient for the pencil-pushers.
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Someone needs to clue in this absolute fucking moron with a two-by-four.
What are the odds it's an open-source fanatic? Hmm. Government. Yeah, plain old idiot works too...
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But they got an exemption.
Someone should raise some shit and cause them to lose that exemption. :evil_laugh: Bet that rule would get rolled back quickly!
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Dipshit salesman has been trying to get me on a webinar for 2 months. I finally agree.
Dipshit salesman is late. Dipshit salesman is about to get his entire org blocked from our domain on email and on every phone number I can find of theirs.
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Another WTF of my day: Recently had my pupils do an exam using Excel. On pupil calculated everything correctly, labelled everything beautifully and clearly - but didn't actually use the main feature of Excel, namely Cells.
I.e. instead of writing:
=A1*B1
he wrote:=0.57*1200
and so on.Too bad for him that I told them repeatedly that any such "solution" would result in exactly zero(0) points for the task. I also wrote it in big, slightly unfriendly letters, directly below where they had to enter their names.
Also from that exam:
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Why does CanvasRenderingContext2D.arc measure angles clockwise?! This is messing with me so much…
The only way this could possibly be worse would be if it used degrees as well.
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Why does CanvasRenderingContext2D.arc measure angles clockwise?! This is messing with me so much…
The only way this could possibly be worse would be if it used degrees as well.
At a guess, because if x is horizontal and y is down (as it is for all web drawing), then clockwise is right handed (ie z is out)?
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@Benjamin-Hall that's my guess too. I suppose there would be significantly less WTFery if my coordinate system were aligned with the canvas's, though it still runs counter to a lot of what I'm used to (but then so does having "up" be negative).
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configure the server to something like Europe/Berlin that uses the zoneinfo DB to automagically take DST into account without changing the time zone name twice a year,
That reminds me. I heard a(n unsubstantiated) rumor that Texas wants to ditch DST. It sounds like a good move, but imagining all the special cases that need to be made in software everywhere gives me nightmares. Worse, the closest time region is
America/Chicago
, but that won't be correct if we drop DST and they don't.
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@Benjamin-Hall that's my guess too. I suppose there would be significantly less WTFery if my coordinate system were aligned with the canvas's, though it still runs counter to a lot of what I'm used to (but then so does having "up" be negative).
Can't you just negate Y?
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@Gąska more or less, but I have to do that everywhere that involves the positions of objects and with certain angles, and not for text or other non-simulation objects.
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configure the server to something like Europe/Berlin that uses the zoneinfo DB to automagically take DST into account without changing the time zone name twice a year,
That reminds me. I heard a(n unsubstantiated) rumor that Texas wants to ditch DST. It sounds like a good move, but imagining all the special cases that need to be made in software everywhere gives me nightmares. Worse, the closest time region is
America/Chicago
, but that won't be correct if we drop DST and they don't.There are already so many special cases it's crazy. Chicago — 20 miles away in Indiana, they don't observe DST, so sometimes they're in the same time zone as Chicago; sometimes they're not. Or Arizona — Mountain Time, except they don't observe DST, except for the Indian reservations that do, except for other reservations that don't, some of which are completely enclosed within reservations that do. Good luck figuring that out! Alaska — all of it except some of the Aleutian Islands are in one time zone. Which ones? There was talk recently of one of the New England states (Maine?) switching from Eastern to Atlantic Time. Other states have talked about dropping Standard Time and adopting year-round DST.
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@HardwareGeek said in WTF Bites:
Indiana, they don't observe DST
No, Indiana has observed DST for over thirteen years now. Even when most of Indiana didn't, The Region stayed on Chicago time all the time.
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@lolwhat Ah, I stand corrected. It's been rather more than 13 years since I visited Indiana.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in WTF Bites:
Why does CanvasRenderingContext2D.arc measure angles clockwise?! This is messing with me so much…
The only way this could possibly be worse would be if it used degrees as well.
At a guess, because if x is horizontal and y is down (as it is for all web drawing), then clockwise is right handed (ie z is out)?
Right hand rule.
Make a fist wrapping your fingers in the Y → X direction, notice where your thumb points, and follow it to @error ‘s AMA...
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And before you ask: Yes, that rule also goes for pretty much every other server-based offering. If it's not located in Hamburg it's out.
Is that lawful? It discriminates against other EU states, and IIRC that's a strong forbidden in EU law. (That it enables services to also be in other parts of Germany is incidental.)
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Another WTF of my day: Recently had my pupils do an exam using Excel.
Coulda stopped right there
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configure the server to something like Europe/Berlin that uses the zoneinfo DB to automagically take DST into account without changing the time zone name twice a year,
That reminds me. I heard a(n unsubstantiated) rumor that Texas wants to ditch DST. It sounds like a good move, but imagining all the special cases that need to be made in software everywhere gives me nightmares. Worse, the closest time region is
America/Chicago
, but that won't be correct if we drop DST and they don't.But that's what zoneinfo is for, isn't it? Add America/Houston and you're good. There are zoneinfo entries for lesser reasons, like the two zones for Germany. One is for the entire country minus ~7km² and the other one is for the town of Büsingen that used Swiss time for like a year in the 1980s. It's just so you can make correct historical time calculations:
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And before you ask: Yes, that rule also goes for pretty much every other server-based offering. If it's not located in Hamburg it's out.
Is that lawful? It discriminates against other EU states, and IIRC that's a strong forbidden in EU law. (That it enables services to also be in other parts of Germany is incidental.)
Don't ask me. But it's actually a very good argument I didn't yet think of.
Let's see if we can make him see the light from that perspective...
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@PJH Is that a diaeresis or umlaut?
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@Zecc Unicode doesn't make the distinction. It does, however, have FAMILY MAN DARK SKIN TONE WOMAN SHRUGGING LIGHT SKIN TONE CAT FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY BOY TEACHER POUTING MEDIUM LIGHT SKIN TONE.
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@kazitor You were supposed to answer "Yes".
Have you ever been to this site at all?
Amateurs.
Edit: see @PJH gets it.
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@kazitor You were supposed to answer "Yes".
Have you ever been to this site at all?
…yes?
Amateur
s.I've never found that sort of response funny. :male_technologist_confused_face_shrugging:
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Büsingen
¨_NOT_FOUND
I would have expected it to be written ‘Buesingen’ in pure ASCII if the correct form is ‘Büsingen’ as per the usual German convention of adding extra ‘e’ when writing in media that don't support umlauts.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
I finally agree.
I am not entirely against hearing what salespeople have to say. Selling is part of my job duties, so I try to hear others out when they are polite and persistent. Call it "professional courtesy" or whatever.
Unfortunately, that professional courtesy usually ends up kicking me in the dick when I get stuck on insufferable webinars. Occasionally it gets me a nice lunch. Sometimes it pans out.
Remember, not all salespeople are bad. I mean, yeah, a heaping fucking fuck ton of them are. But not all of them. Just by luck last year I met a really awesome Comcast rep who has been amazing and helpful. The last Comcast rep that wanted me to partner up with them ended up going on a bender, double booking sales for one of my clients in order to boost his numbers and started a fucking disaster for them that took six months to straighten out while in the meantime those double booked sales kept getting their services shut off because there were accounts associated with them that were not paid.
TL;DR, there are good salespeople in the world, but trying to find them is like trying to separate fly shit from pepper.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
The last Comcast rep that wanted me to partner up with them ended up going on a bender, double booking sales for one of my clients in order to boost his numbers and started a fucking disaster for them that took six months to straighten out while in the meantime those double booked sales kept getting their services shut off because there were accounts associated with them that were not paid.
I did a Google search first before telling this next part to make sure it wouldn't doxx me. Thankfully, there is enough noise on the search string that I don't think it will lead back to me.
When I first met the guy it was when Comcast really started to push their Bizleads program. It is an interesting program where people like myself can pair up with Comcast account executives and when we refer our clients to them for services we get 100% of the first month's sale as a spiff. It is actually a pretty good program, if you find a good and ethical salesman.
So I meet this guy when one of our clients was moving to a new office. They were moving from an area controlled by another cable service provider to a Comcast area. When Comcast comes in to talk to us I meet the guy. He is a slovenly fellow. He looks like he had been poured in to his suit.
"Bill Wallace with Comcast, nice to meet you."
"Bill Wallace?"
"Yep, do I know you?"
"No, but is Bill short for William?"
"....yeah."
"So, your name is William Wallace?"
"Yeah, but it always seemed too formal so I go by Bill."
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@Polygeekery
And you wonder why their account executives double book your clients
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@izzion to be fair, we were not the only ones he did that to.
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@Polygeekery
I stand by my theory. There are a lot of douchebags out there that jump straight to the "oh you have a name that has this common famous equivalent" jokes on meeting someone (source: I filter douchebags I meet that way, having a name that spawns similar jokes)
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
webinar
The absolute worst thing about web meetings is that the market is now flooded with teleconferencing services. Yesterday was RingCentral Meetings. Next week I have to conference with a group about an integration for one of our clients and that will be Uber Conference. Last week I had one using BlueJeans. Then the litany of GoToMeetings, WebEx, the list goes on and on and on. Goddamn it people, I don't want to download and install a new application every time someone wants to have a teleconference.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
BlueJeans
Also, while I am on a rant, that is one of the dumbest fucking names they could ever come up with for teleconferencing software.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
The absolute worst thing about web meetings is that the market is now flooded with teleconferencing services.
See, once upon a time there was SIP. It was shit, so everybody rushed to create a better service. Now we have zillions of services. They are all just as shitty.
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See, once upon a time there was SIP. It was shit, so everybody rushed to create a better service. Now we have zillions of services. They are all just as shitty.
:mandatory_xkcd.conf:
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@Polygeekery That's precisely what I thought about, but it was posted so many times already that we can do without it for once ;-)