WTF Bites
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
@error Yes, sometimes I abuse that "feature"...
Heavy-handed pre-emptive multitasking? When I've got two terminal processes squabbling over who gets to use the spinny metal thing I use it to make them take turns.
#justsinglecorecputhings
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Facebook accused of trying to bypass GDPR, slurp domain owners' personal Whois info via an obscure process
Antisocial network floods registrars with unjustified data requests
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
Antisocial network floods registrars with unjustified data requests
If Facebook hadn't burned every last inkling of trust and then proceeded to plow salt into the ashes, someone might actually believe them
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
Antisocial network floods registrars with unjustified data requests
If Facebook hadn't burned every last inkling of trust and then proceeded to plow salt into the ashes, someone might actually believe them
Its representative continues to claim that being a registered trademark holder is sufficient to be granted full access to the Whois database, and that all other routes are unduly burdensome.
“You don’t know who to sue until you’ve got the Whois information,” claimed Facebook rep Margie Millam at one such recent meeting. “So it’s backwards to say you have to have a lawsuit and you have to use your subpoena power under the lawsuit to get access to Whois.”
So because they own a trademark to facebook it's reasonable for them to get data on the owner of ilikedonuts.com. Sounds absolutely reasonable.
I can only hope that for all future GDPR lawsuits (or any other) to come the judge will slap them for obviously trying to break the rules.
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My favorite feature of the windows CLI terminal is how any incidental click or drag will send you into "highlighting" mode to copy. If you don't exit highlighting mode by clicking again or making a copy - which might happen if you didn't intend to enter highlighting mode - then it freezes all terminal output.
It does not just buffer that output for later printing. No, all threads trying to write to stdout or stderr will block and hang until you exit highlighting mode.This is actually super useful when you want to suspend a command line app.
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Found (and extirpated) in the wild this morning:
submit({ /* SNIP */ order_id: (order_id !== 0) ? order_id : 0 });
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The nice thing about Polish names is that if something looks like a last name, you can be damn sure it's definitely not a first name. This makes it extremely obvious when someone fucks up a list of two people by writing one in the "firstname lastname" order and the other in reverse. I'm looking at you, dear HR representative who made new hires announcement a few minutes ago.
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@Gąska I wonder if anybody ever has made that mistake with a name like "von Something" (or regional variants). I would like to think "no", but realistically speaking ... there's probably somebody out there officially registered as "Von S. Firstname" in HRs databases.
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@cvi We have the local version "van", which means exactly the same thing. And we had a kid in school whose first name was "Van Rijn". The amount of people who mixed up his first and last name was not insignificant.
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@Vault_Dweller Where his parents massive trolls by any chance? (If yes, I approve.)
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@Vault_Dweller said in WTF Bites:
@cvi We have the local version "van", which means exactly the same thing. And we had a kid in school whose first name was "Van Rijn". The amount of people who mixed up his first and last name was not insignificant.
Is't that a clear case of child abuse?
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I remember distinctly when a teacher once did roll call by reading "surname, first name" from the attendance sheet for everyone. And he, hearing his surname called before his first name, automatically corrected the teacher.
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Vin Diesel could have been called Van Diesel.Edit: turns out his birth name is Mark Sinclair, but
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The nice thing about Polish names is that if something looks like a last name, you can be damn sure it's definitely not a first name. This makes it extremely obvious when someone fucks up a list of two people by writing one in the "firstname lastname" order and the other in reverse. I'm looking at you, dear HR representative who made new hires announcement a few minutes ago.
I've worked on some job application application (
English) and you would be amazed how common that is (even when the entry form has clearly labelled input fields; parsing CV is basically just a wild guess). So we solved that by process that uses extensive database of both first and last names (with their respective frequencies) and some very basic heuristic to detect this problem and switch the names to correct order. It also feed itself back by updating the frequencies (and adding new names).This process was, however, just a side product; the real reason was to find the correct gender* - again, surprising amount of people filled that incorrectly. Of course, sometimes it backfired - I remember one very strongly-worded complaint from some Mr. Karen (Georgian, so his first name has 0 matches).
- Note for triggered
: yes, gender. Nobody cares about sex, but gender is required for correct declension - notably, the vocative case in email greetings.
- Note for triggered
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@Zecc I guess it depends quite a bit on where you're from. The "van"-prefix for surnames seems to be a dutch language region thing, so probably outside of that region it would raise fewer eyebrows when used as a first name. OTOH, the name "Van Rijn" looks kinda Dutch, but that's a guess based on containt a ij, which has a somewhat special status in Dutch. (I have yet to meet two Dutch people that say the same thing when asked how it's supposed to be pronounced.)
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@Vault_Dweller said in WTF Bites:
I remember distinctly when a teacher once did roll call by reading "surname, first name" from the attendance sheet for everyone. And he, hearing his surname called before his first name, automatically corrected the teacher.
In Poland, students from the same year are split into classes, each class has all their lessons together. Every class has an official journal containing list of students, attendance throughout whole year for every lesson, all grades ever awarded that year, and other things relating to that class's students. The list in the journal is used for roll calls. It's customary in elementary schools to do roll calls with first name only - they're just little kids after all.
The list of students had names written in Lastname Firstname order. But for some reason, one time one of my classmates had their second name added there. So during roll calls, every teacher referred to him by his second name only (which was the same as another student's first name). And there was much confusion. This continued throughout the entire year. On every lesson.
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in WTF Bites:
the real reason was to find the correct gender* - again, surprising amount of people filled that incorrectly.
Trying to "correct" this is
.If they get it wrong and they complain, you can tell them "We're using the gender you selected yourself".
If you get it wrong and they complain, what do you tell them? "We thought you were too stupid to choose the correct gender, so we fixed it"?
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
@Kamil-Podlesak said in WTF Bites:
the real reason was to find the correct gender* - again, surprising amount of people filled that incorrectly.
Trying to "correct" this is
.If they get it wrong and they complain, you can tell them "We're using the gender you selected yourself".
If you get it wrong and they complain, what do you tell them? "We thought you were too stupid to choose the correct gender, so we fixed it"?
Actually, it makes sense from business perspective:
- The second type of error is much rarer, especially when excluding foreign names (which is another heuristic). So, overall, this correction reduces total number of errors by several orders of magnitude.
- These data are used by HR and management to contact people directly. They really don't like to embarrass themselves by using wrong address. Yes, they can handwave it as "oh, they are idiots anyway", but it's still very awkward situation.
- Also, this immediately creates prejudice on both sides - even if the candidate is actually very good for the job. Even good qualified people make mistakes and in many jobs, filling javascript-ridden web forms is not a crucial skill. Good recruiters know that and hates when they are prejudiced.
- Also, even sloppy candidate is better than none at all. I vividly remember one well-known fast food megafranchise that desperately complained about utter lack of candidates. "Maybe it's because the address you provide use city district and that confuses them!"
- Some of those forms have custom design (provided by customer) or even completely custom implementation. Quite often, filking them correctly is more like IQ test than entry form. Especially when the implementation done in something like SAP or home-grown ERP from overseas corporate HQ.
In short, customers really appreciate "data cleanup" service being included. Those few that want "idiot filter" have better ways to do it.
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
Trying to "correct" this is .
True.
To be fair, I am apparently very good at missing the drop-downs for "Mister / Miss / Dr. / (other titles)" when filling in address forms for e.g. online orders (drop-downs look different from text fields, where you enter stuff, ok?). As a consequence, it's somewhat random whether my online orders are for a "Mister cvi" or a "Miss cvi" in the address field (typically just whatever was the first selection). I've stopped giving a shit, doesn't seem to matter.
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whatever was the first selection
The first selection in a drop-down should always be “Please Select”.
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whatever was the first selection
The first selection in a drop-down should always be “Please Select”.
Dear Please select... Tsaukpaetra, ...
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@Zecc I guess it depends quite a bit on where you're from. The "van"-prefix for surnames seems to be a dutch language region thing, so probably outside of that region it would raise fewer eyebrows when used as a first name. OTOH, the name "Van Rijn" looks kinda Dutch, but that's a guess based on containt a ij, which has a somewhat special status in Dutch. (I have yet to meet two Dutch people that say the same thing when asked how it's supposed to be pronounced.)
"Van Rijn" is actually the last name of famous Dutch painter Rembrandt.
Last name prefixing (actually infixing, based on the Dutch term which is 'tussenvoegsel') is indeed quite common in The Netherlands, and as I understand much more so than in Germany. While Germans to have the 'von', I understand it (nearly) always originates in a noble title. In Dutch, various other words occur, like 'De Bakker' (lit. 'The Baker') or 'De Koning' (lit. 'The King').
Trivia: The infix is generally not capitalised if it is in the middle of a name (so when first names or initials are included), but it is capitalised when at the start of the name:
De heer W.A. van Buren, butDe heer Van BurenandVan Buren, W.A.. And in the phone book, he'll be under B not under V.
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Trivia: The infix is generally not capitalised if it is in the middle of a name (so when first names or initials are included), but it is capitalised when at the start of the name:
De heer W.A. van Buren, butDe heer Van BurenandVan Buren, W.A.. And in the phone book, he'll be under B not under V.That's the thing with names. Every culture has it's peculiarities, so it's effectively impossible to create a system that works for names of arbitrary mix of origins, a situation more and more common as people move between countries more often.
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Kijiji (a local used marketplace)
They allow pictures, which is great, but limit them to 800x600 and show them even smaller in the browser.
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@dkf Those forms tend to be a bit smarter, so you get an error if you forget to select something. But I would go for "Please select cvi" -- if that goes through, it's at least clear that neither side really cared to begin with.
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in WTF Bites:
, filking them correctly is more like IQ test than entry form. Especially when the implementation done in something like SAP
In which case lower IQ does better? The only saving grace of SAP is that I can remember using that when I get super mad at Deltek (our timesheet software) and realize that things could be worse.
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I visited Cool Stuff Thread and it asked me for access to VR devices. What even!?
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What, you mean you didn't know about WTDWTF: VR edition? You should really give a try. You can even pet the kneeling warthogs!
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
You can even pet the kneeling warthogs!
No law says you can't pet the kneeling warthogs. You bring any matches for @Polygeekery?
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@hungrier IIRC suggestions are based on your search history.
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@Gąska If so then it's way off base. I don't even know who Mac Miller is
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@hungrier I meant the first two in particular. But now I've explained the joke and it's not funny anymore.
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Uncovered: 1,000 phrases that incorrectly trigger Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant
“Election” can trigger Alexa; “Montana” can trigger Cortana.
Not really that surprising, but something to keep in mind when there's one of those listening ears in the room.
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@Gąska If so then it's way off base. I don't even know who Mac Miller is
Maybe you should Google him and find out.
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@hungrier I meant the first two in particular. But now I've explained the joke and it's not funny anymore.
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I don't think even Thomas wants to know.
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The nice thing about Polish names is that if something looks like a last name, you can be damn sure it's definitely not a first name.
With some regret I must inform you that this is not, in fact, the case. Although that depends on how much work "looks like a last name" is doing in this sentence.
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
“Election” can trigger Alexa; “Montana” can trigger Cortana.
Trigger Warning!
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The nice thing about Polish names is that if something looks like a last name, you can be damn sure it's definitely not a first name.
With some regret I must inform you that this is not, in fact, the case. Although that depends on how much work "looks like a last name" is doing in this sentence.
If it ends with -ski, -icz, or it's female and ends with any letter other than -a (or male and ends with -a), it's impossible to be the first name (except for Miriam and its variants and a couple other names that haven't been used since 1800s).
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You probably know that Microsoft has various certifications for their products. If you know that, you probably know that every 10 years they rename them and reorganize them all for no clear reason. Because that's Microsoft.
Well, here's the latest one:
MCSA, MCSD, MCSE certifications retire; with continued investment to role-based certifications
Originally posted February 27, 2020 and updated March 26, 2020 Learn about the MCSA, MCDE, MCSE retirement
So they're replacing them with... as far as I can tell, Azure, Azure and Azure? WTF is this? Do Windows sysadmins no longer exist? Do applications outside Azure no longer exist? What the hell are they thinking?
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The nice thing about Polish names is that if something looks like a last name, you can be damn sure it's definitely not a first name.
With some regret I must inform you that this is not, in fact, the case. Although that depends on how much work "looks like a last name" is doing in this sentence.
If it ends with -ski, -icz, or it's female and ends with any letter other than -a (or male and ends with -a), it's impossible to be the first name (except for Miriam and its variants and a couple other names that haven't been used since 1800s).
That's some narrowing of scope...
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@GOG what I mean is, there are a few people with names like Czesław Miłosz, but 99999 times out of 100000, it really isn't hard to figure out which is the first and which is the last name. And although what I specified sounds like pretty narrow criteria, these account for over a half of all Polish population.
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@GOG what I mean is, there are a few people with names like Czesław Miłosz, but 99999 times out of 100000, it really isn't hard to figure out which is the first and which is the last name. And although what I specified sounds like pretty narrow criteria, these account for over a half of all Polish population.
I wouldn't have called it out if I didn't actually have to deal with this problem in my nine-to-five. Thank goodness for official forms that have separate fields, is all I'm gonna say...
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Van (given name) - Wikipedia
