WTF Bites
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@Kamil-Podlesak That was exactly it, thanks! I updated the params to use
address=*:5005and that got it working.
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I was looking for an external hard drive of some 2 TB (as the oldest one with its 500 GB capacity is no more large enough for all the backups). Found some interestingly cheap offers on ebay, like
But it comes with a catch:
"Warnung: Diese Festplattenpartition kann nur das exFAT-Format verwenden (das Standard-NTFS-Format des Computers kann nicht verwendet werden, da sonst die Festplatte irreparabel beschädigt wird)."That is in short:
"Warning: Do not format with NTFS as this would damage the disk finally."Hm. I've read about thumb drives being offered with incredibly high capacity, which will just overwrite your data when the actually very small capacity is reached.
Do those guys try that now also with hard disks?
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@BernieTheBernie said in WTF Bites:
I was looking for an external hard drive of some 2 TB (as the oldest one with its 500 GB capacity is no more large enough for all the backups). Found some interestingly cheap offers on ebay, like
But it comes with a catch:
"Warnung: Diese Festplattenpartition kann nur das exFAT-Format verwenden (das Standard-NTFS-Format des Computers kann nicht verwendet werden, da sonst die Festplatte irreparabel beschädigt wird)."That is in short:
"Warning: Do not format with NTFS as this would damage the disk finally."Hm. I've read about thumb drives being offered with incredibly high capacity, which will just overwrite your data when the actually very small capacity is reached.
Do those guys try that now also with hard disks?TLDR: Yes, apparently.
I have just read about it on some other forum - someone connected that disk directly to SATA and analyzed the dmesg (or, rather, asked other people to analyze that). Judging by the linux kernel messages and the last remnants of removed stickers, it is Hitachi 320GB with (very) custom firmware.
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@BernieTheBernie report this shit as fraud (if you care enough
).
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@HardwareGeek said in WTF Bites:
WTF of the day: Job screening questionnaire.
Identify the bugs in a trivial C function.
Write a trivial C function.
Write a 1-line shell script.
Write a couple of scripts to parse log files.All easy. Actually run all the code I'm writing, even though it's trivial, just to make sure I'm not making any dumb mistakes.
Second log parser is specifically in Python and does some date arithmetic; there must be a library for that.
Oh, there's even a function that parses the date string in exactly the format I have; I don't need to pick the pieces of the date out of the string myself. What? No such function?
Oh, "New in 3.8" Why am I still using 3.6? Run Cygwin update to automatically update everything that's out of date.
Still no such function? Still 3.6. Run Cygwin update again, look at what's available in the Python section. 2.7, 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8 are completely separate, side-by-side installs. That makes sense for having 2 and 3, since they're not quite compatible, but 3.x will never update to 3.y. It won't even tell you 3.y is available. Install 3.8 and various packages.
Still no such function! /usr/bin/python3 is still linked to /usr/bin/python3.6. I just installed 3.8; update the (*&^%$#@ symlink, installer!!!!
But the
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More questions on the questionnaire.Describe how to debug a test failure. Provide as much technical detail as possible.
The answer to that could fill a small book. Except it's one of those "choose your own adventure" books, because everything depends on the answer to the previous question. What are the symptoms of the failure? What info is in the log file? Did it hang and time-out? Was the data not what you expected? Was there a protocol error reported by the test infrastructure? Was a protocol error reported by your end of the bus when the infrastructure wasn't supposed to inject one? Was a protocol error not reported when it should have been? So many questions; so little context in the questionnaire.
More "describe your process/strategy" questions with huge "it depends" holes without context, as well as some "design this test infrastructure" questions. Good thing I don't have any real tasks to do at my current job </sarc>.
Video interview for this job in about 15 minutes. On my phone, because my computer doesn't have a camera or microphone.
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in WTF Bites:
@BernieTheBernie said in WTF Bites:
I was looking for an external hard drive of some 2 TB (as the oldest one with its 500 GB capacity is no more large enough for all the backups). Found some interestingly cheap offers on ebay, like
But it comes with a catch:
"Warnung: Diese Festplattenpartition kann nur das exFAT-Format verwenden (das Standard-NTFS-Format des Computers kann nicht verwendet werden, da sonst die Festplatte irreparabel beschädigt wird)."That is in short:
"Warning: Do not format with NTFS as this would damage the disk finally."Hm. I've read about thumb drives being offered with incredibly high capacity, which will just overwrite your data when the actually very small capacity is reached.
Do those guys try that now also with hard disks?TLDR: Yes, apparently.
I have just read about it on some other forum - someone connected that disk directly to SATA and analyzed the dmesg (or, rather, asked other people to analyze that). Judging by the linux kernel messages and the last remnants of removed stickers, it is Hitachi 320GB with (very) custom firmware.
Interesting. Do you know (or can you guess...) how that "very custom firmware" can survive formatting with "exFAT"? What does Windows do when a disk gets re-formatted with the same file system, in contrast to formatting it with a different file system?
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@BernieTheBernie report this shit as fraud (if you care enough
).C'mon, that's not a single offer of that type. There a dozens. By "different" sellers - who are all from China.
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@BernieTheBernie said in WTF Bites:
Interesting. Do you know (or can you guess...) how that "very custom firmware" can survive formatting with "exFAT"? What does Windows do when a disk gets re-formatted with the same file system, in contrast to formatting it with a different file system?
I don't know, but guess shouldn't be hard.
Windows (nor any other OS) does not normally overwrite all the disk during formatting, it only writes some metadata. For exFAT, like all *FAT, the metadata is all at the beginning, plus a backup copy at well known offset, and the disk will be initially filled sequentially. So the “custom” firmware just needs to make sure the backup FAT is stored and that's it. But for NTFS the metadata is scattered all over the disk and the “custom” firmware is not up to keeping track of which parts are needed.
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in WTF Bites:
Hm. I've read about thumb drives being offered with incredibly high capacity, which will just overwrite your data when the actually very small capacity is reached.
Do those guys try that now also with hard disks?TLDR: Yes, apparently.
I have just read about it on some other forum - someone connected that disk directly to SATA and analyzed the dmesg (or, rather, asked other people to analyze that). Judging by the linux kernel messages and the last remnants of removed stickers, it is Hitachi 320GB with (very) custom firmware.
Apparently, a number of variations on this scam have been going on for several years. Found this from 2014:
How to Spot Fake External Hard Disk Drives without Taking Them Apart
There are some of the ways that may help you spot a fake portable external hard drive without having to take them apart. You can also protect yourself from such forged fake products by shopping only from reputed showrooms and online shopping websites.
So when we finally opened it up, we found nothing but a USB flash memory drive, a chip that bypasses file writing errors and two sets of heavy nuts and bolts to increase the weight (so that it feels like having appropriate weight when you hold in your hands).
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Yes, but you could easily detect those old fakes: a mechanical drive that doesn't make any sound can't be real.
Those new fakes are harder to detect, since they're based on real hard disks.
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A security flaw in Grindr let anyone easily hijack user accounts | TechCrunch
Secret tokens used to reset account passwords were leaking to the browser.
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Of course, I won't buy such an obviously fraudulent item. But still: how can I be sure I don't receive such a thing when I buy some disk of a good brand at a reasonable price from a seller with good reputation?
But for NTFS the metadata is scattered all over the disk and the “custom” firmware is not up to keeping track of which parts are needed.
That's already a piece of good news: I prefer NTFS, and so Windows might detect some issues during formatting. But is that enough?
I think of creating a folder with some easy to inspect items, like a text files, images, pdfs, etc. which I could open and inspect visually after having run the robocopy backup task. If one of these files gets corrupted, I can throw away the backup disk. Better than using a corrupted backup later on....
What do you think?
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There are tools to detect that (they're made to test USB keys, but they should work as well on hard drives):
Fake Flash Test: 7 Free Tools to Check Real Capacity
Counterfeit computer products, including flash memory storage, have become increasingly common in recent years. While all types of flash memory storage,
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
20 minute meeting where multiple people failed to convince her that
(foo = 1 or foo = 0)will always be true. The field is never null.Should have told her to come up with a case where it’s false.
NaN.
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@BernieTheBernie said in WTF Bites:
Of course, I won't buy such an obviously fraudulent item. But still: how can I be sure I don't receive such a thing when I buy some disk of a good brand at a reasonable price from a seller with good reputation?
Being a good brand at a reasonable price from a seller with good reputation is itself a guarantee. Most eBay listings lack at least 2 of these (i.e. unreasonably low price from a seller without a googleable office address).
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Currently I am struggling with a Powershell WTF: scripts expect parameters to come in a specific order. I.e.
powershell .\StupidScript.ps1 -param1 "Blah" -param2 "Extra"Now imagine
param1is a filename,param2isn't. In a command window, I can use thetabkey to navigate between file names, that's appropriate for preventing tyops. But then, I have to manually type-param2 "Extra"again...
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We're being recommended to use the Microsoft Authenticator App for 2FA. Apparently I have it installed on my phone already, though without having any connected accounts. But it has this somewhat subtle attention thing in the corner (the red dot in the menu).
Apparently it wants me to turn off "Battery Optimizations":
I mean, that's pretty much a nope already, but why?
Yeah, nope.
Plebian screenshots because I can't take proper ones due to "security policy" in the Microsoft app.
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@cvi Yeah, well, it's reasonable because those "battery optimizations" sometimes are really overzealous.
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WTF of my week: So, I got Borderlands 3 Whatever Edition through a deal and now that the final DLC is out, actually wanted to try it.
Keep in mind, this game is more than a year old by this point.
So far I've got:
- Crashes in the menu
- Crashes 10 seconds after loading into the world
- Crashes before a cutscene
- Crashes during a cutscene
- Crashes after a cutscene
- Crashes when loot drops (usually of the "unique" variety)
- Crashes on startup (only after an in-game crash, however) which require a revalidation of the game files
Doesn't matter whether DX11 oder DX12.
And it's always an "Unknown Function" in the stack trace.
Control runs fine on my PC. Doom (and Doom Eternal) runs fine. Death Stranding runs fine. Destiny 2 runs fine. Monster Hunter World runs fine. Assassin's Creed Odyssey runs fine. I.e. way more ressource taxing games work fine for hours on end.
Only this game does not get beyond the 1 minute mark in a reliable manner.
Some people obviously cannot develop their way out of a wet paper bag.
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
Just when you thought you could get away from micromanagement by working at home:
'I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots'
Many have struggled to get to grips with working from home, but would surveillance technology help?
You know what's very good at detecting programs that shouldn't be running? Anti-cheat systems. Valve should turn VAC into a corporate employee monitoring solution.
My experience with CSGO contradicts this statement.
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@DogsB it does almost quarter-decent job against programs that do their damnedest to hide their activity. Imagine what it can do against programs that don't even try!
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@DogsB it does almost quarter-decent job against programs that do their damnedest to hide their activity. Imagine what it can do against programs that don't even try!
Maybe 16th decent job about a decade ago.
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I somehow got myself on the mailing list of IT Job Cafe. Today's email:
- Senior Software Developer
- Web/Mobile Developer
- Domino's Delivery Driver
- Domino's Delivery Driver
- Domino's Delivery Driver
IT jobs for people who didn't learn to code?
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@HardwareGeek said in WTF Bites:
I somehow got myself on the mailing list of IT Job Cafe. Today's email:
- Senior Software Developer
- Web/Mobile Developer
- Domino's Delivery Driver
- Domino's Delivery Driver
- Domino's Delivery Driver
IT jobs for people who didn't learn to code?
Or for those programmers who just had one of those idiots we write about here promoted to be their boss.
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@cvi Microsoft and Azure AD accounts can use push notifications instead of requiring typing a code. With battery optimization turned on, these notifications generally don't come through until several minutes after requesting them unless the app is currently open. With battery optimization turned off, the notifications tend to hit within 10 seconds, usually closer to 2, even if the app is closed.
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@TwelveBaud The use case for me is largely logging in to Microsoft Teams for work. On my home-work machine, I remain logged in there anyway. For the odd time I'd be using, I would need to actually fetch my phone in the first place, so opening up the app into foreground wouldn't exactly be a large detour. (Right now I use the SMS version of their 2FA, I'm not super inclined to change that ATM. Best case: login expired, SMS doesn't arrive, and I have an excuse to not appear in Teams.
)I guess if you have more frequent interactions with it, it's more useful.
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Only this game does not get beyond the 1 minute mark in a reliable manner.
I'm imagining it's something weird going on with the interaction between the game and your graphics drivers. I'm not saying it's crash-free, but they've mostly been rare.Stuff that's only relevant once things start working…
The 4th DLC is less than perfect; there's a lot of very poor side-quests in it (probably due to COVID triggering a phoning-it-in effect). But I did like both Athenas and the Asteroid from the main game, and the Revenge of the Cartels event was great, especially with a few doses of Mayhem.
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Right now I use the SMS version of their 2FA
The app is actually more secure. There are malwares that can read your SMS so doing phishing on people with SMS-based 2FA is somewhat plausible. It is harder to create a malicious receiver for the app.
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@Bulb Fair. And I'm probably TRWTF here, but I actually don't think Microsoft Teams is important enough to receive 2FA anyway. If you have malware on my machine, you're largely logged in there already. My work email doesn't have 2FA, and that would be a much more important target.
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@cvi Yeah, well, it's reasonable because those "battery optimizations" sometimes are really overzealous.
You can say that again! I turned off a bunch of that stuff to try to stop my Pixel 3a (with Android 10) from killing my podcast player while it was playing, sometimes immediately after I'd interacted with it. The phone still killed it sometimes anyway, but it happened less. Never happened on my previous phone; the notification would sit there for days unless I closed it and battery life didn't seem to change either way.
In Android 11 the OS hasn't stopped my media apps from playing but it's a crapshoot whether a player notification will be in the normal notifications, the new media player area (under the Quick Settings), or won't appear at all. The whole "let's remember the notification controls for every media player you've ever used and take away a row of Quick Settings to do it" looks like a "solution" to a problem they created.
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Status: You say "identical". I don't think that means what you think it means...
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@boomzilla How am I supposed to press the right Ctrl with my right thumb while my index, middle and ring fingers are resting over the arrows keys right beside it?
It's easy: you just need to curl your...
Unless I curl my fingers, which is awkward.
Oh.
Maybe I'm just conditioned to curl my fingers from having learned to play the piano.
Wait... don't you have to curl your fingers in order to have them in the home position (on qwerty: left-hand fingers on asdf, right hand fingers on jkl;) when you're typing on a keyboard?
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
Unless I curl my fingers, which is awkward.
Curling your fingers to be on the same level as your thumb, like this, is awkward:
This resting position is just right:
Does it help if you twist your keyboard counterclockwise a few degrees?
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
Status: You say "identical". I don't think that means what you think it means...
There are many file formats where this can be completely true. What exactly were you comparing?
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@TimeBandit first I need to replace my soldering tool... #recentlymovedabroad #max50lbcheckedbaggage
You can pay extra for more weight. Or pay for another bag. Or ship it in a box as freight via a shipping company. (The last might be the cheapest option.)
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Wait... don't you have to curl your fingers in order to have them in the home position (on qwerty: left-hand fingers on asdf, right hand fingers on jkl;) when you're typing on a keyboard?
That's why I never do the "return to home row" thing. I just float my hands all around the keyboard when typing. According to my mom, it looks like I'm just pretending to type, especially when I look at her instead of the keyboard.
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@TimeBandit first I need to replace my soldering tool... #recentlymovedabroad #max50lbcheckedbaggage
You can pay extra for more weight.
Would you pay $200 to transport a soldering tool? Because it costs $200 to have a single additional suitcase. And yes, I mean US dollars.
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Right now I use the SMS version of their 2FA
The app is actually more secure. There are malwares that can read your SMS so doing phishing on people with SMS-based 2FA is somewhat plausible. It is harder to create a malicious receiver for the app.
No need for malware. There are various ways to take over a phone number - one would be to get someone in a phone shop to do that (happened over here - there was a story last month about a guy who lost access to his Amazon business account. He got one message that his number was being ported and then it was "lights out" for several weeks before Amazon deigned to react). Another possibility is setting up an actual telco and then abusing the not-so-secure routing system which seems to work on an honor system. You simply tell the system: "That number? It's currently in Abu Dhabi so route everything to that endpoint!"
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@Gąska That's why I listed
several3 options, and noted that the last one (shipping a small box) was probably the cheapest.
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@djls45 all of these options are many times more expensive than buying the damn thing at a local hardware store. I just didn't get around to that yet because I never needed it (and still don't - the replacement charger only costs 10 bucks).
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@BernieTheBernie said in WTF Bites:
Currently I am struggling with a Powershell WTF: scripts expect parameters to come in a specific order. I.e.
powershell .\StupidScript.ps1 -param1 "Blah" -param2 "Extra"Now imagine
param1is a filename,param2isn't. In a command window, I can use thetabkey to navigate between file names, that's appropriate for preventing tyops. But then, I have to manually type-param2 "Extra"again...Ah, you're not in the powershell shell proper, just invoking it.
If you actually start in powershell, tab completion should be working for all parameters regardless.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
Status: You say "identical". I don't think that means what you think it means...
There are many file formats where this can be completely true. What exactly were you comparing?
The output of the function from this post: @Tsaukpaetra said in Programming Confessions Thread:
This is reasonable, right?
as compared to the apparent equivalent from a PHP re-packer thing I made that uses a JSON-based descriptor to run php's
packandunpackfunctions.It seems the one made from the Arduino has an extra
FEFEat the end. I think symptom of a virus.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
It seems the one made from the Arduino has an extra
FEFEat the end. I think symptom of a virus.Inspecting the data more, it seems there are some arbitrary
FEbytes elsewhere, but only sometimes?
I have to wonder if it's some kind of alignment thing and it just so happens thatFEwas the "memory uninitialized" value...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
Status: You say "identical". I don't think that means what you think it means...
There are many file formats where this can be completely true. What exactly were you comparing?
The output of the function from this post: @Tsaukpaetra said in Programming Confessions Thread:
This is reasonable, right?
as compared to the apparent equivalent from a PHP re-packer thing I made that uses a JSON-based descriptor to run php's
packandunpackfunctions.It seems the one made from the Arduino has an extra
FEFEat the end. I think symptom of a virus.I shouldn't have asked.
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You can say that again! I turned off a bunch of that stuff to try to stop my Pixel 3a (with Android 10) from killing my podcast player while it was playing, sometimes immediately after I'd interacted with it. The phone still killed it sometimes anyway, but it happened less. Never happened on my previous phone; the notification would sit there for days unless I closed it and battery life didn't seem to change either way.
That happens to me too. Not while a podcast episode is playing (it can't), but at the end of an episode it had to be about 50/50 whether it'd go on to play the next episode or if Android would nuke the app in that fraction of a second.
And I have battery optimizations turned off for my podcast app; as you said, it still happens but less often. I keep meaning to see what's going on in logcat. I'll hardcode the name of the app in my Android build to stop it if I have to. My battery life is about 45 hours. It doesn't need this kind of babying.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
It seems the one made from the Arduino has an extra
FEFEat the end. I think symptom of a virus.C07FEFE?
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
It seems the one made from the Arduino has an extra
FEFEat the end. I think symptom of a virus.C07FEFE?
Yus.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
the "memory uninitialized" value...
I find this explanation likely, based off of sifting through some C++ tutorials about the matter.
Status: Reading and writing type 14 config files is now working, and I can adjust the values at will using the HTTP PATCH request type.
What's amusing to me is that you can actually disable network updates after first load by setting the appropriate config variable in the server's version, so the card reader will connect, download the config that tells it never to update, and save that to itself.
I am genius.What's even more genius is that due to how my little system works, I can do some magic with a "public" server, which geo-IPs a config that matches the local server, which then provisions a config for the actual device it's supposed to be attached to, and so even in a "factory reset" situation can quickly restore its configuration, so long as a network connection is available...
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Covid-19 news: Moderna’s omicron booster has promising immune response
A regular round-up of the latest coronavirus news, plus insight, features and interviews from New Scientist about the covid-19 pandemic
"Excel error" being:
- thinking that Excel is a proper tool for the job, and
- using one column per case (guess what happens when you reach 16,384)
