WTF Bites

Zecc

@Carnage You d my edit

Arantor

So Monday is a bank holiday for the Queen’s funeral. Fair enough.

Businesses are not forced to close, the decision to do so was made quickly and for individual businesses to implement as they see fit. The shortness of notice is inconvenient but whatever, we’ll figure it out.

But then you have Center Parcs. They are a collection of resorts in the UK, accommodation, restaurants. Mini villages with some nature stuff.

I don’t know, I’ve never been, they always seemed for the people who were too post for Butlins but not rich or broad minded enough to go somewhere abroad. ( )

Anyway. They have decided they’re closing for the day. Fair enough that’s their call.

But it’s the manner of it that’s - if it were closing for new arrivals to the accommodation, just for the Monday, fine, inconvenient but fine. Close the restaurants too if you must, other food options exist.

But no, that’s not what they’re doing. The entire venues are closing - that means you have to vacate your accommodation for 24 hours. Even if you had a Friday to Friday stay booked, you must leave your accommodation for that 24 hours. You can leave your luggage there, though, that’s fine. You can then get access to your room again Tuesday morning.

And in case anyone thinks this is a matter of misunderstanding, I give you a tweet exchange between a customer and a customer service rep: https://twitter.com/CenterParcsUK/status/1569666674713923584

loopback0

@Arantor

Applied Mediocrity

@loopback0 said in WTF Bites:

@Arantor

Rhywden

@Arantor said in WTF Bites:

So Monday is a bank holiday for the Queen’s funeral. Fair enough.

Businesses are not forced to close, the decision to do so was made quickly and for individual businesses to implement as they see fit. The shortness of notice is inconvenient but whatever, we’ll figure it out.

But then you have Center Parcs. They are a collection of resorts in the UK, accommodation, restaurants. Mini villages with some nature stuff.

I don’t know, I’ve never been, they always seemed for the people who were too post for Butlins but not rich or broad minded enough to go somewhere abroad. ( )

Anyway. They have decided they’re closing for the day. Fair enough that’s their call.

But it’s the manner of it that’s - if it were closing for new arrivals to the accommodation, just for the Monday, fine, inconvenient but fine. Close the restaurants too if you must, other food options exist.

But no, that’s not what they’re doing. The entire venues are closing - that means you have to vacate your accommodation for 24 hours. Even if you had a Friday to Friday stay booked, you must leave your accommodation for that 24 hours. You can leave your luggage there, though, that’s fine. You can then get access to your room again Tuesday morning.

And in case anyone thinks this is a matter of misunderstanding, I give you a tweet exchange between a customer and a customer service rep: https://twitter.com/CenterParcsUK/status/1569666674713923584

Oh, that's just small fry. There's hospitals and doctors cancelling or postponing procedures over this. For example, someone on chemo had his Covid booster vaccination carefully planned to fall in between rounds of chemo, only for the jokers to cancel the appointment and the next possible date is four weeks away.

Just one example.

Laura Kuenssberg beyond parody on Twitter

boomzilla

@Carnage said in WTF Bites:

@dkf said in WTF Bites:
@Carnage said in WTF Bites:
public static String nullSafe(Object object) {
    return Objects.nonNull(object) ? object.toString() : "empty";
}
Objection sustained. There's Objects.toString(object, "empty") right there...
Oh, that reminds me, when I suggested they use that instead, I was told that was "less clear"...
From the people that think that Objects.nonNull is more clear than != null, but I have to set up special highlighting rules in the IDE to make it pop out as much as != null...

You should introduce them to .

Arantor

@Rhywden yeah, I’ve heard.

But you know it’s bad when a satirist tells you it’s getting too sinister…

Gribnit

@Carnage said in WTF Bites:

I was told that was "less clear"...

You can challenge that, you know. A reasonable response is "how so?"

loopback0

@Arantor said in WTF Bites:

The entire venues are closing - that means you have to vacate your accommodation for 24 hours

In a surprise to no-one who's seen the reaction to this decision, they've done a U-turn.

Arantor

@loopback0 indeed. Probably someone with a brain spoke to the lawyers and found out the shitstorm that would ensue for people not getting what they'd paid for, as well as essentially forcing people out of accommodation for 24 hours.

Tsaukpaetra

@Medinoc said in WTF Bites:

@Carnage Frankly I've done this kind of thing in the past. The only part that really irks me is the name nullSafe (I'd have called the method safeToString instead, and perhaps added a parameter , string defaultString="empty").

Edit: Oh, and on second thought I'd use "null" instead of "empty".

I've made the reverse function: nullIfEmptyOrWhitespace

Carnage

@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:

@Medinoc said in WTF Bites:

@Carnage Frankly I've done this kind of thing in the past. The only part that really irks me is the name nullSafe (I'd have called the method safeToString instead, and perhaps added a parameter , string defaultString="empty").

Edit: Oh, and on second thought I'd use "null" instead of "empty".

I've made the reverse function: nullIfEmptyOrWhitespace

Yeah, that seems common enough that it's probably in an Apache library.

LaoC

@Rhywden said in WTF Bites:

@Arantor said in WTF Bites:

So Monday is a bank holiday for the Queen’s funeral. Fair enough.

Businesses are not forced to close, the decision to do so was made quickly and for individual businesses to implement as they see fit. The shortness of notice is inconvenient but whatever, we’ll figure it out.

But then you have Center Parcs. They are a collection of resorts in the UK, accommodation, restaurants. Mini villages with some nature stuff.

I don’t know, I’ve never been, they always seemed for the people who were too post for Butlins but not rich or broad minded enough to go somewhere abroad. ( )

Anyway. They have decided they’re closing for the day. Fair enough that’s their call.

But it’s the manner of it that’s - if it were closing for new arrivals to the accommodation, just for the Monday, fine, inconvenient but fine. Close the restaurants too if you must, other food options exist.

But no, that’s not what they’re doing. The entire venues are closing - that means you have to vacate your accommodation for 24 hours. Even if you had a Friday to Friday stay booked, you must leave your accommodation for that 24 hours. You can leave your luggage there, though, that’s fine. You can then get access to your room again Tuesday morning.

And in case anyone thinks this is a matter of misunderstanding, I give you a tweet exchange between a customer and a customer service rep: https://twitter.com/CenterParcsUK/status/1569666674713923584

Oh, that's just small fry. There's hospitals and doctors cancelling or postponing procedures over this. For example, someone on chemo had his Covid booster vaccination carefully planned to fall in between rounds of chemo, only for the jokers to cancel the appointment and the next possible date is four weeks away.

Just one example.

Laura Kuenssberg beyond parody on Twitter

The ungrateful bastards should consider themselves lucky they're not going to be entombed alive together with Her Ex-altedness as they should if Bratannia had gotten her withdrawal from the European Court of Human Rights done already.

Medinoc

@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:

I've made the reverse function: nullIfEmptyOrWhitespace

So have I. Very useful when you want to use ?? somewhere down the line.
But the use cases are different: safeToString is for debugging purposes, whereas nullIfEmptyOrWhitespace is for business logic.

Carnage

@Medinoc said in WTF Bites:

safeToString is for debugging purposes

Hah! I wish.

cvi

Empty promises from Microsoft:

HardwareGeek

@Arantor said in WTF Bites:

Probably someone with a brain spoke to the lawyers

That must have been excruciating.

Arantor

@HardwareGeek given the stupid involved, I don’t know if I feel more sorry for thr brain or the lawyers.

HardwareGeek

@Arantor Never feel sorry for the lawyers.

Rhywden

WTF of my day: So, we're running Rocket.Chat at my school and I decided to switch over to Snapd so I don't have to watch the Node.js versions every time I do an update.

Looked easy enough: Install Snapd, install the server and then update the configuration.

Here's where I hit my snag: When I started out, Rocket.Chat demanded that you create a replica set on the MongoDB. Well, a replica set with just one replica didn't make much sense to me so I added two additional MongoDB instances to the original one (on different servers, mind) so that we have an actual replica set. Works well and when one instance keels over, the other two take up the slack seamlessly, just as it should be.

Which means that my connection string now is this:

mongodb://foo:bar@192.168.2.16:27017,192.168.2.14:27017,192.168.2.30:27017/rocketchat?authSource=admin&replicaSet=rs01

Guess what happens if I try to set the connection string using the officially documented method, i.e. snap set rocketchat.server mongo_url=mongodb://foo:bar@192.168.2.16:27017,192.168.2.14:27017,192.168.2.30:27017/rocketchat?authSource=admin&replicaSet=rs01?

Well, first it stumbles over the ampersand but okay, my bad, should have escaped that.

And then it tells me that this is an illegal connection string.

Keep in mind that the current Rocketchat server uses this exact string just fine, MongoDB Compass has no truck with it either and my various C# programs don't think it illegal.

So, what's "illegal" about it? Well, the part where I provide the IP addresses of the servers which are part of the replica set.

So, someone has been overzealous with validating connection strings. Good job! Mandating a replica set while not dealing with someone actually having a real replica set.

(Similarly, they want an oplog url but this works: mongodb://foo:bar@192.168.2.16:27017/oplog whereas this does not: mongodb://foo:bar@192.168.2.16:27017/oplog?authSource=admin - which makes authentication a bit non-working.)

kazitor

Status: struggling with the Matlab installer.

everyone faints from shock

This worthless installer/downloader shits itself if the internet connection drops out even momentarily, which is a semi-regular occurrence in the VM (for whatever reason). Then once that happens, it aborts the entire process and you have to restart the installer from the beginning – password, licence, agree to the terms, pick somewhere for it to go and what you actually want etc. And then it starts downloading everything all over again with zero regard for what made it the first time.

Close doesn’t just close the error dialog, of course, but the entire installer. Woe betide it might provide, I don’t know, a “Retry” option??

If I copy over a bunch of files from a previous successful installation, that refuses to start with cryptic warnings, and at that point all the installer can do is COMPLAIN that the directory’s not empty enough, or with a different combination of files, that it’s already installed – and in either case do nothing useful.

No help to be found elsewhere – the official solutions are to always install from scratch and to magically ensure the internet connection doesn’t hiccup. This is the “MATLAB Answer” linked in that screenshot; note that “perform an offline installation” is barricaded by special licence shenanigans because of course it is. At least Open Sores don’t cripple themselves like this to protect Teh Copywrites.

kazitor

Rubber ducking as a service: While I do indeed not have the appropriate Thetan level to download a complete installer from the website, I can download a complete installer from the installer, after logging in to that. In the past I must have tried the “download for offline use” option straight after starting the first installer, which leaves it greyed out. Only after doing that and agreeing to the licence terms does the installer let you download an installer.

So long story short, I copied the first installer to a machine with a real internet connection, and with that was able to download a complete installer. Even then the first try aborted most of the way through. But after a second, successful attempt, I could copy the installer downloaded by the installer to the VM, and everything worked normally.

I’ve never known downloading a few GB to be so difficult.

Gribnit

@kazitor reminds me of watching a Ghostscript binary download over POTS modem onto a series of 10+ floppy disks. But those were only like 20-odd MB.

Gern_Blaanston

@Gribnit said in WTF Bites:

@kazitor .... But those were only like 20-odd MB.

Well, there's your problem. You also have to use the even megabytes.

HardwareGeek

I've overdrawn my checking account a few times, but never this badly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjOu7D3pWno

Note: The overdraft amount was $99,999,999,999.22. I could understand .99 — minimum value of a decimal type, or something — but .22???

dcon

@HardwareGeek said in WTF Bites:

Note: The overdraft amount was $99,999,999,999.22. I could understand .99 — minimum value of a decimal type, or something — but .22???

Someone used floating point numbers and that was the best it could do?

ixvedeusi

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/gerrit/gerrit_overview.htm said:

Disadvantages of Gerrit:

Reviewing, verifying and resubmitting the code commits slows down the time to market.

So actually trying to make sure your shit makes any kind of sense before slows down the time to market. We really can't have that now can we!

Bulb

@ixvedeusi The sad fact is that rushing shit to market often works.

Economic theories say it shouldn't, but economic theories assume the customers can tell whether the product is shit or not. In case of software it is patently untrue. In fact it is untrue of most products.

Kamil Podlesak

@Bulb said in WTF Bites:

@ixvedeusi The sad fact is that rushing shit to market often works.

Economic theories say it shouldn't, but economic theories assume the customers can tell whether the product is shit or not. In case of software it is patently untrue. In fact it is untrue of most products.

async function isShit(product) {
   return true;
}

Bulb

@Kamil-Podlesak Well, the point is a half year (or sometimes even bigger) delay before it returns.

Arantor

@ixvedeusi said in WTF Bites:

Gerrit - Overview

Gerrit - Overview - Gerrit is a web based code review tool which is integrated with Git and built on top of Git version control system (helps developers to work together and maintain the history of their work). It allows to merge changes to Git repository when you are done with the code reviews.

said:

Disadvantages of Gerrit:

Reviewing, verifying and resubmitting the code commits slows down the time to market.

So actually trying to make sure your shit makes any kind of sense before slows down the time to market. We really can't have that now can we!

Gerrit has a special workflow that involves reviewing each commit at a time and revising each individual commit for changes rather than a pull request with a bunch of things in it.

Great if you have reason to care about perfect commits, pain otherwise. Why would you care about individual commits being perfect? Well, suppose you maintain a repo that is 95% upstream with custom changes and you perform upgrades by way of rebasing your custom changes on upstream, reviewing your changes such that each commit is a “perfect change” does make this rebase/upgrade significantly faster in the long run provided you do actually practice this diligence when developing.

But it’s hard to teach, it’s a really alien workflow to most people and it doesn’t take much to really fuck it up. And it is provably slower, and unlikely to be of help in greenfield dev like you need in the rush to market.

izzion

@Kamil-Podlesak said in WTF Bites:

@Bulb said in WTF Bites:

@ixvedeusi The sad fact is that rushing shit to market often works.

Economic theories say it shouldn't, but economic theories assume the customers can tell whether the product is shit or not. In case of software it is patently untrue. In fact it is untrue of most products.
async function isShit(product) {
   return true;
}

Shirley that function should be a static extension method instead.

Bulb

@izzion JavaScript does not have extension methods.

MrL

@Bulb said in WTF Bites:

@izzion JavaScript does not have extension methods.

That explains pathological braces formatting.

Arantor

@Bulb said in WTF Bites:

@izzion JavaScript does not have extension methods.

Just overwrite the prototype, that’s what all the cool kids do.

dkf

@dcon said in WTF Bites:

@HardwareGeek said in WTF Bites:

Note: The overdraft amount was $99,999,999,999.22. I could understand .99 — minimum value of a decimal type, or something — but .22???

Someone used floating point numbers and that was the best it could do?

My thought that the 99999999999 was a flag to say that the account was disabled, and the 22 was a reason code to say why. Because that was all grafted into a fixed-width numeric field in whatever passes for a DB...

Watson

@Bulb said in WTF Bites:

In case of software it is patently untrue.

Just found a new subject for a paper: using Rice's Theorem to prove the impossibility of determining whether an arbitrary given program is shit.

topspin

@Watson said in WTF Bites:

@Bulb said in WTF Bites:

In case of software it is patently untrue.

Just found a new subject for a paper: using Rice's Theorem to prove the impossibility of determining whether an arbitrary given program is shit.

Rice's theorem does not apply to trivial properties.

MrL

Failed to execute 'postMessage' on 'DOMWindow': The target origin provided ('https://www-preprod.dailywire.com') does not match the recipient window's origin ('https://www.dailywire.com').

Well, at least they have preprod, I guess.

Applied Mediocrity

Hassan Mujtaba / Sep 22, 2022

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series PCIe Gen 5 Power Adapters Have a Limited Connect & Disconnect Life of 30 Cycles

The PCIe Gen 5 12VHPWR connector may have a limited connect & disconnect life cycle on NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards.

The issue regarding the lower life cycles stems from the fact that the PCIe Gen 5 (12VHPWR) cable is extremely fragile to bends and with thermal variances being somewhat of a concern as hinted by PCI-SIG, prolonged use beyond the advertised life cycles may damage the cables permanently.

Yeah, let's just keep using plastic Molex Microfit, but with even smaller pitch than before. What could go wrong? It's just half a kilowatt.

Zerosquare

I guess we can expect more fires in PCs, much to @Polygeekery's delight.

boomzilla

@Applied-Mediocrity said in WTF Bites:

Hassan Mujtaba / Sep 22, 2022

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series PCIe Gen 5 Power Adapters Have a Limited Connect & Disconnect Life of 30 Cycles

The PCIe Gen 5 12VHPWR connector may have a limited connect & disconnect life cycle on NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards.

The issue regarding the lower life cycles stems from the fact that the PCIe Gen 5 (12VHPWR) cable is extremely fragile to bends and with thermal variances being somewhat of a concern as hinted by PCI-SIG, prolonged use beyond the advertised life cycles may damage the cables permanently.

Yeah, let's just keep using plastic Molex Microfit, but with even smaller pitch than before. What could go wrong? It's just half a kilowatt.

This means that the user can, at maximum, connect and disconnect the cable for just 30 times before its "Limited" service life would end.

are people doing that this matters?

Applied Mediocrity

@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:

are people doing that this matters?

Reviewing or diagnosing customer problems on test benches
Using $100 1000W units

cvi

@boomzilla We used to swap around a very high-end GPU between different machines for benchmarks. (E.g., had one very high-end, and the rest at the normal high end and/or previous gen for day-to-day stuff.)

But it's probably not that common. Still sucks, though.

Zecc

@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:

are people doing that this matters?

I hear there are people who clean the insides of their computers.

dcon

@Zecc said in WTF Bites:

@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:

are people doing that this matters?

I hear there are people who clean the insides of their computers.

Some of them even use soap and water!

cvi

@dcon I heard rumors that you can put your GPU into the dishwasher for a thorough cleaning...

Don't do that.

BernieTheBernie

@dkf said in WTF Bites:

the 22 was a reason code to say why

Ah, Catch-22, that's it!

Gribnit

@BernieTheBernie said in WTF Bites:

@dkf said in WTF Bites:

the 22 was a reason code to say why

Ah, Catch-22, that's it!

Best there is.

Benjamin Hall

WTF of my day (or more at this point) Apple and it's undocumented, but very much enforced limits on various things.

Receive more than 2-3 background notifications for an app in an hour? Or less, or more, depending on how it's feeling, with this limit being subject to change without notice? It'll just silently drop any more notifications into the trash for an indefinite period of time.

Try to schedule more than 64 local notifications for a given app? Yeah, no, it will accept them...and overwrite the first ones because it keeps it in some sort of circular buffer. Which means if you schedule in chronological order (soonest first), your soon alarms get overwritten by your later alarms. Note--this was documented for the old local notification framework. They deprecated that and the new framework doesn't say it has this limit. Publicly at least. But absolutely does have the limit. Except the old framework did the sane thing of keeping the soonest alarms instead of the most recently scheduled ones.