WTF Bites
-
Some software I track (don't need it yet, but I could see using it in the future) changed their versioning scheme. It's now
yy.day.month. Didn't Y2K teach them anything? Maybe in 2100, they do the unix thing and the version changes to100.d.m?So a version released on the 31st October 2022 has a lower version numer than a version released on the 1st November?
22.31.10vs22.1.11?
-
@loopback0 said in WTF Bites:
Some software I track (don't need it yet, but I could see using it in the future) changed their versioning scheme. It's now
yy.day.month. Didn't Y2K teach them anything? Maybe in 2100, they do the unix thing and the version changes to100.d.m?So a version released on the 31st October 2022 has a lower version numer than a version released on the 1st November?
22.31.10vs22.1.11?Oops, mistype on my original. It's
y.m.d(Hey! I'm dyslexic!)
-
@loopback0 said in WTF Bites:
Some software I track (don't need it yet, but I could see using it in the future) changed their versioning scheme. It's now
yy.day.month. Didn't Y2K teach them anything? Maybe in 2100, they do the unix thing and the version changes to100.d.m?So a version released on the 31st October 2022 has a lower version numer than a version released on the 1st November?
22.31.10vs22.1.11?Oops, mistype on my original. It's
y.m.dAh. Then as mentioned already, that's a problem so far into the future it's basically not one.
Hey! I'm dyslexic!
Hi Dyslexic
-
@loopback0 said in WTF Bites:
that's a problem so far into the future it's basically not one.
Well, I'll be dead, so it won't be my problem...
-
@loopback0 said in WTF Bites:
that's a problem so far into the future it's basically not one.
Well, I'll be dead, so it won't be my problem...
NMFP. The best sort of problem.
-
@Zerosquare ???. 4, 8, 16, 32, sure, that would make sense.
-
@loopback0 said in WTF Bites:
that's a problem so far into the future it's basically not one.
Well, I'll be dead, so it won't be my problem...
If it's far enough in the future, it can even be your legacy. Whether that means as a piece of amusing trivia or as The World-Ender depends on what you work on.
-
If it's far enough in the future, it can even be your legacy. Whether that means as a piece of amusing trivia or as The World-Ender depends on what you work on.
Nuclear fusion.
-
@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
@LaoC: power strips are fine when you use them properly.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who do things like:
- buy the cheapest & nastiest power strip with loose fitting contacts and flimsy wires
Butbutbut freedom!
- plug it into an old outlet with no grounding, that was meant for lighting and whose circuit is meant to carry a few amps at most
is that these still exist. The last of this kind I saw was the post-war¹ building my mother moved into about 30 years ago that had fabric-insulated 0.75-mm²-or-something wires throughout. Since then I've seen some dodgy shit like a 120V/5500W shower heater on what was probably a 2x1.5mm² cable but "explodes when you plug in a toaster" kind of dodgy is very rare even in shitholistan.¹ WW2, not Vietnam
-
@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
Some software I track (don't need it yet, but I could see using it in the future) changed their versioning scheme. It's now
yy.day.month. Didn't Y2K teach them anything? Maybe in 2100, they do the unix thing and the version changes to100.d.m?Yes, definitely.
is using two digits for the year here.Is it in FORTRAN-77 or C++20?
-
-
Some software I track (don't need it yet, but I could see using it in the future) changed their versioning scheme. It's now
yy.month.day. Didn't Y2K teach them anything? Maybe in 2100, they do the unix thing and the version changes to100.m.d?edit: Corrected date order
It's simple: after
99.,A0follows
Or:0(the lazy variant)
-
Some software I track (don't need it yet, but I could see using it in the future) changed their versioning scheme. It's now
yy.month.day. Didn't Y2K teach them anything? Maybe in 2100, they do the unix thing and the version changes to100.m.d?edit: Corrected date order
Could be worse: they could go with version 0.1, 0.2,..., 0.9, 0.10, 0.11,..., 0.98, 0.99, 0.991, 0.992....
-
- plug it into an old outlet with no grounding, that was meant for lighting and whose circuit is meant to carry a few amps at most
is that these still exist.I think
is that, while those circuits still exist in some old(-ish) buildings, nowadays you can't find a new wall outlet without the grounding pin (which isn't physically needed to connect a plug, as opposed to e.g. the British earthing pin on plugs (which necessarily requires the outlet to have the matching hole)). You can still find plugs without the (hole for the) grounding pin (for devices that aren't grounded), but not the matching outlets (or at least not easily in DIY stores).Which means that if such a circuit has been turned into a not-lighting circuit (which isn't that unusual, in the scale of
that happen in a building's life...) and no ground wire has been added, you still end up with an outlet that looks like it has grounding, and no way to know that it hasn't without taking the outlet apart.
-
@remi I think the electrical code in the UK requires earthing of every socket, and has done for a long time. Even on lighting-only circuits, you've got an earth wire to at least the junction box where you connect the wire to the light (those circuits never have sockets).
The electrical code in the UK is probably over-strict and adds to the cost of wiring homes.
-
Some software I track (don't need it yet, but I could see using it in the future) changed their versioning scheme. It's now
yy.month.day. Didn't Y2K teach them anything? Maybe in 2100, they do the unix thing and the version changes to100.m.d?edit: Corrected date order
They correctly assume that in 2100, their
softwarecompany won't exist anymore.
-
@dkf I think the current French code also says so, but I don't know if it says that every circuit (on which any work is done) must be retro-fitted, and even if it does, I know that many older circuits still don't have any grounding.
In my house, none of the lighting circuits are grounded (which doesn't mean "none of the lighting points" since I'm fairly sure that there are a couple that are on a not-lighting circuit, even though ideally they shouldn't). When we bought the house, the ground floor was grounded, but the upper floor wasn't. We added the grounding upstairs, but the work was done very shoddily and while there is an earth wire in each socket, I wouldn't bet my life on where that wire actually goes. There is one Cthulhu-ian junction box upstairs where I'm pretty sure there are connections between wires of colours that should never be connected together, and I'm not going to try and undo that Gordian knot.
So now, in theory, all circuits are grounded. In theory.
-
@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@boomzilla well, I’ve also never seen anything like that in a private setting, so I had no idea how anyone could manage to fuck things up that badly. (Although admittedly, if you buy cheap Chinesium electronics on eBay/Amazon, you’re gambling on burning things up.)
But I guess it only takes one absolute moron out of hundreds of employees who doesn’t know not to daisy chain 6 devices.Maybe this is partly a consequence of having higher voltages? You guys do that too, right?
I don’t think so. We have higher voltage, but you can overheat power strips by daisy chains with either voltage. You just don’t do that if you’re a normal person. (Like you don’t leave the stove on over night.)
This is a) mostly a myth and b) made less likely by higher voltage.
The risk of overheating a power strip is purely a function of the current you run through it.The power "lost" due to current is directly proportional to the square of the current through the device / wire (P = I² * R)
In effect, doubling the voltage (and thus halving the current) will reduce the power for resistive heating of a wire by 1/4.
-
@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@boomzilla well, I’ve also never seen anything like that in a private setting, so I had no idea how anyone could manage to fuck things up that badly. (Although admittedly, if you buy cheap Chinesium electronics on eBay/Amazon, you’re gambling on burning things up.)
But I guess it only takes one absolute moron out of hundreds of employees who doesn’t know not to daisy chain 6 devices.Maybe this is partly a consequence of having higher voltages? You guys do that too, right?
I don’t think so. We have higher voltage, but you can overheat power strips by daisy chains with either voltage. You just don’t do that if you’re a normal person. (Like you don’t leave the stove on over night.)
This is a) mostly a myth and b) made less likely by higher voltage.
The risk of overheating a power strip is purely a function of the current you run through it.The power "lost" due to current is directly proportional to the square of the current through the device / wire (P = I² * R)
In effect, doubling the voltage (and thus halving the current) will reduce the power for resistive heating of a wire by 1/4.
to ¼ or by ¾
-
You can still find plugs without the (hole for the) grounding pin (for devices that aren't grounded), but not the matching outlets (or at least not easily in DIY stores).
And in both the German and French systems, if you have a grounded socket and an old-style non-grounded plug, they won't fit.
.
-
You can still find plugs without the (hole for the) grounding pin (for devices that aren't grounded), but not the matching outlets (or at least not easily in DIY stores).
I don't know if it's still true, but a few years ago, I did find some in a large DIY store. (I was replacing an old ungrounded outlet only used for ungrounded appliances, and adding a grounding wire would have been a
to 
.)
-
@PleegWat true, though most not-earthed plugs are slimer than the one on your picture, and you can still very easily buy those in DIY stores. They fit in grounded sockets without an issue.
A slightly less common variation (I had to look a bit further in my search result to find a picture) is this one, where the plug ends with a round shape but there's a hole for the grounding pin (even if it does not actually go inside the plug):
TBH, I have only very rarely seen plugs like the one in your picture, and never on recent devices.
-
@remi Indeed, I think the plugs like in my picture fell out of favour when grounding became common.
-
@PleegWat I wonder why...
/ 
-
@remi It's been explained to me that the sockets were designed that way to prevent people thinking devices were safe because they were plugged into a safe socket. This always struck me as strange, because the reverse (earthed device in non-earthed socket) was still possible.
I think it is more likely this was to prevent dangerous non-earthed devices from being used in kitchens and bathrooms, which for a long time were the only rooms in which earthed sockets were mandatory. I also know that there has been a period when having electrical sockets in the bathroom was not allowed at all, and switches had to be very high up. Hence bathroom lights using pullcords.
-
@dkf I think the current French code also says so, but I don't know if it says that every circuit (on which any work is done) must be retro-fitted, and even if it does, I know that many older circuits still don't have any grounding.
In my house, none of the lighting circuits are grounded (which doesn't mean "none of the lighting points" since I'm fairly sure that there are a couple that are on a not-lighting circuit, even though ideally they shouldn't). When we bought the house, the ground floor was grounded, but the upper floor wasn't. We added the grounding upstairs, but the work was done very shoddily and while there is an earth wire in each socket, I wouldn't bet my life on where that wire actually goes. There is one Cthulhu-ian junction box upstairs where I'm pretty sure there are connections between wires of colours that should never be connected together, and I'm not going to try and undo that Gordian knot.
So now, in theory, all circuits are grounded. In theory.
The return and ground are connected in the main breaker box. I think our main line does not even carry a return from out of the house (only three phases), but even if it did, if it wasn't grounded at each house, there could be significant potential between the return and the ground, since the ground potential actually varies quite a bit.
So having the ground pin in the socket connected, to actual ground, isn't a problem—just connect return and ground to the same wire.
What this does not support is leak current protection. That requires separate ground and return to the breaker box, even though they are then still connected, but wiring done before leak current breakers were common don't have that wire.
-
TBH, I have only very rarely seen plugs like the one in your picture, and never on recent devices.
I think they were used a lot until the 1970s, but hardly anymore afterwards. From the late 70s on, it was mostly one of the other types of plug (the thin ones or the round ones with the holes).
-
I think our main line does not even carry a return from out of the house (only three phases)
It must have one. Otherwise, you couldn't use standard electrical appliances, only things like big industrial motors or the like.
So having the ground pin in the socket connected, to actual ground, isn't a problem—just connect return and ground to the same wire.
Don't do that! Ground and neutral (return) should be connected at a single point only (whose location can vary depending on the electrical code you're using). Bridging them together at an outlet is a Bad Idea™ and will interfere with GFCI protection.
-
@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
Bridging them together at an outlet is a Bad Idea™ and will interfere with GFCI protection.
Government Frequency Control Interlock
-
I nearly posted this in the "Unexpected Backfires" thread, but this has a wider audience.
For the past couple of years I have had occasional issues with my YouTube subscription. A few times a year I would get advertisements in my feed, like I would if I did not subscribe to YouTube Prime, or whatever the hell they call it. Nothing too horrible but still annoying considering that I pay specifically so I do not get ads. I would contact support, they would look into it and shortly thereafter it would be resolved. This happened perhaps a half dozen times in two years, if I had to guess. I assumed it was some random error, perhaps a spotty connection causing odd issues, whatever.
So a couple of weeks ago this happened again but it got coupled with advertisements in videos also. Constantly. I check to make sure some payment method had not expired but nope. All was good there but it was as though my subscription had lapsed. At first I thought that it was worse than that. Like, so many fucking ads. Then I fired up YouTube in an incognito window and it was roughly the same. How the absolute fuck does anyone watch YouTube in the app without a subscription???
What was really odd was that I had all the other features of YouTube Premium. Videos would keep playing if I locked my device. I could download videos for playback later. Etc. But just so many fucking ads.
I contacted support several times. They said they would look into it. Kept getting ads. So many fucking ads.
So I looked for other solutions. Hey, turns out that if you use YouTube in Brave Browser it blocks all the ads and you can keep listening while your device is locked. I even preferred the UI of their mobile site versus the app.
So fuck YouTube Premium and their ads every five minutes. A lot of the creators I watch had their monetization pulled so they aren't losing anything so I am pretty sure that I am going to drop YouTube Premium altogether. Fucking hell, YouTube without an ad blocker is just insufferable.
-
@Polygeekery hold out for Premium Plus, with no intermittent ad remissions
-
@Gribnit that seems like something they would do. Base price only gets you a service that mostly works. You have to pay extra for a guaranteed SLA, that isn't actually guaranteed.
-
@Polygeekery hold out for Premium Plus, with no intermittent ad remissions
That reminds me of this:
-
@Gribnit Ground Fault Current Interrupter, also called a Residual Current Detector, sometimes part of a Residual Current Breaker with Overcurrent [p]rotection.
-
@TwelveBaud said in WTF Bites:
@Gribnit Ground Fault Current Interrupter, also called a Residual Current Detector, sometimes part of a Residual Current Breaker with Overcurrent [p]rotection.
You have no power here Grayman. I have the protection of the Elder Sign.
-
@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
Fucking hell, YouTube without an ad blocker is just insufferable.
Yeah it's why I basically never use the YouTube mobile app.
The YouTube TV app isn't as bad - the ads are more tolerable, although one of my TVs is rooted with an adfree version of the app.
-
@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
I think our main line does not even carry a return from out of the house (only three phases)
It must have one. Otherwise, you couldn't use standard electrical appliances, only things like big industrial motors or the like.
Does it? It's three phases line. The returns meet in the middle and are grounded.
… I think you are right though. The returns should be connected to the nearest transformer station, otherwise the phases could carry some additional currents due to the difference between the grounds.
On the other hand, we had network cable on the roof and across a gap to the next house, tied to a support steel cable, and there were significant currents in the support cable from the difference between the grounds—though these were lightning rod grounds and some of the houses have separate ground plates for those.
So having the ground pin in the socket connected, to actual ground, isn't a problem—just connect return and ground to the same wire.
Don't do that! Ground and neutral (return) should be connected at a single point only (whose location can vary depending on the electrical code you're using). Bridging them together at an outlet is a Bad Idea™ and will interfere with GFCI protection.
Too old to have GFCI protection. That was my point. A lot of old wiring around here that has grounding connected, but no GFCI, because that wasn't a thing when it was installed. At least our house has all copper wiring; at the time it was still common to use aluminum wiring.
-
@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
Hey, turns out that if you use YouTube in Brave Browser it blocks all the ads
uBlock Origin in Firefox blocks all adds too. I haven't seen a YT add in years. And not sure about device locked (I don't use YT for audio-only), but I don't think Firefox will let them find out.
-
uBlock Origin in Firefox blocks all adds too. I haven't seen a YT add in years. And not sure about device locked (I don't use YT for audio-only), but I don't think Firefox will let them find out.
I have a Chrome extension for that. I mostly use YT for audio-only, but stop the track before leaving the machine (which is set to only lock when locked explicitly).
-
@Polygeekery Sounds like you were appointed as a volunteer for their "Let's terrorize our users with 10 times the ads to see if it increases premium subscription rates." in error, since, you know, already being premium member.
And yeah. Ad blockers. And tracking blockers. On everywhere, because the ad companies have fucked the poodle too god damn many times now.
I've been considering making a nitter of the tubes of you, since ads seem disabled when embedded in other websites.
-
I've been using NewPipe for Youtube on my phone. It doesn't show ads, and supports playing audio-only in the background, with a notification with standard audio controls. It also supposedly supports a handful of other services, but when I tried Soundcloud it didn't work for me.
-
the ad companies have fucked the poodle
Do you want to show us on this, uh, teddy bear, where the ad companies have touched you?
(inb4: that thread is
)(as for the rest of your post:
)
-
@Polygeekery hold out for Premium Plus, with no intermittent ad remissions
That reminds me of this:
Fucking Hulu. We ended up dropping them after they reneged on Hulu subscriptions not having advertisements. Then they had this two-tiered thing where if you paid more the programming that had advertisements on it even with a paid subscription then wouldn't have ads. IIRC, it was something like if you watched an episode of something within X days of it debuting then it would have limited ads. No. Fuck off. I pay to not have ads and now you are saying that I have to pay more if I don't want ads on this subset of stuff.
They were all going in the right direction for a while where it became more trouble to pirate programming than it did to just pay for it. Now they are going the other way again and people will go back to pirating.
- Prime Video: Basically a sunk cost if you already have Prime, ~$12/month if you do not.
- Hulu: $14-$70(!!!) per month
- Netflix: $10-$20/month
- Disney Plus: $8-$20/month (overlap with Hulu subscriptions here)
- Peacock: $5-$10/month ($10/month to not have ads)
- HBO Max: $10-$15/month ($15/month for no ads)
Starz, Showtime, fuck knows what else I am missing, etc.
They reinvented everything that everyone hated about cable, but with a higher cost. There is no way this in tenable. It quickly becomes death by a thousand cuts.
-
the ad companies have fucked the poodle
Do you want to show us on this, uh, teddy bear, where the ad companies have touched you?
(inb4: that thread is
)(as for the rest of your post:
)The numerous times they have been used as a delivery system for virus, she boggles the mind.
Also, the memories of AltaVista. Or any number of pages that ended up having the main content drowned out with ads.The text only, relevant to searches, ads that google had at the start were the best ads I've ever seen online. Nothing like it can be seen these days, but if ads were like that I wouldn't block it. Obnoxious epilepsy triggers it must be!
At least pop ups, pop unders and pop ins are mostly killed off these days, thanks to browser makers.
-
@Carnage you know, that was just a cheap joke based on how your avatar vaguely looks like a poodle.
But don't let me get in the way of a good rant!
-
@Carnage you know, that was just a cheap joke based on how your avatar vaguely looks like a poodle.
But don't let me get in the way of a good rant!
Aah, well, it's a pomeranian. So way more retarded and inbred than poodles. But a decent joke anyway. :D
-
@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
For the past couple of years I have had occasional issues with my YouTube subscription.
You're the last person I'd have expected to pay for a YouTube subscription.@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
So fuck YouTube Premium and their ads every five minutes. A lot of the creators I watch had their monetization pulled so they aren't losing anything so I am pretty sure that I am going to drop YouTube Premium altogether. Fucking hell, YouTube without an ad blocker is just insufferable.
Ah, that's more like it.
-
@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
You're the last person I'd have expected to pay for a YouTube subscription.
I hate ads and the mobile app used to be pretty good but got incrementally worse over the years. I guess its shittiness was like boiling a frog. Now I got out of the pot and have realized just how shitty it is.
-
@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
How the absolute fuck does anyone watch YouTube in the app without a subscription???
Adblock.
Fucking hell, YouTube without an ad blocker is just insufferable.
Exactly this.
I've been running adblock on the desktop browser since basically forever (15+ years? no idea.). Last year I spent like, the better part of a day figuring out how to root my TV. This opens up a few possibilities for home-brew apps, direct SSH connection and so on, but 95% of the usage I got out of it was just to install a modified youtube app that has ad-block and sponsor-block built in. Because I hate ads.
Unfortunately, while I usually don't give a fuck about tinkering with my phone, one notable disadvantage of not being able to side-load apps on iOS is that I can't install youtube vanced for it. So the youtube app on the phone shows adds and, as you said, it is absolutely insufferable. Want to shit-post a 2 minute a video clip? Well, first you have to watch 30 seconds of ads before you can even find out that the thing you just googled is not what you wanted.
But I recently figured out that you can either run some kind of ad-block plugins within safari (or just install a userscripts app) or use the shortcuts app to run scripts, e.g. this.The easiest solution would probably be if you could build a website that embeds youtube but automatically removes the ads, as if you had a corresponding user script add-on installed. No messing with the client required. But from what I understand, that's doesn't seem possible due to security restrictions on iframes and cross-domain stuff.
-
So having the ground pin in the socket connected, to actual ground, isn't a problem—just connect return and ground to the same wire.
Don't do that! Ground and neutral (return) should be connected at a single point only (whose location can vary depending on the electrical code you're using). Bridging them together at an outlet is a Bad Idea™ and will interfere with GFCI protection.
Too old to have GFCI protection. That was my point. A lot of old wiring around here that has grounding connected, but no GFCI, because that wasn't a thing when it was installed.
It's still bad idea if you don't trust the installation 100%—and as this kind of wiring is usually both ancient and DIY stuff a certified electrician will not touch with a 10-foot teflon pole, you shouldn't. If your neutral wire breaks at some point between the transformer and the outlet and you have a device with a metal case plugged in (which needs to have ground connected to the case), you'll electrify the case. Without the connection, you'd probably get a bit of leakage current on the case but not the full brunt.
