Random Question of the Day
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@Bim-Zively said in Random Question of the Day:
"The administration page is not working" is not a sufficient bug report in my dream world. Especially when the page comes up with no glaring error messages.
Working as expected, innit? Since when does anything labelled "administration" do any actual work?
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@jinpa said in Random Question of the Day:
@izzion said in Random Question of the Day:
Sounds like an exceptional ask
In the past six months or so, I have heard people on my project use "ask" as a noun. I was hoping that was just our own quirk. Has that usage infected the corporate IT world?
Not just in IT afaict. An "ask" is the target of an ask.
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@Gribnit said in Random Question of the Day:
@Bim-Zively said in Random Question of the Day:
@jinpa said in Random Question of the Day:
Is it unreasonable to expect that tickets/stories about bugs/defects include a working example on how to replicate the bug, exceptions not withstanding?
There have been times when I would have been happy just to receive an example of what the supposed problem is.
"The administration page is not working" is not a sufficient bug report in my dream world. Especially when the page comes up with no glaring error messages.
Add a little 3-phase animation of a guy hitting an anvil to the header.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Random Question of the Day:
@Gribnit said in Random Question of the Day:
@Bim-Zively said in Random Question of the Day:
@jinpa said in Random Question of the Day:
Is it unreasonable to expect that tickets/stories about bugs/defects include a working example on how to replicate the bug, exceptions not withstanding?
There have been times when I would have been happy just to receive an example of what the supposed problem is.
"The administration page is not working" is not a sufficient bug report in my dream world. Especially when the page comes up with no glaring error messages.
Add a little 3-phase animation of a guy hitting an anvil to the header.
See? Lookit him work.
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Someone apparently made a few attempts to open an Instagram account with my email address. They were unable to do so, because it would have required me to confirm it.
It is my real email address, one that I never intentionally give out. (I use a disposable email address forwarding service.) However, it is relatively simple (an unusual first name with a neither-famous-nor-totally-obscure domain), so there a couple of possibilities for how someone could have come up with it.
What I'm trying to figure out is what the advantage would be of using someone else's email address? At first I was thinking that someone was trying to impersonate me, but there would no need for them to use my email address for that.
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@jinpa is it conceivable that someone legitimately thinks that it’s theirs?
It doesn’t happen to me but to someone else I know, they have the equivalent of arantor@gmail.com as early adopter, and someone else whose first name is Arantor (run with the metaphor) is convinced that arantor@gmail.com is theirs as a result.
The amount of bills ahd quite personally identifying info there is staggering and the other person won’t be told that, actually, not your email address.
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@Arantor It's possible, but then it seems like I would have gotten a wider variety (such as personal) of emails as well, and I haven't. This has happened on my gmail account with a different rare but real life single name.
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@jinpa it only one special individual to be convinced of it.
Either that or it’s a weird phishing attempt somehow?
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@Arantor said in Random Question of the Day:
@jinpa is it conceivable that someone legitimately thinks that it’s theirs?
It doesn’t happen to me but to someone else I know, they have the equivalent of arantor@gmail.com as early adopter, and someone else whose first name is Arantor (run with the metaphor) is convinced that arantor@gmail.com is theirs as a result.
The amount of bills ahd quite personally identifying info there is staggering and the other person won’t be told that, actually, not your email address.
Same here. I used to get a ton of emails from Netflix warning me "my" account was about to be cancelled. Unfortunately I think they've renewed it, because I'm getting viewing suggestions again.
I could reset their password and steal their account, but I'm not evil.
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@Zecc Try contacting them on their e-mail address
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@jinpa said in Random Question of the Day:
@Arantor It's possible, but then it seems like I would have gotten a wider variety (such as personal) of emails as well, and I haven't.
Maybe they somehow typo'ed their address?
On (one of) my gmail address(es), I sometimes get mail for someone who shares my name, but only from one bank. I assume that when they opened an account on that bank, they gave the wrong email, and since they have the same name as I do but I don't get any other mail for them, I further assume that their correct email is something like
my-name.2@gmail.comand that they forgot the.2part that one time.There are still quite a few organisations here that will ask you to fill in a paper form, including your email address, so it's also quite possible that the typo'ing happened when the bank employee copied what was written (possibly in bad hand-writing) in the form.
I notified the bank a couple of times (especially after I got an email with an attachement that contained some financial information!) and now I only get some of their spam, no personal information, so I assume the person fixed their email in the real database but the wrong one (mine!) still lives in their marketing database.
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@remi said in Random Question of the Day:
so I assume the person fixed their email in the real database but the wrong one (mine!) still lives in their marketing database.
All according to kekaiku
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@izzion well, if their plan is to have me avoid that specific bank as the plague because of how badly they handle sensitive client's data (*), yeah, I guess it's working.
(*) not really because of the first email, I can understand an error happening once, but the fact that it hasn't been fixed until at least a year (IIRC) and several emails from my part, and that even now it's not properly fixed really, really doesn't feel me with confidence.
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Totally unrelated: if someone shares the exact same name (first + last) with someone else, and knows a couple of tidbits of personal information and the bank they have an account in (but not the exact account number, I think), is that enough to empty that account?
It's just, uh, a Random Question, I'm, errr... just asking for a friend...
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@remi you’d hope not. Reality? Probably.
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@Arantor said in Random Question of the Day:
@jinpa is it conceivable that someone legitimately thinks that it’s theirs?
It doesn’t happen to me but to someone else I know, they have the equivalent of arantor@gmail.com as early adopter, and someone else whose first name is Arantor (run with the metaphor) is convinced that arantor@gmail.com is theirs as a result.
The amount of bills ahd quite personally identifying info there is staggering and the other person won’t be told that, actually, not your email address.
That happened to me ... about 25 years ago!
I had an address at t-online, in the form firstname.lastname@t-online.de. And suddenly I received some emails from a guy whom I did not know. Some from his university email address to "his" private email address, some business emails, with real life address and telephone number on them, so I could contact that guy with my Firstname Lastname living in Stuttgart...
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@BernieTheBernie did you?
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@remi said in Random Question of the Day:
Totally unrelated: if someone shares the exact same name (first + last) with someone else, and knows a couple of tidbits of personal information and the bank they have an account in (but not the exact account number, I think), is that enough to empty that account?
In the US, yes and that's the LEAST destructive thing you could do with their life if you had that. SSN is short for Social Security Number, it's issued by Social Security Administration that does retirement pensions and a few other important things - that should give you a few ideas.
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@Gustav I don't think
Ithe hypothetical person I was talking about know their SSN, and besides in
, for all our bureaucratic 
, there are less side-effects of the equivalent of the SSN (*).That number does identify you in a number of institutions like social security (wow, a social security number is used for social security!
) or retirement, but I don't think you could do much wrong if you just knew that number (and name). On top of my head, I think the worst you could do is get your heath care paid by that account, but since the way our health care works there is no specific ceiling for most things, it wouldn't really affect the true owner.(*) which would be the INSEE number, although IIRC
it's a different number that just happens to have the same digits in 99.9% of cases.
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@remi In Poland, we have PESEL, which serves the same purpose as SSN except it's actually meant to do so. The one thing that makes it infinitely more secure is that it's actually printed on the standard ID card/driver's license. It's not enough to just know it and have an ID with matching name, you actually have to have an ID with both that name and that PESEL. In the US, the ID doesn't have SSN (because it cannot have it because powers of states or some other constitutional bullshit). 99% of the time they just take your word for it, the other 1% they ask for Social Security Card which is laughably easy to forge and contains literally just name and number, no other info.
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@Gustav In
SSN isn't printed on IDs either, on the basis that the right hand of the state (the interior ministry, handling IDs) has no business knowing what its left hand (the social security) is doing. Which looked, and looks, a bit 
(and probably historically the result of a lot of administrative , infighting and 
) but then again with what we're seeing e.g. in 
(but also elsewhere, such as the 
and what can happen with an SSN!), it's probably a good thing overall.But that's besides the point, as I don't really think there are many occasions you will be asked to prove your SSN. You will be asked for it on various forms, but it's just one more key to identifying you (like, I don't know, your snail mail address or the like). It's not used as a highly valuable thing that has power by itself. So knowing someone's else SSN won't really get you very far.
I think you can probably do more harm in
if you can get a copy of a birth certificate (and have the same name as the person on it, of course). From there you can probably get a legit but fake ID and properly impersonate them. Since birth/death registers are public, the only barrier here is knowing the local authority where they were born, since this is where the records are (or at least, only that authority that can issue a birth certificate, I'm hoping that nowadays the actual records are in some sort of central computer system!).
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@Gustav said in Random Question of the Day:
@BernieTheBernie did you?
Yes, I phoned that guy up. He was rather confused, and did not really understand how to setup an email address at t-online. At that time, your email was automatically a long number:
300284635454681323@t-online.dewith the number assigned by t-online to you. You could then some where setup your "email alias" however you liked. But when you only told your email program what your email alias should look like, and not t-online, it did not work...
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What online computer hardware supply sites have you had good luck with?
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@jinpa said in Random Question of the Day:
What online hardware supply sites have you had good luck with?
build.com has lots of hard to find parts, like sugatsune stuff for sliding doors and architectural panels.
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@Captain I figured I'd get a pedant or two on that one. Clarified question in post.
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@jinpa said in Random Question of the Day:
have you had good luck with?
Newegg.
I goat.
B&H is usually fairly good if you're not wanting the dross of Amazon and eBay.
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In English, what the longest adjective that has comparative/superlative forms in "-er/-est" and the shortest that has comparative/superlative forms in "more/most?"
Or: what is the most short expansiver adjective and the most long compacter one?
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@remi
antidisestablishmentarian(er/est), I suppose.Almostandutmostappear to (be derived from archaics that) fit the other bill.Now surrender the Rhineland!
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@remi said in Random Question of the Day:
the shortest that has comparative/superlative forms in "more/most?"
much/manyobviously.
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@remi Honestliest? Here on WDTWTF, you'll likely find a more gooder idea, but you cannot be sure if it is the most goodest idea.
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@BernieTheBernie said in Random Question of the Day:
you cannot be sure if it is the most goodest idea.
I can. And for the small price of believing me, so can you.
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@remi said in Random Question of the Day:
In English, what the longest adjective that has comparative/superlative forms in "-er/-est"
The longest I can find with a quick search is
bloodthirstiest. I don't know how good the dictionary is that I was searching.
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About 30.
I hope you find this useful.
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But did I?
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Random Question of the Day:
But did I?
Almost certainly not. But, I did hope that you would, so, that counts for something.
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If I exceed the health points value of an automatically generating enemy per strike, will the apparent kill rate be able to exceed the apparent kill rate on screen due to rounding errors?
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@Tsaukpaetra have you been visited by the ghost of @Gribnit past?
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@topspin said in Random Question of the Day:
@Tsaukpaetra have you been visited by the ghost of @Gribnit past?
My mental facilities have been negatively impacted by recent resource redirections elsewhere, it is possible an unanticipated error error error error
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@Tsaukpaetra Perchance.
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I was watching this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p21xT8_DV00
And I wondered if there was such a thing as an inverse-continuously-variable-transmission device which would be able to keep a particular RPM (mostly) regardless of the input.
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@Tsaukpaetra put a very big flywheel between input sheet output?
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Random Question of the Day:
@Tsaukpaetra put a very big flywheel between input sheet output?
That helps with rapid velocity changes, but not really so much with the actual speed regulation.
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@HardwareGeek said in Random Question of the Day:
Neat! Sadly, I don't think our intrepid Marble Machinist would be up to the task of building that.
Should have known it would have such an obvious name, but
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@HardwareGeek said in Random Question of the Day:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Random Question of the Day:
Marble Machinist
Wintergatan?
Yes, as seen in the youtube video linked in my random question.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Random Question of the Day:
as seen in the youtube video linked
Also, I have a firm policy of never watching any videos you post, because weird.
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@HardwareGeek said in Random Question of the Day:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Random Question of the Day:
as seen in the youtube video linked
Also, I have a firm policy of never watching any videos you post, because weird.
Only 23 percent of the time, and only in certain topics!
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Random Question of the Day:
Only 23 percent of the time
That's how many you think are weird. Other people have different standards.
Constant speed drive - Wikipedia
