The minor rants thread.
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Because it always puts [10] topics there.
Yes, but why not 10 of the topics in the last [relatively recent time]?
When I say 'old topics' I don't mean 'unread' or 'not new', I mean old. If you have a suggested topics function and it's putting a decade-old topic there for any other reason than that there have been fewer than 10 topics active in the last decade, you're doing it wrong.
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Yes, but why not 10 of the topics in the last [relatively recent time]?
Because
- you've probably read them anyway, and
- Jeff secretly wants people to see the "Are you sure you want to revive this topic" toaster?
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there have been fewer than 10 topics active in the last decade
If there are less than 10 topics in the forum, it adds read-only threads from other forums.
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The worst part is, while I'm sure you made that up... I wouldn't be too surprised to find out that it's true.
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Jeff secretly wants people to see the "Are you sure you want to revive this topic" toaster?
That's what get's me about the suggestions.Discourse: Here, take a look at this thread... maybe it'll be interesting!
Me: OK, sure. Hey, I have something to say. Click reply.
Discourse: WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS IS AN OLD THREAD
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Discourse: WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS IS AN OLD THREAD
At this point, who cares. If Discourse made it a trending topic, then it doesn't matter if you necro it.
Honestly, the only reason why necroing is bad, is because people make a stupid assumption about the context being the same.
Is that as bad as a forum with 3000 threads about a topic because it keeps coming back.
I'm glad we have threads that are universal and we re-use them.
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Glad to see discourse is OO compliant
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The last word in your sentence is invalid, as it exists within the same sentence as your fourth word.
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Counter-example:
Discourse is BOFH-compliant.
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Simon would never stand for this. Jeff would have found himself on the wrong side of a hermetically sealed safe, the bottom of an elevator shaft or at the very least an overpowered cattle prod by now.
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Simon would never stand for this. Jeff would have found himself on the wrong side of a hermetically sealed safe, the bottom of an elevator shaft or at the very least an overpowered cattle prod by now.
True, but unfortunately Simon isn't one of the users; he's in charge of the software design.
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Was reading an article with a transcript of a radio show.
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it mat contain errors:
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for the record, i do not work as a transcriptionist.
just to quell any roumours
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I vote that we create a firefox extension which replaces the word 'typo' with 'accalia' and reorders random words throughout any page, rather like the 'Men Kampf' addon. I vote firefox mostly because we'd be staying in the same species.
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HOLY FUCK WINDOWS STOP POPPING UP GOD DAMN DIALOGS THAT STEAL FOCUS WHEN YOU ENCOUNTER A COPY CONFLICT. I JUST WANT TO MULTITASK. LET ME DO IT.
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The FAFSA is the key to financial aid for any US college student. The application process is a potpourri of user-hostile web design and security WTFs, though none of it bad enough to deserve a topic of its own.
The student applying for aid fills out the application, electronically signs it, and submits it. Since most, if not all, of the aid is need-based, some of the information needs to come from the parent, such as parent's income. The income information must come from the parent's Federal income tax return from the previous year; since the student may be completing the application before the parent has filed his/her taxes, the student can just say "Plans to file," and submit a correction when the information is available.
Apparently, no student ever goes to college away from home. The process seems to be designed around the assumption that the parent and student will be sitting next to each other while going through this process.
We'll pick this up at the "filing a correction" step, because that's where I get involved. My kid has an application that needs the information from my tax return. Ideally, this process involves logging into the FAFSA web site, following a link to the IRS, which automatically fills in the information in the FAFSA and redirects back to the FAFSA web site, then submitting the corrected application. This is the Federal government; nothing can be that simple.
FAFSA home page:
Start a New FAFSA or Returning User Login. Simple enough; login.Login page:
Enter your (the student's) FSA ID. Do not log in the the FSA ID if you are not the student.Enter the student's information
Ok, enter student's info: Name, date of birth, other identifying information.
Options for what you want to do with the FAFSA:
Make corrections(and a couple of other irrelevant choices). So far, so good; no
yet.Now it starts to get interesting.
Enter your <abbr title="Federal Student Aid">FSA</abbr> ID and create a Save KeyOk, this is what they just told me not to log in with unless I am the student, so I guess I have to create one of my own.
Create an FSA IDopens a new tab to a different subdomain of ed.gov.
E-mailOk.
Confirm E-mailPaste disabled. Grr. Ok, type it again.
UsernameName is available, ok.
Password
Numbers Uppercase Letters Lowercase Letters Special Characters 8-30 Characters, each with a  that changes color when you've met that strength requirement. Max length is a, but at least it's long enough to stronger than any other password I use. Tell KeePass to generate a 30-char random password that meets the rules; paste it into the form.
Confirm PasswordPaste disabled again.
Type 30-char random string.
Continue
? Special Characters, but only a select list of specific special characters.
Tell KeePass to generate a password using only those special characters. Type another 30-char random string into the paste-disabled confirmation box.Select and answer, not one, not two, but five security questions. First question: Drop-down to select question; pick first choice in the list; provide real answer that I can remember (I'm one of maybe two people still alive that know the answer, so it's reasonably secure). Second question: Drop-down; select second item; has no valid answer for me, so have KeePass generate a random string. Get one it will accept on the second try. Question three: Oops, no drop-down; I have to make up my own question. Think about it for a while, and come up with one that, again, I'm one of two people that know the answer to. Question 4: Also make up my own. People in my own family could guess this, but probably nobody else. Question 5: No choice of question.
Significant date in your life (mm/dd/yyyy)for use when talking to telephone support. What date is significant enoug that I will not only remember the date of the event, but which event I chose? Ok, picked one. Pretty easy for anybody that knows me well enough to guess, but not much I can do with that kind of question. Submit.Oops. Thinking about the questions took too long. Session timed out.
Start over from the beginning. Back to the first page of the form. Oops, can't do that. Have to back to the FAFSA and click the link there again. Hey, at least this time I already have a username, password, questions and answers chosen, right? So fill in everything again, including typing the 30-char random password. Oops, typo; the password and confirmation don't match. On to challenge questions.Phone call about a job (trying to squeeze a couple of dollars off my rate). Session timed out again.
Hey, I'm starting to get good at typing long, random strings. Finally, submit.Wait for email verification, type the 6-digit number into the box. I now have a shiny, new FSA ID. Back to the FAFSA form.
Follow the link to the IRS web site. (ISTR there was some minor
here, but I don't remember exactly what it was, and I'm not about to start changing the FAFSA again just to repro.) FAFSA updated. Save.Call my kid and tell it to log in, sign and submit the form. (I could have done that myself, but that would have basically been forging kid's signature. Even though kid said it was ok with it, doing that wasn't ok with me.)
It turns out the FSA ID and 30-char random password are not associated with the person accessing the form, but with the application itself. Kid needs ID (my name) and password to access the application. Reading a 30-char password over the phone, while kid on the other end tries to type it takes more than one try to get it right.
Repeat for other kid's FAFSA, with variations. FAFSA submitted without FSA ID. No problem; I've got one sitting right here. Can't use that; it doesn't match the current information in the applications. Create new ID. Try to recreate the one I just created. "I'm sorry, Dave; I'm afraid I can't do that." Username not available. Belgium this; call kid and tell it to log in and create an ID. It does, and reads me the (weaksauce) password. I log in and discover it chose to submit the application with mother's income info instead of mine, so I don't actually have to do anything on its application (except correct an error I noticed; I'm divorced, not dead). Time and effort (mostly) wasted.
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Kid clicked the wrong thing, and set marital status to widowed instead of divorced. Since kid was using Mom's info for the form, presumably Dad (me) was the parent who was dead.
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I also forgot to mention that the FSA ID
was interrupted repeatedly by a modal alert from the other tab warning that the session was about to time out. At least it had the option to keep the session alive for another 15 minutes, unlike the FSA session, which apparently could only be kept alive by submitting the form.
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Username Name is available, ok.
First
right here, asking for a username instead of email.
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Paste disabled
I wonder if you could disable the disabling with F12 dev tools.
Select and answer, not one, not two, but five security questions.
My FSA card's management website asks you for 5 questions. Then, apparently, if you need to reset your password, you have to give it 3 of the 5. Ugh.
I say apparently because I'm not actually sure--as I told the person when I called the 800 number I have no idea what questions I used let alone the answers, not to mention the fact I may have been on a "i hate security questions when I can' pick teh question and they're obviouis enough a person knowing my history could guess them so I used the word 'random' as all the answers" kick.
I'm not about to start changing the FAFSA again just to repro.
Awwww.
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I wonder if you could disable the disabling with F12 dev tools.
I wouldn't be surprised. TBH, I didn't even think of it.I may have been on a "i hate security questions when I can' pick teh question and they're obviouis enough a person knowing my history could guess them so I used the word 'random' as all the answers" kick.
One of my kids tried something like that when creating its FSA ID. Answers must be unique. Answers must be unique. Answers must be at least three characters. Answers may only contain letters, digits and spaces. Create-your-own questions also may only contain letters, digits and spaces; they fail at Jeopardy, because you can't write a proper question with a question mark at the end.@HardwareGeek said:
I'm not about to start changing the FAFSA again just to repro.
Awwww.
I did actually log in as if to correct one kid's FAFSA, but I draw the line at actually making edits. It's too important to risk screwing something up.
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asking for a username instead of email.
They ask for both, and I think you can log in using either.
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you can't write a proper question with a question mark at the end.
State the maiden name of your mother
(Was going to use "State your mother's maiden name", but if you can only have letters, digits and spaces that lets out apostrophes.)
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That is an imperative, not an interrogative.
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That is an imperative, not an interrogative.
If &, #,[1] and ; are allowable characters, you have a workaround.
[1] Note Oxford comma.
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But they're not, so you don't.
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Rant: internet protocols.
Maybe it's just me, but everything seems like a massive clusterfuck in the world of networking. A large pile of layers and layers of workarounds and tunnels and things doing things they're not supposed to do. NATs, firewalls, VPNs, anything to make the simple problem of SENDING DATA FROM ONE COMPUTER TO ANOTHER hard.
Let's just tunnel everything over HTTP on port 80 because apparently that's the only thing that works everywhere.
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RFC 1149
edit: somewhere I remember seeing someone implementing this over e-mail to circumvent corporate firewall...
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Let's just tunnel everything over HTTP on port 80 because apparently that's the only thing that works everywhere.
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For a minute I read that as HTTP via SMS, and I had a flashback to the pre-iPhone days of AIM via SMS.
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hmm.... well your packet size wouldn't be terribly big, but yeah it's totes possible to write an implementation that does HTTP via SMS
/me thinks about how one would implement that
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Pretty expensive too.
Fuck SMSs and phone calls, that outdated shit has to die.
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expensive
I got unlimited texts and limited data, so it'd be cheaper to do it that way :)
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Rant: Somebody walking their dog cleaned up their dog's poop in one of those plastic bags made for that purpose — Yay!
— then threw the bag in the middle of the street.
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then threw the bag in the middle of the street.
seen those laying around at several occasions. Preferably a few steps away from a garbage bin.
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hmm.... well your packet size wouldn't be terribly big
160 7-bit characters or 70 16-bit unicode characters (not sure if UCS-2 or UTF-16). No idea how sensitive the average carrier is to following the spec, and whether you can just use the 140 bytes.
but yeah it's totes possible to write an implementation that does HTTP via SMS
You will need to include TCP as well, or something else that fill the same purpose.
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You will need to include TCP as well, or something else that fill the same purpose.
It'd be simpler to not run over TCP, or you'd run into big problems with latency. Sticking to a higher-level view of HTTP will work better (and won't be too hard if you don't support CONNECT or WebSockets).
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You do need sequencing and receive acknowledgement, which is probably a large part of the cause of the latency.
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I wish I had a fucking badge.
So do we. That way we wouldn't hear so much about lojban.
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QUIC runs over UDP.
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Enjoy your fucking badge.
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What?! that was long overdue and none of y'all posted quagmire before!
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mi po'edji lo gletu si'irvelne'u
