The Official Status Thread
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@TimeBandit said in The Official Status Thread:
@dcon said in The Official Status Thread:
Our customers are our beta testers.
You work for Microsoft?
Nah. We compete with them.
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@dcon: then you're doing things properly.
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status: noticed the thing.
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Status: Yesterday was fun. It started with IT completely fucking networking for the whole of WTF-U, campus-wide, by introducing some sort of packet looping between the firewall servers (I believe they were trying to configure failover, but instead enabled overfail). Fortunately, they rolled it back after a short time and only ended up with half of everyone screaming blue murder. I only caught the tail end of it and didn't have time to get more than mildly irritated; I guess there's sometimes a benefit to my train being delayed.
On the plus side, I got my code for booting our hardware working. Given that doing this involved a horrible horrible protocol in mixed-endianness and was a bit timing sensitive too, that I only needed to spend an hour with wireshark is something of a miracle. Now that it works, I propose to never touch that code again! Far too much weird byte flipping was required; unlike all the code on top, which is all at least just one endianness, the people who baked the boot code into ROM made some odd choices that mean that the OS binary has to be byte-swapped several times (since the loader also has to patch a few bits and pieces in the process, oh yes) in order to make all the bits and pieces work right. Ugh. But it works and that means I can forget the details ASAP as the code will remember it for me.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
status: noticed the thing.
Did the cat try to catch it?
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@dkf: Why are you designing bleeding-edge new hardware that already has as many crutches as 50 years of legacy?
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Status: Yesterday there was a small power hiccup in the city, noticed it by the light flickering and the heater "rebooting" (There's an audible sound when it lights the flame). Lasted less than a second, I think.
This morning at work there's broadcast messages:
Broadcast message from whatever@redacted (Tue Oct 30 20:04:16 2018): UPS UPS_something@redacted on battery Broadcast message from whatever@redacted (Tue Oct 30 20:05:31 2018): UPS UPS_something@redacted on line power
Wondering if it kept it on battery for that long on purpose, just to make sure.
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@dkf said in The Official Status Thread:
I believe they were trying to configure failover, but instead enabled overfail
I'm stealing this. I expect I will have use for it soon
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Happy Gwendolyn everyone.
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@topspin said in The Official Status Thread:
Why are you designing bleeding-edge new hardware that already has as many crutches as 50 years of legacy?
The next generation of the hardware won't have so many crutches, but the boot ROM for the current hardware was baked the best part of 10 years ago so we're stuck with those bad decisions as the chaos from having different bits of hardware booting in different ways would be worse. (Some smartass hardware designer apparently thought “everything coming off the network is network-endian, so we'll byteswap everything in the boot loader to be helpful”.)
The reason we won't have this problem next time? The “boot ROM” will be flash and will be removable too.
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Status: We've got a critical top-priority JIRA ticket that the calculations we make in our code are all wrong and we must fix it ASAP - in a few hours at the latest. What the correct calculations look like? They're still in the process of figuring it out.
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@Gąska said in The Official Status Thread:
We've got a critical top-priority JIRA ticket that the calculations we make in our code are all wrong and we must fix it ASAP - in a few hours at the latest. What the correct calculations look like? They're still in the process of figuring it out.
Hopefully this won't bug you for more than a few weeks. If you're unlucky and the numerics are something subtle, this could take years to hunt down. Bugs in numeric code can be awful to diagnose, especially when those bugs are losses in accuracy and/or cumulative errors.
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@dkf we know exactly where the bug is. We just don't* know what the fix should do.
* At least didn't at the time. We've got it all figured out since my last post.
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@dkf said in The Official Status Thread:
But it works and that means I can forget the details ASAP as the code will remember it for me.
I've written code like that... Thunking from Win32 to Win16 to make use of the modem (COM) interface. Ah, Win32s... I do not miss you.
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Status: Trying to enjoy breakfast. Every time someone passes in front of one of the Halloween decorations, they start playing music and making noise. Wouldn't hate it normally, but the creepy organ music does sort of conflict with the pop music being played at the same time, and hearing both together is immensely distracting. I get to leave when I finish breakfast. The staff have to listen to that all day, poor fuckers.
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Status: holy shit, I just got a really great idea for a WTDWTF/NodeBB userscript.
It might be pretty involved, though...
We'll see.
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@topspin said in The Official Status Thread:
Wondering if it kept it on battery for that long on purpose, just to make sure.
Absolutely, it's generally called something like anti-cycling protection. It waits until it decides the line supply is stable again.
Some faults can have sporadic, but quick, drops in line voltage (underground cable faults, tree branches moving against overhead lines). UPSes have a considerable 'transfer time' when moving between line and battery, so as well as being hard on the UPS itself transfers can be hard on the power supplies in the protected hardware too.
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status Apple. sigh.
: Installing Software Update: About a minute
For the last 30 minutes. It's maybe 10% according to the progress bar. Even Microsoft does progress better! (Guess I leave it to chug along by itself... off to work now)
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Status: Finished the first two chapters of RiME. I can't believe I haven't heard more about this game; it's great. Light puzzling, gorgeous graphics, plenty of secrets, and all without words. It's also a software developer's dream - if something isn't working, yell at it, and it'll probably work.
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Status: Slightly disappointed the itsy bitsy spider on the right doesn't do
xeyes
. I mean, the linux binary is only 22K, I'm sure a JS hack couldn't be more than a few megabytes.Paging @ben_lubar, there's still time for this.
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@topspin said in The Official Status Thread:
Paging @ben_lubar, there's still time for this.
Next year, in WTDWTF…
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@topspin said in The Official Status Thread:
This morning at work there's broadcast messages:
Whoa, you use those UNIX broadcast messages in real life? This is the first time I see it!
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@dcon said in The Official Status Thread:
status Apple. sigh.
: Installing Software Update: About a minute
For the last 30 minutes. It's maybe 10% according to the progress bar. Even Microsoft does progress better! (Guess I leave it to chug along by itself... off to work now)Got home. Still at 1 minute. Progress hasn't changed. Hmm. Hard boot.
Let's see if it works this time... (same updates are still available)
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Status: Lack of thorough testing has caused that the special event is easily exploitable.
And is apparently unable to be completed (based on words just overheard).
Good jorb...
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Status: Oh shit, the dropdown for whether to publish to prod or dev accidentally reset itself to prod.
Looks like we're migrating away from claims-drive authentication now!
Filed under: Paging @Weng
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I bought a thing on Aliexpress 3 days ago that said "5 day delivery guaranteed". I didn't notice it also said "(up to) 5 days handling". So actually it hasn't even been SENT yet
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At least that's the claim. Why would it take a dedicated seller 5 days to send something? I have this theory: maybe they add extra "handling" days, then send it immediately through a slower, cheaper carrier, so the end result is the same. This would mean that smart customers could cancel the purchase in the middle of that, get an automatic refund, and still receive the item.
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@dcon said in The Official Status Thread:
@dcon said in The Official Status Thread:
status Apple. sigh.
: Installing Software Update: About a minute
For the last 30 minutes. It's maybe 10% according to the progress bar. Even Microsoft does progress better! (Guess I leave it to chug along by itself... off to work now)Got home. Still at 1 minute. Progress hasn't changed. Hmm. Hard boot.
Let's see if it works this time... (same updates are still available)Looks good. Except xcode is still installing this morning...
Looks at power settings
Well fuck. When did the go-to-sleep setting get set when plugged in? No wonder the install never finished. (finishing now)
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Status: The iPhone's pictures app just gave me a "suggestion for sharing" for yesterday's pictures. Not sure if that implies I look even worse on days that are not Halloween.
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@anonymous234 I recently bought something that was supposed to arrive within 3-14 business days. That time frame placed arrival on a Monday at the latest... the private third-party seller shipped it the Saturday before it should've arrived. Needless to say, it didn't arrive on time. Complained to the site where I made the order, and they just gave me a "occasionally may take up to (some larger number) business days, please let us know if it hasn't arrived by then" canned response. There's no way to directly leave feedback about the seller (although the site does guarantee the purchase), so I just hope that my complaint was noted and that they might actually do something if that seller routinely takes forever to ship stuff.
I can see the tracking information. I know it's not just taking a long time in transit. Don't try to give me that. I think the total transit time was 18 or 19 business days, but most of that was waiting for the seller to actually drop it in the mail.
For extra fun, the shipping manifest said in the seller's directions that they're supposed to mail it within 3 business days.
Also, not that I'm complaining about it too much, but a little coupon code or something extra like that would've been a nice way to apologize for the extra wait.
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@anotherusername said in The Official Status Thread:
Also, not that I'm complaining about it too much, but a little coupon code or something extra like that would've been a nice way to apologize for the extra wait.
The only possible response at this point is to send @Polygeekery to burn down their offices!
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@izzion I'm nowhere near "burn down the eBay headquarters" level of annoyed by this. More like "leave a flaming bag of dog poop on the seller's porch and ring their doorbell" level.
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@anotherusername
Stick aflag on the bag of poo and claim it's my house and watch @Polygeekery light it immediately
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@Luhmann said in The Official Status Thread:
Stick a
flag on the bag of poo
How dare you suggest defacing a bag of poo like that! Apologize to the poo.
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@anotherusername said in The Official Status Thread:
@Luhmann said in The Official Status Thread:
Stick a
flag on the bag of poo
How dare you suggest defacing a bag of poo like that! Apologize to the
poo.little shit!FTFY.
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Status: Just noticed that the Front Page article for 10/30/18 has been removed...
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@TimeBandit said in The Official Status Thread:
@Tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
Front Page
What's that?
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@izzion said in The Official Status Thread:
@anotherusername said in The Official Status Thread:
Also, not that I'm complaining about it too much, but a little coupon code or something extra like that would've been a nice way to apologize for the extra wait.
The only possible response at this point is to send @Polygeekery to burn down their offices!
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@loopback0 That's FrontPage 97, though. He was talking about the one from 10/30/18.
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@anotherusername But that one's missing.
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@mott555 said in The Official Status Thread:
@anotherusername But that one's missing.
Obviously. There aren't 30 months in 2018.
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status: hi there!
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Status: got some miscellaneous illness, I don't know what. My knuckles ache, my muscles are drained, and my head's not working. I've got the other half of an essay due in an hour and a half, and then I've got to show up for lab tomorrow. So this is fun.
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STATUS Slightly disconcerted by gmail's auto complete.
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@DogsB Gmail web interface? That's different
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@loopback0 Oh! It's just on my work one and not my personal one. It also encourages me to say please and thank you. :O
I'm calling it now. William Hertling has right. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006ACIMQQ
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Status: Last day on this contract. Project is mostly complete (last deploy needs to happen still), but I'm waiting for the guy I'm handing off to to become available so he can run the deploy. MOAR WTDWTF!!!!
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@DogsB said in The Official Status Thread:
STATUS Slightly disconcerted by gmail's auto complete.
My work email has that crap now. I'm just waiting for fireworks when I accidentally click the "No, I won't do that" autosuggestion in response to orders from my boss.
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@pie_flavor said in The Official Status Thread:
Status: got some miscellaneous illness, I don't know what.
It's called "Discourse-Fan"
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@TimeBandit said in The Official Status Thread:
@pie_flavor said in The Official Status Thread:
Status: got some miscellaneous illness, I don't know what.
It's called "Discourse-Fan"
?