WTF Bites


  • area_can

    Why is it so hard to right click with a Magic mouse??


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @bb36e said in WTF Bites:

    Why is it so hard to right click with a Magic mouse??

    Because it's magic! And magic is hard.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    I'm trying to install the GitHub desktop app, and currently their desktop app webpage is showing, almost exclusively, their desktop beta for their new Atom-based desktop application. So I tried to install that and ran into a problem. Two problems, actually, because they have two different windows installers for it.

    The first, the one the big purple dildo links to, executes what I'm guessing is a fork loop - it keeps regenerating a new process with the same name and a new PID, replacing the previous one. And it does it so fast that it can't be killed from Task Manager - I had to use StopProcess -processname GitHub* in PowerShell to kill it.

    The second one, in the plaintext purple link underneath the big purple thing, is an MSI, which elevates and then quits without warning or notice.

    Fortunately, hidden at the very bottom of the page is the link to the "old" version. Hopefully that will work.



  • So normally I used to update my YouTube videos in mass by hand, but I now have 1500+ videos making it a waste of time to do it by hand. Instead I'm using Google Apps Script and the YouTube Data API to update my videos with scripts I write myself. I'm trying to avoid the XKCD-1319 trap, but Google isn't making it easy.

    I only need to do simple things like insert strings of text between other strings of text in video descriptions, which isn't possible to do in mass with the YouTube video manager (it only lets you mass append and mass overwrite). It's possible to do this with the YouTube Data API of course, but the design makes it an utter chore. In order to do that you have to:

    1. List all your uploads (or a playlist of videos you want to update) or use the search API with a flag set to only include your own videos in the search.
    2. Implement pagination logic because you can only get a maximum of 50 results at a time, which at first seems fair enough, but you can't request to only get back video ID and video title - you have to take the whole snippet including other irrelevant data such as descriptions and thumbnail URLs, which makes each page of 50 videos take more bandwidth than just requesting ID and title of 100+ videos at a time. Waste of bandwidth and API calls.
    3. Download the same data again because when listing the videos you get video title and description but not the tags which are required at a later step. In order to get the video tags (and other required info) you have to use a different API that ALSO gives you the title and description alongside the tags. Why couldn't I get the tags when listing? Why was I forced to get the description when listing if I was just going to get the description again later? Waste of bandwidth and API calls.
    4. Construct an object with replacement data - you MUST specify the new title, new description, new category, new language, and new tags - if you don't provide a field, YouTube just deletes the data outright instead of, you know, leaving the data untouched like a normal person. There is NO WAY to JUST update the description - you HAVE to provide everything else, too, and as mentioned in step 3, you need to make multiple API calls to get all the required information, increasing the complexity of your script. Waste of bandwidth and API calls.

    Basically, the issue is that the YouTube Data API has granularity issues. You can't get specific information without other information being grouped in with it, and the groupings are inconsistent between each API method. For example, PlaylistItems snippet doesn't include the video language or tags whereas Videos snippet does, meaning I have to call both to get all the information required to update my video descriptions. It's also impossible to get or set some information that you can easily change in the web interface of YouTube, such as the name of the game in the video.

    Now, I haven't worked with many APIs, so I have to ask: is this normal for API designs? To split up the data you can get and set into predefined groups? To require all data in a group to be sent even when some of it isn't necessary? Am I using it incorrectly? Or is the YouTube Data API just poorly designed?



  • @Dreikin said in WTF Bites:

    I'm trying to install the GitHub desktop app

    Here's your problem. Try something cromulent like SourceTree



  • @Dreikin said in WTF Bites:

    @bb36e said in WTF Bites:

    Why is it so hard to right click with a Magic mouse??

    Because it's magic! And magic is hard.

    http://i.imgur.com/0pwQxlq.gif



  • @Arantor The fun part is that Visual Studio installs this version:

    0_1496871474082_58cbd0fd-248a-41ce-a026-42fe10d0d64e-image.png



  • 0_1496871946953_Screenshot_20170607-174319.png

    How is this even possible? Do they hand code the mobile version of every individual article?


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Arantor said in WTF Bites:

    @Dreikin said in WTF Bites:

    I'm trying to install the GitHub desktop app
    

    Here's your problem. Try something cromulent like SourceTree

    I'll be installing that too, but I didn't know it could work with GitHub.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @hungrier said in WTF Bites:

    0_1496871946953_Screenshot_20170607-174319.png

    How is this even possible? Do they hand code the mobile version of every individual article?

    I have come to learn that many publishers are really stupid about how they publish. My most recent adventures in that realm being a couple of publishers focused on content about making digital art (ImagineFX and 3dtotal) but who don't actually publish any of their books in digital form.



  • @Dreikin Why wouldn't it? AFAIK Github uses normal git repos that should work with any tools. You won't be able to list all your projects or whatever else the Github app would let you do, but normal source control operations shouldn't be a problem.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @hungrier said in WTF Bites:

    @Dreikin Why wouldn't it? AFAIK Github uses normal git repos that should work with any tools. You won't be able to list all your projects or whatever else the Github app would let you do, but normal source control operations shouldn't be a problem.

    Listing the projects and stuff is what I was thinking of. The integration with github makes it easier to work with, at least when it comes to initial cloning and whatnot.



  • Via slashdot (yeah, yeah, I know...):

    TSA officer Camille Morris is quoted as saying, "A AA battery is fine. A AAA. A 9-volt battery is a huge power charge. The size of the battery that can take down a plane when attached to an explosive."

    Really? So ... the problem there is the 9-volt battery and not the fucking explosive it's attached to? :headdesk:



  • @hungrier the GitHub Desktop app has a really nice GUI for staging partial commits. Just select and unselect the lines of code in the GUI as you please. Though I haven't tried other GUIs to see if they have similar functionality.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @anotherusername said in WTF Bites:

    Apparently I am TRWTF.

    0_1496864624657_f4c470a0-f784-476b-9712-e57f8bc7bbc5-image.png

    Yes, I have a cell phone bill. And yes, it is $0.00. Maybe I should just enter the amount I spend on my wife's cell phone bill... but then, if I'm talking about her plan, some of the answers I gave to previous questions would be inaccurate...

    Put in 1 dollar.



  • @LB_ said in WTF Bites:

    @hungrier the GitHub Desktop app has a really nice GUI for staging partial commits. Just select and unselect the lines of code in the GUI as you please. Though I haven't tried other GUIs to see if they have similar functionality.

    The standard git gui does that too, in the context menu on the diff.

    Neither can beat fugitive's diff view where you can edit both the working copy and the stage.



  • @Bulb said in WTF Bites:

    @LB_ said in WTF Bites:

    @hungrier the GitHub Desktop app has a really nice GUI for staging partial commits. Just select and unselect the lines of code in the GUI as you please. Though I haven't tried other GUIs to see if they have similar functionality.

    The standard git gui does that too, in the context menu on the diff.

    TIL.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @cvi said in WTF Bites:

    Via slashdot (yeah, yeah, I know...):

    TSA officer Camille Morris is quoted as saying, "A AA battery is fine. A AAA. A 9-volt battery is a huge power charge. The size of the battery that can take down a plane when attached to an explosive."

    Really? So ... the problem there is the 9-volt battery and not the fucking explosive it's attached to? :headdesk:

    TRWTF is A AA battery and A AAA.. :pendant:


  • FoxDev

    @dkf A AAA battery is a Canadian AA battery, obviously ;)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @RaceProUK That'd be an Eh Eh Eh battery…



  • @dkf said in WTF Bites:

    A AAA

    "A triple-A [battery]", right?


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    A pet peeve of mine are badly formatted (unreadable) plain-text emails. Why do you even pretend to offer a plain-text version if it's just garbage anyway?

    Anyway, today's email from Microsoft, informing me that I need to update Skype, contained the following gem:

    0 OR IndexOf(Lowercase(@MOD_Config), 'partner_logo') > 0, '30px 0 0', '0')=%%;">

    I have no idea what they were trying to do there (except from summoning Chtulhu, because they definitely used regular expressions for removing the HTML tags), but I sure as hell hope that I never have to use whatever fucked up template syntax that is.


  • FoxDev

    @asdf Looks like a leaky WebForms template



  • @cvi said in WTF Bites:

    Via slashdot (yeah, yeah, I know...):

    TSA officer Camille Morris is quoted as saying, "A AA battery is fine. A AAA. A 9-volt battery is a huge power charge. The size of the battery that can take down a plane when attached to an explosive."

    Really? So ... the problem there is the 9-volt battery and not the fucking explosive it's attached to? :headdesk:

    http://i.imgur.com/lowJkLJ.jpg



  • @Bulb said in WTF Bites:

    All but mkstemp and tmpfile are deprecated. The remaining two, tmpfile is portable (conforms to C89) while mkstemp is less portable (only conforms to POSIX.1–2001), but more flexible with the template.

    And of course, as usual, these don't exist on Windows. But don't worry, you have _mktemp_s() which does just the same thing as mkstemp()! Except... the Windows version does not open the file, and it also returns an error code rather than a file descriptor (which makes sense since it doesn't open it, so could not get one).

    This gets me to a long standing bug in our code that I just happened to fix this morning. We need a temporary file, but the code that creates it is not the code that uses it, so it just needs a name that works. For some reason, we ended up on Linux with close(mkstemp("foo_XXXXXX")) (well the string is in a variable, not a constant, of course). And that was ported to Windows as close(_mktemp_s("foo_XXXXXX")).

    Can you guess what happened on Windows when that code was run? Once? Twice?

    Answer: running it once (which is what happens 99% of the time) works OK, since _mktemp_s() returned 0 (success), so it did close(0) and 0 happens to be stdin (which we never use), so it closed it and all was fine and dandy. But if that function is called a second time, it will again succeed in _mktemp_s() and return 0 again (and another file name), so we would again try to close(0), which this time was already closed, and oops, a crash!

    :wtf: :headdesk: :headdesk: 🤕 😢



  • @dkf said in WTF Bites:

    @cvi said in WTF Bites:

    Via slashdot (yeah, yeah, I know...):

    TSA officer Camille Morris is quoted as saying, "A AA battery is fine. A AAA. A 9-volt battery is a huge power charge. The size of the battery that can take down a plane when attached to an explosive."

    Really? So ... the problem there is the 9-volt battery and not the fucking explosive it's attached to? :headdesk:

    TRWTF is A AA battery and A AAA.. :pendant:

    Those are pronounced "a double-A" and "a triple-A", so they're both correct.



  • @remi While mkstemp does not exist on Windows, tmpfile definitely does (even if deprecated in favor of _tempfile_s).

    Also, whoever ported the code mistook mkstemp[1] and mktemp[2]. Microsoft implements the latter, but not the former.



  • @Medinoc said in WTF Bites:

    Also, whoever ported the code mistook mkstemp[1] and mktemp[2]. Microsoft implements the latter, but not the former.

    Yes. With the added :headdesk: that the return value is not the same as the Posix version (mktemp returns the string with the new file name, not an error code)...



  • @remi There's strerror_r, of which there are two versions on Linux: the XSI version which returns an int and the GNU one that returns a pointer to a string. On Windows, there's sterror_s, where the arguments are passed in a different order to either of strerror_r, and which also returns an error_t. :-(


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @anotherusername said in WTF Bites:

    Yes, I have a cell phone bill. And yes, it is $0.00

    How'd you accomplish that?



  • @Yamikuronue FreedomPop. I use Hangouts for Google Voice calling and texting, and I can (and do) use WiFi connections to avoid using the 4G data when I'm at home, work, or anywhere else that I can get WiFi.

    I'll say, I have not been impressed with the quality of their customer support. You get what you pay for there...

    My wife's old phone that I've inherited from her, with their free minutes/text/data plan...

    0_1496939228492_750be175-6c00-400b-855b-7252e47be16e-image.png

    The plan actually is a 500 MB plan; all of their plans allow you to get an extra 50 MB/month of high-speed data for each "freedom friend" you connect with, up to a maximum of 10, or 500 MB... I should really add another, and that 950 MBs would be 1000... but I haven't run out yet, so...

    A MiFi, with their free data-only plan; I use it to connect my old iPhone that doesn't have any cell service...

    0_1496940644567_e51b8409-e1d4-4758-807b-95c72e9fa927-image.png

    I mainly just use them for games, GPS, Facebook, Messenger, and occasionally browsing the web. I really need to get a newer phone, though... both of the ones I use are really old. I wouldn't even be carrying the Victory around if not for the fact that the iPhone is so old that even Hangouts told me I'm a dinosaur and refused to work on it... (it's stuck on 7.1.2, and Hangouts is definitely not the only app to do that; lots of apps have dropped support for iOS 7, and not always just a "you're stuck on an old version and can't upgrade" sort of experience, but instead the app actually complains "this version is really old; please upgrade" and refuses to work anymore)

    My wife's plan; one of the paid ones that they have, plus a few extra "services" (they kinda upsell you on these, but it's still cheap)...

    0_1496939718061_c5582264-88b4-4e55-8642-37633274e75d-image.png


  • Java Dev

    Radeon's reuse of GPUs as different models is confusing my laptop. The model installed is a Radeon Pro W4190. When I updated the driver in Windows today it got changed to Radeon R7 M350. And Linux calls it a Radeon R7 M265. And, from my understanding, it is the same chip just with different names.

    Also, the start menu in Windows is annoying me. Press start and start typing to search for apps works fine. Open start menu and do any sort of browsing in it and then start typing to search? Wont work! All while the Cinnamon (start) menu works like expected and will search it if I start typing while it is open, regardless if I have been browsing around in it or not.



  • @Atazhaia said in WTF Bites:

    Also, the start menu in Windows is annoying me. Press start and start typing to search for apps works fine. Open start menu and do any sort of browsing in it and then start typing to search? Wont work!

    On Windows 7 the search box in the Start Menu grabs focus again if you mouse out of the recent / all programs menu box.


  • :belt_onion:

    @Rhywden said in WTF Bites:

    Didn't look at Android, but again, unless I want to put my app into the store I can always build an APK I can sideload. Easily, too!

    I can speak to this - no shenanigans required. You just upload the .apk, and any future app updates must have a matching signing certificate. No Google-issued certs, no BS. Just pay $25, once, to get a developer account on the play store.



  • @sloosecannon Good to know!


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Atazhaia said in WTF Bites:

    Also, the start menu in Windows is annoying me. Press start and start typing to search for apps works fine. Open start menu and do any sort of browsing in it and then start typing to search? Wont work!

    Works fine on 10.


  • Java Dev

    @Dreikin 10 is what I am using and I had this problem on more than one computer with 10. Hmm.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Atazhaia said in WTF Bites:

    @Dreikin 10 is what I am using and I had this problem on more than one computer with 10. Hmm.

    Weird. I tried scrolling around the applications list and opening folders, but typing still immediately opened up search. Are you doing something more than that? Or maybe it's a settings issue?


  • Java Dev

    @Dreikin I'll look into it later. Maybe Windows just hates me.



  • WTF of the day: Finally managed to get the Git sample repository for this cross-platform OneDrive access thing to work. Alright.

    Now to plug it into my own app. Just install the NuGet package Microsoft.Identity.Client and I'm almost good to go... what do you mean, my project is referencing the wrong things and the package is incompatible? It's targetting UWP, iOS and Android, exactly like the sample project! It is identical in that regard.

    Turns out, not exactly. Because the build targets for a fresh Xamarin PCL project still include stuff like "Windows Phone Silverlight". Which is not supported by that NuGet package. Okay, so I don't need it, so I simply uncheck the box, right?

    Yeah. Only there's no such box. There's a box for UWP, for iOS and Android. And a dropdown for the .NET version. But NO check box for Silverlight. So you cannot uncheck the box. It simply isn't there.

    The solution: Uncheck everything (which makes Silverlight go away), click ok, and then re-check everything you want.

    Jesus.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Rhywden said in WTF Bites:

    WTF of the day: Finally managed to get the Git sample repository for this cross-platform OneDrive access thing to work. Alright.

    Now to plug it into my own app. Just install the NuGet package Microsoft.Identity.Client and I'm almost good to go... what do you mean, my project is referencing the wrong things and the package is incompatible? It's targetting UWP, iOS and Android, exactly like the sample project! It is identical in that regard.

    Turns out, not exactly. Because the build targets for a fresh Xamarin PCL project still include stuff like "Windows Phone Silverlight". Which is not supported by that NuGet package. Okay, so I don't need it, so I simply uncheck the box, right?

    Yeah. Only there's no such box. There's a box for UWP, for iOS and Android. And a dropdown for the .NET version. But NO check box for Silverlight. So you cannot uncheck the box. It simply isn't there.

    The solution: Uncheck everything (which makes Silverlight go away), click ok, and then re-check everything you want.

    Jesus.

    Embrace, Extend, Eternally Linger On?



  • @Dreikin said in WTF Bites:

    @Atazhaia said in WTF Bites:

    @Dreikin 10 is what I am using and I had this problem on more than one computer with 10. Hmm.

    Weird. I tried scrolling around the applications list and opening folders, but typing still immediately opened up search. Are you doing something more than that? Or maybe it's a settings issue?

    On Windows 7, the file list gets focus if you go into All Programs and click on one of the folders. The search box grabs focus back, though, as soon as the mouse leaves the file list.

    I dunno if Windows 10 does the same thing. If they totally rebuilt the Start menu, then maybe not.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @anotherusername said in WTF Bites:

    they totally rebuilt the Start menu

    Yes, it is totally rebuilt, such that if for some reason "Store Apps" (aka Metro apps AKA UWP apps) stop working, then the Start menu won't open.

    THE FRICKIN START MENU!

    It was so bad that not even an in-place-upgrade (aka Feature Upgrade) didn't fix it, I had to use the Reset (aka Upgrade, keeping only user files) option to get it back.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:

    It was so bad that not even an in-place-upgrade (aka Feature Upgrade) didn't fix it, I had to use the Reset (aka Upgrade, keeping only user files) option to get it back.

    Couldn't you have just run some Store App to repair it? 🚎


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @dkf said in WTF Bites:

    @Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:

    It was so bad that not even an in-place-upgrade (aka Feature Upgrade) didn't fix it, I had to use the Reset (aka Upgrade, keeping only user files) option to get it back.

    Couldn't you have just run some Store App to repair it? 🚎

    I couldn't even run WINDOWS UPDATE to repair it, because that, too, is largely controlled by a Store App.

    Heck, I couldn't even get to the Recovery options screen, because you have to do it through the Settings App.

    My rage destroyed a few things that day....


  • BINNED

    Combo collected over the weekend:

    Part 1: Yeah Android, thanks, that'll help with the battery life

    0_1497265846055_26250d60-2bfc-48bb-aa3d-54e7caaeb0ce-image.png

    Part 2: In front of a large store. On the outside. Methinks I should take my laptop there...

    0_1497265896906_4aaa9504-1131-4300-8b9c-df619527ab3b-image.png


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Onyx said in WTF Bites:

    Part 1: Yeah Android, thanks, that'll help with the battery life

    Battery save is quite good IME. It reduces the processor maximum clock, turns off animations and almost kills background data usage


  • BINNED

    @Jaloopa said in WTF Bites:

    @Onyx said in WTF Bites:

    Part 1: Yeah Android, thanks, that'll help with the battery life

    Battery save is quite good IME. It reduces the processor maximum clock, turns off animations and almost kills background data usage

    I wasn't complaining about that. Look again. It's on. Then, when my battery reached 5% Android offered to turn it off.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Onyx yeah, because sometimes you might not want it on, e.g. waiting for an important email so you want push notifications on, and you know you'll get to a charger soon. Lots of notifications have that bit below the main notification with quick options, and tapping the main body just brings you to the main interaction.

    For low battery, tapping the main bit brings you to the low power options where you can configure things like the threshold before it comes on. Tapping the bottom just turns it off without having to go through that. Notifications in Inbox take you to the email when tapped, or there's a bottom option to mark it as done without opening


  • BINNED

    @Jaloopa said in WTF Bites:

    @Onyx yeah, because sometimes you might not want it on

    I am perfectly able to turn it off myself in that case. Hell, I'd love it if they made that a switch in the pulldown menu, but I can't find an option to add thatEDIT: Was blind, found it now, on Android 5 at least. Shoving it in my face just makes it more likely for me to tap it by accident to get rid of it while trying to quickly do what I have to do before my battery runs out.

    @Jaloopa said in WTF Bites:

    Lots of notifications have that bit below the main notification with quick options, and tapping the main body just brings you to the main interaction.

    Yes, I know how to use Android. I'm not confused. I just think it's not a particularly good idea.


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