soloActivist

joined 1 year ago

I’ve been out of the loop on games for a while but ReactOS may be worth a look.

[–] soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The 1st ½ of your comment sounds accurate. But...

And also in Foss there are highly opinionated software where the devs completely ignore users, ban them from GitHub when they post issues,

Right, but to be clear non-free s/w is worse - you can’t even reach the devs, generally, and there is no public bug tracker. FOSS is an improvement in this regard because at least there is a reasonable nuclear option (forking). The nuclear option for non-free software is writing it yourself from scratch.

That all sounds accurate enough to me.. but thought I should comment on this:

However - in larger enterprises there’s so much more, you get the whole SDL maturity thing going - money is invested into raising the quality of the whole development lifecycle and you get things like code reviews, architects, product planning, external security testing etc. Things that cost time, money and resources.

It should be mentioned that many see testing as a cost, but in fact testing is a cost savings. In most situations, you only spend some money on testing in order to dodge a bigger cost: customers getting burnt in a costly way that backfires on the supplier. Apart from safety-critical products, this is the only business justification to test. Yet when budgets get tightened, one of the first cuts many companies make is testing -- which is foolish assuming they are doing testing right (in a way that saves money by catching bugs early).

Since the common/general case with FOSS projects is there is no income that’s attached to a quality expectation (thus testing generates no cost savings) - the users are part of the QA process as free labor, in effect :)

79
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org to c/foss@beehaw.org
 

There is a common theme pushed by fanatics of capitalism that never dies: that a profit-driven commercial project ensures higher quality products than products under non-profit projects. Some hard-right people I know never miss the chance to use the phrase “good enough for government work” to convey this idea.

I’m not looking to preach to the choir here, but rather to establish a thread of scenarios that correspond to quality for the purpose of countering inaccurate narratives. This is the thread to share your stories.

In my day job I’m paid to write code. Then I go home write code I was not paid for. My best work is done without pay.

Commercial software development

When I have to satisfy an employer, they don’t want quality code. They want fast code. They want band-aid fixes. The corporate structure is too myopic to optimize for quality.

Anti-gold-plating:I was once back-roomed by a manager and lectured for “gold plating”. That means I was producing code that was higher quality than what management perceives as economically optimal.

Bug fixes hindered:I was caught fixing some bugs conveniently as I spotted them when I happened to have a piece of code checked out in Clearcase. I was told I was “cheating the company out of profits” because they prefer if the bugs each go through a documentation procedure so the customer can ultimately be made to pay separately for the bug fix. Nevermind the fact that my time was already charged anyway (but they can get more money if there’s a bigger paper trail involving more staff). This contrasts with the “you get what you pay for” narrative since money is diverted to busy work (IOW: working hard, not smart).

Bugs added for “consistent quality”:One employer was so insistent on “consistent quality” that when one module was higher quality than another, they insisted on lowering the quality of the better module because improving the style or design pattern of the lower quality piece would be “gold plating”. This meant injecting bugs to achieve consistency. The bugs were non-serious varieties; more along the lines of needless complexity, reduced performance, coding standard non-compliances, etc, but nonetheless something that could potentially be charged to the customer to fix.

Syntactic dumbing-down:When making full use of the language constructs (as intended by the language designers), I am often forced by an employer to use a more basic subset of constructs. Employers are concerned that junior engineers or early senior engineers who might have to maintain my code will encounter language constructs that are less common and it will slow them down to have to look up the syntax they encounter. Managers assume that future devs will not fully know the language they are working in. IMO employers under-estimate the value of developers learning on the job. So I am often forced avoid using the more advanced constructs to accommodate some subset of perceived lowest common denominator. E.g. if I were to use an array in bash, an employer might object because some bash maintainers may not be familiar with an array.

Non-commercial software development

Free software developers have zero schedule pressure. They are not forced to haphazardly rush some sloppy work into an integration in order to meet a deadline that was promised to a customer by a manager who was pressured to give an overly optimistic timeline due to a competitive bidding process. #FOSS devs are free to gold-plate all they want. And because it’s a labor of love and not labor for a paycheck, FOSS devs naturally take more pride in their work.

I’m often not proud of the commercial software I was forced to write by a corporation fixated on the bottom line. When I’m consistently pressured to write poor quality code for a profit-driven project, I hit a breaking point and leave the company. I’ve left 3 employers for this reason.

Commercial software from a user PoV

Whenever I encounter a bug in commercial software there is almost never a publicly accessible bug tracker and it’s rare that the vendor has the slightest interest in passing along my bug report to the devs. The devs are unreachable by design (cost!). I’m just one user so my UX is unimportant. Obviously when I cannot even communicate a bug to a commercial vendor, I am wholly at the mercy of their testers eventually rediscovering the same bug I found, which is unlikely in complex circumstances.

Non-commercial software from a user PoV

Almost every FOSS app has a bug tracker, forum, or IRC channel where bugs can be reported and treated. I once wrote a feature request whereby the unpaid FOSS developer implemented my feature request and sent me a patch the same day I reported it. It was the best service I ever encountered and certainly impossible in the COTS software world for anyone who is not a multi-millionaire.

[–] soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So does that mean jlai.lu is blocked by lecho.be? I figured it was more likely that lecho.be was blocking Tor, thus blocking my connection.

 

When I visit this post:

https://jlai.lu/post/2250911

the embedded short abstract intro to the article is “403 Blocked www.lecho.be” When I try visiting the link directly I get “403 bot detection”. This suggests that everyone who opens that thread independently visits that webpage by way of some javascript that’s not under the user’s control. If 1000 people open that thread, then 1000 separate fetches are made. That’s a poor design. The server could do that job just once and the results would be more reliable. As opposed to everyone getting different results.

This is also a #privacy #security bug. Someone who opens a thread does not necessarily intend to fetch the linked article. Non-tor users are under surveillance in some countries (e.g. the US, where Trump enacted law s.t. ISPs can collect data on users without consent). So they should have control over what sites they visit. Merely opening a thread is an abuse because it makes users actions instantly trackable. IOW, users share information with their ISP without their knowledge or control.

Note that the example thread shows the full text of the article because the author was diligent about copying it. But that’s not the general case.

#bug #lemmyBug

[–] soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Many coils pulse full heat to simulate different heat levels. Gas gives you very precise control over exact heat levels and it is instantly responsive to change.

You’ve got the precision factor backwards. Gas is a clear loser on that.

When you have knob levels 0—9, if you set the knob to 3 on electric you get exactly ½ the heat energy that you get from level 6. It’s perfectly linear. This is not true in the slightest with gas. A gas flame is non-linear as you go from 0 to 9. All you can do is eye-ball the flame and guess. Even when you have a flame size in mind, it’s not reproduceable because you’re still eye-balling it every time. You can’t trust the levels on a gas knob either because they’re so non-linear that you can get a big flame difference in certain points along the scale.

Gas also has less precision of control because of the reduced range at both ends. The lowest possible gas setting is still too hot for some tasks. So the best you can do is manually mimic the pulsing of electric by turning the burner off and reigniting periodically. The highest temp on gas is also less than the highest temp electric can achieve.

The only “precision” task that gas wins at is at the zero (off) level, and speed, AFAICT, which is related to precision. Both of those factors can be discarded for the most part when comparing induction because it adjusts temp demand fast enough.

[–] soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Indeed. And it’s a needlessly destructive form of sanitization. That is, sanitizing properly normally means replacing the special characters with an encoding to ensure literals render.

 

After submitting an HTML sample in this post, #Lemmy gutted the content silently and destructively without telling me. The original text is totally lost and not recoverable. I only noticed because more than half the code was discarded.

This is terrible. It’s perhaps understandable that raw HTML might have security issues if it appears as-is, so of course the angle brackets should be automatically encoded as literals by the submission processing modules. The status quo is obviously a #LemmyBug because authors are not even warned about the destruction and given a chance to preserve their work. It just gets trashed.

[–] soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I think this is a regression. IIRC, there was a time when a removal only removed it from the timeline. You could still reach it via the modlog. IIRC. But those days are gone. It’s a shame because it’s important for the community to be able to evaluate the mod’s decision making.

I’ve even seen cases where an over-zealous mod gets embarrassed by the mod log and purges the mod log itself to remove traces of the censorship itself. I suppose that’s only possible if the mod is also an admin.

3
voting out of sync (kbin→lemmy) (links.hackliberty.org)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org to c/lemmy_support@lemmy.ml
 

Directly visiting a Kbin thread on the server hosting it shows some positive number of votes. If the URL of that kbin thread is used is queried in lemmy so a copy local to the lemmy instance is made, the number of votes is zero.

Edit-- this also happens when the source article is another lemmy instance.

 

I filled out a form to crosspost to !assistive_technology@lemmy.sdf.org, clicked create, and the create button turns into a spinner. Forever.

F12 » console gives:

Source map error: Error: request failed with status 400

Resource URL: https://links.hackliberty.org/css/themes/darkly-red.css

Source Map URL: darkly-red.css.map

#lemmyBug

[–] soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

There are bug reports and then there is user support. There’s some confusion because I filed a bug report in a user support community (because there is no bug reporting community).

Indeed the user support solution is to either request that the admin to change the slur filter config, or change instances. But the purpose of the thread was to report a bug in an in-band way (without interacting with a Microsoft asset [#deleteGithub]).

[–] soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

That’s all plausible. But in the end the airline (their insurance) will be the loser, no?

When a traveler has insurance they have some reassurance & comfort that the loss won’t be theirs as they will file a claim. In my cases of lost luggage, the rules of the traveler’s insurance claim required me to still file a claim with the airline. The airline seemed to have the primary liability. Wouldn’t it be bizarre if the airline (who caused the loss) would get off the hook? My insurance just ensured I was compensated one way or another so long as I followed the rules and reported the loss to the airline. From there, wouldn’t my insurance work in their own interest to ensure the airline pays out? Surely my insurance must only be liable for benefits coverage that exceed the airline’s responsibility (depending on how generous my policy is).

Since an insurance company has the resources and legal muscle to ensure the responsible company pays out, I would expect it to /not/ be in the airline’s interest to deal with another insurance company over a loss. Just about every time I had a loss without insurance, the airline was directly liable to me but they told me to pound sand. Every time IIRC. They wouldn’t get away with that against another insurer.

Most of my cards are free with lousy policies that only pay out if I lose a limb or something like that. It was only when I paid for extra insurance that I got coverage that was useful.

In any case, if you are correct, that implies if I get a payment card with zero insurance (a prepaid card?), then the flight details won’t be shared, correct? Might be interesting to test that, but tricky because prepaid cards often don’t issue a statement.

[–] soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I can see your point in many situations but when I say I am the one b*tching (myself… in the 1st person), in this context I am not saying I am acting badly myself. So the “women are bad” narrative doesn’t follow. In this case the word merely serves as a more expressive complaint.

If someone were to talk about someone else b*tching, it might well be what you’re saying, as they are complaining about someone else complaining & maybe they oppose that other person complaining or their aggressive style thereof.

[–] soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

GDPR gives people a fair amount of protection and it is enforced.

Not in my experience. I have filed complaints of ~20+ GDPR violations under article 77 going years back. Not a single one of them enforced to date. These cases just sit idle for years. The problem is the GDPR gives no recourse when DPAs fail to honor article 77 obligations. It’s toothless.

https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

That shows a low count of cherry-picked enforcement actions. If you had a way to get a count of unenforced reports it would likely be an embarrassing comparison.

[–] soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org -2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

You should simply pickup a few dictionaries and recognize there are multiple meanings, rather than cherry picking whatever definition plays into whatever narrative you’re fixated on. Have a look at mainstream definitions that most people are commonly working with.

One dictionary defines it as “the feeling of hating that a man has for women”. Another dictionary: “hatred of women”. Another: “Hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women”. Did alternate definitions not survive your whatever cleansing you’ve undergone? Is there a specific book that caused you to deviate from common definitions?

 

In this comment my use of the “b” word was overzealously suppressed, silently without telling me. I only discovered it when re-reading my post.

There are THREE #LemmyBug cases here:

  1. when the “b” word is used as a verb, it’s not a slur. And when it’s used as a noun, it’s only a slur if not literally referring to a dog.

  2. my post was tampered with without even telling me. Authors should be informed when their words are manipulated and yet still presented to others as their own words.

  3. The word “removed” cannot simply replace any word. It makes my sentence unreadable. In the very least, the word should be “REDACTED”, and there should be a footnote added that explains /why/ it was redacted.

 

cross-posted from: https://links.hackliberty.org/post/125466

My credit card issuer apparently never gets to know what I purchased at stores, cafes, & restaurants -- and rightfully so. The statement just shows the shop name, location, and amount.

Exceptionally, if I purchase airfare the bank statement reveals disclosures:

  • airline who sold the ticket
  • carrier
  • passenger name
  • ticket number
  • city pairs

So that’s a disturbing over-share. In some cases the airline is a European flag carrier, so IIUC the GDPR applies, correct? Doesn’t this violate the data minimization principle?

Airlines no longer accept cash, which is also quite disturbing (and illegal in jurisdictions where legal tender must be accepted when presented for PoS transactions).

Has anyone switched to using a travel agent just to be able to pay cash for airfare?

UPDATE

A relatively convincing theory has been suggested in this other cross-posted community:

https://links.hackliberty.org/comment/414338

Apparently it’s because credit cards offer travel insurance & airlines have incentive to have another insurer involved. Would be useful if this were documented somewhere in a less refutable form.

GDPR question still outstanding.

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