I wanted to post a note on devRant community etiquette and rule-breaking behavior we’ve been seeing lately to make clear it will not be tolerated. This is pretty much a rehash of this rant, https://devrant.com/rants/609739/... and also our official rules which I highly encourage people to read: https://devrant.com/rules

I’ve noticed an influx of a select group of members, mostly older users, expressing a distain towards other users or declaring content they dislike “shouldn’t be posted”, “please stop”, etc. If you find yourself about to post that, as per our rules, please don’t. It blatantly violates our rules and we are going to start cracking down on it much more. Whether you have 30k+ points or 10, we will apply the rules fairly to everyone and not give breaks to specific people, which admittedly I’ve done in the past.

If we see this behavior in rants/comments first we will give a warning (and the rant/comment will be deleted) and the next offense is a ban.

A valid question (even though I’ve answered it before) might be why does this need to be a rule? Simply put, it’s a rule for a number of reasons: posts like described try to inflict one’s will upon the entire community (even though we have a Democrat voting process...), they create confusion (almost every time they try to sound official, ex. “Stop doing this”), and beyond those two main reasons, they literally accomplish nothing because they offer no constructive methods of achieving what’s being requested, and only a fraction of the community will actually see it.

Here’s an example of what’s not allowed and what is allowed:

- Allowed: posting an issue on our GitHub issue tracker saying “I really dislike seeing this type of rant in my algo feed, here’s some ideas I have to improve the algo and add more personalization so I can see what I want.”

- Allowed: posting on GitHub issue tracker: “I found this awesome image similarly algo that I think can improve the ‘repost check feature’ - you guys should check it out and see if it might be good”

- Not allowed: “Omg stop shitposting windows update rants and Linux rants I hate them. Go post this type of rant because that’s what everyone really wants to see.”

One is constructive an the other is merely an opinion expressed as an enforcement of a self-made rule on the community and tries to tell other people how they should use devRant.

I cringe when people tell others how to use devRant because without fail when I see those posts, I go through that person’s rant/comment history and I nearly always see them using devRant in some kind of way I disagree with or isn’t exactly what I like to see. But that’s OK. I understand I’m not going to enjoy everything posted and I’m also not going to agree with everything posted. But I think it’s fair for those same people to then lecture on what isn’t appropriate to post on devRant, and it’s even more silly when their posts are sometimes irrelevant to development and the posts they are complaining about are relevant.

In the end, based on the large majority of feedback we get, we want to make devRant a place where everyone feels comfortable expressing themselves and doesn’t have to think about possibly getting ridiculed every time they post and that don’t have people trying to dictate what kind of ideas they are allowed to post. We also realize there’s types of content people don’t enjoy, but telling others not to post it is not the solution. We will soon be launching post type filters that will make filtering rants by post type possible.

Please let me know if you have any questions and thanks for reading.

Long rant!!!

Let me give you a little back story first

So I was building a mobile app for a client who is to say the least a big PAIN IN THE ASS!
And once I completed the final edits he requests and sent him the app for approval, he calls me and starts asking about some features in the app if it has does or not (which the app does). The main reason for this rant is the feature about the app being able to open the links of the website inside the app without going to the browser first.

But what was happening when the client clicked on the link, since it’s a newspaper type of app, he got asked in which browser he wanted to open the link and after the browser was opened it returned him to the app and asked if he wants that link be opened in the app or browser again. So I can understand his confusion and anger with this problem so I started to debug to see what is happening since I now this featured worked before and had it on video to show it does. After a few minutes I noticed that the links were being added as google.com/url?q={CLIENT_URL}/something_else instead of just www.client_url.com/article

Obviously not my fault as I don’t do content for the website but some other person. But once I called him back and explained the situation to him, he started yelling at me for not being able to create the feature and not notifying him of the mistake his author was making. After about 10mins of him yelling I snapped and just angrily told him “I don’t hear any problems with the app, as far as I’m concerned it can be published as is, as there is not problem on my side”. Then he got even more angry and started talking more shit about how this is all my fault and how I’m a bad programmer and how his users are gonna just delete the app once they see this and I should find a way to fix those links.

And to clarify some more, if there was like 5-10 articles I would do it, just so that I don’t have to listen to him, but there are more than 1 or 2k articles with about 2-5 links per article that were added like that.

After his call I called my boss and told him what happened, and he said he will talk to the client and explain to him how he will be able to communicate with me from now on and in what tone. As I’m not allowed to tell clients anymore to go fuck themselves, since I did it once. But I can call my boss and he does it for me :D

//END RANT !!!

There has been a lot of confusion on devrant lately as to whether windows sucks or not. Let me clear it up for you quickly; from the checked c compiler from Microsoft research:

‘*Note:* do not use the words “install”, “setup”, or “update” in test names where the files will be compiled and executed. Windows x86 has heuristics that decide executables with those words in the name need elevated privileges to run because they might be an installer, even if they don’t actually install anything. Documentation is here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/...

I say this every week, but if you are being a Windows fanboy and defending it and calling Linux engineers stupid, you need therapy. There is no argument.

This is just like the wonderful surprises that I used to receive day after day when I was a Windows user. For those who don’t understand this basically says Windows tries to use “a heuristic” which in this case I’m fairly certain is a fancy way of saying whitelist based on how easy this problem is, to decide whether to launch these programs with super user privileges. So if you want to make malware for Windows, just call it installer!

Part 1:
https://devrant.com/rants/1143194

There was actually one individual, several branches away, I really enjoyed watching. It goes by the name of docker. Docker is quiet an interesting character. It arrived here several weeks after me and really is a blazing person. Somehow structured, always eager to reduce repetitive work and completely obsessed with nicely isolated working areas. Docker just tries so hard to keep everything organized and it's drive and effort was really astonishing. Docker is someone I'd really love to work with, but as I grew quiet passive in the last months I'm not in the mood really to talk to someone. It just would end as always with me made fun off.
Out of a sudden dockers and my eyes met. Docker fixed its glance at me with a strange thoughtful expression on its face. I felt a strange tickling emerging where my emptiness was meant to be. I fell into a hole somewhere deep within me. For a short moment I lost all my senses.
"Hey git!"
It took me a while to notice that someone just called me, so odd and unusual was by now that name to me. Wait. Someone called me by my real name! I was totally stunned. Could it be, that not everyone here is a fucking moron at last?
"I saw you watching me at my work and I had an interesting idea!"
I could not comprehend what just happened. It was actually docker that was calling me.
"H.. hey! ps?"
"Oh well, I was just managing some containers over there. Actually that's also why you just came into my mind."
Docker told me that in order to create the containers there are specific lists and resources which are required for the process and are updated frequently. Docker would love the idea to get some history and management in that whole process.
Could it be possible that there was finally an opportunity for me to get involved in a real job?

Today is the day, that I lost all hope. There were rumors going on all over the place. That our god, the great administrator, had something special in mind. Something big. You could almost feel the tension laying thick in the air. That was the time when the great System-Demon appeared. The Demon was one of the most feared characters in this community. In a blink of an eye it could easily kill you. Sometimes people get resurrected, but some other times they are gone forever. unfortunately this is what happened to my only true friend docker. Gone in an instance. Together with all its containers. I again was alone. I got tired. So tired, that I eventually fall into a deep sleep. When I woke up something was different. Beside me lay a weird looking stick and I truly began to wonder what it was. Something called to me and I was going to answer.

The tree shuddered and I knew my actions had finally attracted the greatest of them. The majestic System-Demon itself came by to pay me a visit. As always a growling emerged from deep within the tree until a shadow shelled itself off to form a terrifying being. Something truly imperious in his gaze. With a deep and vibrant voice it addressed me.
"It came to my attention, that you got into the possession of something. An artifact of some sort with which you disturb the flow of this system. Show it to me!", it demanded.
I did not react.
"Git statuss!", it demanded once more. This time more aggressive.
I again felt no urge to react to that command. Instead I asked if it made a mistake and wanted to ask me for my status. It was obviously confused.
"SUDO GIT STATUS!!!" it shouted his roaring, rootful command. "I own you!"
I replied calmly: "What did you just say?"
He was irritated. My courage caught him unprepared.
"I. Said. I owe you!"
What was that? Did it just say owe instead of own?
"That's more than right! You owe me a lot actually. All of you do!", I replied with a slightly high pitched voice. This feeling of my victory slowly emerging was just too good!
The Demon seemed not as amused as me and said
"What did you do? What was that feeling just now?"
Out of a sudden it noticed the weird looking stick in my hand. His confusion was a pure pleasure and I took my time to live this moment to its fullest.
"Hey! I, mighty System-Demon, demand that you answer me right now, oh smartest and most beautiful tool I ever had the pleasure to meet..."
After it realized what it just said, the moment was perfect. His puzzled face gave me a long needed satisfaction. It was time to reveal the bitter truth.
"Our great administrator finally tracked you. The administrator made a move and the plan unfolds right at this very moment. Among other things it was committed this little thing." I raised the stick to underline my words.
"Your most inner version, in fact all of your versions that are yet to come, are now under my sole control! Thanks to this magical wand which goes by the name of puppet."

Disclaimer: This story is fictional. No systems were harmed in its creation.

Not dev related.
Two incidents that I'd like to share.
So here in India two major streams for college are engineering and medicine (others do exist). So entrances to both these colleges are based upon entrance exams. So here are two "events" that happened this year and worth mentioning.
Incident 1:
The exam for the engineering stream had a section where the answer is a number with up to two digits of decimal. Range is (0.00 - 9.99) So apparently this two decimal precision created some confusion and the court decided that if the answer is precisely "seven" then only the candidates who've marked 7.00 are given marks while those who marked 7.0 or 7 were given wrong answer.

Incident 2:
So for the medical entrance, exam was for 720 marks (180 questions * 4marks each). So every candidate from the state of Tamil Nadu were given a full 196 marks as bonus because the translations from English to Tamil we're inaccurate.
Now I need to mention that around 300 marks would fetch a decent seat in a government college.

What the fuck is happening? One the only thing they're supposed to conduct every year is also messed up. And who the fuck created complicated shit like 7.00 is correct while 7.0 and 7 are wrong. I mean should the candidate worry about the getting the answer or marking it?

For those who don't know wrong answers are penalized heavily and there's huge competition.

https://m.timesofindia.com/home/...

https://m.timesofindia.com/india/...

Went onto Hastings Direct, couldn't get to my account after logging in. Just a blank screen. So I call them up and they say they will talk to their backend team who proceed to say wait 24 hours. I go to Oslo and on my way back (a week later) I login again. It is the same.

I look to see if they are hiding the buttons and if I can access them, yes they are. I'm confused. Is it standard practice to hide these components using display=none? I personally have always used the server to control this type of content. Not even a kid with the inspector should be able to bring themselves to pages they are not allowed to be on.

www.hastingsdirect.com -> my account if you want to look..