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Client: Can you provide some kind of guaranteed timeline that you're going to be able to move our website to our new servers with the optimizations implemented? I know you said it should take a week, but we have 3 weeks to get this moved over and we cannot afford to be double billed. I'm waiting to fire up the new server until you can confirm.
Me: As I said, it SHOULD take about a week, but that's factoring in ONLY the modifications being made for optimization and a QA call to review the website. This does not account for your hosting provider needing to spin up a new server.
We also never offered to move your website over to said new server. I sent detailed instructions for your provider to move a copy of the entire website over and have it configured and ready to point your domain over to, in order to save time and money since your provider won't give us the access necessary to perform a server-to-server transfer. If you are implying that I need to move the website over myself, you will be billed for that migration, however long it takes.
Client: So you're telling me that we paid $950 for 10 hours of work and that DOESN'T include making the changes live?
Me: Why would you think that the 10 hours that we're logged for the process of optimizing your website include additional time that has not been measured? When you build out a custom product for a customer, do you eat the shipping charges to deliver it? That is a rhetorical question of course, because I know you charge for shipping as well. My point is that we charge for delivery just as you do, because it requires our time and manpower.
All of this could have been avoided, but you are the one that enforced the strict requirement that we cannot take the website down for even 1 hour during off-peak times to incorporate the changes we made on our testbed, so we're having to go through this circus in order to deliver the work we performed.
I'm not going to give you a guarantee of any kind because there are too many factors that are not within our control, and we're not going to trap ourselves so you have a scapegoat to throw under the bus if your boss looks to you for accountability. I will reiterate that we estimate it would take about a week to implement, test and run through a full QA together, as we have other clients within our queue and our time must be appropriately blocked out each day. However, the longer you take to pull the trigger on this new server, the longer it will take on my end to get the work scheduled within the queue.
Client: If we get double billed, we're taking that out of what we have remaining to pay you.
Me: On the subject of paying us, you signed a contract acknowledging that you would pay us the remaining 50% after you approved the changes, which you did last week, in order for us to deliver the project. Thank you for the reminder that your remaining balance has not yet been paid. I'll have our CFO resend the invoice for you to remit payment before we proceed any further.
---
I love it when clients give me shit. I just give it right back.6 -
My Lazy Habits:
1. Not testing my own code thoroughly... cuz fuck that. That's the tester's/QA's job.
2. I create slack commands to get certain things done, so I dont have to get up and open my laptop each time I receive a ticket.
3. Ask more time for development that I actually need so I can fit in couple naps here and there.
4. Falsely claiming that I am busy when someone invites me over meet or a phone call. Like just text me.
5. Factoring my laziness in when I design features LOL.1 -
The Setting:
Ola Cabs (One of the biggest competitors of Uber, for those who don’t know) comes to college to recruit software devs:
✅ Pre-placement talk
Now time for the aptitude/code round. Hackerearth used as the solution to run the test and compile code, as well as check the result immediately. Or so I thought.
3 programming questions, 2 hours.
The problem:
Me: *Write the code for the first question* (and I know it’s correct)
Me: Clicks “Compile and run”
Compiler: *Compiling*
*LITERALLY ONE FUCKING HOUR LATER*
Compiler: *Still compiling*
Hackerearth. What a fucking joke. Though the course of the HOUR I waited, I kept questioning the recruiter head from Ola and his response was:
Recruiter: “Try the other program, it’s possibly a problem with your code. I’ll check at my backend also, hold on.”
YOU FUCKING DIMWIT. MY CODE IS PERFECT AND EVEN IF IT WASN’T IT WOULDN’T TAKE MORE THAN A MINUTE (If you’re factoring in absolutely worst cases) TO COMPILE THIS SMALL ASS FUCKING PROBLEM’S CODE.
In the meanwhile I even coded one of the other remaining questions’ solution and the shit still didn’t work.
At the end of the 2 hour time limit, I’d finished code for all 3, the recruiter stops us all from coding and says:
Recruiter: “Just submit your code, we will evaluate it and get back to you.”
Like fucking hell, asshole.
*One hour post interview*
EVERYONE who attempted the aptitude code round (At least 30 of us) receive messages on our phones:
“Unfortunately you did not clear the aptitude round and we will not be able to take your application forward.”
FUCK YOU OLA. IN ONE FUCKING HOUR YOU “EVALUATED” ALL OF OUR CODE? FUCK YOU HACKEREARTH FOR YOUR SHIT FUCKING EXECUTION OF A “SOLUTION”. Maybe test your own fucking product before offering a solution to companies.
Fucking lost opportunity.3 -
CONTEST - Win big $$$ straight from Wisecrack!
For all those who participated in my original "cracking prime factorization" thread (and several I decided to add just because), I'm offering a whopping $5 to anyone who posts a 64 bit *product* of two primes, which I cant factor. Partly this is a thank you for putting up with me.
FIVE WHOLE DOLLARS! In 1909 money thats $124 dollars! Imagine how many horse and buggy rides you could buy with that back then! Or blowjobs!
Probably not a lot!
But still.
So the contest rules are simple:
Go to
https://asecuritysite.com/encryptio...
Enter 32 for the number of bits per prime, and generate a 64 bit product.
Post it here to enter the contest.
Products must be 64 bits, and the result of just *two* prime numbers. Smaller or larger bit lengths for products won't be accepted at this time.
I'm expecting a few entries on this. Entries will generally be processed in the order of submission, but I reserve the right to wave this rule.
After an entry is accepted, I'll post "challenge accepted. Factoring now."
And from that point on I have no more than 5 hours to factor the number, (but results usually arrive in 30-60 minutes).
If I fail to factor your product in the specified time (from the moment I indicate I've begun factoring), congratulations, you just won $5.
Payment will be made via venmo or other method at my discretion.
One entry per user. Participants from the original thread only, as well as those explicitly mentioned.
Limitations: Factoring shall be be done
1. without *any* table lookup of primes or equivalent measures, 2. using anything greater than an i3, 3. without the aid of a gpu, 4. without multithreading. 5. without the use of more than one machine.
FINALLY:
To claim your prize, post the original factors of your product here, after the deadline has passed.
And then I'll arrange payment of the prize.
You MUST post the factors of your product after the deadline, to confirm your product and claim your prize.99 -
A couple of days ago, an individual attempted to convince me that the National Security Agency is capable of cracking Rijndael encryption; as a response, I informed the individual of the infeasible nature of the factoring of extremely large semiprimes; however, my attempts were futile, as the individual believes that NSA possesses sufficient power to crack this encryption without intercepting the transmission of the corresponding private key.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is real; although this individual tends to be logically-minded, there does exist an exception to this good behaviour.
"It is easier to square a circle than get 'round a mathematician."1 -
The Zen Of Ripping Off Airtable:
(patterned after The Zen Of Python. For all those shamelessly copying airtables basic functionality)
*Columns can be *reordered* for visual priority and ease of use.
* Rows are purely presentational, and mostly for grouping and formatting.
* Data cells are objects in their own right, so they can control their own rendering, and formatting.
* Columns (as objects) are where linkages and other column specific data are stored.
* Rows (as objects) are where row specific data (full-row formatting) are stored.
* Rows are views or references *into* columns which hold references to the actual data cells
* Tables are meant for managing and structuring *small* amounts of data (less than 10k rows) per table.
* Just as you might do "=A1:A5" to reference a cell range in google or excel, you might do "opt(table1:columnN)" in a column header to create a 'type' for the cells in that column.
* An enumeration is a table with a single column, useful for doing the equivalent of airtables options and tags. You will never be able to decide if it should be stored on a specific column, on a specific table for ease of reuse, or separately where it and its brothers will visually clutter your list of tables. Take a shot if you are here.
* Typing or linking a column should be accomplishable first through a command-driven type language, held in column headers and cells as text.
* Take a shot if you somehow ended up creating any of the following: an FSM, a custom regex parser, a new programming language.
* A good structuring system gives us options or tags (multiple select), selections (single select), and many other datatypes and should be first, programmatically available through a simple command-driven language like how commands are done in datacells in excel or google sheets.
* Columns are a means to organize data cells, and set constraints and formatting on an entire range.
* Row height, can be overridden by the settings of a cell. If a cell overrides the row and column render/graphics settings, then it must be drawn last--drawing over the default grid.
* The header of a column is itself a datacell.
* Columns have no order among themselves. Order is purely presentational, and stored on the table itself.
* The last statement is because this allows us to pluck individual columns out of tables for specialized views.
*Very* fast scrolling on large datasets, with row and cell height variability is complicated. Thinking about it makes me want to drink. You should drink too before you embark on implementing it.
* Wherever possible, don't use a database.
If you're thinking about using a database, see the previous koan.
* If you use a database, expect to pick and choose among column-oriented stores, and json, while factoring for platform support, api support, whether you want your front-end users to be forced to install and setup a full database,
and if not, what file-based .so or .dll database engine is out there that also supports video, audio, images, and custom types.
* For each time you ignore one of these nuggets of wisdom, take a shot, question your sanity, quit halfway, and then write another koan about what you learned.
* If you do not have liquor on hand, for each time you would take a shot, spank yourself on the ass. For those who think this is a reward, for each time you would spank yourself on the ass, instead *don't* spank yourself on the ass.
* Take a sip if you *definitely* wildly misused terms from OOP, MVP, and spreadsheets.5 -
After learning a bit about alife I was able to write
another one. It took some false starts
to understand the problem, but afterward I was able to refactor the problem into a sort of alife that measured and carefully tweaked various variables in the simulator, as the algorithm
explored the paramater space. After a few hours of letting the thing run, it successfully returned a remainder of zero on 41.4% of semiprimes tested.
This is the bad boy right here:
tracks[14]
[15, 2731, 52, 144, 41.4]
As they say, "he ain't there yet, but he got the spirit."
A 'track' here is just a collection of critical values and a fitness score that was found given a few million runs. These variables are used as input to a factoring algorithm, attempting to factor
any number you give it. These parameters tune or configure the algorithm to try slightly different things. After some trial runs, the results are stored in the last entry in the list, and the whole process is repeated with slightly different numbers, ones that have been modified
and mutated so we can explore the space of possible parameters.
Naturally this is a bit of a hodgepodge, but the critical thing is that for each configuration of numbers representing a track (and its results), I chose the lowest fitness of three runs.
Meaning hypothetically theres room for improvement with a tweak of the core algorithm, or even modifications or mutations to the
track variables. I have no clue if this scales up to very large semiprime products, so that would be one of the next steps to test.
Fitness also doesn't account for return speed. Some of these may have a lower overall fitness, but might in fact have a lower basis
(the value of 'i' that needs to be found in order for the algorithm to return rem%a == 0) for correctly factoring a semiprime.
The key thing here is that because all the entries generated here are dependent on in an outer loop that specifies [i] must never be greater than a/4 (for whatever the lowest factor generated in this run is), we can potentially push down the value of i further with some modification.
The entire exercise took 2.1735 billion iterations (3-4 hours, wasn't paying attention) to find this particular configuration of variables for the current algorithm, but as before, I suspect I can probably push the fitness value (percentage of semiprimes covered) higher, either with a few
additional parameters, or a modification of the algorithm itself (with a necessary rerun to find another track of equivalent or greater fitness).
I'm starting to bump up to the limit of my resources, I keep hitting the ceiling in my RAD-style write->test->repeat development loop.
I'm primarily using the limited number of identities I know, my gut intuition, combine with looking at the numbers themselves, to deduce relationships as I improve these and other algorithms, instead of relying strictly on memorizing identities like most mathematicians do.
I'm thinking if I want to keep that rapid write->eval loop I'm gonna have to upgrade, or go to a server environment to keep things snappy.
I did find that "jiggling" the parameters after each trial helped to explore the parameter
space better, so I wrote some methods to do just that. But what I wouldn't mind doing
is taking this a bit of a step further, and writing some code to optimize the variables
of the jiggle method itself, by automating the observation of real-time track fitness,
and discarding those changes that lead to the system tending to find tracks with lower fitness.
I'd also like to break up the entire regime into a training vs test set, but for now
the results are pretty promising.
I knew if I kept researching I'd likely find extensions like this. Of course tested on
billions of semiprimes, instead of simply millions, or tested on very large semiprimes, the
effect might disappear, though the more i've tested, and the larger the numbers I've given it,
the more the effect has become prevalent.
Hitko suggested in the earlier thread, based on a simplification, that the original algorithm
was a tautology, but something told me for a change that I got one correct. Without that initial challenge I might have chalked this up to another false start instead of pushing through and making further breakthroughs.
I'd also like to thank all those who followed along, helped, or cheered on the madness:
In no particular order ,demolishun, scor, root, iiii, karlisk, netikras, fast-nop, hazarth, chonky-quiche, Midnight-shcode, nanobot, c0d4, jilano, kescherrant, electrineer, nomad,
vintprox, sariel, lensflare, jeeper.
The original write up for the ideas behind the concept can be found at:
https://devrant.com/rants/7650612/...
If I left your name out, you better speak up, theres only so many invitations to the orgy.
Firecode already says we're past max capacity!5 -
Looking for someone to test a new factorization script I wrote.
https://pastebin.com/Td2XTKe6
Tested against a set of products from all primes under 1000. Worked even on numbers up to 87954921289
Worked for about 66% of the products tested.
Obviously I'm cheating a little bit because I'm checking for four conditions n%a == 0, n%a == 1, n%b == 0, and n%b == 1
It appears it is possible to generate the series from just the product, and then factor each result. The last factor in each each set of factors becomes x, and we do p%x and check for zero.
if it works, we've found our answer.
Kind of wonky but basically what its doing is taking p, tacking on a 0 to the right, and then tacking p to the right of *that*.
So if you had a product like
314
The starting number we look at is
3140314
The middle digit becomes i, and the unit digit becomes j.
Don't know why it works more often then not, and don't know if it would really be any faster.
Just think it's cool.9 -
For any product of two non-trivial primes, it is *always* possible to get the quotient of its factors b/a derived solely from the product of those factors, *without* first factoring the product (p).
Fight me.3 -
I literally spent a week fighting scope creep instinctively introduced by myself on a submodule with the nominal role *Read all files the compiler needs to read using the fewest possible additional steps*
I have to keep reminding myself that there's no such thing as a scope too narrow. If its purpose can be described without spelling out the implementation, it can be encapsulated. -
Someone save me from this fucking stupid corporate web based trainings and let me focus on more important shit like re-factoring my code (ohh joke) and/or writing something more code then going what i just mentioned above.
-
So I made a couple slight modifications to the formula in the previous post and got some pretty cool results.
The original post is here:
https://devrant.com/rants/5632235/...
The default transformation from p, to the new product (call it p2) leads to *very* large products (even for products of the first 100 primes).
Take for example
a = 6229, b = 10477, p = a*b = 65261233
While the new product the formula generates, has a factor tree that contains our factor (a), the product is huge.
How huge?
6489397687944607231601420206388875594346703505936926682969449167115933666916914363806993605...
and
So huge I put the whole number in a pastebin here:
https://pastebin.com/1bC5kqGH
Now, that number DOES contain our example factor 6229. I demonstrated that in the prior post.
But first, it's huge, 2972 digits long, and second, many of its factors are huge too.
Right from the get go I had hunch, and did (p2 mod p) and the result was surprisingly small, much closer to the original product. Then just to see what happens I subtracted this result from the original product.
The modification looks like this:
(p-(((abs(((((p)-(9**i)-9)+1))-((((9**i)-(p)-9)-2)))-p+1)-p)%p))
The result is '49856916'
Thats within the ballpark of our original product.
And then I factored it.
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, 23, 29, 46, 58, 69, 87, 92, 116, 138, 174, 276, 348, 667, 1334, 2001, 2668, 4002, 6229, 8004, 12458, 18687, 24916, 37374, 74748, 143267, 180641, 286534, 361282, 429801, 541923, 573068, 722564, 859602, 1083846, 1719204, 2167692, 4154743, 8309486, 12464229, 16618972, 24928458, 49856916
Well damn. It's not a-smooth or b-smooth (where 'smoothness' is defined as 'all factors are beneath some number n')
but this is far more approachable than just factoring the original product.
It still requires a value of i equal to
i = floor(a/2)
But the results are actually factorable now if this works for other products.
I rewrote the script and tested on a couple million products and added decimal support, and I'm happy to report it works.
Script is posted here if you want to test it yourself:
https://pastebin.com/RNu1iiQ8
What I'll do next is probably add some basic factorization of trivial primes
(say the first 100), and then figure out the average number of factors in each derived product.
I'm also still working on getting to values of i < a/2, but only having sporadic success.
It also means *very* large numbers (either a subset of them or universally) with *lots* of factors may be reducible to unique products with just two non-trivial factors, but thats a big question mark for now.
@scor if you want to take a look.5 -
!rant
I have my 121 in a few days with my new manager and am trying to get a raise either through moving from junior to mid level dev or being given a significant raise , am being paid a tad below the London market rate's lower range for my skill level.
Any advice on how to approach the topic?
Some bits of my background:
I got almost 4 years of exp :
almost 2 working there...
6 months short term contract as a ruby sql dev another company...
1.5 years worked for an abusive joke of a company who took advantage of my naivety since i was fresh out of uni ( did stuff like pressured me to add more features to a pojo system i made for them) barely learned anything there since i was the only IT person there developing solo, the project lasted 1.5 years and was a total mess to finish, so am not too sure of factoring it into my years of exp.
My Qualifications are:
bsc in information systems
Msc in enterprise sw engineering
My "new" Manager is seeking to retire real soon.
The company isn't doing too well but we just landed 2 big customers who are buying the product my team is working on
I Am one of two last devs on my team and we are barely holding on with the load, can't afford the time to train a newbie to join us
my department is soon to be sold (soon according to what mgr says). They have been saying so for 10 months now.
Last year , since the acquisition Is taking so long and funds were running out We were hit by a wave of redundancies which slashed our workforce in august/ july, told we could last till march this year on our funds . Even senior staff were on a reduced work week...but since we Got new customers then money should be coming in again , this should mean thats no longer the case. Even the senior staff have returned to 5 day work weeks.
Am being given only JavaScript work to do despite being hired as a junior java dev, my more senior colleagues dont wanna even touch js with a long stick
Spoke to 3 recruiters , said they got open roles in the junior- mid level range that pay the proper market range if am interested to put my cv through.
Thats like 25% more than I currently make.
Am a bit scared to jump into a mid level position in another company because i lack a bit confidence in my core java skills.
although a senior dev who used to be on my team thinks i can do it.
i recon i can take on the responsibilities of a mid level dev in me existing company since am pretty familiar with the products
I dont get to work with senior devs and learn from them since we are so stretched thin, hence am not really getting the chance to grow my skills
I know i have gaps in my knowledge and skills having not been able work in java for a while hasn't allowed me to fix that too well. I badly need to learn stuff like proper unit testing, not the adhoc rubbish we do at the moment, frameworks like spring etc
Since I have been pretty much pushed into being the js guy for the large chunks of the project over the last year , its kinda funny am the only guy who has the barest idea how some of the client facing stuff works
The new manager does seem to be a nice guy but he is like a politician, a master bullshitter who kept reassuring all is well and the company is fineeee (just ignore the redundancies as the fly past you)
The deal for thr aquisition seem to have sped up according to rumors
And we heard is a massive company buying us, hence things might pick up again and be better than ever
Any ideas how to approach the 121 with him?
Any advice career wise?
Should i push for a raise ?
promotion to mid?
Leave to find a junior to mid level position?
Tought it out and wait for the take over or company crash while trying to fill the gaps in my knowledge ?
Sorry for the length of this post2
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