I had a secondary Gmail account with a really nice short nickname (from the early invite/alpha days), forwarded to another of my mailboxes. It had a weak password, leaked as part of one of the many database leaks.

Eventually I noticed some dude in Brazil started using my Gmail, and he changed the password — but I still got a copy of everything he did through the forwarding rule. I caught him bragging to a friend on how he cracked hashes and stole and sold email accounts and user details in bulk.

He used my account as his main email account. Over the years I saw more and more personal details getting through. Eventually I received a mail with a plaintext password... which he also used for a PayPal account, coupled to a Mastercard.

I used a local website to send him a giant expensive bouquet of flowers with a box of chocolates, using his own PayPal and the default shipping address.

I included a card:

"Congratulations on acquiring my Gmail account, even if I'm 7 years late. Thanks for letting me be such an integral part of your life, for letting me know who you are, what you buy, how much you earn, who your family and friends are and where you live. I've surprised your mother with a cruise ticket as you mentioned on Facebook how sorry you were that you forgot her birthday and couldn't buy her a nice present. She seems like a lovely woman. I've also made a $1000 donation in your name to the EFF, to celebrate our distant friendship"

I once brought my Kali Linux laptop to school. (Because normal had dead battery, waiting for shipping)

MFW someone from the IT department is called in to fix teachers projector and he sees I still have the default dragon wallpaper on it.
MFW when recognises it it's Kali.
MFW he calls the police and my laptop gets taken away because 'its dangerous' and I get questioned in school.

The police came back a week later to check my laptop again. 'uhh we gotta check the logs'.

IF I WANTED IT TO BE DANGEROUS YOU'D BE FIXING A LOT MORE THAN JUST THE FUCKING PROJECTOR!

Also, wuddup devrant!

shipping recursion

i've been working with my plan to make a small software development company for a while now.

time to implement my plan
Finalizing my plan: Done
Quit my job: Done
Ordering Office Requirements : Shipping
a Server : Shipping
Dozen of Rubber Ducks : Shipping
etc...

so here it is, Day 0; repurposing my bunker to be my small office !

new life, new hope

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.

Not a rant, but I found this funny enough to share.

About two weeks ago, I’m contacted by a third party development firm that is responsible for building the next iteration of a control board were are developing. Alongside build of the PCB they were scoped to flash the firmware and verify all connected components.

During the call, they tell me they don’t have the resources to build our testing environment with the Ansible script I provided, and they don’t know if the updates they have made will work with our control system. Ugh...really...

I attempt to walk them through the 3 pretty simple commands to launch the playbook. Instead of listening, their project manager insists that I need to load up the environment and send them a ready to go system.

I quickly load up a RaspberryPi and prepare it for shipping. I hand the box to our shipping clerk and fill out the shipping request documentation. Then about a week goes by and this is where the story really begins.

I get an email from the same rep asking where the environment is, and I head down to the warehouse to inquire where the RaspberryPi might be. After speaking with the head clerk, we can’t seem to track down the package. I’m assured that they will find the Pi and send me the shipment update.

I pass the information along and after about a day and a half I still didn’t receive word back from the warehouse team. I load up another Pi and head back down to the warehouse. I follow up with the warehouse staff. They inform me that they have not been able to locate my package and another warehouse worker is called over. He says he hasn’t seen it, but they they were having a food day that day and he thinks more than likely someone ate it.

Like it didn’t even click at first but after a few seconds I realize that these guys have literally been looking for a pie for the past two days...and I JUST DIE.

After the 5 or so minutes of laughing I show them the newly flashed RaspberryPi, and of course they know exactly where the original one was.

It’s shipped out now, but wow. Also, it turns out the PCB manufacturing company didn’t even really need this and it was all a guise to hide that they are behind schedule and that they will not be able to finish the work scoped. FML!

Friend: Why don't you just quit your job?
Me: I want to, I just can't right now, it would cause too many issues.
Friend: oh really? Will it affect your health insurance or pension?
Me: No my office is the shipping address for my new iPhone. Haven't got it yet.
Friend: Oh ffs .... seriously?

"I don’t care if it works on your machine! We are not shipping your machine!" - Ovidiu Platon

Typical international shipping for free swags

Got them 3 weeks now. Tested them before posting, here my summary:

Pro:
Arrived in 1 week (US to Germany)
Squeaky while squeezy
Nice hats
Really are helping
Stressball tastes nice

Contra:
IT'S FUCKING HARD TO FUCKING PUT THE CHRISTMAS HATS ON

Your sincerely,

A loyal customer

Do you also like the idea, if devRant would have patreon or paypal for donations?

++ the rant if you like the idea. Maybe @dfox and @trogus will consider it then 😄

Servers are not cheap and it would be great if the community would finance itself.

Sure devRant got a Store, but I live in Europe and ordering/shipping is not so cheap, we got huge taxes for it. And I dont wont to order a stressball or sticker every month.

Also every dev wishes for a beer 🍺 😜

Here's a story about the history of privacy:

Advertisements once ruled the internet. Users invented adblockers to beat them. The ads adapted and disguised themselves as legitimate news articles and fake news. They can still influence how people think and shape you, and only a few people realized it. Most were lost to this cunning move by advertisers.

Like advertisements, evil companies like google and Facebook and Microsoft that harvest and use your data against you ruled the internet. Most people were smart enough to use open source software to avoid them, knowing it couldn't do anything that you didn't know it was doing. SO THE COMPANIES ADAPTED. And released lots of wonderful things with evil features like android, google chrome, gmail, disguised as helpful features or open source. Now, people thought they were safe using open source and simple things, but never realized that their data was being shipped off and collected right under your nose.

Moral of the story: using Adblock and open source is not enough any more, you have to understand the motivation behind what you read on the internet, and have to understand how the software you are using accomplishes its task to know if you are truly safe. Shipping your searches to google can look like it's evil or a feature in the eye of the beholder, so you have to be the one smart enough to know thatjust because it's open source doesn't mean it can't do bad things. REMEMBER UBUNTU UNITY AND AMAZON.

Note that I'm actually very pro free software, but you still have to watch what you use.

Well, that was fast! 1 week for international shipping (Canada). Thanks dfox and trogus for the awesome swag (and for making an awesome app). Didn't even have the time to finish my 3d printed ball before I got the real one :P

Fuck those who cover their incompetence with complexity. Fuck those who fall for their shitty tricks. Fuck you for depriving me of any sense of accomplishment with overcomplicating everything to show how smart you are when you are not. Fuck you for creating a culture of overthinking egoism instead of shipping and finding out who was right. FUCK YOU IN THE ASS YOU BIKESHEDDING, MOTHERFUCKING CUNTS!

At least free shipping.

So.. I wanna buy the rubber duck, but the shipping fee is more pricey than the item itself. 😔

I thought docker was a shipmaker or shipping company until today....

Me:
- Few days ago: Orders thinkpad
- Now: Checks email
- Sees shipping email from lenovo
*YES! Earlier than expected ship date by a full week*
- Opens email
- Package only contains the additional charger that I had ordered, I can't even use it without the laptop

*facepalm*

I ordered my devrant stickers a few hours ago and they still haven't arrived.

Advertising your laptops as "linux-laptops" but shipping only with nvidia-gpu should be punishable by death.

Writing cool code might be your passion but shipping it is your job. Sometimes they are not the same thing unfortunately... and its ok!

I hate being a fucking tech support dude. Everyone thinks it is my job to fix their device. Some girl asked me to replace her iPhone 6 plus screen a few days ago. I reluctantly said yes. I bought a screen. And I started the process. I opened the box for the new screen and it was just the screen with no digitizer. That was completely my fault. I was an idiot. I immediately buy the correct one on amazon and tell the girl, I'm sorry you won't have a phone for two days. As soon as the new package comes in, I will do the repair.
3 Days Later: Today.
Her: Has it come in yet?
Me: No, I'm going to call Amazon
Amazon: We're sorry, the thing you asked for was out of stock, you'll have to buy it again.
He was very nice, and he gave me free shipping, but this was not my fault!
Her: I have to wait 2 more days? That's like a whole week without a phone!
I had to do this for free and pay $40 for the new part. I am never telling anyone I am a developer again. I feel so fucking bad, and she's mad. And I can't do anything about it.

I prefer android phones. Am in the oddball here? I had a client ask me if I owned an iPhone. I said I don't, all I have are Androids. He is shipping me an iPhone so I can test our app on it.

Hmm.

me: do we need to setup the shop to charge a flat shipping rate, or charge per item?

🕛3 hours later.

client: yes, that is correct.

me: 😧

Friends, hear the good news, somebody figured out how to turn off Intel ME. Rejoice!

I fucking hate how intel reps say “they don’t participate in lowering security or shipping back doored or compromised systems, but yet ME is designed such that any vulnerability in it equals total gang busters for gaining access. It’s introducing your best friend to a serial killer, handing the killer a un, and offering him a million dollars to shoot your friend, and then when he does, saying you had nothing to do with it because it was his choice. Go fuck yourselves Intel, I’m already never buying a cpu or nic from you as long as I shall live, the least you can do is not lie to us.

why dont any startup company concern themselves with quality.. oh i hate shipping shitty code.. 😞

I didn't redeem my stressball because I felt bad for dfox and trogus having to pay extra for shipping. Is there any way to redeem my stressball while still paying shipping? ❤ (I wanna order some other stuff too)

13 fucking USD in shipping for a 9 USD rubber duck? Fuck no.
Spend $2 a month and most likely forget I am now subscribing to devRant++? Yeah, sure. Why not, right?

Seriously though, thank God for this platform, I'm luckily not the only one with struggles..

Do you know when you think "Oh that doesn't look too hard. I bet I can do it in no time"?
That is how I felt when I saw the DIY 3D printer kit Anet A8. It's only 150€ on gearbest so that is pretty cheap.
The reviews said it takes about 3 - 4 hours to build and I though "Ok I am a computer specialist and engineer so 3h sounds reasonable".
When I bought it from gearbest the first problems started: 5 days after the estimated shipping date the packet was still not on its way. After I fucked the support up, it finally arrived 3 weeks after the estimated date.
When I took the first look, everything seemed to be fine except for some small scratches but for that price that is not a problem.
So I started to build the printer at about 14:00 and even if some random sites in the manual were in Chinese I felt confident to get it done in a view hours.
And then it started to get really fucked. The first problem was that 2 screws were unusable and I had to use my own screws instead. The next problem was that the manual was just in the wrong fucking order at some points and I had to reverse multiple steps to get it right.
But the most fucked up thing: There should have been 2 threaded rods with a length of 345mm but the rods had a length of 310mm which was nowhere listed in the parts list. So I had to go buy some aluminium rods to fill the gap temporary so that I can at least go on with the build before getting a replacement. And I could go on and on and with the problems but the point is, it is now 19:30 which is about 5.5 hours after I started and I am still not fucking done with this.

So what have I learned?
Cheap Chinese hardware is good, but only as long as you don't have to assemble that shit yourself.

Working with a delivery ordering API. Response:
Shipping label type: PDF
Label: base64encoded string

I was like, that's easy, literally two lines of code. Proceeds to convert and save the file. Then on open, bam! Format ubreadable. What the actual fuck?! Found an online converter, and tried to convert it to pdf, to see if I was missing something, but the results was the same.

Then checked the decoded string. First 3 characters: GIF

Well fuck you too! This carrier uses GIF's for it's shipping labels for 2years at least, how hard is it to change that in your fucking api response, you pice of shitbag.

"During this crisis, we all need to stand together. We're contributing by providing 50% off domain registrations"

"Important COVID-19 update: Social distancing is a must. Free shipping on all dildos and vibrators"

Pandemic-themed marketing emails... 😩

Because shipping method %s is the fastest!

So I Bought this bio metric pad lock for my daughter. She excitedly tried to set it up without following the directions( they actually have good directions on line) first thing you do is set the "master print" she buggered that up setting her print. So when I got home I was thinking, no problem I'll just do a reset and then we cant start again.

NOPE !!! you only have one chance to set the master print! after that if you want to reset the thing you need to use the master print along with a physical key that comes with it.

What sort if Moron designs hardware / software that is unable to be reset. Imagine how much fun it would be if once you set your router admin password it was permanent unless you can long back in to change it. Yea nobody has ever forgotten a password.

Well they are about to learn a valuable financial lesson about how user friendly design will influence your bottom line. people (me) will just return the lock to the store where they bought it, and it will have to be shipped back to the factory and will be very expensive for them paying for all of the shipping to and from and resetting and repackaging of the locks and finally shipping again to another store. Meanwhile I'll keep getting new locks until at no cost until she gets it right.

poor design

Birthday rant !dev
>Be me. Buy 20 doughnuts for everyone in company, two more than there are people working in the office, just to be safe.
>Be one of 5 other people that came to work today. Everyone else either are sick, are working remotely or went on a delegation.
>Watch as 14 doughnuts slowly decay in the kitchen.
Well... At least I've got my package from devRant. Thanks for quick shipping! I only got it today because there was tracking. Fucking post in Poland is shit, they "tried to deliver it yesterday but there weren't anyone at home" even though I was and I haven't even got notice in the mailbox.

Fucking Amazon rant again...

TLDR: Amazon specializes in “the last mile”. They are repeatedly allowing a 3rd party shipper (Purolator) destroy their main value proposition. Thoughts at the end.

Me on the phone with their support...

Me: so it says my package was attempted to be delivered today. I did not get a call or notification or anything and I have been working from home all day to wait for the package.

Support: -Sigh- yes, I can see it was Purolator we have been having trouble with them lately.

Me: ok, so are you able to see what happened?

Support: let me put you on hold.

.......

Support: So they said they will not call for a delivery, did they use your building buzzer?

Me: Nope, just stood outside the building and then left I guess.

Support: -sigh- Well you can pick it up at their depot. Let me get you the address.

Me: The one by the airport?

Support: Yes it looks like it is about an hour away from where you are. And they are only open during work hours.

Me: So, after working from home to get this package you advice is to take 3 hours off work and go there to pick it up?

Support: Well, we can refund it? If thats what you want.

Me: No, I would like the package I ordered please.

Support: There is nothing I can do sir.

Me: So before I hang up let me see if I have it straight. When I order a package from Amazon, do I have an option of who ships it?

Support: No, I’m sorry but that is decided on our end.

Me: And I have had this problem before with this shipping agent. So, your telling me that when I ship things to me with Amazon that I have no control of wether I even get the package? Your telling me it is literally a coin toss as to wether or not I ever get my package?

Support: yes sir, I’m sorry but that is all I can do.

Me: So you realize that, for example, if I went to my local grocery store and it was a coin toss that I could take my groceries home (even after I paid for them) then I will always go to another store....

Support: yes, I know. There is nothing I can do.

Me: So from now on I have to order items, wait for them to be shipped, check the shipper and then cancel the order of it is them?

Support: -sigh- you cannot cancel an order after it has shipped...

Me: wow. Sure is great being a prime and audible member. I get fast delivery of 50% of my packages and no delivery at all of the other 50%. Sorry for the sarcasm...

Support: I’m sorry I can’t help more.

Me: So just to clarify. I can expect NOT to get the package I ordered?

Support: sorry

Me: have a nice day.

————

Here are my thoughts as a student of business...

Amazon specializes in “the last mile” (in their delivery service anyway) and when they deliver the package they also deliver on that value proposition.

However, now it seems that one of their shipping providers is failing at getting packages that last mile, which is resulting and destroying the idea of their value proposition in a customers eyes. (Affecting more than me as the rep said)

Now, instead of believing that Amazon will get things to me, saving me that last mile trip to the store etc., I firmly believe that it is a toss up as to wether I will ever receive my package (based on carrier)

I know that if I was in Amazon’s position (a carrier hurting my overall value proposition with consistently unacceptable service) that I would come down on them with a force they have never seen or drop them entirely.

But of course, every company reaches a point where they have such market share and sway that they take their eye off the ball when it comes to their value proposition to customers.

!rant

Hello dear fellow devs, I got some more nice ram and don't need those ram bars anymore. Write why you should receive them and they are on the way. For people outside germany you (unfortunatly) have to cover the shipping costs.

I'm fascinated by the programs in use by stores. I was buying a piece of furniture yesterday and noticed that the employee typed my order using the console. Literally everything - the model, the color, the shipping address...

Fuck safari literally nothing does what it's supposed to do, I have a `document.getElementById('x').innerText = "hello there"` but it sets a totally different element to that text, this is apparently because of display: none although JS should NOT look at css wtf.

There's a whole bunch of these issues but I won't rant about them until I've solved them so I can fully explore the depth of stupidity in safari. If you work for apple and developed WebCore or WebKit, I'm sorry but I hate you and you would be better off shipping with lynx.

!rant

My fucking awesome ass JS #SwagDuckie arrived!

Awesomeeeeeeeee!

Also, stickers arrived the other day. I ended up mounting them on Black because the Apple logo shining through annoyed me 😊

Now I need a vinyl design that looks like a duckie for the back of the laptop.

Thanks @dfox, @trogus; international shipping to the uk was remarkably fast, I was shocked.

Confession: I'm launching a major project for a client this time next week. It's some of the worst code I've ever written in my entire life. It's beyond awful, but I have no choice. It's sure going to be fun fixing it for the next 2 weeks post launch.

[...] great! Nice to hear from you that you've got experience using C#! Our shipping company will also need a mobile interface for our IBM AS400 relic older-than-the-pyramids server, can you do that?

Me (a little displeased about the idea of working on a pre-existing legacy server): yes sure, I'm working on a Android project right now, so I'm learning a lot about it lately, I think it's totally feasible

Them: oh, but we are using a windows mobile device

Me (wondering why they are still using Windows phone): I can look it up and let you know btw

> Windows Mobile /= Windows Phone
> Deprecated since 2010

I'm fucked.

Wohooooooooo just got email about Hacktoberfest. So excited.
Did you guys paid anything for it when it arrived like taxes or shipping ?

Has anyone ever ordered off RedBubble? Are they even a legitimate company?

Rant...

20 days ago I ordered a package from redbubble.com

They shipped the package, without an apartment number. So the delivery was refused and it was sent back to them.

I reach out to support and they ask me to send them a complete mailing address and my order number.

I send them my exact mailing address and the order number as they requested. They inform me that the package is being sent out again ASAP.

This morning I see that the new package has shipped, WITH NO FUCKING APARTMENT NUMBER.

I email them to let them know this. They inform me that since it has my zip code it will be fine (which is a ridiculously stupid this to say).

So I actually call the post service and ask them if the address will work, they let me know that of course, it will not get to me if there is no apartment. Duh!

So, I email RedBubble support again to let them know this.

I expect some sort of answer as to why this is happening. But the following happens.

They send me a refund.

Let's be clear, I did not as for a refund. I asked for the order I made to be shipped to me.

So it seems that putting an apartment number on a shipping address is completely impossible for this very unprofessional company.

After 2 weeks of bullshit, I will be receiving nothing at all from these shady cunts.

Fuck RedBubble it seems.

> goes to amazon
> finds fluent python book
> wants to order it
> shipping costs almost the same with the book
> cries.

This hasn’t been posted yet?

The Boring Company Flamethrower is renamed to The Boring Company not a Flamethrower because of shipping problems :D

Finally got my Bluetooth earphones!
It's called Pamu Scroll, funded in Indiegogo.
I bought it for $49 without shipping fee.
Now let me write a review about it here after using for about an hour or so.

1. Shipment
Shipment from China is slow and hard to track unless it is classified as EMS, which mine wasn't, obviously.

2. Packaging
It has some shock protection layer, but without that, nope! It was staying still inside the packaging though.

3. Design
Beautiful. Just beautiful. Period. Just see the picture below.
It opens as a papyrus, maybe that's why it is called Pamu Scroll. Both the case's end, and earphones itself has magnets to hold each other.
It has a leather feeling to both the inside and outside of the case, and the touch control area of the earphones is also leather feeling, adding a nice touch that differs with other earphonnes.
The diamond feeling finish in the end of the case makes the case itself isn't earphones, more like some expensive jewelry case.

4. Fit
My ears are smaller than most people, for I am young, so it sometimes fall off when I jump, but when I put it the correct way, never falls out.

5. Audio
I am not an audiophile. I don't really care about the audio quality and how it sounds like unless the sound is too cringy and has so many white noise.
This earphones has white noise, but just a little bit, you won't notice except when you are in a quiet room.
The bass is boosted, but low sounds, and vocals can be cringy sometimes, so I should manually tune them with my phone's equalizer.

6. IPX6
Not tested yet, but they advertise as using it in the shower.

7. Stereo call
Yup. Stereo call. Call in both ears. But only right microphone seems to get the voice.

8. Pairing
Using BT 5, it is a breeze to connect.
Take both of them out, put to your ear, then ding! "Connected"
Done.

9. Charging
with micro-usb
wireless charging for optional purchase - 10 bucks

10. battery
Reasonable amount
You have 3.5 hrs of listening time in both ears, and you can charge 2 times more each by putting in the case.

===============

Overall, it is awesome and let's just pray it doesn't break for at least for an year.

One side note, I can activate assistant by double tapping in the left ear (yes it is touch control), but my S8 asks me if I want to customize with Automate/Tasker. Yup!
Will share that later as well.

If you have any questions, ask me! Thanks for reading my first ever product review in devRant! <3

Releasing a new shipping console.
Every day I've told them to let me know when ANYTHING goes wrong.

I released it last week on Tuesday.

Yesterday.. they came with some missing options. Ok fine. I fixed them. Then repeated the same sentence: Let me know DIRECTLY when ANYTHING goes wrong!

Today, I planned to leave early and tomorrow I have a day off.

30 min before I leave;

hi, something's wrong, I told X yesterday.

GOD FUCKING DAMNIT;!!!!!

I needed a new laptop to work/study and found a suitable one on Lenovo's website...
25th of july :
- "your order has been placed... blablabla.. it will take approximately from 1 to 2 weeks to prepare and 3-5 days shipping.."
- hum... Ok.. seems long to just put RAM and SSD inside my laptop but alright..

31st of july :
- "unfortunately your order has been delayed, the new shipping date is estimated for August, 14"
- Fuck ! Ill be patient then.. hopefully it'll be ready earlier than that..

10th of August :
- "unfortunately your order has been delayed, the new shipping date is estimated for september, 7"
- WHAT THE FU.. ?!? YOU DENSE MOTHERFUCKER, HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO PUT 8 FUCKING GIGS OF RAM AND AN SSD PLEASE TELL ME ?!? IS IT A JOKE OR WHAT ?! I FLY ABROAD THE 17TH OF SEPTEMBER YOU BETTER SHIP MY LAPTOP IN TIME !!

I'm really mad now and thinking of cancelling the order.. I might have no time to test the laptop before flying.. FUCK !!

About the Huawei not being allowed in Play Store. Just remember that Xiaomi was shipping devices without Google services installed, but it had the single click "Install Google Play Services" app.

Anyway, can I send a bill for my dad's phone to Donald Trump?

In order to reduce support costs, manager instructed his team to remove all logging/reporting of errors in the company’s CRM application.
Team’s support tickets went down 80%, manager received an award for his efforts, but mysteriously, DBA/support workload increased, bad/missing data,
increased support tickets in other areas of the business (shipping, etc. that relied on correct data from the CRM) and other side-affectual behavior.
Even after pointing this out this correlation, showing before/after code, no one believed the two were related and I was accused of not being a ‘team player’.
“You and the other teams need to learn from his example!”. As ‘punishment’ was I was moved to the team managing the CRM application.

When your total cost of the item you bought on Black Friday is cheaper than shipping.... (cries in the corner)

When you get so desperate for your new ThinkPad that you know its flight number...

YOU WANT ME TO TEST AND DEVELOP IN MOTHERFUCKING PRODUCTION?!!!

Whaaaaaat, I'm changing shit, what if somebody goes to buy this product and I've made it super-cheap? ATM, there's two fuckin options for shipping, both different costs. the best bit? RIGHT NOW, THE USER CAN CHOOSE TO PAY LESS FOR THEIR SHIPPING.

HOLY FUCK.

It cost me 6$ to have a big ass keyboard, that weighs a fuck ton thanx to the metal back plate, to have it couried 800km.

It cost 12$ to courier a fucking raspberry pi from the same city... what the actual fucking fuck. And to make it worse i had to pay double shipping cause i had to order the power supply from another site causr site A only had stock of pi's and site B only had stock of power supplies...

fuck my city needs more imported goods vendors

dev, ~boring

This is either a shower thought or a sober weed thought, not really sure which, but I've given some serious consideration to "team composition" and "working condition" as a facet of employment, particularly in regard to how they translate into hiring decisions and team composition.

I've put together a number of teams over the years, and in almost every case I've had to abide by an assemblage of pre-defined contexts that dictated the terms of the team working arrangement:

1. a team structure dictated to me
2. a working temporality scheme dictated to me
3. a geographic region in which I was allowed to hire
4. a headcount, position tuple I was required to abide by

I've come to regard these structures as weaknesses. It's a bit like the project management triangle in which you choose 1-2 from a list of inadequate options. Sometimes this is grounded in business reality, but more often than not it's because the people surrounding the decisions thrive on risk mitigation frameworks that become trickle down failure as they impose themselves on all aspects of the business regardless of compatibility.

At the moment, I'm in another startup that I have significantly more control over and again have found my partners discussing the imposition of structure and framework around how, where, why, who and what work people do before contact with any action. My mind is screaming at me to pull the cord, as much as I hate the expression. This stems from a single thought:

"Hierarchy and structure should arise from an understanding of a problem domain"

As engineers we develop processes based on logic; it's our job, it's what we do. Logic operates on data derived from from experiments, so in the absence of the real we perform thought experiments that attempt to reveal some fundamental fact we can use to make a determination.

In this instance we can ask ourselves the question, "what works?" The question can have a number contexts: people, effort required, time, pay, need, skills, regulation, schedule. These things in isolation all have a relative importance ( a weight ), and they can relatively expose limits of mutual exclusivity (pay > budget, skills < need, schedule < (people * time/effort)). The pre-imposed frameworks in that light are just generic attempts to abstract away those concerns based on pre-existing knowledge. There's a chance they're fine, and just generally misunderstood or misapplied; there's also a chance they're insufficient in the face of change.

Fictional entities like the "A Team," comprise a group of humans whose skills are mutually compatible, and achieve synergy by random chance. Since real life doesn't work on movie/comic book logic, it's easy to dismiss the seed of possibility there, that an organic structure can naturally evolve to function beyond its basic parts due to a natural compatibility that wasn't necessarily statistically quantifiable (par-entropic).

I'm definitely not proposing that, nor do I subscribe to the 10x ninja founders are ideal theory. Moreso, this line of reasoning leads me to the thought that team composition can be grown organically based on an acceptance of a few observed truths about shipping products:

1. demand is constant
2. skills can either be bought or developed
3. the requirement for skills grows linearly
4. hierarchy limits the potential for flexibility
5. a team's technically proficiency over time should lead to a non-linear relationship relationship between headcount and growth

Given that, I can devise a heuristic, organic framework for growing a team:

- Don't impose reporting structure before it has value (you don't have to flatten a hierarchy that doesn't exist)
- crush silos before they arise
- Identify needed skills based on objectives
- base salary projections on need, not available capital
- Hire to fill skills gap, be open to training since you have to pay for it either way
- Timelines should always account for skills gap and training efforts
- Assume churn will happen based on team dynamics
- Where someone is doesn't matter so long as it's legal. Time zones are only a problem if you make them one.
- Understand that the needs of a team are relative to a given project, so cookie cutter team composition and project management won't work in software
- Accept that failure is always a risk
- operate with the assumption that teams that are skilled, empowered and motivated are more likely to succeed.
- Culture fit is a per team thing, if the team hates each other they won't work well no matter how much time and money you throw at it

Last thing isn't derived from the train of thought, just things I feel are true:

- Training and headcount is an investment that grows linearly over time, but can have exponential value. Retain people, not services.
- "you build it, you run it" will result in happier customers, faster pivoting. Don't adopt an application maintenance strategy

/rant

Conversion rates and shipping make it awfully expensive to get official t-shirts here in India, so I decided to experiment with t-shirt printing till the time I can earn enough to donate directly to open source foundations.

I call this design "FUCK YOU, AUTODESK!!"

(Yes it's literally just the logo. Yes I'm not a graphic designer)

Not too bad, but the print could've been better. Time to start tweaking things.

Couple of jobs back we got bought out by that massive shipping company with the red and yellow colors.

We used macs and some high up moron decided it was a good idea to put on domain policy restrictions on our macs, but developers can't work without admin access so if we wanted to keep said admin access, we had to sign a written agreement indicating that we were not allowed to do certain thing, like change our wallpaper or install personal music players, you know like Spotify, which at the time was what most of us used.

Now this was just a nice cherry on the cake of stupid descision that was making me rethink working there. Thanks to the high demand for skilled front ends, it was 11 am when we got this, 3pm I had comnfirmed my interview for the next day.

An hour later our manager called us all in to explain this was BS formalities. Well too fucking late, learn to communicate you dumb shit.

I think I might change my middle name to "I told you so"

Couple of weeks ago I proposed integrating a daily process job into an existing WPF application (details of what+why would be too long to explain) and the manager suggested I make the changes

Me: "I can do it, but Jay has the most experience with that application. I don't have his WPF skills"
Mgr: "How hard can WPF be? If it uses the MVVM pattern, it should be a snap."
Me: "Its nearly an 8 year old WPF project with several chefs in that kitchen. I pretty sure I could figure it out, but that is a difference between 2 weeks and 2 days. Integration is pretty straight forward, Jay could probably do it in a day."
DevA: "WPF is easy. MVVM makes it even easier. I worked on the shipping app."
Me: "That's was a brand new, single page app, but yea, it should be easy."
DevB: "WPF has been around a long time and the tools have really matured. I don't understand what is so difficult."
Me: "I didn't say anything would be difficult, I know with that application, there is going to be complexity we need to figure out."
DevB: "It uses the MVVM, so all we need is the user control, a view model, controller, and its done."
DevA: "Sounds easy to me."
Mgr: "If you need more time to work on the vendor project, I'll have DevB work on the integration."

<yesterday>
Me: "How is the integration going?"
DevB: "This app is a mess. I have no idea how they got the control collections to work. If I hard-code everything, I can get it to work. This dynamic stuff is so confusing. Then there is the styling. Its uses dark mode, but no matter what I do, my controls show up in light mode."
Me: "The app uses Prism, so the control configuration is in, or around, the startup code."
DevB: "That makes sense. Will it fix the styling too?"
Me: "I have no idea. When I looked at it, some controls loaded the styles from the main resource, other's have it hard-coded. Different chefs in the kitchen, I guess. How far have you got?"
DevB: "I've created invoice button. That is as far as I got"
Me: "I'm finished with the vendor project and I'll be wrapping up the documentation today. I can try to help next week."
DevB: "Thanks. I think we might have to get Jay to help if we can't figure this out."
Me: "Good idea"

Two weeks and only a button. A button? I miss Delphi.

That sad feeling when you live outside the US and shipping for swag is 13$ :(

Gotta admit. Amazon fire tablets are awesome for cheap tinkering and installing custom firmware in it. Using 7 of them to use at my super efficient smart home (😎) and they don't break at all...
I wish they allow direct international shipping tho...

The site I work on is a market where you can buy magnets for dolors, insomniaque, bla bla bla (I don't believe a sec in this).
Just saying that to settle that 80% of our customers are +45 years old. They weren't born with a computer in their hands, and they sometimes manage to make a lot of mess in the site.
We are based in France, and we sell the most in France (no shit) and Switzerland. And this is the third time that a Swiss pass a command, puts all her address in Switzerland EXCEPT for the country (still on France) so she doesn't have to pay the shipping fee. I should do something about that, like a regex when verifying the zip code, but I have more urgent work to do, and the best has to come.
This smartass doesn't know she is the joke, because by saying she is in France, she has to pay the VAT that she wouldn't have if she said she was in Switzerland. She buys in general for around 350 €, so she has ~ 70€ (20%) in VAT, and she would only pay 14€ in shipping fee.
Maybe one day she'll see how dumb she is (my boss already mailed her so she pays attention to it, no change). But I think I would have set the regex by then.

(I'll give some context before the rant: I'm part if the IT department of a manufacturing company (actually I'm 1/2 of the department), and all the applications (old an new - except the ones used on production line) used in the company are my responsibility, that including most of databases too... Also, English isn't my native language so there will be some words or phrases that I'll probably write wrong... Sorry for that, if there are any corrections, I'll be glad to hear them)

So...

There will be an implementation of new "control point" on the "shipping department" which consists on a electromechanical equipment controlled by a PLC. And despite the original concept was a collaboration between 2 departments (we, IT, and Production Control), I was never taken in consideration about anything of the project... To be fair, I forget about its existence until two weeks ago.

So, a few days I learned that there are a huge delay regarding the original deadline (mainly because the supplier was delayed with the delivery of their system), and since two weeks (less, actually, because some holydays in between) I'm learning how to integrate that "P.o.S" into an existing application on a PC using a serial communication (not the main problem, as I've done that before... With another brand of PLC's) while avoiding buying any additional software (to get the communication done and in a easy way) and that sort of things... But discovering in the process that it will be necessary to acquire such additional SW in order to finish the job ASAP.

When suddenly I get the "news" that it's almost all my duty (and responsibility) to meet the original deadline, because it doesn't matter how the other departments screw all the schedule, it's the job of IT to get the shit done in time... And what is worst: they didn't said that in such straight manner, no, the implied it while making a quick test with the general manager.

I mean, WTF? Besides doing a "respectable" number of "user support" activities in a dialy basis, I also need to manage the activities of other departments? And also fix their screw ups on a schedule that I just learned days before?

And also there is a coworker (one of whom screwed up) that, almost every time she see me, is asking "how much until you'll finish?"

As I read on a meme years ago: "please, give patience, because if you give strength, I'll need bail money too..."

Damn... I don't know of the benefits of this work are worth all this nonsense

thank god it has free shipping...

For fuck sake!
Fuck locatefamily.com, just searched out on google my name and surname, both foreign and hard to even spell out for many, and it's the first time that I saw my data(where did I live, my current work phone number, name and surname) open wide as the second link of my search, fuck!

But there's a clue, at that address I lived for a not so long period, so I did search my emails in that period and other than my employers and government emails(in which I don't trust either), here's a list of companies that had my info(partial or full):
Only address(with name and surname):

Amazon.it with 14 other companies(for shipping)
eBay with 4 other companies(for shipping)
voxelfarm.com
trenord.it
DUMA (LIGHT) di Adel
decathlon.com
gruppoargenta.it
paypal.it

All info:
gearbest.com
glistockisti.com
oculus.com
Banggood.com

Overall there are 33(including government, employers and national main mail service) potential leaks of that data, with 7 in full exposure.

After this, I'm thinking how it's even avoidable to not leak personal data, because from any of those businesses I got goods or services that otherwise I couldn't without exposing such informations... fuck.

Yeah these fucking assholes lost a 300 pound gaming chair at my local depot for 3 weeks where I eventually got a refund from Amazon. I ordered a USB desk fan for the heat off ebay, yeah these fucking cunts delivered it to my workplace at 9pm.

Guess who is building my companies new ecommerce platform, where I am currently integrating the shipping options. Fuck off Yodel.

My project just went from "we can use one of those arduino boards, they are cheap and easy to use" to "we need a mass storage solution for that, maybe we can buy a shipping container and put it down on a nearby field as an on site storage". I love the things I would do if I had the resources for this kind of project!

Say hello to the ducks family! 😁 (I know, couldn't get the devrant ones, shipping fees are too much 😷)

Worst thing you've seen another dev do? So many things. Here is another...

A developer purposely forged international shipping documents by 'hard-coding' data to get around international shipping restrictions (ex. we can't sell 'Widgets' to Germany...so under the category he would replace the value with 'light bulb'). He was 'under pressure' to make keep the money rolling in no matter what.

We were eventually 'caught', fined over $300,000 (which was better than the $10,000 per offense and we had thousands of offenses).

For this major frack-up, 'Rob' was promoted to manager of the International department, got to travel (including his wife) to several European countries, and eventually obtained a company-paid MBA degree.

'Rob' liked to joke about how he would sometimes have to pinch himself how lucky he was by working for such stupid people (yes, he used the word 'stupid') and how gullible government investigators were.
"All I had to do was say 'its a bug in Windows' or some other kind of nonsense and they believed me."

'Rob' quit 3 months after receiving his MBA degree (again, 100% company paid) and the international department closed due to some potential illegal activity.

Client: There was an order issue... please look into it.

Me: Okay, whats the order reference id.

Client: I accidently deleted the order. Please check your system logs. It was a 20 pound order.

😠

Me (4 hours later): It was a 18 pound order with free shipping... and it failed cause they never finished the 3D secure.

😑

New work place (changed the PC bellow (so now I have just a little more room.
And the stuff that arrived in 10 days.
Only arround 90 packages to arrive, all arduino or eletrónics related...
Must up my credit card limit
... Reached maximum this month.
No I only need that energy I had before the brake down.. Maby forcing me to finish the projects I already have in mind.
After all, I need a cnc to make my projects, so I must make one

Do you suffer from low motivation ? For three easy installments of $79.95 plus shipping & handling , the secrets of overcoming low motivation can be yours . Act now , don’t delay !

Operators are standing by & the first caller will receive a free set of dollar general steak knives in a faux wood gift box , excellent for regifting for that team party or potluck where if you’re lucky , you might get tofu .

So I ordered a blue yeti mic, mic arm and pop filter, to buy from Amazon Australia (the warehouse is a 2 hour drive from my home) it would have cost me $450 and arrived January 18th, I ordered it from Amazon US and paid 208 that includes shipping and import and it's arrives on the 10th.... Come on Amazon are you fucking serious?!

I cancelled prime a few months ago so when I was doing BF shopping on Amazon yesterday, delivery is now 1wk instead of 2-days.

And shipping apparently is $9 if you don't meet the $25 minimum and manually select free shipping; I remember it was $6 before...

So a few thoughts I had:

1. Amazon really must need the Prime memberships to cover all the shipping costs since it is now a pain in the ass to get free shipping on the checkout page.

2. Americans really want instant gratification? Waiting a week is that painful?

In contrast, stuff from China take about a month but are much cheaper

3. The only thing that's worth buying via Amazon now is electronics and stuff that are fragile... And food that's on sale because they have to uphold quality

4. Lucky for me, I get 1 week shipping, I have more time to cancel orders... Which is what I actually did

Recently I keep watching videos about these beasts.
The shipping cost is absolutely bananas🤦‍♂️
But I really want to get one in Mac layout.

Should I pull the trigger?

When you are italian but you want a laptop with a US keyboard....
... all the shop online (with less than 10€ of shipping cost) become empty.

Fuck.

Project name - "JIRA 2.0"
Description - JIRA seems to not be informing people in our company about much of anything right now. Engineers don't know how to find anything. PMs don't know when things are shipping.

Me: JIRA, you had 1 job!

Part 2... I just bought Amazon Prime (with the free shipping)... spent all night watching a movie and then adding Recommendations too my Watchlist.

I think I added at least 10 movies and 30+ seasons...

Productivity --

Expenses/Purchases++

FUCK HTC, FUCK DYNALOGIC AND FUCK DYNAFIX PIECE OF SHIT FUCK COMPANIES

it started over a month ago, my HTC10 was charging with the included charger from a wall socket, took the Htc and cable to test a new feature I implemented on my xamarin project (see other rant). I attached it and nothing happend, tried another USB port still nothing, then I smelled it. My HTC was burning...

Contacted HTC, they referred me to a contact form and send 3 attachment with it. THE MOTHER FUCKING THING ONLY ACCEPTED 1! Oké calm down... so I went through the trouble of combining the attachment.

4 days go by and get an email if I could resend the attachment because there where non. the FUCKING contact form did not send it after my troubles!

A week goes by without response, I contacted them again, they apologies and promised me to call me the same day. BUT THEY FUCKING DIDN'T after that I thought maybe the next day but no call. After that I did not have time to contact them.

So I contact them after 4 days and get the FUCKING STUPIDEST and not well speaking person on the line that was constantly interrupting me. Finally got RMA and shipping in order but he managed to fuck the entire description of my problem of what I specifically told him.

So now dynalogic (a transport company) comes in place, they should have come to pick up my phone and bring it personally to Dynafix for repair. BUT THEY FUCKING DIDN'T.
Instead they drove by, put a 'you were not home so ship it yourself package' in the mailbox. BUT I WAS HOME and so were 4 others and lights and TV on. Not to mention our DOGS that react to anybody that enters our driveway. he was just a lazy PIECE OF SHIT.

So now I had to ship it myself, what resulted in my paying for shipment, paying for insurance and leave work early to get the the post office in time, since leaving early was not an option (deadline) I asked my parents if they could. BUT THEY FORGOT for 4 days.

Still having had good service from HTC in the past and being a loyal customer for years I was not angry and thought everything would be alright.

so now coming to today 1,5 I get an email that they WONT FIX IT BECAUSE OF FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT BULLSHIT REASON THAT WAS NOT THE PROBLEM.

tldr;
FUCK THEM, FUCK ME, they won't fix it after over a month for a bullshit reason. I am not gonna buy an HTC ever again.

My teacher joked in class about trying to get #octothorpe trending. Two days later he's wearing a t-shirt that says it, turns out someone already thought of it and it's on a t-shirt on Amazon with prime shipping lol 2018 is crazy

!rant
Got my stickers. Thanks @dfox, @trogus

USPS FTW!

I label all packages I know are coming as being for a company: Derp Industries. This is from an old in-joke between my friends and I. This tells me whether a package was something I ordered or not from the label (as I often forget I have a package coming.) However, I just got a call from a DHL driver asking me how long we'll be open. I, uh... I told him we close at 8. He said that's perfect, as he has to pick up from the local holding station at 5 and i'm his first stop.

I'm tempted to call back and tell him I'm just a dude living in a trailer...

!dev

I wanted to buy some lightning deals on Amazon today but the total was like $23.50 and free shipping requires $25.

I bought a few $25+ items last few weeks so I figure they should be able to waive it...

Chat with CS and they're like no we can't.

WELL FCK U!!!!! I'VE ACTUALLY BEEN PRIME FOR 2YRS AND JUST ENDED A FEW MONTHS AGO... AND IMMEDIATELY THEY'RE LIKE, WE DON'T KNOW U...

(The person actually started out saying thanks for being a Prime member)

Not that it'll matter to them... But just needed to rant...

Aaand my ducks are on their way to me

If only international shipping werent so high, id have many more ducks

Kind of awkward for me.

Tomorrow is my last day at my current job and my department is starting to work full time remote tomorrow.

I start my new job this next Monday, and they went full remote yesterday. As of now they're shipping my laptop my way, but they cancelled new hire orientation on Monday and moved it to the following week. I haven't heard about what is expected for Monday yet, guess I'll know soon!

Unexpected downside to studying/having an interest in computer graphics - it's not that widespread a field so not many of the books have local editions. Which means I need to spend like $60+ for the good books (Real-time Rendering, Physically Based Rendering, etc.) (and sometimes international shipping too), which is a pretty large amount for a student here. It's sad because local editions of technical books rarely go above $20 (heck, above $15 is rare too).

Still worth it though, those books are easily good enough that the return on investment in knowledge/future prospects will be massive (highly recommend those two if you're into graphics btw, two of the best technical books I have).

@dfox I was thinking about the high shipping cost of stress ball's to outside US,
Maybe something like the massdrop would be useful

Completely fucked up replication of MySQL servers.

Remote: 2 different database Servers
--> made sense.

Except the misconfiguration. Or better: No configuration at all.

So how to solve the massiv delays and make everything even more crazy?

2 remote servers - 2 readonly slaves for reading data remote (master - slave)

2 local (internal) servers.

Remote - Local Master Master.

Unfucking this cluster fuck was a real nightmare.

It had to be done at night, cause everything needed to be ripped apart.

And the servers were the backend of a warehouse with supply chain and multiple selling channels (Amazon, eBay etcetera).

So. It had to run the next day at 05.00 clock so the incoming orders could be packaged / prepared for shipping.

That was fun. Not.

And the clusterfuck died spectaculously on my first work day - the old DBA was gone (fired....)

:)

Really want to go here...
Can anyone buy me an economy seat and send to my place via ship? (Air shipping will probably cost $500+)

Tracking status of an item from a Kickstarter I backed. Shipping to me in the US. Yeah, that should be here any day now.

Fuck this algorithms course. How the fuck do you expect me to populate a 2d array of N^2 elements with data in linear time if you won't fucking let me write to more than one element at a time???

Dear CS department,
Make sure your homework makes fucking sense before shipping it off to students.
Regards,
A pissed off student

And before anyone comes at me with this "But you can technically do that if there's k*N elements and it would still be linear time" shit, fuck off; there's a worst case of needing to write to half the elements in the 2d array so it's still N^2 no matter how you try to "but technically" your way though it.

We basically don't unit test at work. I write some tests for my code and honest to God people complain I'm wasting time saying a test bed and manual tests are good enough. We don't write test beds for about half of our production code and rely on integration tests for the rest. We only test release builds which have been symbol stripped, I get handed a crash report with no stack trace that I'm unable to reproduce and expected to stay late to fix it for some arbitrary internal deadline.

I've since moved to R&D where basically I'm left to do my own thing so it's better.

We don't project manage. Project leads take time estimates and double them so management might cut them some slack. This doesn't matter because management made up time estimates before the project started. Last project I was on had a timeline of 3 months and took a year.

We have released broken products. Not that any of the above really matters, our software products have made about 50k revenue in 2 years. There are 6 people on software. Fortunately hardware has made about 3 mill. That said our hardware customers are getting frustrated with us as we keep fucking up, shipping broken products and missing deadlines.

I've been working there about a year and a half and will be looking for a job at the end of the current project.

I joined devRant about when I was most pissed off with my job, my rant frequency has definitely gone down since I moved over to R&D.

Spent my entire evening trying to figure out why my CoordinatorLayout + AppBarLayout + CollapsingToolbarLayout setup won't work properly despite my code being "seemingly" identical to Banes' fabled Cheesquare.

And the culprit? Well, roll the drums..

Turned out CoordinatorLayout and all its mumbo jumbo NEEDS the support-v7 version of Toolbar in order to WORK RIGHT.

HOLY. EFFIN'. POOPFEST.

I'm targetting Lollipop, goddammit, there should be absolutely ZERO reasons for me to use Toolbar from the Support Library!!!

If this is by design then why on Earth would you even bother shipping Toolbar alongside the default API in the first place, Google???

Just go the RecyclerView/CardView/Palette route and make Toolbar a separate library FFS!!!

.

.

.

Oh hey, my first "actual" rant on devRant. Neat.

The worst realtime coding you'll ever see.."Require efficient.... correction normal shipping/delivery algorithm"

Is it okay for someone to printout their own devRant stickers which includes the devRant logo (this :/)?

I am unable to get the stickers on my own. We don't have international shipping/mailing. But I know a local sticker printing shop which can print one for me. And I really one one for me.

Thank to this UPS driver ... i'm not going to get my package (laptop screen) until Monday evening.
Express Priority shipping $35.xx or whatever that is down the drain.

Never had this issue with Fedex and 100's packages delivered.

This ends the rant.

Why do some countries do everything they can to stifle industry and economy?

I'm in South Africa and looking to build a high end rig. With local distributors a PC in the Excellent and above category of Logical Increments cost 3x as much as it should. Importing it myself would cost even more for shipping.
Guess I'll stick to a potato for now.

!dev

Even though I bought Prime for cord-cutting now whenever I need to buy something I have an urge to just buy from Amazon because I feel like I'm making back what I paid since shipping is now free 2-day for anything and 5% cash back...

And when you search for anything, there's usually 1 result that's like Amazon Choice and I see there's a price huge price cut...

But in the back of my mind, I stop and think does this make sense. Could be cheaper elsewhere? Are these deals really deals...
And that $120 was for video and I'm pretty sure Amazon is not losing money no matter how many orders I make our how much I "save"....

And why am I even trying to make back X by doing Y....

Yes totally random but thoughts, how do you think about this?

I wish I would have picked faster shipping for my first mechanical keyboard I ordered this weekend... The wait is killing me and I have to wait a whole week until it comes in lol. Hurry up Fedex! I need to annoy a coworker.

Last day at work: goodbye overnight sessions breeding over some arcane legacy code that blew up in prod or manually restoring dozens of backups because the customer continued to work while systems went down due to power failure.

Colleagues last commit message at that place: It just works (Friday 8pm then shipping the code to prod)

Here's an idea:

What if we bundled swag store orders to a particular country so the cost of shipping everything gets spread across?

Although I don't live in a central area of the UK, I'd volunteer to receive multiple orders and then further post them to their final destinations. Posting locally is definitely cheaper, so if the math is done right, everybody wins.

:)

Seniority sucks sometimes.

Today I took the time to figure out the API for a shipping website.

I was super proud of this and figured that this could be useful for our application but the guy who has been there for 5+ years was like "no we have used an API for a previous client and caused the application to slow down by 1.2 seconds."

Of course in my mind I'm like, "but what was the API that you used? When I use it, it's running and returning in milliseconds. Surely you're not doing it right."

Of course because of his seniority I'm not going to say that.

It just sucks a lot because I spent a lot of time reverse engineering the API. It would have been nice to have been noticed for that work.

Marketing team built out some changes in the staging environment using the CMS, didn't test it, submitted a ticket for cloning with the note that they only changed the content of one page. I check and it works fine, complete the clone. Two weeks go by and I get a ticket saying one of the pages isn't working, I check and it doesn't work because it only exist in staging. Turns out they were hoping to sneak one by me and deploy something that they were trying to get printed for shipping that day in their original request. So now I have to spend the next hour running test, getting approvals, and deploying that page. I need to finish my CI/CD for this site.

. Does someone here know of a good site to print individual stickers? Im from europe and almost all the sites i've searched are either for bulk printing or cost a fortune in shipping

From a dev and eCommerce management perspective, Groupon is THE WORST. They just launched a brand new marketplace site but STILL don’t have an API I can connect with to do fulfillment. Their CSV format is useless for our shipping company. Their data inputs are not sanitized and standardized enough to be predictable for purposes of transformation via scripting. The exceptions and edge cases are infinite. So I’m STILL stuck having to take time out of my day to manually copy and paste and correct order data into the proper format to FTP to the fulfillment company. Oh, and I don’t yet know if the new marketplace does this, but the old one used to suspend vendor accounts for...get this...selling TOO MUCH! How is Groupon still in business?

Note to self:
Close off ALL ways things could go wrong..

Long story short; I released a new feature, to be able to better follow up on any stock moves, their amounts, locations and even expiry dates. An older tool just bypassed that very verification and nothing was logged or taken out of stock.

~

Taking out an amount for a certain orderline has a shortcut in place to mitigate some of the mandatory steps that pickers need to take in order to verify what's being taken. This little tool only available, visible and possible for a very few select users.

I assigned some orders to one of these people, which made him think it was an urgent batch. It's only one product, for multiple orders, so he went to the location, took out the amount needed and then used the tool to quickly be able to prepare them for shipping.

This bypassed the new methods to check if the location actually had stock to take, which I had just enabled for 1 account.

Luckily I caught the miss-hap as I was monitoring that product first-hand and noticed the batch of orders was collected but the stock amount didn't update.

It was 5min before I was leaving work, so I investigated and then ran to the person in question to ask what he did; which was "I used that tool"

I facepalmed myself internally while blaming myself, as he couldn't know that it wasn't ready to use for that purpose.

The tools to fix this up are there already.. so I used that to fix some missing stock-takes manually.. Though I'll need to close that little tool for these kind of orders for sure, asap, probably when I get home, at least until I bring over its new logic to it.

Happy Tuesday? (:

I will need a laptop for uni and I thought you guys could give me some tips on good brands/models. I want it to have at least 16GB of RAM, preferably a newer generation of i7 and dedicated NVidia graphics. The bigger the screen is the better. I don't care too much about the battery but I would like to have a few USB type A ports and some HDMI/DP outputs. The maximum price (shipping included) should be around 1000 - 1200€

Follow-up on my previous Lenovo shipping rant:

After shipping my charger ahead of schedule separately, they've now extended the expected ship date of the main unit from the 4th to the 17th of December, two whole weeks. Expected to arrive December 26, aka the week that I'll be out of town visiting family for christmas :/

Originally a comment, but thought it made a good rant.

My experience with Amazon so far... (I live in the colony known as Puerto Rico)

2011: Can no longer get free shipping on books. Apparently, we could before because of a "bug"

2015: Your Prime membership no longer gets you 2 day shipping. Only standard shipping.

2017: Free shipping 3-7 days? Now it takes 3 weeks to a 4+ weeks. (Packages get here faster without Prime for some reason)

2018: Tax of 11.5 when buying directly from Amazon.

Stress ball limit got raised to 500++, being pretty realistic about this situation I had to order them instead after realizing it never get that

Hopefully we will leave the path of shipping tons of crappy software in increasingly shorter periods of time and come back to thought out, well engineered software that actually matters. I would love that.

Hacktoberfest this year
Too lazy to do contributions
I shall rest this year
And managing to get the swags is cumbersome, international shipping sucks especially when tracking isn't provided

Hey Guys,
What do you think about Windows 10 shipping with a real Linux Kernel? Do you enjoy the love of Microsoft towards Linux? If yes, why?

I live in Sweden and want some new dev stickers. Checked redbubble.com but I'm not willing to pay $25 for 12 small stickers. Even with free shipping. Anyone know a cheaper alternative?

I need

-ES6
-JS
-HTML5
-CSS3
-ReactJS
-Angular JS
-git
-PHP
-VSCode
-Photoshop
-Node.js
-npm

I wish I could teach younger developers that shipping the product is also a feature.

After months and months of waiting for the devRant mousepad to become available again in their store ... it turns out it's going to be ducking expensive to get that item (shipping costs as much as the product itself... and it could take 6 more weeks to arrive!) Came on, 1-6 weeks ... the variance of the estimation is huge ... I have lost the motivation :(

How can I track the shipping of 3 ducks I just bought :D

Yes I HAD to say the number because of yes.

My mechanical keyboard just died :/ Plugged it into my work tower and started smelling "burnt". its a WASD V3, i hope they can ship me just the controller board because shipping the keyboard to the US and back it's going to take a too much time and money...

Uhmmmmm this is very weird.
As every year i complete hacktoberfest challenge. But this year is weird as i ordered the Tshirt from their store. By the last 2 years i know that to get it even shipped will take 2 months which is fine with me as long as i get it but i didnt get shipping comfirmation this year and letter arrived from DigitalOcean with literally 1 fucking sticker inside it.
WTF is this ?
I sent message to their support to see WTF is going on as i ordered a fucking T-Shirt from their store so i would expect a shirt and not 1 sticker. And not only that but i didnt get shipping info about my order which is normal but when you send something to me i would fucking love to know WTF it is and why.
Did anybody receive 1 sticker from them and then shirt or am i just not getting shirt this year ?

It really sucks when you realize that you're gonna end up despising a programming language just from having an extremely shitty first experience with it.

About ten weeks ago I was forced to, despite that I was SUPPOSED to be able to choose the language myself, to learn C++ for this course when having literally not a single fucking bit of experience with it whatsoever. And that's pretty soon after already having a beyond shitty experience with the very same school AND the same teacher. (The school I study at "rent" courses from other schools, this is one of them.)

I have the final exam on Monday and I'm allowed to have a book on C++ with me to use as reference, as (I'm pretty sure) I won't have internet access on the computer I'll be doing the test on. I ordered a book with express shipping to be here during this week, Friday at the latest. Never arrived. Called customer service at the book store and apparently it was supposed to have shipped yesterday but hadn't and they didn't know why (fucking awesome girl at the customer service btw, 11/10 quality service). So we cancelled the order, sure, we get the money back, but I still won't have a reference for a language I barely know at all. (No need to mention libraries, did that, dead end.)

Oh, and about that school and that earlier experience I spoke of, because if their inability to do their motherfucking jobs, earlier this year I ended up struggling with money for a couple of months. I really want to fucking strangle these assholes and have them pay my fucking bills to cover the shit that THEY caused.

TLDR; I'm gonna end up hating C++ because of shitty fucking teachers at an even shittier school.

My 20 rubber apparently ducklings arrived.. Yes, its a standard 3x3 cube..
Anyone know where i can purchase a bigger duck for around $5 without paying $12 for shipping?

I want to purchase a rubber duck from devrant, but am not quite sure how long it is going to take before arriving to Nigeria. I can buy it from a local retailer in my country, but i don't want to, buying from devrant is my way of giving back to this awesome platform. @dfox have you shipped to africa before ?

The stickers are finally here! :D

Thanks for shipping it all the way to India guys.

Before I came along, my company was processing orders of type X by hand, taking many hours and being at greater risk of human error. So as a temporary solution, I crafted a console app to do the processing. Then, this app is needed to be accessed remotely. Because adding a newer .NET to a handful of servers was just too much to handle emotionally for management, the console app was revamped to a web app. During this revamping process, I was having my client send me an email so that I could initiate the processing myself until a friendlier UI was available. Well, I finished last night. I sent them an email explaining that it was live, gave them the address, and gave myself a high-five. A moment ago, I get an email from the client insisting that I process those orders quickly so that I don't cause a delay in shipping. FML!! Did they even READ the email I sent them?? They've been suckling at the teat for too long. Adding insult to injury, since the revamping project began, the client would CC my boss every time they emailed to have an order processed as if to hint at their frustration that the project wasn't done yet. Grr....

The Jio phone out of India actually looks like a cheap ($10ish dollars) but worthy little option if you just want something to mess around on but don't want to drop $30-40 (plus shipping) on a pi.

Only 4gb storage, 512mb ram, 240x320 screen, dual core 1ghz, just enough to experiment if you're broke.

What do you think? Any indian programmers familiar with the Jio?

I'm not running out to buy it or anything. I stumbled across it and wonder what people's opinions of it are.

So Huawei is now shipping MateBooks with deepin. I dont know how to feel about this...

Our owner's other company sells products online (or has the ability to anyways). Their current site is 7+ years old WordPress/Woocommerce and is seriously outdated because the site breaks if you update anything so we've been told to make a new site (finally). They also said they were going to release a whole new line up of products. So the first thing I tried to do was get them to nail down their product line and how shipping was going to be configured. I was told to just use the shipping from the previous site.

Turns out those shipping rates don't use any sort of math or automation at all, there is literally a manually set shipping value for every single product for every single shipping location (30*60) and even values for different quantities. And there's no way to export these rates into a readable table because the plugins they use shove all the data into the postmeta table, I'm forced to go through and put the data into a spreadsheet so that I can attempt to organize it and hopefully find someone way to automate it. Owner claims at one point that he has a similar spreadsheet that's more up to date but for some reason refuses to send it over or put me in touch with the right people in the shipping department.

I've gone through the shipping rates with the old products and the new products and organized them as best I can and each time I've gotten done and shown them the spreadsheet with their products and shipping, they add or change something which requires me to basically wipe the slate clean and start over eating another 50 or so hours of my time, which with everything else really means another month+ to find time to work on it between other projects.

After about a year they finished their products and I finally finished the planning and got approval to build it out for the site. Small victory!!

After about 60 hours plugging these values into the database (only about 1/3 done) I get an email from their head of shipping who tells me the values in my spreadsheet are "terribly inaccurate, in some areas by $100+" and that the data should not be used anywhere.

So after something like a year and a half and 200+ hours of work, the data I've been using to plan all this isn't even accurate. I'm trying not to go crazy here but this kind of shit is unacceptable. When we're done with this I'm going to send the owner an invoice to show him how much money he wasted on this because nothing was planned and he just wanted it built. There's a fucking process for a reason, when you don't follow the process you fuck everything up. If a client had pulled this shit and turned their simple site into this much work they would have been dropped. I get constant emails asking when the new site will be done and every time my answer is "I'm still waiting for x items that I asked for last time you asked where we were." He gets a couple things on the list and sends them back and then goes unresponsive for weeks at a time.

Management has been telling me that I seem more stressed lately but only one of them understands what's going on here when I explain it. The rest say stupid shit like "why don't you automate it" or "make an intern do it." You won't let me hire an intern and even if I did, I'm not sure I could explain how the shipping works now to even trust someone else to do it. I'm hoping when the shipping guy gives me the new sheet that maybe there's some easier solution here because I'm ready to start shooting people.

My new job is giving me a budget for getting a new laptop, looking for some recommendations on good programmer brands, somewhere in the neighborhood of $1800-$2000 USD (not including tax/shipping). I'm looking at the Dell XPS 15, beautiful screen but poor quality reviews. Also, looking at ASUS Zenbook line. Any thoughts on those brands? Any other brands I should look at? I need to run Windows natively, so MBP is out.

We're spending more time shipping dud code to close tickets from our biggest client than we are actually working on the next release.

!rant
this.type = TYPE.Question;
Is the free swag actually free? Is it free shipping?
Thanks!

Pretty sure I've decided to dedicate to shipping electron applications. The problem is I've only lightly dealt with node, recommendations on where to start?

Having co-workers that understand to not sacrifice quality over shipping features as fast as possible.

Level 1 support moron dishing out bad instructions from his flowchart.

Wanted me to edit config files for a production setup, which would've killed shipping for all stations, in the middle of our shipping rush.

Fixed the problem while in the escalation queue for level 2. L2 confirms the fix, and bemoans the shit documentation L1 provided.

If its a business class (mission critical) system, hire decent support staff! You might try testing people for reading/listening comprehension, and then paying them a decent wage! This isn't good for my blood pressure...

Was looking at devRant ducks, then saw the shipping price. 😭. 16 Bucks... Wishing for cheaper shipping this Christmas...

Part of one of the workarounds for Dirty COW is to disable ptrace.

ptrace is generally needed by debuggers.

I am team lead for L2 support at a company which makes a debugger.

RedHat are now shipping this workaround.

*ducks for cover*

I've been selected as an amazon echo tester for my country.

to agree fill this survey and you will receive a free Echo:
*fine*

do you have WiFi?
yes (you already know that i have a fire tv stick so you know even the password)

what mobile os do you have?
android (you already know also this i have the amazon app installed in it)

where do you live?
*my city* (you know that from ip address & shipping addresses)

imagine what them will now that i will introduces an open in mic in my room....

(i think that i will keep it behind firewall when i am not at home and when i dont want use it)

!dev

I hate $ .99.... spent all morning trying to figure out how to get free shipping.

Tried looking for a filler item but nothing good. Then looked at some funko-pop figures but not that interested... and still cost $10

Finally just went asked them to waive it... but still... that took almost an hour...

And now back to regularly scheduled programming... with 1hr less sleep....oh n it's a Monday...

!rant

Frontend people, I need your opinion.

I will soon start building the next version of a rather large project's frontend but I am mostly a backend guy.

It is a custom made web application (PHP, Postgres) that handles all business aspects of a shipping company of about 50 people (trucks, truck free space in shipments for new packages, package tracking via gps on the truck, invoicing, reselling shipping services to other businesses, everything).

The existing frontend is using an ancient version (1.x) of the YUI framework and uses AJAX heavily to refresh the user interface. It's usable, but maintaining and extending it is getting really hard as the project grows larger and larger and more systems are integrated.

So the question is, given this use case, what JS framework do I use and what is a good resource to start learning it?

I am really being tested with my creativity in naming conventions with these two sites rn.

Site 1 is a blog for a place called "The Post", so literally everything is called .post

Site 2 is a development built out of shipping containers, where each container is a different features of the property... just like a container would wrap features in their app🤦‍♂️

I’m now in my third try at attempting to set up reasonably priced shipping for a small volume ecommerce website. First it was UPS which charged more to ship than the product was worth, and ended up just dropping it off at USPS for local purchasers. Then it was USPS but apparently I chose the wrong WooCommerce plugin because it’s meant for high volume (but doesn’t say so in the description). Now I have to get the plugin maker to swap it to Stamps.com and I have to set up a whole new account there and no idea if it’ll even work. FML.

Shipping company sending e-mails regarding cases to our ex-Intercom addresses instead of our registerd contact e-mail.

Intercom was turned off months ago.
I can not reach any old communication.

Of course certain claims expire... and we're ending up with sad and mad customers.
Let me be the shitpole to fix it... again.

FML, where's my long awaited customer service colleague!? /sadface

* le me develops endpoint using serverless on AWS Lambda, forgets to enable cors *

Le front end dev: Your endpoint doesn't work. Gives me cors error.
Me: but that works on POSTMAN

le front end dev: We are not shipping it with postman.

*fml*

Hey fellow devs,

i finally did it! i applied as a junior dev in a software company for inHouse projects. the job interview is today in one week.

little background story for those of you who are just procastinating at this time:

i have started coding when i was in school. just little stuff - nothing special. after i finished school i edjucated in the business field (did not found the english word. something like office person or in our words "user").
after that my company changed the ERP System and i wanted to do that so badly. and i got that job. i worked my ass of to get that baby running. from entering the orders to production to shipping and billing, i made that all happen by myself. as we had some very specific requirements i also wrote applications myself. after about three quarters of a year we switched to the new system and it ran smoothly (company is producing windows and doors). i was so proud when the first windows were finished.

BUT there was one problem. I was alone. no second it person i could talk to. no one i could learn from and no one who could learn from me. i then decided to change the company. same product, same job - but within a team. It was a whole other experience. i really enjoy the exchange with my colleagues. we learn from each other and we solve problems together. we can rely on each other. As i worked there i also wrote applications for inHouse usage and i even launched my own first app (not related to company - private commercial project)

BUT there is one problem. I am still the only dev. so i try to code the lease i can at my current job so that the team still works and the whole system stays maintainable for everyone. I do not feel good holding back the desire to code something. so after two years (and with a lot of talks with my cousin) i finally applied for a job as a "real" developer.

I have no bachelor, so the invitation for the job interview made me so damn happy. i really hope that i can transmit my passion for this job and if everything fits that they take me.

The next rant will then be about the result of my job interview :)

PS: even if i do not get the job. i am proud of myself that i applied!

Thanks for reading, potato potato

I've ordered hardware like 24 days ago. Shipping company lost the package and I've just got confirmation the to see my money I have to wait another 20+ days. FML

I was going to buy a duck but then I realised that the shipping cost was 1.5x the cost of the duck itself :(

Laracasts is no longer accepting debit card payments ☹️ time to use my mom's credit card and just pay her lol 😂

Is shipping docker course - Chris Fidao course, accepting debit card payments? Thanks!

I am shifted to Django for the new project from Laravel. I am shipping features so quick my boss thinks I was slacking off earlier. #django_for_life #python

I miss ROM cartridges. Shure the software looked like crap, but at least they had to make shure it was worked before shipping. I'm having a bad day today being right in the consequences of "we can always patch it later".

When Amazon promotional emails ring too true:

Final days for last-minute shipping before Dec 25

I ordered an EEG signal decoder from A Dutch company. But it is stuck in Delhi due to the virus. When are they going to allow shipment of non-essentials ?

sorry for not ranting but im quite anxiously looking for a talk about Domain Driven Design. I think it was from Eric Evans but the ones I found yet arent it. he has a very speqking example of shipping which he usus throughout his talk, speaking in front of quite a big crowd, interacting with the crowd and no desk or anything in front..... Is there anyone who knows which talk I mean? Infinite kudo's to he who does!

Are stickers free shipping to Ukraine? What price I need to pay if they're not?

Just built a solid desktop app for MacOS with Flutter that's worthy of shipping. I gotta say I'm pretty stoked about it, even if it isn't nearly as dope as LOIC. Haha chargin muh lazers!
I'll get some screenshots up soon!!
I also wrote a comple CLI interface for Firebase management using Python. Advanced auth abilities, CRUD capability, full json import/export, verification/password resets, you name it. Well, except full Firestore/mobile OTP features but it's still a win. Actually dicked around and made a cool little Firebase chat program in the terminal with the Python interpreter.
Finished up my first apps in React, React-Native and Ember, my 2nd with Electron, and also got my first Firebase hosted site up and running. Solid day!!! Cheers to that. And cheers to all of you amazing bastards!

Shipping is a feature. That's why I release half-assed stuff for the world to suffer.

Looking for nice mechanical keyboards with underglow/sideglow or backlight, any recommendations? Photo for attention featuring Jian Keyboard. Budget: 175$ including shipping to Poland, can be cheaper because I'd probably change keycaps as soon as it arrives. Max. 65% keyboard because I would carry this to my school huh.

I threw some random android adware i found into a virtual device on my laptop (while swapping like a motherfucker, ofc) and it turns out, aside from the Draw over Other Apps, Install Apps, Location, and Storage permissions, and the blank name/icon, it's an honest-to-God working global ad blocker via VPN. It's shipping your traffic to China and filling your device full of more malware, but it's blocking ads too, so...? Is it worth gutting to remove the bullshit? (Can Android Studio do that?)

Got a confirmation that my stickers are shipping out, im so excited :D
HYPE

I need to pick one terminology for shipping so I don’t forget my function names, css classes and labels.

I’ve used a mix of “Shipping”, “postage” and “delivery” and now I’m confused :-/

I'm developing a Prestashop module, and I'm adding and removing products from the cart.
Whenever I try to get the shipping price, I get the value I had before the change...

Round 2 of trying to warranty repair a new monitor (Samsung CF791 ultrawide). Of course, it would die right after the 30-day return period with B&H so now I’m at the mercy of Samsung. Spent $70 on special packing to send it to Samsung so they couldn’t claim it broke during shipping. It came back to me in a box that looked like a homeless person had once lived in it. And it still didn’t work. I just sent it off again, this time in the same box they sent, as if to say “screw you for making me spend $70 for nothing”. I fully expect it to come back still not working. And I’ll demand a replacement. $700 monitors aren’t worth what they used to be.

I now realize after binging for 3 days that Prime Video is a lost cause.... The time wasted is just not worth it... And my watchlist. I have about 270 movies that I at least need to preview and isn't going to get smaller... Especially if I'm "trying to get my money worth"

Quite frankly it takes the fun out of watching movies... At least for me.

My first annual subscription will end in 2 months. I guess I'll miss the prime shipping but guess I'll go back to grouping orders... Hopefully won't need it though.

Can I use plus codes in place of address line 1 when entering my shipping credentials ?

Need advice about protecting ddos via iptables and whitelisting. Currently I launched my gameserver and am fighting against a massive attack of botnets. Problem was solved by closing all ports on my gameserver linux machine and shipping game.exe with injected c++ socket client. So basically only gamers who launch my game exe are being added to firewall iptables via the socket client that is provided in the game exe. If some ddosers still manage to get inside and ddos then my protection is good enough to handle attacks from whitelisted ips from inside. Now I have another problem. Lots of players have problems and for some reason shipped c++ client fails to connect to my socketserver. Currently my solution was to provide support in all contact channels (facebook,skype,email) and add those peoples ips to whitelist manually. My best solution would be to make a button in website which you can click and your ip is whitelisted auromatically. However if it will be so easy then botnets can whitelist themselves as well. Can you advice me how I could handle whitelisting my players through web or some other exe in a way that it cant be replicated by botnets?