spinningD20

A little off topic, but I had to refresh my memory as to what Garuda was. As a long time user of arch in various "forms" (initially manjaro until I grew frustrated with all the extra/different things, then antergos because it was mostly just plain arch with a nice installer/sane default packages, then endeavouros because it was the closest thing to what antergos provided me), I'm not sure how I missed garuda. Some of their utilities look convenient.

Thanks for the mention! I'll have to try them again on my next machine.

Yet if the business model / customer's _existing_ service agreement is changed, the temperature of the water that the frog is in just went up a little bit, so folks continue using it, which is what often happens as well.

"well, I'm not sure if they're going to start collecting or using my data, because I don't actually really KNOW that or the extent of everything, just an email from them with a vague update to an equally vague privacy policy that I apparently implicitly agree to if I don't discontinue using their service."

Just like a manufacturer/seller on say, amazon shouldn't be able to revise their product with cheaper quality under the same model number (and yet it happens all the time), changes to the agreement of a service should be treated as a new service.

Whatever the solution, it should be a big enough deal that it cannot be implicitly agreed to, and clear enough language (maybe vetted by a third party review of the agreement) to communicate to all users, what is at stake and how, to which third parties, etc.

As a toddler in the early 80s, I playfully stole my older sister's pencil when she was working on her homework, ran away with it, tripped and fell, the lead breaking off in my eye. Fortunately I don't remember any of that myself...

Almost 40 years later it's still there, still scaring any new eye care establishment personnel with each visit.

Fortunately no noticable side effects, other than when I get something in my eye and back out again, my brain keeps telling me something is there for an hour or two afterward.

it took me two weeks to get the sealed pinetime working back when it launched. for some reason it would get stuck on the initial boot screen, and it would be in a state to where I couldn't update the firmware. eventually in a mindless "flap/spin it in a circle with my hand while I was thinking about work" I felt it vibrate and to my surprise, it booted for the first time ever.

It turned out, even with a firmware update months later applied to it, that whenever it gets rebooted, I have to do the above movement until it finally decides to boot, and it's random. Sometimes it takes a few spins/flicks, sometimes I'm doing it for minutes on end.

I confirmed this isn't a red herring by leaving it in its frozen state and motionless, and it would never recover, even 24hr later.

This was the second Pine purchase of mine, the first being the PinePhone Pro, which A) I couldn't get activated on AT&T (not Pine's fault with the 3g phase out and whitelist approach, but I digress), and when I used TMobile, I couldn't make a call with it without having audio problems or etc.

Look, I wanted to support them, and the idea of less expensive open hardware/software, even if it meant rough edges, but completely non functional for even the most basic usages... I might as well just build my own and understand all of the reasons why something doesn't work instead of spending days or months getting it to do what it said it would do on the tin out of the box.

That tracks well (both the quotes and your thoughts).

One example that comes to mind where I want to roll my own thing (and am in the process of doing so) is replacing our ci/cd usage of jenkins that is solely for running qa automation tests against PR's on github. Jenkins does way way more than we need. We just need github PR interaction/webhook, secure credentials management, and spawning ecs tasks on aws...

Every time I force myself to update our jenkins instance, I buckle up because there is probably some random plugin, or jenkins agent thing, or ... SOMETHING that will break and require me to spend time tracking down what broke and why. 100% surface area for issues, whilst we use <5% of what Jenkins actually provides.

Just to clarify, I am definitely not saying this is only useful or only applies to databases.

The point was more that, I don't see how this testing approach (at the level that it functions) would catch all of the bugs that I have seen in my career, and so to say "all of the bugs" or even "most of the bugs" is definitely a stretch.

This is certainly useful, just like unit tests, assertions, etc are all very useful. It's just not the whole picture of "bugs".

The other issue I would point out is that building a database, while impressive with their quality, is still fundamentally different than an application or set of applications like a larger SaaS offering would involve (api, web, mobile, etc). Like the difference between API and UI test strategies, where API has much more clearly defined and standardized inputs and outputs.

To be clear, I am not saying that you can't define all inputs and outputs of a "complete SaaS product offering stack", because you likely could, though if it's already been built by someone that doesn't have these things in mind, then it's a different problem space to find bugs.

As someone who has spent the last 15 years championing quality strategy for companies and training folks of varying roles on how to properly assess risk, it does indeed feel like this has a more narrow scope of "bug" as a definition, in the sort of way that a developer could try to claim that robust unit tests would catch "any" bugs, or even most of them. The types of risk to a software's quality have larger surface areas than at that level.

I'd call it something like "Risk analysis, identification and mitigation group"

When outsourced, you either A) rely on someone in your org to tell them what to test and what the workflows are, ie use them as a warm body/monkey to click on things for you - this is what most people see QA as, which is silly - or B) you rely on the outsourced QA to know your product and know what is important or what all of the edge cases are.

If your product is non-trivial in size or scope, ie it is not a cookie-cutter solution, then the testing of your product will also be non-trivial if you want it to work and have a good reputation (including during those all-important live demos, poc's, etc).

QA does not mean "click on things and go through the happy path and everything is fine" - not saying you are implying that, but gosh the amount of companies that think it's child's play is crazy.

Doing every quality activity "after the fact" I agree is the issue. That's the root of the problem you're seeing, not that there was a separate quality team.

There are so so many instances where "rolling back" is just not a feasible solution. Working for a SaaS company with mobile/web/api and huge db's, migrations, payroll uses in the product, rolling back is and should always be a LAST RESORT. In 99% of the cases, something significant enough to want to roll back usually results in a "hot patch" workflow instead because rolling back or etc has its own risk.

QA has always been about risk management.

100%.

QA should be related to identifying risk, likelihood of failure, impact of failure to user, client and company. The earlier this is done in the varying processes, the better. ("shift left" but I've seen a ton of differences with how people describe this, but generally QA should start getting involved in the "design phase")

Another example from my own first-hand experience:

A company I worked for made a product that plugged into machines that were manufacturing parts, and based on your parameters it would tell you whether or not the part was "good" or "bad".

When interviewing the leadership of the company, as well as the majority of the engineering group, "what is the biggest risk with this product" they all said "if the product locks up!". Upon further discussion, I pulled out a much larger, insidious risk; "what if our product tells the client that the part is 'good' when it is not?"

In this example, the part could be involved in a medical device that keeps someone alive.

You're not going to be able to roll that back.

I had this happen to me as well, though I remember that it was either a docker or snap/flatpak/etc version of it. Got things working but lost a few months of data, likely something I foolishly did while trying to make things work. Stopped using it and went with Seafile for a while - grew frustrated with that and stopped syncing files between computers altogether.

Later on, when I set up an old dell xeon workstation as a home server (using proxmox), I used the turnkey image of nextcloud, and have (knock on wood) not had any issues at all.

Anyway - I wanted to ensure it was fully virtualized this next time if/when this happens again. I have it backing up the base vm once a week (I have the file storage separate/outside of the vm). So... hopefully this doesn't happen again to the degree that it did.

Let me rephrase... Regardless of the interpretation of intent, this was not "rape in ff6" or "discussing rape", and "rape" is not in ff6.

If I heard as a parent that a game has rape in it, I am thinking "there is a scene in which a character is raped", and there is no way I would let my kids play that game, regardless of the rating, until I felt they were mentally or emotionally ready to be exposed to such an awful scene.

This is not rape in a game or anything like that. Speculation or interpretation of events or intent is FAR different than a scene literally displaying such an act.

So, my commentary in this thread has been to clarify, there is no such scene in this game, and any interpretation or speculation is just that. It does not explicitly actually occur in the game.

This is not explicitly stating that it is rape by any means, and I don't interpret it that way. It seemed to me that Maria and Setzer had a history already and he was stealing her away from her opera life, which she may or may not have wanted, we are not told whether or not she even wanted to work at the opera house, or what those conditions were. Casting characters in these negative lights without explicit proof is just silly. Especially after you get the backstory on Setzer and his love interest - nothing else in the game paints him as character that would do something awful like that.

The grounds for "FF6 has rape in it!" seems super super shaky. It feels like the sort of thing where people are decided that Satsuki & Mae from Totoro are really "dead and ghosts" during the entirety of the movie. It's silly.

Don't scare people away from a classic for things that aren't true.

Your mentioning of "rape" here sent me on a google journey... I don't remember anything like that happening or even being hinted at in FF6, what are you referring to?

This seems like a negatively charged take. Vampire Survivors could have been made in a ton of different engines that are far far less capable that Godot, for example. The engine is not the thing that holds back a product from succeeding.

This is the same as saying "no FAANG company uses X language/platform so X is a toy", it's far too reductive and not actual reality.

Serious question: Why would this be any different than reading a book?

Is the implied suggestion, that, anything that is not "real" is bad? Does watching a tv show, movie or youtube video, reading a novel, or listening to podcasts of people discussing things (either fictional or "real world") have the same supposed impact? What about listening to a co-worker tell me about their weekend?

How do we define a disassociative activity?

I used to wear a special bite splint / alignment device thing after I had the misfortune of an accident that messed up my jaw in my teens. To this day, one side of teeth make contact before the other side by just a mm or 2.

My teeth don't grind at night, but the next time I head to the dentist I'll look into seeing if I can have the issue corrected... worth a shot!

Thanks for the suggestion!

Edit for more info:

My wife helps out with back and neck massages, and my traps (neck and between the shoulder blades) usually have knots on the days I have trouble. I plan on ruling out weak traps and other muscular imbalances for good this spring, but as I mentioned in my initial comment, I have had three different rounds of PT sessions with different workout strategies over the last decade, and still no resolution (nor improvement during/after).

This tension thing waxes and wanes just like the other symptoms, but far more frequently.

Thanks for the response!

Yeah, Ménière’s and BPPV has been ruled out, thankfully.

The oddity is that the sets of symptoms waxes and wanes on the order of months. I had sudden hypertension (170/100, not overweight, ~155lbs and 5'9, decently healthy diet for sodium, etc) from 2016-2019, then within a couple months it completely disappeared and went back to normal (120/65). No known or significant changes in diet or lifestyle when it dropped or leading up to it.

I've kind of just "accepted" that I will have these various, "random" health issues, and am just doing my best to figure things out / mitigate them as they come along. The neck-tension-turning-into these "cervicogenic headaches" are the largest common hurdle to my life on a frequent basis. I can deal with the other noise of issues.

Anyway. Thanks again for responding!

You just sent me on a research adventure. I have struggled with chronic neck tension and pain for the last 15 years with no obvious origin event, and sometimes take 2-3 ibuprofen every day to take the edge off, when it's at its worst.

Thank you for bringing this up!

Background for me for those interested:

Within a few years of struggling with chronic pain and tension headache episodes (vomiting, catch-my-breath level of pain for hours), I had my first "vertigo event". I was sitting in a chair in an office in front of a whiteboard, writing and thinking and chatting with a team, nothing special or different. Never had an inner ear issue before this moment.

Since then, I have struggled (seemingly randomly) where I have ear fullness (almost entirely without hearing on left ear for a month about 6 months ago, then everything slowly came back, for example), varied tinnitus levels, light-headedness, unable to turn around too fast without losing balance... and it waxes and wanes.

Now I am wondering if any of the waxing or waning of these symptoms have anything to do with my usage of ibuprofen. I found a study suggesting this back from 2010 just now, and wonder how I've never connected these two dots.

Of course, I have to mention neck tension and inner ear related issue, aren't the only health issue I've had in the last 15 years. I've gained GERD (probably not surprising), hashimoto's and vitiligo, as well as sudden onset of mild astigmatisms after the first few years.

I have tried my best to avoid using ibuprofen at all, but it is the only thing that can take the edge off of the neck trouble before it turns into that awful, torturous headache/barf session.

PS) I know most folks will see "neck tension" + "inner ear problems" and jump to pinched nerve, spinal damage, ergonomics, posture, etc, but even after a great deal of lifestyle changes, reduced time at an office desk, yoga, Feldenkrais method, numerous physical therapy stints, I am confident that it is not the cause and "how good I am doing posture/movement" has no strong correlation to pain levels or inner ear trouble on any given day - it is seemingly random.

PPS) Definitely open to suggestions or ideas, but I will be surprised if something is mentioned that I have not tried or looked into.

This feels like a shifting of the burden of proof. When folks state (oversimplifying by doing so I agree) LLMs and similar tech are "fancy word predictors with parlor tricks" they're usually doing so in response to those that are enchanted into attributing some form of technical magic to it.

Are you implying that, by being similar to humans, that makes it a sentient, living thing? Ducktyping? Just because something walks and talks like a sentient being does not mean that it is.

I'm sure a person from the bronze age would consider my Roomba "alive" and while we can get all philosophical about what alive means, my Roomba is not a living being. I would not confuse the bronze age person by saying "what does it mean to be alive?" And instead I would say, no it is a mechanism made by mankind.

It's *Bezos. (joke)

In all seriousness, my experience with third party recruiters overall has been quite good. One sought me out and continued to follow up until it sounded like a good deal, and in the end I won a sign-on bonus, decent salary, and felt like I started a good working relationship with the recruiter themselves, too.

Now, this guy hits me up for when he has potential matches for my team. It's been really good. I'm sure like most things, there are good recruiters and bad ones, regardless of first or third party.

Ever since I discovered Kivy in 2013, it has had a special place in my heart, and because I know my way around it, I've used it for many smaller projects, and one non-trivial game project WIP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m06AH7MN0i4

Graphically, my game is mostly straight-forward, but being a strategy game, the complexity is behind the curtains in the AI, pathfinding and other game mechanics. I am very thankful to continue using my mastery of Python in this endeavor, and even though it doesn't provide game development conveniences out of the box (so it took time to get started, compared to say, Godot), it allowed me to utilize - and build on - my experience in the language. Doing this allows me to control the learning curve, especially when it comes to learning about OpenGL, and how graphics work underneath in general.

Don't get me wrong, depending on what you're looking to do, Kivy can have a stronger learning curve in itself, especially if you're doing this sort of thing for the first time (app development, specifically, but of course game development too). It took me until around 2016 - after playing with Kivy on and off - to become completely comfortable with all of its concepts. Aside from learning to profile and troubleshoot some graphics performance issues (largely my own fault, in my implementation), Kivy has been reliable and, like a well-designed door, I rarely consciously note that I am using it!

Outside of games, as I mentioned, I have also used Kivy for internal tools professionally. One was for (visually, analog curves) creating simulated plastic injection molding sensor signals, in order to create and provide data sets for QA Automation. The other was for a specialized AV company's (internal) usage as a job/bid/information management app. Another project required the ability to flip, pan and zoom images for a 3d mirror viewer hardware set. And, here in 2020 I used it to train non-automation non-coding QA personnel into making their own mobile apps, learn about event handling, and to get a glimpse into what a developer might be considering or thinking as they build software.

I've always been bewildered at why Kivy doesn't (seem to) garner more public attention. For what it aims to provide, it hits the mark quite well. I enjoy using Python the most, so I prefer to use it for most of my work, personal and professional. In that way, Kivy has allowed me to progress towards mastery of Python, without having to spend that effort on other tech stacks. (Having said that, I have experience outside of Python, just to be clear, it's not out of necessity.) As others I'm sure, I have a life outside of my job and side game project, so I have intentionally chosen what to invest my time in learning.

This turned into a bit of a ramble. Anyway. For me, it's a great fit, and I'm thankful that it exists, and people continue to build and refine it. I get to keep writing Python, and use it in more ways and places because Kivy exists.

The reverse of that is likely just as true; people that are happy Biden won, have no concern if there was fraud, just like those that wanted Trump to win would not question him winning.

For the context of this app and in general, I would agree.

While I was at PyCon, I had prepped a version of my resume that had my photo on it, and during the job fair I shared them with folks and companies that interested me.

I figured, if there's any chance of someone remembering a person and wanted to recommend them, a photo would go well with the name and info. But maybe it was ineffective :) I didn't think it would hurt to include, at the very least.

I used a more off the shelf approach, but the result is likely similar in performance and goal: https://imgur.com/a/Nm607lo

Case is an M350 itx case, and using a pico psu.

There should be more, smaller Ryzen APU systems, they really are amazing. Looking forward to physical releases of their v1000 series SoC's.