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Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: June 12th, 2023
  • My current workplace only allows whitelisted applications to run, and you must install them via the company portal. At my old workplace I used Linux with Kde Plasma, and Meld. New workplace has windows 11 only, and I was trying to find a replacement for Meld. When I started here, I noticed Beyond Compare is on the list. I’d heard of it before, but never used it. I installed it and it’s great! So happy that’s the one diffing tool they allow.

  • I generally prefer native local applications wherever possible, and for a long time I was against the movement to web based tools. That is until one thing changed. I moved to a different department at work. In this different department, I am issued with a Windows 11 laptop that is extremely locked down. It cannot run any executables aside from those whitelisted. I cannot run anything as administrator. If I need anything new whitelisted, I need to write a full page justification, get an endorsement from my manager, and then it can take over a year to get approved (but most likely will be immediately denied).

    Obviously one thing it can run is MS Edge. All of the company tools and systems are webapps on the intranet, accessed via Edge. Now I’m grateful there are so many high quality browser based webapps around.

  • Jetbrains have gone the opposite direction unfortunately. The latest version of PyCharm came with the announcement that PyCharm Community is being discontinued. Instead, they will provide just one PyCharm (the closed source one) formerly PyCharm Professional, that can operated in a Basic (Free) mode, or a Pro (Licenced) mode. Also, some features that were free in Community edition will be moved to the Pro mode in the new PyCharm.

    It doesn’t affect me personally because my workplace pays for a pro subscription for me, but I used PyCharm Community for 4 years during uni and I’m sad it’s going.

  • If I’m reading that correctly, that shows the system is drawing around 100W just sitting idle.

    Something is not right there.

    Either the power meter is way out of calibration, or there is a configuration issue with your PC. Maybe you have a performance setting that is causing the CPU and GPU to not idle down ever? Or a rogue antivirus software that is cranking the CPU constantly?

    Are there any spinning disk hard drives in your PC? They can sometimes use around 5W each on idle. That was the biggest cause of idle power consumption on my old xeon server, with 8 HDDs.

    PSU choice can also affect it. Eg, if you buy into marketing and buy a monster 850W PSU, but it’s idle all the time and only uses 450W under load, then the PSU is spending the whole time outside it’s efficiency curve, and can end up causing more power draw than expected.

  • I had the same experience with Canonical. They advertise hundreds of jobs in LinkedIn, in every major city around the world.

    I applied for one that matched my skillset well, and the recruiter was enthusiastic about my application.

    After my application was accepted, and passed the first round of scrutiny, they wanted a long and detailed cover letter answering some very specific and personal questions about your education and career. Eg. “How would your friends describe you in High School?” and “What was your least favourite subject in high school?”. Man, high school was 20 years ago, how is that relevant? And weird stuff like “how can Canonical become a global leader in Software and compete against Microsoft, Apple, and Google?”. I’m a senior software engineer, not a CEO.

    I did a whole series of tests, did their online exam and weird online IQ test thing. I passed them all with very good results. Then suddenly got the rejection letter out of nowhere.

    I don’t think they actually want to recruit people. They have no budget to put on new software engineers. They just want to advertise hundreds of jobs on Linkedin and send candidates through meaningless hoops for weeks to make it look like they’re recruiting.