• 1 post
  • 16 comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: June 18th, 2023
  • Most data centers have some kind of service where you can request a KVM to be connected to the server. It’s not instant as an actual human has to do so but a lot sooner than another human driving long distance. I guess in this case, it’s a mid size company that is big enough to have multiple locations yet small enough to still manage to use on-premise infra instead of data centers.

  • RoR is too much magic for me. Getting started with any new code base is such a pain that I never want to do again. As a manager, I’ll avoid any job post that mentions Ruby. I have maintained projects written in Delphi, Centura, Java, C#, PHP and none of them even come close to the pain of RoR. Java and C# are notorious for ceremonial interfaces but that’s nothing compared to trying to figure out RoR automagics.

  • Any good encryption should make data looks random. Looking for patterns in encrypted data is one of the most basic steps to break an encryption. Therefore, good encryption should make data almost uncompressable, as in it’s so random that compression does not reduce the size.

  • Others have given excellent advices. I’ll approach it from management point of view:

    • If there’s management oversight, such as tech lead/engineering manager, talk to them. Don’t make any accusation. Approach it from the direction of you feeling uncomfortable with how the team is working. They will know how to solve the issue. However, any tech lead/engineering manager should have already dectected the problem and at a minimum acknowledge the issue.

    • If there’s no tech management oversight, I’d suggest you approach the senior engineer directly. I’d want to emphasize here that it has to be tech management. Non tech management won’t understand the problem and they won’t be able to solve the problem. Sometimes the senior engineer maybe under pressure to deliver and there’s nobody to split the tasks to other team members. I did this a few times in my career before I developed my skill to lead a team.

    • If it’s neither because the senior is under pressure to deliver, nor there’s management oversight, your next best bet is to seek consultantion with another senior, either in your team or another team. They maybe able help to talk to the senior.

    • Your last resort would be non tech management, or saying it another way: express that you’re not happy with your job. This won’t be much help unless others in your team doing so as well.

    If all these fail, consider finding another offer. There’s no oversight, there’s no willing to inprove from the senior and there’s no chance to improve the situation from other seniors, you won’t learn much there.

  • How star reviews, especially on PlayStore, is not what most people think. Reviews are given weight so that one star means almost nothing, unless there’s no other ratings. Remember that app stores have interest in apps staying highly rated to attract users. Nobody want to see an app store with mostly below average ratings.

    This also applies to any rating system where the service has interest in keeping them high, such as Amazon shopping. The way I combat this to use 2 stars to make my impact on the rating much higher.

  • Plex login system is such a nightmare. There’s a mix of something that is local, some that are online but displayed as local, and some that are completely online. I gave up on Plex when I can’t figure out how to remove an old Plex instance that somehow the clients still connecting to instead of the new server.