The computing stuff rant thread

[Mr Larrington]

E-mail from Ebuyer this morning asking me to rate a recent purchase.

Hello? It's an SSD.  It does disky Stuffs, quietly.  It has no blinkenlights.  It does not sing, nor dance, nor does it make the tea, raise and lower Tower Bridge or cross the Stormy North Atlantic by steam power. It's a fucking storage device.  If it didn’t work you’d already know about it.  It does work.  Ask me again in six months time

[Kim]

My phone (Moto G7) got battery bulge.  Possibly due to exposure to that nuclear sky ball thing that we have now.

I was stupid enough to crack the screen by poking at it before backing up contacts and things.  Screen's now too fucked to unlock it and mount the filesystem over USB or enable the debugger or anything useful.  Div.

I've ripped the battery out for explosion containment reasons.  The rest can go in a drawer as spare parts (see below).

Barakta's phone (also Moto G7, about 7 months newer) seems fine.

[Feanor]

Bing Maps!  You sucketh greatly.
When I drop a pin at a location, then generate a link to share this, the link sometimes (randomly!) does not come back to the same place!

I am working on a local project to locate some historical artifacts.
I am providing GPS locations, and various other information, including an OS Maps link.
Bing maps provides an OS maps layer, so I'm using them.

Here's an example of the issue I face ( and it may not reproduce for everyone, it's quite an inconsistent issue ).

Lat/Long extracted from GPS waypoint:
57.138532111421227 -2.094846814870834

(Yes, yes I know that's a sub-atomic precision. Bear with me.)

Go to the Bing maps website: https://www.bing.com/maps/
Switch to OS maps.
Copy-paste the above lat/long into the search box, and hit enter.
You should get a pin dropped on the banks of the river Dee, in Aberdeen.
A pane opens on the left, describing the location.
Fine.

At the top of the Bing page, click More [...], and click the 'Share' option.
On the pane that pops up, there is a link generated, with a 'Copy' button.
Click 'Copy' to copy this to the clipboard.

In my case, I get this link:
https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=3897a31c-e6c7-4a89-9262-eb305e5738c2&cp=57.138897~-2.100168&lvl=16&style=s&v=2&sV=2&form=S00027

Now, try to use this link.
Open a new tab in the browser, and paste the link into the navigation bar.

It opens the map to the correct area, but there's no pin.
The information pane on the left describes a random location, ranging from Germany to the US.

By altering the number of decimal places in the lat/long I can get it to work, but it's very inconsistent. Removing 5 or 6 spurious places generally works, but sometimes removing 6 fails, and removing 5 works.

Really a pile of poo.
YOU made the link, YOU should honour it.
 

[Pingu]

I followed your instructions and opened the proffered link in a browser. The left pane contained stuff to do with something in that London. Hit F5 and it refreshed with local Furryboottoon stuff.

Yep -  a pile of poo.

[woollypigs]

It took me to a page showing a in with this info attached "7 Old Ford Road, Aberdeen, Aberdeen City, AB11 9AA"

Looking like this, is that correct or wrong?

[Feanor]

That's correct.

Perhaps it's an issue where the link was created on the same PC where you then try to view the link.
Perhaps some cookie the website dropped during the link creation fucks up subsequent viewing of the link.

ETA: Yes, it does appear to be cookie-related.
If I click on the link I posted, I get a London-based location.
If I clear cookies for bing.com, I get the correct location.

Ah, no. It's fucked again.
The link I posted above now goes to Bloomberg in the US.
731 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10022

And after closing/reopening chrome, it's correct.

Basically, where the link lands you is totally random based on something I don't know.

[Kim]

My phone (Moto G7) got battery bulge.  Possibly due to exposure to that nuclear sky ball thing that we have now.

I was stupid enough to crack the screen by poking at it before backing up contacts and things.  Screen's now too fucked to unlock it and mount the filesystem over USB or enable the debugger or anything useful.  Div.

New phone obtained.  Moto G50.  Major differences, apart for the obligatory annoying Android UI redesign, include about a centimetre of height inflation, a physical calculator google assistant button that doesn't appear to be re-mappable to something useful, and that the second SIM slot shares physical space with the SD card slot, so you can only use one or the other.

It *might* be able to stay connected to a wireless LAN with IPv6 RAs on it, but it's a bit early to tell.  Hasn't randomly disconnected yet anyway.

Managed to recover a reasonable amount of my config from previous backups, at least.  And worked out how to stop Google Maps from crashing on startup...

[Bledlow]

New phone obtained.  Moto G50.  Major differences, apart for the obligatory annoying Android UI redesign, include about a centimetre of height inflation, a physical calculator google assistant button that doesn't appear to be re-mappable to something useful, and that the second SIM slot shares physical space with the SD card slot, so you can only use one or the other.

That sounds very inconvenient.

[andrew_s]

That's correct.

Perhaps it's an issue where the link was created on the same PC where you then try to view the link.
Perhaps some cookie the website dropped during the link creation fucks up subsequent viewing of the link.

ETA: Yes, it does appear to be cookie-related.
If I click on the link I posted, I get a London-based location.
If I clear cookies for bing.com, I get the correct location.

Ah, no. It's fucked again.
The link I posted above now goes to Bloomberg in the US.
731 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10022

And after closing/reopening chrome, it's correct.

Basically, where the link lands you is totally random based on something I don't know.

I got "7 Old Ford Road", with a marker, pasting the link into Edge
Bloomberg LP at 731 Lexington Ave (aberdeen map, no marker) pasting into Chrome
Sussex County Cricket Club (aberdeen map, no marker) pasting into IE

[Feanor]

That's correct.

Perhaps it's an issue where the link was created on the same PC where you then try to view the link.
Perhaps some cookie the website dropped during the link creation fucks up subsequent viewing of the link.

ETA: Yes, it does appear to be cookie-related.
If I click on the link I posted, I get a London-based location.
If I clear cookies for bing.com, I get the correct location.

Ah, no. It's fucked again.
The link I posted above now goes to Bloomberg in the US.
731 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10022

And after closing/reopening chrome, it's correct.

Basically, where the link lands you is totally random based on something I don't know.

I got "7 Old Ford Road", with a marker, pasting the link into Edge
Bloomberg LP at 731 Lexington Ave (aberdeen map, no marker) pasting into Chrome
Sussex County Cricket Club (aberdeen map, no marker) pasting into IE

Yep.

What a load of poo.

I'm going to re-do the web links to google maps sat view, and tell people if they want OS maps to paste the lat/long into bing.
The bing links don't persist correctly.

[woollypigs]

When I do projects like that, sharing point on maps with a wee note attached. I have had great success with https://umap.openstreetmap.fr

[Feanor]

When I do projects like that, sharing point on maps with a wee note attached. I have had great success with https://umap.openstreetmap.fr

Does it have a UK OS Maps layer?

If not, then I'm going to ditch online OS mapping, and simply provide the OS Grid references.
If the users want to see the pins on an OS map, they can copy-paste the lat/long into bing maps themselves.
That works, even if their sharing links don't.

I'll re-work my stuff to provide google sat view links, which is probably more useful anyway.

[Pingu]

If you've got grid references then you can link to maps on streetmap.co.uk, e.g. https://www.streetmap.co.uk/map/idld.srf?X=395058&Y=809213&A=Y&Z=115&lm=1

[Kim]

Moto G50.

[...]

It *might* be able to stay connected to a wireless LAN with IPv6 RAs on it, but it's a bit early to tell.  Hasn't randomly disconnected yet anyway.

Seems promising.  Not only does it seem to not randomly disconnect, but it seems to be able to roam between APs without closing sockets.  Finally a Moto G with WiFi that isn't broken?

[Feanor]

If you've got grid references then you can link to maps on streetmap.co.uk, e.g. https://www.streetmap.co.uk/map/idld.srf?X=395058&Y=809213&A=Y&Z=115&lm=1

That produced an OS map, centered on the BoD, but with no pin on it.

Anyways, the purpose of this survey is to produce high-resolution GPS co-ords, the OS refs were a secondary output for those that like to work with paper maps.
I am still providing them, just in text form, not on a pretty online OS map.

My online linking is now to google sat view, which is actually more useful for most people who might be looking for these artefacts.

[ian]

Have something important that needs to be done by 10 am, so I'm looking at a progress bar that says 'about thirteen minutes remaining.' (thanks for the precision Apple.)

Fucking IT and it's 'your computer will restart in 5 minutes' – was it that vital the security update ran right now? Again, it's like they know, and trigger these things at the most inopportune moment.

And because they're watching me, it's still saying 13 minutes, two minutes later.

[ian]

Yes, Akamai is stumbling for the entire world. Please stop emailing me, I can't fix it.

[matthew]

We don't have a computer specific grumble thread or a divvery thread so here it will have to be.

So I have an old Epson flat bed A4 scanner, still in good working order even if it is probably 20+ years old. It is a SCSI 1 device on a 50 pin centronics connector. Last year I upgraded my desktop PC new motherboard CPU etc. with the intention that I would transfer my old PCI SCSI card across. Here's the Divvery: new motherboard only has PCI Express slots so old SCSI card can't be transferred to the new build. 

I finally have gotten around to purchasing a second hand PCI express SCSI card for all of £35, great thinks I, I'll have the scanner working again ready for when I might need to use the expenses system again.

Second Divvery: Only now the new card has a VHDCI connector and the old one was a micro DB50.  My old cable won't fit.

And here is the rant. How in the name of all that's Holy can the replacement cable VHDCI - Centronics cost me £40 and more than the card itself?   

[ian]

I think you could have bought an entirely new (and better) scanner for less than you're spending on a cable...

Our expenses system, like most others these days, supports photographs of a receipt, the app even sorts them out and creates the expense.

[grams]

I think you could have bought an entirely new (and better) scanner for less than you're spending on a cable...

Buy? Round here you can’t leave the house without tripping over an abandoned scanner/inkjet printer thingy.

[ian]

True enough, I've not used mine for, erm, a long time. The inkjet has been banished to the loft. I have a scanner thing for my phone, hover it over the piece of paper, and it does the deed.

[matthew]

I agree, I probably could have bought a new scanner, but I have a reliable, robust and proven bit of kit and see no need to throw it away or add to the collection of waste electrical items.

[nuttycyclist]

HTML emails and tracking images.  Why?

I have today received an email from $BANK, which paraphrased said "either enable HTML or click this link to read this".  I have my client set to text only on purpose to prevent spam links and tracking etc.  On reading the 659 lines of HTML code, apparently I will be receiving a new card and all information I need to know will be in the letter it is glued to.  The majority of that code was simply to cope with different formatting between different operating systems (and versions thereof) page layout, font decoration, and images for tracking porpoises.
   Why oh why oh why couldn't I have had just a single sentence "we're sending you a new card so please read the letter it is glued to"?

The children's school are just as bad, the final full-stop in every email is actually a picture, from the web, with a unique URL so that they know who opens and reads the email.  Naturally that domain is blocked on my router so that Mrs Nutty still can read the email on her fondleslab without realising the tracking is removed  (<--note lack of full stop.)    The school once sent an email asking if communications were being received as a previous email had only been opened by 10% of the audience.


And worst of all is one place I have to book appointments with, whose email comes through in what looks like Office365 markup.  I haven't found a way to read it other than via a text editor.  Pages of <> <> and other code, just to say "your appointment is booked on xx/yy/zz @ hh:mm with reference qwertyuiop".


I appreciate that data tracking is important to companies, but why on earth are we flooding the internet with pretty formatting and pictures and tracking just for a simple short few lines communication?  Especially when so many spam emails come out looking authentic (I've had them in the past purporting to be from reputable companies) but the link behind the pretty fondleslab picture is the dodgy one.

[Kim]

I appreciate that data tracking is important to companies, but why on earth are we flooding the internet with pretty formatting and pictures and tracking just for a simple short few lines communication?

Microsoft.

(Remember the good old days when they were the Evil Empire?)

[ian]

I'm pretty sure the battle between html and plain text email was lost in c1996 or thereabouts. I'm cool with it, I'm at my best in Comic Sans.

Replies at the top still make me angry though. I'm taking that to the grave.