Author Topic: The computing stuff rant thread  (Read 396244 times)

Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1975 on: 16 February, 2020, 07:11:26 pm »
Can you elaborate ?
Apple guideline 2.5.6 states: "apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework". Webkit is the framework used to implement Safari. I believe the requirement is to allow iOS to remain in control even when the app runs downloaded client-side code.

Davef

Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1976 on: 16 February, 2020, 07:14:28 pm »
Can you elaborate ?
Apple guideline 2.5.6 states: "apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework". Webkit is the framework used to implement Safari. I believe the requirement is to allow iOS to remain in control even when the app runs downloaded client-side code.
Ah, i saw safari and thought Mac. Once that thought was in my mind I selectively ignored the iOS bit.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

CommuteTooFar

  • Inadequate Randonneur
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1977 on: 16 February, 2020, 08:07:28 pm »
**** rain its interrupting my interwebby connection

Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1978 on: 16 February, 2020, 08:12:52 pm »
Can you elaborate ? If I install chrome and then delete the safari binaries from the application folder I believe chrome will carry on working. Various other things will break so I would not recommend doing it but I don’t think chrome depends on safari, but then again  I often turn out to be wrong.

I meant specifically on iOS (iPhones and iPads) third party browsers aren’t allowed in the App Store. The things that exist that look like third party browsers (including Chrome) are required to use the built-in browser engine (i.e. Safari) so will have the same functionality/bugs/performance.

On Macs Chrome is a real app with its own Google-developed browser engine* that isn’t dependent on Safari.

(* pedantically it’s a fork of the same engine as Safari)

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1979 on: 17 February, 2020, 02:29:28 pm »
The "no third party browsers in the App Store" nonse was why Puffin died.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Feanor

  • It's mostly downhill from here.
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1980 on: 03 March, 2020, 08:29:15 pm »
Microsoft Word! Fuck you and the horse you rode into town on!

A while back, I had to code some custom plug-ins for our software product.
(It's extensible with User Apps which can be written in a variety of languages, but it's easiest to use Visual Studio and C# because it directly works with the API.)

This code had to do some Hard Stuff, involving Deep Magic.
Sometimes, one of the Hard Things is not the actual User Code, it's how to implement it properly as a plug-in for the main product.
(You are building DLLs, which need to both implement specific public interfaces which the main product can call into in order to use the plug-in, and also reference the main product API DLLs to be able to Do Stuff. )
I commented the code well, but I also wrote a Word doc describing how to set up the VS project correctly to integrate with our product, including screen-shots and code snippets.

I came to re-use some of those code snippets today, and copy-pasted them back into the new project.
A mess of squiggly red underlines.

"Are you perhaps missing a reference ( dumb_ass) ?" it helpfully asks.
Why, no! I am not. Fuck Off!

WTF?
Turns out Word has mangled the CaSe of everything in the code snippets when I wrote it up.
When I pasted the code snippets into the Word doc, Word decided that the CaSe needed 'fixing', and I never noticed at the time.
Cue half an hour of cursing and fixing it all back up.

I mean, it was everywhere.
From all the "using ThisThing" lines, through to all the class names.
And this ran very deep.
IDatabaseFactory, IDatabase, IWell, ICurveSet.
These things are referenced everywhere, and FuCkEd Up Case is a total PITA.



Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1981 on: 18 March, 2020, 01:14:38 am »
Yes, Windows, I know that monitor has built-in speakers.  But they're shit.  That is why I disabled them in Control Panel.  In fact I disabled all the myriad sound options – except one – because they're shit too.  Or they don't exist.  So please route sounds out of the optical hole in the sound card, so they can travel down the string, into the pleasingly chunky A/V receiver and thence to my ear'oles via the 5:1 squeaker system I bought for that very purpose.  You know, like I told you to do when I installed them.

Do NOT decide unilaterally to renable the shit monitor speakers and send sound to them instead, because they make BRITISH Sea Power sound like Mickey fucking Mouse.  With pneumonia.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

CommuteTooFar

  • Inadequate Randonneur
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1982 on: 20 March, 2020, 11:31:14 am »
Its probably not Microsoft's fault. Windows just does what is told. When you get chipset/video card update from windows update, nvidia or amd the new driver assumes itself to be god and windows obeys.
When I update my amd graphics I need to tell windows to use my usb DAC again.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1983 on: 20 March, 2020, 12:05:47 pm »
It did it two days running but seemed to have got the message yesterday.  No obvious updates during the period, and definitely nowt from Nvidia.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

SoreTween

  • Most of me survived the Pennine Bridleway.
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1984 on: 28 March, 2020, 05:50:20 pm »
How can it be so hard to set up a persistent network share mount on linux?  FFS how?  2 days I spent on my previous installation (mint 19.1) searching and reading a trying trick after trick.  In the end I gave up and settled for 'simply' (ha!):
  • Log in
  • Open command prompt
  • sudo mount -a
  • enter password (again)
So now for #reasons1 I'm setting up a fresh installation (mint 19.3) and spent a day getting nfs shares working2 instead of using cifs.  Seemed logical, it's a linux protocol, mint is linux and so is the NAS so shirley that'll work better?  Even fekking worse!  With nfs shares the system thinks the mount points are in use after login (they aren't) so I can't mount -a.

Linux ready for the mainstream?  My shiny metal arse.

1including the bonus more than doubling the speed of my raid1 array by moving it from mdraid to an Adaptec 6405
2for disappointing values of...
2023 targets: Survive. Maybe.
There is only one infinite resource in this universe; human stupidity.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1985 on: 28 March, 2020, 05:53:54 pm »
How can it be so hard to set up a persistent network share mount on linux?  FFS how?

By adding the appropriate line to /etc/fstab

(Any desktop GUI stuff pertaining to network mounts is basically a trap.  NFS, while generally more inclined to stay working than CIFS, is basically voodoo to configure and is file permission gotchas all the way down.)

SoreTween

  • Most of me survived the Pennine Bridleway.
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1986 on: 28 March, 2020, 06:24:17 pm »
By adding the appropriate line to /etc/fstab
Define 'appropriate'.  My dumb thinking is if I can 'sudo mount -a' and the mounts connect then the fstab file must be right?
With cifs as I said it works when manually run but did SFA at login.  It was set up to use a credentials file and when I read there were bugs with that I'd reached the end of my patience.
With nfs after editing the fstab file and nothing mounted 'sudo mount -a' works just fine but at login it doesn't work.  The devices are created (as in they appear under 'devices' in the left pane of caja) but the connection is empty (as in when I open them nothing is listed).  I can't umount them because they aren't mounted and I can't mount them because the mount points are in use.  Perfect catch 22.
Code: [Select]
<NAS>:/<Share> /home/<user>/<foldername> nfs rw,hard,intr,_netdev 0 0
Mrs Tween is used to our network drives being N: & M: on windows, I need it to be as simple to find the network shares.  So far she has been patient with my refusal to allow winblows post 7 anywhere near our infrastructure.  So far we have been lucky that when I've been away, which is 4 weeks as a time, nothing has failed.  She would struggle with the 4 steps in my post above but if something stops working she'd be fine with a text from me in <forrin> that simply said 'reboot it'.
2023 targets: Survive. Maybe.
There is only one infinite resource in this universe; human stupidity.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1987 on: 28 March, 2020, 07:02:34 pm »
My NFS-fu is completely rusty, because I last mucked about with it many years ago and it's been working fine since.

FWIW, the fstab on my desktop has lines like this:

Code: [Select]
servername:/home/kim        /mnt/kim      nfs     defaults,rw,soft,tcp,intr         0       0
This gets mounted at boot time (not login time), and caja et al just regard it as part of the filesystem.

I'm wondering if the "_netdev" option is delaying your mount?


I have the user problem of barakta (who used too many Apple products at a formative age) not really understanding that all Linux GUIs are lies, mounting network shares using the MATE tools, drag-and-dropping things from caja into random non-MATE programs and then screaming because it doesn't work.  Well of course it doesn't work, it's not actually mounted.  It's not $random_program's fault that someone thought it was a good idea to make a file manager that pretends to mount filesystems.  (Seriously, what were they thinking? Couldn't it mount them in /media/username or something?)

This is still preferable to Windows, where things tend to be easy to get working, but then break at random.

barakta

  • Bastard lovechild of Yomiko Readman and Johnny 5
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1988 on: 28 March, 2020, 07:10:17 pm »
Thunderbollocks. Is bollocks!

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1989 on: 28 March, 2020, 07:10:53 pm »
Thunderbollocks. Is bollocks!

And yet remains superior to the alternatives  >:(

SoreTween

  • Most of me survived the Pennine Bridleway.
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1990 on: 29 March, 2020, 08:36:00 am »
Thanks Kim, I'll try that spread of options. One thing in particular, in the fresh light of day, has me wondering.

_netdev is supposed to only delay the mount until all networks are connected.

Cheers.
2023 targets: Survive. Maybe.
There is only one infinite resource in this universe; human stupidity.

Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1991 on: 29 March, 2020, 09:15:08 am »
I was once (many years ago) working in the datacentre of a major supermarket when someone accidentally hit the emergency stop button. Once the power was turned back on and everything started to boot up we were privileged to watch the circle jerk of about twenty unix boxes that had been deployed over the years all trying to mount each others filesystems via NFS. Took forever.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

SoreTween

  • Most of me survived the Pennine Bridleway.
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1992 on: 29 March, 2020, 11:34:21 am »
I is a dipstick  :-[

My /home directory is encrypted, that's the penny that dropped reading Kim's fstab this morning.  Mount the drives in /mnt and it works :-)  They don't show up as devices in Caja that way though which is why I was mounting them under /home.  A couple of symbolic links on the desktop solve that.

Thanks again Kim, you are a star.

Re the gotchas all the way down, yep I see that and suspected There May Be Trouble Ahead in going NFS.  Files on the NAS saved through nfs belong to <me> <me> rather than NAS groups <500> <users>.  I can read such files from windows boxen but they are read only.  Not a problem for me as my visits to windows are rare these days but Mrs Tween uses a windows 10 laptop, I shall have to find a way.  I can always go back to cifs now I know why mounts that way weren't working but it will irritate me to discard the faster protocol.

Lastly re thunderbollocks, Pegasus Mail works just fine under Wine.  Looks positively Neanderthal these days but is still a proper email client that has become able to display HTML rather than everything else I've used that seem to be HTML editors/renderers with a pish poor email back end cludged in.
2023 targets: Survive. Maybe.
There is only one infinite resource in this universe; human stupidity.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1993 on: 29 March, 2020, 12:51:30 pm »
I was once (many years ago) working in the datacentre of a major supermarket when someone accidentally hit the emergency stop button. Once the power was turned back on and everything started to boot up we were privileged to watch the circle jerk of about twenty unix boxes that had been deployed over the years all trying to mount each others filesystems via NFS. Took forever.

'tis fun when someone hits the BRS.  One of the tape librarians did it at a former labour camp by stacking the big boxes we used for offsite tape storage three-high instead of the more usual two before pushing them to the airlock.  With 20/20 hindsight, The Mgt generated An Edict that the boxes must in future be stacked no more than two-high, and also installed a mollyguard on the BRS.

Because it happened at about 5:15 pm on a weekday it took north of 24 hours to get everything back to working order but, perhaps surprisingly, Dave the Tape Monkey didn't lose his job.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1994 on: 29 March, 2020, 12:55:15 pm »
Because it happened at about 5:15 pm on a weekday it took north of 24 hours to get everything back to working order but, perhaps surprisingly, Dave the Tape Monkey didn't lose his job.

Reminds me of the Thomas Watson quote:-

Quote
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1995 on: 29 March, 2020, 12:59:51 pm »
Re the gotchas all the way down, yep I see that and suspected There May Be Trouble Ahead in going NFS.  Files on the NAS saved through nfs belong to <me> <me> rather than NAS groups <500> <users>.  I can read such files from windows boxen but they are read only.  Not a problem for me as my visits to windows are rare these days but Mrs Tween uses a windows 10 laptop, I shall have to find a way.  I can always go back to cifs now I know why mounts that way weren't working but it will irritate me to discard the faster protocol.

There are only two sane ways to use NFS:
a) Where UIDs and GIDs are consistent between boxes.  Consistency left as an exercise for the reader.
2) With a (likely read-only) mount exported using all_squash, where ownership doesn't matter.

Otherwise you're in for a world of pain...


Quote
Lastly re thunderbollocks, Pegasus Mail works just fine under Wine.  Looks positively Neanderthal these days but is still a proper email client that has become able to display HTML rather than everything else I've used that seem to be HTML editors/renderers with a pish poor email back end cludged in.

The current problem is mostly that Lightning (a perfectly good CalDAV client) got integrated with thunderbollocks, to the detriment of both.

Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1996 on: 30 March, 2020, 01:12:04 pm »
Thunderbolt problems, using an I mac to run the interactive turbo. Does not recognise the TV using a thunderbolt to hmdi cable. Have a macbook and cable works on same TV . Anyone fixed a Thunderbolt socket on the I mac? Or is sending to Macupgrades the best bet for fixing the problem?

ian

Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1997 on: 23 April, 2020, 12:46:25 pm »
Gah, stupid Teams and achy-breaky audio. Driving me nuts. I assumed it was bad wifi to the laptop but speed test claims it's consistently doing about 20Mbps with a sub-20ms ping (admittedly that drops to <5Mbps on the VPN). That bloody laptop has never worked properly since mothership IT got their paws on it and installed 'management tools.'

I hate fixing computers.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1998 on: 23 April, 2020, 01:17:48 pm »
speed test claims it's consistently doing about 20Mbps with a sub-20ms ping

That doesn't actually tell you anything about the packet loss (unless you can infer something from what the throughput ought to be), which is likely to be the cause of your audio woe.

A more useful test is to leave ping[1] running for a while, and see what the stats look like.  Pinging the LAN address of your router will test the WiFi part of the connection without involving the wider internet.


[1] On a Mac, you can open a terminal and type "ping hostname", where hostname is either a hostname or an IP address.  It will send a ping once a second and tell you if/when it receives a response.  Press <ctrl><c> to stop pinging and get some statistics.  The Windows ping works similarly, but defaults to stopping after 3 pings.  There will be some command-line parameter for changing that (on *nix it's "-c").

Davef

Re: The computing stuff rant thread
« Reply #1999 on: 23 April, 2020, 02:41:50 pm »
speed test claims it's consistently doing about 20Mbps with a sub-20ms ping

That doesn't actually tell you anything about the packet loss (unless you can infer something from what the throughput ought to be), which is likely to be the cause of your audio woe.

A more useful test is to leave ping[1] running for a while, and see what the stats look like.  Pinging the LAN address of your router will test the WiFi part of the connection without involving the wider internet.


[1] On a Mac, you can open a terminal and type "ping hostname", where hostname is either a hostname or an IP address.  It will send a ping once a second and tell you if/when it receives a response.  Press <ctrl><c> to stop pinging and get some statistics.  The Windows ping works similarly, but defaults to stopping after 3 pings.  There will be some command-line parameter for changing that (on *nix it's "-c").
Ping -t on windows


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk