My first job out of university, I was working for a content marketing startup who's tech stack involved PHP and PerconaDB (MySQL). I was relatively inexperienced with PHP but had the false confidence of a new grad (didn't get a job for 6 months after graduating - so I was desperate to impress).
I was tasked with updating some feature flags that would turn on a new feature for all clients, except for those that explicitly wanted it off. These flags were stored in the database as integers (specifically values 4 and 5) in an array (as a string).
I decided to use the PHP function (array_reverse)[https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.array-reverse.php] to achieve the necessary goal. However, what I didn't know (and didn't read up on the documentation) is that, without the 2nd argument, it only reversed the values not the keys. This corrupted the database with the exact opposite of what was needed (somehow this went through QA just fine).
I found out about this hours later (used to commute ~3 hrs each way) and by that time, the senior leadership was involved (small startup). It was an easy fix - just a reverse script - but it highlighted many issues (QA, DB Backups not working etc.)
I distinctly remember (and appreciate) that the lead architect came up to me the next day and told me that it was rite of passage of working with PHP - a mistake that he too had made early in his career.
I ended up being fired (grew as an engineer and was better off for it) but in that moment and weeks after it, it definitely demoralized me.
Yep, I was put on PIP with impossible success criteria (no issues raised in PRs by senior engineers and no issues in code deployed to production - even if it was reviewed by senior engineers & QA) and fired (for failing that criteria) in 2 weeks.
Wat? Like serious issues, or minor things that can be improved? Because it's very rare in my place of work that there are no comments on a 'PR'. Something can always be improved.
+1 on this, every place or project I have touched has a backlog of tens if not hundreds of nice to haves but never enough time to touch them, and some of them are really not complicated.
It’s illegal where I am, but employers are extremely capable of abusing “performance improvement plans” as a way to constructively dismiss people - knowing most people won’t have the wherewithal to fight it in court.
I'm at the marriage age right now and I see tons of my friends getting married.
A friend got proposed a couple of months ago and her ring is ~40k USD. In my opinion, that's crazy since they're spending ~30k CAD on their wedding.
My partner also mentioned that she'd like a wedding ring of the same calibre since according to her - diamond ring is how much love / value / worth I hold for her. Furthermore, a significant group of middle/upper-middle class want naturally occurring diamonds (because they're "real") over lab produced ones (not because of the quality, but because of the tag associated with and the societal group pressure). Furthermore, the same group also hate moissanite because it's not diamond.
It's irrational, marketing and conditioning all they way down.
Hopefully, stuff like this forces lab grown diamonds to the mainstream culture so that we can finally get rid of that mentality.
> My partner also mentioned that she'd like a wedding ring of the same calibre since according to her - diamond ring is how much love / value / worth I hold for her.
I don't really understand situations where peoples' partners say things like this and it comes as a surprise. This feels like an extremely aggressive statement on how they view your relationship, and the level of trust and mutual understanding you have.
I just can't imagine getting to the point of considering marrying someone and not knowing well in advance that they will hold an opinion like this. And if they seemed like the kind of person who would have this opinion... I probably wouldn't be staying with them, because it seems like it would flag a variety of other uncomfortable personality traits.
How did you react? Was it a surprise to hear this?
Social signaling and innate competitiveness is a hell of a drug. A former all-Linux employer had standardized on issuing Dell laptops, and everything was fine. Until some joiner in middle/lower management petitioned for a Macbook Pro and got it, and a couple more popped up in the Excel-jockey stratum, and the floodgates were opened. PMs and team leads all started to report all sorts of "problems" with their old laptops (too slow, gets too hot) to motivate for replacements - thought they had to run Linux VMs to get any work done. The Dell/Apple laptops weren't just tools anymore - they were now a social signal/status symbol to say "I am an important person" in every meeting room. It was fascinating to observe, because getting a Macbook made their lives worse (having to develop in a VM with slow disk I/O - this was before docker took over the world). Computers became the visible representation of your place on the totem pole; the same thing happens with engagement rings within social circles when going for drinks/brunch. You don't want to be caught dead with the Dell of engagement rings in a room full of Macs.
> I probably wouldn't be staying with them, because it seems like it would flag a variety of other uncomfortable personality traits.
I wouldn't go that far - we all have hobbies/interests we are passionate about that we're not utilitarian about and are willing to go all-out on. Judging a person on one axis feels like a mistake to me.
Cocaine is also a drug, and yet, one doesn't need to date someone addicted to either.
> I wouldn't go that far - we all have hobbies/interests we are passionate about that we're not utilitarian about and are willing to go all-out on. Judging a person on one axis feels like a mistake to me.
I don't this is a hobby so much as a world view, or as you stated, an addiction. To me it indicates a very materialistic, shallow worldview. If 40k rings are required to show love, what do they think of people who aren't as wealthy? What would they think of you if you lost your job? Heck if someone's marrying you, why do you need to show your love at all, shouldn't that be established to them?
I think you should be incredibly judgy about who you choose to marry.
> To me it indicates a very materialistic, shallow worldview. If 40k rings are required to show love, what do they think of people who aren't as wealthy?
Or - hear me out - the partner was embarrassed to verbalize that she's competing with the friend's engagement ring, and therefore created a less embarrassing, post-hoc rationalization as to why she wants a $40k ring too. Here's a thought experiment - had the friend gotten a $6k ring, would she have asked for a ring closer to $6k or still gone with $40k, by some intuition?
> Heck if someone's marrying you, why do you need to show your love at all, shouldn't that be established to them?
Unfortunately, no (on both sides: some people marry for the wrong reasons, and it's not close to showing your love - which shouldn't be an event)
> I think you should be incredibly judgy about who you choose to marry.
> Or - hear me out - the partner was embarrassed to verbalize that she's competing with the friend's engagement ring, and therefore created a less embarrassing, post-hoc rationalization as to why she wants a $40k ring too. Here's a thought experiment - had the friend gotten a $6k ring, would she have asked for a ring closer to $6k or still gone with $40k, by some intuition?
Marginally better, but still greatly concerning that the person you're supposed to trust most is too embarrassed to communicate openly imo.
Do an experiment - ask your partner if she wouldn't marry you if you don't give her precious stone. If she won't, I can't see how such a relationship is based on love, rather than various calculations. The idea that money express love is plain stupid from any point of view I can imagine.
One big warning sign right there.
FYI I didn't give my wife any diamond, in fact when I proposed to her on top of Mont Blanc after grueling dangerous skitour I didn't even have a ring since she never wore any before, so I couldn't get correct size.
It didn't matter a bit and still doesn't - everybody we talked about considers my proposal way cooler than usual big money being thrown around. I bought her a ring of her choice afterwards (cheap stuff), and no surprise - she lost it / got stolen when working at tomography lab few months afterwards. Not a problem, imagine losing a ring worth 40k (upon sale, resale maybe 50% of it if lucky).
Some people have just been conditioned, by friends/family/marketing, that 'if he doesn't buy you a diamond, he doesn't love you'. There is _some_ logical thought to it. Putting money down on a marriage can be seen as a sign of commitment, and that's the way it's usually portrayed. If he won't spend money on the symbol of your marriage, then he hasn't committed.
I, personally, decided I would not marry someone who thought this way. I know it is a weird hill to die on, but if someone won't change their mind even after seeing all of the pertinent information about the diamond mining industry and the marketing, then that is not the type of person I want to marry. I luckily found an amazing woman who thinks the same way I do.
> My partner also mentioned that she'd like a wedding ring of the same calibre since according to her - diamond ring is how much love / value / worth I hold for her.
Do not marry this person. At the very least, they're bad with money (presuming you/they are not a multimillionaire presently where $40k is just pocket money).
Wow, you might want to talk with your partner about buying a ~40k ring. That seems like it could be a big sticking point in a marriage, especially considering it could pay for an entire university degree.
> diamond ring is how much love / value / worth I hold for her
Wow.. I find it hard to believe how someone can say/repeat such a statement about the size and authenticity of a shiny rock to equal the love you have for the person. It sounds so materialistic - but, I can't blame her either, it's part of the value system of the surrounding society she grew up in. It's impressive how effective the diamond industry's marketing has been over the last century or so.
Don't want to get too personal but why not date in a different circle?
Almost no matter how financially well off you are, why have $40K on your finger. Not worth the danger (unless maybe you are $100m+, have 24/7 security, rich).
maybe it's tongue in cheek but in all honesty, I find it extremely hypocritical that the Ayatollah of Iran, dis-information news organizations (esp those based in China) and now CP are fine on Twitter but god forbid some people on the right wing use the "#notmypresident" or "#learntocode" hashtags - both of which were extensively used by the left in 2016 without any repercussions what so ever.
I don't mind Twitter having it's policies (Infact I support it)- but selective enforcement of said policies is the issue.
I guess that's because the world is not black and white. You see corrupt cops hurt you while the nice mob helps your family.
It's one of the reasons why successful criminals always have a good community outreach program. Once you have the people on your side, it's very hard for the police to do much.
When gangs selling drugs in Colombia originally started, while they were quite violent, they did take care and look after the local community they were based in. And in return, they local community took care of them by alerting them when the military was closing in as an example.
If you're a young kid growing up in that environment, it's easy to see how you'd consider the military as the bad guys since all you see them do is come in and create chaos / hurt people etc. while the local drug dealer on your street is ensuring that you have food to eat.
On a side-note, I hate how Facebook sticks to their real name policy and does not allow for the creation of multiple accounts (I'd want one for my startup / work etc. and another for my personal use case for my friends / family etc.).
That said, all the mainstream social media apps - Facebook and Twitter had a hand and if Parler was de-platformed with that reason, then they should be as well.
I mean, if a 700B and a 50B company can't solve this issue, than how can we expect a much much smaller company like Parler to tackle it?
But it's obvious that these companies don't give a damn about the insurrection - This was entirely to pacify the dems by giving them a "Win" considering they have the House, Senate and Presidency.
It's funny because the company I'm currently consulting for a company that has a ~1B/yr account with Amazon and we've decided to slow our cloud migration projects. We run a major media site and if AWS decides to capitulate to the pressure from essentially people on social media or the wrath of the US Govt, what's stopping them from doing the exact same from Govts of other countries?
Isn't the Real Name policy a bit of a joke? I have a few test/fake/dev accounts, never had any issues (but for new accounts, need to associate them with a mobile number, but only for the initial signup).
That said, I think the structure of Facebook intentionally makes it difficult to moderate. Reddit, for example, has public groups, group mods, etc. Far from perfect, but Facebook could definitely do more validation before promoting groups.
Funny, last time I changed my birthday on Facebook I was asked "Are you sure? You can change your birthdate at most 5 times". Presumably they must be aware that at least one of the birthdates I gave was false.
According to the CEO of Parler, banks and payment vendors, law firms, text and mail services also cancelled on them. Shouldn’t there be some discussion about banning those banks and lawyers too?
Should a law firm be able to quit you? Should a bank be able to cancel on you? We even have major banks cancelling on the US President. At what point ought those who despise you be free to ditch you? These are all parties exercising their freedom of association.
Parler was a red hot potato for anyone who didn’t leave fast enough.
Specific lawyers? Yes. Some clients are just horrible, and forcing them to work with a certain person is ... decidedly unethical.
Banks? Now we're starting to have fun. If all banks cancel you, you cannot reasonably do business in this country. That's a very real concern and something that needs to be looked at.
There may be some real value in investigating all of the oligopolies in the United States, and their behaviors in cancelling.
I dont think they were trying to pacify dems. I think they have wanted to do this for a long time but couldnt with Trump in power. This was a cathartic release for San Francisco bay liberals
Didn't they freeze Trump only after the entire backlash? and last I checked, Trump was not on Parler was he? Infact, that was the big issue - Trump not moving to Parler or Gab while calling out Twitter.
It's funny because if he did do the move earlier, he'd have hurt twitter where it counts - their stock price. But I guess the attention on Twitter was just too much to ignore.
> and last I checked, Trump was not on Parler was he? Infact, that was the big issue - Trump not moving to Parler or Gab while calling out Twitter.
This is a legitimate criticism even for people on the right about Trump. He knew these Tech Giants were questionable about uneven censorship, he’s been complaining about it for years.
So why in the hell wasn’t he posting to gab, parlor, bitchute, streamable, all the “alternatives” first, then the tech giants on automatically on delay? Someone could have EASILY set that up for him.
The media for the past four years set around salivating for the next Trump tweet. They would’ve had to say Parler, Gab, whatever. They would’ve had to show the logos. They would’ve had to make it more about the words in the platform.
You could be a diehard Trump supporter, and realize that this is largely his fault for not being smart about how his message got out. I really think he thought he was above censorship, they wouldn’t DARE... I guess he was right, just until until he lost power.
> Didn't they freeze Trump only after the entire backlash?
Yes. To be fair, Parler didn’t do much including after the backlash. But I’m not going to argue this is another advantage Facebook accrues due to its size.
The idea behind repealing 230 is not essentially about tackling censorship.
It's more so the idea, that the right wing believes that Social Media is unfairly applying their moderation rules targeting the right side of the political spectrum. They want these these rules (even if it's more censorship) applied evenly to both right and left speech.
While what we have right now is not "free" speech, even moderated speech has a bias and both sides point to the other when it comes to these rules being applied unfairly.
Repealing 230 is a way to hurt who they see as responsible - the companies running the services as they are the one who apply these moderation rules unfairly.
Google, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit are pretty heavy handed when it comes to "censoring" content. This is annoying because somehow "rightwing / wrongthink" content is censored while "leftwing" content is fine as it is.
If they are not platforms and are publishers - they need to be treated as such.
I feel this needs to be extended all the way down - Why stop at social media? Let's go ahead and hit where this counts - Domain Registrars, DNS Hosts, Payment Processors and Web hosts.
The sad part is - if they do, the internet as we know won't exist anymore. But in all honesty, we are heading to it anyways - with all the internet companies consolidating - I don't think I'll loose a lot of sleep if Twitter if fined - They had it coming for a while anyways.
EDIT: If this comment does not follow the rules, I'm happy to delete it as it's inherently political imo. Also I'm happy to provide examples of the above claims as well.
I’m a Canadian and I find that absolutely the opposite.
1. > I don't need perfect to be the enemy of good. There's no reason to possess these weapons any more than there's a reason to possess nuclear warheads
Slipper slope don’t you say? Quite a lot of guns on that list were not even available in Canada or would be available. Furthermore, we have some of the strictest gun laws around.
What you said above to me sounds like we also need to just ban McDonalds and others from Canada too - considering obesity kills more Canadians than gun deaths no?
2. > The next bill can ban more, fix the bugs, etc, but the flag has been planted: there's no room for those weapons in Canada.
Have you by chance gone throw the process of getting a PAL? Our issue is not responsible gun owners - it’s the access to illegal guns coming from south of the border and this bill did absolutely nothing to stop it. It was political theater at the end of which a minority of citizens were affected (and they probably didn’t even vote in for the Libs anyways)
> it also makes them horrifying enough that we're not going to sit back and pray the crime away
By not dealing with the influx of guns from the south - we are literally doing JUST that further more at the cost of law abiding gun owners too.
Re 1: If McDonalds were handing out firearms I'd agree with ya ;) The difference is of course that the burger only kills the person ingesting it where a gun kills someone other than the owner. This makes the former a personal responsibility issue and the latter a public safety issue.
And of course, you can eat McDonalds safely in moderation without developing obesity, but you can't really get shot safely or in moderation without developing death.
Re 2: I have not tried to get a PAL, though I do understand it to be quite an arduous process.
Re 3: Indeed more should be done to keep weapons on the US side, however I don't think there's any reason we can't do both things at the same time.
Thanks for being willing to have a discussion about this.
1. > The difference is of course that the burger only kills the person ingesting it where a gun kills someone other than the owner.
Guns in general (both in the US and CA) have more self harm / accidental deaths to the owner than to others - If we wanted to reduce deaths by firearms, this is the number to watch out for. Which is why I brought it up. Far more people die due to drunk driving than firearm related deaths.
What I’m saying is that this issue has an significant amount of focus for an insignificant amount of return in Canada. (Again I’m referring to legal firearms).
2. I brought up PAL because just like we need a license to drive a car safely and the consequences of not having one and driving a car are serious, the same applies to guns as well.
3. > Indeed more should be done to keep weapons on the US side, however I don't think there's any reason we can't do both things at the same time.
I agree that we can do both at the same time - I don’t see anything being done about it though. I pointed (and feel) that this is why it makes this entire bill pointless.
I live in Toronto and have family in Scarborough - both places where firearm related deaths and crimes have kept going up YoY. (One of the people who died in the Nova Scotia’s shooting was a part of my interns family - a family that does have firearms btw - and yet they are against the bill). That said, I’ve yet to hear of crimes committed by PAL holders. This law has done nothing to keep us safe (or even relatively safer) while taking away a lot more.
Further, as a taxpayer - the buyback is going to cost quite a bit while our deficit is through the roof due to COVID.
And I’d rather we not spend money for show when it is much needed elsewhere.
My first job out of university, I was working for a content marketing startup who's tech stack involved PHP and PerconaDB (MySQL). I was relatively inexperienced with PHP but had the false confidence of a new grad (didn't get a job for 6 months after graduating - so I was desperate to impress).
I was tasked with updating some feature flags that would turn on a new feature for all clients, except for those that explicitly wanted it off. These flags were stored in the database as integers (specifically values 4 and 5) in an array (as a string).
I decided to use the PHP function (array_reverse)[https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.array-reverse.php] to achieve the necessary goal. However, what I didn't know (and didn't read up on the documentation) is that, without the 2nd argument, it only reversed the values not the keys. This corrupted the database with the exact opposite of what was needed (somehow this went through QA just fine).
I found out about this hours later (used to commute ~3 hrs each way) and by that time, the senior leadership was involved (small startup). It was an easy fix - just a reverse script - but it highlighted many issues (QA, DB Backups not working etc.)
I distinctly remember (and appreciate) that the lead architect came up to me the next day and told me that it was rite of passage of working with PHP - a mistake that he too had made early in his career.
I ended up being fired (grew as an engineer and was better off for it) but in that moment and weeks after it, it definitely demoralized me.