• @miridius@lemmy.world
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    32 days ago

    Most software is a terrible pile of unreadable code with no tests and horrible architecture choices, that somehow manages to keep working just through the power of years of customers finding bugs and complaining loud enough to get them fixed.

    If you write any automated tests at all, you’re already better than most “professional” software companies. If you have a CI/CD pipeline, you’re far ahead.

  • @SirSamuel@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    These aren’t secrets, but may not be well known (unless you watch LPL):

    Sentry Safes aren’t safes, they are fire boxes with a fancy lock.

    High security locks are not high security because of the lock design, but because the keys are very difficult to have duplicated.

    No one (except maybe intelligence agencies) breaks in to a house by picking a lock, especially in the US. Windows, weak door frames, and, in a pinch, making a hole in the wall are all faster ways of getting in.

    Car keys are so expensive because many manufacturers charge a subscription or per-use fee to access and program the keys to the ignition. These costs are passed on to consumers

    No one is picking your locks just to move things around or steal small, insignificant items. You are either suffering from a mental disorder or a trusted member of the household is gaslighting you (it’s not gaslighting though, you’re your grasp of reality is slipping. Don’t call me for a pick proof lock, just get help please)

    Some manufacturers (you know, in China) will put any sticker you want on the products they produce, including UL and ANSI stickers. Before buying a product that is supposedly fire-rated, such as a fire safe, check the UL website to verify the item is actually listed with them.

    “Grade 1” door hardware sold in stores like Lowe’s or Home Depot is, at best, Grade 2, and is likely Grade 3 (residential grade). These grades are really just about how durable the product is over time, and how much abuse they will endure by the public.

    And just a little practical advice. Find a qualified, honest locksmith before you need one. We’re like plumbers. If you wait until you have an emergency to find one, the quality will be questionable. There are a lot of scammers out there. If you don’t have a resource for locksmiths beyond Google, look on the ALOA website for members in your area. The good ones will know who the other good ones are, and won’t be shy about sharing that info if they are unavailable or too far away

    • WIZARD POPE💫
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      55 days ago

      The fact that breaking a wall to get into the house is even a viable option honestly baffles me as a person living outside the US

    • I Cast Fist
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      56 days ago

      If there’s one thing the Lockpicking Lawyer taught me, is that the vast majority of locks only work because almost nobody bothers to learn lockpicking. Some “extra safe” locks being defeated by a fucking magnet of all things always amuse me

    • Sentry Safes aren’t safes, they are fire boxes with a fancy lock.

      Judging by the one I bought when I went off to college to keep some documents safe, they don’t even have fancy locks. I misplaced my key, but I was able to open it in the same amount of time with a pumpkin carving knife as a jiggler.

      • @SirSamuel@lemmy.world
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        36 days ago

        Yeah that’s was probably a 1200 or their document box. I was thinking of the “safes” they sell with a dial or keypad lock. They can be defeated in about the same amount of time. I won’t say how, but YouTube has more than one video showing how it’s done

    • No one (except maybe intelligence agencies) breaks in to a house by picking a lock, especially in the US. Windows, weak door frames, and, in a pinch, making a hole in the wall are all faster ways of getting in.

      It reminds me of a friend who visited me from Colombia (we grew up together down south.) We were walking around a neighborhood in Vermont. He said “I’d love it if we had houses like this one in Bogota. Why don’t we?!” And I replied “Because they’d be broken into in two seconds.”

  • @rodbiren@midwest.social
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    446 days ago

    A whole bunch of welds in nuclear reactors are visually inspected using cameras duct taped onto the end of incredibly long poles which also get duct taped together. This would be the inside of BWR plants near the fuel and jet pumps. There is also an “art” to moving the cameras and poles around to get the shots you need. And if you get stuck the talented people know how to get you unstuck. There are also cameras just duct taped to ropes that the camera handler “swims” to certain spots.

    Don’t get me wrong, we have cool ultrasonic inspecting robots as well, but I was absolutely blown away by what visual inspection looked like in practice.

    PS: The high dose fields make the camera look like it is being blasted with colorful confetti because of the high energy particles bombarding the camera module.

  • @stufkes@lemmy.world
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    876 days ago

    The use of chatgpt for writing is so widespread in higher ed, it will cause serious problems to those students when entering the workforce.

    Lots of fancy stuff is written about how we just have to change the way we teach!, and how we can use chatgpt in lessons! blablabla, but it’s all ignorant of the fact that some things need to be learnt by doing them, and students can’t understand how they hurt their own learning, because they don’t know what they don’t know.

    • There are a lot of entry level jobs that basically assume new employees know nothing, anyway. Seems like this will just further devalue degrees and emphasize work experience for hiring.

    • @sunbytes@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I bet AI detection is going to get a lot better over time.

      I wonder if there’s going to be retrospective testing of theses as time goes on.

      Could really damage some careers down the line.

      Edit: guys, retrospective testing means it was done later (i.e. with a more up to date AI detector).

      • pflanzenregal
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        186 days ago

        Once a detector is good, you can train a model to adjust its outputs to cause false negatives from the detector. Then the cycle repeats. It’s a cat and mouse game basically.

        The only proper way I see is a system that is based ob cryptographic signatures. This ia easier said than done ofc.

        • @sunbytes@lemmy.world
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          46 days ago

          Yeah but if your wrote your thesis in 2024, and the detector is run on it in 2026…

          You’re probably busted.

          It’s not like you’ll re-write your thesis with every major ChatGPT release.

          • @TehWorld@lemmy.world
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            36 days ago

            Are you expecting that the for-profit college will go back and retroactively rescind degrees? What’s the end-game for re-running the thesis?

            • @sunbytes@lemmy.world
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              35 days ago

              It could be a new level added to the peer review of work. Nothing to do with the university. Just “other professionals”.

              A thesis isn’t just an exam, it’s a real scientific paper.

              And usually claims is contents as fact, which can be referenced by others as fact.

              And absolutely should be open to scrutiny so long as it is relevant.

              • @TehWorld@lemmy.world
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                14 days ago

                Great points. Note: I’m not arguing against it as a concept. I’m just skeptical that it’ll happen, and even if it did, there wouldn’t likely be terrible consequences for the accused, especially as that’s what science is… new facts change the outcome vs choosing an outcome and matching facts to it.

  • @sudo42@lemmy.world
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    1457 days ago

    If you value your privacy and you have a choice between using a browser to access a service vs installing their app, use the browser.

    Online services can get much more information about you through an app vs the browser. Browsers are generally locked down more. Apps in general have access to much more information from your device.

    • Department lead.

      The website team is small, but incredibly effective. Everything works. Everything is mobile friendly, responsive, fast. It’s a way better experience.

      I love my app developers, but they’re always behind. Not their own fault. Mobile development is complicated. There’s so many screen sizes, iOS vs Android differences, platform permissions, etc.

      The big reason for us to push the App on people was to get more brand awareness on the App Store. But the website is so much more better.

      You literally can use it as a web app right into your phone and get a better experience.

      And it’ll be such a dark day when I have to dissolve the App team (and hopefully convince them into web dev)

      • @Stoposto@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Why not a responsive web app packaged into native viewer app? Depending on your utilization of native components of cause.

        My team had the same issues you described so we build the web responsive and made that the “Apps” on the App Store + Google Play. There is still a tiny native components that hook into the web so you still need those native developers knowhow, but yes they will have to switch in large to web based development.

        Less maintenance, more devs for the main product, faster progress, fewer headaches with Apple and Google tooling.

        Edit: forgot to app that our customers loved that more features are available now on the “Apps” and that things work the same between devices

      • @librejoe@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        But where is has the compromise happened? The Kotlin/Flutter/swift code written? The database? not being sarcastic just unaware.

  • HexesofVexes
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    476 days ago

    In the UK, slot machines fall into 4 main categories. Of particular interest are category C machines, as these can remember a fixed number of previous games. I.e. the “myth” that a machine is “about to pay out” because “someone lost a lot to it” can hold for these games.

    Cat A and B machines are completely random, previous games can have no impact on probabilities of winning (though pots can climb).

    Online games have different rules, not always fair ones!

    Oh, and ALL games (in a physical location) must (by law) show “RTP” (return to player) somewhere. It usually gets stuck it in a block of text in the manual since no-one reads them. (If it’s below 97.3% just go play roulette as it offers better returns).

      • @IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world
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        116 days ago

        Speaking of slot machines, every slot machine, electronic poker machine, etc. are just state machines that operate based on a stream of random numbers fed into them by another device.

        The random number generators (RNG’s) used for gaming are highly regulated (at least here in the US) and only a small handful of companies make them. They have to be certified for use by organizations like The Nevada Gaming Control Board. RNGs have to be secured so only NGC officials and other key people can access them. If they are opened unexpectedly or otherwise tampered with then they need to go into lockdown and stop generating numbers until an official resets it.

        The RNGs also need to be able to replay sequences of numbers on demand. If the same sequence of numbers are fed into a game and the user plays the same way then the result of the game should be 100% identical each time.

        • HexesofVexes
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          25 days ago

          Extra fact - in the USA almost all games use long weighted reels.

          I believe this is by law, but may be misinformed.

          Also, if you know the rng gen you can game machines: a very very clever group in Russia bought up old machines from defunct casinos, reverse engineered the games, and then developed an app that let a user photograph x number of spins to find out what the seed was for the next spin, and from there told them to bet high or low based on the upcoming game. They made millions, and farmed it out to make more. (https://www.wired.com/2017/02/russians-engineer-brilliant-slot-machine-cheat-casinos-no-fix/)

      • HexesofVexes
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        46 days ago

        Never really worked with them (we never made them).

        I think they’re lower prize threshold cat Bs.

  • slazer2au
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    1487 days ago

    The majority of technologies that power the internet were developed in the 80s and refined in the 90s. Everything since then is built as a layer of abstraction on top of those core technologies.

    • @mspencer712@programming.dev
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      557 days ago

      Also, the development and evolution of these open technologies relies on human interest and attention, and that attention can be diminished, even starved, by free, closed offerings.

      Evil plan step 1: make a free closed alternative and make it better than everything else. Discord for chat, Facebook for forums and chat/email, etc.

      Step 2: wait a few years, or a decade or more. The world will largely forget how to use the open alternatives. Instant messengers, forums, chat services, just give them a decade to die out. Privately hosted communities, either move to Facebook, pay for commercial anti-spam support, spend massive volunteer hours, or drown in spam.

      Step 3: monetize your now-captive audience. What else are they going to use? Tools and apps from the 2000s?

      • We are facing a very real possibility of the end of the web browser as we know it. Google owns the chromium engine. Mozilla is on ever more precarious footing. It’s become logistically impossible to build competing products except for tech giant. Even then everybody else gave up and went with chromium.

        • @errer@lemmy.world
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          116 days ago

          And Mozilla is largely funded by Google. We all just hope they don’t pull the rug from them but I have no faith that our inept, slow government would stop that from happening before it’s too late.

          • Liz
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            126 days ago

            Almost certainly the entire reason Google is funding Mozilla is to try and stave off antitrust lawsuits.

            • Iron Lynx
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              36 days ago

              The official reason is so that Big G is the default search engine on every install.

              But that may very well just be a smokescreen.

            • @Waffelson@lemmy.world
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              15 days ago

              I think this reason is stupid. Why can’t there be a duopoly in the browser market like in the phone market? Even if there is no firefox, there will still be safari on its own engine

              • Liz
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                15 days ago

                I think the phone market should also be broken up.

                The reason a doupoly is bad in any market is that it’s essentially next to no choice for the consumer, and the businesses can force changes to the market that are anti-consumer with little reprocussion. In any given market the minimum number of legitimate competitors necessary for meaningful competition will be different, but even three is too few in the web browser game, especially when the market shares look like this.

          • lil_shiOP
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            25 days ago

            I appreciate you making me aware of such an amazing project.

    • @3volver@lemmy.world
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      46 days ago

      The key word is “majority”. I think IPFS will gain more popularity moving forward especially if fascism and censorship continue to rise.

      • @Mike1576218@lemmy.ml
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        25 days ago

        And IPFS is not build on 90s tech?

        Also compared to TOR, IPFS has 0 censorship resiliance.

        I was a bit exmited for IPFS for a moment, but th more i tried it and thought about it, the less I saw a reason to use it.

  • @cooltrainer_frank@lemmy.world
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    1057 days ago

    Former process engineer in an aluminum factory. Aluminum foil is only shiny on one side and duller on the other for process reasons, not for any “turn this part towards baking, etc” reasons.

    It’s just easier to double it on itself and machine it to double thickness than it is to hit single thickness precision, especially given how much more tensile strength it gives it.

    Also, our QA lab did all kinds of tests on it to settle arguments. The amount of heat reflected/absorbed between the two sides is trivially small. But if you like one side better you should wrap it that way, for sure!

  • The interview is a vibe check first and foremost. If you vibe with the team we will overlook other things in your application. If you made it to interview, we already think you’re good enough so don’t stress trying to impress or apologize.

    Managers are mostly people who get tired of watching other people do things badly and decide to try to do better. You don’t need a special degree or any magic to be a good manager, you should like people though.

    Everyone is faking it to some degree.

    • @neidu2@feddit.nl
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      56 days ago

      Can confirm with a very condensed anecdote: I once applied for a job that required engineering degree in electronics or mechanics. I’m a hischool dropout. Interview went well, and I got a job offer a month later. I got the impression that they were more interested in the right type of person with relevant hands-on experience, and in my case that experience meant IT/Linux (I was always a hobbyist geek)and being used to operating heavy machinery (Grew up on a farm).

      I’m still in the same industry, and I earn more than my friends with masters degrees.

  • @3volver@lemmy.world
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    206 days ago

    Fractional-reserve banking. Most people have no idea what it is, probably a good thing. You could argue that it’s not a “secret”, but most people aren’t aware of it regardless. I don’t think most people would be fond of grinding for $15 an hour if they knew banks could just lend money they don’t actually have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking

    • @miridius@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      I don’t think you understand how fractional reserve banking works. The first paragraph of that Wikipedia page already clearly contradicts you. The banks can still only lend money they have (otherwise how would they lend it? Where would it come from? Only the central bank can print currency). What fractional reserve banking is saying is that banks can invest some portion of the customer deposits that they hold into non-liquid assets, often in the form of loans to other customers, but it could also be invested in other things eg government bonds. The interest banks earn by doing that helps pay for the interest they pay to customers on their saving. They also have to carefully manage their liquidity: maximising returns while still holding enough liquid assets to cover any potential spikes in withdrawals.

      Even when investing customer funds, banks still have to meet captial requirements set by the regulators which basically say that their risk-adjusted assets have to cover the liabilities of customer deposits, so that for example they can’t just invest all the deposits in Bitcoin as that would pose too high a risk of insolvency. The reason SVB went insolvent recently was that they successfully lobbied the Trump administration to relax capital requirements for banks of their size, then made risky investments that lost money and they suddenly had less money than they owed their customers.

      • @Bronzefish@lemmy.world
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        95 days ago

        I am a very well trained piece of shit.

        But I am not allowed to clean the upper part of the icemachine ( where all the slime happens) because of liabillity. I do my best to keep it clean but not all of it is possible so while its one of the cleanest icemachines I have ever seen its still dirty.

        And I work in a very upscale cocktailbar in a very well regulated country.

      • I can’t imagine this to not be the case. Every bartender I know is tweaked out of their mind. Even the ones who see bartending as an art.

        I’m not knocking their skill set. But they’ll be a rare breed if they think about bartending AND food safety at a high level enough to think about the cleanliness of ice.

    • @MagicShel@programming.dev
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      167 days ago

      That’s where you need people like me who give a fuck about nothing but customer experience and if my employer manages to make a buck, good for them. My employer is generally just a middle man who siphons money out of both our pockets. And makes me fill out a second, useless timesheet while you’re paying me to work.

      Jokes on me though because I’ve been out of work for 3 months, so take my suggestion of fuck your employer with a grain of salt.

    • @dotned@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      Depends on business model. Saas - quality is very important. Non-profit insurance/bureaucratic type - they’ll burn millions to hire plenty of QA then treat them like shit, ignore them, and push trash software all day

          • Uptime isn’t quality. Perf and reliability are easily faked with the right metrics. It’s trival to be considered working on PowerPoint without working well for the user.

            • Lightor
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              13 days ago

              Uptime is quality. It’s why uptime is in SLAs. A quality product isn’t down half the time.

              • Opinions like that are why software quality sucks. And why using software is so painful for most people. “I have to use a stroller to set my phone number on the UI.” “Sure, but uptime if 5 9’s, so it’s quality software”.

                • Lightor
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                  13 days ago

                  Lol, saying uptime is needed for quality of why software quality sucks? What? Uptime is part of quality, it is not the sole determination of quality. You seem to be purposefully misunderstanding that concept.

        • Lightor
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          15 days ago

          False. Have a 70% up time and let me know how many clients you have left.

          • Uptime isn’t quality. Perf and reliability are easily faked with the right metrics. It’s trival to be considered working on PowerPoint without working well for the user

            • Lightor
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              4 days ago

              Uptime indicates reliability. Reliability is a factor of quality. A quality product has a high uptime. What good is a solution that doesn’t work 20% of the time? That’s exactly how you lose clients. Why do SLAs cover topics like five 9s uptime if they don’t matter and can be faked? This makes no sense.

              You said quality doesn’t matter, only features. Ok, what happens when those features only work 10% of the time? It doesn’t matter as long as it has the feature? This is nonsense. I mean why does QA even exist then, what is the point of wasting spend on a team that only worries about quality, they are literally called Quality Assurance. Why do companies have those if quality doesn’t matter, why not just hire more eng to pump out features. Again, this makes no sense. Anyone who works in software would know the role of QA and why it’s important. You claim to work in tech, but seem to not understand the value of QA which makes me suspicious, that or you’ve just been a frontline dev and never had to worry about these aspects of management and the entire SDLC. I mean why is tracking defects a norm in software dev if quality doesn’t matter? Your whole stance just makes no sense.

              It’s trival to be considered working on PowerPoint without working well for the user

              No it’s not trival. What if “not working well” means you can’t save or type? Not working well means not working as intended, which means it does not satisfy the need that it was built to fill. You can have the feature to save, but if it only works half the time then according to you that’s fine. You might lose your work, but the feature is there, who cares about the quality of the feature… If it only saves sometimes or corrupts your file, those are just quality issues that no one cares about, they are “trivial?”

              • See, you just set the bar so low. Being able to save isn’t working well, it’s just working. And I have held the title of QA in the past. It is in part how I know these things. And in the last 5 years or so, companies have been laying off QAs and telling devs to do the job. Real QA is hard. If it really mattered you would have multiple QA people per dev. But the ratio is always the other way. A QA can’t test the new feature and make sure ALL the old ones still work at the rate a dev can turn out code. Even keeping up on features 1 to 1 would be really challenging. We have automation to try and keep up with the old features, but that needs to be maintained as well. QA is always a case of good enough. And just like at Boeing, managment will discourage QAs from reporting everything they find that is wrong. Because they don’t want a paper trail of them closing the ticket as won’t be fixed. I’ve been to QA conferences and listened to plenty of seasoned QAs talk about the art of knowing what to report and what not to. And how to focus effort on what management will actually ok to get fixed. It’s a whole art for a reason. I was encouraged to shift out of that profession because my skills would get much better pay, and more stable jobs, in dev ops. And my job is sufficiently obscure to most management that I can actually care about the users of what I write more. But also I get to see more metrics that show how the software fails it’s users while still selling. I have even been asked to produce metrics that would misrepresent the how well the software works for use in upper level meetings. And I have heard many others say the same. Some have said that is even a requirement to be a principle engineer in bigger companies. Which is why I won’t take those jobs. The “good enough” I am witness/part of is bad enough, I don’t want to increase it anymore.

                • Lightor
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                  13 days ago

                  I’m setting a new low sure, and you’re moving the goal posts. What “well” means is incredibly subjective.

                  You worked in QA, cool, and I’ve manage the entire R&D org of a nation wide company, including all of QA.

                  Your saying that since companies don’t invest in it enough it doesn’t matter at all? Why do they even invest at all then, if it truly doesn’t matter.

                  Yes a QA can test old features and keep up with new ones. WTF, have you never heard of a regression test suite? And you worked in QA? ok. Maybe acknowledging AQA is an entire field might solve that already solved problem.

                  You did a whole lot of complaining and non relevant stories but never answered any questions I’ve been asking you across multiple comments…

      • @MrPoopbutt@lemmy.world
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        76 days ago

        Sonos has pissed me off. After the latest update, the app cannot locate the speakers in any of my rooms. The TV speakers still work with a signal from the TV, but the speakers in all other rooms basically cannot be used.

        I’ve factory reset them, set them up in the app, and as soon as that is done, they disappear from the app again.

        They worked fine for years, then this bullshit. I’m researching a home theater setup that doesn’t use Sonos and am planning on selling it all once I’ve found replacements.

        It feels like I don’t own the very expensive hardware that I have bought. I guess since they are software controlled, I really dont.

      • That’s a dream. The googles and such just buy them out and shut them down. There is always a bigger fish that spends more money preserving the status quo than making a product.

      • @yamanii@lemmy.world
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        36 days ago

        I would love to see exactly how many people dropped Adobe after the latest drama, I would bet it would look exactly like the Netflix micro dip after shutting down password sharing.

    • @efstajas@lemmy.world
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      36 days ago

      I don’t really get this point. Of course there’s a financial motive for a lot of software to work well. There are many niches of software that are competitive, so there’s a very clear incentive to make your product work better than the competition.

      Of course there are cases in which there’s a de-facto monopoly or customers are locked in to a particular offering for whatever reason, but it’s not like that applies to all software.

      • When the buyer isn’t the user (which is most of the time), no there isn’t. Competitors try to win with great sounding features and other marketing BS because that is all the director will see. The users are then left with the product that has all the bells and whistles, but is terrible at doing what actually needs to be done. And the competition is the same, so they don’t really have much choice. Bell’s and whistles are cheaper than making it work well.

        • @efstajas@lemmy.world
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          So you’re talking about SaaS / business tooling then? Again though, that’s just one of many segments of software, which was my point.

          Also, even in that market it’s just not true to say that there’s no incentive for it to work well. If some new business tool gets deployed and the workforce has problems with it to the point of measurable inefficiency, of course that can lead to a different tool being chosen. It’s even pretty common practice for large companies to reach out to previous users of a given product through consultancy networks or whatever to assess viability before committing to anything.

          • Nor necessarily SaaS, but yes business tooling. Which is the vast majority of software if you include software businesses buy and make thier customers use. The incentive is for it to work, not for it to work well. The person who signed off on the purchase either will never know how bad it is because they don’t use it and are insulated by other staff from feedback, or because they are incentivesed to downplay and ignore complaints to make thier decision look good at their level in the company.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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        36 days ago

        Software just has to be good enough that people put up with it. Once you get users on the system, you make it difficult to move your data out which acts as a lock in mechanism. The company that can make a minimally usable product that people are willing to put up with will typically beat one making a really good product that takes longer to get to market.

    • Lightor
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      16 days ago

      I mean, no? If you are at a SaaS company the software working well is the most important aspect. Loss of quality leads to loss of subscribers.

          • Okay then the users aren’t subscribers, thier boss or the boss above that are. And that person doesn’t really care how hard it is to use. They care about the presentation they gave to other leadership about all the great features the software has. And if they drop it now, they look like a fool, so deal with it.

            • Lightor
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              5 days ago

              They do care, %100 they care. If you take longer to do task X because the SaaS solution crashes or is unavailable, or causes issues in finance, or a dozen other things then the company will very much care. I literally work at a SaaS company and hear complaints from clients. Money is all that matters, if your solution isn’t as good at making/saving them money as another solution, you get dropped. And reliability is a big part of that. A solution that frequently has issues is not a money-making/saving system that can be relied on.

              It’s not about looking like a fool; it’s about what your P&L looks like. That’s what actually matters. Say you made a nice slide deck about product X and got buy-in. Walking that back is MUCH easier to do than having to justify a hit to your P&L.

              What experience do you have to be making these claims?

              • I have 30 years of work experience on both sides of the equation with companies of varying size. Once a company gets to somewhere between 500 and 1000 employees, the 2nd level managment starts to attract professionally ambitious people who prioritize thier career over the work to a more a more extreme degree. They never walk anything back. Every few years they will often replace a solution (even a working one) so that they can take credit for a major change. Anyway, you get enough of these and they start to back each other and squeeze out anyone who cares about the work. I have been told in one position that it doesn’t matter if you are right, you don’t say anything negative about person X’s plan. And many other people from other companies and such have echoed that over the years. Now small companies often avoid this. But most software targets the big companies for the big paydays. Of the ones I have worked at, some even openly admitted that financially they couldn’t justify fixing a user issue over a new feature that might sell more product because the user issues don’t often lead to churn, where as new features often seal a deal.

                • Lightor
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                  14 days ago

                  You seem to be basing how the entire industry works on some people you’ve encountered who want to climb the ladder. Again, when you stand in front of a board and have to justify your EBITDA, it doesn’t matter how good your PowerPoint slide was. They don’t have to walk it back, the P&L is numbers, they have to justify those numbers or deal with not hitting budget. A company runs off numbers not initiatives people want to push.

                  You seem to be ignoring the fact that you have to report metrics to investors. Spend, rev, output, etc. And a poor SaaS solution that has poor quality negatively impacts those numbers. Numbers don’t lie, no matter how much spin you put on them. You say you have 30 years of experience both consuming and delivering SaaS solutions but seem to ignore that you have defended your P&L and your performance, all numbers, not office politics. Investors only care about money, dollars and cents, numbers. So what happens when solution X that Bob pushed and no one can talk bad about tanks your topline, or your EBITDA? Then what? You tell the board not to say anything bad about it? That just doesn’t make sense.

  • @nik9000@programming.dev
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    105 days ago

    We knew spooks were all up in the phone network. They’d show up and ask installers to run them some cables and configure ports in a certain way. I was friends with folks who were friends with the installers.