jonathanlydall (u/jonathanlydall)

jonathanlydall commented on Parse, Don't Validate (2019) lexi-lambda.github.io/blo... · Posted by u/shirian

vips7L · 8 hours ago

    record PhoneNumber(String value) {}

Huge pain.

jonathanlydall · 5 hours ago

I’m very much a proponent of statically typed languages and primarily work in C#.

We tried “typed” strings like this on a project once for business identifiers.

Overall it worked in making sure that the wrong type of ID couldn’t accidentally be used in the wrong place, but the general consensus after moving on from the project was that the “juice was not worth the squeeze”.

I don’t know if other languages make it easier, but in c# it felt like the language was mostly working against you. For example data needs to come in and out over an API and is in string form when it does, meaning you have to do manual conversions all the time.

In c# I use named arguments most of the time, making it much harder to accidentally pass the wrong string into a method or constructor’s parameter.

jonathanlydall commented on Converting a $3.88 analog clock from Walmart into a ESP8266-based Wi-Fi clock github.com/jim11662418/ES... · Posted by u/tokyobreakfast

kotaKat · a day ago

Of note, having recently shopped at Walmart for a self-setting alarm clock (what I once knew to be “atomic”):

Apparently the entity today known as Sharp sells “AccuSet(tm)” branded clocks that “automatically set time”… but they’re just factory pre-set with a button cell and they include a slider on the bottom to set a timezone offset (only for US timezones). If you’re lucky, the clock’s battery is still good and the clock “set itself” out of the box several minutes late.

If you’re unlucky - surprise, you get to manually set the time anyways.

https://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Digital-Alarm-AccuSet-Automatic...

jonathanlydall · a day ago

Clocks which are designed to be able to auto set their time in the US will actually also do the auto setting at least as far away as Johannesburg, South Africa.

I know this because when my mother was visiting the US over a decade ago, she found a clock she felt was aesthetically perfect for her psychology practice room at her house.

Twice a year the clock changes its time to be 10 hours (or thereabouts) behind, no doubt due to daylight savings change over.

So she has to readjust the time whenever this happens which she says she doesn’t really mind.

jonathanlydall commented on Roundcube Webmail: SVG feImage bypasses image blocking to track email opens nullcathedral.com/posts/2... · Posted by u/nullcathedral

jojomodding · 2 days ago

I know someone who embeds an SVG of his signature in their emails. Looks pretty cool, renders inline, and it's sad that the state of things means they'll probably have to remove it because it triggers spam filters.

jonathanlydall · 2 days ago

I don't block embedded SVGs, just ones included as attachments, so I don't think it would affect your friend's use case.

jonathanlydall commented on Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition github.com/microsoft/vsco... · Posted by u/napolux

g947o · 2 days ago

> Note: Initially submitted this to MSRC (VULN-172488), MSRC insisted bypassing billing is outside of MSRC scope and instructed me multiple times to file as a public bug report.

Good job, Microsoft.

jonathanlydall · 2 days ago

“Not my job” award winner.

We use a “Managed Azure DevOps Pool”. This allows you to use Azure VM types of your choosing for build agents, but they can also still use the exact same images as the regular managed build agents which works well for us since we have no desire to manage the OS of our agent (doing updates, etc), but we get to choose beefier hardware specs.

An annoying limitation though is that Microsoft’s images only work on “Gen 1” VMs, which limits available VM types.

Someone posted on one of Microsoft’s forums or GitHub repositories to please update the images to also work on Gen 2 VMs, I can’t remember for sure right now which forum, was probably the “Azure Managed DecOps Pools” forum.

Reply was “we can’t do anything about this, go post in forum for other team, issue closed”.

As far as I’m concerned, they’re all Microsoft Azure, why should people have to make another post, at the very least move the issue to the correct place, or even better, internally take it up with the other team since it’s severely crippling your own “product”.

Useless and lazy employees.

jonathanlydall commented on Roundcube Webmail: SVG feImage bypasses image blocking to track email opens nullcathedral.com/posts/2... · Posted by u/nullcathedral

jonathanlydall · 2 days ago

Slightly related, but fraudsters love using .svg attachments, typically the mails purport to be for an invoice which you need to log into your Microsoft account to be able to “securely” view.

I’m not sure if Exchange Online doesn’t scan them or something, but I landed up making a rule which blocks all emails with either .svg or .htm(l) attachments and to notify me when blocked.

Happens a couple of times per month for the our small company, no false positives yet.

jonathanlydall commented on Systems Thinking theprogrammersparadox.blo... · Posted by u/r4um

jonathanlydall · 5 days ago

Lots of wisdom in this post about some of the realities of software development.

The core point they're trying to make is that agile (or similar) practices are the incorrect way to approach consolidation of smaller systems into bigger ones when the overall system already works and is very large.

I agree with their assertion that being forced to address difficult problems earlier on in the process results in ultimately better outcomes, but I think it ignores the reality that properly planning a re-write of monumentally sized and already in use system is practically impossible.

It takes a long time (years?) to understand and plan all the essential details, but in the interim the systems you're wanting to rewrite are evolving and some parts of the plan you thought you had completed are no longer correct. In essence, the goal posts keep shifting.

In this light, strangler fig pattern is probably the pragmatic approach for many of these re-writes. It's impossible to understand everything up front, so understand what you reasonably can for now, act on that, deliver something that works and adds value, then rinse and repeat. The problem is that for sufficiently large system, this will take decades and few software architects stick around at a single company long enough to see it through.

A final remark I want to make is that, after only a few years of being a full-time software developer, "writing code" is one of the easiest parts of the job. The hard part is knowing what code needs to be written, this requires skills in effective communication with various people, including other software developers and (probably more importantly) non-technical people who understand how the business processes actually need to work. If you want to be a great software developer, learn how to be good at this.

jonathanlydall commented on The full history of Windows widgets, from 1997 to today xakpc.dev/windows-widgets... · Posted by u/thunderbong

Eddy_Viscosity2 · 6 days ago

This is a good comment with actionable tips so thank you. But its not the windows bashing that is tedious, its microsoft making its products so steps like these have to be taken or the experience is hellish. I see no reason why microsoft can't make its software experience good for consumer users AND still makes lots of money.

jonathanlydall · 6 days ago

Yes, it's annoying and particularly egregious by MS, but is there any perfect OS out there?

Apple also regularly has quality issues and makes questionable OS design decisions. I feel more in control of my OS experience with Windows than macOS.

With Linux you tend to have the freedom to change it however you want, but I'm not looking to invest my time into understanding the intricacies of Linux when Windows exists and out the box already does the job more than adequately, and essentially hassle free, for my purposes.

It's not perfect, but it's not nearly as bad as some people make out.

jonathanlydall commented on The full history of Windows widgets, from 1997 to today xakpc.dev/windows-widgets... · Posted by u/thunderbong

AlexDragusin · 7 days ago

I always read about people and ads in Windows, haven't seen any ad ever (both 10 and 11), I am wondering what's going on (I don't use any of them debloaters either).

jonathanlydall · 7 days ago

I have also in the past made the same comments regarding my Windows 10/11 Professional experience.

What I forgot for a long time is that on new computers I do a quick registry tweak (also possible from group policy editor) to disable web search results from my Start Menu:

> reg add HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer /v DisableSearchBoxSuggestions /t reg_dword /d 1

I cannot emphasize enough how the 10 seconds of effort to apply the above key changes your life on Windows. Likely all Start Menu search problems you've ever experienced disappear.

The other main things I do:

- Turn off widgets from the regular Windows Settings "app".

- Change my Microsoft Edge home screen settings to make it completely uncluttered, it shows nothing except my recently visited/pinned websites. Most notably I see no MSN News trash.

Other things which make me not see adverts:

My personal PC has a personal and my work PC has a business Microsoft 365 subscription meaning that I have premium OneDrive, meaning no adverts related to it at all. But if you have no subscription and uninstall OneDrive then you see nothing about it anymore. It's worth mentioning that I find Microsoft no worse than Apple in this regard which will incessantly push you to use iCloud.

Very recently I noticed my Start menu showing results from the Windows Store, but I was able to get rid of that by following this advice: https://superuser.com/a/1933000

I find Windows bashing which I regularly see online (here and elsewhere) very tedious and not really indicative at all of the experience of people like me, I spend < 10 minutes configuring new Windows computers to my preferences and then for months or years at a time I just get on with using it to do the actual things I want without worrying about the OS at all, drivers just work, most software supports it, and WSL is awesome for when I need to do Linux stuff.

None of the recent headline Windows Update bugs have affected me personally (and I do updates promptly), while I guess it's partially luck, it may also be that only a minority of Windows users are actually affected by bad updates, while any update issues are still unforgiveable by MS, these incidents are not as broadly affecting as they may seem from seeing the news stories.

Final thing worth mentioning is that PCs pre-loaded with Windows often come pre-loaded with additional crap, so I also always format, completely remove all partitions and re-install Windows fresh using an ISO from the Microsoft website.

jonathanlydall commented on Puget Systems Most Reliable Hardware of 2025 pugetsystems.com/labs/art... · Posted by u/zdw

12_throw_away · 7 days ago

Yup. When building "upcycled" PCs out of used second-to-last-gen components, I learned very quickly to only ever use brand-new, high quality PSUs ... the alternative is insanity

jonathanlydall · 7 days ago

My anecdotal experience over the last 15 years of personal PCs.

I've had one case of Corsair memory which went faulty after a year (was replaced without question by the supplier) and around 3 PSU failures.

However, on the 3 times I've done upgrades (typically motherboard + RAM + CPU) in that time I've been able to keep my existing PSU without stability issues.

So I wouldn't say it's "insanity" to keep your current PSU when upgrading, but based on your experience if I had stability issues it may be the first thing I test.

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