Undistinguished Blog

POTPOURRI INTRO DEV

POTPOURRI

Comeuppance is best served HOT: behold the ADH!

bubsmeany

I'll start with a confession : I never liked the show Seinfeld. Primary reason : I'm not a big fan of the "asshole solely to be an asshole" type character; just not my thing. The show did just fine without my support so I must be in the wrong here. But I do recall some of the simplest people I know loving the show and raving regularly about how "sarcastic" it was. But when they had me watch and rewatch scenes while they guffawed aggressively, I noticed it wasn't the (supposed) sarcasm they enjoyed; it was the randomness and borderline cruelty. "You just don't get sarcasm" they would lecture me; "You would love the show if you got it."

But shitting on old acquaintances (many of which, unsurprisingly, went on to be the absolute worst type of Facebook asshole) isn't really where I'm going with this. Nor is questioning whether Seinfeld was ever really funny in a sarcastic way.

The internet is massive, and social media is what most people seem to enjoy the most about it. Which, of course, requires direct interaction with others to be.. well.. social. And that's where shit can get tricky because a non-zero percentage of people out there seem to not get the "it" part of "social media."

And if you know what I mean when I reference "it" you probably get "it"; most people do. 95%+ of my 1:1 social media interactions are amazing (in no small part due to the fact I don't interact on any Meta platforms or Twitter.. yes Twitter.. eat a dXck Elon... ) these days. But there are still ~5% that fall into a few wonky categories : Usually people you have never interacted with whom -

miss the entire damn point of what you were trying to say
try to hijack your thread
try to one up your post with something "wittier" or "deeper"
chastise you while also somehow oddly agreeing with you
are just chodes

Pitiful drawing of a guy saying : Ill f*cking do it again!

Of note - There is a non-zero subset of random folk that have seemingly lost their damn marbles on the socials and I can't speak on how to handle them. But the "usual suspects?" Maybe I'm onto something...

You already knew there was a likelihood that 5% of those dopes would pop up and pop off. But character limits on most social media posts are (thankfully) a thing and, even if they weren't, there's no reason to chastise/bore 95% of your readers that act in completely good faith. So I present you with a simple concept/idea that could be incorporated relatively quickly and easily.

Behold : ADH - The Asshole Defense Hash

How does it work? Post a seemingly random series of 32 hexadecimal characters at the end of your post and preface them with "ADH-".

For instance, the message below would be a perfect message to use the ADH with :

My brother got a virus on his Windows laptop. Any ideas on the best software to help get rid of it without completely wiping the system? Thanks ahead of time! ADH-1048c4a538d0cde83c55dd57ea02b75b

This one here is a phat, juicy burger. You'll definitely get the cellar-dwelling Linux fanbois coming hard into your paint; they just can't help themselves. So you can expect at least one response like this :

"Tell your brother to stop being a pleb and just use Linux; it's safer and doesn't support the billionaire class"

Disclaimer : I am only referring to the worst part of Linux honks here. I run Linux on every machine I can (including this blog - Ubuntu running Apache) and am NOT shitting on the Linux OS.. at ALL.. but I will ALWAYS shit on people that virtue signal without understanding (or even caring about) the nuances of a situation before they show their whole ass. And this is where ADH can serve these buttmunches a proverbial shit souffle.

(wont quite work copied from here due to formatting) - ADH (Asshole Defense Hash) for: 1048c4a538d0cde83c55dd57ea02b75b is MD5 for: My brother needs Windows software that doesnt work with WineHQ... he tried; it shit the bed. Also, its none of your damn business if you can

That seemingly random assortment of hex characters? That's an MD5 hash. I'll get into those weeds a bit below but the main objective is this : it allows you to post a premeditated follow up message that 100% calls them out even BEFORE they spew their vitriol.

If you are a hash nerd like me you get this but if not you may ask "How does this prove.. anything?!?"

This is where the fun, geeky part happens. And it's not a complicated concept :

Go play around on this URL :

https://emn178.github.io/online-tools/md5.html

If you type the phrase referenced above and below EXACTLY (upper/lower case.. returns and spaces matter.. check end spaces) in the input box :

My brother needs Windows software that doesn't work with WineHQ... he tried; it shit the bed. Also, it's none of your damn business if you can't answer the question and just stopped by play "Linux Bootlicker"

..you will receive this in the MD5 output result box (which, unsurprisingly, matches the "random 32 characters in the initial example above):

1048c4a538d0cde83c55dd57ea02b75b

And if you don't type that phrase EXACTLY, you will get something wildly different. Notice I had a typo near the end of my "follow up" message? Too bad - I need to be more careful next time I guess!

Try it yourself.. Change one character.. Even just adding a stray space screws the pooch.. Shit goes cray. And this, my friend, is 100% by design. But cool story - we can use that to our advantage when we use ADH.. because the hash we posted with our original message proves we knew exactly what kinda assholes were gonna litter our feed even before they dildoed around...

"I still don't get it" you may lament - well, yea.. the "how it works" details can get a bit mucky...

Hashing is some -ish high-level math bullshit that few people care about logistically, but a primary use is to "fingerprint" information (which, as a side-note, obfuscates the information as well). Files.. Messages.. Passwords.. It's a quick way to ensure two things match one another.

In this case : it's that an unhashed message we posted later matches a previously hashed version of the exact same message we posted previously.

MD5 is a less robust hash than SHA based hashes but is still wildly unique (your odds of winning the powerball 4 weeks in a row with only one set of numbers is greater than choosing 2 completely sensical yet unique phrases off the top of your head that share the same hash). Given that truth, coupled with the fact it is relatively short (32 keyboard characters long), it makes a lot of sense to use for our "post your own ADH" purposes.

So if you sell what this blog post is cooking and want to add your own ADH manually -

Go to the link referenced above (there are many sites and programs that can create an MD5 hash; this is just the most convenient I found quickly online without scammy ads all over the place)
Type a message you KNOW will apply to a future responding asshole (probably relatively short if you have to post the follow up; again - post character limits)
Copy the MD5 hash it returns and include it at the bottom of your post with the ADH- preface
When an asshole ultimately can't help themselves to asshole, post your ADH reveal similar to the way presented above
If they call you on it because they "can't understand it", point them to this blog post

Even though this is a blog, I added an ADH to it as a "proof of concept." And, for the record, this article is the first I've posted with an ADH!

I would LOVE to see social media sites add a built in ADH option that doesn't take away from your character limit (300 for Bluesky, 500 for Mastodon). Maybe it keeps the worst of the social media asshole crowd from bothering to respond if you include it, afraid you pre-flexed on their weak ass... Yea - it's a long shot.. But stranger things...

And YES, I KNOW Mastodon is technically part of the Fediverse, and I KNOW Mastodon instances can set their own character limits.

And I did you a courtesy telling you that BEFORE you could pull out the mansplain card on me.. But had I not, the ADH below my article here would apply to the paragraph immediate above this one. 3 days after my last edit of this page eYap here will "reveal" this exaxt paragraph below.

See how this works?

ADH-013933f1ce878cba6a816288c6d64324
..is MD5 for...

And YES, I KNOW Mastodon is technically part of the Fediverse, and I KNOW Mastodon instances can set their own character limits.

2025-03-13 02:14:17

POTPOURRI

Weaponization of Scrum? In MY department? It's more likely than you think...

bubsmeany

This week, I did something I've never done while working a scheduled job: I decided to take the last 3 days of the week off on only 1 day's notice.

The reason : Complete burnout brought on by our company's implementation of Scrum.

Hard facts : Our standups suck. Our retros suck. Our reviews suck. Our refinements can be useful, but they are usually 75%+ wasted motion. And yes I'm ready to eat the metaphorical turd salad many true believers reading this would like to serve me.

"Scrum works if it is done right, so your company must not do it right!" or, to pull out a Malcolm in the Middle meme: "The future is now, old man!"

And I can't argue with those points because, honestly, I've never seen "Scrum" work "right". But spoiler alert - the majority of coders I respect and trust have had universally awful experiences with Scrum as well. Notice I didn't shit on Agile; more on that later - but I do have some thoughts on how corporate "weaponization" of Scrum got us to this point.

Hilariously awful drawing of a guy in glasses looking at a whiteboard saying : This is important work

Enter : the internet, circa 1997. AOL had muscled its way into casual homes through a combination of aggressive mail-order advertising and reducing their prices notably. Shortly thereafter, seemingly bottomless venture capital and the false-prophet known as "banner ads" led to a meteoric rise in the NASDAQ. Any 17 year old with a lame-brained idea and a ridiculous company name (or an ability to buy a one word .com) was seemingly awarded a $30+ million round of funding.

Corporate America was pissed and began to think maybe, just maybe, they could get in on a piece of this hearty pie.

Almost simultaneously, Y2K finally became a hot button topic. I'd be remiss not to mention that Y2K was 100% a legit issue. Thankfully, it was accounted for so well by true high-level "nerds in the trenches" that plebs today casually dismiss the whole shebang as a big nothing-burger.

But every good, legitimate scare is coupled almost immediately with a grift. Fly-by-night contract firms played on the "planes falling out of the sky" and "elevators trapping people" angles to absolutely fleece frightened AF legacy entities. "Your coders didn't account for this.. It's their fault! But we have our own true top-notch experts, and we can fix it all!!!" they carnival barked in the faces of mid-to-upper-level managers with suspect (or, worse still, no) coding backgrounds who held the purse strings.

(FYI - old school coders had legit reasons for doing exactly what they did - legacy storage costs and the belief their code would be obsolete decades later)

This allowed these skeevy contracting shysters to roll out a stampede of "coding cowboys" to help line their pockets with this "once in a lifetime" cash-grab. Sadly a lot of these implemented "cowboys" were all hat and no cattle; I personally remember helping a couple of these "contract experts" (neither of which had any useful coding experience) work through legacy COBOL code (which was hilarious and scary, because not only was I studying to be an actuary at the time but I have never actually formally coded in COBOL).

So yea - a large swath of corporate American suits not only felt like they had given too long a leash to their full time coders in hindsight, but they now also felt ripped off and also hoped to cash in on "the internet" all at the same time.

Finally - enter The Agile Manifesto in 2001. In theory, it and its 12 principals were innocent enough and, on the surface, make a whole lot of sense.

But again - what's a good idea without a follow-up grift? Enter Scrum : "An Agile Framework"

Notice the original Agile Manifesto mentioned above is only 68 words long. Even the 12 principals take up barely one page.

And this here Scrum big-boi book, authored by two of the "Agile Manifesto" guys - 176 damn pages .. and not nearly the biggest Scrum book on Amazon. Scrum also morphed into having entire courses, certifications, and retreats based on itself..

Maybe this over-bloated, self-aggrandising "framework" CAN work for some companies but, hell, MLM works for a non-zero percentage of people. Either way, it's sorta starting to have a grifty odor to me at this point

But companies with ever-expanding coding departments absolutely.. ate.. this.. shit.. up! And while they coyly acted like they loved the "efficiency" and "teamwork" Scrum could theoretically add, what most middle-to-upper-level managers ultimately rubbed it out to in the shower was the "accountability" of it all. Standups requiring a team of (oftentimes competitive) coders willing to discuss and "lord over" what one another were doing on the daily while also being monitored by an outsider mole enforcing a sense of false urgency? Boards that can be monitored in real time to review and track everything from a team member making a pull request to taking a shit? Yes please!

Oh, again I know, I know... (Or at least I've been TOLD) all Scrums aren't like this. I personally know several Scrum masters that cringe when I tell them about how the company I work for "Scrums." Still

I've had a pretty high success rate landing+completing a multitude of full stack contract jobs over 20+ years without most of those companies forcing any form of Scrum down my throat. And if I had to retire now I may not do so in as well-to-do a manner as I'd prefer, but I'll be happy greeting your ass at Walmart for walk-around money before I go through this kindergarten-teacher level of oversight bullshit again.

And it's not just me.. or the people I know... Hell, not even all the authors of the original Agile Manifesto are willing to drink the Scrum Kool-Aid.

And this final postscript from this old-head :

Most joint's highest skilled employees (those that can architect large scale solutions) are now swimming in excess meetings which almost always neuter their overall value. Simply "working the board" and "enumerating velocity" often misses the point of high-level productivity. These types of employees get more done when they have time to not only "grind out code" (which obviously "sprint boards" love), but to also step back and evaluate how today's requirements need to evolve over time and architect accordingly. Real-world demands aren't always easy to throw a low fibonacci number at..

One could rightfully argue a lot of a company's best coders intuitively practice Agile in their approach anyway without having to rely on Scrum enforcement. And no, I'm not recommending employees be isolated and allowed to run amuck; that's a recipe for a different type of disaster.

Having your best coders attend well run refinements will almost always be net-positive. But all that "filler" meeting shit? Maybe apply some of that extra time to pair programming with newer or struggling devs (which would allow for a flexibility on scheduling and cadence that Scrum ceremony attendance doesn't).

And if your department has a "high-level" coder that can't level up co-workers with pair programming? Hot take: they are almost assuredly polluting daily Scrum standups they are currently forced to attend to an ever nastier degree. And, oh goodness.. A mid-level manager may have to actually step in and mid-level manage for their dough, instead of being a glorified figurehead or great coder for a company with no further avenues for promotion other than "getting into management"

..but, hey, that's a whole OTHER issue

2025-03-08 01:55:28

POTPOURRI

Watch out Picasso.. I'm taking up art!

bubsmeany

After adding an RSS feed to my blog, I've become quite smitten with RSS. It's allowed me to get to know some of my favorite Mastodonians and Blueskiers better because now their blogs are directly updated in my feed and, as such, have quite enjoyed a lot of interesting and niche articles lately. One thing is certain, however : having images in the reader as well as the actual article makes for a better overall experience. But what images should be used?

It's a bit of an ethical and legal quagmire, honestly. I'll start with the low hanging fruit : AI generated images. Of course, AI generated images created by models trained on copyrighted material are a big non-starter for me. It's obscene that techbros were just like "hey, let's just shit all over legal and moral standards and use a bunch of cool stuff created by other people and not pay for it." The whole "move fast and break stuff" is a cute moniker until it's used to just ignore the law while simultaneously trying to make the creators that were stolen from obsolete. An argument could be made for models trained entirely off of public domain images + images approved by the copyright holders, but people aren't "moving fast and breaking stuff" to do that because, let's be honest, it's not going to be as profitable as legalized theft.

But my issue goes a bit deeper - what about any copyrighted image, period? Regardless of common conception, fair use is far from black and white. Putting the fact aside that this is technically a universally available blog and fair use varies from location to location, I'll focus immediately on the United States. There is a four-factor test that must be passed before fair-use applies and, even if you are 100% confident you are within the boundaries of fair use, it still won't potentially stop a copyright holder from making a claim. And that, in and of itself, is enough to keep me from playing in that sandbox; I've got too little time to dilly-dick around with concerns of that nature (especially for use in this blog which, last I checked, isn't making me any dough). Moreover - I'm not out to use somebody's shit in something if they don't want me to just out of principal... even if they won't ever come after me. So where does that leave me?

At this point I've decided to use public domain only images in my blog. But, instead of becoming a Steamboat Willie, Winnie the Pooh, and Funnyman fan site, I've decided to control my own narative and primarily use my own photos and drawings (as bad as they may be). Oh, and any of those photos or drawings you see? They're my gift to you, open internet. Not that you would ever want to, but feel free to use them in any way, shape, or form possible as long as you aren't doing nazi-adjacent shit with 'em.

bad drawing of a guy in an undistinguished shirt holding a beer out

Enjoy - if you can!

2025-03-03 17:08:55

POTPOURRI

RSS feeds are dead..right? Right?!?

bubsmeany

For me, the internet as I had come to accept it broke irreparably in November, 2022. IYKYK. If not, here is a quick, boiled down recap. It's far from a perfect article, but the nuances are exhausting and out of the scope of this post. Interested parties can go pick a lot of scabs on Bluesky and Mastodon for the gory details.

That said, a lot of fractures existed well before that. Even before big-tech added the term "AI" to their collective spank bank, too many high-quality thought pieces were living in paywalled gardens, not to mention Google was already shitting all up in the comfy search-engine bed it had masterfully crafted since the late 90s. The promise of Web 3.0 turned into nothing more than NFT shills and offensively named crypto meme coins.

1% at a time, the internet had become a sort of Ship of Theseus, with all the parts being manufactured by Wish.com to make folks behind the curtains cabbage while simultaneously ruining.. well.. almost everything else involved.

Anywho, back to RSS feeds.. literally and as an informative device. Yet again, shit is broken...

I dilly-dicked around on my Android Play Store (yea, I'm too cheap to be an iPhonesman), and boy oh boy the search sucks there too. Most of the "top searches" are just sponsored article thieving aggregators that cram ads down your throat. And while it looks like a fun little game, walking across a bridge and shooting up an overwhelming opposing army with giants isn't what I searched for.

But I did find a couple of usable apps. One is an open source project named Feeder which is my personal favorite, but isn't as "casual internetter" friendly. A servicable alternative is Feedly, which offers less friction to build up a quick feed and is also available on iOS. I'm currently dabbling in both.

But what is a good "starter pack" to get ya going? Well, if you want to add Undistinguished.com now that I added an RSS feed I'd be honored! That said, my personal RSS feed includes a bunch of blogs of my Fediverse + Bluesky friends, a few old podcast buddies of mine, and the following techy news sources I trust and enjoy :

Ars Technica

Slashdot

Techdirt

The Onion (mandatory!)

Web 3 Is Going Just Great

So while RSS may never party again like it's 1999 (or especially the mid 2000's), maybe we can pitch in to collectively get it a babysitter so it can keep partying through the 2020's...

2025-02-26 16:38:25

POTPOURRI

Reading is fundamental, but not very fun

bubsmeany

I'm late to the Nate Bargatze train, but the guy speaks to me at a level few ever have. This particular dialogue struck a chord deep in my soul :

"..every book is just the most words... and it doesn't let up.." - Nate Bargatze

I am a very poor reader, oftentimes having to read the same sentence repeatedly to get it to "stick". I tried CliffsNotes in high school, but quickly learned even Cliff was too verbose for my pallette and hoped secretly he had a simpler brother named Chuck to boil things down further. So yea, I don't read books either Nate... and I, as well, wish I did..

In reality - I'm relatively certain I have an undiagnosed reading disorder but, having grown up when I did, it made more sense to mask imperfections instead of trying to improve them... so here we are... bumblefugging through my literary existence ...

Unfortunately, almost as if by proxy, my writing skills are pretty rudimentary as well. So trying to coral my thoughts and formally "blog" about them is proving.. challenging...

..but I'm trying! Prior to Mastodon and Bluesky, Twitter helped me and others "squeeze the life" out of a digestible character limit (..yes.. I know the character limits on Masto are instance specific... not the point ... ), which is why I likely gravitated toward them in the first place; there was less of "Uncle Wayne brain dumping about politics for 8 scrollable pages on Facebook"... ain't nobody got time for that.

So this blog is gonna act as somewhat of a "learning ground" for me to practice expressing myself through writing in a comprehensive way. I'll never be a "writer", mind you, but forcing myself out of my comfort zone in a "non-tech" way can only help me at this point. And who knows... maybe, just maybe, one day I'll even read another book...

Wish me luck!

2025-02-25 15:03:51

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