OSButler's comments

The one thing that keeps bothering me with MAS updates is that you cannot see the download/install progress. It will show it at first, but then the progress bar indicator simply disappears after a short time. I have to close the App Store window and reopen it, often multiple times, in order to be able to see the download progress again. This is not an issue for smaller updates, but larger Xcode updates are a pain trying to figure out how much data has been downloaded so far.

This is interesting, as I've heard the exact opposite from friends in Seoul. Is this a new law or s.th. tied to a specific income limit?

Out of my group of friends, none of them were able to afford day care and had to make plans accordingly. It was either by getting help from the grandparents, if the family was living close by, or by the mother quitting her job and looking after the child(ren) until they would go to school or kindergarten.

There's a mildly amusing movie about the '70s Korean government's attempt to reduce population growth in a rural village: http://asianwiki.com/Mission_Sex_Control It shows some of the concepts that resulted in the stunted growth they're addressing in the above linked article.

Nowadays the main issue appears to be that daycare is simply not affordable for the average young Korean couple, which is why you may see children still being raised by their grandparents instead. If the family is too far away, then the mother may give up her job until the children have entered school.

Not only that but some online services add DRM to their media downloads, which can range from minor annoyance to being unable to play the legally obtained file.

I've had the issue with a special edition movies set on iTunes, which prevented the playback on an external monitor (vga connector). There was no info about this limitation on their store page and only after contacting support did they mention that the problem was the DRM imposed by the publisher.

Another sector where I've noticed this quite a lot is in international media releases (music & videos). I've experienced your mentioned "not available in your country" many times with Japanese music videos. It makes (kind of) sense if we're talking excerpts from a TV show, which is usually licensed out to the individual countries, so you'll most likely not be able to watch clips on their official site unless you're accessing it from within the origin country. However, I don't understand how this applies to music videos. One would assume that those are being used to generate hype & revenue for music/ticket sales, so why do they get access restricted?

The theme directory is a common target for code injection, as it is often set with writeable webserver-user permissions, in order to allow the admin to use the backend theme editor.

Almost all of the compromised accounts I've dealt with over the years were the result of outdated WordPress or plugin installs, where an exploit was used to upload a file to one of the commonly known writeable directories: plugins, uploads, or themes.

Most of those cases could have been prevented if the owner would have kept their installs up to date, which makes these issues so frustrating to deal with.

As a contractor, the fear is more on the client side than with the code. Coding problems can be resolved or worked around eventually, but the client can be a wildcard. In developer meet-ups I usually hear about coding issues like they are a puzzle, whose solution is being shared with the group. But the scary stories are usually centered around clients, since problems can arise there even if you provide perfect code.

Thanks, I was hoping this might be it and just checked, but those settings are already disabled in my account. I would report it as a bug if I knew what caused it or had a way to reproduce it directly, but it's just a stock error message without any kind of additional information that occurs maybe once every 1-2hs.

I made the switch to iTunes on OS X after finding out that some of the international artists I was looking for actually had a decent catalog on iTunes. Nowadays it's more of a balance act between the features I like and the annoyances it throws at me.

The most recent issue, which appears to be the result of one of the last updates, is that iTunes keeps on connecting to the store in the background for some reason, even when you're just on the normal Music view and not doing anything with the store. This wouldn't really be an issue, if it wouldn't complain every 1 to 2 hours with a popup message that it's unable to fulfill the store request.

However, iTunes on OS X is still only mildly annoying for me compared to the disaster that is the redesigned Music app on iOS. It took me a while just trying to figure out how to navigate it and then its features no longer match the iTunes on OS X behaviour, making it even more difficult trying to figure out how to use it. The search feature is the one I've been fighting the most with, as it no longer allows you to play the listed results like in the desktop version, so that you have to resort to custom playlists, if you are trying to play music that is not from the same artist or from the same album.

This is an interesting point of view. I wasn't even aware of those fan creations. Having them available in audio log format would actually be quite neat.

Maybe I'm too stuck thinking about it from a technical point of view, where it just doesn't make sense to me why this information couldn't be made available in-game somehow. However, looking at it from a hunt for information point of view and hearing that there's quite a bit of community discussion going on actually makes me a bit curious again. It's a shame, and in a way my own fault then, that all of this went over my head, as the in-game narrative put me off enough not follow up on the grimoire.

It'll be interesting to see how they are going to handle the story in the next iterations of the series. I haven't played it myself, but heard that The Taken King supposedly has a lot more in-game narrative and cut scenes, compared to the original release version. I'm not asking for a movie, but a little kick in the right direction to get me curious enough about the backstory (like your comment) and make me interact with the grimoire would be nice.

For me the grimoire cards were destroying the immersion, as you had to login to the website to be able to lookup information that could just as well have been presented in-game. It reminded me a bit of how RPG games of old used to have journal entries in the manual, in order to be able to flesh out the story without being limited to a few lines on screen.

The part where I gave up on the story was when you were being told that there's no time to explain anything, yet here you are, inside a hub area and without any urgency at all to proceed with the story line. It felt like they had to explain why they couldn't tell you about the background story with a nonsensical reason.

I've enjoyed the gameplay, but just couldn't be bothered to keep up with the story due to the cards and odd in-game explanations.

I usually base it on the movie's stars, theme or genre, then read up its synopsis (short movie description on imdb or theater's website), and if it's less likely to have some kind of twist or I don't mind spoilers at the time, then I'll watch the trailer.

I'm also not really picky, so don't mind giving a movie a try without knowing anything about it in advance (Dancer In The Dark, Oldboy, and Snowpiercer come to mind as wonderful surprises, for example).

I usually only check ratings & reviews after watching a movie, just to see what other people think about it.

Seeing how easy it is to game such online ranking systems and how tastes can differ, not only on a personal level but also on the current mood, I simply don't trust the scores without having been able to make up my own opinion.

The same goes for any other aggregate "review" site, e.g. restaurant reviews. Those are even worse for restaurant owners, since a bad review can stick around, even if you used its mentioned points to improve your service.

At least movies don't usually change over time (Star Wars being one of the few exceptions), but it's still annoying to get caught up in a hype only to be bitterly disappointed, or the other way around, finally watching a movie after hearing so many bad things about it and then thoroughly enjoying it, making you wish you had seen it on the large screen instead.

...and not to forget paid social marketing, especially when it's not being disclosed.

I'm curious how such a device would be approached with today's knowledge, seeing that one of the links mentioned in the comments noted that it's still being used in FBI training.

Can't speak for the US, but this is the case in Canada.

I sponsored s.o. for their permanent resident visa and we were told to wait until the status has been approved before any kind of work can be done. The immigration hotline mentioned that volunteer work would be possible during that time, but it would still require an application from the employer. It took the employer a few days to get all the paperwork sorted out and 2 weeks later the application was denied, leaving everyone a bit disappointed & furious about all the wasted time and promised opportunities on both sides.

Generally speaking: even if you do work as a volunteer, the kind of work you're going to do is most likely s.th. that should either be paid for or could be done by a local resident/citizen. If the US system is anything like the Canadian one, then you'll still get in trouble if they figure out that you've been working, even if it's for free/volunteer work.

I've had the same experience on desktop & mobile. The desktop issues with Radeon are from quite some time ago, but the driver problems on both Windows & Linux back then were extremely frustrating: random framerate slowdowns, no working linux drivers, bad support in some games, ...

And the only time a Laptop has died on me was when its AMD GPU decided to go crazy, resulting in artifacts and full system shutdown within a few seconds/minutes, if you were lucky enough to get it booting at all.

I know that this is anecdotal and most likely just coincidence, but I haven't had such problems with nvidia, so that I'm willing to pay the small premium price whenever I need a new GPU.

Try switching from autocomplete while typing to autocomplete via keyboard shortcut and it may already make a big difference - this helped in my case with the php autocomplete slowdown.

Most annoying instance I've experienced with PCI compliance was with an auditor who didn't understand the concept of patching. Even after providing the full list of backported CVEs, which clearly showed the one he insisted was missing on the system, he still refused to pass it. Only after escalating the issue was it finally marked as passed.

If you're not 100% set on your current editor or would just like to see what else is available out there, then I'd recommend giving Atom a try.

I'm using it as my main editor on an older 2010 Macbook Pro and the only issues I've been experiencing with it are the slow startup time and auto-complete in php files causing a noticeable delay. The git integration, community packages, and extensive customization options more than make up for those minor annoyances.

This is just a wild guess, but the visible watermark could be the result of a legal issue. Having hidden tracking elements in such videos could require disclosing them, whereas a visible watermark could be used to argue that the viewer is aware of the video being marked and therefore other included tracking elements do not need to be specifically named.

It has the potential side-effect of the watermark getting blurred out by the leaker, but leaving other tracking pieces intact.

The stories I've heard from friends & family working and living in Korea reflect exactly that.

There's not just uncompensated overtime, but you're also expected to join up when it comes to company retreats. So, not only do you give away 10+ hours every day to the company, but then you'll also be incorporated over the weekend, due to some company outing.

I also doubt that any imposed limit would actually be enforced or tolerated by the employer. The unpaid hours go directly into the prices, so some businesses wouldn't be able to compete anymore if they suddenly had to pay for that overtime.

The passion my friends put into their work is admirable and nothing short of impressive, but I can't help but notice that there's not much time left for family, or anything else besides work for that matter.