Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[pcprogrammer]

......

We will see what the future brings.

[james_s]

Don't forget that many of my generation grew up with lead in petrol and only a small percentage might have reverted to criminal behavior based on elevated levels in their blood.

But I do agree that there are multiple influences on someone becoming a "criminal". Only a very small percentage will actually be born a "criminal", but it does happen. There are people that are just bad from the start, despite proper upbringing in a protected environment. And it is these that can't become proper members of society, whatever you do for them.

Edit: and furthermore, lead has been removed from petrol for quite a while now, but youngsters are starting to show more aggressive and criminal behavior in current society, so other factors are at play for sure.

In the Netherlands a snack bar owner was killed by they think three youngsters, two female (15, 17) and a boy (17), and why they don't know yet. 

The lead is a valid (and interesting) example. People suffering from lead exposure could be said to be mentally ill. Mental illness is not the fault of the individual, nobody would choose to be mentally ill. In many cases though it cannot be fixed, and ultimately a mentally ill person still has to play with the cards they were dealt, it sucks but it's just how life is. I read somewhere that around 70% of the (American) prison population has a cluster B personality disorder, mostly ASPD but NPD and BPD are common, especially among the white collar criminals. Cluster B disorders are interesting in that they are the result of a fundamental fault in the way the brain has developed, particularly the amygdala which is involved in decision making and impulsiveness. There are some forms of intense therapy that can enable a cluster B disordered person to live a somewhat normal life, but ultimately their hardware is wired wrong and some just can't be saved. You can teach a psychopath or sociopath to emulate empathy, but you cannot make them actually feel empathy, the hardware is not there or is not wired up properly.

Anyway in the end we don't just say "oh well, that person has a personality disorder, it's not their fault they raped somebody" and send them on their way. They are still fully responsible for their actions.

[james_s]

Edit: and furthermore, lead has been removed from petrol for quite a while now, but youngsters are starting to show more aggressive and criminal behavior in current society, so other factors are at play for sure.

In the Netherlands a snack bar owner was killed by they think three youngsters, two female (15, 17) and a boy (17), and why they don't know yet. 

This is often stated, but if you actually look at crime rates, they have been falling since the 90's.

For instance, for the UK: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingjune2022 (Figure 1 for all crime, Figure 7 for violent crime)

Though this trend is seen all over, definitely not unique to the UK.  There are some inversions with certain crimes increasing against the general fall of others decreasing.  Those have more complex causes, but in general criminality including violent crime has been falling for over 30 years and the fall is significant, like it's some 2-3x less likely that you will be involved in a violent assault in the UK today, as compared to the 90's.  Media narrative loves to spin the idea that it's getting worse because it sells newspapers and gets clicks, but it's clearly fallen by a significant amount.   One other aspect is social media and the internet make these crimes that much more visible.

They were falling here for many years, but in recent years they have been going back up. Homicides in Seattle and Portland for example have nearly doubled from a few years ago. There is some trickery going on with the stats on property crime because so much of it doesn't even get prosecuted anymore people don't bother to report it. If it doesn't get reported, it's not part of the crime stats. All you have to do is take a stroll through Seattle and see the used needles all over the sidewalks, graffiti on buildings, tents and piles of trash everywhere, empty stores that have gone out of business or relocated due to extremely high theft rates. It's gotten pretty bad. 

[pcprogrammer]

... nobody would choose to be mentally ill. In many cases though it cannot be fixed, and ultimately a mentally ill person still has to play with the cards they were dealt, it sucks but it's just how life is. ...

That is something that can be said for every illness. I did not choose to become ill (Fibromyalgia), it just happens to you and you have to live with it. But coping with a mental illness won't be easy and will affect decision making, I see that, but still not a valid excuse to start killing and raping or whatever else that is not allowed and get a free pass because of the illness. Not that it happens that often, but they do let people out that really should have been kept locked up.

[PlainName]

Microsoft Word

Used it since forever and I've never noticed this before: you have one document open in an instance of word to which you are going to do search and replace. You open a different document in another instance of Word, and this document holds the search and replace terms. OK so far.

In the first document you hit Ctl-H to get the replace dialog. Switch to the second document to copy the terms, hit replace, and blow me if the bugger doesn't do the search and replace to the second document instead of the one in which you opened the search dialog!

Just spent far too long dicking about with autocorrect options after noticing the crib document was different every time I looked at it

[AndyBeez]

Microsoft Word - Bring back the talking paper clip I say.

You guys aren't software enginers... have a crack.

Code: [Select]

String input = "5.56 5.58 5.54 5.48 5.54 5.59 5.52";
...


One silver star for mentioning the basic string.split syntax that's used across many languages. But only for a script kiddie/trainee programmer. However, if I'm looking for a software engineer (whatever that is), I would be expecting a response showing knowledge of Regular Expression group capturing. With an extra stars for implicit format validation, for-each iteration and maybe questioning why the data is in such a bad format. More stars for mentioning string.format, boxing, floating point number characteristics, localization, ISO character sets, buffers, pointers, structs, arrays, etc, etc. Really this is a question that helps the interviewer discover what the candiate knows about data mangling.

As for your candidate who did not park his phone in voice mail mode, did he realise where he was? Maybe he thought he was doing you the favour, what with this shortage of highly qualifed IT workers under the age of 13?

Recruiters are pretty bad at filtering out the chaff unfortunately (and they still somehow get 15-20% of first year salary, it seems insane to me.)

And THIS is the BIG problem across the engineering industry. Some 25 year's ago, businesses decided they no longer needed a recruitment function as, this can be contracted out to some high performance recruitment agency. A quarter of a century ago, the agent would have known their boolean from their bollocks because they were ex-industry. Today, the recruitment sector is just one giant file forwarding marketplace populated by Gen-Z wannabes whome, know nothing about the industry in which they claim to have excelled. It's all going rather Dilbert...

Manger: Find me candidates who are top their game
Recruitment consultant: I've hundred's, no thousands on my database!
Manager: Great, send me their CV's!
Dogbert: Please God is there anyone can spell curriculum vitae?

[james_s]

Ok good. I've made you depressed. All I used was words.

No you haven't, you've made me pity what a sad person you must be to apparently enjoy trying to make someone depressed for no obvious reason. I'm in quite a good mood, the sun is out, I just had a delicious cheeseburger that I cooked myself for lunch and now I'm in a comfy seat with a warm cat on my lap and just about to get back to work and wrap up my day. I'm not going to bother reading the rest of the wall of text you've written because it's not likely relevant to engineering. I would encourage you to seek some type of therapy to deal with your issues which as you've explained a few times are apparently serious. You are free to ignore me if you like or be angry at the reality I'm pointing out, but that won't change the fact that nobody is going to fix your life for you. If you want things to be different, YOU have to choose to make them different.

[tom66]

That is something that can be said for every illness. I did not choose to become ill (Fibromyalgia), it just happens to you and you have to live with it. But coping with a mental illness won't be easy and will affect decision making, I see that, but still not a valid excuse to start killing and raping or whatever else that is not allowed and get a free pass because of the illness. Not that it happens that often, but they do let people out that really should have been kept locked up.

My view is the same, though moderated somewhat.  We should our best to get people back into society.  That means forgiving most crimes eventually, after the appropriate justice is served.  But, I am not a fool.  If you continue to test the patience of society, maybe you are best on the inside of a jail cell for a very long time.

[Circlotron]

When Shazam identifies an unknown cool tune and gives you the option of opening it on Spotify,  but Spotify has  no knowledge of it. 

[Zero999]

My pet peeve is mumbling. I don't care if someone has an unusual accent, but not opening ones mouth properly to speak is the height of laziness and makes communication very frustrating. Someone where I work often mumbles. It's hard work. 

[eti]

Teenagers, specifically the modern age - arrogance and feeling they know it all.

Said no one ever: “Wisdom comes with youth”

You can’t teach them anything. We don’t need Google, just ask a teenager. lol.

[eti]

My pet peeve is mumbling. I don't care if someone has an unusual accent, but not opening ones mouth properly to speak is the height of laziness and makes communication very frustrating. Someone where I work often mumbles. It's hard work. 

I hear you. (Am aware of the potential irony there)

If you dislike mumbling, avoid the BBC - their new (awful, plastic “acting”) drama - “The Gold” is FULL of mumblers. It’s bad enough the acting is garbage, but the mumbling seals the coffin on that show. 

[themadhippy]

Teenagers, specifically the modern age - arrogance and feeling they know it all.

wasn't that the same for every generation of  teenagers

[eti]

Teenagers, specifically the modern age - arrogance and feeling they know it all.

wasn't that the same for every generation of  teenagers

Yes, but in todays "ME ME ME! LOOK AT MEEEE! I AM RIGHT, I SAW IT ON TIKTOK, SOOOO...." society, this behaviour has been amplified a bajillion percent. Teenagers are trapped in a dummie's echo chamber of OTHER teenagers, and idiotic "influencers" - NO ONE can accept they may not know something, any more. Yeah, you're right also - teens often think they don't need advice or guidance, but if you can't see how the world has fallen SOOOOO far downhill, and how arrogance is FAR WORSE these days, well... keep observing.

They don't TRY something first-hand, often, they will just accept their peers' word for something as "fact", and go no further. Don't tell me you haven't noticed this behaviour? As part of a study, I had to join and interact on TikTok for a few months... it is VERY VERY painful, and one's IQ points can be felt falling away, minute by minute. I DO NOT envy teenagers or youngsters AT ALL these days - in fact, if there was some way to tranport them back to what we had in the 80s and 90s, and de-program them of this SHITE they engage in now, I can't imagine many of them would want 202X "socialisation" back AT ALL... because it lacks almost EVERYTHING wholesome or worthwhile.

[paulca]

Code: [Select]

 
MX_SPI1_Init();
MX_DMA_Init();

If you understand, you'll understand.

No?

DMA needs to be enabled for the SPI config to attach to it.  If DMA is initialised after, it no workie.

2 hours.  2 hours of what was supposed to be fun moving a project to a new MCU... wasted.  Because of that ******** bug in MX... Again.  And I didn't spot it this time.  Shame.

[TimFox]

A general peeve about sloppy spelling in technical contexts:
Why do people waste money on "200 mhz DSOs"?
My DMM is faster than that.

[Bud]

All those vintage electronic Restoration youtubers who does not clean the dust off of the poor old electronic they so proudly restore. I do not get why that decades old dust is so precious. This is ridiculous how those "restorers" proudly show you how they align that RF filter with their hands dirty from the dust and the boards and chassis all in smears where were touched by those idiots. This is Restoration for f.ck sake, so restore it then, there was no dust covering that TV when it rolled off the factory floor. These idiots are all over youtube.

[rsjsouza]

All those vintage electronic Restoration youtubers who does not clean the dust off of the poor old electronic they so proudly restore. I do not get why that decades old dust is so precious. This is ridiculous how those "restorers" proudly show you how they align that RF filter with their hands dirty from the dust and the boards and chassis all in smears where were touched by those idiots. This is Restoration for f.ck sake, so restore it then, there was no dust covering that TV when it rolled off the factory floor. These idiots are all over youtube.

Interesting; any examples? I haven't seen these specific types of "restoration" channels. In the channels I know, usually when the dust is left is where they specifically mention they will just see if they can put the equipment to work.

The other day I watched some dude put an old TV set to work but his delivery method was really obnoxious for my taste: he repetitively made dozens of remarks about the number of spider exoskeletons, old nests, roach remains and rat poo than with the work of putting it to work again. 

[vk6zgo]

All those vintage electronic Restoration youtubers who does not clean the dust off of the poor old electronic they so proudly restore. I do not get why that decades old dust is so precious. This is ridiculous how those "restorers" proudly show you how they align that RF filter with their hands dirty from the dust and the boards and chassis all in smears where were touched by those idiots. This is Restoration for f.ck sake, so restore it then, there was no dust covering that TV when it rolled off the factory floor. These idiots are all over youtube.

I have a problem with the opposite end of the spectrum----those who want to restore equipment to "showroom condition", to the point of searching out ancient parts identical to those which, in the device, have long failed & been replaced with more modern equivalents or undoing well done modifications that had been carried out to overcome an inherent weakness in the original design.

In my opinion, properly carried out & technically valid repairs & modifications are as much a part of the equipment's history as the original configuration.

[eti]

All those vintage electronic Restoration youtubers who does not clean the dust off of the poor old electronic they so proudly restore. I do not get why that decades old dust is so precious. This is ridiculous how those "restorers" proudly show you how they align that RF filter with their hands dirty from the dust and the boards and chassis all in smears where were touched by those idiots. This is Restoration for f.ck sake, so restore it then, there was no dust covering that TV when it rolled off the factory floor. These idiots are all over youtube.

While we're talking about "vintage" YouTubers, there is a VAST EXCESS of them, most of whom regurgitate or "re-spin" VERY obvious, done-to-death topics which 5000 other channels have equally done to death. You see this A LOT. We don't care THAT MUCH about the very subtle colour difference between the first coat and the second coat of paint you applied to your "vintage" Game Boy; you're blatantly spewing out videos of very little interest, and haven't given your mind enough of a PROPER breather since the other 25 videos you've posted this month... PUBLISH LESS VIDEOS please - give people a CHANCE to miss you.

Yeah, ya see, the bottom line is the tedious, mundane topic which kills and dilutes these channels... money. Don't chase the money as the goal, be passionate - stop spamming with "Click the bell icon and subbb-scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaab" - no, and no, I do NOT want to "follow" you, or know about every meal you have on Instagram - I SIMPLY CAME AS I WAS PASSING BY, and took a vague interest in ONE video - don't overdo it and put me off your channel.

... and the overly neat, pristine shelves, showing off their ENTIRE collection of hoarded clutter that has NEVER been used, and is showing off how much stuff they own (that doesn't prove they know anything about any of it - it proves they received a parcel, unpacked it and put it on a shelf)

I'd rather see a messy workshop and an obscure, eccentric bloke who isn't reading a rehearsed, rigid "YouTuber Guidebook formula" script.

[RJSV]

"Rather see...eccentric bumbling bloke...".
Yup, that'd be myself.

   Same here, with the heavy 'SUBSCRIBE' Crap.  I immediately turn away any music or video reviewers that do endless 'intro' s.
'HEYhey B whatotit B, B ? '... Thinking that's clever

[eti]

Yet another packaging failure has become a trend with supermarkets. STOP these stupid, overly sticky thick paper bands around bananas. Paper and glue have existed for time immemorial - why are you ONLY JUST doing this? These bands are nigh on impossible to remove. How does this help anything? You time wasters.

[Bud]

Packaging aside, what is a difference between organic vs non organic banana? 

[themadhippy]

what is a difference between organic vs non organic banana?

around 20 pence per banana

[PlainName]

Paper and glue have existed for time immemorial - why are you ONLY JUST doing this?

Because they've been banned from using alternative means, so have to fall back on paper.

How does this help anything?

Helps keep the bunch together. Partly that will be for shipping (which includes shelf filling) and partly to prevent 'shoppers' taking a freebie or sample. So it no doubt helps lots, otherwise they wouldn't bother - paper and glue is not cost free, you know.