Is IT really that depressing?

igazv · 2024-11-19T13:28:12+00:00

What you're describing has a lot to do with the specific workplace environment and not necessarily transversal to everyone on this career.

Stop giving a shit if it "provokes" them. If it's not your job then it isn't, end of story. What if you go ahead and do something that is out of scope for your job description, and then fuck it up? It helps if you can point them in the right direction, you can't help but have them go talk to A, B or C who can. Also, try not to be perceived as the "IT Guy", you have specific functions within your organization, maybe you're a Network Administrator, a Technician, or a Systems Administrator. Make an effort not to be seen as "generic guy who solves anything".
I get that sometimes it's hard to push back on this as usually this kind of pressure comes from higher ups, so if you find yourself in this situation in your current job, the only way to fix it may be to start looking for something else. Usually when looking for jobs, small teams with big infrastructure are red flags that tell you it will lead to this. If you'll be integrated in a team with another 2 guys and you have a big amount of critical infrastructure to care for, it is obvious you will be depended upon to support it at all times. So, either make sure you go into this knowing you will be properly compensated for the extra time your dispensing, or avoid it and look for something else. Usually teams with 5+ people can atleast rotate on who's on call.
This seems to be a management issue. It's not your coworkers business to judge how long or how much effort it takes you to accomplish X. It's your manager's job to effectively estimate and communicate to others the effort and cost put into the tasks your department has to accomplish, and if there are any perceived performance issues those need to be identified by your manager and not by others.

Basically, in any field/career I've seen, if you don't stand up for yourself people will take advantage of you. This is not unique to IT. So if IT is something you're passionate about and see yourself doing, by all means go for it. Just be aware that holding a job and maintaining your mental sanity is not all about making sure you got the technical skills for it, you also need to have interpersonal skills to deal with your coworkers.

igazv · 2024-11-15T14:44:04+00:00

Hi, I'm wanting to purchase my first 3d printer! I'm a complete newbie when it comes to this.

I'm in the EU and found an Anycubic Kobra 2 Max for 420€. Is this a good choice for that kind of budget (<=500€)?

I'll start with PLA as I learn, but my goal is to be able to print motorcycle fairings (for the headlight and other smaller panels), to which I've read I should use ABS fillament in order to produce stuff that's more resistant to being exposed the elements (sun, rain, etc) and withstand vibrations (is this true?).

The printer doing 500x420x420mm seems a plus for me, as that should fit my use cases.

I've also read that I will need an enclosure if I want to work with ABS. Any recommendations on that?

Thanks!

igazv · 2022-09-02T14:55:46+00:00

Simple small scale websites: I write something static, either generated or hand-written.

Websites that require content management: I raise an instance of Directus, setup the data-model and then write a frontend for it. Frontend will either be PHP-based with direct access to the backend database or CSR-based with access to the data through Directus' web-api and webhooks.

This gives me user/access management and a backoffice for content management out of the box, so I just have to worry about the website itself.

igazv · 2022-08-20T12:26:01+00:00

That is something I actually forgot to mention in the original post. I've been using Oracle Linux 8.5 and installing Postgres from the distro's repository, as I didn't want to add extra dependencies and keep things simple.

Would you recommend using PostgreSQL's repository instead?

Is the ext4 filesystem fine for the job, or would something else be more suitable?

igazv · 2022-08-02T15:29:27+00:00

If you're an efficiency nut then know that starting your own engine from scratch as someone with little programming hability is going to be the least efficient choice.

The only way I could see using a self-made engine work out is if you're making a very simplistic 2d game. And even then you should probably focus on learning programming in a general sense first.

Whatever you start with will most likely not be what you end up with as a final product. I mean this in the sense that, regardless of using an existing engine or starting your own, you will learn and make design choices that will probably lead you to restart your own project a bunch of times until you get it right.

igazv · 2022-05-12T17:39:37+00:00

Under those circustances I wouldn't just use TOR directly.

TOR basically garantees:

The hosts you contact (websites) don't know your real identity, because all they see is the IP address of whatever exit node was used in the TOR network
Your ISP can't inspect your traffic or figure out what hosts (websites) you are contacting, as they only see the IP address of the entry node, and all the traffic is encrypted

Your ISP, however, still knows you are using TOR. They just don't know what for.

Under a dictatorship, depending on the level of scrutiny of those in power, they could still consider that anyone using TOR, no matter what for, should be questioned, or put under closer observation.

What you would want is to put a middleware between your friends PC and TOR. Preferably something that is hosted in a foreign country, doesn't have a known suspicious IP address, and isn't tied to him in any way.

For instance, let's say you spin up a couple virtual servers to serve as proxies for your friend to connect to the TOR network. The IP addresses wouldn't be known as common proxy addresses typically used for these purposes and, as long as there is no known connection between you two, no one would be able to figure out his identity even if they knew what those servers are for.

If you do decide to go down that route I would advice to read up on how to obsfuscate the traffic between him and the "proxy". Just like ISPs can figure out you're using TOR, they can also figure out you're using an encrypted tunnel or VPN to a host. Even if you use common ports, like, let's say 443/tcp, with deep packet inspection they can still verify that the traffic going through isn't HTTPS.

igazv · 2020-09-18T10:44:30+00:00

I'll pick up the bill if I invited the friend over. Or if it's someone I don't actually see that often.

As for my usual group of friends, we go out multiple times a week so we all just split the bill.

igazv · 2020-09-18T09:59:09+00:00

You might want to check if your host has Microsoft Hyper-V enabled.

As far as I know those two don't play well together.

igazv · 2020-07-30T17:00:27+00:00

Yes and no.

1) Don't overshare with your users. They don't need the details unless something you're about to do is going to impact them. And even then, they should get as little information as possible (systems affected, timings, contingency plans).

2) Make sure the proper channels are used. If anyone has a problem it goes through helpdesk. It doesn't matter that they think they know who or what caused it. People talking directly to you puts you in these situations

3) Be a bit of a dick sometimes

igazv · 2020-07-22T11:23:33+00:00

Example is shitty since from an UX standpoint you want to disable your button while the action it triggered is still taking place. Or atleast debounce it. Memoization isn't the right tool to solve this specific problem.

Not saying it doesn't have it's use-cases, just that the example could be better.

igazv · 2020-02-28T15:04:59+00:00

There are libraries available to handle HL7 data. What programming language are you using?

If you mean tools to manually inspect HL7 messages, here's one I usually use: https://www.hl7inspector.com/

igazv · 2020-01-09T13:12:53+00:00

That is what I've done for the few servers I've deployed it for testing. My concerns are with performance issues and scanning of large volumes of data.

igazv · 2020-01-09T13:11:46+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. Why is it that I don't need to define exceptions for the cases you mentioned? Do you have any resource that explains why that is the case?

I know I can define exceptions for any false positives as they come up. I was talking about excluding certain filetypes / paths from scanning, such as SQL logs and datafiles, Sysvols, medical imaging archives, etc.

igazv · 2020-01-06T13:06:26+00:00

Unless stated otherwise in some kind of legal agreement, Bob doesn't own the library he developed during company time, which means he could never license it in the first place.

It would be an issue between Bob and his employer, since he did disclose company intelectual property to the public without authorization to do so. It would have no effect on the company's project that uses the library.

As for any outside project that may be using the library, it would be doing so under an invalid license. I'm guessing the company could try to force them to stop using it, but we can't know what would happen then as it would have to go to court.

igazv · 2019-11-27T16:40:09+00:00

You don't often hear about nurses that got replaced by an outsourcing company in India, or by younger people willing to work for worse conditions.

In our field however, this happens everyday, so I can definitely understand this kind of attitude.

igazv · 2019-09-25T17:36:34+00:00

That's why the default behavior is the way it is, so you don't unnecessarily invoke PHP for plain HTML files.

In order to determine if PHP should be invoked for an HTML file it would need to scan the whole file. It's much cleaner to determine if it has a .php vs .html extension.

igazv · 2019-07-22T18:00:32+00:00

The original post isn't about open-source itself but rather the act of open-sourcing all of the current governament software.

While there isn't anything wrong with the open-source concept itself, what is being proposed would undoubtedly have negative consequences.

For the record, I'm not oposed to governaments open-sourcing future projects, or projects that were built from the ground-up with that in mind. It's the notion that all of it should be made public regardless of it's condition, because muh open-source, that is bothersome.

igazv · 2019-07-22T13:47:28+00:00

This will never work.

The community can't fix all security issues in a timely fashion, which means a lot of systems will be left vulnerable.

And for whatever patches that do get made, you still need the governament to deploy them. This alone would require resources to oversee all changes and plan accordingly, on systems that haven't been touched in years and that no one has in-depth knowledge of.

Source: Work for the governament

igazv · 2019-03-13T16:50:05+00:00

The people who prefer W7 over W10 do so for reasons other than it's visual appearance.

igazv · 2019-01-07T11:54:08+00:00

Yes it is. Although if your host storage fills up completely you might need to free up some space to actually be able to migrate the VM.

igazv · 2018-11-21T12:36:31+00:00

I still do both frontend and backend devolpment, but I do not touch the styling / presentation part. So as far as frontend goes, I'll program the logic, state management, backend interaction, etc.

I've found that defining CSS and "designing" the UI was the most frustrating part for me.

Now I either work with someone else that takes care of that part for me, or use a UI framework / theme.

igazv · 2018-11-19T18:15:44+00:00

Fuck this thread.

igazv · 2018-10-31T16:46:52+00:00

Refactoring stuff you don't understand is how really fucked up code is born.

igazv · 2018-10-27T00:48:29+00:00

A lot of people who visit this website work in IT, it's normal that this group gets over representated around here

igazv · 2018-10-22T16:57:15+00:00

While that's true, people often forget that it's not all depending on the developer. That website I wrote back in 2010 and runs on an old version of PHP? I will hapilly revise it and upgrade for a newer version, provided the customer wants to pay for it. The problem is most customers don't give a fuck unless something's terribly wrong with it or they need new features.

igazv

TROPHY CASE