Programming

lol no are you kidding

If prompted I’d tell them the new key is “EMYAPUOYKCUF” and when they say it doesn’t work ask them to reverse the letters

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One of my biggest weaknesses is I am not very motivated by money. I was like welp lesson learned always get paid up front or get it in writing and chalked it up to that. There’s not really any hard feelings other than I am professionally irritated they’re using my script in a way it was not written to be used.

I just realized I could break all their shit by disabling my account.

Of course disable the API key. Also send them an email saying you know they were using it and if they want to continue using it they owe you money for past work and an up front charge to re-enable your script.

I’m not particularly motivated by money at this point either. But it’s important that people pay you what you’re worth. Because too often letting them pay you less actually makes them value you less. People are messed up.

And if you really don’t want it, donate it. Then the effort you put in isn’t about you getting more - it’s about doing good in the world.

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C++ question

This is for some homework that nanodaughter has. It must have been something the prof said in lecture that was missed.

“Has modern C++ provided any new features to alleviate problems associated with dynamic and/or stack allocated memory?” (generally talking about arrays)

I don’t know what is considered modern, but the class requires C++ 11.

??

I think it’s pronounced “Rust”

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It could be one of those things that comes up the classroom a lot though.

(Note: I’m a lawyer, but not an IP lawyer and, most importantly, not YOUR lawyer, so none of this is legal advice.)

I’m not sure exactly what your consulting agreement says or what your correspondence was, but I would lob in cease-and-desist letters to the company’s GC, CEO and (if you can figure out who they are) their outside counsel and auditors. The substance of the letter would be:

  • On [dates], I created a computer program to do X, Y, and Z (the “Program”). The Program was shared with Mr. X and Mr. Y pursuant to [a consulting agreement/informal discussions regarding the transfer of the program to ABC Inc./whatever the case may be].
  • On [date], Mr. X informed me that ABC Inc. had determined that the Program was not suitable for its needs and that ABC Inc. did not intend to pay me for producing it.
  • As a result, as the author of the Program, I retain all copyright rights over it.
  • Information has recently come to my attention indicating that, contrary to the assertions of Mr. X, ABC Inc. is making significant use of the Program in its business operations. As you doubtless know, if ABC Inc. is indeed using the Program or any derivative work, that use would be an illegal infringement under the Copyright Act. Please note that any program that performs a similar function to the Program and was drafted by individuals with knowledge of the Program may constitute a derivative work.
  • At your earliest convenience, please contact me regarding a retrospective license for your apparent unlawful use of the Program. I am also willing to negotiate regarding a prospective license of the Program, but until such a license is in place, I must regretfully insist that ABC Inc. cease and desist from using the Program or any derivative work. To inform negotiations regarding a retrospective license, it would be helpful if you could provide:
    • A summary of how the Program has been used by ABC Inc. and over what period;
    • A description of any other software tools have been developed by ABC Inc. that perform a similar function, together with the source code of those tools and an analysis of whether they are derivative works of the Program; and
    • Financial reports showing sufficient detail to establish how much revenue ABC Inc. derived during the infringing period from operations where the Program was used.

It would be much better if this was on a lawyer’s letterhead, but it may not be worth the expense. The main idea is that if this is an infringement problem rather than a stiffed vendor problem, it becomes a big problem if the company ever wants to get sold. Potentially it’s a financial statement problem as well. The idea is to put enough people on notice that it doesn’t get swept under the rug and has to be addressed. It may well be that it’s NOT an infringement problem–if it’s work for hire they own the copyright–but at a minimum someone is going to have to incur the brain damage and sleepless nights to get comfortable with it.

If they do offer to pay you some money, I personally would not take the original agreed amount as settlement. Depending on the size of the company and what specifically happened, I would probably be holding out for something with 5 figures.

Then, obviously, if they do sell the company, you take your records to a lawyer and see if you have a claim worth suing over. It’s a good idea to do that now actually.

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I had to wait til I had time to give this a proper read.

The software I wrote was a very simple script anyone could have written (at least anyone with the time and inclination). I’m kind of hesitant to go that hard at them from the get go - me leaving was cordial, but kind of sudden with little notice and I felt bad about it. Me turning around and turning the screws on them feels weird.

I think I might send an email to the effect of, “hey, I received an email that leads me to believe you are using that script I wrote… I was never paid for it, and my understanding is that I would be paid if it was used. Let’s talk to settle the specifics.”

But again like I care so little about this that it’s hard to summon the motivation. Donating it is a good idea, that could get me off my ass. But tbh i’d rather just donate my own money than start a fight in which I’m most likely outmatched. I did not go about this in an intelligent way and left myself open to this abuse. I thought I was dealing with them on good faith, but what I’ve learned now in the last two years is that you can never, ever trust a CEO.

Go templating can suck my you know what. God i hate it. It’s so ugly and clunky.

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Tbh probably something they fix for free? Or for not very much

I literally had them fix mine for free last week. One key was perma triple hitting, I dropped it off at an apple store and it was ups backed to me 3 days later fixed, I was sorta stunned. 2017. Keys feel a bit different now so maybe its the 2019 version? Meh.

Yeah I’ve been buying the 2016 pre-butterfly. But after 2 keyboards going bad (one key goes bad) - I bit the bullet and upgraded to the 2020 post-butterfly, which I love so far.

My work MacBook is butterfly and I hate it - but I’m on external keyboard 99% of the time.

How do you guys cope when you just don’t feel like programming? Programming of all things is really difficult when you don’t feel like doing it.

My boss just submitted some gnarly change requests on a website i built that will require me refactoring the entire backend. Just because he wants some dynamically generated tables on what was supposed to be a static website for displaying log data. I think I need to get better at standing up for myself.

I don’t know how you guys do this day in and day out, I HATE doing front end stuff or ui/ux design. Even this basic thing. I’m thinking lately I’m maybe not cut out for this.

Hardly anyone is cut out for 9-5, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, doing what some pointy hair tells you to do. Not cut out for it. More like square pegs jammed into round holes for it.

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After the initial disappointment you need to be able to switch off from the emotional hit of having to scrap things you’ve built because someone didn’t properly think about the requirement, and try to take something for yourself out of the refactoring work.

Maybe you can use a new technique or simplify something because you’ve had time to think about it?

But that’s the sunny view and yes, it really sucks sometimes.

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Yea I feel that very heavily today… I just did a git rm -f which I never, ever do and a wildcard expanded in an unexpected way and I lost about 10 hours of work I’d done since this morning. Like 700 lines of code and it was a huge pita. I was freaking out until my boss linked me a way to recover the files from git’s cache… thank god. I honestly don’t think I had the strength to do all of that over again.

Don’t understand what you mean

What’s happening: git reflog is an amazing resource for recovering project history. You can recover almost anything—anything you’ve committed—via the reflog.

He’s asking if that’s what you used.

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No I didn’t commit these changes. It was like a day’s work I only had locally without a commit. There’s no way to recover those with the CLI I think.

That wasn’t 700 lines of bash was it?