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emacs moment
  • They just said :wq in school, so thanks for the tip. Hard to believe it saves even when the file hasn't been changed if you use :wq. What is the use case for that? If the file gets changed in another program and you want to revert?? Edit: Just saw the comment about the modification times being updated.

  • Advice?

    Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right community to ask this, but I got yelled at by my mom today for not having a job and I thought it might be worthwhile asking what sort of strategy I should pursue from a community of people with skills I would like to develop. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from a mid-tier state university in the US before the pandemic, but didn't really do anything to develop my portfolio. I had good grades and got two interviews for software engineer positions, but didn't get the job in either case. I didn't really care too much. I was still an enby egg and everything felt off, so I never looked very hard. When the pandemic happened, it made finding a position out of the question because my parents are high risk. Unfortunately, I have had trouble developing a portfolio. I don't know if my education is lacking or I missed something or it is my ADHD or I am just not talented and got fooled into thinking I was okay by grade inflation, but I could never focus for long enough to figure out anyone's project and make a contribution. I did a bit of Cracking the Coding Interview, but got bored a chapter or two in and haven't gone back to it in a while. So I guess specifically my questions are:

    1. Am I correct in trusting the common advice to contribute to open source projects to build a portfolio?
    2. If so, how do you figure out how to gauge your skill level so that you pick the right projects to contribute to? 2a. How long does it take you to get up to speed on a new project before you feel comfortable contributing? How long did it take before your first job?
    3. Am I correct in thinking that any credit I get from employers from having a CS degree is strongly outweighed by 5 years of not having a job and no contributions?
    4. Should I consider looking into the resources I (and my mom) have heard about offering autistic people help getting into technical fields? I don't think my autism is that bad, and I'm not particularly talented either, so I'd dismissed these for the most part.
    5. How do I avoid positions that don't either build my skills or lead to a career?
    6. I am prescribed and taking medicine for ADHD. Is there anything I can do beyond that? My mom has talked about hiring a “life coach,” but it has always sounded like a good way to spend money for no benefit.
    7. How do I motivate myself when I'm probably mediocre and will be treated like shit if I “succeed?”
    8. Am I thinking about this all wrong somehow?
    9. What are the best resources for someone in my position? Despite how it may sound, I am willing to put a fair bit of effort into self-improvement, it has just been spread far too thin because of the ADHD.
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    5 Reminders NOT to Pre-Order Games This Year ~ We used to demand trials before buying before, what happened? ~ Stop Pre ordering Games
  • That's certainly true. I'd still say that for the online stores, for which that policy applies, there isn't a lot of upside to preordering. Because the purchase is digital, you will always be able to get a copy on release day (unless the publisher artificially limits how many games it will sell, but I've never heard of a publisher doing this).

  • 5 Reminders NOT to Pre-Order Games This Year ~ We used to demand trials before buying before, what happened? ~ Stop Pre ordering Games
  • Financially, preorders without a “preorder bonus” are a zero interest loan to the developer. Preorders with the “preorder bonus” are a loan with the bonus as interest. Even if the game were guaranteed to be good, you could most likely be doing something better with the money until it comes out. Since the game is not guaranteed to be good, it is a risky loan as well. Without any of the protections you get when you make an actual loan.

  • Some commands to confuse the newbies (post from GNU+Linux Humor)
  • It's also helpful to note that “shell builtins” don't typically have man pages (at least for BASH). You can find help on these commands by typing [builtin name] --help or looking in the shell's man page or info doc (no one told me when I was learning, so I got confused as to why some of the more common commands didn't have man pages)

  • How to rip a dvd (probably also works with cds, etc) on gnu/linux (probably also works on other *nix systems such as macos and openbsd)
  • This should work with some caveats.

    1. Tbis probably won't work on WSL (Linux needs direct access to your hardware).
    2. For DVDs, you need to be sure libdvdcss is installed for this to work correctly
    • You probably already have this on your system if you have successfully watched a dvd in Linux.
    1. You may need to replace /dev/cdrom with the name of the device file corresponding to your drive.
    1. This creates an exact copy of the disk, including the unallocated space. You would probably want to follow the guide https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Optical_disc_drive#Creating_an_ISO_image_from_a_CD,_DVD,_or_BD
    • (@BustedPancake@lemmy.world's use of mkisofs does the same thing because they copy the files on the disk rather than the whole disk. But you don't need makemkv. You should be able to use any method of copying the files and Linux should use libdvdcss to decrypt them.).
    “deep magic”

    Linux trys to treat devices like files. If you ran xxd /dev/cdrom, you would see every bit on the disk (not just those of the files, but those in the free space as well) in order from the first to the last (converted to base-16 in what is called a hexdump). Not that you need to see this, but your video player does. The “DRM cracking” is actually a feature of libdvdcss that makes it possible for the system to treat the disk this way. dd is just a general copying command and if Stack Exchange is to be believed, it isn't necessarily the best option (https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/12532/dd-vs-cat-is-dd-still-relevant-these-days). But it probably is necessary for the linked guide to work because it has dd truncate the file.

    edit: caveats is note spalled caceats

    edit: file → files on the disk

  • cat /dev/null

    Description: Cat illustration from Japanese fine print in void with cat /dev/null written below in a monospace font.

    I guess you could say this meme is… a copycat.

    Yes, normally you'd redirect it to do something useful. But I'm not editing it.

    edit:remove duplicate photo

    edit2: Silly me for thinking that Lemmy was smart enough to grab the first body photo as its thumbnail. Also set language.

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    I have never posted on Lemmy
  • The comment with this comment's UID in Lemmy's comment database is not deducible from the Lemmy axioms. There! Out-nerded you 😜. (Please don't call me on the details. Please don't call me on the details. 🤞)

  • LMAO THEY GOT BUSTED
  • I suspect if you are trying to build an inclusive community but don't have a lot of diversity already, the only thing you can really do to change the culture is to remind people to be considerate in the way they speak. And if most people who would be offended aren't actually part of the community (but you would like them to feel welcome to join), then you might want some bot rather than a person to be the “narc” and remind people to be on their best behavior. So I guess if the mods are the only ones who want to be nice, then yes, it is a bit ridiculous because it will never work. Even if people change their language, they won't be nice. But if most people want things to change, it could be a helpful way to both remind you to be inclusive and get the few people who would rather talk about how having to say bartender is censorship (without actually defending why they want to make a point of saying “barmen”) to realize that they either have to change the way they talk in that particular community or find a better fit.

  • Keep your memcpy sizes validated or catgirls will smash the stack, nya

    cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/97118

    > ! > Accessibility text :Pictured is a slide from a presentation at a hacker conference with a bullet point reading “We can smash the stack” highlighted and the presenter wearing cat ears and holding a plushie fox. Added to the screenshot of the presentation is the aforementiomed highlighting as well as the warning “KEEP YOUR MEMCPY SIZES VALIDATED OR CATGIRLS WILL SMASH THE STACK, NYA” written in a pink all-caps impact-style font clone.

    Edit: Meme photo wasn't visible when the link to the actual talk was in the url field, so I'm moving it here: https://media.ccc.de/v/gpn21-16-breaking-the-black-box-security-coprocessor-in-the-nintendo-switch-a-story-of-vulnerability-after-vulnerability

    Edit 2: It still wasn't visible, so I had to add the photo url. I'm new 😁

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    Catgirls, smash the stack

    ! Accessibility text :Pictured is a slide from a presentation at a hacker conference with a bullet point reading “We can smash the stack” highlighted and the presenter wearing cat ears and holding a plushie fox. Added to the screenshot of the presentation is the aforementiomed highlighting as well as the warning “KEEP YOUR MEMCPY SIZES VALIDATED OR CATGIRLS WILL SMASH THE STACK, NYA” written in a pink all-caps impact-style font clone.

    Edit: Meme photo wasn’t visible when the link to the actual talk was in the url field, so I’m moving it here: https://media.ccc.de/v/gpn21-16-breaking-the-black-box-security-coprocessor-in-the-nintendo-switch-a-story-of-vulnerability-after-vulnerability

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    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)NE
    nekomusumeninaritai @lemmy.blahaj.zone

    I use xe/xem or they/them pronouns ATM.

    I wanna be a cat girl! Or a cat enby perhaps. Nyan.

    Posts 6
    Comments 14