The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Awareness’ Category

Is the world still homogenising towards anonymous pile of monotony?

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/08/23

A few years back there was a great thread on Twitter starting with [Wayback/Archive] David Perell on Twitter: “What’s causing all these logos to look the same?”

The trend wasn’t just about logos. Architecture was looking more and more the same too and society at large was affected as well.

I wonder if by now the trend has changed.

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Why Return-to-Office Mandates Aren’t Worth the Risks | Gartner, 2024-05-20

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/08/14

After decades telling management that remote work is best for most of the IT-teams, or in more general white-collar workers, Covid-19 proving it does, some managers still don’t get it.

After years of the Return-to-Office movement trying to get people back to the office, Gartner finally found out that RTO is a major risk of losing talent or not even acquiring talent.

[Wayback/Archive] Why Return-to-Office Mandates Aren’t Worth the Risks | Gartner

  • Nearly three-quarters of executives say return-to-office (RTO) mandates are a source of leadership conflict.
  • Lack of work-life balance ranks among the top five reasons employees quit.

Via [Wayback/Archive] David Chartier: “The Data Is In: Return-to-Office Mandates Aren’t Worth the Talent Risks …” – Toot Café

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Posted in Awareness, Development, LifeHacker, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Welkom in de onzichtbare vinkjesmaatschappij – Rules by Rosita (want het gaat slecht met mensenrechten voor gehandicapten in Nederland)

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/08/10

Belangrijke blog-post: [Wayback/Archive] Welkom in de onzichtbare vinkjesmaatschappij – Rules by Rosita

De onzichtbare vinkjes zorgen ervoor dat er aan de ene kant veel onduidelijk is over wie met welke beperking wel/geen recht heeft op bepaalde onderdelen van deelname in de maatschappij, en aan de andere kant dat mensen zonder beperkingen geen idee hebben welke onderdelen dat geldt.

Velen beseffen niet hoe makkelijk je zomaar eens een beperking kunt krijgen (hallo ongelukkige struikelpartij!) en als je dit bijvoorbeeld na je 18e overkomt je ineens geen recht op Wajong meer hebt.

In 2016 – bijna 10 jaar nadat het verdrag ontstond – ratificeerde Nederland pas het VN-verdrag inzake de rechten van personen met een handicap (meest afgekort tot “VN-verdrag handicap” of “VN verdrag handicap”). Helaas is er sinds de 8 jaar na ratificering nog maar weinig gebeurd, sterker: er is zelfs achteruitgang volgens de introductie op [Wayback/Archive] Persportaal ANP: Nederland moet zich verantwoorden bij de Verenigde Naties

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Posted in About, Awareness, Personal | Leave a Comment »

Every conversation about dependencies since 2020 uses the same XKCD 2347 based image, which is a problem on multiple levels

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/08/01

The below picture is a modification of [Wayback/Archive] 2347: Dependency – explain xkcd

Title text: Someday ImageMagick will finally break for good and we’ll have a long period of scrambling as we try to reassemble civilization from the rubble.

It actually emphasises the problem both that [Wayback/Archive] xkcd 2347: Dependency is way too optimistic, and that everyone uses that to point out dependency issues or worse as a thought-terminating cliché .

The second problem amplifies itself by increasing the popularity of the comic, and the attracts people to use it even if they hardly know about dependencies.

In turn it diminishes the meaning of it, kind of making it more optimistic by basically amplifying the message “there is just one really fragile project our design/infrastructure depends on” (the infamous “A project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003”).

The sad reality is that this single fragile project is just not true. Modern development and infrastructure systems usually are underpinned by package managers installing the complex graphs of dependencies of which dozens, heck thousands are maintained for “free” by, more often than not, a single worn out maintainer per dependency.

It’s just that over the last few decades usually only one such package at a time posed a serious problem. But with dependencies on very small building blocks, the amount of blocks is rising as is their usage. Just two examples out of the Node JS world (mind you, each development and infrastructure stack lives in comparable worlds):

Mind you, these links are 2021 and 2022, so the numbers have increased.

Many think such problems are limited to programming errors, but over the last decade these have become the tip of the iceberg. The real problems now are that maintainers are fading away as they have for instance been worn out for too long, or simply are aging. So what we have seen over the last decade is the rise of supply chain attacks.

One such example was the XZ utils backdoor which was, by sheer luck because one guy tried to investigate why connecting over ssh had become much slower than before, barely detected in time. It had a CVSS score of 10.0, the highest possible score.

So be prepared that the below picture will have “your business structure” on the top, and towards the bottom a bunch of small fragile pillars with the text “many projects, each maintained by a worn out person on the verge of collapse”.

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Posted in Awareness, Conference Topics, Conferences, Design Patterns, Development, Event, Fun, Software Development, Systems Architecture, Technical Debt, xkcd | Leave a Comment »

Trigger warning: recovering data of someone close to you which suddenly died

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/07/28

Sudden death sometimes is chosen, which makes it even for the ones close that are involved.

That’s why the below MCH2022 lecture by father and son Jilles and Jurre Groenendijk two years ago is really important.

I was reminded about it by a [Wayback/Archive] Thread by @jilles_com on Thread Reader App last week, but before that a big TRIGGER WARNING from the lecture:

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Posted in Awareness, Health, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

How Old Are You in CO2?

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/07/15

I’m from 326 CO2.

[Wayback/Archive] How Old Are You in CO2?

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Posted in Awareness, History, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Rode Kruis on Twitter: “#hittetip voor de komende dagen en de zomer. 👉 Zo herken je de symptomen van oververhitting:…”

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/07/01

Belangrijke tips voor het begin van oververhitting en wanneer je echt 112 moet bellen.

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Wees voorzichtig met lappen/keukenpapier/dweiltjes/etc als je er olie of vet op zit (na klussen, koken, schoonmaken)

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/06/10

Een onbekend fenomeen voor velen, maar als je olie of vet op lappen, keukenpapier of dweiltjes en dergelijke hebt zitten dan kan er zo maar brand ontstaan.

Die brand komt door broei. Broei is als vet of olie onder invloed van lucht steeds warmer wordt en dan uiteindelijk zelf gaat branden of de lappen/keukenpapier/dweiltjes/etc in brand steekt.

Broei versnelt als alles opeengepakt ligt maar er toch voldoende lucht bij kan komen.

Uit onderstaande linkjes zijn er zijn grofweg drie mogelijkheden om dit te voorkomen (lees de linkjes goed door om te bepalen wat in jouw situatie het beste mogelijk is):

  • compact en luchtdicht verpakken (maar wees voorzichtig als dat bij het afval komt: dan weet je niet of het luchtdicht blijft en kan er alsnog bij vervoer/verwerken brand ontstaan!)
  • heet wassen (minimaal 60 graden Celsius) zodat de olie/vet met zeep of wasmiddel wegspoelt, en niet in de droger drogen
  • uithangen op een goed geventileerde plek zodat het droogt (en vet/olie verdampt)

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Veiligheid in de trein en op het station | Reisinformatie | NS

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/05/20

[Wayback/Archive] Veiligheid in de trein en op het station | Reisinformatie | NS

WhatsApp- of sms-bericht bij onveilige situaties

Stuur een WhatsApp of sms-bericht naar nummer 06 13 18 13 18, om overlast of onveilige situaties in de trein of op het station te melden. Hiermee kom je direct in contact met de Meldkamer NS.

Belangrijk: in situaties waarin spoedeisende hulp noodzakelijk is, bel je altijd 112.

–jeroen

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Climbing up from a deep pit it just as admirable as climbing a mountain (via Liz Fosslien)

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/05/06

A while ago in 24 hours time, I bumped into both of these great illustrations about accomplishments that help strengthen your mental state.

Time to give the authors a boost:

You can find more about their books and workshops at [Wayback/Archive] Liz + Mollie Feel Things.

The illustrations that triggered me

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Posted in About, archive.is / archive.today, Awareness, Health, Inclusion / inclusive society, Instagram, Internet, InternetArchive, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User, SocialMedia, Twitter, WayBack machine | Leave a Comment »