561–570 of 577 posts
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One might also ask why in 2020 your taking an exam and then photographing it. Some of those with problems actually had real computers as well.
it may be way write physics, math calculation with pen and paper than trying to type that in the computer.
A lot of comments are arguing about whether the software should have been modified to accept the HEIC format. Let's go with "no" for the sake of argument. They probably can't accept an mp3 of me singing my answers, either. But! If I upload an HEIC, an mp3, a keynote file, or anything else unacceptable... Why doesn't the site provide an immediate "File format not accepted, please upload .gif, .jpg, or .png" message? A…
It does have pretty much exactly that message. The corruption problems came from students seeing that only PNGs/JPGs were allowed, then trying to "convert" the file just by renaming it. What they're doing is the same as 99% of other sites that expect images. But it's probably fair to expect it to be even more streamlined (i.e: clear conversion instructions) given the circumstances of a time-limited exam.
I mean ... isn't that kind of a classic trick when handing in homework you didn't make? Just rename some file to .doc and claim it got corrupted?
Who doesn't test their upload forms with common flows like uploading an iPhone photo? Sounds to be like the college board contracted this out to the lowest bidder.
The burden of testing is enormous and nobody wants to pay for it. I know plenty of companies that barely test at all. All except the Googles of the world miss stuff regularly.
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Is this for comment real? Why should being tech savvy enough to jump through esoteric technical requirements be part of the test?
Ever see a student get scolded for not using a #2 pencil? Can't use a pen. Can't use a marker. Can't use a #9 pencil. Must be a a #2 pencil. Ever fill out a government form that must be done in non erasable black or blue ink. A pencil is unacceptable. A red pen, green pen, purple pen is unacceptable. An erasable pen is also unacceptable. Not saying users should have to know what a .JPG from an .HEIC but just saying t…
And government forms also come with pens to fill them out.
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As I said, the file data was likely popped off the stack automatically, no need to write any extra code.
In your model, what's happening to the data in the file system?
Writing extra code to delete a file in a catch block doesn't seem like something someone trying to account for failure scenarios would do, it's much more likely that the data was living in memory and no thought was put into failure scenarios in that part of the code.
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As I said, the file data was likely popped off the stack automatically, no need to write any extra code.
In your model, what's happening to the data in the file system?
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If no format is specified, then the presumption would be that the website wants a raw octet stream, and that adulterating it would be the last thing a client device should do, because it knows nothing about what the website's going to do to the result.
Okay, but the contents of that raw occlet stream will be a file in some format . The iPhone isn't like a traditional computer—the user picks an image from a library of images , and the type of image is abstracted away. Yes, it so happens that modern iPhones store images on disk as HEIC, but since this isn't user-visible it amounts to an implementation detail. Since the user didn't specify a format, and the website di…
"Give me the underlying data, just as it is. You may or may not understand what it is, but I'm asking you to pretend that you don't, because I definitely don't understand what it is. I'm acting as a courier on behalf of a recipient who wants whatever you give me. All they told me was to get it from you. Please don't try to guess why they want it, or to prepare it for them in some way. Their motivations are beyond our understanding. They just want it. They want what you have, the way you currently have it. Do as little to it as possible, because anything you do may be counter-productive to their unknowable designs."
This is, for one thing, the use-case of file-sharing websites. If you upload something to e.g. MEGA, or WeTransfer, you're doing that in order for something further to happen to it on the other side. The other side may or may not have wanted the file in its original format, but that question is up to them, not up to the sender. The job of a "dumb pipe" file-transfer service, is to take what it's given, and losslessly pass it on to the recipient, so that further steps can happen. And, as such, it's also a responsibility of a file-transfer service to ask the User-Agent to also send the file on to it losslessly, because in this case the User-Agent is also acting as part of the "dumb pipe" transfer process.
Let me put it this way: if my photos were not saving correctly, and someone at Apple asked me to file a Radar ticket and attach such a mis-encoded photo to the ticket... how would the Radar web-app express the intent of "I want the stupid mis-encoded file that you-the-device are using to store what you think is a Photos photo"? Well, our legacy convention is that it would express that intent through `accept="⋆/⋆"`. (Or a lack of an `accept` header at all.)
Note that this is different from an `accept` attribute like "image/⋆". In that case, we know something—we know that the recipient we're acting as courier has the intent to use the uploaded file as an image—so both the mis-encoded file, and maybe HEIC files, are probably bad candidates. One should be filtered out as an upload candidate; the other should maybe be transcoded (just like a RAW camera file would be.)
Here's a crazy idea: If your whole web site is based around a high stakes interaction, especially with a time limit, put a dress rehearsal into the registration process . If someone wants to make an account to register for a test, ask them to upload a picture of anything. A signature. The wall. Their face. A cat. Use the same framework for finishing the test that you used for this interaction. So if for instance you'…
Here's a crazy idea: If your whole web site is based around a high stakes interaction, especially with a time limit, put a dress rehearsal into the registration process . If someone wants to make an account to register for a test, ask them to upload a picture of anything. A signature. The wall. Their face. A cat. Use the same framework for finishing the test that you used for this interaction. So if for instance you'…
Some other comments [1] noted that they did -- they had a demo site, it was just hobbled by not actually doing all the same things it would do on test day. So students tested their method out, it looked right, and they repeated it on the test day only to have it fail there. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23261511
Murphy's Law I suppose. The spot at which you stop testing is the spot where it will break. But do you learn not to listen to that voice in your head that is telling you this part doesn't need to be tested?
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I don't understand why no one is blaming the education system? How is it possible that students that are being considered for "advanced placement" are not familiar with file formats? how horrible and backward your education system must be? This belongs to basic literacy in the modern world. Note we're not speaking about old people who were exposed to files for the first time while they had to balance a family life an…
Because in a world where apps do everything for you and 80% of your use is on a phone and the remaining 20% is either for a once a year use case, you don't need to worry about image formats. Even as a software engineer, I haven't used a desktop or windows in 5 years. I haven't used TheGimp (or any other non web/app image manipulation software) in 3 years.
from my experience converting ppt/word to pdf is a common enough use case that I would've assumed the majority of non-tech people run into it.
Latex is also a common case where you run into file extensions.
note I'm not expecting them to understand the difference between extensions, just what they mean and how to google how to convert between them.