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I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

skeptrune.com

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Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#81

Post by cnst »

cosmic_quanta wrote: post #4

> It reminds me of George Hotz’s legendary single week at Twitter in 2022, where he joined just to fix a login popup that was bothering users, then bounced. The author remembers this, uh, event differently than I remember it... George Hotz boldly claimed that he could "fix Twitter search" faster than those lazy Twitter devs, only to bail almost immediately. Hubris! On the way out, he removed that login popup as a sor…

Well, that's a bit of my time gone (re)looking into GeoHot, patent trolls, and now comma.ai.

Comma.AI by George Hotz sounds very interesting, it's basically a $999 "comma 3x" smartphone with an OBD-II connector and a $99 wiring harness that can add an equivalent of a Tesla Autopilot to many cars manufactured in the last 10 years (even Tesla's own cars, too), for a total cost of $1098, whilst being OSS and available on GitHub, and — get this — even having ssh access to your car! Optional cloud subscription plans are $10/mo for your own SIM, or $24/mo with bundled cellular data.

Sadly, it does NOT have an equivalent of Tesla Sentry Mode yet, https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/issues/29912, which is kind of unfortunate, because Tesla's own implementation of Sentry Mode is using 250W of power — depleting the entire 80kWh battery from 80% to 30% in like 7 days (".5*80kWh over 7 days" = 238W) — openpilot would have been a nice alternative at what'd presumably be around 5W or less ("40kWh / 5W" is 333 days).

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#83

Post by codingdave »

makeitdouble wrote: post #79
wavemode wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm aware employment contracts might stipulate it. But violating a contract isn't against the law. Worst case you could get sued (though with an employment contract, the limit of repercussions are generally just termination).

> violating a contract isn't against the law Being binding is kinda of the whole purpose of a contract. If violating it is void under the law the company should change lawyers. To put your argument under a different angle, there are many written laws you can violate with very limited consequences if any, but they are still laws. Contracts aren't written by the country, and enforcing them is civil matter so there's nu…

There are two types of law. Contracts are civil law. Breaking them does not break criminal law. Civil vs. criminal law has different procedures, different burdens of proof, and different potential consequences.

When it comes to contracts, no, there are no "laws", there are agreements between parties that can be enforced if taken to court, and in that sense they are binding. But breaking them does not break any law... it just breaks an agreement.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#84

Post by hansvm »

b8 wrote: post #55

Reminds me when I got banned from Amazon for suspected fraud (had an old account, but deleted my email and number since it was in a lot of DB dumps). After I got hired, I reached out to the guy in charge of the anti-fraud team at Amazon, and got unbanned. Emails to support etc. did nothing before I reached out internally (unbanned by 1am the next day).

Interesting. I still have a bricked phone from my onboarding at Google, and no internal people cared either. There's a tool I could have used to fix it, but it's accompanied by a message saying that if you use it without permission you'll be fired.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#85

Post by daymanstep »

danillonunes wrote: post #73
makeitdouble wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they're working at Amazon now.

Next level epic is hand your resignation letter right after you get unbanned. "My job here is done."

And then banned again the next day.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#86

Post by naniwaduni »

makeitdouble wrote: post #66
rmonvfer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the level of epic I aspire to in life

Except they're working at Amazon now.

tbh you could probably easily have enough gripes with Epic to do this too... but then you'd have to move to Wisconsin.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#87

Post by miniBill »

buggy6257 wrote: post #82

I specifically attempted to get a job at Discord so I could submit a PR to make giant emojis be a toggle setting rather than automatic. I know the feeling. (If anyone works at Discord, please me and the rest of my server are begging you)

I don't know if this helps but I've been adding a full stop next to emoji exactly for this. It doesn't fix it for ~new people but it's something for yourself?

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#88

Post by xmprt »

hansvm wrote: post #84
b8 wrote: post #55

Reminds me when I got banned from Amazon for suspected fraud (had an old account, but deleted my email and number since it was in a lot of DB dumps). After I got hired, I reached out to the guy in charge of the anti-fraud team at Amazon, and got unbanned. Emails to support etc. did nothing before I reached out internally (unbanned by 1am the next day).

Interesting. I still have a bricked phone from my onboarding at Google, and no internal people cared either. There's a tool I could have used to fix it, but it's accompanied by a message saying that if you use it without permission you'll be fired.

> accompanied by a message saying that if you use it without permission you'll be fired

Probably why none of the internal people cared either. They didn't want to be the person on the line in case it was determined that the usage wasn't valid.

I'm curious how you bricked it beyond repair though. Most devices have a way to enter a recovery/flash mode where you can upload your own firmware from the bootloader. And if you haven't unlocked the bootloader then I don't get how you could have bricked it unless there's an Android bug... which would have probably triggered a more serious look.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#89

Post by sreekotay »

jldugger wrote: post #56
stevesimmons wrote: post #53

If Google Maps would like to hire me so the km/miles switch can remember I only ever want to see distances in km, my contact details are in my HN profile. I must have changed that back from miles once a fortnight since Google Maps launched 20 years ago. That's 500 times. Totally ridiculous for a company who core goal is profiling their users...

> That's 500 times. Totally ridiculous for a company who core goal is profiling their users Seven interviews later and 1 PR later: Fails in A/B due to declining user engagement

Nailed it in one. Or (similarly) never makes the priority/cut-off list because "what metric does it move?"

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#90

Post by xmprt »

buggy6257 wrote: post #82

I specifically attempted to get a job at Discord so I could submit a PR to make giant emojis be a toggle setting rather than automatic. I know the feeling. (If anyone works at Discord, please me and the rest of my server are begging you)

Discord is an electon app IIRC so in theory it should be possible to make a client side mod which fixes this. Not sure if that would result in your account getting banned though...
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