Usually a sign of multiprocessing/multithreading going wrong, e.g. accessing the same resource without proper locks like opening the same logfile in different processes and trying to write simultaneously. Those errors can be triggered just by reformating the code (or obfuscating in this case), thus changing the runtime behaviour slightly. Hard to find, especially since they’re dependent on the speed/workload of the machine running the code.

You are aware that the impossible sections were on purpose to sell hint books and to make money with the telephone hintline which one could call being stuck?

In short: it’s always like this, sometimes more, sometimes less. And guess what: it’s the main part of the job. As a developer you have to understand what the customer (your boss) needs (sometimes not what they say they want) and to figure out how to do that by yourself. It’s nice to have colleagues you can ask, but it’s like on stackoverflow. The accepted answer is not necessarily the right or good one. Often you have to work with bad documented legacy artifacts (code, api) and figure out what they do. Also the tech changes, you have to constantly keep up with changes and what was great years ago may now be outdated. My advice:

• Do not start coding until you are sure you understood what is to be done.
• if there is no user story to describe the task write it yourself
• write good tests for your code. It’s an art. While thinking about corner cases you often find questions you did not think about at first
• if you don’t know how to do it ask people around you, browse the web, read books. Develop the skills to figure stuff out. Most of the time noone knows the correct answer. It’s your job to find it.
• do code reviews with others, usually both benefit from it
• write clean code

If you don’t like your working environment then change it. Especially when you think you can’t learn anything new there or it is no fun to work there. Go to meetings in your area (meetup or so) or online to meet other developers and ask them about their job. You get a feeling about what is considered a good job in your area. Good developers will always find a good job. Be one of them. As long as you think you’re a god who can code anything, that’s probably not the case. ;-) The best you can achieve is to be an expert in a very narrow field and to be good in some others.

Why would they use bitcoins to pay for the stream? If it’s already bitcoin why bother?

I have never ever heard of a game coming with a help hotline. And I played a lot of games in that time. TIL that

one classic example is the game “The Legend of Zelda” for the NES. The game contained cryptic puzzles and secrets that were not easily solvable. Nintendo provided a hotline, called the Nintendo Power Line, where players could call in for tips, tricks, and solutions. Calls to the hotline were not free, creating an additional revenue source for the company.

Lol. Thanks. I really don’t care. I’m running linux servers professionally since the late 90s, which means I have seen one or the other WTF. And systemd had quit some of them, especially flooding log files and race conditions. For example see https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/7293. That took more than 2 years to fix. And if people like to downvote my personal experience with it they are welcome to do so. I mean all I did was answering a question why one might use a systemd free distribution. Oh and for the downvoters: SYSTEMD IS MICROSOFTS ATTEMPT TO KILL LINUX! Poettering always was their agent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering 😉

with Lemmy and Mastodon the opensource community has a place to really try itself out

Sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

My problem with systemd is that since I’m practically forced to use it that it’s flakey in starting services after boot (independent of service and distro). Since systemd I had to install monit to check if all services came up. Didn’t had that problem before. Or I forgot, it’s been a while…

What about people who complain only about subreddits like r/donut - should they not, instead, complain about the hole thing?

Isn’t the donut the hole thing?