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Retweet of latest_is

2015 Feb 10, 6:35
Automating Tinder with Eigenfaces http://crockpotveggies.com/2015/02/09/automating-tinder-with-eigenfaces.html …
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Retweet of davemethvin

2015 Feb 5, 9:34
When when the defenders of synchronous AJAX appear for the 14th time https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2015JanMar/0523.html … http://i.imgur.com/k4Y5Uhh.png 
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David_Risney: Reading about new Odd Couple TV series includes an interview with Gary Marshal but I can only hear voice

2015 Jan 15, 9:33
David Risney @David_Risney :
Reading about new Odd Couple TV series includes an interview with Gary Marshal but I can only hear @PFTompkins voice http://www.nerdist.com/2015/01/matthew-perry-and-thomas-lennon-introduce-us-to-their-odd-couple/ …
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Debugging anecdote - the color transparent black breaks accessibility

2014 May 22, 10:36

Some time back while I was working on getting the Javascript Windows Store app platform running on Windows Phone (now available on the last Windows Phone release!) I had an interesting bug that in retrospect is amusing.

I had just finished a work item to get accessibility working for JS WinPhone apps when I got a new bug: With some set of JS apps, accessibility appeared to be totally broken. At that time in development the only mechanism we had to test accessibility was a test tool that runs on the PC, connects to the phone, and dumps out the accessibility tree of whatever app is running on the phone. In this bug, the tool would spin for a while and then timeout with an error and no accessibility information.

My first thought was this was an issue in my new accessibility code. However, debugging with breakpoints on my code I could see none of my code was run nor the code that should call it. The code that called that code was a more generic messaging system that hit my breakpoints constantly.

Rather than trying to work backward from the failure point, I decided to try and narrow down the repro and work forwards from there. One thing all the apps with the bug had in common was their usage of WinJS, but not all WinJS apps demonstrated the issue. Using a binary search approach on one such app I removed unrelated app code until all that was left was the app's usage of the WinJS AppBar and the bug still occurred. I replaced the WinJS AppBar usage with direct usage of the underlying AppBar WinRT APIs and continued.

Only some calls to the AppBar WinRT object produced the issue:

        var appBar = Windows.UI.WebUI.Core.WebUICommandBar.getForCurrentView(); 
// appBar.opacity = 1;
// appBar.closeDisplayMode = Windows.UI.WebUI.Core.WebUICommandBarClosedDisplayMode.default;
appBar.backgroundColor = Windows.UI.Colors.white; // Bug!
Just setting the background color appeared to cause the issue and I didn't even have to display the AppBar. Through additional trial and error I was blown away to discover that some colors I would set caused the issue and other colors did not. Black wouldn't cause the issue but transparent black would. So would aqua but not white.

I eventually realized that predefined WinRT color values like Windows.UI.Colors.aqua would cause the issue while JS literal based colors didn't cause the issue (Windows.UI.Color is a WinRT struct which projects in JS as a JS literal object with the struct members as JS object properties so its easy to write something like {r: 0, g: 0, b: 0, a: 0} to make a color) and I had been mixing both in my tests without realizing there would be a difference. I debugged into the backgroundColor property setter that consumed the WinRT color struct to see what was different between Windows.UI.Colors.black and {a: 1, r: 0, g: 0, b: 0} and found the two structs to be byte wise exactly the same.

On a hunch I tried my test app with only a reference to the color and otherwise no interaction with the AppBar and not doing anything with the actual reference to the color: Windows.UI.Colors.black;. This too caused the issue. I knew that the implementation for these WinRT const values live in a DLL and guessed that something in the code to create these predefined colors was causing the issue. I debugged in and no luck. Now I also have experienced crusty code that would do exciting things in its DllMain, the function that's called when a DLL is loaded into the process so I tried modifying my C++ code to simply LoadLibrary the DLL containing the WinRT color definition, windows.ui.xaml.dll and found the bug still occurred! A short lived moment of relief as the world seemed to make sense again.

Debugging into DllMain nothing interesting happened. There were interesting calls in there to be sure, but all of them behind conditions that were false. I was again stumped. On another hunch I tried renaming the DLL and only LoadLibrary'ing it and the bug went away. I took a different DLL renamed it windows.ui.xaml.dll and tried LoadLibrary'ing that and the bug came back. Just the name of the DLL was causing the issue.

I searched for the DLL name in our source code index and found hits in the accessibility tool. Grinning I opened the source to find that the accessibility tool's phone side service was trying to determine if a process belonged to a XAML app or not because XAML apps had a different accessibility contract. It did this by checking to see if windows.ui.xaml.dll was loaded in the target process.

At this point I got to fix my main issue and open several new bugs for the variety of problems I had just run into. This is a how to on writing software that is difficult to debug.

PermalinkCommentsbug debug javascript JS technical windows winrt

YouTube - June System Update Walkthrough for Xbox One OneGuide...

2014 May 21, 6:15


YouTube - June System Update Walkthrough for Xbox One

OneGuide on SmartGlass is coming in the June Xbox One update! The feature I’ve been missing since day one. I don’t think I’m an average Xbox One user.

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CM Punk’s Grammar Slam - Literally vs. Figuratively (by...

2013 Aug 30, 8:00


CM Punk’s Grammar Slam - Literally vs. Figuratively (by Nerdist). This is literally very funny.

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URI functions in Windows Store Applications

2013 Jul 25, 1:00PermalinkCommentsc# c++ javascript technical uri windows windows-runtime windows-store

How I Met Your Mother - Ted’s Kids Like You’ve Never...

2013 Jul 23, 7:45


How I Met Your Mother - Ted’s Kids Like You’ve Never Seen Them (by howimetyourmother)

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robhuebel: Axe Cop coming this summer!   Nick Offerman, Tyler...

2013 May 13, 2:26


robhuebel:

Axe Cop coming this summer!  

Nick Offerman, Tyler the Creator, Me (Rob Huebel), Giancarlo Esposito and Vincent Kartheiser.  

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Google Street View Hyperlapse

2013 Apr 17, 2:00PermalinkCommentsVimeo webgl hyperlapse googlestreetview teehanandlax

laughingsquid: ‘Veronica Mars’ TV Show Attempts to Make a Film...

2013 Mar 13, 11:38


laughingsquid:

‘Veronica Mars’ TV Show Attempts to Make a Film Via Crowdfunding

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Jeopardy! - The Exciting (And Amusing) Teen Tournament...

2013 Feb 21, 4:02


Jeopardy! - The Exciting (And Amusing) Teen Tournament Conclusion (Feb. 12, 2013) (by thechadmosher)

Leonard on Teen Jeopardy was the best.

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John Hodgman’s Apocalypse Survival 101 (by thnkrtv)

2012 Dec 17, 9:11


John Hodgman’s Apocalypse Survival 101 (by thnkrtv)

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“Jon Hamm And Adam Scott’s ‘greatest Event In Tv History’...

2012 Oct 12, 8:41


Jon Hamm And Adam Scott’s ‘greatest Event In Tv History’ Was A Tribute To A Forgotten ’80s Classic
If you know more about Simon and Simon than its intro and general premise, you’re better at TV than I am. If you’ve never heard of Simon and Simon, you’re the BEST at TV because, honestly, Simon & Simon — a CBS series about two mismatched brothers who ran a private detective service; it ran for eight seasons — wasn’t good.

Source: Uproxx

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Decrypt.py: Act like a decrypting hacker on tv (github.com)

2012 Aug 8, 3:34

A python script that d3crypt5 the input pipe’s ASCII content from ASCII garbage slowly into the correct output.

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Daria Episodes in good quality.

2012 Jul 3, 2:45

fuckyeadaria:

Submission from witchbabie. Thank you a lot!

PermalinkCommentshumor daria nostalgia la-la-la-la-la tv mtv video

Funny People: Steve Heinrich, You Don’t Know Jack head writer | Interview | The Gameological Society

2012 Jul 1, 3:38

A veteran of the satirical trivia game series since its first heyday in the 1990s, Heinrich talks about Jack’s writing process, its long hiatus, and that short-lived live-action TV version.

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“House Hunters:” What It Was Like to Be On the Show

2012 Jun 11, 6:48

Apparently they cast folks who have already closed on a house.  Well… at least the folks on the show are non-actors who were actually recently looking for a new house…

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Content ID Run Amok: Isaac's Lip-Dub Proposal Removed from YouTube

2012 Jun 7, 3:14

Waxy roundup of DMCA takedown process stupidity.

So the Scripps TV broadcasts are indexed by YouTube, and the Content ID robots do the rest. And because Content ID disputes are judged by the copyright holder, complaints are routinely ignored or denied.”

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Matter Anti-Matter: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

2012 Jun 7, 3:07

ensignau:

The conversation surrounding how to liberate HBO from its cable partners and create the entertainment utopia viewers have long desired has been fascinating.

The resulting analyses of the numbers has pretty much shown that the amount people are willing to pay is not nearly enough to…

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