Category: Humor

Strictly speaking, closer to 700 miles than 500, but
if we really cared about precision we’d just go insaner.

Peripatetic
Jonathan
calls out an inappropriate use of lexical sort, as he wryly suggests he’d be
“Just popping over quickly to the nearby store which is 1200km away from me.” But
he entirely missed also calling out the odd location of the Pargo Greatlinks cafe.
We’ve got you covered, Jonathan.

Peckish
David L.

“Trying to review a pending grocery order, I was challenged
with the perfect Captcha. I’d like to see a bot complete this one!”

Nostalgic
Barry M.

cooly wonders “How long will it take to binge watch Not a Frasier?”.
Meanwhile, I’m reading ‘,–and creating,–‘ and looking for a
content creator to defenestrate.

We got lucky when
D-Coder

found some novel bad date math for us. Is this a failure to convert ms to seconds?
He says “I guess that’s a looooong time from now,” and he’s right.

A poster who wisely wanted to remain anonymous
crowed “Can’t wait to become the master of {{#_iv}}{{/_iv}} in no time!”

Amanda Bynes’ podcast co-host may be a con artist, as alleged by a woman who claimed to be his former roommate.

Amanda has just come out with a podcast that she has been running with her friend, Paul Sieminski.

According to a woman who goes by “EverybodyHatesXtina” on TikTok, Paul used to be her roommate and a pretty awful one at that.

The TikToker in question, adult content worker Scarlett Rae Summers, alleged that while he has claimed to be a scientist, Paul was lying and was, in reality, a “sociopath”.

A woman claiming to be Paul Sieminski’s former roommate has alleged he was a “sociopath”, as he is running a new podcast with Amanda Bynes

Image credits: Amanda Bynes & Paul Sieminski: The Podcast

Scarlett claimed that she used to be Paul’s cat and dog sitter while he would go out of town, for over seven years.

The Tiktoker went on to make the shocking allegations that Paul had “sacrificed” and “unalived” her dog to “a blood moon” type of ritual.

According to Scarlett, Paul went on to delete footage of the brutal act while lying to her about it for several months.

Paul has claimed to be a scientist, but his former roommate has said it was all lies

Image credits: Amanda Bynes & Paul Sieminski: The Podcast

Moreover, in the bombshell TikTok, Scarlett went on to turn the camera to an adorable white terrier type of dog, which she claimed was Paul’s former dog that he had just abandoned.

While Scarlett’s Instagram account is private, it would appear that Paul does not follow her on his own Instagram page.

Both Scarlett and Paul have been contacted for comments.

The alleged former roommate has also made the shocking claim Paul sacrificed her dog

Image credits: everybodyhatesxtina

Image credits: everybodyhatesxtina

Image credits: everybodyhatesxtina

Amanda grew to become one of those infamous child stars who fell from grace in Hollywood. But the tide seemed to finally turn for the former actress.

Amanda announced the surprising new career shift of making a comeback into the world of podcasts, rather than on the big screen.

After staying out of the spotlight for years, the 37-year-old debuted “Amanda Bynes & Paul Sieminski: The Podcast” On December 9. The series, available also in video format, marks the first on-camera project for Amanda since filming the 2010 comedy movie “Easy A”.

@everybodyhatesxtina #stitch with @Amanda B. I will make this video as many times as i have to to get justice for my baby. #fyp #foryoupage #amandabynes #amandabynespodcast #amandabynesedit #amandabynesnow #amandabynesrecovery #viral #dog #dogsoftiktok #mentalillness #abuse #takingadvantage #story #justice #real ♬ original sound – EverybodyHatesXTINA

According to Paul’s LinkedIn profile, he has been a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles, since 2018. Bored Panda has contacted the university to confirm this information.

Amanda fans are concerned about the star’s safety following the accusations

Michael was debugging a system where the J2EE service would just… crash. It was running on a Windows host set to restart the service when this happened, so the outages were brief, but it was a serious problem.

He eventually tracked down the problem to a class called JdbcSchema, which is about 1,100 lines of homebrew database management code. It does “fun” things, like create extra tables in the database to track “foreign key metadata”.

Or, for real fun, it has a getTransIsolation function, which returns the transaction isolation your query should use. If you’re thinking to yourself, “doesn’t the transaction isolation depend on the specific query and workload?” you’d be right- this function changes what transaction isolation all queries are supposed to use based on the time of day. Presumably, this was to support batch processing at night, but it’s a bonkers way of going about it.

None of that, however, is why the application crashed.

  protected Connection createConnection( final boolean canKickOut,
      final boolean forceConnection, final boolean forCounters )
  {
    final boolean canGetSpId = ( !url.startsWith( "jdbc:odbc:" ) );
    String spid = null;
    Connection result = null;
    try
    {
      boolean isClosed = true;
      final int connsSize;
      synchronized( this )
      {
        if( connections == null )
        {
          connections = new LinkedList();
        }
        while( retrieveConnectionFromPool( result, isClosed ) )
        {
          result = (Connection)connections.get( 0 );
          if( canGetSpId )
          {
            spid = getConnectionId( result );
          }
          isClosed = ( spid == null );
          connections.remove( 0 );
        }
        connsSize = connections.size();
      }

      if( ( result == null || isClosed ) && connsSize == 0 )
      {
        final int maxConnects = getMaxConnects();

        
        if( totalConnections < maxConnects )
        {
          LOG.info( "CREATE CONNECTION:  " + url );
          result = DriverManager.getDriver( url ).connect( url, props );
          result.setAutoCommit( true );
          if( canGetSpId )
          {
            spid = getConnectionId( result );
          }
        }
        
        
        else
        {
          result = handleMaxConnectionsReached( maxConnects );
        }
      }
      final int isolation = getTransIsolation( result );
      if( isolation > Connection.TRANSACTION_NONE )
      {
        result.setTransactionIsolation( isolation );
      }
    }
    catch( final SQLException exc )
    {
      throw new LibException( exc );
    }
    incrementConnections( result, spid, forCounters );
    return result;
  }

Now, this function isn’t what was causing the crash, but there are a few highlights here that are worth noting.

First, note that the block which gets a connection is synchronized– they at least put a little thought into multithreading.

Then note that retrieveConnectionFromPool function- you’ll note that the function doesn’t retrieve a connection from a pool. It returns true or false- whether this specific connection can be pulled from the pool.

And yes, they implemented their own connection pooling, despite Java already having a perfectly good solution for it.

Regardless, once they’ve gotten a connection, they’re going to compare totalConnections against maxConnects. At this point, it’s worth noting that we’ve left the synchronized block. incrementConnections, down at the bottom of this function, is a synchronized method, so changing the count is threadsafe, but checking the count is not. Yes, there are loads of concurrency problems when the system is under load.

But if you’ve been reading ahead, you know where the suspicious part is:

		
        
        else
        {
          result = handleMaxConnectionsReached( maxConnects );
        }

“send an email and restart the system”? Uh oh.

  private Connection handleMaxConnectionsReached( final int maxConnects )
  {
    LOG.fatal( "Max connections reached", new RuntimeException() );

    
    System.exit( 0 );
    return null;
  }

So when there are too many database connections, we just… quit. We rely on the host OS to restart our service, because a System.exit( 0 ) just terminates us. Even better, we exit with status code 0– a successful exit. It’s not an error, just a normal part of our operation.

Extra bonus point for the function signature: it returns a Connection, which will never happen, but clearly the original developer dreamed of someday coming up with a solution to expand the connection pool.

It’s also worth noting that the maxConnects value is arbitrary, varies between servers, and has no basis in reality. Someone just picked a config number, and didn’t think about anything else.

Most of us remember playing with LEGOs in our childhood and getting a new set for Christmas seemed like the height of luxury. Those tiny plastic blocks allowed us to create vast imaginary worlds filled with square-shaped people and endless possibilities. Sadly, not everyone can afford a brand-new set. Charlie Jeffers noticed that and wanted to share the joy of LEGO with underprivileged kids, so he came up with a brilliant project, Pass the Bricks.

More info: Instagram

Charlie Jeffers loved playing with LEGOs growing up – the toys taught him many things, such as math and foundations of engineering

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

Young Charlie, like many kids his age, loved playing with LEGOs. He was 4 or 5 when he received his first set of colorful bricks that opened up a world of possibilities. Now a senior in high school, he believes that those famous toys helped him learn math and engineering concepts, improved his focus, flexibility and fostered his creativity. The teen fondly remembered the joy of discovery and building and wanted other kids to experience the same.

Sadly, not every family can afford brand spanking new sets. Charlie felt sad for them and wanted things to change. And what is the best way to turn things around? Be the change you want to see. In 2020, the teen launched Pass the Bricks. At first, he walked around his neighborhood, leaving flyers asking if people had any unused LEGOs they would be willing to donate. Let’s be honest, many of us have a box of various pieces gathering dust somewhere in our parents’ basement waiting to add to the landfills.

By repurposing unloved toys, Charlie and his volunteer-based team save a lot of plastic from ending up in the trash. LEGO, sustainability and making little ones smile? Sounds like a perfect project.

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

Now a senior in high school, the kind-hearted teen realized that not every kid gets to play with these awesome toys

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

And many toys end up forgotten, buried in the landfill

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

Charlie wanted to tackle both problems so he created Pass the Bricks – an organization that repurposes old bricks to aid underprivileged kids

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

Pass the Bricks has an open model program template with four key steps:

• Collect used LEGO bricks;
• Sanitize and sort them;
• Create new sets with the used bricks;
• Deliver the sets to kids in marginalized communities.

Random plastic pieces come together into new original sets such as “Superman Would Love Just One Day To Sleep In Peace” featuring Clark Kent in bed and his suit in the closet, “Antarctic Bathroom” with a grumpy penguin-man, and “Fruit Heist: Stealing The World’s Largest Tomato” that indeed has a very large tomato in the picture.

After the new sets are created, the team then distributes them to the children directly or through partnerships with nonprofit organizations. Charlie has formed close relationships with many, particularly with multiple chapters of the Boys and Girls Club of America. These wonderful friendships allow his organization to distribute toys to more children every month. Huzzah!

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

Charlie and his volunteer team have created many original sets with hilarious titles – truly one of a kind

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

To this date, Pass the Bricks has delivered over 3,055 sets to excited little ones who are eager to begin the magical journey in LEGO world. Their parents are equally appreciative.

“We sent our LEGO bricks to Ecuador with my son’s middle school some years back. I love to think of kids there playing with them,” shared Paola, one of Charlie’s neighbors who contributed to the project.

Let’s not forget the fact that Charlie is still in high school, working hard to earn his diploma and volunteering free time to help other kids. Fortunately, many like-minded people have joined him, currently the team has over 20 people, and the program has expanded to San Francisco, Marin County, Portland, Austin, DC, Richmond, and Los Angeles. Pass the Bricks is looking to scale up in the future, so many more kids will be able to have their very own LEGO sets.

The program has an easy four-step program to give the toys new life

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

Pass the Bricks has currently donated over 3000 sets to children in need and they are just picking up the pace

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

Charlie said that LEGO nourished his creativity and gave him inspiration. If LEGOs help create people like him, then every child should have their own set. With the teen’s help, it is quite possible

Image credits: Pass the Bricks

If you accidentally find your old LEGOs you’d be willing to donate, Charlie created an easy-to-use program template with instructions on how to contribute to the program from the comfort of your home. Not only would you be adding to children’s happiness, but also to Charlie’s ultimate goal – a behavior change so that every LEGO brick has a second life. I wonder how many karma points he has earned by now?

Hopefully, this program will continue to grow, inspiring others to join or create similar ones, reminding people that toys can have long lives and help many generations to learn how to build dream houses. All the brightest scientists and inventors were children once, and perhaps those who have received Pass the Bricks sets will grow up inspired to do many great things!

Did you have LEGOs growing up? What was your favorite set?

People in the comments were praising the teen for his incredible idea