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Things to commit just before leaving your job

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Re: Things to commit just before leaving your job

#51

Post by josephmosby »

PCI-compliant networks often contain checks for credit card numbers being sent in plaintext over the network. Problem with that is that credit card numbers are computed according to a formula, and it's really easy to generate a bunch of fake 16-digit numbers that will pass the check. So if you want to troll your security team, generate a CSV with a stack of credit card numbers and drop it in a few places on a server. Even better, set up a script to send it over the network somewhere. Then wait for the scan.

Piece on check digits, for reference: http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/july42013/index.html

Re: Things to commit just before leaving your job

#52

Post by hydrogen18 »

masklinn wrote: post #18
Kenji wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course :) Basically this removes the volatile keyword from your code and replaces it with... nothing. If a variable is declared volatile, it disables compiler optimizations and signals the compiler that this variable can be modified at any time (e.g. by hardware or other threads). Omitting volatile can lead to nasty concurrency bugs (e.g. if the optimizer optimizes spin locks away). In the worst case, such bugs ar…

> Omitting volatile can lead to nasty concurrency bugs (e.g. if the optimizer optimizes spin locks away). In the worst case, such bugs are extremely hard to reproduce (and thus debug) but lead to deadlocks and/or crashes in case they do occur. In C and C++, volatile is not intended and must not be used for synchronisation primitives, it is not a memory fence (so it does not force cache coherency and does not prevent…

While you are absolutely correct, you will find no shortage of experienced employees at large companies that will disagree. In fact, they will insist that the only purpose of volatile is a primitive for synchronization. I actually had a conversation where a developer insisted that by declaring a variable volatile all operations on it were atomic.

Of course at this same company a developer insisted that if you use the mongoDB client libraries in your software, your software can never have data consistency problems.

Re: Things to commit just before leaving your job

#53

Post by htor »

happywolf wrote: post #29

The horror story that I heard was a disgruntled engineer silently replaced the source codes (C++ based) in the project with compiled binary object files and he kept the source codes on his local computer, not checking those in. He did this over an extended period of time to make sure this crept into the backup tapes as well. No one found out because each engineer owned a code module of their own. Then he resigned. Wh…

That's insane.. He must have really hated his job.

Re: Things to commit just before leaving your job

#55

Post by toothbrush »

happywolf wrote: post #29

The horror story that I heard was a disgruntled engineer silently replaced the source codes (C++ based) in the project with compiled binary object files and he kept the source codes on his local computer, not checking those in. He did this over an extended period of time to make sure this crept into the backup tapes as well. No one found out because each engineer owned a code module of their own. Then he resigned. Wh…

My god, i'm surprised that person didn't land up in court :/

Re: Things to commit just before leaving your job

#56

Post by nicolas_t »

tajen wrote: post #44
DeusExMachina wrote: post #31

It is always a funny joke to say "commit this when you leave a job". But I always wondered if there are people that actually do this. Although it could be funny and give a sense of revenge for some wrong (perceived or real) that the person leaving might have suffered, I don't think this would be a good idea. Contracts usually include liability for gross negligence or wilful misconduct. Does anybody have a record of t…

Obviously most of those fall easily under gross negligence. However, I threatened to use this for the company I quit in 2010 and the threat was enough. We were negotiating and they thought a share of 100-0 in favor of the employer was ok. The law was 100 in favor of the employee. After threat we ended up at 50-50.

How would the threat have worked? If they had source control, they could just get your code before you made the threat?

Re: Things to commit just before leaving your job

#58

Post by msandford »

cgranade wrote: post #17
Kenji wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course :) Basically this removes the volatile keyword from your code and replaces it with... nothing. If a variable is declared volatile, it disables compiler optimizations and signals the compiler that this variable can be modified at any time (e.g. by hardware or other threads). Omitting volatile can lead to nasty concurrency bugs (e.g. if the optimizer optimizes spin locks away). In the worst case, such bugs ar…

That would also break the trick of declaring something `const volatile`. While that seems like a contradiction, I've heard of it being used to force the compiler to include a symbol in the final object file. In particular, I've seen it used to make a poor-man's plugin architecture.

It's not as crazy as you think. "volatile" means that something else other than us can change the value, somehow. "const" means that we aren't allowed to write to it.

So what is that? It's any kind of input. Like memory mapped GPIO.

Re: Things to commit just before leaving your job

#59

Post by Kequc »

wil421 wrote: post #6
yarper wrote: post #2

We've got a guy in the office that merges the past over the present all the time. He's not quitting but I imagine if you were to try to break things this would be a good way to do it.

Got a offshore guy just like that. Constantly committing his whole project where most files are out of date and only the few he worked on are not. There's no reason for him to commit javascript files he doesn't even work on the front end. It took me forever to figure out he wrote over my files the other day.

Sounds like one of those new git conventions that becomes hot every little while. Scripts are written that automate a 10 line git process which along the way gets mangled or copy-pasted wrong and you end up there.

Re: Things to commit just before leaving your job

#60

Post by branchless »

verelo wrote: post #49

I would suggest before you leave your job, you say "it was nice working with you" to the people you liked working with, and absolutely nothing to those who you did not enjoy working with. The tech world is big in some ways, but also equally small in others. A select few might find this funny, but others will not appreciate their day (or longer) spent debugging your practical joke...and on the chance you actually get…

It's the correct advice, but I'm sure 99% of people reading this are seeing it as simply a joke. For the other 1% see above.
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