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I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

myname.website

71–80 of 335 posts

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#71

"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." N…

> Furthermore your average engineer wouldn't eat a ham sandwich handed to them on the street by a stranger

We would however eat one provided by a café that our colleagues recommended.

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#72

"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." N…

> B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, > If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

Pray tell - what do you propose? Keep fiddling until no one but government officials and high level executives can afford to buy or rent a car?

> No one in management wants the expense or the overhead of actual security.

Wrong. Almost no one wants (and can afford) to _pay_ for the cost overhead you're (completely subjectively) implying would be sufficient.

This fantasy thinking has been going on ever since Ford Pinto, as if safe cars aren't available and everyone is forced to buy unsafe cars. Is there a law that bans Benz or Volvo?

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#73
post #34
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, it took me a long time to accept that people not caring was ok. Now I realize that my dad is frustrated I never learned something as simple as changing the oil on my car. My mom does not understand how I can't name more than two flowers and can't bake a pie. My legal-minded friends are astounded I do not take a day to work on my legal status to pay less taxes. Hell, my wife does the paperwork I am not even…

Just wanted to say this is a really good comment, thanks for putting it out there.

Thanks, you made my day :-)

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#74

"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." N…

> Furthermore your average engineer wouldn't eat a ham sandwich handed to them on the street by a stranger We would however eat one provided by a café that our colleagues recommended.

That's true, and a good point, but a big part of that trust comes from the knowledge that no one can run a café without some kind of oversight and inspection on food safety.

I probably wouldn't eat a sandwich from a bootleg café.

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#75
Don't you think that most of your clients being breached is immaterial in the greater scheme of things?

You seem to be bothered by the "overall picture". I am also prone to this sentiment (not in infosec though) but I am actually consoled by the sort of nihilist nature of things. Maybe even optimistic for being so. I think the stuff that keeps us happy are minutiae.

If you are super keen about APIs then maybe building really sensible APIs along the way will bring you the relief of having something stimulating to work on. At the moment I get a lot of satisfaction from tooling vim to be my super-IDE and everytime I use vim now I get a kind of wry happiness from not having to use all kinds of apps and what-not. I think APIs can be super interesting and useful. For example, I wanted to pull the Bitcoin purchasing history from a site and the answer was... you have to use Golang.

I also get a sort of satisfaction from using Perl in this way. (I use Python too.) It's just that all kinds of wonderful gems were once written in Perl by people that were clearly bored with their lives (exiftool comes to mind).

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#76
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, it took me a long time to accept that people not caring was ok. Now I realize that my dad is frustrated I never learned something as simple as changing the oil on my car. My mom does not understand how I can't name more than two flowers and can't bake a pie. My legal-minded friends are astounded I do not take a day to work on my legal status to pay less taxes. Hell, my wife does the paperwork I am not even…

I can't accept that not caring is ok. The small "I don't care" extends into "I don't care about anything outside my immediate environment" and that has political and eventually global consequences. If their bank account is drained they will care, and get angry, and then maybe do something (but preferably the bank will recompense them in which case they feel better and go back to not caring). Some stuff you just can't…

> If their bank account is drained they will care

For people living in the US, that's just basically an act of God now. The refusal to have a decent ID system has made identity theft laughably easy. Even with top-notch computer security, if you have ever shopped online or swiped a card in a shop that doesn't do in-depth background checks of its employee, you are at risk.

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#77
post #57
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest security investment is to switch your shop from Windows, cutting like 98% of threats out there cold.

As well as cutting 98% of your workforce as no office employee knows how to work on anything different.

And of your productivity for those tied to excel, word, and powerpoint

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#78
post #70
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As well as cutting 98% of your workforce as no office employee knows how to work on anything different.

> As well as cutting 98% of your workforce as no office employee knows how to work on anything different. Techies repeating this should take a lot of the blame for why Windows still sell as well as it does. A 50 year old electrician convinced me to start using Ubuntu 13 years ago after someone at his kids elementary school or something had told him. UX wise Linux passed Windows in many areas around the time Ubuntu wa…

> UX wise Linux passed Windows in many areas around the time Ubuntu was introduced.

Is this something you decided on your own was a fact? If I disagree, would I be wrong, stubborn and/or incompetent?

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#79
post #57
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest security investment is to switch your shop from Windows, cutting like 98% of threats out there cold.

As well as cutting 98% of your workforce as no office employee knows how to work on anything different.

Most of the workforce would have little trouble working on Macs or using Office365.

The actual friction will come from Windows sysadmins with no other practical skills.

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#80
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, it took me a long time to accept that people not caring was ok. Now I realize that my dad is frustrated I never learned something as simple as changing the oil on my car. My mom does not understand how I can't name more than two flowers and can't bake a pie. My legal-minded friends are astounded I do not take a day to work on my legal status to pay less taxes. Hell, my wife does the paperwork I am not even…

Your mom and dad, or grandparents probably didn't need to know, even though they know how. Most of their interactions were with local businesses, with people who, like themselves, were part of the local community. The unofficial grapevine worked pretty well for rooting out the good and bad mechanics, lawyers and florists. Your dad could change the oil, but almost certainly knew which mechanics could be trusted to hav…

My dad was dealing with international teams to manage semiconductors manufacturing at a global mega-multinationals. His dad was the trustworthy mechanics though, that's why he ended being good at cars repairs :-)

I am the one living in the countryside not far from a middle-sized city. I do know, from local community's word of mouth the reliable and cheap mechanic and florist.

Don't fell in the fallacy that things changed globally because you moved from one place to another ;-)

Tracking reputation has never been easier. If you are interested in it, that is.

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