I can relate to the author. Worked for now acquired payment gateway that was for PCI compliance level 1 (over 6 million transactions a year). Getting upset over outdated practices by either the company or the security company testing our software was regular.
I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
301–310 of 335 posts
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I get the impression that they're continuously discovering new and exciting ways that individual facets of individual pieces of software (and the processes around them) suck As a software engineer, I think this is my experience at every job I've had around systems in general.
As a person sometimes overly distracted by grammar, I would like to thank you for using the "As a [description of subject], [subject] [rest of sentence]" construction correctly. Getting this wrong, which is called a "dangling modifier" error, is common. Examples from today's front-page HN discussions: As a new (1 year) coder starting out at 39 years old, this sounds very similar to the path I envision for myself. As…
Would_you_like_to_know_more.gif?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier
(I found this mildly interesting!)
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#303I'm a recovering security guy. When I listen to security people rant, I can see their points and it's a bit of fun, I like a good rant. But I get the impression that they're continuously discovering new and exciting ways that individual facets of individual pieces of software (and the processes around them) suck. All without ever accepting that the entirety of the software ecosystem sucks (and that they're rarely mov…
I hate when I see people throwing in the towel like this. As a two developer company with four separate products doing nearly $500k in ARR collectively, Kumu [1] is a living example that it doesn’t have to be this way. We rely heavily on bash, docker and cloudformation. We only use Ubuntu LTS and we lag a release behind so there are plenty of tutorials available when it comes time to upgrade. After experimenting with…
Docker has its own security nightmares and mis-designs -- for instance, are you using user namespaces? With LXC and LXD user namespaces are the default (and unlike Docker's design, they can use different ID mappings which blocks inter-container attacks). There are plenty of other missteps I can think of.
(I am a maintainer of runc and have contributed to Docker for a long time, as well as collaborated with the LXC folks.)
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#304The problem with the security mindset is that security goals are relative to other business goals within almost every organization. A breach can be OK. A rebuild can be OK. Some downtime can be OK. It depends on the system. To put it eloquently: I don't trust security people to do sane things. - Linus Torvalds (2017) ... via https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
> I don't trust security people to do sane things Seriously. Security decisions that demolish UX can tank entire products. Recent-ish example: Oracle VirtualBox. Used to love that software and I would recommend it to friends needing VMs. They added a new hardening feature that makes it unusable on my setup for whatever reason (VMs fail to start with "hardening failures"). There is no option to disable the hardening f…
The funny thing is, VirtualBox is the “best” product in principle, it’s adopting security by default and has one more feature on the bullet point list. Analyzed in isolation everybody would agree that’s good, yet the overall value for the user, considering all the use cases, is lesser, because the definition of “better” was “more restrictive”.
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a person sometimes overly distracted by grammar, I would like to thank you for using the "As a [description of subject], [subject] [rest of sentence]" construction correctly. Getting this wrong, which is called a "dangling modifier" error, is common. Examples from today's front-page HN discussions: As a new (1 year) coder starting out at 39 years old, this sounds very similar to the path I envision for myself. As…
If you're going to pedant, at least fix your first "correction" so that it includes its subject.
Ha! You got me. Poor editing. Please delete "to the" in the corrected example.
(or maybe I was just adhering to Muphry's law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law.)
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a person sometimes overly distracted by grammar, I would like to thank you for using the "As a [description of subject], [subject] [rest of sentence]" construction correctly. Getting this wrong, which is called a "dangling modifier" error, is common. Examples from today's front-page HN discussions: As a new (1 year) coder starting out at 39 years old, this sounds very similar to the path I envision for myself. As…
I read the examples of dangling modifiers you give as assuming "Speaking" at the start of the sentence. So, e.g. "Speaking as a new (1 year) coder ... this sounds very similar...".
That's still a dangling modifier, because "this" is the subject of the sentence, and "speaking" doesn't modify "this"; rather, it's meant to modify an "I" that's not in the sentence.
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
Enterprise architecture done well; but the tooling is incredibly difficult, it's expensive and you need a culture devoted to engineering discipline over raw productivity. Other industries manage this just fine: manufacturing and defense contracting are two that come to mind. Both industries have pretty good work / life balance for their employees. Tech is just worse because we haven't unionized like both of those ind…
> you need a culture devoted to engineering discipline over raw productivity Where can I find this? Sign me up -- please!
> Where can I find this?
In industries where engineers are unionized.
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate when I see people throwing in the towel like this. As a two developer company with four separate products doing nearly $500k in ARR collectively, Kumu [1] is a living example that it doesn’t have to be this way. We rely heavily on bash, docker and cloudformation. We only use Ubuntu LTS and we lag a release behind so there are plenty of tutorials available when it comes time to upgrade. After experimenting with…
Docker has its own security nightmares and mis-designs -- for instance, are you using user namespaces? With LXC and LXD user namespaces are the default (and unlike Docker's design, they can use different ID mappings which blocks inter-container attacks). There are plenty of other missteps I can think of. (I am a maintainer of runc and have contributed to Docker for a long time, as well as collaborated with the LXC fo…
I love lxc/lxd. Its really a shame that there is little to no interest by the lxd team in supporting the oci container format.
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
I've worked in the field as a professional since around that time and as an amateur since 1995.
Things Linux did better at that time:
- installation experience, os: installation of a "pre-installed" Windows laptop could take up to 4 hours before you had finished completely.
- installation experience, additional software: I was good at removing Windows spyware and adware back when that was a local problem. Never had any Linux user with that it problem.
- driver issues: 50/50, since around that time hardware would mostly "just work" unlike Windows were one would typically, again at that time, have to hunt around the Internet or dive for the cd. Reason why Linux don't win hands down was because if something wasn't supported it would often be a dead end until next distro release, sometimes longer.
- end user support, other ux issues: the same, which means Linux probably win with a comfortable margin since Windows had the benefit of everyone "knowing it" and still didn't come out way ahead.
- in addition Linux typically is faster, even to this day, which is a huge issue with some users.
You might have noted I wrote in many areas, not all.
For users who earn their livelihood with Autocad and Photoshop I'll have a hard time recommending Linux. Same goes for people who have tried Linux for a few weeks and still don't like it. It might be preference or it might be stubbornness, I don't care.
But blanket statements like the one I replied to:
> As well as cutting 98% of your workforce as no office employee knows how to work on anything different.
is just plain wrong. The fails here are mostly related to other issues, not dumb users. (I really don't like that idea that all users are so stupid they cannot change adapt.)