TOTP and the Google Authenticator app? Aside from the development cost (perhaps not even that, since anything supporting 2FA seems to support TOTP natively these days), it costs exactly zero USD to set it up.
Except you actually want them to learn a lot, not just a little: it starts with one very specific bit of information, but then you realize that in order to understand that, you need four more bits of knowledge, but each requires six more, and those each require two more, but those in turn require four more, and... you get the point. The same way you start with a simple question: "If I have a logo in Great Britain that kinda looks like this other one in Massachusettes, is that okay?", and it snowballs pretty quickly into a full-blown research on common law including the 1528 case of Jane Doe v. Henry VIII and the 1796 case of Smith v. State of Massachusettes before you say eff it and instead go to a qualified lawyer.
You don't see this in action, not very often, because by the time they enter your world, people have already learned this, and head the entire process of with the phrase "It's not my problem, I don't really care, just make it work!". And it's true, it's not their problem, it's yours - that's why they pay you instead.
As a professional, you probably have a very different concept of "basic" than they do. To continue your analogy, their concept of "basic" is hammering in a nail straight, while yours is more like juggling four hammers to drive in three nails in a board over your head. Just because it's basic knowledge to you, it may not be for others.
Let me turn this around for you for a moment... Do you know how to, say, navigate the mazes of international copyright law? Run an ad campaign across multiple social platforms? Or balance ledgers? Do you want to learn these skills?
The same way you're good at IT, those people are good at something else. And the same way you're not going to be interested in the intricacies of their domain, they aren't in yours. And that doesn't make them any less intelligent than you.
I work half support, and I need to deal with irate PM/management types on a daily basis. No, they don't want to understand how our product works. They wouldn't if they tried. Yet, somehow, there's always a conversation like this: Client: I just don't understand, why can't you do X? Me: Listen, I can get into the details why that's not possible, but I don't think you want to hear it. Do you want to hear it? Client: Try me! [5 minutes of moderately in-depth technical explanation on database and platform architecture and algorithmic complexity] Me: So that's why what you're asking is not possible and will not be possible in the foreseeable future. Now do you understand? Client: I guess I see why that won't work, okay... As I've noticed, people say they don't care, but as long as they can parrot it back to their boss/client why their bright idea won't work, they're willing to flex their mental muscles.
Didn't Sky already do this in Britain? They even had a Doctor Who special that let you use Sky RedButton to point out stuff to the Doctor during the episode, and if you missed the cues, the scene unfolded differently (but did not affect the overall plot).
Well, feelings affect how one perceives reality (how the facts register to the person), which, for lack of a better alternative, is the reality as far as one is concerned.
That said, "Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what’s “true, fake, or otherwise,”" - nobody gets to make that call. Truth is truth, no matter the subjective reality of the viewer, and it remains truth whether or not one believes it.
You are aware that no nuclear exchange in our lifetime will be "limited", right? Once somebody launches the missiles, no matter who they are aimed at, protocols take over and suddenly, everyone is launching everything at everyone.
The line between MAD and MAS is razor thin, and MAS only works because so far, all leaders with nuclear arsenals have thought it's better to keep on living than to be vaporized.
As for the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis flared up and down so fast, the Bulletin did not have time to react by moving the clock. It was like 23:59:59.750+0000, but they couldn't get together and debate it fast enough for the clock to actually reflect that.
They're quite far from the cap (21 million, out of which app. 17 million have been mined). What they can't scale is throughput: the Bitcoin network can manage about 10-14 transactions per second, while Visa for instance executes about a hundred times that per second.
Now, miners can apply all the hacks they want (SegWit and co.) but if the system wasn't made to scale, no amount of patching will make it scale.
As an afterthought, I should add that I put the word "required" in quotes because it's not like "Read these books or we're terminating your probation right this instant!", but more along the lines of "Here, these are the standards we hold ourselves to and this will be the minimum level of quality we will be expecting from you." - anyone is free to say no, and even get away with it, but if they write unclear, badly documented code, no matter its performance, they will get infinite amounts of shit during their code review.
To date, nobody has refused to read them, nor did we have to remind people more than once or twice to name variables and functions properly and write DartDoc/JavaDoc in their code. I read them, and even I got a metric ton of comments on my first review, but mostly from a performance/robustness aspect, not for style.
No, it's not right for an employer either, actually. You don't air the dirty laundry to the public from either side of the argument.
How often do you hear the "juicy details" when a Fortune 500 company changes CEOs or other officers? Don't kid yourself, they aren't saints any more than I am (and I know I'm not), yet the only line the public hears is "Left with mutual agreement" - saying anything more would doom either side (nobody wants to work for someone who exposes the dirty secrets, and conversely, nobody wants to hire a potential liability whose default way of getting their way is to threaten defamation).
Sure. The first couple of weeks (two-three, usually) are usually spent getting to know the languages (mainly Dart these days) and the code base anyway, and since the seniors are otherwise occupied, "down time" between questions and pair programming sessions can be spent reading, sorting out various bits of paperwork, etc.
They're generally eager enough to take the books home anyway (yes, we hand out the hard copies:) ).
Are you in HR? Abusive employers are the unprofessional ones. It is a public service to expose them. Power and money grubbing scum are not deserving of your imagined "professionalism", you have Stockholm syndrome.
No, I'm Chief Support Engineer. My sense of "professionalism" comes from an avid reading of Clean Code and Clean Coder, two books that we (our company) holds in the same regard as the Bible, and is the first two books for new hires as "required" reading.
An abusive employer can be exposed via other means, job seekers hardly look for a workplace review on Google Maps, do they? You can talk to your superiors, there are employment courts/lawyers that can help you fight abuse, there are ways other than ranting about them on a forum...
Are you saying you think the unwashed masses are graceful and/or professional?
They should be.
That they have any consideration for future repercussions to their actions?
They should, if they don't, they shouldn't blame prospective employers if they don't want to hire hostile, toxic people.
That they are capable of even remembering that they did this a week later?
That is wholly irrelevant to the question, I think. But if you think otherwise, please do expand on your point.
You think that acting sensibly would be more important than the 5 minutes of 'fame' they felt they would get from posting some stupid troll-rant the moment they left a job?
That would hardly be "fame", correct. I think it's more therapeutic to type up the rant, take a deep breath, and hit Ctrl+A, Delete. That usually helps for me when I have some pent up frustration.
Interesting... Want to buy a bridge?
No thanks, I'm a Titan pilot, I make my own bridges:) (EVE Online)
Seriously, though, I'm not trolling. I actually do think everyone should strive to be professional relating to their job. Probably the result of me having read through Clean Coder.
Despite the IP rating, I wouldn't trust the Apple Watch in the ocean. Sure, it may handle swimming strokes, but just once you see something shiny down there and dive for it without realizing you have your watch on and it's toast.
If you want to go swimming with it, get a Nixon Mission - speaking from experience, it's pretty much indestructible so you can go running/swimming/rock-climbing/diving/whatever with it.
So far, I've had this watch for nearly a year, and I'm very happy with it. It's pretty much indestructible, it has survived bangs against rock underwater, functioned as a mini-flashlight in a cave during diving, works as a sleep monitoring device, and can easily go a day on one charge.
My only complaint with it is the pressure sensor, which reads incorrect values if the microphone port is sealed (probably because it communicates with the atmosphere through there). I've raised the issue with Nixon, but with no response.
There was a Doctor Who episode of this as well, where the Doctor spoke to the viewer and the viewer had to assist David Tennant in solving the mystery of the week. It was pretty fun, one time.
I fundamentally agree with the post, that programming (let's distinguish it from the truly repetitive "coding") is a technically complex task.
Ethically, I coud argue it is not: the programmer creates a tool, and like all tools, it is up to its user whether it is used for good or evil. By the same reasoning, one could say forging a hammer is ethically complex, as one cannot know whether it will be used to hammer a nail in a scaffold holding up a wall or to bash someone's head in. I'm not advocating that a programmer is without responsibility for the algorithms they create, but they most certainly do not bear full responsibility for how those algorithms are used.
What I'm more surprised at is why it cannot be "fun"? Just because writing a program is complex and challenging task, it can still be a source of enjoyment for the writer. Seeing the code take shape, knowing that you are tackling a problem effectively, understanding the problem and its solution and holding both in your mind, these can all be sources of enjoyment and happiness for the creator.
I think that emphasizing the fun part is not wrong, as long as one does not forget the frustration that comes with the task.
We have an open office plan, and what evolved organically was to use the person's headphone state as an indicator: if it covers both ears, the person is "in flow" and should not be interrupted, unless for high priority requests; if the headphone is off or only on one ear, the developer can be questioned freely.
> Don't tell the customer anything until the dust settles!
That's one way to handle a major crisis, but if you're transparent about an issue, it puts a lot more minds at ease than it upsets, since then at least your customers know that you're aware of the problem, that you're working to fix it, and that they can communicate with you.
I bought a Nixon Mission when it came out, and I've been extremely pleased with it: it runs Android Wear, meaning it integrates well with my phone; it's comfortable; its battery lasts a workday easily, and charges quickly for sleep tracking at night; it's waterproof down to a hundred meters, as well as being made with Gorilla Glass III, a high-impact chassis, and a stainless steel raised bezel, so it's pretty much indestructible (I've tested it with a thermal shock of 100C -> 20C and no problems); and even the default watch face is cool and elegant.
If I had to mention a downside, it's the lack of a speaker or a heartbeat sensor, and the three Nixon apps (surf and ski information applications) that came rolled into the OS cannot be removed, but I can live with that.
Have you ever used ReactJS? That's being developed by Facebook in the majority.
Then there's a lot of graph theory being applied to your network connections to determine who are you likely to know. A lot of analysis of your browsing habits on FB (and off it, admittedly) to determine what ads you are likely to click on and what pages/communities you may be interested in.
Like it or not, Facebook is doing a LOT of research to keep itself relevant, both in engineering and in the minds of people.
Point, yes. I actually completely glossed over mobile OSes, and in retrospect, it may have been a mistake, given how Windows is attempting to span the entire device spectrum since Win8.
Slashdot Mirror
TOTP and the Google Authenticator app? Aside from the development cost (perhaps not even that, since anything supporting 2FA seems to support TOTP natively these days), it costs exactly zero USD to set it up.
Except you actually want them to learn a lot, not just a little: it starts with one very specific bit of information, but then you realize that in order to understand that, you need four more bits of knowledge, but each requires six more, and those each require two more, but those in turn require four more, and ... you get the point.
The same way you start with a simple question: "If I have a logo in Great Britain that kinda looks like this other one in Massachusettes, is that okay?", and it snowballs pretty quickly into a full-blown research on common law including the 1528 case of Jane Doe v. Henry VIII and the 1796 case of Smith v. State of Massachusettes before you say eff it and instead go to a qualified lawyer.
You don't see this in action, not very often, because by the time they enter your world, people have already learned this, and head the entire process of with the phrase "It's not my problem, I don't really care, just make it work!". And it's true, it's not their problem, it's yours - that's why they pay you instead.
As a professional, you probably have a very different concept of "basic" than they do. To continue your analogy, their concept of "basic" is hammering in a nail straight, while yours is more like juggling four hammers to drive in three nails in a board over your head.
Just because it's basic knowledge to you, it may not be for others.
Let me turn this around for you for a moment...
Do you know how to, say, navigate the mazes of international copyright law? Run an ad campaign across multiple social platforms? Or balance ledgers?
Do you want to learn these skills?
The same way you're good at IT, those people are good at something else. And the same way you're not going to be interested in the intricacies of their domain, they aren't in yours. And that doesn't make them any less intelligent than you.
I work half support, and I need to deal with irate PM/management types on a daily basis. No, they don't want to understand how our product works. They wouldn't if they tried. Yet, somehow, there's always a conversation like this:
Client: I just don't understand, why can't you do X?
Me: Listen, I can get into the details why that's not possible, but I don't think you want to hear it. Do you want to hear it?
Client: Try me!
[5 minutes of moderately in-depth technical explanation on database and platform architecture and algorithmic complexity]
Me: So that's why what you're asking is not possible and will not be possible in the foreseeable future. Now do you understand?
Client: I guess I see why that won't work, okay...
As I've noticed, people say they don't care, but as long as they can parrot it back to their boss/client why their bright idea won't work, they're willing to flex their mental muscles.
Didn't Sky already do this in Britain? They even had a Doctor Who special that let you use Sky RedButton to point out stuff to the Doctor during the episode, and if you missed the cues, the scene unfolded differently (but did not affect the overall plot).
Well, feelings affect how one perceives reality (how the facts register to the person), which, for lack of a better alternative, is the reality as far as one is concerned.
That said, "Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what’s “true, fake, or otherwise,”" - nobody gets to make that call. Truth is truth, no matter the subjective reality of the viewer, and it remains truth whether or not one believes it.
You are aware that no nuclear exchange in our lifetime will be "limited", right? Once somebody launches the missiles, no matter who they are aimed at, protocols take over and suddenly, everyone is launching everything at everyone.
The line between MAD and MAS is razor thin, and MAS only works because so far, all leaders with nuclear arsenals have thought it's better to keep on living than to be vaporized.
As for the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis flared up and down so fast, the Bulletin did not have time to react by moving the clock. It was like 23:59:59.750+0000, but they couldn't get together and debate it fast enough for the clock to actually reflect that.
Two orders of magnitude is not a big difference??
They're quite far from the cap (21 million, out of which app. 17 million have been mined). What they can't scale is throughput: the Bitcoin network can manage about 10-14 transactions per second, while Visa for instance executes about a hundred times that per second.
Now, miners can apply all the hacks they want (SegWit and co.) but if the system wasn't made to scale, no amount of patching will make it scale.
As an afterthought, I should add that I put the word "required" in quotes because it's not like "Read these books or we're terminating your probation right this instant!", but more along the lines of "Here, these are the standards we hold ourselves to and this will be the minimum level of quality we will be expecting from you." - anyone is free to say no, and even get away with it, but if they write unclear, badly documented code, no matter its performance, they will get infinite amounts of shit during their code review.
To date, nobody has refused to read them, nor did we have to remind people more than once or twice to name variables and functions properly and write DartDoc/JavaDoc in their code. I read them, and even I got a metric ton of comments on my first review, but mostly from a performance/robustness aspect, not for style.
No, it's not right for an employer either, actually. You don't air the dirty laundry to the public from either side of the argument.
How often do you hear the "juicy details" when a Fortune 500 company changes CEOs or other officers? Don't kid yourself, they aren't saints any more than I am (and I know I'm not), yet the only line the public hears is "Left with mutual agreement" - saying anything more would doom either side (nobody wants to work for someone who exposes the dirty secrets, and conversely, nobody wants to hire a potential liability whose default way of getting their way is to threaten defamation).
Sure. The first couple of weeks (two-three, usually) are usually spent getting to know the languages (mainly Dart these days) and the code base anyway, and since the seniors are otherwise occupied, "down time" between questions and pair programming sessions can be spent reading, sorting out various bits of paperwork, etc.
They're generally eager enough to take the books home anyway (yes, we hand out the hard copies :) ).
Are you in HR? Abusive employers are the unprofessional ones. It is a public service to expose them. Power and money grubbing scum are not deserving of your imagined "professionalism", you have Stockholm syndrome.
No, I'm Chief Support Engineer. My sense of "professionalism" comes from an avid reading of Clean Code and Clean Coder, two books that we (our company) holds in the same regard as the Bible, and is the first two books for new hires as "required" reading.
An abusive employer can be exposed via other means, job seekers hardly look for a workplace review on Google Maps, do they? You can talk to your superiors, there are employment courts/lawyers that can help you fight abuse, there are ways other than ranting about them on a forum...
So, just to check here...
Are you saying you think the unwashed masses are graceful and/or professional?
They should be.
That they have any consideration for future repercussions to their actions?
They should, if they don't, they shouldn't blame prospective employers if they don't want to hire hostile, toxic people.
That they are capable of even remembering that they did this a week later?
That is wholly irrelevant to the question, I think. But if you think otherwise, please do expand on your point.
You think that acting sensibly would be more important than the 5 minutes of 'fame' they felt they would get from posting some stupid troll-rant the moment they left a job?
That would hardly be "fame", correct. I think it's more therapeutic to type up the rant, take a deep breath, and hit Ctrl+A, Delete. That usually helps for me when I have some pent up frustration.
Interesting...
Want to buy a bridge?
No thanks, I'm a Titan pilot, I make my own bridges :) (EVE Online)
Seriously, though, I'm not trolling. I actually do think everyone should strive to be professional relating to their job. Probably the result of me having read through Clean Coder.
Why would you publicly defame current or former employers? Not only is it rude, it's not graceful nor professional in any way to burn bridges on exit.
Despite the IP rating, I wouldn't trust the Apple Watch in the ocean. Sure, it may handle swimming strokes, but just once you see something shiny down there and dive for it without realizing you have your watch on and it's toast.
If you want to go swimming with it, get a Nixon Mission - speaking from experience, it's pretty much indestructible so you can go running/swimming/rock-climbing/diving/whatever with it.
So far, I've had this watch for nearly a year, and I'm very happy with it. It's pretty much indestructible, it has survived bangs against rock underwater, functioned as a mini-flashlight in a cave during diving, works as a sleep monitoring device, and can easily go a day on one charge.
My only complaint with it is the pressure sensor, which reads incorrect values if the microphone port is sealed (probably because it communicates with the atmosphere through there). I've raised the issue with Nixon, but with no response.
There was a Doctor Who episode of this as well, where the Doctor spoke to the viewer and the viewer had to assist David Tennant in solving the mystery of the week. It was pretty fun, one time.
I fundamentally agree with the post, that programming (let's distinguish it from the truly repetitive "coding") is a technically complex task.
Ethically, I coud argue it is not: the programmer creates a tool, and like all tools, it is up to its user whether it is used for good or evil. By the same reasoning, one could say forging a hammer is ethically complex, as one cannot know whether it will be used to hammer a nail in a scaffold holding up a wall or to bash someone's head in. I'm not advocating that a programmer is without responsibility for the algorithms they create, but they most certainly do not bear full responsibility for how those algorithms are used.
What I'm more surprised at is why it cannot be "fun"? Just because writing a program is complex and challenging task, it can still be a source of enjoyment for the writer. Seeing the code take shape, knowing that you are tackling a problem effectively, understanding the problem and its solution and holding both in your mind, these can all be sources of enjoyment and happiness for the creator.
I think that emphasizing the fun part is not wrong, as long as one does not forget the frustration that comes with the task.
We have an open office plan, and what evolved organically was to use the person's headphone state as an indicator: if it covers both ears, the person is "in flow" and should not be interrupted, unless for high priority requests; if the headphone is off or only on one ear, the developer can be questioned freely.
> Don't tell the customer anything until the dust settles!
That's one way to handle a major crisis, but if you're transparent about an issue, it puts a lot more minds at ease than it upsets, since then at least your customers know that you're aware of the problem, that you're working to fix it, and that they can communicate with you.
I bought a Nixon Mission when it came out, and I've been extremely pleased with it: it runs Android Wear, meaning it integrates well with my phone; it's comfortable; its battery lasts a workday easily, and charges quickly for sleep tracking at night; it's waterproof down to a hundred meters, as well as being made with Gorilla Glass III, a high-impact chassis, and a stainless steel raised bezel, so it's pretty much indestructible (I've tested it with a thermal shock of 100C -> 20C and no problems); and even the default watch face is cool and elegant.
If I had to mention a downside, it's the lack of a speaker or a heartbeat sensor, and the three Nixon apps (surf and ski information applications) that came rolled into the OS cannot be removed, but I can live with that.
Have you ever used ReactJS? That's being developed by Facebook in the majority.
Then there's a lot of graph theory being applied to your network connections to determine who are you likely to know. A lot of analysis of your browsing habits on FB (and off it, admittedly) to determine what ads you are likely to click on and what pages/communities you may be interested in.
Like it or not, Facebook is doing a LOT of research to keep itself relevant, both in engineering and in the minds of people.
Point, yes. I actually completely glossed over mobile OSes, and in retrospect, it may have been a mistake, given how Windows is attempting to span the entire device spectrum since Win8.