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begueradj

897 karma · joined January 8, 2018

I am Billal BEGUERADJ. Software developer, pentester & entrepreneur. Billal Begueradj's blog is: www.billalbegueradj.com
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begueradj··on Jean-Pierre Serre turns 100
"When I was 14 or 15, I used to look at these books, and study them"

Smartphones prevent most teenagers of this era to read a book. This may apply to lots of adults.

begueradj··on Software is about people, not code
Every product is about people.
begueradj··on 100 Best Novels of All Time
None of Albert Camus' work is mentioned ?!
begueradj··on Kent Beck: Parkinson's
Some research suggests that highly educated individuals may have a slightly higher risk of being diagnosed with Parkinson.

Wishing you all the best.

begueradj··on The three year myth
> Your performance review is solid, of course, your deliverables unimpeachable, but something begins to feel increasingly off. Your colleagues are in more meetings, but your task list only grows longer. Your progress on said project is appreciated by your boss and team, maybe even your boss' boss, but never really recognized.

Managers sabotage talented employees: https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/what-drives-ma...

begueradj··on Sometimes your job is to stay the hell out of the way
Not all wolves work in packs.

Hint: think of the widespread expression used in terrorism debates: "Lone wolf". It's a self radicalized/motivated individual acting independently and alone.

begueradj··on Sometimes your job is to stay the hell out of the way
> i have been seen wolves accomplishing amazing feats and being sidelined for not being team players by mediocre leadership because the leadership did not get recognition.

That's the norm across all industries.

begueradj··on Indifference is a power (2015)
My whole comment refers to the "Propaganda" book by Edward Bernays.
begueradj··on Indifference is a power (2015)
Since the Covid theater, Stoicism is everywhere: that's why I don't read about it anymore because wherever the mass and Pavlov dogs head, the truth is elsewhere.
begueradj··on Eat Real Food
They also received financial aid depending on the land surface they have (at least in Europe)
begueradj··on Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)
>Sugar Papers Reveal Industry Role in Shifting National Heart Disease Focus to Saturated Fat

But sugar-sweetened foods contain saturated fat ... so ?

begueradj··on Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
> The article (or the survey it's based on) sounds extremely misguided though

Unfortunately the entire Internet is bloated with such extremely misguided jokes. Here is another extremely misguided joke:

"We have a fundamental problem in the way we develop software. A large percentage of software is created by people who were never trained on the basics of security. " [1]

[1]: https://buildingacareerinsecurity.com/why-developers-dont-kn...

begueradj··on Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
You must be a developer only :)

https://www.securecodewarrior.com/press-releases/secure-code...

begueradj··on Vietnam bans unskippable ads
Both here and on the source post there is a typo in the title (Vietnam instead of Vienam).
begueradj··on Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
>Gmail isn’t even the worst offender, it’s just a more popular one. The Tesla and Crypto.com apps are around 1 GB each.

One reason is those are typically apps which need to be heavily secured. So behind the seemingly "simple" user interface and functionalities, there's so much security related code to ensure their "safety".

More importantly, it's difficult to code without dependencies.

begueradj··on Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
> if you are demonstrating performance at your boss's level, that's evidence/proof that a promotion is warranted.

It can not be farther from the truth.

The best way to stay in the bottom is to work hard, to focus on work so that others have time to focus on advertising themselves, take credit of your good work and backstab you for everything else, befriend and lick the shoes strategically -even develop bed skills, for some- while you isolate yourself by sweating and believing everyone will understand or care about how you optimized that for loop.

begueradj··on The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café
When you sit in a café, even when you do nothing as the author said, you are still not alone because you are visually (looking at her, for example) and audibly (listening to them, for example) active. Like in any other public space, you are passively interacting with others, hence you are not "sitting alone".
begueradj··on I charged $18k for a Static HTML Page (2019)
More contributions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19921386
begueradj··on Cold-blooded software (2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38793206
begueradj··on Jeffgeerling.com has been migrated to Hugo
Third party options (Disqus, for example)
begueradj··on Jeffgeerling.com has been migrated to Hugo
The posts looks pretty smooth to read.

You list all the links to posts on the landing page: what if you have 1000, 2000 posts ? Have you thought of paginating them ?

begueradj··on Drugmakers raise US prices on 350 medicines despite pressure
> Drugmakers plan to raise U.S. prices on at least 350 branded medications including vaccines against COVID, RSV and shingles and blockbuster cancer treatment Ibrance, even as the Trump administration pressures them for cuts

Few days ago, Donald Trump pressured Emmanuel Macron to raise the prices of all medicines. The pressure was made with unspoken threats according to several mainstream French media such as this one [1].

[1]: https://www.tf1info.fr/international/trump-se-vante-d-avoir-...

begueradj··on Project Vend: Phase Two
There is a marketplace platform with the same name in Nordic countries (vend.com)...
begueradj··on The battle to stop clever people betting
> I'd venture that actually smart people don't go near this at all because they know telling yourself "I'm better than others and won't get addicted"

Being addicted is not an intelligence criterion because every human is addicted to something -good or bad.

That's actually a basic principle of how we function cognitively.

- https://psychiatryofscottsdale.com/psychiatrists-honest-take...

- https://psychiatryofscottsdale.com/were-all-addicted-to-some...

begueradj··on Always bet on text (2014)
>Text is the oldest and most stable communication technology

That's completely false: Images were used for storytelling thousands of years before text (compare for instance the Lascaux paintings which are more than 17 000 years old, the Göbeklitepe sculptures and stone drawings (more than 12 000 years old), or the the more than 15 000 paintings of the City of Sefar (Algeria) which some estimate to date back as far as 20 000 years ago to the earliest text known in human history, Kish Tablet, Mesopotamia, around 3500 years old.

begueradj··on How to Reproduce This Book with LaTeX
So many .sty (but not only) files to download elsewhere.

Maybe it's better to include them in the repository itself.

Once all the files downloaded, I run into several compiling errors.

begueradj··on How I Left YouTube
>The problem of "doing more work and not getting compensated" is pretty well-known.

Yes, the reward for more work is always more work. Hard work is the best way to make yourself unseen. Those who get promoted are busy advertising themselves, befriending strategically and may even take credit of your work while you are busy sweating.

>My final conversation with my manager was heart-wrenching. I had prepared a script, anticipating a counter-offer or a guilt trip. Instead, I was met with soft and understanding empathy.

Too much naivety out there to mention empathy even in a startup, let alone when working for a shark as Youtube. That was rather a good news for your manager: no counter offer, but also the fact they never rewarded you internally (L5/6) was a way to push you to leave.

begueradj··on I'm just having fun
What is this new blog trend where I see capitalization disappearing ?
begueradj··on Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025
The 6 first books reflect the quality comments I often see here on HN.
begueradj··on Inca Stone Masonry
How will you do that to stones of granite, quartz or stishovite ? Several authors and experts of all kind say what you said and what the article states are completely unfeasible.
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