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bkeroackon [dead]

"And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

George Washington's Farewell Address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell...

bkeroackon [dead]

Coming Apart by Charles Murray is an incredibly important book that goes into detail about this including immense amounts of statistical data. The core of American civilization is based on Judeo-Christian values and the fact that faith in those are rotting away is directly leading to slow-motion social collapse. I understand the average HN reader is probably areligious (the book goes into the class dynamics of why this is) and skeptical of anything not science-related, but the deleterious effects are serious and real.

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/...

bkeroackon My Google job was tedious and pointless

Oh I'm not defending him. Some of his points were interesting but he seemed determined to piss everybody off to the point of no return. However that stuff happened after he got himself fired from Google.

My point is that Google is not particularly tolerant of dissent, or at least a specific type of dissent. Even back then (it seems worse now).

bkeroackon My Google job was tedious and pointless

Counter-example: Michael Church (who was also aggressively banned from HN, not coincidentally)

bkeroackon Google commits $1B in grants to train U.S. workers for high-tech jobs

Exactly. Instead of colluding to artificially depress wages, flood the market with trainees to naturally and legally accomplish the same end.

bkeroackon Google commits $1B in grants to train U.S. workers for high-tech jobs

...which will depress the wages of everyone on HN reading these words. Especially entry level engineers or those without CS degrees.

"Coding bootcamps" are the new DeVry IT program of the 2010s.

bkeroackon Beijing Pushes for a Direct Hand in Big Chinese Tech Firms

> Adds the voice of a civic minded, non-profit entity to the board.

Wat. We are talking about the PRC here. A totalitarian communist regime. "Less brutal"?

bkeroackon Security.txt

The first thing every attacker will do: replace security.txt

bkeroackon Building and using a 29-year-old compiler on a modern system

The entire reason GCC exists is politics. The same can be said for the rest of the base GNU system.

bkeroackon Golang: Don't be afraid of makefiles

Whenever someone says "X is one of the dumbest ideas" there are two possibilities:

1. The person who came up with the idea is actually very stupid.

2. The person speaking doesn't fully understand the idea, or all applications of it.

Guess which option is more commonly true?

bkeroackon GM and Cruise announce first mass-production self-driving car

Insane for whom? Regardless of rate of depreciation it's still an asset. The relentless drive to push everything to rental transfers value from individuals (as equity) to industry/corporations in the form of operating profit. There's a reason why much of the economy is moving this way and it isn't beneficial to the vast majority of us.

bkeroackon GM and Cruise announce first mass-production self-driving car

"when the software is ready" - every failed project ever.

bkeroackon Nginx Unit

Secure software isn't useful? Insecure software isn't eventually value-destroying?

Really what this sub-thread is arguing is that security Isn't My Job(TM) as application developer. I disagree. Furthermore telling app devs not to worry about it because nginx takes care of everything is a false security blanket that will bite you eventually.

Not accepting unbound input and sane rate-limiting are kind of basic stuff, no? I'm not saying every app developer needs to be a Defcon wizard, just that they should have some fundamental awareness of secure coding standards for web apps if that's what they're building.

bkeroackon Nginx Unit

I would argue that all is part of security-aware software engineering. If you aren't thinking of these things you have no business writing publicly-exposed HTTP applications.

bkeroackon Nginx Unit

It's worth noting that it's rarely necessary or desirable to put an app server like nginx in front of Go HTTP server applications. The Go standard library http and TLS stack are production quality and rock solid. Putting something in front is mostly cargo culting from people more used to the worlds of PHP/Python/Ruby/etc.

bkeroackon A Newbie’s Guide to Cassandra

CQL is the best and worst thing about Cassandra. The pro is that obviously it is very similar to SQL so it's easy to understand, the con is that C* is nothing like a RDBMS so you can be easily fooled into doing dumb/inefficient things with the nice CQL syntax.

I think that Cassandra is best thought of as a fancy K/V store that lets extra data ride along with query results. Don't think of rows/columns at first, it will just screw you up in your modeling. Also keep in mind that the cost for very fast queries is a lot of extra time spent figuring out how to model new data access patterns in the future.

bkeroackon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2017)

ABOUT DSC: We’re on a mission to build a better bathroom. We started with razors way back in 2011, and now millions and millions of Members later, we’ve expanded into shave products, skin care, hair styling, with more to come. We’re always growing and reinventing, and we rely on killer talent to help us achieve our goal of owning the bathroom. If you’re a team-playing innovator, you’ll fit right in. A sense of humor helps, too.

ROLE SUMMARY: Interested in writing Go and contributing to OSS? Excited about Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos and the brave new world of containerized distributed applications? DSC is looking for a Software Development Engineer in Infrastructure (SDEI)! Help us make men’s lives better while building amazing tools to keep our systems humming and our member’s personal information safe and secure.

RESPONSIBILITIES: You will work as a member of our Infrastructure Team, bringing an experienced and pragmatic security-focused point of view to all projects. You will be the nucleus of a cross-functional team to evaluate DSC’s security posture and address any threats that may arise. You will build systems and tools that help all of Engineering to write and deploy more secure code. You will spend at least 50% of your working hours writing code for tools and systems that support DSC Engineering. You will participate in all Infrastructure projects (not just security-related) as a well-rounded Infrastructure/DevOps generalist.

QUALIFICATIONS: Strong in at least one programming language. Go (golang), Python or Ruby are great. Shell languages (or config management tools) do not count. Familiarity with Go, or a willingness to learn (don’t worry -- it’s designed to be easy to pick up). Passion for security or crypto-related topics. If you like to pen-test in your spare time or you write crypto tools for fun we’d like to hear from you! Familiarity with public cloud providers (AWS in particular) is a plus Desire to build tools and automation. Ability to think creatively and invent new solutions to tough cutting-edge problems. Ability to thrive in fast-paced cross-functional teams

Reach out to benjamen+hnjobs@dollarshaveclub.com if interested.

bkeroackon Postmates laid off all its city managers yesterday

I can't prove it but I suspect Postmates was hacked last week. One morning I got a login alert from Postmates (I haven't used them in at least a year, don't even have the app installed anymore). I promptly reset the password. An hour or two later I got a fraudulent charge on the credit card that was on file with them. I've had this card for years and am extremely careful with it (always use chip, etc). I suspect they are storing full numbers without the requisite security controls (a big PCI violation).

bkeroackon Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

I upvoted. :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_I...

bkeroackon Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

Human rights aren't "provided" to you. You are born with them and they can never be taken away, only violated by thugs and tyrants.

bkeroackon Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

If every material thing that the developed world has is a "basic human right", then effectively nothing is a basic human right. Furthermore it conflates material comfort with the inherent inalienable rights that human beings are born with, which I think is quite dangerous.

bkeroackon Rust – Coroutines support merged

http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-y...

Coroutines with "color" are problematic.

bkeroackon [dead]

This is pretty sickening. I'd say the same thing if the other party were victimized. The sole intent of this is to allow terrorism and harassment of individuals. As a society we all need to disavow political violence, regardless of ideology. Democracy dies when people stop voting and start terrorizing.

bkeroackon We Fight for the Users

My sympathies for your condition, but I regret to inform you that the rest of the world does not revolve around you and your symptoms. Speech is not violence harming you, however much you might want to claim it as such.

bkeroackon We Fight for the Users

This is a false argument. Speech is not "harming someone".

This is a tactic that seems to be more common recently: trying to equate expression of ideas with violence, and then claiming that violence is acceptable to suppress this supposed "speech violence".

bkeroackon We Fight for the Users

Would they have done the same for a right-wing website? Just as importantly, would HN be just as pro free speech if they had?

Free speech as a value and ideal must be content-neutral.

bkeroackon How far you can get if you leave the largest U.S. cities at rush hour

A big part of this is that the 405 acts as a giant nearly impenetrable wall separating the west side from everywhere else. The few underpasses that exist (Ohio, etc) become horrific logjams every day. I've spent 45 min going 1/4 mile to get past the 405.

bkeroackon Valid points in the Google manifesto have been totally ignored

Be careful, you might be blacklisted! Remember, thoughtcrime is still crime.

bkeroackon On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

Hacker culture used to trend towards libertarian ideals: free speech absolutism, cyberpunk freedom, etc. Now we have a huge mass of people at Google forming a rage mob to punish someone for expressing an unpopular idea. Should people lose their livelihoods and be blacklisted from the industry because you disagree with them? (see also Brendan Eich)

bkeroackon Legalize It All – How to Win the War on Drugs (2016)

By this definition of win we also "won" the Vietnam war.