chevill

>As a total outsider I'd have guessed that the (in retrospect justified) anticipation of large-scale civil unrest would be driving this...

There's some of that for sure but every presidential election year there's a spike due to people worrying about the possibility of more restrictive gun control laws.

The combination of the anticipation of unrest (as you mentioned), the pandemic (which generated a fear of long-term shortages of essential items, which in turn made people worry about looting and the collapse of the government), and politicians talking about new gun control laws has created a more lasting spike.

>Does it need to be 50 million lines of code?

Probably not and they should try to reduce the size if it makes sense. However, if all of the OS's I listed are above 10 million lines even in the best case scenario a modern operating system isn't going to be anything less than an overwhelmingly large and complex program.

>How many mistakes does someone have to make before we start to suspect there might be problems with relying on that person's work.

There's a lot of legitimate criticisms about modern OS security, whether we're talking about Linux/Android, MacOS/IOS, or Windows. However, we can't ignore the scope of these programs. Supposedly Windows 10 is approximately 50 million lines of code and due to its overwhelming popularity it has almost certainly been targeted more often than all of the other OS's listed combined. I am pretty sure all of these operating systems are > 10 million lines of code.

Whose work are you going to rely on instead? The level of security in these OS's isn't equal across the board, but I assure you zero days exist for all of them and barring some kind of miraculous technological breakthrough, they'll continue to pop-up from time to time as long as they exist.

Suppose someone pulled off a miracle by making a security-focused OS that's easy for non-technical people to install and use and actually gains enough traction to establish a market share. If such a thing existed it would likely get lots of things right where others have failed, but they would also likely get lots of things wrong. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try and it doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage both old and new companies to try and improve the situation, it just means that its an incredibly difficult and likely never-ending task. Security is a process, not an achievement.

This is obviously technically true but so far every case I’ve ever heard about involved a dispute that began on the Internet.

>Should I feel like I have imposter syndrome because I'd be uncomfortable as a professional athlete, something I don't do?

We aren't talking about short couch potatoes being scared to apply to the NBA. That's a justified sense of inadequacy.

We're talking about people switching from one fairly normal job to another one that probably has a lot of overlap with what a person was already doing. Imposter syndrome is the unjustified sense of inadequacy.

Its not a binary thing though. Some people would have a little bit of doubt transitioning to a slightly different role and that's normal. Change is scary to lots of people to varying degrees. However, some people are very competent, yet might be afraid to apply for a higher level position or a slightly different role because they fear that they are actually terrible and that they've gotten where they are due to luck and graft. That's imposter syndrome.

You seem to be misunderstanding what imposter syndrome is. The entire point is that you aren't an imposter but you feel like one.

Its used to refer to people that are actually competent at what they do but they feel like they have faked everything and that the entire world is about to find out. A lack of self confidence is a core part of imposter syndrome.

> most online games with anti-cheat etc.

Any notable exceptions?

What's the performance like compared to the same games in a native Windows install. I tried proton several months ago and I had to go back to Windows because it wasn't even close to good enough as far as compatability goes.

I'd really love to abandon Windows as a desktop OS and just game in a VM though.

Cool project. However, the 2nd highest rated book is incorrectly picking up two different books.

Steven King's On Writing

Zinsser's On Writing Well

Also, some of the posts are recommending one book instead of another book, but being counted as a recommendation for the book that's not being recommended.

For example, someone recommended the Algorithm Design Manual as an alternative to Introduction to Algorithms, but its counted for the latter.

I've heard that those who seek to pay for an education are usually unfit to evaluate its quality before they enter into an agreement. Might have been a paraphrase of a Socrates quote IIRC. I have basic coding skills and do DFIR professionally but I don't know much about data science/ML and I don't have experience with a lot of the math involved. So not being equipped to evaluate the quality of the instructors due to my own ignorance, I had a question:

The website states that 70% of the instructors are industry experts. Are any of them known to the Data Science community outside of being backed by Ycombinator?

>When does linux not "just works"?

The answer to this is "For almost its entire history of being used as a desktop operating system by users without a significantly above average level of technical knowledge."

I think Linux is in a pretty good state for at least the last few years but you have to be either unreasonably lucky or simply joking to be able to pretend you are unfamiliar with the concept of running into various hardware/driver/software issues attempting to run Linux as a desktop OS. Even if you stick to "Linux Certified" hardware like Thinkpads.

Linux is my OS of choice these days, but over the years I've had 10x as many issues as I have with my Windows systems and I probably have 10x as much time in raw hours using Windows.

I think perhaps something happens to those of us with experience and expertise is when we run into an issue we might know how to fix it in 30 seconds or a few minutes so it doesn't even seem like it was an issue to us, simply part of configuring the system. However, when it happens to someone that's not experienced that same "non-issue" might result in them spending 4 hours on forums and various websites trying to figure out how to do something that would only take a few seconds if they already knew how.

That's assuming they don't just throw their hands up immediately and ask someone to fix it for them.

I was one of them and I am still certain that his statement wasn't meant to be interpreted as him literally rewriting every sentence 10-20 times.

That being said this is a great article and the interview you linked is pretty great as well. I'll have to check out the book that recommended the technique of viewing the code zoomed out in a word processor.

I've read quite a lot in my life but I haven't checked out Wodehouse yet. I'm pretty impressed by his work ethic and his general approach. Do you have any recommendations for a Wodehouse novel?

When asked how long it takes to write a novel:

>Well, in the old days I used to rely on it being about three months, but now it might take any length of time. I forget exactly how long Bachelors Anonymous took, but it must have been six or seven months.

I had so much trouble writing papers in college that I couldn't imagine writing four novels a year at his peak. For me I end up spending 95% of my time thinking about what I should write and whether or not my ideas are bad.

PG takes a lot of peoples' claims for granted when they are probably exaggerations.

Gates: >I didn't take a single day off in my 20s.

Most likely this is only technically true because its almost certain he took multiple days off in his 20s. We'd have to look at what Bill means here by working every single day. If he counts spending at least a couple minutes on something work related every day its far more believable than him spending approximately 3650 consecutive days working 8-12 hours or more.

Wodehouse: >with each new book of mine I have, as I say, the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature. A good thing, really, I suppose. Keeps one up on one's toes and makes one rewrite every sentence ten times. Or in many cases twenty times.

This claim is even more unbelievable. I'd bet the average sentence he wrote wasn't rewritten at all, let alone 10-20 times. I think what he actually means is that sometimes he would have to re-write a sentence 10-20 times.

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python and Python Crash Course were both pretty great.

The first one you can read online for free legally. I'm not sure about the second one.

https://automatetheboringstuff.com

He's a great father and I couldn't imagine a better one. Its kind of funny though because as a member of flight crew he jumped out of airplanes on a semi-regular basis and I am terrified of heights. It doesn't bother me to ride in a plane with someone else flying it but I'd probably have to get someone to push me out of one if I needed to parachute.

My father was a flight engineer in the Navy on P3s. While in-flight his job was to monitor the instruments. If you've never seen the cockpit of a P3, its basically wall to wall instruments.

Low visibility flight is frequently dangerous even when you have proper training. A lot of people that fly are surprised how easy it is to get disoriented in low visibility conditions.

Learning to use only instrumentation is a great and valuable skill, but don't forget that even if you know what you're doing the best option is to avoid bad weather if you can help it.

>where he argued that the pill made women fat crazy and promiscuous

I'm not aware of psychological side effects, but weight gain while taking the most common form of birth control pills is expected and normal. At least that's what the doctor told my wife and I.

Milo was basically a professional troll though. His banning was inevitable.

I put everything where its supposed to be. The dishwasher is probably pretty old though. I rent.

I've used several other ones over the last 20+ years and they have all been pretty mediocre in terms of cleaning dishes and not chipping them. Perhaps everywhere I've been has had substandard models. What model is yours?

The modern ones definitely don't do that. I'm an unusually clumsy person and my dishwasher chips or breaks at least 20 dishes for every one that I break myself.

I've run into some interesting business practices since I've gotten into Woodworking/woodcarving. There's a business I buy carving wood from where his process is you place an order, he ships you the items, and then also mails you an invoice and then you have to send a check or money order.

People are simply saying he might have social issues, not declaring it as a fact.

Its a realistic and common possibility in this industry and there's nothing wrong with mentioning it. My parent comment that yours falls under specifically mentions that even if he does have such issues, its no excuse to spend the rest of his life being toxic to people.

I think its probably more likely that he knew what he was doing and did it because he could get away with it as the leader of that project. However, I can't entirely dismiss the possibility that he has social issues because as I mentioned its a common problem.

I think you're mistaking the relevance of his intentions as an excuse for him to continue being toxic. That's not the case at all. I think its very relevant why a person does the things they do. He still has to change and become less toxic no matter what.

If a person bullies because they have some kind of social ineptitude that makes them not realize they were bullying. That person is still a bully. However, its important to recognize if this was the case because the alternative is that he knew better and did it anyways because he knew he could get away with it.

>On the other hand, society should try to be more tolerant and understanding of people who find doing so significantly more challenging than the average person does.

I agree completely. It took me a while to find a place where people didn't just treat me like I'm weird. Kindness, patience, and forgiveness are important things for everyone to work on.

I totally get that and it happens to me too. But I'm just talking about making an effort and the guy from OP didn't sound like he was making an effort at all.

Its possible that if he has social issues like some of us do that he didn't realize how bad his behavior was because everyone was afraid to tell him. But now that he knows I hope going forward he tries to get his anger under control a little more.

Kindness and understanding works both ways. We should also expect people that are naturally good at stuff like empathy and social skills to be patient and forgiving if they see that we try and fail.

Looks like emulators for gaming.

>Training them to play nice may not be possible.

I'm autistic. It is possible for the socially inept to learn to be less of an asshole and to have better interactions with other people. I did it and we should expect everyone to make an effort to be kinder.

I think you're misinterpreting him. All he's saying is that its ridiculous that he simply crosses something off on a calendar and people are acting like he created a brilliant productivity system.

He finds it hilarious presumably because people have been crossing things off on calendars probably since calendars and writing implements both existed at the same time.

While I can technically see that some news organizations are worse than others, my issue is that they are all so bad that they are actively doing significant damage to the world and most of the time they are doing it consciously and intentionally, so I don't really get much utility trying to distinguish them from one another.

And yet while they are all genuinely terrible due to trying to remain profitable AND trying to advance their personal political agendas, people are always trying to use the excuse that "its better than X" to justify supporting them.

My solution would be to ignore the news completely, but that solution isn't effective because I know multiple people that insist on ranting about everything they see/hear from the media on a daily basis.

IMO the media is very important for civilization, but somehow we have accepted that deceit, manipulation, and failure are the golden standard.

I agree that they are most effective for newcomers. I'd also agree that with few exceptions they aren't the most efficient learning process, but as a person that had the luxury of spending about $35k in leftover GI bill benefits on 6 SANS certifications I did get some value out of most of the classes, even when I was an intermediate DFIR analyst. They weren't life changing or anything, but some of them were useful.

>these things all have a much higher payoff than certification does, and any time you spend pursuing a certification is coming at the expense of those other things.

Those are all good suggestions. I think from the perspective of newbies a lot of them (research/ctfs/open source dev) seem really intimidating and/or they might assume (rightly or wrongly) that they have a high barrier to entry. When you combine that with the tendency for a lot of security guys to be super shy introverts for a lot of us its a big deal to socialize or reach out to people for help. Having static, structured forms of training like books, certification programs, online courses, etc, can help people like this get started even if its not the most efficient way to learn. Getting just a little bit of experience can give the boost of confidence they need to start contributing socially.

I guess my point is while I do agree that passion is usually the biggest indicator of success in this industry (and many others), I wouldn't be ready to rule out that a person has that passion just because they have a slow start, aren't confident and don't really know where to start or where to look.

>I'm not quite sure what this implies? That the team who did the initial infection was in fact some sort of FBI undercover?

I suppose that's one of the many possibilities that are implied, but its not even close to the most likely.

I think its more likely that some of the attackers' systems or accounts were compromised (AKA hacked).

>I have been using DDG for a few years, and find a few problems with their results:

I've tried it a few times, this latest time I've been using it exclusively for a month or two and the results are almost completely worthless 95% of the time and I end up using the !g operator. In many cases the results have nothing to do with that I typed at all.

I've de-googled in every other way possible but Google's search engine is so much better than everything else I've tried that the rest are unusable.

I've heard it said before that Google's effectiveness is mostly due to the vast amount of information they have about me but that's not it. I've used lots of computers all over the East coast that I had never used before without logging into an account and Google gives good results every time.