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OP here. I'm very interested in two things: thinking about new types of security tools and studying how different systems, especially those that are not computer related, are secured.

This repo is for people who also fall into the second camp and are curious about how prisons are secured, how museums are secured, etc. And the techniques used to do this systematically -- kill chains, failure analysis, and so on.

Happy to hear your feedback, and sorry if it's a bit disorganized!

veeralpatel979on Ask HN: What are your go to SaaS products for startups/MVPs?

I saw http://viable.fit/ on Twitter today!

veeralpatel979on Supreme Court declines to hear cases over qualified immunity

What's unfortunate is that a lot of bills are not even brought up in the Senate or the House for a vote after the other house passes them, often with overwhelming bipartisan support.

This effectively grants the Senate majority leader and House speaker veto power over any legislation. Even if the rest of the body supports the bill, the leader of the house can just kill it by refusing to bring it up for a vote.

I'm not sure whether this practice happens because the leader of the bodies don't want it to pass, or there's not enough floor time to bring it up, or if these bills are ultimately tucked into an omnibus package and passed into law that way.

The good news is that if people and their legislators truly care about this issue, they can demand that leaders allow votes as a condition for their support. The system is bad right now, but it can be changed.

veeralpatel979on Supreme Court declines to hear cases over qualified immunity

I thought the supremacy clause applies only when federal and state law are in conflict?

veeralpatel979on Learn Security Engineering

Author here; let me know if you have any questions.

This repo is a work in progress. I think it has enough content to be useful to others, so I thought I'd share it. But I hope to continue to study security engineering throughout my lifetime, so it hopefully be a work in progress forever :)

Anyways, this means I would very much appreciate any pull requests or issues with links to new books and papers to check out on this topic!

veeralpatel979on Learn Security Engineering

Hey - author of the repo here.

I'm very interested in learning how to secure anything. What we're securing may be computer-related, but it might be a painting in an art museum or a medieval castle or a ATM machine...is there a set of steps I can follow to secure it?

That's why I created this repo. I've included links to many different books and papers in this repo, as well as notes on any books and papers I've read.

This will hopefully be a lifelong curiosity for me, so if you have any other resources I should look at, please submit a pull request and I'll merge it in. The repo is very much a work in progress; I by no means have read everything that I've linked to. Let's make this a collaborative effort!

veeralpatel979on Trump to Sign Executive Order Waiving Key Environmental Laws

Got it, so you're proposing electoral lines by drawn by algorithms?

I don't see any problems with this myself, as long as the algorithms are fair -- what are some downsides of this, though?

veeralpatel979on Trump to Sign Executive Order Waiving Key Environmental Laws

I hate gerrymandering too. More competitive elections, in my view, makes politicians less partisan and incentivizes them more to deliver for their districts.

But who should determine who draws electoral lines? Right now, it's in the hands of elected officials, so you can at least vote them out if they gerrymander.

If electoral lines are drawn by a nonpartisan commission, who appoints the commission? How do you ensure the members of the commission stay nonpartisan? Can the public hold members of this commission accountable?

Definitely our current system is broken; what are some alternatives to elected officials drawing electoral lines that are promising?

veeralpatel979on Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?

I'd say choose an area to specialize in. Whether it's security, graphics, drones, something else...find what you like and don't just gravitate toward AI/machine learning/blockchain since that's what's hot.

veeralpatel979on Frameworkless Movement

I wrote my first web app with Django. And then Rails. These frameworks taught me how a web app should be structured (models, views, controllers, services, migrations, middleware).

Now, if I wanted to, I could build my own application without Django or Rails, as long as I had something to accept incoming HTTP requests, make responses, and a library to make DB calls.

But I wouldn't have gotten to this point had I not learned Django and Rails first.

I think using a framework turns many "unknown unknowns" into "known unknowns".

I can read my framework's documentation and learn it has built in logging, so logging is something I need to think about when building a web app. It lets you filter sensitive data from logs, so that's something I need to think about.

This is why I was building a type of application I didn't build before, I would look for a framework I could use, or something like it.

I'd use go kit for building a microservice for example. I don't get many of the concepts involved with building a microservice (circuit breakers, service discovery, etc) and hopefully the framework would help me learn them.

veeralpatel979on Frameworkless Movement

I'd define framework as something that dictates your file structure. I don't view React to be a framework; Rails definitely is.

veeralpatel979on I think my BBQ just offered to be my default browser?

https://mightyapp.com/

I think it would be incredibly cool if this tweet especially was turned into reality:

https://twitter.com/Suhail/status/1253781213363363840

veeralpatel979on What I wish I knew about React

Meant to say critiques above, not "technqiues"

veeralpatel979on What I wish I knew about React

I love reading about people's first principles technqiues of different technologies on HN! What do you think React will be supplanted by?

veeralpatel979on Engineering code quality in Firefox

what college was this if you don't mind sharing? I recall a similar thing happening at the college I went to

veeralpatel979on A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t

Pro tip: if you live in California, there's something called IGETC, which is a set of GE classes you can take at a community college. Look up the equivalent in your state.

Once you do that, you don't have to take GE classes at most UCs and CSUs.

Transfer students typically take IGETC classes at community college, which is what allows them to graduate in 2 years once they transfer.

I realized I could take these classes while in high school and so I finished all my IGETC classes while in high school. It did a middle college program my senior year, but even if I didn't I probably could still finished IGETC, by taking community college classes online and using AP scores.

This allowed me to graduate in 2.5 years from UC Berkeley with a CS degree. I didn't have to take any GE classes at all in college (though of course I could've if I wanted to). I then paid off my student debt after a couple months of starting my first job.

This is the best of both worlds: don't spend two years at a CC (which was never too fun for me) and also graduate early from whatever college you go to.

This trick worked for me because I knew from the start I wanted to go to Cal or another UC. If my goal was to go to a private or Ivy League school, this wouldn't have worked.

I do kind of regret not applying to Stanford or any Ivy League schools, but I think going hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to go to a more prestigious school, and having to stay there longer, just isn't worth it. I would've gone to Cal even if I got into these schools for this reason.

Especially as someone who wants to start a startup, this much debt will make you a lot less willing and able to take risks.

veeralpatel979on Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization

non paywalled link:

http://archive.is/mhfp8

veeralpatel979on After killing investigation, Bloomberg News sought to silence reporter's wife

non-paywall link:

http://archive.is/npL70

veeralpatel979on GitHub is now free for teams

Actions, Packages, Sponsors, free unlimited private repos, this...Microsoft's GitHub acquisition has turned out really great so far in my view.

veeralpatel979on How to Edit Your Own Writing

Non paywalled link: http://archive.is/M4COJ

veeralpatel979on Founder's Field Guide for Navigating This Crisis