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drodgers

774 karma · joined March 10, 2014

CTO of Stile Education https://stileeducation.com/
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drodgers··on Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks (2017)
Huh, must be a licensing issue. There's definitely a 2013 edition: https://web.archive.org/web/20201124174943/https://www.audib...
drodgers··on Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks (2017)
State of the Art is available as an audiobook.
drodgers··on US must be ready for simultaneous wars with China, Russia, report says
My understanding is that unwilling conscripts are widely regarded as less than worthless in a modern military.

It’s a little different for Ukraine since their conscripts are so highly motivated by defending their home, but even they were turning away recruits for a while. I’m sure the same kind of motivated conscripts could be found if the US mainland were threatened but that’s not what’s being contemplated here.

drodgers··on Not setting up Find My bricked my MacBook
If you bought the laptop with a credit card, you should try doing a charge-back. Airport story aside, the laptop is now bricked at Apple's discretion, so you should just get your money back from them to cover a new one.

CC companies are usually pretty sympathetic in cases like these.

drodgers··on Results of technical investigations for Storm-0558 key acquisition
Also completely failing to check the scope of the request before validating it!

> Microsoft provided an API to help validate the signatures cryptographically but did not update these libraries to perform this scope validation automatically

drodgers··on Results of technical investigations for Storm-0558 key acquisition
I was more talking about the problems of moving data across trust zones rather than retaining it at all. Retaining logs and crashdumps for several years is good, but moving them from a locked-down production environment to a less secure corp account (where they were presumably easier to work with because of the lower security requirements) is why this leak happened.
drodgers··on Results of technical investigations for Storm-0558 key acquisition
This is not confidence inspiring. These fixes are only surface-level, rather than looking at the underlying systemic failures:

- Not storing key data in an HSM.

- Exporting crashdumps outside of the production account.

Redacting private keys and other sensitive data from these will always be failure-prone. Keys are also only just one problem, there will be personal data, passwords etc. in those dumps depending on what process it was.

- Corp environment infiltration not detected at the time (presumably, since this part is pure guesswork)

- Not enough log retention in the corp environment to track a 2 year old infiltration.

- Not assuring that key validation correctly denied requests with the wrong scope.

Fails-with-a-valid-key-with-wrong-(scope/date/subject etc.) are the kind of cases that always deserve test coverage, especially for a dedicated key-validation endpoint. Also concerning that this wasn't found by manual-testing/red-teaming/pen-testing in the time since it shipped.

- Slow detection, slow response, poor communication

drodgers··on Reddit founders made hundreds of fake profiles so site looked popular (2012)
Adversarial interoperability like this would be a great way to neutralise network lock-in effects and create a more level competetive playing field between social media companies. I think we should enshrine protections for this kind of thing.

There was a strong 2019 precedent in favour of allowing this kind of scraping of public content (from LinkedIn in that case): https://www.techdirt.com/2019/09/10/big-news-appeals-court-s...

drodgers··on Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
I recently found that new Sony TVs (which run Google TV as the OS) start up with the option to set it up as a 'Basic TV' or 'Smart TV' right from the get-go.
drodgers··on Features I'd Like in PostgreSQL
I've never looked into this for Postgres itself, but AWS Redshift (a postgres derivative) has enough info in the system tables to reconstruct a create table statement using a view (see: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/awslabs/amazon-redshift-ut...) and I'd guess that you can do the same for Postgres.
drodgers··on Features I'd Like in PostgreSQL
> Reduced throughout for inserts since the primary index pages won’t all be in cache if the keys are randomized. Lose ability to use id as a fast temporal ordering.

You can generate the first few bytes (we use the first 3) of the UUID from a timestamp - that gives you index locality. It's even better than an auto-inc because you can control exactly how much of your index will be used for hot inserts based on how many timestamp bits you use, so you can avoid lock contention around the single latest index page.

> Encourages uuids generated client-side.

It's really an API design choice about whether you allow this, but it can be useful in some circumstances (if you trust the client).

drodgers··on The human cost of neurotechnology failure
Agreed. I meant 'essential' in a weak sense to include all high stakes medical cases, not just literally life and death.

The key thing is that we won't be able to get much benefit from neural implants as an enhancement technology without solving this problem; there's a ton of potential value which will be left on the table because people are reasonably afraid of these risks.

drodgers··on The human cost of neurotechnology failure
I really like the proposal from John Scalzi's 'Lock In' series where companies that produce neural implants have to establish a trust or insurance contract with enough assets to pay for the maintenance of any implants for the lifetime of the recipients, regardless of what happens to the company.

Governments could provide generous subsidies, tax breaks etc. to such funds to reduce the barrier for entry for companies.

Without some solution like this, it's hard to imagine any non-essential neural implants really taking off: who would ever buy a neural lace from a startup — or even an established company like Google who might just lose interest — if there was no guarentee of patches and maintenance?

drodgers··on Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Are Now Open Source
July 2016 and 303 days for me. Great app!
drodgers··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2022)
Stile Education | Melbourne, Australia | Full-time | Onsite (flexible WFH) | Senior Mobile Engineer (Flutter) | Head of Platform Engineering

https://stileeducation.com/who-we-are/engineering-at-stile/

We're a small, diverse, tight-knit team with a mission to radically improve main-stream science education at schools. By creating world-class science lessons, coupled with intuitive tools that allow teachers to take advantage of the latest pedagogies, we’ve already helped several hundred thousand students in Australia get excited about science.

Stile is already used in 1 out of 3 Australian schools, and over the next few years, we're striving to perfect our product and bring our lessons to the rest of the world. This is an opportunity to have a big influcence on education from within a small, high impact team.

drodgers··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2022)
Stile Education | Melbourne, Australia | Full-time | Onsite (flexible WFH) | Senior Mobile Engineer (Flutter) https://stileeducation.com/who-we-are/engineering-at-stile/

We're a small, diverse, tight-knit team with a mission to radically improve main-stream science education at schools. By creating world-class science lessons, coupled with intuitive tools that allow teachers to take advantage of the latest pedagogies, we’ve already helped several hundred thousand students in Australia get excited about science.

Stile is already used in 1 out of 3 Australian schools, and over the next few years, we're striving to perfect our product and bring our lessons to the rest of the world. This is an opportunity to have a big influcence on education from within a small, high impact team.

drodgers··on Protect your data from ransomware with S3 Object Lock
It can be enabled later, but you need to contact support and have them do it
drodgers··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2022)
Stile Education | Melbourne, Australia | Full-time | Onsite (flexible WFH) | Senior Mobile Engineer (Flutter)

https://stileeducation.com/who-we-are/engineering-at-stile/

We're a small, diverse, tight-knit team with a mission to radically improve main-stream science education at schools. By creating world-class science lessons, coupled with intuitive tools that allow teachers to take advantage of the latest pedagogies, we’ve already helped several hundred thousand students in Australia get excited about science.

Stile is already used in 1 out of 3 Australian schools, and over the next few years, we're striving to perfect our product and bring our lessons to the rest of the world. This is an opportunity to have a big influcence on education from within a small, high impact team.

drodgers··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2022)
Stile Education | Melbourne, Australia | Full-time | Onsite (flexible WFH) | Senior Mobile Engineer (Flutter) | Head of Platform Engineering https://stileeducation.com/who-we-are/engineering-at-stile/

We're a small, diverse, tight-knit team with a mission to radically improve main-stream science education at schools. By creating world-class science lessons, coupled with intuitive tools that allow teachers to take advantage of the latest pedagogies, we’ve already helped several hundred thousand students in Australia get excited about science.

Stile is already used in 1 out of 3 Australian schools, and over the next few years, we're striving to perfect our product and bring our lessons to the rest of the world. This is an opportunity to have a big influcence on education from within a small, high impact team.

drodgers··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2022)
Stile Education | Melbourne, Australia | Full-time | Onsite (flexible WFH) | Senior Mobile Engineer (Flutter)

https://stileeducation.com/who-we-are/engineering-at-stile/

We're a small, diverse, tight-knit team with a mission to radically improve main-stream science education at schools. By creating world-class science lessons, coupled with intuitive tools that allow teachers to take advantage of the latest pedagogies, we’ve already helped several hundred thousand students in Australia get excited about science.

Stile is already used in 1 out of 3 Australian schools, and over the next few years, we're striving to perfect our product and bring our lessons to the rest of the world. This is an opportunity to have a big influcence on education from within a small, high impact team.

Please apply by sending a cover letter and resume to: jointheteam@stileeducation.com

drodgers··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2022)
Stile Education | Melbourne, Australia | Full-time | Onsite (flexible WFH) | Senior Mobile Engineer, Full Stack Engineer (Mid and Senior), Infrastructure and SRE Engineers https://stileeducation.com/who-we-are/engineering-at-stile/

We're a small, diverse, tight-knit team with a mission to radically improve main-stream science education at schools. By creating world-class science lessons, coupled with intuitive tools that allow teachers to take advantage of the latest pedagogies, we’ve already helped several hundred thousand students in Australia get excited about science.

Stile is already used in 1 out of 3 Australian schools, and over the next few years, we're striving to perfect our product and bring our lessons to the rest of the world. This is an opportunity to have a big influcence on education from within a small, high impact team.

Please apply by sending a cover letter and resume to: jointheteam@stileeducation.com

drodgers··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2022)
Stile Education | Melbourne, Australia | Full-time | Onsite (flexible WFH) and Remote (AEST) | Full Stack Engineer (Mid and Senior), Infrastructure and SRE Engineers https://stileeducation.com/who-we-are/engineering-at-stile/

We're a small, diverse, tight-knit team with a mission to radically improve main-stream science education at schools. By creating world-class science lessons, coupled with intuitive tools that allow teachers to take advantage of the latest pedagogies, we’ve already helped several hundred thousand students in Australia get excited about science.

Stile is already used in 1 out of 3 Australian schools, and over the next few years, we're striving to perfect our product and bring our lessons to the rest of the world. This is an opportunity to have a big influcence on education from within a small, high impact team.

Please apply by sending a cover letter and resume to: jointheteam@stileeducation.com

drodgers··on Open Salary and Equity Database
Why does the tech stack matter?
drodgers··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2022)
Stile Education | Melbourne, Australia | Full-time | Onsite (flexible WFH) and Remote (AEST) | Support Engineer, Full Stack Engineer (Mid and Senior)

https://stileeducation.com/who-we-are/engineering-at-stile/

We're a small, diverse, tight-knit team with a mission to radically improve main-stream science education at schools. By creating world-class science lessons, coupled with intuitive tools that allow teachers to take advantage of the latest pedagogies, we’ve already helped several hundred thousand students in Australia get excited about science.

Stile is already used in 1 out of 3 Australian schools, and over the next few years, we're striving to perfect our product and bring our lessons to the rest of the world. This is an opportunity to have a big influcence on education from within a small, high impact team.

Please apply by sending a cover letter and resume to: jointheteam@stileeducation.com

drodgers··on What is the best way to learn Python for Bioinformatics?
The problems from Rosalind https://rosalind.info/problems/list-view/ are designed to help you connect bioinformatics knowledge to programming.

There won't be much visualisation required in those problems explicitly, but you should reach for something like matplotlib when you need it and follow the most relevant examples you cna find for what you're visualising.

drodgers··on Apple Reports First Quarter Results
Yeah, don't rely on docker's quemu x86 emulation - it doesn't work.

Everything else has been an absolute breeze though (and so fast!).

drodgers··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2021)
Hi Mandatum, our mid + senior range combined goes from $95k-160k AUD.
drodgers··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2021)
Hmm, that's super weird. That account is just a corporate Google account.

Try my personal email here and I'll push it into the normal pipeline: drp-at-fastmail.com

drodgers··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2021)
Stile Education | Melbourne, Australia | Full-time | Onsite (flexible WFH) and Remote (AEST) | Engineering Manager, Support Engineer, SRE, Full Stack Engineer (Junior, Mid and Senior) https://stileeducation.com/who-we-are/engineering-at-stile/

We're a small, diverse, tight-knit team with a mission to radically improve main-stream science education at schools. By creating world-class science lessons, coupled with intuitive tools that allow teachers to take advantage of the latest pedagogies, we’ve already helped several hundred thousand students in Australia get excited about science.

Stile is already used in 1 out of 3 Australian schools, and over the next few years, we're striving to perfect our product and bring our lessons to the rest of the world. This is an opportunity to have a big influcence on education from within a small, high impact team.

Please apply by sending a cover letter and resume to: jointheteam@stileeducation.com

drodgers··on Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022
In my state — Victoria — you need to be vaccinated for non-essential retail locations (department stores, hairdressers etc), and to work in most on-premises roles (hospitality, office work, construction, schools etc). Students 12+ are elegible but not currently required to be vaccinated when attending school, though there's a pretty standard list of vaccines which are usually required for students to attend school, and I suspect the covid vaccine will make its way onto that list at some point.

Essential retail locations (food, pharmacies, laundries etc), and other essential services (public transport, government offices, medical facilities, consular services, banks) etc. do not require proof of vaccination, though many of them do require masks.

On the whole though, vaccination isn't a huge issue here: we're just crossing 90% (age 12+) fully vaccinated now. There are some small protests about the vaccine requirements, but they're very much in the minority.

Other states in Australia are slightly different in the details, but taking broadly the same approach.

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