jecxjo

I find it kind of ironic though. The risk of crypto currencies is too high, yet the company was ok with creating fake accounts that could totally have been used for fraud.

More likely they are afraid that it will be a high cost for them with very little reward.

Many times companies will file patents on any IP they design that is broad enough to disrupt their market. With the patent being exceptionally broad, it ironically leaves less room for questions when the patent request is filed. One would hope everyone on the Government side of patents would be well versed enough in the given technology but unfortunately that is rarely the case so having a broad patent is sometimes easier to push through.

I am all for experimentation and creating something new. But so many of these projects out there are not forks of current projects, they are complete rewrites. Is this because the new project is vastly different? Nope! That is the issue, they aren't extremely different.

The reason this is a problem is because web tech is constantly changing, to the point that so many of these projects end up in the scrap heap far faster than other tech. It causes problems with long term service due to compatibility issues with ever changing dependencies.

But it's not even independent green developers, it's everyone. Chai, mocha, jasmine, jest, should, expect, lab...omg do we really need another unit testing library? Sure they are all slightly different but there is no reason they all couldn't be condensed down to one or two libraries. Shall we list all the reactive UI frameworks? Or routing frameworks? Everyone is at fault here.

This issue is not just a lack of learning from past failures, it's an active issue that is systemic to web development, especially node. Everyone wants reinvent the wheel rather than supporting a similar, already existing project. I don't know if it's that everyone wants to be the lead on something or if they all lack group skills, but there is no reason we need dozens of similar, partially functional libraries. I can barely, and I mean sooo very barely get behind the fact that all of these SaaS companies need to create their own versions of frameworks, but it amazes me just how many square wheels there are in the web community. It was one of the major reasons it took me so long to start doing full stack development, just way too many cooks all wanting to make almost the exact same meal, only theirs is more superior.

I'm trying to think of how this situation works. And the only one I could come up with is that you're writing software that your clients use internally. Or I guess the software could produce something that your clients would end up selling to their clients.

The biggest "risk" is where you interpret the user of the software. At what level does the rights to view, modify and redistribute go away? Does your client have to make source available to its clients?

But you were never going to put Heathkit or Zenith or any of these other companies out of business with your side markets. You could never compete even if you wanted to.

The cool thing about software is that one person, with one computer could totally disrupt a giant software company with a better widget because the manufacturing and distribution costs of software can be effectively zero.

Aren't telegrams already "e"?

I would say it's safe to assume that the law would protect data that stays on your phone, but would not protect communication. So you could encrypt the contents of your phone but phone calls, SMS, and IM would still be possible to back door.

In college I had a Prof who was a leader in network technology and was hired as an expert whiteness for the RIAA trials for people getting busted illegally downloading music and movies. I lost all respect for him when he was working a case where an elderly lady had an open wifi connection on her home router. He never brought up the fact that it's not possible to know what was going on behind the NAT wall and that because her wifi has no encryption anyone driving by could use it.

Now that I'm older it worries me that it is very possible to go to court and be on the right side and have a judge and jury who cannot comprehend these basic concepts. I've had bosses who work in software / hardware industry not understand concepts, God forbid I ever have to defend myself in a public forum.

Well our issues are more about things like sending someone a letter, proving they got it and that the person receiving it is the person we wanted to send it to. Even with a certified letter none of those features are actually possible with the current USPS, at least not in any real meaningful way. And don't even get me started on their use of received receipts in email.

But like you said, it's all about screwing the system and I'm sure a judge would not understand any of these concepts regardless of how simple someone would make them.

I'm on a home owners board with a woman who is a paralegal for her brother's lawfirm and it amazes me how much stuff they do that they think is either secure or provides some sort of authentication (in the meat world). Kind of annoying when they want to go through all sorts of rigmarole when it doesn't actually provide the features they think.

I use to break all of my work up into smallest tasks possible. Was doing pomodoro, with two large projects, hardware and software, development and management, multiple feature and bug releases. So tons and tons of tasks! At one point I had it automated so when I was doing a bug fix I'd create a set of dependency connected tasks (Understand Bug, Create Fix, Create Unit Test, Code Review, Documentation, Push Update). I could easily have a hundred tasks in the queue at any given time.

There are also people w/o the anxieties, who live their lives as firefighters. Every day take on the emergencies!

That was me for a long time. When you have a job that is constantly filled with fires you can survive for a long time doing this. The problem is that sometimes a non-fire tasj can start out as low priority but eventually become the most important thing you have to do today all based on a due date. Unless you are good at managing your future tasks, you'll often miss them.

I never had anxieties about getting things out the door, mostly because my bosses were constantly chopping down one or two of the legs of my stool (money, time, resources). But it was easy for me to keep pushing a low priority task to the bottom of the list because its not due yet, totally forgetting about the fact that eventually it will be due.

I totally agree. I am currently trying to figure out how to best do that with todo.txt with the minimal amount of dependencies. I liked in taskwarrior how all the tasks were numbered and could be referenced, but it required a big infrastructure in taskwarrior, which is more painful in todo.txt.

A lot of the optimizations I found (in taskwarrior) was allowing the app to figure out what I needed to do next. Due dates and expected duration and priority...all done programmatically.

I really only needed that for work, as my personal life is much easier managed with pencil and paper.

Actually, because I was at the point where so much stuff was automated, and I had taskwarrior deciding just how much work to do every day...I had a lot of free time to do whatever I wanted to do.

Mostly I left because the pay was lousy and I had been doing it for almost a decade and a half. That was the final straw when I realized I couldn't ask for a raise because they weren't giving me enough work.

At one point I was the sole engineer on two very large hardware/software projects. Projects that often didn't have dedicated marketing, sales, tech support, internal/external training. So I was wearing a LOT of hats, and I needed a way of figuring out how to be one of the most productive people in the company (for my own reasons) while also only doing the bare minimum of work.

Then one day the company decided they would completely change direction, dropped all future development on current products and moved everyone to their next gen product line. Turns out my two major projects wouldn't have next gen work for 3 to 5 years so I was "demoted" to a "gun for hire". I went from doing way too much work, to filling in the gaps when a team needed to complete a sprint on time. None of my work more than a few days, had no blocking dependencies and had no correlation to what I was going to do next week.

No more burn down, no more charting, no more task management. That is when I decided to change jobs. Now I' have some complexity, but its all easily managed in todo.txt.

I actually wrote my own in Haskell, but really I just mean the structure. I no longer need huge ordered lists of blocking dependencies. I loved that taskwarrior did that, but once your life becomes less complicated, all the cool features seemed to get in my way. I wanted burndown charts. I wanted an app to figure out what tasks were highest priority based on how much time they could take and deadlines. But once you no longer have any of that...it is basically todo.txt

Edit:

I should also add that with my daily life (outside of work) I'm strictly a pencil and paper kinda guy. I hate when my phone dies and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do today.

Might as well return the shameless plug with my own (https://github.com/jecxjo/todo.hs)

I use to use Taskwarrior, using all its features until one day my work life lost all complexity. At that point I felt like all the key features of Taskwarrior were lost because I just didn't have enough complication to track.

Now I just use todo.txt and that seems to cover everything I need.

That might be the most depressing thing I've heard all day.

You get to be creative today. Which package manager are we going to use on our new project: npm, bower, or yarn?

Whoopty freakin' doo!

Every 6 months to a year I pick a new tooling language. New paradigm, nothing like what I've done before or use on a day to day basis. This gives me something "new" w/o having to change jobs.

Other hobbies, and keeping the screen off when I'm at home helps too.

I totally agree. We are slowly deluding our profession by reducing it down to a few online courses. The vast majority of college is not about learning a specific topic. It's about being given a wide range of problems to solve in very different and complex topics that stretch your abilities.

I've been amazed at how many programmers I've interacted with in the past two decades who cannot operate outside the one, small subject they currently know. It's one thing to say you can't work on scientific modeling because you couldn't do Calc, but when I see front end developers who say "nope I can't do back end ever" I realize that they were never challenged and they will be the last person I want on my team. I want to have an employee who says "I don't know that topics but I'm going to learn it and solve this problem!" Dumbing down our profession doesn't help us.

Everything should be done in moderation. Eventually you learn how to only put forth the amount of energy required of a task. While it is fun to do things in new and interesting ways, the name of the game is least time spent.

This also applies to how much energy you put into your work. I started out trying to meet crazy timelines and for the most part I did it. But eventually it became the norm and I couldn't keep up. It took a lot longer to get managers to understand that nights and weekends are not sustainable.

Lastly I would have jumped ship sooner. I've been working for the same company for 11 years and now that I'm in the market for a new job, no matter how much I tried to diversify myself within the company, I don't always have specific skill sets these new positions are looking for.

I've had the "security" conversation with my father-in-law a few times. He is a wanna be computer nerd.

I tried to explain to him the benefits of all traffic being encrypted. It means "the man" can't see anything you are doing. Why would you want this? Because it sets a precedent that you aren't hiding something. I had a job once where coworkers only spoke Spanish when they wanted to talk about someone without their knowledge. It was obvious and even those who didn't speak the language could see it was happening. If they just spoke it all the time no one would have suspected they were making fun of someone, and no one would have paid that close of attention to what they were saying. It would have become a non-issue.

And THIS is the problem. Yeah the app is a pain to install, but security is a mindset, not just an app.

I even wonder how many people download an ISO or installer from a website, and do any sort of due diligence to find the signer's key from another 3rd party location, then verify previous builds, or require multiple signers of a key to give any semblance that the key is not fake? Or do we all just download the ISO and the .iso.asc file from the links provided and call it good? Even security minded people can be lazy in this situation.

The more this topic comes up, the more I start to wonder if the "difficulty" in email encryption is actually people just being lazy.

We have IM and texting apps like Signal. You install, and if your friends install then you're secure. Most people skip verifying fingerprints, not doing IRL face to face verification. Yes the install process is simple and requires no real work to start encrypting things, but that still doesn't make the process secure. If anything, having these types of security models where you aren't forced to verify the other end continues to breed this lazy mentality. Security is hard and requires all end users to actually put time and thought into what they are doing. We can always make a better mouse trap when it comes to security but that will not change people's minds on how they interact with security when online.

I got an email, and then saw this post on HN...and then backed up and deleted my account. Wasn't going to renew anyways, just happened to be perfect timing.

I grew up in Wisconsin and went to college in Iowa and the one thing I noticed between the two was how horrible the Iowa DOT was.

In Wisconsin we know that every year there will be snow. Lots and lots of snow. In 18 years of living there I never once remember a time where there was more than half a day of our rural road not being plowed. I remember seeing plows driving around when there was no snow falling because they knew it was coming and as soon as the first flake hit the ground the buckets went down.

In Iowa, ever year there were multiple times when I'd be stuck at home, unable to get to school or work because the roads weren't plowed. Major Highways! I'd call the DOT and their response was "we are just waiting until the snow stops so we don't have to plow multiple times." This was their response in the afternoon having not plowed all morning. One year they ran out of salt for the roads and had to use expired Seasoning Salt from a local manufacturer. Everyone complained because their car smelled like Garlic Bread. No one seemed to care about the fact that Iowa is in the Midwest and for some strange reason the people running the DOT didn't think to have adequate supplies.

Wisconsin has a huge vacation market. A large amount of road usage is by people traveling from out of state up to the north woods for hunting, fishing, camping, etc. Iowa does not have this type of road usage.

Iowa has two main highways. Hwy 80 is a shipping lane that connects Chicago to the western half of the US. Hwy 35 is a north south route going from Minneapolis/St. Paul all the way down to Austin Texas and connects a lot of major cities along the way.

Hwy 80 (and hwy 88) are used so much in Illinois that Illinois actually charges you a toll to use it. Iowa has the same traffic on 80 but does not charge a toll. One state has figured out how to pay for their road usage while the other has not. THIS is the real issue with why Iowa's DOT can't do anything right. They spend money in the wrong places, don't get enough income to pay for things they should and for some strange reason don't understand that they have a problem.

That is why its such a difficult situation. when you have depression you may not want help, due to the negative affects of depression controlling your actions. Burn out still allows you to want to get better. The up side of depression is that typically with medication and or therapy you can get better. Burn out really only has two cures: changing jobs which is a pain or your work changing which is usually out of your control.