Hacker News Reader

johnpythonon Ask HN: Please critique my personal digital security strategy

Overall you have a great security posture. I would not recommend using LastPass due to the service having a history of really bad security vulnerabilities. If you must use a cloud-based password manager, 1Password is the most secure choice, otherwise use KeePassX. As others have mentioned, less reliance on Google will do you some good. Look into using Duo MFA. Migrate high-security accounts like banking to a separate email account. Don't store credit card details with shopping sites. Disable Touch ID.

johnpythonon Ask HN: Should I not use MongoDB?

MongoDB is the wrong choice 99.9% of the time. Just use Postgres.

johnpythonon Forum without politics, please

You can simply ignore the political posts on HN. If criticism directed at Trump and "social justice propaganda" is bothering you so much, perhaps you need to reconsider your life.

johnpythonon Ask HN: Does anyone else feel overpaid?

Occasionally I have this thought but then I remember how difficult it is to recruit great engineers. Perhaps we should be paid even more money.

johnpythonon Ask HN: Why continue to use Firefox?

Because Mozilla is not an ad company and actually cares about users' privacy. I do not trust Google and do not want to enable them to vacuum up more of my data.

johnpythonon Ask HN: How do you scale yourself?

Inform management I am stretched thin and request additional team members. There's no secret to being able to do much more in the finite amount of work hours. If management sees that you are adapting to the extra load, they will have no incentive to hire more people.

johnpythonon James Damore, Google, and the YouTube radicalization of angry white men

More needs to be done to combat the radicalization of young white men by neo-Nazis and white supermacists.

johnpythonon Launch HN: Muzmatch (YC S17) – A place where 400M single Muslims can meet

Nobody cares about your opinion on religions. HN is not the place for this.

johnpythonon Launch HN: Muzmatch (YC S17) – A place where 400M single Muslims can meet

> The two biggest problems (Europe has) with the integration of Muslims in our society are our societies prejudice and the forming of parallel society by the immigrants, leaving them isolated from the greater society they are supposed to join.

Why are Muslims integrating well in US and Canada, but not Europe? Perhaps it has more to do with bigotry and lack of opportunity afforded to them rather than refusal to integrate.

> After all, this app could be seen as reinforcement of the stereotype that Muslims do not want to mix with non-Muslims.

A Muslim wanting to marry another Muslim means they don't want to mix with non-Muslims?

> Do other dating apps have ethnicity filters, too?

Are people not allowed to have preferences? Muslims are a very diverse group and this sounds like a feature many would want.

johnpythonon Ask HN: Seriously, How Can We Begin to Make AI Safe?

I have zero faith that a homogeneous group of people (ie. white guys in SV) with the same beliefs and experiences can make AI safe. This is one area that must have a diverse group of people working on it.

johnpythonon How to Determine If Candidates Will Thrive in a Remote Work Environment

If they talk about how great it was to do their laundry during work hours, thumbs down.

Talking about the work/life balance benefits of remote work is a bad thing? This makes even less sense since remote work is usually coupled with flexible work hours.

johnpythonon Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams

This is a change for the better. Ultimately, pedigree does not matter and a meritocratic society should not care about the institution that awarded the degree. Assess the individual and check your privilege.

johnpythonon Ask HN: Do you skip phone interviews for Google/FB/Tier-1 company engineers?

We dont hire engineers from Google/Facebook/Apple, primarily because they are too expensive, but also due to culture fit.

johnpythonon The Best DevOps Is NoOps

If you think being a "software engineer" means you only write code and ops/security is none of your concern, you are terrible. The best software engineers understand the importance of operations and security for the code they release to production.

johnpythonon Ask HN: Is Rust too complex for mere mortals?

Unless you have a valid need to write low-level code (something you would have done in C or C++), choosing Rust for your next project will destroy the productivity of your team.

johnpythonon Ask HN: Would passing certification exams boost my resume?

You don't want to work anywhere where certifications are valued that much to the point that simply having a cert gets you hired. It's an extremely bad reflection of the management and technical staff there.

johnpythonon Ask HN: Do you feel welcome on HN?

Not at all. HN is a Silicon Valley echo chamber while at the same time being an accurate reflection of the tech industry: predominately young, white men with vocal but shallow opinions on anything outside of tech.

johnpythonon Show HN: An online interactive Kubernetes playground

follow this guide: https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way

johnpythonon How much do hackers at the CIA/NSA/FBI make?

Whatever amount they pay you isn't worth it. Private sector pays more, has less bureaucracy, and will help you sleep better at night.

johnpythonon Why traditional password managers are flawed

When it comes to security tools, I strongly recommend not to use pet projects maintained by a single person over well-established open source tools. If you are looking for a cross-platform, reliable, secure password manager, KeePassXC is an excellent choice.

https://keepassxc.org

johnpythonon Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

A key takeaway from this blog post is the important of communication skills. Be a professional in the workplace. Be sincere with your colleagues and avoid passive aggressive behavior. If you have an issue with a colleague, take it to them first before lodging a complaint with their manager.

johnpythonon US military intelligence agencies have influenced over 1,800 movies and TV shows

America's infatuation with their military is disgusting

johnpythonon I'm not a Woman in Tech

SV tech companies are infested with young white brogrammers who only want to work with people who look like them and share their hobbies/interests. They call it "cultural fit"

Edit: missed important adjective "white"

johnpythonon 70 job interviews in 17 days

I wonder what's the conversation rate for a woman or person of color?

johnpythonon Ask HN: *app.com or *.co?

Why not .io ?

johnpythonon Ask HN: As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health?

I completely agree with this approach. The best job security is being good at what you do. Fortunately, we work in an industry where if you are even slightly talented, you will have no trouble finding a new job. So, don't worry too much about how the company is doing. Stick around as long as you are getting paid, the work is interesting, and you are growing in your knowledge/skills. Ensure you have savings for any disasters. And always be scouting the market for new opportunities.

johnpythonon Ask HN: DevOps learning resources

I recommend the following books to learn more about the work involved on the Ops side:

https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Linux-Administration-Cutting-E...

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Cloud-System-Administration-...

https://landing.google.com/sre/book.html

https://www.amazon.com/How-Linux-Works-Superuser-Should/dp/1...

https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Monitoring-Alerting-Web-Ope...

https://www.amazon.com/Ansible-DevOps-Server-configuration-m...

https://www.amazon.com/Terraform-Running-Writing-Infrastruct...

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Services-Action-Andreas-Wittig...

johnpythonon Go Language – Web Application Secure Coding Practices

and Ruby as well

johnpythonon Black Hat Go – Go Programming for Hackers and Pentesters

Wouldn't the capability to compile a completely self-contained binary for any platform that can avoid AV be really appealing to pentesters?

johnpythonon How to find a trustworthy VPN service

VPNs are for privacy, not anonymity. Confuse the two are your own peril - the Grugq

The only trustworthy VPN service is one that you operate yourself. There are plenty of Github projects that will deploy a personal VPN for you:

https://github.com/jlund/streisand

https://github.com/trailofbits/algo