souperk

After reading about the "suicide" of yet another whistleblower, it got me thinking.

When working at large enough company, it's entirely possible that at some point you will get across some information the company does not want to be made public, but your ethics mandate you blow the whistle. So, I was wondering if I were in that position how I would approach creating a dead man's switch in order to protect myself.

From wikipedia:

A dead man's switch is a switch that is designed to be activated or deactivated if the human operator becomes incapacitated, such as through death, loss of consciousness, or being bodily removed from control. Originally applied to switches on a vehicle or machine, it has since come to be used to describe other intangible uses, as in computer software.

In this context, a dead man's switch would trigger the release of information. Some additional requirements could include:

1. No single point of failure. (aka a usb can be stolen, your family can be killed, etc)
2. Make the existence of the switch public. (aka make sure people know of your mutually assured destruction)
3. Secrets should be safe until you die, disappear, or otherwise choose to make them public.

Anyway, how would you go about it?

I just finished reading this book and decided to share my experience with it.

About the Book

Continuous Architecture in Practice is a sequel to Continuous Architecture both written by Murat Erder, Pierre Pureur, and Eion Woods. The authors attempt to address feedback from their 1st book by navigating the reader through the Trade Financs eXchange (TFX) case study.

The book starts with a brief introduction to the core concepts of Continuous Architecture, including its 6 principles, as well as its essential activities:

1. Focus on quality attributes
2. Drive architectural decisions
3. Know your technical debt
4. Implement feedback loops

From then on the book switches focus to common architectural concerns:

1. Data
2. Security
3. Scalability
4. Performance
5. Resilience
6. Emerging Technologies

Each concern is tackled in a separate chapter that features an introductory quote, a definition along with some historical context, a list of issues an someone should keep in mind when architecting for that concern, a list of tactics, and a further reading section.

My Opinion

Overall, I liked reading the book, it gave me a lot of inspiration and a desire to learn more about particular topics. The book assumes a certain level of familiarity with software engineering which helps it focus on general concerns and avoid implemention specific details.

I particularly liked the Emerging Technlogies chapter as it offers a healthy view on AI, ML, and shared ledgers. It helps remove the fairy dust that's blinding our industry, and instead focuses on meaningful changes that actually provide value to a product.

Also, as someone with experience in software security I appreciated the focus on shifting left security concerns.

Who Should Read This

In my opinion, every software engineer can benefit from reading this at some point in their career. However, I wouldn't recommend it to a junior, if you are not already familiar with the topics covered in the book it could be intemediating.

PS I am not affiliated with the book or its authors in any way. I am just a person that read a book they liked wanted to share my experience.

Hi,

I am looking for a remote senior software engineer position. Most of my career I have been using connections to move from one job to another but this time I haven't had the luck, so I am mostly blindly applying through LinkedIn.

I know the general tips but I would like to get some more specific tips to improve my chances.

How can I make my CV stand out? I feel I am getting rejected by positions that are way below my qualifications. I have wondered if I should be updating my CV according to the stack of the position I am applying for. Throughout my career I have focused on building transfarable skills and as a result I have worked with a wide variety of technologies and it feels like I am being penalized for that.

Are there any job boards that may be better than LinkedIn? I am tired of skimming through ads about fintech and AI positions. I am not interested in those and I would prefer to work somewhere that I genuinely I am contributing something in the world. Also, I would be interested on job boards on the Fediverse, especially if it meant that my resume is read by humans and not machines.

How can I avoid time wasters? I had applied to Canonical, after 8 interviews and a bunch of offline steps, I was rejected. While the interviews were fun, I feel I have wasted a lot of time and energy for a someone that was not genuinely interested in hiring.

Anything else I should be paying attention to?

If you haven't heard this cliche while discussing your neurodivergency with someone, then I envy your luck. Yesterday I fucked up, I feel shitty, but also I am pissed.

Our brains are impulsive af and tend to forget the most important information. We mess up, our RSD (and empathy) kicks in, we feel terrible, we vow to be more careful, but guess what? Thats fucking exhausting.

As a result, we start overthinking our every waking moment, stressing over every little thing. Because, we are trying to be aware of the things we cannot perceive.

At some point, hopefully we realize that we cannot live like that, and we start to arbitrarily ignore our compulsion to overthink. Most often that works out great because most often the threat is not real, but sometimes we make the wrong call.

The times we overthink are still more than the times we do not, and we still mess up. Let us have our fucking peace.

I have been doing a lot of research about ASD and ADHD, and I would like to contribute by sharing information with other people. So, I was wondering if there is a wiki for that purpose.

Not an American, but I just noticed that the election day is on the 5th of November. Given the similarities between Trump and the chancellor, it seems like a good opportunity to remind people what is coming if they vote for Trump.

For those who haven't watched V for Vendetta, do it, the reference will make sense.

Remember, remember, the 5th of November,

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason

Why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

As a software engineer I have adapted to the world turning upside down every couple of years and having to learn new concepts and technologies. However, I have been noticing other fields struggling to adapt as things change in a faster scale.

For example, some researchers have pointed out that the number of papers about ADHD increases exponentially every year. However, most mental health professionals, at least in my area, seem to be severily outdated, often using information that has been debunked within the last 10-20 years.

So, I was wondering if other fields are affected and how they are adapting?

Edit: Bonus question, assuming a 40hr week (a luxury for most), how much time out those 40hrs would you need to spend on education?

I am reading "Unmasking Autism" by Devon Price and the introduction has an exercise that requires you to come up with 5 moments in your life where you felt fully alive. I have spent the better part of yesterday trying to remember such moments, but I am not even sure what it means... I was hoping the community here can provide some insights, either by sharing their moments or their definition of being "fully alive".

Full text of the exercise for anyone interested:

Instructions: Think of five moments in your life when you felt like you were FULLY ALIVE. Try to find moments from throughout your life (childhood, adolescence, adulthood; school, work, vacation, hobbies).

Some of the moments might leave you with a sense of awe and wonder—“wow, if all of life was like that, life would be amazing!” Some of the moments might leave you feeling deeply recharged and ready to face the next challenge, or satisfied and fulfilled.

Write down each of these moments. Tell the story of each moment in as much detail as possible. Try to think specifically about why the moment stuck with you sodramatically.

When reading about the shortage, they always write about Europe or America. This got me wondering, is there an issue in Asia? if not could we order from there?

I am developing a platform, the details don't matter, but it's a system the hosts personal data. As a result, I want to avoid hosting users in any way, and I am trying to make it as easy to self-host as possible.

I have some experience self hosting applications and I have some intuuition what to do or don't, but I wanted to see if I can pull from the collective wisdom.

Got any good resources to share? Any tips? Or, maybe some bad experiences or things to avoid?

Context

Being a full stack developer, I have decent experience with both python and Typescript. I often use python for API development and I have been trying to write code that is pep-484 compliant (aka fully typed). However, often I get the feeling that if I was using TypeScript it would be much easier.

That got me wondering why there isn't a fully typed language that compiles to python.

I am aware of some arguments, so I am going to get the conversation started by providing my thoughts on them.

ts2python

ts2python is a TypeScript to python compiler.

Unfortunately, it covers only a small subset of python's capabilities. I am not sure why this hasn't been adopted and/or expanded to cover more of python's capabilities, but I can see possible issues with some python features that are not supported by TypeScript like context managers or operator overloading.

Still wondering if it would be possible to extend the TypeScript compiles so it would support such features?

pep-484

pep-484 describes how to provide type hints for python, it's not ideal but good enough that don't have to invent a new language.

IMO that's a trap, pep-484 (and other typing related peps) are not a good enough solution, on the contrary sometimes they are straight up misleading.

For example, consider the stubs for comparisons with built-in types, you would notice that they are defined as __op__(self, other: Any) -> bool: ... which is not correct as when other implements __opposite_op__ that is called instead of builtin.__op__, and it's return value may be of a different type.

Typing tools have not caught up with it, right now only pyright has full compliance with pep-484 (and other typing related peps). For that reason, SQLAlchemy had to introduce more than a couple of workarounds so MyPy can understand what's is happening behind the scenes, even for features that are pep-484 compliant.

Use Another Language

Python was never meant to be fully typed, and they make it clear.

True, but there are a bunch of libraries unique to python that make it a mandatory choice for many tasks. Things are changing and other options become available, but it's going to take time until there is another viable alternative.

Conclusion

Interested to read your thoughts.

1. Is there another reason typing support hasn't advanced?
2. Are you satisfied with typing support for python?
3. Are you transitioning to another language?
4. Are you aware of any new and exciting typing tools?

Of course, if typing is not an issue for you, that's okay, every software has different constraints.

In physics, it's common to develop a formula and then stick a constant to explain the unknown. For example, Newton's theory of gravity uses the gravitational constant G on the formula F = G * m_1 * m_2 / r^2, later on Einstein gave a more accurate explanation with the theory of relativity which does not rely on a constant E = m * c^2. Constants provide a good enough explanation of the laws of physics that's useful for centuries.

I was wondering what's the equivalent in social studies? How do researchers deal with the uncertainty of human behaviour?

Edit: Comments made me remember how much I don't understand the theory of relativity, terrible example, sorry for the confusion. I need to rephrase the question but I don't know how.

I am looking for "glue" concepts, things that help connect observations with theory, aka if I calculate m_1 * m_2 / r^2 the result is slightly off but if I account for G, an empirical constant derived from observation, then everything makes sense for the observable universe.

Also, as someone said, I am referring to social studies.