Interesting. I was able to access the linked whitepaper and repositories without trouble and the 3rd party stuff too. Do you have local config preventing you from downloading the source code to review?

While I can respect your distaste for non-libre software, you’ll need to back up the malware claim. There are real security concerns out there in common non-libre; labeling things that are not libre as malware solely because they are not libre muddies the waters and makes your message much less palatable.

Let’s assume you’re arguing in good faith here so we can understand why land deeds and URLs are completely different.

Deeds are managed by a central authority. There is an agreed-upon way(s) to view and search those deeds. There is a single authority to update or remove deeds. The items the deed refers to also are controlled by a single authority and changing them has a single process.

URLs are registered (loosely) with a central authority but the similarities end there. I can impersonate a URL on a network (even up to large chunks of the internet if I’m able to confuse DNS in a large enough attack). So just because you’ve bought the domain referenced in the blockchain and set up some name servers doesn’t mean any consumer of the blockchain or even the internet is guaranteed to hit your instance of the domain. All a URL is is a reference to something so let’s assume for a minute we can have a global reference. What’s behind it? Again, completely uncontrolled. For now it could be your NFT; what happens if I am your hosting provider and destroy your instance? Move your hardware? What’s to prevent you, the owner of the assumed global reference, to change what that uniform resource locator is actually locating?

Land deeds and URLs are not analogous. Land and the content served at a URL are not analogous. Let’s look at NFTs quickly to see if we can actually do something about this!

Since we have a single-write, read-only database, why not store the full thing in the DB? Well, first you have to agree on a representation. It has to be unchanging so we can’t use a URL. It can’t ever duplicate so realistically hashing is out (unless our hash provides a bijection which is just a fancy way of saying use the fucking object itself). Assuming we’re only talking about digital artifacts (attempting to digitize a physical asset is a form of hashing meaning we get collisions so you can’t prove ownership), we’re now in an arms race for you to register all of your assets and their serialization methods before I brute force everything. Oh and this needs to live everywhere so it can be public so you need peta-many petabyte drives. But wait! Now we’re burning the sun in power just to show you have ownership of 10 and I have ownership of 01. Fuck me that’s dumb.

This is the first unpopular opinion I’ve seen that’s truly an unpopular one. Through this lens, I’ve been a personal army for Victoria, people that think Alexis Ohanian is an idiot, people that think transparency to unpaid moderators is important, and people that think API pricing matters. I didn’t realize I was such a troll.

Elderly cows can take care of themselves and wouldn’t want to sacrifice their grandcalf’s economic future. Keep them all together going strong.

I feel like you missed that this is on a job application, not an offer letter. Unless I’m actually hired and get paid by you, you aren’t going to send me tax documents so you don’t need my address.

Their justification is batshit for the seven dropped packages I read. I haven’t seen all of those various talking points together in a single place before. It’s a “who’s who” of every crank idea from the last couple of decades. I’m genuinely surprised they don’t drop support for themselves given their social bloat.

That was never part of his defense. Do you think the CIA colluded with him and his lawyer to accept responsibility for the material the CIA planted to sandbag his sentence? I feel like an innocent person would be screaming that. Hell, even possibly innocent/possibly guilty folks do.

Edit: here’s a quote about the material you’re defending:

Schulte called the child pornography he was accused of possessing a "victimless crime"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/13/the-surreal-case-of-a-cia-hackers-revenge

Typically conspiracy theories come with a kernel of truth, like he always maintained that the CSAM was planted. Only he didn’t. Because he was into CSAM. Don’t muddy the waters unless there’s reason to because there’s zero fucking reason to defend someone collecting that shit.

I made the same comment when I saw it was nominated. It’s Fallout 4 in space with both free base building (outposts) and grid base building (ships). The procedural generation of locations is reminiscent of Arena. The class system is a simpler version of Skyrim and Fallout 4. The story is cliche science fiction using mechanics from earlier Bethesda titles. The dogfights are decades old. The drudgery of running around forever for a simple objective hails back to earlier titles like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and similar Ubisoft map objectives.

I have no idea what Starfield innovated. It’s just like every other Bethesda game with some new things done better elsewhere. I am in the minority that love it because it is exactly what you would expect from the studio that’s been rereleasing the same game for over a decade.

The headline makes it sound like boomers are out-earning other generations or making good money.

• The average private sector wage is $34/hr. This indicates wildly skewed upper bounds so we can’t draw any conclusions about their earning.
• The median in 2020 was $23/hr, implying boomers are earning less than other generations
• $22/hr is about $45k/yr. Generously that’s about $40k after taxes. Assuming a health plan of $600/mo (premiums are higher at higher ages) and giving a generous 50% employer payment, we’re down to about 37k. tbh I feel like healthcare costs should be doubled or tripled based on costs I’ve seen from family and friends. Rounding nicely, that’s about 2k a month. If we use the incredibly outdated figure of rent/mortgage being 30%, we have 1400 to spend or save. Let’s pretend we’re able to get all bills under 400 so we have 1000 left over to use.
• Hip replacement is conservatively 3k with insurance. That’s three months of work. You’re probably taking FMLA which means you probably need another three months to cover expenses while recovering. Use hip replacement as a stand in for other surgeries.
• Let’s pretend crowns are as cheap as 1k/tooth. You’re probably looking at one a year ish over time.
• Let’s pretend hearing aids are 2.5k and you’re lucky enough to have insurance that covers them every few years. You’re still out of pocket at least 1k, burning another month.
• Some conservative estimates for cancer are about 6k for lung, breast, and rectal after insurance (prostrate is cheaper!). That’s six months assuming no FMLA; you’re probably taking some time so that’s probably more months.

Boomers are fucked earning that. Millenials are even more fucked. Who knows how fucked GenZ is.

Your gut reaction about Nord is correct. They completely mishandled a breach a few years ago and never did anything to even attempt to regain trust. I care more about the transparency here than I do about the attack itself.

I have two problems with FAANG candidates.

First, having gone through the full interview process at several and rejected all due to laughably low base salaries, I know how those candidates are selected. The skills being evaluated have fuck all to do with what I’ve actually needed engineers to do. That gives me zero confidence in their ability to do anything meaningful. Solving tic-tac-toe doesn’t mean you can actually walk your way through security problems in an API.

Second, the toxic cultures at these companies is not something I want infecting my teams. Google, for example, is famously about making yourself look really fucking good for a performance review board, not making the company better. Amazon makes people think the talent pool is big enough for perpetual unregretted attrition and pits peer against peer. Meta completely strips any semblance of ethics and therefore customer understanding. Twitter doesn’t fucking care about security.

Most engineers meet expectations. Period. People think FAANG is hot shit. It’s not. It’s arguably worse than most run-of-the-mill places because people on the internet like to make FAANG out to be hot shit. The chances of someone actually doing something big at FAANG are so fucking tiny it’s just like thinking you’re going to make the next killer indie game.