Young Hands Club

Posted below is the corrected, completed version of Ossasepia Log Notes 6. I’d neglected to read the Collection of Pearls article prior to publishing, which resulted in the original summary humorously being as wrong as possible with regard to its content. The article itself was spot on in describing my recently called-out derping:

There, the great discovery of this year’s lazy bums just as lazy as last year’s lazy asses: don’t do today what you can postpone indefinitely! And if it’s on a todo list, then it doesn’t need to actually be done! If I write that I’ll do it then it’s just as good as if I did it and way less work so it’s win-win-me, isn’t it?

Nothing new under the sun…

31 Aug 2019

Shrysr asks the definition of a public toilet computer – does it apply to all online machines? Diana Coman says it’s a matter of what’s running on the machine and how open it is to the network; definitions vary. Shrysr asks for Diana’s definition – is she strict in only doing certain activities on public toilet computers? Shrysr wants to improve his data security – he’s put sensitive data on Evernote for convenience, and wonders if he should store his private keys and mail server on Linode VPS.

BingoBoingo cautions against running one’s own mail server: keeping up with standards can be time consuming, and big inbox providers can distrust one’s mailings. He says no to valuable private keys on Linode: people have lost Bitcoin for doing so. Diana echoes – storing private keys on someone else’s machine is particularly bad.

Diana emphasises that one’s private key is one’s identity in #o; anything done with that key is done by oneself; losing one’s key is the death of one’s identity – one will have to start over anew with a fresh key/identity.

Conversely, Diana points out that government data has nothing to do with security (notwithstanding pretense to the contrary) – handled as it is over insecure channels and methods. She considers all government/school/civil admin data public; therefore fit for public toilet PC use.

Diana explains that “private” means default-closed/“no”, with exceptions; whereas public is the opposite. Thus, a public toilet computer will allow most things, whereas a private computer will mostly forbid.

1 Sep 2019

Linking to Diana’s Open Sores article, Shrysr wonders why open-source code is such a shitshow – despite the voluntary nature and developer turnover, aren’t there best practices/guidelines to maintain codebases? Is CI/CD just another Docker – ie. an ineffective scam? Linking to Diana’s Brave New Code article, he wonders if it’s possible to lower barriers to entry, whilst maintaining quality. Diana explains CI/CD is a nebulous term; insofar as it means code signed by a trusted person, it’s fine. The barriers are the shit-blockers; charitably, one might say the problem is lowering the wrong barriers, but this wrongness is itself caused by bad incentives; isn’t the root cause of the shit influx.

Pondering bad incentives, Shrysr asks if quantity of GitHub contributions being used as a stand-in for competence is a case. After linking to her Collection of Pearls article exemplifying the dire state of open-source code, Diana agrees, noting two core problems: no ownership of code, and the “more lines added = better” (rather than worse) mindset. Shrysr can’t see the sense in the current codebase situation, noting the similarly baffling job environments he’s worked. As example, he mentions interacting with senior CAD engineers unable to identify basic product differences. Beginning to see the shit surrounding him, he understands the anger BingoBoingo feels toward the software industry; maybe he’s feeling it, too.