Security

• Passwords Considered Harmful

  Passwords, plainly, are not only bad at their intended purpose, but nearly everyone is incapable of using them correctly. That includes both developers, and users. Meanwhile they’re a constant security risk, not only because individual passwords can be broken, stolen, guessed, or given away. But also because, if you have no other data than email and password pairs you do have something worth stealing. Painting an even larger target on your back.

• Informed Consent

  In news that’s surprising to no one who’d read this. OK Google Voice recordings leaked Yet, this is still breaking news. When I first read this story, I felt bad for the people who were contacted for comment by the news reporting agency who broke this story. It’s not hard to imagine that they were surprised that the device was recording their conversation, especially given that they didn’t even say the keyword.

• Do less

  I have a strange take on YAGNI. You should do less, write less code, consume and produce less data, instead of being a 10× dev, be a 10÷ developer. Now, that may be a bit misleading, because I don’t want to suggest you should want to be, just a software developer. Really what I’m getting at is that I think you should try to channel the ideals of what it is to be an engineer.