stuffaandthings | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do I prepare for an interview for AMZ/GOOG/APL/FB?
stuffaandthings's comments
stuffaandthings | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: What would you do with $5k/mo basic income for rest of life?
stuffaandthings | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: What would you do with $5k/mo basic income for rest of life?
stuffaandthings | 8 years ago | on: C0, an Imperative Programming Language for Novice Computer Scientists (2010) [pdf]
I agree with you that learning the ins and outs of memory is super important, but the methodology of this course doesn't imply the lack of teaching memory management
stuffaandthings | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: Are Linux distros allowed to distribute Docker CE?
might just be a Fedora thing
stuffaandthings | 8 years ago | on: S3 was down
EB interface is affected too
stuffaandthings | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: How is anonymous / distributed data hosting even possible?
For example, if you have a static webpage it may either be present on every node in the network (so anyone else accessing your webpage would only be making a local request to their copy of the data) OR the webpage would be split up into many pieces distributed amongst all the nodes, so say your webpage is split into n chunks you fetch each chunk from Node_1 ... Node_n and use some algorithm to stitch it back together.
These are obviously over simplifications, but you should take a look at how Gnunet, Freenet, and Zergnet(?) and how they approach the distributed web. Also, looking at p2p networks might give you an idea of how this works as well.
stuffaandthings | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: What configuration management tool would you choose in 2017?
That said, I've been playing around with Kubernetes lately and trying to move a lot of our infrastructure onto Kubernetes. The use of Dockerfiles kind of nullifies the need for a full fledged configuration management tool for me and I've been relying on bash scripts and distributed kv stores to manage state and environment variables (using 12 factor approach and managing environment variables with consul and secrets with vault)
stuffaandthings | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: Should I become a security engineer?
My understanding of security researchers is limited to an academic setting. Many PhD students, masters students, professors, etc at my school were technically security researchers. Usually this consists of a lot of theoretical exploration. Check out this paper, I think it's pretty accurate to what a security researcher does: https://www.tau.ac.il/~tromer/acoustic/ So that's the academic side. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Red Hat, etc. will also hire Security Researchers where your job is a bit more open ended and focused on outside-the-box work (finding new vulnerabilities, testing software, maybe some offensive security work).
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of a netsec person is someone who's job is to implement and maintain secure systems. While this can definitely involve experimentation, it seems like more of a defensive approach to security. A job description might say things like: "Protect critical systems from attacks", "incident response", "disaster recovery".
I think a Security Engineer is much closer to a Security Researcher, but in a more 'applied' way... for example, as a security engineer at Dropbox your job might be to actually implement (write code for) cryptographic communication between the client and server. So, to me, a Security Engineer is much closer to a software engineer. Whereas a Security Researcher is much closer to an academic.
I hope this helps clarify things. There are other great responses on this thread.
Also, I completely understand public sector not being a good fit.
stuffaandthings | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: Should I become a security engineer?
I think it's definitely easier if your interviewer actually knows what security ctf's are.
stuffaandthings | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: Should I become a security engineer?
stuffaandthings | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: Should I become a security engineer?
Internships and jobs will open up from being part of a CTF group. It's also A LOT of fun* (*opinion).
netsec might not necessarily be what you're looking for. A position as a Security Researcher is probably what you most fit into... finding the right recruiter can also help you out a lot.
Another (and honestly, easier to get into) security industry is the public sector. Intelligence agencies, military intelligence branches, etc. They'll hire you based on personality and potential, and will train you further. This (in my limited experience) usually means less pay.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
stuffaandthings | 9 years ago | on: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X
If you're looking for clipboard management, there are tons of linux solutions for that, see: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/list_of_applications#Cl...
As for an alternative to Karabiner, I use Xmonad and manage my keymapping through the use of Xmodmap (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xmodmap)
stuffaandthings | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: What is there any Hackintosh of-the-self laptop?
stuffaandthings | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: What laptop should I get instead of a Macbook Pro?
The build quality definitely isn't as good as Apples. I had to return my first T460s due to severe light-bleed issues. The new one is fine, though the TrackPoint isn't as good as it was in previous generations. The TrackPad also is not as good as Apples, though I try to keep a keyboard-only workflow so it's not that much of an issue (till it is)
stuffaandthings | 9 years ago | on: CMU 15-721 (Spring 2016) Database Systems
This is a matter of legal debate about the intentions and methods of the government, IMO. To reiterate I don't think it's fair to blame students/faculty/researchers for not breaking the law and agreements that allowed them to conduct the research in the first place.
As for what CMU has done to insure that this does not happen again... I don't know.
stuffaandthings | 9 years ago | on: CMU 15-721 (Spring 2016) Database Systems
There's a lot of really good work that comes out of CMU, including the department that helped the FBI.
EDIT: furthermore, SEI was doing independent research into the security of TOR. The FBI subpoena'd CMU to give up the results/contents of the research which is what ultimately helped the FBI do what they wanted.
stuffaandthings | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is replenishing the Operating Systems talent pool?
Seemed like a small niche that really got into it though. I have a few friends that went that route and seem pretty competent
stuffaandthings | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2015)
stuffaandthings | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: Why is there no HN chat?
Seems like its hard to just get traction.
It's all about practice! Good luck!
Also, if you can get in touch with a recruiter at those companies, they'll give you tons of helpful tips (mostly just how to practice and what to practice)