waoush's comments

Blockchain itself just refers to a linked list (the chain) of cryptographically hashed items such as a timestamp and the data it is time-stamping (the block), which is based on previous elements in the chain. This is also how how it is also described in the original Bitcoin paper.

Blockchain doesn't rely on crypto, crypto was implemented using blockchain. Blockchain was invented long before crypto in the early 90s at Bellcore. Crypto may emphasize transactions and combating double-spending (due to nodes being on a public network), but no one is held to crypto's use of blockchain to be blockchain. The Bitcoin paper cites both the original Bellcore paper and its follow-up discussing the use of Merkle Trees, and the Bellcore paper cites patent documents as a potential use-case. So I think what S&P Global and Walmart are doing are valid use of the technology.

Now whether or not cryptocurrency itself or the networks they run on have value is a different story. For what it's worth, one of the use-cases for Corda that I found basically advertised itself as "we are better than transacting with paper" lol.

(note: I didn't downvote, but have been working with blockchain and thought I would answer since you haven't gotten any yet)

https://www.hyperledger.org/learn/case-studies

Hyperledger is a set of open-source distributed ledger related technologies, the most well-known being Fabric, which is a framework for creating blockchain networks.

The most interesting cases are S&P Global and Walmart, who use it to keep track of data for various auditing purposes. The idea is that since data on a blockchain can't be modified on a whim without that change being observed, it protects the integrity of the data being stored. Basically it is being treated as a sort of database.

I would listen to all of Evoken's work while I was programming lol. One day the earbuds had accidentally unplugged and people were looking at me like "HOW CAN THIS MAN FOCUS?!?!?"

Here are the big-name defense contractors that are US-based: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman are almost entirely (if not entirely) focused on work for the military. Boeing has lots of their own commercial stuff, but they also do work for the military. The work these companies do is pretty broad. They can make fighter jets, but also custom software.

The military tends to get funding for certain projects, and then seeks out contractors to research, build or manufacture things for them. In some cases, they may split budget between multiple companies or organizations. The military tends to select companies or organizations with demonstrated expertise in a project area.

I was on a DARPA project, and when DARPA announces projects, you have to apply to be selected. The money from our project wasn't funded by DARPA directly, but rather via the Air Force Research Labs. All of the companies or organizations that were selected for the collaborative research team I was on, were experts in some privacy-related area (usability, data storage, AI, differential privacy etc). I worked for a big-name university which was awarded a contract, and we were held accountable for how we spent the money. Keep in mind, congress keeps an eye on these budgets. We also didn't strictly do research, we were expected to produce something tangible and had to put in an honest effort to transfer the technology to the public.

So when you talk about startups and VC funding, I can't imagine there are too many (if any) of those kinds of companies around. A VC is going to invest in a company, because that company is producing a product that is going to get them a return on their investment. If the government isn't awarding contracts to your startup, then you aren't making money. Think back to SpaceX vs Blue Origin, and how much money Bezos lost on that NASA contract. One of the companies I worked with that gets awarded DARPA money was started by an ex-DAPRA project manager. They had connections. Other companies who did contracting work for the military were well-established and have a track record of delivering quality. You just won't really see college-aged kids come out with an idea for defense, get a ton of VC money and then start working with the government. Chances are more likely that they will build some product that has relevancy to the government, and thus the government becomes a sort of side-customer. College-aged kids just aren't really established enough to be taken seriously for these kinds of things. They may get to work on those projects during the course of their research at university, though.

For things like limitations on research, as mentioned above, you will be awarded a research grant for a specific project. Your limitations are scoped to that project. The military (DARPA in this case) could hypothetically decide a particle disintegrator is worth researching, and then call for people to apply if they got funding for it. You will see companies and universities applying for this work. DARPA project managers tend to be experts in a specific area. The project manager for Brandeis (the project I was on) is an expert in cryptography. So you won't see random people coming up with random ideas. The project managers have to come up with a project that is worth getting funding on, which isn't easy as I understand.

For legal stuff... one of the organizations on the DARPA project I was on ended up developing technology that the military decided to keep secret. I don't know if those individuals ended up getting a security clearance or what, but they weren't allowed to discuss the work with other team members who weren't involved. Typically a contractor will want to see US Citizens and ask that they get a security clearance, but sometimes there is work that doesn't require a clearance. As mentioned in another post, you do have to consider laws like ITAR especially if you start using HTTPS and other encryption methods. If it is a DARPA project, there shouldn't be any "legal" issues that randomly prop up. They keep in touch with you, so unless you keep things a secret from them, that shouldn't happen.

I keep an e-mail for anything I suspect I will get spam from, one for anything official like work/job hunting, and a gmail mostly for anything google-related.

A smart bulb by itself is not particularly likely to cause any kind of harm.

IoT in general can have some risks and these have been proven, especially if your devices are linked to services outside of your device provider such as "If This Then That" (or IFTT) [1]. I am a little fuzzy on the details, but I believe some smart home appliances such as TVs expose APIs that aren't particularly secure either...

Additionally, some devices do not secure the data they transmit to whatever nearby base station [2].

Overall it is fine to buy in to IoT, just be aware of what you are buying and things that can go wrong (i.e. how can people exploit this device?). If you get actuators that adjust windows or vents based on temperature, make sure they are secure physically and can't be gamed by intruders.

I should add that although your smart bulb may not have a microphone, people can determine other things about you from data analysis or machine learning.

[1] https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity20/presentat...

[2] http://www.cse.msu.edu/~ghtu/published-papers/Lei-Mobisys20....

This seems to be heavily focused on studying social phenomena and less so about things like engineering papers or Physics etc. The author himself specializes in social-oriented research. I think it would be better to look at how successful non-social studies are vs humanities. It is debated on whether or not Sociology is even a science at all.

For what it is worth, I happen to know that big tech companies follow research at big name CS universities with a bit of interest. At times, even borrowing the research itself in their products. At one point, a professor I worked under was quoted in Android documentation.

I work in the banking industry which has a bit of regulation, and is a bit risk-averse. People are expected to engage in risk management at all levels. If sabotaging became more common, OSS adoption would likely become unacceptable at these organizations. Mine already blocks Github and you need to request permission just to view it, and even then you can't pull code via command line.

Putting in code that is destructive like that, for any reason, is a good and fast way to scare management away from using your code. If you are going to insist on doing that stuff, just engage in hacking on the side lol.

I work as a senior developer for one of the largest banks in the US at the moment, and have also worked for a subsidiary of the largest medical provider in the city. Neither of these companies had particularly challenging interviews. Generally, if you are IT, the interviews are simple.

The only people who I have met who turn the interview process into a gamut of algorithm puzzles, are people who happen to be very good at them. These also don't tend to be the people running things at banks, let alone large ones.

Most of the comments touched on what you need already, but one thing I will add:

I don't know if I can advertise other startup accelerators here, but there is at least one startup accelerator that involves companies with manufactured products. I participated in this program, and they work closely with participating companies on this process. The accelerator is also very well connected, which could help with your marketing thing too.

It is JWT introspection. Apache modules have to be written in C, and therefore so does my parser. It's another piece of infrastructure.

Whether or not it makes sense to do it like that is another story, but I don't have control over the design of enterprise architecture.

Coming in to give this a +1

I am developing an Apache module that does some authentication stuff, and I needed a way to parse and read JSON in C. I really did not want to deal with doing that myself, and I wanted to avoid any complicated library.

This is super easy to use, and is just one file.

Up until last year, the only real problems I ever had with recruiters were in staffing agencies. I feel like at least prior to the pandemic, people did at least skim over your resume to get an idea of who you were as a whole... I would get interviews, but nowadays I am lucky if I even get an automated rejection e-mail.

I tend to not fill out these forms because I have a resume, and then I get rejected without an interview for jobs I am almost literally verbatim a match for.

Do recruiters even read resumes anymore? I am genuinely not sure at this point.

In my experience, typically researchers only publish the relevant and/or core algorithms of their research. If you would like, you can always publish the code to Github (if it isn't already), and reference it in your paper.

If it is too much work to refactor the code for publishing, you can also just publish pseudocode.

I don't think anyone will nitpick or criticize coding style or things like that unless it is particularly egregious (ie naming variables something vulgar etc). The point of research papers is to communicate new and valuable findings. If people in this conference or journal are nitpicking things like that, you may want to find a different place to submit your work.

I don't know what your field is, but in Computer Science I can't say I have ever known people to consider their code a competitive advantage. The only time they might shy from releasing code is when they think they can commercialize it or something.

I took a graduate-level reading course where the point was to critically read and discuss two research papers per week. These were research papers at top computing conferences in areas related to IoT.

You definitely don't need a week for just one paper. I wasn't even a graduate student. Papers are usually around 16 pages. It would take me a good 4-5 hours to read and digest things, and even longer when it was my turn to present a paper, but never an entire week... Professors go over these things even faster.

I would also add that sports can be highly emotional games, and getting a player angry or passionate (assuming they direct this at the other team) can actually be productive. This isn't the case with work that requires higher level of cognition, and not smashing someone against the wall to get a puck from them hah. I wouldn't want my subordinates to be angry at me or the rest of the organization for any reason.

I got a message on LinkedIn from a software developer manager there less than a month ago. Was quite shocked and didn't think such a thing was even possible.

Also got a staff software engineer from Facebook who added me on there, and had in their title "hiring". lol.

Before I was a lead research engineer at CMU, I only rarely showed up on search results for FAANG companies. After a few months of being there, I started appearing rather frequently, and their recruiters would even argue with me that I should interview with them. A Facebook recruiter once told me they targeted me specifically because and I quote, "we know smart people are there". My favorite line of BS from them was when an Instagram recruiter tried to tell me, "everyone is our kind of candidate" LOL!

Being a lead research engineer isn't quite the same as being one of the PhD students. Although I did get quite a few people there who insisted I would be great for FAANG, it remains impossible to get in. Meh. I refuse to pay for leetcode premium and effectively cheese my way in.

I was the lead engineer at a top university for a large multi-year DARPA project on Android privacy, working with literal experts in the field. I applied for some roles at Twitter for Android privacy engineering after the project was over, and they rejected me without even speaking to me.

Forget Twitter lol