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Glad you posted this but...

This is one of those multi-day, multi-faceted topics that need us to have many conversations until it's stopped.

Recall the SOPA & PIPA protests of last decade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA

There were more than a few discussions here


Requiring everyone to discuss this every few years seems like a surefire strategy to exhaust people. It normalizes the idea, if nothing else.

So the question is how do we get it so that supporting ending effective encryption is a political third rail that ends political careers? Because that seems like the only way to get this to stop coming up until it eventually passes.

Feinstein seems to be a perpetual supporter of this kind of thing. But she keeps getting voted in by CA of all places.

The full list of PIPA supporters according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Members_of_the_U.S._Co...): Patrick Leahy (D-VT) Lamar Alexander (R-TN) Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) Barbara Boxer (D-CA) Sherrod Brown (D-OH) Bob Casey, Jr. (D-PA) Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) Thad Cochran (R-MS) Chris Coons (D-DE) Bob Corker (R-TN) Dick Durbin (D-IL) Mike Enzi (R-WY) Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) Al Franken (D-MN) Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Chuck Grassley (R-IA) Withdrawn 1/18/12[11] Kay Hagan (D-NC) Johnny Isakson (R-GA) Tim Johnson (D-SD) Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) Herb Kohl (D-WI) Mary Landrieu (D-LA) Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) John McCain (R-AZ) Bob Menendez (D-NJ) Bill Nelson (D-FL) Jim Risch (R-ID) Chuck Schumer (D-NY) Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) Tom Udall (D-NM) Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)


"Requiring everyone to discuss this every few years seems like a surefire strategy to exhaust people"

The older generation may get exhausted, but fortunately there's Eternal September at play, where newer generations constantly arrive, start to become politically aware, and have fresh energy.

In order to continue to effect change we need to continually educate and re-educate people on what's going on and why.

"Feinstein seems to be a perpetual supporter of this kind of thing. But she keeps getting voted in by CA of all places."

Yeah, I really don't get California Democrats' unwavering support for Feinstein.. but then again, they've elected quite a few Republican governors as well, which I also don't understand.

On the other hand, contrary to popular belief, California is not an overwhelmingly Democratic state... there are a fair number of Republicans in office and even when Republicans lose they often manage to get 40% or more of the vote... not the 0% or 10% that's probably in the popular imagination of what California is like.


This is the first time I've heard anyone mention Eternal September in a positive sense.

Congratulations on finding the silver lining!


It’s a pretty bipartisan list, I’m more surprised because CA has a large tech industry which could be hurt by loss of trust in US tech at home and abroad.


The thing is, how many of those politicians receive throwbacks from industry to support this vs actually care about and believe in these laws?

Addressing rampant corporate government bribery(lobbying) would go a long way to preventing these kind of laws from passing.

On a more immediately achievable and realistic level, I think the idea really needs to drilled down into the general public that encryption is your computer and phone's equivalent of a 'front door lock'. I know this is simplistic and not necessarily 100% accurate, but it might as well be as important as one these days for any personal information and these kinds of simplistic, easily understandable metaphors tend to work a lot better than drilling over the details as to why encryption matters.


> But she keeps getting voted in by CA of all places.

Never underestimate the power of the national party to protect seniority by supporting those campaigns. Seniority brings with it more power on committees.


Al Franken got cancelled so that must be an old list. After the whole FISA/Steel Report/FBI affair we are now supposed to trust the government with our secrets?


It is an old list, PIPA is one of the earlier attempts at this.


HN doesn't really need constant repeat of political promotion. It's been discussed, if there's nothing new happening, it probably doesn't belong on HN.


> After running from September 2000 through July 2001, seeing the first class to graduation, the program was forced to shut down.

I wonder why it was forced to shut down?

I bet a few of the graduates are on HN, so maybe someone has the backstory?


I recall a statistic from about 10 years ago that computer forensic investigators in law enforcement burn out after two years due to the trauma of the images they are exposed to.


There's likely some confounding factors. Pressing "go" on the overpriced software tools and then entering into evidence what you find is the lowest level of work in that field so the churn is going to naturally be very high as people move up or out. The pay also isn't that great.


No, that is not the issue. Rather the issue is that even the hardest stuff on Facebook isn't remotely comparable to stuff of actual criminals, and the effort is wildly different:

- Facebook: it's violating rules? Delete, next.

- Forensic IT on a multi TB disk full with child porn: document every photo, what it shows, extract identifiable faces to cross reference with other content (to check for recurring places and victims), and the process is even more gory for video content. You have to watch every second or the defense can attempt "you didn't watch the video in full where the perp gives the victim an ice cream at the end" or whatever else. The amount of time you spend with documenting a single photo or video is many orders of magnitude worse than FB content mods.


This sounds very grevious, it's sad that a human being has to do this work


> It fails completely for large classes.

Large in-person classes you don't even have discussions. Some universities have lecture halls of 400-600 students, and you have to go ask a TA for help later in the week

> That's not dissimilar to the situation before the plague.

So I think you agree and are saying that it's the same?


It's absolutely the same. Before, you'd outsource homework and grading in the large introductory classes to awful proprietary tech, the fact that now you have people who can't put a proper recording of their class together doesn't make it worse.


I am enjoying working from home, many of my coworkers too. I'd probably say it's 50/50 here


> can create a GraphQL server and essentially ... have their app brought to its knees trying to fulfill an intentionally complicated query is kind of concerning

I've seen this denial of service attack against SQL/Relational databases as well, and I imagine if it triggers more read replicas, that a large bill could be caused as well

so it's not unique to GraphQL


That editor (in the gif) is really cool. Does anyone know if it's homebuilt, or if they used a library for that?


I think it's the graphqleditor.com which makes sense being their blogpost.

At the end of the post you can click the button and try (as in a trial) the graphqleditor

It's nice, but if you want a free one check altair or just use postman?


It's homebuild but some of its parts are opensourced, check out the GitHub: https://github.com/graphql-editor


Wow, this entire article seems to be more a "let's repost every tweet that hates Krebs". Most of it assumes he is a "a 50-year-old dude in a suit" doing cyberstalking, but I don't think that is an accurate description. Keep in mind, much of the criminal hackers do not like Krebs because he exposes them. People Swat his house and attempt to entrap him. So reposting a bunch of hate-Tweets is stupid.

Yes, Krebs' does his own research, but he also has hundreds of security researchers and contacts that provide him info, many of those are insiders. In his book Spam Nation, he even goes to Russia to visit a crime boss to ask tough questions. This isn't some cyberstalker.

Krebs is a better researcher than most, so I tend to trust his doxx. Most of the info he publishes is already public (poor opsec) and he is more thorogh than Reddit. Can he be wrong? Sure..... should he doxx? I don't know, that's an ethics question.. but if he's wrong on this, I'm sure Brian will reconsider that in the future


There are two issues to consider here: whether he is correctly identifying the people he doxxes and the ethical implications of his decision to do so. He received a fair bit of backfire for doxxing security researchers a few years ago (including @notdan) https://itwire.com/security/infosec-researchers-slam-ex-wapo...

For me (and I'd imagine most folks coming to a board called "Hacker News"), doxxing independent security researchers for the crime of port scanning is highly unethical behavior, and this vigilante crusade to doxx hackers is appearing to generate yet more collateral damage in the reckless pursuit of clout.


I agreed with everything you said until the last four words. What would make you think that Krebs is motivated by a "reckless pursuit of clout?"


I suppose we can never truly know what motivates anyone to do anything. I'm not committed to that stance, but even if he had the most pure of motivations it wouldn't materially change the consequences (both ethical and practical) of his actions.


> but if he's wrong on this, I'm sure Brian will reconsider that in the future

If I remember right its not the first time he has gotten such things wrong, and mostly responded by blocking people criticizing him for it on Twitter.


> If I remember right its not the first time he has gotten such things wrong,

I must have missed that. Could you find that article for me?


It’s linked in the original article here. :)

> In March 2018, he came under fire from users of a German image board pr0gramm.com after he revealed details about several admins and moderators in an article which claimed to identify who was behind the cryptocurrency mining service Coinhive.

https://itwire.com/security/image-board-admins,-mods-doxxed-...

> In April last year, Krebs was again slammed by security researchers after he doxxed two of them on Twitter, apparently because he disagreed with them about the operations of Spamhaus.

https://itwire.com/security/infosec-researchers-slam-ex-wapo...


Thanks!


There was the Shadow Brokers story, where he claimed to have identified the NSA leaker: https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/11/28/the-russian-metadata-i...

Then there was the thing where he doxxed two other researchers apparently just because, not even for assuming some crime: https://itwire.com/security/infosec-researchers-slam-ex-wapo...


there was also his Thaddeus Zu/Ashley Madison story, which was pure conjecture


He might be good at his work but he's not a god, he can't be right 100% of the times. We still have to evaluate him based on evidence everytime he utters anything.


No, it doesn't work that way. If he wrongly doxxed someone once, it is definitely fair to harshly judge him for doing so again.

When people make a bad mistake, you don't just press a reset button after and judge their next, related bad mistake in isolation.


A lot of the advice seems superficial (using college and employer branding to leverage yourself into roles). It even goes to the point of telling you that earnign an MBA from a any school besides a toptier school hurts you. I guess that might be true if your only goal is to make $1M in 10 years, not for an average top-impact employee working their way up (the HN title says "as a traditional employee")

Did anyone find value in this? It comes off as a bit arrogant maybe, but maybe Ineed to reread it


Getting an MBA from a non-top school CAN help. The key is understanding how it can help: 1- If your pre-MBA employer has a strong brand, and you are not planning to switch functions, then a mid-tier MBA will hurt you (i.e., you are working at Amazon in marketing. Getting an MBA from University of Portland thinking it will accelerate your marketing career is a mistake)

2- If you are using an MBA to switch functions, then even a lower tier school will help you do that (but obviously not as valuable as a higher tier school)

"Traditional employee" here just means someone working for an employer - not self employed or starting their own company. It does not mean "an average employee". Clearly a random person off the street is not going to make $1MM/year anytime soon. And anyone who claims they could make that happen are lying.

Also: I would hope much of the advice is helpful for anyone who wants to "accelerate" their career, even if they don't take it all the way to $1MM.


What a great story, and I'm sure you have more! Why did you do the Rally? Do you have a blog that documents your journey?


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