You don’t have to read it, but you just might learn something.
Leading Thought
Prime
9 Ways to Make Your SaaS Customers Hate You, Ranked
Great post here about communicating changes and issues to your customers. Everyone has probably been on the receiving end of one of these bad practices and will empathize with the points being made. If you provide a service of any kind, whether B2B or B2C, you should give this a look. It may just change the way you communicate in general.
In ‘warfare against renters,’ homeowners fight affordable housing push
In the 4.14.23 Self. Documenting. I shared an episode of Frontline titled Poverty, Politics and Profit which talked about the Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) attitude many homeowners have when it comes to having muti-family and affordable housing come into their neighborhoods. Much of it is fear that property values will drop given the stigma that such housing brings with it crime, traffic, and other problems. It also detailed the massive problems low-income families face to simply have shelter (really, if you haven’t watched it, you should).
Jump forward to 2023. We are still feeling the effects of the 2008 housing collapse. New homes are lagging demand, prices on existing stock continue to rise, interest rates make homes less affordable, and rents are skyrocketing as a result. While most people don’t want to see anyone homeless, the thought off building affordable housing in their neighborhoods continues to be taboo. The problem is that many of the lower-paying jobs that these communities depend on for services (which includes teachers) can’t be filled because the people who would fill these jobs can’t afford to live nearby. This stigma around housing hurts everyone eventually whether we know it or not.
If you are in the camp of homeowners who fear the worst for yourself, you should give this a read and watch the video linked above. The time has come where we need to get back to looking out for each other; maybe this will help change your mind.
The housing shortage was aggravated during the pandemic when remote work and the desire for more space led to a population shift toward less densely packed suburban areas and relatively lower-cost states, like Texas, Arizona and Colorado. In turn, home prices have risen more than 30% and rents are up more than 25% nationwide since 2020.
Shein steals artists’ designs, a federal racketeering lawsuit says
If you’re on the Interwebs at all, chances are you’ve run across an ad fro Shein offering clothing and other items at ridiculous prices. Turns out there may be a good reason they can offer items this low, even if they are manufactured overseas: the lawsuit accuses them of stealing their designs from small, independent designers and artists.
If I understand the way this works correctly, Shein actually owns multiple different companies. An AI system watches for fashion trends and looks for items that may fit the trend. Once a design is identified, it is handed over to another company that does the manufacturing, which then goes to other companies for sales and web properties. The kicker, based on the complaint, is that the company will do small batch production – say 200 or so of an item – and see if a complaint is made for the stolen design. If none appear, they open up production and profit, stealing from the original designer. This collusion of companies, meant to make it hard to sue any one of them, is how we arrive at a RICO charge (yep, that’s the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act used to fight The Mob). Really an interesting read; it’s going to be interesting to see where this goes.
The designers have suffered “substantial damage to [their businesses] in the form of diversion of trade, loss of profits, and a diminishment in the value” of their products and reputations, the complaint says.
Restricting the Government from Speaking to Tech Companies Will Spread Disinformation and Harm Democracy
You may have missed this ruling since it was made on July 4th, but it’s important to raise awareness around it. Why? Because there are so many things wrong with both the case, the ruling, and the reasoning.
At issue is some vague notion that the government is censoring conservative speech on social media. As relief, the judge issued an order that prevents government agencies, including the FBI, Homeland Security, and the Justice Department, to name a few, from communicating with social media companies. This is a serious problem if for no other reason than it means that the government is hamstrung even in cases where there may be a threat from a hostile government attempting to sow discord.
This short analysis of a very long opinion is from Leah Litman, Professor of Law at University of Michigan, and Laurence Tribe, Professor of Law at Harvard. It’s very much worth the few minutes to read through and start to understand why this ruling is wrong and a danger to every US citizen.
Whatever ultimately happens in this case shouldn’t cause us to lose sight of the fact that this decision, if left standing, will make us less secure as a nation and will endanger us all every day the injunction remains in force.
Coming Soon
Beer City Code
(August 4 - 5, 2023 | Grand Rapids, MI)
Definitely check this dev conference out – lots of names you may recognize: Mike Eaton, Cassandra Faris, Chris DeMars, and Rocket Homes own Chris Woodruff!
Black Hat USA
(August 5-10, 2023 | Mandalay Bay / Las Vegas + Virtual)
Infosec your thing? Then check out this conference in Vegas. There are two day classes available, as well as briefings demos, and more.
Black Is Tech 2023
(In-Person (Atlanta, GA): August 9 – 11, 2023 | Virtual: August 7 – 9, 2023)
The Black Is Tech Conference is a platform that connects Black tech professionals, students and entrepreneurs and provides access to resources for growth and development for these groups.
Humble Bundles
Programming Fundamentals 2023 Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation and Covenant House – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $25 you get 25 titles, including:
- Working with grep, sed, and awk
- Flowchart and Algorithm Basics
- Software Testing
- Programming Fundamentals Using JAVA, Second Edition
- Linux Shell Programming Pocket Primer
- And more!
Cloud Ops and Development Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Covenant House – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $18 you get 36 titles, including:
- Kubernetes for Jobseekers
- Linux Server Cookbook
- IT Infrastructure Automation Using Ansible
- DevOps & Containers Security
- Developing Cloud Native Applications in Azure using .NET Core
- And more!
The Salesforce CRM Certification Mega Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Covenant House – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $25 you get 20 titles, including:
- Salesforce Data Architecture and Management
- Salesforce for Beginners - Second Edition
- MuleSoft for Salesforce Developers - First Edition
- Hands-On Low-Code Application Development with Salesforce
- Mastering Apex Programming
- And more!
The Complete Python Mega Software Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $25 you get 45 items, including:
- Beginners Guide to Coding in Python (20 Hours)
- Python and NumPy for Data Science: Mastering the Foundations
- Python Mastery: Visualizing Data with PyPlot
- From Excel to Python: Mastering Data Science Automation
- Introduction to Data Analysis: Pandas and Python for Beginners
- And more!
CyberSecurity: Zero to Hero Software Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting World Wildlife Fund – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $25 you get 22 items, including:
- The Beginners 2023 Cyber Security Awareness Training Course
- Writing Secure Code in ASP.NET
- The Complete Ethical Hacking Course
- Software Security Testing
- Pentesting Fundamentals for Beginners
- And more!
AI
A simple guide to help you understand AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI), in it’s many forms, is all around us whether we know it or not. We hear the arguments over the latest advances in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) like ChatGPT and generally have a strong reaction, whether positive or negative, but rarely do people even think twice about the AI working for them already.
From Alexa and Siri, to ChatGPT, this article does a great job of explaining the different forms AI takes, how they work at a high level, and where you will encounter them. Especially if you find that you are feeling a bit out of the loop, this is a good, not too long, read.
The promises and warnings of science fiction seem to have suddenly crept up on us and we find we are already living in a world where AI is beginning to reveal its strange inhuman abilities.
Infosec
WormGPT: New AI Tool Allows Cybercriminals to Launch Sophisticated Cyber Attacks
It was going to happen sooner rather than later, the weaponization of Generative AI. Interesting look at a tool being advertised on underground forums that helps create phishing attacks, and this is likely only a harbinger of far worse black hat tools coming, including those that generate massive amounts of misinformation and spread it via social media.
While some of the best ways we have of detecting phishing emails include typos and poor grammar, WormGPT promises to make clean, legitimate looking emails that avoid these pitfalls. The even bigger threat may come from an increased number of script kiddies who can now quickly and efficiently craft these types of attacks, creating a deluge of bad email – eventually you are going to miss one.
The fact that WormGPT operates without any ethical boundaries underscores the threat posed by generative AI, even permitting novice cybercriminals to launch attacks swiftly and at scale without having the technical wherewithal to do so.
CVE-2023-36884 – Nation-State RCE Targets Government Agencies with Malicious Microsoft Office Documents
On July 11th, Microsoft announced they had uncovered a zero-day bug found in numerous Windows and Office products with a criticality score of 8.3. Concerningly, this vulnerability, which is being tracked CVE-2023-36884, is already being exploited in the wild, with a nation-state backed group as well as other criminal groups leveraging it to carry out remote code execution via weaponized Office documents.
MOVEit app mass-exploited last month patches new critical vulnerability
New security update for three issues, two critical. Details inside but if you use MOVEit and haven’t gotten notice and patched already, now you know.
The vulnerability contains the same elements—and, likely, the same potentially devastating consequences—as one that came to light in late May when members of the Clop ransomware crime syndicate began mass-exploiting it on vulnerable networks around the world.
Personal Development
Why you didn’t get that design job
Anyone who’s been on the hunt for a job understands the frustration and depression that can go along with not getting picked up right away. While at some level we know that there are a ton of factors at play, from resume scanning for key words, to implicit bias, to simply being lost in the shuffle, it’s still hard not to feel as if it’s personal.
The author, Eric Snowden, VP of Design at Adobe, has written this with a focus on designers, obviously, but there is wisdom here for everyone looking – or considering looking – for a new job, as well as those doing the hiring.
Many large companies require jobs to be posted publicly even if they already know who they want to hire. Sometimes the hiring manager forgets to take down a post and it stays up indefinitely.
Teams
Help your team leave
Great advice here not only for leaders of design teams, but of software engineering teams as well. I’ll let the post make its point about why it’s important to provide time for team members to build their portfolios and give them feedback to do it better, but there’s an even better reason: for using that portfolio internally.
One of the hardest parts of promoting people is understanding their strengths and weaknesses. By having a portfolio built for the outside, you get an edge on the competition by seeing the brand before anyone else. While there are people who will leave for myriad reasons, how much better is it to have an opportunity to essentially recruit from within? Team members with portfolios are advertising themselves to the outside world for sure, but they are also advertising to you. If they are valuable to someone outside, it is likely they are at least – if not more – valuable to you on the inside. Take advantage of the familiarity to retain and grow people.
Hiring, nurturing and caring for a team who will one day leave you is a necessary pain in life. Turnover isn’t a bad word, it’s expected. As an employer or leader the sooner you accept this golden rule, the better.