You don’t have to read it, but you just might learn something.
Leading Thought
Prime
Why I Left Developer Relations (dev rel)
Are you a company that feels like it needs to have a Developer Relations team to be one of the cool companies, or check off a box on the no, really, we’re a technology company list? Are you looking to go into Developer Relations as a career? You need to give this a watch.
If you’re not quite sure what DevRel is, check out this post I linked mid-August: I think, therefore I YAML
What Your Boredom at Work Is Actually Telling You
Good, quick hit here from LifeHacker. From signaling burnout to increasing creativity and innovation, some level of boredom is a good thing and reinforces why we shouldn’t be scheduling teams at 100% capacity (even the Harvard Business Review is on to this).
Boredom forces us to be with our thoughts, something many people are loathe to do. In fact, one study found that participants would rather self-administer electric shocks than be alone with their thoughts. “Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing,” the study concludes, “even if that something is negative.”
Disaster relief often leaves disabled people behind. Disabled first responders are trying to change that
When a disaster strikes, I don’t think there are many people who aren’t at least somewhat concerned for the people affected. Getting people food, shelter and basic necessities is likely one of the first ways to think to help. But how often does someone without a disability, or who doesn’t know someone living with a disability, think about the special needs of this population?
Like anything, it’s easy to forget that not everyone has the same life or life experience as you do. When the power goes out for me, it’s an inconvenience. A long outage is frustrating. But for someone who relies on medical equipment, an extended outage can be deadly (now think about that population in Puerto Rico, where some were without power for months following Hurricane Maria). Now think about not being able to hear (or hear much), and what the impact might be when first responders are evacuating an are or looking for survivors. Disability can be complicated in a normal world; thinking about what that may be like in a disaster will definitely make you sit back.
This is another one of those articles that everyone should read to understand how other people may be affected by large scale events. It may even help some realize that there may be additional actions that they need to take to help protect their loved ones from a worst-case scenario.
With climate-related crises growing worse, a comprehensive disability-led approach to disaster relief is more important than ever. Flooding is expected to get worse as sea levels rise, rain rates and wind intensities increase, and the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes also likely goes up.
Right to repair’s unlikely new adversary: Scientologists
Right to Repair is a fascinating topic – from John Deere to car manufacturers to Apple, the efforts to maintain hold over proprietary repair facilities that often charge a lot of money, is huge. The question of whether it should be allowed when you own the product is a problem in and of itself.
But where do the Scientologists come in?
While there does not seem to be any hard proof, it seems that this may be the result of the Church of Spiritual Technology’s E-meters. As the only known product that might be impacted by Right to Repair, the damage a successful suit here could do if successful – requiring that only someone with particular training could make repairs – would be vague enough so as to render any protections moot. In essence, companies could require their training, at a high cost, to meet the criteria, or withhold it altogether. It’s going to be interesting to see where this goes.
The Fall Yard Cleanup Tasks You Should Tackle in September
Great reminder here of some of the tasks to get done before winter comes – yard work’s not done yet!
Humble Bundles
Machine Learning and AI 2023 Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Direct Relief – 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 25 titles, including:
- Machine Learning Security Principles
- Artificial Intelligence with Python - Second Edition
- Machine Learning in Microservices
- Creators of Intelligence
- Applied Machine Learning and High-Performance Computing on AWS
- And more!
Game Programming with C++ & Unreal Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Direct Relief – 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 $20 you get 22 titles, including:
- C++ Game Development By Example
- Hands-On C++ Game Animation Programming
- Elevating Game Experiences with Unreal Engine 5
- Hands-On Design Patterns with C++
- C++ Data Structures and Algorithms
- And more!
Software Architecture Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Code for America – 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 15 titles, including:
- Fundamentals of Software Architecture
- The Software Architect Elevator
- Foundations of Scalable Systems
- Learning Domain-Driven Design
- The Art of Agile Development, 2nd Edition
- And more!
The A-Z of Full Stack Development Software Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Girls Who Code – 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 29 items, including:
- AWS, JavaScript, React - Deploy Web Apps on the Cloud
- Docker - A Beginner’s Hands-On Guide
- Kubernetes for Beginners
- JavaScript Masterclass - Zero to Job-Ready with Hands-On Projects
- React JS Masterclass - Go From Zero To Job Ready
- And more!
AI
In every reported case where police mistakenly arrested someone using facial recognition, that person has been Black
This may be a dead horse, it bears raising awareness every time it comes up. As technologists, we have a duty to not do harm to people. The fact that these are known problems and products are released into the wild is unethical at best. The damage bad algorithms can, and do, do to people’s lives should make any form of software used to make judgments about people highly regulated with severe penalties when harm is done. Good to see more and more legal action being taken on behalf of the injured.
In 2020, Detroit’s police chief said their facial recognition technology, when used alone, fails 96% of the time, Insider previously reported.
DE&I
Ingram, Reeves, and Wilson vs. Wayne County, MI
Not many know that there is little most people can do to stop law enforcement from seizing your assets – from your car, to your home, or even cash on hand – with very little cause in a lot of places (see Detroit Civil Forfeiture for information on this case). Even if you are not guilty or simply awaiting a court date, you may not get your stuff back for a long time, if at all, and the impact on low-income people is even worse. This forfeiture model has become a huge revenue generator for law enforcement all over the country. This ruling makes the current process in Wayne County unconstitutional and requires that the county provide a hearing within two weeks (normal process could take up to 10 months).
This is an important case simply because of the fast and loose way law enforcement uses the forfeitures. Not only are there fees for towing a car for example, but also storage fees and more, that must be paid before the car is returned. Failure to pay can result in the car and all the property inside being auctioned off and the money going to the local government. Absolutely worth a read – this could easily happen to you by simply being in the wrong place at the right time.
Unlike criminal forfeiture, civil forfeiture does not require the property owner to have committed a crime. Anyone’s vehicle can be seized based on one police officer’s suspicion that it was, in some way, connected to a crime. Even being near an alleged crime is enough. And anyone’s crime will do. The vehicle owner does not have to be under suspicion, even when he or she could have done nothing to prevent the crime from happening.
Engineering
How to Remove Secrets From a Git Repository
It happens. You’re chugging along and forget to exclude a file from your commit and – whoops – you’ve managed to commit sensitive info to your repo. Nice, straightforward strategy here for getting them out though, as one of the commenters notes, it’s probably also a good choice to change that information if at all possible.
Infosec
Results of Major Technical Investigations for Storm-0558 Key Acquisition
Kudos to Microsoft for being transparent and releasing the findings of their investigation of the compromise of a signing key in July. This is a great write-up detailing what happened, how the environments are configured, and how the key was exposed. Also included are the remediations Microsoft have done to prevent a similar action in the future. Well worth the read to understand where you may find holes in your security.
The crash dumps, which redact sensitive information, should not include the signing key. In this case, a race condition allowed the key to be present in the crash dump (this issue has been corrected).