6 ms·

This is a really gross attitude, and it's even grosser that you dress it up like some macho rite-of-passage. Call it what it is: A bunch of bitter nerds taking

by ceol 13y ago

This is a really gross attitude, and it's even grosser that you dress it up like some macho rite-of-passage. Call it what it is: A bunch of bitter nerds taking their pent-up anger out on random newbies. It's the fraternity hazing of the tech world, it's bullshit, and it needs to stop. It doesn't need other bitter nerds treating it like it's normal. Instead of expecting newbies to know they're going to be met with a storm of putrid shit should they speak a syllable out of line, how about we expect our moderators and leaders have some degree of social skill?

dobbsbob 13y ago
I think there's something wrong with you if you get all uppity and bent out of shape over a senior developer calling you out. I actually laugh when Theo De Raadt calls my device driver a flaming bag of of shit, and says my head must be so far up my ass I'm unable to understand the interfaces I'm coding to. I rewrite it then submit it to somebody else to review before submission, then get a message saying thanks for doing it the proper way, thanks for using the proper channels, and hey you seem OK do you want to come to the invite only hackathon in Germany this year? If I cried about it instead, I'd still be a shitty programmer, and I wouldn't be drinking gigantic beers in Hamburg learning invaluable methods from Henning Brauer how to properly design a program from the ground up with security in mind so you don't have to dispose of everything half way through a major project, wasting everybody else's time because you didn't carefully design. If you think mailing list comments are bad, wait until a room full of developers has to delete six days worth of coding because you screwed up the design with a simple mistake. Wait until your boss finds out you wasted company resources and money for months and had to scrap a project. You will get worse than hurt feelings, you will be fired. Almost all security/crypto projects are open source. There's no money involved, therefore no corporate sensitivity training or social skills needed. What's needed is secure code to stop governments from rounding up Syrian and Bahraini dissidents and drilling holes into their knees during interrogation because they were duped into trusting cryptocat while planning their democracy protests.
- ceol 13y ago
  There's something wrong with someone who doesn't want to get treated like shit? You're not helping your case. > What's needed is secure code to stop governments from rounding up Syrian and Bahraini dissidents and drilling holes into their knees during interrogation because they were duped into trusting cryptocat while planning their democracy protests. Oh, get over yourself. We all know the vast majority of online cryptographic transmissions are for child pornography and drug purchases. Don't act like Syrian rebels actually use these technologies when most of them don't even have access to a computer, let alone the knowledge of how to use one. This is seriously the problem. You sit there and think modern cryptography is something other than a rich white guy's game, as though it's nothing but a Righteous Endeavor, so you get to treat other people like shit. The fact that the paragraph before that one is all about how you're getting drunk at some invite-only German hackathon is proof enough.
  - nekopa 13y ago
    I understand your need to argue against a certain opinion, but I find it ironic that in a post where you use the term 'a rich white guy's game' you state that most people in Syria don't have access to a computer yet alone the knowledge how to use one. Yet a quick search shows Syria as 55th in the world with regards to Internet users - 5.4 million Internet users, or just over 24% of the population. Couple this with the fact that the government took Syria off of the global Internet, I think that maybe there is a solid use case for Syrians using strong crypto.
    - ceol 13y ago
      In context, Syria has the third lowest internet penetration in the entire Middle East at 22.5%.[0] Considering there are only ~195 countries in the world, being #55 is pretty low. 5.4m is nothing to forget about, of course, but my original point was that most don't have access. The United States, on the other hand, has 78.1% penetration.[1] Obviously I'm not arguing that Syrians who have access to computers shouldn't get to use crypto, or that there has never been a Syrian who used crypto to aid in protest. But let's not act like crypto's main usage is as righteous as helping a rebellion against an oppressive regime. [0]: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm [1]: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats14.htm http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats14.htm

by ceol 13y ago

dobbsbob 13y ago

I think there's something wrong with you if you get all uppity and bent out of shape over a senior developer calling you out. I actually laugh when Theo De Raadt calls my device driver a flaming bag of of shit, and says my head must be so far up my ass I'm unable to understand the interfaces I'm coding to. I rewrite it then submit it to somebody else to review before submission, then get a message saying thanks for doing it the proper way, thanks for using the proper channels, and hey you seem OK do you want to come to the invite only hackathon in Germany this year? If I cried about it instead, I'd still be a shitty programmer, and I wouldn't be drinking gigantic beers in Hamburg learning invaluable methods from Henning Brauer how to properly design a program from the ground up with security in mind so you don't have to dispose of everything half way through a major project, wasting everybody else's time because you didn't carefully design. If you think mailing list comments are bad, wait until a room full of developers has to delete six days worth of coding because you screwed up the design with a simple mistake. Wait until your boss finds out you wasted company resources and money for months and had to scrap a project. You will get worse than hurt feelings, you will be fired. Almost all security/crypto projects are open source. There's no money involved, therefore no corporate sensitivity training or social skills needed. What's needed is secure code to stop governments from rounding up Syrian and Bahraini dissidents and drilling holes into their knees during interrogation because they were duped into trusting cryptocat while planning their democracy protests.

ceol 13y ago
There's something wrong with someone who doesn't want to get treated like shit? You're not helping your case. > What's needed is secure code to stop governments from rounding up Syrian and Bahraini dissidents and drilling holes into their knees during interrogation because they were duped into trusting cryptocat while planning their democracy protests. Oh, get over yourself. We all know the vast majority of online cryptographic transmissions are for child pornography and drug purchases. Don't act like Syrian rebels actually use these technologies when most of them don't even have access to a computer, let alone the knowledge of how to use one. This is seriously the problem. You sit there and think modern cryptography is something other than a rich white guy's game, as though it's nothing but a Righteous Endeavor, so you get to treat other people like shit. The fact that the paragraph before that one is all about how you're getting drunk at some invite-only German hackathon is proof enough.
- nekopa 13y ago
  I understand your need to argue against a certain opinion, but I find it ironic that in a post where you use the term 'a rich white guy's game' you state that most people in Syria don't have access to a computer yet alone the knowledge how to use one. Yet a quick search shows Syria as 55th in the world with regards to Internet users - 5.4 million Internet users, or just over 24% of the population. Couple this with the fact that the government took Syria off of the global Internet, I think that maybe there is a solid use case for Syrians using strong crypto.
  - ceol 13y ago
    In context, Syria has the third lowest internet penetration in the entire Middle East at 22.5%.[0] Considering there are only ~195 countries in the world, being #55 is pretty low. 5.4m is nothing to forget about, of course, but my original point was that most don't have access. The United States, on the other hand, has 78.1% penetration.[1] Obviously I'm not arguing that Syrians who have access to computers shouldn't get to use crypto, or that there has never been a Syrian who used crypto to aid in protest. But let's not act like crypto's main usage is as righteous as helping a rebellion against an oppressive regime. [0]: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm [1]: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats14.htm http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats14.htm