Leaving twitter And my social media footprint shrinks; I’ve closed my twitter account, mostly ‘cos there’s very little left there to read. Yesterday there were only 5 or 6 new posts on the “Following” feed (I never used the algorithmic feed); 90% of the likes my posts got were bots. It really was the text equivalent of a post-apocalyptic wasteland with howling winds.
I had always been careful about what accounts I followed, so the extreme views that are reportedly on that platform rarely impinged on my consciousness; on the occasions I did click on a tweet it became clear that many of the replies were bots and misinformation or just plain hatred (“never read the comments!
So 5 years ago today was the day I told my boss I wasn’t going to come into the office for a while, and would work from home. Because I didn’t feel comfortable.
The company had made a plan; they were going to split the office into two groups who would come in alternate weeks. The idea was to reduce occupancy. However I’d been seeing more and more in the news how bad COVID could be and I didn’t want to risk being on the train for an hour each way as well as being in the office.
Secure messaging A common question I get asked is “what secure messaging app do you use?” and the answer of “none” gets some surprised looks; how can I be in cyber security if I don’t use secure messaging?
The answer is “convenience”, with a side of “risk analysis”.
Back when Signal (on Android) did both secure messaging and SMS in the same app then I used this. When they removed this (because people might send insecure messages by mistake) I stopped using it.
For some reason this year a lot more 9/11 denialism has come across my social media feeds. I wonder if it’s because of the upcoming election.
And I just can’t…
I’d had enough a decade ago and wrote something then; I’m repurposing it here.
I was working on Wall Street the day it happened, just half a mile away. I’d only moved to the US 2 months earlier.
I spoke to people who were at WTC as it happened.
This isn’t my normal tech-ish posting; this is a more personal view at how Corporate America and tech startups and the like are abusing their workforce. I don’t mean the sort of abuse seen in the service industry (below minimum wages needing to be supplemented with tips; excessive overtime; all that stuff). I’m talking about white collar tech jobs. The sort of jobs I did; likely the sort of jobs you’re doing (if you’re reading this blog); office workers…
We all know what imposter syndrome is. We may all have suffered from it at some point. I know I did.
We may even know, rationally, that this isn’t a sensible thing. One good representation of this was from David Whittaker
Yet despite this whenever I started a new job I was always worried that I wasn’t the right person for it; that I’d fail to deliver.
Recently I wrote about how I got here without knowing what it was I wanted to do.
That was a prelude to the other half of the equation; I may not know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want.
At this moment in my life, I don’t to work. At all. I want to have the luxury to be able to lie in, to read a book, to stay up late hacking on some code or whatever…
One of the most annoying interview questions is “where do you see yourself in five years time?“. I hate it. I have no vision of the future like this. Hell, I barely know what I want to do tomorrow.
I’m good at foreseeing the future, honest! So my first job, straight out of uni, was with a small Greek shipping company. I learned a lot there ‘cos I had to do it all.
I get email…
What are your thoughts about making a career out of specialising in Unix? It seems like you’ve done quite well…
Interesting question…
Realise that I started doing this 30 years ago. At that time there was no Windows (Windows 1.0 was around the corner). We had DOS. Networking was mostly serial based; if you were (un)lucky you might have had Banyon Vines or Novell or some other proprietary network stack.
Back in 1984 I thought I was pretty good at writing programs for my BBC Micro. I could write BASIC programs that worked; I was learning 6502 assembler. I could hack on programs, break copy protection. I definitely knew more than my teachers.
But my brother was able to break my code.
For example, I wrote a simple “football” program for him. The idea was that he’d select two teams and the game would simulate a match and generate some scores.
