@hrefna@hachyderm.io
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

hrefna

@hrefna@hachyderm.io

SRE at Google. Queer. Poly :potion_polyamory: Trans :verified_trans: :nonbinary_potion: Engineer. Ace :flag_ace: Member of AWU-CWA. #ActuallyAutistic :rainbowinfinity: #UnionStrong

Opinions my own. Does not suffer fools gladly.

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hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

One of my least favorite management antipatterns:

"Can we just try this for a while to see how it works?"

Not because that phrase should never be uttered, but because at least half the time when it happens it's happening because the manager(/exec) wasn't listening to feedback at all or had already made a decision without collecting feedback first.

If you want to use that phrase, you need to schedule a point in the future when feedback will be collected and the decision analyzed.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Be careful about saying something correct but that can be snipped out of context as "short, quippy, and wrong." Especially if you put the short, quippy, and (contextually) wrong piece into a meme.

Memes get shared much, much farther than the context you wrote to go with said meme.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

For example, there's a blog post going around talking about encryption at rest and how to an attacker* on a live* database* whole-disk encryption is useless (* we'll get to these momentarily). The article overall is fine and is talking about threat modeling, and explicitly names its constraints. All good things.

BUT, what I don't like it is that it puts this into a meme of the form "corporate would like you to tell the difference" between whole-disk-encryption and unencrypted.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Again: this isn't an objection to the blog post, where within the context of what it is talking about:

  • Attacker is qualified.
  • Live systems are specified.
  • Databases are the focus.

That's a GREAT conversation to be having about threat modeling and the constraints are useful in a threat modeling context.

But I'm not sharing it because the lede is the meme which, if you remove all the nice language and qualifiers from the blog post, becomes not just wrong but dangerously wrong.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

It's punchy. It's short and quippy. It's a good meme as a meme.

That's my problem with it.

Because what it is says is only correct in the context of the blog post and when divorced from that blog post it becomes dangerous.

That's a terrible lede, even if it is likely to draw clicks and views.

From a more general perspective whole disk encryption is very useful, just not against a live attacker on your database (which is the point), but that requires reading the entire blog post.

/fin

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

As a kid when I first heard the story of Odysseus and Polyphemus I always felt bad for Polyphemus.

You broke in, killed his sheep and goats (ended up after all of this stealing his favorite ram), and hung around—against the advice of your crew—because you thought he might give you a gift?

I'm not surprised that he decided you would be tasty. Nor when you give him your name, address, and social security number am I surprised he reported you up the chain, as it were.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@aoanla

I'd typically interpret the word "sacrifice" here to mean a live animal sacrifice, and I don't think it is particularly far of a stretch to think that they had stolen a nearby lamb or kid to make the sacrifice.

hrefna, (edited )
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@aoanla One could presumably argue that this was an offering of offal from the previous hunt, but it is notable that:

  1. At least in this translation the word "sacrifice" generally seems to only apply to live animals, which would be a common custom. There are a few cases where the target is unspecified, but where it is specified it always seems to be a live animal

  2. It isn't mentioned in the previous section when they actually kill the goats, despite cooking them and eating them there.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Mustards: "I can take 2 years to eliminate from a pasture!"
Kochia: "I take 3!"
Thistles: "We can take 5+ years!"

Bindweed and Russian Knapweed, speaking together: "Amateurs! AMATEURS!"

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Time to do some light reading on this flight. We'll see how far I get before I need to take a break and switch over to something less… substantive.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

I should give my "How I learned to stop worrying and love the JIT" (not my original title, but someone suggested it and I'm stealing it) talk again.

I also need to do a followup "Fear and Loathing in HotSpot" talk about "things you are seeing as problems, why they exist, and how to address them."

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Especially because so much has changed between the LTS releases that it's worth revisiting every so often.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

I've talked about this here before, but in general: Java performance advice is just so often… horridly wrong. Like you can still find pieces of advice that date back to pre Java 1.4 days.

But this doesn't mean that there aren't performance considerations, it's just that they are almost never the performance considerations that people think of when they think of how to tune java or debug performance issues.

The outdated (or just flat incorrect) advice is often worse than no advice at all.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

It's also relatively common for people to think that things are a performance consideration because they don't understand them.

Like the number of situations I've seen Guice be the source of a performance problem? I can basically count on one hand and usually a) it's a misconfiguration and b) it's rectified with like two lines of code.

But the number of times I've seen developers blame Guice? Many, many more times.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

I really just need to only date other asexuals (:flag_ace:). It's so much easier and lower stress.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"No one said not to do harm reduction"

Except I have multiple examples of people doing exactly that.

Come on, this isn't particularly difficult to find.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Like I've now seen "no one said not to vote for harm reduction" said in a thread with someone who advocates not voting in that exact same thread.

This "no one said…" line is extremely tired.

vyr, to Horror
@vyr@princess.industries avatar

looking for horror book recommendations, ideally from women and/or queer authors. starting by listing every horror book and deleting everything on any r/horrorlit recommendation thread because holy fuck how is anyone still stuck on Stephen King in 2024.

okay but seriously though. i don't know what's out there because i've been reading mostly short web fiction for a year. the last few formal horror books i've read were:

gonna throw out some keywords and generalities: i'm about to read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58830202-from-below. i vibe with Empty Spaces, some Cthulhu Mythos stuff, i love the sci-fi horror in the Southern Reach trilogy and Roadside Picnic and The Descent and pretty much everything by Peter Watts. i like Seanan McGuire and i liked the one book i've read by Seanan McGuire as Mira Grant (but it was the magical girl one so idk how much it applies to her actual horror stuff). i've read Ada Hoffmann but i only liked the first one. i think China Miéville is pretty good and Clive Barker is kinda mid. i think anything as trope-frozen as vampires and werewolves and ghosts is for children and yes i realize i said i liked Mythos stuff earlier. anything marketed as a "thriller" or "psychological horror" i will probably hate.

if you got this far, thanks for reading.

boosts appreciated 🔁✅

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@vyr If you liked Mexican Gothic you may like Roses of Pieria. It's kind of a supernatural-mishmash but it's a lot of fun (and sapphic).

Under the Pendulum Sun (Jeannette Ng) is brilliant, described as "Anglican Missionaries go to the fairylands, it doesn't go well." It's a very specific flavor of horror, but it's one I like a lot and don't see often

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher is a creepy-as-hell retelling of Manhen's White People, while Hollow Places is based on Blackwood's Willows.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@vyr "Not Good for Maidens" is one I haven't gotten to yet but have heard good things about. It's a horror-fantasy inspired by the Goblin Market.

The Scholomance Series ticks a lot of boxes, though it leans on a kind of comedic horror that is not to everyone's taste.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"Harm reduction is just reformism"

No, "reformism"—or whatever particular brand of "rebuild society" you are for—is about what you are doing with the other 365 days out of the year and how you are looking to drive change.

Harm reduction is about reducing harm in the meantime.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Girlfriend is describing to me, my response:

"So it's like a hybrid of Stardew Valley and Don't Starve as if written by Paradox Games?"

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"Person who won't do anything claims that the problem is no one else will do the only things they approve of, film at 11."

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Me: "I think this alert is a false positive for us. There may be a real issue, but it is directing it to the wrong group and we can't do anything about it."

Coworker: "I'm not sure I'd characterize it as a false positive given that it identified a real issue."

Me: "I'm not disputing that there is also a false negative involved as well."

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"I miss the old internet, when the cruel people were contained to one or two websites I could ignore"

What internet would that be, exactly?

It certainly wasn't any internet I've been on, and I've been around since the 1990s.

This "nostalgia for the 'heyday of the internet'" almost always seems to be rooted in these rose-colored glasses about how things were.

I won't argue about whether things are better or worse overall, but this idea that the internet was somehow nicer is weird to me.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Pet peeve "Happy memorial day."

-.-

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