a confession: I’ve battled mourning doves for months, ever since I bought a bird feeder for my garden and they kept draining it in less than a day.
they are allegedly stupid creatures, but that’s just what they want us to think.
I am plausibly an expert in cyber defense, having written a book and academic papers, lectured at federal agencies and F500s alike — yet the doves thwart my every mitigation.
I planned to write a blog post once I won, but my hope for victory further desiccates daily…
@mikeloukides that might work when there is actual ground, but I, living in NYC, have only a humble rooftop that I’d rather not be smeared in dove shit.
So, the doves hanging around all day is still a non-starter.
But, the focus of my battle is a Bird Buddy. I did buy a squirrel buster feeder which indeed prohibits them from feeding, but I am extremely stubborn so wanted to thwart their ambitions to feed from the Bird Buddy; that way, the finches, cardinals, and sparrows could finally feed.
went down to the hotel lobby to retrieve my dinner delivery in a yoga outfit + snuggly cardigan + face mask.
some men with #RSAC2024 lanyards exited the elevator as I re-entered; they turned back to look at me and one said (very loudly, very pointedly staring at me) to the other, “I was like, did you hire me a hooker?”
if you are a man attending #rsac, please shut that kind of shit down when your peers do it. let’s not let insecurity rule our #security industry.
when “finished” with its cycle, my new dryer beep bloops a jingle that can only be described as the sound of an ice cream truck in the first third of a horror movie, meant to show the viewer that something is contorted, sinister, slithering beneath the glossy surface in this seemingly halcyon town and it feels like it is mocking me every time, especially because it never actually has dried the things its insidiously jocund jingle insists it has
one day I will write a, “here are the top ~7 ways to dramatically improve your technical writing” guide for engineers.
because passive voice influences clarity, not just style, and even adds friction for neurodivergents who can’t stomach extended slogs through passive voice without their attention drifting.
eg “A review will be performed before project launch so readiness is assessed.” Who will perform the review?? Often the answer is “we don’t know”; passive voice is pernicious like that.
I suggested this for a conference and it (understandably!) didn't get accepted, but who'd be interested in me doing a recorded presentation on the similarities and differences between hardware-backed computer identity and the genetics of sex?
I am re-reading Dune. This quote by the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam is remarkable:
“Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
It's not about a Terminator-style AI-apocalypse where the machines want to kill us all dead. It's just an accurate prediction of what actually appears to be happening.
@hllizi@kaoudis you’d enjoy “the Technological Society” by Ellul (enjoy might be a stretch, because it’s honestly pretty haunting how accurately he foretold our current societal dynamics)
SbD should not incentivize lip service or #security theater. It should not be at odds with business goals.
So, @rpetrich and I wrote what SbD should be and not be.
We hope mastonerds especially appreciate our recommendations in Section 1.2.1 for how #software teams can start investing in SbD while supporting velocity, dev productivity, & reliability.
I really think people in the infosec industry and .gov do not understand the type of horrifically insecure shit customers request of software vendors — even customers who are security leaders!
At one company, a large customer asked us to, in effect, build a remote access trojan (RAT) into the product.
I refused, for what I hope are obvious reasons.
A decent chunk of the software #security problem is heinous architectures festering with tech debt and blaming software providers won’t fix that.