BC SOFTWARE
Saved by @Alex1Powell

AFAIK the only group to discover Ken’s hack was us in PWB/UNIX. One of the other guys noticed C prepreprocessor had gotten bigger, looked at binary namelist, found symbol not in source code. I got onto Ken’s system, found the code, very clever.

 @mattblaze A bit latet, I was in Lab 127’s terminal room, talking to dmr or bwk, and overheard amusing conversation between ken and Robert Morris Sr, who sometimes consulted for NSA.
(RM Jr of worm fame was just a kid then.)
@mattblaze They were chortling away over cleverness of exploit. Then one (must have been ken) said “think we could put this over on NSA?” (which already had UNIX systems... we did favors now and then).
More chortling, then (must have been Bob): uhh, NSA really doesn’t have sense of humor.
@mattblaze PWB crew ran 1st real UNIX computer center & we were hyper-sensitive, partly because someone had called at night, told operator he was Ken Thompson & needed root password ... and got it. Turned out to be high schooler ... proving that social engineering tactics have been eternal.
@mattblaze Years later, as many BTL Directors were buying PDP11-70s for labs as general service systems, some PWB crew were asked to do security audits, given experience running biggest UNIX site. One lab was very proud of enhanced password software.
We did audit, agreed with that, BUT:
@mattblaze We told them, unfortunately:
1) Many terminals had yellow stickies with root password.
2) They’d reused unused lab space w/o adequate HVAC, room got hot, so they often left door open.
As usual, good tech helps, but human error/laziness must always be guarded against.
@mattblaze BTL Directors could spend $250K w/o much approval, enough to buy PDP 11/70, disks, tapes, run their own computer center w/o having to negotiate with regular BTL computer centers.
Same thing happened later with workstations & then PCs: user depts got impatient with central IT.
@mattblaze There's often been pendulum swing between centralized & distributed IT handling.
Just as happened later with workstations/PCs, BTL Directors found that running own computer center well was a pain. The main computer centers then offered to do facilities management, with good HVAC,
@mattblaze 24-hour operators who could run tape backups, and centralized purchasing. If a Director wanted more disk space for their system(s), they just told central IT, not have to haggle over disk allocation.
I recall centralized mainframe service bureaus of 1960s,reborrn as cloud🙂

More from Software

Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
One of the big promises of software is composability. You can build rich, powerful experiences out of basic building blocks.

APIs add new things to the toolbox. For example: Treasury, which lets an app/platform store, move, and track a business’

I've been a small business owner and can talk at length about SMB banking, and will later, but let's put on the software developer hat right now.

Lots of software talks about money, keeps records about money, does calculations about money, but can't *touch* money.

This is extremely frustrating when you're building SaaS apps for businesses, because you have total control over your UX right until your app needs to touch money... at which point all data about it lives in a silo you can't access.

So you generally push work to the operator.

For example, suppose you’re writing a business-in-a-box system for electricians, including an invoicing feature.

You need to be able to read bank transactions to reconcile. You probably can't. The owner can. So you ask the owner to do mind-numbing work a computer does better.

It sure would be great if your business customers had bank accounts you could actually introspect and operate on their behalves! You could just get the list of incoming payments and match against the invoices.

There is some software to write but it is not rocket science.
SOFTWARE
Charity Majors
Charity Majors
@mipsytipsy
Developer productivity, y'all. It is a three TRILLION dollar opportunity, per the stripe report.

Eng managers and directors, we have got to stop asking for "more headcount" and start treating this like the systems problem that it is. https://t.co/XJ0CkFdgiO


If you are getting barely more than 50% productivity out of your very expensive engineers, I can pretty much guarantee you cannot hire your way out of this resourcing issue. 😐

(the stripe report is here:

Say you've got a strategic initiative that 3 engineers to build and support it. Well, they're going to be swimming in the same muddy pipeline as everyone else at ~50%, so you're actually gotta source, hire and train 6, er make that 7 (gonna need another manager too now)...

...which actually understates the problem, because each person you add also adds friction and overhead to the system. Communication, coordination all get harder and processes get more complex and elaborate, etc.

So we could hire 7 people, or we could patch up our sociotechnical system to lose say only 25% productivity to tech debt, instead of 42%? 🤔

By my calculations, that would reclaim 3 engineers worth of capacity given a team of just 17-18 people.
SOFTWARE
Advertisement
Opemipo: The 15-year-old developer\U0001f680
Opemipo: The 15-year-o...
@coderoflagos
Here are some resources you need as a designer/developer to work on your level of productivity.👨‍💻🍀

(Thread) 🧵👇

1. Focusmate: Focusmate changes the way you work by connecting you to other professionals who have committed to being accountable for finishing their most important

2. Habitica: Habitica is a free habit and productivity app that treats your real life like a game. Habitica can help you achieve your goals to become healthy and

3. BitBucket: Bitbucket is a web-based version control repository hosting service owned by Atlassian, for source code and development projects that use either Mercurial or Git revision control systems.

4. Clickup: ClickUp is a cloud-based collaboration and project management tool suitable for businesses of all sizes and industries. Features include communication and collaboration tools, task assignments and statuses, alerts, and a task
SOFTWARE
Eric Seufert
Eric Seufert
@eric_seufert
Facebook -- having taken out full-page ads in the NYT, Washington Post, and WSJ -- is generally seen as the primary victim of the new app privacy controls coming in iOS14. But Google is perhaps even more vulnerable to ATT. Why has Google remained silent? (1/X)

2/ First, background: here's a high-level overview of how ATT / IDFA deprecation impacts advertisers and ad networks, and why this whole ordeal has put advertisers and ad networks into a state of panic:

3/ Google is equally as susceptible to harm from ATT as Facebook. Google's UAC product -- esp its tROAS and tCPA campaign objectives -- relies as much on IDFA-indexed monetization and engagement data as FB's mobile product does. But Google has one big weakness wrt ATT: YouTube

4/ Broadly, view-through attribution accounts for a disproportionate % of conversions from YouTube app install impressions. This means: user sees the YT ad, doesnt click, downloads app later, & Google is able to claim it by reconciling IDFA seen at impression to IDFA seen in app

5/ View-through attribution is nonexistent in the ATT paradigm as it relies on the IDFA; some significant portion of YT's attributed conversions will evaporate. So why isnt Google vocally opposing ATT? Two reasons: consumer optics and its duality as ad network / mobile platform
INTERNET , SOFTWARE
Kenneth Cassel \U0001f40d
Kenneth Cassel 🐍...
@KennethCassel
Software engineering interview experiences don't have to be terrible.

Thread on my best software engineering interview experience.
👇🏼 (Thanks @PaulYacoubian for the idea)

Starting from the top of the funnel, I heard of this company (fintech startup, close to $1b valuation, based in NYC) from a podcast they were advertising on, and I liked the mission.

I went to their website and applied.

Their application portal used greenhouse. One page and no need for re-typing resume info.

They had an open field that said "Tell me something we should know about you".

I wrote about how I was a career switcher, had kids, went to school while working full time, etc.

Here's where they started to stand out.

They emailed me back a few days later and sent me a calendly link to schedule my first interview.

Letting the candidate choose a time for an interview is a small detail but is great for reducing candidate stress.

I scheduled my first interview. I received an email detailing what the interview would be about, what to expect, and what to prepare for. It would be a casual chat.

My interviewer mentioned and asked tons of questions about the free-response field I had filled out earlier.
SOFTWARE

You May Also Like

David Rothkopf
David Rothkopf
@djrothkopf
Pretending that voting for Trump or denying climate change or suggesting the solution to every problem is more guns is a legitimate point of view, worthy of respect is not "how America works." It is how it dies.

People in a free society are entitled to any point of view no matter how obviously wrong or outlandish or destructive provided they do not impose their views on others.

But suggesting that something ignorant or divorced from reality warrants the same kind of treatment in public debate as something based in fact or at least credible is absurd and when done on behalf of a society in public media or academic settings it is self-destructive.

We would not grant media coverage or much bandwidth at all to a group that argued that unicorns exist or that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet views like denying climate change or basing policy decisions on sweeping, obvious lies, are just as unsound.

Somewhere, somehow, judgments must be made. Some behaviors are wrong and must be condemned. Someone must challenge lies and demand facts. Coddling people who embrace idiocies does not help them no matter how loudly they demand to be coddled.
POLITICS
Anu Satheesh \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Anu Satheesh 🇮🇳...
@AnuSatheesh5
Thiruvizha Mahadeva Kshetram
#Alappuzha 
#Keralatemples 🚩

Thiruvizha Mahadeva Kshetram is located in Cherthala and it is believed that Prathishta of temple was done by Vilwamangalam Swamy. Paramashiva is Swayambhu here and is worshipped as Kalakandha which means who swallowed


Halahala visham to save the world during Samudra mathanam. 

It is a famous temple where people seek the blessings, for curing the Kaivisham. The poison given by someone to destroy a person is made to vomit here. This is removed by making them vomit the poison by a special


medicine.
The medicine for vomiting is made from a plant near temple by Palodathu family. The milk offered to Bhagwan is mixed with the extracts of the plant.

Story says that once this place was a dense forest, and a woman was looking for the presence of a tortoise in the pond


and the tip of her stick hit the bottom and it started bleeding in the pond. 
Frightened, the lady informed every one and after searching in pond people found Swayambhu Lingam inside the pond. Thus Prathishta was done here.

Om Namah Shivaye
Shambo Mahadeva
🙏🕉🙏
ALL
Advertisement
Fidato
Fidato
@tequieremos
A thread on the life and achievements of Muhiyudin Sayyid Abdul Qadir Jillani RadiAllah who served Islam infinitely as the Reviver (Mujadid) of the 11th Century!


Muhiyudin Sayyid Abdul Qadir Jilani (RA) was one of the greatest Islamic Saint, Scholar, and Jurist. The honorific Muhiyudin denotes his status with many Sufis as a "reviver of religion". Jilani refers to his place of birth. He also carried the epithet Baghdadi.

[1]

Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani was born on the eve of the 2nd of Ramadan 470 AH. His birth was a great blessing for the Ummah. It was the arrival of the Sultan al-Awliya (King of the Awliya) of that era, which had been foretold for centuries before his birth.

[2]

When Hazrat Abdul Qadir Jillani was asked by someone what brought him to his high spiritual level, he said, The truthfulness which I promised to my mother. He related the following story:
"One day, on the eve of Eid al-Adhā, I went to my mother, who was then a widow and..

[3]

..and requested her, 'Send me to the path of Truth, give me permission to go to Baghdad to acquire knowledge, to be with the wise and those who are close to Allah. She cried, but she brought out 80 pieces of gold, which was all that my father had left as inheritance.

[4]
RELIGION
Vedic Gyaan
Vedic Gyaan
@vedicgyaanindia
The chorus of this song uses the shlokas taken from Sundarkand of Ramayana.

It is a series of Sanskrit shlokas recited by Jambavant to Hanuman to remind Him of his true potential.

1. धीवर प्रसार शौर्य भरा: The brave persevering one, your bravery is taking you forward.


2. उतसारा स्थिरा घम्भीरा: The one who is leaping higher and higher, who is firm and stable and seriously determined.

3. ुग्रामा असामा शौर्या भावा: He is strong, and without an equal in the ability/mentality to fight

4. रौद्रमा नवा भीतिर्मा: His anger will cause new fears in his foes.

5.विजिटरीपुरु धीरधारा, कलोथरा शिखरा कठोरा: This is a complex expression seen only in Indic language poetry. The poet is stating that Shivudu is experiencing the intensity of climbing a tough peak, and likening

it to the feeling in a hard battle, when you see your enemy defeated, and blood flowing like a rivulet. This is classical Veera rasa.

6.कुलकु थारथिलीथा गम्भीरा, जाया विराट वीरा: His rough body itself is like a sharp weapon (because he is determined to win). Hail this complete

hero of the world.

7.विलयगागनथाला भिकारा, गरज्जद्धरा गारा: The hero is destructive in the air/sky as well (because he can leap at an enemy from a great height). He can defeat the enemy (simply) with his fearsome roar of war.
VEDICGYAN
Will Buxton
Will Buxton
@wbuxtonofficial
The Haas / Force India argument is fascinating, and the decision of the stewards may still have consequences. The first key finding is that the stewards ruled Racing Point Force India to be a valid constructor. That means that it builds its own cars.

Haas had argued that the cars had been designed by Force India, but as Haas knows only too well, "outsourcing" is legal. The stewards decided that "there is no regulatory support for the argument that Outsourcing of Listed Parts cannot come from a former or excluded team."

In determining this, the stewards also came to the following conclusion: "In relation to the submission by the Racing Point Force India F1 Team that it is not a new team, the Stewards decide that the Racing Point Force India F1 Team is indeed a new team."

This will have a big knock on effect for Haas in its continued arguments over the rights of RPFI as relates to its eligibility and rights under the complex payments structure. Haas has argued all along that RPFI should be treated as a new team and tread the same path that it did.

TLDR? Haas lost the fight but may have won the war. In having its argument that Racing Point hadn't designed their own car thrown out, they gained clarification that RPFI was a new team.
SPORT