This image has stirred up a great deal of controversy and a bunch of people defending the state of software engineering.
I think y'all need a goddamn reality check, and I'm here to give it to you.
I have yet again engaged in an argument on Twitter with people who think Root Cause Analysis is a terrible, bad and misguided thing, and I've decided to put this very simplistic explanation of why I don't agree with that perspective here so I can just point people at it the next time I need to have this discussion.
Continue reading "Root Cause?"So there's a lot of people sounding off on the HORRIBLE CONSEQUENCES of the net neutrality vote today, and I want to just drop some real-world knowledge on y'all so you don't sound like morons.
Basically it means the internet is about to suck as much as Cable TV does.
There's a lot more, but I'm writing this on my lunch break, so you'll have to be happy with what you got.
A big deal is being made about NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem in protest of racial injustice (like the fact that a black guy is more than twice as likely to be shot by a cop than by anyone else in our society).
I think you all know where I stand on this, and I've spoken extensively about it on Twitter. What I am going to address here is the issue of patriotism - specifically the expected public displays of patriotism in our culture. Read on if you dare.
Continue reading "On the subject of Patriotism"…and that's not a joke, it's how your design meetings should be starting.
A few days ago on Twitter someone asked a seemingly innocent question: "I'm writing a post on the failure of Stored Procedures as a platform. What, in your view, were the reasons they didn't work out?"
A lot of reasons were given: "They're hard to test" (They're not - your unit tests should be testing your database.), "They're not in git" (They should be - If they arent your revision control process is fucked because your database isn't controlled), "They're fundamentally unreadable and require exponentially more tacit knowledge aka are awful for new devs to understand" (They're not "fundamentally" anything, and if they're documented well any competent developer should be able to understand them), "They encourage silos where DBAs say no." (This is a people problem: Your process doesn't facilitate understanding between your DBAs and the rest of your team).
Some folks even came up with what I would argue are good reasons, like "Badly written stored procedures don't scale well" (which is true: If your stored procedures involve lots of processing overhead the DB server becomes a processing bottleneck, which is a Bad Thing), and "It's an additional moving part in the system" (generally something to avoid, unless that moving part is the simplest solution to a problem).
I was all set to have a friendly difference of opinion on this issue until I saw this blog post, which starts out great and quickly goes off the rails into the weeds and starts eating slugs with the DevOps "we don't need no stinkin' sysadmin/DBA" children.
So now you get a rant about why you still need a Developer, a Sysadmin, and a DBA.
Back in April some jackass promised that there would be a follow-up post about migrating bsd-box.net to use the LetsEncrypt CA.
Oh right, that was me.
As usual life interfered, but here's the followup: The bsd-box.net server has been replaced with a shiny new machine, LetsEncrypt is still my CA of choice for this system, and a bunch of other things have changed. More below the jump.
Continue reading "A new server, and a few more words about LetsEncrypt."Most if not all readers of my blog are probably aware of the Lets Encrypt project, which officially exited Beta this month.
For those of you not familiar with it, the basic premise is "It's the goddamn 21st century, and there is no reason every website shouldn't be available over HTTPS. We're giving away certificates for free, and giving you an automated tool to acquire and renew them. You have no more excuses!"
Most of you also know I was originally quite skeptical of this project: I'm not a huge fan of trusting third-party programs with my cryptography, and I like to ensure that I'm maintaining control of the impotant bits (like private keys) at all times. The final implementation however appears to be well-designed and reasonably secure, enough so that I have used it for this year's certificate renewal on bsd-box.net.
What follows is a brief description of the Lets Encrypt process on FreeBSD: Its successes, its failures, and some thiings I may be submitting patches for in the near future.
Tom Limoncelli (yes, that Tom) recently wrote a blog post that came to my attention by way of Twitter in which he lamented his bank's scheduled downtime and the implications of routine "weekend work" in terms of an organization's respect for the time and work-life balance of its sysadmin staff.
This was posted the "Rants" section of his blog and is obvisouly ment to be taken as slightly tongue-in-cheek alongside the idea that every sysadmin in geekdom's creation would really rather be watching the Star Wars movie, but it's broadly representative of an attitude I've seen emerging more and more in our profession: That sysadmin work should be viewed as a 9-to-5 gig. I in turn ranted a little bit about that on Twitter, but I think it merits following up with a longer form discussion, so let's have a blog post before the end of the year!
Continue reading "The Problem of the 9-to-5 Sysadmin"For those of you living under a goddamn rock, a white dude walked into a predominantly black church and shot the place up. He killed 9 people.
That's really not what I've decided to spend my lunch hour talking about though: I want to talk about mental health in the context of mass violence. So if you want to hear about that go ahead and click through to the rest of this entry, otherwise move along on your merry way.
Continue reading "Racism, Violence, and Mental Health" I have some (probably-unpopular) thoughts on the Wikipedia ArbCom ruling.
First, read the proposed decision.
Now read this excellent Gawker article on the subject.
Still with me? Good. Read on.
Continue reading "Gamergate, Wikipedia, and ArbCom"There is currently a hashtag on Twitter - #MaleProverbs - and I would like to take this opportunity to encourage everyone to read it, for it is indeed filled with great truth and stories of epic douchebaggery. If you recognize yourself in some of these tweets then take note, for you may in fact be a douchebag.
There is however one that bothers the everloving fuck out of me, and about which I am going to rant for the remainder of this blog post:
@LunaGemme: "-Any opinion on birth control & abortion- #maleproverbs"
Come for the lead, stay for the rant, but you'll have to click through.
Continue reading "Feminism: Birth Control, and Abortion - A rant in 2 parts."So, two interesting decisions came out of the US Supreme Court this term, and I'd like to take a few minutes to alternately crucify and defend Justice Salia. Those of you not interested are cordially invited to stop reading now.
Continue reading "Why Scalia is (sometimes) Right."Scott Hansleman recently posted a great piece on how people Do Internet Wrong - one which I heartily recommend everyone read because really you're all still making a mess of it.
We agree on 8 out of his 9 points:
Continue reading "Stop Doing Internet Wrong!"
Dear Congres,
Stop.
Seriously, just FUCKING STOP.
I read this one today and just couldn't believe it guys:
A bipartisan group of senators will introduce legislation to stop the FAA from closing any control towers to meet its sequester cut requirements. "The Protect Our Skies Act, which is co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of 18 Senators, would prohibit the Department of Transportation (DOT) from closing any air traffic control towers, including those that are operated by the FAA," says a news release issued by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla), one of the bill's sponsors.
So anyone who knows me knows that I hate censorship in any form. I'm the guy that wears the "I Read Banned Books" shirt, and considers it to be a required reading list (yeah I'm still working my way through it myself).
So you can imagine I was just a little bit miffed when I found out that @violetblue's talk at BSides SF was apparently cancelled because it offended someone's delicate sensibilities (particularly since they can't have possibly known the content of said talk as it HADN'T BEEN GIVEN YET). I was even a little miffed at @BSidesSF for basically caving to PC-Pressure (unjustly as it turns out, so I'm glad I didn't lay into them), but I just quietly commented on the WTFery of such censorship and moved on...
...until tonight when I read @violetblue's blog post on what went down.
Update: Please also read The Ada Initiative's side of the story as well (thanks to Rob for pointing it out, I didn't find it in my 30 seconds of Googling). The Ada Initiative has done some very good things, and they do raise many valid points. I don't think censorship was (or is) their intent, it's just an unfortunate side effect of cultural hypersensitivity surrounding certain issues...
I fully expect this blog entry will piss some people off. Frankly I don't care. Try not to get any wharrgarbl on me if you feel the need to respond.
Continue reading "Political Correctness, Sensitivity, and Censorship in the Information Age"