I don’t think it’s overhyped, at least I’ve never heard anyone hyping it up so much. I would be happy to recommend you other books if you want :)

I also don’t think it’s a big deal if you didn’t like the book. I don’t think even Knuth himself would be upset, really.

False. Everyone can opt out of Facebook.

i’m pretty sure my neighbour’s dog is going to announce a new ai assistant any day now

Also, if you remember enjoying hacking, maybe pick that up again? There’s a massive shortage of security engineers at all times.

First of all, you can totally do it! The field is massive, but also full of very bad programmers, and seeing how you were able to write a coherent text of three paragraphs, that already puts you ahead of the curve. Determination and perseverance is key.

I would suggest to play to your strengths. Java is still Java. Most of the progress since the 1990s was in the libraries and tooling, which only recently have become passable. The language itself also evolved somewhat, but there’s nothing that you won’t pick up in a couple of days of working with it.

Start with [1], work through all the boxes that are unfamiliar to you, practice a little on a pet project, or an open source project, and you’ll land a job in no time.

[1] https://roadmap.sh/java

You likely have a mental model of Subversion, so what I would suggest is to try to forget as much of it as possible first, as Git is very different.

Take a tutorial that is aimed at Git beginners, e.g. [1]. This will help you start building a new mental model as well as get first practical experience.

After that, read the official docs starting wtih the object model[2]. The reason why many people struggle to get into git, especially after using other VCS, is that it was built from the ground up, without much regard of the established conventions and terminology. Linus Torvalds once mentioned that he used his experience designing file systems when developing git.

So the object model of git is very simple, but also not intuitive. However, once you understand it, everything will start making sense, including the xkcd you’ve linked.

[1] https://gitimmersion.com/ [2] https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Git-Objects

I didn’t use yaml much while it was gaining popularity, and therefore didn’t pay much attention. But this article really made me pay attention and now I distrust anything that uses yaml in any capacity.

https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2023/01/11/the-yaml-document-from-hell

I have to download an app to confirm the reservation?

<three sentences not containing the answer to the question>

wait, you’re actually using encrypted email? Is it for work or you use it with friends/family too?

I’ve never received an encrypted email in my entire life.

I can’t imagine how normal people use any software at all. When something doesn’t work for me, often I can figure out what could’ve gone wrong. For instance, there might be bug in the JavaScript form handler, and I can just bypass it. Or an app doesn’t invalidate its cache properly, so I just need to flush it manually.

Ah yes, that’s Android for ya.

Nice article!

You seem to be missing the word “by” in the table introducing threat T04. Also, the threat summary table uses ✅ and ❌ in a way that was counterintuitive to me: initially I thought ✅ meant the encryption approach protects against the threat.

A bigger issue IMO is how you describe email encryption in transit as a matter of fact, but according to Google transparency report[1] there are still domains that do not support in transit encryption, and, what’s worse, when you send an email you can’t tell if it will be encrypted or not.

[1] https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer-email/overview?hl=en

The T in “ninja” is silent. Silent and invisible.

They call Japan itself “Nihon”, so what do they know… /s

Surobakia (right next to Cheko)

Because he testified against the entire city’s worth of mafia?

Awesome! Will definitely check it out. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s a nice collection of tips for indie game devs: https://develop.games

(I realize this reads as a bot comment, lol, but that’s a genuine tip, and that website isn’t even monetised as far as I know).

Slice and Dice: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.com.tann.dice

“Monitor J-Wave Tokyo, 81.3.”

The “15 to 17” part is worded somewhat confusingly, but it’s not wrong.

The number of bits contained in a double is equivalent to ~15.95 decimal digits. If you want to store exactly a decimal number with a fixed number of significant digits, floor(15.95) = 15 digits is the most you can hope for. However, if you want to store exactly a double by writing it out as a decimal number, you need 17 digits.