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not_me_ever

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On May 25th, 2024 I made the mistake of highlighting some of the security flaws of the Signal app&protocol. On May 26th, 2024 Some massive doxing campaign was initiated. And two (false!) accusations have been made against me at the local police station. Luckily they are used to this by now, and talked to me first.

Guess it's time to burn this account. May 28th, 2024 I am giving up. The harassment has gotten out of hand. Keep your eyes closed to the truth, and keep drinking the cool-aid. I tried. Will move on with my very happy life now.

Reach somebody at 04.ravines-stria@icloud.com

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"We don't know if telegram is secure or not."

The point was: This is a discussion about Signal, not Telegram.

But by now we have gotten pretty used to deflecting every discussion about "is Signal secure" to "look behind you, a three headed monkey" or rather to "but telegram is not secure, because all Russians are stupid".

"I compile and run Signal from the sources..." Yes, so you get a messaging app that might be secure, while 99.999% of users use the one from the store which very likely comes from a completely different source.

"The original whitepaper" Just use you favourite search engine, we have been over this dozens of times by now. If you understand security I would start here: https://cs.nyu.edu/~afb383/publication/uc_signal/uc_signal.p... If not -- it probably takes 15-25 years to teach you.

Very rough, and simplified: "Double Ratchet has some very strong preconditions which have never been addressed by signal, and probably never been implemented by anybody." (Please, don't quote me on that, it's very dumbed down.)

We don't know if telegram is secure or not.

We do know that signal is lying: - About it's code being open source - About it's protocol being open - About it's funding - About it's massive white washing campaigns in forums - About smear campaigns against and harassment of journalists who dare to look into them

We do know that signal is probably insecure if(!) - It is actually based on the original white paper - It is actually using any of the code they released ages ago

There have been major security incidents with apps using the signal protocol, e.g. WhatsApp.

Who is the one doing the astroturfing?

You might not like the facts, but that doesn't change them.

ML is quite ok at answering questions, but it is very bad at asking the right questions.

Engineering is about asking questions.

Looks like we are at least 50 years out from "AI" replacing entry level engineers. I'll let me grand children worry about that, and use this glorified auto completion until then.

Nope.

It's nice at implementing simple stuff at a first semester CS student, after somebody over specified it, but that's it.

Code monkeys might want to start looking for a new job in 10-20 years, but you asked about SWEs. And less than 1-10% of our job is to actually type code.

120 if no major break throughs happen. 150-180 otherwise.

Ignoring fatal accidents.

The average life span of males in my family is 98. Heavily brought down by two accidents (38 & 17). No naturals deaths below 104. I guess genetics are in my favour.

I am saying 90K+ for seniors is what I have seen, and 60K+ for juniors. "Normal" is a bit hard to define, and there will always be wide deviations, but the averages, and ranges in that doc just don't match my numbers.

Written offers I got in the last 3 years: M$ - 140K. IBM 120K, 160K & 180K. Amazon 150K Google 80K & 250K (yes, I know :eyeroll:) All their salary bands are public.

A lot of the smaller companies pay extremely well too. And no, not going to give out names, as they are swamped in CVs already.

I am currently at 120K, for 20h per week (2days/3days alternating). Currently hiring for a small startup, and everybody I interviewed asked for 100K+, and that is with shares on top.

Amazing work, but those salary numbers feel off.

Background: I've been a IT hiring manager for 20+ years now, with about 600 hires (and salary negotiations) in total. About 70% gamedev related, and the other 30% classic IT.

I have tracked all those numbers over the last 20 years. They are 50-100% higher across the board; And that is base salary on-hire, without bonuses.

A senior developer for 60K? Show me, and I'll hire 10. Make that 20. On the spot.

Last year I hired a graduate in Bulgaria for 80K/year base(!) salary. Granted, he was the best of his year, and had some nice side projects.

According to your numbers I should not exist. I started my career in the 90s, and never earned below 60K/year.

I suspect something might be off with your sample selection. Or maybe people are just under reporting their numbers. Not saying you are intentionally misleading, but these numbers just don't compute.

This is the post that proves that you never used agile. And nobody you worked with ever used it. Sorry to hear that you have been scammed :(

"Standup is a scheduled management upgrade": Nope. The manager isn't even there during the standup.

"Planning poker is a useless waste of time so the manager has some false sense of security when something will be done" Nope. It gives the team a chance to see what's coming to them in the future, and a feeling to guestimate the work needed, so the less experienced people have a better chance to participate in the sprint planning.

"Retrospectives are actually useful, if the manager is out of them." Yes. Retrospectives are a safe zone, so if your manager even tries to join them something is wrong. They do get the consolidated, actionable items though, and are responsible for helping to fix them.

"The Scrum Master role is made so the owner's son" The Scrum Master is not a role-job. It's a role of the day, and every member of the team will take their turn.

"The PO role is where the money people..."

Ah. Worked with one bad PO before? The PO is there to help the team, and highly incentivised to do so. If he is not doing his job, in answering the questions they have and unblocking their work, the team will leave him hanging dry for a sprint or two, and he is gone.

"Sprint is just a cleverly crafted ploy to make the developers endlessly hurry towards endless micro deadlines, sprint after sprint." Wow. I see some major depression there. A sprint gives us the chance to tick a box every few weeks, instead of achieving nothing over years.

"Agile Coach role." Really? That is a role at your company? It's amazing what an Agile Coaching consultant can achieve by visiting 2-3 times a year, with an outside perspective. If they are there full time, and paid like everybody else, they loose the outside perspective, and thus are not a Coach, but something ... weird.

Is Agile the holy grail of perfection? No.

Is there anything else that gets even close? Hell no, but if you know a framework that works better let us know.

It's always easy to say "X doesn't work", the real constructive part is to be able to say "Y works better than X because of Z".

Quoting Cliff Berg as a source of information? Cliff Berg?!?!

I could quote a ton of stuff that Cliff said at conference dinners and parties in the last years, but really -- would anybody believe the world is flat?

That guy lost his marbles decades ago.

It's interesting that you can read from every single "agile is dead" rant that the author has abso-elfing-lutely no personal experience whatsoever, and is just using it as click-bait. :sigh:

I stopped doing (for money) side projects in 2015.

Instead I started to buy solar farms from my yearly xmas bonus. Invest 40K (10K bonus + 30K loan) -> 6000K/year. Net -- post costs & taxes. On average the loan was paid off in 6 years (thanks to low interest rates). From there on it's pure revenue.

Rinse repeat. Not even accounting for the free tax credits I get out of the investment.

Just doing my planning for the '23 investment. If I stop doing anything right now the last loan will be paid off in 2030 (interest rates are up a bit), and I will be making ~5K/month. Net. "Forever".

I use the time I gained for free work on important projects.