What I am reading 8/15/2016

Ars Technica - Can 42 US, a free coding school run by a French billionaire, actually work? -

As you read these words, hundreds of students are hunched over iMacs in a massive computer lab. Most of them have little, if any, programming experience, and they haven’t paid a cent to get here.

And yet, here they sit, just 7.6 miles directly across the Dumbarton Bridge from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, dreaming of joining Silicon Valley’s legions of programmers. Each day, the students get new programming assignments, but there are no teachers. There is a help desk, or rather a “help” desk—which really, really doesn’t want students to ask for guidance—all in the name of “peer-to-peer learning.”

I am not one of those guys who thinks coding is the answer to everything currently wrong in the labor market, with the country, with mankind etc.  Coding is just a skill that can be valuable.  That siad I kind of like the idea of this place.  I did notice this piece of irony though:

“If we put up barriers to education with money or with backgrounds, that means there are innovative talents and individuals that are not able to have access to education. So the idea behind 42 is to create an opportunity where individuals from all different kinds of backgrounds, all different kinds of financial backgrounds, can come and have access to this kind of education so that then we can have new kinds of ideas. Because in order to innovate, you need to have new people who think differently.”

Unless you are over 30.  If you are over 30 you are a piece of shit with nothing to contribute and shouldn't bother applying.

Slashdotters on the other hand don't seem particularly impressed.

Dark Reading - Here's The Business Side Of Thwarting A Cyberattack -

Ponemon Group study data illustrates the balancing act of running a business while trying to stay secure.

The most interesting thing, in my opinion, was the perceived lack of responsibility / accountability on the part of management.  That's an argument that I have been having at work.  That if you don't have someone who is accountable for fixing issues then you don't have any way of actually getting them fixed.

The Next Web - There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source code -

Hey, easy money right?  Everyone knows Gates stole DOS.  Right?

Infosec Island - Back to Basics: How Simple Techniques Can Thwart Complex APT Attacks -

It might seem that mitigating the risk of an APT means deploying highly sophisticated cyber security measures, out of reach of most ordinary organizations.  Not so. In fact, you can go a long way towards mitigating the risk of an APT by going back to basics: understanding the fundamentals of how such an attack is planned and deployed, and how your organization’s network structure can help or hinder such an attack.  Understanding, in short, how to reduce the attack surface you have available to malicious hackers.

These are the types of articles I like.  Short and simple.  Much like myself.  Unlike me though the article has some good suggestions.