Wednesday, October 18, 2017

What I am reading (or maybe watching) 10/18/2017

DefCon - ICS Village: Grid Insecurity and How to Really Fix This Shit -



I tried to see this talk while at DefCon, but the room they had listed on the schedule didn't seem to exist and myself and the guy with me spent 30 mins. looking for it.  That's when I learned the value of the DefCon app.

Wired - The Problem with #MeToo and Viral Outrage -

On its surface, #MeToo has the makings of an earnest and effective social movement. It’s galvanizing women and trans people everywhere to speak out about harassment and abuse. It’s causing everyone to weigh in on systemic sexism in our culture. In truth, however, #MeToo is a too-perfect meme. It harnesses social media’s mechanisms to drive users (that’s you and me) into escalating states of outrage while exhausting us to the point where we cannot meaningfully act.
...
 As a result, our “outrage” bar continues to move firmly up and to the right as our feeds become saturated by egregious stories. We become numb to tragedies because we’re unable to process the emotions they engender at the speed with which they arise. As Crockett writes, “Just as a habitual snacker eats without feeling hungry, a habitual online shamer might express outrage without actually feeling outraged.” We may also discover that, just as venting anger begets anger, expressing outrage leads us to feel the emotion more deeply and consistently. Neither of these changes is good for humans.
I think we are already seeing some of this outrage escalation.  Over the weekend I followed some of the #MeToo threads and it seemed like as soon as one woman related an experience, someone would pop up in here thread and one-up her. Then that would generate a new round of everyone condemning the antagonist in the second story until another more egregious violation was named.  It's exhausting and at some point it causes people to just start ignoring the issue.  Especially if it starts to make the issue seem so big that it can never be addressed.

Network Computing - From Law School Dropout to Senior Network Engineer -

NWC: What things have you seen changing in the field?
AA: Like people have been saying for a while, it's not enough just to know networking. To be really good at being a network engineer, you have to understand a little bit, or sometimes a lot, about the way other systems work -- storage, servers, virtualization. You don't have to be an expert in any of it, but in order to make the best decisions, you really have to know some of it. So I would encourage people to not just learn networking, but go over and bother the systems engineer every so often, things like that.
They keep saying that the job of the network engineer is going to be automated out, but I don't see that happening. I see the people who understand the fundamentals having to shift their focus, but you still need someone who understands how routing works and how it relates to the other systems it interacts with.


I follow Amy on twitter (@amyengineer) and her blog is pretty good too.  Give her stuff a look.



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