Common Sense Password Policies
When you overcomplicate security, you compromise user experience. When you compromise the user experience, your users have to fight back. When your users fight back, they compromise security. D’oh!
Fully Remote Work All The Time
Fully Remote Work, All the Time!
The upsides outnumber the downsides. If you can get away with it, you should. If there is any way that you can restructure your company and/or your line of business to accomodate fully remote work, you should employ it. You should get as far from limitations like WhErE yOu ArE rIgHt NoW as quickly as you can. If you don’t work in a business that can make that transition to fully remote right now, you should seriously consider changing your vocation and getting the hell out of your industry.
Because the Robots Are Coming.
The Plight of the Power User
The 1980s. A simpler time, when hair was big, music was loud, and computer interfaces were… well, let’s just say they weren’t exactly what you’d call user friendly. Unless, of course, you were one of the chosen few. The elite. The engineers and the proto-geeks. For some of us born at the cusp of the digital dawn, the call to wield that power was irresistible.
To Olympus: Replatforming on the Cloud
There is a particular synergy that springs from engaging an agile software development agency as an integrated software partner, and having them platform your software into the cloud. The sum of the two is truly greater than its parts. When launched together, the entire tech saga becomes truly epic for your business; you are freed to focus on your business, and we carry you up on our back. Do not fret, good citizen, we’re here to help.
8-bit Makes a Better Programmer
In the realm of modern programming, with its high-level languages and sophisticated development environments, the art of programming an 8-bit microcomputer might seem like a quaint, if not obsolete, pursuit. However, diving into the world of assembly language programming on such a system isn’t just a nostalgic trip down memory lane; it’s a journey that offers invaluable insights and a deeper appreciation for the inner workings of computers.
Threat Categories, Attack Patterns, and Countermeasures: Safeguarding Against Cyber Vulnerabilities
Recently, our community in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, experienced a harrowing cyber attack on our healthcare system. The electronic systems that the hospital system relied on suddenly became useless, forcing workers back to the rudimentary pen-and-paper methods. This sudden regression in technology not only disrupted healthcare operations but also painted a stark picture of our vulnerabilities in the digital age. This incident was more than just an inconvenience; it was a dramatic step backward, highlighting the urgent need for resilient cybersecurity measures to protect our most critical services and data.
I Went to a Remote Cabin to Hunt Deer and All I Found Was Agile
I was stunned to realize my father in law, a man in his 70s, is a practitioner of Agile. I found this out at Deer Camp, the remote off-the-grid cabin in the thick woods of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where the men of my wife’s family gather every year to hunt deer. I went there with the expectation of a digital cleansing of some kind, I think, or some grand hermitage away from civilization. But instead I found reinforcement for everything we do in my high tech job @Opreto, and realized during my time there that our hunting cabin uses good Agile practices. It seems clear to me now that something I thought of as modern is actually quite old, and that an “agile team” approach to deer hunting is as natural as an agile approach to software development, although there are arguably fewer websites disclaiming this fact to hunters than those proliferating on blogs about software development.
You’re validating email addresses all wrong!
Ever tried entering your email address, only to receive a “Please enter a valid email address” error? Frustrating, right?
There’s a lot more to email validation than just spotting an ‘@’ and a ‘.com’. Dive into the world of RFCs where email addresses are not just strings, but a complex interplay of rules and standards. From the subtle nuances of RFC 5321 and 5322 to the curious world of quoted strings and dot-atoms, we’re tackling the real challenge of validating emails. Because let’s face it, nobody wants to be told their perfectly good email is “invalid” – especially not by a machine.
Escape from Agile
I discovered Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom a couple years ago, via the Philosophize This! podcast. In this work, Fromm dissects the human psyche’s intricate dance with freedom and authority. His thesis pivots around a paradoxical tendency in human behaviour: the flight from the liberating yet daunting responsibility that freedom entails, seeking refuge in authoritarian structures.
While Fromm was reacting to the rise of fascism in Europe at the height of World War II, having fled Nazi Germany himself, it occurs to me that some of his observations are relevant to a matter more mundane: the resistance we often encounter to fully embracing Agile principles.
Cognitive Biases in Agile Estimations and How to Avoid Them
Cognitive biases, often unconscious influences on human judgment and decision-making, can significantly distort the accuracy of Agile estimations. These biases, like invisible bugs in our mental software, can lead to errors that affect the outcomes of project planning. Whether it’s anchoring to the first piece of information heard or overly optimistic predictions about project timelines, they can subtly undermine the efficiency of even the most experienced Agile teams.