Sneaky backdoors, the mythical 10x programmer, and more news
Greg Leffler
Director of Developer Evangelism at Splunk. Former SRE Leader and Editor at Large at LinkedIn.
A look into game DRM and the security corner round out the news. Read on...
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Reverse-engineering video game DRM. From the ‘90s! Check out this piece from the ever-entertaining Tedium newsletter, discussing copyright protection in the NES and Sega Genesis. The Tengen approach to getting around copyright protection is especially interesting given just how brazen it was.
Waymo’s ticked off at Uber. Speaking of intellectual property, Alphabet’s Waymo subsidiary added a patent claim to its existing copyright infringement lawsuit against Uber. (You know, the one where the employee installed the scary-sounding “specialized software” known as TortoiseSVN to access the “proprietary database” known as an SVN repo.) This ups the ante quite a bit should Uber be found to be liable.
The Internet of insecure things. There’s a built-in backdoor on a GSM-to-VoIP bridge used in small businesses – the interesting thing about this story is that this company doubled down on the backdoor when shown it, just trying to make the backdoor more complex to activate instead of just getting rid of it.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is excited for today’s CS students. Read about why in this post he wrote on LinkedIn, and make sure to read the comments. The post goes to show you what a little rulebreaking can do in the long run.
.google may not be the best TLD. It turns out that heuristics used to tell if something is a search query or a domain name are having trouble with the flood of new garbage TLDs like .google. This chromium bug report helps explain the problem.
Weigh In
Two topics this week spiked a lot of discussion, including Tim Berners-Lee on the web, and the assertion that there are no 10x programmers. Do you agree or disagree with these positions? Tell me in the comments of this post.
The Web’s inventor wants change. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, wants to see three major changes. Learn about what they are, and tell me if you agree or disagree with his opinion in the comments below.
There’s no such thing as a 10x programmer. A bold statement but something worth thinking about. Can there really be such a thing as a 10x programmer? Perhaps they get 10x the output because of their other skills, not necessarily their code-slinging. Share your thoughts in the comments below.
In the security corner: some sort of CIA kerfuffle, a look inside a scam call center, and how backups expose spammers:
- In news I’m certain surprised absolutely nobody, the CIA possesses spy tools. Here’s an overview from Krebs on Security, a response from Apple, and my post on why we should keep calm, for now, at least.
- Ever wondered what it’s like behind the scenes at a scam call center? The BBC has a wonderful expose of one targeting customers of the UK-based mobile provider TalkTalk.
- If you’re a spam operation, carefully check your rsync config before you start running backups, or you might end up leaking all the details of how your operation works to the Internet. RCM is one of Spamhaus’ top offenders, and you can learn how they messed this one up in this piece from CSO Online.
I’m excited to announce that we’ll add original video to the rundown next week (for real this time.) Stay tuned! As always, if you have feedback, or think there’s something I should cover next time, leave a comment!
Cover photo: Spies in the grass? It's more likely than you think. Image credit: RichVintage / Getty
Senior Software Engineer at Ripple Labs
7 年I suspect people are a bit jaded with LI articles from MSFT. They are starting to look like WWII propaganda news reels. MSFT hires the same type of worker as Infosys. Infosys is notorious for requiring American engineers to train their replacements, which suggests that the H-1B is more about cheap labor than importing the "brightest and best". If these entry-level, whiteboard, 10x coding interviews were intended to select only the finest minds, then we would expect Infosys workers to be training up American engineers, instead of the other way around.
systems engineer/analyst, "secessio plebis"
7 年You know why 10x programmers don't exist? Because if someone was smart enough to be able to generate 10x the output as a 1x programmer, assuming quality is equivalent, they wouldn't be stupid enough to do it for say 8-9x less pay.