I Have A Problem With Design Patterns Just in case the title and heading didn’t tip you off, I have a problem with software design patterns. The problem isn’t actually with the design patterns themselves, nor (necessarily) with the people who promote them. My problem, at it’s root, is how people treat them with an unquestioning semi-religious idolatry, and also use them as a way to declare themselves superior to others in a most idiotic fashion....
Irksome Lingo It is common amongst the non-executive types to deride so-called ’execu-speak’. That is, words and phrases which sound trite, stupid or (sometimes) like disingenuous euphemisms. While there can sometimes be some justification for such criticism, quite a lot of that vocabulary is simply, in essence, the jargon of that field. Software developers are actually at least as equally guilty of overusing sayings, re-using lexicon from somewhere else such that it makes little sense in the original context,1 and just plain using words and phrases that irritate me....
I’m a little iffy on Passkeys In case you haven’t heard, passkeys are the new saviour of the security world (yes, I do say that with a tinge of sarcasm). In fact, Google apparently just recently switched their default credential system for Gmail over to passkeys from regular-old usernames & passwords. Passkeys are so strongly considered to be the way of the future that both 1Password and BitWarden seemingly bought passkeys-focused startups so that they could add the capability to their products (I didn’t manage to track down any announcements or old news articles confirming that, though)....
On Government Surveillance Via Data Brokers I listen to a number of podcasts that have at least a partial focus on digital privacy. Most notably, these include The Privacy, Security and OSINT Show and Surveillance Report, while Risky Business also tends to touch on such matters at times. I have also listened to others in the past, but they either have stopped running, or I found something about them off-putting. I also read the Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons newsletter....