Bradley Manning – Security Leaks

To start off, I want to clarify; I do not identify myself as a conspiracy theorist. I do believe the government keeps huge amounts of data and information secret from the public. But I do think they have good reason to do so. And further I think they have a significantly large amount of intelligent and conscious people who make the decision of what to share and what not to share. I think things like executive privilege are necessary for governments to work the way they do. These people dedicate their lives to politics or our military and I think their decisions are not taken lightly. Even though sure I would love to know everything, and I can understand the desire of those who vehemently oppose government secrecy, I think people are good at heart, and the decisions those in a position to hold or reveal secrets are probably doing what they are doing for the right reasons.

So moving on to discuss how I feel about Manning’s arrest. I think it is 100% an act of treason to leak what he leaked. I understand his intention, I think he genuinely thought he was benefiting the public by leaking all the information, but I still don’t think that justifies his actions. There was a quote saying something to the effect that he thought he was the only one intelligent enough to determine what should or should not be shared with the public. That line alone gives me enough information to stand firmly against him. I do think he genuinely believed that, but I also think he might be slightly delusional to actually believe nobody above him or in his position previously had ever questioned the system and brought it to the attention of someone with the power to open those documents to the public. It’s crazy to think he was the first. And it’s crazy to think he was the only one smart enough to make those incredibly massive decisions.

I am not going to claim I know anything about politics or how countries interact with one another on anything but a very superficial level. I am not a political science major and I know there are people much smarter than I am who could explain to me in a very detailed way how Manning’s leak affected the political climate at the time, how its affected now, and how it will be affected in the future. I think what he did has had and will have caused turbulence in the political realm. Now the same security systems are not going to be trusted nearly as much and I’m sure some countries are now weary about discussion with the United States because of the leaks.

Overall I think Bradley Manning is a traitor. A traitor with good intentions, but a traitor none the less. He wanted to help the public out, but I believe he did more harm than good. Exposing some flaws and some shady doings are great, but I think shaking up the whole security of our government in the long run is a huge detriment that will be felt for some time.

 

CoC

On my first pass through reading some of the codes of conduct, they seemed a little frivolous. They seem to consist of obvious characteristics and restraints that produce an even more obvious goal. I don’t think I need to be told to be “considerate” or “collaborative.” I think working in the field that we all have chosen to work in means that we already have to be these things and more (or at least if we want to be successful). So why then is it 100% necessary to have these things included? Why do groups like Python require it for sponsorship? These parts of the codes seem to be evident without being stated.

On the whole, we as a technology community are relatively forward thinking. We are all accepting of different creeds, religions, sexual orientations, or whatever you could use to discriminate people. And further, we all lean towards the introverted side of things as compared to the extroverted side. So if we have something to say that could be taken offensively by someone else, we rarely ever voice it even to just avoid the conflict. It’s no longer the 60’s, and we are not characters from Mad Men where we constantly say and do however we feel towards people without thinking of the consequences. We are conscious and deliberate in our actions.

I think the anonymous writer said it in an extremely accurate and concise way: “If you act like something other than relevant skill entitles you to anything from us, then please, I beg you, leave me alone.” Simple enough. If you don’t have skills that make you superior (race, color, etc.) then why should you act superior? What objective quality can someone possibly have that allows them to demine others or refuse to work with them or skirt responsibility when something goes wrong? There isn’t one. It’s plain and simple: there really is no reason to act outside of a code of conduct – even without being told so.

All that being said, I am going to contradict myself. Although for me, everything in the codes may seem self-explanatory, I know I cannot assume everyone else shares my beliefs and my opinions. I understand that for a small minority it does need to be expressly explained that you can or cannot act a certain way. Especially when dealing with issues of who is superior to whom. I can see the merit in it, but I am not completely convinced of its complete necessity. I do think it is a way for corporations or groups to almost cover their own backs for when something does happen, they have some moral ground to already be standing on. And as the anonymous writer also explains, this can be used as a means to only work with certain individuals. It all lies in the subjective. Who is to say what exactly is offensive? And further if someone offends one individual for one reason, can we guarantee that it will offend another similar individual (or all similar individuals) for the same reason? I don’t think so. I can see the reason for having them; it does create an air of political correctness. But when everything is said and done, we are debating a topic that can never be expressly written down in concise words to cover it exhaustively. We are trying to define morality.

Burnouts

I want to get this right. I want to make sure I can clearly identify why I have felt burned out. I think there are hundreds of factors, but I’ve broken it down into the five that I think are the most accurate and impactful: overwork, ambition, disinterest, money, and work-life balance. Let me preface this all with this is my opinion, based on my experience. I am not trying to whine or complain. This is just what I have to say.  I have never been in a position where my company is being acquired, so the thought of being given “Golden Handcuffs” is an incredibly foreign concept to me. But the feeling of burning out is something familiar to me.

Overwork is the most obvious, but I think it’s also the easiest to overlook. It’s easy to let the hours slip by when you want to hit an achievement. Especially in college, where we do a majority of our work in the evenings, its only too easy to sit down with a cup of coffee at 9:00 PM and then look up and see you’ve gone through two pots and its 3:30 and you haven’t even left your desk for more than a minute to go to the bathroom or refill the bowl of chips you’ve mindlessly been eating. Doing two or three of these a week (or even a month) really affects me. Although I get out of bed at 8:00 or 9:00 the next morning, I am not awake until noon. I walk around like a zombie all day, my emotions are high strung, and I am waling a tightrope until I can finish classes or work and finally reach those twenty minutes of bliss I allow myself to nap before starting to tackle the next stack of assignments I have. Breaking up work and allowing yourself to have mental down time helps prevent this.

Next is ambition. This may seem like an odd one to credit burning out to but I think it’s closely tied to overwork. I consider myself an incredibly ambitious person. I feel I can always be pushing myself to do more and to do better. I always want to be the best. And because of this I have found myself overextending and reaching to touch too many goals. And more times than not, I fall short of more goals than goals achieved. Signing up for work and projects (both in a formal sense as well as you just telling yourself) makes you ambitious. But it also leads to not being able to devote the required brain activity to anything and causes you to be stressed about finishing them all. This starts a vicious cycle of stress to doing work to overworking to stress. Time management and self-control are necessary to prevent this.

Third, disinterest I think runs rampant with college kids and early career adults. When we accept a job position, we all walk into the office the first few weeks with rose colored glasses. We think everything is great. We have a very regular work schedule. We can leave work at work. We are getting a regular paycheck. We are living in a cool place. Whatever is going on, I think there is something that is distracting us from the reality of it all. Now I don’t want to jump to the conclusion and say this is everyone, but I would not be surprised if it was common. After the first few months, we will wake up one morning, and think: “What the hell am I doing? I hate my job.” We will realize because of the money, or the house, or the friends we have been making, we haven’t really paid attention to work. The place we spend most of our time at, the place we spend a majority of our energy at, the place that is draining us, we never knew what was going on. Once this realization occurs, burnout soon ensues. Actually paying attention to your surroundings helps mitigate this.

Along the same lines, money causes the burn out. Even after we realize we don’t like our jobs, it’s hard to leave that nice pretty check. I mean look at all those zeros. A couple months ago, we were lucky to be able to pay rent and textbooks. Now everything seems to be a little easier. Sure we might not like our jobs, but we are too scared or too naïve to continue to search for greener pastures where we can actually be happy. All because of those little slips of paper that come over week or so that make a little number we check on or phones go up. You need courage to severe ties and push to find something better.

Lastly, and I think most importantly is work-life balance. It’s easy to become wrapped up in a routine. Like the writer in “Avoiding Burnout” said, it’s easy to get off work and immediately sit down in front of the computer or the television. It’s easy to get off work and then just not really accomplish anything and before you know it is time to go to sleep to get back up and return to work. There become two parts to your day: work and not-work. This isn’t even a slippery slope, this is a cliff. You need something to balance out work. For me I try to work out three of four times a week – but I know that’s not enough. On the days I don’t work out I try to work as a bartender or brewery at a place down the road – not because I need/want the money, but because I like what I do, and it allows me to exit work mode and enter a more creative mindset. When I don’t do that, I try to cook, or meet up with a friend. As difficult as it is, especially as the introvert that I am, I try to keep as active as possible while keeping my mind out of work mode. It would be so much easier to just sit on the couch and watch television but I feel so much better when I am doing something.

I had an interview recently, and I was actually talking with the CTO, CFO, and COO of the company in a panel interview. I asked them about the work life balance of the company, and one of them responded: “I think work-life balance is bullshit. I want employees who are always thinking about work and solving problems.” Neither of the other two high ups even flinched when he said that. I knew this company was not right for me. Sure every company wants their employees to be super effective, but which company wants their employees to hate work and burn out in a matter of weeks. I am not going to say this was the reason I walked out, but I will say this had a big impact. After a brief break, I decided to thank them for their time, and cut the interview short. I knew that was not the place for me. It’s necessary for companies to value work-life balance. It’s imperative.  And just the same, it’s imperative to manage these factors in my life to avoid a burn out.

 

Manifesto and Portrait Review

I would say the manifesto reflects my thoughts pretty accurately. Throughout my time in college there have been quite a few times where I have questioned what I wanted to do after I graduate or if I was in the right major. And every time I stayed with the choice I had made. I didn’t realize until towards the end of junior year that I would probably be better suited with a computer science degree rather than a computer engineering degree. However by hat point if I decided to switch I would have had to stay an extra year at Notre Dame to make up the requirements.

However I am content with my choice to stick it out. I feel accomplished to have completed what only a few of us did complete. Further, I think the experience in the classes I have taken makes me a little more marketable. The way I always describe my degree to people is that it’s a hybrid computer science and electrical engineering degree. I can do about 80% of what a computer scientist can do and about 80% of what an electrical engineer can do. I will admit I have not taken all the hard classes for either subject, but knowing the base layer for both allows me to approach problems from a different perspective than solely a computer science background or solely an electrical engineering background. And when most people in my desired field of employment have degrees in computer science, having the engineering background puts me into a different bucket.

I think the portrait is an incredibly accurate description of the student body in the computer science and engineering majors. We are just an extremely diverse group of people that cannot be described in one way at all. The stereotypes and assumptions the world makes about the kind of people who study what we do are unimportant and frankly just inaccuracies. We do not fit the mold of the standard coder. We are all individuals that cannot be stereotyped.

The entire portrait highlights the diversity of our class, so in a way it describes me perfectly, but at the same time it does not describe me at all. Sure I am a white male from the states with a single major. But I am not from the Midwest, I prefer to hang out in large groups than small, I play a sport (water polo) most people know nothing about, and I have passions for things nearly nobody else in our class is interested in. I think the most accurate description within the portrait is about passion though. Everyone has some sort of passion, and no matter what it is, the best word to describe it is passion. My classmates are incredibly passionate people, and it becomes evident when you get them talking about their interests. It’s easy to feel their excitement and feed off that energy to learn about why they are so enthralled by it. Notre Dame’s computer science and engineering majors are incredibly diverse and subsequently cannot be stenotype, but without a doubt, they are all very passionate.

Interviews

To start off I am going to be aggressively frank. I do not have a job. I have had multiple offers. I have turned down multiple offers. I have been and I still am holding out for the right offer. I am waiting for something that I can actually get excited about, something where I will be doing interesting work, something that I can be happy doing, and something in the right place. All that being said, I have probably been on more calls, screenings, and on sites than 95% of my peers. I could join a company as a recruiter and be a pro at interviewing I have been on so many.

I started the interview process before I had even finished my internship last summer. I had a wonderful experience during my internship and would’ve loved to continue to work for them full time. However they decided they were not hiring and so I was forced to start searching for another job. And so I started applications. I applied to all the big companies (Facebook, eBay, GitHub, etc.). I was flown out for many others on site interviews for big companies (Google, Microsoft, etc.). I have interviewed with other recognizable tech firms (Cerner, Epic, etc.). I have interviewed with many consulting firms (Deloitte, Accenture, Pariveda, etc.). I have interviewed with smaller companies still with the start of feel to them (TabbedOut, and others without as much name recognition). I have not stopped interviewing since I started the process, I have used all three breaks (Thanksgiving, Fall Break, and Christmas Break) to actually do office visits and in person interviews). I am truly committed to finding the right fit for me. I have lost count of how many companies I have submitted applications to, or how many companies I have interviewed with, but it has been a significantly large number. I would estimate that my total number of interviews since August of 2015 is getting close to a hundred.

What am I looking for? I am looking for a place that has some interesting problems that need to be solved. I want a company that is doing something good for the community in some capacity (this is a broad requirement and can be fulfilled in many different ways). After seeing all the companies that I have seen and talked with everyone that I have, I think I would much prefer working for a small company than a large company because of the much more open communication and flat structure.  At this point in the process I am becoming a lot more hyper critical of companies. I have no problem with going through the full process only to deny the offer because I know it is not the right fit for me. But I am also starting to get stressed out and honestly exhausted with the whole process and I am beginning to fear that I will settle and accept an offer just so I can have that load off my back.

What do I think of the process as a whole? I have mixed feelings about it all.  I think some companies are better at it than others, but there is certainly some bad practice. As students we have an income of zero. For most of us we have never really earned a substantial amount of money in our entire lives. And I think some companies realize this and exploit this fact. I have seen friends accept the first offer they get because they see the salary attached to it and sign the papers without thinking about it, because it is such a drastic increase in the money they will be making rather than trying to find a place that they will genuinely be happy at. I understand that early in our careers it is expected that you will be doing work that isn’t perfect, and as you build and grow your resume it’s easier to move into stuff that is more interesting and more satisfying, but I don’t think its 100% ethical for companies to exploit this quality of students. I am not sure what the solution to the problem is, but I do think there is certainly room for improvement in this system.

Computer Scientist or Hacker?

The first thing I feel incredibly obliged to address is the definition of a hacker. From the readings it seems to be that the writers of these papers say that anyone who writes code is a hacker. I have an issue with that. I, myself, would not claim to be a hacker. I would claim to be a computer scientist or a software engineer. I don’t think what I do is “hacking.”

The first definition in the dictionary of the word hack is as follows: “cut with rough or heavy blows.” Its second definition is more aligned with computers saying: to “use a computer to gain unauthorized access to data in a system.” Everyone’s favorite resource for slang, Urban Dictionary, defines it as “A person who is a professional at doing some sort of service, but does crappy work.”

None of that seems to fit what I see myself as. I develop software. I create systems. I solve problems. I am a computer scientist.  Hackers do fall under the umbrella of computer scientists, but just how every square is a rectangle but not every rectangle is a square, not every computer scientist is a hacker. The guest lecturer from Harvard spoke for a significant amount of time about his dislike of the word “science” in the description of jobs. He says how there is a social obligation to act science like even though he equates his “hacking” as an art. I say computer science is an art; its purpose is to discover and create new systems and ways of going about solving problems. But what is science? Its discovering things about the field, and understanding why it works the way it is. What is engineering? Taking all the discoveries from the scientists and applying them to solve the problems at hand more efficiently. Sound familiar? Computer science is science and engineering. Both the terms “Software Engineer” and “Computer Scientist” are incredibly accurate descriptions of what I think my peers and I do.

So what is a hacker? What makes a hacker a hacker and not a computer scientist is not what they are creating, but rather the purpose of what the work is. To give a visual image, computer scientists are brick layers, placing bricks in such a way as to create a wall, building, or piece of art. Hackers are skilled professionals who are removing only certain bricks so that they can see beyond the wall, or into the structure. But they do it ideally so none of the brick layers will notice the missing bricks or the invasion of an unwelcomed party. The hacker and the computer scientist both work with bricks, but they are certainly not the same.

Moving on from the ambiguity and possible error-ridden miscommunication of the definition of hacker and computer scientist, the qualities described within “A Portrait of J. Random Hacker” seem to be reasonably accurate. Of course there is some variation to all the characteristics and there are exceptions in every case. But looking specifically at myself and my own personality as well as the friends and peers who study similar fields or those I have interacted with in the work world, the description seems to be mostly accurate, especially with the psychoanalysis of how we think and why we think that way.

Reading 0: Is cs an art, engineering, or science?

While I think computer science falls best under the umbrella of engineering, I think it is better described as a merge between all three. First let’s define what engineering actually is. I don’t think it’s a set of rules that must be adhered, nor is it how to build a bridge or mix chemicals. Engineering is a way of thinking. Engineering classes don’t only teach a skill, but they teach how to approach problems and how those problems should be solved. And to me computer science at its core is problem solving. This is what makes computer scientists engineers.

Looking at the things that are done in computer science, the coder is given a starting point and they know what the desired outcome is. But how do you solve that problem? There is a bunch of possible ways of solving that problem, but which one do you take? This is where the art comes in. Actively exploring the tens, hundreds, thousands of approaches takes an artistic eye. Which one is the most efficient? Which approach is the fastest to code? Which solution are the most users friendly? Which answer takes the least amount of data or memory? There are hundreds of considerations that need to be taken into account before the final product is produced. Just as a photographer needs to consider the lighting, framing, composition, aperture, and angles, programmers need to take into account time constraints, complexities, hardware requirements, where their code is going to affect other features or services. In this sense programmers are in fact artists as well as engineers.

That just leaves how computer scientists are actual scientists. Sure they don’t have white hair and are conducted experiments that create monsters like Frankenstein. But they certainly do experiment. They are constantly running tests to make sure their code is working in the desired way, or testing new algorithms to make it faster or use less memory. How else would these developers uncover the best way to solve problems? These experiments make the developers and coders scientists.

I was lucky enough to be exposed to computer science before I entered college. I took my first programming class (object orient programming, a java based class) my sophomore year in high school and continued to take AP Computer Science during junior year, and I took a project based computer science class during my senior year. And I think the videos bring up some interesting points when it concerns teaching coding as a classical subject like English or math. I think that everyone should be able to have the opportunity to take a coding class. But I don’t think they necessarily need to know how to do computer science. In most high schools, calculus is the highest level of math available. And unless you are going into engineering or math, you aren’t required to take many more math classes in college to get your degree. I think coding and computer science should be treated the same way. Teach the basics in high school, but don’t require advanced classes unless it makes sense for the field of study chosen. If I wanted to be a geologist or a historian it doesn’t make much practical sense for me to send my time learning about data structures and algorithms when I could be learning about rock formations or how the addition of grain to the average diet changed the world completely.  Coding is important, but I am unconvinced computer science is necessary for everyone.

 

Reading 0: Who is Alex?

My name is Alexander Hansen. I am a proud citizen of the nation of Texas. Although I don’t have much of an accent, Texas is and will always be considered home to me. There is something about the southern culture that I have grown to love and keeps me drawn back. Not to mention it has significantly better weather than the Midwest.

Outside of school I am an avid traveler, I have been to all fifty states, and almost thirty countries. I played competitive water polo all through high school and actually got recruited to play division one in college, but I decided to take a more academic route and focus on getting a degree from a good school rather than play sports as the first priority. One of my biggest passions is beer. I have been brewing both in a home brew setting as well as on a professional level for three years now. I currently work as a brewer and bartender at Evil Czech Brewery in Mishawaka. Lately my newest interest is learning about photography, which drove me to enroll in a basic photography class in my last semester at Notre Dame.

The short answer to why I chose to study computer engineering is rooted in the fact that I was lucky enough to have coding classes in high school. I learned I liked what it entailed, and the homework assignments didn’t feel like homework. There was an I at satisfaction in the problem solving aspect of coding. This is what drove me to study technology in school and what has continued to drive me to pursue software development as a career.

One of the most pressing issues and something I am incredibly interested in is ethical hacking. How would that be concretely defined? When is it okay? What are the moral dilemmas with it? I have zero hacking ability but I do think there is an appropriate time and circumstances when having those skills would be acceptable and maybe even necessary. I think there is a very interesting discussion to be had revolving around that.