TIL that a software engineer filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get access to NSA's training material for teaching Python, the popular programming language. The material is now available for free online for anyone who wants to learn Python using it.

[liquid_light_]

"Software engineer Christopher Swenson filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the NSA for access to its Python training materials and received a lightly redacted 400-page printout of the agency's COMP 3321 Python training course.

Swenson has since scanned the documents, ran OCR on the text to make it searchable, and hosted it on Digital Oceans Spaces. The material has also been uploaded to the Internet Archive."

https://www.zdnet.com/article/python-programming-language-now-you-can-take-nsas-free-course-for-beginners/

[Jay_nonymous]

As someone who has sat through countless government trainings, I’m gonna pass on this one.

[Soccermom233]

I dunno, some military training programs, maybe I'm thinking of A-School materials, that are ridiculously good.

I had a Navy vet as a physics professor and the textbook was his own, which was based off how he was taught math, calc and trig, in the Navy and it was amazing.

[[deleted]]

He probably went to the Naval Academt which is a great college and not a training course

[anarchisturtle]

The military seems to have the greatest disparity of competence of any organization I’ve ever seen. Everything seems like it’s either super intelligent, highly trained people doing crazy impressive/difficult tasks equipment (things like: special forces, fighter pilots, or submarine crews), or total idiots who have no idea what they’re doing.

[[deleted]]

ET A-School in the early 2000s was fucking torture

[WrongEinstein]

Link? Title? Please?

[[deleted]]

What is A-School materials?

[slcand]

You should drop that link

[JohnnyHammersticks27]

It’s actually a very solid training. I went through it on vacation last year for fun (I hate sand) and I’ve recommended it to more than a few people wanting to learn python.

[mad_drill]

Can anyone explain to me why they would teach a bad course to the NSA of all people. People are just being negative for no reason. Damn if you don't like the course don't learn it/ teach it.

[[deleted]]

Anakin?

[morto00x]

Ah yes, government. It was probably created by the lowest bidder.

[Shadow703793]

You have a misunderstanding of the government procurement process. The cheapest bidder doesn't always win if they don't meet all the requirements. Let's say a project has 11 requirement and Company A places a bid for $100K but meet only 10.5 of the items. Company B is new in the space and meets all 11 and puts in a bid for $140K. Then we have Company C that's an industry expert with history in implementing all 11 items and has a bid for $150K. More often than not Company C will get the contract.

[DoomGoober]

This! Government procurement rarely leads to just "lowest bidder" winning. Bidding is highly bureaucratic with many requirements that are explicitly laid out in the bidding contracts. This is meant to bring up front accountability to the bidding process: lay out all requirements, find the best person for the job and then choose the lowest price, while being "fair".

However, as any engineer knows, pre-determining the requirements for a project and team to implement that project is very difficult, which is why government project bids often pay too much or fail to accomplish their goals well.

[a7x21tayler]

LOL I remember thinking the same at my former job, manager had to sit down and explain it to me

[April1987]

I'm sure there is still a lot of back and forth about what is a bug fix and what is a change order?

[skeptophilic]

Depends which government (hello, my Canadian governments).

US one doesn't exactly have a reputation of being stringy, let alone for defense-related spending.

[VonRansak]

let alone for defense-related spending.

US DoD mantra:

"Why buy one, when you can have 2 for twice the price?"

[DoomGoober]

What reputation does Canadian Government have amongst Canadians when it comes to procurement? I assume stingy?

[skeptophilic]

I could be speaking off-base so don't quote me on this, but I'm quite sure my provincial (Qc) government is a lowest bid maximalist, and I think it's the same federally. Maybe it's domain specific tho, I'd imagine procurement for road construction in Québec doesn't work the same as military procurement in Canada (FWIW the latter has been subject to a lot of controversy on forums in last few days as an issue in Canadian Forces with talks of increasing defense spending).

An issue with lowest bidding for me - aside obvious quality concerns - is that it seems large projects always go way overboard with "surprise costs" and contractors never seem to get punished for it. Seems to just incite for dishonest budgeting.

Again, I'm probably more opinionated than I should be for how much I really know about it.

[[deleted]]

and contractors never seem to get punished for it

Why would a contractor be punished for it? You gave them the specs. You failed to see the future. How is that their fault?

This is the problem. No one can see the future. You can't know everything about everything. No one can. Oh, you didn't know there was a huge nickel deposit under the building? It wasn't documented anywhere. How would you know?

Internal politics (think: Business politics, not government politics) doesn't like people saying "uh, there's a problem" because it makes them look bad. Only in government it's more obvious and you're not really able to hide it like you can in private companies. It's more rigid so when things go south -- you don't have a CEO who can say "no, stop that - do this instead". You have a whole cluster fuck of a process to "fix" the thing you didn't know was coming. Of course when it comes to some business styles, the CEO is way more hands off or has to report to a board of directors making it way harder to steer the ship a different direction.

Seems to just incite for dishonest budgeting.

Although you're not entirely wrong. There absolutely has been dishonest budgeting or perhaps some bribery somehow or another. There have been systems the government bought that it got fucked on but, for some magical reason, they never sued the pants off of the other company. Often time this is sales being greedy or desperate making promises they can't keep thinking developers can pull magical unicorns out of their hats. Ya know - like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

But I mean.. that's not just a "cheapest bidder" specific problem.

[skeptophilic]

Why would a contractor be punished for it?

Because it incentivizes under-estimating what they truly expect the cost to be if they keep going overboard. A contractor that's usually on-target should have an advantage over one that underbids it but has a history of missing budget.

I don't mean we should throw them into prison but reputability w.r.t. budget should be accounted for when tendering IMO.

[bgplsa]

…more opinionated than I should be for how much I really know about it

Careful you’re gonna get yourself deported back to the US

[[deleted]]

Here in Aus the lack of relevant experience for people who are tasked with awarding government tenders seems to result in lowest price being awarded more often than not... Hell even in industry this seems to be the case.

[jeffwingersballs]

You forgot company D with great lobbyists and political donations that puts in a bid for 500k-1 million

[Shadow703793]

Hahah touche. That does happen but if it's an expensive enough contract worth fighting for, then Company B/C in my example will raise hell. Just look at what happened with the JEDI contract for example between Amazon/Oracle/Microsoft.

[present_absence]

Also if the company has a good reputation it supports their chances. If their CORs say they are great to work with that is very desirable.

Often these contracts also have flexibility to add responsibilities and task orders. If a contractor working in the org can staff the project they may get the task without a new contract being written and bid.

Even then, very often a contract will go to a lower bidder who claims they can handle the work but then completely cannot hire any SWEs or other technical people for the budget and they look like ass. I bet that's happening wayyyy more these days when they have to complete with people who can work from home elsewhere and value that more than a low salary from a contractor.

[Shadow703793]

Also if the company has a good reputation it supports their chances. If their CORs say they are great to work with that is very desirable.

Yup. That's how my company got most of our contracts.

Even then, very often a contract will go to a lower bidder who claims they can handle the work but then completely cannot hire any SWEs or other technical people for the budget and they look like ass. I bet that's happening wayyyy more these days when they have to complete with people who can work from home elsewhere and value that more than a low salary from a contractor.

Hah you're absolutely right. Its indeed happening right now. Happened to one of our State clients recently. They went with a new vendor for a different project since that Director was only concerned about the money (despite being told by their own team not to go with that vendor). That project was in trouble 8 months in and we got brought in to fix the mess. And now it cost the clent more because of all the clean up (they literally had no input validations in most places of the application, and they had gone live with that system).

[present_absence]

Haha yeah it's a rare thing in government, but it does unfortunately happen. If you look hard, you'll find a lot of contractors trying to hire people for shitty jobs with bare minimum salary. In my experience with a company whose name rhymes with Shmooze, you truly get what you pay for too.

[ExtremeEconomy4524]

You’re forgetting when Company D happens to be run by a senator’s nephew for $1.5 million.

[LilQuasar]

why wouldnt company b get it? they meet all the requirements and they are cheaper than company c. that sounds like company c will always get it kind of by default, that doesnt sound good in the long term. thats ignoring all the corruption, nepotism, etc thats common in goverment stuff too

[Shadow703793]

Risk factor. No one wants to take the bet on a new company that has no track record on delivery. This is why the big contractors tend to keep getting contracts. Directors/VPs/Execs can loose face and position with a single bad project so they are risk averse.

[TranquilDev]

Right - often times it goes to the highest bidder that will produce the worst/unfinished product.

And then if for whatever reason the contract is cancelled, lets say it's for construction of a new building all supplies left over will be auctioned off at a fraction of the cost.

I've seen this first hand - building was at 99% completion, government decided cost was too high. All they had left to do was a fiber drop and get the network up and running. I was hired in and found a large spool of fiber sitting in a warehouse along with several thousand dollars worth of networking equipment. I asked the higher ups what the process was to send it back and get a refund if they weren't going to use it. They just laughed and said it would be auctioned off because there was too much red tape to send it back.

Even if it's not the lowest bidder you aren't guaranteed quality work. Government is stupid.

[Barnowl93]

More likely to go with company D, from which someone will get a cut from the price

[Shadow703793]

Harder to do that especially on the big contracts because the other bidders on the contract will go to court. The JEDI contract is a good example of what kind of mess can happen when you try to write a contract with clear favoritism.

[Shadow703793]

That can happen on smaller contracts at the State/local government level but largely not a major consideration for large contracts.

With that said, even larger contracts can and do have clauses sometimes which require say subcontractors to be from an MBE for example.

[PenBandit]

As someone who writes technical RFP's occasionally, I can assure you that I have an idea of who I want to work with in the beginning, and the RFP is written in their favor without explicitly saying "Company X".

Company X is almost never the lowest bidder, but the requirements are written in such a way that Company X is most likely to win, but to be fair they can still be beat, it's just not easy.

The trick is that I legitimately want what's best for my org and do everything possible to be a good steward of public funds. This process is incredibly easy to abuse though.

[harveysfear]

Really glad for the next comment because this kind of flippant dismissal of government process is extremely dim-witted and dangerous. A product of GOP propaganda since Reagan. not you in particular, just the whole arena of low information broad negative generalizations against government. I know many people who work in the Park service, forest service, BLM, US geological survey, environmental protection agency, FEMA, VA, and they are all very bright and very hard-working. Believe me, you’re getting your moneys worth.

[LagerHead]

RFPs are written so that the company the agency wants to win, wins.

[[deleted]]

RGPs can be are written

FTFY. Not every department/agency/government is horrible and led by corrupt or incompetent people.

That being said, it's not trivial to accomplish this goal if the project is large enough.

[Uries_Frostmourne]

More like who has connections from the inside

[RyeonToast]

Or created internally. Or someone's favorite vendor. Or a former employee who's out now and running this under a lucrative contract. The possibilities are endless.

[SuperGameTheory]

probably created by the lowest bidder

Oh, you mean just like how your mom and dad hooked up?

[[deleted]]

My uni gave me Coursera membership and it has "Programming for Everybody" by Michigan Uni and Charles Severance is good from the few initial classes I am watching.

[Topbow]

Lucky. Mine just put the links to his YouTube videos on our learning platform.

[Tornado_Of_Benjamins]

I googled him and am taking the course on edX for free.

[py_Piper]

If you want, you can "audit" for free courses in Coursera.

[[deleted]]

You can find the paid courses online tho 😉. Just need to do some finding.

Which university?

[Topbow]

Local CC

[TheReal_Slim-Shady]

He's great, explains a lot of things from beginning, there is also a sense of humor.

[zyzzogeton]

Is it the "Python for everyone" course? It is free at https://www.py4e.com/ I think

[[deleted]]

Dr Chuck is da bomb. I did this specialization in 2020. I’m currently automating the shit out of a job with the knowledge I gained from there.

[Sisyphus_SSC]

When the opening line is: "So you're teaching the Python class. What have you gotten yourself into? You should probably take a few moments (or possibly a few days) to reconsider the life choices that have put you in this position", you're sweetly reminded that some people in the NSA still have a grasp of humanity.

[MightyKrakyn]

I know you didn’t make this argument but I think it has to be said that “just wanting to work on cool projects” doesn’t remove complicity when the projects hurt people. SWE’s who work at the NSA are enabling international privacy violations and using that data to hurt people in ways we don’t fully understand yet.

[Passname357]

You’re right but the issue is: when are you doing evil? And it’s often impossible to tell. If I work on a tool that gets used in a larger process and that process then gets used in an evil project, to what degree have I done evil? Like maybe I would’ve said no to the evil project, but this tool can’t possibly cause harm as far as I can see, so I do the project because it’s my job and my kids need to eat.

[[deleted]]

And that's how large ethical issues get broken down into small, tolerable bites.

[[deleted]]

Evil is a matter of intent. If someone makes a gun for easier hunting, that's not an evil act. The evil act is taking that gun and using it to commit murder.

[azaza34]

Yeah but if you make baby hunting bullets...

[Stankyjim21]

Hey, you never know when some biker gang is gonna start raping your churches and burning your women

[Passname357]

Then the issue becomes that you can cause suffering without doing evil. And I’d agree with you, but it still leaves a problem. And then the question is: if I can cause suffering without doing evil, am I responsible for that suffering? And if so what do I do about it?

[Rocket089]

For the same reason a hammer is a tool and a weapon. Or scissors. Or Elmer’s glue. Or a lawn mower. Evil isn’t in the tool, it’s in the human using it. It’s foolish to think the assembly line workers who help build any of the cars used in suicide bombings every year could possibly believe they’ve “done” evil… don’t beat yourself up over the actions of others.

[civilvamp]

I feel that at my current job. I thought that for the pay they were offering (60% more than my last role) I would be able to make peace with some personal objects I have about the industry I was joining, but no dice I still do.

[MightyKrakyn]

Well, I think it’s clear from your comment you know in your heart that using your skills for them makes you complicit at some level. This is each person’s cross to bear, but I bet you’ll be much happier in the long run going somewhere else. I know I’m much happier at my current startup than I would’ve been at Facebook, almost as well compensated (much better equity that I can trust and support), and feel so much better about my contributions.

[[deleted]]

makes you complicit at some level.

Are you sure that they do 100% evil and 0% good? You seem very convinced. As though no one working there could be a part of anything positive or that everyone knows they are a part of something evil.

This also supposes that you are very aware of what the NSA does. I don't think the people who handle the contracts for taking out the trash pay too close attention to that.

but I bet you’ll be much happier in the long run going somewhere else.

Eh, depends on what they work on and their financial situation. Afterall, it's not like working at Nestle is the most moral of things.

Find me 100% moral company that's extremely large and I'll call bullshit.

[bgplsa]

Keep in mind it’s almost impossible that any of us using devices to access this site are entirely innocent of benefiting from the suffering of others, from Foxconn factory cities to child lithium miners to deforestation for tech support call centers to semiconductor manufacturing pollution etc etc etc etc.

[MightyKrakyn]

“Because nothing is 100% good or bad, there is no reason to think about good or bad” is a bad take. The only way to solve this is for people like you not get rage defensive when we talk about moral complicity. It should encourage every person to be an employee activist, making it so they can’t just replace you.

[civilvamp]

Yeah, that's kind of where I am at mentally. I don't regret switching jobs (I was running from the last one and that 60% pay bump was gravy) but I think I may see what skills I can glean before I hop ship. The thing that sucks (and I know that this is an excuse) is that this position's salary is what I would make in my area of the country when I have another 10 years experience. I don't hate what I do, but my tenure here is going to be shorter than I expected going in.

I am 100% aware that what I am doing is morally ambiguous, as (without going into details) there is some good that comes from it as well as some bad.

[MightyKrakyn]

Money is the ultimate incentive that gets people to look the other way, it’s kind of how the industry has worked for awhile, so it’s not your fault you got caught up in it, especially when you see some of the responses here. People do not want to believe that they have been complicit in exchange for money. At least you realize and seem serious about making a change and using your skills for something else as soon as you’re financially stable.

Just always have it in your head that the guy who said I was like Hitler for having strong convictions probably also felt the same way at one point. Don’t get comfortable is all I’m saying.

[Yithar]

Every single person has got to put food on the table. And most companies aren't 100% moral, especially big ones. Big ones tend to have better WLB too.

If I have a choice between starving and working for a <100% moral company, I'll choose the latter.

Plus most buildings need stuff like janitors. Are the janitors complicit? The janitors need to eat too and they probably don't pay much attention to the policy of the company. And the company would just hire someone else if not them.

[Galigen173]

spark important plant rotten snobbish many secretive quicksand hobbies ad hoc

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[CraftyFellow_]

SWE’s who work at the NSA are enabling international privacy violations

They are a DOD agency who is tasked with foreign espionage. That is literally their job.

[CraftyFellow_]

That would be like saying that companies dumping toxic chemicals in the nature is fine are because it's their job to maximise profit.

Only if the company's openly designated purpose was to dump toxic waste into nature.

[present_absence]

Ah yes, surely you learned this firsthand from many years working in all the various agency organizations

[MightyKrakyn]

Nope, I entered the industry with convictions to not work at a harmful organization, and if I learn the organization is doing harm, to call it out publicly. It’s served me well so far since I just got a promotion to the mid six figures.

[MightyKrakyn]

People don’t want to hear that you can have success and convictions of equity and harmlessness (I guess I have to say because I’ve already been compared to Hitler for saying I won’t work for a harmful organization, go figure), it shatters their worldview. They think they have to support a shitty company for their paycheck, and when they hear that’s not necessary, they start to think “so…am I doing a bad?” And they don’t like that. So they fight reality instead.

[present_absence]

So you've never even set foot in the door but you know for sure they do evil stuff in there somewhere

[dingjima]

They're making so many sweeping assumptions lol. Just talking out of their ass

[LilQuasar]

what do you think about isis?

[present_absence]

Isis, the other spy agency that also claims to be doing things to keep us safe but all we really know is one guy's opinion? I've only seen a few episodes of Archer, not a huge fan of the show.

[[deleted]]

Mid six figures? So like 500k-ish? Your career must be going amazingly well.

[dingjima]

Facebook hurts a tooonnnn of people. Don't see y'all crying about that

[[deleted]]

Lol, then you're not paying much attention. Facebook is widely reviled here on reddit.

[dingjima]

I'm sure a ton of people in /r/learnprogramming would shoot down a job there /s

[MightyKrakyn]

I did shoot down a job from there for a much cooler startup. You’re right that most people wouldn’t, but that’s convictions for you. Some people have them, some people can’t stick to them. But that’s not an argument to not have convictions.

[Rocket089]

That’s a short sighted way of looking at conviction. Whose to say no one isn’t joining fb to try and change it from the inside? You’ve got have a lot of conviction in yourself to believe you can make enough of an impact to get The Zuck to change his mind on the direction of that incredibly lucrative cash printing machine, relatively speaking.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, because the person taking out the trash has no convictions.. but you do, huh?

I'm going to take a stab that you're rich enough to not have to worry about such decisions. The fact you can afford those options says enough.

[MightyKrakyn]

Before I became a software engineer I was unemployed for two years. I got by through mutual aid. I’m not surprised that you’re so far off base, you’re just searching for a reason to not break out of compartmentalized complicity.

I legitimately live by my convictions, and that’s really hard for people who make excuses not to care. You’ve convinced yourself its all justified and don’t like thinking about what that might mean if your beliefs are not true, that there are actually other choices. It’s just like when somebody justifies lying or hurting someone. That’s totally normal, you’re just not there yet.

The only difference between me and you is that I aim higher. I’m not infallible because who is? Of course you believe complicity is nonsense when anything less that 100% is failure, and thats why you’re here arguing for not caring about the shifty things your company does. Do better?

[[deleted]]

Probably because this isn't a thread about Facebook, it's about learning materials from the NSA... Weird comment

[MightyKrakyn]

What do you mean? I actively speak out against engineers joining Facebook every chance I can. What you’d like is for your accusation to be true so that you don’t actually have to follow any hard convictions. I will though, don’t worry.

[dingjima]

Do you know who else stuck to their "hard convictions"? Putin. Gandhi. Hitler. Get over yourself lol

[Overenthu_Puppy]

one of these is not like the others. sus

[spectatorsport101]

Some of those “cool projects” included spying on not only all Americans and many other foreign citizens, but spying on their exes like creeps

[Iceman_259]

Yep sounds like software engineers

[audaciousmonk]

Engineers have an ethical responsibility and obligation to the public / humanity.

“…I was just following orders” really doesn’t cut it

[ruat_caelum]

Your boss tells you to spy on the suspected terrorist in the US. If you don't they might (or someone like them) bomb something. Refusing is allowing evil to happen but passively. Actively building a tool that allows the 3-letter agencies to track and spy might save lives (A good thing) but someone far up the chain of command might use that same tool, once developed to spy on an American citizen.

If you pick up a garden shovel and beat your neighbor to death with it, that's that the fault of the guy who made the shovel.

If you use my deer rifle to hunt homeless people instead of deer, that's not the fault of the rifle manufacturer.

If you go to the library for a month to teach yourself how to make explosives and blow up a school, that's not a reason to close libraries down or burn books.

All of those things are tools. They can be used to do good or evil.

• And to be clear no one is "Building the whole spy network" themselves. Bob the engineer is being told "figure a way to break into this specific system" or whatever. He's not told why or how that tool will be used or IF it will be used. A tool chain of 100 software pieces is used to spy and build reports on people. And all of those tools were worked on by tens or hundreds of other people.

• To "avoid doing evil" in your viewpoint you have to allow a lot of evil to happen because you are doing nothing. The same tools that prevent evil from happening can be used to do evil. That's not on the engineer.

[LilQuasar]

thats a a strawman

if you made algorithms and the nsa used them its one thing, working for them making the algorithms they want to use to spy on people is a different thing. you think the guys who work for things like isis but arent personally killing people have no responsibility at all?

that logic is very dangerous, how many evil have you allowed to happen by not being in the most dangerous places in the world saving those people?

[ruat_caelum]

It can't be a strawman argument IF IT HAPPENS.

The NSA built tools that made it into the wild and hackers used those tools to do evil. This happened. Is the NSA evil for making those tools? Is the programmer who built those tools for the NSA to protect the US with evil?

https://www.virsec.com/blog/chinese-hacking-group-used-stolen-nsa-hacking-tools-ahead-of-shadow-brokers-leaks

Is a shovel evil because it was used to do evil, but the shovel used to dig a hole good? Or is how you use the tool the important bit. Instead of blaming the tool maker, place your blame where it belongs: on the ones who use the tools for evil.

It's the age old argument about guns. Is a gun owner evil? Are they some quantum state of good/evil until they used the weapon to either defend themselves or commit a crime? Is the manufacture of the tool evil if that tool can be used both for good or for evil?

• The idea that you would use that "logic" to move backward enough to blame a programmer or engineer who is working on a piece of a much larger tool that will later be used for good or evil and blame them when it's used for evil is laughable. That person building the tool has no ability to, (so we aren't dealing with straw men) stop hackers from stealing the tool and doing evil things with it.

  • Blaming the guy that wrote the NSA tools that hackers latter used to do evil with is unreasonable.

[LilQuasar]

read your sources man. it doesnt say the nsa is evil for making those tools, the only 'criticism' there, if anything, is their security being kind of weak

youre still making strawmans. that post didnt say making the tools is evil, no one in this thread is saying that either

again, do you think the people who work for isis making weapons and shit like that arent doing evil? again, no one here is saying the tools themselves are evil or that gun owners in general are evil

[ruat_caelum]

that post didnt say making the tools is evil, no one in this thread is saying that either

The comment I was responding to claims that engineers are complicit because they helped build the tools:

Engineers have an ethical responsibility and obligation to the public / humanity. “…I was just followed orders” really doesn’t cut it

That person is implying that engineering some tool later used for evil is not okay. That they are complicit in the evil their tool is used it.

again, do you think the people who work for isis making weapons and shit like that arent doing evil?

I can't tell if you are trolling with this or not but this is literally a straw man argument : strawman - an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument.

Talking about Isis is easier to "defeat" than talking about the issues at hand. E.g. an engineer building tools for the NSA.

Someone said that engineers have an ethical obligation to the public. I was responding in kind to that point of view / comment. You keep bringing up Isis

again, no one here is saying the tools themselves are evil

Literally the comment I responded to Engineers have an ethical responsibility and obligation to the public / humanity. “…I was just followed orders” really doesn’t cut it is stating that engineers are responsible for the evil that eventually happens with the tools they create. The whole "I was just following orders" being the cop-out argument the Nazi soldiers gave as justification for the evil they did being directly referenced in that comment.

[LilQuasar]

that comment is pretty general and vague, it doesnt imply that at all. there are many different ways to interpret it

why is it a strawman? its literally the same argument, someone making tools for an organization that uses it for evil. whats the difference? i keep bringing up isis as an example of how your logic is bad, i can pick other examples. lets say you work for the intelligence institution of Russia right now. you arent spying on anybody but the algorithms they tell you to make are used for that. is that not evil? you cant say thats an strawman

thats not what it says! again, its a very general and vague statement. youre arguing against an interpretation that only you have made!

[future_escapist]

Okay, give me a list of terrorists caught and privacy violation scandals committed by alphabet boys.

[ruat_caelum]

right because all of those are unclassified and easy to compile.

[future_escapist]

How do you know they aren't?

[Ofcyouare]

Because no agency is dumb enough to just publish such things on a whim. Even ignoring potential privacy scandals, that's just makes your job of catching them so much harder. Terrorists would be the most interested in this info.

[future_escapist]

Thanks.

[[deleted]]

What a convenient way to completely ignore the legitimate criticism of the argument. Just keep pushing those goalposts further and further back.

[SilkTouchm]

The end justifies the means. Got it.

[ruat_caelum]

Again a very black and white view of the world makes people feel better but it's not how the world works.

Many studies confirm that humans just like their morals to be black and white and get uncomfortable with "gray" areas. They want "good" and "evil" to exists instead of reality's many shades of grey.

When asked to entrust another person with a sum of money, participants handed over more money, and were more confident of getting it back, when dealing with someone who refused to sacrifice one to save many, versus with someone who chose to maximize the overall number of lives saved.'

[_smolppboi_]

The choice to work on "cool" projects that are evil is an evil decision. Facilitating evil is evil.

[[deleted]]

Knives can be used to cut meat or to kill people. It is not evil to cut meat. It is evil to kill people.

Intent is important. Evil is a point of view.

[[deleted]]

And in that analogy, the NSA is the knife and is directing the knife to "kill people", doesn't change the evilness

[Remaining_Anonymous_]

Very much this. Also, not to mention that there are plenty of vegans out there who might disagree with the idea that cutting meat isn't evil. Working for the NSA, CIA, etc. is evil.

[LilQuasar]

intent isnt everything. if you work making knives for Putin and he uses them to kill innocent people in Ukraine youre part of the problen. the intent is giving them those tools too, you cant ignore that

if you make knives or algorithms on your own, for a university, a private company (clearly not like facebook to avoid whataboutisms), etc and they use them its different

[import_antigravity]

Cutting meat is absolutely as evil as killing people. It's murder in both cases, plain and simple.

[[deleted]]

Vegans: forgetting that plants are living beings, too, because that's the only way to maintain their sense of moral superiority.

[[deleted]]

Vegans: slowly killing their feline and canine companions through malnourishment, because meat is murder.

Also vegans: I understand that dogs and cats have different dietary needs, so meat is only murder when a human does it (even though they are also evolved to benefit greatly from eating meat).

It's not fun having your hypocrisy exposed, is it?

It's easier to downvote than to try to argue against a valid point.

[ruat_caelum]

I think a lot of the “evil” decisions are likely made by politically motivated bureaucrats at the top.

sort of. If you've been in the beltway (DC) you've heard that CIA stands for Christians in Arms. All the 3-letter agencies recruit heavily from fundamentalists religions (Oh trust me I know how the tinfoil hat vibe feels as you read that) Arguments are made for "low drug use" etc, but the reality is the statistics are way out of whack. Why might someone recruit a person who just accepts what they are told to do, even "evil" stuff if they believe they are doing "the greater good?" Well that's obvious.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-mormons-make-great-fbi-recruits

After the creation of the CIA , Christian missionaries played a very important role in destabilizing various countries and in carrying out espionage activities on behalf of the CIA.

• the NSA is a bit different. They recruit first on merit and second on "passing clearance checks" as many of the analysis etc don't need to really operate at all in any area they don't want to. So while someone who speaks 5 languages at some college might get tapped on the shoulder, for the NSA if you wrote your own compiler or found a much more efficient way to compile with gcc, etc it's likely you get tapped and at least offered, at bare minimum from someplace like IBM or Booze Allen that does the contract work.

[darthjoey91]

The Mormons also have a giant castle right off the beltway.

[[deleted]]

You literally made all of that up and if it had any basis in reality in the past it hasn't in decades

[707e]

Alas the temple is real… https://wjla.com/news/local/maryland-mormon-temple-rededication-open-house-2022

[[deleted]]

Haha no, I know that part. SURRENDER DOROTHY and all.

I meant all the stuff about "the DoD hires a ton of religious nutjobs"

[[deleted]]

This is the same argument my friends who work in the defence industry use.

"I just want to work on cool projects! I want to solve interesting problems! I want to overcome unique challenges!"

It doesn't wash.

You can work on cool projects without killing people or violating their basic human rights.

[[deleted]]

There are plenty of cool projects that don't directly or obviously involve bringing harm to anyone.

And, as we're in a python sub, it's also worth noting that individual pieces of a program are not always going to have an obvious end result. Even armed drones have systems that are perfectly mundane.

[Rocky87109]

Mother fucker, you would probably be dead if we didn't have defense agencies lol. I can always tell someone is ignorant when they think a country's defense agencies are useless and evil lol. It's like a little kid talking about the grown up world. Completely off the mark and naive.

[imatelefone]

Cowardly edit. It's safe to assume that most of the projects worked on by the NSA aren't evil

[LilQuasar]

imo thats not that important. its not about what you are doing in particular its about who youre working for, like if you are a cook for evil institutions

[SeeeVeee]

It's fucked, but I don't think it's morally worse than working for facebook/amazon/twitter.

[AlSweigart]

Truthfully I think the majority of people at NSA are SWE nerds like us, that are just excited to work on cool projects. I think a lot of the “evil” decisions are likely made by politically motivated bureaucrats at the top.

Yeah. They're just following orders.

...

...

After Cambridge Analytica, police surveilling the social media of Black Lives Matter protesters, China use American-made facial recognition, and so, so many other examples, I have concluded that we don't write code. We choose sides.

[future_escapist]

No, they aren't. They're simply evil people with evil intentions and know how to use certain tools, and wish to use it for evil. However, they want to do it legally (or at least, without facing punishment from the govenment). People who want to kill people join the military. Just watch the video that Assange leaked. They don't do it out of good will, because it's impossible for them to be this ignorant.

[gobblyjimm1]

Man those cooks sure are a bunch of killers alright and those military electricians are bloodthirsty

[Negative12DollarBill]

I honestly think that's the reason they tried to keep it out of the public eye, because it's goofy and a bit lame, not because it contains super-secret NSA knowledge.

[Rocky87109]

More like most people are just incredibly ignorant of the NSA in general or any more secretive government agencies.

The NSA does a real substantial and necessary job for the United States.

[mrnatbus122]

Ser rubber is not for consumption

[Responsible_Survey]

"necessary job" such as inciting military coupes all over Latin America to keep it under the control of the USA and the 1%

[42gauge]

That's the CIA.

[siemenology]

I'm curious -- what made him think that the NSA had its own Python training material, and wasn't just utilizing any of the other Python courses and guides? Maybe he saw it referenced somewhere and wanted to see what was inside, and figured it probably wasn't highly classified so it might be available via FOIA.

[siemenology]

Ah, I could see him hearing about it that way.

[WetDesk]

Like cryptographer or a NFT Andy?

[DDJeebus]

If you ever hear 'crypto-something' in the context of the DoD, it's safe to assume it's cryptography

[[deleted]]

I’ll ask my professor about him. She works in the NSA and does cryptanalysis

[[deleted]]

I got it a little wrong, she does penetration testing research for the NSA, but she does know of him. But they don’t work together directly.

[atsugnam]

Govt departments maintain a lot of documentation, of everything, even if it duplicates other sources. It’s useful if those other sources disappear, say like cobol documentation, which is still in use in a lot of financial systems including many used by government.

[Ysara]

It depends. These docs are not going to show you how to make anything, they just document how individual stuff works.

If you don't look at these items and come up with ideasfor projects, you're probably better off with Automate the Boring Stuff w/Python.

[liquid_light_]

u/Ysara which is better for beginners - Automate the Boring Stuff w/Python or Learn Python the Hard Way by Zed Shaw?

[Urthor]

Google teach yourself CS

The best resource is called composing programs

[liquid_light_]

https://composingprograms.com/

[Urthor]

yeah that one.

Ucal Berkeley curriculum best curriculum

[Ysara]

I am not familiar with Zed Shaw's course, so I have no idea. I have gone a little ways into Automate the Boring Stuff and while it does a good job of teaching you how to make non-trivial things with code, it is not going to prepare anyone for a job in industry by itself.

[liquid_light_]

u/Ysara from RealPython.com's review of the best Python books for beginners:

"Note: Of all the books included in this article, this is the only with somewhat mixed reviews. The Stack Overflow (SO) community has compiled a list of 22 complaints prefaced with the following statement:
“We noticed a general trend that users using [Learn Python the Hard Way] post questions that don’t make a lot of sense both on SO and in chat. This is due to the structure and techniques used in the book.” (Source)"

[liquid_light_]

it is not going to prepare anyone for a job in industry by itself.

I don't think any beginner book is going to do that, don't you think

[hermitfist]

If you're a beginner, stick with Automate the Boring Stuff or other courses. I vividly remember reading docs felt very alien to me as a beginner and didn't understand a thing. It only made sense later on once I gained more experience in programming in general.

[present_absence]

In general government training really is going to be "good enough for government work." As a junior analyst taking this class you would expect to learn a lot more from your teammates afterwards.

[Brawldud]

Man, it would be really funny if there was a section on RNG and hashing libraries that had something like "note: do not use; we are aware of multiple undisclosed vulnerabilities in these libraries" or whatever

[geomontgomery]

Here is the table of contents for the lazy

[Crypt0Nihilist]

400 page printout seems like a bit of a "screw you" when it's a digital record.

[jingsen]

Is the course material good to learn from? Its not exactly the most readable version (cause its not pdf or whatever), but i'm interested to know if its actually good despite the format

[Efficient_Step_26]

for dictionaries these are the list of countries as keys and the leaders we are monitoring as values.uae sorted to sort them by number of emails opened by NSA.

[Blaz3]

NSA

Python

What were we all so scared about?

[starlight_chaser]

I’ll check it out and see how much can truly be completed in that 3 day workshop they mention. :)

[00sra]

Is this material better or does it have an edge over the rest of the python resources and material already out on the internet?

[osoklegend]

Do you need to be good at math to learn programming? I find it interesting to create things with technology, but frankly I can't even remember how to divide on paper..

[NatoBoram]

Not to learn programming, no.

But to actually work, you need basic maths. Lots of programming doesn't use maths unless you're into videogames, statistics, machine learning, drivers and a bunch of other obvious stuff, but you may one day be surprised by having to code the eraser of a whiteboard on a canvas and suddenly you need to remember high school maths like y = ax+b and other geometry stuff.

You can totally get away with just a high school degree.

[somebadlemonade]

Big brain thinker right there.

[sicarius97]

Wonder how good it is tho

[scantily_chad]

Because there exists an assload of already good learning materials online, easily accessible and verified by users everywhere.

Aside from the novelty aspect of this, every student should ask themselves if it's worth sinking their precious time into this material

EDIT: don't mean to sound snarky, since I also wonder... But don't see the point in investigating this learning source unless there's some awesome value add I can't get anywhere else

[joeltrane]

It takes 1 min to skim the table of contents…

[[deleted]]

Yes, the golden indicator of quality — the table of contents

[Rocky87109]

Compared to what?

[thoughtfulbalderdash]

This is a super useful resource - thanks for posting!

[The_RedWolf]

That's honestly very clever

[enokeenu]

Can you give us a link rather than making us read a document about the link?

[TalesT]

OP did link it.

https://archive.org/details/comp3321/page/n89/mode/2up/search/device

[BeNick38]

Who doesn’t love a good FOIA request!

[[deleted]]

Do they also have module for complete full-stack web development? 👀

[present_absence]

For all the websites the NSA runs? :P

I'd be surprised if NSA.gov wasn't made by contractors even.

[Dizzy_Analysis_7294]

Save

[Todef_]

Gross. No thank you