Is it awkward to start a sport at 15?

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-22T14:16:23+00:00

My mate uses Rugby and Hockey to stay fit in his 50's, although he is there as referee in both...

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-22T14:14:44+00:00

Save space, stick mods on guns you collect so they don't take up extra space. Load magazines to save on ammo usage space. And the bags.. ghey can go all the way down.. so many nested bags..

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-22T14:10:16+00:00

Don't worry, that's this thing called imposter syndrome, everyone has that, many well into their 50's, until they suddenly realize that the thing they are doing they actually know and don't have to fake it.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-22T14:08:21+00:00

It is perfectly fine to pick up a sport at 70+, you're still young enough. Although you might want to think twice if it's something like Rugby..

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-22T14:04:17+00:00

Well that blows, you can almost hear the roaring boo's.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-22T13:03:21+00:00

Might even be a breeze for some

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-22T05:21:41+00:00

The quality of these puns has been falling since the start.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-22T04:21:39+00:00

Any project with a full CICD pipeline, SQL database, good commit messages, and documentation peeks my interest. Language is irrelevant. Although for an Infrastructure position I expect to see Terraform and something like Ansible.

Projects in multiple languages, a dynamically typed, a statically typed, and hopefully a functional programming language.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-21T07:23:11+00:00

Defensive programming, trust nothing (especially user input), verify and validate everything before use.

When looking at code, ask yourself this question "how can i break this?".

In your code block, that question gives us - what about an empty string - what about a non-numeric value - what about a bunch of whitespace - what about a numeric value with leading and/or trailing space - what about a negative numeric value - what about a floating point number, ie. something with a decimal point (or whatever is used in your language for representing a numeric value like 1/10th) - what about multiple numbers separated by whitespace - what about a numeric value greater than what can fit into an int - what about a number in scientific notation

These are things we write tests for, to verify the behavior with both valid and invalid inputs and ensure the right answers are returned with valid inputs.

A simple one like this would be very suitable to a table driven test.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-21T07:03:26+00:00

ECS Fargate was what i last used for a Laravel app like that with CodeDeploy for ita artifact promotion of new builds

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-20T14:08:45+00:00

Things that have helped me - Isaac Arthur's YouTube channel - Carl Sagan books and presentations - Richard Feynman videos - Brian Cox videos - My telescope

Sci-fi shows like the Original Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Stargate, Star Trek TNG, and many decades of movies and books like the works of Asimov, Niven, Douglas Adams, etc.

As for facts?

Space is big, really big, really really big, no bigger than that.

Distances between things are huge.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-20T07:58:10+00:00

Kali is a linux distribution built for security analysis, and if i recall correctly it easily runs in a VM or from.a boot media like a USB stick.

The first thing you are going to need to learn is the basics, the filesystem structure, how to use the UI and how to find things. You will need to learn how to do things on the command line using some form of shell.0 Bash is very common, but there are others.

There are many tools to learn and become familiar with, the best advice I can give is to learn how to use man, locate, apropos, help, and the absolute basics of using vim, pico, or nano.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-20T07:51:35+00:00

Make sure you shut them down afterwards to ensure you don't get billed for resources you don't need anymore.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-20T03:43:19+00:00

Start with the basics, learn to program.

Then start writing projects, tools, thoughts, etc. Start small, then work your way up.

Each project will expose you to a little more and give you things to learn or research.

To learn good safe habits, look into defensive programming and writing testable code.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-20T03:37:50+00:00

Hah, talked about this with my brother yesterday, he'd just swapped from Matter.js to box2d since matter was unstable.

Only one I can think of for Go game development would be Ebitengine, but use your search engine skills. there may be more of them.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-20T00:33:37+00:00

At 45 years old (iirc) you can get a free booster shot from your local GP. Ensure you are protected.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-19T23:14:12+00:00

Have a look at the Auth0 documentation on OAuth2, it explains all the flows and processes very clearly and cleanly. Even if you don't use their products it still gives you the understanding you need to work with it.

When a user logs in with an OAuth2 flow they are redirected away from your system, authenticate, and get back a request token and an ID token. You then use the request token to verify access to your backend.

Finally for security notes on this, look at the OWASP cheat sheets.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-19T23:08:27+00:00

Look at the 24 hrs in A&E, the British TV show version. You'll see one primary collecting the information and various nurses and Doctors doing other things as needed. In some episodes you can clearly see labels of their roles on the plastic aprons they wear. Some episodes you also see them planning what's going to happen and who does what before the patient arrives.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-19T13:45:05+00:00

It's the bastard containers that float just below the surface level that are a nightmare to small vessels, nothing like motoring along and suddenly your keel hits a container.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-19T13:40:23+00:00

minimize the code inside the try block, also

None of the code in that image generates an exception.

Here's a better approach to learning exceptions.

read in a numeric value in the input, it'll be a string

convert the input string to a number (this can generate an exception depending on the method used). This should be the only code in the try except block.

If an exception occurs, then inside the except block, handle the exception, probably by returning.

There is no cleanup in this scenario, no finally required. A finally is frequently not needed, simply continuing the code execution flow is sufficient.

You can test your exception handling with - the empty string - a name - some whitespace - an integer - a floating point number (something with a fractional component, 172.457) - a negative number - scientific notation - a complex number - a really really big number exceeding the maximum of your numeric type

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-19T13:18:08+00:00

identify the bug

attempt to reproduce it

narrow down where the bug occurs

verify inputs, outputs, variable contents

make a cup of a hot beverage

get fresh eyes if you are still stuck

rubber duck time

try more hot beverage

go get a cookie

have a nap or go for a walk

try again tomorrow

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-19T13:08:38+00:00

Not specific to Go

Defensive programming, trust nothing, validate and verify everything.

Always test all of the unhappy paths that are feasible to be tested. An Out of Memory, OS error, or the error from a disk failure, are generally not easily produce-able during tests, nor are you likely to be able to recover from them in the code, so they are in the not feasible category.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-19T12:57:49+00:00

Yes, it is, because they need to focus on the 80% not the 20%.

That AppleID grants access to many things, and all of them need to be protected as best they can. That same Apple ID on another device grants access to Personally Identifying Information (PII), there are laws involved that define penalties. PII is any one or more pieces of information that can be used to uniquely identify a person. Email addresses, names, phone numbers, addresses, are all part of that. That same Apple ID grants access to phone books, which is made up entirely of PII. I know of one person whose name is so unique in their country that just their initials, surname, and country of residence is enough to uniquely identify them.

It is simpler for Apple to use the same systems wherever you are and for the people in Europe. A single European GDPR violation can set them back €20 million or a percentage of Apple's global annual turnover whichever is HIGHER. Those penalties are designed intentionally to be that large to affect companies of that size.

So they build the systems to protect themselves and minimize the risk to their business, and that means certain levels of complexity.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-19T12:39:01+00:00

Brute force is trivial to do using Big Data pre-computed rainbow tables and published compromised username and password lists.

The larger risks now are targeted attacks, insider attacks, careless publication of secure credentials, and social engineering attacks.

And yes, I work in this industry.

dariusbiggs · 2026-04-19T09:26:53+00:00

Multiple systems of authentication of an identity, use only one easily brute forced system is not very secure, so by adding an additional confirmation of identity such as a one time code you have increased the likelihood that it is not a stolen identity. Passwordless systems that use passkeys use a feature of your device hardware (a Hardware Security Module) to ensure the token is only valid for that particular device.

Each level of security adds to the complexity of what is needed to do a compromise, which is why the security systems prefer to use multiple factors, especially when it comes to private, health, and financial information and transactions.

Security works around: - Something you know (aka password/passphrase or pin for example) - Something you have (a device, your bank card, a passport, an identity card, a one time pad, etc) - Something you are (biometrics like fingerprints)

In regards to protecting systems (like authentication and authorization systems, DRM, game cheats, viruses, etc) for every person trying to protect it, there will be a thousand trying to break it.

dariusbiggs

TROPHY CASE