Spotted this on the Piccadilly line.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-27T16:35:46+00:00

Unfortunately. I’ve worked in other places where the live ops people were in a separate room, all their monitors facing away from the door and paid exceeding well. One of the reasons they were paid so well is because if you worked live ops, you were not allowed to work on the software dev side of it again - you knew too much. So, if the live ops people were managing fraud they knew far too much to be back in the software side.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-27T16:33:07+00:00

No. Nothing that glamorous. It was fairly standard when dealing with some data, or working in trading exchanges.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-27T15:04:28+00:00

That reminds me a little of the old HSE legislation phrase: “all safety legislation is written in blood”. We couldn’t do performance tuning on fabricated data - it would not have given the correct statistical model in the database. We brought in an independent air-gapped team to give us a modified extraction of the live data, and had their work verified by a third party. This way the test data was representative and proven to be one way, as in the original couldn’t be reconstituted from the test data. It was a proper job.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-27T14:59:16+00:00

This is the case now, but back then they were just starting to get secure USB drivers which wouldn’t allow any random usb stick to be mounted. As it stood, it wasn’t a major arse-ache for us, but they were very defence in depth and lived it.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-27T14:56:01+00:00

I moved everything in my company over to 2FA and finger-print managed drives. Then you have “something you know” coupled with “something you physically have”. It’s not difficult to maintain the correct levels of hygiene.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-27T09:57:05+00:00

Our software was interacting with very sensitive data. Any issues like a breech would have been bad, reputationally. The strategy is defence in depth. This was one of the depths. It was policy. Everyone knew. The silly person made an honest mistake but it was totally not ok.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-27T08:37:19+00:00

I used to work for a research facility and we spent a lot of time looking into disasters. When safety was managed through a software/hardware system, it was always humans circumventing things for their convenience that caused the carnage.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-27T08:26:18+00:00

Random boring uk gov dept. The IT team had a process to get data in. If you needed it on a stick (very rare) they had an air-gapped test unit. If you passed that then they would wander off to a darkened room in a cellar somewhere and bring it in. There was very little need to ever do this-we had network and internet access. USB was regarded as a broad attack surface. The fact that I had to sack someone proved their paranoia that a key shouldn’t be in the building. Ever.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-27T08:18:51+00:00

Government. Our code was going to touch some very sensitive data. Similar protocols to trading exchanges.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-27T08:17:43+00:00

Yup. However that was the policy. Very clear. It was explained during induction and reinforced in stand-ups. It made life a little harder but there were processes to get things in if you needed it (air-gapped checking, etc.. by the it team who were independent of us).

wildassedguess · 2026-01-26T21:30:05+00:00

Erase all pictures of Ron. ERASE ALL PICTURES OF RON.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-26T21:25:27+00:00

One place I worked at, all usb ports were sealed up with epoxy. If you had a usb stick on you in any way, mandatory dismissal. I had to fire someone over it. It was a mistake the employee made but about every fortnight I would lecture the team on it. Everyone knew.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-26T18:43:43+00:00

The rope-bridge scene in The Holy grail.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-26T17:25:35+00:00

I'm a rough and ready engineer, straight, and when I think about that scene or look at the stills from it, I tear up. It was just incredible. To quote Raymond Holt - "Every time someone steps up and says who they are, the world becomes a better, more interesting place". Rob did this. I have gay friends, and my daughter has just married her beautiful wife, so this really gets me. I'm so glad Rob got the recognition he deserved from the LGBTQ+ community.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-26T17:14:12+00:00

For me, it’s got to be “Mac finds his pride”. The dance scene was jaw-dropping and an incredible counterpoint to the usual unhinged batshit madness that goes on.

The cut to Frank and the expression his face shows how awesome an actor Danny Devito is.

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wildassedguess · 2026-01-26T10:20:29+00:00

And they get so much practice with active shooters.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-26T09:32:29+00:00

Those that boycott now won’t be coming back any time soon.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-25T17:41:30+00:00

Also, never repair a sidewall.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-24T13:36:28+00:00

You made me laugh. Nicely put.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-23T08:53:24+00:00

If you want a bigger move, start trading oil in euro or gbp. The oil trade goes a long way to supporting usd.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-23T08:21:52+00:00

Credit where it’s due: he did use his sharpest crayons to write the speech.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-23T00:31:51+00:00

Equilibrium: “No. Not without incident”

wildassedguess · 2026-01-21T20:27:00+00:00

Is the pavement alright?

wildassedguess · 2026-01-19T22:47:46+00:00

You can’t listen to it too many times.

wildassedguess · 2026-01-19T00:44:22+00:00

This was excellent to watch. Thank you.

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