unknownknowns

Thank you! Currently using XXH64 to good success for small keys, and xxh3 looks fantastic as the next upgrade.

Client certificate PKI is common in this space. Even if it's just a local cert on the user's profile, it works really well as SSO.

When it's the current flavour of the month, yes.

> * If you data is more fluid and changing all the time, and/or if it comes in JSON serializable format, consider switching to postgresql ^9.4, and use the JSONB columns to store this data. You can index/query those columns and performance wise its on par (or surpasses) MongoDB.

Would it be worthwhile to switch from MongoDB to Postgres (when MySQL is being used alongside Mongo)? I'd have to do lots of testing with it to know for sure though, I guess.

I use Mongo for timeseries-like data, and have >1 billion documents in Mongo currently. Querying super old data is pretty slow (and not needed generally), but querying recent data (recent being the last month) is "fast enough".

> "When national security programs are hobby-level, you really have to worry that anybody else can do them."

It's not really surprising that bulk surveillance is simple, in my opinion. The act of collection/surveillance itself isn't the hard part. It's doing it on a much larger scale.

Wardriving a Starbucks as a hobby is slightly different than installing a specialized device into every downtown DC Starbucks, even if functionally both do the same thing (collect data and/or injection).

Yep, that was my idea at first too! But in the summer I see people in flip flops and shorts :-) Execs still wear suits, but us lowly engineers not so much.

Are you in SIGINT? If you're not in SIGINT, I agree with everything you've said, otherwise my experience has been pretty different likely because I'm in SIGINT. Most of us are employees and the work can be pretty satisfying and rewarding, especially when you can see the effects and/or results when you're just a small cog in the machine.

It's possible we're in different countries, though :-).

I'm a full-time employee. Managers and government benefits are a pretty big part of it. Work hours are very flexible (some roll in at 6am, others 10am), lengthy vacationable time, etc. Like morga3sm said, we want to do things correctly.

It has its downsides of course: getting a TS security clearance can be stressful, but that goes away afterwards; not being able to tell your SO what you do other than high-level stuff; career advancement and progression can be a long process and you basically know where your salary is going to go when you first start (because it is standardized); and so on.

I've enjoyed working in national security and defense. It's a laid-back environment and I can leave work at work without feeling stressed.

Agreed. When I started learning to program around 12, I was very motivated by what I wanted to make, not follow some bland tutorial ala CodeCademy.

From my experiences in university so far (Comp Sci), this experience seems to be pretty rare. If I ever have kids, I hope to be able to guide them in a similar way I learned as a kid. If they want to mod Minecraft, sure, let's start with that and not a boring tutorial for TodoApp#5034.

Indeed. I made a project a few years ago and maintained it for several years. At one point I just didn't have the time (or motivation, I suppose) to continue updates and essentially abandoned it without much official word, while putting in a good amount of work every few months. The guilt was pretty crushing, so I can understand where the author comes from.

Fortunately, someone offered to take it up recently so I feel much better now.

Seems to have gotten HN'd; it's forever waiting for me.