Welcome to the latest edition of Bacon Bytes.
If you tell people the metrics being used to judge them, they alter their behavior to gain an advantage. You might think this doesn’t matter much to you. It’s not as if your life depends upon this bit of information. Until it does. A recent survey shows that one in three heart surgeons will refuse difficult operations to avoid poor mortality ratings. I have mixed feelings about this one. I want a doctor to do what is best for the patient, before doing what is best for themselves.
Here’s an interesting story about how the Golden Gate killer was tracked down using DNA information submitted to a public website. At first, you might think “hey, this is great, we caught the guy”. But the fact is that DNA testing is not always 100% accurate. There are lots of variables involved, not the least of which is the timeline (the DNA could have arrived prior to, or well after the crime). The data being collected by these genealogy websites could be manipulated in a way to frame someone for a crime. If hackers breach one of these companies it could make a mess of criminal investigations for years.
It’s easier to do nothing than something. That is why software migrations are such a headache. But migrations are the best way to tackle technical debt. This article helps break down migrations into a simple process: derisk, enable, and finish. I wish I had read this article ten years ago when I needed to migrate a majority of our database servers to newer versions.
Here’s a story about how Microsoft helped imprison a man for ‘counterfeiting’ software it gives away for free. I think the author is missing a key point here. The man was charging people for software and made the disks look like they were authentic reinstall disks. That’s the issue. Microsoft can’t allow someone to conduct business in this manner. Don’t blame Microsoft for protecting their software.
Companies spend thousands of dollars a year for snacks in the breakroom but can’t afford to do proper asset management. If you’re not doing continuous asset management you’re not doing security. It’s not unusual for a company to spend thousands of dollars to hire a database expert to help with some edge case performance problem. That same company can’t spend a dime to track all the devices on their network to make sure they are secure. With the industry shifting towards a more security focus, I wonder if we will see a shift in spending, too.
See you next week!
