denis bider

Earlier this decade, a computer simulation showed that, because of the Dunning–Kruger effect, a democracy cannot consistently elect better than mediocre people:
Mato Nagel, a sociologist in Germany, recently implemented Dunning and Kruger's theories by computer-simulating a democratic election. In his mathematical model of the election, he assumed that voters' own leadership skills were distributed on a bell curve — some were really good leaders, some, really bad, but most were mediocre — and that each voter was incapable of recognizing the leadership skills of a political candidate as being better than his or her own. When such an election was simulated, candidates whose leadership skills were only slightly better than average always won.I'm not sure if anyone has tried to research this further. However, it comes to mind that if this result is true, it can be extended to academic fields of study.

Education is commonly divided into STEM – science, technology, engineering, m…

Thanks to the work, feedback, and help of many others over a period of years, I can now call myself a published author! (*)

(*) Technically correct - the best kind of correct!

RFC 8308: Extension Negotiation in the Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol
RFC 8332: Use of RSA Keys with SHA-256 and SHA-512 in the Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol

Though to be completely correct – the first was this small but honorable mention in 2012:

RFC 6668: SHA-2 Data Integrity Verification for the Secure Shell (SSH) Transport Layer Protocol

This Futurama quote is now applicable to me as well. :)

I'm not yet 38, but if I'm not yet experienced enough to teach these basics, I may never be. All of this advice is based on my past mistakes. Take it with a grain of salt, and apply with prudence. :)
If you can at all avoid it – don't negotiate with scrooges.You can recognize a scrooge in that they not only negotiate hard, but also low-ball every offer, and seem to want to nickel and dime you with respect to every term and condition.If you can avoid negotiating with these people, avoid it. If you are selling, sometimes they will still buy your stuff on your terms, but most of the time they walk away from the transaction.You want them to walk away. If you get their business, you will be a slave to them.In most transactions, there can be substantial give and take. A fair price is 50, but a buyer is willing to pay up to 80 – with clenched teeth. At the same time, the seller may be willing to sell for as low as 20 before they really regret it. Scrooges are hell-bent on maximizi…

It is finally expected that reputable websites use TLS for all connections. Google, Bing, Facebook, Reddit, many smaller websites, even this blog – we all use HTTPS by default. This protects the privacy and integrity of internet browsing from intrusion near the user, or between the user and server.

At the same time, though, a security threat is encroaching from the server direction. Increasingly, no one except a few large corporations has control over their servers anymore. Even data that needs to conform to HIPAA security requirements is being moved into "the cloud" – which is to say, onto computers managed by a few companies. This is primarily the largest cloud provider, Amazon; trailed by Microsoft, IBM, and Google.

It's not just that the servers reside at these large providers in the form of virtual machines which can potentially be accessed by the provider, or any government that can compel them. It's also that increasingly, servers are being abstracted away. Am…

I used to rely on the Calendar app on my Samsung Galaxy. Then, something changed. Maybe it's that I upgraded the phone; maybe an update broke the calendar functionality. Either way, for some reason, alerts now no longer work.

I was supposed to be on a call today. It was scheduled a week in advance, so I used the Calendar app. The event was set up, and was configured to alert me 30 minutes before. The time zone was correct. The phone was on; sound was on; and the app was permitted to alert and show notifications.

There was no alert. I was not present on the call, and this may have cost my company business.

I remembered this happening once before, but at that time I figured I must have configured something incorrectly. This time, I double checked. An alert should have happened, and did not.

My wife uses a different Samsung Galaxy with the same app, and has also experienced alerts that don't occur.

I tried switching the Samsung Calendar app for the Google Calendar app. But the sa…

From one point of view, cashing out is foolish. The price has gone up, and will go further. From another perspective, holding so much in BTC was already insane.

In 2013, I swallowed my pride for not having invented Bitcoin, and invested a total of $60,000 in it. About $30,000 was into Butterfly Labs mining hardware. This turned out to be mostly a scam. Time after time, the company delayed delivery, while actually, they were using hardware prepaid by their customers to mine Bitcoin themselves. A year later, I was able to receive my order refunded. I'm not sure that would have happened if it wasn't for a friend.

With the other $30,000, I bought around 250 coins on MtGox, at around $120. For months after, I had a disturbing gut feeling about leaving them there. I rationalized that it's safer to trust the world's largest exchange than to store them myself. When MtGox came crashing, I salvaged around 30. For a year, I beat myself up for ignoring my sixth sense.

I have now s…