It's not a meme, it's true. Anything that subsists on advertising and user expression is going to end up taking a stand of some kind.

If you don't want to take a stand, make something yourself.

There are lots of ways to interact with folks who don't understand something that get your point across without making them feel bad. I'm guessing you didn't employ any of those strategies.

The truth is probably somewhere in between. I was firm but polite. I was called in because I was going to be analyzing the data. Build data warehouse and import other data. I had to be firm because I know how much time it takes to clean up data before you can analyse it.

We're having this conversation as if everyone making SQL queries is one fat finger away from irrevocable data loss. I know very little about SQL but have managed to build literally dozens of systems on top of Postgres without ever causing a data loss event as a result of my poor SQL skills...

I think we are seeing the difference between software development and software engineering laid bare.

The distinction is similar to a property developer and a civil engineer. Both create buildings, but one does it at scale by offloading functions to known entities and prepackaged solutions, while the other understands one domain in depth.

Both are needed in any team or organization, because not every solution needs to be "engineered" (a Dockerized Redis instance without SSL or auth behind a corporate firewall may survive untouched for a decade), but sometimes you have to engineer something that withstands gale-force winds at 1000 ft height.

They'd get you access to your password store, I assume.

They are talking about in situations where the password is so strong it cannot be bruteforced.

Though it does make me wonder if online password managers like lastpass or 1Password could hand that info over if authorities demanded it.

1Password publicly documents their security model, if you want to verify it inspecting the HTTP requests is fairly straightforward. I assume Lastpass does the same, but as I don’t use it I haven’t bothered checking.

I hope not. If they demonstrate that capability and word gets out then that will end their business. If they can give law enforcement access to your passwords then the employees of the company have access to the passwords too.

I appreciate the “hope”, and I sympathize with the general view but I think the probability of a law abiding corporation to divulge this info to the American government approaches 100% across a few years, provided said corporation actually has the data (cf iPhone access codes).

I really don’t want to have to ask myself that question, which is why I’d rather use Keepass and sync the store myself.

That’s why you should put a pass phrase on it. Firefox syncs my passwords but has to ask for my master password at launch. Same goes for Google Chrome’s passwords: they’re encrypted at rest and can’t be displayed online for that reason, you have to sync with Chrome.

Brute force? Nothing brute force about bringing you your laptop/phone so you can unlock your password store.

Or in other words, stop having fun?

There is value in relaxing, there is value in letting go of control and following your impulses. Trying to drive out all fun may lead to a more productive life, but at the cost of a pleasurable life.

Are you passionate in the same way the commenter's friend meant, though? Passion means different things to different people, and maybe his friend was expressing his desire to be more passionate, which actually sounds like a trait you share with him, considering you're not more passionate about any one particular thing over other things.

I agree with you, but would go even further and say you're not born interested, the set of experiences you have are what shape your interest. It's both an important and useful idea to consider that people are born blank slates, and experiences drive us.

The people who dominate the stereotype of "genius" are also those who have debilitating mental disorders, and far too many people can't separate those two things.

I'm not sure it's a given that natural talent is even part of the equation. A decent number of the behavioral economics who have written popular books (Grit, Peak, to name a few) seem to be converging on the idea that talent isn't really worth discussing as a prerequisite to greatness.

That especially follows if you consider the luck factor mentioned in this article; is it really talent to have a unique way of looking at a topic that moves the topic forward? Or is the uniqueness merely a factor of the set of experiences a person just happens to bring to bear on a problem?

I say this because far too many people get caught up on talent, trying to find what their talent is, when they'd be much more productive simply obsessing.

Love this mindset; far too many people think of the System 1 part of our brains as things to fear and reduce as much as possible. Training it is vastly superior.