Use The Force, Larry: Oracle Playing Politics with Nation's Defense

This article is based on the introduction to DevOps’ish on 2019-07-28. Some parts are duplicated but this is a much deeper dive than I could do in the newsletter (and these 1500 words barely do the topic justice). Also, yes, I work for Red Hat. No, these views do not represent theirs. Please take a moment to read my disclaimer. Above all things, I’m an American, and this issue trancends business....

July 29, 2019 · 8 min · Chris Short
The Incredibly Few, The Mostly Proud: The Anonymous Veterans of Today's America

Being a Veteran in Today's America

This was originally posted as a thread on Twitter. But, at the suggestion of a few friends, I’m turning it into an article here. Please understand that this is my opinion. A few things have bothered me the past couple of weeks about how Americans “respect” veterans. While I served, I appreciated the recognition at sporting events and ceremonies for active duty personnel. But, now that I’m a civilian, I have strong feelings about how veterans should conduct themselves in today’s America....

May 27, 2018 · 5 min · Chris Short

Breaking Encryption Won't Make Us Safer

The British government wants to build backdoors into standard encryption libraries. This means the technology that protects your financial transactions could have a backdoor. These same backdoors were just exploited in the WannaCry outbreak that just took down the NHS. Who created that backdoor? The NSA, whose incompetence allowed this “tool” to fall into the hands of a Russian government-affiliated hacking group. You don’t do anything illegal? Great! You do have a bank account, right?...

June 5, 2017 · 1 min · Chris Short

Understanding, Fear, and Hate

“Fear leads to anger… Anger leads to hate… Hate leads to suffering.” Jedi Master Yoda On Saturday, my wife Julie, son Max, and I attended church. This was a very special mass as it was the mass at which Max was being baptized. Julie’s family was present as were friends of ours. As a lot of my friends know, I’m not religious. My stance on religion is that I choose complete freedom over being beholden to humans interpreting what they believe to be the word of God....

June 21, 2016 · 4 min · Chris Short