Project: Movie Review (Take two)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6j8AznPiWqyTjF6TF9URVI5TzA/view?usp=sharing

FINALLY think I got this working. If the link still doesn’t work for you, please send me an email.

Project of Lucinda Krahl, Emily Claps, and Jack Magiera

The Troll Toll

I’d like to say I have a certain degree of experience with trolls, being a nerd that uses the internet and plays video games pretty often. What is described in the readings and my experiences with trolling on the internet differ in content and style, but for the most part, the general context and purpose of trolling is more or less universal .

Let’s start by defining this thing. Trolling doesn’t just mean being cruel or ruthless to someone on the internet. It doesn’t only refer to bullying or flaming. Trolling is, put simply, acting in a way that will elicit a response from someone. This can come in the form of verbal abuse or harassment, or simply by making a dumb comment to rile up commenters. Some trolls are essentially harmless and honestly hilarious: even if you hate the idea of trolling, you must admit Ken M is a master at his craft. But some trolls are vicious and toxic: having played online video games before, I’ve seen some terrible terrible things typed in the chat.

But the more violent side of trolling can extend far beyond that. When institutionalized prejudice is given a strong, anonymous voice, the result can be horrifying. Having read the article and listened to the podcast about the Lindy West incident, I can’t even think about how I would respond to being harassed by a fake twitter account in the name of my deceased father.

The podcast related to this incident shed some light on the causes of trolling. The former troll admitted it was a point of weakness in his life, and he had just been trying to feel in control of something. He targeted this woman because she was confident and unafraid of her flaws, which was something he had been struggling with, and frankly he also targeted her because she was a woman. Because of anonymity, trolling is easy, free, and void of real consequence. You can simply type a few words, click the ‘post’ button, and instantly feel a fleeting surge of superiority.

In terms of moral obligations as companies, I do not think companies have any obligation to try to mitigate trolling (but it is in their interest to do so anyway). I do believe that there is an obligation to help prevent harassment, including having a measured degree of anonymity and freedom of speech, providing tools to block/report trolls and abusers, and put in place harassment and stalking policies to decide when content crosses the line.

I honestly don’t want to categorize anonymity as a blessing or a curse. There are times when I prefer to be anonymous; I don’t want my real name connected with my gaming profile because I don’t want people to find out how actually terrible I am at Heroes of the Storm. But there are certainly times when requiring personal information is important – I wouldn’t want anonymous strangers being able to comment on my Facebook pictures. And I certainly could have done without the troll account that commented “haha sux” on an Instagram post memorializing my dead dog. These are cases where anonymity and by extension trolling is mitigated by privacy and “real name” features created by technology companies.

I do not think that trolling as it stands is a real “we need to deal with this ASAP” issue, because trolling will be around as long as anonymity is around (and possibly longer). The harmful cousins of trolling (stalking, abuse, harassment) are a major problem, and hopefully the development of security features in social media will provide more resources to victims of such abuse. In the meantime, I’ve found that the best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them (hard as it may be – again, I don’t know how I would have reacted if I were in Lindy West’s shoes). Battle not with monsters…

 

Net Neutrality

I had always seen the anxious and fervent Reddit threads proclaiming the need for net-neutral legislation. I never really understood the hype behind it, although I was able to understand the basic principles, as an engineer and as a heavy consumer of the Internet.

The idea of a neutral internet stems from the fact that packets of data traffic should be treated equally, regardless of origin, destination, or content. The argument is that this grants consumers a degree of privacy as well as protection from monopolistic and price-gouging practices from ISPs. An argument is that this protection is good for innovation in the form of small business and startups – entrepreneurs who can’t afford a “fast-lane” for their high-traffic app or product would still be able to compete in a fair marketplace.

The arguments against net neutrality claim that such regulations actually stifle innovation and create a worse internet experience for most consumers. Opponents of net neutrality understand that Netflix might account for X percentage of internet traffic so there is no reason that they shouldn’t be able to pay for a higher throughput. Such an arrangement is (arguably) better for consumers and for content producers.

Another argument against net neutrality is that the Internet has never been “open” in the sense that packets are not discriminated against. Even since early on in the days of the Internet, ISPs have given precedence to certain packets based on content and purpose. For example, packets containing data bound for services such as Telnet and other interactive protocols received higher “precedence” than non-interactive and less immediately needed packets. So any push to make the internet more “neutral” would not just be a safeguard against manipulation that harms consumers; it would actively disrupt a standard of data routing that is a current staple of the Internet.

In all, I think net neutrality is unnecessary and ultimately harmful. Though protecting consumers from price-gouging and other harmful practices is important and definitely a worthy concern, the best way to go about it is not with sweeping and heavy-handed regulation. Leaving the internet generally open to new protocols and allowing the old ones to continue is important for the continuation of an available and well-maintained internet. Regulations should be put in place to keep consumers safe from certain practices (the thought of paying ISPs for access to certain websites is terrifying, when you think about it compared to the current cable TV model), but sweeping regulations and reclassifications like some are proposing is simply stifling to innovation and efficiency, and an open-market solution is far preferable.

Project 3: Whistleblowing

I completed project 3 in the form of an audio podcast episode that I produced with Lucinda Krahl and Emily Claps. The episode can be found on Lucinda’s blog.
Recording the podcast episode about the Volkswagen scandal was informative in a number of ways. First and foremost, I was given the opportunity to do further research on the subject and actually form opinions in order to produce an episode worth listening to. There was a lot more to the process than  I’d initially understood, including the actual testing process that uncovered the real emissions levels.

Potential reasons that a corporation like VW would resort to such tactics depend on the level that this comes from. If it came down from near the top, it could have been a tactical move on VW’s part to try to push a superior product through stricter regulations without spending extra money to fit such regulations. If it were a rogue engineer or two who hacked something together to make their jobs easier, then the motive might have been sheer laziness (knowing engineers, this possibility is more than plausible). But the sophistication of the system suggests that it was a dedicated effort instead of a quick hack.

If I were an engineer at VW, if the orders did come down from the top, I could have used Whistleblower protections to keep from being demoted or fired, or to seek reinstation (although it is not clear how well these protections work, as I definitely wouldn’t be the company’s favorite employee). That only really goes for the US though, I don’t know what protections might be like in Germany, where the scandal took place.

Ultimately the responsibility for such scandals that involve whistleblowing should stay at the highest level. It is completely unfair and unethical to expect common workers and engineers to have to be responsible for things of this magnitude; people at the top need to be held responsible for their actions.

Privacy and Security

Every September 11th, I watch the 0th episode of the third season of the political drama The West Wing. I call this episode, titled “Isaac and Ishmael”, the 0th episode because it doesn’t fit into The West Wing canon. The episode was written and produced in less than two weeks in September of 2001 in direct response to the terrorist attacks on my home state of New York. Fans of the show generally ignore the episode, and it is often dismissed as writer Aaron Sorkin’s sentimental nature translating into across-the-board preachy television. I think it’s good writing, and at the time (and still today) serves as a reminder of who and what the real enemies are in the war on terrorism.

One of my favorite scenes from the episode involves one of the more typically liberal and idealistic characters speaking out in favor of extreme measures taken by intelligence agencies. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a clip of it to embed from Youtube, but the point of the monologue is that, historically, Americans haven’t enjoyed relative safety because there have been no terrorists until now; Americans have been safe because intelligence and national defense agencies have taken measures such as these to protect the American people.

The FBI wants to acquire knowledge about the shooter’s contacts and help their investigation to keep Americans safe. However, their only way to do this is to get Apple to help them break into the shooter’s phone, which sets a dangerous precedent. If Apple helps with a backdoor into one phone, then they have opened the floodgates for future cases in which the FBI will simply request backdoor access from Apple for other smaller infractions. And so now it becomes a public debate on the extent we want to let the FBI use extreme measures in the name of our protection.

There is another scene from the episode that always sticks with me. One of the characters quotes Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” This quote recalls the very nature of our country and the reason for its founding, and it highlights why I largely side with Apple in this case. If Apple were to give the FBI a backdoor into a phone, even just temporarily, it would be selling liberty for safety. We would no longer be assured of our privacy, and there are no assurances for our safety, either. Ultimately, the San Bernardino case is a pivotal opportunity for public debate over safety and privacy, but I find myself siding pretty squarely with Apple and privacy.

Reflection: Project 2

My group (myself, Emily Claps, and Lucinda Krahl) wrote a guide to the interview process. The guide reflected the thoughts and observations of three students who made it through the process and will be gainfully employed after graduation.

I think the most important part of our guide is the ‘Networking’ section. This section highlights and stresses the importance of using connections made in a variety of ways as a way to ease the process. This is something I really wish I had known earlier; if I’d known that my future internship and full-time job would each come about as the result of a connection I had made, I would have spent more time making connections!

The best advice I received actually had little to do with the interview process itself. I spent a lot of time worrying about my resume, and studying for interviews, and keeping up with coursework, and it put me under a lot of stress. A close friend noticed that I seemed overtired and overworked, and passed on the following advice:

You can spend as much time as you like worrying about what you think you’re supposed to worry about, but the interview process is a mental game. Take care of your sleep patterns, your diet, and your exercise habits, and the rest will fall into place.

As a result of this advice, my life got noticeably less stressful when I stopped worrying about my resume and started making sure I got enough sleep.

I do not think that colleges need to change curricula in response to a changing marketplace. A huge advantage of a four-year university over a trade school is the opportunity to diversify learning and focus on the education of the self instead of simply learning the same thing as everyone else. In fact, if Notre Dame were to change anything (which I don’t think it should) it should allow for a more diversified education to allow students to broaden their experiences. Extracurriculars and side projects come from places outside the standard curriculum, and they make a large difference in the  job interview process. I think the current CS program does a good job of teaching essentials and specialties while still allowing students to develop outside the classroom.

Burnout Shmurnout

I’m of two minds about burnout as presented in the articles read for class this week.

One the one hand, I do give a lot of merit to Marissa Mayer’s claim in the CNBC article. “Burnout is about resentment. It’s about knowing what matters to you so much that if you don’t get it that you’re resentful,” she states. I do believe that burnout is about resentment – or more specifically, I believe that burnout is about the disconnect between what your job entails vs. what you had hoped your job would entail.

A lot of this comes from personal experience. I’ve faced burnout multiple times, at jobs and in school. I’m not sure if it compares to the articles and their descriptions of burnout felt by experienced professionals, but I’d be surprised if it was drastically different. Any time I’ve experienced burnout, it was as a result of resentment for whatever I was doing at the time. I’ve dropped two classes due to burnout (both of them on the last possible day… ouch!) and I’ve rejected an offer of employment due to burnout from an internship at the company. One of the classes was a research experience that turned out to be far less fulfilling and more gruntwork than expected. The internship was a work experience that went more or less the same way. Fortunately, none of these actions had serious consequences – I’m not going to have any trouble graduating, and I didn’t want to work at that company anyway. But it’s not hard to imagine a situation where burnout could give me serious problems in my career.

So I do give some credence to Marissa Mayer’s definition of burnout. It’s important to do work that’s fulfilling and in line with what you actually want to do, and burnout comes when there’s a disconnect in this part of your professional life.

BUT, I don’t think that this is the only cause of burnout. And I certainly do not believe Mayer’s assertion that burnout isn’t a function of sleep, food, and exercise. I’m positive that your non-work life affects the extent and pervasiveness of burnout. Diet, exercise, and the proper amount of sleep are fantastic tools to mitigate the effects of burnout (exercise especially – I have spent many hours in the Keough Hall cardio room at about 3 AM to get through especially tough weeks.) And having a decent life outside work can keep burnout from starting at all. I spent a lot of the summer with my internship throwing myself into my hobbies – I saw a lot of live music and played a lot of strategy games. However, toward the end of the summer when there were fewer concerts to go to, the burnout really began to set in as my life outside work became less fulfilling.

On the whole, as someone who puts a lot of importance on mental health, I think it is important to avoid burnout at all costs. Fortunately, I think burnout can be kept at bay by finding work that fulfills you or taking care of your body and soul.

I Applied to [redacted] and It Went OK

Having read your disclaimer about privacy and whatnot, I’ll be referring to all companies in this post by generic names, except for one company, which I’ll refer to as Hooli, for reasons that should be apparent to any fans of the HBO series Silicon Valley.

I’d come off my summer internship feeling somewhat disillusioned about my future. I had worked for a large motor control company in the midwest. I wrote setup software to assist a product in development. My project (as well as the other software projects I learned about) was non-priority and dealt with heavy bureaucratic interference. I spent a lot of time in a colorless cubicle talking to nobody – which was far more physically and emotionally draining than I would have anticipated.

So I came into my new job search wanting something completely different. I targeted companies based on certain properties – I wanted to work for a company that embraced and valued software (Hooli and DeltaCorp) or a consulting firm that would allow me to reach my potential as a problem-solver (AlphaCorp). There were some firms that blurred the line as software consulting firms (BravoCorp and CharlieCorp)- I looked at these as kind of the the best of both worlds, and also as ideally sized companies (I didn’t exactly love the slow grind of a large company that I experienced during my internship, but I also didn’t want to start my career at a squishy startup.)

The most surprising thing about the process was probably how much I trusted myself along the way. I can say this for a number of reasons. The primary reason was that I was far more confident compared to the nightmare that had been my previous year; trying to find an internship with a 2.9 GPA is a terrible experience and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Going into a job search with a solid experience section on your CV is much more satisfying (I still had a 2.9, but most companies didn’t even ask this year. Odd.) I also trusted my abilities in the interview process. I felt better about communicating what I wanted from a job and how I thought I could do that job well. Maybe the most comforting part of the whole season was that I was convinced of the absolutely random nature of the job search process. I stopped freaking out about perfecting my resume or memorizing answers to questions. Either I would get the job or I wouldn’t, and a large part of that was entirely out of my hands. A lot of this was laid out in the Wired article assigned for class reading: if the interviewer was having a bad day, you could get passed up for almost no reason.

In fact, the most frustrating part of the interview process was the interview itself. Being halfway through an algorithms course, I didn’t have quite the grasp on many of the technical questions I would be asked. I probably could have prepared better (I borrowed a copy of Cracking the Coding interview and did some practice problems), but I didn’t have much time working two jobs and a full courseload. I did much better in the behavior and analytical interviews.

The important part of this process is that I was able to identify companies wanted to work for, apply to them, and have thorough, honest conversations with employees and recruiters throughout the experience. I honestly can’t say much as to the effectiveness of the system, having not really experienced the end product, but I would guess that it would be effective in the aggregate. Sure, the whole process was random and needlessly complex, but I’m pretty confident that it was able to weed out incompetence fairly efficiently.  I did experience some of the questions described in the CodingHorror article – problems designed to show simply that you have a basic knowledge of programming. An interviewer from DeltaCorp asked me to implement a hashtable using arrays and stopped me pretty shortly into my answer because he didn’t care about the answer, he just wanted to make sure I knew what an array was.

In that regard, even though the process was intensely stressful and taxing, I do think it is humane. It rewards hard work, ability, and persistence. Though the process is fairly random, it is also fairly reasonable. A candidate without any ‘strikes’ against him will generally have a good shot of coming out of the process with a competitive job, and a candidate that can’t solve a simple FizzBuzz problem will generally not. That’s not to say that ‘good enough’ is good enough; the process isn’t perfect to be sure, and ‘good enough’ is not worthy of our society, but it’s what we have to deal with now.

Computer Art: Not a Thing

I don’t for a second give any merit to the idea that computer science is an art.

It might be a testament to the arrogance of programmers that this idea exists. The other two categories mentioned in the prompt are almost inarguably the two perfect terms to pigeonhole the field of computer science. Do we really hold ourselves in such high esteem that we need to try to call ourselves artists as well?

There’s no denying that there can be beauty and elegance in code, and that being a standout in this field requires skill, practice, and intuition. But beauty and elegance does not necessitate artistry.

Of the other two categories, I think it’s important to appreciate the duality of the computer science field. There’s the theoretical side, where we study what can and can’t be calculated and prove things with math and don’t even really need a computer at all. There’s also the practical side, where we write if-statements and make apps and use funny words like Hadoop and segfault. If you were to ask me to answer this prompt in one sentence, I would say that computer science is a two-headed beast of engineering and science, and I would differentiate between them with the examples above (among other things).

Beyond that, I think there needs to be some clarification on what engineering really is, especially in the context of the articles posted in this week’s reading.

When I hear the word ‘engineering’, I immediately think of NASA. More specifically, 1960s, Apollo 11, space race NASA. These guys were on a whole other level of engineer, designing astonishingly advanced systems and components fueled by a literal desire to leave the planet (and potentially by drugs, these are engineers in the ’60s). Rocketry and ballistics sciences hadn’t been around too long: a few centuries for sure, but not anywhere near the level of what NASA was doing. They were problem-solving on an absolutely unprecedented scale with billions of people watching and very little room for error.

That is what, in my mind, exemplifies engineering. Smart people looking at problems, figuring out a way to solve them, and then actually making the whole thing work. I can understand the sentiment of articles like “Programmers: Stop Calling Yourselves Engineers“, that say things like:

When it comes to skyscrapers and bridges and power plants and elevators and the like, engineering has been, and will continue to be, managed partly by professional standards, and partly by regulation around the expertise and duties of engineers. But fifty years’ worth of attempts to turn software development into a legitimate engineering practice have failed.

But I disagree with them. Fifty years’ worth of attempts is enough to write off software development as illegitimate? In the scope of human existence, 50 years is simply not enough time. I highly doubt that the “professional standards” of  “legitimate engineering practices” sprang up overnight, or even in 50 years. And forgive us for taking some time to work out the kinks. We’re transmitting billions of bits of information around the planet at speeds that would shock the guys who built the aqueducts in ancient Rome right out of their togas. It might take a while to settle on the best way to do things. If anything, the diversity implied by a lack of standards and regulation serves as a reminder that our capacity as software engineers is ever-increasing.

As a whole, I think software development is an engineering discipline, with a separate section altogether for computer scientists (which is naturally a science). Don’t get me wrong, I love art. I would love to be considered an artist, and I would love to be so assured of the importance of my work that I can consider it art. But if I’m choosing one or the other, which in the context of this post I am, I’ll choose engineering every time. You can keep your books and your poems, and you can even keep your bridges and tunnels. Art is great for life on Earth. Engineering got us to the moon!

Introduction

My first computer class was a middle school technology class. It taught the basics of Microsoft Word and Excel, explained the basic concept of a file system, and introduced some programming with QBASIC. This part of the class was seen by pretty much everyone as a waste of time, except for me. I ate it up. I stayed after class to learn more from the teacher. I worked on side projects after school, and figured out how to use programming tools on my home computer. By the time I started high school, I was a machine. I worked my way through two courses of web design before learning Java and OOP. When I finished AP Computer Science in my junior year, I had run out of computer classes to take, and my high school hired me on part-time as a network technician apprentice. This is when I was initially convinced of two very important things.

1. Getting paid for something that fascinates you is absolutely the way to go.
2. No matter where my future led me, it would probably somewhat involve making computers do things.

 

I was born and raised in upstate New York, and against all odds I followed my older brother to Notre Dame after I graduated high school. My older brother graduated as a chemical engineer in 2015. My younger brother, who will start attending Notre Dame next year, also wants to be a chemical engineer, but I think there’s still time for him to see the light.

Besides programming, which I honestly don’t find myself doing way too much of anymore, I’m a self-identified gamer. I love to collect and play strategy board games (and will gladly take on all Settlers of Catan challengers) as well as some strategy-based or role-playing video games. I am also a sports fanatic; I have been a sportswriter for Notre Dame student media since my first week as a Domer and have seen almost as many football games from the press box as I have from the student section. My other job is with the Office of Sustainability, where I hope to do my part in making the Notre Dame campus more efficient in its use of resource and keeping the community aware of its effect on its surroundings. After graduation, I’ll be moving to Chicago to work for Pariveda Solutions, a software consulting firm.

My reasons for studying computer science definitely correlate with my love for strategy games. Since I started studying computer science seriously at Notre Dame, I have always considered myself a professional problem solver. That’s what games and computer science really have in common. They both involve finding solutions to problems on many levels and scales. They involve identifying what information is important, and how it can be stored, and how it should be used. This abstraction leads me to an area of ethics involving computer science that I think is really fascinating: intellectual property. Intellectual property in the field of computer science can boil down to the ownership of a solution to a problem, a concept that honestly hurts my head if I think about it too hard.

I fell in love with programming and it grew into an obsession with problem solving. But not all problems have an immediate solution. Many problems have complications and externalities that go beyond what I know, and I hope that some of these questions are answered through this class. When can I use judgement in a professional environment to tell right from wrong? How can I prepare myself for issues unknown, and be mindful of social complexities not seen? How can I tell if my career is going in the right direction? More importantly, where is it going?