I recorded an episode of @learnswift_fm with Steven Sherry a couple weeks back. We had a great chat about contracting, computing history, philosophy, Smalltalk, and even a little bit about Swift. I think you’ll really like it, and recommend giving it a listen.

How many times have you been called into a meeting only to realize five minutes into it that you’re likely going to speak for sixty seconds… if you’re lucky? You potentially hold one piece of valuable information, and the rest of the discussion doesn’t concern you much. There are probably four other people like that in the room as well.

I was asked

It has become quite common for companies interviewing engineers to give candidates take home tests. These consist of an interview problem (or problems) which they can work on in their free time. This gives the candidate the benefit of not being under pressure in a high leverage interview setting. This gives a company the benefit of seeing how a candidate works in a normal work environment.

Cryptography is becoming more important in our every day lives and there’s no way around it. Whether it’s the calls from governments to ban encryption, come up with “responsible encryption”, or to violate norms and laws, cryptography is playing a role in shaping our society. I’d like to approach the role of cryptography from the other perspective though, from the side of helping us prove facts about the world around us.