Category: Books

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Review: Making Spaces Safer, by Shawna Potter

I was made aware of this book very recently on Twitter in one of the many, many threads calling out shitty behavior, specifically shitty behavior at cons, more specifically shitty behavior at Defcon.

As a person who runs a space and attends cons, it seemed exponentially important for me to read it.

I’ve been around a while. I’ve seen shitty behavior. I’ve seen shitty behavior at Defcon. Combine people who have never had their bad behavior challenged with the Vegas factor and the perception of anonymity, and it’s easy to see how things can go off the rails really quickly.

Going into this book, I felt like I had done the work. I’ve worked on myself over the years. I’ve intervened and confronted on behalf of others. I’ve been that person that discreetly notifies staff that a problem might be brewing. After reading this book, I know there’s even more to do. I was surprised. In fact, I was surprised at how surprised I was.

Shawna (Twitter: @ShawnaPotterWOW) does a fantastic job at describing the problems faced by marginalized people — people of color, women, LGBTQIA+, etc. — and then takes it farther by giving real world examples of both shitty behavior and legit strategies that can be employed by community space staff, allies and even bystanders. None of it is extreme or difficult. In fact, 99% of it costs nothing, and much of it aims for not only de-escalation of a situation and how to support the victim in the moment, but also changing the behavior using confrontation, education and specifically targeted strategies on dealing with the person who has been harmed as well as the person causing the harm.

I feel like this book is a great starting point for anyone who manages a group or opens up a space to the public. I still have questions, of course, but as the book points out, these behaviors and their reactions can be nuanced and require thinking outside of the box, and there will be situations that come up that feel like gray areas. But the book does a fine job of guiding the reader into the mindset of a victim-centered approach.

The important thing is that it makes situations that may seem unmanageable seem more manageable by providing you with a toolset for dealing with them.

Going forward, there’ll be a copy in the DC540 library. Members who are interested are encouraged to consider reading it. Or get your own copy:

Amazon (affiliate link)

Also available on audiobook at libro.fm

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Two Gitlab books briefly reviewed

If you’re following along like a good little do-bee, you’re already aware that i’ve been evaluating Gitlab as a functional equivalent to (much of) my Atlassian infrastructure, due to unforeseen events I will no longer vent about.

This required me to actually LEARN gitlab in the process.

In my usual fashion, the very first thing I did to start learning it was to install it. In my infrastructure. No planning, no strategy, just follow the install doc and get it up and running so that I can start playing with it.

That alone was so easy that I got cocky. Again, with no planning and just the barest hint of strategy, I integrated it with my FreeIPA ecosystem. No problem.

Then, following the simplest of breadcrumbs, I was able to migrate both my existing Bitbucket infrastructure AND my existing Jira dataset. Some of those subsets of data referenced the same internal projects, so it was fun and informative to sort through that.

So here I am with 92 projects, many with open and closed issues, some with git repositories. Seems good. I’ve already started working through issues and generating new ones.

But now here I am with a mostly unfamiliar new interface. I’ve been around, I’ve used many interfaces and I’m reasonably competent with git, but I have yet to figure out what else Gitlab can do for me to improve my life.

So I picked up The Gitlab Cookbook and Gitlab Repository Management to see if they would expand my knowledge.

They did, to an extent. But neither of them were perfectly suited to my needs. This is my gripe with most of the computer books out there. The widest audience for a book is going to be people who are new to the product, the technology or the paradigm. There are very few books out there that are capable of taking you into the stratosphere — the deep tracks of a product, where hearts and minds are conquered, lives are changed forever, destinies altered…

So yeah. These books covered installation, user management, creating projects and issues, etc. I was able to skim through most of that. The CI/CD sections will probably prove useful at some point, but that’s not exactly where I’m going right now. I guess what I want is all the cool little timesavers that improve our lives and the quality of the data retained and created by these products. Neither of these books really got into that.

As an example, I wonder why neither of these books chose to explore “Quick actions.” This is the kind of deep knowledge I need. When I can open an issue, and type “/spend 1h” in the description box to document the fact that I spent an hour on something, that means a lot to me. When I can type “/shrug” to append ¯\＿(ツ)＿/¯ to a comment, these are the important things I need to know.

So now I know. I don’t need a Gitlab book. I need a Gitlab Quick Actions Cheat Sheet.

And so do you.

And here it is. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/quick_actions.html. You’re welcome.

The rest of Gitlab is mostly pretty intuitive, or else completely dependent on your knowledge and understanding of git itself.

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Schneier’s book giveaway

I picked up a few extra copies of Schneier’s book during a special offer a while back. They finally shipped yesterday. I’d like to make them a giveaway item at the next in-person event, or maybe figure out some easy way to give them out. Whaddya y’all think?

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Fascinating — The Drone Databook, by Dan Gettinger

From the Preface:

Once a novelty, drones have become standard military equipment, spawning a global network of units, bases, and test sites. Battlefields in Ukraine, Syria, and Yemen, as well as zones of geopolitical conflict such as the Persian Gulf and the East China Sea, are increasingly crowded with drones of varying size and sophistication. Whether they are used for intelligence gathering, aerial strikes, artillery spotting, or electronic warfare, drones are a leading contributor to the changing character of modern war.

The Drone Databook is a study of military drone capabilities. It is comprised of profiles of 101 countries in seven regions – Asia and Oceania, Eurasia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, North America, and Sub-Saharan Africa – as well as two appendixes that address military drone infrastructure around the globe and the technical specifications of more than 170 drones currently in use by these countries. The Databook evaluates the military drone capabilities of each country in terms of six categories: inventory and active acquisition programs, personnel and training programs, infrastructure, operational experience, aircraft research and development programs, and exports.

CSD-Drone-Databook-Web

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cDc has got me a little verklempt.

So I’m finally getting around to digging into the cDc book, which I preordered and was looking forward to.

I’ve only completed the first few chapters, but reading this book is like reading my own story. Trafficking in MCI numbers, hoarding esoteric text files, running multiple BBSes over the years. Close calls, and learning from the mistakes of others. Familiar names.

I feel like it’s time to release a set of text files about MY history, and see what comes out of the woodwork.

They’ll be on the citadel. There is no better place for them. If it takes five years for the right people to find them, then so be it.

I might drop some knowledge on different techniques that might be used to carve a successful career on your own from a disadvantaged position.

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The Hardware Hacker

This book arrived at my doorstep yesterday. Color me excited.  $12 something at Walmart, go figure.  He goes way into Chinese factories, manufacturing and the supply chain before getting into the hacking part of it.  Exciting if you’ve got some hardware ideas in your head.