Intrinsic | Senior Software Engineer | San Francisco, CA, USA | ONSITE | https://intrinsic.com
Intrinsic is startup backed by leading investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, First Round Capital, and StartX. Our team is building a new runtime security technology for Node.js. You can learn more about our product here: https://intrinsic.com/product.
We are currently hiring engineers that have experience or interest in building secure systems. Candidates should have a strong background in one (or more) of the following: systems (e.g., language runtimes, operating systems, browser engines); programming languages (e.g., compilers, type systems, static analysis); security (e.g., experience with penetration testing, building security tools); Node.js (e.g., deep knowledge of Node's internals or V8 internals). Help us build the next generation of principled security that's easy enough for anyone to use.
I started a meetup to fill a niche in the town I lived in regarding a technology stack I was proficient in (PHP and MySQL in Ann Arbor, MI). Attendance was usually less than 10 per day, but that made it easy to give everyone personal attention. Fast forward a few years and now I regularly mentor at Nodeschools.
The market demand will naturally require that all shared hosts start offering some sort of free HTTPS as webmasters such as yourself will simply be required to migrate somewhere where $hosting + $HTTPS is cheaper. This means shared hosts may start integrating with services like Let's Encrypt to save costs.
In fact you could be proactive and announce to your shared host that for this reason you will be relocating. Let them know there will be a trend of other webmasters relocating for the same reason.
As more and more website features (passwords, geolocation) start requiring HTTPS by browsers we will naturally approach the point where HTTPS is free and ubiquitous, at which point everybody wins.
I've been switching back and forth between OS X and Linux for the past several years. I'm currently at a year and a half into a Linux streak and really enjoying recent advancements. My Dell XPS 13 typically gets 10 hours of battery life.
Linux itself is quite stable. Simply install a recent distro and off you go. If you're using a heavy Window Manager you'll get all the convenient configuration applets you need. The real issue, IMO, is the desire to tinker.
OS X is a bit limiting in what you can do with it. I haven't seen anyone with custom window decorations in OS X in a long time. Short of running a software update we aren't capable of tweaking kernel versions and system utilities. If we stick to the same limitations in Linux it's going to be near impossible to break.
Once the Linux tinkering sets in you'll find that you've installed a bleeding edge kernel, changed some repository sources, modified Xorg.conf, ./configure && make && make install'd an obscure library (then (mostly) uninstalled it), and installed Python 2 alongside Python 3 without rebooting for two months. Good luck rebooting at that point ;)
With great power comes a great desire to shoot ourselves in the foot.
I frequently see members of the Firefox, Chrome, and Edge teams at various JavaScript Meetups (in the Bay Area) as well as conferences, though I've yet to meet someone from the Safari team.
Perhaps this is due to the secretive nature of Apple, and as a result I'm always surprised when new Safari features come out. By the time a feature lands in a different browser, we already know it's coming.
We've been typing usernames and passwords for our very important _banking_ accounts into third parties like Mint (instead of using OAuth) for several years now.