The Imposter's Handbook Season 2

Imposter's Handbook #2

by Rob Conery, Scott Hanselman

Genres: Technology, Programming, Software

375 pages, ebook

First published December 22, 2018

Reviews

[Michiel]

A fun format: two devs documenting their journey into learning about bits, hashing, encryption, and blockchain. The second half was a bit less technical, but more on the privacy concerns. But otherwise nice!

[Zi]

After reading this book, I became quite certain that Rob Conery is the teacher I wish I have alongside my CS education (writes in agony…)

I learned a lot of new stuffs from this book!

In no specific order:
- Why RSA is doomed to be replaced in the future (or at least in theory)
- Benefits of elliptical curve (ECDSA) that RSA lacks
- The MVP of tech goes to Claude Shannon
- How to (try and) make passwords unbreakable
- How rainbow tables are used to crack passwords
- The message is as important as the cipher and key (Kerckhoff’s Principles)
- Why we should use SSL even for static websites (p.s. it’s not for the good reason)
- Potential usage of decentralized blockchain (hype aside): help businesses cut down big spendings (i.e. on SAP software), help third world countries make payment abroad, resolve election/voting fraud, store medical records, etc

[Daniel Hill]

Good coverage. Less polished than the original for some reason.

[Jacob Ernst]

Great introduction into encoding and encryption.

[Maria Ines]

I had completely forgotten about Huffman encoding and prefix free codes. This book reminded me :)

Eagerly awaiting for season 3! Hopefully it covers databases and distributed systems.