I Listen to ALOT of House Music, Here's Why

Anybody who knows me knows that I'm really passionate about music. I listen to everything... literally everything. From classical to metal, dubstep, hard dance, dark techno, trap, bluegrass, folk rock, classic rock, big band... whatever. The only place I don't really listen to music oddly enough, is in the car. For whatever reason I always end up listening to talk radio or podcasts. Regardless, music is a huge part of my life, and that includes during work.

For me, work hours are restricted to house music in various forms. When I'm not on the phone or in a meeting, I've got techno in my headphones. No particular sub-genre, but it needs to have a 4-on-the-floor beat with lots of energy and the longer the track, the better (live/recorded DJ sets are good). The most important attribute however, is little to no lyrics.

I always find it fascinating when people listen to rock or hiphop when they're trying to get shit done. For me at least, if someone is talking to me while I'm typing, I will inadvertently end up typing what they're saying. Same goes for any music with words, I'll end up with a bunch of song lyrics in the email I'm writing. I've tried classical, ambient, jazz, and various world music as well, those genre's just don't have enough energy to keep me productive. This is also not to say I absolutely can't work with wordy music in the background, but if I have it on in my headphones I find that the quality of my work dips and it takes me longer to complete if it's not a banging house set.

Would love to hear some thoughts on this... what do you listen to at work, if anything?

Also, here is my personal repository of work tunes for your enjoyment/productivity:

Matt's "Get Shit Done" playlist of sets

I also have a set of turntables and record my own sets sometimes, those are here:

Matt's Techno sets

RSA Security Conference 2018, the beginning of the end

RSA Security Conference is a circus.

Everyone I spoke with that went this year noticed a difference. All the companies are still swinging for the fences with extravagant booth designs, gimmicks and giveaways, but the attendees seemed more disillusioned this year than in previous years.

Security conferences are a funny thing... almost fickle really. Also a complete catch 22: they're good, until they become big.

This is sad to me. The whole goal of security conferences are to bring people together to learn and share ideas on security. The more people who get to share, the better right? Unfortunately this is not the case.

I have been going to RSA since 2007, so I've seen alot. I've seen the birth of the 2 floor booth, the rise and fall of the "booth babe", and the giveaways go from remote control cars to real cars. As things started to go to pot, the constant refrain was "yea, RSA is more of a marketing event, the real show you want to attend is BlackHat." Anyone who's been to BlackHat in the past few years knows that this is no longer the case either. I read that in 2001 (before my time) RSA boasted 250 vendors and 10,000 attendees, this year there were over 600 vendors and close to 42,000 attendees registered. What's interesting is the number of attendees was actually down from around 43,000 registered attendees in 2017...which I found interesting. These numbers are difficult to gauge regardless because of what a sprawl the show has become (is this people who actually walked the floor or just registered for the conference?) Half of the hotels in the city are rented out for customer meetings, venues in surrounding buildings are used, etc.


Contrary to popular belief, there is still solid content at both of these shows. I have friends who have presented at both RSA and BlackHat with relevant and innovative research with great reception. There are also still ways that both RSA and BlackHat recognize trail-blazing new vendors to help them get noticed. For example, my company was part of the "RSA Innovation Sandbox" and it drove all kinds of attention to our little booth, and I know BlackHat has similar methods of recognition.

So why is everybody so jaded?

These conferences are "pay to play" to the extreme. EVERYTHING costs money. Do you want a 10x10 or a 10x20? That costs money. Do you want internet? That costs money. Do you want CARPET at your booth or do you want your customers to walk on hard concrete? THAT costs money!

When all is said and done, to have even a SMALL presence at RSA you need to shell out at least $50k. That is ABSURD. If a company makes a $5k investment in a conference, folks are comfortable having casual conversations with potential clients and discussing their needs before mutually deciding it makes sense for another conversation. When it costs $50k you are scanning anything that moves and hoarding leads like a chipmunk getting ready for winter.

It's a shame really... because nobody wants that. Because of how ridiculously expensive it is to even be at the show,  companies need to do everything they possibly can to show a return on their investment, inadvertently turning these big shows into marketing conferences rather than security meetups.

The one saving grace (to RSA and BlackHat at least) is that all the vendors still go, which gives a great opportunity to reconnect with old friends, customers and colleagues. One such colleague, asked me why I don't blog anymore and hence... my first article in almost a year. So it's still good for that at least =]

So... We Have a Probe Orbiting Jupiter...

And this took so long because... ? Be forewarned, there is much factual information in this post but it's a rant.

First of all I am thrilled we're orbiting Jupiter, but come on NASA... we just sent a probe out beyond Pluto, an extensive Jupiter expedition should have been done YEARS ago. I get it that all space discovery is expensive, and Jupiter is really far away, but as a species we are REALLY behind right now. I also know the argument "let's focus on fixing this planet before we go someplace else", but if we don't get off our asses and start doing some serious exploration, we're not going to have any idea where to go, even!

I have always been a space and astronomy nut. Something about a science where there is the possibility of discovering something brand new that's never been seen before is fascinating to me. We also discover something new virtually EVERY time we explore anything... so why aren't we exploring more stuff? New Horizons flew past Pluto in ONE DAY, and do have any idea all the science we were able to do in <24 hours? It's insane! And we're STILL discovering stuff, just today scientists determined that because of the shape and behavior of the informally-named Sputnik Planum there's most likely a 100KM DEEP OCEAN ON PLUTO. What?!?

There are 8 planets in our solar system, did you know the last time we were up close with two of them (Uranus and Neptune) were 1986 and 1989 respectively? Why is that? One of them is tilted completely sideways unlike ANY other planet in our solar system, and the other one has the fastest sustained winds (2000+ mph) we've ever seen and we don't know why. Is this not interesting to us as a species? It's 2016, I figured by now we would at least have probes orbiting all the planets.

Part of the problem is all the planning necessary to launch one of these things. Unfortunately we haven't really developed an assembly line process for building long-distance space probes. As a result, by the time one of our probes visits the places we haven't been to, the technology is on the brink of obsolete. It took 10 years for New Horizons to get to Pluto... it was launched in 2006. Do you remember what sort of digital camera you had in 2006? Pretty sure the megapixels were still in the single digits... most people were still on Windows XP listening to music on our iPod classics... crazy right? And it's that level of technology sophistication that's on a spacecraft hurtling through the outer reaches of our solar system.

It's this type of problem that makes me confident we're doomed as a species. In 2015, the US spent $601 Billion on defense. The NASA budget you ask? $17 billion. Yep, the budget to build and develop sooper-cool jets and explody bombs in this country is 34 times larger than budget for understanding how and why we're here. One final thought on this, the development of the new F-35 fighter plane build by Lockheed Martin cost the US taxpayers $1.5 trillion dollars. Yes, trillion with a T. The cost of sending a probe 4 billion miles from earth and capturing tons of priceless scientific data? 700 million. mic drop