DEV Community: Lucas Meine

Should email re-confirmation be a thing?

Lucas Meine — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 11:40:44 +0000

Let's say you once worked in a company called Example Engineering Corporation, a very big and respected company. In fact, it is the biggest engineering company in the world, and it is a huge career accomplishment to be employed by it.

When you were an employee, you were given a corporate email, and you used it in Github so you could show everybody that you were working in the big leagues.

Thing is, you no longer are employed by Example Corporation. But to Github, that email is still valid, giving you an identity that you shouldn't have anymore.

So, should websites, specially the ones that can provide oauth authentication, ask you to periodically confirm if your email is still valid?

How could Google possibly know about this?

Lucas Meine — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 17:01:56 +0000

After a normal day of work I got home as usual and started to chill out at Netflix. After a few minutes, I have decided to finally watch the Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain which was at my should watch someday movie list for a very long time.

It was only a normal movie session until it got to a scene where a peculiar piece of art was shown. I never knew about it, and I have decided to Google it just out of curiosity.

It is a shame that I didn't know what this piece of art was, considering that it is Renoir's

Some character at the movie mentioned the painting's name but I didn't pay much attention. I just heard by glance that it started with lunch or something.

So, i went to Google and proceeded to type the word lunch. By the time I typed the letters lun, the first suggestion popped out. It was the painting's name, Luncheon of the Boating Party.

And it just blew my mind. I never searched for that in Google. In fact, i didn't know that painting even exist. Google has become such an essential thing in our lives that sometimes we even forget how efficient and creepy it is.

How could Google know about it? Lun, as I typed, should bring results such as "Lunch near me", or "Lunch for monday" or something like that, not Exactly what i was thinking about with no more information that the simple L-U-N letters that I gave it.

A subtle and clever way to prevent adblocks

Lucas Meine — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 14:08:43 +0000

Some websites are very direct about their adblocking policies. Who has never seen something like this before?

Some of them even write complete articles or help posts discribing how to disable an adblock software so users can resume their web surfing. ( while seeing a lot of ads of course. )

Wheter that is acceptable or not is up to discussion. Some people are completely against the usage of internet ads, like the guys at pihole. Some think there are acceptable ads, and some think that all kinds of ads are a good source of revenue. Personally, i think that internet ads are an outdated practice that should be extinct.

Well, on the last few days i have come across some websites that were completely broken and unusable. Inspecting the developer tools ( force of habit, trying to debug stuff even if it isn't my job, lol ), i have noticed that my adblocker was breaking the site. My first thought was something like:

Hey, maybe the guys were junior devs and didn't think about it, and the site owners didn't have enough money to pay for proper devs.

Then i just stopped my adblock software and kept browsing. But then some thoughts came into my mind.

What if it was done in purpose?

Then I realized that i'm not the first person to happily disable an adblocker because the website completely stopped working because of it. It was like my subconscient told me that it was my fault instead of the website's. Then i ask you guys:

Maybe it is more efficient to break your website in purpose if it detects an adblocker instead of just asking the user to disable it? And is it an ethical thing to do?

Would you hire an entrepreneur?

Lucas Meine — Tue, 03 Jul 2018 04:16:42 +0000

And I'm not talking about a rich businessman. I'm talking about a developer who just opened his tech startup and maybe is getting his first customers. When considering someone with that profile for a tech gig, one may think that it's a good thing, because an entrepreneur is usually a hard worker and can get along nicely with a team. But others may think that an entrepreneur will put his startup before the company, won`t give his best or may even steal some co-workers.

How do you guys feel about it?

What is your million dollar question?

Lucas Meine — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 19:58:31 +0000

I actually have a lot of million dollar questions myself. For example, what is the technology that is going to make websites obsolete? What will be the next Facebook? Have you ever thought about something like that? Share with us :)

Is automation important for you?

Lucas Meine — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 15:18:35 +0000

Yaaaay story time!

Computers are supposed to work for us. As a software engineer working on IoT on a daily basis, one of my major goals is to make computers do the work i don't want to do. I would preffer expending my day designing something that require creative effort, and not repetitive effort.

That's why for me, automation is a must. From the most trivial things, passing from devops magic and even reaching the kingdom of hardware, automation is present on my life.

I was first introduced to automation some years back when i found out about something exquisite called php unit. In that time i used to develop low quality php code, zip it manually, upload the zip file to a ftp server and then unzip this file. Ergh.

That's when I realized that i didn't need to test every single piece of code I have made on the browser. The code could test itself, and i was amazed by it. From this point, I started reading a lot about automated tests and testing methodology. Test-Driven Development by Example, by Kent Beck, was one of my first reads on the subject.

After that, I got to a point where i wanted to automate everything. That's when i started developing https://devmind.io as an effort to make my dev life easier. I started developing features that could automate boring work that i didn't want to do. I made a complete ftp/ftps client that had a nice organization system so i wouldn't lose precious minutes looking for passwords at my work email. Then I wrote a code beautifier that would work for php, html and javascript (it was my tech stack at that time.) because i just hated writing allman indentation all the time.

Then I found myself in a pickle. I could no longer use shared hosting services. I had to become a man and manage a linux server myself. No need to mention that i have become addicted on server automation. I started using digital ocean, then went to amazon and now i'm using Google cloud. It is by far, the better infrastructure provider i have ever found so far. The fact that they generate ssh keys on the fly and let me log into my machine on the web with a complete terminal using my google account gives me chills. Good chills.

Some time after that, while being a researcher at University of Brasilia, I found out that there are a lot of better alternatives to ftp on software development. It didn't take much until Devmind had Github and GitLab integrations. It got to a point where i could run my deploy commands just by saving my code on Devmind. Gosh, i really love webhooks.

Now i'm venturing into the obscure realm of hardware and I'm having a lot of fun with it! I can already control a lot of my home devices thanks to a RFID on my wallet and a home made linux server. I almost feel like a mad scientist from some cartoon.

I really became addicted in automation. What about you guys? Do you automate anything on your life? What do you automate? I would love to hear suggestions!