The real spooky season
Hi there! Happy you’re here, and we hope you’re having a fantastic day today. Thanks for being part of Indiana’s largest, best and most active community of technology makers, doers and hackers.
In the rush and excitement to announce the return of the Holiday Social in the last edition, we had to cut a huge block of content about something specific to October - Cybersecurity Awareness Month!
It’s the month to remember that lurking in your codebase, in that dark and musty corner filled with arcane, ancient code that no one understands, sits a yet-to-be-discovered security hole.
The only secure code is code you never write!
Spoooooky!
Some resources to guard against the monster hiding beneath your npm modules:
Cybersecurity Awareness Month resources from the government and KnowB4 (here’s the form to “officially” download the guide if you’d rather … we’ve directly linked to the pdf at the end of the rainbow for you).
A look at a clever bit of malware trickery using fake Captchas
The OWASP Top Ten is always good fireside reading. Some familiar monsters make appearances. The fine folks at OWASP also have a fantastic open source guide to security testing.
Notably, there’s a rich vein of cybersecurity companies here in Central Indiana. We were going to list some of them, but found too many to list.
Speaking of! The Indianapolis Cybersecurity Summit is on October 22. Intended for “C-Suite/Sr. Level Executives Only” … but, hey maybe that’s you!
In case you missed it…
Indy Hackers is thrilled to announce our next event, Bridging the Business-Technical Divide, co-hosted with Elevate Ventures! We’re bringing together CEOs and tech professionals for a panel discussion about what technical teams wish their CEOs understood about building software—and what CEOs wish their tech teams knew about the business side. It’s shaping up to be a lively conversation! Here are the details:
When: Tuesday, October 29, from 5-7pm ET
Where: 16 Tech, 1220 Waterway Blvd, Indianapolis, IN 46202
Confirmed Panelists
Jacob Schpok, Partner & Head of Platform at Elevate Ventures
Chris Vannoy, Indy Hackers Board Member & Founder of Axiomatic
Eric Christopher, Co-Founder & CEO of Zylo
Wes Winler, Founder & CEO of Woven
Megan Lohman, Founder & Co-CEO of Plan Forward
Check out the Eventbrite page to register and save your spot! We hope to see you there: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bridging-the-business-technical-divide-tickets-1035445885517
Things the community is reading
Tech hiring might finally be bouncing back (ht, @Andrew Poland): Over the last few years, a lot of software engineers from companies large and small were laid off. The good news is that as interest rates start to fall, many jobs appear to be opening back up. It’s early yet, but the early signs of the hiring freeze thawing are there. Rooting for it!
Using static websites for tiny archives (ht. Tony Dewan): Walkthrough of a fun project to build a lofi Evernote-like system collecting all of one’s digital stuff.
Indy Vote Times (ht. @Roger Deetz): Election Day is coming soon, and early voting has already started. This local app shows wait times at various polling places. Make a plan to vote, and then use the app to get in and out quickly.
DHH on Rails World 2024 and what's coming in Rails 8.1 (ht. Tony Drake): We’re highlighting this link not so much for David Heinemeier Hansson dithering again (the race car enthusiast and creator of Ruby on Rails is known for going on and on and on about stuff), but for the energetic discussion in our Slack, sitting at 116(!) replies at the time this email was sent.
Meetup. Of. The. Fortnight!
AI Engineering Katas is hosting another virtual meetup next week!
If you are interested in solving software architecture problems, especially related to using LLMs and other common AI models, you might enjoy it 🙂
They host these twice per month - fortnightly, one might say - so follow their page if you want to see when events are posted or share solutions.
AI Architecture Engineering Kata | LinkedIn
Another AI Engineering Kata
Upcoming Events
Free Code Camp Indy - Oct 23 6pm
Fishers Code and Coffee [Online] - Oct 24 7:30am
Downtown Code and Coffee [In Person] - Oct 24 7:00am
Broad Ripple Code and Coffee [Online] - Oct 30th 7:30am
AI Engineering Katas [Online] - Oct 30th 5:30pm
Is there an event you would like to announce here? Let us know at newsletter@indyhackers.org and we’ll get it added to the calendar.
New on the Job Board
The IndyHackers job board is free to companies and the community. Our goal is to help as many community members as possible land jobs they love at companies based here in Indiana, growing the community of hackers throughout the state.
If your company is hiring, post your job here.
If you’re hunting for a job, the full job board is here or you can follow along in #jobs in our Slack. Or: Just reply to this email with what you’re looking for.
One last thing
We live in stressful times, filled with anxiety of what might be in front of us - the possible futures at our doorstep.
Elections, and wars, and climate change, and hiring freezes, and bills, and job applications, and sales cycles and forecasts.
There are a lot of possible futures ahead of each of us.
What I want to say to you today is that whatever the future holds for you, you’re smart, capable, and totally up for the challenge.
So, worry about it then if you can. Feel some grass between your toes, or build something for fun, for now.
All we are promised, all we have is this moment. Right now. This speck and fragment of time.
The future will come, and you can - and will! - deal with it then.
For now, just be.
Because that’s always enough.
Hang in there. Hope you’re having a great day, and if not, what would make it a great day?
Go do that.
You got this.
Chris Vannoy, Indy Hackers Board Member - currently making his day great with a Cuban coffee at Ascend Coffee
Thanks to Our Sponsors
