Critical Point War Stories with Kevin Riggle

Jul 29 2024 11 ep. 53 mins 4

Critical Point War Stories with Kevin Riggle Podcast artwork

Building better software, one incident at a time. Host Kevin Riggle talks with software engineers about that time they broke production. Whether you're an industry professional, or just curious about what makes the modern Internet run and what happens when it breaks, we bring you stories you haven't heard elsewhere. This is the audio version of the podcast. Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@critical-point Produced by Complex Systems Group (https://complexsystems.group). Part of Critical Point (https://criticalpoint.tv).

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What is the role of a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer)? - Melanie Ensign - Bonus

Jul 29 2024 17 mins

Host Kevin Riggle interviews Melanie Ensign, former Global Head of Security, Privacy, & Engineering Communications for Uber, about what the role of a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) is. (Hint: It's not being the smartest security person in the room.)Bonus episode from https://warstories.criticalpoint.tv/episodes/the-reporter-called-her-christmas-day-melanie-ensign-bug

He Won George Hotz's Money - Andrey Petrov

Jul 15 2024 58 mins

Host Kevin Riggle interviews Andrey Petrov about three different incidents he was involved with: A programming mistake in high school that filled its alumni's email inboxes, a Twitter analytics site he built that got co-opted as part of a phishing scam, and how he won a bug bounty on the Ethereum blockchain rollup prototype developed by superstar hacker George Hotz.Chapters:(00:00)

The Reporter Called Her Christmas Day - Melanie Ensign - Bug Bounty & Incident Management

Jun 25 2024 56 mins

Kevin Riggle interviews Melanie Ensign (Discernible Inc.), former Global Head of Security, Privacy, & Engineering Communications for Uber, about building good bug bounty programs, incident management processes, and one especially memorable Christmas morning.Melanie's company: https://discernibleinc.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanieensign/Twitter: https://x.com/i

The Future Is (Literally!) Bright - How Infrastructure Works, by Deb Chachra - Climate, Energy, & the Future

Jun 07 2024 75 mins

Kevin Riggle interviews Deb Chachra, professor of engineering at Olin College and author of HOW INFRASTRUCTURE WORKS about climate change, the housing crisis, the green/sustainable energy transition, and how we can build a better world for ourselves and everyone around us.BUY DEB'S BOOK! https://criticalpoint.tv/infrastructureDeb's Twitter: https://twitter.com/debchaBluesky: https:

Was Akamai the Velvet Underground of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)? - Abhijit Mehta - Bonus

Mar 21 2024 12 mins

Kevin Riggle interviews Abhijit Mehta about Akamai and its role in the history and development of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). Bonus episode outtake from https://warstories.criticalpoint.tv/episodes/he-broke-turkish-twitter-abhijit-mehtaAbhijit's Twitter: https://twitter.com/AbhijitCMehtaAbhijit's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehtaabhijit/To watch the video version

He Broke Turkish Twitter - Abhijit Mehta

Feb 21 2024 65 mins

Kevin Riggle interviews Abhijit Mehta, who tells how one tiny dot made almost made a massive difference to Twitter's Turkish ad revenue.Abhijit's Twitter: https://twitter.com/AbhijitCMehtaAbhijit's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehtaabhijit/Chapters:(00:00) - Intro (01:25) - How did you find yourself in a place where you could break production? (08:53) - Akamai & the

She Missed the Overnight Push! - Julia Lunetta

Feb 08 2024 52 mins

Kevin Riggle interviews Julia Lunetta, who tells us how an ostensibly minor change caused her employer, a financial institution (Upromise Investments), to miss its overnight reconciliation with its banks.Credits:Emoji artwork is provided by Emojitwo (https://emojitwo.github.io/), originally released as Emojione 2.2 (https://www.emojione.com/) by Ranks.com (http://www.ranks.com/) wi

She Made Dropbox Give the Internet Free Watermelon? - Kate Rudolph

Sep 25 2023 54 mins

Kevin Riggle interviews Kate Rudolph, who tells how a rolled back commit on her intern project resulted in Dropbox, her employer, offering free watermelon to the entire Internet.Credits:Emoji artwork is provided by Emojitwo (https://emojitwo.github.io/), originally released as Emojione 2.2 (https://www.emojione.com/) by Ranks.com (http://www.ranks.com/) with contributions from the

He Locked Players Out On Launch Day - Zachery Johnson

Sep 20 2023 84 mins

Kevin Riggle interviews Zachery Johnson, who tells how an innocent command doomed the database servers and locked players out of Diablo II: Resurrected on Day 2 of launch.Blizzard's blog post on the incident: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t/diablo-ii-resurrected-outages-an-explanation-how-we%E2%80%99ve-been-working-on-it-and-how-we%E2%80%99re-moving-forward/28164Credits:Int

Twelve Lines of Code Took Down the Whole Company - Patrick O'Doherty

Aug 08 2023 61 mins

Kevin Riggle interviews Patrick O'Doherty, who tells how a seemingly-simple configuration change one Friday morning led to a massive outage.Patrick's web site: https://patrickod.computerCredits:Intro & outro - "Senpai Funk" by Paul T. Starr. Used with permission.https://soundcloud.com/ptstarrCritical Point logo and wordmark designed by Timothy James Lopez.https://www.behance.ne