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Dan Sneddon
Senior Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Networking Architecture
Dan Sneddon is a highly experienced professional in the field of cloud computing and networking. He currently holds the position of Senior Principal Software Engineer, focusing on Cloud Networking Architecture at Red Hat.12
With over 25 years of experience in the industry, Dan has established himself as an expert in cloud computing and networking technologies.1 His extensive background has likely contributed to his current senior role at Red Hat, where he is involved in shaping cloud networking architecture.
Prior to his current position, Dan worked at IBM, where he also held a significant role in the cloud computing sector.12 This experience at IBM, combined with his current position at Red Hat, suggests that Dan has been at the forefront of cloud technology development and implementation for major tech companies.
Dan's LinkedIn profile indicates that he is based in the Oakland area and has over 500 connections on the platform.1 This suggests that he is well-networked within the tech industry, which is often crucial for senior roles in software engineering and cloud architecture.
It's worth noting that Dan's expertise and senior position make him a valuable asset in the rapidly evolving field of cloud networking, where his experience likely contributes to developing innovative solutions and strategies for Red Hat's cloud offerings.
Highlights
Apple has an App Store problem. Developers are releasing useless scam apps at $0.99+ and whole collections of useless apps for $10.95+ that do nothing. In one case a developer released a suite of useless apps that claim to be security-related. The ones with reviews have only 1-star reviews, and some have no reviews. I can’t report the apps individually without purchasing them first, so there is a loophole where malicious actors can post apps that only look like they perform a function but really just collect your money, and you can’t report it unless you’ve already lost your money.
Apple Support loves to just issue a refund instead of auditing apps and developers, so the App Store is filling up with this sort of trash. It’s a nightmare. Anyone with a copy of XCode and some photoshop skills can create a whole suite of bogus apps and start collecting revenue for useless junk, and it makes it hard to find decent apps when some searches are returning 3-4X as many of these useless apps as those that actually work.
In the good old days Google Play was full of scams, but the IOS App Store was a nice curated list of apps. Some were not great, but at least you knew that all of them were real apps and weren’t just stealing your money. Now there are so many untested apps on the App Store that it’s almost useless to browse under most categories of software.
What’s the point of Apple having a monopoly on App Store revenue if they aren’t even going to perform basic functionality testing on apps before allowing developers to release them?
These aren’t just useless either, a month or two ago I reported a whole group of fake apps being used to steal banking info from victims. The apps were all confusingly similar look-alikes to a valid popular financial apps that were designed to confuse people into downloading the wrong app and giving away their online banking credentials. The support rep I talked to was unable to do anything except file a report on one or two of the (many similar) apps that were using a plethora of apps which were all different windows into the same private data theft operations in Russia and India. I figured out the whole scheme and had a list of apps that were involved, but there is no good place to report it where it will get the attention it deserves.
Apple, I’m not going to do your work for you for free, but I will help you stop this fraud if you give me the channels to report it. Instead you have created a system where there is no good way to report the criminals and the victims have been taught to avoid scams by only downloading apps from trustworthy sources (like the Apple App Store). If the App Store isn’t trustworthy, then all hope is lost and there is no reason to continue the walled garden that allows you to continue to collect sales revenue from all apps. Protect your customers or give the market the freedom to allow new marketplaces that will protect your customers. You can’t have it both ways.
IBM has published a statement on Responsible AI which outlines the importance of fairness, bias mitigation, diverse teams, ethics review boards, and other safeguards. The work we do today will shape the future. Looking back at how things like social media or the gig economy have affected society, it’s vitally important to get things right from the start.
