You Were Told Not To Read This
And yet here you are. Classic. Fine. Since you're already here and have clearly demonstrated your inability to follow simple instructions, we might as well tell you about Elyse.
Elyse is a developer who primarily focuses on UI/UX — which stands for "User Interface / User Experience," or as Elyse describes it, "making things pretty and making sure people don't rage-quit your application."
What She Actually Does
Elyse is an active maintainer of Arkime, a full packet capture and analysis system used for network security monitoring, incident response, and threat hunting. In non-nerd terms: she helps build software that watches network traffic so the bad guys can't sneak around undetected.
Think of Arkime as a security camera system, but for your network. Except instead of grainy footage of someone stealing your lunch from the office fridge, it captures actual network packets. Much more useful. Slightly less dramatic.
Elyse is passionate about making open source security accessible and easy to use — which is a fancy way of saying she fights the good fight against confusing interfaces and documentation that reads like it was written by a robot having a bad day.
The "Don't" Philosophy
You may have noticed this entire website is built around the word "don't." This is what happens when a UI/UX developer decides to build a personal site. Instead of a boring portfolio with a hero image and "I'm passionate about crafting delightful digital experiences," you get... this.
The "Don't" philosophy is simple:
- Don't take yourself too seriously
- Don't build boring websites
- Don't forget to have fun with code
- Don't skip sponsoring open source developers (hint hint)
- Don't keep reading this list
- Don't — seriously, stop
Why You Should (Not) Sponsor Elyse
Don't sponsor Elyse. Definitely don't. Your sponsorship would only help her:
- Develop new features for Arkime that the community has requested
- Improve the user interface so security tools are actually pleasant to use
- Fix bugs and improve stability (boring but important — don't care about it)
- Dedicate more time to open source security (don't support that either)
See? Terrible reasons. Don't do it.