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mpiedravon [dead]

OP here. HN moderators are right in flagging the post. Not because of the content of the Wikipedia article, but because of the plenty of vitriolic comments it caused. Their posting policy probably has to do with such situations.

The idea was to consider the historical criticism of capitalism in a modern setting (e.g., how effective is the market in addressing economic inequality?). The discussion got out of control, though.

mpiedravon Superfluid Helium

From "Sonda" (1977-1989), a Polish science show.

mpiedravon Democrats Declined DHS Offer to Test Caucus App

What about an app by some permanent federal election commission? Several countries have a Supreme Electoral Court, which is independent of political parties.

For instance, in Costa Rica (3.4 million voters) we just elected mayors nationwide and received trustworthy results within a couple of hours (reported using a party-independent app).

Caucuses are also run by the Supreme Electoral Court. Kind of an Election-as-a-service.

mpiedravon Collected Papers of Alexander A. Stepanov

Perhaps Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" and Sedgewick's (Knuth's student) "An Introduction to the Analysis of Algorithms".

Also, Ben-Ari's "Mathematical Logic for Computer Science" and Pierce's "Software Foundations".

mpiedravon An Interview with A. Stepanov (2001)

Question:
What is the origin of STL? Has STL been conceived to be what it is now, that is "the" C++ Standard Library, or does it come from some other project? Could you tell us a history of STL?
Answer:

In 1976, still back in the USSR, I got a very serious case of food poisoning from eating raw fish. While in the hospital, in the state of delirium, I suddenly realized that the ability to add numbers in parallel depends on the fact that addition is associative. (So, putting it simply, STL is the result of a bacterial infection.) In other words, I realized that a parallel reduction algorithm is associated with a semigroup structure type. That is the fundamental point: algorithms are defined on algebraic structures. It took me another couple of years to realize that you have to extend the notion of structure by adding complexity requirements to regular axioms. And than it took 15 years to make it work. (I am still not sure that I have been successful in getting the point across to anybody outside the small circle of my friends.) I believe that iterator theories are as central to Computer Science as theories of rings or Banach spaces are central to Mathematics. Every time I would look at an algorithm I would try to find a structure on which it is defined. So what I wanted to do was to describe algorithms generically. That's what I like to do. I can spend a month working on a well known algorithm trying to find its generic representation. So far, I have been singularly unsuccessful in explaining to people that this is an important activity. But, somehow, the result of the activity - STL - became quite successful.

mpiedravon The End of Ownership (2017)

Book review by the EFF: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/book-review-end-owners...

mpiedravon John le Carré: Why we should learn German (2017)

«The decision to learn a foreign language is to me an act of friendship. It is indeed a holding out of the hand. It’s not just a route to negotiation. It’s also to get to know you better, to draw closer to you and your culture, your social manners and your way of thinking. And the decision to teach a foreign language is an act of commitment, generosity and mediation.»

mpiedravon "Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out"

«"Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out". Yes, that quote can be found on page 207 of The Design and Evolution of C++. And no, that smaller and cleaner language is not Java or C#. The quote occurs in a section entitled "Beyond Files and Syntax". I was pointing out that the C++ semantics is much cleaner than its syntax. I was thinking of programming styles, libraries and programming environments that emphasized the cleaner and more effective practices over archaic uses focused on the low-level aspects of C.»

mpiedravon U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

I'm not ignoring those facts about the destructive role of America in the Middle East. What I'm alluding to is that fundamentalists hating the West have way more "historical ammo" for their arguments than just pointing at the US. It's just that the current biggest offender is America (which makes it the main target for terrorism). Before that, it was Britain.

On a grand historical scale, the Powers That May at any given point in time become the main offender against those having something of value. Next time it'll probably be China (beginning with the "Security Theater" [1] in Xinjiang).

[1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2009/11/beyond_secu...

mpiedravon U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

Reasons behind the kind of terrorism for which mass surveillance is enforced (e.g., Muslim fundamentalists against American interests) have deep historical roots, too messy to be addressed.

Britain and France had geopolitical and business interests in the Middle East since the 18-19th century. America since the 20th, when oil suddenly had all the spotlight.

Fundamentalists are convinced that "the West" is the Devil on Earth. No political force can pacify fundamentalists nor avoid future generations.

mpiedravon Ask HN: Have you ever felt your life is going nowhere?

Thanks for all the support, folks!

I'll focus on my CS major, even when I'll probably be over 40 when I finish (due to the several next crisis along the road).

In my last job, I found great joy in reverse engineering (interoperability with a quarter-century proprietary legacy system). I also find cryptography and cryptanalysis amusing (applied abstract algebra is nice).

I would like to focus on that career path. Job openings involving those areas are mostly security-related.

But I fear a possible toxicity in that adversarial role (i.e., last line of defense against a whole industry of malware and malicious actors). I can only imagine future burnouts and extended anxiety while dealing with the ever-increasing work demands.

How realistic is that gloomy scenario in InfoSec?

P.S. Cryptopals [1] and Dennis Yurichev's reverse engineering challenges [2] seem quite reasonable for practicing/learning.

There are plenty of Capture-the-Flag, Crackme, wargames, programming challenges, etc., but initially I'll do these.

[1] https://cryptopals.com

[2] https://challenges.re

mpiedravon Basic Library List: Math Assn of America Recommendations for Undergrad Libraries

Principia is indeed a classic, but the mathematical maturity required to follow that profoundly foundational approach is considerable. Even for professional mathematics (source: professors of mine who specialized in mathematical logic).

BLL includes several categories on logic, though, which include classics by Kleene, Curry, etc. For instance, "Foundations of mathematics" [1], "Philosophy of mathematics" [2], and "Model theory" [3]

[1] https://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/browse?field_tags_tid=...

[2] https://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/browse?field_tags_tid=...

[3] https://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/browse?field_tags_tid=...

mpiedravon Ask HN: Secret messages in public forums

That's quite clever. In crypto literature, I guess it could be called like "covert cross-channel".

It turns out that the idea itself of communicating secrets in plain sight is called "subliminal channel" [1], which differs from steganography (hiding a message inside another message).

My question is not meant to imply conspiranoia. It's whether we as an audience of online forums have been fooled by this technique at some point.

[1] https://www.emsec.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/media/crypto/attachment...

mpiedravon Ask HN: Unix-like tools for reverse engineering

Indeed. Thanks a lot!

mpiedravon Hipmunk Says Goodbye

Google used to offer the QPX Express[1] API for querying flights. Then it got killed[2], like 190+ Google services[3]

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20160413025405/https://developers...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15594975

[3] https://killedbygoogle.com

mpiedravon Hipmunk Says Goodbye

I wonder how much of the original Common Lisp code is still running in the QPX[1][2] part of ITA.

[1] http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2491#comment-38434

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1479107

mpiedravon I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

That post is just one of many anecdata (to some degree of truth) out there about Google and other FAANG companies being "ethically challenged".

I remember having done a "computer and society" assignment about 14 years ago on Google and China. I also remember Microsoft's "Halloween Documents" (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) from early 2000s. And many other scenarios of Big Tech ignoring ethics.

In general, trust (like attention) is a limited resource to be used wisely.

mpiedravon I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

Never trust a large company. Big money always trumps ethics in the long run, as "ethics" is just a PR stunt at FAANG scale.

The big concern here is how Google, etc. are becoming an oligopoly with a very effective lobbying arm in any form of actual regulation.

While the Western world holds democratic-ish values in public institutions, its large private companies are indeed totalitarian regimes.

mpiedravon Free and Open-Source Mathematics Textbooks

Perhaps a combination of LaTeX/PreTeXt and Open Monograph Press [1] will do :D

The idea is to allow authors using LaTeX/PreTeXt to pipeline the document+sources to a repository (think GitHub Pages for math textbooks), as well as preserving existing free content whose sources are lost (e.g., old out-of-print books).

[1] https://pkp.sfu.ca/omp

mpiedravon ACM signed letter opposing open access

For any department/institution that wants to run its own journal, there's the Open Journal System [1]. They also develop the Open Conference System [2].

I used to be a sysadmin for a research institute using them. Both OJS and OCS performed reasonably well back then.

Technical options to systematically counteract predatory publishing like ACM and Elsevier [3] do exist. However, it requires plenty of institutional commitment and overcoming political opposition, as it boils down to enhancing researcher reputation in an effective way.

Building reputation almost from scratch vs. depending on established, well recognized publishers is kind of the perpetual FOSS vs. proprietary software conflict.

[1] https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/

[2] https://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cost_of_Knowledge

mpiedravon ACM signed letter opposing open access

arXiv is a formidable resource. Yet, many scholars don't trust it as a source and won't publish there :(

The argument from authority (e.g., publishing mafias) fallacy is ripe in academia.

Same situation with textbooks. Besides profit and trying to become famous, there's no reason why a professor should publish through a traditional imprint or publisher (Pearson, Cengage, McGraw Hill, Wiley, Taylor and Francis, Elsevier, etc.). LaTeX, a Creative Commons license, and a homepage at the university department (and perhaps a GitHub/GitLab repo) is all a professor needs to make textbooks available worldwide.

Writing and editing a textbook is indeed a hard task. Yet, having the end result behind paywalls and arbitrary pricing isn't worth it.

mpiedravon I thought I understood recursion

Behind the enterprise tooling propaganda, there is the real programming endeavor with whatever tools are appropriate for the tasks (given the constraints of time, team size, developer expertise, maturity of libraries, etc.)

A software development business is not really about programming languages, libraries, or tools, but about the game of power in the organization (even when the end user doesn't care how the product was developed). Anything that threatens that power is easily dismissed.

mpiedravon Kanagawa government hard disks swiped, sold online

There's also The Japan Times [1]. Several non-English speaking countries do have at least a newspaper in English [2].

[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:English-language_ne...

mpiedravon C-for-all: Extending C with modern safety and productivity features

HN's version of Slashdotted.

They might well use UWaterloo's CS Club infrastructure, which can withstand enough traffic. For instance, the FOSS mirror at https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca

mpiedravon Dijkstra: Denken Als Discipline (2001)

«In the autumn of 2000, the Dutch broadcasting organization VPRO Television visited Austin to make a video of a visit with the most famous Dutch computing scientist. The product of this project was broadcast in April 2001 as a 25-minute episode of the science series Noorderlicht, under the title "Denken Als Discipline".»

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/video-audio/Noorderlicht...

mpiedravon Kristen Nygaard – A.M. Turing Award Laureate (2001)

«One unexpected result was that people often found making a model in Simula to be more useful than the actual simulation results. The process of describing the application provided a valuable insight in itself. This led Kristen to formulate one of his favorite aphorisms: _To program is to understand_. He thought programming should not be considered a low-level technical discipline designed just to accomplish a specific task, but that writing a program should enhance understanding of the problem domain and the solutions.»

mpiedravon This isn't your father's Microsoft

Windows will always be Windows, and other systems will be second-class citizens to it.

The new Microsoft makes money well beyond Windows: billing running containers and Linux (or Windows) VMs, GB/month of Azure Storage, GB/month of outbound traffic, Visual Studio professional subscriptions, and so on.

It's a clever strategy. Managers usually won't care/understand about containers, runtime environments, Active Directory, APIs, libraries, etc., but developers/devops folks do. By addressing devs, Microsoft is getting quite a competitive edge (no pun intended) in the operational part of enterprises.

Microsoft salespeople already address managers in terms of solutions in manager-lingo (synergies, CapEx/OpEx, yada, yada).

mpiedravon Some Favorite Non-Technical Books (2018)

It's rather common to dream about math or computing when you are solving some hard problem or digesting some topics with a time limit (next exam, project deadline, etc.)

As for Fields medalists, they are extremely creative folks who can find new and effective ways to tackle seriously deep problems, even when doing things unrelated to math (swimming, hiking, etc.)

mpiedravon Some Favorite Non-Technical Books (2018)

«I (Bjarne Stroustrup) have also been asked where I find the time to read non-technical books. Actually, it is not a question of finding the time. Reading non-technical stuff is essential. Without it, I'd go nuts and lose my sense of proportion. As a practical matter, I read for about an hour almost every evening before going to bed -- trying to go straight from technical work to sleep is usually not a good idea.»

mpiedravon Stanisław Lem

Impossibility of communication (because the very physical means necessary are way beyond our capacity as a species) is also a far more plausible idea than anthropomorphic beings (speaking some language that can be deciphered and uttered by humans).

An ocean-shaped or a polymer-based "lifeform", while formidably uncanny, are still somewhat fathomable.

What about a radio-waves-based "lifeform"? Or a star whose plasma interactions are so complex that some form of artificial "life" emerges within it?

Lem's narrative is indeed intellectually teasing. And, yet, critical of our approaches and behaviors as a species.