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tdudhhu commented on The xz sshd backdoor rabbithole goes quite a bit deeper   twitter.com/bl4sty/status... · Posted by u/nathell
ufmace · a year ago
The weird thing about this one is how it seems super professional in some ways, and rather amateur in others. Professional in the sense of spending a long time building up an identity that seemed trustworthy enough to be made maintainer of an important package, of probably involving multiple people in social manipulation attacks, of not leaking the true identity and source of the attack, and the sophistication and obfuscation techniques used. Yet also a bit amateur-ish in the bugs and performance regressions that slipped out into production versions.

I'm not saying it's amateur-ish to have bugs. I'm saying, if this was developed by a highly competent state-sponsored organization, you'd think they would have developed the actual exploit and tested it heavily behind closed doors, fixing all of the bugs and ensuring there were no suspicion-creating performance regressions before any of it was submitted into a public project. If there was no performance regression, much higher chance this never would have been discovered at all.

tdudhhu · a year ago
Sometimes I think it could be someone who was forced to embed the backdoor but was smart enough to make it detectable by others without raising suspicion by the entity that was forcing him.
tdudhhu commented on What makes housing so expensive?   construction-physics.com/... · Posted by u/jseliger
lwansbrough · a year ago
While I think the article does a good job breaking down the costs, the top comment does a better job highlighting the arbitrary restriction of supply as the primary source of housing costs (though, the article does get there in the end and makes effort to highlight zoning in the conclusion.)

It should be considered that, in a market where supply is limited, the economics of scaling housing development are also limited, such that the associated costs of building go up. Fewer opportunities to build means fewer materials suppliers, fewer labourers, etc. which can mean price gouging when demand is bursting.

Zoning restrictions and building code are the primary causes from which (virtually) all systemic issues originate.

They are also the easiest to fix, and can be rewritten overnight if needed. We just don't see enough outrage yet, but I believe the pitchforks are coming for city councillors across Canada and the US.

tdudhhu · a year ago
Isn't the main problem that all the jobs are located at central spots? There is a huge amount of land where people can live. But building a cheap house at a location where you can't find a job leads to nothing.

There is also a kind of hype of homesteading. But you should not underestimate the huge amount of work it takes to keep yourself alive. So for most that is not an option.

tdudhhu commented on Smoking cannabis is now legal in Germany   theguardian.com/world/202... · Posted by u/gebt
tgsovlerkhgsel · a year ago
> more people destroying their lives with drugs than people who can regulate their use.

I think you are either intentionally exaggerating, or vastly overestimate the number of people destroying their lives, or underestimate the number of people who use drugs (especially alcohol, consumed by >50% of the US population).

tdudhhu · a year ago
Hidden alcoholism is a huge problem.

There are estimates that 70% of alcohol addiction is hidden.

tdudhhu commented on Smoking cannabis is now legal in Germany   theguardian.com/world/202... · Posted by u/gebt
tdudhhu · a year ago
While I think freedom is good, I also think there are more people destroying their lives with drugs than people who can regulate their use.

I've seen so many people waste their life on weed and alcohol that I can't be very happy about this news.

tdudhhu commented on Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?   vitalik.eth.limo/general/... · Posted by u/bpierre
darby_eight · a year ago
> there's still a really good art scene based on NFTs and smart contracts

I'm still not quite getting the idea here—these assets only really "exist" in web3 apps, right?

tdudhhu · a year ago
Yes, they can prove ownership of an art peace but can not prove the art peace even exists.
tdudhhu commented on Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?   vitalik.eth.limo/general/... · Posted by u/bpierre
ShamelessC · a year ago
> ML on a blockchain

I would actually love it if you had a link with more info on that. Don't take this the wrong way, but my first guess would be that that basically isn't true; either it's not actually machine learning (as is understood today) or it isn't actually a blockchain but rather normal distributed computing being "verified" via blockchain somehow?

Would love to be proven wrong though.

tdudhhu · a year ago
https://internetcomputer.org/

A YT video about this: https://youtu.be/wk3FxuA5DKs

I am still very sceptical about this because it looks very slow, but it seems to work.

tdudhhu commented on Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison   cnn.com/business/live-new... · Posted by u/misiti3780
gabesullice · a year ago
I wish society would stop viewing punishment as a tool for the greater good, whether as revenge or as something that will "correct" the criminal.

Treating it as a correction feels like a lie that polite society tells itself in order to absolve itself of the distaste of knowingly harming someone. We shouldn't pretend we can "re-educate" anyone. We can merely provide opportunities for self improvement, but we can't actively "correct" them.

On the other hand, treating punishment as revenge is unhealthy too. It's too easy to get carried away and it's even easier to get carried away by perverse incentives (gestures broadly at US incarceration rates). Two wrongs don't make a right, as they say.

So then how should society decide what punishment is fair? I believe the punishment should be as harsh as an elected judge feels is necessary for the perpetrator to think, "it wasn't worth this"—and not a bit more.

Isn't that using punishment as a deterrent? It's easy to see it that way, but no. That would make punishment impersonal again— unbinding it from the specific person, place, and circumstance that we should elect judges to consider carefully and compassionately. In other words, when one says, "the perpetrator should be punished {this much} to deter the others", then the perpetrator becomes a pawn, not a person.

All that leads me to believe that: the purpose of a punishment should be to inflict a harm equal to the perceived personal benefit of the perpetrator's crime, as an enforcement action of the social contract between the perpetrator and society.

tdudhhu · a year ago
I think this is a wise answer. Thank you.
tdudhhu commented on Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?   vitalik.eth.limo/general/... · Posted by u/bpierre
ArtTimeInvestor · a year ago
All this crpyto technology is fascinating. But is it used for anything?

I asked this in an Ask HN today, but got no answer so far:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39852389

It looks like not a single HN reader is using blockchain technology for anything.

If nobody is using blockchain technology outside of blockchain projects, what are the reasons we expect that some day we will? What could be a near term use case?

tdudhhu · a year ago
Some days ago ICP showed it can run ML on a blockchain.

While this is nice and does show that distributed computing is a real possibility I also don't think that anyone is going to switch from Amazon/Azure to ICP any time soon.

But I must say the idea is really nice. It's very easy to develop Actor model based software and deploy it on ICP.

tdudhhu commented on Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison   cnn.com/business/live-new... · Posted by u/misiti3780
tdudhhu · a year ago
The difference between opinions in this thread is interesting.

I think it's mainly because some see a punishment as revenge and others as correction.

But, as user publius_0xf3 is showing, revenge does not work. The victims don't get their money back.

If this sentence is used as correction I also think it does not work. Would such a correction really take 25 years? His life is over. I don't see how such a long time is helpful to him, to his victims and to society.

u/tdudhhu

KarmaCake day127February 18, 2024View Original