SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

Poisoned certificates are already on the SKS keyserver network. The keyserver network handles certificates with up to about 150,000 signatures. My public certificate as found on the keyserver network now has just short of 150,000 signatures on it.

Source: gist.github.com

Fast.ai – Deep Learning from the Foundations

Fast.ai – Deep Learning from the Foundations

It covers many of the most important academic papers that form the foundations of modern deep learning, using “code-first” teaching, where each method is implemented from scratch in python and explained in detail (in the process, we’ll discuss many important software engineering techniques too). The first five lessons use Python, PyTorch, and the fastai library; the last two lessons use Swift for TensorFlow, and are co-taught with Chris Lattner, the original creator of Swift, clang, and LLVM. A huge amount of work went into the last two lessons—not only did the team need to create new teaching materials covering both TensorFlow and Swift, but also create a new fastai Swift library from scratch, and add a lot of new functionality (and squash a few bugs!)

Source: www.fast.ai

Mozilla Server Side TLS – Recommended Configurations

Mozilla Server Side TLS – Recommended Configurations

The use of the Old configuration with modern versions of OpenSSL may require custom builds with support for deprecated ciphers. For services with clients that support TLS 1.3 and don’t need backward compatibility, the Modern configuration provides an extremely high level of security. This configuration is compatible with a number of very old clients, and should be used only as a last resort.

Source: wiki.mozilla.org

The explosions, reenactments, and animals that made Vauxhall Gardens a hot spot

The explosions, reenactments, and animals that made Vauxhall Gardens a hot spot

Indeed, such was its fame and longevity that “Vauxhall” was often used as a straightforward synonym for “pleasure garden”: several other towns and cities—including New York—boasted their own “Vauxhall Gardens,” named after the original. Concerts, both indoors and outdoors, were supplemented by variety acts: Ramo Samee, the famed Indian juggler; Mr. Blackmore (stage name “The America”), who performed nightly on the tight and slack rope while wearing a cap fitted with fireworks; Ching Lau Lauro, the acrobat and contortionist; Signor Spelterini, “The Wonderful Italian Hercules”; and, in 1830, the peculiarly popular performance of Michael Boai, “whose unrivaled music on his chin has drawn forth such great astonishment and delight.” His vehicle was promptly renamed the Great Nassau, and made further flights from Vauxhall and other gardens, drawing huge audiences.

Source: www.laphamsquarterly.org

San Francisco school board votes to destroy murals by Victor Arnautoff

San Francisco school board votes to destroy murals by Victor Arnautoff

Mark Sanchez, the school board’s vice president, later told me that simply concealing the murals wasn’t an option because it would “allow for the possibility of them being uncovered in the future.” Arnautoff’s work, the group concluded in February, “glorifies slavery, genocide, colonization, Manifest Destiny, white supremacy, oppression, etc.” The art does not reflect “social justice,” the group said, and it “is not student-centered if it’s focused on the legacy of artists, rather than the experience of the students.” Mr. Sanchez, the board vice president, told me: “A grave mistake was made 80 years ago to paint a mural at a school without Native American or African-American input.

Source: www.nytimes.com

Atari Centipede’s Hidden Code Trap

Atari Centipede’s Hidden Code Trap

Created by Sidam (a notorious bootlegger of Atari games based in Italy) and distributed by Video Amusements of Canada Ltd, the game was very clearly a copy of Atari’s Centipede. Atari, in an effort to protect its assets (and at the same time fire a warning shot across the bows of any other unscrupulous businesses thinking about distributing pirated versions of its games) took Video Amusements of Canada to court with the intention of shutting down the distribution of Magic Worm. It’s pretty obvious even to the casual observer, that Atari at least had a point:

But the real coup de grâce against Video Amusements of Canada was Logg’s assertion that the game hadn’t just been inspired by Centipede, its code had been literally copied.

Source: arcadeblogger.com

TeXmacs v1.99.1

TeXmacs v1.99.1

∗ New TeXmacs videos on web site (1.99.10). ∗ Experimental and partial support for Git as a versioning tool (1.99.10). ∗ User interface for new features in educational styles (1.99.10).

Source: github.com

Berlin Brandenburg: The airport with half a million faults

Berlin Brandenburg: The airport with half a million faults

This is Berlin Brandenburg or BER, the new, state-of-the-art international airport built to mark reunified Germany’s re-emergence as a global destination. Image copyright
Getty Images

“The supervisory board was full of politicians who had no idea how to supervise the project,” says Prof Genia Kostka, of the Free University of Berlin. As he shows me around the interior of the new but unused airport, Michael Dorn from the company running it, FBB, says the capacity inside the terminal building was doubled – after construction began.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Real problems with functional languages

Real problems with functional languages

Real problems with functional languages

And their influence on Dark

After two decades of coding professionally in a dozen languages, I’ve come to a conclusion about static and dynamic types:
Static types help you ensure that your changes work, especially for changes that span large parts of the program. Here’s an example of some simple Python code that will throw an exception if aor bare strings which are not valid ints:
sum = int(a) + int(b);FPs commonly use a Result type instead of exceptions (or C/Go error codes). Type checking in Dark
In most FP compilers, your whole program either compiles or it doesn’t, making it difficult to make small scale changes.

Source: medium.com

What Is the Human Microbiome, Exactly?

What Is the Human Microbiome, Exactly?

And while scientists have known about the existence of some microorganisms on and in the human body since the discovery of E. coli, the magnitude and importance of the microbiome has only recently begun to come to light. Two biologists, Nicolae Morar and Brendan Bohannan, of the University of Oregon, recently surveyed the metaphors scientists use to talk about the microbiome (an “organ” or a “part of the immune system”) and the human-microbiome complex (a “superorganism,” a “holobiont,” or an “ecosystem”). So if scientists have discovered something so essential to human health and development that it truly is a part of the human body, it is reasonable to expect that we will be able to think about it the same way we think about other parts of the body.

Source: nautil.us