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π An example of quantum-hard classically-implementable asymmetric crypto
NTRU is an open source public-key cryptosystem that uses lattice-based cryptography to encrypt and decrypt data. It consists of two algorithms: NTRUEncrypt, which is used for encryption, and NTRUSign, which is used for digital signatures. Unlike other popular public-key cryptosystems, it is resistant to attacks using Shor's algorithm and its performance has been shown to be significantly better. NTRU was patented but was placed in public domain in 2017, and can be used by software under the GPL.
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- "An example of quantum-hard classically-implementable asymmetric crypto" | 2013-02-03 | 41 Upvotes 19 Comments
π Comparison of parser generators
This is a list of notable lexer generators and parser generators for various language classes.
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- "Comparison of parser generators" | 2013-01-27 | 25 Upvotes 11 Comments
π Universal Disk Format
Universal Disk Format (UDF) is a profile of the specification known as ISO/IEC 13346 and ECMA-167 and is an open vendor-neutral file system for computer data storage for a broad range of media. In practice, it has been most widely used for DVDs and newer optical disc formats, supplanting ISO 9660. Due to its design, it is very well suited to incremental updates on both recordable and (re)writable optical media. UDF is developed and maintained by the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA).
Normally, authoring software will master a UDF file system in a batch process and write it to optical media in a single pass. But when packet writing to rewritable media, such as CD-RW, UDF allows files to be created, deleted and changed on-disc just as a general-purpose filesystem would on removable media like floppy disks and flash drives. This is also possible on write-once media, such as CD-R, but in that case the space occupied by the deleted files cannot be reclaimed (and instead becomes inaccessible).
Multi-session mastering is also possible in UDF, though some implementations may be unable to read disks with multiple sessions.
Discussed on
- "Universal Disk Format" | 2013-01-20 | 10 Upvotes 10 Comments
π Y Combinator cofounder was convicted under CFAA in 1990
Robert Tappan Morris (born November 8, 1965) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is best known for creating the Morris worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet.
Morris was prosecuted for releasing the worm, and became the first person convicted under the then-new Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He went on to co-found the online store Viaweb, one of the first web-based applications, and later the funding firm Y Combinatorβboth with Paul Graham.
He later joined the faculty in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received tenure in 2006. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2019.
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- "Y Combinator cofounder was convicted under CFAA in 1990" | 2013-01-18 | 171 Upvotes 71 Comments
π Andreas Raab passed away
The Squeak programming language is a dialect of Smalltalk. It is object-oriented, class-based, and reflective.
It was derived directly from Smalltalk-80 by a group at Apple Computer that included some of the original Smalltalk-80 developers. Its development was continued by the same group at Walt Disney Imagineering, where it was intended for use in internal Disney projects. Later on the group moved on to be supported by HP labs, SAP Labs and most recently Y Combinator.
Squeak is cross-platform. Programs produced on one platform run bit-identical on all other platforms, and versions are available for many platforms including the obvious Windows/macOS/linux versions. The Squeak system includes code for generating a new version of the virtual machine (VM) on which it runs. It also includes a VM simulator written in Squeak. For these reasons, it is easily ported.
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- "Andreas Raab passed away" | 2013-01-17 | 19 Upvotes 2 Comments
π The If-by-whiskey fallacy
In political discourse, if-by-whiskey is a relativist fallacy in which the speaker's position is contingent on the listener's opinion. An if-by-whiskey argument implemented through doublespeak appears to affirm both sides of an issue, and agrees with whichever side the listener supports, in effect taking a position without taking a position. The statement typically uses words with strongly positive or negative connotations (e.g., terrorist as negative and freedom fighter as positive).
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- "The If-by-whiskey fallacy" | 2013-01-16 | 268 Upvotes 97 Comments
π Ilya Zhitomirskiy
Ilya Zhitomirskiy (12 October 1989 β 12 November 2011) was a Russian-American software developer and entrepreneur. Zhitomirskiy was a co-founder and developer of the Diaspora social network and the Diaspora free software that powers it.
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- "Ilya Zhitomirskiy" | 2013-01-13 | 86 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Jonathan James
Jonathan Joseph James (December 12, 1983 β May 18, 2008) was an American hacker who was the first juvenile incarcerated for cybercrime in the United States. The South Florida native was 15 years old at the time of the first offense and 16 years old on the date of his sentencing. He died at his Pinecrest, Florida home on May 18, 2008, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
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- "Jonathan James" | 2013-01-13 | 366 Upvotes 118 Comments
π Wikipedia entry for Aaron Swartz-founded PAC was deleted the day he died
Demand Progress is an internet activist-related entity encompassing a 501(c)4 arm sponsored by the 1630 Fund and a 501(c)3 arm sponsored by the New Venture Fund. It specializes in online-intensive and other grassroots activism to support Internet freedom, civil liberties, transparency, and human rights, and in opposition to censorship and corporate control of government. The organization was founded through a petition in opposition to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, sparking the movement that eventually defeated COICA's successor bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act, two highly controversial pieces of United States legislation.
The organization has continued to fight for such causes in the wake of the successful shelving of these two acts. Demand Progress has also played key roles in forwarding the passage of net neutrality rules, blocking expansion of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, under which co-founder Aaron Swartz was indicted, and other key legislative efforts. Estimated membership numbers in early 2015 weigh in at over two million. As of late 2013, the organization encompasses the Demand Progress, Rootstrikers and Watchdog.net wings/brands.
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- "Wikipedia entry for Aaron Swartz-founded PAC was deleted the day he died" | 2013-01-13 | 26 Upvotes 5 Comments
π Judy arrays are patented
In computer science, a Judy array is a data structure implementing a type of associative array with high performance and low memory usage. Unlike most other key-value stores, Judy arrays use no hashing, leverage compression on their keys (which may be integers or strings), and can efficiently represent sparse data, that is, they may have large ranges of unassigned indices without greatly increasing memory usage or processing time. They are designed to remain efficient even on structures with sizes in the peta-element range, with performance scaling on the order of O(log n). Roughly speaking, Judy arrays are highly optimized 256-ary radix trees.
Judy trees are usually faster than AVL trees, B-trees, hash tables and skip lists because they are highly optimized to maximize usage of the CPU cache. In addition, they require no tree balancing and no hashing algorithm is used.
The Judy array was invented by Douglas Baskins and named after his sister.
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- "Judy arrays are patented" | 2013-01-11 | 42 Upvotes 56 Comments