Forgive my ignorance on this but does his assertion that a CSPRNG is all you need after an initial truly random seed, hold up against theoretical quantum attacks? If not, then I could see the need for very large/fast sources of entropy for OTP uses and such?
> Forgive my ignorance on this but does his assertion that a CSPRNG is all you need after an initial truly random seed, hold up against theoretical quantum attacks?
Yes, if you mean by "theoretical quantum attacks" the stuff we could run if we had a scalable quantum computer.
Those impact public key crypto. They do nothing to impact the security of RNGs.
It's true that the stream-cipher and/or hash-based CSPRNG constructions that are commonly used are not broken by quantum computing.
CRQCs impact more than just public key crypto though, and there's more than one way to design a CSPRNG, so it's not true in the general case that they have "no" impact on RNGs.
I believe that Blum Blum Shub, Blum–Micali and Dual_EC_DRBG (backdoor aside) would also be broken by a CRQC.
Technically correct, but the RNGs you're mentioning are essentially RNGs build on public key cryptography. And I don't think they're widely used, simply because they're slow and have no advantage over faster ones (the Dual EC stuff was, as far as I know, the only thing that was somewhat widely used, and, very obviously, nobody should be using that).
Grover’s algorithm gives a square root speedup on many symmetric algorithms. This isn’t a disaster: it means you have to simply double your key (or hash digest or seed) sizes. But not every symmetric PRG out there is careful about this: some older ones may use 128 bit keys.
One feature request: as I have never dug into the internals I don't know if this is feasible, but long ago Firefox had a very simple extension that exposed a button that could disable javascript (without a reload of the whole page). It appeared to be native or built-in capability as it used to be a config option if I remember correctly. I have not found anything that works well in current firefox, perhaps it's not technically possible anymore? But being able to disable javascript, ideally on per-tab basis, is super helpful.
This is a great way to frame it with the caveat that you've done a fair bit of homework to support your assertion. And the other thing I would add is context-aware time padding. The "deadline" should be adjusted to respect the bosses schedule AND the potential impact. i.e. if it could hit production, give them more time. If it can't easily be rolled back, give them more time, etc.
But in general, if you are an adult, competent at your job, taking initiative, and have spent a bit of time thinking through the second and possibly third order effects, this is great.
Probably most of so called software engineers consider themselves "competent". "Adults" are well aware of it, and apply to themselves, hence collect others opinion.
The first part of this, where you told it to ask YOU questions, rather than laboriously building prompts and context yourself was the magic ticket for me. And I doubt I would have stumbled on that sorta inverse logic on my own. Really great write up!
This is the key to a lot of my workflows as well. I'll usually tack some form of "ask me up to 5 questions to improve your understanding of what I'm trying to do here" onto the end of my initial messages. Over time I've noticed patterns in information I tend to leave out which has helped me improve my initial prompts, plus it often gets me thinking about aspects I hadn't considered yet.
The example prompts are useful. They not only reduced the activation energy required for me to start installing this habit in my personal workflows, but also inspired the notion that I can build a library of good prompts and easily implement them by turning them into TextExpander snippets.
P.S.: Extra credit for the Insane Clown Posse reference!
That's one of the key wins with o1-pro's deep research feature. The first thing it tends to do after you send a new prompt is ask you several questions, and they tend to be good ones.
One idea I really like here is asking the model to generate a todo list.
I add something like “ask me any clarifying questions” to my my initial prompts. For larger requests, it seems to start a dialogue of refinement before providing solutions.
Me to. I suspect its a combination of demographics and sub culture thing (I'm old, and out of the loop on a lot of pop culture and sub-variants). I have noticed a very high degree of nihilism and a sort of "morals are just a role you play in a game" kinda mentality with the younger crowd that looks and acts _very_ different to past generations though..
Plato allegedly said it better than you thoudands of years ago... and if you are "old", maybe he was talking about you? ;)
> What is happening to our young
people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?
All of this to say that generations judging each other are rarely objective and very prone to both confirmation bias and broad generalization.
But if are going to generalize, how about this, transgression is part of a healthy growth for most young people (we all test limits by crossing lines one time or an other, some more than others), and most old people (conveniently) forget that they were doing exactly the same with the tools they had at the time.
Let's take a step back and appreciate that societies around the world tend to become less violent and less criminal... when these trends might reverse we can start talking again about the decadence of young people and it's consequences.
So, in the context of the US, yes, those trends are reversing, so it is apropos to examine it (see article content). I am fully aware of the tendency of grumpy old people decrying the amoral youth, my point is that the degree of nihilsim seems qualitatively different than 70's burn-out, 80's goth, or 90's grunge, or what have you. It appears more like a kind of defeatism than rebellion (the more normal youth passtime). Who knows, maybe during the great depression the younger generation was in a similar place, don't know, not THAT old ;-) But it seems less a case of "those old peoples values aren't MY values" and more of a "there are no values" differnce than previous generatonal divides.
Surprised that generation who named themselves slackers gave birth to kids that also don’t have any vision and take pride in not caring about anything?
Also the group is so varied you can’t generalize of what the age group is about. If I think of young person I think of mrbeast or the kids who sit on the road to block the traffic cause they care immensly. I always thought the youth of today just hustle and influence and try to build it themselves and totally lack the ability to chill out. Happy to know there lurks some nihilists somewhere.
Even if it wasn't made up it, it would not be all that relevant IMO because it would not have to mean that "adults have always complained about youth but they always turn out fine", it could also mean "the quality of a society goes up and down over the centuries, in cycles, and both we and Plato/Socrates are/were on a downturn when things started going worse".
That’s an interesting step back, but stepping back further we can recognize that there is no single metrics to let us evaluate if some society is going up or down.
And also that "ceteris paribus sic stantibus" might be indispensable for growing scientific approaches, but irreconcilable gaps in world perception between generations is better taken as an anthropological constant across time than a minor insignificant detail.
I feel that stepping as far back as you do here will kill any meaningful discussion.
"There is no single metric" translates pretty much into "there is no objective meaning of life that can be proven".
In most discussions certain things are implied about shared values. E.g., fascism is bad and democracy good (plenty of people seem to disagree with this these days, but much written discussion, e.g. on HN, assume shared values anyway).
I heard a story yesterday from someone who's job involves dynamite. He had a vocational student tag along for a couple of weeks that would constantly stare at his phone and not pay any attention, causing some dangerous or at least inconvenient situations.
If you step enough back, who can say it is "bad" to get yourself blown up to pieces because you are too TikTok addicted to look around you? In everyday language we assume enough shared values to say this is "bad" though.
>"There is no single metric" translates pretty much into "there is no objective meaning of life that can be proven".
That seems a rather robust baseline, if "objective" means something like "absolute certainty on which we can practically leverage on to reach absolute understanding of everything we might have to deal with". That is, it’s one thing to admit there are some universal truths, it’s an other very different faith step to believe any human can ever be able to construct anything close to the latter.
>fascism is bad and democracy good (plenty of people seem to disagree with this these days, but much written discussion, e.g. on HN, assume shared values anyway).
I’m afraid that I observe the very same tendency in values evolution (I live in France for some context). Though contrary to what this threads focus on, I’m far more concerned with the extreme views that the oldest people in my acquaintances are moving to. No Tiktok on that side, but TV rolling news channel are not that much better. Probably my own HN addiction could be pointed at me just as well.
>In everyday language we assume enough shared values to say this is "bad" though.
Sure we agree here, but just because we assume something, it doesn’t make us correct and accurate.
It's obviously not going to be competing with prices from 60 years ago, it'll be competing with prices from today. Probably with first class tickets and private charter flights. I'm sure there's probably a suitable niche in there somewhere.
It's what a private jet charter costs now. I bet rich execs prefer that despite the longer flying time. Getting direct to your destination, not having to rub shoulders with random people, stuff like that. It's also what killed the Concorde. Not enough comfort for the price.
Thats not exactly true. The FCC911 and other government laws require the telcos to have access to location data and record calls/texts for warrants. The problem is both regulatory as well as commercial. It is unrealistic to expect the general public nor the government to go with real privacy for mobile phones. People want LE/firefighters to respond when they call 911. Most people want organized crime and other egregious crimes to be caught/prosecuted, etc. etc.
Nonsense. I kindly informed my teenage niece of the fact all her communications on her phone should be considered public, and the nature of Lawful Interception, and the tradeoffs she was opted into for the sakenof Law Enforcement's convenience.
She was not amused or empathetic to their plight in the slightest. Population of at least 2 I guess.
Make that population of 3. I'm not a fan either. But I'm also realistic. I treat the phone as what it is: malicious spyware. But I realize that most people want the convenience and the safety (of sorts) of dialing 911 and getting the right dispatch..
If law enforcement actually did their jobs, this would be more understandable. I don’t know about you or others’ experiences, but when I’ve called the police to report a crime (e.g. someone casually smashing car windows at 3p in the afternoon and stealing anything that isn’t bolted down), they never show up and usually just tell me to file a police report which of course never gets actioned. Seems pretty obvious to me that weakening encryption/opsec to “let the good guys in” is total nonsense and that there are blatant ulterior motives at play. To be clear I’m a strong proponent of good security practices and end to end encryption
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