christianbryant

As an Emacs user since the Nineties and holder of the view that Emacs _is_ my operating system, I simply can't relate to this on any level.

Now, I won't discriminate against the segment of the industry moving in this direction, but ask yourselves this question: Where is my personal power over my environment, over my code, and do I have the freedom to modify my work and the hardware I do it upon as I see fit? The model proposed and the assertion of the inevitable disappearance of the IDE and personal workspace is done with no consideration of those questions, or the psychology and methodologies of the experienced software engineer.

Of course, the points relating to security and environment stability are problems we all face, but they are also problems that have simple solutions within the existing software development ecosystem. And, I must say, if human verification and "fit for use" validation is not part of this process, then the flaws go beyond psychology and the freedom to tinker.

I saw someone post about Autology in HN last year and found the project interesting. I only had a chance to re-visit it and found this Lambda Days talk on the code. I stick to Emacs Lisp, yet found the ideas of interest.

https://github.com/Kimbsy/autology

Reading the article from the perspective of a non-mathematician the line that rang true for me was "I realized they derived joy, satisfaction, and meaning from the long journey toward understanding." My eldest child loves math and her whole life has been chaos except when she is solving math problems. I see that human element in science and I know deep down we need that.

I've been in the software industry for 30 years and I understand that sentiment perfectly on a personal level. However, also having used ChatGPT for the first time this year to help solve a technical problem, I was surprised to learn that feeling didn't go away. In fact, it was because I leaned on my experience and technical understanding to get to the point where I realized I needed help that I decided to try a new tool. I didn't feel any shame or disappointment in myself, rather I felt excited to learn something new that came out of the solution. It sent me on a new path of learning.

Now, that was research and not implementation. While plenty of code options were presented by ChatGPT, I analyzed the solution and educated myself from it. My final fix looked very different from the proposal because I do things a certain way, based on experience and learning from my many mistakes. In this scenario I was the secondary verification. My peers the tertiary. AI made the proposal, humans did the verification and could not have done so without cumulative knowledge and experience.

I have to assume that all fields utilizing AI will remain as they have always been, human education and experience will come first no matter what the tools available, because we are the ones impacted by the data produced by AI. As many math-oriented commenters here have already noted, human verification is a necessity and to do that, you must understand the discipline within which the data is being produced.

Personally, the idea of reaching solutions in math and computing (for example) exponentially beyond human capacity is exciting; I want certain answers before I die! But it still must be human-verified and the solutions should be for humans, not for machines, and not for "time to market". Repositories full of unvetted AI-generated code is bad enough, but once you start engineering structures, spacecraft and medicine strictly with AI, well...

I also appreciate discontinuities and while I won't comment on the data in the paper itself without cross-referencing, I will say that a couple of these examples hold true for me from applied observation over the years. When I was old enough to start caring about insurance for health and property, or became a parent and had to begin forecasting costs for college and what loans really represented, I began looking at observable data much differently. Working in the software industry, you begin to see the complicated systems at work at the C-Level, and the seemingly odd relationships with unrelated organizations start to become clear. Being an educated voter, a discerning consumer of products, and turning a critical eye on world news all require the ability to see processes, their patterns and the discontinuities within them. While there may not always be a useful explanation behind all of them, seeing them in the first place is essential to navigating so-called reality successfully.

The overall sentiment expressing the growing gap between software needs and hardware capabilities is sound. This is where FOSS projects shine who put deep thought into providing the same features modern users need into an OS that can intelligently utilize older computing resources. I've been in the industry since the Nineties and it still amazes me how many companies invest so little into backward-compatibility and performance during their OS and application design process.

I've had my Panasonic Toughbook (CF31-5) for almost 10 years and while it's a dinosaur to some, it's a major upgrade from what I had before in terms of portable computing. Its max memory is 16 GiB DDR3 SDRAM on an Intel Core i5-5300U. When I first bought it I tried Debian and Ubuntu, but even back then those ran slow. I installed Xubuntu and have run that ever since with no performance issues whatsoever.

Because I primarily use Emacs and TeX tools, writing Elisp and LaTeX, the system is more than enough for me. I've not played graphics-heavy games, run GPU-intensive UI or done any heavy data plotting. However, one benchmark I do have: I am able use the test automation framework required for my day job with ease. I run that software on Xubuntu because on my work-provided systems (Windows 11 and macOS Tahoe) the application crawls and is practically unusable.

Bedrock is the only Emacs "customization" project I've actually tried out since my GNU Emacs journey started in the Nineties. I am very simple in my setup and it was only in 2018 I started trying packages that I never used before to create some modes to manage tasks at work that dealt with commercial testing tools. It forced me to evaluate my init.el in ways I never imagined (which was, to be fair, getting unmanageable from decades of use). It was only this year I jumped onto System Crafters and saw the great work being done there by Guix hackers whose work I follow, and discovered Bedrock in the process. I'm still trying to navigate how it will best serve me but it has definitely changed my perspective from blindly updating a single file for all my many custom .el hacks and thinking more responsibly about how I code and how I manage my work environment. I highly recommend Bedrock to first-time or new-ish Emacs users who feel overwhelmed or who need a little organization in their environment. I particularly like the UI enhancements and have been using Avy for the first time. I'm already writing some code around Avy for a new mode and it seems to be the package I've been looking for. Even if you're a greybeard hacker like me Bedrock will be a great addition to your toolkit.

This open access study presents an application-specific instruction set processor (ASIP) design for the Kyber, Saber, and NewHope algorithms based on transport triggered architecture (TTA). While PQC algorithms are being standardized, one of the most critical issues is the development of efficient hardware architectures for them. Creating customized instruction set architectures (ISAs) is essential to ensure these algorithms can be used practically, especially in embedded systems.

The COVID-19 pandemic shows us how crucial patient empowerment can be in the healthcare ecosystem. Now, we know that scientific advancement, technology integration, and patient empowerment need to be orchestrated to realize future smart health technologies. In that effort, this paper unravels the Good (advantages), Bad (challenges/limitations), and Ugly (lacking patient empowerment) of the blockchain technology integration in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) paradigm in the existing healthcare landscape.

Definitely! I'm sure you've seen it, but check out his publications page. Quantum cryptography is where I find his ideas most interesting.

http://users.cms.caltech.edu/~vidick/publications/index.html

Even Kurzweil's updated ideas and projections in The Singularity is Near from around 2005 still make assumptions of humanity having a longer technology maturation period than 100 years. I actually have the same opinion as you when it comes to our time left if we can't make some global changes; it bums me out, having two girls who are not even in High School yet.

While I'm not totally on board with outlooks on a technological singularity a la Kurzweil and peers, what does it mean that there is no real representation of that idea here? For example, Kurzweil's "law of accelerating returns" where the speed of technological change increases exponentially has many flaws according to scientists I respect greatly, yet also has many hints at possible futures, ironically also according to scientists I respect greatly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

I agree with the core idea here, of developers reducing use of energy-pulling hardware and software resources. However, to both get interest moving and to ensure future participation, there should

1) be a solid plan on how to do it efficiently (HOWTOs),

2) a table of ideal targets (if your footprint is typically X then achieve Y or Z upon reduction, and

3) a public site where the actual results and data can be stored, studied and commented upon.

I feel to quantify this in a monetary way would bring support for the activity from non-developers as well, and perhaps lend to a shift in the way developers purchase hardware.

Two major factors that lead to hardware purchases are

1) software vendor minimum hardware requirements, and

2) hardware vendor advert strategies which often pull developers into buying more than they really need.

This global awareness week could end up making developers more aware of their actual hardware needs, and cause a shift in how companies actually purchase hardware. Done right, you could see a huge impact on the computer hardware market.

What kind of project are you working on with Arc? Or are you just having fun for now ;-)

Keep in mind that Arc is the start of something with long-term goals; further, it's part of a lifecycle that didn't necessarily start with Arc but with the first Lisp. PG points to an early essay titled "The Hundred-Year Language" [1] as an indicator of where Arc is intended to go and some future outlooks that might inspire more evolution.

I don't know that any programming language can be everything it needs to be from the outset, but it certainly needs inherent featured supporting longevity, a framework that supports change and evolution, while still having a pleasing and useful function that can be taken advantage of immediately.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html

My one major concern not outlined above is that of responsibility to end users who may not have resources with which to adjust when large repos are retired. Case in point: We assume users of forges are like us - that is, back up their own code, proficient enough to move to their own local repository if needed, etc. However, what if some of the developers using an online repo were something else. Highly hypothetical but imagine they came from a country where they could only code from a remote server and had to check in to some online forge to store their code (whether it's source like Python or updates to documentation - not all project members are coders). Imagine this user was a political fugitive or similar.

Now, it's not your legal responsibility as the originator or current curator of the repo to help this person out, of course, but in terms of the industry and our behavior as software engineers it seems we do owe some sense of permanence to things that feel more like infrastructure than simple personal websites. I’ve been very guilty myself of stepping “briefly” away from things knowing in the back of my mind I may never return. I continue to try to reform my attitudes online. Remember BerliOS, Google Code, and CodePlex? Gna! is merely one of several, not even the most used.

Realizing this might appear an attack against the Gna! project owners, I had to reach out and talk about this with them and identify this as merely a conversation starter. The loss of Gna! definitely has made me think more about the ecosystem we work within and whether we are doing everything the way we should be doing. How many users of GitHub might be working under frightening conditions to get code out to the world they could be arrested for writing? We don't know. I merely propose we might have a gap here in the process that does not acknowledge users who may rely greatly on some of our tools we offer for "free" and that when we retire them, something important could be lost in the process.

Note: Sylvain Beucler, formerly of the Gna! project and notably of many great projects like Savane and FusionForge, reminded me ArchiveTeam volunteers are often working behind the scenes to keep snapshots of retires sites such as Gna! when able. That project is currently headed by one of my favorite ASCII-oriented minds, Jason Scott of textfiles.com. They are linked to below.

https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Gna!

If you take a look at the code for HN written in Arc, you can compare it against other Lisp dialects. I point to this as it is possibly the most widely-used and familiar application to most here written in Arc.

https://github.com/wting/hackernews

This is a great place to start with understanding Arc, as the jump to Anarki (an Arc fork) will make more sense as it comes bundled with News - a Hacker News style app - which is fun to play with if you have experience with HN and want to try a variation of this site.

Working at UCLA I have an affinity for Ted Nelson and the early life of the Internet. I am also deeply interested in his ideas related to the interrelations in human knowledge. Perhaps I am a lover of things not celebrated (I sometimes work off an early version of the GNU Hurd and an OpenVMS system) but I feel he has ideas that actually should be. O'Reilly had a great article recently that invoked Ted Nelson I enjoyed:

The Intertwingularity is near: When humans transcend print media

https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-intertwingularity-is-near-...

I spend most of my days reading technical journals and books, so I like to take a break once in a while and read more general writing. The two below are the only books I pledged to finish this Summer.

1) Challenging Sociality: An Anthropology of Robots, Autism, and Attachment by Kathleen Richardson

From the Introduction: This book explores the development of humanoid robots for helping children with autism develop social skills based on fieldwork in the UK and the USA. Robotic scientists propose that robots can therapeutically help children with autism because there is a “special” affinity between them and mechanical things.

2) Wandering Towards a Goal: How Can Mindless Mathematical Laws Give Rise to Aims and Intention? Edited by Anthony Aguirre, Brendan Foster, Zeeya Merali

From the Introduction: This collection of prize-winning essays addresses the controversial question of how meaning and goals can emerge in a physical world governed by mathematical laws. What are the prerequisites for a system to have goals? What makes a physical process into a signal? Does eliminating the homunculus solve the problem?

The lead up to and spike in 2013 was likely partly due to the GNU project's 30th birthday. To celebrate, version 0.5 of the GNU Hurd was released September 2013. Also, it appears the 2012 and 2013 Summer of Code sessions had some influence. As I am very eager to use a pure GNU Hurd-based OS in future projects, I do hope we see more activity and interest. Summer of Code is a good idea and maybe simply celebrating every birthday moving forward with a hackathon would help (wink).

Zilliqa is pretty cool, actually. I read the whitepaper and found the pieces on Zilliqa consensus and incentivizing miners based on their sharding architecture that "allows the mining network to process transactions in parallel and reach high throughput" very interesting. A great example of tech that presents solid algorithms or functions that do real work, or that could set the stage for new future work, within the context of cryptocurrency.

If one compares IPO->ICO, in that context then the SingularityNET ICO may not seem to have to forecast of "profitability" that one would usually associate with a successful public offering. However, in the context of the purpose of the AGI Token they offer, the initial demand was high and in fact overshot, pointing to anticipation (or hype, but I believe it was genuine anticipation) for the coin. It sold 500 million tokens, reaching the ceiling in 24 hours. Sales dates were pushed to allow more sales due to overselling. That points to an initial success, I think.

Looking at the purpose of the AGI Token which is to create an open AI exchange (if I understand it correctly), where AI developers use their services in exchange for the AGI token, or for other services, then looking back at that anticipation and over-sale of tokens, it appears there are interested and active investors who are looking to make this coin work. To me, that is successful in comparison to simply having a Public Offering where lots of people invest, often to only lose that money later. This seems to have a purpose.

What points to current success, the "doing so well", is the more than decent ratings a large portion of ICO watchdog sites are giving it for now (although many ICO watchers acknowledge the level of hype to date has been high).

Looking at the current numbers, you're probably going to say "meh"; especially considering the ICO hype pushed the price up, then it dwindled down to a low ebb and flow. But that isn't why I see high expectation, still, for this coin, right? It still has intentional use built into it, and according to the website the Platform Beta Release is coming in the next month or so, at which time the coin will begin to do its work.

So, for me, "doing so well" means there was meaning behind the ICO beyond just economics, the interest was there and was overwhelming, the project has code tied to the coin that is going to go live soon and (from what I read) anticipation is still there within the AI community and the investors.

But again, I ask the question here because compared to the statistics in the article above, SingularityNET appears to be... doing well.

I'm in no way whatsoever connected with the SingularityNET ICO or project. I actually couldn't get on the whitelist but I'm curious if the underlying point of the ICO is why it "appears" to be doing better than your average one. Could it be a model for future projects and whether they decide to go IPO or ICO. Clearly more successful ICOs are good for the model in the long run.

In contrast, the ICO for SingularityNET has actually done quite well and received 5 times the amount of demand expected for their token sale; they postponed the end of their token sale date to properly handle the overwhelming demand. Feels most ICO sites are giving them 4/5 rating on average, but we'll how that goes. I think the reason this one in particular is doing so well is that the purpose of the sale feels useful, which is "to let anyone create, share, and monetize AI services at scale". According to them, the world’s first "decentralized AI network" has arrived.

Anyone have thoughts as to why this ICO could be different? ICO Drops says it was a whitelisted ICO:

https://icodrops.com/singularitynet/

Interesting note from the website: "While we are aware that the AGI token is currently being traded on some exchanges, we do not encourage or facilitate this exchange trading in any manner. Speculative secondary trading is against the spirit of the AGI token and SingularityNET project. We strongly discourage speculative secondary trading and officially ask AGI token holders to act accordingly."

Agreed. I do like the creative thinking here, though. And it makes one think about what an IM-Visor means for InfoSec outside this scenario; I'll be honest, I've not thought about it and I see all sorts of topics here worth exploration. For instance, what's to stop a malicious app to install and emulate the IM-Visor essentially intercept the data "acting" as the pre-IME defense stage?

I think the cool factor here is that they "propose a new idea, pre-IME, which guarantees that “Is this touch event a sensitive keystroke?” analysis will always access user touch events prior to the execution of any IME app code."

In the paper they note as "a pre-IME design, IM-Visor always recognizes and isolates sensitive keystrokes before the IMEs could access them. To achieve this, whenever a user intends to type in a soft keyboard, the STIE will be initialized to intercept touch events and analyze whether it is a sensitive keystroke."

This model is one that begs a matching and reversed exploration of "sensitive keystroke" emulation and whether such pre-IME analysis can be fooled.

Plus for this manufacturer, the Hygon Dhyana CPUs should work under GNU/Linux:

http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1806.1/00730.html

Having worked in tech for as long as I have, and being able to apply some of that human element of foresight based on "gut feeling" to what I read, I see a lot of the same sentiment echoed out there among the InfoSec talents who are in the trenches. I'm not the only one who sees the InfoSec talent shortage as being about people. Add more tools, add more people.

I would immediately be deemed suspect by that measure :-)

I have to beg a revision to this analysis of AI as a solution to the InfoSec industry skills shortage. Point of fact, the skills shortage in cybersecurity is no longer about a lack of bodies performing any of the automated data mining and intrusion detection functions AI is currently able to do, and may advance further in years to come, but actually about human beings with the right skillset to do what AI can never do. We are looking at human beings who can not only intelligently leverage "tools" like AI, pentesting toolkits like Kali Linux, and the myriad hacking/cracking soft and hardware tools out there, but also to think like and counter Black Hat human threats with similar skillsets.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service published an insightful paper "2018 Security Outlook - Potential Risks and Threats". In this paper they acknowledge that the skills shortage in cybersecurity will continue to be unsolved. In fact, they predict such a growth in automated tools with decision-making and other AI attributes and there is an embedded warning in this outlook that we can not blindly trust everything these systems produce. We need human beings as hackers, as analysts, as overseers of the AI armies predicted for 2017-2018 or we will lose control of the cyberwars we are currently managing.

To sell current and predicted AI tech as a solution to the security skills shortage is to suggest the problem is something other than it is. And if we suggest that, when AI is improved and proliferated, there will be a mistaken sense of comfort among some in the industry, and especially among those who are not "in the know" that will actually do more to threaten InfoSec as an industry, and the actual safety and security of our systems, in that it will create a vulnerability in the widening of the security skills hole - the human factor.

We love our tools, we love AI and we love technology. It will never be a solution to the ever-growing shortage in qualified human hackers desperately needed to fill seats in InfoSec roles across the needy customer base. All new tech needs human monitoring and if the AI as anticipated here comes to pass, you will need yet another large body of human assets to make it successful.

The question stems from a hypothetical problem. A person who works undercover, let's say, and has a fairly unique name, is concerned that their real name, if ever revealed, could be searched and then the associations to family and friends revealed from this search be used to either coerce the undercover person to work against the law, or simply to hurt the associated family and friends in retaliation for duty performed. The agency for which the undercover person works does not aid in any way the cleaning up of public data available against the person's true identity.