OP here. HN moderators are right in flagging the post. Not because of the content of the Wikipedia article, but because of the plenty of vitriolic comments it caused. Their posting policy probably has to do with such situations.
The idea was to consider the historical criticism of capitalism in a modern setting (e.g., how effective is the market in addressing economic inequality?). The discussion got out of control, though.
What about an app by some permanent federal election commission? Several countries have a Supreme Electoral Court, which is independent of political parties.
For instance, in Costa Rica (3.4 million voters) we just elected mayors nationwide and received trustworthy results within a couple of hours (reported using a party-independent app).
Caucuses are also run by the Supreme Electoral Court. Kind of an Election-as-a-service.
The party primaries are more or less independent from "real" elections. This is how the parties like it— the DNC argued in a lawsuit that they don't have any obligation to make the process fair.
What is the origin of STL? Has STL been conceived to be what it is now, that is "the" C++ Standard Library, or does it come from some other project? Could you tell us a history of STL?
Answer:
In 1976, still back in the USSR, I got a very serious case of food poisoning from eating raw fish. While in the hospital, in the state of delirium, I suddenly realized that the ability to add numbers in parallel depends on the fact that addition is associative. (So, putting it simply, STL is the result of a bacterial infection.) In other words, I realized that a parallel reduction algorithm is associated with a semigroup structure type. That is the fundamental point: algorithms are defined on algebraic structures. It took me another couple of years to realize that you have to extend the notion of structure by adding complexity requirements to regular axioms. And than it took 15 years to make it work. (I am still not sure that I have been successful in getting the point across to anybody outside the small circle of my friends.) I believe that iterator theories are as central to Computer Science as theories of rings or Banach spaces are central to Mathematics. Every time I would look at an algorithm I would try to find a structure on which it is defined. So what I wanted to do was to describe algorithms generically. That's what I like to do. I can spend a month working on a well known algorithm trying to find its generic representation. So far, I have been singularly unsuccessful in explaining to people that this is an important activity. But, somehow, the result of the activity - STL - became quite successful.
«The decision to learn a foreign language is to me an act of friendship. It is indeed a holding out of the hand. It’s not just a route to negotiation. It’s also to get to know you better, to draw closer to you and your culture, your social manners and your way of thinking. And the decision to teach a foreign language is an act of commitment, generosity and mediation.»
«"Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out". Yes, that quote can be found on page 207 of The Design and Evolution of C++. And no, that smaller and cleaner language is not Java or C#. The quote occurs in a section entitled "Beyond Files and Syntax". I was pointing out that the C++ semantics is much cleaner than its syntax. I was thinking of programming styles, libraries and programming environments that emphasized the cleaner and more effective practices over archaic uses focused on the low-level aspects of C.»
Reasons behind the kind of terrorism for which mass surveillance is enforced (e.g., Muslim fundamentalists against American interests) have deep historical roots, too messy to be addressed.
Britain and France had geopolitical and business interests in the Middle East since the 18-19th century. America since the 20th, when oil suddenly had all the spotlight.
Fundamentalists are convinced that "the West" is the Devil on Earth. No political force can pacify fundamentalists nor avoid future generations.
You're conveniently ignoring the fact that the US has historically ruined entire countries for multiple generations just to benefit itself. Maybe if we'd stop carpet bombing other countries we'd have fewer people that hate us.
Most of the problems in the Middle East, at least with regards to them hating the US, are because the US did something to directly make them hate the US. Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan - at least in their current iterations - are all problems the US created. This is barely even beginning to describe the list of atrocities the US has committed against other countries.
The US has terrorists because the US creates terrorists, sometimes from us terrorizing other countries that are too insignificant for the world to take notice.
If you think I'm being hyperbolic, look into the history of US drone strikes just for a very recent example of the US leveraging its military superiority to decimate other countries. What's interesting is it gets worse regardless of the president.
I'm not ignoring those facts about the destructive role of America in the Middle East. What I'm alluding to is that fundamentalists hating the West have way more "historical ammo" for their arguments than just pointing at the US. It's just that the current biggest offender is America (which makes it the main target for terrorism). Before that, it was Britain.
On a grand historical scale, the Powers That May at any given point in time become the main offender against those having something of value. Next time it'll probably be China (beginning with the "Security Theater" [1] in Xinjiang).
I'll focus on my CS major, even when I'll probably be over 40 when I finish (due to the several next crisis along the road).
In my last job, I found great joy in reverse engineering (interoperability with a quarter-century proprietary legacy system). I also find cryptography and cryptanalysis amusing (applied abstract algebra is nice).
I would like to focus on that career path. Job openings involving those areas are mostly security-related.
But I fear a possible toxicity in that adversarial role (i.e., last line of defense against a whole industry of malware and malicious actors). I can only imagine future burnouts and extended anxiety while dealing with the ever-increasing work demands.
How realistic is that gloomy scenario in InfoSec?
P.S. Cryptopals [1] and Dennis Yurichev's reverse engineering challenges [2] seem quite reasonable for practicing/learning.
There are plenty of Capture-the-Flag, Crackme, wargames, programming challenges, etc., but initially I'll do these.
The idea was to consider the historical criticism of capitalism in a modern setting (e.g., how effective is the market in addressing economic inequality?). The discussion got out of control, though.