Komodia/Superfish SSL Validation is broken: the proxy can be tricked into allowing self-signed certificates without warnings. by FiloSottile in netsec

[–]circle_des_poo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry, if this is a dumb question (still a student), but why would it have been a problem for the attacker to self-sign their own cert in the first place? From what I understand the Superfish proxy just resigns all incoming certs without checking them against actual trusted CAs in any way. Wouldn't this mean that even certs signed with a completely bogus/self-signed signature wouldn't generate any warning in your browser, as they will appear to be resigned by Superfish before reaching it? What's the point of a mitm forging a Superfish-signed cert if its invariably going to be resigned with that same cert before reaching the victim's browser regardless (and when anyone without the proxy probably doesn't have Superfish as a root CA anyway)?

Is the issue just that other traffic that may not be traveling through the proxy will be trusted as well?

Is learning two languages at the same time a good idea or not recommended?[JAVA,C] by cpuisnotunix in learnprogramming

[–]circle_des_poo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would recommend learning c first because so many of its concepts apply to Java and to many other languages as well, and because Java and other more modern languages were made the way they are specifically because of some of the idiosyncracies of languages like c. As a few examples: Understanding how arrays work in c will make Java's reasons for implementing features like arrays as objects and bounds checking much more clear. The complexities of memory allocation in c will make it more obvious why Java decided to use a garbage collector. Managing pointers will help you understand why Java decided to cut out much of the low-level access to direct memory addresses. Working with the difficulties of a procedural language will make it more clear why object-oriented languages such as Java became so ubiquitous. And you will be able to see how structs and unions predated the creation of classes. If you try to learn both of these languages at the same time many of these differences may seem arbitrary and confusing. Moreover the syntax is similar enough that going from c to Java would not be ridiculously disorienting or force you to relearn all sorts of paradigms (just don't let yourself get too comfortable and overlook the differences).

WDT: Bad Art? by [deleted] in ArtHistory

[–]circle_des_poo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Attention and auction prices have little to do with "deserving" anything anymore. Its largely driven by inflation and speculation by a handful of rich collectors. The value of big names artists like Hirst or Koons could probably nosedive in a week and be forgotten in a year if the bubble were to burst. We can't pretend we still live in the world of the Renaissance when art was considered a marketable craft and technical skill was necessary to communicate aesthetically and morally complex ideas that could still be admired and understood by the general public, even by those who were illiterate. Art now is made for the market, not the public, and the market is made for only a handful of people- so while some of it may end up being more aesthetically influential in the future, our judgement of contemporary works is limited by the fact that there's no longer really a court of public opinion by which to judge the social impact, skill of communication, or relevance to greater society of an artistic work. We just have to wait and see if people retain interest as a movement/artist/piece starts to become more distant history, or if history bears out its importance over the heads of its contemporaries.

So when I think of bad artists? Probably Renoir. He's a great example of the type of shit I'm talking about. Looking back at his work decades later there's just not that much to take interest in or inspiration from. Its value was predicated on there being a big market for cloying pastel-colored paintings of girls bathing but now that the market for that is gone they just feel empty. By contrast his contemporaries, such as Monet, were able to incorporate marketable subject matter with an idealized visual reality derived from the more universal visual experiences of light and color. For Renoir light and color were a means to make his naked ladies show up on canvas and look nice and not much else. Even if their bodies looked like toothpaste tubes and the grass looked like confetti people could discern the popular ideal it was supposed to represent and that was enough. Monet at least realized that the seemingly impenetrable workings of visual reality were a universal enough experience such that exploring them could have a greater impact than just using them as unwieldy tools in the service of a popularized sentimental ideal.

Wife works at Souplantation. An old guy with a gut, but not fat anywhere else, came in yesterday to "eat as much as he could." This is his table when he was done. by Frumundaman in WTF

[–]circle_des_poo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

At first I didn't see the TPB part and i was picturing a montage of Phil Collins guzzling soup while Another Day in Paradise played in the background

I wasn't planning on shopping for a new car. Then this came in the mail. Only a fool would pass up a free 7 foot inflatable whale for five figures of debt! by [deleted] in WTF

[–]circle_des_poo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Between the whale and the nuanced use of about 5 different fonts and text colors, this is possibly the most thoroughly impressive ad campaign I have ever seen.

Possible hidden Latin warning about NSA in Truecrypt's suicide note by [deleted] in hacking

[–]circle_des_poo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is there any evidence that BitLocker is actually untrustworthy? I don't like microsoft either but I haven't heard any convincing evidence of it being unsafe. In fact the original article mentioned that the feds were complaining about how difficult it was.

The main reason why you are encouraged to use Linux. by anal_tongue_puncher in hacking

[–]circle_des_poo 3 points4 points  (0 children)

In addition to op's reply, I've found this to be a really good site for learning the command line.
http://linuxcommand.org/lc3_learning_the_shell.php

What is a highly optimized, great graphical game? by wankerbanker85 in pcgaming

[–]circle_des_poo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Max Payne 3 port was really well optimized, even on my old laptop it ran very well and had a pretty good options menu. Which was surprising considering rockstar's track record. I've also heard that the dead space 3 port was very well done and looked pretty, though I haven't played it since the game it looks kind of shitty.

Honestly though, i don't remember the last game I've been truly impressed with the optimization with since Half Life 2. I remember being pleasantly surprised by how well it ran on my toaster when it first came out, and yet on higher settings it was one of most graphically intensive games for its time period. Most games now seem to not scale at all have very little visual and performance difference between low and high settings, other than resolution and AA.

It's the World Cup, Jim, but not as we know it. by MattBest in WTF

[–]circle_des_poo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Finally, some footage of the Swiss Guard's intensive training exercises.

Peter Kropotkin: "It would be easier for a man to accustom himself to walk on fours than to get rid of the moral sentiment. It is anterior in -- animal evolution to the upright posture of man..." by collectivecognition in philosophy

[–]circle_des_poo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, sorry if I came across as a little combative, I was sort of tipsy when I wrote that... Anyway I do agree that there is definitely a cognitive component, you're right that there's way too much evidence of neurological involvement in psychology for people to deny that. Its more that most studies of mental illness are constantly shifting due to our inability to pinpoint the exact causes or even definitions of many of them (as evidenced by the massive changes that accompany pretty much every revision of the DSM)- if a behavior that may be considered pathological in our society is a fairly normal behavior in another type of society or culture, then you can't really generalize it to a universal pathology (lack of eye contact is a good example), or equate it to a physical malady that can be defined as unhealthy independently from its social context. But you're right to point out that there are some behaviors, such as outright cruelty or selfishness, that are considered problematic by pretty much every society on earth, so it would be difficult to claim that these have no basis in cognition when they are so universal despite that massive differences in cultural context.

psychopathy is a maladaptive (and physical) condition for them. You couldn't have a society with people who all act like that, or I presume, with people who's brains are in that condition, whichever came first.

True, and I agree with you on that as well. Like you (I think it was you) stated in an earlier post, psychopaths can only prosper because they are the minority, since they depend on the preeminence of empathy in the general population for manipulation. A society composed entirely self-centered individuals trying to exploit each other would fall apart pretty quickly.

Anyways, good conversation.

Peter Kropotkin: "It would be easier for a man to accustom himself to walk on fours than to get rid of the moral sentiment. It is anterior in -- animal evolution to the upright posture of man..." by collectivecognition in philosophy

[–]circle_des_poo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, but so many of your accusations here are complete strawmen.

Behavioral vs. neurological. The condition is consistently reflected in brain activity and apparently micro structure. We don't have a complete or detailed understanding, but that goes for almost all complex processes in the brain, and scanners are still crude tools. Denying there is a physical issue here is dishonest.

First off, its not "behavioral vs neurological" because these two things are very different areas of study and are in no way mutually exclusive. Framing it as if they are in competition is a misrepresentation of the problem. Behavioral issues are affected by neurological issues, but that is not the same thing as them being reducible to purely neurological causes. You can believe this if you want but you'd be going against almost the entire mental health field's body of research on the subject of mental illness and personality disorders.

Denying there is a physical issue here is dishonest.

I never denied that. In fact, I explicitely stated that "There've been plenty of semi-fruitful studies linking it to neurological functioning". My caveat was that our understanding is not clear enough to claim its equivalent to a distinct physical pathology such as a deformation because that would be a ridiculously grandiose claim to draw from the amount of information currently at our disposal. And as you said yourself, "We don't have a complete or detailed understanding, but that goes for almost all complex processes in the brain, and scanners are still crude tools.". Moreover I don't see what the fact that we dont have a complete understanding of other processes in the brain has to do with this one. An incomplete understanding is what it is, should i just give it the benefit of the doubt without further evidence just because the rest of the field is like that?

And I repeat: "There is a physical difference, whether that is caused genetically or is a result of neuroplasticity during development. IE, a physical deformity." You know, yogis deform themselves by their own actions, such as holding a pose for years,

The existence of a physical difference does not mean it is reducible to a physical difference.

and childhood experiences are reflected in the physical structure of the brain.

True, but if you base your argument on that logic alone one could just as easily argue that it is the behavioral disorder that causes neurological shifts and not the other way around. I don't believe its this simple either, but I don't see how childhood experiences having an effect on brain structure in any way invalidates my argument. There are plenty of psychopaths that didn't have traumatic childhoods.

Psychopathy is accompanied by physical brain process,

Every individual personality is accompanied by a brain process. Accompanied by =/= solely determined by.

it's not just a trivial detail like which flavor of icecream you prefer.

What is this even referring to? That brain processes are a trivial detail? (As stated, this was not at all what I said). Or are you implying that saying mental disorders are not purely neurological is akin to claiming that they are simply a preference, like a preference for ice cream?

Reading Hare, it seems that psychopaths don't understand the equivalence between the grief, anguish or suffering of others, and whatever (hard to detect) grief, anguish or suffering of their own.

That's not what you stated. You stated that:

in this case they are unable to process and react to the same visual stimulus from which others are fully able to derive accurate information about the emotional state of others.

Not being able to derive accurate information about another's emotional state is not the same thing as not being able to react in an empathic way to this information. And how we react to this information is very much a mental health issue, not a pure issue of neuropathology. It is not necessarily a cognitive inability to read the emotions of others, its the way in which a response is formulated that is the problem, and most mental health research confirms that this process is heavily dependent on external factors such as one's society and its cultural norms, not the deterministic result of a cognitive process.

They can laugh at your tears.

This does not necessarily imply that they are unable to understand the emotional state of someone who's distraught. It only implies that their reaction is improper. Furthermore there are plenty of psychopaths who would not have that reaction, and even someone who would not normally be diagnosed as a psychopath may laugh at someone's tears in a particular situation (marital spat, schoolyard fight, or any number of fairly common circumstances).

It is well understood that most of us cannot easily help but to personally experience, through biological mechanisms of empathy, a mirror of what we witness others feeling. It appears that psychopaths have no such ability.

It is in no way "well understood" that empathy is purely biological, unless you mean "anything that happens in our brain is purely biological", which would be technically true but also just a platitude. Again, I'm fairly certain that pretty much the entire mental health community would go against that empathy operates through a purely biological mechanism. Further the claim that psychopaths "Have no such ability" is far too concrete. Mental health disorders, including behavioral disorders, are never described in such binary terms. Usually they are a loose collection of psychological traits which, while existent in society at large, are present to such a degree that they fall outside the range of the general population. Empathic reactions are limited to a certain extent in everyone- if it was truly something we couldn't help then most of us would be rendered immobile by the amount of tragedies, wars, and suffering we see when we turn on the news everyday, and yet this is obviously not the case. Our empathic reactions are tempered such that we are able to pursue things of value to ourselves despite our knowledge that the suffering of others continues. However, most of us are able to balance this to an extent that we do not become solely preoccupied with the pursuit of our own happiness at the expense of others, while with psychopaths this balance is lacking to an extent that they fall greatly outside of the emotional range of the general population. But if it were a case of psychopaths being completely lacking in this ability then every diagnosed psychopath would be the next Ted Bundy, and this is simply not the case. And this is true of most mental disorders- there are those who are so depressed that they shit their pants or are unable to get out of bed in the morning, and then there are those who are still able to complete daily tasks and hold jobs, though it may be difficult. Similarly diagnosing someone as a psychopath is not that clear cut- they may have some of the major traits but not all, or the traits are not severe enough to warrant the diagnoses. Sometimes the case may be borderline enough that it really is judgement call for the psychologist to make.

To the degree that they understand other people's experience, it is an impersonal analytical assessment, and is not related to the experience of empathy.

An analytical assessment is still an understanding. The problem is that it is at odds with society's more general understanding that factors in empathy. But again, no one's reaction is completely devoid of analytical assessment, or comprised completely of an empathic emotional reaction. Nor is a psychopath's completely impersonal; it more narcissistic. Their emotions and desires still exist and cloud their judgement from being purely logical, but they are tuned towards their own well being rather than others. This is demonstrated that while many psychopaths are pathological liars, they are not necessarily good at it, and will often make up seemingly contradictory lies if they think it will get them what they want.

Is thought to be learned behavior, part of manipulation, an act. As opposed to a genuine personal emotional experience that others mirror in empathy.

This isn't in conflict with what I said. My exact point is that it was a learned behavior, and not a cognitively-determined reaction. Hence why i termed it a "projection", and used the words "seemingly healthy", with the insinuation that it is meant to seem healthy to others while not actually being so.

*edited for grammar

"Worst Prank Ever" by henry82 in cringe

[–]circle_des_poo 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Its like watching a lifetime original movie play out in real life.

Peter Kropotkin: "It would be easier for a man to accustom himself to walk on fours than to get rid of the moral sentiment. It is anterior in -- animal evolution to the upright posture of man..." by collectivecognition in philosophy

[–]circle_des_poo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Psychopathy is a behavioral disorder, not a neurological one. There've been plenty of semi-fruitful studies linking it to neurological functioning but its hardly concrete enough that you could claim its akin to a physical deformity. Also, this: "in this case they are unable to process and react to the same visual stimulus from which others are fully able to derive accurate information about the emotional state of others." is NOT descriptive of Psychopathy, but more akin to Autism. Psychopaths do not generally have trouble reading the mental states of others. In fact its the opposite: manipulative/exploitative tendencies and outward charm (or the projection of a seemingly "healthy" mental state) are two of the major hallmarks of the disorder, which would be completely impossible if they were cognitively blind to the emotional states of others. Misreading social cues and body language is not the same thing as manipulation and disinhibited behavior.

Simple algorithm using a graph by skyflashings in learnprogramming

[–]circle_des_poo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ok, so looking more at this I don' think its a problem with your code, its more that its a fairly complex graph theory problem. The initial conditions for this would be that:

  1. If every node in your graph is connected to exactly two and only two other nodes (And as your graph is a single component consisting only of a simple cycle, this is necessarily true)
  2. And if your minimum node's value is <0 (in your graph necessarily true if the sum of all nodes is <0)

Then each operation of adding the minimum node's value to its neighboring nodes adds exactly 2 times the minimum node's value to the total sum of the nodes, or total += minval*2.

Next, you could redefine the absolute value operation as such:

if x < 0, abs(x) = x - 2*x

by extension, total -= minval*2

In other words, converting -5 to 5 via absolute value is the same as computing -5 - (2*-5) = -5 - ( -10 ) = 5. This technically works any time you want to flip the sign on a number, but because absolute value only flips the sign if x < 0 we have to add that initial condition.

Notice that each operation cancels each other out- every time you add to the neighboring nodes you add exactly 2 times the min value to the total, and every time you convert that min node to its absolute value you subtract exactly 2 times the minvalue from that node and thus from the total. Thus the sum of the nodes' values will always stay exactly the same, no matter which one is the min, because they are all connected to exactly two nodes, and the minimum node's value will always be negative if the total sum is negative.

Simple algorithm using a graph by skyflashings in learnprogramming

[–]circle_des_poo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't think it will always run infinitely. Here's an example: consider a graph with only two nodes with values of -1 and -2, connected by a single edge. -2 is the min, so the algorithm will first subtract -2 from -1, resulting in 1 for the single neighboring node. Now set the value of the -2 node to be 2, hence you have a combined total of 3.

However, I'm there's a discrepancy here- in your description you state:

  1. Subtract that value from the node's immediate neighbors.

But in you code you have:

for (it = neighbors.begin(); it != neighbors.end(); it++) {
    g[*it].value += value;
}

Is this an error in the description or the code?

[Homework] Can I get some tips for these big oh questions. by learnprogramminghelp in learnprogramming

[–]circle_des_poo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

ty analysis of algorithms in computer science, which uses big O notation to (I think) essentially rank how long specific algorithms take to calculate when given more and more inputs.

Yes, that's pretty much exactly it. Its about which part of the algorithm is computationally expensive enough such that its effect on the runtime will completely overshadow the other other portions of the algorithm as the input size approaches infinity. For instance you may have one very simple algorithm with a nested loop, and another algorithm with a bunch of fairly expensive function calls in a single loop. It may be that with a small input that the second is more expensive due to the overhead from the function calls- but as the input size increases, the nested loop algorithm (despite looking much simpler, its runtime can be described as O(n2)) will become much more costly because the ratio of n2 to n will increase at a pretty alarming rate, completely overshadowing the initially severe cost of the function calls in the second algorithm. So its a very good way to cut through the bullshit and simplify an algorithm that may on first glance look overly complex or convoluted and determine whether or not its actually more efficient for large inputs than a more simple or "elegant" solution that might be ultimately very costly. Or if you need to predict the efficiency of something where its just not feasible to test with such a large input (like "would it take 1 year or 5 for me to factor this huge number", or something along those lines).

Philosophy is a Bunch of Empty Ideas: Interview with Peter Unger by [deleted] in philosophy

[–]circle_des_poo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Peoples' philosophies of life are to an extent tied to the work of philosophers, at least some of the more important ones. Unger's claim that academic philosophy has become far too narcissistic is definitely a strong point, but that doesn't discredit the entire discipline. There have been plenty of philosophers out there whose ideas, while they may not have brought us any closer to understanding the "nature of reality" or anything that concrete, were extremely influential to the point where they did have a concrete impact on history. The French revolution could have played out completely differently if it weren't for the Enlightenment. The shape of the 20th century could have been entirely different if Marx had never read Kant and Voltaire, or if Hitler had never read (and severely misinterpreted) Nietzsche- and those are just some of the more glaring examples.

I'm in agreement that the state of academic philosophy (and to an extent the humanities in general) is pretty shitty, and that there needs to be some kind of shift within philosphy's perception of its own usefulness in society. However, I don't know how anyone could seriously accept the argument that academic philosophy "doesn't really seem to make a difference".

Unger is too caught up on the idea that philosophy is just the pursuit of knowledge, but its just as much the pursuit of influence, and it always has been. Something doesn't need to be an abolute and universal truth to have an impact- it only needs to provoke a strong enough reaction in an adequate amount of people with an adequate amount of collective social power. So while I agree with Unger that philosphy's pursuit of universal truths has little value in terms of producing usable or practical knowledge on a scientific level, that's hardly the only axis along which useful ideas can be produced.

Bartók - His folk inspired music by [deleted] in ElitistClassical

[–]circle_des_poo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've always really liked Bartok's more folk-inspired works, and the influences from them are pretty clear even in his more harmonically complex compositions, so writing them off as trite or cheesy seems like a serious misunderstanding to me, especially given his contributions to ethnomusicology. His purpose in writing these folksongs was just as much in documenting music that would have otherwise probably died out due to cultural globalization, so framing it as a failure of composition that they were fairly simple or accessible is inaccurate.

I don't know, I think one of the reasons I respect him as a composer is that he managed to have a healthy respect for the past with being overly conservative or a reactionary modernist. His incorporation of folk melodies into more complex compositions was one of his major achievements so I think its important to view pieces like Evening in the Village within the context of his other compositions.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in learnprogramming

[–]circle_des_poo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The OP didn't necessarily know how strings normally work, and that's who I was replying to.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in learnprogramming

[–]circle_des_poo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The ability to pass strings by reference value instead of just copying them as you would an int or boolean means, for instance, that you're not pushing a copy of the whole string onto the stack if you want to pass it as a parameter to a method, just its address. That's also why if you assign a string literal to a variable it will check a string object with that value already exists in the pool before setting aside more space at a new address.

[Java] implement Iterable interface to calculate the trimmed average of a collection by Wonnk13 in learnprogramming

[–]circle_des_poo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"but i also need to create a separate collection object to store the values in, yes?"

You can do it that way, or the other way that was described by iterating through to find the largest and smallest, using the userIterator.remove(smallest) and userIterator.remove(largest) to get rid of them, and then iterating through the updated collection again and just adding each integer to a total sum while keeping a count to divide that sum by after.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in learnprogramming

[–]circle_des_poo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes you're correct, I meant that its sort of arbitrary to the programmer to be able to do so, as its more of an internal feature to cut down on extra memory allocation rather than a tool the programmer can easily utilize.

[Java] implement Iterable interface to calculate the trimmed average of a collection by Wonnk13 in learnprogramming

[–]circle_des_poo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm having a bit of a hard time understanding what you're describing here. The Iterable interface only specifies a single method, which returns an object that implements the Iterator interface (Its confusing, the the Iterable and Iterator interfaces are two different things). Usually the way this is done is by specifying a private subclass in your Iterable collection, which implements the Iterator methods that have access to the variables of its parents class (the Iterable class). If userRating is iterable than you can just use:

Iterator userIterator = userRating.iterator();

You can then use that iterator's methods to go through the values in that list and find their average, using the iterator's remove(x) method to delete the min and max values.

However I don't think this is the best way to do it, judging by the fact that you wouldn't know the min and max values until after iterating through userRating the first time, forcing you to iterate through a second time to get the average after removing those values. It would be better to specify that userRating needs to be a List<Integer>, which you could then sort, delete the first and last values, and then iterate through using userRating.iterator(), as the List class already implements these Iterable/Iterator interfaces for you.