Langner talks about his works at dissecting the infamous computer virus: beautiful in its elegance and subtlety.
Category: Notes
-
Ralph Langner: Cracking Stuxnet, a 21st-century cyber weapon
Ralph Langner: Cracking Stuxnet, a 21st-century cyber weapon -
“Rocks Breaks Scissors” by William Poundstone
Humans love to think we know what random is and that we can be random when we want to. As Poundstone demonstrates, we are far less random than we imagine and, interestingly enough, we have trouble identifying randomness when we see it. For example, consider the following string (taken from the book):
–||-|–|-|-|-|-|—|-|-|-|-|-|||-|-||-|-|-|-||-||
Mostly people would consider this to be fairly random sequence (with “-” and “|” having an equal chance of appearing). It is not. The “|” has a 75% chance of appearing. A truly random sequence might look like this:
|—-|-|||-|||-||—||——|||–||——-|–||-|-
One reason for our poor randomness skills is that we imagine that things should be uniform in their randomness. The first sequence looks more random because the two symbols alternate more frequently. Gamblers often experience this problem: a run has held steady so they bet that a contrary pattern must appear. True randomness means that each outcome has an equal chance of occurring during each iteration of an event. That is, seven heads in a row does not change the 50/50 odds that the next coin flip will be heads too.
The first half of the book is filled with quick rules and explanations for examining randomness in a variety of situations.
Interesting tidbit: When vetting numbers, look at the second digits. They usually should be fairly well distributed if they are natural. Odd spikes of over usage are signs that the numbers may have been tampered with.
-
Yasheng Huang: Does democracy stifle economic growth?
Huang argues that democracy does fuel economic growth but such growth can proceed much quicker when helped by spurts of authoritarianism. -
Larry Lessig: Laws that choke creativity
Lessig addresses the burgeoning copyright issues that we are seeing spawned by the internet. He argues that we need to strike a new balance between allowing the amateurs to engage in a “read/write” culture and protecting the copyright of artists without forcing modern creatives to run from the law. -
“Why We Make Mistakes” by Joseph T Hallinan
This book provides a solid overview of, and antidotes for, the most common reasons we make mistakes. Some of the more common reasons for mistakes (antidotes) include overconfidence (be less confident), unrecognized biases (take a step back to identify what is influencing your decision) and familiarity (have someone else take a look at your your project). Hallinan keeps the whole book light, but meaningful and includes many, often humorous, examples.
Interesting tidbit: Patients who had a reversible version of a surgery performed were more likely to be less happy than patients who underwent the permanent version of the surgery. Hallinan cites Loewenstein: “Hope impedes adaptation.” In other words, as long as we have a chance, we resist adapting even if it means sacrificing our own happiness.