--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: '04a'
+title: On security
+date: May 29, 2016
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: cogitatio
+---
+
+It happens that I have some degree of familiarity with what people
+nowadays call "security", as at the moment of writing this essay I am
+pursuing my PhD[^1] in operating systems security, a topic which is
+currently quite fashionable, although it wasn't (as) fashionable when I
+started studying it[^2].
+
+Fashion aside, one must remember that security has existed as a term
+long before the appearance of computers. Let us defer to our friend
+Merriam-Webster:
+
+> Simple Definition of security
+>
+> : the state of being protected or safe from harm
+>
+> : things done to make people or places safe
+>
+> : the area in a place (such as an airport) where people are checked to
+> make sure they are not carrying weapons or other illegal materials
+
+For the moment we can leave aside the fact that the last definition is
+outrageously meant to educate plebs that they oughta become subject to
+controls in the airport, *or else*; even more simply put, security is
+that state where people don't need to fear invaders pillaging their
+goods, raping their wives and bombing their train stations. From this
+one may derive more specific definitions, such as that of security as a
+financial asset or as a property of computing systems.
+
+This stake being set in the ground, the educated citizen of the world
+must acknowledge that security is not something that can be
+mathematically or scientifically proven, despite several claims to the
+fact[^3]. Scientifically proving that "something is secure" is not much
+different from showing that masturbation causes skin degeneration: the
+maths might work in some spherical-chicken-in-vacuum cases, but they
+can, and if they can then they will fail in most real situations.
+
+That isn't to say that there is no such thing as an abstract definition
+or model of security. The most intuitive way to look at a system's
+security would be to find that which gives it resistance to outside
+forces. For example the membrane of a biological cell allows some
+substances to enter and exit it, but not all of them. Similarly, a
+computer that is physically disconnected from a network will be
+protected against malicious agents running on said network, as opposed
+to software running in the broken [cloud][cloud]. Similarly, a country
+with strict border policies will always be more secure than one allowing
+unconditional free passage[^4]. And so on.
+
+A fact often overlooked by today's [failingly][failure-marketing]
+[post-religious][post-religion] yet
+[politically correct][political-correctness] Western civilization is
+that there also exists a cultural definition of security. Cultural
+artifacts, starting from language and continuing with literature,
+philosophy, science and general knowledge and understanding of life, are
+what define a group and what separate it from other
+cultures[^5]. Dickens and Austen are products of British culture because
+by understanding them you will become somewhat more of an Englishperson,
+while the Russians can only be permeated by reading through Dostoyevsky,
+Pushkin, Tolstoy et al. Similarly, China is a strong country precisely
+because you do not easily understand their culture, while the North
+American post-culture -- or pop culture -- is a good example of poor
+culture, since it can be too easily permeated, understood and laughed at
+by almost everyone else, save Africa.
+
+This is also why my PhD thesis may prove to be in the end
+useless. Today's technical culture is erroneously trying to solve
+cultural issues using technical means[^6]: people bitch about privacy
+issues, but they use the all-snooping Facebook to communicate and
+ever-snooping Google to find things; they want to keep their data safe,
+but they use cloud services; ultimately, they prefer convenience at the
+cost of responsibility. The bad thing about this is that this is
+spreading through other fields (say, education), and the mind-numbingly
+worse thing is that nature induces (often hidden) costs for everything
+we do.
+
+The trade-off is simple, albeit not provable scientifically. One can
+either [choose to become human][humanity] and fight until the end of
+their days to get themselves removed from the tar pit that is inculture,
+or they can choose to trust Facebook, Google, or for that matter the Big
+Brothers that were/are Hitler, Stalin and NSA, and be left with nothing
+of their own. Or as a very wise man once said[^7]:
+
+> Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
+> temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
+
+[^1]: The reader must remember that PhD degrees don't hold the same
+ value as they did, say, fifty years ago. This is mainly due to
+ causes of [academic hogwash][hogwash].
+
+[^2]: This was a while before Heartbleed, Shellshock and their no less
+ damaging follow-ups. At the time people were only starting to
+ scratch the surface of Android's -- which is what people initially
+ thought would be a fundamentally "more secure" operating system --
+ [shortcomings][android], despite the fact that Android doesn't
+ really address any real fundamental issues currently being
+ researched in the field of [operating system design][os-design].
+
+[^3]: Back when I started my PhD, I was deeply fascinated by
+ seL4. Having grown a little, I now understand that employing an army
+ of mathematicians to solve the intractable problem of proving the
+ correctness of a kernel will neither protect against system
+ designers who misunderstand the OS kernel they're using, nor against
+ faulty hardware -- see Wojtczuk and Rutkowska's 2009 paper and
+ Domas' 2015 paper on Intel CPU exploits, to name only a couple of
+ examples.
+
+[^4]: In case you're wondering why the Schengen agreement is now proven
+ to be a failure. Also read [Popescu's post][trilema-schengen] on the
+ matter.
+
+[^5]: This is for example how the Japanese, despite being a few people,
+ survived throughout the millenia, only to be labeled as xenophobic
+ by the stupid Westerners of our time.
+
+[^6]: Of the "AI is going to improve our lives in so many ways"
+ sorts. We are however not so keen to evaluate the ways in which AI
+ will make our lives more miserable, or the ways in which we will
+ make ourselves more miserable in order to fit the world views of
+ AI. This too will be part of Westerners' undoing.
+
+[^7]: From Ben Franklin's Reply to the Governor, supposedly available
+ online when the [site][franklin] isn't down.
+
+[hogwash]: /posts/y02/045-academic-hogwash.html
+[android]: /posts/y02/03f-android-the-bad-and-the-ugly.html
+[os-design]: /posts/y01/03a-the-linguistic-barrier-of-os-design.html
+[cloud]: /posts/y02/041-cloud-software-is-unreliable-ii.html
+[trilema-schengen]: http://trilema.com/2013/no-seriously-not-much-of-a-priority-anymore/
+[failure-marketing]: /posts/y02/043-on-the-failure-of-marketing.html
+[post-religion]: /posts/y00/018-on-post-religion.html
+[political-correctness]: /posts/y01/02e-on-the-inherent-harmfulness-of-political-correctness.html
+[humanity]: /posts/y01/032-your-worth-to-humanity.html
+[franklin]: http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=6&page=238a
--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: '04b'
+title: We
+date: July 16, 2016
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: reading
+---
+
+Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel is a classical depiction of the socialist lamb
+of the socialist God living the socialist utopia, subject to the whims
+of a socialist Church like any other[^1].
+
+The story's brilliance derives primarily from the fact that it is built
+as a first-person (and thus inherently subjective) narration of its main
+character, D-503, a so-called Number of
+[the machine][mechanics-of-socialism] called the United State and a cog
+in said machine, writing his, or rather its journal to be spread
+throughout the entire universe to explain to other curious beings how
+this great machine works. In a twist of irony, the story somehow ended
+up being transported back in time to 20th (and now 21st) century Earth,
+where, or rather when we can amuse ourselves of the sheer stupidity of
+the socialist individual[^2].
+
+The number D-503 -- like most other numbers, the reader is left to
+assume -- is not merely proud to be part of the United State; more than
+that, it can not conceive of anything other than the United State as it
+is during its time. In the number's own words, the United State is like
+a Platonic geometrical shape, symmetrical and uniform, and anything
+other than that is considered to be less-than-perfect according to State
+rules and regulations.
+
+State rules and regulations are axiomatic "mathematical" facts, and they
+regulate pretty much everything, starting from the time numbers wake up,
+go to sleep and have sex, to the daily work they do and the propaganda
+they are to be subjected to. Naturally, at least from the point of view
+of the average comrade, numbers are not supposed to think by themselves,
+feelings being frowned upon and fancy being considered absolute
+heresy. In other words, Saint Taylor decreed that independent thought is
+unscientific (and thus harmful), the hair left on one's hands is an
+imperfection inherited from a long-lost race of prehistoric animals, and
+thus being anything but a piece of mindless, soulless matter is
+unscientific, State above all. Now, this sounds bleak when you look at
+it from outside, but the way the main character describes everything is
+meant only to denote numbers' infantile mis-thought. Thus the situation
+looks absolutely hilarious, a feature which we may attribute to
+Zamyatin's own Russian dark humour.
+
+Not unlike other dystopian novels[^3], We's plot is feminine in
+nature. Some chick attempting to start a revolution uses this particular
+tool-with-a-cock-attached to wreak some havoc. Again, this is
+unremarkable. What is however out of the ordinary is D-503's discovery
+that there is civilization outside the United State and that there
+exists a freedom other than the doublespoken spoken notion thereof,
+inoculated in all numbers' feeble minds by the propaganda machine.
+
+The reader is thus presented with a gradual, yet still subjective story
+of D-503's evolution from a mere number to a human being with a
+soul. Too little, too late, as they say. At the end of it all, the
+unbearably stupid number is still unable to grasp the idea that there
+might be other "We"s than the United State, or, indeed, any other "We"s
+at all[^4]. And so the main character's soul is swiftly removed by the
+Well-Doer's machine and all comes back to the status quo, as things
+usually go in comedies.
+
+The only implausible aspect in Zamyatin's dystopia, as in Orwell's, as
+in Huxley's, is the perennity of such dreadful machines. But we can
+forgive We by also labeling it as a Science Fiction slash Fantasy work,
+where engineering has achieved something other than
+[a complete breakdown][myth-software-engineering] and where
+[marketing, that is, propaganda][marketing] works forever and ever.
+
+[^1]: Regardless of whether you call it the Catholic Church, Soviet
+ Union or post-9/11 United States.
+
+ Sure, to the untrained eye the US are "the most capitalist state",
+ "the best goddamned country" and whatnot. The untrained eye however
+ fails to observe that just because KFC tastes like chicken and
+ "they" tell you it has at least 20% chicken, that by itself does not
+ make it chicken. This sort of charlatanism is uncoincidentally the
+ prime mark of the so-called "socialist utopia".
+
+[^2]: NB, there is no such thing as a socialist individual, the term is
+ pure contradiction. The so-called "socialist individual" is but a
+ bunch of mindless, soulless matter whose purpose is solely to be
+ used by the machine. This is another aspect that is masterfully
+ illustrated by the novel.
+
+[^3]: Although to be completely honest, it was Orwell who was inspired
+ by We and not the other way around.
+
+[^4]: This is a lesson on the irreversible retardation of socialist
+ thinking. What, there are people who don't eat the same bullshit as
+ you? Who could have ever thought that?!
+
+[mechanics-of-socialism]: /posts/y00/017-the-mechanics-of-socialism.html
+[myth-software-engineering]: /posts/y02/03c-the-myth-of-software-engineering.html
+[marketing]: /posts/y02/043-on-the-failure-of-marketing.html
projects / thetarpit.git / commitdiff