From 38d3f42714a640febd219f32262f2551bd5155f0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Lucian Mogosanu Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2016 22:45:41 +0300 Subject: [PATCH] posts: 04a, 04b --- posts/y02/04a-on-security.markdown | 139 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ posts/y02/04b-we.markdown | 97 +++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 236 insertions(+) create mode 100644 posts/y02/04a-on-security.markdown create mode 100644 posts/y02/04b-we.markdown diff --git a/posts/y02/04a-on-security.markdown b/posts/y02/04a-on-security.markdown new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b4d64ff --- /dev/null +++ b/posts/y02/04a-on-security.markdown @@ -0,0 +1,139 @@ +--- +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 diff --git a/posts/y02/04b-we.markdown b/posts/y02/04b-we.markdown new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc03c8e --- /dev/null +++ b/posts/y02/04b-we.markdown @@ -0,0 +1,97 @@ +--- +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 -- 1.7.10.4