The “common mentality” is a software ****lord who thinks his limited programming skill makes him better at designing locks than the people who do it for a living.

The very idea is moronic - it TRIPLES your attack surface, a third of which you would find incredibly unpleasant - and that’s assuming your mechanism was designed at least as well as existing locks. Biometrics are a great username and a lousy password.

Computer security isn’t made bad for the sake of convenience. There are plenty of design choices engineers are making to this very day that they think improves security, but actually make things both less secure and less convenient. Things like password restrictions and password expiration. (Studies have repeatedly shown that people choose worse passwords when they’re forced to reset them periodically, e.g. Hunter01!, Hunter02!, etc.. Despite overwhelming evidence though, it’s basically impossible to get chuckle**** computer janitors to stop their idiot horse**** though!)

Well, that's what padlocks are for. They keep honest people honest. A person who wants to break into padlocked storage will find it's not challenging.

Unless you drop a ton of dosh, they're easy to pick, and any can be broken with a crowbar pretty easily.

Better than a lock which tells you where the owner lives though..



Yes.

"Yes" meaning it is different?

When I said "correlation does not imply causation", I was more suggesting that perhaps nobody actually wanted to take my clothes in the first place, but who knows?

I want to punch every person in the face who doesn't allow long passwords and has character requirements. Many of my passwords are various phrases, idioms, etc when they can be. They're super easy to remember and are secure. But goddamn if I have to sit there and guess which **** I had to add to a nice phrase to make their **** website accept the password.



This statement is universally true: "A small group of people are sincerely interested in making systems more secure, whereas the rest are apparently just annoyed that they have to think about security at all, and therefore do everything they can to circumvent it in the name of convenience."

*found a noise reduced version..

Whenever this happens I just add an '!' mark to the end. This usually works, and it also makes it seem like I am shouting at the program that made me do it.

but then it wouldn’t fit in a varchar(10) anymore???

As if the hype weren't enough, now with a dubious blockchain startup buying Bit Torrent for an alleged $140 million, the hijacking of the term 'crypto' by the blockchain world to mean literally anything that uses a hash on a network is more or less complete.

That said, I am personally looking forward to scouring the market for cheap ass server parts that coin miners have been presumably dumping on eBay by now.

OK, what the heck is wrong with Quora so that a question that is obviously a joke has a 2600 word essay as the top answer? Is it just the need to karma whore?

dont get too excited crypto moon kids are saying the wallstreet bonus and chinese birthday are right around the corner to pamp it past ath again. $30k bitcoin EOY

Also McAffee has to eat his dick if BTC doesnt make 100k this year so don't be so excited to see the fall of internet moneys because we could still get something real good out of it

this is a good example of why i hate quora

I wish there was better work out there teaching category theory at an easier level. Categories are such a powerful tool in organizing mathematics. Worse, the typical student of mathematics is learning category theory language and proofs from the paradigm without understanding the structure of category theory itself. It's a shame.

If you really think it's a shame, and you honestly can't find anything out there that is elementary enough for your students, then there is only one honorable thing left for you to do.

I'm not looking for necessarily a course on category theory itself. Most universities have an intro to proofs course which covers proofwriting and set theory. I'm starting to think that this course should dip a big more into intro to category theory stuff. Time doesn't permit, so maybe intro to mathematics would have to become a two semester course, but, I don't have any control over this so what can I do. But in an ideal world, taking the time to at least take the time to explain what a category is, why it's useful to be able to identify categories, the essence of category theory which is in the types of morphisms, and why the definitions make sense for "isomorphism" in various categories as a concrete introduction to how to categorize mathematics.

Why not just stick the short tutorial on category theory in the middle of upper division abstract algebra (in my class it was introduced in a homework problem in the course on undergraduate ring theory), where you're already learning about the kinds of objects that category theory originally was invented to abstract? Is there any place in the undergraduate curriculum before abstract algebra that requires category theory?

By the way, for students looking to appreciate the broad sweep of mathematics from the ground up, at a sophmore-junior undergraduate level (finished with calculus and at least one proof-based course), they should read this book, which was written by one of the two co-founders of category theory. Note that he doesn't even talk about category theory itself until page 386, after discussing the various facets of the various branches of mathematics in a conceptual but also concrete setting. So even the founder of category theory didn't think it was a good idea to hit people over the head with abstractions before explaining the objects being abstracted. Instead, if you look inside that book, you will see all sorts of crazy diagrams that interconnect the various subjects in a much looser manner.

But if they care about WHAT category theory "is", without knowing more than a bit on set theory, students can read this. It's super easy to understand, and it's written by somebody who himself sought to do revolutionary work in topos theory back in the 60s. (The book is mostly about the category of sets, I believe; this shouldn't be too much of a surprise though, since I said he did work in topos theory.)

I mean, category theory is useful outside of classical mathematics too, and I think this book could be good too for those who are more interested in applications like functional programming and type theory (but want to learn about it first from a mathematician).

That said, this is all just my relatively hazy and uneducated opinion. I will say that from the very first course I took on group theory, our T.A. too was anxious to beat us with the category theory stick.

I'll keep that in mind. If I ever get to structure a intro math course, I might find some good sections from that and use it as supplemental material for the A students.

A friend of mine at a CA school has a pretty awful advisor. Sent an email at 1am and then scolded them for not replying 9am the next day. And this attitude is pretty common for him.

Lastly, **** xi and **** zeta and **** mathematicians who use those scribbles for symbols.

Is this the nutrition science thread?

No, it’s not. You should start a new thread to discuss that.

I took my algebra qual today. Pretty sure I passed. Probably the highest anxiety I've ever felt.

I mean, they're not wrong that there are a bunch of people who push crank health science things as magical "you'll live forever" crap. But health science is not bull****. Coverage of health science is bull****. Those two are not the same.

There's actually not as much debate or back and forth in the health science community about these things. If health science was really so unsure, it would be impossible for a committed person to shape their bodyweight, eat the right amount for sport, or to optimize diet to build muscle. But all of those things happen! Anyone who's willing to spend the time to read basic texts on these topics will realize diet isn't complicated.

For some of the specific things: yes juice is pretty much sugar water. The fiber of fruits are good to consume, so it's worse than eating regular fruit. Yes, consuming vitamins is a good idea, and vitamin C has zero chance of being toxic in the amounts you'll get drinking those drinks within reason, so it genuinely is fine to consume. There's mountains of evidence that eating natural foods is better for you than eating processed foods ceteris paribus. Of course health science skeptics will say that some natural things are toxic, so it's all bull****, or something. Responses like that are deliberately missing the point and ignoring what is meant. It's absolutely possible to eat only processed food and be healthier than a person who eats unprocessed food. One has to actually understand what these terms mean when operationalized, and grasp what the studies actually refer to as processed or natural.

This study, for instance:



In other words, a diet high in processed sugar, preservatives, hydrogenated oils, and a few other additives all are correlated with a statistically significant higher occurrence of cancer. Of course, there's no absolute way to know if the diet is the direct cause, but given most of these items listed have independent research done which suggests they are unhealthy to consume, I think it's a probably causation and worth considering when making dietary choices.

When we shop we don't scrutinize every little thing we buy. This is why "eating natural" is a thing. If you pick grains, or vegetables or fruits, you can be sure without thought that your diet is avoiding many of these risky substances. It's a solid shorthand.

Other than that, yeah ignore "superfood" bull**** and whatever. So, yeah, again, the problem is not at health science but how health science is reported. Basically **** U.S. journalism and education. It all sucks.

Superfood stuff isn't all bull****, though. The major produce we eat today has been selectively bred to eliminate inconsistent or unpleasant flavors (vitamins and minerals), reduce fiber, and increase sweetness. Corn today is basically candy. It's the worst, but other common grains, fruits and vegetables we grow aren't much better. Most "superfoods" are staples from developing countries that were bred for different sensibilities, or traditional European foods that have been prized for their flavor and left alone (like spices and things like arugula).

I am so goddamn looking forward to never having to do bull**** group theory problems again.

You're absolutely right. There definitely are nutrient rich foods that are more bang for your buck than typical foods. Kale vs. Lettuce, for instance. They really are more nutritious, and you'll do yourself a favor to eat them often.

They're not going to cure every diseas though. Just help prevent some major ones.

Do you have any experience getting something better? I'm assuming this is possible if you know the right farmers. Or do I just have to leave this miserable country altogether to eat food that hasn't had the nutrients literally bred out of it.

Just make sure you weren't just studying Grumpy Group Theory (defined at 2:30).

Not really, no. I have a big ol ****off sack of heirloom seeds and exactly zero time to plant them. I also have no idea if a purple carrot is healthier for you than a non-purple one. I'm mostly interested in them because normal food is boring.

This isn't a US problem. The Japanese almost killed themselves eating nothing but polished white rice, for example. Humans have a long history of excluding things from our diets because we don't understand their purpose.

One of the primary things we've done is breed fiber out of plants. Sometimes literally, like with corn, sometimes making the carby flesh bits bigger, like wheat's endosperm. Well, it turns out that fibrous foods are important for a lot of things. Chewing fibrous foods strengthens and lengthens your jawbone. This makes room for your wisdom teeth and also, I'm not kidding, is what gives men a masculine jawbone. And what we flippantly call fiber is actually hundreds of different things. It's a catch-all term for anything in our food that we can't digest. Your microbiome requires certain amounts and kinds of fiber. Nobody has picked apart exactly what people should be doing, but westerners eat a minuscule fraction of the fiber that we should be eating.

So I'd generally characterize this change to our produce as "bad".

i wonder if Spook has some heirloom seeds he can sell me

if i hear yet another person's sweeping pedagogical concerns about mathematics i'm gonna scream

I'm not sure you watched the video, which doesn't have anything to do with pedagogy, and more than anything else is a joke.

I am sorry though that I triggered you by mentioning the term group theory.