Sundar @digital_carver@social.cleverlibre.org

[குவாண்டம் உலகத்தில் ரகசியங்களைப் பாதுகாப்பது எப்படி?](https://www.hindutamil.in/news/opinion/columns/618789-how-to-protect-secrets-in-quantum-world-2.html) on Hindu Tamil.

A nice little article from public key cryptography to post-quantum cryptography. There are rough edges (from the space constraints of a newspaper and probably from translation inaccuracies too), but I'm glad to see a major #Tamil paper publishing something like this with all its complexity and detail. Kudos to சுபஸ்ரீ தேசிகன் (https://www.thehindu.com/profile/author/Shubashree-Desikan-249/).

I was looking through the #Gab code repository for a Hacker News discussion, and it was a weird feeling.

In the #Dresden Files, early on, Harry Dresden talks about how he'd always been taught that Magic comes from life, from the heart, and is a force for good - and how incongruous it was to see that magic being twisted for horrible goals, by the bad guys. That's what this felt like, to see the familiar open source tooling and conventions that I see every day, being used for twisted hateful purposes there.

Somewhere out there, someone writing an oppressive mass surveillance tool is running `git amend` since they oopsied their last commit. Someone running a malware website is adjusting their CSS values. Someone profiting off child abuse is reading syntax discussions on StackOverflow. It's a weird, icky feeling, to see these worlds collide.

Peter Norvig's #Python solutions to #AdventOfCode 2020: https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/blob/master/ipynb/Advent-2020.ipynb

(HTML Archive: http://archive.today/Xzyse in case the notebook doesn't load.)

One thing that strikes me after following @metanumbers is how many large numbers have just two factors. I had this intuition that most large numbers have several factors, but that seems generally not true.

I just completed Day 12 of #AdventOfCode in #JuliaLang.

Hard day with little time for AoC, but I managed to squeeze it in - and the problem was interesting enough to be rewarding, to make it feel worth it. Got to explore Julia's typing and multiple dispatch a little bit along the way.

I just completed "Adapter Array" - Day 10 - Advent of Code 2020 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2020/day/10 in #JuliaLang .

* I was surprised to learn there's no "count unique values" function in base Julia (equivalent to `uniq -c` in shell). The `StatsBase` downloadable package is needed for that.
* How have I never used `sort` in Vim before?! I always thought I'd need to use the shell's sort command since that's the Unix-y way, but `:sort n` works like a charm.
* One thing Advent of Code does better than other coding challenges is state the problem very clearly. Good examples, clear question text, and every assumption made explicit.

Common phrases in Non-fiction writing, translated:

"in part because of":
This may not be the major reason or even a significant reason, but this is the one I'm gonna focus on because it helps my narrative look more convincing.

Common phrases in Non-fiction writing, translated:

"commentators have argued that":
Here comes my opinion, but to give this a sheen of objectivity I found a few other people who agree with me.

That's one thing I miss in AoC compared to Project Euler and others, there's no "Aha!" moment when solving the challenges, no particular insight gained from thinking about and coming up with the solutions. Seems like I should treat this more like a replacement for a mini-project one might do to learn a language, with straightforward code (which still takes work, just not the focused, creative type of mental work that coding challenges usually require), rather than as tricky puzzles with interesting solutions.

I just completed "Handheld Halting" - Day 8 - Advent of Code 2020 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2020/day/8 in #JuliaLang.

Spent way too long on Part 2 thinking there must be an interesting non-bruteforce way to solve it. reddit also seems to be concluding there's no neater way of solving it, just straight up try everything, which is disappointing.