7 ms·

I don't understand what's amusing. Care to explain?

by sjnair96 10y ago

Cyph0n 10y ago
Have you heard of anyone running BrainFuck in production?
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  The joke is gonna be on all of you when I deploy a 256-core machine in production. :P Then you'll modify it to be, "Have you heard of anyone running BrainFuck in production other than Nick P's BrainFuck-as-a-Service platform of questionable longevity?
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    ...Well, we can compile TIS-100 programs to BF, and then run it on your 256-core machine. Then the question will become, "Have you heard of anyone running BrainFuck in production, other than Nick P's BrainFuck-as-a-Service platform of questionable longevity, or Qwerty's TIS-100-as-a-service running atop the former?"
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      Interesting expansion that requires you to buy the new model that's 128-cores that each have an I/O MMU for added security of running the "corrupted" code without permanent damage. Includes actual ROM on-chip for trusted boot and accuracy of simulation. To keep customers happy, replacements for anyone with a support contract are sold at cost [with R&D included].
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        Yes, we would require a new model, as new IO primitves would be required. Might I suggest ^v/.! as the instructions for writing up, down, left, right and last IO ports, respectively? For reading, we could use &V\,*$ for up, down, left, right, any and last respectively.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        We'll take whatever you suggest. So long as we have a DSL for writing our demo programs that buyers can understand and approve of before programmers see the actual primitives. ;)
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        Well, yes. With that, we can inplement most of the TIS-100 instruction set fairly easily. We may have to exclude JRO, the NIL psudoport, and restrict the use of labels, but it would be fairly complete. Better yet, these restrictions are totally undocumented, so programmers will have to either work with the primitives or cross their fingers that their code will compile each day.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        "these restrictions are totally undocumented, so programmers will have to either work with the primitives or cross their fingers that their code will compile each day." That's a great expansion it being undocumented. Worked wonders for Microsoft's strategy of lock-in. We're going to have to make sure the CPU and platform's API's are considered copywritten on top of that so they might not be... legally allowed... to clone or port it without paying us. We could collect royalties on a BrainFuck CPU for our lifetime plus an arbitrary number of years decided by Congress reps collecting bribes.
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        From this discussion, I conclude that we are both way too good at being evil.
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    Damn, I like your thinking... You know what, since we're on HN, let's just apply to the next round of YC. They'd be crazy not to fund the first BFaaS in human history! I already have a logo in mind. A cloud surrounding a brain, and inside the brain is "the finger".
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      Nice haha. I was just going to call it the BrainF interpreter with references to prototypes A-E. Ill say I put 256 "brains" in each FPGA or ASIC. I'll reference the performance of various machine learning algorithms. I'll have comparidons showing speedup over a Core 2 Duo I with less watts. Fast-forward time some to see it becomes a post-mortum, legacy system, or acquired by Novell as their entry into AI. They promise it will be the success of Netware all over again. Audience at conference pauses at the ambiguity of that statement unsure if they should cheer or charge out the door.
      - Cyph0n 10y ago
        LOL you have everything thought out!
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Oh the funny part is I just slapped BrainFuck and a little creativity on top of the standard M.O. of the hardware accelerator industry. All the ones getting tons of VC money or revenue. Including DWave that showed the DWave-specific algorithm got a million times speed-up over implementing the DWave-specific algorithm on a general-purpose, barely-parallel CPU. Was that an innovation going a million times faster or a shoddy component going a million times slower? We don't know but they have reputable customers shelling out big cash. Lmao...
        Cyph0n 10y ago
        I wasn't aware of how flimsy the tech is. Guess I need to do more reading on the topic. But it looks like there is a legitimate and interesting shift towards running stuff on FPGAs. Google, FB, and MS are all doing something with ML hardware acceleration. I actually attended a talk a few weeks back by Microsoft's Doug Burger[1]. He has been leading a team that has created a low-latency FPGA network to accelerate stuff within MS. The eventual goal is to allow customers to take advantage of this distributed FPGA fabric to run custom firmware. He said that FPGAs now run several of Bing's core search algorithms and Azure has some stuff running on FPGAs too. I forgot the exact performance gains, but it was somewhere around 2x for Bing with extremely stable response time even at insane server loads. One interesting factoid is that they were able to translate Wikipedia in its entirety from English to Russian using 90% of the currently deployed FPGAs in around 100 ms. Insane stuff. [1]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/dburger/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/dburger/
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Then you can pitch it to VC's, as you'll be the only entrant in this burgeoning new space, with first mover advantage! The world will be your mussel!
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      My pitch will target the enterprise DB, embedded, and military markets. I'll package it as something for highly-concurrent, real-time programming. Give them a language like ParaSail or Chapel that compiles to BrainFuck. Keep getting subcontracts to use it in criticsl, long-term projects. Eventually, the sham will come out but BrainFuck will be To Big To Fail (TM). Also leverage patent on key innovation forcing uptake of BrainFuck for at least 20 years. I'm not sure it's worthy of a Bond villain but it's a start. ;)
      - happyslobro 10y ago
        Whatever, man. When all that falls on its face, CTOs will be googling for peeps with low level brainfuck debugging skills. But they can't hack BF themselves, so I'll ace the interview with no prep, and scoop a six fig salary. Remote, from Amsterdam. Part time, because, priorities.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Nah, they'll ask when they last had this problem. They'll learn that there were these migration tools developed to turn COBOL into C or Java with bug-for-bug compatibility. They'll pay some company like Semantic Designs to automate a conversion from BrainFuck to Rust since it will be popular on embedded systems by the time they're finished. The remoters will then spend all their time enhancing and debugging RustyBrainFuck while writing as much code in Rust as possible to hide the BrainFuck behind a neat interface. Building that was another enterprise project. Unfortunately, you can't outrun software's hidden assumptions behind correct functioning forever. There will come a time, much like Y2K for COBOL, that their critical database will just loose everything if they don't make an internal change that requires understanding all the Rust, BrainFuck, Verilog, and analog components I used "because I was learning analog at the time." I can't predict what they will do facing such a situation. I can tell you to start a brewery of fine Scotch that sends flyers to them around the time of the feasibility study. You'll make a killing. :)

I don't understand what's amusing. Care to explain?

Cyph0n 10y ago

Have you heard of anyone running BrainFuck in production?

nickpsecurity 10y ago
The joke is gonna be on all of you when I deploy a 256-core machine in production. :P Then you'll modify it to be, "Have you heard of anyone running BrainFuck in production other than Nick P's BrainFuck-as-a-Service platform of questionable longevity?
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  ...Well, we can compile TIS-100 programs to BF, and then run it on your 256-core machine. Then the question will become, "Have you heard of anyone running BrainFuck in production, other than Nick P's BrainFuck-as-a-Service platform of questionable longevity, or Qwerty's TIS-100-as-a-service running atop the former?"
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Interesting expansion that requires you to buy the new model that's 128-cores that each have an I/O MMU for added security of running the "corrupted" code without permanent damage. Includes actual ROM on-chip for trusted boot and accuracy of simulation. To keep customers happy, replacements for anyone with a support contract are sold at cost [with R&D included].
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Yes, we would require a new model, as new IO primitves would be required. Might I suggest ^v/.! as the instructions for writing up, down, left, right and last IO ports, respectively? For reading, we could use &V\,*$ for up, down, left, right, any and last respectively.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        We'll take whatever you suggest. So long as we have a DSL for writing our demo programs that buyers can understand and approve of before programmers see the actual primitives. ;)
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        Well, yes. With that, we can inplement most of the TIS-100 instruction set fairly easily. We may have to exclude JRO, the NIL psudoport, and restrict the use of labels, but it would be fairly complete. Better yet, these restrictions are totally undocumented, so programmers will have to either work with the primitives or cross their fingers that their code will compile each day.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        "these restrictions are totally undocumented, so programmers will have to either work with the primitives or cross their fingers that their code will compile each day." That's a great expansion it being undocumented. Worked wonders for Microsoft's strategy of lock-in. We're going to have to make sure the CPU and platform's API's are considered copywritten on top of that so they might not be... legally allowed... to clone or port it without paying us. We could collect royalties on a BrainFuck CPU for our lifetime plus an arbitrary number of years decided by Congress reps collecting bribes.
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        From this discussion, I conclude that we are both way too good at being evil.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Damn, I like your thinking... You know what, since we're on HN, let's just apply to the next round of YC. They'd be crazy not to fund the first BFaaS in human history! I already have a logo in mind. A cloud surrounding a brain, and inside the brain is "the finger".
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Nice haha. I was just going to call it the BrainF interpreter with references to prototypes A-E. Ill say I put 256 "brains" in each FPGA or ASIC. I'll reference the performance of various machine learning algorithms. I'll have comparidons showing speedup over a Core 2 Duo I with less watts. Fast-forward time some to see it becomes a post-mortum, legacy system, or acquired by Novell as their entry into AI. They promise it will be the success of Netware all over again. Audience at conference pauses at the ambiguity of that statement unsure if they should cheer or charge out the door.
    - Cyph0n 10y ago
      LOL you have everything thought out!
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Oh the funny part is I just slapped BrainFuck and a little creativity on top of the standard M.O. of the hardware accelerator industry. All the ones getting tons of VC money or revenue. Including DWave that showed the DWave-specific algorithm got a million times speed-up over implementing the DWave-specific algorithm on a general-purpose, barely-parallel CPU. Was that an innovation going a million times faster or a shoddy component going a million times slower? We don't know but they have reputable customers shelling out big cash. Lmao...
        Cyph0n 10y ago
        I wasn't aware of how flimsy the tech is. Guess I need to do more reading on the topic. But it looks like there is a legitimate and interesting shift towards running stuff on FPGAs. Google, FB, and MS are all doing something with ML hardware acceleration. I actually attended a talk a few weeks back by Microsoft's Doug Burger[1]. He has been leading a team that has created a low-latency FPGA network to accelerate stuff within MS. The eventual goal is to allow customers to take advantage of this distributed FPGA fabric to run custom firmware. He said that FPGAs now run several of Bing's core search algorithms and Azure has some stuff running on FPGAs too. I forgot the exact performance gains, but it was somewhere around 2x for Bing with extremely stable response time even at insane server loads. One interesting factoid is that they were able to translate Wikipedia in its entirety from English to Russian using 90% of the currently deployed FPGAs in around 100 ms. Insane stuff. [1]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/dburger/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/dburger/
- kbenson 10y ago
  Then you can pitch it to VC's, as you'll be the only entrant in this burgeoning new space, with first mover advantage! The world will be your mussel!
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    My pitch will target the enterprise DB, embedded, and military markets. I'll package it as something for highly-concurrent, real-time programming. Give them a language like ParaSail or Chapel that compiles to BrainFuck. Keep getting subcontracts to use it in criticsl, long-term projects. Eventually, the sham will come out but BrainFuck will be To Big To Fail (TM). Also leverage patent on key innovation forcing uptake of BrainFuck for at least 20 years. I'm not sure it's worthy of a Bond villain but it's a start. ;)
    - happyslobro 10y ago
      Whatever, man. When all that falls on its face, CTOs will be googling for peeps with low level brainfuck debugging skills. But they can't hack BF themselves, so I'll ace the interview with no prep, and scoop a six fig salary. Remote, from Amsterdam. Part time, because, priorities.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Nah, they'll ask when they last had this problem. They'll learn that there were these migration tools developed to turn COBOL into C or Java with bug-for-bug compatibility. They'll pay some company like Semantic Designs to automate a conversion from BrainFuck to Rust since it will be popular on embedded systems by the time they're finished. The remoters will then spend all their time enhancing and debugging RustyBrainFuck while writing as much code in Rust as possible to hide the BrainFuck behind a neat interface. Building that was another enterprise project. Unfortunately, you can't outrun software's hidden assumptions behind correct functioning forever. There will come a time, much like Y2K for COBOL, that their critical database will just loose everything if they don't make an internal change that requires understanding all the Rust, BrainFuck, Verilog, and analog components I used "because I was learning analog at the time." I can't predict what they will do facing such a situation. I can tell you to start a brewery of fine Scotch that sends flyers to them around the time of the feasibility study. You'll make a killing. :)