8 ms·

Computer science professor Christian Grothoff testifies in Assange hearing

55 points by k1m 6y ago

kleiba 6y ago
Slightly OT: the German magazine "Der Freitag" (https://www.freitag.de/ https://www.freitag.de/) seems to play a certain role in the order of events discussed in this hearing. I keep different sources referring to it as "Die Freitag" however. Why is that?
- aeyes 6y ago
  The newspaper is probably also known as just "Freitag" (without "der"). Newspaper in German is female ("die Zeitung"). When saying "the newspaper Freitag" it changes to "die Zeitung Freitag". You can leave out "Zeitung" if the context is known and thus it gets shortened to "die Freitag". I'm not from a region where this newspaper is common so I'm just guessing here. This is common when talking about newspapers in German.
- Uberphallus 6y ago
  Disclaimer: not German speaker so please correct me. The name of the newspaper is "der Freitag" (masculine) but Before it was called just "Freitag". Newspaper itself is feminine (die Zeitung) so I suspect any use as "die Freitag" is a contraction of "die Freitag Zeitung" and coming from German speakers.
- yk 6y ago
  The newspaper is called "der Freitag," however the German Zeitung (newspaper) is feminine and therefore would suggest "die." So it appears that people do not recognize that "der" is part of the title, and then make the mistake to use the wrong article since deducing the gender from the category newspaper does not work here.
  - stallmanite 6y ago
    Any linguistic information experts here that can comment as to whether there is some informational advantage to having random nouns assigned “genders” like German, French, etc. do? As in, if we were considering a programming language would all the work involved with matching gendered nouns, adjectives, etc. get us any gains in expressiveness or any other benefit. I love the French language and wouldn’t want it changed, just have always wondered if there’s a “point” to eg a table being feminine.
    - patrec 6y ago
      It reduces anaphora ambiguity. Compared with gendered pronouns in English (some languages have gender neutral pronouns). Bob and Alice went to the beach, but only he got a nasty sunburn. Bob and Alice went to the beach, but only "it" got a nasty sunburn.
      - julesnp 6y ago
        While it could resolve ambiguities when discussing two objects that happen to have different grammatical genders, it seems it would introduce more anaphoric ambiguities when discussing a person and object with the same gender. For example: "George a laissé tomber le livre et son dos était cassé." Which back was broken here, George's or the books?
        patrec 6y ago
        No genuine ambiguity here, it's the book (and I suspect that's typical). Even if you increased the ratio of theoretically ambiguous sentences, if that comes at a decrease of actual, practical ambiguity (uintended and unnoticed by the speaker) that's a win.
    - leephillips 6y ago
      “Gender” is the exact term for this; no need for the quotation marks. As an English native speaker, when studying romance languages I never found genders to serve any purpose (other than to make the languages harder to learn). But it’s an interesting speculation.
k1m 6y ago
This article from 2011 is an interesting read, about the publishing of the password to the Wikileaks file in a Guardian book: https://web.archive.org/web/20110925132344/http://nigelparry.com/news/guardian-david-leigh-cablegate.shtml https://web.archive.org/web/20110925132344/http://nigelparry...
- dm319 6y ago
  I'm going to have to read that, as came across it in this[1] article by his ghostwriter, who puts it down to Julian being paranoid. quote here: How far was he willing to go in order to fuck everybody off? The answer came on 1 September. Having canvassed his followers on Twitter, Julian decided to dump the whole cache of 250,000 US cables supplied to him by Bradley Manning on the internet. He blamed the Guardian – a tactic I recognise from many of his sorties – and especially David Leigh. He insisted Leigh had included a password in his book that could decrypt the files WikiLeaks had left online. Leigh has always said this is nonsense. The manoeuvre brought so many infamous Julian tropes together: the hatred of the US; the showing off about security while having no real sense of how it works (why were the files left online?); the ‘blame culture’ in which any enemy of his must be shown to have failed. [1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n05/andrew-o-hagan/ghosting https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n05/andrew-o-hagan/ghost...
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    The unredacted cables were already available online before 1 September 2011, because two Guardian journalists published the password to the encrypted archive. The Guardian continues to deny its responsibility for making the unredacted cables available. It says that people at the Guardian believed the password to the file was "temporary" (how does a password to an encrypted archive stop working after a given time?), and that WikiLeaks should have deleted the file from the internet (it was already mirrored on different sites beyond WikiLeaks' control). I'm willing to believe that people at the Guardian were just technically incompetent and didn't know that publishing the password to the archive would make it available to everyone. But denying responsibility after the fact is just malicious. > Leigh has always said this is nonsense. The password is in the book, for everyone to see. Why do people lie about things that are so easily verifiable?
ganzuul 6y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUnet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUnet Evidently he is one of the good guys.
- Nicksil 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUnet

55 points by k1m 6y ago

Slightly OT: the German magazine "Der Freitag" (https://www.freitag.de/ https://www.freitag.de/) seems to play a certain role in the order of events discussed in this hearing. I keep different sources referring to it as "Die Freitag" however. Why is that?

aeyes 6y ago
The newspaper is probably also known as just "Freitag" (without "der"). Newspaper in German is female ("die Zeitung"). When saying "the newspaper Freitag" it changes to "die Zeitung Freitag". You can leave out "Zeitung" if the context is known and thus it gets shortened to "die Freitag". I'm not from a region where this newspaper is common so I'm just guessing here. This is common when talking about newspapers in German.
Uberphallus 6y ago
Disclaimer: not German speaker so please correct me. The name of the newspaper is "der Freitag" (masculine) but Before it was called just "Freitag". Newspaper itself is feminine (die Zeitung) so I suspect any use as "die Freitag" is a contraction of "die Freitag Zeitung" and coming from German speakers.
yk 6y ago
The newspaper is called "der Freitag," however the German Zeitung (newspaper) is feminine and therefore would suggest "die." So it appears that people do not recognize that "der" is part of the title, and then make the mistake to use the wrong article since deducing the gender from the category newspaper does not work here.
- stallmanite 6y ago
  Any linguistic information experts here that can comment as to whether there is some informational advantage to having random nouns assigned “genders” like German, French, etc. do? As in, if we were considering a programming language would all the work involved with matching gendered nouns, adjectives, etc. get us any gains in expressiveness or any other benefit. I love the French language and wouldn’t want it changed, just have always wondered if there’s a “point” to eg a table being feminine.
  - patrec 6y ago
    It reduces anaphora ambiguity. Compared with gendered pronouns in English (some languages have gender neutral pronouns). Bob and Alice went to the beach, but only he got a nasty sunburn. Bob and Alice went to the beach, but only "it" got a nasty sunburn.
    - julesnp 6y ago
      While it could resolve ambiguities when discussing two objects that happen to have different grammatical genders, it seems it would introduce more anaphoric ambiguities when discussing a person and object with the same gender. For example: "George a laissé tomber le livre et son dos était cassé." Which back was broken here, George's or the books?
      - patrec 6y ago
        No genuine ambiguity here, it's the book (and I suspect that's typical). Even if you increased the ratio of theoretically ambiguous sentences, if that comes at a decrease of actual, practical ambiguity (uintended and unnoticed by the speaker) that's a win.
  - leephillips 6y ago
    “Gender” is the exact term for this; no need for the quotation marks. As an English native speaker, when studying romance languages I never found genders to serve any purpose (other than to make the languages harder to learn). But it’s an interesting speculation.

k1m 6y ago

This article from 2011 is an interesting read, about the publishing of the password to the Wikileaks file in a Guardian book: https://web.archive.org/web/20110925132344/http://nigelparry.com/news/guardian-david-leigh-cablegate.shtml https://web.archive.org/web/20110925132344/http://nigelparry...

dm319 6y ago
I'm going to have to read that, as came across it in this[1] article by his ghostwriter, who puts it down to Julian being paranoid. quote here: How far was he willing to go in order to fuck everybody off? The answer came on 1 September. Having canvassed his followers on Twitter, Julian decided to dump the whole cache of 250,000 US cables supplied to him by Bradley Manning on the internet. He blamed the Guardian – a tactic I recognise from many of his sorties – and especially David Leigh. He insisted Leigh had included a password in his book that could decrypt the files WikiLeaks had left online. Leigh has always said this is nonsense. The manoeuvre brought so many infamous Julian tropes together: the hatred of the US; the showing off about security while having no real sense of how it works (why were the files left online?); the ‘blame culture’ in which any enemy of his must be shown to have failed. [1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n05/andrew-o-hagan/ghosting https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n05/andrew-o-hagan/ghost...
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  The unredacted cables were already available online before 1 September 2011, because two Guardian journalists published the password to the encrypted archive. The Guardian continues to deny its responsibility for making the unredacted cables available. It says that people at the Guardian believed the password to the file was "temporary" (how does a password to an encrypted archive stop working after a given time?), and that WikiLeaks should have deleted the file from the internet (it was already mirrored on different sites beyond WikiLeaks' control). I'm willing to believe that people at the Guardian were just technically incompetent and didn't know that publishing the password to the archive would make it available to everyone. But denying responsibility after the fact is just malicious. > Leigh has always said this is nonsense. The password is in the book, for everyone to see. Why do people lie about things that are so easily verifiable?

ganzuul 6y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUnet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUnet Evidently he is one of the good guys.

Nicksil 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUnet