5 ms·

It is posts like this that make me feel inferior. The author used Z3, CUDA, GPT-2, medium-level cryptoanalysis, Jack the Ripper plugin creation, KLEE symbolic

It is posts like this that make me feel inferior. The author used Z3, CUDA, GPT-2, medium-level cryptoanalysis, Jack the Ripper plugin creation, KLEE symbolic execution engine. 20 years ago, I prided myself with keeping on top of almost everything in CS. Now, I can barely keep up with the names of all the cool tools out there.

Scaevolus 5y ago
And then someone else came along and implemented a MITM search in C++ that takes 10 seconds. :)
- moyix 5y ago
  Yep - there's always someone out there who can do things that look like pure wizardry to you, no matter what your skill level. I was amazed by the meet in the middle attack and frankly still don't understand it properly!
- xyzzy123 5y ago
  The feels when your state of the art symbolic execution (multiple academic papers, years of work by grads) fuzzer finds fewer bugs than a 15yo with a 10 line Python dumb fuzzer. (IMHO it wasn't until AFL that this stopped being the repeated history of the entire field).
  - moyix 5y ago
    Yeah, now at least it's AFL++ finding more bugs than your fancy symbolic execution tool instead of a 15yo's fuzzer ;)
miohtama 5y ago
> 20 years ago, I prided myself with keeping on top of almost everything in CS. Now, I can barely keep up with the names of all the cool tools out there. 20 years ago CS was smaller in scope, simpler, because there was less of it. We have more systems, more complex systems, and in some point the body of knowledge grew so large that one human cannot know all of it.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  Except for Donald Knuth.
Y_Y 5y ago
I don't think this is fair to you. Contrary to what Ayn Rand might think, society isn't a competition. Someone doing something impressive shouldn't detract from what you're doing, especially something like this which is (imho) a couple of sigma above the mean. Nobody, regardless of talent or repute, will have any trouble finding people and achievements to be amazed by (if they're honest with themselves). This obviously doesn't diminish their work and their worth as a person. This all goes double for industries like this one that are all about self-promotion and trying to wow investors and employers by displaying technology-indistinguishable-from-magic. Even if you did have an objective and rigorous measure of programming acumen, the fact that someone scored better than you should hardly be surprising, let alone disappointing. There's plenty of room for mediocre coders in the industry, I work with many. In fact I outshine them in mediocrity every day, but I still get paid and have a good time. In conclusion: there is no time to feel sorry for yourself, there are too many cool new technologies to learn and use.
- moyix 5y ago
  Yep, I agree with this. And I should point out that this particular flavor of hacking is really squarely in my area of specialization (Z3 and symbolic execution get used extensively in software security, and language models / GPU coding stuff are something I've done research in as well). There are tons of areas of CS that I'm pretty shaky on still, the field is just too big for one person to know it all in any detail.
brian_herman 5y ago
Yeah everyone has their unique and special talents. In computer science you are a beautiful snowflake. Tell the Tyler Durden in your head to fly a kite.
deleted 5y ago
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Scaevolus 5y ago

And then someone else came along and implemented a MITM search in C++ that takes 10 seconds. :)

moyix 5y ago
Yep - there's always someone out there who can do things that look like pure wizardry to you, no matter what your skill level. I was amazed by the meet in the middle attack and frankly still don't understand it properly!
xyzzy123 5y ago
The feels when your state of the art symbolic execution (multiple academic papers, years of work by grads) fuzzer finds fewer bugs than a 15yo with a 10 line Python dumb fuzzer. (IMHO it wasn't until AFL that this stopped being the repeated history of the entire field).
- moyix 5y ago
  Yeah, now at least it's AFL++ finding more bugs than your fancy symbolic execution tool instead of a 15yo's fuzzer ;)

miohtama 5y ago

> 20 years ago, I prided myself with keeping on top of almost everything in CS. Now, I can barely keep up with the names of all the cool tools out there. 20 years ago CS was smaller in scope, simpler, because there was less of it. We have more systems, more complex systems, and in some point the body of knowledge grew so large that one human cannot know all of it.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
Except for Donald Knuth.

Y_Y 5y ago

I don't think this is fair to you. Contrary to what Ayn Rand might think, society isn't a competition. Someone doing something impressive shouldn't detract from what you're doing, especially something like this which is (imho) a couple of sigma above the mean. Nobody, regardless of talent or repute, will have any trouble finding people and achievements to be amazed by (if they're honest with themselves). This obviously doesn't diminish their work and their worth as a person. This all goes double for industries like this one that are all about self-promotion and trying to wow investors and employers by displaying technology-indistinguishable-from-magic. Even if you did have an objective and rigorous measure of programming acumen, the fact that someone scored better than you should hardly be surprising, let alone disappointing. There's plenty of room for mediocre coders in the industry, I work with many. In fact I outshine them in mediocrity every day, but I still get paid and have a good time. In conclusion: there is no time to feel sorry for yourself, there are too many cool new technologies to learn and use.

moyix 5y ago
Yep, I agree with this. And I should point out that this particular flavor of hacking is really squarely in my area of specialization (Z3 and symbolic execution get used extensively in software security, and language models / GPU coding stuff are something I've done research in as well). There are tons of areas of CS that I'm pretty shaky on still, the field is just too big for one person to know it all in any detail.

brian_herman 5y ago

Yeah everyone has their unique and special talents. In computer science you are a beautiful snowflake. Tell the Tyler Durden in your head to fly a kite.

deleted 5y ago

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