4 ms·

Great to see some 3letter guy into this. This might be one of those rando things which gets posted on HN (and which doesn't involve me in the slightest), but a

Great to see some 3letter guy into this. This might be one of those rando things which gets posted on HN (and which doesn't involve me in the slightest), but a decade later is taking over the world. Rust and Go were like that. Previously there was that Rust in APT discussion. A lot of this middle-aged linux infrastructure stuff is considered feature-complete and "done". Not many young people are coming in, so you either attract them with "heyy rewrite in rust" or maybe the best thing is to bottle it up and run in a VM.

mesrik 11mo ago
>Great to see some 3letter guy into this AFAIK, djb isn't for many "some 3letter guy" for over about thirty years but perhaps it's just age related issue with those less been around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein
- Slothrop99 11mo ago
  Just to be clear, I mean to venerate Bernstein for earning his 3letters, not to trivialize him.
  - ggm-at-algebras 11mo ago
    Not to trivialise but being a 3 letter guy means being old. So, it's at best a celebration of achieving longevity and at worst a celebration of creaky joints and a short temper.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - vkazanov 11mo ago
      Most of us will have a problematic joint or two by a certain age. Almost none of us will be recognised by any name by that time.
      - ggm-at-algebras 11mo ago
        Mate, we're not talking about the future, but about 3 letter guys now. I'm one, I've carried it with me for 40+ years as have the ten or twenty peers of mine I know by their tla. I got it at pobox.com when the door opened, the guy at the desk next door got a one letter name. I set up campus email for the entire uni in 1989 and gave myself the tla with my superuser rights before that. I'd done the same at ucl-cs in 85, and before that in Leeds and York. My point here is we're not famous we're just old enough to have a tla from the time before HR demanded everyone get given.surname. Every Unix system used to ship with a dmr account. It doesn't mean we all knew Dennis Ritchie, it means the account was in the release tape. There are 17,000 odd of us. Ekr, Kre and Djb are famous but the other 17,573 of us exist.
        Valodim 11mo ago
        I'm not sure what your point is here. OP was clearly using "three letter guy" in the sense "so famous people know them by their initials". This is hardly unread of, e.g. https://wiki.c2.com/?ThreeLetterPerson https://wiki.c2.com/?ThreeLetterPerson
        debugnik 11mo ago
        Is this because they're that famous though or simply because there weren't as many people in the scene back then? We just don't do the initials thing anymore.
        overfeed 11mo ago
        Yes: the fame is the subtext. It's akin to mononyms; they'd be referring to famous people like Shakira, Madonna, or Beyoncé. A lot of us have first names, but the point isn't that one's family calls them "Dave" without ambiguity. There were many unix instances, and likely multiple djb logins around the world, but there's only one considered to be the djb, and it's dur to fame.
        deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - jabwd 11mo ago
    Despite the cool shit the guy has done, keep in mind that "venerate" is not the word to use here. djb is very much not a shorthand used in any positive messaging pretty much ever by any cryptographer. He did it to himself, sadly.
    - pas 11mo ago
      Sorry, can you explain what he did to himself?
      - bgwalter 11mo ago
        I would like to know as well. All that is public is that a couple of IETF apparatchiks want to ban him for criticizing corporate and NSA influence: https://web.archive.org/web/20250513185456/https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/nqouPVfPtU7hm-RF0lSDHCfze54/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250513185456/https://mailarchi... The IETF has now accepted the required new moderation guidelines, which will essentially be a CoC troika that can ban selectively: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/mod-discuss/s4y2j3Dv6DS4qns7AwqRunowIHY/ https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/mod-discuss/s4y2j3Dv6D... It is very sad that all open source and Internet institutions are being subverted by bureaucrats.
        pas 11mo ago
        ... if he thinks some WG is making a mistake and he's not welcome there (everyone else seems to be okay with what's happening based on the quoted email on the first link), then - CoC or not - he should then leave, and publicly post distance himself from the outcome. (Obviously he was never the one to back down from a just fight, but it's important to find the right hill to die on. And allies! And him not following RFC 2026 [from 1996, hardly the peak of Internet bureaucracy] is not a CoC thing anyway.)
        bgwalter 11mo ago
        Why should he leave? The IETF pretends on its sponsor page (https://www.ietf.org/support-us/endowment/ https://www.ietf.org/support-us/endowment/): The IETF is a global standards-setting organization, intentionally created without a membership structure so that anyone with the technical competency can participate in an individual capacity. This lack of membership ensures its position as the primary neutral standards body because participants cannot exert influence as they could in a pay-to-play organization where members, companies, or governments pay fees to set the direction. IETF standards are reached by rough consensus, allowing the ideas with the strongest technical merit to rise to the surface. Further, these standards that advance technology, increase security, and further connect individuals on a global scale are freely available, ensuring small-to-midsize companies and entrepreneurs anywhere in the world are on equal footing with the large technology companies. With a community from around the world, and an increased focus on diversity in all its forms, IETF seeks to ensure that the global Internet has input from the global community, and represents the realities of all who use it. There is only one IETF, and telling dissenters to leave is like telling a dissenting citizen to go to another country. I don't think that people (apart from real spammers) were banned in 1996. The CoC discussion and power grab has reached the IETF around 2020 and it continues. "Posting too many messages" has been deemed a CoC violation by for example the PSF and its henchmen, and functionally the IETF is using the same selective enforcement no matter what the official rationale is. They won't go after the "director" Wouters, even though his message was threatening and rude.
- pixelpoet 11mo ago
  It's wild how much he looks like ryg, another 3 letter genius
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

mesrik 11mo ago

>Great to see some 3letter guy into this AFAIK, djb isn't for many "some 3letter guy" for over about thirty years but perhaps it's just age related issue with those less been around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein

Slothrop99 11mo ago
Just to be clear, I mean to venerate Bernstein for earning his 3letters, not to trivialize him.
- ggm-at-algebras 11mo ago
  Not to trivialise but being a 3 letter guy means being old. So, it's at best a celebration of achieving longevity and at worst a celebration of creaky joints and a short temper.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - vkazanov 11mo ago
    Most of us will have a problematic joint or two by a certain age. Almost none of us will be recognised by any name by that time.
    - ggm-at-algebras 11mo ago
      Mate, we're not talking about the future, but about 3 letter guys now. I'm one, I've carried it with me for 40+ years as have the ten or twenty peers of mine I know by their tla. I got it at pobox.com when the door opened, the guy at the desk next door got a one letter name. I set up campus email for the entire uni in 1989 and gave myself the tla with my superuser rights before that. I'd done the same at ucl-cs in 85, and before that in Leeds and York. My point here is we're not famous we're just old enough to have a tla from the time before HR demanded everyone get given.surname. Every Unix system used to ship with a dmr account. It doesn't mean we all knew Dennis Ritchie, it means the account was in the release tape. There are 17,000 odd of us. Ekr, Kre and Djb are famous but the other 17,573 of us exist.
      - Valodim 11mo ago
        I'm not sure what your point is here. OP was clearly using "three letter guy" in the sense "so famous people know them by their initials". This is hardly unread of, e.g. https://wiki.c2.com/?ThreeLetterPerson https://wiki.c2.com/?ThreeLetterPerson
        debugnik 11mo ago
        Is this because they're that famous though or simply because there weren't as many people in the scene back then? We just don't do the initials thing anymore.
        overfeed 11mo ago
        Yes: the fame is the subtext. It's akin to mononyms; they'd be referring to famous people like Shakira, Madonna, or Beyoncé. A lot of us have first names, but the point isn't that one's family calls them "Dave" without ambiguity. There were many unix instances, and likely multiple djb logins around the world, but there's only one considered to be the djb, and it's dur to fame.
        deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- jabwd 11mo ago
  Despite the cool shit the guy has done, keep in mind that "venerate" is not the word to use here. djb is very much not a shorthand used in any positive messaging pretty much ever by any cryptographer. He did it to himself, sadly.
  - pas 11mo ago
    Sorry, can you explain what he did to himself?
    - bgwalter 11mo ago
      I would like to know as well. All that is public is that a couple of IETF apparatchiks want to ban him for criticizing corporate and NSA influence: https://web.archive.org/web/20250513185456/https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/nqouPVfPtU7hm-RF0lSDHCfze54/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250513185456/https://mailarchi... The IETF has now accepted the required new moderation guidelines, which will essentially be a CoC troika that can ban selectively: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/mod-discuss/s4y2j3Dv6DS4qns7AwqRunowIHY/ https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/mod-discuss/s4y2j3Dv6D... It is very sad that all open source and Internet institutions are being subverted by bureaucrats.
      - pas 11mo ago
        ... if he thinks some WG is making a mistake and he's not welcome there (everyone else seems to be okay with what's happening based on the quoted email on the first link), then - CoC or not - he should then leave, and publicly post distance himself from the outcome. (Obviously he was never the one to back down from a just fight, but it's important to find the right hill to die on. And allies! And him not following RFC 2026 [from 1996, hardly the peak of Internet bureaucracy] is not a CoC thing anyway.)
        bgwalter 11mo ago
        Why should he leave? The IETF pretends on its sponsor page (https://www.ietf.org/support-us/endowment/ https://www.ietf.org/support-us/endowment/): The IETF is a global standards-setting organization, intentionally created without a membership structure so that anyone with the technical competency can participate in an individual capacity. This lack of membership ensures its position as the primary neutral standards body because participants cannot exert influence as they could in a pay-to-play organization where members, companies, or governments pay fees to set the direction. IETF standards are reached by rough consensus, allowing the ideas with the strongest technical merit to rise to the surface. Further, these standards that advance technology, increase security, and further connect individuals on a global scale are freely available, ensuring small-to-midsize companies and entrepreneurs anywhere in the world are on equal footing with the large technology companies. With a community from around the world, and an increased focus on diversity in all its forms, IETF seeks to ensure that the global Internet has input from the global community, and represents the realities of all who use it. There is only one IETF, and telling dissenters to leave is like telling a dissenting citizen to go to another country. I don't think that people (apart from real spammers) were banned in 1996. The CoC discussion and power grab has reached the IETF around 2020 and it continues. "Posting too many messages" has been deemed a CoC violation by for example the PSF and its henchmen, and functionally the IETF is using the same selective enforcement no matter what the official rationale is. They won't go after the "director" Wouters, even though his message was threatening and rude.
pixelpoet 11mo ago
It's wild how much he looks like ryg, another 3 letter genius

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]