Nostr notes by Dan Wallach

R.I.P. Patrick Stewart. ...

2026-10-29T22:50:20Z

R.I.P. Patrick Stewart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA7lv1SDzno

(HT to the New York Times for linking to his Sesame Street appearance.)

Here's an interesting result where the co-authors use AI code ...

2026-10-14T17:57:02Z

Here's an interesting result where the co-authors use AI code generation, wrapped in a "hill climbing" optimization, to build what might be the world's fastest -- and verified correct -- implementation of DEFLATE compression and decompression. All that you write are the specs (in a subset of Rust) and then you wait while it crunches.

This feels spiritually similar to the GNU Superoptimizer, which is commonly used to find sequences of instructions that are identical in impact to a reference standard but run faster, only the kinds of changes this new tool can make are far more radical, and yet the result is still correct. Even better, this architecture seems to naturally control for reward hacking behaviors.

The challenge, unsurprisingly, for somebody who wants to roll this out in a big way is that writing unambiguous specs is an incredibly difficult problem, all by itself.

https://henniger.dev/post/djinn/

Peter G. Neumann has passed away. 94 years old. Haven't seen ...

2026-05-17T17:50:05Z

Peter G. Neumann has passed away. 94 years old.

Haven't seen an obit posted yet, but here's a detailed interview with John Markoff from 2012.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/science/rethinking-the-computer-at-80.html

When I was a grad student attending CCS '97 in Zürich, I ...

2026-05-01T23:11:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…qxre
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When I was a grad student attending CCS '97 in Zürich, I ended up having an hour-long conversation with Ross Anderson in the otherwise empty hotel bar. Somehow I got over my fear and just approached him and introduced myself. Amazing, talking to a legend and having a real discussion about my career.

More recently, on the paying it forward front, I was invited to a CRA event (representing DARPA, at the Watergate Hotel!) where I'd stay at a round table and ten fresh assistant professors would show up. We'd talk for 15 minutes, then DING, a fresh round and start over again.

So, these kinds of things do occur, but they could definitely stand to happen more often. You just need to somehow break the ice, so prospective folks won't be afraid to even sign up.

I was invited to give a keynote at NDSS. I gave the first talk of ...

2026-05-01T01:03:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…k8rc
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I was invited to give a keynote at NDSS. I gave the first talk of the day. After that, I had a huddle around me, in the hallway, for the entire rest of the day. Lots of junior faculty asking for career advice. While exhausting, it's intensely rewarding to pay it forward.

I like your calendar idea. See if you can get other folks to do the same, and make it a bigger effort, get the conference organizers to announce it, etc.

I got into bread baking when the NYT started the "no ...

2025-07-12T21:06:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…wgyy
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I got into bread baking when the NYT started the "no knead" crazy in, what, 2006? These days, I make a lot of sourdough rye.

It would be cool if they were reproducing hand-tinted b&w ...

2024-12-17T16:11:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…5v2p
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It would be cool if they were reproducing hand-tinted b&w photos, which were certainly a thing back in the day, but the photos here look way too good, too clean.