I read about a fascinating technique described on Wikipedia as a mathematically formalized combination of Occam's razor and the Principle of Multiple Explanations. I want to add this to my toolbox. I'm dreaming of a concise set of actionable instructions for using Solomonoff induction. I realize this wish might be...
Due to the difficulty of finding high-quality Heartbleed instructions, I have discovered that perfectly good, intelligent rationalists either didn't do all that was needed and ended up with a false sense of security or did things that increased their risk without realizing it and needed to take some additional steps....
I read about a fascinating technique described on Wikipedia as a mathematically formalized combination of Occam's razor and the Principle of Multiple Explanations. I want to add this to my toolbox. I'm dreaming of a concise set of actionable instructions for using Solomonoff induction. I realize this wish might be overly idealistic. I'm willing to peruse a much more convoluted tome and will consider making time for any background knowledge or prerequisites involved.
If anyone knows of a good book on this, or can tell me what set of information I need to acquire, please let me know. It would be much appreciated!
I want to test my ideas, mostly ideas for technology projects and/or startup ideas. Doing scientific research is best but can be quite costly and time-consuming, so I assume it would be optimal to filter the ideas first in order to select the best ones for testing. I already do things like looking for problems and unintended consequences, looking for relevant studies, and showing them to people hoping to find flaws, but I would bet that somebody has created an idea review process that can be applied for even better preliminary filtering. It would be ideal if the process itself had been calibrated such that I could get the... (read more)
Is Heartbleed really untraceable?
I was sent a PM about this and a really good point was raised there. If EFF claims that networking logs showed enough detail to confirm Heartbleed exploit attempts going on, then why did Codenomicon's heartbleed.com website claim that the bug doesn't show up in logs?
Recognizing that this is outside my specialty, I did not venture into this topic but I have been wondering about this myself. To say that Heartbleed leaves no traces in the logs is a pretty big commitment. This is because there are a lot of different software options that you could potentially use. Within those, there may be settings you... (read 483 more words →)
That's been fixed. I was pretty surprised about this mistake. I remember finding that Canadian website link via a news article discussing the impact of Heartbleed. Maybe I copied the number from the news article, but somehow got mixed up while switching between the two pages and ended up grabbing a number that was relevant to some other topic on the news page. Thanks for catching that.
I added a note about this to the post.
Should this learning experience / Heartbleed instructions post be in main or discussions?
[pollid:677]
I wasn't sure that this was on topic enough for main, but Gunnar_Zarncke argued that this post should be in main "because it is totally applicable to practical rationality and real risks".
If a significant number of people vote and the majority wants this to become an article, I'll put it there after fixing whatever errors I'm notified about in the comments, and after requesting or making a polished version of the poll for it that Gunnar_Zarncke started (the one that asks those questions to encourage you to review your reactions to Heartbleed). I really wanted to include such a poll. I just didn't have the time to construct a quality one.
I have had not a single email from any of them about Heartbleed
This delayed my finding out about it. I discovered later that most of them had posted their notice someplace a little out of the way - on some blog that's not even under their main domain name (Google did this and I think Microsoft may have done it), or in a little "news" box that you only see after signing in to the website. I don't know what immunized me against the instinct to write it off as a hoax. Perhaps it was all of the security literature I've read and my daily experiences that have informed me that security is difficult and that flawed code can easily be written by accident.
Thanks. That's fixed. I also checked all the other links in the post for 404 errors and fixed two others.
Due to the difficulty of finding high-quality Heartbleed instructions, I have discovered that perfectly good, intelligent rationalists either didn't do all that was needed and ended up with a false sense of security or did things that increased their risk without realizing it and needed to take some additional steps. Part of the problem is that organizations who write for end users do not specialize in computer security and vice versa, so many of the Heartbleed instructions for end users had issues. The issues range from conflicting and confusing information to outright ridiculous hype. As an IT person and a rationalist, I knew better than to jump to the proposing solutions phase... (read 2634 more words →)
I have read around 25% of The Sequences, most of HPMOR, a lot of LessWrong posts, some Daniel Khaneman, have familiarized myself with logical fallacies, and have begun learning about research methodology. I've been checking my own reasoning and beliefs for flaws and doing self-improvement for years. I have also attended LessWrong and Effective Altruist meetups, and a CFAR workshop after party.
Like many of you, I am an IT person and an atheist. I have a large amount of interest in effective altruism, research, self-improvement and technology in general, and a lesser degree of interest in other topics the community also enjoys like artificial intelligence and transhumanism. I do believe that it's fairly likely that the Singularity will happen within my lifetime, but do not believe that the first AGIs are likely to be friendly.
Aisarka is intended to be more of a neat handle than a claim but I hope to live up to it.
Does anyone know where the most recent version of the welcome thread is? I searched and searched for keywords like "welcome" and "introduction" / "introduce". Do you not use welcome threads anymore?