[HN Gopher] Foundations of Computer Science
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Foundations of Computer Science
Author : tosh
Score : 134 points
Date : 2022-01-27 12:19 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (infolab.stanford.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (infolab.stanford.edu)
| Scarbutt wrote:
| What other books teach data structures/algorithms along with
| discrete math like this one?
| quda wrote:
| bdhdnjdjdkd wrote:
| This is great! It would be wonderful if this kind of thing would
| be added to the open textbook movement so people can mix, match,
| and update the content. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks
|
| Us societal rejects would greatly appreciate it.
| exdsq wrote:
| Looks good! Their examples of using goto in automata (chapter 10)
| is the first time I've seen it that makes sense to me.
| joelbondurant1 wrote:
| beebmam wrote:
| It's quite ironic that the "Foundations of Computer Science" are
| hosted on an HTTP server without TLS.
|
| I was lucky enough to have gone to a university system (UC) which
| gave me an opportunity to learn the fundamentals of computer
| science, but when I see major universities (like Stanford)
| operate public HTTP sites without TLS, I can't be anything other
| than disappointed.
|
| It's 2022, there's really no excuse to operate public HTTP sites
| without TLS (with minor exceptions). Even self-signed certificate
| HTTPS would be far better than HTTP without TLS.
| Kranar wrote:
| I feel like in the absence of an overwhelming justification,
| your comment is just derailing the topic and attracting
| unnecessary attention.
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| Why is it important for this particular site to use https or
| tls?
| wackafooe wrote:
| Please explain your reasoning. Why would this site need HTTPS?
| falcor84 wrote:
| I don't think any explanation about a particular site is
| needed. I came to believe that we in HN all agreed that mass
| surveillance is bad and that promoting HTTPS everywhere is
| the least we can do make surveillance more difficult.
|
| Just as no one would want government agents following them
| around as they go about their day attending university
| lectures, and just as we wouldn't be happy with that agent
| asking us "Why, what do you have to hide?", we also shouldn't
| be comfortable with having our visit to resources on
| stanford.edu be open to surveillance by every node on the
| network. In a world where even example.com uses TLS, we can
| surely expect the same from all Stanford subdomains.
| Zababa wrote:
| Just to push back on your first paragraph, there is no "we
| in HN". HN is composed of individual people with various
| degrees of belief in "HTTPS everywhere" and "mass
| Surveillance is bad", especially since many people here
| benefit directly or indirectly from money from mass
| surveillance.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| there are many we's in hn emerging from the headlines we
| choose to click on.
| mburee wrote:
| Why would it need encryption? The only convincing argument
| would be stuff like as insertions by ISPs and so on but that's
| extremely uncommon. Additionally everyone and their mother
| seems to be a CA these days...
| beebmam wrote:
| There's more to HTTPS than just data integrity promises. One
| of the most popular topics on Hacker News is privacy, so I'd
| imagine people here would understand why virtually all public
| websites should be HTTPS only.
| qsort wrote:
| Ah yes, the obvious privacy implications of reading topics
| in elementary computer science.
|
| You are right that virtually all public websites should be
| HTTPS only. Serving static, non-sensitive data is the use
| case that "virtually" is there for.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > You are right that virtually all public websites should
| be HTTPS only.
|
| That is correct.
| beebmam wrote:
| Is there any reason to be so sarcastic here, other your
| desire to engage in bad faith here? There are good
| reasons to make the paths that people request on public
| websites private to the client & server, even when that
| content is seemingly not interesting (to you) to gather
| for snooping purposes.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Its always entertaining to see users claiming bad faith
| when they are engaging in bad faith themselves.
|
| Please list the good reasons that are relevant for a
| fully publically accessible page of information that
| contains nothing that asks for usernames/passwords or
| whatever.
| 533474 wrote:
| Don't feed the troll
| beebmam wrote:
| The proof of the burden as to why this website should
| force all communication to be public is on you. HTTPS
| exists and configuring it is simple in this era, and the
| choice to not use it for a university's public website is
| either laziness or incompetence.
|
| You surely must be aware that content like headers and
| even URL paths (and other parts of the URL) are
| confidential over HTTPS.
|
| Why should I allow an employer, an abusive spouse, an
| abusive parent, a parole officer, a detective looking to
| charge me with a crime, a gang looking to intimidate me,
| know which content I'm accessing from a website? All it
| takes is something like a wireshark application somewhere
| between (inclusive) my network and the server's network,
| and they will full have access to everything I've
| requested from the server and everything it has responded
| with, including all metadata. No warrants needed.
|
| Like I said in another comment: "Why should we make any
| personal details about our lives public information if it
| doesn't need to be? Do you go around announcing all the
| things that you do in your life that are seemingly
| harmless? Sometimes revealing information to the public
| that one would think is harmless can end up doing a lot
| of harm, both to you and others. Privacy matters, a lot."
| jcelerier wrote:
| > Do you go around announcing all the things that you do
| in your life that are seemingly harmless?
|
| you must not like twitter much
| [deleted]
| theWreckluse wrote:
| Why's it /so/ disappointing? I/We would definitely
| appreciate if you could elaborate. I'm not saying https is
| pointless, but why is it such a big deal for a site like
| this?
|
| And how is self signed better? If anything I'd say it's
| worse! It creates a false sense of security.
| beebmam wrote:
| Sure I'd be glad to elaborate. Why should we make any
| personal details about our lives public information if it
| doesn't need to be? Do you go around announcing all the
| things that you do in your life that are seemingly
| harmless? Sometimes revealing information to the public
| that one would think is harmless can end up doing a lot
| of harm, both to you and others. Privacy matters, a lot.
|
| A self-signed certificate used for HTTPS still protects
| the client/server from snooping by a unaffiliated party,
| even if it doesn't protect from a MITM intercepting and
| responding to the request in the case where the client
| hasn't already added this self-signed certificate to
| their trusted CA store.
| utopcell wrote:
| Going against my better judgement and feeding the troll:
| While public key cryptography is Computer Science, HTTPS
| most definitely has nothing to do with Computer Science
| theory.
| gryn wrote:
| not ironic at all, you're just confusing (theoretical)
| "Computer Science" with "Software Engineering" industry best
| practices.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Related HN submission:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30084470
|
| https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2022/2/258231-abstractions-th...
|
| Aho and Ullman received the Turing Award last year and their
| Turing lecture and this book have some overlap.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| There are so many topics that one might consider "foundational"
| in computer science. While this (what I would call the Data
| structures and algos) is one approach, you could also:
|
| -- start with binary and work your way through hardware and logic
| gates
|
| -- start off with theory like turing machines, first order
| predicate logic and work your way up
|
| -- start off with a hello world, and slowly iterate over
| programming (in a post internet world, this is especially
| popular) with loops, if/then statements and so on
|
| But, perhaps aging myself, this book is close to my idea of the
| traditional introduction.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > -- start off with theory like turing machines, first order
| predicate logic and work your way up
|
| Or start off with the lambda calculus-based alternative to
| Turing machines, as in seen in SICP.
| munificent wrote:
| Just my opinion:
|
| _> -- start with binary and work your way through hardware and
| logic gates_
|
| I'd consider this foundations of computer engineering.
|
| _> -- start off with theory like turing machines, first order
| predicate logic and work your way up_
|
| I'd think of this as more like foundations of computability
| theory, but, yeah, this seems like another viable angle for me.
|
| _> -- start off with a hello world, and slowly iterate over
| programming (in a post internet world, this is especially
| popular) with loops, if /then statements and so on_
|
| I'd call this foundations of software engineering.
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