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LaurieWired

@lauriewired

Mar 27

HTTP code 418 began as an April Fool’s prank to signal “I’m a teapot”.

Later, it acted as a DDoS defense mechanism during the Ukraine war.

In 1998, the HTCPCP standard defined communication for…coffee pots.

Turns out, that wasn't the only thing brewing.

Even the original RFC pokes fun at itself, stating:

"This has a serious purpose – it identifies many of the ways in which HTTP has been extended inappropriately."

Despite the joke, frameworks began treating the error code as valid; leading to unexpected consequences.

Code 418 became a method for developers to confuse attackers.

Instead of an ordinary 404, 418 acted as a marker for suspicious or invalid requests.

It’s essentially a wink at the attacker saying “I know you’re here, and I know what you’re trying to do.

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LaurieWired

@lauriewired

Mar 23

China’s leap in computer science stemmed from a Soviet disagreement.

Soviet computer tech exchanged between the two countries, until tensions between Mao and Khrushchev abruptly ended the swap.

Suddenly isolated, China was forced to create their own computer, the Model 107.

For CS researchers, this was brutal.

1000+ Soviet experts were ordered to leave the country within the month. Their tech was the backbone of China’s early machines.

Self-reliance was the new game, yet they were intellectually isolated from the rest of the world.

Three researchers were tasked with creating a home-grown computer at the Chinese Academy of Science.

Two dropped out.

Xia Peisu, a female researcher, didn’t flinch.

The last person standing, she either had to finish to project, or doom the country to technical stagnation.

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LaurieWired

@lauriewired

Mar 21

Water can solve differential equations.

Lukyanov, a Soviet engineer, was trying to calculate heat transfer in concrete structures.

Hand calculation was cumbersome, so he developed an analog computer to physically model the math relationships.

It worked *really* well.

Known as the “Water Integrator”, it solved partial differentials with just gravity, with an error rate around 2-3%.

Because of the simplicity of “programming” with valves, it was successfully used for Geology, thermal physics, metallurgy, and even rocket engineering.

The insane part? Digital computers weren’t able to match the utility of the Water Integrator for DECADES.

In the mid-70s, they were still being used at over 115 Soviet research sites.

These “Lukyanov integrators” weren’t decommissioned until the late 1980s!

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LaurieWired

@lauriewired

Mar 18

The term “Hacker” originated from a bunch of MIT students obsessed with model trains.

In the late 1950s, the Tech Model Railroad Club was split into two primary factions:

- Knife and Paintbrush
- Signals and Power (S&P)

S&P played fast and loose; disliking authority.

S&P hated formal engineering procedures.

They wanted to use the multi-million dollar mainframe (IBM 704) in Building 26 to calculate their control system.

Turns out, time on that mainframe was restricted to “important” things like defense (lame).

The nerds were out of control.

Eventually, S&P got access to the TX-0, a $3 million experimental computer at Lincoln Labs.

Complexity went off the rails.

Virtualized “j trains” could be simulated on top of the physical network, allowing algorithmic experiments.

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LaurieWired

@lauriewired

Mar 13

Ken Thompson, upon receiving the Turing award, wrote a terrifying paper.

“Reflections on Trusting Trust” illustrates a scenario of original sin.

Because the C compiler is written in C itself, a compromised compiler can self-replicate with no trace in source code.

If you can’t trust your compiler, you can’t trust any compiler you build with it either.

Sin in the family tree, no matter how distant, can propagate to your clean code even decades later.

This creates a recursive paradox. What if the tools used to validate a compiler, are themselves products of said compiler?

Source review never guarantees security. You have to verify the entire ancestry.

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LaurieWired

@lauriewired

Mar 10

In 1960s Soviet Russia, a computer network was proposed decades before the internet.

“ОГАС” had concepts of Cloud Computing, virtual currencies, and a data-driven economy.

At a cost of $300 million, 300k operators, and a 30-year rollout, it was killed by politics.

Glushkov, the creator, envisioned technology as a tool for government optimization.

The claimed savings returns would be fivefold over a 15 year period.

Banks, factories, and offices hooked up to cities; with information further distilled to a central hub at Moscow.

But it didn’t stop there.

OGAS was not just a mere optimization system. Natural language processing would allow humans to communicate directly with computers.

Eventually, they sought to achieve a sort of “information immortality”; the upload of human minds.

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