HackerNews Summary (2023-05-11 03PM)

Source: Problems harder than NP-Complete

Summary
P vs NP oversimplifies problem difficulty. Problems can get much harder than NP: PSPACE requires polynomial space, and EXPTIME requires exponential time. EXPTIME includes problems such as defining succinct circuits and game problems. Problems continue to get harder with 2-EXPTIME, which includes Presburger Arithmetic statements and some program synthesis.

Fact

😓 P vs NP oversimplifies difficulty; problems can get much harder, ex. PSPACE.

🤯 EXPTIME requires exponential time and is suspected to be strictly larger than NP and PSPACE.

🧩 Problems under EXPTIME include defining succinct circuits and game problems.

🤯 2-EXPTIME includes Presburger Arithmetic statements and some program synthesis.

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Source: Millions of mobile phones come pre-infected with malware

Summary
Miscreants have been infecting cheap Android mobile devices with malware before they reach consumers, affecting millions of global users, says research by Trend Micro. Experts say the problem began when competition led to a price war among firmware distributors, forcing providers to add silent plug-ins and underscoring how vulnerable smartphone security can be at an early stage of the device’s lifecycle.

Fact

📱 Criminals have infected millions of Android devices worldwide, mainly cheap mobiles, with malware before leaving factories, according to security researchers at Black Hat Asia.

🌍Telemetry data estimates millions of infected devices globally, largely focused on Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, with self-reported figures from the criminals of around 8.9 million infections.

💰 Criminals rent out “proxy plugins” that can be used to harvest data such as keystrokes, geographical location and IP addresses or to steal information stored on the device and monetise the attacks via adverts and click fraud.

🇨🇳 The researchers suggest that China may be contributing to the widespread attacks.

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Source: The Birth & Death of JavaScript

Summary
This talk humorously narrates the history of programming from 1995 to 2035, covering the flaws and positive impact of JavaScript on the industry.

Fact

🤖 In 2030, AI writes perfect code, but no one knows how it works.

🌐 JavaScript was created in 1995 in just 10 days.

👨‍💻 JavaScript’s flaws include global variables, lack of built-in module system, and asynchronous programming.

💻 JavaScript’s impact on the industry is tremendously positive, making it the most widely used programming language.

📈 JavaScript’s popularity grew with the rise of web applications and Node.js.

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