[FRIAM] A PolyMath by any other name...
Frank Wimberly
wimberly3 at gmail.com
Mon Dec 30 16:38:20 EST 2019
No I meant Bruce Simon. He works for a company that makes devices that
treat depression and migraines by stimulating the vagus nerve electrically.
Frsnk
-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly
My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly
My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2
Phone (505) 670-9918
On Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 2:31 PM Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
> I believe that Bruce (if you mean Sherwood) went AWOL from this list,
> expatriating to WedTech when it was formed (5 or more years ago?), along
> with a few others. I heard rumors of a contingent getting overly tired of
> our endless philosophical maunderings here, in favor of a more "actionable"
> set of discussions, whether it be CS/Tech details or "good places to
> eat/plumb/roof/get-drunk in Santa Fe", etc. I try to keep my own endless
> blather on esoteric topics on this list rather than our sister WedTech, but
> am not terribly disciplined about such things. I could be wrong, Bruce
> (and others I assume expatriated) might well be lurking here...
>
> PolyBores R' US!
>
> Bruce, do you receive this list?
>
> -----------------------------------
> Frank Wimberly
>
> My memoir:
> https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly
>
> My scientific publications:
> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2
>
> Phone (505) 670-9918
>
> On Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 2:04 PM Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org> wrote:
>
>> Okay, resurrecting this four plus year old discussion because it matched
>> a search for vagus.
>>
>> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5807379/#B20 reports that
>> electrical stimulation of the outer ear can stimulate the vagus nerve and
>> has positive results for treating depression. It's hitting a spot that
>> acupuncture uses to treat depression.
>>
>> -- rec --
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 11:22 AM Nick Thompson <
>> nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Steve,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thank you for not chastising me, as I surely deserved. I want to take
>>> this opportunity to renew my apology to the list.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> If you asked me to think deeply, I would say that boredom is actually
>>> one of those things that is in the eye of the beholder. A person who is
>>> bored by a topic is just a person without the resources or energy to find
>>> what is interesting about it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Obviously I, the pot, who has been known the regale this list with
>>> commentary on Elevated Mixed Layers, should not be calling any pots black.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks, Steve, as always, for your good will.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>>
>>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>>
>>> Clark University
>>>
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Steve
>>> Smith
>>> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 11, 2015 11:36 PM
>>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>>> friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Subject:* [FRIAM] A PolyMath by any other name...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick!
>>>
>>> I'm surprised *anything* bores the living crap out of you! I hear tell
>>> of you staring for hours at water swirling down a drain, considering the
>>> philosophical and psychological implications of such, and even more hours
>>> listening to the squawks of Ravens!
>>>
>>> That said, I have to say that Marcus' and Glen's conversation here was
>>> far enough above my head that I can't imagine finding the time to noodle
>>> out enough of the reserved lexicon to do more than gape at it awkwardly.
>>>
>>> I have a good friend who is a former AstroPhysicist who has reinvented
>>> himself a few times as a High Performance Simulation Scientist, then
>>> Virtual Reality Researcher, then Nueroscience Researcher. He is definitely
>>> a PolyBore to anyone without experience or interest in those fields, but
>>> the hoot of it all is that one of his best and oldest collaborators has
>>> stuck with "Applied Math" for 50 years and he calls HIM a "MathHole"...
>>> they are finishing up a multi-year book project on their theory of Neural
>>> Function based in Category Theory. I suspect even people who
>>> Neurophysiology and Category Theory find them Polybores!
>>>
>>> I do like the duality of PolyMath/PolyBore... we might have more than a
>>> few such creatures here on this list!
>>>
>>> - Steve
>>>
>>> Hi Owen,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> How’s your summer.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I note that not only can glen and company participate in a conversation
>>> with me that bores the living crap out of you, but they can also
>>> participate in a conversation with you that bores the living crap out of
>>> me. But I am not threatening to pick up my marbles and go home.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think it’s in the nature of things. They are multitalented bores.
>>> Polybores, we might call them. I guess being a polybore is the other side
>>> of being a polymath.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>>
>>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>>
>>> Clark University
>>>
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com
>>> <friam-bounces at redfish.com>] *On Behalf Of *Owen Densmore
>>> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 11, 2015 7:41 PM
>>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>>> <friam at redfish.com> <friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: unikernels?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks! Fascinating.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -- Owen
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 4:37 PM, Parks, Raymond <rcparks at sandia.gov>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> The original articles/blogs are from the U of Cambridge Xen folks and
>>> a somewhat buzzword lovin' sysadmin. The current trend in using someone
>>> else's computer (SEC, more commonly called cloud) is LInux containers and
>>> docker. The articles predict that the future is unikernels. A unikernel
>>> is application specific, like containers, but in the form of a monolithic
>>> VM that includes the specific application and necessary kernel services for
>>> that app. At least two of the current unikernel projects use functional
>>> languages - OCaml and Haskell. The Xen model is for a developer to specify
>>> the kernel services they need, develop the application code, develop the
>>> configuration code, and the whole thing gets turned into a monolithic VM
>>> that runs in the Xen hypervisor. In theory, this makes for greater
>>> efficiency and less chance of the tail wagging the dog. By that latter, I
>>> mean that one of the major issues in securing computer systems of systems
>>> is that one gets all of a system one includes (i.e DNS Bind) even though
>>> one uses one small feature. That means all of the vulnerabilities as well
>>> as all the features that are not used.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> As I said in a previous post, this is a reinvention (for hypervisors)
>>> of IBM VM and CSM - the latter being a minimalist kernel with, usually, a
>>> single application.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The downside of monolithic VMs is that any change requires a complete
>>> rebuild of the VM - even minor configuration changes that are the
>>> equivalent of environment variables. In a SEC environment, for example,
>>> adding a static or CDN to the list of sources for a web server will require
>>> a rebuild. Alternatively, of course, one could simply allow the web-server
>>> unikernel to invoke scripts from any web-site recursively - but then an
>>> attacker simply inserts an advertisement that invokes malware and we're no
>>> better off than before.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The idea of unikernels is not bad nor is it new - but the benefits will
>>> probably not be as great as the current promises. The UX will not be
>>> different for the end-user although it might be somewhat better for the
>>> content provider.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It's not clear to me that the visionaries have thought about this
>>> outside of the WWW. For example, I recently read an article about how
>>> NetFlix worked hard to be able to provide streaming video with SSL
>>> encryption. They started with their standard server and added SSL - the
>>> performance hit made that impractical. Eventually, they found a
>>> configuration of VMs and infrastructure that made the performance hit
>>> acceptable. A unikernel that only served SSL-encrypted video would be more
>>> efficient than their current VMs running a general-purpose OS plus video
>>> streaming software. But configuration changes (newly added caching
>>> locations, links that are down, et cetera) would be the bane of a unikernel
>>> NetFlix. Each time BGP reports a change, either the video streaming
>>> unikernel would need to be rebuilt or there would need to be another layer
>>> of unikernel that dispatches requests to the video streaming unikernel
>>> VMs. But that dispatcher would either need to be reconfigured or there
>>> would need to be another unikernel that tracks network connectivity changes
>>> and informs the dispatcher - and now we still have configuration changes
>>> and a complex system of unikernels that exist to make it possible.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The Internet is a dynamic system that constantly changes - and any
>>> system that uses the Internet needs to adapt to constant change. The two
>>> ways to do that with unikernels are to have the meta on meta layers I
>>> imagine in the previous paragraph or to change the VM unikernels on the fly
>>> so the user will eventually get directed to a correctly configured
>>> unikernel. That latter means there will be performance hits - how bad
>>> those will be is TBD.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Ray Parks
>>> Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer
>>> V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Aug 11, 2015, at 3:25 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm so outta this conversation!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Could one of us give a brief explanation of unikernels and the related
>>> tech being discussed?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 2:49 PM, glen ep ropella <gepr at tempusdictum.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> OK. But what I'm still missing is this: if unikernels are more domain-
>>> and/or task-specific, then the dev environment will branch, perhaps quite a
>>> bit. I.e. one dev environment for many deployables. We end up with not
>>> just the original (false?) dichotomy between config and compiled, but
>>> meta-config and, perhaps, meta-compiled. And that may even have multiple
>>> layers, meta-meta.
>>>
>>> So, while I agree pwning the devop role allows the attacker to infect
>>> the deployables, the attacks have to be sophisticated enough to survive
>>> that branching to eventually achieve the attacker's objective. I.e.
>>> "closeness" in terms of automation doesn't necessarily mean "closeness" in
>>> terms of total cost of attack.
>>>
>>> It just seems that the more objective-specific the deployable(s), the
>>> less likely a hacked devops process will give the desired result. I'd
>>> expect a lot more failed integration/deployment attempts if my devops
>>> process was modified.
>>>
>>> But this is all too abstract, of course. The devil is in the
>>> particulars.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 08/11/2015 01:13 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote:
>>>
>>> I would expect the dev environment to be closer if not actually in
>>> the same hypervisor. It's almost like the web-site we once attacked by
>>> using the java compiler on the web-site's computer sytem to modify the code
>>> in the web-site. Right now, with devops, the dev environment is probably
>>> not in the cloud/hypervisor. And, for unikernels that may also be true.
>>> But to deploy quickly in both devops and unikernel, there has to be a
>>> direct channel from dev to cloud.
>>>
>>> In more traditional environments, there's a dev server in a separate
>>> space, a testing server in its own environment (sometimes shared with
>>> production but not touching production data), and a production server.
>>> While traditional environments don't always follow the process well, in
>>> theory the flow is developers develop on a development network with the dev
>>> server, roll their system into the testing server which runs alongside the
>>> production server with a copy of the production data and processing real or
>>> test transactions, and finally install the tested version on the production
>>> server. From my standpoint, that means I can attack the production server
>>> directly or the development server on a separate network. There has to be
>>> connectivity, but it's likely to be filtered, if only to prevent the
>>> development server from affecting the production environment.
>>>
>>> In devops and in future unikernel systems, the pace of change is, of
>>> necessity, much faster and the three roles are collapsed into one VM. The
>>> VM image is modified in place, given a new name so that rollback is
>>> possible, and the management software is told to use the new image instead
>>> of the old.
>>>
>>> One of the principles of cyberwarfare (as formulated in our paper of
>>> that name) is that some entity, somewhere, has the privileges to do
>>> whatever the attacker wants to do and the attacker's goal is to become that
>>> entity. In the case of devops and unikernel, that entity is the
>>> developer(s) who make(s) the changes to the VM. In traditional
>>> environments, the attacker might need to assume the privileges of several
>>> entities.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> glen ep ropella -- 971-255-2847
>>>
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>>
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>>
>
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> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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