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Halvar Flake
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Halvar Flake
@halvarflake
Choose disfavour where obedience does not bring honour. I do math. And was once asked by R. Morris Sr. : "For whom?" @[email protected]
thomasdullien.github.io/about/
Joined June 2008
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  • Pinned
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    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Nov 4, 2019
    I will have to print & frame this tweet :-))
    user avatar
    Rob Joyce
    @RGB_Lights
    Nov 4, 2019
    If you watch one talk this month, make it this one. Profoundly insightful on the complexity threat to security by @halvarflake given at NATOs CYCON. Video: err.ee/836236/video-g… And slides: docs.google.com/presentation/d…
  • user avatar
    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Aug 22, 2022
    Today in IP law: someone registered a trademark for CUGGL as a clothing brand in Japan, and sells shirts with the logo partially obscured. GUCCI sued, JP trademark office states that CUGGL is not similar enough to GUCCI to warrant enforcement.
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    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Dec 5, 2022
    Feedback effects: Google initially relied on the (human-curated) link structure of the internet to derive "importance" signals from the internet graph. As people started using Google instead of links, Google accidentally destroyed the fabric that provided the value.
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    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    May 2, 2019
    Excel is the most popular functional programming language.
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    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Apr 21, 2024
    The best thing I did in life was learn assembly at age 16 when everybody said it's a waste of time.
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    tetsuo
    @tetsuoai
    Apr 20, 2024
    George Hotz says that everyone should learn C and Assembly.
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    00:00
    421K
  • user avatar
    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Dec 4, 2022
    I think i must've conducted on the order of 100 coding interviews while I worked at Google. After playing with ChatGPT, I have to say: It is better than the median engineer I interviewed at solving coding interview questions.
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    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Nov 2, 2023
    I wish I had more time to chime into the AI doom debate, but here a very quick thread: 1) The one thing all AI doomers seem to assume is that almost all engineering problems can be solved by thinking, vs. experimentation. 2) Humanity has seen multiple individuals of ...
    1.7M
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    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Aug 22, 2022
    Replying to @halvarflake
    Homoglyph attacks on trademarks.
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    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Nov 3, 2025
    Given the extremely big role ffmpeg has played historically in YouTube I think it's pretty fair of ffmpeg to ask Google to submit the patches...
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    vx-underground
    @vxunderground
    Nov 3, 2025
    Lots of nerds arguing over FFmpeg and Google stuff still. Basically security nerds have argued that FFmpeg has a responsibility to fix any bugs in their project regardless if they call themselves a "volunteer project" or a '"vendor". Security nerds argue that because of the
    93K
  • user avatar
    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Aug 31, 2019
    We take your security and privacy. Seriously.
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    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Apr 12, 2021
    Next level trolling.
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    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Nov 6, 2021
    Brief reminder that there are Excel sheets out there, created by non-developers, that have created more business value than most software devs (me included) will create over their careers, and that are more sophisticated than 95% of programming tasks.
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    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Jul 13, 2023
    Understanding that every compressor is a machine learning predictor, and vice versa, was the single most important insight I learnt about between 2019 and now.
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    Riley Goodside
    @goodside
    Jul 13, 2023
    this is wild — kNN using a gzip-based distance metric outperforms BERT and other neural methods for OOD sentence classification intuition: 2 texts similar if cat-ing one to the other barely increases gzip size no training, no tuning, no params — this is the entire algorithm:
    for (x1, _) in test_set:
  Cx1 = len(gzip.compress(x1.encode()))
  distance_from_x1 = []
  for (x2, _) in training_set:
    Cx2 = len(gzip.compress(x2. encode())
    x1x2 = " ".join([x1, x2])
    Cx1x2 = len(gzip.compress(x1x2. encode())
    ncd = (Cx1x2 - min(Cx1,Cx2)) / max(Cx1, Cx2)
    distance_from_x1.append(ncd)
  sorted_idx = np.argsort(np.array(distance_from_x1))
  top_k_class = training_set[sorted_idx[:k], 1]
  predict_class = max(set(top_k_class), key=top_k_class.count)
    191K
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    Halvar Flake
    @halvarflake
    Jun 22, 2024
    People that ignore robots.txt automatically waive their side of all other agreements, such as ToS or licensing terms.
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    Luke Metro
    @luke_metro
    Jun 22, 2024
    honestly it’s amazing that robots.txt held up as a self-regulation for 25 years
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    69K
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