The Cursed Computer Iceberg Meme

Sep 19, 2023

Ref. https://suricrasia.online/iceberg

Reading List

Above the iceberg

[x] y2k 2023-09-19 (Read date)
- Many programs represented four-digit years with only the final two digits, making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900.
- via ChatGPT: The Y2K problem was a computer bug that arose because many systems stored dates with only the last two digits of the year, potentially causing errors when transitioning from 1999 to 2000.
[x] brainfuck 2023-09-19
- A famous Esolang with 8 characters ><+-.,[]
[x] Little Bobby Tables 2023-09-19
- Classic XKCD Comic
[x] TCP/IP over carrier pigeon 2023-09-19
- via ChatGPT: IPoAC, or "IP over Avian Carriers," humorously proposes using carrier pigeons to transmit data, illustrating the absurdity of slow physical transport in contrast to digital data transfer.
[x] year 2038 bug 2023-09-19
- Unix timestamp 32-bit integer overflow in January 2038
[x] spectre/meltdown
- Modern critical exploit that reads data in memory of other programs
[x] ternary operator
- a ? b : c
[x] md5 rainbow tables 2023-10-01
- precomputed table for caching the outputs of a cryptographic hash function e.g. MD5
[x] DOOM on a toaster 2023-10-01
- https://youtu.be/vI7tWd7B3iI
[x] self-modifying code 2023-10-01
[x] undefined behaviour 2023-10-01
- ChatGPT: When a program exhibits undefined behavior, it means that anything can happen, and the results are not guaranteed to be consistent or meaningful. This can lead to crashes, data corruption, or other unexpected and undesirable outcomes.
[x] hungarian notation 2023-10-01
- Annotate data type within variables e.g. strName, decPrice
[x] emoji variables 2023-10-01
[x] tracking pixels 2023-10-01
- aka. web beacon - track webpage and/or email visitors, usually be a single pixel transparent image
[x] heisenbugs 2023-10-01
- a software bug that seems to disappear or alter its behavior when one attempts to study it
- e.g. a bug that will not be present if runs with a debugger attached
[x] perl golf 2023-10-01
- Code golf with Perl language
[x] parsing XML with a regex 2023-10-01
- H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ
[x] tar bomb 2023-10-01
- a .tar whose contents appear to explode into the current/existing directory instead of a new directory
[ ] all web browsers pretend to be each other
[ ] sidechannel attacks
[ ] rowhammer
[ ] bogosort
[ ] sleepsort

On the iceberg

[ ] typeof(NaN) === “number”
[ ] quines
[ ] javascript was designed in 10 days
[ ] unintentionally Turing complete languages
[ ] :(){ :|:& };:
[ ] human gene renaming due to MS Excel
[ ] numbers that start with zero are interpreted as octal
[ ] hardware backdoors
[ ] Falsehoods programmers believe about time
[ ] manual loop unrolling
[ ] the Sony BMG rootkit
[ ] ping of death
[ ] no computers are turing complete because memory is finite
[ ] fonts can be malicious
[ ] Intel Management Engine
[ ] the 500 mile email
[ ] fast inverse square root
[ ] the “Wat” talk
[ ] “a monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors”
[ ] self-hosting languages
[ ] total_hours_wasted_here = 42

Below the water

[ ] [X5O!P%@AP4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*\n
[ ] [/usr/bin/
[ ] the FDIV and F00F bugs
[ ] magic the gathering is Turing complete
[ ] smart cards run Java
[ ] c++ templates are Turing complete
[ ] “lp0 is on fire”
[ ] PHP’s fractal of bad design
[ ] SVG supports JavaScript
[ ] array[i] == i[array]
[ ] rm -rf $STEAM_ROOT/
[ ] Postscript and PDF are Turing complete
[ ] illegal numbers
[ ] reflections on trusting trust
[ ] INTERCAL
[ ] polyglot programs
[ ] Powerpoint is Turing complete
[ ] cold boot attack
[ ] zero-knowledge proof
[ ] malbolge
[ ] Van Eck phreaking
[ ] CAP theorem
[ ] etherkiller
[ ] null island

Middle of the iceberg

[ ] font hinting is Turing complete
[ ] Therac-25
[ ] adversarial patches
[ ] x86 mov is Turing complete
[ ] FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8
[ ] PDP-10 “more magic” switch
[ ] Duff’s device
[ ] Tony Hoare’s billion dollar mistake
[ ] Super Mario Flappy Bird
[ ] are floats for money really that bad?
[ ] “Thank you for playing Wing Commander!”
[ ] OpenOffice does not print on Tuesdays
[ ] square waves do not exist
[ ] program code can be read by hand off decapped chips
[ ] 42.zip
[ ] most cpu instructions are unused by compilers
[ ] COMEFROM
[ ] c trigraphs
[ ] ADSL over wet string
[ ] Aphyr’s technical interviews
[ ] gps week rollover
[ ] “das ist ein Game-Boy Advance…”

Bottom of the iceberg

[ ] no elegant solution to FizzBuzz exists
[ ] Actually Portable Executable
[ ] ouroboros programs
[ ] soviet ternary computers
[ ] SQL raytracer
[ ] The Story of Mel
[ ] return to libc attack
[ ] tainted canvases
[ ] SIGBOVIK
[ ] billion laughs attack
[ ] “You fool. You absolute, unmitigated, unadulterated, complete and utter, fool.”
[ ] Dual_EC_DRBG
[ ] javascript’s father, son, and holy spirit
[ ] reverse indentation
[ ] killer poke
[ ] YAML vs Norway
[ ] HTTP referer header typo
[ ] Wikimedia flower DDOS
[ ] “The Birth and Death of JavaScript” predicted the future
[ ] python number redefinition
[ ] non-local goto
[ ] The Basilisk Collection

Below the iceberg

[ ] SAT solvers keep getting faster
[ ] perl parsing is undecidable
[ ] Jsfuck
[ ] void *alloca(size_t size);
[ ] x86 instruction set is unbounded
[ ] chucknorris is an HTML color
[ ] TIMTOWTDI
[ ] fractional bits
[ ] CMake raytracer
[ ] nasal demons
[ ] “samy is my hero”
[ ] the Effective Power bug
[ ] cross-language string escaping
[ ] MicroSD cards are Turing complete
[ ] no-knowledge proof
[ ] isUserAMonkey();
[ ] EVE Online vs boot.ini
[ ] RAID write hole
[ ] page fault handling is Turing complete
[ ] weird machine
[ ] black dot of death
[ ] POPCNT: the NSA instruction

Deep water

[ ] GPS chip maximum speed
[ ] radiation hardened quines
[ ] sandsifter
[ ] 00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a
[ ] Spyro YOTD is booby-trapped
[ ] Jazelle DBX
[ ] HotJava
[ ] all build systems have a bug with unicode BOM
[ ] airplane ticket mainframe pointers
[ ] NSA ANT catalog
[ ] exploiting linux with 6502 assembly on the NES
[ ] GIFARs
[ ] diverse double compiling
[ ] Wii sensor bar LOLSERIAL
[ ] FJCVTZS
[ ] the scary devil monastery
[ ] 8 and 9 were valid octal digits in pre-ANSI C
[ ] radioactive chip packaging materials
[ ] witchcraft compiler collection
[ ] kleptography
[ ] “Moving online webserver using public transport”
[ ] Crash Bandicoot quantum corruption
[ ] GIF MD5 hashquine

The abyss

[ ] unicode on punch cards
[ ] .fr-016c: fuenf (in your face)
[ ] Coding Machines
[ ] Mario Wolczko’s unix recovery
[ ] WebMIDI permits arbitrary code execution
[ ] “I no longer trust the constants.”
[ ] The Bitter Lesson
[ ] infinite loop inlining bug
[ ] Bedlam3
[ ] Alexander Rhatushnyak broke Kolmogorov complexity and won 8000 euros
[ ] ClueBot NG’s emergency stop button
[ ] The Infamous Japanese Postal CSV
[ ] Orson Welles’ in-band signaling attack
[ ] C64 Safe VSP
[ ] USERSEEUSERDO
[ ] Adrian Thomson’s primordial silicon
[ ] BANCstar
[ ] lost FOCAL interpreter
[ ] Toby Ord’s “Complete Turing Machine”
[ ] GCJ-02
[ ] “The single most useful macro in Praat”
[ ] if your computer bug isn’t a moth jammed in a relay, it’s not a bug. it’s just a sparkling error.
[ ] computers are flattened sand with lightning inside

Additional Cursed Content

Supplemental Bathysphere #1 (February 2022)

[ ] Lies, damned lies, and scans
[ ] wtfjs
[ ] Minesweeper logic gates
[ ] preprocessor_fun
[ ] left-pad
[ ] The DAO
[ ] The FORTRAN-hating gateway
[ ] stuxnet
[ ] Producing Wrong Data Without Doing Anything Obviously Wrong!
[ ] argc == 0
[ ] ambiguous PNGs
[ ] Binary Banshees and Digital Demons
[ ] Linux in a pixel shader
[ ] ambiguous URLs
[ ] Explaining the Entombed Algorithm
[ ] Arbitrary Code Execution in the Universal Turing Machine
[ ] ace w/ fopen
[ ] ubuntu’s surprisingly innocuous compiler bug
[ ] c++ ”—>” operator
[ ] A Turing Machine whose behavior is independent of ZFC
[ ] radr://5614542
[ ] exact reals converge to 6, floats converge to 100
[ ] programming down on bare metal / head crash radio

Supplemental Bathysphere #2 (June 2022)

[ ] Lace card
[ ] Cursed computer memory hierarchy
[ ] The wrong error message
[ ] Hertzbleed
[ ] strfry
[ ] main is usually a function
[ ] The C++ Iceberg
[ ] sinkhole
[ ] The Apple GPU and the Impossible Bug
[ ] Black Sunday Kill
[ ] Array.prototype.contains
[ ] Polyglots
[ ] 80 columns
[ ] the liminal space between fork and exec
[ ] unexec
[ ] 1900 is a leap year
[ ] Escaping HTML
[ ] Mr Self Destruct
[ ] The most vexing parse
[ ] set_trace_func
[ ] aux.h
[ ] C Integers Quiz

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