When I was around 8 to 10, I got REALLY into computers through this book my parents got: https://bashny.net/t/en/34007 (Энциклопедия профессора Фортрана / Professor Fortran's Encyclopedia). It laid out all the fundamental concepts like algorithms, storage, memory, etc. I didn't even have a computer at the time, but this book I think pretty much laid the path for me.
My dad also had these ones, which I also loved: https://archive.org/details/worldofcomputers/page/n17/mode/2... (Мир компьютеров в вопросах и ответах / World of Computers in Questions and Answers). It's probably got an original Japanese version, but I can only find the Russian ones. These books are more advanced, and go into computer basics all the way to telephone and packet networks.
I enjoy this series quite a bit and read more than a few but these books are far denser than people realize. After each manga section there are several pages of an afterword of sorts that feature some of the densest textbook level explanations you'll ever see simply because they can't give the needed depth in the manga parts of the story if their goal is to actually teach something.
This is such a retarded new security feature of Firefox. Oh no! Something wants to be downloaded from plain HTTP! As if malicious actors could not figure out HTTPS...
you say retarded, at least in this particular instance, i say thank you. if the browser warns you it is http and not https yet allows you to download anyways, then no harm no foul. it's not any different to me than when a browser warns you something is hinky with a website's cert with a scary warning, yet allows you to view it anways.
maybe so, maybe that's all it thought was scary. luckily for me, i had no intention of downloading the item as it was an accidental click while trying to click a different window. It just so happened to come from suspicious looking IP only address with a PDF about manga. So it just worked out in my favor.
you can't deny that it is a very suspect link even if giving benefit of doubt that surely an HN user would never post a link to something untoward, right?
What makes it more suspicious other than the lack of a domain name? Would you trusted more if it was http://righto.com/MangaGuidetoMicroprocessors.pdf instead? (using Ken's blog as an example) Or did you do an IP look up in your head that told you this IP is related to malicious activity?
What if it has HTTPS instead? Would that make it less risky for you? (From my understanding of HTTPS, it wouldn't. Maybe make it harder for other people to see that you're viewing a pdf..)
Basic self protection of the interent is don't click on suspicious links.
PDFs are known vectors of malware.
PDF only links as submissions to HN receive their own mod to the title to indicate that it is a PDF for multiple reasons.
Using a term like manga is click baity as well, as it will help lure people in to clicking a link. A common ploy for people needing to use ploys.
I was mainly upset that with all of the effort I go to in order to not click suspicious link, this is how it happened. It also just happens to be a supsicious looking link that for whatever reason(s), my browser decided it would not download it. For me, this worked out just fine as I had no intention of attempting to download it.
> Basic self protection of the interent is don't click on suspicious links.
You still haven't explained why you think it's suspicious. You keep getting close and then avoiding actually explaining; is it PDFs that are suspicious? Raw IPs? Unencrypted HTTP? Describing it as "manga"?
What? It's the sum of all of those reasons. Getting close to what? I just point by point listed the things about the link that made me leary. Good lord, why is it so hard to believe that I felt the link was just odd and definitely worth hesitation on validity.
If you feel it is hunky-dory to just click willy nilly never think about it lalalala all the live long day, then click away. You do you. Me, I tend to see links like that and take pause on if I feel the risk of following that link would be worth the potential reward. I make these types of decisions all day long while traversing the web, reading emails, tweets, etc
Videos also get modified by HN btw. I have firefox HTTP warning turned on as well, so I assume that's what you saw.
I still don't understand what you found so sus about my link, as it's exactly relevant to the thread here. It's not uncommon to see links in HN threads that bypass paywalls for example.
Ig there's no conclusion to be reached other than, be more careful next time? If you are really worried, you could sandbox your firefox with Qubes OS.
EDIT Just noticed that Ken must've seen this thread.. @kens well played! You got me good :D
Why are you taking this so personally? If it were normal, I would be very hesitant to click a link that looked like yours. I've already stipulated that a bit of benefit of the doubt on another HN viewer would be less likely to post suspect links, but bots are a plenty.
I've already listed my reasons, and I really don't think there was fault in any of the reasons for my personal "keeping safe on the intwebs". You may find that in your day to day life, you are much more cavalier about links you click. You do you, I'll do me.
However, it's 2022 now, and to not be using HTTPS is pretty much just a whole level of not trying very hard. So much so, the browser warned against it.
I don't see how is HTTPS related to the safety of a file. The problem is not that you have your reasons, it's that they seem irrational/show a lack of technical understanding and this is HN so of course people will challenge you.
If you don't understand how HTTPS protects one's safety while traversing the wilds of the internet, then I would posit it is you that doing have technical understanding of how things like MITM is a bad thing. Everyone that has challenged is focused on one single aspect vs the hollistic view of it. Given any one thing of the reasons I posted may not be enough on its own, but added all together the link becomes something I would/do choose to ignore.
But there is nothing to MITM here, it’s a link to a file. Either you trust the person posting the link or not, but the host and the protocol are irrelevant in that case to evaluate if it’s safe or not, period. It’s not that people are challenging details, it’s that your concept of holistic view makes no sense here, there is nothing to add together.
Also having that wrong mental security model makes you more vulnerable (i.e. you’ll be less on your guard when seeing https and a reputable host, where you shouldn’t and apply the same level of scrutiny).
While PDFs can contain malware and for some reason people trust hosts with domain names more than bare IPs, the sole reason Firefox showed the warning was because you attempted to download a file via HTTP from a HTTPS page - it had nothing to do with the file type or bare IP.
The reason for that is browsers already have some methods of differentiating between HTTP and HTTPS when displaying web pages, but not for downloads. So folks at Mozilla decided to implement a feature that warns the user in this specific situation. Personally I disabled this feature (block_download_insecure in about:config) but for the majority of the population it might be a good thing.
I've only read a few but its hit-or-miss... to be expected since the series is written by so many different authors.
I think the Manga Guide to Databases was really good, but the Manga Guide to Linear Algebra was pretty bad.
To be fair, Linear Algebra is really difficult to teach and hard to think of a silly story to wrap it together. But the Princess in the "Database" story is trying to organize the apple-orders of her kingdom, and that's just enough "story" needed to be a good, practical example of Databases, 3rd normal form (as well as the inconsistencies you'd come across in just 1st or 2nd normal form... and how those inconsistencies could lead to double-orders or incorrect data).
The only book you need to get a solid foundation in Linear Algebra is Linear Algebra Done Right by Sheldon Axler. Not only a very good book on LinAlg, but a very good book on any topic.
Larry Gonick did western equivalents of these; Cartoon History of the Universe is either the best book I've ever read or the best comic book.
It's rather 70s though, so the art can get psychadelic and it covers several different religions as if they're literally true. But it has to be the only kids' history book written in the US that treats China and India's history as just as important as ours.
I love Gonick's books! I have his Cartoon Guide to Calculus, Modern History, and US History too! His bibliographies at the back of the books would make for excellent syllabuses
I'll vouch for the Manga Guide to Databases. It's a solid first introduction wrapped up in a silly little story about a princess and a fairy. Read numerous 5-star Amazon reviews for more.
It's such an odd coincidence to see this now; I just discovered this series a week ago. I teach elementary school science and math, and I've already used a few excerpts from this (from Universe and Calculus) to help illustrate important ideas. I'm also a huge fan of Gonick's The Cartoon Guide to Genetics, which I'm using with the younger kids. As far as I'm concerned, we'd replace pretty much every textbook with comic books.
Could anyone with this subscription tell us if it's worth getting? I'm in the software industry and do read books from time to time, maybe just one every quarter or something like that. Still worth to get the subscription?
I was going to reply "so worth it" but I checked my subscription - $399/year (legacy) now $499/year. I had gotten it when I was starting consulting and needed to read books per client projects, and could write off the expense for taxes.
Now, I'd have to say no. I read maybe one book a year. ( I "could" read hundreds, but in the end, I don't) I could buy the physical book, which I prefer, and 7 or so others and keep them, instead of a virtual library. Or get them from my public library. Or from archive.org.
The only advantage was the unlimited library and the auto-update of books from revision to revision. But your question has caused me to cancel the subscription.
If you can get it from library or university, I'd say it is -- but not unless you read a lot of books per year.
All I can say is it is incredibly useful, not just O’Reilly but they have got collections from a lot of other publishers. It is really useful as a reference or when you want to deep dive into something new. To top it, if you get to complete couple of books cover to cover, it is even better.
I can’t say whether it is worth the subscription fee. I have got my employer to cover for my subscription for the last 2 years, but not sure if I will be willing to pay it out of my pocket.
Membership to ACM (acm.org) comes with access to the o'reilly learning platform along with some other benefits and costs $99, so that's a pretty good deal. Have to admit I don't read enough to make it worth it though
> Could anyone with this subscription tell us if it's worth getting?
My local library has a deal with them: connect to the library's website, enter your card number, and get bounced through a proxy to O'Reilly's site to read any content.
Perhaps check if your local library system as the same deal.
My local library for sure doesn't have access (it has around ~100 books available at any given time, and because of lack of funding/maintenance recently had to give away their computers).
Since you do have access, could you maybe share if you think it's worth paying for?
> Since you do have access, could you maybe share if you think it's worth paying for?
It has been handy for a few things, but given the finite hours in a day/week I tend to not read tech stuff in my off-hours, so haven't used it much in general. Most recently used it for some Postgres stuff and IPv6:
I don’t know how good these are for actually learning a subject matter, but I’ve always been tempted to pick up a couple, if only to keep on the shelf. There are some that cover topics I’d genuinely be interested in and have a poor enough grasp on that they would likely be useful as introductions if nothing else. And even if not, it’s difficult to deny the novelty :P
Reading some comments here on perceived sexualising in manga, I've started to think that's why we have that ugly asexual Corporate Memphis illustrations everywhere.
These kinds of educational manga have been quite common in where I grew up in and I devoured them one after the other. Never though I was “studying” but still got a good broad picture of the topic. I think that’s how education should be! I get so annoyed at how utterly boring my school was.
I’ve been thinking about drawing something similar for software engineering and have a draft for introducing Apache Kafka that I want to publish some day.
Yeah they do teach what you need to know, in my experience, but they're not textbook level in explanation, simply because there's no space for that much text on the page.
Some of them are. Both the Electricity and Microprocessors books have lengthy sections that are mostly text with a few diagrams, as opposed to the normal manga format.
I got most of these when Humble Bundle was running a 35% off sale on No Starch Press (here's the book set: https://nostarch.com/manga-guide-13-book-set). Still a splurge, but it saved me a good chunk of money.
If cartoons trigger you, I suppose you may have a problem with oversexualising media. They r just drawings, when I read mangas as a kid I never thought and I still dont think about them that way. Why not notice the cute monsters? or cute dress? Some body proportions are comical, the eyes are drawn to portray emotions in a cute or exaggerated way. There may be a drawing or two that you might call fan-service, but not everyone looks at these cartoons and thinks that this material is for sex predators all the time. In asia not everyone is so triggered or oversexualising everything. Where is the innocence in people? have we lost the ability to look at things differently?
How does that protect it from criticism, let alone mean that one should not voice their disquiet about its effect on them? I live in Japan and I think it's a disgrace how much of this stuff is around.
Most manga/anime fans in the west are young women. That doesn't mean they bring it to work, but they're not offended by manga having women without perfectly flat chests or anything. Remember, the attraction to those features is just in your head.
Actually this reminds me of an anime forum I used to be on that was so sensitive about this issue (because the other boards made fun of them constantly) they ended up being reduced to only liking shows where shirtless men got in homoerotic fights, because any women being on screen that wasn't a grandma was a sign of fanservice.
You are thinking about this too hard, they are just drawings...some of the manga scenes also portray male kids with adult muscles, it's just comical and light to read. The humour is very different. We all got the right to be silly and playful sometimes, why always so serious?
A lot of manga is written by women, and a lot of it is read by women. You're overreacting and being unnecessarily prudish. None of the art on any of those books is even remotely lascivious.
Sadly this kind of small sexualization is very common in most manga media. I grew up in Japan and thought this is normal, only finding out later in a Western country this is appalling. Once you have a more global perspective, I see this is certainly a concern, as Japan's gender gap in the STEM area is worse than any developed country (can't quote the number for now, but take a look at the World Gender Gap Index). The problem is compounded when some people (like ones in this very thread) brush this off as "oh this is just a drawing why so serious haha" when modern-day sexism is just a collection of many, many small things.
there is definitely an issue. not so much that your coworker would get upset or anything. but it is true that anime & mangas geared towards men (shonen and seinen) tend to overuse young girls for effect. they even have names for the different archetypes.
those geared towards women (shojo and josei) do the same thing but they have a different drawing style. the manga guide collection is not using that style.
the manga guides are cool with me. but that does not invalidate the issue though. it's exactly the same issue as men with perfect six packs on romantic novel covers.
>those geared towards women (shojo and josei) do the same thing but they have a different drawing style. the manga guide collection is not using that style.
What? Its way closer to shojo style than it is to something like Dragon Ball Z.
Shojo and Josei manga are designed for female-audiences. They can consist of male characters (DNAngel) or female characters (Princess Jellyfish).
Shonen and Seinen manga are designed for male-audiences. They can consist of male characters (Naruto), or female characters (Madoka Magica).
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Madoka Magica in particular is a Seinen-oriented story pretending to be a Shojo story. So the categories can get complicated sometimes. All categories know and understand each other's demographics, as well as the tropes and overarching storylines that enter one demographic vs another.
But that's what makes "cross-demographic" shows (like Inuyasha, Kenshin or Madoka) so much fun. They take elements of one genre, and shove it into a totally different genre.
Inuyasha is nominally Shojo (aimed for a female audience), with Kagome (female protagonist) meeting lots of cute fantasy male characters (Inuyasha in particular). But it takes a battle-style reminiscent of Shonen, and a lot of male-audience members identified with Inuyasha.
Kenshin is nominally Shonen (aimed for a male audience), with Kenshin (male protagonist) largely doing battles. But Kaoru's arc largely plays out like a Shojo romance. As such, a lot of female audience members identified with Kaoru.
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The gender of the main character though isn't really that important though. In the West, it seems like "male-audience must have a male-main character", but that sort of thing just doesn't seem to be an issue in Manga. Its kinda-sorta there in some cases, but there's enough manga / anime that break the rule that it really isn't a rule at all.
A lot of Shonen are abridging the training arcs (ex: Demon Slayer, Mob Psycho skipped the training arcs).
It seems to be some new hypermodern kind of storytelling. Turns out that the "Training arc" really isn't needed. But even something as old as "Full Metal Alchemist" never really had a major training arc.
But Demon Slayer is popular because it was written by a woman and drawn kind of shoujo-y.
(Jump, which has no women working for it and never has, doesn't actually realize this. They think it's popular because it's got demons and stuff, so they approved a bunch of mystical setting comics to follow it up… like Ayakashi Triangle… clearly women are going to love that one.)
Hiromu Arakawa (Full Metal Alchemist) is a woman. EDIT: Oh, wow, that's not a "Jump" manga. Huh, well TIL... so your point stands.
CLAMP also made a scene back in the 90s / 00s by emphasizing the shear number of women in their circle. They made all sorts of manga too across all genres... even dabbling into erotica. Cardcaptor Sakura, Chobits, xxxHolic, Rayearth, the character designs for Code Geass, etc. etc.
IIRC, Cowboy Bebop's script was also written by a woman. Etc. etc. I do hear that Japan is pretty bad when it comes to gender issues but I'm really not super into the culture believe it or not (I do like Anime/Manga, but I understand that's just a subset of the culture).
Manga authors don’t work “for” Jump, they’re contractors and keep ownership of their work. That’s why the One Piece guy is rich unlike any of the actual artists behind the MCU.
The manga publishers work by having editors keep the creators on track every week and canceling work that loses too many readers.
Totally random, but I literally just read the scene in When supernatural battles became commonplace where they have this conversation almost word for word...
Western cartoons always have boys as protagonists because the execs thinks nobody likes girls. They just have the opposite opinion is all. Mainly the character ages are because they're targeted to readers of the same age, but there's definitely impure reasons for it too.
All these covers have pretty different artstyles, it feels kind of random and the art isn't great either. Not sure if it's meant to be a parodying popular series or what.
Mostly they look like boys' comics, "Statistics for Nurses" feels like website clip art, and "Surveying" looks like an older girls' comic or book cover for a Western novel.
Mind you, I don't know how the other character presented on the cover is depicted later on, but "girl in short skirt" I first thought would be an university graduate age at least. Could be that there's a case of preconceived ideas or "cultural dictionary" involved?
My dad also had these ones, which I also loved: https://archive.org/details/worldofcomputers/page/n17/mode/2... (Мир компьютеров в вопросах и ответах / World of Computers in Questions and Answers). It's probably got an original Japanese version, but I can only find the Russian ones. These books are more advanced, and go into computer basics all the way to telephone and packet networks.