Category Archives: Quora

Were networks and websites much easier to hack 5+ years ago?

Repost of my  Quora Answer:

Yes they were because of multiple reasons:

10 years ago Internet had started spreading fast. Since it was a new technology people started adopting it like mad (at least in India that was the time when people started getting crazy about it). But little did they realize that with technology came bugs. A lot of it was replicated into many systems. Those who made Internet never expected Internet to be used the way people started to use it. Banking, ticket booking, form applications, INTERNET started getting everywhere and so did the bugs. As these bugs started surfacing up, it became impossible to patch them up completely . These bugs were exposed on Internet for everyone to view and try them for free. People did start trying. Many countries didn’t even have a formaly cyber security laws in place at that time.

For Example:
Even though https was formally specified in 2000 itself, its widespread use started only in around 2008 when facebook started pushing it (as far as I recollect, correct me if wrong).
New Firefox add-on hijacks Facebook, Twitter sessions    
This is when everyone started hacking Facebook, Twitter 😀 – so by 2010 every major site had to shift to https.

Moral of the long story:
Internet was not made for what it is used today. Noone knew that Internet will be what it is today – it evolved and evolved fast, so did the technology. Mistakes were made and we learned from our own mistakes. Internet today is much safer than it was anytime before.

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Why is Python so popular despite being slow?

I came across an amazing answer for this by Alec Cawley on Quora.

What does it matter if a program runs in 100 msec instead of 1 msec, if only run it a hundred times? If it takes me 10 minutes to develop instead of 60 minutes, I have gained 3000 seconds and lost 10. Isn’t that the right way round?

The only reason for computers is to help us. By running an easy-to-write language, they help us. You need to prove the necessity for a hard-to-write language. There are such proofs – many applications really need performance.  But for the many that do not, Python is an excellent language.

Originally Answered: Why is Python in demand when it is slower than other languages?

Is Quora Down?

It’s 8:30 PM here in Bangalore and I am trying to open my quora profile. But honestly this wasn’t expected. Quora is down. I have been a very frequent quora user for the past 4 years but this is the first time I’ve seen it being down. Not that I am complaining. Quora is indeed the best Q&A platform but this is a rare sight indeed.

Screenshot from 2016-07-30 20-25-04