My personal blog
hauleth.dev
blog
feat: add article about treachery of representation
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config.toml
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content/post/treachery-of-representation.md
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content/post/treachery-of-representation.md
···
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---
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title: "Treachery of Representation"
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date: 2020-04-27T13:06:26+02:00
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lastmod: 2020-04-27T13:06:26+02:00
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description: |
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Representation is not data - something that developers (and not only them)
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often forgot when working with different data.
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tags:
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- programming
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- linguistic
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- culture
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---
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I had that discussion on different chats few times already, but it is always
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troublesome for people (not just programmers):
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> **Representation is not data**
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And this concept is confused **a lot**.
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Almost any of you know that you can do `ping 1.1.1.1`, however did you know that
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you can also do `ping 16843009` and the result will be the same? Magic? Not
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really. What we commonly treat as an IPv4 address `1.1.1.1` is only textual
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representation of the IPv4 which in reality is single 32-bit number which is
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represented as dot separated 8-bit values just out of convenience. The same
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applies to SHA-1 hashes, UUIDs, etc.
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We people are great in finding patterns and simplifications, so when one sees
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something like:
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```
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-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
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mQINBFd1CwMBEADTJG+QszZ9JK6G+IZpvK/g8mJicqKVTV1OmI1toIml5c/5r/70
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dBc1FuASTM58PPZYJoKkbIh489QIvTm+8UdYu9zNRkT33el7pW1lEe5A6sq2bvoY
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GE8DioHTewdoSDPf7KIaZQeRcIY4n93rUOwA6GEtNpyYGP6ss5Y7BGk4ltSioe7N
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o+4ZmWoQZwZzRon3t1eWVVP9tRMG5nLzL3XA5FK8TqoYuuIOR0Kw9+yK/CIJi6EV
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NGXidQEhRX/e6cDcqmo6LQuQluuhpwKjD3rVIq5P55kDcyUXHkcr9/RBIY1GCw0m
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r03H053xYhPib4S3fkcGMz1zrvgPR8M6T8VYXERZDjKzQbkkjKx2umP+MQb57N/m
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Ndr+vks5PoPOPTGS9DYPaWf0fTVWQz/Wr6SuqKYWOObw2Ql1fOFS9dlQ26VHqtdP
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CjCS/+kxTWP0SNIlvmICj68JNq0Elti8DNF+8K4U/zjqphqLUOMYo+bfxF3Xudlx
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…
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X5tXXRd2Jx3rkquLhlOaIfwx5ZKkc0jFvFq6L6iQ8M3w2osTTQ8wzLVrKcA/1E37
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vzFw0eLlAHxqKKx8AGXhlG+bu4z9
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=HbWE
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-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
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```
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Then they will automatically say that this is PGP public key, however it is not!
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This is only armored (textual) representation of such. We can find infinite
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amount of ways to represent this in different formats that will suit our needs.
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We can use binary format, we can post it as huge integer:
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```
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2261124045260532526154306748833731566597485067054072337617187788422439611692535
221
+
6816154352988676611143089545607089006494597803681742408872009589972348314218354
222
+
5885756829028538416517815718956811889863727858335798002033148984814372442071252
223
+
2067544365025698588181983841271622441543580184070308095038169545529105805899001
224
+
5825565028451412722300055213104773432923209992505613530612435181227942384006400
225
+
6523874291660768676182135558923684054785558197662748591717032047925055385422584
226
+
8826587112169068650291428518318455696828296955217726852703371476729712500873714
227
+
9472757285042561083989577043290348125840395005244750850424202067248954262318073
228
+
3815815411200758900340511052777147951522351782525348580404031636340281256009099
229
+
3622685663270098759448305092624146163465790024589793366278716865415624355235291
230
+
3985878069536487297514629837101726802175517221106646456169044468305875210017956
231
+
3762872046696988950422497705388225997904571624738961093738188347083184831994615
232
+
5653340873908308859802165057177945265893576798033839250748977766722025452484918
233
+
4969906442004769360577067228954632576483279588054785969942183381969384204862823
234
+
5527295851917376805942967603231125591852023457112648669282453139677076502138626
235
+
9831545895899997311194908866099892662200438185858903893802349550297108232343975
236
+
7063807807
237
+
```
238
+
239
+
Before you ask - yes, this is my PGP public key as a single decimal integer.
240
+
241
+
Next time you will see someone asking for "shorter UUID" you can point them
242
+
there and say - just pick shorter representation.
243
+
244
+
[so-uuid]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2117523/1017941
