Hitchhiker's Guide to Privacy Engineering - Early Access Issue #2

?? Author's Salute - Community Update #2

Hello dear reader, welcome to the second issue of my "creative privacy" passion project, where we try to discover experiences that harmonize creativity and privacy.

I also added a text-to-speech model to the stable diffusion text-to-image outputs to help with creating a more immersive storytelling experience. Therefore now you can listen to the story as well.

This week I created a trailer which I did for HGPE and also a reading session of the synopsis of the HGPE plotline with subtitles. The music in the background is also an original score of mine!

This issue focuses on the?software aspects?of?how a computer works such as ??

? Operating System

? File Directories

? Coding Programs

? Computer Viruses

? Bugs and Errors

You will also write your first Linux Commands on your?terminal CLI?to execute. You can check out the first part of this chapter which focuses on the hardware from here.

?? Issue #2: How do computers work? (Part 2: The Software)

Operating System (OS)

An Operating System (OS) is an interface between a computer user and computer hardware. Its first job is to get the computer up and running when you first turn the computer on.

The OS is basically a loop of instructions that asks deals with inputs and outputs millions of times per second.

An order was found on the day the computers connected to each other. It was formed to defend humanity. During the Battle for Earth, the Grandmaster was in charge of building the legendary PETs. The ultimate weapons of war against machines. - Journals of Order of Epoch, 2342 Anno Domini

OS is also responsible for starting and ending programs. It guides the programs like a maestro and switches between the programs in RAM.

During the Battle for Earth, the Grandmaster was in charge of building the legendary PETs. The ultimate weapons of war againts the machines, that ironically became the end of humanity's dominance over the Earth. - Book of Cyborg Anatomy by Doctor Talia, 2230 Anno Domini

What is computer code?

A code is something that tells the bits how to assign meaning to themselves. I would definitely suggest checking out Harvard's CS50 course to better understand these concepts.

Humanity defended its capitals from the machines. The synthetic troops built by the Order of Epoch invaded the remaining factories of the machines from two fronts: On the western border by hitting the city of Istanbul and Morocco in the south.- Book of Cyborg Anatomy by Doctor Talia, 2230 Anno Domini

Here is a code for a program in Python, which iterates the integers from 1 to 50. For multiples of three print "Bip" instead of the number and for the multiples of five print "Bop". For numbers that are multiples of both three and five print "Bipbop".

for bipbop in range(51)
    if bipbop % 3 == 0 and bipbop % 5 == 0:
        print("bipbop")
        continue
    elif bipbop % 3 == 0:
        print("bip")
        continue
    elif bipbop % 5 == 0:
        print("bop")
        continue
    print(bipbop):        

The bit does not contain any meaning in and of itself; there is no room in a bit for anything other than the presence or absence of electricity. Meaning is assigned to a bit by something external to the bit.

So think of it as 0 for "no electricity" and 1 for "yes electricity" and hence now you have all you need to form a common language with the computer's hardware and software.

For a hundred years the war went at a stalemate, The humanity defended its capitals from the machines. They were able to contain and hold the machines off to start a counterattack.? - Journals of Order of Epoch, 2435 Anno Domini

Bits together coupled in meaningful ways become bytes, which are then used in the binary, the most native "machine language" to tell computers to get things done.

You can even write a program that turns humans into cyborg space zombies thanks to the advancements in neurotechnologies.

The human legions marched to the capital of Machines to open a second front on the Himalayas.?The valiant charge of the humans and the siege of machine capital, HIVE, enabled humans to upgrade their technology to finish the war.? - Order of Epoch, 2345 Anno Domini

Programming Languages

Computer programming is the process of writing code to facilitate specific actions in a computer, application, or software program and instructing them on how to perform.

So in order for a computer language to exist, you need the syntax and the words that make up the language and a compiler that compiles the written language into more crude machine languages.

Due to one bad misconfiguration, or due to machine worshippers as some believe, the legendary weapon, PETs, started to emit black spores and parasitic lifeforms which was named The Shadow Matter.?- Order of Epoch, 2345 Anno Domini

Here is an example Golang snippet from a real-world production that creates internal system actions.

type Runtime struct 
	actions map[string]actions.Action
	vms? ? ?[]*VirtualMachine
	sync.Mutex
}


func New() *Runtime {
	return &Runtime{
		actions: make(map[string]actions.Action),
		vms:? ? ?make([]*VirtualMachine, 0, 10),
	}
}


func (r *Runtime) AddAction(action actions.Action) {
	r.actions[action.Name()] = action
}{        

Programs

A series of instructions in RAM is called a program. Programs come in many sizes. Generally, a program is a piece of software that has everything needed to do a specific task.

A system would be something larger, made up of several programs. A program might be made up of several smaller parts known as ‘routines.’ Routines in turn may be made up of sub-routines.

Its dark energy invited an unspeakable evil, a Lovecraftian dark singularity to appear on Earth which possessed the Hive and turned it into its slave. Then the capture and massacre of humanity began. All capitals were reduced to rubble and the defense of the humans fell shortly after the emergence of Lilith and her hordes of cyborgs. -Journal of Order of Epoch, 2251 Anno Dominus

The File System

A computer file is a string of bytes that can be any length, from one byte up to all of the bytes available on the disk. This file system gives application programs an easy way of using the disk.

Applications can ask the OS to create, read, write or erase something called a file. You open it, request bytes, send it bytes, make it bigger or smaller, and close the file.

All life carbon-based lifeforms in the proximity of the Shadow Matter died a horrible death as their bodies were possessed by this evil matter. Then the capture and massacre of humanity began. All capitals were reduced to rubble and the defense of the humans fell shortly after the emergence of Lilith and her hordes of cyborgs. -Journal of Order of Epoch, 2231 Anno Dominus

If you ask the OS to look at your disk, it will show you a list of all the file names, and usually their sizes and the date and time when they were last written to.

Last login: Sat Oct 22 23:12:32 on ttys00

mertcanboyar@Merts-MacBook-Air ~ % ls

Applications			Music

Cisco Packet Tracer 8.0.0	Pictures

Desktop				Postman

Documents			Public

Downloads			PycharmProjects

Library				Movies

mertcanboyar@Merts-MacBook-Air ~ %?        

Bugs and Errors

A bug refers to an error, fault, or flaw in any computer program or hardware system. A bug produces unexpected results or causes a system to behave unexpectedly. In short, it is any behavior or result that a program or system gets but was not designed to do.

After the defense of the humans finally broke after 100 years. The remaining humans were hunted down by Lilith who serves the Dark Entity. She practiced cosmic dark experimentations to turn the machines into slaves to her will, using parasitic lifeforms by infecting the Hive. -Journal of Order of Epoch, 2242 Anno Dominus

In the early days of computing, there were components that two pieces of metal had to touch to make the electricity go where it need to go. Sometimes, the machines stopped working correctly, and when they investigated what was going on they found something wedged in between two of these pieces of metal that were supposed to touch each other. IT WAS A LITERAL BUG! A moth to be precise had crawled inside the machine and had gotten itself wedged in between pieces of metal that were supposed to touch each other. Then they removed the bug, and hence the saying “There was a bug in the computer.” was created.

There are two main classes of computer bugs: hardware and software.

A hardware bug actually means that the computer is broken. This could be as serious as you turn the computer on, and it catches fire, or there is one byte in the RAM where one bit is not functioning correctly.

A?software bug?is basically an error in your code due to which you don't get the expected output. And debugging?is the removal of errors in your code, to ensure you get the desired output.

All the cosmic horrors I have seen in what remains of Earth are unspeakable. I could not look, nor could I look away! - Journal of Order of Epoch. - 2227 Anno Domini

Computer Virus

A computer virus is a program written by someone who wants to do something bad to your computer when it runs.

The motivation of people who write virus programs ranges from being geniuses who likes technical challenges to a desire to watch the world burn.

A virus program has to be placed in your RAM, and your computer has to jump to the virus program and run it.

She nearly destroyed both humanity and Earth in the decades that followed. Realizing their potential extinction, they fled from Earth. -Journal of Order of Epoch, 2241 Anno Dominus

When it runs, it locates a file that is already on your hard disk, like some part of the operating system. After the virus program locates this file, it copies the virus program to the end of this file and inserts a jump instruction that causes the virus program to be run instead.

Stuxnet is the first and only known time a cyber attack achieved a military goal., an alternative to a cyber warfare bombing raid. No other virus has done anything like it.

Here is a code snippet from the actual Stuxnet reverse compiled code which is used to delete the entries that seem like Stuxnet files on infected machines

if (Length !=12) return 0;
if (StrCheck(L".TMP, &Filename[Length -4],4) == 0)return 0;
if(StrCheck(L"WTR", Filename,4) == return 0;
for(i =4;i < 8; i++){

 chr = Filename[i];
 if (chr < '0'; chr > '9' return 0;
 Mod = (chr - 0x30 + Mod) % 10;
};
if (mod == 0) return 1;
return 0;         

It is not only a new virus or worm but it's a new era of malware, which you will face far worst in your journey to become a member of Order of Epoch.

-End of Chapter 2: How Computers Work-

?? Comic Book Issue #2 - Want to read the plot and immerse yourself in the story even more?

?? Chapter 2: The Battle for Earth -->?Jump on the?story from here, as it is written and hosted on the Gitbook platform.

??Early Access?is available to the fiction, where you will witness the?story of our protagonist Red, and her journey to find her brother. ‘Lore’ differs from ‘plot’ in that it refers to the?backstory of the galaxy. The first chapters revolve around the lore of the story.

??? Now you can listen to the reading sessions of HGPE with amazing text-to-speech algorithms coupled with original music in the background which I have composed.

?? Please don't forget to subscribe to not miss the new releases and please tell me what you think in the comments. See you next week!