“Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#11

Post by jasonhansel » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 12:56 AM UTC

This congressman (or his aides) is surprisingly knowledgeable. I'm impressed with whoever thought to ask about nightly builds.

Edit: for reference, this is the congressman who was accused of writing "Bigfoot erotica" during his campaign.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#12

Post by bvinc » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 12:58 AM UTC

I just tried to build libra on stable rust. At least the first thing that failed is that it's depending on futures 0.3. So it's almost certainly using async/await.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#13

Post by jdavis703 » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 1:06 AM UTC

This is a good question to ask, especially about the nightly builds from upstream. There have been NPM exploits targeted at crypto currency developers (e.g. the event-stream breach), so it seems FB would be placing a lot of trust in the Rust developers. This is not to say Rust maintainers are dishonest, but all it takes is one person who's authentication credentials gets comprised.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#14

Post by krferriter » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 1:26 AM UTC

tvanantwerp wrote: post #10

I don't think I've ever heard of a Congressman going to GitHub, poking around in some open source code, and then asking very cogent and relevant questions about it. This video is incredible if only because of that.

Yeah that's the most interesting part of this video. Good to know at least 1 person in Congress knows what "code" is and what "GitHub" is, and even more good that they're knowledgeable enough to know what Rust is, that different languages exist and may have different features and stability, and what nightly builds are. Since overseeing software and data security regulations is part of their job.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#15

Post by ryanmarsh » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 1:27 AM UTC

tvanantwerp wrote: post #10

I don't think I've ever heard of a Congressman going to GitHub, poking around in some open source code, and then asking very cogent and relevant questions about it. This video is incredible if only because of that.

Congresspeople often come from backgrounds other than law. It could have also been his aides helping with this.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#16

Post by glass_of_water » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 1:28 AM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #13

This is a good question to ask, especially about the nightly builds from upstream. There have been NPM exploits targeted at crypto currency developers (e.g. the event-stream breach), so it seems FB would be placing a lot of trust in the Rust developers. This is not to say Rust maintainers are dishonest, but all it takes is one person who's authentication credentials gets comprised.

Also, it's not just an issue of an intentionally backdoored compiler. The nightly could have some experimental optimization enabled, and if there's a bug in the optimization, it could introduce a vulnerability into the compiled Libra binaries.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#17

Post by pohl » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

tvanantwerp wrote: post #10

I don't think I've ever heard of a Congressman going to GitHub, poking around in some open source code, and then asking very cogent and relevant questions about it. This video is incredible if only because of that.

Probably an intern on his staff did the research.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#18

Post by jameslevy » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 1:35 AM UTC

newshorts wrote: post #5

The congressman wants a job at Facebook.

They're going to pass but encouraged him to circle back in six months.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#19

Post by twunde » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 1:36 AM UTC

For those wondering the Congressman in question is Denver Riggleman, (R) representing VA's 5th district.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#20

Post by hnaccy » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 1:38 AM UTC

pohl wrote: post #17

tvanantwerp wrote: post #10

I don't think I've ever heard of a Congressman going to GitHub, poking around in some open source code, and then asking very cogent and relevant questions about it. This video is incredible if only because of that.

Probably an intern on his staff did the research.

>Riggleman was in the Air Force for eleven years, serving as an intelligence officer. He then worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency.

He may just be familiar with programming.