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Microsoft open-sources Graph Engine

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Re: Microsoft open-sources Graph Engine

#51

Post by pcnix »

Someone1234 wrote: post #36
jpfed wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am under the impression that MS has a lot of different parts, and that these parts have different cultures and goals. MS Research and their developer division seem really open-source-friendly, but that may or may not say anything about their OS team.

Their OS team just put a Ubuntu-Linux subsystem into Windows via direct kernel calls. I'd be careful assuming anything about them.

I was surprised at how well it was implemented. It's a very comprehensive system, and their roadmap for the future is promising too.

Re: Microsoft open-sources Graph Engine

#52

Post by cookiecaper »

dogma1138 wrote: post #7
bluejekyll wrote: post #5

At this rate, are we going to see Windows open-sourced? MS is on a roll. My bias since 1996 is being eroded with each OSS release they have, and multi-platform targeted support. I started using VSCode regularly as my main Rust IDE, and I feel dirty for liking it. It's seemless across macOS and Linux.

I don't see MSFT benefiting from open sourcing windows, so likely never.

Sun is a beautiful case study in what happens when you're a little too aggressive about the "openness" mantra. They bet the farm on SPARC and lost. If they had kept pieces of Solaris closer to chest, who knows what would've happened, but they would've at least had one more potentially-viable commercial offering.

I assume that Microsoft is not going to be naive enough to do the same.

IMO Microsoft's interest in openness revolves around remaining a viable option in the cloud era. They need to protect their investment in the .NET ecosystem and MS-centric development workflow, which means making it easy for people to run .NET programs on *nix-based VPSes and containers.

Re: Microsoft open-sources Graph Engine

#53

Post by WayneBro »

Someone1234 wrote: post #43
WayneBro wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet. Their next strategy is to try and use ARM (again) to shove UWP down your throat. I love Windows but I seriously will not touch UWP until they loosen up the sandbox restrictions so that I can do regular IPC with a win32 desktop app. You can't even send an HTTP request to a little node.js Web server running on your desktop right now. Fuck that. I'm not buying into it.

> I love Windows but I seriously will not touch UWP until they loosen up the sandbox restrictions so that I can do regular IPC with a win32 desktop app. The whole reason for the UWP sandboxing is to make it so that users can confidently install UWP applications with some assurances that it isn't spyware/malware/blackmailware that will take over their PC or steal their personal information. UWP is Microsoft's answer t…

> They aren't going to just dump it all because you and a few others find the priviledge model inconvenient.

> But, no, it won't allow unchecked IPC...

And I'm not asking for either.

How about just giving the user a simple permission like they have for allowing UWP apps to access your Microphone, Camera, Bluetooth, etc?

Seems a little silly that my UWP app can access everything on my network except for my own darn computer via localhost, doesn't it?

Re: Microsoft open-sources Graph Engine

#54

Post by yulaow »

pcnix wrote: post #51
Someone1234 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their OS team just put a Ubuntu-Linux subsystem into Windows via direct kernel calls. I'd be careful assuming anything about them.

I was surprised at how well it was implemented. It's a very comprehensive system, and their roadmap for the future is promising too.

Can I ask you where I can find their roadmap about it? Very interested recently

Re: Microsoft open-sources Graph Engine

#55

Post by WayneBro »

Someone1234 wrote: post #49
WayneBro wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give it a try. You can't send requests to `localhost` or `127.0.0.1` at all. AppService is largely useless for IPC between UWP and Win32 since the UWP app can't initiate a request to the Win32 app. Another thing you can't do, which is really annoying: UWP won't let your code start an external process and use standard i/o pipes to communicate with it. The only possibility is to use files for IPC and you'd have to have…

> However UWP can't listen for changes in those same files, so it's a real PITA. It can via the ContentChanged event see this example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/39737147/how-can-i-watch-... > Give it a try. You can't send requests to `localhost` or `127.0.0.1` at all. Luckily getting the local IP address is easy enough from UWP: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33770429/how-do-i-find-th... That will work s…

OK, so ContentChanged is new since the last time I looked - thanks for that! However, IPC via files is still a PITA in general compared to something easy like sockets.

Using an external IP address is a terrible solution for communicating with another process on the same machine. As soon as you disconnect from the network, it will stop working.

Re: Microsoft open-sources Graph Engine

#56

Post by Someone1234 »

WayneBro wrote: post #53
Someone1234 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love Windows but I seriously will not touch UWP until they loosen up the sandbox restrictions so that I can do regular IPC with a win32 desktop app. The whole reason for the UWP sandboxing is to make it so that users can confidently install UWP applications with some assurances that it isn't spyware/malware/blackmailware that will take over their PC or steal their personal information. UWP is Microsoft's answer t…

> They aren't going to just dump it all because you and a few others find the priviledge model inconvenient. > But, no, it won't allow unchecked IPC... And I'm not asking for either. How about just giving the user a simple permission like they have for allowing UWP apps to access your Microphone, Camera, Bluetooth, etc? Seems a little silly that my UWP app can access everything on my network except for my own darn co…

> Seems a little silly that my UWP app can access everything on my network except for my own darn computer via localhost, doesn't it?

Unfortunately for historical reasons localhost (127.0.0.1) are treated almost like a named pipe. Meaning a LOT of Win32 (and UNIX-style) applications treat data over that path as "trusted."

For one specific example, I've used a HP driver that installs a local webserver for no good reason, and if you can send a specially crafted request it will execute that request in the SYSTEM context. All you need is localhost access and knowledge to pull it off (this is not exploitable remotely).

A lot of software has been designed with the assumption that localhost is trusted and they have therefore used it for IPC. This is exactly what you're attempting to do too. But let me ask you this, what happens if a third party UWP application tries to use your localhost backdoor? Does it allow UWP malware? How are you going to verify that only YOUR UWP application connects to your Node.js instance?

File IPC allows you to limit it to just your UWP application because presumably the file will be within that UWP application's unique storage block. It might be a pain but at least the ultimate result is secure.

Re: Microsoft open-sources Graph Engine

#58

Post by brilliantcode »

Microsoft of 2017 makes me forget about Microsoft of 1997. It's insane how a shakeup of CEO and new cultural shift can seemingly add another major boost to it's brand.

I welcome open source, eventually, I believe that it will eat commercial software, if the right economic incentives are in place. Microsoft may be signaling this to the market.

Re: Microsoft open-sources Graph Engine

#59

Post by eganist »

ygra wrote: post #41
Someone1234 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their OS team just put a Ubuntu-Linux subsystem into Windows via direct kernel calls. I'd be careful assuming anything about them.

They were also very careful not to touch anything GPL-licensed. The Linux syscalls were all implemented from scratch. So it's effectively a proprietary reimplementation of parts of the Linux kernel. I'm not sure how much that says about open-source plans of Windows itself.

That sounds more like an edict from MS Legal more than anything related to the culture of the core OS team.

Re: Microsoft open-sources Graph Engine

#60

Post by adamnemecek »

Jasper_ wrote: post #30
adamnemecek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is the biological analogue, which has inspired neural network I'm somewhat aware but it seems like the idea of a computational graph is the most generic computational idea I can think of and I'm surprised it's not more explored. > Another ancestor would be the Data-Flow paradigm: Oh yeah, data flow is definitely another one.

Functional programming can be represented as a graph, where calls are directed edges. Flow control is often analyzed in graph form in real compilers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_flow_graph

It's not just functional programming (but I do agree that it's better in functional programming). All the reverse engineering tools have some feature to represent assembly as a CFG which is super helpful.
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