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Michael Rabin has died

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Re: Michael Rabin has died

#81

Post by harel »

zozbot234 wrote: post #62
harel wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to regularly donate to the wikimedia foundation every year. I stopped doing that as I find the whole project is now a political tool and cannot be relied on. Even ignoring vandalism like here, sometimtes the same articles get different meanings depending on the language you view them in.

Different language editions of Wikipedia are completely different projects, with distinct user bases. You're never looking at the "same" article across languages.

In that case, Wikipedia should not link to them (and even distance themselves from the edition) if they purposefully change the content of the article to suit a political agenda. The whole thing became a death match arena of factions as mature as 12 year old kids playing an actual death match arena game... This example here just demonstrates my point.

Re: Michael Rabin has died

#83

Post by [deleted] »

blovescoffee wrote: post #77
AlecBG wrote: post #7

First sentence starts with horrible antisemitism. Can someone fix it? (on my phone with kids so not in a position to)

Wikipedia has demonstrably been ravaged by anti-semitism. Feel free to ignore any of the notes here about Israel / anti-Israeli sentiment which I understand is not clear cut. There's demonstrably antisemitic coalitions editing wikipedia en-masse. https://www.adl.org/resources/report/editing-hate-how-anti-i...

[deleted]

Re: Michael Rabin has died

#84

Post by YZF »

tptacek wrote: post #75
adrian_b wrote: post #2

Michael O. Rabin had important contributions in many domains, but from a practical point of view the most important are his contributions to cryptography. After Ralph Merkle, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, Michael O. Rabin is the most important of the creators of public-key cryptography. The RSA team (Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman) is better known than Michael O. Rabin, but that is entirely due to…

They didn't really found a successful business. They founded a middling business that didn't do much but license a patent until Security Dynamics, a smart card company, bought them and took over the name.

The story that I remember going around is that they each made some millions of dollars. That was a lot of money at the time for academics. I audited a cryptography course given by Adi Shamir in the early 90's and you couldn't tell he was rich though.

Re: Michael Rabin has died

#86

Post by ogogmad »

blovescoffee wrote: post #77
AlecBG wrote: post #7

First sentence starts with horrible antisemitism. Can someone fix it? (on my phone with kids so not in a position to)

Wikipedia has demonstrably been ravaged by anti-semitism. Feel free to ignore any of the notes here about Israel / anti-Israeli sentiment which I understand is not clear cut. There's demonstrably antisemitic coalitions editing wikipedia en-masse. https://www.adl.org/resources/report/editing-hate-how-anti-i...

[flagged]

Re: Michael Rabin has died

#87

Post by tptacek »

YZF wrote: post #84
tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't really found a successful business. They founded a middling business that didn't do much but license a patent until Security Dynamics, a smart card company, bought them and took over the name.

The story that I remember going around is that they each made some millions of dollars. That was a lot of money at the time for academics. I audited a cryptography course given by Adi Shamir in the early 90's and you couldn't tell he was rich though.

I mean, I'm sure it turned out great for them, but their reputation definitely isn't rooted in their business acumen.

Re: Michael Rabin has died

#88

Post by eranation »

keybored wrote: post #63
apical_dendrite wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wikipedia edit that this thread is discussing was as follows. I think it's worth printing it here to make the point that the commenter above you is completely right about the prevalence of anti-semitism in online discourse today: > Michael Oser Rabin (Hebrew: מִיכָאֵל עוזר רַבִּין; September 1, 1931 – April 14, 2026) was a Jew (a.k.a. kike) rat computer scientist who was co-recipient, with Dana Scott, of the 1976…

Who the heck sets it as their antisemitism campaign to edit “vile X” and “X (aka rat)” on Jewish biographies. Normalizing slurs? I thought the goal of antisemites was to spread propaganda about how Jews are bad. Writing “X (aka BAD)” seems like the weakest possible attempt at that. I don’t know what people elsewhere in this thread are going on about Israel for.

Some people are actively trying to shift the Overton Window, and sadly some attempts are more successful than others.

Re: Michael Rabin has died

#89

Post by nephihaha »

moralestapia wrote: post #22

"As a young boy, he was very interested in mathematics and his father sent him to the best high school in Haifa, where he studied under mathematician Elisha Netanyahu, who was then a high school teacher." Interesting. Some people are lucky enough to find their vocation quite early in life.

That's Benjamin Netanyahu's brother apparently.

Sad that the only thing that shows up nowadays in searches tends to be Wikipedia. I miss the democratic internet with lots of quirky sites you could find with ease.

Re: Michael Rabin has died

#90

Post by ishi »

arbuge wrote: post #34
thraxil wrote: post #3

I took his Introduction to Cryptography class when he was a visiting professor at Columbia. Absolute master of an old-school chalkboard lecturer. They don't make them like that any more.

I know him from Harvard and came here to say pretty much the same thing. RIP.

I took his Computability class in the Hebrew University. He got angry that students were often late to class, and said that this never happened in Harvard...
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