News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say researchers. Parent comment

Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by gaius on Monday July 31, 2017 @08:06AM (#14891139)
And they got it wrong too. Trivial in the software sense merely means there is a known solution, you just have to implement it. Non-trivial means you need to generate some novel IP first.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by asax on Monday July 31, 2017 @10:58AM (#14892578)
Genuinely sorry if I'm being ignorant here, but... by whose definition?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by Bartweiss on Monday July 31, 2017 @12:39PM (#14893521)
As far as I can tell, he's borrowing the mathematics sentiment, where "the proof is trivial" doesn't necessarily mean you'll find it easy - it just means that the interesting aspects of the problem have been dealt with and what's left is a simpler or more general case.

That said... I've never encountered "novel IP" as the actual standard for 'trivial' in mathematics or CS. It would take a very strong source to convince me that's a formal or most-common-use meaning. (The Wiki page on 'trivial (mathematics)' certainly doesn't offer that meaning.)

[ Parent | on HN ]