
A document that the NSA uses for teaching Python - enthd
https://archive.org/details/comp3321/page/n89/mode/2up/search/device
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pbourke
Is this any better than other resources or just mildly interesting because it
was made by the NSA?

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matheusmoreira
Probably the latter. Anything that reveals how the NSA and other agencies
operate is interesting.

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cmroanirgo
I adore governments' classification system which can state things are
classified as 'unclassified', and by extension to hijack the meaning of
'classified' to mean 'top secret'.

On a topic relevant note, from the original twitter feed [0] which
announced/released this (as part of FOIA) a helpful person also mentioned a
lightweight download of the ?same document[1] (18MB vs 118MB).

[0]
[https://twitter.com/chris_swenson/status/1225836060938125313...](https://twitter.com/chris_swenson/status/1225836060938125313?s=09)

[1] [https://deeb.io/wrdprs/wp-
content/uploads/2020/02/comp3321_r...](https://deeb.io/wrdprs/wp-
content/uploads/2020/02/comp3321_red.pdf)

Also, I notice in the top left corner there's a handy little Doc ID: 6689691.
It'd be interesting if if it were possible to FOIA all those Doc ID's.

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ARandomerDude
Top Secret is only one of several levels of classification.

You really need to mark things as unclassified in the government because other
people need to be able to answer basic questions like:

\- what computer am I allowed to view/edit/save/transmit this on?

\- can I talk to my coworkers about this, and if so, which ones?

\- what do I do with printed copies of this document?

Answering these questions wrong can land you in serious trouble, including
jail time. So even as a courtesy to your peers, you want to mark them (U).

~~~
scarejunba
That's apparent to the guy you're responding to. He's pointing out that the
so-called "unclassified" is actually the class "non-secret". A truly
"unclassified" object would not have gone through the process of
classification. It would not have a class.

Of course in English this is fairly common. The object of price zero is said
to have no price. Yet clearly it has a price, it is just zero.

I have to say that's an amusing observation and sort of reveals the type
errors that occur when we model real world things in type systems.

~~~
Daviey
The United Kingdom's previous system for marking school exams (GCSE) had a
marking scheme from "A*/A" to "F", and then "U". Where "U" was Ungraded.
Clearly it was graded, but as a "U".

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az656
What are they using now? I went through the system not that long ago when it
was still A* to U.

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Daviey
1-9,
[https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel...](https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-
gcses/understanding-9-1.html)

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F00Fbug
It's not that great. You can find much better training materials for beginners
all over the place.

~~~
aliljet
Interesting, I don't disagree, but what better alternative would you suggest?

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avinassh
Automate Boring Stuff with Python is a great book to start

~~~
bordercases
That book is an introduction to Python libraries, not programming and barely
even automation.

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orf
Page 4 - the NSA uses Gitlab.

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thenewnewguy
Better link:
[https://archive.org/details/comp3321/mode/2up](https://archive.org/details/comp3321/mode/2up)

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tetrazine
There’s probably nothing to this, but when I try to screenshot the pdf
([https://ia802805.us.archive.org/7/items/comp3321/comp3321.pd...](https://ia802805.us.archive.org/7/items/comp3321/comp3321.pdf))
on iOS Safari, my phone locks up for a moment with a black screen and spinner
and then I have to unlock the phone. Doesn’t happen on other PDFs on
archive.org or after I’ve saved it to iBooks. Can anyone replicate? Is this
perhaps the result of some byzantine configuration state in the PDF spec that
Apple has chosen to implement or that their implementation is choking on?

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gruez
>my phone locks up for a moment with a black screen and spinner and then I
have to unlock the phone

AFAIK that happens when springboard crashes. Maybe there's a 0day exploit in
there?

~~~
simongr3dal
When taking a screenshot in safari on iOS 13 it also tries to save a pdf of
the entire page. If you open the little screenshot overlay in the corner there
is an option to save as the full page as pdf instead of a screenshot.

Maybe the pdf is just too big to be re-rendered and saved as a new pdf and it
crashes somehow.

