BEg2 chapter 2 going nuts on (concept of) hash-

[Michael Bailey]

Neil, thanks for providing better data!* Also for referring to the cannabis
(et al) connection with computing.

Hash -
It’s a fun idea to play with.

A) Generalize the hash*tag* concept - it's a “label”
So if you sling hashtags, you’re naming things (like Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden) and/or perhaps judging them.
I’ve certainly seen hashtag used in contexts outside social media, and
heard it in sitcom (not yet in real life) conversations, mostly easily
remembered’d be  comments on someone’s clothes: “hashtag dad hat,” eg.
It’s a new kind of way to go meta, also a very social concept sticking
things in a group.

B) Generalizing the “hash function” concept as Neil described it…scrunching
something down to where you can work on it easily, converting into a
minimal form bearing no resemblance to the original?
(Differentiating with hash function, as distinct from sort-of integrating
with hashtags?)

C) Anyway, slinging hash, then, is a big part of Big Data and its
manifestations in social (and antisocial) media.

D) Yet more generally, speech is a hash of experence; text is a hash of
speech.

E) Then there’s “to make a hash of something,” which is to describe the
result of someone pushing through a process & neglecting steps which
the critic considers key.
Like the time in 4th grade when the teacher gave me a bunch of tests to
return and I wanted to do it quickly, so omitted to look at names. It
generated complaints. Made a hash of that.

F) Also, as David mentioned, “Hashslinger” denotes a short-order cook.
Their characteristics applied to data tend to mean “minimal curation,
minimal security, minimal organizing” …applying to all kinds of stuff
pushed out there for cheap or free…and all the downsides like ads,
tracking, selling data, misinformation, and security breaches.

G) reminds me of “quick and dirty,” a phrase my grandmother used for a
hamburger joint.
But sometimes one craves that, unless one has evolved beyond that craving,
I guess…I haven’t had a Krystal burger (local cognate of White Castle; they
steam the buns & the little scumbling of onion bits, ketchup, & mustard is
pretty tasty, especially if you add extra pepper) in hmmm maybe 3 weeks…

H) Who knows what Pynchon is thinking?
But Hashslingrz isn’t a bad term to play around with, imho.


*Neil Fultz wrote:

social media around 2000-2001 was basically just Live Journal, which I
think had "tags" but not "hashtags". del.icio.us and flickr
popularized tagging a couple years later.

Twitter made "hash tags" a thing in 2007-2008ish as they started to
move away from SMS, and then really started getting used as a word in
the early 2010s (the hash was chosen as a direct reference to usage on
IRC)
- https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=hashtag
- https://buffer.com/resources/a-concise-history-of-twitter-hashtags-and-how-you-should-use-them-properly/

In computer science, a hash function is a "one way function" where it
is easy to calculate in one direction but very difficult to invert.
They are typically used for data structures with fast lookups, digital
signatures for verifying files, and for encrypting passwords.

Typically, servers only store the hash of a password, not the plain
text. To crack a password, you "guess and check" by computing the hash
of every combination of letters and searching for a match, which can
take a lot of computing power or patience. So called "rainbow tables"
exist, which are precomputed tables of clear-text passwords and their
hashes, and the NSA reportedly has a very good cluster for cracking
hashes.

The other common usage is cryptocurrency, where "mining a bitcoin" is
not dissimilar to cracking a difficult password.  For reference, the
bitcoin network calculates around 500 quadrillion hashes per second -
arguably the largest slinger of hashes ever, dwarfing the NSA
(although there is a theory that bitcoin is a psyop).

I still think hashish is a major connotation, though.