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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

> Why exactly would you do any of this

Because it's your first adventure in the land of crypto and you have no idea how to do things, which parts you need to learn about and which are not required. It seems trivial for me now, but there was a time I would end up on a similar journey.

I don't know of a source which would do a quick walk through all of these levels. And if there is one, I don't know how you'd find it without knowing the right keywords.

(Now I'm tempted to write up some "crypto and certificates and public keys and other things explained quickly and without depth so you can ask better questions next" post)

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Not the person you replied to, but

> Because it's your first adventure in the land of crypto and you have no idea how to do things

is rather presumptuous. I do actually know how to do crypto things (I review and test such things for a living) and after reading their comment and skimming the post I'm left wondering the exact same thing.

You misunderstood the answer. It's "you" as in: why would person X do this - because person X is a beginner in this area. (Like the author)

I figured as much, and by the way English has the word "one" for that (e.g. one could go for a walk), but regardless you're replying to someone, quoting them even, and calling it ignorant. You can wave it away as being written in general, but either way you're including the person you replied to in the group that you call ignorant.

I agree 'one' might have been the better word, but I understood what the 'you' meant immediately, as a third person reference, not directed to anyone specific. English is weird that way.

I mean, so did I? See the first two words of the comment

You say you understand, but the second part of your statement indicates that you don't.

What I'm puzzled by is, why did you feel the need to suggest that the comment in question can be considered an attack on someone, when it is clear (to the both of us, as you point out), that it isn't so?

Edit: I say this because I always think about this guideline before I comment:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Fair enough, if you don't know "the customs" it's probably very easy to end up looking for "public key formats" and fall into the PKIX/X.509/ASN.1 rabbit hole.

It’s actually quite an exciting rabbit hole to explore with not many useful Google search results to educate on.

Opinions are my own :)

Rabbit hole is a polite way to put it. Antiquated pile of shit is getting closer to the truth

That would be the post I have been searching for the last 2 years of my life. I have to budget my time very strictly, and finding out how to learn about security is obscure at best.

Indeed, and it's not being helped by people claiming we're all going to do it wrong anyway so they won't tell us just in case we'll roll our own crypto with it. At least that was my experience getting into the topic before I knew what to even search for.

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