Quantum computing may eventually force us to move to OTPs. Of course it's going to be a pretty long time before we'll have quantum computers that can work across an 800-bit field.
Yeah, that's what got me. Doubling the length of the key only requires a single order of magnitude more work?. If that turns out to be true, I'm going to need to revise my beliefs about how the universe works. In particular, information theory and thermodynamics, because multiplying two numbers together doesn't preserve information about what the factors were. Or at least pretty much everyone thought so. (Caveat: if the values of primes turn out to have a predictable pattern, that could provide the needed information. However, that would mean that the Riemann Hypothesis is false, and that'd be an even more astounding result.)
He doesn't need to demonstrate it with an 800-bit number. Given the claims made about how much faster this is, the effect should show up even in fairly small numbers.
I'd agree with that if he had merely tweeted about RSA. However, he put the claim to "destroy RSA" in the abstract. Claims made in the abstract do need to be substantiated, but RSA isn't discussed in the main text at all.
Note that (despite the ill-considered claim about RSA in the abstract) this isn't security research. It's a maths paper in a very important area of number theory. It doesn't disclose a patchable flaw in RSA---it claims that RSA is based on an unproven conjecture that turns out to be false. That RSA is vulnerable to fast prime factoring has been known since it was first implemented. That's not fixable, so delay serves little purpose, especially with a (if it turns out to be true) seminal result in number theory.
Isn't the ability to sell targeted advertisements pretty much the foundation of their business plan? The business plan they showed investors and stockholders? Maybe they'll stop indexing my behaviour against my name or social security number, but to stop tracking me or using that information is the kind of behaviour that leads to class action suits by shareholders. I suspect that this lede will only be true if one allows some pretty creative definitions of "stop", "selling", and above all "specific". The only purpose that adjective has in this sentence appears to be to grant that sort of flexibility. "Oh, no, we're not tracking that specific human being. We're only tracking the use of the computer he's sitting in front of."
The B2 was designed to stealthily penetrate long distances into the USSR. It was a 1980s black program that eventually (at absurd cost) only shipped about 20 aircraft for a mission role that no longer existed. It's not surprising that the infrastructure and supply chain to maintain them into the latter parts of their operational life didn't materialize.
I am curious about what the current role of the B-2 is, as the US doesn't really have much need to bomb anywhere that it doesn't already have complete air superiority (and retaliatory strikes that wouldn't be preceded by pounding the local air force flat are best served by missiles, drones and other things that don't take a crew somewhere they might crash and end up confessing to war crimes on live TV). It was used to deliver a few bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq, but not in a role that couldn't have easily been filled by a B-52. Or a B-17. (I checked. There are currently more than 40 B-17s still flying in the world. That's twice as many as there are B-2s. Hmmmm...)
Yes, but that would also apply if what I had was a used car, rather than bitcoin or gold, etc. The requirement for intermediate conversion to another currency in order to realize value implies that bitcoin isn’t (at least yet) a currency (even in the case where foreign currency isn’t local currency, there is a context where it is currency: that foreign country). I can also buy milk by exchanging my car for local currency, and it has at least some intrinsic value. I realize that the currency/money question is far more complex (my car is neither fungible nor easily portable), but I wonder how many of those speculating on bitcoin’s value appreciate that or are capable of explaining why Bitcoin has any advantages over gold or bearer bonds as a repository of value. Or, for that matter, how speculating in Bitcoin in the 20th century is different from speculating in Tulips in the 17th.
Right now, Bitcoin’s primary economic role seems to be as a demonstration of just how many Greater Fools the internet and social media give us access to.
I always enjoy conversations with cryptocurrency cognoscenti: "Ok. Assume I have some bitcoin (a bitcoin? bitcoins?). How would I exchange it for, say, a carton of milk?"
Don't get me wrong. I'm a math nerd. I think bitcoin is fascinating as a technical achievement, and hope we keep exploring the blockchain idea. However, I also know that bitcoin mania has literally affected global supply chains of computer components and inflicted a measurable exacerbation of global warming. There is a colourable argument about whether bitcoins have value, but it's very clear that bitcoin has a non-trivial cost.
I'm less intrigued by the fact that this happened than by the fact that it was such a childishly incompetent effort at IP theft.
I'm not sure how French courts would differ, but in my jurisdiction, if a company that was failing to get what it wanted from the court just went and stole it, mid-litigation, there would be a very unpleasant discussion with the judge about what was going to happen next.
I think you'll find the set of people simultaneously competent to maintain a python package and willing to take on potentially significant legal liability for free is too small to maintain a software ecosystem. This isn't necessarily bad: it means that the process of evaluating and securing code has tangible value and provides incentive to hire programmers or their consulting companies, which improves my odds of being able to feed my children in the future.
A lot of the maintenance of these packages is performed by volunteers. Putting, however well-intentioned, barriers up will often result not in a more secure maintenance process but no maintenance at all. I'm generally happy to donate my patch that fixes an issue in a package I use, but that's not going to last long in the face of demands that I jump through hoops prove my identity (my interest in the following the bureaucratic procedures of an organization is closely related to the amount of money they are paying me). Particularly since my experience has been that organizations that are anal about that sort of confirmation tend to be more interested in passing any legal liability on to me rather than maintaining a secure maintenance process.
I'd settle for a rough familiarity amongst science journalists and their editors, but I like the aspiration. Couple of questions, though: do we mean how science should work, or how it actually works in practice (and no, not just Kuhn: his conclusions were only surprising to other non-scientists, and primarily seem to have been valuable for Sociologists nursing a discipline-wide inferiority complex and 'scientists' like Andrew Wakefield who want to blame the establishment and not their own sociopathy.) We're coming up on two decades since Ionnidis, and Psychology still seems to be primarily a collection of unconfirmed small population studies of undergraduate psych students. Medical doctors can't explain or apply freshman statistics. Research directions (and, too often, results) are chosen by investors and donors. The modern west has more taboos about what assumptions and received truths it is permissible to question and investigate than the most repressive theocracies. Much of theoretical physics seems to be aimed at exploring untestable hypotheses and frameworks. And, my personal favourite: the phrase 'scientific consensus' is now used so often and without critique and introspection that it's actually become trite.
Heh. Warming up to writing a “I wish people would not use the adjective ‘categorical’ in a maths context because it implies Category Theory”. Reads abstract...”Oh, it is Category Theory. Wow, that’s a cool application.” <Starts Reading>
Agreed. The last one was pretty clearly a failure of a shaft or turbine, and the damage was much more obvious. This might be something completely different.
Not 'kinda'. Debris exiting the engine housing with sufficient energy and in a direction that leads to damage of other systems is the literal definition of an unconfined engine failure (i.e. it can spit as many parts as it wants to out the exhaust). There is a band of armour around the plane of the fans that should prevent any blades leaving the engine perpendicularly. If there was fuselage or wing damage from debris, that was an unconfined failure and would require investigation as a major fault.
However, loss of the shroud doesn't necessarily imply there was a confinement failure. Damage to the shroud during the event can easily lead to the cowling shedding aerodynamically, which is also part of the design: the last thing you need is more drag on the dead engine side. We can't tell which that was in this case, but it's important that we do---the design criteria specifying that the aircraft can be safely recovered from a catastrophic single engine failure during any stage of flight would assume the failure is confined to the engine.
As well as two demonstrations that the aircraft meets the design specification that even a catastrophic failure in the worst stage of flight is easily recoverable. I'd expect an increased inspection rate, possibly some new mandated ND testing for fractures and discontinuities (the last one was an LP shaft failure, IIRC).
One thing that does bug me, though is that we now have two events where the shroud was lost. Were these uncontained failures (problematic because of potential for wing damage) or contained faiLures followed by aerodynamic shedding of the damaged shroud (system functioning as designed). I'm also somewhat concerned about the fire remaining in the burner stage. Might have just been lubricants, but I'd want to make sure the fire handle had been pulled and investigate whether it worked correctly.
A couple of decades ago, I spent a few years teaching an introduction to network programming using C on an embedded board running uCLinux for Network Engineering students. While my primary text was Stevens, Beej's guides were an invaluable secondary reference for my students. There were many, many occasions where students who were were having difficulty understanding my explanations could recover using Beej's approachable, application-oriented notes. Eventually, I found myself frequently abandoning my own notes and just lecturing from Beej's work. I miss the days when I still worked
with students that close to the metal, helping them build their own network devices. Thanks for the reminder of a time I still have fond memories of.
I think the argument that Google is trying to make is that Privacy Sandbox is better because it's our trusted friend Google that will control this information, not all these other organizations who don't have your best interests at heart. Which is hilarious, and not even original: governments and law enforcement have been making the same argument around privacy issues (to the sound of millions of rolling eyeballs) for decades.
Their original "don't be evil" motto was always a little hypocritical, but now it represents a level of irony previously reserved for slave owners and religiously motivated genocide.
Based on a single cohort study (all subjects born within a year or so of each other), UK only. Primary evaluation is questionnaire. No focused investigation or hypothesis testing. Correlational study only, no control group. no peer review. At best, this study supports only two conclusions: (1) 20 year-old Britons who report higher use of social media also have a tendency to answer leading questions in a way that could be interpreted as reflecting somewhat higher levels of anxiety and depression: and (2) Prince's Trust-funded research is a good gig if you can get it.
Two of my favourite authors draft by hand, which I still do (we're all in our fifties). What I want is not yet another (sigh) editor for writers but OCR tools that can be trained for cursive and don't soil the bed on encountering a crossed out word or insertion.