Conan: Remember those silver balls falling in the trough?

Continuing on the encryption story that Darth linked to yesterday:

"The US Government couldn't protect it's own employees data from being swiped. What makes you think they can protect these backdoors against any other black hat out there?"

And that's not even the worst problem with it. Let's pretend for a moment that we live in a perfect world and that the government will never leak access keys, will never use them contrary to law, and that black hats will never succeed in reverse-engineering them or finding some other kind of side door.

Even if we grant all of these unrealistic assumptions, the system will eventually fail and everything encrypted by it will be exposed. Why? Because of Moore's Law. As computing power increases, previously secure algorithms become vulnerable to brute-force attacks (where you just keep guessing key values until you randomly guess the right one). And the algorithms themselves become more vulnerable to computer-powered cryptanalysis, which seeks to find flaws in the algorithm that reduce the effective key space, so that brute-force attacks can then run a lot faster. In the highest-security applications, the average useful lifetime of a given algorithm is about five years.

So encryption researchers keep having to devise new, more secure algorithms. The problem: In order for escrowed encryption to do what it claims to do, all non-approved encryption has to be outlawed. But if that happens, research into new algorithms grinds to a halt; researchers won't risk being prosecuted. (Or they will emigrate and go to work for another country.) That means that new algorithms to replace the ones that pass their use-by date are no longer in the pipleline. So eventually everything becomes exposed.

Sometimes, dumbass gotta dumbass.

https://www.thecut.com/2019/07/bruce-hay-paternity-trap-maria-pia-shuman-mischa-haider.html

So, apparently this happened.

https://twitter.com/davereaboi/status/1154048766984347649

Sounds like "so much for Mueller Time".

Conan: Remember those silver balls falling in the trough? ~ Crid at July 24, 2019 4:57 AM

Reminds me of the old pipes screensaver.

Remember: they're guilty of what they accuse other people.

https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/1153879654002036737

The Department of Agriculture is moving some of its people closer to actual agriculture. What a concept!

The Department of Agriculture is moving some of its people closer to actual agriculture. What a concept! ~ Cousin Dave at July 24, 2019 11:07 AM

Once the politicians realize the opportunities for graft in moving government installations to their states, they will embrace it.

And let's not forget the opportunities for aggrandizement. Just look at all the Robert Byrd memorial government installations in West Virginia and all the Fritz Hollings memorial government installations in South Carolina.

NASA's orbiting atomic clock for deep-space robotic missions and other cool stuff like that there.

Creating GPS for our inevitable robot space overlords.

Oh.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/07/oberlin-college-ordered-to-post-36-million-bond-to-delay-gibsons-bakery-collection-of-judgment/

There's no imaginable outcome that wouldn't benefit us all.

Only one outstanding performance, but it was in the kind of film that makes a career, no matter what an actor does from that release onward… Young, Olmos, Walsh, Hannah, Sanderson, James, Turkel, Cassidy.

(I still see Walsh a diner near work sometimes. And still fantasize that he's going to approach my table and say "I need ya, Crid... I need the old Blade Runner.")

Anyway, Goodnight Mr. Hauer.

All those moments will be lost, like_____ __ ____....

""The US Government couldn't protect it's own employees data from being swiped. What makes you think they can protect these backdoors against any other black hat out there?""

The department of Energy has helpfully mandated that Federal facilities they administer use Office 365.

Consequently, all e-mail traffic now goes to Microsoft Exchange, at office365 dot com.

Including archived material. Correspondence DOES include protected personal information, and MAY include items about nuclear weapons and materials handling.

Apparently because some idiot thinks that "security" is enhanced by sending your information to a THIRD PARTY!

The only way to protect your information is to not transfer it.

I totally heart ♥ this headline.

There's nothing as pathetic as a faded beauty who thinks it was all about her.

Makes my own narcissism seem so tame in comparison, maybe,

I remember the words by which Spy Magazine described similar portraiture of Siegfried and Roy: 'The effect is taxidermal.'

Ahm nevagunna dance again. Guilty feet....

Anti-vaxxers should be subject to some kind of harsh, enduring social sanction, whether they're sincere immigrants from Venezuela or obliviously-entitled parents from Los Feliz Daycare.

Let your imagination run free, and report back to me when you've got something.

I'm libertarian, truly.

But in matters of epidemiology, you do not have the right to be obstreperously WRONG.

Across Western Civ, from the shimmering capitals of sophistication and learnedness to the quotidian conurbations of manufacturing and transit, people of every political stripe & hue are looking at this news item.

And all of them, ALL, are muttering "Well. How about that."