Cu plăcere, GazetaBitcoin!


I also always hope for forum improvements.  Unfortunately, given the problem of what seems to be a bit of software misdesign:


I think that at least in the short term, a more practical hope here is to encourage people to put their PGP fingerprints in the “other contact info” field, as I do!

Perhaps a thread should be someday started to encourage that.  However, I think we first need more PGP advocacy on the forum; otherwise, we would be putting the cart before the horse.  (Perhaps another idiom with a literal Romanian equivalent?)

I posted a PSA in Beginners & Help on why people should care about PGP fingerprints.  For the how, I have a simple, forum-oriented, extremely basic PGP tutorial in the pipeline.  In the future, I also hope to contribute to such fine efforts as this (n.b. my name in the credits).  Together, we can build community efforts to help people secure their forum identities using the power of strong cryptography!

Quote from: GazetaBitcoin on February 16, 2020, 12:35:23 PM

Also, what AC2 copy did you lose? What do you mean by AC2? Assassins' Creed 2?

Bruce Schneier’s Applied Cryptography, Second Edition (1996) gave me my first solid introduction to cryptography.

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The book details how programmers and electronic communications professionals can use cryptography — the technique of enciphering and deciphering messages — to maintain the privacy of computer data.  It describes dozens of cryptography algorithms, gives practical advice on how to implement them in cryptographic software, and shows how they can be used to solve security problems.

Thus, it was a book for programmers who wished to implement cryptographic software without shooting themselves in the foot.  Not so much a book for cryptographers—who must study how to (0) break ciphers,^* then (1) design new ciphers, and/or write the low-level crypto primitive implementation code that is a type of black magic.

(* As a commonplace heuristic, a cipher should distrusted unless its designer has long past study and experience in breaking ciphers.  That is the “don’t waste your time” threshold for other cryptographers to take the cipher seriously, and try to break it themselves.  If it passes that peer review, then the cipher may be trustworthy.)

It was also (and may still be) a useful book for those who wanted deeply to understand how to use cryptographic software.  I myself did not yet have significant coding skills when I discovered AC2.  Still, it helped me to develop the correct mindset.  That made me a “power user” of cryptographic software written by others, and helped to lay the foundation for my future coding.

Of course, AC2 is now technologically obsolete and thus, mostly of mere historical interest.  Published at the height of the 1990s Crypto Wars, it taught a whole generation of cypherpunks and cypherpunk sympathizers the practical implementation of applied cryptography, per the title.  It was a sort of a textbook for those who wanted to learn how to follow the adage, “cypherpunks write code.”

Quote from: GazetaBitcoin on February 16, 2020, 12:35:23 PM

Besides that, I didn't know that in English exist also the saying "to not see the forest for the trees". I was sure it is a Romanian saying. Apparently, it is not. We have this saying as well, translated ad literam.

As a guess from one who should know well enough to look up the history of the phrase, my immediate hypothesis is that it may be the type of idea spread through the European upper classes, who had Latin as a common language, and then filtered down into the vernacular.

By comparison, European folk-dances show much variation; but ballet and ballroom dances were spread through Europe by the upper classes.  Many high-culture dance styles (especially, ballroom dance styles) were much influenced by local folk dances, and in turn influenced folk dances in other parts of Europe.

Consider that to be more of a demonstration of how to form such hypotheses than anything else.  The next step would be some philological research, which may show the hypothesis to be wrong.  Unfortunately, many reasonable-seeming hypotheses become wildly incorrect urban legends or “folk etymologies” that are flatly wrong, e.g., the incorrect notion that the phrase “give a damn” originated from “give a dam” with reference to a low-value coin.

I give a damn about correctness.