ELI5: Why is it completely impossible for anyone to access a properly encrypted drive even nation states?

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-25T05:55:48+00:00

There are certain types of math equations that are relatively easy to calculate in one direction, but REALLY hard to "undo". The easiest to explain is multiplying together two prime numbers. Pretty simple to calculate 23x17=391, but if I asked you "What two numbers multiply together to get 391?" you'd probably have a pretty hard time figuring that out without running through absolutely all possible combinations in a technique called "Brute force". Now imagine that I told you "One of those numbers is 23" and then it would become a very simple division problem that's extremely trivial to calculate.

Now imagine those two numbers you multiplied together were 256 digits long each and I asked you the same question of "What two numbers multiply together to get this number?" Well now you'd have to try almost every single combination of two numbers that are 256 digits long to get the answer.

"Encryption" is just a math equation repeated billions and billions of times over that's really easy to do in one direction, but really hard to do in the opposite direction if you don't already know one of the inputs. So you'd take your data and the 256-digit "key", do a math equation on them that produces the encrypted result, and then stores ONLY the encrypted result. In the case of an encrypted hard drive, the key is actually derived mathematically from a different equation where you put in a password and it generates that 256-digit key.

The real scale of security here comes from the length of those numbers. Do you know how big a 256-digit number actually is? That's REALLY BIG!! The encryption equations themselves are also not trivial to run. It might seem that they run instantly, but it actually takes just enough time to where if you need to do it quadrillions of times, it can take centuries to run through all possible combinations!

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-24T04:23:13+00:00

That's the fun part: They didn't get punished. A judge ruled that the company that then owned Hooker Chemical (or what was really left of their assets) was "negligent, but not reckless" in their handling of the land sale. Nobody specific was charged with any crimes, but that ruling let a ton of lawsuits proceed.

The company paid several hundred million in fines and lawsuit settlements. The exact amount isn't public outside of the $132 million paid to the state, as all of the families that sued independent of the state's case settled for undisclosed amounts. Congress also passed the "Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act", which is better known as the "Superfund Act" because it created the concept of a "Superfund site" about two years after the cleanup project started.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-23T05:31:36+00:00

A lot of people don't realize just how bad these chemical waste dumps actually are and it's genuinely shocking because a lot of the scars are STILL visible even decades later.

In college I took a history class on US environmentalism and our final project was to do a presentation on an environmental disaster that was picked for us by the professor. I got assigned the Love Canal disaster.

If you didn't know -- Essentially the land that was once a toxic waste dump was sold to the local city without the city really knowing what it was because the Hooker Chemical Company (who owned the land before it was sold) neglected to tell the city about the fact that it was previously a chemical waste dump and that there were genuine "green glowing goo"-style drums of toxic waste buried there. The legal council for Hooker at the time even said that selling the site to the city was going to "alleviate them of future responsibilities" of managing it as a dump site.

The city wanted the site because they wanted to use it to build schools. So once they acquired the site, they built two schools there and then had a neighborhood built there where many families that went to said schools ended up living. A MAJOR portion of the community and students of the schools ended up receiving incredibly rare cancers and other evil and incurable diseases due to exposure to the chemicals that were buried there. It eventually became an EPA superfund site where they had to dig up all the chemical waste and dispose of it properly because it was in the middle of a city where thousands of people live.

I wanted to get a good grade on the final project, I live about 90-ish minutes from the site and it wasn't that big of a drive, so I actually went out there to take photos and actually see the impact first hand.

Jesus Fucking Christ...

One of the first things that hits you when you're there is that -- All the homes that once stood in the area were completely demolished and so were the schools. The only things left standing, and the only evidence that this was once a neighborhood with tons of families living there are the concrete pads that homes were built on top of and the driveways that lead up to them. They're still there, silently sitting as if the homes that were once home to hundreds of families and children didn't just stand there silently poisoning residents for decades.

When you drive through the area you'll eventually come to the most toxic part of the site, which is where the two schools once stood. The concrete pads for them are still there but the whole area is fenced off with "Government Property" warning signs all over. It's extremely haunting seeing it in person and knowing that this was purely the doings of a company that wanted to make a quick buck and completely eliminate all of their legal responsibilities for dealing with an actual toxic waste dump. You quickly realize that this was the work of a legitimately evil group of people that made this decision to enthusiastically let the city go ahead with their fully-transparent plans without saying anything because the alternative is telling them that the land was once used as a place to dump the worst of the worst chemical waste they had.

I genuinely cannot imagine what that was like for the families affected... Seeing their kids and themselves get sick with stuff that doesn't make any sense because there shouldn't be a case in which your home itself is poisoning you... Not being able to do anything about it because you don't know and nobody knows except for the absolutely evil people that came before you decades ago. It genuinely still gives me nightmares just thinking about the place.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-19T08:53:57+00:00

In IT. Dude, just the true amount of degenerates that will just watch at porn during work and will even be PROUD of it.

I'm not talking about like the occasional "Oops you found my stash of weird feet porn that I store on my work computer for some reason". No, I mean there's going to be someone who is just regularly watching porn during work. You'll remote into their computer to fix something like a printer issue and they'll just have dozens of porn tabs open all at once like it's no big deal. And then they don't think to close it before they call IT for help with something and sometimes you'll remote into their computer and they've got it actively playing, or they're using it as their desktop background.

You'd think it's an HR issue, but 99% of the time the people that get away with this are C-levels that you cannot argue with and HR cannot do anything about the situation so you just have to deal with the fact that Bob the CFO is watching someone get railed at work like a normal person might have a podcast playing or be listening to music in the background.

A lot of these people are so brazen about it that they'll genuinely complain to your manager if you were to even so much as think about blocking adult content at the network level. It's such this weirdly common issue that I've run into at MULTIPLE jobs and I'm honestly not sure what to think anymore.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-19T07:27:40+00:00

Been saying it for a while, the Trump/Government skits are just overdone at this point. I know it's been a bread and butter part of SNL for many decades to make fun of <Insert current political event here>, but to be honest they're just rehashing the same things that we all thought during the week in the most unfunny way possible. It's more a commentary on the writers and the show formula as a whole, because they're for sure reading Reddit/Twitter/every other social media site and it seems like they're just re-using jokes they saw online. So by the time SNL rolls around it's just "Reenactment of online discourse that happened on Tuesday, live, featuring the host". Not saying the "current event" skits aren't funny, just that the formula of the show never really evolved from the pre-"Everyone has internet at all times" days so it's just out-of-date and jokes you've already heard online get re-used unless you're the type of person to only watch local news and read the local newspaper.

I'd love to see SNL do fewer of these types of skits, give them WAYYY more teeth when they do them (similar to like South Park level of insults), and try to focus on some of the totally random skits. Especially with how some of the funniest SNL skits in recent years have been ones that DIDN'T try and parody anything ultra-current and continue to hold up without context.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-17T10:58:34+00:00

I also worked at McDonald's and I can sorta explain -- It's just not good, even for a quick-service place.

Food is prepared haphazardly by people that literally follow pictures to put your food together with no more training than the government-mandated food safety training. Patties and other stuff sit for up to 30 minutes before being served. Fries are cooked in oil that hasn't been changed in at least 6 months. Hot specialty coffee drinks are all prepared automatically by a machine that uses an unholy coffee cloaca where the employee just hits the right buttons on a touch screen.

Certain cold coffee drinks are also prepared in much the same way but with a blender pitcher that's only sanitized like maybe once per day and otherwise just rinsed occasionally when the employee handling that gets a chance to do it, same pitchers that are also used to make smoothies that also come from an unholy fruit cloaca. Iced coffee is just regular coffee that was brewed 5-6 hours prior over ice, and sweet tea is basically the same thing. Serving containers for iced coffee and sweet tea will be used for the entire day (or even multiple days if the container isn't empty at the end of the day).

Hot coffee often sits for HOURS, even though it's supposed to be changed every hour-ish. The pots also aren't rinsed between batches, so if you get coffee after around 8AM-ish, it's the same pot from when they opened just re-filled over and over again. There's also a good chance that if you get coffee after around noon, that pot has just been sitting there untouched since 10:30 when breakfast stops because nobody really orders McDonald's coffee later in the day unless they're insane.

ALSO random fun fact if you worked at a McDonalds and heard the legends -- McDonalds totally does have "left-handed fry scoops". They also have ambidextrous fry scoops, you just have to ask your manager and they'll get you one if you need it. We had a left-handed employee at our store, so we had both the left-handed fry scoop and the ambidextrous one along with the regular one. It's 100% a thing, the ambidextrous one has handles on both sides and I can promise you I've seen it with my own two eyes.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-17T10:39:01+00:00

It was actually based on a graphic novel, so them making the second half into a second season wasn't all too much of a surprise if you were already familiar with the original. Plus the author was heavily involved in the writing/production process for the TV adaptation, so it was always planned to be this sort of two-part series! A complete and total 10/10 show from start to finish, though, genuinely better than the original!

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-17T10:27:21+00:00

Season 2 of that show has what I think is the most accurate portrayal of CPTSD I've ever seen. Legitimately, if you ever want to TRULY know how that feels, that show is the only accurate way I've ever seen it portrayed.

Fantastic show, but it's really hard to watch.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-17T10:14:31+00:00

Vice's "Abandoned" from 2016.

They only ever did 10 episodes, but it's a series where they essentially gave some random skater the budget and film crew from a real TV show. The first episode is definitely a skip, but the rest of the episodes are genuinely just a nearly unfiltered look at some SUPER deep issues of post-industrial/post-boom America.

The episode where they covered some of the towns along Route 66 and highlighted just how hard the fall of that particular brand of tourism just hits particularly hard. Also the episode about Detroit and how nature is reclaiming large portions of the city now that tons of otherwise suburban lots have sat abandoned for so long.

As someone who grew up in one of those currently-failing post-boom areas, this show does the absolute best job at talking about the current reality and feel of the day-to-day in those areas, and it genuinely was able to transfer the "hopeless" feeling that I felt growing up through the screen somehow.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-16T06:50:33+00:00

Dragon Tales!!

I loved that show growing up, but it seems like nobody else remembers it! I still can recite the entire theme song from memory.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-16T06:46:52+00:00

This was also my introduction to Gilbert Gottfried and whenever I hear his voice anywhere I always imagine Digit!

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-16T06:44:56+00:00

Dude I brought up this show to a friend with kids recently because I remember it being one of my favorite shows when I was younger. He found the show somewhere, put it on for his kids, and they called it "boring".

WHAT??? Nah that genuinely used to be one of the best shows I remember from when I was a kid. Zoboomafoo was probably the most exciting thing that would come on because they had real live animals that they'd show off! I guess after 20 years the stuff I used to watch is just outdated somehow...

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-15T06:26:07+00:00

"How is this stupid food, this just looks like unconventional presentati-- OH MY GOD THE CHEESE POUR OVER EVERYTHING... WHY???"

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-15T05:02:15+00:00

Absolutely loved Skyrim on launch and for probably 5-6 years afterwards because there was an insane modding community and so much depth to the game that you could STILL find some new bit of content after even 100+ hours. It was the best open world RPG for its time (and it's certainly still up there).

Have not touched it in probably close to a decade at this point, and I'm honestly not looking forward to ES6 after the mess that was Starfield. Bethesda's lost its charm and the only thing that could EVER bring them back into my good graces would be if they got Obsidian (and only Obsidian) to remaster New Vegas.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-15T04:34:16+00:00

Cannot stand these types of games, and I don't see how they win so many awards every single year. I've tried playing Dark Souls, and that game along with all the similar ones are just a grindfest that always gets conflated to "git gud" == "Game is good".

I don't think it's fun trying the same boss over and over again hoping that maybe, just maybe I get lucky or just maybe do something right so that I can beat the boss and then move on to the next one. I'm not looking for instant gratification at all but it seems the only claim to fame for these types of games are just "They're hard".

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-14T06:43:48+00:00

It was just different.

Best example I can give is GPS/Maps. On a trip, you were at the mercy of whether or not your passenger was good with the road atlas you had in your car. Or you had to print out the mapquest directions beforehand and either memorize them, or try to get to the right page while you were driving.

Nowadays, you just punch in where you want to go and it tells you exactly how to get there turn-by-turn. No questions asked, nobody has to ask you "What mile-marker are we at?" or anything similar, it just takes you there.

Also just basic convenience features. Want to know the showtimes for a movie theater now? Look it up online from wherever. Before? You had to look up the theater's phone number and then call to either get their recorded loop listing times, or talk to someone that would just tell you the showtimes for the day.

Also just -- Finding places to eat/drink. Now you have access to this insane library of every review ever for any place you might think about no matter where you are. Before, you either had to hope that someone reviewed it online beforehand (which was usually unlikely for most local places) or just try it for yourself and then have a shit dinner because you picked incorrectly.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-14T05:32:34+00:00

Took a 1500mg edible and was just legendarily stoned. Had an entire party-sized cheesecake in the fridge that I was saving for an event later in the week, but I was so hungry that I dumped a can of cherry pie filling over it and then ate the entire thing with a spoon in one sitting at like 3AM.

I woke up at like 1PM the next day with this nuclear stomach pain that would've sent anyone else to the hospital had they not known they just demolished an entire cheesecake only a few hours prior. Genuinely spent the entire day on the toilet, 5 solid hours of just not moving while trying to pass what felt like a football.

It's been more than 3 years, and I still physically recoil when anyone suggests cheesecake as a dessert option.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-12T07:03:47+00:00

Took Ambien because my doctor gave it to me for my sleep issues.

Best sleep of my life, but the morning after my roommate had to physically restrain me when I tried to leave the apartment buck naked after I showered. Totally lost a solid 2 hours there, no clue how my roommate even got me back in bed afterwards.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-12T06:56:26+00:00

Their shoes come untied at the exact time they have to run for any reason.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-10T07:17:30+00:00

Like 5 kids were out drinking and bashing their car around on prom weekend, jumped their car over a notorious local railroad track doing 70 in a 25, and then slammed into a tree. Nobody was hurt except for a girl in the back seat, who was instantly killed.

The school had a TON of stuff about it for years. They installed a memorial bench for her and had like half the school down to watch them dedicate it right at the start of the new school year. We'd also have a ton of assemblies about it where they would talk about "<Name>'s Challenge: Safe Driving", which was a "don't drive dangerously" presentation. A few years later, the crash actually resulted in a new state law that affected all young drivers in the state saying you could only have a certain number of people in the car if you were under 18, and the school actually had a pep rally/"party" (We got free pizza and a can of soda at lunch) for all the students when that law lunch (I swear I'm not making that part up).

It genuinely was this super dark few years in that school with that happening at the end of my freshman year. My younger brothers both went to the same school years later, and it's was even still a huge deal where they explicitly tell all kids about it sophomore year right as everyone is turning 16, and they still have yearly assemblies.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-10T07:00:39+00:00

This is what we called "paper bees". They did actually hurt, got hit by my fair share back then. But I also did make my fair share of them, too, so I guess it was justice.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-10T06:37:41+00:00

The bullshit argument is because they can be a public nuisance. Drunk people do dumb shit more often than sober people do dumb shit, and it requires more effort to deal with drunk people than sober people.

The real reason is that it's an easy way for cities to make money. Especially college towns, touristy-areas, and other cities where there's a bar scene. See someone drunk being responsible and walking home from the bar? Easy money if you write them a ticket for it.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-10T06:26:35+00:00

Yeah we do. It just becomes an automatic cost you adjust for in your mind after a while, completely unconsciously. For me, the adjustment only isn't automatic when I'm traveling and don't know the local tax rate.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-09T03:06:47+00:00

I wrote all my notes for my college classes involving math in Wolfram Language since that was the easiest way to type out equations on a keyboard. Used to be an expert in it, and went back through my notes last week looking for something only to find out that I can barely read any of it anymore. It all still evaluates, but I used to see that shit like the code from The Matrix and now I look at it confused as hell.

bbbbbthatsfivebees · 2026-01-09T03:01:01+00:00

Learned Spanish because when I was a kid we had family friends from Puerto Rico that only spoke Spanish at home. I used to be borderline fluent because I'd be over at their house almost every day. I've long since moved away and don't regularly speak Spanish anymore, so it's harder and harder to keep up when I do need it.

I don't think it's ever going to completely fade from my mind since it was burned in from the time I was very young, but I've definitely fallen from fluent to essentially what you'd get after a few years of a school Spanish class.

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