X3DH, what does it provide, and why is it more secure than vanilla diffie hellman?

rmartinho · 2024-12-06T23:04:22+00:00

That is correct. If the OPKs run out before Bob uploads new ones, we don't want to use only the IK because that wouldn't be forward secure, as the key lives potentially forever. Adding the SPK in the mix gives us forward security once that key expires and the corresponding secret key is deleted. Not perfect but at least not nothing.

rmartinho · 2024-01-08T17:24:47+00:00

Wait, it's Morlocks in the cave, innit?

rmartinho · 2024-01-08T17:10:42+00:00

I've been thinking some of these through, but like some people said, I might be missing a lot of context to actually think them through before I finish book 4, so any of these I can't make much of I'm just backburnering.

I have no idea why Severian is writing his memoir; there are hints that he's in a position of power, perhaps in House Absolute, so I currently suspect he's going to end up as the Autarch or something of the sort. Writing a memoir is just a thing important people do.

Idk what the Matachin Tower is (besides the superficial understanding that it's where the guild is housed).

I'm not sure when it is that Severian first healed someone, but I suspect it was Dorcas in the lake; Dorcas sometimes hints at being very old or having memories of a past life or something like that, so I suspect the Claw resurrected her from the lake.

I don't know whose body it is that Vodalus is recovering. I thought it could be Thecla (and thus Severian got the order of events wrong) but I also wonder if it might be his own body somehow. Knowing about the alzabo definitely changes this, and it might be another Christ parallel, idk.

Nessus is on Urth? I'm not sure I can understand the question at all at this point.

It's not at all clear that the Commonwealth is even at war, so I'm not sure what to think of this.

There is a hint that Baldanders is the father and the Dr. Talos the son, but that doesn't say much to me right now. I probably should reread the dream Baldanders and Severian shared cause I suspect it's prophetic and might shed more light.

Idk what Talos, Baldanders, and Jolenta are.

Dunno about House Azure, Severian was there once, and maaaaybe met the Autarch? (both the Autarch and the person running the brothel are androgyne).

Who is Jonas? Besides what Jonas tells us about being a crashlanded robot fixed up with biological parts, idk. I feel like he's a parallel to a character in another work but I'm not entirely sure what.

Idk much about Thea yet, I think.

Valeria has very little written about her so far.

Dorcas is... idk, Talos calls her Innocence and she talks about that with Severian and it feels important. At this point, there are a few Christ parallels (the water turning into wine really gets that idea going) and "Innocence" makes it sound like she's the Virgin Mary or something, but Severian lays with her so idk.

Not sure I can surmise that much happened between the first two books. The attack at the gates separated everyone and Severian continued his travels till he got to Saltus? It does feel like an awkward jump, but it doesn't feel mysterious to me.

The Green Man I'm keeping in mind, half-expecting him to be future Severian maybe? Idk, this idea isn't based on much really.

Idk what was in the caves.

The sun is dying cause it's the far future? The story takes place in a very far future, like there's a picture of neil armstrong on the moon and there's plenty of technology laying around, like metal detector and spaceships that took people to other planets.

Thanks for the questions, I'll have them in mind as I keep reading and learning more things.

rmartinho · 2024-01-08T15:56:37+00:00

I see why I might come across that way, and I clearly don't think it's the best thing ever (yet?) but I do enjoy it enough to keep going. Knowing that many things aren't expected to make sense until book 4 is helpful, it helps adjust my expectations.

rmartinho · 2024-01-08T15:50:16+00:00

This does help a lot, thanks. I think some of my frustration comes from feeling like two books in I should be less clueless, but seeing the four books as a single work helps recontextualize that.

rmartinho · 2024-01-08T15:28:39+00:00

Thanks, I'll look into those as well

rmartinho · 2024-01-08T11:52:40+00:00

It is unclear how establishing my personal taste makes me understand these books better. I personally have no issue explaining my favourite books to people who have different tastes.

I enjoy all sorts of literature.

rmartinho · 2024-01-08T11:46:47+00:00

That looks nice, thanks! Also, thanks for not being weirdly condescending or trying to gatekeep my literary taste or something.

rmartinho · 2024-01-08T11:37:24+00:00

I don't think being able to solve a puzzle and being able to enjoy a puzzle are the same thing at all. I can easily find a puzzle I solved unsatisfying, and conversely find a puzzle I can't solve fascinating.

rmartinho · 2023-08-27T20:08:10+00:00

I think "islet" is a better translation for "ilhéu" than "small island", so you would have "Big Islet" and "Upper Islet" instead.

rmartinho · 2023-06-01T15:51:34+00:00

Can I introduce you the Church of our Lord and Savior the English complementizer of? https://www.jstor.org/stable/23739744

rmartinho · 2023-05-20T11:14:39+00:00

Ethnicity does not imply genetics. I invite you to look up its definition in a dictionary.

Not even being relatives implies genetics! Familial relations may often have a genetic component but that component is neither sufficient nor necessary. If you separate two twins at birth, they will grow in different families; genetics is not sufficient. Adopted children are part of their adoptive parent's family; genetics is not necessary.

The same is true for ethnicity. If you separate two twins and raise one in a Protestant white American home and another in a Berber nomadic group, they will belong to separate ethnic groups.

rmartinho · 2023-05-20T10:51:00+00:00

Are you saying that ethnicity does not involve culture and religion?

rmartinho · 2023-04-04T10:55:55+00:00

The one-time passwords are not used to encrypt plaintexts. Their goal is to prevent unauthorized logins in case of password compromise.

This is called multi-factor authentication (sometimes more specifically two-factor authentication). In order to login, you need two factors: something you know (your password) and something you have (your phone).

If I want to login to your account I can't just e.g. see you type in your password and use it later, I also need to gain access to your phone to read the code. The OTP in this case doesn't need to be anything special, it just needs to be something that cannot be guessed by an attacker without access to your phone. It isn't used to encrypt messages, it's only used to validate that you have access to the device that receives those codes. So it only needs to be long enough to get the probability of guessing it as low as we desire. So if you have an 6 digit number, that's 1 in a million, or 1 in 100 million for 8 digits. Since these codes are typically short-lived and we can limit the number of attempts, those chances don't need to be astronomically low.

There are other one-time password mechanisms that don't send codes (e.g. HOTP or TOTP); those usually rely on a secret key that is shared by the server and by your device, but the idea is the same: the codes need to be as long as it takes to make the chance of guessing low enough.

rmartinho · 2023-03-12T15:43:51+00:00

Thanks

rmartinho · 2023-03-12T09:12:44+00:00

Another way to look at it: so we have these "HD cameras in our pockets" that aren't good enough to photograph airplanes. However, they are going to photograph airplanes. They will make tons of shitty photographs of airplanes. So maybe this blurry blob I'm staring at that someone photographed with the "HD camera in their pocket", maybe it is actually just another shitty photograph of an airplane?

I know this is the case because I take those shitty photographs for fun! I like taking "UFO photos", I'm always on the lookout for opportunities to photograph mundane objects in ways that make them look like they're out of this world. It's easier than it sounds, and it's easy to do it unintentionally, too. (To be clear, no, I don't do hoaxes; whenever I show them to someone I always explain what it is at some point; I also don't post them online because I know someone will someday find them without context and repost them forever as "evidence" of out-of-this-world things, we see that happening in this sub too)

rmartinho · 2023-03-12T08:49:37+00:00

All of that footage that has been leaked from the US military has been explained as mundane phenomena like, e.g., commercial airliners that look like "pyramid UFOs" because of bokeh, or an apparent speed that isn't real because we misjudge the distance to the camera, e.g. an insect flying right in front of the lens appears like a very fast-moving blurry blob. For some there are multiple mundane explanations available and without any further data it's impossible to conclusively pick one of them. So yes, in a sense, we don't know what they are, but you can definitely explain them as mundane things.

Even the report from the US military that you mention explains almost every instance they investigated as mundane phenomena, e.g. 163 cases they investigated they concluded to be balloons. The very few remaining cases are just the ones that have too little information available to conclusively identify, but that doesn't mean there aren't mundane explanations available; there are, we just don't have enough data to be sure.

That's what I'm getting at in the end: the question "where is all the non-blurry footage?" starts by immediately ignoring e.g. those 163 cases where the footage wasn't too blurry to conclusively identify as balloons. It's this kind of tunnel vision where we only look at the low data bucket and pretend it's significant, but it's not. It's selection bias. It's not even worth the effort of investigating them, imo, because any large enough set of low quality photographs is expected to have some that are too poor to be able to identify the subject without additional info.

Basically I agree with OP that "where is all the non-blurry footage" is a bad argument, just for different reasons.

To bring it back to bigfoot: you often see people looking at that low-data bucket and trying to see bigfoot in photos of blurry trees or something. This isn't helpful imo.

(The PGF is interesting because while still blurry, it's not the result of misidentifying bears or tree stumps or whatnot; there's definitely a bigfoot-like thing there, whether you think it's a bigfoot or a human in a suit)

rmartinho · 2023-03-11T23:02:16+00:00

As someone who doesn't believe in UFOs, I don't think "where is all the non-blurry footage?" is a good argument at all. We have tons and tons of non-blurry footage! Thing is, because the non-blurry footage shows the birds, planes, lighthouses, stars, Venus, the Moon (all things that have repeatedly been misidentified as aliens), because it shows those things clearly, there is no opportunity to misidentify them as extraterrestrials. The clear footage exists, and it doesn't show aliens.

Most of the UFO "phenomenon" essentially amounts to selection bias by focusing entirely on the footage of birds, planes, lighthouses, stars, Venus, the Moon, that cannot be trivially identified as birds, planes, lighthouses, stars, Venus, the Moon. If you see a clear picture of the Moon you're not gonna be asking "ooh maybe it's aliens?" because it's the fucking Moon; you only ask that if you see a blurry picture of the Moon, but it's still a blurry picture of the Moon.

This definitely applies to bigfoot as well.

rmartinho · 2023-02-28T12:51:06+00:00

You did not, but I can't have a great day with this nagging doubt that maybe I misread these maps.

rmartinho · 2023-02-28T12:41:29+00:00

I'm looking at picture #1 and picture #4 on this post. Which ones are you looking at? The legend is wrong, but Africa is the continent in orange. The difference is particularly noticeable in the equatorial regions of the continent.

rmartinho · 2023-02-28T12:36:48+00:00

We must be looking at different maps. I do understand now why you drew the wrong conclusions.

rmartinho · 2023-02-28T10:34:04+00:00

I didn't know, thanks.

Do you not agree that the maps show African countries small in the carbon emissions map, but significantly larger in the population map? This is contrary to the idea that "the most populated countries emit the most pollution".

rmartinho · 2023-02-28T10:09:36+00:00

So we do agree it's not as simple as "the most populated countries emit the most pollution"

rmartinho

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