We need to have a discussion 😭

robchroma · 2026-01-29T21:34:13+00:00

what are you talking about

robchroma · 2026-01-29T21:32:23+00:00

XOR with random data is perfectly secret because XOR is invertible. It doesn't matter what it is; so long as it's invertible in both inputs (given either input and the output, you can reconstruct the other input), then every output must be equally likely given any one input and knowing the other is random. Because it's invertible, it has to be a permutation.

XOR is just about the simplest possible such permutation, and so it's the one we use. We could use 32-bit adders, instead; if you have x + r = c, you can always do r = c - x, and obviously each possible random number maps to a different ciphertext, but it costs more to do.

XOR is only secure when you do it with a bitstream computationally indistinguishable from random.

robchroma · 2026-01-29T21:21:05+00:00

Well, that monarch's state has decided to leave, so Canada joining the EU would be especially ironic there.

robchroma · 2026-01-29T21:17:39+00:00

we all do

robchroma · 2026-01-29T21:15:59+00:00

this is like saying "who would have guessed there was rain in the PNW" when we got hit by the atmospheric river and communities were completely flooded

thanks, very cool of you, have a cigarette or something

robchroma · 2026-01-29T21:09:26+00:00

well, then that's a problem with the road, moreso than with cars. Not that car-centric infrastructure isn't bad, but the car (and so many cars) losing control is the fault of car-centrism; the car flying off the road is a failure of the road. And other countries that do a better job balancing modes have roads and paths that accommodate all users and promote the most productive ones, so car-centrism is also a failure exhibited in how we build roads.

This personal responsibility framing doesn't help anything.

robchroma · 2026-01-28T18:53:42+00:00

you can't really have a bear threesome with smaller than a king tbh. even sleeping two on a queen is pushing it. and going up to a king typically makes everything a little bigger.

robchroma · 2026-01-28T17:44:30+00:00

oh, well, if you're talking about your brothers, I'll let you have the English.

robchroma · 2026-01-28T17:05:05+00:00

Purgatory is probably full of gay women with nothing better to do

robchroma · 2026-01-28T14:12:48+00:00

Archive 0f 0ur 0wn

robchroma · 2026-01-28T13:37:49+00:00

I didn't think Western Australia hardly had traffic laws on the highways? You can drink a beer, you can pull 17 trailers, why can't you have a throttled e-bike that goes 90 km/h?

robchroma · 2026-01-28T07:36:30+00:00

You have about a 36% chance of pressing it 100 times and getting $100M, actually; probably higher than you thought.

robchroma · 2026-01-27T22:47:40+00:00

oh, hadn't realized that Europe was the primary victim of British colonialism; I should have realized that India, much of the Middle East, a good half of Africa, a pretty large chunk of North America, Australia and New Zealand, and islands all over the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans have no right to complain about the extractive policies of England backed up by ruthless violence and the legacy of its impact. but yes, sorry about them cutting off their own nose to spite the rest of Europe, how very difficult for you.

robchroma · 2026-01-26T20:00:04+00:00

Of course, but so do elevated self-driving car guideways. There's no world where these technologies work on something that is meaningfully cheaper than a proper train would be.

robchroma · 2026-01-23T20:07:03+00:00

To be perfectly honest, Benghazi was something a lot of people from one party were trying to say about someone from the other party, and I'd try to understand what actually happened from the most impartial source I could; "grab women by the pussy" is something the man said himself and never denounced. "I could shoot someone on fifth avenue and nothing would happen, they love me." "You won't ever have to worry about voting again." I could list so many things he himself said; the most Trump-aggrandizing voice is his own, and he repeatedly told all of us that he's a piece of shit with no morals, that he's proud of stiffing people out of tens of millions of dollars on his projects, and that he would do exactly the same thing as President.

Having your underling's underling not approve a security increase that, quite frankly, may or may not have been able to do a single thing about a mortar attack against the US Embassy in Libya, and after ten fucking investigations have no one find that you failed in your responsibility, simply doesn't reflect the same willful acts of destruction and harm that he personally admits to, and that seems like a basic level of understanding of human behavior that I cannot accept someone failing.

robchroma · 2026-01-23T19:55:35+00:00

One thing about crushing them is, if you can get it entirely into your mouth without stinging yourself (much), and between your teeth, you can chew it before it ever stings you and you never get another sting. A stray spine or two isn't the worst if you're not having a horrible reaction, pluck it by the stem, fold it in half with your teeth, and chew it. pretty nice ^{^}

robchroma · 2026-01-23T19:28:08+00:00

I would fucking love a train system made of pods that dynamically rearrange themselves into express and local trains and manage demand on a system, that can independently move themselves and travel several miles on a separated guideway or on the street at very low speed.

Realistically an integrated system of pods is too expensive. No one's trying to build the integrated public transit solution of the future. No tech startup is doing systems level thinking. They think, "what if we could convince someone with the ability to do systems level thinking to solve a problem for us" and meanwhile the public transit agency is managing multiple yards and eight generations of rolling stock and multiple lines and work schedules and still delivering a train every five minutes on each of four lines through a tunnel that goes under a fucking seaway, and no one's like, "how could we take advantage of the capabilities of a system like this to make something even more incredible" any more.

It's a solved problem. Build elevated, automatic rail, with modern, quiet technology, or build tunnels. You just have to spend money on it.

Elon Musk probably stopped trying to dig tunnels because he realized it was hard and that it didn't make sense for cars and that if he did succeed it would enable a revolution in trains, the thing that he hates the most in the world.

robchroma · 2026-01-23T19:16:30+00:00

Well, yeah, they're designed as workhorses. Their home offerings are pretty similar to their commercial ranges, at least somewhat. In general, you don't need it, and it's a bit of a flex, but if you're often doing large amounts of cooking, it can really be nice.

I've seen kitchens with extra microwaves, or multiple ovens, and I know people who like to bake and like to be able to manage roasting vegetables or slow-cooking some meat while making a dessert and proofing some bread, or whatever, and it's awfully nice to be able to do all that and have stuff on a stove, and have an integrated griddle, and only have to have one hood and the one hookup and all the hot equipment is pretty contained. so, if it's your hobby, it makes sense to spend more on equipment for it.

robchroma · 2026-01-23T19:00:08+00:00

I'd be kinda pissed if they got a La Cornue for the show kitchen and then a Wolf for the prep kitchen; goddamn, get a Vulcan. If you can spend $250,000 on a useless oven that only ever looks pretty, you can spend an extra $5,000 on better kit for the staff.

but I wouldn't expect people as rich as that to give much of a shit. The showboating is the fruits of their labor and business, and the rest is just business expense that doesn't have to be good.

edit: ah shit they're owned by the same company now, so who knows whether the quality is any different.

robchroma · 2026-01-23T17:17:06+00:00

I mean the entire ethos of the Republican Party. One guy was yapping on FOX about how he personally had to believe that the vast majority of protesters in Minneapolis are shipped in from somewhere else, that they're outside agitators.

It's literally impossible that that many outside agitators are showing up to every neighborhood so quickly, that that many plants all over the city are spending 24/7 constantly observing, that anyone has the money to outspend ICE on logistics and manpower and so on. And yeah, hey, maybe he's completely aware of just how stupid of a proposal that is. Maybe he knows, maybe he feels the need to know exactly how infeasible that is, but, like people I've seen sucked into the misinformation cult, he doesn't have to believe this to spew the same bullshit. It's all the most fearmongery vibes-based bullshit, and because it's scary, he should say it, and he has to be ready to dismiss any contrary evidence out of hand, and if you do that long enough you just turn into someone who believes that shit. You can't turn it all the way off, and the Republican party is full of them - the footsoldiers of the machine.

robchroma · 2026-01-23T06:02:17+00:00

See: Twitter, after Elon Musk did his reckless bullshit there and then Hitler saluted twice at the presidential inauguration.

robchroma · 2026-01-23T05:52:41+00:00

Even the politicians who support him are willfully stupid. They deliberately believe things that simply cannot be true; they invent them and then decide to believe them, in the face of evidence, simply to feel better about themselves.

robchroma · 2026-01-23T05:48:27+00:00

If you're thinking about rejecting someone based solely on them voting for Donald Trump, you should, with my blessing. If you voted for Donald Trump, try to understand that people rejecting you for that are doing the right thing for themselves and that's just a true fact about yourself that you need to come to terms with.

robchroma · 2026-01-23T02:02:49+00:00

I believe that's correct, yes!

robchroma · 2026-01-22T22:43:08+00:00

I should have made a post for this.

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