Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT Strips 3386 - 3390 (2nd - 6th January 2017)

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Case:

--- Quote from: Zebediah on 02 Jan 2017, 05:44 ---2. In the north, yes, most houses have basements or attics. (Basements are less common in the southern US.) But Faye doesn't live in a house, she lives in an apartment building, and many of those do not have a storage space as part of the deal. We've never seen one in all the time Marten and Faye have lived in that apartment, so I'm guessing they don't have one.

--- End quote ---

Thanks! It's sometimes a bit difficult to translate terms between our coordinate system and that of the US, particularly with the different philosophies regarding home ownership, or the readiness to take out loans.

Germany's home-ownership rate is much lower (43% vs. 69%), in part due to historical reasons. Renting has long been encouraged by various Governments, and building a 'house' can easily cost you 300.000€. I was quite astonished when I learned about GWB's plans to "spreading the dream of home ownership", since over here, home-ownership is seen as sign of ... well, not quite 'wealth', but certainly as 'being comfortably in the secure range of the middle-class'.

As I said, apartment buildings having a basement partitioned into storage spaces for the tenants may not be the norm, but it's far from rare.


--- Quote from: Morituri on 02 Jan 2017, 23:04 ---Most beautiful words anyone ever heard, if they want to break encryption.  "A variant of". 
...

--- End quote ---

Need moar crypto-nerding!  :laugh: (Just yesterday, I read about Turing's 'eins'-catalogue, or 'The world wonders' ...)


Comic: D'aaaaaaaaaaaw - HanneloreHugs are magic!  :laugh:

brasca:

--- Quote from: jheartney on 02 Jan 2017, 18:55 ---WRT Bubbles not being equipped with tear ducts, bear in mind that some AIs ARE equipped with them.

--- End quote ---

Seeing as how Momo had a stereotypical anime chassis I imagine it had built in tear ducts for occasions like that.  Bubbles has a military chassis so it's amazing her face can actually express emotion at all. 

Although it's possible that Hannelore and her resources won't be enough as Bubbles theorized it doesn't hurt to try.  It's also possible that all of this can be averted if they just bribe Corpse Witch enough.  She is a business AI. 

ZoeB:

--- Quote from: de_la_Nae on 03 Jan 2017, 00:50 ---These evils can be pushed back, these demons can be slain. They never go down without a fight, but they also never go down if you don't fight

--- End quote ---

They can't always be slain - but that just means you never get the chance to rest from fighting them, it doesn't mean they can't be beaten back.

Besides which, it's the only game in town. It's not as if opposing them is a choice, or optional. Neither does the fight have to be just you alone.

Skewbrow:
I don't think I qualify for a crypto nerd. I am just a math guy who had reason to get somewhat familiarized with the algebra side of crypto (Read: I have served as the external examiner in one math PhD dissertation on some point of elliptic curve crypto). Also I once was the algebra guy in one crypto project our math department ran together with a couple of engineers from various companies.

Anyway, in theory it is possible to design a cryptosystem that is mathematically secure, i.e. one that not even Station with his considerable computational power cannot crack. But (what I learned from the engineers), there will often be various and sundry implementation attacks (depending on the application, and what the attacker has access to). If you google up "Implementation attack", you will find stuff about how a password to, say a smartcard, may be vulnerable if you can measure the chip's power consumption or time it when running.

None of that is at all relevant in this case where we have something like a partition of a hard disk encrypted. However, the human component is the weakest link in most crypto (your PIN-code is likely to be 0000 or 1234, or if you are a math nerd 3141). IOW: What Morituri said. There are other exploitable weaknesses in such systems. So Station may be able to help if he can locate an expert, but he probably cannot help by applying raw computational power.

Method of Madness:
Wouldn't it be 3142? (1000pi rounded to the nearest integer)

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