And the New Year begins - may it be a frell of a lot better than the last!!
Faye has no job, no money, no assets, how the hell is she going to get a loan? Let alone a loan big enough to buy something like the skate park.if she got the loan, how would she pay it back? The skate park needs to continue, or there's no money for anything.
She needs to calm down.
What if Faye tries offering Dora an investment opportunity? Dora's shown a little regret over her handling of Faye, so she might consider it.
Faye has no job, no money, no assets, how the hell is she going to get a loan? Let alone a loan big enough to buy something like the skate park.
She needs to calm down.
Questions:
* Why are we so sure Faye has no assets? She could be a beneficiary in her parents testament - I think I recall them owning a house?
* Do(n't) US houses usually have a basement/attic? I rent a 35 m^2 flat for 335€ and get 3-5 m^2 storage space in the basement as part of the deal. It's rather common over here.
Faye needs to find a sugar daddy, there's no doubt about that....does this mean something else on your side of the pond? Because if not...what.
Faye needs to find a sugar daddy, there's no doubt about that....does this mean something else on your side of the pond? Because if not...what.
Let me put it this way; in RL I know some people who work at or run shelters for homeless people, and somehow I notice some resemblance between them and Faye. Here in the Netherlands, quite a few of those places are not run by religious or wealthy charities, but by people who had a close shave with problems themselves. They found a way out, and try to help others do the same.
You seem very sure that Corpse Witch is not the big fish the inspector is after. Why is that?
A small repair shop could develop in a bunch of directions. As a repairs-for-the-disadvantaged charity suitable for state sponsorship and/or eligible for tax-free donations, or as a good honest repairs-for-customers-paying-a-reasonable-fee business.
I am seeing everyone proposing the enterprise being done as a capitalist venture.Just thought I'd point that out. Carry on.
[ I am thinking too much commercial indoctrination ]
Why has nobody even mentioned that they could go the charity route instead?
You seem very sure that Corpse Witch is not the big fish the inspector is after. Why is that?
It's the way I read Detective Basilisk's explanation. It sounded like she was imagining a larger organization than the skate park. If Ms. Witch were a senior organized crime figure it doesn't seem likely she'd spend so much time as manager of one small business.
WRT Bubbles not being equipped with tear ducts, bear in mind that some AIs ARE equipped with them. (http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1996)
I always knew Hanners was capable of physical affection. It just required a synthetic recipient to be expressed.
Floof.
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.Damn straight!
and eventually, in a tone of outrage, asked the guy organizing the whole thing, "Why are you feeding these people?!"
The answer was the second finest shut-up I have ever witnessed: "Because they are hungry."
I was all "Awww!", but then I thought: "How does Bubbles keep her lenses clean, and her eyelids lubricated when they close over them?" If she used the same trick as certain lizards (http://ourworldiscool.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/IPC-winner-tile.jpg.adapt_.945.1.jpg), social interaction would be difficult.
I've been in the same situation as Bubbles in the middle bottom panel. It's not the tear ducts, it's the heart. Cruelty and opposition I can cope with, I thrive on it, and I bet Bubbles does too. But kindness... seeing just how Good some people are.. especially when they're being good to you.. no defence.
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.
Most beautiful words anyone ever heard, if they want to break encryption. "A variant of".
...
WRT Bubbles not being equipped with tear ducts, bear in mind that some AIs ARE equipped with them. (http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1996)
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
There are so many ways to be a maths nerd, though. If that were my basis for choosing a PIN (which it wasn't!), I would have gone for 0628.80th--84th digit of pi?
Or perhaps I could have gone for 1597...(click to show/hide)
Most beautiful words anyone ever heard, if they want to break encryption. "A variant of".
Meaning somebody did their own crypto implementation, meaning unless they are a specialist they almost certainly got it wrong.
Well. The PIN-code and the screenlock code (dunno what's it called in English) to my cell phone are 1416 and 26535 respectively. When I worked for Nokia, I was to select a PIN to operate the door at wee hours. I first asked for 3141 or 3142. Both were already taken :-)
I was all "Awww!", but then I thought: "How does Bubbles keep her lenses clean, and her eyelids lubricated when they close over them?" If she used the same trick as certain lizards (http://ourworldiscool.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/IPC-winner-tile.jpg.adapt_.945.1.jpg), social interaction would be difficult.
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.
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.
Well. The PIN-code and the screenlock code (dunno what's it called in English) to my cell phone are 1416 and 26535 respectively. When I worked for Nokia, I was to select a PIN to operate the door at wee hours. I first asked for 3141 or 3142. Both were already taken :-)
Wasn't very secure for them to tell you they were already taken. Now if you ever wanted to pretend to be someone else using the door at wee hours, you had two other codes you could use.
ObCrypto, People will find even more stuff by searching on "Side Channel Attack."
Did you know that when you're doing math on large numbers, most math libraries will use an algorithm that allows an observer who can time the operation to drastically narrow down their guesses as to what number it was? And one who can measure power consumption at the same time to narrow it down to within a few dozen guesses? Did you know that numbers particularly vulnerable to this used to be PREFERRED as the factors in key exchanges and RSA encryption, and that people have demonstrated the ability to pick up the needed timing/power information from recordings of bluetooth networks in the area when the operation was done? Did you know that a major linux distribution spent YEARS failing to initialize their random-number generator correctly, and people would get 256-bit keys (secure until the last star dies!) that had only 64-bit security (secure until about thursday afternoon)? Did you know that your smartphone can be used to covertly get a recording of you typing a password or key? And that given the recording, even if it's audio only, it's REALLY REALLY easy to get the password or key? Hell, if Bubbles *heard* CW typing the key or passphrase, and has recorded audio, it can be recovered.
Had a quick look at elliptic curves: Fascinating subject, but it went quickly over my head -> I have the standard physicist training in analysis and (linear) algebra and am familiar with elliptic integrals, complex analysis and elliptic functions (to a degree), though my 'mathematical horizon' is pretty much Lie-groups/algebras (and my bag of 'what I picked up along the way' usual for physicist). :-\ Pretty much the "It's neither differentiable, nor combinatorics, so why bother?"-attitude to 'discrete stuff'. Guess that was a bit ... premature. :-PLie groups/algebras! Were you doing stuff on elementary particles, supersymmetry and the like? My own dissertation was on algebraic groups (= positive characteristic analogues of Lie groups) where the Lie-algebra side is the same (but won't give quite as conclusive results as in the boring characteristic zero case). We use algebraic geometry there as a subsititute for analysis. Thankfully you only need to believe in (the results of) algebraic geometry. Something I could do even though I never quite got the hang of AG (other than in the simple case of curves). Equally thankfully familiarity with curves allows you to have fun in EC crypto as well as in error-correcting-code side - the latter I have worked on more seriously.
Seems rather close to Andrew Wiles famous work? And if I understand correctly, Shor's algorithm wouldn't help(?), so even if Station had quantum computational capacities, it wouldn't be able to brute-force elliptic curve crypto?Andew Wiles did study elliptic curves, but the machinery he used goes way over my head. I once had a colleague who wanted to work on Wiles' proof. He got to something like the half-way point (that's what he said), but then had to quit. The poor guy never finished his PhD. He took up teaching and running, and went on to win the 50+ class at Berlin Marathon!
EDIT: Just saw that Shor also had a second algorithm for discrete logarithms?
Well. The PIN-code and the screenlock code (dunno what's it called in English) to my cell phone are 1416 and 26535 respectively. When I worked for Nokia, I was to select a PIN to operate the door at wee hours. I first asked for 3141 or 3142. Both were already taken :-)
Wasn't very secure for them to tell you they were already taken. Now if you ever wanted to pretend to be someone else using the door at wee hours, you had two other codes you could use.
Hmmmh, I'd rather suspect that, with Nokia being a geek-factory, somebody told building-security to disable 3141(2), play a well-known tune for 1701 and award style-points for 2718 :laugh:
Just out of interest, what's 'Plan B'? I know that Plan A is for Station to pull some deus ex machina out of his avatar's backside and save the day but Plan B? Disable Corpse Witch with an electropulse bomb and leave her disassembled and harmless until they can put together enough from her personal data to hand her over to Detective Basilisk as a gift-wrapped Thanksgiving gift?
Need moar crypto-nerding! :laugh: (Just yesterday, I read about Turing's 'eins'-catalogue, or 'The world wonders'
Plan B is anything other than plan C.
2718 (and 1828) both get style points for e, but I'd also award style points for 1618 (golden ratio) or even 0577 (or 5772) for Euler's constant. I mean, really, let's geek out for real.
Speaking as a bit of a crypto-geek, I read "a variant of" as "some idiot changed the algorithm and almost certainly introduced major new vulnerabilities". Subtle attacks always lose to "randomness? what randomness?" attacks.
In fact, I really do wonder if she doesn't feel worthy of them.
Had a quick look at elliptic curves: Fascinating subject, but it went quickly over my head -> I have the standard physicist training in analysis and (linear) algebra and am familiar with elliptic integrals, complex analysis and elliptic functions (to a degree), though my 'mathematical horizon' is pretty much Lie-groups/algebras (and my bag of 'what I picked up along the way' usual for physicist). :-\ Pretty much the "It's neither differentiable, nor combinatorics, so why bother?"-attitude to 'discrete stuff'. Guess that was a bit ... premature. :-PLie groups/algebras! Were you doing stuff on elementary particles, supersymmetry and the like? My own dissertation was on algebraic groups (= positive characteristic analogues of Lie groups) where the Lie-algebra side is the same (but won't give quite as conclusive results as in the boring characteristic zero case). We use algebraic geometry there as a subsititute for analysis. Thankfully you only need to believe in (the results of) algebraic geometry. Something I could do even though I never quite got the hang of AG (other than in the simple case of curves). Equally thankfully familiarity with curves allows you to have fun in EC crypto as well as in error-correcting-code side - the latter I have worked on more seriously.
Andew Wiles did study elliptic curves, but the machinery he used goes way over my head. I once had a colleague who wanted to work on Wiles' proof. He got to something like the half-way point (that's what he said), but then had to quit. The poor guy never finished his PhD. He took up teaching and running, and went on to win the 50+ class at Berlin Marathon!
Didn't know that Shor would have a quantum computer algorithm for discrete logs? God, I'm out of touch of what's going on. Years of teaching calculus to reluctant physics majors and bottles of fine single malts are taking their toll :-(
Poisson Bracke
In my graduate classical mechanics course, after a lecture on Poisson brackets, one of the Chinese grad students in the class asked me why they called them "poison brackets." I then had the pleasure of explaining to him that they were named for a guy whose name means Fish.
| 299792458 | c |
| 6674 | G |
| 6626070 | h |
| 1256637061 | μ0 |
| 8854187817 | ε0 |
| 1602176620 | e |
| 2112 | :laugh: |
OT, sort of, but back when I was working on my Ph.D. in math, our department required that each of us demonstrate the ability to translate articles in two languages other than English into English. One of the other graduate students translated "supports Poisson" as "fish hooks" during his French translation exam.
The examiners were so taken aback by the translation that they gave it to him, even though it was totally wrong.
No, I work in theoretical solid state physics; my toolbox is statistical quantum field theory - but that means I'm 'only a Wick-rotation away' from many of the ideas and concepts from high-energy/particle physics & there's always been an overlap between the two fields (cf. Feynman, Dyson etc.). We also get the basic training in "second quantization" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_quantization) that the high-energy/particle physicists get, and I'm 'comfortable' with most of quantum electrodynamics, but I have no serious training e.g. QCD.
I have no formal training in Algebra - but Lie Algebras are so ubiquitous in quantum theory ((bosonic) Commutator, Poisson Bracket, outer vector (cross-) product, SO(n), SU(n), Campbell-Baker-Haussdorff relation ...) that you 'know' how the gears work long before you pick up a book to "let a mathematician confuse you about stuff you already use on a daily basis". :-D
(Especially as a theoretical physicist, you have to take care not to 'drown in the mathematics', because there's "Just so much Shiny!" - technically, my toolbox touches on pretty much three fourths of the hot topics of mathematics of the last two centuries - you need to get a working knowledge on what you need to do your job rather than an exhaustive insight into every subject.)
Hey man - you do understand I'm riffing off of a Bio of Wiles' I once read & the three jargon-buzzwords I picked up fromsleeping throughsitting in the talks of the quantum-CS department, do you? (Jeez, you Mathematicians are so easy discombobulate ... :laugh:). The stuff about Shor's discrete log algo I picked up on Wiki, btw ...
In my graduate classical mechanics course, after a lecture on Poisson brackets, one of the Chinese grad students in the class asked me why they called them "poison brackets." I then had the pleasure of explaining to him that they were named for a guy whose name means Fish.
Shoulda told him "Because it's such a derivative concept" ... :emotrex:
Panel 3 is a lovely Bubbles character moment. She really isn't used to any kind of displays of affection, is she? In fact, I really do wonder if she doesn't feel worthy of them. The way she blushes every time Faye (or anyone else for that matter) gets into her personal space in a nice way is a lovely little 'coming out of her shell' moment.
I'm pretty sure that we're at the end of this arc now. Tomorrow and Friday will either be filler or something else (possibly going back to Brun trying to survive in an alien world full of rules that make no sense to her). However, I'm wondering just how long Bubbles will be able to keep her pretence of defeat around Corpse Witch and I can't shake the worry that she might have a second layer of coercion ready to deploy.
New Comic Up!
Well, Corpse Witch is screwed. She's a whiff of ionised ozone, argon and helium flashing away at hypersonic velocities from a railgun strike that hasn't realised it yet.
Other non-Deus Ex Machina resolutions:
• There are no encrypted memories; Bubbles got on the table for some other reason and CW implanted fake memories of her traumatic military service in order to enslave Bubbles.
• Bubbles reminds CW that if the encryption key is destroyed, there's basically nothing standing between CW and a. Bubbles' vengeance; b. Station's vengeance; c. Faye's vengeance; and d. prosecution by Basilisk. So CW better not destroy it. Bubbles then reveals that she was trained in anti-AI torture techniques, and that she is going to start using them on CW unless the key is forthcoming. So CW doesn't dare destroy the key, and faces some very unpleasant times if she doesn't give it up.
• Bubbles and Faye go over CW's head to Big Fish, and let him know that large orbital guns are ready to take out both the skate park and lots of Big Fish's other property, and CW gets fired. On the run from Basilisk, Station and Bubbles, CW finds someone to eliminate her own memories of the key, and to transfer her to another chassis so she can't be found. That person turns out to be... Pintsize! CW ends up literally as a toaster, and Bubbles gets the key from Pintsize, who fished it out of CW's memories while she was on the table.
• Bubbles resigns herself to never getting the memories back, but also refuses to take violent action against CW. Faye and Bubbles open their own AI repair clinic, and life goes on. Then one day, after Basilisk finally shuts down the skate park, who should show up at the clinic door but... CW! CW, down on her luck and badly needing repairs after a run-in with some other pissed-off colleagues, agrees to trade the key to Bubbles for repairs. So they put CW under for repairs. At length she wakes up as... a toaster!
Oribital Railgun Justice
Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad possibilities. Corpse Witch might have installed monitoring software (or a dead-simple audio recorder) in Bubbles when she did the memory encryption. It's possible she knows everything Bubbles and Faye and Hannelore talked about. It's possible she knows, or could access, everything Bubbles thinks.
... hack Corpse Witch herself.
New Comic Up!
Well, Corpse Witch is screwed. She's a whiff of ionised ozone, argon and helium flashing away at hypersonic velocities from a railgun strike that hasn't realised it yet.
And so would every other AI working at the skate park and potentially anyone else in the immediate area which is probably why Hannelore would prefer not to go that route.
When I want secret numbers, or passwords, I roll dice. I have quite a collection.
I was confident that Jeph would not go down the lazy deus ex route (I never asked for this), and I'm pleased he hasn't.
As CW probably considers herself a person of business, I would tap in HannersMom. A swift negotiation/volcano should sort this.
otoh, CW is hugely smug. Maybe the key is 1 2 3 4 5. "That's good enough!"
As for me - when I want random numbers, rather than pseudo-random, I just listen to cosmic background. One time pads of arbitrary length made easy. Akira's solution using dice towers is a convenient low tech substitute that is usually good enough.
When I want secret numbers, or passwords, I roll dice. I have quite a collection.
I'd like words with Station's colleagues. Starting with reminding them that Time spent in Reconnaissance is seldom wasted.
I want to make sure Corpse Witch isn't an avatar of a Big Bad. Then I want to try to understand what circumstances led to her being as she is, and what the degree of threat is of more like her being created every day.
Station's reaction seems to me to indicate emotional immaturity. To be expected, really. Having emissaries like Momo obviously fills a need, a gap in education they're quite aware of.
As for me - when I want random numbers, rather than pseudo-random, I just listen to cosmic background. One time pads of arbitrary length made easy. Akira's solution using dice towers is a convenient low tech substitute that is usually good enough.
You want to get into a safe, you can either pick the lock yourself, or you can persuade the person with the combination to give it to you. And you may interpret "persuade" any way you like.
Station's reaction seems to me to indicate emotional immaturity. To be expected, really. Having emissaries like Momo obviously fills a need, a gap in education they're quite aware of.
When all you have is a crowbar... from orbit...
So long as a password is not able to be guessed by any likely means, then randomness is not so important. What matters is sufficient length to make breaking it impractical. Of course, something based on words, like a passphrase, needs to be longer than a purely random password, but being so much easier to remember is far less likely to get written down.All very good points. One crucial attraction of rolling dice, or other sources of entropy, in PIN/password/passphrase generation is that they remove unconscious biases. I hope everyone in this forum is too sophisticated to commit basic blunders like choosing their birthday, name of their pet, their favourite football team etc. as a password, but I suspect we are all less unique and unpredictable than we think we are.
You want to get into a safe, you can either pick the lock yourself, or you can persuade the person with the combination to give it to you. And you may interpret "persuade" any way you like.
Who talked about calling Leverage like 2 threads ago? Even if they don't Hardison the shit out of CW they are really good at persuading people into letting them into safes.
When all you have is a crowbar... from orbit...
Why did Hanners change clothes after talking to Station, before coming out to tell Faye what he said? She's wearing a purple t-shirt while talking to Station, but comes back out in a white blouse/pink pullover combination.
When I want secret numbers, or passwords, I roll dice. I have quite a collection.
I have a perl script which I run to get passwords. It uses a "doubly random" character generator.
I like how succinctly Hanners sums up the big problem with Orbital Railgun Justice: "If I wanted to live in a crater, I would have moved to the Moon!"
Although that does seem surprisingly reasonable for Hanners, considering her first reaction upon discovering the spiders in CoD's basement was to inform Dora that "My dad will be in position to drop a tungsten rod on this place in 64 minutes. (http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2468)"
Less a matter of synthetics and more of a matter of someone who has gravely hurt her friend. I don't think she'd have objected were Corpse Witch human, either, had she committed the same harm.
Good to see that they will have to find an alternative plan since using a rail gun to solve this problem would quickly lose them any moral high ground.
Oh? Now that's an interesting thing Hannelore said: Station doesn't want to try because of what "might be lurking in Bubbles' head". That's the first time that it's been implied that some AIs are afraid of Bubbles' experiences.
Oh? Now that's an interesting thing Hannelore said: Station doesn't want to try because of what "might be lurking in Bubbles' head". That's the first time that it's been implied that some AIs are afraid of Bubbles' experiences. It might explain why she was shunned and didn't get the help she needed if her peers (and those far up the intellectual ladder to her) found her experiences so horrifying that the didn't want to experience them, even at one remove.
If that's the case then one wonders how Corpse Witch could perform her operation while retaining her sanity.
If that's the case then one wonders how Corpse Witch could perform her operation while retaining her sanity.
What if Corpse Witch herself is somehow encrypted? Somehow she "helps" (as she calls it) the other robots and then blocks out what she has seen in herself.
Clearly, I have no idea I know what I'm talking about, but what if there's a third party that has the encryption keys not CW (maybe Jeremy knows something).
Another Hannelore mystery! Where is she going all dressed up like that? It certainly isn't what she normally wears to work; it's almost formal wear!
I suppose that she might be going to meet her mother for dinner or something. If so, that might be interesting. As malignant a character Beatrice is, I can't see her tolerating a small fish in her pond thinking it is big enough to bully one of her daughter's friends. That could make the last few days of her life... interesting for Corpse Witch.
Another Hannelore mystery! Where is she going all dressed up like that? It certainly isn't what she normally wears to work; it's almost formal wear!
Oh? Now that's an interesting thing Hannelore said: Station doesn't want to try because of what "might be lurking in Bubbles' head". That's the first time that it's been implied that some AIs are afraid of Bubbles' experiences.I may have misinterpreted it, but I took it to mean that Station suspects any probing he is capable of could be harmful to Bubbles! May be Station suspects that CW installed some malware that could be triggered by a serious decryption effort?
(I just noticed the comic numbers in the thread title were wrong, and corrected them. Because of the way the web site addresses the comics, the Bembo week had numbers in the same sequence.)
...because Corpse Witch is a part of the Robo Nostra an AI mafia that keeps to their own rackets, but if provoked can be a real nightmare especially for people who transfer a lot of money electronically.
Then again - may be HannerMom *IS* the Big Fish? Not really her style, I know. May be the skate park just became a part of her conglomerate in some other deal?
Then again - may be HannerMom *IS* the Big Fish? Not really her style, I know. May be the skate park just became a part of her conglomerate in some other deal?
I was wondering that too! What if they went to HannerMom to have her try to leverage some sort of deal with CW and she turns out to be CW's boss? Wouldn't that be a kick in the head! (He says, with fear and trepidation.)