kryten

Joined 13 years ago

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743

Submissions

253

Member since

Jun 10

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Comment · 13 years ago

Yes: no software, no ports, all media is tangible, no storage, hard to fingerprint (compared to say inkjets).

However there is one problem with typewriters people generally forget: you can extract everything that has been typed from used typewriter ribbons...

Comment · 13 years ago

As per all magazines, it declined to 10% content and 90% advertising that you had to pay a large chunk of cash for. Good riddance to them all.

Comment · 13 years ago

there are no facts in your comment. Please cite your sources. Not only that, my hypothesis hasn't been debunked or disproved.

Comment · 13 years ago

My point is that it will show up in a diff of the binaries.

Comment · 13 years ago

Actually that's a really bad comparison.

The binary size may be similar but that doesn't mean the content is. Consider the two cases below to back up my assertion:

   000000WE_COME_IN_PEACE000000000000000000
   000000WE_COME_IN_PEACE_SHOOT_TO_KILL0000

Comment · 13 years ago

You underestimate the problem.

Look at just chrome for example, which I've posted my rationale for here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6035091

Not a chance in hell.

Comment · 13 years ago

That assumption relies on two uncertainties:

1. The probability of discovering something in all that binary code, especially with the intricate and non-orthogonal nature of x86/x64 assembly and odd compiler optimisations. This isn't some 80's game.

A comparison:

    28500000 = Chrome binary size [1]
   750000000 = Human Genome size (converted to bytes - 1BP = 2bits so 4BP per byte) [2]

So we're only 26x more complicated than Chrome and we have absolutely no fucking idea what is going on with us most of the time.

2. The probability of a vulnerability being published to Google versus selling it on the private market.

[1] http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/bloat/

[2] http://www.biostars.org/p/5514/

Comment · 13 years ago

Well you hope it is.

All sorts can happen between source and binary.

Comment · 13 years ago

Yes but some things rarely work perfectly.

It scales fine. In fact it scaled for hundreds of years before electronic calendars appeared. They mobilized two world wars with pens, paper and typewriters.

Synchronisation is not an issue if you have one single source of truth.

Comment · 13 years ago

Congratulations on making me snort tea up my nose :)

Comment · 13 years ago

And before someone else says this is bollocks, I've worked at a company with shared source access to Windows and there are still bits you can't get at like the CSP implementations so there may still be stuff like that in there.

No open review for any crypto functions in Windows is possible.

That's basically a fucking massive red flag.

Comment · 13 years ago

Well considering targeted advertising is fundamentally based on surveillance, it's pretty much the same thing.

Comment · 13 years ago

I can't really be bothered with all that after basically writing that entire solution for a private company. Another metalanguage to learn...

Plus I have to have a network connection and log into a UNIX box for it which I can't do whilst I'm on the phone as it's stuck to my head at the time.