ascii_field: nubbins`: payware costing money is by far the least significant problem with it, in my experience
nubbins`: "i paid eight bucks for a binary with neat features" "yeah? well i pay everyone to write the software i use. or i use free shit. you're a dummy, use free shit!"
trinque: I would like access to the source but that's a separate issue
trinque: funkenstein_: there's nothing wrong with paying for software
nubbins`: funkenstein_ are we even speaking the same language here?
funkenstein_: if not let me know i'll get you the apk or whatever for free
nubbins`: i'm sure others would be interested as well
ascii_field: check out the many apps whose functionality sums up to one line of 'sed' on a sane machine
trinque: so when do we fix the internet guys?
ascii_field: danielpbarron: this is an ancient plague in the apple world. vendor releases an unusable os, and then various 'entrepreneurs' show up to expensively offer to paper over the turd, and users - oblige
nubbins`: but to answer your impossibly odd question, yes, the GPS app that i purchased had already been written when i purchased it
nubbins`: nobody mentions how "angry birds" devs made, what was it? 52 failures before they hit that one
nubbins`: i know of noone else who can support themselves, let alone a family, on iOS
ascii_field: nubbins`: very different from the populist chumpatron, though
trinque: the few low-tier VCs I've talked to werent' the slightest bit interested in the fact that a) we're already profitable and b) had a sane plan to become more so
ascii_field: nubbins`: not even speaking of 'early adopters' - but of who it is who owns the 'app' market -today-
trinque: seems to be precisely the same mechanism
assbot: Logged on 29-08-2014 04:59:28; asciilifeform: church (evidently in some other piece, forget which) likens the vc circus to the process whereby american 'pop musicians' are industrially manufactured by, among other outfits, disney corp.
nubbins`: i.e. for about three weeks, way back at the start, writing a "fart app" could reasonably earn you several months' wages
nubbins`: ascii_field not unlike bitcoin, early "adopters" of writing ios apps scooped up most of the "free money"
ascii_field: -these- and precisely -these- people will always be the first to swear to you that 'being a star just happens'
nubbins`: "wait now, all those ipads are viewing the bitcoin forum"
ascii_field: ^ how the 'making a living with apps' folks do it
nubbins`: so i guess there's that
chetty: ascii_field, most likely no real knowledge of the gold rush
ascii_field: 'According to reporting, "1.6 percent of developers earn more than the other 98.4 percent combined. And the bottom 47 percent of engineers earn less than $100 per month." Yet somehow, independent app development has often been described as a 'gold rush' despite it being quietly understood by developers, even as early as 2009, that this was hardly the case.' << does this person have any awareness of what the '49 goldrush
ascii_field: 'Recent revelations show that the situation has gotten so bad that today there are only approximately 3000 apps profitable enough to support a median income of $50k for their developer. It is also important to note that not all apps are built by one developer, many work as a team. So it follows that there are many fewer than 3000 developers sustainably doing independent development.'
ascii_field: but guess what, a modern italian can't go around proclaiming 'civis romanus sum' to any useful result, either
ascii_field: danielpbarron: the vibe i got was 'why won't they lick my boots, whatddayamean it isn't 1890 and i'm not a brit'
ascii_field: pete_dushenski: what, precisely, was it that you wanted from the jamaicans ?
ascii_field: mats: leaving us with no real basis for actually figuring out the situation. << know perfectly well that we -have- a real basis. any crypto standard promulgated by known malefactors is to be thrown out. and replaced not with iraqi caesar ciphers, no, but with derivation from first principles of perfectly reasonable modern crypto.
ascii_field: mats: your phrase 'avoid all crypto standards' is very much -not- the inevitable implication of dismissing usg crapolade
ascii_field: from the lulzfarms: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/science/hydrogen-bomb-physicists-book-runs-afoul-of-energy-department.html
nubbins`: you're on the clock
Pierre_Rochard: pete_dushenski: ships that pass in the night, gday!
Pierre_Rochard: well I saw crapple mentioned was coincidentally reading up on their developer chumpatronics: http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2015/3/24/fear-of-apple
nubbins`: i'm not sure i'll be able to find a photograph that accurately captures what a bizarre juxtaposition this is, in the meantime
nubbins`: but straight up, there is a club med about 100 meters from the main square, and you can tell
nubbins`: actually, touts aside, i'd go again for the food
nubbins`: saw the countryside a couple days
pete_dushenski: "One of Britons' favourite places to visit in North Africa has been named the world's top destination by TripAdvisor users. With its desert landscape and bustling souks, Marrakech came out on top in the website's annual Travellers' Choice Awards for the first time."
pete_dushenski: next up: home of the chf
pete_dushenski: i should say, i had the 2-3 weeks, but chose to spread it out over two trips instead of 1
pete_dushenski: lol funny you should mention marrakesh, i was actually going to go to morocco instead of jamaica but didn't have the 2-3 weeks needed to make the haul worthwhile
nubbins`: i recommend you keep doing it for the forseeable future :D
nubbins`: part of me feels this speaks to the relative lack of environmental stressors
pete_dushenski: given the mini-bus trip i took from the north of the island to the south, with 8 rows of people jammed, and i do mean jammed with mothers and children, 5 across
pete_dushenski: nubbins`: different tolerance for comforts or lack thereof << i guess jamaicans have a higher tolerance for discomfort than i do
pete_dushenski: i don't mind westjet, their staff are quite well trained
nubbins`: you ask for a beer and they just give you one, it's great
pete_dushenski: and the paper thin seat cushions
nubbins`: <+pete_dushenski> in that case, why bother doing better than fly guts kid ? <<< same reason one might bother to do worse: different tolerance for comforts or lack thereof
pete_dushenski: i guess cutting costs from air travel has consequences. who knew you can't race to the bottom indefinitely.
pete_dushenski: "An Airbus A320 crashed en route to Dusseldorf from Barcelona, likely killing all 150 people on board, in what would be the worst air accident on French soil in three decades. Germanwings Flight 9525 operated by the low-cost subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa AG went down in the French Alps following a rapid descent from cruising altitude, France’s civil aviation authority said."
pete_dushenski: if we're all treated the same.
pete_dushenski: in that case, why bother doing better than fly guts kid ?
nubbins`: sure, but doesn't mean automatic handjobs for the guy who doesn't scoop fly guts
pete_dushenski: they're not me and i'm not them, so ya, if we say words that sounds superficially similar, they have different contexts, thus different implications
nubbins`: "how dare they not realize i deserve red carpets and back rubs"
nubbins`: my recently identified pete's-blog-post-about-jamaica meta problem is that you identify entitlement as a problem but fail to realize that you're acting more entitled than these guys are
nubbins`: if you're gonna upbraid them for not trying hard enough, why leave out the rest of the world?
assbot: Logged on 22-03-2015 14:04:46; nubbins`: "sourcing their ingredients from within spitting distance, thus keeping the revenue in the local economy" <<< you mean keeping their /expenditures/ in the local economy. their revenue goes elsewhere, unless they're the ones buying all the dimebags.
pete_dushenski: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=22-03-2015#1064047 << "the revenue" != "their revenue"
pete_dushenski: the point i'm making is that quality is more valuable than quantity
pete_dushenski: these are cities i'm talking about. namely, ocho rios and kingston
pete_dushenski: thestringpuller: hm. i can see it
pete_dushenski: they all want to talk to the white kid with hair like them. i was the most popular thing on the street
nubbins`: sometimes they harass a guy for an hour and get a payday
nubbins`: and they do this because....
pete_dushenski: that's the thing!
pete_dushenski: except they don't!
nubbins`: so they leave you alone
nubbins`: these guys immediately realize that you're not some sucker who's gonna fork over a tenner
nubbins`: pete_dushenski it's not effective --against you-- but it's *precisely effective* against the average vacationer.
thestringpuller: pete_dushenski: well it's in art in the sense of the Oracle from the Matrix. Once you realize there is a lot of "waiting" for events to occur, then it's best to spend the meanwhile in enjoyment.
nubbins`: i'm saying it's worth their time to try to get $$ out of tourists, but it's not worth their time to chase dead ends
pete_dushenski: ok, so now you're saying that it's worth their time to be of service to me... make up your mind
nubbins`: why does it seem irrational that they'd harass tourists for money?
pete_dushenski: they seemed to have an abundance of time but little notion of how to use it effectively (at least on me)
pete_dushenski: they'd walk up to me and want to show me this and that, start following me wherever i was going, trying to nudge me here and there
nubbins`: but they don't
nubbins`: the extra time required
pete_dushenski: if 5% chance yields >20x reward then +ev
nubbins`: so why bother?
nubbins`: i'd say 5% of the time, or less, "more effort" results in "reward"
pete_dushenski: maybe they put in a bit more effort, because sure, i have standards, and maybe they get rewarded for it
nubbins`: dude, people the world over want to chill at the bar and smoke some weed instead of making a buck.
pete_dushenski: maybe they lick my asshole for a 100 though
pete_dushenski: triangle with 'good service' at the third point ?
pete_dushenski: you could argue that they both grate on different people in different ways, sure, but for me it's the latter that annoys
pete_dushenski: nubbins`, re: jamaica << there's a spectrum of behaviours within the 'poor service' realm
nubbins`: <+mats> well shit. i guess we're all back to handcrafting our own crypto then huh. <<< no, that's not what we're saying
assbot: Another day, another fissure in the Internet. This time : eBay. | Contravex: A blog by Pete Dushenski ... ( http://bit.ly/1GQ8ZYh )
pete_dushenski: triplescoop : http://www.contravex.com/2015/03/23/want-to-drive-for-uber-first-you-need-to-make-some-mistakes/ http://www.contravex.com/2015/03/24/the-meta-solution/ http://www.contravex.com/2015/03/24/another-day-another-fissure-in-the-internet-this-time-ebay/
mike_c: "RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software"
mats: well shit. i guess we're all back to handcrafting our own crypto then huh.
mike_c: what? i thought it was common knowledge rsa sold their soul.
nubbins`: and i'm saying that whether NIST is complicit or incompetent doesn't matter
nubbins`: you're implying we can figure out the situation
mats: and re: BSafe, i'm not convinced RSA could be sold on destroying their reputation for packing peanuts.
mats: leaving us with no real basis for actually figuring out the situation.
nubbins`: consider that "NIST approved it without knowing that it was backdoored" is probably the least desirable of the two
nubbins`: i.e. that all other NIST standards are cast under shadow
nubbins`: just running down the clock now
jurov: what's the difference wrt NSA?
mats: (not necessarily a claim made here -- but nonetheless)
mats: the claim i'm most concerned about is that the weakness was engineered by NSA, and that, by having approved it, NIST was complicit, thus casting doubt on all other NIST standards
mats: what i'm saying is that, as the evidence stands, i'm unable to take a firmer position on Dual_EC than the previously accepted consensus that the weakness being a backdoor is quite unlikely, and that Dual_EC should be shunned only because of the abundance of caution with regard to any issues that is endemic to the crypto field
nubbins`: man, if my goddamn roommate leaves the front door unlatched one more time, he's gonna find his possessions in the street
asciilifeform: mats: and you concluded this based on what? the perpetrators' word ?
mats: that this happened at the same time as the push towards DUAL_EC as default looks incidental, not malicious
asciilifeform: i'll emphasize that it isn't a 'won't work in the cold' so much as 'entropy relying on sram effects degrades ungracefully'
nubbins`: i'm at the 49th parallel, and i wouldn't be able to use one of these things outdoors in the winter.
nubbins`: nevermind the arctic
asciilifeform: not that any rng will function especially well in the arctic, but that fella's insistence on baking a known-bad design was memorable.
assbot: Logged on 15-07-2014 20:23:09; Rassah: In our tests, it still had plenty of entropy at 0ºC, but it smoothly went down to zero entropy around -20º. Maybe we should put warning stickers on these things saying "Caution - Chaotic System. Do not use in low entropy environments above the Arctic or below the Antarctic circle, unless exposed to external sources of energy" :)
Adlai: much less stressful to shrink the image and uncross
asciilifeform: nubbins`: http://i.imgur.com/6OsxazV.jpg << the bozo actually pasted that into #b-a if you recall
jurov is doing shit with lowlevel dbus interface.. and very first sample caused the introspection to timeout, how else
asciilifeform: oh and mats, forgot to ask: why have you forgotten about the massive (iirc, 10-20 mil) usg bribe to rsa?
ben_vulpes: blocks for the block god
chetty: <nubbins`> "anyone else getting tiredof having no control over our surroundings, or the world at large?"// no one ever controls the world at large :P get used to it
nubbins`: too bad you can't light cigars with these things
nubbins` burns another 10btc for show
nubbins`: i blame the guy's teachers and parents
nubbins`: yes, reddit commentor. many others.
nubbins`: "anyone else getting tiredof having no control over our surroundings, or the world at large?"
asciilifeform: and that whatever else we conclude, the fella who wrote hearbleed doesn't get to say 'oops. i promise i won't do it again. now let me write some more critical code'
asciilifeform: but that 'the evidence cannot be had and we must operate without it'
asciilifeform: but in all seriousness, i was not arguing that 'the evidence exists somewhere damnit' (though i belive it)
mats: i guess you'll have to torture the interrogator.
asciilifeform: when ever man and woman who ever worked at nsa dies under torture and doesn't say anything about dual_ec - then i might believe 'mistake'
asciilifeform: hell, we don't even have 1% of the kgb archive.
asciilifeform: all the necessary evidence.
mats: but did, all those other times?
mats: show me the motherfucking evidence! you mean to tell me these bureaucrats decided not to commit anything to paper this go-around?
asciilifeform: mats: if you have philosophical objections to 'behave as if X even if possibly ~X is true' then try to come up with some other syllogism. but it -must- end in 'the people who gave us heartbleed and dual_ec DO NOT GET TO MAKE CRYPTO ANY MORE'
mats: but i don't see that this is the case here.
mats: there is actual evidence of malfeasance by NSA on other counts, documented and sometimes committed to powerpoint glory
asciilifeform: note the folks routinely shoot themselves and one another in not altogether dissimilar way
asciilifeform: mats: let's put another example. if you are found holding a smoking pistol, with $famouspolitican in a bloody heap on the floor where he was not long ago giving a speech - do you suppose the judge would believe that you drew the pistol and pulled the trigger by accident, while reaching for another object in your pocket ?
asciilifeform: one has to work against one's upbringing, typically, to arrive at the message i was trying to pass here.
fluffypony: on on the seventh day we'll rest, nubbins`
asciilifeform: see, everybody's got these mental patterns, in the ru thinking sphere it is called 'tolerasty'
fluffypony: ok Monday at 3, then
asciilifeform: fluffypony: when they all take up diddled crypto ?
fluffypony: when do we start burning the jews?
asciilifeform: let him earn a living in some other way
fluffypony: and then we shoot him
nubbins`: the crypto designer errs but once
nubbins`: the shovel was bad but wolves are always hungry
nubbins`: gun was bad so we had to use the bayonets
asciilifeform: for the bad people - who deliberately sabotaged algo - bad wall, bad bullet, ..., bad earth
asciilifeform: yes, some crypto designers make mistake, they are good people, sure, whatever. i will borrow from slavoj iek and say then 'we put them to a good wall, shoot them with a good bullet from a good gun, and bury them in with a good shove in the good earth' - since sure, they are good people.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu uses word 'asset' for both, but they are distinct animals
asciilifeform: which is to say, folks who are acting in the interests of usg but do not consciously know it
asciilifeform: and aside from stooges and people, there also exist useful idiots
asciilifeform: there is literally nothing else (other than a certain measure of 'guilt by association')
asciilifeform: all you have to go on, when answering the question 'usg stooge or not' is - 'by their fruits you will know them'
nubbins`: maybe intent is to give you the clap
asciilifeform: it has to do with the impossibility of knowing intent
asciilifeform: the original idea, that is
asciilifeform: nubbins`: very much the wrong analogy
nubbins`: asciilifeform put another way: not everyone has syphilis, but you'd be remiss not to wrap it up when sexing a stranger
fluffypony: thestringpuller: mistakes don't always stem from incompetence
thestringpuller: isn't there that saying, "Road to hell something something good intentions?"
asciilifeform: but it is necessary to -behave- as if they were
thestringpuller: is there really a difference?
fluffypony: I think it's very hard to tell the difference between mistake and malice.
asciilifeform: just a strategic lack of support for anything which might poison the maggots.
asciilifeform: in hopes that the maggots will hatch naturally
asciilifeform: thing is, there are not so many good opportunities for crafted vulns, and the usg folks know it. hence they try to cultivate an overall maggoty flavour in software culture at large
nubbins`: 1% chance of it being an intentional backdoor is 1000x the proof you need to not use it
asciilifeform: this is a fairly outlandish thing on the surface, and i will justify it with something like 'pascal's wager'
mats: the whole 'NSA is undermining all crypto standards!' meme is overplayed
asciilifeform: mats: at the risk of repeating myself, i will phrase my position as a kind of maxim: 'it is necessary to behave as if hearbleed and dual_ec were crafted vulns, regardless of any apparent evidence to the contrary'
mats: look, i'm putting my skepticism on the record. if there was evidence, it'd look like 'Tor Stinks' or the slides from Der Spiegel's work on the Belgacom pwnage. i'm not saying that Dual_EC_DRBG doesn't have obvious flaws or that anyone should continue using it, but my skepticism regarding it being an intentional backdoor remains
nubbins`: the usa invading a foreign country on 100% false pretenses, it can't be true
asciilifeform: but if you have the upbringing of a thinking (that is, polymathic) person - you can get somewhere.
nubbins`: the gasenwagen, it can't be true.
asciilifeform: unfortunately, for most of the folks who do this, it ends in a belief in unidentified flying proctologists
asciilifeform: once you amputate your vestigial 'this can't be true' organ, you are left with only your understanding of the physical world to go on
nubbins`: i think the overwhelming amount of justification triggers a "this CAN'T be true" response in a lot of people
nubbins`: while one may feel silly taking the paranoid stance as the default.... we're just evaluating the evidence as presented
asciilifeform: who want their faces to stay hidden
asciilifeform: nubbins`: that plus another directorate name is pretty much all we publicly have on the 'directorate of breaking pgp'
mats: i hate discussing these things with you people
nubbins`: PIEDMONT: "Provides protection to NSA's bottom line capabilities to exploit SIGINT targets by attacking the hard mathematical problems underlying public key cryptography as well as any future technologies as may be developed"
assbot: Logged on 27-09-2014 02:35:49; asciilifeform: if you create a 'heartbleed' - you are a вредитель. and whether you did it intentionally, given the impossibility of proof - does not matter.
asciilifeform: because 'i accidentally the bug' can never be proven
nubbins`: mats it's worth mentioning that most of what snowden revealed was not considered "within the realm of reason" by many, before the fact
asciilifeform: mats: let me rephrase. i advocate that it is -wrong- to treat any case like dual_ec as anything other than sabotage
mats: the 2006 analysis and subsequent cryptanalytic work stand on their own when it comes to making the case for suspicion of a backdoor, but lets stay within the realm of reason here
asciilifeform: mats: the word of schneier is worth less than zero here.
asciilifeform: (-which products- was redacted by the greenwald gang)
mats: ive personally confirmed with schneier - in person - and have second-hand confirmations by others who have interacted with recipients of leaks
asciilifeform: mats: several of the documents (in particular, one classification-level guide) mention subversion of commercial products specifically.
mats: for the record, there is still absolutely zero solid evidence that Dual_EC_DRBG is backdoored. the Snowden leaks never mention it by name, never talk about backdooring a CSPRNG, and indeed never talk about backdooring anything. the extent of what they mention is that NSA wanted to 'influence standards'
asciilifeform: mats: see the old thread re: malice and incompetence
asciilifeform: but the available evidence is very, very thin.
asciilifeform: now, afaik all available evidence suggests that american cryptological establishment is occupied mainly with crafting monstrosities like dual_ec_drbg - rather than actually breaking 'real' crypto
asciilifeform: the gun is silent.
nubbins`: or, put another way, what mats said
nubbins`: guess they really do screen candidates for some fields, hey?
mats: they know better.
asciilifeform: from anywhere in the usg empire.
asciilifeform: there has yet to be ONE SINGLE cryptologist leak.
asciilifeform: in the sense that if you kidnapped a generic american undergrad, chained him in a cellar, and didn't let him out until he reads the snowden dumps and craps out a deck of 'plausible' canadian slides, the result is likely to be something like the above.
asciilifeform: the former i think
nubbins`: what was it, rolling stone or smth that broke the story?
nubbins`: "turns out the complainant didn't even have any orifices"
asciilifeform: iirc the case in that article ended with police finding no one on the planet remotely matching the description of the perpetrator
asciilifeform: 'Longo said the case is suspended, not closed. He said the fact that investigators could not find evidence doesnt mean that something terrible didnt happen to Jackie.'