cgra: asciilifeform: selfchain having the locking thing makes me think how much does it make sense if you still gotta trust the choke-point peer(s) between you and some semi-rando (l2). and how big biz is there with a semi-rando anyway
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-01-26 18:48:29 asciilifeform: thimbronion: current notion, summarized: we bite off 64byte from payload, and get 2 new fields, call'em 'unlock' and 'lock'. lock == h256(errything else in msg, incl. 'unlock', and unrevealed 32byte turd 'S'.); unlock = 'S' from yer previous msg.
cgra: otoh, the locking idea would make selfchains reliably distinguishable (assuming proper 'S-turd' entropy). instead, would somekinda chain claiming convention, where you send a standard message with a random string in it, similarly guarantee distinguishable selfchains?
asciilifeform: cgra: re 1st q -- see thrd
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-01-26 19:03:39 asciilifeform: (a) eats shit, as he's perma-distinguishable from the genuine article, except if he can cultivate a 'pet' sub-pestnet where he's the chokepoint b/w them & yours, and he's willing to impersonate $speaker erry day
asciilifeform: cgra: re 2nd -- the focus, yes, is to ~detect~ handle collisions (accidental or otherwise) and distinguish the chains. not sure what you mean re 'standard message with random...' tho, plz elaborate
cgra: asciilifeform: i mean, in (leaky) theory, two selfchains are usually distinguishable, even just because the subjects in q wrote different things over time. right?
asciilifeform: cgra: correct.
cgra: i'm suggesting the leaky part is plugged by everybody sending a msg nobody else wouldn't and couldn't
asciilifeform: cgra: problem happens when (for whatever reason) the chain is a) broken b) forked
cgra: does 'forked' mean specifically branched?
asciilifeform: correct
cgra: i was wondering whether there's any demand to automatically resolve either case
asciilifeform: cgra: how wouldja resolve automatically ?
cgra: asciilifeform: you pointed out the thread, i could try re-reading if you think there's an obvious explanation
cgra: or maybe not automatically, but thought that since it's down to trust, wouldn't need anything else but simple mechanics
asciilifeform: linked thrd gives algo where erry msg carries h(s), s being a random seekrit, and subsequent message by same author reveals s. this aint watertight (it is possible to retro-forge) but afaik closest thing there's gonna be to a pill.
cgra: asciilifeform: i grasped the algo, not necessarily all implications though
asciilifeform: if cgra or anyone else can think of a cleaner solution (that does not require rsa) asciilifeform is all ears.
cgra: the choke-point may still plant his own chain extending msg in place of the original sender
asciilifeform: aha
asciilifeform: as described in thrd
cgra: because received the just-revealed S-turd before others
asciilifeform: aha
cgra: so, it's still down to trusting the choke-point, as with without the locking mechanism
asciilifeform: he has to a) be certain that he's a chokepoint b) keep it up indefinitely, however, or the ruse falls
asciilifeform: the handling of handle collisions is the part of pest spec asciilifeform is least happy with atm. currently no one gives half a shit because no one has much in the way of an l2 (not even to speak of l3+)
asciilifeform: but if at some pt there is a pestnet of any serious size, becomes serious headache, and thus far asciilifeform not come up with anyffin but above dirty kludge even in principle to address it.
cgra: can you imagine a case for l3?
asciilifeform: easily
asciilifeform: say, anuther pestnet merges with the current one via peering one or two stations. and then same again.
asciilifeform: for that matter, there is already an l2, largely consisting of various people's bots
asciilifeform: (doubtful that erryone can be arsed to l1 peer with erry bot, nor is there much point in doing so)
cgra: right, that's a clear l2 case
asciilifeform: and so a human joins the pestnet via, for starters, one peering. nao e.g. asciilifeform's bot is in his l3.
cgra: (bot l2 case hardly warrants locking mechanism though)
asciilifeform: summary of what asciilifeform wants. and yes, aware that 'squaring the circle'.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-01-24 11:51:33 asciilifeform: what asciilifeform wants is to emulate the 1 desirable aspect of a traditional centralized 'fleanode' : that the 1st user of a handle on a given pestnet can be distinguished from subsequently appearing users.
asciilifeform: cgra: would like to solve ~general case~ of 'all speakers on pestnet distinguishable at all times' somehow.
asciilifeform: presently only l1 speakers are guaranteed to be distinguishable (from their l1 peer's pov) as immediate msg is prima facie authentic and wot may not contain two entries with colliding handles.
cgra: asciilifeform: and temporary two bobs are ok if there's at least some distinguishing factor, like the intact selfchain down to the day 1?
asciilifeform: correct
asciilifeform: and, ideally, the 'bob' you've been dealing with longer will be 'bob' while the 'new' one will be 'bob_n' until you mark him otherwise
asciilifeform: ( selfchain dun necessarily solve this , alone, as on merge of pestnets may well find that 'their' bob is 'older' )
cgra: asciilifeform: but now that the circle is larger, don't the both bobs need commonly agreed names?
asciilifeform: ideally
asciilifeform: is 1 of the reasons behind 'aka' cmd
cgra: asciilifeform: i suppose a gui pestron feature that reads text 'bob' on screen, but links to a distinct selfchain, worked until agreed upon, new name(s)
cgra: (and the hash icon feature you said earlier)
asciilifeform: aha
asciilifeform: protocol oughn't rely on such a thing to be 100% usable tho (esp given as it dun exist and no one knows when or whether it will)
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-01-18 13:31:33 asciilifeform: it's sad but troo, well-behaved guism on existing os is in fact over9000x harder than e.g. writing a kernel and compiler.
cgra: yeah, trying to take one step at a time. first step being not constraining to irc specifics
asciilifeform: right
cgra: what i mean by questioning the locking mechanism, that is there a break/fork case that wouldn't resolve just by ~asking out?
asciilifeform: asking?
cgra: i mean, by asking the participants what's going on
cgra: i suppose i could use a good example, maybe i have no imagination
cgra: good maybe being realistic
asciilifeform: cgra: 'hey bob and bob, which 1 of you is bob?' 'me' 'me'
cgra: asciilifeform: aren't you asking who's bob while they got their own barcode (selfchain) in their back of the head, and could check there instead?
cgra: or, i'm not sure what the bob q was meant to highlight exactly. an irc specific issue?
cgra: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-07-13#1111437 << do you mean here that one solution would be that whoever talked in pest (whichever net) first deserves the handle? and could check from genesis message timestamp. or do you mean that "my bob must stay bob"?
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-07-13 12:25:42 asciilifeform: ( selfchain dun necessarily solve this , alone, as on merge of pestnets may well find that 'their' bob is 'older' )
asciilifeform: cgra: the latter
asciilifeform: this requires a local notion of 'first'
cgra: is the 'squaring the circle' part here that there's two conflicting (given two pestnets joining) povs, both requiring "my bob must stay bob."?
asciilifeform: cgra: nah, more generally, as e.g. punkman noted, asciilifeform is trying to get the effect of a pubkey system w/out actually using pubkey crypto
dulapbot: Logged on 2021-09-13 15:04:34 punkman: it seems to me that any solution that is not "find way to live with hearsay", will amount to pubkeycryptosystem
asciilifeform: ... or whatever subset of it can be achieved practically
cgra: ah ok
asciilifeform: i.e. somehow make all speakers on a pestnet, past or present, distinguishable from any given station's pov
asciilifeform: including folx attempting to play tricks with the protocol
cgra: asciilifeform: checking that we'
asciilifeform: hm?
cgra: asciilifeform, checking that we're on the same page: i'm trying to understand whether those tricksters are an actual issue. cuz selfchains, assuming ~smooth operation re forks/breaks, seem to give clear identity for every bob
cgra: sorry, mis-enter earlier
asciilifeform: cgra: right, every bob except for deliberate impersonators
asciilifeform: wb gregorynyssa !
asciilifeform: !q seen gregorynyssa
dulapbot: gregorynyssa last seen here on 2021-07-01 16:44:31: /quit
asciilifeform: !q seen gregory4
dulapbot: gregory4 last seen here on 2021-09-08 18:46:05: asciilifeform: what is your view of asymmetric multi-processing? did Linux make the right decision by devoting itself to symmetric?
vex: why exactly is pubkey crypto off the table?
asciilifeform: vex: see e.g. here
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-01-24 11:58:52 asciilifeform: thimbronion: recall the orig. reason why pest is using symmetric crypto, btw
asciilifeform: and elsewhere.
dulapbot: Logged on 2021-09-19 16:48:19 asciilifeform: ( meanwhile, since perhaps it aint obvious, asciilifeform will explicitly remind readers : pest is arguably an atrocity, in that the Final Solution to the problem it intends to solve, is constant-time-rsa-at-line-rate. and nothing else. but this'd cost 1e9$+ to produce the required iron, and then somehow to get it to erryone who wants to play! so asciilifeform posed the question -- what subset of the desired functional
vex: spoofer only needs detected once
asciilifeform: vex: rsa does 0 unless erry single packet signed.
vex: It's likely that I don't understand the problem. nevermind
asciilifeform: vex: see e.g.
dulapbot: Logged on 2021-05-18 16:15:41 asciilifeform: the main obstacle currently is that non-leaking rsa is slow on pc.
asciilifeform: and e.g.
dulapbot: Logged on 2021-09-12 13:28:57 asciilifeform: punkman: the whole protocol is one big 'weird contortion' around the fact that we can't do rsa at line rate but 'want to play anyway because fuckerryone'
asciilifeform bbl