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Archive for February, 2002

So it seems that Dan Bernstein (author of qmail, the mail server used at dsandler.org) has developed an exponential improvement in number-factoring circuits.

Tuesday, February 26th, 2002

So it seems that Dan Bernstein (author of qmail, the mail server used at dsandler.org) has developed an exponential improvement in number-factoring circuits. This has caused me to go read up on related papers of his, as well as differential cryptanalysis (more links.

(Tidbit for those unfamiliar: When IBM was developing DES a while back, the NSA stopped by and asked them to remove certain key possibilities from DES. IBM complied, and for twenty years it was generally assumed that the NSA had added a backdoor to DES — in other words, “please don’t use these keys, because we can’t crack them; use these other keys instead, which we can break at any time.” Twenty years later (early 1990s), a new kind of cryptanalysis was discovered that is particularly potent on certain regions of the DES keyspace — specifically those keys the NSA said to avoid. So it turns out that (a) the NSA was strengthening DES by disallowing use of keys that would be proven weak by later research … and (b) that the NSA had differential cryptanalysis 20 years before anyone else.)

Needless to say, this math is way beyond me. But it’s really interesting.

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Mmm, mini-muffins!

Tuesday, February 26th, 2002

Mmm, mini-muffins!

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My manager invoked the 90-90 rule in business communication today.

Tuesday, February 26th, 2002

My manager invoked the 90-90 rule in business communication today. Keen.

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Angi:

Tuesday, February 26th, 2002

Angi: “the moral of the story is… fuckedcompany is never wrong.”

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//!!!!

Monday, February 25th, 2002

//!!!! ATTENTION

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Penny-Arcade on the unending push-back of GCN titles:

Monday, February 25th, 2002

Penny-Arcade on the unending push-back of GCN titles: Nintendo is making it real hard to be a Nintendo fan right now.

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Amar:

Monday, February 25th, 2002

Amar: it was interesting to walk around SF lifted, although i can never tell if things are truly bizarre or just seem that way cos i’m stoned. [...] up to coit tower, so mysterious and beautiful and pure & bright & white. saruman style, orcs with ghetto blasters loitering thuggishly at the base.

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