asciilifeform: this entire subject remaining a subject even in light of (reasonably well-known) fact of extant airplanes being remotely pwnable - is perplexing.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: it presumably looked 'correct' on xray.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: but even the public 'state of the art' was an israeli phone, successfully delivered to intended decapitee, which functioned as intended for a few minutes and then detonated on command.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: the 'turn on your laptop to prove it isn't filled exclusively with trotyl' thing is rather tiresome. esp. since nothing keeps a miscreant from replacing only, e.g., half of the cells in his battery with plastique of similar shape and density.
asciilifeform: this is one of those problems where it is almost unavoidable.
asciilifeform: artifexd: i will not belabour the point, i think you will arrive at the correct answers on your own. they will fall into place in your head.
asciilifeform: if successful (he signed nonce with an ephemeral key for which the machine being spoken to possesses a valid primary wot-key signature, or is in fact transmitting a new ephemeral pubkey signed by such a wotkey) - this creates a session.
asciilifeform: artifexd: imho the 'hello' should stick to bare minimum - establishing the right of the interlocutor to speak to what is on the other end.
asciilifeform: i'd suggest term 'of', and use mathematical notation subkey(ofkey)
asciilifeform: if correctly built, apparatus will remain standing. but the notion that no one will see it fit to pour excrement upon the head of the early incarnation - is a mistake.
asciilifeform: not even usg as such, needed for this. the crapware folks will readily latch on to anything like a solution to what ails them - which proposed apparatus is; and the antivirus folks will immediately proceed to piss out whatever fluids they can muster, against the problem
asciilifeform: actually i envision a department hastily assembled, of folks much like myself but underemployed, set to work on it.
asciilifeform will not waste the gentlemens' time by belabouring the point further
asciilifeform: if it is not obvious why this is tremendously valuable, try to think about it for a few minutes.
asciilifeform: with udp, you can make the 'friend or foe?' decision upon receipt of a single (!) packet.☟︎☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: answer is, for the same reason that, after a certain date, rifle calibers were X inch sixteenth lines and not some random contemporary fellow's little finger.
asciilifeform: (perfectly legit) question was 'wtf should we give a damn about udp mtu, it's a bore'
asciilifeform: 576 can hold a 2048-bit (ephemeral rsa key!) sig, a reasonably long key fp, and small payload.
asciilifeform: artifexd: this would be - to reconcile history per-pubkey, rather than global.
asciilifeform: artifexd: i was trying to suggest another way whereby no packet needs to exceed udp's mtu in size, or be guaranteed to reach its destination in the first try
asciilifeform: artifexd: you don't strictly speaking need fountain code in first version of this apparatus.
asciilifeform: 'prison is like the grave, room can be found for everyone' (ru proverb)
asciilifeform: not suggesting that 'anonymity' warrants complicating design, but if it can be dropped by the gods from the sky at no cost, no reason not to pick up.
asciilifeform: artifexd: this requires a fixed, steady flow of bits between the two points.
asciilifeform: artifexd: it is also necessary that they have no temporal correlation to anything.
asciilifeform: incidentally, here's a small idea. instead of transmitting snapshots of global state (of 'channel'), have each packet be a reconciliation of one particular pubkey's history. that way there is no need to reassemble gigantic blob.
asciilifeform: the connection-tracking apparatus of tcp is really half the force behind the sting of 'ddos'
asciilifeform: not having to worry about syn floods, etc. plus frustrating most existing traffic analysis widgetry - udp, if done correctly, is a serious win
asciilifeform: if you can get packet P from your box to other end, using paper letter, but not the net - should be able to do so
asciilifeform: but there is no particular reason to glue it to ip on protocol level
asciilifeform: the most classic, 'naive' algo for this, known to nearly everyone under one name or another, is reed-solomon.
asciilifeform: X*N is naturally larger than B. by how much - depends on particular algorithm chosen.
asciilifeform: artifexd: there are several known ways of doing a 'fountain code' (term of art) - where a bitstring, B, is transformed into a number, N, of shorter bitstrings, whereby X of N can be collected, in any order, and with certain quantity of errors permissible, to reconstitute B.
asciilifeform also points out that, as written, apparatus is also meant to replace the classical 'wot'
asciilifeform: artifexd: answer not obvious from the article ?
asciilifeform: but when there are more mice than human eater in the restaurant, mass-wise, it reflects poorly.
asciilifeform: wouldn't suggest that it is their duty to play exterminator
asciilifeform: 'mcdonalds' is 'democratic' not only for leprous bomzhes, but for rats, mice, roaches.
asciilifeform: there's also the interesting fact (i shall offer no attempt at proof here) that a significant chunk of fleanode traffic is botnet c&c
asciilifeform: well yes, but the reactions of the 'nah it isn't our fault, and by the way have you tried plugging it in? and it ain't a bug, but a feature, at any rate'
asciilifeform: there's an interesting similarity in the reactions of the freenode folks (quoted in earlier thread) and that of the wp fool (quoted in recent article on mircea_popescu's site)
asciilifeform: one time, isaac asimov (iirc ?) got tired of idiots badgering him with questions re: subjects in which he could not possibly give informed answer, and some of these even retorted with 'please just give me your gut feeling!' to which he answered that he does not think with his gut, and the questioner is welcome to keep the company of those who do - elsewhere.
