asciilifeform: this is almost convincing re: the impossibility argument. but suppose the goods isn't a generic rsa pill, but something more akin to nuke. that is, oppenheimer & friends didn't run off to an island and form own kingdom, because their 'jewel' required astonishing resources to put into action (industrial empire) and not very useful on their own, on paper
asciilifeform: so, continuing with this lemma, the 'guard' is an impossibility because, were he to exist, he could trivially order his supposed superiors to disappear forever up their own arses, should he wish this?
asciilifeform: why this dichotomy. is it not possible for them to have absolute power to guard 'the goods' but not, say, to control other aspects of the world ? like any ordinary guard
asciilifeform: just trying to argue against 'nothing so valuable can exist, it would've been lifted by now'
asciilifeform: and correctly put it to its intended use
asciilifeform: more traditional question - who, if anyone, can pilfer a working nuke?
asciilifeform wasn't there, didn't personally boot carter - or gorbached - from the goodies vault. but tale is plausible. compartmentalization of 'fun secrets' is generally easy because of the miniscule number of qualified thieves - that is, folks who apprehend the true value of the goods.
asciilifeform: 'mr carter, you aren't cleared for this, and if you ask again there will be problems.'☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: sure. 'indiana jones vault' or the like.
asciilifeform: i'd say it has not been used. waiting to the pig to get fatter, before slaughter.
asciilifeform: well then. suppose, bush sr., or whoever, circa '92, whenever, was informed of the discovery, in his fuhrerbunker. then he proclaims: 'let's get the people with valuable secrets to use rsa. how to do this?'
asciilifeform: how would this world's observables differ from the known observables?
asciilifeform: let's give them some context, then. picture scenario where the $maxint in u.s. cryptologic work actually resulted in something useful. but, so useful that, like a thermonuke, it isn't fit to trot out on just any everyday occasion.
asciilifeform: but how does this apply? my hypothetical is a historically-humdrum 'skunk works' scenario
asciilifeform: this is, admittedly, merely a plausible - if fantastic - hypothesis. but one admitted by the known facts. -- like the nonphysical solution to a quadratic.
asciilifeform: the strings, in this hypothetical narrative, are pulled by another master - one of disinfo, whose purpose would then consist of shielding the former greybeard.
asciilifeform: he sits and plays 'tetris' on his handmade optical cpu
asciilifeform: jurov: the hypothetical master doesn't need to. he just sorta sits there quietly and bakes pills against rsa; creates diddled but internationally-appealing block ciphers; etc
asciilifeform: (they, if i recall, were actually on the right track, unlike germany)
asciilifeform: aye. sorta like the japanese version of 'manhattan project'
asciilifeform: at the risk of sounding like anatoliy golitsyn (infamous fellow who insists, even today, that ussr faked its own death) - the available, afaik, evidence suggests either terrible - or incredibly good - cryptology
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: not necessarily. the inventor, of, say, 'joseki' is probably long dead - but a small army of monkeys (engineers, sw/hw production staff, auditors, etc) have access to 'the goods' - and they aren't leaking either.
asciilifeform regards hypothesis 'there is no good stuff' as unproven
asciilifeform: but in all seriousness, a leak history that favours tedious operational garbage and entirely omits the good stuff suggests 'hangout'
asciilifeform: if wishes were atomic dirigibles, beggars would rain thermonuclear hell upon their enemies.
asciilifeform returns, every time he thinks about any of this, to the Great Mystery of why our beloved phriends never, ever leak anything interestingly cryptological
asciilifeform: ^ re: the conundrum of why a private has 'the keys'
asciilifeform: thus they have issues with quis custodiet ipsos custodes
asciilifeform: they gave him the keys << the anglos have a historic problem, in that they never invented политрукs
asciilifeform: 'diplomatic' (intelligence) corps are still largely 'aryan' afaik
asciilifeform: i think they even removed the age limits recently
asciilifeform: enlist a tranny << slightly different dynamic there. any street scum can enlist as a private
asciilifeform: american military tradition borrows heavily from the brits
asciilifeform: definition of aryan << something like herr snowden
asciilifeform favours crackpot theory: the seekrit skvirels prefer to enlist 'pure blood aryans' and this is a painful constraint for them
asciilifeform: like the mythical einsatzgruppen kommando loading blank shells.
asciilifeform: almost enough to believe that the author is secretly on the side of the forces of good - i.e. he isn't genuinely trying to fool anyone
asciilifeform: still boggling mind at the newest pgp hatchet job. why the idiocy? or rather, why was it not cushioned in perfectly logical criticism of the spec (crufty; mandates support for hideously weak algos; etc) ?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu and all other 'trinitron' aficionados: when you get the inevitable tube fade, do you boost the electron gun voltage? or bite the bullet and somehow conjure up a new (!) tube ?
asciilifeform: there are at least as many ways for bad ui as for bad food
asciilifeform: re: user interface << a 'clean ui' doesn't mean what people often think it means. e.g. a lathe has three knobs. what could be simpler. and yet.
asciilifeform: if 'wisdom is getting on the train one day before everybody else' (TM) - folly is 'trying to get on the train exactly one day before everybody else.'
asciilifeform: why build what will later be confiscated, nationalized.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: lol, why would anyone mine in usa
asciilifeform: decimation: that's nothing to do with 4880
asciilifeform: and not a few of the best gestapo folks ended up in stasi, etc.
asciilifeform: anyone who worked for the tsar in any capacity, 20 years diging ice << nah. most of them (including herr dzugashvili...) just got a new krysha.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: veterans just neatly paste the pgp in the email body << wait, vs. what ?
