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guessWhy

55 karma · joined December 3, 2012

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guessWhy··on Surface Dogged by Low Sales, High Returns
No, the desktop is needed to run Microsoft Office.
guessWhy··on A word on cryptography
I better idea might be to use convergent encryption only for really large files. Practically this would mean deduplication of software, movies, etc.
guessWhy··on A word on cryptography
They don't seem to do that, though. Note that they claim that it's a random key and that deduplication is "much more likely" to happen when files are copied. If they would derive the key from the data in a deterministic way, they could always dedup and the previous statement (deduplication of copied files is more likely) could not be true.

edit: Clarify.

guessWhy··on A word on cryptography
Yes, but the first part makes no sense. If the 128-bit key is indeed chosen at random for each file (as it should be), the probability that the same key will be chosen again for a second upload of the same file is effectively zero (1/2^128).
guessWhy··on What we discovered about InstallMonetizer
"Agree". http://www.installmonetizer.com/AT_images/process.gif
guessWhy··on So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?
I used the following heuristics (some parts added afterwards):

1. Helvetica has level edges, Arial is angled (as ef4 said). Particularly important were "t", "e" and "a", "S", "G", C".

2a. For capital letters, if there is an "R", the Helvetica one is curved in the bottom right part while Arial uses a straight line.

2b. For a capital "Y", the Arial one has the same length in all directions while the Helvetica one is shorter at the bottom. (Alexx indicated a difference).

2c. The jags/gaps in the capital "M" extend further to the top for Arial. This can be used to figure out MATTEL.

3. Otherwise, the one that looks fatter is Helvetica.

guessWhy··on Mega has launched
It looks fine to me ?! Flash is not used at all and the design shows some taste.
guessWhy··on The If-by-whiskey fallacy
Seems to be related to the straw man:

The question is "Should whiskey be prohibited or not?" but he takes it to be "Is there anything good or bad about whiskey?" or "Do I think whiskey is good or bad?".

guessWhy··on My Aaron Swartz, whom I loved
I don't really understand the quote. What does it mean/imply?
guessWhy··on A Moment Before Dying
Wow. It's also worth reading the comments below the original article.

"You’re scaring me here. Please sick around and talk to us. You can always die later. There’s no rush."

"Jeez, Aaron - get some help. Now. Suicides talk about it before they do it."

etc.

guessWhy··on Germany orders changes to Facebook real name policy
The comment you replied to was certainly not a reference to Nazi Germany at all. Germans understand that a privacy-related reference to german history is usually a reference to the former state of East Germany which was famous for massive surveillance.
guessWhy··on Google Disabling Exchange Sync for Free Accounts
Yes, they do (The protocol is called ActiveSync). I don't know if it's on a per-account basis, though.
guessWhy··on You’re not anonymous. I know your name, email, and company.
I think changing the user agent to only report the major version would already go a long way.
guessWhy··on You’re not anonymous. I know your name, email, and company.
Yes, but it takes more than removing most of the identifying information.

First, the precise browser version and OS can probably always be identified by checking for supported features, bugs etc. even if the extreme measure would be taken to remove the user agent string.

Add the screen resolution, IP, timing and request patterns (+) and we are all screwed.

(+) e.g. rule out users that are using other sites at the same time. Note that it would be possible to determine if a page is in the currently focused and visible browser tab and forward that information to the tracker.

guessWhy··on You’re not anonymous. I know your name, email, and company.
You said it yourself: everytime your Firefox build is updated, you change identity.
guessWhy··on Apple blocking SkyDrive from iOS store, wants cut of revenue
The expectation that customers should act in a way to basically create the conditions for a perfectly free market is misguided. Not invoking legislation just makes things painful for everyone. Sure, I can switch to Android - but the cost of buying everything again is rather high. Tomorrow I might have to switch back for similar political reasons.
guessWhy··on Something really scary is going on in Germany
Invalid generalization. If you want money to be part of the index, they should be able to remove you.
guessWhy··on ITU Approves Deep Packet Inspection Recommendation
Sure, but this was the case before CDNs as well. Unless you are a Tier 1 network you usually pay a fee to your upstream carrier.

However, the ITU would like to charge across many networks and discriminate based on the type of service provided.

So if data from your network A reaches the customer through networks B, C and finally D, then D would like to charge you to deliver it and not slow down things artificially.

guessWhy··on 'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistleblower
Why?

Verisign merely signs your certificate. It does not even know your private key and hence also can't pass it to governments.

guessWhy··on 'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistleblower
Correct.

Furthermore, at least Chrome restricts most Google domains to a known CA. So MITM is not possible for Gmail either.

guessWhy··on Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms
Was this example really necessary? You basically said: If terrorists (who, by the way, happened to travel to Afghanistan once) attacked the WTC, the US have a casus belli against Afghanistan.

See, the reason why the war in Afghanistan is controversial is precisely because it is not clear that a country has a casus belli against another country if there is a (remote) connection of offenders to that country. In fact, the pilots lived and planned most of the plot in Germany.

A better example of a failed state would be the results of the war on drugs in Mexico.

guessWhy··on Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms
a) No one time pad is used, because that would make the whole point of publishing the encrypted blob pointless in the first place. The point of publishing it is that the key could be published very easily in an emergency, e.g. using a tweet. If the one time pad key has to be published, he could just keep the data to himself and publish it unencrypted later. Pretty pointless.

b) The argument about deferred encryption may be correct. However this is not related to the relations between Wikileaks and any government. (The argument may also be wrong. It could turn out that decrypting AES is still hard even in 100 years. In any case it is likely to be safe until the data is de-classified anyway.)