I just explained what it actually is. I said "you know how you go to a website HTTPS and it's secure? Well Apple chose a couple of trusted parties that your phone inherently trusts, and those people approve a few thousand intermediate companies who do the day-to-day certificate work for end websites. One of those intermediates, rather than choosing a 200-digit random number, chose 4, no not four-digits, the number 4". And then we could laugh at some of the memes.
i think this oversells the likelihood of it. the probability of any random 116 digit number having its first 115 digits be the number zero is much lower than that of it containing a much higher number of non-zero digits.
As long as programmers trust 3rd-party-provided content-length input, it will be insecure. At this point, I'm not sure why we even use content-length anymore since you're going to need to size your buffers based on the actual content.
Learning about the concept of “negative zero” in school stuck with me. It was one of those lessons where the professor had us bang our heads against one’s complement to understand the shortcomings and introduced two’s complement like Moses coming down with the stone tablets.
I don't know, when I run a password cracker, I always start with a brute force pass of very short passwords. Doing so adds a negligible amount of time to the crack, and its surprising how many short passwords you'll find in systems that permit them.
I was a little surprised when a well-known password cracker managed to pop a bunch of passwords set by a sysadmin at a place I used to work at, who had left under something of a cloud.
I wouldn't have got them if I hadn't set it to start at three characters, on a hunch.
Cameron, if you're out there, I hope you're making less of an arse of it and not still using "CAM" as a password for everything.
First time I pointed John the Ripper to a password file it immediately started beeping like crazy. Turns out default password was no password, and 70% of the accounts were unused. Those happy quaint 90s...
As I understood it, any private key up to N can be cracked in √Ν steps. I don't know what threshold they used, but they probably ran the scan for small private keys.
It's called the baby-step giant-step algorithm, and it's referred in the report thread to Mozilla:
"They can be recovered near instantly via the baby-step giant-step discrete log algorithm or more simplistically by just generating the 'first' 256 P384 keys."
Oh, I thought you meant "private key up to N bits", not "private key up to the exact value N". In that case, sure, but for non-eMudhra-issued keys BSGS's more relevant complexity figure is O(2^keybits). Unless you've a quantum computer on you, in which case I'm told it's easy-peasy :)
These new proposals, which have been suspiciously hidden under NDA’s, misdirection, etc. are ENORMOUS. And the local permitting in my area has data centers categorized as “light industrial”, and thus passed a 1-year moratorium to revisit the code. I am fully aware of smaller data centers along the highway I drive every day with no issue, and as such I do not consider myself crazy.
But are the NDAs new, or were you manipulated into caring about them this time and not the 1000's of other times it's happened (across various industries)
From a layman perspective, American fruit growers refused to change with the times. How long are they still trying to make the “Red Delicious” apple work? Another ex-major packer I know of made the peach fruit cups, which people have been catching on are just filled with corn syrup. But these have been long term purchasing trends, yet the growers seemed blindsided by the packers ceasing operations.
There has been massive innovation and development in apples in the past 20 years. Every apple farm with a clue is growing trees for the past decade that look nothing like the trees of old. They’re growing varieties that didn’t exist 20 years ago. If you’re still seeing Red Delicious anywhere, it’s on the buyers at your local markets that missed the boat.
Idiot consumers forcing us to take forever for market innovations to come to market is not even close to new, and the consumers 100% deserve the blame, contempt, and policies designed to frustrate them.
I have to deal with this crap right now in the world of laundry and adjacent world of cleaning. We've had new Enzymes finally hitting the market en-mass for the first time in decades (DNAse/Lipase) which when combined in full spectrum with all other known enzymes leads to truly superior cleaning results. Literally no one has any excuse anymore for smelly clothes as a result of these innovations, and it's probably going to take another 5 years minimum for anyone outside of the nerds on r/laundry and other enthusiast communities to take advantage of these new innovations. For now, the so called "gold standard" Tide laundry detergent people are buying is straight up incomplete and could be tomorrow reformulated with both enzymes to radically improve its performance and isn't for... reasons???
Where else have we straight up regressed on technology? Vacuum cleaners were better in the 1980s when a higher percentage of America used central vacuums, an objectively superior technology. Guns were often made to higher metallurgical standards, CRT vector displays (Vectrex) to this day get better effective refresh rates, brightness, and glow effects than existing displays (OLED) and peaked in the 1980s.
"Worse is better", literally, and all because of idiot consumers voting wrong with their wallet. They deserve contempt.
Oh, and Americans refusing to embrace bidet toilet seats, or air purification (both important circa covid, fecal plums and poor indoor air quality were a significant infection vector!)
> CRT vector displays (Vectrex) to this day get better effective refresh rates, brightness, and glow effects than existing displays (OLED) and peaked in the 1980s
Except that they're absolutely huge and heavy for any halfway decent screen size and resolution. If I were to replace my two 24-inch screens with CRTs, I'd need a second desk for them alone.
i don't think one necessarily needs the best of the best... probably cheap is enough for a bunch of people
i'll start by having my OLED smartphone dying after many years and the one i got used LCD. much worse and it felt like plastic. colors, brightness, even if my screen now refreshes twice as fast as the previous - fast forward 2 years i don't think i ever thought about the difference, nor saw it after 1 or 2 weeks with my phone
totally valid critique on durable products and better substances for cleaning although
The enzyme stuff is funny to me. DNAse, no purpose there. Why not RNAse too? People can't articulate why they even want a DNA degrading enzyme. Lipase to degrade lipids seems good, but then again, that is already the function of soap.
I knew a number of people whose home had central vacs but funny enough, none of them worked anymore. It was a sort of "what's that weird plug thing" conversation that lead to that somewhat underwhelming finding. I get the sense it is one of those things where if you want it fixed, you'd have to call a technician who will probably give you a quote you don't want to hear. Then you just forget about ever getting it fixed.
I don't know that central vacs were the height of vac technology, but I cannot understand how weak cordless/battery vacuums have such marketshare compared to a vacuum unit that gets 110/240v of power direct from the wall.
A lot depends on what clothes you're washing. Modern enzymes are most useful with modern synthetic material blends, especially underwear. If you've ever had that type of thing stay stinky after washing, that's what's missing.
If you're wearing mostly cotton, normal detergent is largely fine unless it's heavily soiled/stained.
Ok so I have a soy sauce, or so I think it is, stain that I can't remove on a shirt. Is it still possible to clean it? Nothing I've tried seems to get rid of it.
Blood stains are easy. Wash cold, and they come right out.
I can’t remember the last time I had curry stains on anything, and I lived in central India for a year. I just used the typical local detergent and did my own laundry. Always cold though, well as cold as it would ever get - 80F was typical.
I mean it also takes a long to build an orchard and get the apples to fruit. So older orchards are happily still producing old varietals instead of ripping and replacing the trees. Not everything old must be replaced with new - so wasteful.
I planted an apple tree in my yard 20 years go, just for fun. Last year, it finally decided to push out more than a few apples. This year, it put out so many the branches have bent nearly to the ground.
I found a shop selling Hunnyz which is a mix of honey crisp and it was quite nice much nicer than some of these sugar water variants you get nowadays. Still quite sweet but at least it tasted like an apple. So thank you for the recommendation
I don't think I've ever seen a honey crisp. I had to look them up I think they're more common in the US. But the royal galas, pink ladys, jazz and fuji all are just really sweet
Nobody in any major apple growing region (Washington) is growing Red Delicious as their main apple variety for consumers, not even close. They're all growing various club apples (e.g. Envy, Cosmic Crisp), and there's massive competition to be the next honeycrisp (btw, honeycrisp quality is seasonal due to packaging, out of season they're significantly worse because they've been in storage for a long time, Apples are harvested only once a year)
My wife and I used to drive around aimlessly when I was in grad school and she was just starting her career as a doctor. We found that it was a good way to relax, and we sometimes discovered fun local gems when we did this.
One weekend we stumbled on a local apple orchard doing a cider making demonstration. We were the only people there so the orchardist (he called himself a “pomoculturist”) personally showed us around, picking an occasional apple, telling us about it, and then encouraging us to take a bite.
At one point he picked a deeply dark purple, almost black, apple and handed it to me. “Black Oxford” The flavor was intense: acidic, sweet, floral. Then another, dark red and fragrant. “Winesap” Then “Belle de Boskoop”. And on and on.
None of these apples are sold commercially except at small scale directly from orchards. The flavors, appearances, and aromas of apples is truly astonishing. So I think that’s why Red Delicious gets all the hate. The world of apples is amazing and huge.
I prefer to see Red Delicious as yet another miracle of apple genetics, just one that I don’t personally care for. But if you have the opportunity to visit an heirloom orchard, please do.
For me, it was a life-changing event: I now have a small heirloom orchard of my own.
It's mealy, bitter, and has a thick unpleasant skin. Many articles call it "the worst apple in the world." Decades of engineering it for transportability at the cost of taste and edibility are to blame.
But the U.S. has created new, much better apples, like Cosmic Crisp (2020)
I've enjoyed listening to dozens of talks by Alan Watts, who is a pretty chill guy until he comes across the subject of red delicious apples. Never heard him curse about any other subject.
I've read that Honeycrisp is difficult to grow, that's probably why.
Cosmic Crisp is much easier to grow, at least in the climate it was developed for/in. Those 2 varieties are somewhat similar, although I find Honeycrisp a bit more subtle in flavor and enjoyable, while Cosmic Crisp has just a strong sweet/tart flavor.
My understanding is that demand killed the Honeycrisp. When it first came out, it was very delicate and could only be grown in certain places. But it was a perfect apple- crisp and sweet and bursting with flavor. So everyone who tasted one loved it and wanted more.
And so the food scientists went to work, and figured out how to cross-breed in the ability to grow in a wider variety of places. And adding in the capability to grow in large numbers like the Red Delicious turned the Honeycrisp into an apple that tasted more like the Red Delicious.
The US is really amazingly good at growing food, but it is because the physical reality- not just transportation but growing conditions- trumps taste in the main.
My advice, as someone who grew up regularly apple-picking, for going local is to prefer the types that are local versus the names that you recognize from the supermarket. Unless you are in exactly the right area (upper Midwest), you will be much better off with the best apples for your region then with a locally grown Honeycrisp.
In upstate New York, I would recommend Autumn Crisp, Blondee, Macoun and Shizuka. I haven't picked apples in Virginia in about a decade, so I'm probably out of date on the right types to get there, but I remember loving Stayman apples.
It's mealy, tastes pasty and bland with no flavor. Honeycrisp so much better tasting and texture! Red delicious were bred to have a dark red outside and look like a classic "apple" while sacrificing the apple flavor inside.
No idea if this is still true of what is currently sold under the name. All apple verities are clones so the they should be (mostly) the same but the verity is old enough to not have anyone protecting the name.
Red Delicious is not a pure clone of the original. Random genetic mutations have happens over the years and those were cloned. Normal breeding has more genetic variation but clones get some
I am somehow in the "I like Red Delicious" camp. Perhaps because I was used to Kashmiri apples, that apparently share the cultivar roots of red delicious. Never liked the more acidic varieties. Actually like the "mealy" texture - (it feels grainy to me)
The Red Delicious has been optimized for the growers, packers, and grocery stores, and not the consumer. The priorities are thick skin so they can be roughly handled, and bright red because they believed that's what would make people purchase them. "Cosmic Crisp" is their answer to the Honeycrisp, by trying to tweak the Red Delicious instead of abandoning it. I see it as the equivalent of "a faster horse" dilemma.
In my family they’ve always been known as “those apples that look pretty on the shelf at the supermarket but taste like cardboard and aren’t even good for cooking”. We’ll all opt for just about any other cultivar if given the choice.
In the great POSIX, Windows vs. Apple filesystems debate, and iPad "what is a file", the great AI Overlords propose: "what if the filesystem was soup?". Manufacturer instructions, public data, and user's instructions and data, all sort of swimming together.
Could also phrase it "What if the filesystem was SOUP?"
Apple’s Developer Documentation is historically pretty terrible. So I’d be curious to see if they stepped it up for the agent instructions for the new API’s.
Apple's current docs suck, and they have, for a long time (SwiftUI was so bad, that someone came up with this[0], and it was a lifesaver).
But I'm old enough to remember Inside Macintosh[1], and that was a thing of beauty.
Apple used to take technical documentation very seriously. Many of their technical writers had better tech chops, than the engineers making the stuff they wrote about.
I really wish they still did, instead of focusing so much on trying to make it simple and obvious like in SwiftUI. Objective-C was a pinnacle of computing, and ever since Swift they've been devolving into the pursuit of oversimplifying and abstracting away the details such that they don't even feel necessary to teach anymore, even though as a new developer, I WANT TO KNOW THEM.
Unfortunately, during that time is when they screwed around with the gold confiscations. So the best option would have been to illegally hoard gold until they struck the statute down?
I'm shocked that more people don't know about this. It seems insane that the "land of the free" (yeah I know, not really, but that's the pitch anyway) would have such an obviously command-economy policy through the heart of the cold war.
My pessimistic take is it’s being optimized for the “numbers” users benchmark with. The 5G repeater towers that display on your phone as full-bars but the tower itself is constrained, to juicing the speedtests. Apple even changed how the RSSI translates to the bars. There are engineers doing great work, and the marketing teams muddle the waters (like ATT’s “5Ge”).
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