Hacking for fun and profit

We already got a great UNIX, and programming jokes from XKCD, but the new one is about cryptography (funny because I’ve been reading a lot about Cryptography the last 2 weeks).

In case you don’t know, in Cryptography, Alice and Bob are commonly used instead of A and B, as in “Alice delivers a message to Bob”. There are other recurring characters like:

• Eve, the eavesdropper of Alice and Bob’s communication.
• Trent, a trusted third party.
• Mallory, a malicious hacker that can not only intercept Alice and Bob’s communication, but also modify, substitute, delete or introduce new messages, impersonating both Alice and Bob. We know this as Man in the Middle Attack.

By the way, there is also the Alice and Bob rap by “computer science gansta rapper” MC Plus+.

Alice and Bob

Alice is sending her message to Bob
Protecting that transmission is crypto’s job
Without the help of our good friend Trent
It’s hard to get that secret message sent

Work tries to deposit a check of your salary
But with no crypto it’ll be changed by Mallory
You think no one will see what it is you believe
But you should never forget there’s always an Eve

(Chorus)

‘Cause I’m encrypting sh*t like every single day
Sending data across the network in a safe way
Protecting messages to make my pay
If you hack me, you’re guilty under DMCA

DES is wrong if you listen to NIST
Double DES ain’t no better, man, that got dissed
Twofish for AES that was Schneier’s wish
Like a shot from the key, Rijndael made the swish

But Blowfish is still the fastest in the land
And Bruce used its fame to make a few grand
Use ECB and I’ll crack your cipher text
Try CFB mode to keep everyone perplexed

(Chorus)

Random numbers ain’t easy to produce
Do it wrong and your key I’ll deduce
RSA only public cipher in the game
Creating it helped give Rivest his fame

If we could factor large composites in poly time
We’d have enough money to not have to rhyme
Digesting messages with a hashing function
Using SHA-1 or else won’t cause dysfunction

(Chorus)

Nerds.

Yes, after a long week of rumours it has been done. It wasn’t Microsoft. It wasn’t Yahoo. It was the big mighty G telling everybody that they are very serious about the Internet Video business.

Quoting the press release:

When the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity, strengthening and complementing Google’s own fast-growing video business. YouTube will continue to be based in San Bruno, CA, and all YouTube employees will remain with the company. With Google’s technology, advertiser relationships and global reach, YouTube will continue to build on its success as one of the world’s most popular services for video entertainment.

This means that Youtube will coexist with Google Video at least for a while.

The question is: for how long? Will Google move all the user accounts and Videos from Youtube to Google Video? Will they keep using the “Youtube” brand? They dropped the “Urchin” brand after they bought it and renamed it to Google Analytics. Personally I don’t think this will happen with Youtube, since what is really valuable in Youtube is the brand and the community behind it. Look at these graphs from Hitwise Intelligence:

The red line is Youtube and the light blue line is Google Video. Youtube growth has been astronomical.

About the possible legal threats, Scoble hits the nail:

Now, will Google get sued over and over? Probably. But if you think that matters then you are missing the point. Did Microsoft’s legal troubles slow down its cash generation machines? No. Neither will Google’s. Plus, Google has demonstrated it’s fairly adept at working out deals with folks who produce content, or own it. Yeah, they’ll probably lose a few battles in court, but that’s like losing a battle or two but winning the war.

Techcrunch also reports:

Details are also emerging that Yahoo was in the bidding war until very close to the end.

Interesting. Om Malik also lists Yahoo as the biggest loser with this acquisition.

More coverage in Techmeme.

I for one, welcome our new Internet Video overlords, that will become Skynet someday.

Previously.

This is one of my favorite (very) short stories:

Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.

He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe - ninety-six billion planets - into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.

Dwar reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment’s silence he said, “Now, Dwar Ev.”

Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.

Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. “The honour of asking the first questions is yours, Dwar Reyn.”

“Thank you,” said Dwar Reyn. “It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer.”

He turned to face the machine. “Is there a God ?”

The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.

“Yes, now there is a god.”

Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch. A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

‘Answer’ by Fredric Brown.
©1954, Angels and Spaceships

Hi computer!

Previously.

People that know me personally know that I LOVE my keyboards.

No really, I love them.

I even wrote about them two years ago: IBM Model M - The One True Keyboard.

These keyboards are a triumph of technology. Future generations will talk about Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, the Great Pyramid of Gizah, and the IBM Model M Keyboard. These keyboards are the epitome of human civilization.

Really, they are that good.

I have more than 10 Model M keyboards now, and before you ask: NO, they are not for sale, and NO, I will not give you one. Some day I will die, and my son will inherit the keyboards. Since every single modern keyboard is a piece of utter crap, I want my son to hack with some style.

But now I see another advantage of using a Model-M, you can kill an attacker with it, and it will still work.

Two scientists, Paul Honig and Anne Jan Brouwer, made this discovery replacing an attacker’s head with, well, watermelons.

Not only that, they also discovered that you can defeat an attacker if he uses a lesser keyboard as a weapon.

The IBM Model-M IS mightier than the sword.

Read more in Keyboard Carnage (digg).