Cryptography | TIL Technology

The Abyss!

Boötes Void , aslo known as the “Great Nothing”, via Wikipedia.org “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Ch IV, Section 146, Via Project Gutenberg Nietzsche is a very interesting figure, whose work is often admired and/or criticized, but seldom understood. It does not help that he suffered bouts of ill health throughou

Feb 184 min read

Password Managers!

Linus and Sally in class, from Peanuts, via YouTube.com Far too often, if you ask an InfoSec professional how to be more secure, your answer will be similar to that of Charlie Brown’s teacher, as you hear a bunch of technical jargon and details of specific vulnerabilities or attacks. This is not really specific to InfoSec, but more a general issue with experts - an occupational hazard, where people understand their field of expertise, but don’t yet understand it well enough t

Jan 214 min read

Acme Corp!

Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner, via Wikipedia.org Wile E Coyote is one of my favourite Looney Tunes characters. I love the wonderfully absurd plans he comes up with in order to catch the Roadrunner. These range from such simple things as pulling the pin from a hand grenade, then throwing the pin, to ridiculously complicated, Rube Goldberg-like plans (often with blueprints) that fail spectacularly. A common element of many of these plans is some product from Acme Corporation .

Jan 144 min read

Happy Feet!

Mumble, from Happy Feet, via YouTube.com It seems obvious in retrospect. Look at the way penguins walk, then watch Happy Feet , and tap seems like the inevitable style for a dancing penguin. But maybe that’s just because of the masterful dancing (via motion capture) by the amazingly talented Savion Glover (who was also co-choreographer). For any not familiar with him, Glover got his start on Broadway at age 11, appeared on Sesame Street in his teens, and was called “possibly

Dec 17, 20255 min read

Eine Kleine Alptraummusik!

Nachtmahr (“The Nightmare”), by Johann Heinrich Füssli TIL that the German translation of the word “nightmare” is “alptraum”, which led me to the wonderful painting above. While “ alp ” is the German cognate of the English word “elf”, the creature in question bears little resemblance to the Tolkienian Elves most of us are familiar with. Instead, they appear to be more closely associated with the vampire, or incubus, and attack sleeping people, either by giving them “elf dream

Nov 12, 20254 min read

Bombes vs Bombs!

Wartime picture of a Bletchley Park Bombe, via Wikipedia.org I’m mentioned Alan Turing and (some of) his contributions to computer technology, and still managed to not even mention the work which probably had the greatest influence on the world at the time. For a bit of background, the Enigma machine was a cipher device that was developed in the years after World War I. To simplify dramatically, it used three rotors (four, in some models) which turned in sequence after each

Nov 5, 20254 min read