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1000 results for “Neil_Warner_”
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@neil @snikket_im I was surprised at the state of #XMPP on my friends' #iOS devices. #siskin seemed like the best client, even though self-registration is broken. I've not played with voice or video chat, but it's very nice to have chat available again on my laptop after having my world contract to just Signal chats, which I never look at because my relationship with my phone just isn't like that. I'm certainly not installing any kind of #signal app on my laptop.
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@neil @snikket_im I was surprised at the state of #XMPP on my friends' #iOS devices. #siskin seemed like the best client, even though self-registration is broken. I've not played with voice or video chat, but it's very nice to have chat available again on my laptop after having my world contract to just Signal chats, which I never look at because my relationship with my phone just isn't like that. I'm certainly not installing any kind of #signal app on my laptop.
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@neil @snikket_im I was surprised at the state of #XMPP on my friends' #iOS devices. #siskin seemed like the best client, even though self-registration is broken. I've not played with voice or video chat, but it's very nice to have chat available again on my laptop after having my world contract to just Signal chats, which I never look at because my relationship with my phone just isn't like that. I'm certainly not installing any kind of #signal app on my laptop.
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@neil @snikket_im I was surprised at the state of #XMPP on my friends' #iOS devices. #siskin seemed like the best client, even though self-registration is broken. I've not played with voice or video chat, but it's very nice to have chat available again on my laptop after having my world contract to just Signal chats, which I never look at because my relationship with my phone just isn't like that. I'm certainly not installing any kind of #signal app on my laptop.
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@neil @snikket_im I was surprised at the state of #XMPP on my friends' #iOS devices. #siskin seemed like the best client, even though self-registration is broken. I've not played with voice or video chat, but it's very nice to have chat available again on my laptop after having my world contract to just Signal chats, which I never look at because my relationship with my phone just isn't like that. I'm certainly not installing any kind of #signal app on my laptop.
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neil breen’s new film “cade: the tortured crossing” will be showing in seattle at the grand illusion cinema on sep 8/9 #NeilBreen #Seattle
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Neil Jordan Claims Ex-Irish PM Expected Payment for ‘Michael Collins’ Praise (Report)
#MovieNews #Movies #International #MichaelCollins #NeilJordan -
Neil Jordan to Direct Adaptation of Own Novel ‘The Well of Saint Nobody,’ Jeremy Irons, Helena Bonham Carter, Aidan Quinn to Star in Film for Bankside (EXCLUSIVE)
#Variety #Global #News #HelenaBonhamCarter #JeremyIrons #NeilJordan -
@neil Apart from the security risks, #bankingapps are #privacy nightmare. Checkout this analysis of all the #Dutch banking apps: https://delft.piratenpartij.nl/2022/08/22/tikkie-deze-partijen-kijken-met-je-mee/
They are full of trackers....
(Articel in Dutch, but deepl.com can fix that for you ) -
@neil Apart from the security risks, #bankingapps are #privacy nightmare. Checkout this analysis of all the #Dutch banking apps: https://delft.piratenpartij.nl/2022/08/22/tikkie-deze-partijen-kijken-met-je-mee/
They are full of trackers....
(Articel in Dutch, but deepl.com can fix that for you ) -
@neil Apart from the security risks, #bankingapps are #privacy nightmare. Checkout this analysis of all the #Dutch banking apps: https://delft.piratenpartij.nl/2022/08/22/tikkie-deze-partijen-kijken-met-je-mee/
They are full of trackers....
(Articel in Dutch, but deepl.com can fix that for you ) -
@neil Apart from the security risks, #bankingapps are #privacy nightmare. Checkout this analysis of all the #Dutch banking apps: https://delft.piratenpartij.nl/2022/08/22/tikkie-deze-partijen-kijken-met-je-mee/
They are full of trackers....
(Articel in Dutch, but deepl.com can fix that for you ) -
@neil Apart from the security risks, #bankingapps are #privacy nightmare. Checkout this analysis of all the #Dutch banking apps: https://delft.piratenpartij.nl/2022/08/22/tikkie-deze-partijen-kijken-met-je-mee/
They are full of trackers....
(Articel in Dutch, but deepl.com can fix that for you ) -
Neil Patrick Harris has the worst German accent ever in #TheGiggle lol
We don’t saund leik ssät, du wie?
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Neil Patrick Harris is a gem! #TheGiggle was an awesome episode of #DoctorWho
From: @Paul
https://supernatural.fans/@Paul/111557349396603510 -
@neil
that said, I can't wait for all shops to implement self-scan booths (while still keeping a manned till too) so I can further reduce my interactions with shop employees, even if it will likely result in less job opportunities.
My grocery trips to the three stores here that have them have significantly improved because I can scan the items at my own leisure (and at #CoopOBS that's even more convenient, as they offer a hand scanner so I can scan the products as I put them in my basket, or even directly into my shopping bag! as well as directly see a sub-total), and immediately can see if a product has been mispriced. And paper receipts are automatically printed, as you need them to open the exit gates.
The only times I then have to interact with an employee (and risk either of us spreading a cold or worse) is if there's an issue, or if I get picked for a random check, or if I have an age-restricted product such as energy drinks. (For which I could register my thumb print at one of them I think, but it's not like I am going to volunteer handing over biometric data to a supermarket...) -
@neil no, mermaid.js doesn't come close to the (sadly sometimes barely documented) capabilities of plantuml. Even though it is somewhat more ubiquitous, knowing #plantuml you wont have a hard time adapting. Perrsonally I'm in the lucky situation that my (gitlab, etc) hosts set up a #kroki server so I don't have to do deal with mermaid anymore, can version-control plantuml sources and even throw in raw bpmn xml whenever I need it.
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Neil Young, Neil Young, 1969 on Reprise
Young’s debut solo album. It can be tricky to keep all the chronology straight here, as someone who came to Young much later in his career – but this is following his departure from Buffalo Springfield and before the first Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young record. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (with Crazy Horse) was the followup.
Great songs here: The Loner, The Old Laughing Lady, and I’ve Loved Her So Long. The tracks produced by Jack Nitzsche and Ry Cooder, the rest David Biggs. It sometimes gets credited as having been released in 1968 (wikipedia for example) but I believe it actually came out in January of 1969. (See this Village Voice ad citing Jan 22nd, 1969).
My copy is a 1970 US Pressing, with Neil’s name in black on the cover (first pressings left the name off) and “Stereo” at the bottom of the labels. In my collection via Crossroads Records in Portland OR.
#1960s #1969 #ClassicRock #CrossroadsRecords #DavidBiggs #JackNitzsche #NeilYoung #PortlandOR #Reprise #RyCooder #vinyl #vinylcollection #vinylfinds
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Neil Madden recently wrote a blog post titled, Digital Signatures and How to Avoid Them. One of the major points he raised is:
Another way that signatures cause issues is that they are too powerful for the job they are used for. You just wanted to authenticate that an email came from a legitimate server, but now you are providing irrefutable proof of the provenance of leaked private communications. Oops!
Signatures are very much the hammer of cryptographic primitives. As well as authenticating a message, they also provide third-party verifiability and (part of) non-repudiation.
Neil Madden
Later, he goes on to make recommendations for alternatives. Namely HMAC, possibly with a KEM. His recommendations are sensible and straightforward.
Where’s the fun in that, though?
CMYKatLet’s design a type of digital signature algorithm that can only be verified by the intended recipients.
Standard Crypto Disclaimer
Don’t use any of this.
I’m rolling my own crypto, which is almost always a bad idea, for my own amusement.
Absolutely none of this has been peer-reviewed or audited.
Even if there’s no immediately obvious fatal flaw in this design, it’s always possible that I screwed something up.
If anything of value ever comes of this post, it will be serious cryptographers writing their own protocol that accomplishes the goals set out in this furry blog post, but with a machine verifiable security proof.
X3MAC
Let’s start with a somewhat simple building block (using libsodium), which I call X3MAC.
Why? Because it’s partly inspired by X3DH.
The idea is pretty straightforward, and basically in line with what Neil recommended:
- Generate an ephemeral keypair.
- Do two ECDHs. One between the sender and the recipient, the other between the ephemeral keypair and the recipient.
- Use a domain-separated hash with both ECDH outputs and all three public keys to obtain a symmetric key.
- Calculate a MAC over the message, using the symmetric key.
- Return the ephemeral public key and MAC.
Verification is basically deriving the same symmetric key from the recipient’s perspective, recalculating the MAC, and comparing the two in constant-time.
This should be pretty easy to understand.
Why bother with ephemeral keypairs?
It doesn’t buy us much for the MAC use-case (since we aren’t encrypting so forward secrecy isn’t a consideration), but we will use it when we turn the X3MAC into X3SIG.
What are people saying about X3MAC?
When I showed X3MAC to some friends, some recoiled in horror and others said, “Oh, I think I have a use case!”
I really hope they’re joking. But out of caution, this is where I will cease to provide sample code.
Sarah Jamie Lewis said, “thank you i hate this.” That’s probably the correct response.
Turning X3MAC into a Signature
X3MAC isn’t actually very useful.
If Alice and Bob use X3MAC, it’s true that only the two of them can verify the authentication tag for a message… but both parties can also create authentication tags.
To turn this into a signature algorithm, we need to work with the Ristretto group and build a non-interactive variant of Schnorr’s identification protocol.
My modified protocol, X3SIG, uses Ristretto255 scalars and points instead of X25519 keypairs.
“What does any of that even mean?“
Ristretto255 is a prime-order group (imagine a clock, but instead of numbers going from 1 to 12, it’s between 0 and a very large prime number), built from Curve25519.
Scalars are analogous to secret keys.
Points are analogous to public keys.
You can do point arithmetic. You can do scalar arithmetic. You don’t have to worry about the cofactor (like you would with Ed25519 or X25519).
Schnorr’s identification protocol (explained above) is essentially the basis of elliptic curve signatures; i.e., you can construct EdDSA out of it with minor (yet important) tweaks.
That’s exactly what we’re doing here: Turning X3MAC into a signature by building Schnorr out of it.
The protocol begins the same way as X3MAC: Generate a random scalar, multiply it by the base point to get a point. Do some point-scalar multiplications and a domain-separated hash to derive a symmetric key. Hash the message with the symmetric key.
But this time, we don’t stop there. We use the X3MAC-alike hash in place of the Hash() step in non-interactive Schnorr.
Important: We can eschew some data from the hashing step because certain parameters are fixed by virtue of using Ristretto255.
If anyone ever builds something on another group, especially one where these parameters can change, you MUST also include all of them in the hash.
If you fail to do this, you will find yourself vulnerable to weak Fiat-Shamir attacks (e.g., Frozen Heart). If you’re writing Rust, check out Decree for transcript hashing.
(As stated before: No sample code will be provided, due to not wanting people to ship it to production.)
What does this give us?
Alice can sign a message that only she and Bob can verify. Bob cannot generate a new signature. Third parties cannot perform either action.
Thus, we still have a digital signature, but not one that provides third-party verifiability.
X3INU – Cryptographic Innuendos
If we had stopped the train at X3SIG, that’d be pretty neat.
However, X3SIG is limited to one sender and one recipient. This is kind of a bummer that doesn’t scale very well.
Fortunately, this is a solvable problem.
If you recall from my idea for multicast support in Noise-based protocols, I’m no stranger to reusing the TreeKEM abstraction from the MLS RFC to nerd-snipe my friends in the cryptography community.
So let’s do that here.
X3INU.Pack
Inputs:
- 1 keypair (sk, pk)
- A finite number of other public keys (
pk_ifor many values ofi)
Output:
- Group public key
gpk
Here, we use a Ratchet Tree (per RFC 9420) where each step is a scalar multiplication over the Ristretto group (since that’s what everyone’s public key is) and a Key Derivation Function.
The important property is that each participant in the Pack can asynchronously derive the group secret key, and it’s computationally infeasible to do so without one of the pack members’ secret keys.
This step must be performed ahead of time to establish the Pack (quorum of recipients that can verify a signature).
X3INU.Howl
Inputs:
- The message being signed.
- The secret key for the entity sending the message.
- The pack public key for all of the recipients.
Outputs:
- A signature that only pack members can validate.
Here, we just perform an X3SIG signature with the pack public key.
X3INU.Hear
Inputs:
- The message being signed.
- The signature.
- The public key for the entity sending the message.
- The secret key for a pack member.
- The pack public key for all other recipients.
Outputs:
- Boolean (is the signature valid?)
Here, we just perform an X3SIG validation.
If you’re a member of the pack that can validate the signature, you can derive the group secret key and perform X3SIG as usual.
If you’re not, you can’t tell if the signature is valid or not. To you, it should be indistinguishable from random.
CMYKatX3INU Questions and Answers
Why “X3INU”?
It’s short for “innuendo”, but also “inu” is the Japanese word for “dog”, and I like to make furry puns.
Why “Pack”, “Howl”, and “Hear”?
See above! Furry puns!
Why are you like this?
CMYKatI dunno.
You fool, this already exists in the cryptographic literature under a different name! What do you have to say for yourself?
Okay, yeah, probably.
I’m not an academic, so if I reinvented something that someone else made (except worse, because this is being published on a furry blog for fun), that’s kind of cool but not surprising.
It also shouldn’t be surprising that I haven’t heard of it before, due to me not being an academic.
(The closest I’ve heard of are designated verifier signatures, as Neil Madden alluded to at the bottom of his blog post.)
What if I think this might actually be useful?
Normally, I would say, “Talk to a cryptographer before writing any code,” especially if you’re writing your own protocol that uses a Fiat-Shamir transform like I did here.
However, if it turns out that X3INU is in any way novel or valuable, you should instead consult the entire cryptographic community and wait for their verdict on whether this idea is totally bonkers or not.
Why not just public-key-encrypt a digital signature?
Why not just use the existing digital signature algorithms, but encrypt it under the recipients’ public keys?
Because after decryption, the recipient possesses a signature that a third-party could still use to verify the contents of a communication.
If you transmit the signatures produced by X3INU, only the audience can tell if they’re genuine or not.
(This assumes your audience’s secret keys all remain secret, of course.)
Under what conditions do the security guarantees fall apart?
If the signer reveals their secret key, messages can be forged.
If one of the Pack members reveals their secret key, anyone can verify signatures again.
If one of the Pack members leaks the internal hash used for a given message, anyone who knows this hash can verify the signature. Pack members can do this without compromising their own signing key.
This leakage is possible because the signature is computed over a keyed hash, and the key used by the hash is a shared secret between the signer and the recipients.
Thanks to Thad for inquiring about this:
could Bob not reveal the shared symmetric key from the X3MAC to a third party? His private key is still protected by mixing the ephemeral key and the KDF, while having the shared key allows the third party to verify the message hash and prove it with Alice’s public signing key(?)
Additionally, nothing about this protocol is post-quantum secure.
Couldn’t you extend X3MAC instead of X3SIG for the Innuendo protocol?
Yes. It may even be desirable to do so.
The only downside is: Anyone in the quorum can forge messages, so there is no special “signer” role, really.
With that in mind, you’re probably better off just using a Ratchet Tree to get a shared secret, and then using that with HMAC.
Can we make it even more wild?
Here’s a fun one: Combine the idea behind innuendos (as outlined above) with ring signatures.
Now Alice is one indeterminate member of a discrete set of potential signers, rather than just one, who can sign a message such that only a designated group of recipients can verify (provided nobody’s secret key is leaked).
Header art by Harubaki and CMYKat.
https://soatok.blog/2024/09/20/cryptographic-innuendos/
#asymmetricCryptography #cryptographicInnuendos #RatchetTrees
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This is what we do when we listen to #aNONradio and chat in #COMmode on @SDF Join us!
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Neil Young, Neil Young, 1969 on Reprise
Young’s debut solo album. It can be tricky to keep all the chronology straight here, as someone who came to Young much later in his career – but this is following his departure from Buffalo Springfield and before the first Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young record. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (with Crazy Horse) was the followup.
Great songs here: The Loner, The Old Laughing Lady, and I’ve Loved Her So Long. The tracks produced by Jack Nitzsche and Ry Cooder, the rest David Biggs. It sometimes gets credited as having been released in 1968 (wikipedia for example) but I believe it actually came out in January of 1969. (See this Village Voice ad citing Jan 22nd, 1969).
My copy is a 1970 US Pressing, with Neil’s name in black on the cover (first pressings left the name off) and “Stereo” at the bottom of the labels. In my collection via Crossroads Records in Portland OR.
#1960s #1969 #ClassicRock #CrossroadsRecords #DavidBiggs #JackNitzsche #NeilYoung #PortlandOR #Reprise #RyCooder #vinyl #vinylcollection #vinylfinds
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Neil Young, Neil Young, 1969 on Reprise
Young’s debut solo album. It can be tricky to keep all the chronology straight here, as someone who came to Young much later in his career – but this is following his departure from Buffalo Springfield and before the first Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young record. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (with Crazy Horse) was the followup.
Great songs here: The Loner, The Old Laughing Lady, and I’ve Loved Her So Long. The tracks produced by Jack Nitzsche and Ry Cooder, the rest David Biggs. It sometimes gets credited as having been released in 1968 (wikipedia for example) but I believe it actually came out in January of 1969. (See this Village Voice ad citing Jan 22nd, 1969).
My copy is a 1970 US Pressing, with Neil’s name in black on the cover (first pressings left the name off) and “Stereo” at the bottom of the labels. In my collection via Crossroads Records in Portland OR.
#1960s #1969 #ClassicRock #CrossroadsRecords #DavidBiggs #JackNitzsche #NeilYoung #PortlandOR #Reprise #RyCooder #vinyl #vinylcollection #vinylfinds
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Neil Young, Neil Young, 1969 on Reprise
Young’s debut solo album. It can be tricky to keep all the chronology straight here, as someone who came to Young much later in his career – but this is following his departure from Buffalo Springfield and before the first Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young record. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (with Crazy Horse) was the followup.
Great songs here: The Loner, The Old Laughing Lady, and I’ve Loved Her So Long. The tracks produced by Jack Nitzsche and Ry Cooder, the rest David Biggs. It sometimes gets credited as having been released in 1968 (wikipedia for example) but I believe it actually came out in January of 1969. (See this Village Voice ad citing Jan 22nd, 1969).
My copy is a 1970 US Pressing, with Neil’s name in black on the cover (first pressings left the name off) and “Stereo” at the bottom of the labels. In my collection via Crossroads Records in Portland OR.
#1960s #1969 #ClassicRock #CrossroadsRecords #DavidBiggs #JackNitzsche #NeilYoung #PortlandOR #Reprise #RyCooder #vinyl #vinylcollection #vinylfinds
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Neil Young, Neil Young, 1969 on Reprise
Young’s debut solo album. It can be tricky to keep all the chronology straight here, as someone who came to Young much later in his career – but this is following his departure from Buffalo Springfield and before the first Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young record. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (with Crazy Horse) was the followup.
Great songs here: The Loner, The Old Laughing Lady, and I’ve Loved Her So Long. The tracks produced by Jack Nitzsche and Ry Cooder, the rest David Biggs. It sometimes gets credited as having been released in 1968 (wikipedia for example) but I believe it actually came out in January of 1969. (See this Village Voice ad citing Jan 22nd, 1969).
My copy is a 1970 US Pressing, with Neil’s name in black on the cover (first pressings left the name off) and “Stereo” at the bottom of the labels. In my collection via Crossroads Records in Portland OR.
#1960s #1969 #ClassicRock #CrossroadsRecords #DavidBiggs #JackNitzsche #NeilYoung #PortlandOR #Reprise #RyCooder #vinyl #vinylcollection #vinylfinds
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Great article. I'm always bringing up the fact that my hippie-generation parents were like this.
"Despite their long hair and countercultural leanings, the New Alchemists were not hippies; they were scientists. ... alongside quotations from Tolkien and poems about mushrooms are reports on their experiments on the insect-resistance of certain cabbage varieties, diagrams of their low-tech wind turbines or progress reports on aquaculture techniques.
Nor was the NAI a “commune”. It was a research project, the Todds explain; people came there to work, not to play. At its peak, the NAI had around 30 members, aided by hundreds more temporary volunteers. Few actually lived on the site."
And about that awesome building: We focus on "solar panels" a lot, but #PassiveSolar is just as great in many respects.
"Aligned east-west, the Prince Edward Island ark was partly sunken into the earth on its north side, with sloping glazing along its south facade to capture maximum #solar radiation. The south facade also featured a row of vertically aligned solar collectors (heating water rather than generating electricity – photovoltaic technology was nowhere near advanced enough yet). A prototype #hydraulic wind turbine nearby covered the building’s electricity needs.
The dominant space inside was a high-ceilinged #greenhouse containing plant beds for growing vegetables, herbs, flowers and tree saplings. Lizards, newts, ladybirds and even a resident snake controlled insect populations. The ark also contained 32 of Todd’s “solar-algae tanks” – primarily for fish cultivation, but the tanks proved so effective at storing heat that the building’s other experimental climate systems became redundant."
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I'm currently learning how to do Systemic Modelling, which is about facilitating groups to draw on collective intelligence. I love it!
If you wanted a non-group-focused related thing, I might suggest starting with Clean Interviewing. Could imagine that being useful in a legal context (e.g. finding out what clients would ideally like to have happen), because it's all about not accidentally mixing in your own assumptions with the other person's answers. But it isn't specifically a law thing - it's got lots of uses.
https://cleanlearning.co.uk/training/detail/clean-interviewing
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Neil Patel will be a speaker at ATypI Copenhagen, April 22–26, 2025. Venue is the Royal Danish Academy. Join us! 🇩🇰
https://atypi.org/conferences-events/atypi-copenhagen-2025/
We can’t wait to see you there!#ATypICopenhagen #ATypI2025
#typefaces #typedesign #typography #graphicdesign #calligraphy #lettering #designeducation #techtalks #conference #Copenhagen #atypicreativeteam -
@neil "if I asked the other one, what would they say?"
