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Tell HN: Sci-Hub's TLS certificate has started failing

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Re: Tell HN: Sci-Hub's TLS certificate has started failing

#111

Post by daddosi »

yzmtf2008 wrote: post #84
ethbro wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. I blame 2nd coming Jobs (iMac and iPod era) and same period Microsoft for a lot of this as they competed with each other. Usability became more important than flexibility. And intuitive operation prioritized over ease of learning. There's a lot to be said for a harder to use computer with a learning curve, but which affords you more power to be a creator instead of a consumer at the end of the curve. I'd g…

> Usability became more important than flexibility. And intuitive operation prioritized over ease of learning. Why is this problematic? Why is more people having access to computing a bad thing? This is a dangerous, and (dare I say) elitist opinion. We're seeing positive impact, every day, thanks to the ubiquitously available computing resources. If you'd like to use a computer with a learning curve, use a computer w…

The trade of is worth some thought. It takes a lot of effort to cater to intuition. If we put some of that effort into giving the user acces to the tools it should make a better result in the long run. The simple version of how a combustion engine works is inspiring and helps us aperciate the bus.

It might be a bit to deep an argument but where do you think intuition comes from? If we design peceaved reality after existing intuition you get a giant feedback loop that calls for ever more unrealistic representations.

Mabe an analogy can be had with electronics being mostly paralel processes while we can barely figure out how to implement it in higher languages. Our intuition likes the 1 thing at a time approach.

Re: Tell HN: Sci-Hub's TLS certificate has started failing

#112

Post by dagenix »

userbinator wrote: post #40
06983234 wrote: post #2

This is exactly what I said would happen when Google started making all of us use HTTPS.

You're not the only one. I hypothesised about this before in previous SciHub discussions, and SciHub isn't the only site that is/will be affected. Security is the ostensible benefit, and it's the one they advertise the most; easier censorship and centralised access control is the other---something which a lot of the pro-(traditional)-HTTPS advocates don't advertise. Make HTTPS mandatory (so no more HTTP), make it nea…

This reads like a conspiracy theory. Who are the pro HTTPS everywhere people that are _also_ secretly trying to further censorship? This would have to be a fairly vast conspiracy, but, you don't provide any evidence.

Re: Tell HN: Sci-Hub's TLS certificate has started failing

#113

Post by yzmtf2008 »

daddosi wrote: post #111
yzmtf2008 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Usability became more important than flexibility. And intuitive operation prioritized over ease of learning. Why is this problematic? Why is more people having access to computing a bad thing? This is a dangerous, and (dare I say) elitist opinion. We're seeing positive impact, every day, thanks to the ubiquitously available computing resources. If you'd like to use a computer with a learning curve, use a computer w…

The trade of is worth some thought. It takes a lot of effort to cater to intuition. If we put some of that effort into giving the user acces to the tools it should make a better result in the long run. The simple version of how a combustion engine works is inspiring and helps us aperciate the bus. It might be a bit to deep an argument but where do you think intuition comes from? If we design peceaved reality after ex…

I think the idea is that we should cater to intuition, and give everyone the necessary tools to understand and tweak it, but it's not necessary to do good. To the average people, appreciating the bus brings much less utility than being able to take the bus. Should we not have the bus just because people can't appreciate the combustion engine?

But then, of course, intuition is more useful for some people. For those people, no one is stopping you from digging into the engine itself. This is really the price discrimination idea applied to utility: offering a cheaper, easier to use interface (taking the bus) means now the bus is useful not only to the engineers, but the passengers as well.

The situation about computing is not really that much different. If you want to learn the internal of computers, Gentoo exists, feel free to use it. But should everyone use Gentoo? Not really. I'm probably more proficient in Linux than the average developer, but I don't see the need of using Gentoo myself either.

That is not to say we can't do better either. The signature design for SQLAlchemy is leaking abstractions (but in a good way). The average dashboard for a car today is way more complicated than the dashboard of a car 70 years ago. Yet, that's not stopping car ownership to grow. Maybe there's a lesson for us somewhere there as well.

Re: Tell HN: Sci-Hub's TLS certificate has started failing

#115

Post by otterlicious »

Only one of the domain/wildcard pairs listed in Sci-Hub's certificate actually works for me right now. It's probable the certificate was revoked not because some publisher threatened legal action against Comodo, but because Sci-Hub no longer controls some of the domains listed in their certificate. If this is the case then they would be able to get a new certificate for free with those names removed.

I wouldn't go rushing to blame Comodo for kowtowing to publishers' demands until Alexandra tells us that's what actually happened...

Re: Tell HN: Sci-Hub's TLS certificate has started failing

#116

Post by chickenfries »

staticassertion wrote: post #99
userbinator wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but we'll never be in a world where the average person understands PKI 2000 years ago: "we'll never be in a world where the average person can read and write English"

I think my point stands even with a loose definition of 'never'.

Yes, apparently all we need to do is wait 2000 years for people to understand PKI.

Re: Tell HN: Sci-Hub's TLS certificate has started failing

#117

Post by [deleted] »

Xylakant wrote: post #82
staticassertion wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not see how censorship at the CA level is worse than the ISP/ DNS level. We should not discourage people from using TLS because it allows for one of many other methods to censor. SEC takedowns have happened for years without relying on TLS.

ISP/DNS-takedowns affect only customers of a single provider. Compelling every US provider is tedious and would still not affect people in other jurisdictions. CA-levy takedowns affect everyone.

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Sci-Hub's TLS certificate has started failing

#118

Post by voltagex_ »

yzmtf2008 wrote: post #84
ethbro wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. I blame 2nd coming Jobs (iMac and iPod era) and same period Microsoft for a lot of this as they competed with each other. Usability became more important than flexibility. And intuitive operation prioritized over ease of learning. There's a lot to be said for a harder to use computer with a learning curve, but which affords you more power to be a creator instead of a consumer at the end of the curve. I'd g…

> Usability became more important than flexibility. And intuitive operation prioritized over ease of learning. Why is this problematic? Why is more people having access to computing a bad thing? This is a dangerous, and (dare I say) elitist opinion. We're seeing positive impact, every day, thanks to the ubiquitously available computing resources. If you'd like to use a computer with a learning curve, use a computer w…

The problem is that with the popularity of tablets and phones, the desktop and laptop market is shrinking. I wonder how much of the recent hardware price increases you can really blame on cryptocurrencies vs it's becoming a niche to have root on your computer and is priced as such.

Re: Tell HN: Sci-Hub's TLS certificate has started failing

#119

Post by voltagex_ »

ethbro wrote: post #56
muizelaar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft runs a root store. That gives them more leverage over the CAs than McDonalds has.

I'd be curious what would happen if the "too big to fail" issuers pushed back against this. Microsoft's only option is to completely drop the root cert, right? So there's no real non-nuclear option... In the broader sense, this is one downside of the shift towards Lets Encrypt and CAs being more interchangable: increased power of the root stores relative to them. Sometimes that's good, sometimes it's evil.

Sidenote to this: if you want to sign a Windows driver (and on XP+, you do), you can only use Microsoft approved CAs.

Re: Tell HN: Sci-Hub's TLS certificate has started failing

#120

Post by posterboy »

gregknicholson wrote: post #91
progval wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people have at least a vague idea of how a combustion engine works, don't they?

Kids ride buses; I'm pretty sure they don't understand the marvels of engineering they're benefiting from. My point is: it should be possible to use something without fully understanding the minutiae of how it works. We call this “user interface design”. You should be allowed to live in a house without a full understanding of the architectural details that prevent it from falling down.

I'm sure no single person understands every detail of the diesel engine, arguably nobody so far can solve the Navier-Strokes equation exactly. But even children understand that the car needs fuel and they might now that it has an engine that can break if given the wrong fuel. They could, at least. The fact that there are those who don't only corroborated the fact that there are folks who don't know how ... what was the actual problem? Will be owned by having their traffic captured.
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