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What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

lars.ingebrigtsen.no

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Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#11

Post by jagged-chisel »

dgan wrote: post #8
quibono wrote: post #6

CLRF vs LF strikes again. Partly at least. I wonder why even have a max line length limit in the first place? I.e. is this for a technical reason or just display related?

I am just wondering how it is good idea for a sever to insert some characters into user's input. If a collegue were to propose this, i d laugh in his face It's just sp hacky i cant belive it's a real life's solution

“Insert characters”?

Consider converting the original text (maintaining the author’s original line wrapping and indentation) to base64. Has anything been “inserted” into the text? I would suggest not. It has been encoded.

Now consider an encoding that leaves most of the text readable, translates some things based on a line length limit, and some other things based on transport limitations (e.g. passing through 7-bit systems.) As long as one follows the correct decoding rules, the original will remain intact - nothing “inserted.” The problem is someone just knowledgeable enough to be aware that email is human readable but not aware of the proper decoding has attempted to “clean up” the email for sharing.

Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#12

Post by beejiu »

> So what’s happened here? Well, whoever collected these emails first converted from CRLF (i.e., “Windows” line ending coding) to “NL” (i.e., “Unix” line ending coding). This is pretty normal if you want to deal with email. But you then have one byte fewer:

I think there is a second possible conclusion, which is that the transformation happened historically. Everyone assumes these emails are an exact dump from Gmail, but isn't it possible that Epstein was syncing emails from Gmail to a third party mail server?

Since the Stackoverflow post details the exact situation in 2011, I think we should be open to the idea that we're seeing data collected from a secondary mail server, not Gmail directly.

Do we have anything to discount this?

(If I'm not mistaken, I think you can also see the "=" issue simply by applying the Quoted-Printable encoding twice, not just by mishandling the line-endings, which also makes me think two mail servers. It also explains why the "=" symbol is retained.)

Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#13

Post by db_admin »

netsharc wrote: post #7
seydor wrote: post #5

TLDR "=\r\n" was converted to "=\n"

Author seems to think Unix uses a character called "NL" instead of "LF"...

I am more surprised by the description of “rock döts”. A Norwegian certainly knows that ASCII is not enough for all our alphabetical needs.

Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#14

Post by FabHK »

OJFord wrote: post #9
quibono wrote: post #6

CLRF vs LF strikes again. Partly at least. I wonder why even have a max line length limit in the first place? I.e. is this for a technical reason or just display related?

I haven't seen them other than in the submission - but if the length matches up it may be that they were processed from raw email, the RFC defines a length to wrap at. Edit: yes I think that's most likely what it is (and it's SHOULD 78ch; MUST 998ch) - I was forgetting that it also specifies the CRLF usage, it's not (necessarily) related to Windows at all here as described in TFA. Here it is in my 'notmuch-more' emai…

> it's not (necessarily) related to Windows at all here as described in TFA.

The article doesn't claim that it's Windows related. The article is very clear in explaining that the spec requires =CRLF (3 characters), then mentions (in passing) that CRLF is the typical line ending on Windows, then speculates that someone replaced the two characters CRLF with a one character new line, as on Unix or other OSs.

Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#15

Post by debugnik »

netsharc wrote: post #7
seydor wrote: post #5

TLDR "=\r\n" was converted to "=\n"

Author seems to think Unix uses a character called "NL" instead of "LF"...

Unicode labels U+000A as all of "LINE FEED (LF)", "new line (NL)" and "end of line (EOL)". I'm guessing different names were imported from slightly different character sets, although I understand the all-uppercase name to be the main/official one.

https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0000.pdf

Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#16

Post by matsemann »

netsharc wrote: post #7
seydor wrote: post #5

TLDR "=\r\n" was converted to "=\n"

Author seems to think Unix uses a character called "NL" instead of "LF"...

NL, or New Line, is a character in some character sets, like old mainframe computers. No need to be snarky just because he mistyped or uses a different name for something.

Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#17

Post by dgan »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #11
dgan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am just wondering how it is good idea for a sever to insert some characters into user's input. If a collegue were to propose this, i d laugh in his face It's just sp hacky i cant belive it's a real life's solution

“Insert characters”? Consider converting the original text (maintaining the author’s original line wrapping and indentation) to base64. Has anything been “inserted” into the text? I would suggest not. It has been encoded. Now consider an encoding that leaves most of the text readable, translates some things based on a line length limit, and some other things based on transport limitations (e.g. passing through 7-bit…

Okey it does sound better from this POV. Still wierd as its a Client/UI concern, not something a server is supposed to do; whats next,adding "bold" tags on the title? Lol

Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#18

Post by dgan »

flexagoon wrote: post #10
dgan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am just wondering how it is good idea for a sever to insert some characters into user's input. If a collegue were to propose this, i d laugh in his face It's just sp hacky i cant belive it's a real life's solution

When you post a comment on HN, the server inserts HTML tags into your input. Isn't that essentially the same thing?

No, because there is a clear separation between the content and the envelop. You wouldnt expect the post office to open your physical letters and write routing instructions to the postmen for delivery

But I agree with sibling comment: it makes more sense when its called "encoding" instead of "inserting chars into original stream"

Re: What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

#19

Post by fredley »

lordnacho wrote: post #2

I love how HN always floats up the answers to questions that were in my mind, without occupying my mind. I, too, was reading about the new Epstein files, wondering what text artifact was causing things to look like that.

Me too. I first assumced it was an OCR error, then remembered they were emails and wouldn't need to go through OCR. Then I thought that the US Government is exactly the kind of place to print out millions of emails only to scan them back in again.

I'm glad to know the real reason!

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