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Code that helped end Apartheid

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Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#211
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The jewish people have a 2000 year old history and presence in the region, if that's consider colonialism then might as well just declare earth a settler-colonialist project and get it over with.

That's assuming you can prove direct lineage over 2000 years. The Kazar theory of 8th century Ashkenazi conversion hasn't been completely debunked.

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#212
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The jewish people have a 2000 year old history and presence in the region, if that's consider colonialism then might as well just declare earth a settler-colonialist project and get it over with.

There's a saying "God doesn't exist but he gave us the land" which refers to the hypocrisy behind Zionism's biblical claims to the land of Palestine given that its founding fathers were all atheists.

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#213
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jewish people have a 2000 year old history and presence in the region, if that's consider colonialism then might as well just declare earth a settler-colonialist project and get it over with.

There's a saying "God doesn't exist but he gave us the land" which refers to the hypocrisy behind Zionism's biblical claims to the land of Palestine given that its founding fathers were all atheists.

Feel free to educate yourself on the history of jews in the region: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_Judais...

"God gave us the land" has nothing to do with the jewish connection to the land.

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jewish people have a 2000 year old history and presence in the region, if that's consider colonialism then might as well just declare earth a settler-colonialist project and get it over with.

That's a rather odd argument, don't you think? Romans have been in my country even before that, Greeks have been in present-day Turkey, Egypt, etc. Normans have invaded and colonised England 1000 years ago. Should the corollary be that these peoples are somehow entitled to expel the current dwellers of those lands because of some sort of historical right?

It's a pretty simple argument - how can one colonize a region in which they are native to?

You could argue there's unfairness in the events, but saying israel is a colony is just odd, jews have come from the region.

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#215
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re presupposing they actually survive the current events and come out victorious in order to “write history”. I’m not sure of that at all if things kick off in earnest there.

Quite a bit of wishful thinking here. Who exactly would be able to defeat Israel? Iran? They are cowering in fear right now. Hamas? Hezbollah? Please.

History is already written, this is the age of everyone recording and sharing things. There's no meaningful rewriting it.

They don't get to directly and intentionally kill and/or cause death, injury and illness to high hundreds of thousands of people very publicly and proudly, while writing "death to Arabs", "good Arab = dead Arab", "Nakba 2023", and other vile shit on the walls of their destroyed cities.

Easy to see this is not Israel+USA trying to eliminate Hamas, but some holy war to eliminate Palestinians as a whole, in the most underhanded way possible, as to not get blowback from the non-USA countries.

They'll destroy themselves, continuing doing this, provoking neighbors and inciting Palestinians for a massive revenge wave in the future. It doesn't matter when this happens, but Israel is done after this. They're not a superpower and USA backing under Trump, once he wins, will only serve to make their crimes more obvious, and self-destructive behavior more bold.

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#216
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the PRNG is good enough then shipping floppies full of PRNG output is very much unnecessary. Simply send the seeds used to initialize the PRNG thereby fitting many (~180k of them on a 720kb floppy) seeds on one floppy and save your couriers a lot of risk.

The problem is that, if you do this, you're not using a one time pad anymore. You're using a stream cipher. The difference is in the nature of the security guarantees. Almost every cryptographic primitive is "computationally secure", which means the best-known attack is to try every key, and that would take beyond the heat death of the universe. One-time pads have "information-theoretical security", which is that eve…

The Linux random devices no longer work the way you describe, either. random blocks until there's enough entropy to consider the PRNG output fully random, then never blocks. urandom simply never blocks, even if there's absolutely no entropy yet and every copy of your device produces the same random stream.

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#217

The tech side of this is really cool but I'd also like to read more about the non-tech stuff. I wonder if the sympathetic Dutch flight attendant is still alive or the guys who actually carried the Trojan horse books to Mandela. What an amazing story!

She is alive and hearing her recollections is super cool. If you follow the link to the short documentary I mentioned in the column you will see her then and now.

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#218
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a saying "God doesn't exist but he gave us the land" which refers to the hypocrisy behind Zionism's biblical claims to the land of Palestine given that its founding fathers were all atheists.

Feel free to educate yourself on the history of jews in the region: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_Judais... "God gave us the land" has nothing to do with the jewish connection to the land.

My point stands. An atheist claiming God gave him exclusive rights to anything is rank hypocrisy.

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#219
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to educate yourself on the history of jews in the region: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_Judais... "God gave us the land" has nothing to do with the jewish connection to the land.

My point stands. An atheist claiming God gave him exclusive rights to anything is rank hypocrisy.

I think you missed the point. The claim is based on being native to the lands, has nothing to do with god.

Re: Code that helped end Apartheid

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, no matter whose side you're on, if the Israel-Palestine situation is not complicated, I'm not sure what is.

I disagree. While the situation in Israel differs from that in the West Bank, there are still significant elements of systemic discrimination against Arab citizens. The 2018 Nation-State Law is a prime example, as it: 1. Removedd Arabic as an offical language 2. Defined Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people exclusively 3. Declared Jewish settlements a national value This law effectively codified the second-…

Your comment is complicated in and of itself, even without the enormous historical, legal-theoretic and political context surrounding that law and its enactment.
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