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Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

philzimmermann.com

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Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#91

Post by newsclues »

vbezhenar wrote: post #86
Zababa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put "jokes" and "cultural references" together under "tone". Recent articles often feel like they're trying to catch the attention of children. There are lots of "candies" to make you read: pictures, GIFs, jokes, an attention grabbing title, colors, emojis, a friendly tone, lots of exclamation marks. On the other hand, that article is mostly black on white text, that's plain in a good way.

That's because young people have very short attention span and they must be fed with instant gratifications all the time to continue reading. Those "candies" are targeted at them.

Is it really just young people?

Don’t old people who sit in front of the news get a similar rush?

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#92

Post by jacquesm »

Zababa wrote: post #65
skybrian wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One difference (in this article at least) is that there are no jokes or unnecessary cultural references. Another might be called moral clarity. Unfortunately, it's usually an illusion. We have much more experience with technologies invented under optimistic assumptions turning out to be a moral gray area at best, when you look at how they're used. I found this paper interesting: The Moral Character of Cryptographic W…

I'd put "jokes" and "cultural references" together under "tone". Recent articles often feel like they're trying to catch the attention of children. There are lots of "candies" to make you read: pictures, GIFs, jokes, an attention grabbing title, colors, emojis, a friendly tone, lots of exclamation marks. On the other hand, that article is mostly black on white text, that's plain in a good way.

It's the recurring critique on my blog posts: that there is too much text and too little pictorial content. I'm not going to change anything because of that but it is interesting how you have identified this as a good thing when the bulk of the feedback that I get about this is negative.

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#93

Post by ozim »

vbezhenar wrote: post #86
Zababa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put "jokes" and "cultural references" together under "tone". Recent articles often feel like they're trying to catch the attention of children. There are lots of "candies" to make you read: pictures, GIFs, jokes, an attention grabbing title, colors, emojis, a friendly tone, lots of exclamation marks. On the other hand, that article is mostly black on white text, that's plain in a good way.

That's because young people have very short attention span and they must be fed with instant gratifications all the time to continue reading. Those "candies" are targeted at them.

No those "candies" are to create feeling that you are peers and that it is informal communication.

That is why most people like movies made by Quentin Tarantino and not by Andrei Tarkovsky.

I don't like when someone puts memes in each paragraph but at the same time I don't like to read "guru on a high horse" that comes like he is a smart ass because he pretends to be professional and all that.

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#94

Post by whoaisme »

emilsedgh wrote: post #56
uncomputation wrote: post #27

There’s something… different about how people (techie people are most of my sample) would write before the 00’s. I’m not sure if it has to do with the medium, or the constraints of the time, but reading it always fills me with something I can best describe as peace/nostalgia. The belief that technology honestly can change the world for the better and that the most influential people driving it have good motives inste…

You are right. All the good movements in tech happened ~20 years ago. Free Software/Open Source, Wikipedia, etc, all date back to early days. Now it's all about that SaaS money.I don't mind the money part, but sadly, tech has become a gold mine for predators who smell the money and are out for blood.

Funny how it's obvious you're not a woman. 20 years ago if I groped a woman's ass or called or called my coworker Jose a wetback people would have clapped compared to today. And you're right, greedy predators like Gates and Ellison are a totally recent phenomenon. The past is better more noble and cleaner than the present. Honestly what a basic sentiment.

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#95

Post by [deleted] »

jandrese wrote: post #57
XorNot wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web of Trust is a perfectly fine system but UI-wise a total disaster. There's also the reality that what most people need most of the time is a web of trust that includes government agencies, banks and other major institutions. For the vast majority of useful communications for users, your web of trust ideally goes You -> Government ID Agency fine - that's what people actually need. People get scammed or deceived by…

Having to physically meet people to exchange long hex strings was never going to scale.

[deleted]

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#96

Post by hmfrh »

dosman33 wrote: post #9
breput wrote: post #3

PGP felt so subversive back in the day. Key signing parties[1] and porting the "international" version[2] to run on the Amiga. And the very real threat that the Clipper Chip[3] would lead to the outlawing of all other encryption methods. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signing_party [2] https://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~conrad/krypto/pgp263.features... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

The sad thing is if the clipper chip was ubiquitous today that could have killed the ability for spammers to spoof numbers. Some days I can get a dozen robo calls, each with a different spoofed number. People that want non-backdoored crypto could still do so. I'm still blown away at how hard it is to get people to use any encryption, even people who work in infosec/etc. If nothing else, 2020 was a great year for the…

> Some days I can get a dozen robo calls, each with a different spoofed number.

I live in the EU and have literally never gotten a robo call in my life. It's a political problem, not a technical one.

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#97

Post by danielschonfeld »

uncomputation wrote: post #27

There’s something… different about how people (techie people are most of my sample) would write before the 00’s. I’m not sure if it has to do with the medium, or the constraints of the time, but reading it always fills me with something I can best describe as peace/nostalgia. The belief that technology honestly can change the world for the better and that the most influential people driving it have good motives inste…

I am with you. But I think I know what it is, you touched on it and almost had it. It was indeed peace, we almost had it, world peace - feeling utopian and all loving in the 90s.

Then came 9/11. It’s the single point in history where just about everything to do with American society can be defined to be before and after.

Doesn’t matter what you think about the event and it’s authenticity as described, the fact of the matter is that America as a country has been locked in this sort of country wide PTSD since and have changed completely. Along with it went peace, calmness, secularism, egalitarianism and altruism. We’re constantly the hunted now, the ones who need security, everything needs to be dumbed down, so called common sense rules and it better be mine common sense and not yours. And on and on it goes. We’re operating like a demented, schizophrenic who has woken up from a nightmare every day of their lives and have lost the fact they are living in their head instead of in the real world.

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#98

Post by Damogran6 »

sildur wrote: post #85
skybrian wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One difference (in this article at least) is that there are no jokes or unnecessary cultural references. Another might be called moral clarity. Unfortunately, it's usually an illusion. We have much more experience with technologies invented under optimistic assumptions turning out to be a moral gray area at best, when you look at how they're used. I found this paper interesting: The Moral Character of Cryptographic W…

All those "jokes" are exhausting. I usually don't have the energy to finish reading an article. I assumed it was a problem with myself, lack of attention. Until some day I read an article from beginning to end, it was captivating. I found that weird, then I checked the date of the article: 1950.

Link? :D Honestly, I know it's popular to cast these things as 'Gen Z, kids these days don't know how it used to be'....but I know this 51 year old guy doesn't have near the attention span reading that he used to.

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#99

Post by iso1210 »

dylan604 wrote: post #71
uncomputation wrote: post #27

There’s something… different about how people (techie people are most of my sample) would write before the 00’s. I’m not sure if it has to do with the medium, or the constraints of the time, but reading it always fills me with something I can best describe as peace/nostalgia. The belief that technology honestly can change the world for the better and that the most influential people driving it have good motives inste…

To me, there was something to say vs people posting shit just to meet a quota. There seems to be much less thought/research/editing of content now. It wasn't so gamefied before HTML2.0 and social.

Not convinced HTML2 'gamified' anything.

"HTML 1" wasn't really a standard anyway and I don't remember what html2 actually brought - I remember not every browser in the mid 90s did tables, client side image maps etc but they were later additions to html2.

Javascript (which came in with html 3.2) was far more of a step change than html2

Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

#100

Post by user3939382 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #89
arminiusreturns wrote: post #75

From an old comment of mine on the topic: https://youtu.be/sKOk4Y4inVY?t=518 [1] 1. "In 1995, there was a debate at Harvard Law School – four of us discussing the future of public key encryption and its control. I was on the side, I suppose, of freedom. It’s where I try to be. With me at that debate was a man called Daniel Weitzner who now works in the White House making Internet policy for the Obama administration.…

Tor is the anonymous net. It might be not perfect against targeting state-level attackers, but generally it works and delivers its promise.

> it works

Does it? Dragnet surveillance might not easily inspect all Tor traffic, but it can easily see who is using it, flag those identities, and put them on a list for increased scrutiny. Unless a major web browser has it enabled by default, I don’t see it delivering on its promise.

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