Proof isn't always possible

 The cloud is not secure for entry-level users.   My personal security has been pwnd, leaving open questions about my competency, by criminal hackers who employ their creativity to enable malice and occasionally spite, such as revenge porn.  This blog once reflected the language "with grim determination," alluding to my motives for implementing Erasthmus's sieve on an odd number line. Now it says "mad cap experiment," instead. I cannot even correct an error on blogger dot com once published. Caching takes over and the update never populates. But in a new development, my book "The Devil's Hangover," has been updated for me. When I first wrote it, I had the original bad guys named "Rurek" and "Harold York." However, this reflects offline preparatory drafts, and the only cloud interaction it might have seen was as a zip file to my Google Drive as a backup. At the time of publishing, I labored to correct every occurrence of Rurek th...

There are a finite number of compression algorithms. One strategy is to catalog differences in consecutive values and compress a dictionary of the differences. A simple experiment to perform in Rust or C++20, is as follows. 1. Read the file as an array of unsigned int (16 bits each.) To do this, it is important to understand encoding. I avoid Microsoft's Unicode encoding. An alternative is to read the file in 8-bit bytes, and concatenate every two-byte pair into an array of unsigned int. The numeric value represented is not the purpose. Declare a large enough array space in RAM to accommodate some max_size value. 2. delta_encode the array. There is standardized code to do this. Python3 has a function in module numpy. 3. Golomb-encode the resulting dictionary or array. There is standardized code to do this. This falls into the category of run-length encoding. Viewing pixels from a raw photo format or an mp3 as unsigned int is the innovation suggested.   4. Write the result in a file...

Red Pill; White Hat; Blue Team! Source Code uses only printable characters. Unicode provides for fonts, control codes and many other bells and whistles. However, Unicode does not expand the vocabulary of source code. As such, source code that is tampered with control codes introduced to the text file or the editor (by a bad actor or automaton,) can be scrubbed by a format stripper. One notable "virus," introduces hidden control codes to combine the direction the processor "parses," from left to right v right to left. Based upon a foundation of tampering direction codes, the file or editor is directed to corrupt the program logic by tampering indentation. This is of less concern with c++20 and other semi-colon delimited languages, but Black Hat has devised improvements, inspired by success against Python using the older method. The strategy to compile a source-code scrubber would be to read the file in 8-bit bytes, assessing which are ASCII and which are not. Only a ...

 If I want to certify object code but don't want to share the source, ONE idea would be to provide an interpretive script that duplicates it. Encryption would be an example. My idea was: if I can write C++ code that decrypts text enciphered by my python3 implementation, that would certify it while capitalizing on faster execution, yet defeating efforts to brute force cryptograms.  Specifically in encryption, the rule is: nothing secret except the message and the password. Ethically, derived key material represents a grey area. If I use a C++ object from an unknown source, and this object decrypts what Python has enciphered AND Python decrypts what the object has enciphered, then the object is valid - as long as I check EVERY message. A back door treats some passwords (or messages) differently. As a learned rule, this helps me think more clearly about it.

 Cryptocurrency is NOT a suitable medium of exchange for the 21st century. Cryptocurrency is conceptually, non-counterfeitable coins attached to a resilient blockchain. By associating the blockchain entry with a jpg, we get the idea of an NFT. These are worth what someone will pay for them in the same way as a painting. However, the coins are subject to failings. 1. Cryptomining of the currency (computing new coins) is inflationary. 2. Cryptowallets can be summarily deleted, by either a hacker or a despotic government. A Backup wallet is a workaround, but by the mechanism you reconnect the wallet to the blockchain, you can introduce a mathematical attack. 3. Marked bills do not name criminals. They identify the holder by possession or transaction participation. Each cryptocoin contains literally EVERY transaction it has ever been associated with as part of the coin. So arguably EVER coin acts as a marked bill. 4. No one regulates the capitalization of the blockchain. If by some art...

We love to hate DRM, because we associate it with degraded quality or loss of data control. Sometimes we associate it with loss of privacy when we register.  Here is a formative "Open DRM." The kernel of the system is going to be the idea that a salted hash is a member of a class of some kind. If I start with a MEMBER md5 hash and run 200,000 iterations of the correct salt, I hit a control value predictably.  The potential problem arises not from providing 199,999 different possible keys, but from providing a registered customer with his own valid replacement, on that rare occasion when he proves he has purchased it, and we must re-present his original key. Standing behind the warranty is what makes us reputable. To preserve his privacy AND the security of our system, we do not want to store the enumerated value on the server.  However, we can reasonably suppose that we can manage to keep a secret value secure. I propose that the DBM or LLC choose a passphrase of some kin...