JackGibbs

Perfect secrecy refers to the ability to determine any information about the plaintext without decoding it. Not having it can be very useful to an attacker, but that isn't always the case. RSA, for instance, doesn't have perfect secrecy, because it leaks the Jacobi symbol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobi_symbol) of the plaintext. However, that information is of limited utility, and it can be shown that determining more useful facets, for instance the parity of the plaintext, requires solving more unfeasible problems.

For no encryption scheme is the key space unlimited.

For symmetric key ciphers, the keys are of a set length. AES accepts key lengths of 128, 192, and 256 bits.

For asymmetric ciphers, they vary even more. The RSA-XXXX designation refers to the length of n, which is the product of two primes (which must be kept secret) p and q. So for RSA-2048, p and q are roughly 1024-bit numbers. In addition, the secret exponent can frequently be quite large, although as it's calculated from the public key exponent and n its size is not guaranteed.

Ultimately however, all of these are designed so that the key spaces are too large to be feasibly brute-forced searched. The reason for the much larger size of the keys for the asymmetric ciphers is that their security is usually based on the difficulty of solving a problem (in RSA's case, factoring n into p and q, or the equally difficult problem of determining the totient of n) that gets more difficult as the keys get larger.

EDIT: And yes, one-time pads are theoretically unbreakable, however they can only be used once (as the name implies, but if they are used twice recovering the key is trivial), must rely on a sufficently good quality random number generator (which Matt Green recently had a very good article describing how hard it is to do: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/03/how-do-you-k...) and they have the same issues that any symmetric key ciphers have, in terms of key distribution. They're useful when you have old women in Bletchley Park spinning bingo balls and carefully copying into two notebooks. Less so when you're trying to build a usable system for secure communication.

It's not trying to be anything else. It's trying to make the case purely from Israel's perspective about the threats it faces.

You clearly aren't familiar with Simmons' writing style. For instance, in my opinion the best thing he's even written was the Oscar Robertson section in The Book of Basketball. He manages, in the course of only a handful of pages, to just about perfectly capture the difficult balance of the O's legacy. His enormous talents, his extremely difficult personality, which got in the way of success, and of course the way that the ever-present racism of the era he played in deeply affected both those things. And I'm not the only one who feels that way. In the second edition, Simmons includes a footnote from Jason Whitlock, one of the most vocal (and, it must be said, controversial) media members about racial issues in sports, and he says essentially the same thing. My point? Simmons uses that language throughout the section. It's his style. He's informal, he's straightforward, he's self-deprecating, and he's funny, and it's why he's been so successful and will continue to be. His language in the letter would be troublesome if it was a departure from his usual writing, but it's not, and so as an avid reader I don't take it as flippant or dismissive.

As for your comment about it being 2700 words too long, the original post here is the only professionally published article I've read on the subject since Simmons' statement (which includes articles on Salon, Washington Post, Deadspin, etc.) which continues to phrase the events as though Hannan acted maliciously. The reason for the length of Simmons' apology was to make clear that Hannan and the editorial staff were extremely unfamiliar with trans* issues, and that it was that lack of education, and not personal hate or bigotry, that caused Hannan to make the mistakes (which Simmons, it should be noted, takes full responsibility for) he did. He didn't realize how grave it is to out someone in the trans* community in life or death, and to him it fit the narrative he found, of an inventor whose life was a complete lie. Again, he didn't understand that keeping a gender identity secret is done out of necessity in our culture, and is not in any way a statement of one's personal veracity. Grantland also published an op-ed by ESPN's Christina Kahrl, who is transgender, in which she eviscerates Hannan and the editorial staff's actions (http://grantland.com/features/what-grantland-got-wrong/). Note that at no point in her attack on Hannan's actions does she attribute it to maliciousness. To quote, "revealing her gender identity was ultimately as dangerous as it was thoughtless."

EDIT: I guess I should I add something, just so I don't get accused of anything. I attended one of the most progressive high schools in the country, and now attend one of the most progressive colleges, and know many LGBTQ and trans* individuals, with a few of the former counted among my closest friends. I believe that one's identity is theirs and theirs alone until they choose (if ever) to come out, and I also strongly believe that active sexual and gender discrimination is a hate-crime. My point is not that Grantland was not horribly horribly wrong. They were. My point is that it was a lack of education that caused their errors, and that the opportunity should be used to continue educating, which Simmons' piece, even if it seems at times to be attempting to shoehorn in an excuse, does. I know the errors they made, but I'm sure the vast majority of Grantland's readership does not.

I'm surprised no one has made a "Hacker News for Hacker News for X" site yet...

Those of us in the cycling world know Oleg Tinkov well, and the first rule of listening to Oleg Tinkov is don't listen to Oleg Tinkov. Few people on earth are as full of it as he is...

I don't know what the result of the case will be, but his statements regarding it will certainly be useless.

I wasn't exactly thinking of Optum or Kenda, I was thinking of a Pro/WorldTour level rider. The numbers you mention are frightening close to these I found for Brian Vandborg: http://home.trainingpeaks.com/races/saxo-bank-sungard/2011-u... - not exactly known as a powerhouse (there he is finish 47 seconds down over a 8km TT, and here he is barely beating Chris Anker Sorenson in a 40km time trial a few months before those figures: http://cqranking.com/men/asp/gen/race.asp?raceid=20722). Sure, Domencio Pozzovizzio isn't putting out 400 watts sustained (he probably isn't putting out 300), but my feeling is that Siutsou, Chavanel, Tuft, Vanmarcke, Vaitkus, Malori and other riders of their ilk are creeping up towards the 375-400 range sustained.

Don't get me wrong, I'm nitpicking here, I was just noting those numbers feel slightly low.

Those pro numbers are a little low. Although La Gazzetta's watt calculations have been somewhat questionable in the past, Tony Martin's wattage was given as 480 for the Mont Saint Michel TT on Tuesday.

Shane Perkins, and Aussie track rider who is probably the strongest cyclist in the world in terms of pure brute strength, has a maximum output of 2500 watts (my guess is that is a ten second effort, they don't give it, but his 60 second effort is certainly higher than 1100 watts).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8H6fU9VNgQ

Most top tier pro cyclists clock 25000-35000 miles a year on their bikes, and race 80-140 days a year. Other than that, the job is mainly sitting around recovering. Although cycling is an incredibly complex sport, on the level of gridiron football or basketball in terms of the number of calculations that have to be made as part of tactical decisions, the longer-term playout of actions (at least in long road races) means that riders and their sporting directors (think coaches) have time to think about their decisions, and that combined with how much of racing is done on feel means there isn't the same need for things like film study and in-depth tactical coaching on a daily basis.

It looks like Cervelo was sponsoring the team, based on the bike being used appearing to be an R5 and the kit he was wearing. Nowadays Garmin (for whom Cervelo is a major co-sponsor) only has one Canadian on the team, Ryder Hesdejal, but they do have a number of Americans, including Dave Zabriskie, a reasonably slim time-trial powerhouse (read: perfect for this), who is currently sitting on his couch in Colorado unable to ride due to his six-month suspension he received as part of admitting to doping and testifying against Lance regarding his time on the US Postal team. They could have made it happen...

As part of properly generating RSA keys there are restrictions as to how close together the two primes numbers chosen can be. So no, twin primes bear no relevance to the problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(algorithm)#Faulty_key_gene...

Some authors and a rec or two for each.

DFW - Infinite Jest

Pynchon - Really anything, but in particular Against the Day, V, and Gravity's Rainbow.

Rushdie - Shame and Satanic Verses, a lot of good other ones.

Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon

Gaddis - JR, hence my name.

Heller - Catch-22

Not to mention an anti-Semite, which actually plays a prominent role (Rose da Nose) in the book. Still, Heinlein was a fascist, and L. Ron Hubbard, well...Anyway, it's the age old debate that pops up with artists. Do you overlook their personal issues for the sake of their work? Wagner is another anti-Semetic example.

I'll probably go see it, but I have my issues...

EDIT: I should say I think Heinlein was a fascist. I know that's a contentious point, and various people read him various ways...