This may seem like an odd question, but strategically, why acquire the stake (aside from dividends)?
As I understand, ASML already depends on Carl Zeiss. I would guess ASML will depend more heavily on them with EUVL over the next decade, but I honestly haven't done the research.
Is this going to give them more control over production? Does it somehow reduce their costs?
People and businesses in countries like Venezuela, where the native currency is volatile and under strict government control, use cryptocurrencies. They're more stable (not as stable as USD/EUR though) and easier to transact (particularly cross-currency).
Okay... I agree adding features to email and IRC are probably not the easiest things in the world. There are a number of useful features that have been added to email over time though, and I don't think decentralized control of the protocol is the bottleneck. Wave might or might not be a good example.
I'm a huge fan of the IRC protocol, and I think I've set up IRC channels at nearly every company I've worked for.
Freenode and Weechat seem to support the changes, but I honestly worry that the protocol ends up more complicated than it needs to be, or possibly more complicated than people can use. Diaspora already provides a lot of what IRCv3 looks like it's trying to do. I guess I'm just not sure what the difference is.
ORWL was designed specifically to prevent undetected tampering with any of its electrical components, including the entire motherboard and storage drive. When tampering is detected, ORWL immediately and irrevocably erases all your data, even if it is unplugged at the time.
and...
Upon any tampering, the secure microcontroller instantly erases the encryption key, causing all data on the SSD to be irrevocably lost.
If only the key is deleted, wouldn't that leave the drive susceptible to brute force?
There are reasonable issues that could be raised about various meta-data leaks with full-disk encryption. For example, in a completely naive per-file encryption scheme, the (approximate) file sizes would be visible. But I don't think "brute force" is a concern for reasonably modern encryption schemes. Of course, if they are using weak/short pins with a key derivation function, then that is vulnerable to brute force.
Bruce Schneier and others[1] have done the math on brute forcing 256 bit keys: even with a perfectly efficient computer using the least amount of energy possible, you would have to deplete the entire energy content of the Sun to just iterate over a 225 bit keyspace once, let alone do anything meaningful with those keys.
It's estimated there are 10^80 atoms [1] in the visible universe, so 2^256 is definitely a huge number. I didn't realize 256 bit brute force was nigh feasible with only a solar system.
I'm a bit surprised the quantum algorithm only gives a polynomial speedup.
It's all down to probabilities, yes our hypothetical attacker could guess your key correctly the first time or within a few years but the chances are so tiny it approaches zero for practical purposes on practical timescales.
quantum computers, at best, divide the bit-strength of a symmetric key like AES in half[1]. Brute forcing a 128 bit key is theoretically possible (in the sense that you can do it if you marshal the entire world energy output to the cause, you could crack 1 key/yr), but not a 5 minute process.
that is assuming that there is no better quantum algorithm for aes specifically. grover's algorithm is only optimal if brute force search is the only possible approach and there are no other exploitable properties.
considering that there already theoretical attacks that (marginally) faster than brute force on classic computers who knows how much more one could squeeze out with quantum algorithms.
It's very obvious how special structure exists in cryptosystems that use finite cyclic groups, such as in discrete log cryptosystems.
But in AES? that sounds unlikely and really unfortunate.
I think it's more likely that large quantum computers would aid in mathmatical exploration that uncovers currently unknown vulnerabilities that could be exploited by classical systems.
I think it's likely intelligent life outside our planet just doesn't, or won't, have any interest in us outside the infinitesimal possibility of a threat.
Consider everything less intelligent than us on our planet... If anything tried to communicate with us, would we even bother trying to figure out what it was trying to say? Would we try to communicate back?
Suppose an octopus stacked rocks in piles of prime numbers (not including unity). Would we care beyond possibly putting it on display in an aquarium?
Paul aside, we've been ignoring evidence that animals are sentient for centuries now.
So yes - as a general principle, there's a term missing from the Drake equation to cover recognisable similarity, technological equivalence, and mutual interest.
Two civs probably need to be within half a millennium or so of technological development (human time) to have any possibility of communicating.
Considering how old the universe is, it's quite likely civs pass each other by all the time, because larger development differentials aren't visible - literally in one direction, and because of perceived triviality in the other.
Imagine an ant colony in a city, looking for other ant nests, while the city, all the other cities, and the rest of the civ that built the cities can't be imagined by the ants. So even though they're in the middle of a busy civilisation, it's invisible to them.
Two civs probably need to be within half a millennium or so of technological development (human time) to have any possibility of communicating.
Intelligence seems to expand polynomially or exponentially by a lot of measures though (e.g. technology). The closest analogy for us compared to another civilization that could actually receive our radio communication I think would be chimpanzees using sticks to eat termites.
If I had to guess, I'd guess there's probably some kind of technological asymptote, but considering the scale of the universe (more importantly its complexity) I think we are probably nowhere near it.
Yeah, I'd care about that octopus. I would want to study it and see what else it does.
Prime numbers are a consequential concept. Maybe that octopus knows about another consequential concept that we haven't been thinking about for many hundreds of years.
Also, maybe the smartest thing to do if an unknown entity tries to contact you, is to play dumb.
Yeah, I'd care about that octopus. I would want to study it and see what else it does.
Sure, I mean intelligent life is interesting to us because it's novel. If there is other intelligent life in the galaxy (universe), it probably implies that intelligent life is relatively common. So, more (less) intelligent life would be extremely inconsequential to them. Why waste resources studying something already well understood?
That seems remarkably incurious. There are like, tens of thousands of species of bee on earth, and there are tons of people who are out there looking into cataloguing them, studying their behavior, etc.
I suspect that if life is common enough that we're boring to most other forms of intelligent life, we'd probably find at least one or two other species that are interested in us, and if it's rare enough that there's only one or two other species out there, then chances are we're interesting enough that some of their folks would want to visit us and find out our deal.
I personally think life is probably common in the universe. We've only been able to prove exoplanets exist within the last few decades, but the evidence is already that there are a number of planets that are hospitable to life (our kind at least). We've only just started scratching the surface and we've already found things like Tabby's Star [1].
Obviously I think there's a point to us trying to communicate with whatever is out there, I just think we shouldn't be surprised by the lack of response.
> Suppose an octopus stacked rocks in piles of prime numbers (not including unity). Would we care beyond possibly putting it on display in an aquarium?
Considering that a lot of research is done on animal communication, I think that's a poor example.
It would just be considered a mating ritual, with some reference to the fact that numerical artifacts in uncommunicative life aren't uncommon (sunflower spirals and Fibonacci).
Then we'd start studying its anatomy for its prime calculator.
That's a good point, although what I'm more concerned with is industry pushback against third-party self-driving upgrades, similar to how ECU tampering voids the warranty of most cars.
Autonomous software is a lot more complex than the software the ECU uses (which is still complex), so there may be a genuine argument against allowing people to modify cars not designed for autonomous driving. It definitely raises a really serious liability question.
Even with those systems working exactly as designed, there are some serious liability questions I don't think anyone has really answered yet.
