Comment by jona-f

3 years ago

You used obscure language to make yourself look smart and deal with the resulting confusion by calling people stupid instead of clarifying what was said. Please get your ego in order.

18 comments

jona-f

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alariccole  3 years ago

The person is saying one thing then denying saying that thing and being a jerk about it. Either a bot or someone with a broken thesaurus. Glad you pointed it out because it’s ridiculous/risible.

  • kbenson  3 years ago

    That person is very well known in this community, and in other communities as well.

    They are also known for making very specific arguments that people misinterpret and fight over, but the actual intent and literal meaning of the statements is most often correct (IMO).

    Whether this is a byproduct of trying to be exacting in the language used that tends to cause people interpretive problems or a specific tactic to expose those that are a combination of careless with their reading and willing to make assumptions rather than ask questions is unknown to me, but that doesn't change how it tends to play out, from my perspective.

    In this case, I'll throw you a bone and restate his position as I understand it.

    NIST ran the competition in question in a way such that all the judges referred each other, and all are very well known in the cryptographic field, and the suggestion by someone with more common game that they could be bribes in this manner (note not that the NSA would not attempt it, but the implication they would succeed with the people in question) is extremely unlikely, and that DJB would suggest as much knowing his fame may matter to people more than the facts of who these people are, is problematic.

    • tptacek  3 years ago

      I'm not sure I'd use the same words, but yeah, the argument I'm refusing to dignify is that NSA could have been successful at bribing a member of one of the PQC teams. Like, what is that bribed person going to do? Look at the teams; they're ridiculously big. It doesn't even make sense. Again: part of my dismissiveness comes from how clear it is that Bernstein is counting on his cheering section not knowing any of this, even though it's a couple of Google searches away.

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    • MauranKilom  3 years ago

      If that is the case, then what is the explanation for NIST (according to DJB) 1. not communicating their decision process to anywhere near the degree that they vowed to, and 2. stone-walling a FOIA request on the matter?

      > Whether this is a byproduct of trying to be exacting in the language used that tends to cause people interpretive problems or a specific tactic to expose those that are a combination of careless with their reading and willing to make assumptions rather than ask questions is unknown to me

      Communicating badly and then acting smug when misunderstood is not cleverness (https://xkcd.com/169/).

      If many people do not understand the argument being made, it doesn't matter how "exacting" the language is - the writer failed at communicating. I don't have a stake in this, but from afar this thread looks like tptacek making statements so terse as to be vague, and then going "Gotcha! That's not the right interpretation!" when somebody attempts to find some meaning in them.

      In short: If standard advice is "you should ask questions to understand my point", you're doing it wrong. This isn't "HN gathers to tease wisdom out of tptacek" - it's on him to be understood by the readers (almost all of which are lurkers!). Unless he doesn't care about that, but only about shouting (what he thinks are) logically consistent statements into the void.

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dcow  3 years ago

He said bribed, which quite explicitly means payment made to a person in a position of trust to corrupt his judgment. Coerced is not bribed. Period.