catloaf: is it worth it?

international treaties, for one. second because lack of encryption discourages commercial/non-hobbyist use. third because the spirit of Ham is for Hams to all listen and transmit to each other.

I think FCC still takes it pretty seriously.

just use Meshtastic/LoRa. you can use encryption and you don’t need a Ham license. your output power is limited but I’ve heard of people getting 50+ miles of range for reception.

specifically, for ham you’re not allowed to obscure the meaning of your transmissions. this means no:

• symmetric cryptography
• numbers stations (one-time pad ciphers)
• communicating in codewords (“the Falcon has left the nest, over!”

but you can use:

• compression
• commercial telegraph codes (e.g. 22415 = “Partly cloudy with a chance of showers”), as long as you’re using a public codebook
• message authentication codes (to prevent forging messages)
• (arguably) asymmetric cryptography for signatures, identity challenge/response
• encrypted control messages for hobbyist satellites (special exemption)

so authentication is possible, just not privacy.

well, it worked out for him but it didn’t really work out for him.

specifically this is how QUANTUMINSERT worked (from the Snowden leaks.) also China used the same technique, injecting malicious JS through the GFW to get bystanders to DDoS github, in a much more obvious and indiscriminate way.

nobody here is remotely likely to be targeted by NSA, of course, but you can actually do such attacks on a budget if you compromise any router in the chain. combined with a BGP hijack it’s not far out of reach for even a ransomware gang to pull something like that these days.

yuck. he apparently groomed a 14yo he was tutoring and eventually got her pregnant, and later preyed on a 12yo (per Wikipedia.)

never meet your heroes.

i did not!! thanks for link!

I loved that show so fucking much.

and yes. yes it was.

Zalgo captchas would go so hard.

computer engineer refers to someone who engineers computer hardware. more like being a (digital) electrical engineer.

that can’t be right. maybe they meant lambda calculus? programmers are definitely good at applied logic, graph theory, certain kinds of discrete math etc. but you’re not whipping out integrals to write a backend.

hugs

DM me if you need a friend. being isolated sucks.